Ask HN: Can we have a conversation on startup swag waste? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can we have a conversation on startup swag waste?

118 pointsjimkri78 comments

Yesterday I made a Jokr order and was handed a swag bag. It had a rag thin bandana, a tote bag, and a plastic bag dog waste holder. The tote bag has a use, but the bandana was so thin it was a waste of fabric. The dog waste holder is another problem, but also uanessacry when I don't have a dog.

I think swag is great to get, when it has a use. I they probably made a lot of bandana's and plastic bag holders that were probably thrown away. I also know there are a ton of conferences where this is also happening. This is leading to so much waste that is not controllable, but companies continue to waste money in this area. They will also shift blame to consumers on recycling when the companies are constantly producing it.

Questions:

- Why do companies continue to waste money on useless swag?

- What can be done to have companies think about the waste they are producing from swag?

Edit 1: I'm not talking about t-shirts or sweatshirts

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I think part of the problem is actually the shift away from shirts. Swag is advertising but at least a shirt served a purpose and if you didn’t want it you could donate it. Many company shirts ended up at Goodwill or shipped off the 3rd world countries.

But shirts are expensive so no one gives them anymore. They’ve shifted to the cheapest items they can find.

I usually turn down swag now and when I’m in charge of swag I always opt for t-shirts with some sort of “use the product quickly” treasure hunt task to earn one.

The stuff has become so cheap and junky that it's basically useless. Like they hand out bluetooth speakers which sound worse than laptop speakers. And then the company gets stuck with box loads of this ewaste junk when branding changes. I think the least wasteful idea I saw was the company branding on a packet of mints. At least thats something almost everyone wants and isn't any more wasteful than store mints.

There was someone at a trade show I went to a few years ago (like all the rest) selling a product called (in industry) a "lunchbox" who was giving away branded snack-sized boxes of raisins.

I remember working at a company where some idiot in marketing ordered a thousand or so clear bouncy-balls with the company logo that had electronics inside that flashed red LEDs and made an obnoxious chime through a loud piezo speaker. They were almost the size of lacrosse ball. They were useless even for just idle play because you could probably punch a hole in a wall with one, damage equipment, or hurt someone.

To this day I have no idea what the hell they were thinking.

We had these smart watches that cost like $5 a pop.. Even my 3 years old daughter at the time didn't want them.

Bulk order single color silkscreen on a cheap tee is around $5. Totes are about the same. Dye sublimation mugs are ~$3. Not sure about nalgene-type bottles but I'm guessing in the $3-$5 range.

Is it the cost? $3-$5 per item seems about what I would expect.

I'd guess the biggest problem with tees is sizing. It's not one uniform product to hand out, so you have the added complexity of multiple inventory and people asking to swap their size.

Some of those bottles reek so bad of chemicals you would have to be an idiot to drink out of them.

The tshirts, if they end up abroad, contribute to ruining the local textile industry.

Many developing countries had local industry producing fabric and clothes, but they really struggle to compete with free or almost free waste Western clothes.

Some articles on this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44951670

https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/12/business/second-hand-clothes-...

When you say "local textile industry" are you thinking of cotton growing, yarn spinning, fabric weaving, or shirt cutting/sewing? Because those are all totally different things done in totally different parts of the world. There is no longer such thing as "local textile industry". A single strand of cotton is better traveled than most of us.

Lots of great learning starts here: https://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title

You mean the shirts made abroad, printed with Random Co. logo, shipped to the US, then shipped right back when no one wanted them? Those shirts?

How does it ruin the local textile economy for a foreign company to pay the local mill to give out free shirts?

Last time I was in an African country there were people wearing shirts like "Atlanta Winners 2019" when it was some other baseball team that won in 2019. So similar to what you describe.

Those shirts were probably made in Asia, but ruin the African clothing industry.

T-shirts are awesome, because you can wear them when you change your oil and you don't have to get your good work clothes dirty.

Sad to say but most of those shirts probably ended up in landfill.

I would tolerate swag more if it were actually quality. Like you mention, so much of it is junk. But I also hate logos on things I use, so it's only half the problem.

