MerchButler Resources — guides, calculators, and playbooks for buying merch in bulk
Fun Run Giveaways: A Decision Tree, Not a Listicle
Somewhere around week six of planning a fun-run, someone suggests adding a photo booth prop, a branded koozie, and a custom trucker hat to the swag bag. That suggestion usually comes from a well-meaning sponsor or a volunteer who found a…
Race & Walk Organizer5K Shirt Size Calculator: How Many of Each Size to Order (Free Tool)
Most race directors order shirts by gut feel or a generic online calculator, then either run out of mediums on race morning or haul a bin of unworn XLs back to their garage. Neither feels great. Here is the math that actually accounts for…
People Ops SwagCustom Moleskine GO Pen for New-hire onboarding kits: A Buyer's Take
Moleskine notebooks make sense for onboarding kits, but only if you have enough budget runway and enough calendar runway to pull them off. Get either of those wrong and you're either overspending or scrambling to find a substitute the week…
Co-Branded Sponsor Shirts: Design Order, Approval, and the Legal Bits
The back of your race shirt is real estate, and every sponsor who writes you a check thinks they own the penthouse. Sponsor logos on race shirts follow a logic that's half physics and half contract law, and skipping either one will cost…
Nonprofit Volunteer Kit: What Every On-the-Ground Volunteer Needs
Assembling a volunteer kit that survives eight hours of hauling barricades, directing foot traffic, and answering the same question four hundred times is mostly a problem of combination, not cost. Pick the right four items in the right…
Walkathon Swag on a Mission Budget
Walkathon swag has a brutal sorting process. Within two weeks of the event, roughly half of it ends up in a donation pile, one quarter becomes a painting shirt, and the rest disappears into a drawer. The rare piece that actually gets worn…
Stanley/Stella Unisex Chaser Hooded Sweatshirt SXU038: A Swag Spotlight
If your team keeps raiding the merch closet for themselves, you've picked the right hoodie. The Chaser is the kind of sweatshirt people actually want to wear on weekends, which is exactly the point. The Chaser earns its keep in the…
Moleskine Medium Notebook Gift Set: A Swag Spotlight
Executives who still write things down by hand tend to notice when a notebook is good. This gift set is for them, and for the clients, speakers, retreat attendees, or new hires you want to impress without overthinking it. Moleskine has a…
Swag Production Timeline for a Multi-Day Conference
A conference swag timeline without buffer time is just a deadline you'll miss. Most organizers build their schedule forward from "we should probably order soon" and backward from "the event is in three months," and then act surprised when…
Best Swag for a Board Offsite: Useful, Quiet, Memorable
Executive offsite swag lives in a narrower band than most merch. Go too cheap and you signal you treated the board like a trade-show crowd. Go too lavish and you look like someone who didn't read the room. The window between "careless" and…
Custom Moleskine Pocket Notebook and GO Pen Gift Set for New-hire onboarding kits: A Buyer's Take
The Moleskine Pocket Notebook and GO Pen Gift Set is one of the few onboarding items that sits at a defensible price point and still feels like someone at the company thought about it. Budget north of $20 per unit, allow eight to ten…
Want to
try it out?
Just want to kick the tires? Click below to get started. Trying it out is free, and it’s pretty fun to see what The Butler suggests.
Get Started