Start-Up Advice

People love branded gear. Especially your team. Take the time and resources to make them feel included and to show a little pride in what they’ve helped to build. Investors also like cool stuff; bonus points for making them feel like a VIP or an extension of the team.

If t-shirts, pay attention to fabric and fit—there are crunchy boxy t-shirts and there are tailored soft t-shirts.

Ask your team for their actual sizes when placing the order and consider getting a style for those who might prefer a women’s cut. A v-neck might be a compromise—it’s pretty unusual for women’s styles to have a high crew neck. I have no idea why there are always leftover huge shirts but never xs or smalls, but as long as you order for your audience instead of going with someone else’s default sizing, this shouldn’t happen. (If you can’t figure out how to get shirts that look good on women, maybe the sleeves could be tailored?)

I actually think zip up sweatshirts make more sense than t-shirts in a lot of cases:

You can wear them multiple times without washing (great for having your team wear during conferences).

They can be used as an accessory to change your outfit from casual to more professional or formal or the other way, e.g. you can take it off when going to dinner after an event.

You can print something on the back and it won’t be hidden in the case that you want to put on another layer, etc.

Sizing and styling is more forgiving/doesn’t need to be as on-point.

And don’t forget that you can actually just buy clothing you already like and take it to get screen printed. For the first couple batches of branded gear, I literally just bought sweatshirts from Uniqlo and had them printed at a local shop in order to get them done in time.

If you’re branding other types of stuff, ask yourself whether these are quality objects that you’d want people using and enjoying. Is it a really good pen that people will reach for again and again? Maybe a ☕Thermal mugs that will improve people’s lives on a daily basis. Maybe a sling bag or backpack big enough for a laptop? Or a cool phone battery brick? Or 🤳Tiny cell phone stand? If it’s not useful in a daily way, at least try to make sure it’s something useful for the circumstance; at one event we hosted, we branded a pile of off-brand nalgenes to handle the logistical problem of keeping everyone hydrated (the bottles themselves were better quality than regular nalgenes and I still see people using them, a decade later).

And do the math: maybe it’s crazy to get nice backpacks for everyone at a conference, but maybe getting something kinda fancy for everyone on the team (maybe when they start or maybe all at once for an occasion) isn’t actually that expensive, especially when you consider how much the person themself costs you daily. Staff is probably your largest expense, and if you’re doing things right, they’re also your best resource—I think it makes sense to invest in these small ways that will likely have a pretty high ROI.

(I always give my immediate family gear from my projects and it sparks so much joy to see my dad wear his vintage branded stuff from year-1 with such pride. 100% worth it to print extras and let people take stuff home.)

Two side notes:

1. It’s pretty weird to me that people don’t get more creative with where they put their logo or words or whatever. Even printing on the back is still not mainstream. Why not put a logo to the side near the brim of your hat instead of right in the middle? What about by your hip on your t-shirt? At a diagonal? Do you really need words? What about explanatory visual graphics from your website? Just a symbol? Just something in your brand’s colors? People might be much more interested in wearing the thing or using the thing if your branding is subtle. Just make sure you have enough brand recognition for it to still work. Which brings me to point 2:
2. It can be very powerful to show up at an event with your team all wearing the same general thing or variations on a theme. Even if there are just a handful of you, people start to get the impression that you’re everywhere. And if the thing you’re wearing is cool (which it should be, if you’ve followed my advice), people will even approach you wanting their own 🤷‍♀️