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…
Race Medals + Shirts: Ordering Both as One Project
Medal and shirt orders are separate purchase orders sent to separate vendors with separate artwork, separate production timelines, and separate shipping cutoffs. They also need to arrive at the same venue, on the same day, so that every…
Inclusive Sizing for Company Apparel
Sizing decisions for company apparel carry more weight than most buyers realize. When someone opens their welcome kit and the shirt doesn't fit, the kit stops being a gesture of inclusion and becomes evidence of the opposite. That's a lot…
Onboarding Kits at Every Headcount: 5, 50, 500
Your onboarding kit strategy has an expiration date. What you put together for your first 50 hires, probably a branded tee folded into a shipping box from your office closet, will quietly fall apart somewhere between year two and year…
Sustainable Swag Materials Worth Choosing
Sustainable swag materials are only as green as the paper trail behind them. The hangtag says "eco-friendly" and the website copy says "responsibly sourced," but neither of those phrases has a legal definition, a third-party auditor, or a…
Carhartt Tall Rain Defender Paxton Heavyweight Hooded Zip Mock Sweatshirt CTT100617: A Swag Spotlight
If your crew works outdoors, stands on job sites, or spends real time in real weather, a dress-code hoodie is not going to cut it. This Carhartt sweatshirt is built for the people on your team who are actually outside. Carhartt has a…
Swag-Bag Stuffers Under $1: What's Actually Worth Including
Every bad swag bag starts with the same decision: someone picked the cheapest item in the catalog without asking who was going to carry it home. A keychain that retails for $0.42 sounds like a deal until 800 of them land in a trash can…
Memorial Run Shirt Design: A Family-Forward Playbook
Running a 5K in someone's name is one of the more quietly courageous things a grieving community does. The shirt that comes with it needs to match that courage, not undermine it by looking like it was designed in fifteen minutes between…
Custom Moleskine Pocket Notebook Gift Set for New-hire onboarding kits: A Buyer's Take
Moleskine Pocket Notebook Gift Sets photograph well, ship elegantly, and land on new desks with a quiet "we thought about this" energy. They also have a hard floor on budget, a lead time that bites people every quarter, and decoration…
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