Swag me up, Scotty!

I find myself deep down the rabbit hole of something that's not a top priority for Herodesk (to put it mildly) more often than I care to admit.

When you're curious, optimistic and constantly hungry to learn, it happens.

This time it was about "company swag".

The term "swag" is widely used by startups for their company-branded clothing, etc., and comes from the phrase "Stuff We All Get".

The fact that the word "swag" itself has roots in Old English slang referring to stolen goods only makes it funnier that that was the acronym chosen.

I've needed Herodesk-branded clothes a few times since I started the business.

For conferences, talks, etc, and every time I've gone to Vistaprint or some similar shop and spent too much time in bad online editors, trying to create a design that I've paid way too much for afterwards.

Now the time has come again, and I need more swag. Add to this that I now have two colleagues whom I also want to give some to.

I mean, who doesn't want a cool logo t-shirt or hoodie?

So, instead of repeating the process and spending too much time and money on manual services, I thought there had to be a better way... And I started digging.

And of course, someone solved this problem, too!

Enter: Fourthwall.co 

A company that lets you set up a webshop where you can sell your own designs that are printed by sub suppliers on demand and shipped directly to the customer!

The editor is brilliant. It took me less time to design 10 products and set up the whole webshop, than it took me to design and order a single hoodie before.

I haven't built this because I expect anyone to want to buy stuff with a Herodesk logo.

But I know that I need it, and I know that my team wants it, too. So now we can all just order it from our very on Herodesk SWAG store.

I've opened it up to the public (in case I'm wrong and anyone actually wants to buy it).

All items are priced at cost, meaning I don't make anything at all. (and of course, the team has a 100% discount code).

You can visit the store here: https://store.herodesk.io

In addition to using it internally and letting anyone who wants to buy our swag, I plan to test it as a customer loyalty enhancer.

To reward happy and loyal customers by letting them choose something from the store. 

I have no idea if it'll work - but we'll test it out and see.

My theory is that it spreads like rings in the water.

Every piece of swag out there with our logo on it is free advertisement for us...

And if it looks cool at the same time... I mean, what's not to like?!