The collapse of companies like SVB is triggering demand for corporate merch | Hacker News Reader

The collapse of companies like SVB is triggering demand for corporate merch

modernretail.co

80 pointsleotravis1090 comments

I have an Enron-branded calculator.

It's one of those cheap ones companies used to give away at convention booths.

I've always toyed with the idea of re-programming it so that the math comes out all wrong. 2+2=7.

Ha, yes, modding it would make it a more accurate 'fraud'-ulator.

If you want to be really evil make it mostly work right, and only invoke the bogus logic of the 5th bit of the first argument is set or something, so it fires maybe 1/10 Or 1/20

I have an Enron hat and a Worldcom hat.. need to add to my collection tho

I have an Enron mug which I "liberated" from the London office staff kitchen.

Grammar nitpick: for "which", do you mean "that" ?

Overuse of "which" seems to be a British thang.

Sunnyvale Goodwill is the best for this. I don't know why but I always get a kick out of seeing mugs for things like NASA projects from the 90s or some Intel internal milestone award where the mug is just covered with acronyms that mean absolutely nothing to outsiders. Absolutely the best store shelf in the whole city.

I was just there for the first time and passed on a Sun Microsystems coffee mug, which I regret. I was really missing Weird Stuff, though. Haven't lived down that way for a decade.

Some of this is going into the background of interview videos to back up the claims people make of having worked at places that no longer exist and can't be verified.

Pretty funny if this is common practice!

This is what's currently happening with Twitter (since they laid off the entirety of HR).

As an ex-Twitter employee who started a new job at the start of the year, I can confirm that they did not respond to inquiries from the company that performed my background check. There was some back-and-forth with the recruiter at my new gig about it, until I reminded him that the reason my boss recommended me was because I worked with him at Twitter.

I regret not holding on to my Sun Microsystems merch with both hands.

I still have some of mine (e.g. an original Java varsity jacket). All in storage somewhere. I loved working there in the 90s

Nice. I got a nice jacket for shipping SSDM for NSPG, but I lost it at some point

I had one of DEC’s t-shirts, The Network is the Network and the Computer is the Computer. We regret the confusion. But no one got the joke anymore and I let it slip away.

I worked at Sun around that time. Our version: "The network is the computer, and Cisco is the network... therefore Cisco is the computer."

I still have a stack of mousepads from Sun from when I purchased servers by the truckload (and after they gave up on optical mouses).

Fortunately, I still use a mouse at my desk. I hope to work through my collection in this lifetime.

Unfortunately, the art on them is of inconsistent appeal:

  - "The Network is the Computer": corporate-lame art
  - "The Dot in Dot-Com": OK art, slogan still funny
  - "Ultracomputing": Decent art, least-fun slogan

These slogans, especially the last, sound fit for ironic use, "hack the planet" style.

Pretty much all of them were considered pretty ironic when they were new.

...at least by everyone I knew who was a customer or an employee of Sun. I can't speak for Sun's marketing department!

The sun logo was one of the all time best

I have a first edition Enterprise Java Beans T-shirt and a Mozilla Developer Conference circa 1997 And a Microsoft Test one that won me an “oldest T-shirt contest.

I still have a Sun "We Put The Dot in Dot Com" t-shirt in my closet. :)

I think I still have a plush Duke I bought at JavaOne one year.

I still have my Arthur Andersen shirt back from when they were considered "the big 5" (now it is the big 4).

They were the auditors for Enron, and when the scandal unraveled, a judge divested all of their clients to the big 4 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

For anyone who is confused or making up theories, cursed corporate swag is a bit of a fashion trend https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/the-dark-allure-of-black...

Next time somebody asks me what "extremely online" means, I'm gonna send them this link.

Conversation pieces have been a thing for centuries at least, and probably forever. Maybe you're the one who should get out more?

did you read the link? it's extremely online language

He was talking about the style of writing.