It's all so repetitive. I have a cupboard full of mugs, travel mugs and water bottles. A bunch are even the same product with just a different color and logo! How many liquids does one man need to keep hot/cold for 24 hours?!

Why do you continue to take them? I refuse swag from my own employer if I don't see myself using those things.

My current employer ships us swag and sometimes doesn't tell us up front.

Fortunately, our swag tends to be useful and decent stuff.

There are only two pieces of swag that I've ever bothered using, both were from the same event, and I only ever used them as evidence that I was around during the early days of Linux. My main reason is a dislike of logos, but utility is another big factor.

I understand this stuff is shelled out to promote companies, but it's not very useful if it goes straight into the trash. I will keep a business card since it is small and they're easy to organize. A decent quality pen may be kept, but I've only ever seen them offered by local businesses. I only see a use for the first two mugs: one for coffee/tea and one for quality pens that are never given out. The bags are not durable enough, I would never use them outside of work, and I don't have a use for them at work. Anything else will be very dependent upon the person.

As for the people who do like that sort of thing, just leave the stuff on the table. Don't force it in a person's hand and don't make them feel obligated to take it.

I got some branded swag for my startup for new customers. I literally made sure that the swag wasn't just usable but something people might actually use. For example, moleskine notebook [0], a metal parker pen[1], and a metal parker pencil. And even with it being good quality stuff, I am still worried when I give it out that it's just going to end up being tat that thrown in the bin.

0 - https://www.allbranded.co.uk/Office/Storage-Organisation/Not...

1 - https://www.allbranded.co.uk/Classics/Pens-Pencils/Parker-Pe...

Those are wonderful, I'd definitely use a nice pen and Moleskine

Great choices!

I got a really nice notebook from incident.io. I use a lot of notebooks and this one is pretty high quality. Please people, more notebooks and more pens. Preferably erasable gel pens. Those are fantastic.

> What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She’s a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult.

http://cyborganthropology.com/Cayce_Pollard_Unit

I think the guideline should be that if you're not willing to spend enough to give away a durable good that people would actually use (e.g. a good quality t-shirt), we should normalize giving away useful, common _consumable_ goods. This can avoid increasing waste if it just replaces/delays consumption the recipient was already going to do anyway. It's shorter-lived, so they don't act as a walking ad for you (but no one was gonna wear that bandana anyway) but this way you might create some positive sentiment.

E.g. branded small sanitizer bottles, sunscreen bottles (X Corp cares about your health and well-being!), snacks (we're all occasionally hangry at conferences right?), etc.

I'd definitely wipe my ass with some Windows 11 TP.

> Why do companies continue to waste money on useless swag?

They want your attention. Both at the event/when you interact with them first (probably more important), and then later. Swag is a way to get that attention. Useless swag is, as other comments have noted, cheaper than useful swag, but still gets some attention.

> What can be done to have companies think about the waste they are producing from swag?

Oh, most are aware. I think the easiest thing to do is:

* Don't take it if offered.

* If delivered, complain about it to customer service.

If enough folks do this, the value for swag will decrease, and fewer will do it. Or if they do, they'll do it well.

Swag can be a differentiator in the latter case. I can't tell you how many hours my current company, FusionAuth, has spent evaluating our swag t-shirts, but it is a big number. And we hear folks at conferences say "ooh, that's nice" (unsolicited).

Really appreciate this- it's been on my mind for some time. I've been off the convention circuit since COVID hit, but before then I found myself awash in lanyards, stickers, pamphlets, t-shirts, plastic and canvas bags, etc. and it did weigh on my conscience.

I think some of this is purely cultural, insofar as startup tech companies see other startup tech companies do this and want to emulate as a kind of legitimacy-builder. I can attest that making custom shirts/hoodies for your team can actually be more fun and morale boosting than it might seem before you do it.

It's very cheap to produce merch compared to the money you might spend on conference attendance, which is another early sales/marketing driver for young companies- if you're spending tens (or in some cases hundreds) of thousands of dollars setting up booths or flying internationally to be somewhere, what's another couple of hundred to give your logo a bit more visibility?

