Ordering swag for employees sounds easy until you actually have to pick something. You need something that works for a lot of different people, fits the budget, can be branded well, and ideally won’t end up forgotten in a desk drawer.
The tricky part is that “employee swag” can mean everything from 500 welcome gifts shipped to new hires throughout the year, to 40 bags waiting in hotel rooms at a company retreat. Those aren’t really the same assignment.
Before you start looking at products, it helps to figure out what you’re asking the swag to do.
Start with the occasion, not the product
A new-hire gift should help someone feel welcomed and give them something they can start using. An anniversary gift has more room to feel special. Retreat swag has to work for the event itself and make it home afterward. A company-wide gift needs to make sense for a much broader group of people.
That gives you a much better starting point than opening a catalog and scrolling until something looks good.
For new hires, practical tends to work well. A tote, backpack, drinkware, or another everyday item can become part of someone’s routine pretty quickly. If employees receive several pieces, think about whether they work together rather than assembling a box of unrelated branded items.
For company retreats and offsites, look at the actual agenda. A cooler makes a lot more sense if there’s an outdoor afternoon planned. A backpack or tote can be useful from day one if employees need something for materials, a laptop, or everything else they accumulate during the event.
For milestones and recognition, you have a smaller audience and a different reason for giving something. That may be the place to spend more per person or choose an upgraded version of an item you wouldn't use for a 1,000-person order.
Then look at how your employees actually work
“Employees” isn't a particularly useful audience description on its own. A distributed software company, a hospital system, and a retail organization may all be ordering employee swag, but they shouldn't necessarily be ordering the same things.
A few questions can narrow the field quickly:
- Are most people remote, hybrid, in an office, or working in the field?
- Do they commute with a laptop or other gear?
- Do they travel frequently?
- Are you shipping items individually or distributing them in person?
- Will employees use the product primarily at work, or are you hoping it has a life outside work too?
- Does one item realistically work for everyone, or would a small choice of options make more sense?
That last question can be especially useful for larger or more varied teams. You don't necessarily need 12 choices, but giving employees a choice between two useful items can sometimes make more sense than trying to find one universally beloved product.
Look at the details that actually affect whether something gets used
Two backpacks can look nearly identical on a product page and work very differently in real life.
If you're choosing a backpack, check the overall dimensions, laptop compartment size, pocket configuration, straps, and how much it weighs before anything is inside it.
For a tote, look at the dimensions and gusset, handle length, material, and capacity. If you expect people to carry it over their shoulder, the handle drop matters quite a bit.
For a cooler or lunch bag, capacity alone doesn't tell the whole story. Look at the shape, insulation, closure, carrying style, and whether its dimensions make sense for the way you expect employees to use it.
Those details aren't nearly as interesting as picking colors and artwork, but they're often the difference between something that looks good in the mockup and something people reach for six months later.
Think about branding after you've picked the product
It’s easy to approach branded merchandise as logo first, product second. For employee swag, reversing that order usually gives you more options.
Start with a product that works, then look at the available decoration area and what actually looks good there. A large centered logo may be right for one item. Somewhere else, a smaller mark, company name, icon, or different placement may look better.
You can also think beyond putting the exact same treatment on every product in a set. The pieces can clearly belong together without repeating the same oversized logo three times.
And if employees are likely to use something outside of work, consider what you'd be comfortable carrying yourself. There's a difference between recognizable branding and feeling like you're wearing an ad for your employer.
Build the budget around the whole order
The unit price is only one part of an employee swag program.
Depending on what you're ordering, you may also need to account for decoration, setup charges, shipping, packaging, individual fulfillment, and extras for future hires, damaged items, or employees who were accidentally left off the original count.
Quantity matters, too. If you're onboarding throughout the year, it may make more sense to think about the annual program rather than treating every new group of employees as a separate small order.
And before you spend most of the budget on elaborate packaging, decide how much of the experience actually depends on the box. If employees are going to use the bag for two years and recycle the packaging in two minutes, that's worth factoring into where the money goes.
If you're shipping to employees, plan for it early
Distributed teams create a few logistical questions that are much easier to answer before you've chosen the product.
You'll need accurate addresses, including international addresses if applicable, and enough lead time to get everything where it needs to go. Larger and heavier items may also change the economics of the program considerably once you're shipping them one at a time instead of sending everything to a single office.
For an event, work backward from when you actually need the merchandise rather than the day the event starts. You need time to receive it, check the order, organize it, and get it to the venue or into employees' hands.
If people are flying home with their swag, that's another constraint. A gift that requires half a suitcase may not get the reception you hoped for.
Don't order exactly the number you need
If you have 200 employees, ordering exactly 200 pieces leaves very little room for real life.
Someone gets added to the list late. An address is wrong. Something gets damaged. A new hire starts the following week. An executive suddenly remembers three people who “definitely need one.”
How much extra inventory makes sense will depend on the program and product, but it's worth deciding up front whether you need a buffer and what you'll do with the extras afterward.
For ongoing programs like onboarding, having inventory available for future hires may be useful. For a one-time event with the date printed prominently on the product, 75 leftovers are considerably less helpful.
Give yourself more lead time than you think you need
The fastest way to make a swag decision harder is to wait until there are very few options left.
You need time to choose the product, finalize artwork, approve the proof, produce the order, and get it where it needs to go. If you're coordinating hundreds of individual shipments or an event at another location, add more room.
Starting earlier also gives you more freedom to choose based on what you actually want rather than what's available and can arrive by Friday.
A good employee swag brief can be pretty simple
Before you start shopping, write down:
Who it's for: 150 hybrid employees
Why you're ordering: Annual company retreat
Where it's going: Distributed at the hotel
How they'll use it: During the event and afterward
What matters most: Useful, easy to travel with, works across a broad group
Quantity: 150 plus extras
Budget: Your total budget and/or target per person
Need-by date: When you need the merchandise in hand, not the event date
Branding: Logo/artwork, brand colors, and any preferences around how prominent the branding should be
That gives you something much more useful to work from than “we need employee swag.”
You don't need to find the most original thing in the catalog
Totes, backpacks, coolers, and other staples are staples because people have uses for them. The trick is choosing the right product, at the right level of quality, for the people receiving it.
If you have the audience, occasion, budget, logistics, and timeline figured out, you're already in a much better position to make that choice.
And if you've gotten that far and are now staring at a few hundred products that all seem almost identical, send us the brief. We'll help you narrow it down.