It's funny, this particular online culture/group/vibe the author is a part of is one I very rarely encounter but do occasionally stumble upon.

It blows my mind to think that for some people, this 'vibe' may be the majority or at least a large part of the online content they consume / online spaces they inhabit.

It makes me wonder how many more foreign to me online cultures there are.

Bronies, sports lovers, 4chan-ers etc

I think it's satire. Maybe?

It’s irony. There’s a difference but difficult to discern sometimes.

You could wear those clothes in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn bar and you’d get smiles and pleasant remarks from those who are with it for example.

I don't think anyone on HN is going to come out of reading that feeling less confused.

I had trouble reading that. Anyone else?

Had a friend of friend who worked at Enron.

Years ago, she showed me her Enron Beanie Baby corporate merch. (Oh the irony..)

I wonder if she still has it. It's obscure enough that you can't even find a photograph it online. I guess it might be worth a few bucks these days.

That's all nothing compared to the SKA/CS cap. They had been already cult before CS colapsed. In the 80s, they had been everywhere. Almost every person in Switzerland had one.

https://bellevue.nzz.ch/mode-beauty/stilkritik-cs-krise-eine...

About a year ago that guy Carlos Watson from Ozy reached out to me cold and wanted to have coffee. I said sure why not then he cancelled on me short notice. Then a month later that big story came out. Then a day after that I went on their website and bought an Ozy coffee mug, which is sitting on my desk as we speak.

Unofficial corporate swag is an entire industry in itself on Etsy. I don't understand it, but then when it comes to fashion who ever does?

My roommate in college made a small fortune selling “Vintage Dr Pepper” t-Shirts on eBay. They weren’t actually old shirts at all. On Dr Pepper’s site you could buy old style shirts as “Vintage”. He’d but them for $20 and then get around $40 in auctions on eBay.

...and dead tech companies aren't likely to pursue IP claims, so you can print them on demand for $10.

I worked at a startup that failed in an impressively incompetent manner. The founders and core employees could not ship in a timely fashion and refused to validate their product or talk to users. However they made sure to give employees the most outrageous bunch of swag. I'm talking mugs, blankets, hoodies, tote bags, backpacks, pens, really anything you could imagine. All very good quality. I gave a lot of it to family and loved ones, who still use it. I still use the blanket personally. Maybe the founders should have gone into the swag industry? Honestly seemed to be where their hearts were.

The collection of relics is an old phenomenon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic

Like you couldn't spin up the merch yourself if you really wanted to. Obviously it wouldn't be authentic.

It's true. After the Theranos scandal broke I bought a hat on ebay.

It sits on my desk as a conversation starter.

Merch for failed companies like SVB would give new meaning to "tombstone": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_toy

"Triggering demand" is a little strong. I also bought an Enron sweatshirt for the lulz, but that doesn't mean there's actual demand (in the economic sense) for Enron stuff there.

But there's "actual demand" in the Enron sense.

I know I'll be holding onto my SVB p-card as a trophy.

A quick ebay search and lot of "sponsored" items in the results and very few "watchers", sounds like a scam, don't fall for it

I'd buy these as a joke. For some reason I find it funny to claim to associate with these as if they were really cool and successful right now.

I'm still waiting for my pets.com t-shirt.

It's still stuck in transit with the 50 pound sack of cat litter.

From my experience this stuff is not really collectible. It's more of a novelty that wears off after some time.

Googling some of these products in the article has led me down a small rabbit hole I didn't expect.. But found this bizarre website : (Probably shouldn't buy anything) https://svbgiftingportal.com/

Honestly can't tell if its serious or just someone trying to take advantage of the situation.

On first and second look I thought it was a random shop with their logo slapped on.

Om the third look I found the "guidelines" page, which is the first thing that suggests to me that this may actually be custom to SVB.