One thing which isn't widely known is that some popular alternatives to swag i.e. food or coffee giveaways are often strictly controlled/monopolised by convention centres- so you'll often be forced to use their services, which can run into many thousands of dollars.

From my perspective as an attendee, the disposables do get really tiresome. I've joined the ranks of the business-card-free and don't think I'll move back. I'd like to see more eco-friendly manufacturing for this space, which probably starts with moving away from plastics and towards more paper. I do appreciate T-shirts and hoodies I've collected and wear even the old ones to this day.

This is the time of year in Austin (sxsw) that we load up on a years supply of free promo sunglasses.

The funny perk of being a highly paid engineer is all the free stuff you get.

I don't know if it's an accurate representation of the flow of money but I've always thought of it as the fed sending stimulus money to me directly through banks & VCs.

the rich get richer by virtue of being rich

That always struck me as strange. Getting a high quality branded sweatshirt, just give it to someone who doesn't sit in a climate controlled space all day. Plenty of cold people out there.

I appreciate that you used the word "continue" in your first question as tech firms have featured swag seemingly forever. I will just say that my DEC Alpha coffee mug, a multitude of lapel pins from an array of companies, and my Nokia monitor screen brush have all stood the test of time, unlike the many golf shirts, posters, lanyards, and pens. The swag you have received seems to be pitiful and wasteful.

What is the world's most durable item of historic corporate swag?

I once got a pet rock.

Not really "swag" but I would say iPod socks. I still have one that I keep an altoids tin inside of for transporting small fragile components.

Oh boy I can imagine exactly what you mean. I used to have a green/lime one.

1. Old fashion wide-mouth Nalgene bottle (easy to clean and therefore less likely to become trash, also great as a hot-bottle in winter).

2. I've been carrying a tiny Victorinox classic SD on my keychain ever since I've started hiking. At some point when I lost it, and while they're not expensive (though there are much cheaper options that also feel cheap), they also don't break, so I went to ebay, scanned the completed listings to get an idea of the lowest price I can get, and there I saw soooo many used branded victorinox (in great condition). None of them that I can remember had the logo/name of a tech company, which is a shame, because it seems like at so many conference booths they would aim for quantity rather than quality, whereas myself and most of the people I value, would rather appreciate something that is very very good in its category rather than assortment of junk that I wouldn't choose for myself even if I was stressed to buy a product in that category.

Maybe St. Peter's bones?

SGI shirts, pens, and the the coveted ski jacket, all circa 1998 all with the squashed bug logo. At one time I had a Spyderco tactical folder with the Abovenet logo, given to me by Paul Vixie. Alas, that is long gone. All swag since then is mostly cheap useless junk and a waste of good landfill space.

Could it be a form of cargo culting[1]?

You have a department that is tasked with promoting your organization at public events. They see that other organizations provide lots of wares with their logo emblazoned on them. Some of those other organizations are successful. There are companies that provide customised wares. Thus: your department purchases more of the wares.

And a belief: you can make a big difference by not peddling swag, and being principled and open (albeit not loud) about the fact that you do not. Perhaps it basically comes down to reducing energy usage and waste; the upside to you would be the word-of-mouth reputation benefit from taking a principled stance.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

> Why do companies continue to waste money on useless swag?

Marketing, attracting talent, reminding people you care about your company exist. It has a use and it's cheap.

> What can be done to have companies think about the waste they are producing from swag?

Tell them plastic recycling is a scam perpetrated by the oil business and our weakly-spined governments and just a small portion of plastics get actually recycled; we end up eating and contaminating the environment with most of it.

Once this issue picks up enough steam maybe companies will stop with the useless gadgets in order to show they care about the environment for virtue points.

I think this should be stopped. I have a ton of water bottles, mugs, shirts, USB chargers, pens and other stuff I will never use and often just throw away. Not only do I not need the items but usually they are just cheap crap that breaks if you actually use it. One company handed out Patagonia shirts which actually were good quality but most companies are too cheap for that.

Just stop. It's wasteful and harmful for the environment. If they want to make me happy, give me some cash :-).

