Promotional Products

Apparel is what we make in house, but plenty of jobs need things that aren't clothing — drinkware for an event, tote bags for a conference, signage for a booth, stickers for a launch. We source and brand those alongside the apparel so it all matches and arrives together.

The practical benefit is consistency. Because we already hold your logo, colors, and thread specs on file, the tumbler matches the polo matches the tote. Sourcing those separately is how brand colors drift.

The whole game with promotional products is that most of them get thrown away, and the ones that don't are the ones someone would have bought anyway.

Spend on fewer, better items. Three good things beat eight cheap ones at the same total cost, every time. A decent insulated bottle gets used daily for years; a hollow plastic pen is landfill with your name on it.

Keep branding restrained. A small logo gets used more than a large one, which means more impressions, not fewer. Skip the tagline — nobody reads it and it makes the design worse.

We went deeper on what actually works at events in trade show giveaways and on branded merch generally in company swag ideas.

Individually handed-out items are swag. The same items in a box with a note are a gift, and people treat them completely differently — including keeping them.

That's most of what we do on the promo side now: onboarding kits, client thank-yous, and event boxes that combine apparel with a couple of well-chosen promo items. Swag boxes covers the formula and the real costs, and corporate gifts has the gifting range.

Worth being straight about this: apparel we make ourselves; promotional products we source. That means lead times on promo items depend on the supplier, and they're generally longer than our in-house work — often four to six weeks rather than two to three.

So if you're combining apparel and promo for a single deadline, tell us the date first and we'll work backwards from the slowest item. We'd rather flag that up front than have your shirts arrive on time and your tumblers arrive after the event.