I’d guess that this is serious; this sort of thing is common so the corporate compliance department can make sure the company doesn’t accidentally cross the line from “gift” to “bribe” when account managers send tokens of their appreciation. (There are all sorts of limits, like “only $X per gift, cumulatively $Y per person per calendar year”.) Note that you apparently need a “Star Compliance code” to actually check out, so you can’t buy anything from here even if you wanted to.

On a related note, maybe five years ago I bumped into the Google employee swag store and discovered it was built on a platform that I happen to know is written in COBOL. There are all sorts of niche providers for random services that are needed by large companies.

Reminds me of sgi stuff :)

One of my old tech company items that's still with me - my three color Silicon Graphics Inc (not 'sgi') logo back denim jacket with the tan arms.

The nice thing about it is that while it is ancient, it is still quite durable.

A lot of my T-shirts grew holes and faded their way to the trash.

Ngl, was in SF at the weekend and got a pic outside a branch downtown.

I still have tons of things from Sun Microsystems. I love it.

Can you keep the merch and sell an NFT for it?

I could imagine a company that vaults physical objects and tracks ownership by NFTs. The NFTs could then be traded and the current owner of the thing attached to the NFT could view the object through a web cam. Of course the owner could take delivery of the object for an added fee.

Yeah but you can also just sell the token without any obligations attached

Instead of storing the original in a vault, you can just burn it. Meaning the NFT is the only 'authentic' piece now.

Story time.

In 2001 when the bubble was bursting we had a business deal with one of the trendy dot-com's. Because their office was across the street from us we had a lot of in person meetings, and they always had us come to their far more swanky office. Along with free drinks and food we always left with the pile of merch they shoved into our hands. It got to the point where my self and several co-workers had boxes of their crap at our desk.

They were in a consultant role. They often told management nonuse and made our lives hard on good day and miserable on a bad one. To say we could not stand them would be an understatement.

Then it happened, the news came down that there would be a massive layoff (ahh fucked company was great). I grabbed my perch box, and a coworker and his merch box and dressed as many homeless people as we could, head to toe in their gear and had them sit out side their main office door. Folks were streaming out of their office, boxes in hand with a bunch of homeless people dressed in their march.

That line in the sand between funny and asshole, I laid down and made a sand angel in it that day.

Because homeless people wearing their company’s merch, in your minds, would further degrade the company’s image? Or something else? I’m an anonymous internet stranger, but I invite you to think about what you’re actually saying, and whether it reflects true views you wish to hold.

When my company changed name the last time, they actually told us to destroy any merchandise we might have. No donating.

I actually keep wearing them. I don't have much anyway.

Similar issue with that Abercrombie & Fitch CEO who only wanted "cool kids" to be seen in his clothes, so someone made sure to give donated A&F clothes to the homeless:

https://www.businessinsider.com/man-gives-abercrombie-to-hom...

Remember that gift we gave you because we’re such a great company to work for? Yeah, we’re going to need you to destroy that. And come in on Saturday.

Joke police arrived I see.

But yeah it's truly horrible that homeless people got some clothes with logo of now-dead company, how horrible for them!

Probably were tipped off by the fashion police.

> Joke police arrived I see.

Was there a joke? I didn’t get it either!

You are missing GP's specific grievance and how it relates to his revenge. You are welcome to find schadenfreude distasteful, I wouldn't even disagree, I'm not even sure GP would disagree, but I'd ask that you join me in an empathy exercise first so that you can at least understand what you are wagging a finger at.

Let's walk through a fictional scenario. Imagine that you are on a team that is overloaded and behind schedule -- not because you suck, but because management is a bit green and has let their expectations run considerably ahead of reality. In a misguided attempt to help, management goes out and buys some highly paid consultants without vetting them (management is a bit green, remember?). The consultants frame you as incompetent and themselves as saviors, but in actual fact they consume time and money and contribute nothing of value. They turn out to be a liability, not an asset. Management doesn't understand this and doesn't want to understand it so the consultants stay hired. Those consultants earn more than you, are worse than useless, and yet still have the gall to go behind your back and talk shit about you. Assholes!