That was a nice thing about working at Ghostery. Our swag was LEGIT. Too bad we didn't have a viable business model to go with it

GitHub sponsored a coffee van at FOSDEM. That was a solid choice.

Can't cost that much to run a van for the day (I see them in places with low footfall and the incremental material cost is low), quite low waste, widely appreciated by conference attendees. Also the queue was long so people spent a while in front of the logo, some of the time discussing GitHub.

A cheaper version of this, my favorite swag I've gotten in years was little boxes of smarties (Canadian m&m's, essentially -- not the chalk pills, we call those Rockets)

Getting swagged out is a right of passage for those entering tech. However, Comdex (RIP) was the gold pinnacle for swag. I remember Creative giving out mp3 players, Dell giving out laptops, Microsoft giving out keyboard / mice combinations, AMD giving out processors...

Now people have to be happy with some branded shitty USB cables, black shirts (90% of swag shirts are black for unknown reasons and made of 100% shitty cotton), stickers, branded candies (Hey Amazon, looking at you), and the occasional heat resistant gloves (splunk knows things get hot when presenting their obscene price to upper management).

I stopped accepting swag unless it's something unique and cool.

I hate all the damn totes and the drink bottles. How many of those do you need in your life? I must have a dozen nice ones and I've recycled endless dozens more.

I usually refuse to take them if I have the option.

While it can make you feel very special to get a gift bag containing a bunch of things, and getting that "Oooo, I get to open it" I'd rather just have a table with the swag on it. Take what you want. Some people like pens (I always lose mine). Some like cups, or notepads, or whatever. But like you hinted at, each person has things that they will use, and more things they probably won't. And who cares if someone takes a bunch of them - you're almost sure that they'll all get used then!

You need to convince the consumer not to collect something for free they’ll just never use or throw out. It’s human nature, free stuff is rare. So it works.

Most swag is total junk. I don't need yet another cotton bag, notepad, pen or bad coffee cup. I would rather get nothing at all.

I worked at Facebook for years. In the earlier years of my tenure they gave out Christmas (or company birthday? I forget) gifts. Most were not great but one year they gave pajama pants, which have probably seem more use than any other item of clothing I own and are still going strong.

The useful things I got from startups and/or conferences over 20 years:

- light backpack (got it in 2003 at a conference and loved it so much that I tried to find out where they sourced it from when it finally broke after years of intensive use);

- mugs

- USB sticks (can't have enough as they tend to vanish)

- (unobtrusive) t-shirts

The useless swag (which I often remove from swag backs while still at the event):

- (obnoxious) t-shirts (too attention-seeking or the ones with the wrong logos...)

- most electronics

- most things made of plastic

- paper adware that doesn't really say anything except for logo and buzzwords

Good choices for swag are paper notebooks and pens, but the quality of the swag items will be associated with your brand, remember (it is true the quality has gone down in recent year, and also the spend per vendor)!

I encourage you all to speak out and give generous feedback about the swag offered to you, especially regarding utility, quality and ecological footprint.

As a rule I don't trust USB stick swag.

Yeah they work terribly

At re:invent this past year (my first industry conference/show), I thought it was comical how much garbage was being given away. I felt kind of guilty to be honest. I'm not one for having many physical goods though, so that's just me.

I guess the problem for me was that most things had no use, like you mentioned. The bags get used for groceries and I'd be lying if I said the Red Hat hat didn't give me a little glee, but a match box car? I'm not going to use this and it feels like a waste on me.

Shirts are fine, although I mostly wear plain colored shirts and jeans I bought in bulk years ago.

My favorite "swag" was probably the mini open bar one booth had. Honestly put me in a position where I wanted to talk about the product with an associate.

I think companies should produce swag that people could be proud of in 20 years if the company succeeds.

A mug will last for years if you don't drop it, a plastic bag will not. One t-shirt I own is non-startup swag but "swag" from a powerboat race, and it's almost as old as me bar a few months.

> A mug will last for years if you don't drop it

Depends. If the mug is cold and you pour a hot liquid into it fast enough, it'll crack.

That's happened to me a couple times, but I've learned my lesson since then—pour slowly.