This is the headspace in which seeing the consultants lose their job feels like long overdue cosmic justice. They didn't just pass you on the racetrack of capitalism, they sliced your tires as they went by -- but now they are spinning out. Is it so very wrong to enjoy the sight? Suddenly, an evil idea tugs at the back of your mind: you have some of their merch. You could commemorate the occasion. So far, they have been the bad guy... but now it's your turn.

----------

I tend to agree with you and find the revenge part distasteful, but only due to the collateral damage. I'm sure there were people working for Highly Paid Consultant Company who didn't deserve to lose their job, walk out, and see a living extrapolation of themselves into homelessness and failure, and the homeless don't deserve to be used as props representing failure. However, the asshole consultants this was targeted at? I tend to suspect that if I were to learn all the details I'd agree with GP that they earned this one.

As you might have guessed, I've experienced something akin to this story myself, except that the asshole consultants in my story got away scott-free. In both cases they got to keep their ill-gotten gains. It's not like the money was clawed back, so the scales still tip in their direction. If it's wrong to occasionally indulge in fantasies of karmic justice... then today, I'm in the wrong. Thanks for sharing, GP.

Do you believe that homeless people do not face negative stereotypes and discrimination and suffer from poor image in society? Perhaps take some time out to reflect on that mindset some day.

This story is hilarious.

Homeless people got clothes, a terrible company got dragged.

Ethical sand angel confirmed.

Nice, so you demeaned the homeless in an attempt to demean people who had just lost their jobs. Good for you.

It's possible the demeaning is all in your head

Time to get spiritual. For some reason, your comment made me think of an interesting conversation I had while I was on a walk once with a friend of mine who is a Chan Buddhist monk. We were walking by a hotel in Boulder, CO called the St. Julian. I had always hated that place since it was one of the first large development projects that came in and started to change the feeling of the downtown area. That and they had rejected me as a job applicant.

I related all this to him and mentioned that I liked to "get back" at them by regularly walking in and using the lobby bathroom. He looked over at me with a severe expression and said, "You may as well have been pissing in their mouths."

I suppose that's the point in the parable where I was "enlightened." My friend's meaning was that, by acting spitefully and vengefully, I wasn't doing myself or anyone else any favors. I think the same could be said of OP's story.

Your thing appears to be petty and unimportant. Allowing the status quo to exist under a parasitic all encompassing economic system does nothing for material dialectics. Unhoused people sometimes have nothing not even clean clothes. Let's move on with the bravado of civility and help the marginalized as much as possible. Let's leave spiritualness in this case with general liberal ideals.

Actually, crappy hats and T's are a dime a dozen. Homeless shelters need unglamorous items like undies and socks, which are rarely donated, altho I remember reading about one SV biggie who dropped several G's on them.

Homeless shelters need to not exist in post scarcity western world. Point noted tho :)

I don't think you are anywhere near that line. Using human beings as part of a punchline is pretty much the opposite of funny. Trying to rub something in the nose of people who were laid off is rather tacky, too.

Your story apparently hits too close to home for some folks. Many of us worked for companies that gave our swag and spouted kool-aid. Some of us even drunk it and owned it. I personally know more than a few engineers who can't imagine becoming homeless. The moral concern around your story seems like a red herring for upper-class anxiety around BS jobs in a world of low growth.

Not how I expected that headline to end.

I don't think there is a market for merchandise of bankrupt crypto companies collapsing. They will be as worthless as the fake crypto tokens they created.

I would expect though to see more bankrupt crypto companies and this is the only way they will have to sell off their assets.

Well the article does mention FTX hats and bobbleheads, so the highest profile crypto companies at least do have some "valuable" swag.

> FTX hats and bobbleheads

hardly a collectors item, probably needs to be thrown away, recycled or burned in shame.

People have a morbid fascination and collect infamous mementos all the time.

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