Never had that problem with quality mugs

These topics are fascinating to read. I've not attended any conferences besides barcamps in Germany and FOSDEM since around 2012 - and I'm still kind of surprised about the (amount of shape of) things that are supposedly handed out, because most of the stuff I still have is actually useful, but that's only like 10 t-shirts and 1-2 mugs and some pens that were not completely useless, so apparently it has picked up in the last years, we didn't get nearly as much stuff 10y ago (which is good, don't get me wrong).

That said, I am totally ok with some of the USB sticks and my favorite bottle opener that's been sitting on my desk for years.

Would have loved to get a water bottle at some point though :P

Pre-pandemic I was thinking the same thing, but at conferences. Since t-shirts and hoodies were a hot commodity, many companies resorted to giving away what is essentially trash. The cheapest items you could possibly imagine. Little toys, and trinkets, and things that were bought from china that will never make it out of the bottom of your conference bag. Sitting there for years waiting to be discovered in your closet and subsequently thrown out.

Good swag has insanely high ROI.

And an unimaginably high alpha-risk.

> Why do companies continue to waste money on useless swag?

Lead list generation. Sales...

Is the answer. You need to entice a potential customer closer to your booth, get their name and have a chance to follow up later.

If a customer represents a few $100 or few $10ks, the customer acquisition cost of a $15 water bottle is quite low.

Here's another idea: QR codes that give you NFTs or alt coins.

You can then turnaround and donate it to a charity.

This generates customer engagement at the very least...

I actually have an issue currently; I run a volunteer IRC network and people beg me for swag (minor gift for recurring donations and so on).

My issue is that I refuse to make shit.

I want to test products before I inflict them on the people using my services, not only that I want my brand of service associated with high quality.

As a low value item, maybe stickers? But let people request them, don't send them automatically if someone donates.

We already have stickers, but people love high quality swag. :)

My company sends monthly "gifts" and many of them are great. Shirts, sneaks, a beach chair, a little SoloStove, a ukulele. They're all useful, but heavily branded.

I told my boss I'd rather have the cash value, or maybe a lower deductible.

Funny something like this recently popped into my LI feed: https://www.linkedin.com/company/buzz-swag/

Buzz Swag - esg corp gear eval.

Instead of getting random SWAG from my employer, here's what I want

- A credit to a store for company/org SWAG

- There's a selection of products w/ team logo. It's all high quality stuff.

- I get something I need and use the credit

Maybe if there was like a checkbox:

Yes, I know I'm your valued customer but please don't send me any of your promotional items that I didn't order?

You can criticize anything you want under the guise of some environmentalist angle. Can everyone stop doing Y because Y is bad for the environment? Where Y can be traveling, drinking the wrong kind of water, having a big house, driving a car, flushing the toilet too often, taking long showers, printing reports, turning on the lights, not living in a tent on the street, getting a new phone every two years.

This is so tiresome. No, everyone else isn't going to change their behavior to align with your personal environmentalist crusade. Leave us alone.

I think their point was that very few people want this stuff, which may or may not be true.

Based upon the comments so far, it sounds like a lot of this stuff is unwanted since it is either low quality or they get so much of it that it is redundant. It sounds like a lot of people would welcome it if it was higher quality or not redundant.

I would hardly call it an environmental crusade if it stops behaviours that are out of habit and that people do not find beneficial, unlike your examples (most of which people do because it has value in their life).

They might change their behaviour. Or at least I might disuade any company I work for from making swag. That said my company’s swag has been pretty decent - replacing clothing I would have purchased anyway. So it can be good.

I am so grateful for my Windows 11 sweatshirt. I'm proud of what I did for Windows 11 and am proud wearing the hoody.

no one is talking about clothes, it's OK.

It's just glorified advertising. It's the pollution you see on ad based TV or ad based websites, materialized.

It’s because Patagonia doesn’t let you brand their stuff anymore and no one knows L L Bean exists.

Yes. Please. This so much. Envrinmentally harmful garbage

I loved those IFTTT socks back in the day though.

You could delete everything except the last three words in your title. There's really no need for all the throat clearing.

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