Everyone loves a freebie, no matter how small the gift really is, but if you really want customers to remember your business, you are going to need to get creative. Everyone is offering basic t-shirts or pens these days, but half of those products end up in a cupboard, forgotten, along with the brand behind them.
Just look at the fact that events were the source of about 32.1% of the branded merchandise customers received, but a lot of those products got thrown in the trash. When people discarded an item, 37.9% blamed a lack of usefulness, 26.6% blamed poor quality, and 23.9% said they already owned too many similar products.
So, here is my advice on choosing the kind of swag that could actually get customers excited.
The Best Budget Swag (Under $10 per Unit)
| Product | Platform | Base price | My take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kiss Cut Stickers | Fourthwall | From $2.29 | Simplest low-cost option for big giveaways |
| Coozie Can Cooler | Fourthwall | $3.42 | Great to offer next to a bar or cafe |
| Kiss-Cut Holographic Sticker Sheet | Fourthwall | From $4.00 | Fantastic for fan-heavy events |
| White Glossy Mug | Fourthwall | From $5.95 | Affordable and practical for most attendees |
| Set of Pin Buttons | Fourthwall | From $8.25 | Ideal if you want to offer collectible swag |
| Classic Mouse Pad | Fourthwall | $9.13 | Easy choice for professional conferences |
| Gildan Heavyweight T-Shirt | Fourthwall | From $9.50 | Fantastic for companies offering more premium apparel |
| Premium Sustainable Crew Socks | Fourthwall | $9.95 | Fun apparel alternative to the standard t-shirt |
| Die-Cut Sticker Samples | Sticker Mule | 10 for $1 | Affordable and quick to dish out |
| Custom Magnet Samples | Sticker Mule | 10 for $9 | Nice upgrade to the standard sticker |
For affordable swag, stickers are hard to beat, and very easy to dish out. You do not have to worry about people finding the right size, protecting their gift on the way home, or figuring out a way to get them through an airport. If you want something a little more premium feeling, magnets are a strong alternative, along with pin buttons (especially if they are collectible).
Can coolers, mugs, and the classic mousepad make a lot of sense if you want to offer something practical without spending a fortune, while high-quality t-shirts and crew socks are a great way to turn event attendees into future promoters for your brand.
Best Mid-Range Swag ($10 to $20)
| Product | Platform | Base price | My take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spiral Notebook | Fourthwall | $11.95 | Safest all-round conference pick |
| Enamel Mug | Fourthwall | $12.42 | Better for retreats or local events |
| Valucap Foam Trucker Hat | Fourthwall | $12.95 | Fun wearable option |
| Desk Mat 15.5″ x 31.5″ | Fourthwall | $13.00 | Fantastic for desk-bound audiences |
| Yupoong Cuffed Beanie | Fourthwall | $13.79 | Brilliant for winter events |
| All-Over Print Drawstring Bag | Fourthwall | $15.25 | Useful and practical option for most events |
| Comfort Colors 1717 Tee | Fourthwall | From $15.45 | A more premium alternative to the standard shirt |
| Econscious Eco-Friendly Tote Bag | Fourthwall | From $15.56 | Ideal for handing out at the beginning of an event |
| Yupoong Classic Dad Hat | Fourthwall | From $15.65 | Strong everyday wear potential with restrained embroidery |
| Big Accessories Bucket Hat | Fourthwall | $17.29 | Best for festival and Summer events |
| Custom Tote Bags | Printful | Starts at around $10 | Worth comparing for moderate-volume bag orders |
| Custom Notebooks | Printful | Starting at $12 | Good for bulk giveaways |
If you want to get a bit fancier with your swag giveaways, without going crazy, a notebook is a good option. Fourthwall’s spiral notebook has 140 dotted pages, a soft-touch cover, full front-and-back printing, and no minimum. You can also explore custom notebooks from Printful.
Desk mats are the mouse mat upgrade, perfect for the desk-bound crowd, while an enamel mug is a great giveaway for anyone who will not be travelling too far after the event. Premium shirts and hat options, from the classic dad hat, to bucket hats, are ideal if you match them to the season, and choose a design people will actually want to wear.
Tote bags are probably the most practical choice, since people can use them to store the swag they get during the event, then keep coming back to them later every time they go shopping.
Best Premium Swag for Speakers, VIPs, and Sponsors
| Product | Platform | Base price | My take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stainless Steel Water Bottle | Fourthwall | $20.35 | Universally appealing choice |
| Stainless Steel Tumbler | Fourthwall | $20.95 | Useful for audiences who spend a lot of time in the office |
| Laptop Sleeve | Fourthwall | From $21.16 | Good tech gift, though sizing needs checking |
| CamelBak Thrive Flip Straw Bottle | Fourthwall | $23.45 | Familiar brand name with US-only fulfillment |
| Cotton Heritage Premium Hoodie | Fourthwall | From $27.29 | Strong speaker or staff gift when recipients choose the size |
| All-Over Print Duffle Bag | Fourthwall | $58.00 | A hero prize, never a casual giveaway |
| Custom Backpacks | Printful | From $37 | Worth comparing for team and speaker orders over 25 units |
These are the kind of gifts that you will only be giving to people who already have a relationship with your brand, like sponsors or guest speakers. You can afford to go a little higher with your budget here, usually, and it is worth doing it, because it can improve your chances of partners wanting to work with you again, or promote you in the future.
Most of these products are practical. The stainless steel water bottle, tumbler, or the flip straw bottle are items that most people can use every day, including at the event itself. The laptop sleeves and bags are genuinely reliable, and great for encouraging people to passively promote your brand in the future.
Hoodies are another great option, particularly if you can get a speaker to wear one on stage, just make sure you get the sizing information you need in advance.
Bulk and Booth Items (with Real Minimums)
| Product | Platform | Base price | Minimum | My take |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Journey Bottle | Fourthwall | $13.70 | 150 | Great gift for important events |
| Jolt Bottle | Fourthwall | $15.58 | 150 | Ideal for outdoor events |
| Classic BlenderBottle | Fourthwall | From $11.27 | 150 | Good choice for wellness or fitness events |
| Lanyards and ID Holders | 4imprint | Starting at $1.65 | Commonly 100 to 150 | Sensible low-cost option |
| Small extras (pens, pencils, stress balls, etc) | 4imprint | Live pricing | Varies | Great for making sure your booth is always stocked |
As nice as it is to order swag without worrying about minimums, sometimes it pays to get certain products in bulk. If you know you might end up with hundreds of people visiting your booth, a bulk purchase means everyone can get something useful, like a custom-printed bottle to carry with them for the rest of the event.
You do not have to choose something expensive though. Stocking up on lanyards that attendees can actually use at the event, as well as little extras like pens, pencils, or even something fun like a stress ball is a great way to make sure that everyone who comes to chat with you leaves with something.
The most important thing to get right here are the terms. Make sure you know what the minimum is, and how long it is going to take to get your bulk order ready.
Swag Ideas By Event Type
| Event | Swag kit | How I would use it |
|---|---|---|
| Tech conference or developer booth | Desk Mat, Kiss Cut Stickers, Laptop Sleeve | Stickers for general traffic, desk mats after a proper demo, sleeves for challenge winners or customers |
| Trade show | Econscious Tote, 4imprint Lanyards, Spiral Notebook | Give the tote out early, while it can still carry samples and brochures |
| Music festival or outdoor event | Bucket Hat, Can Cooler, All-Over Print Bandana | Match the item to heat, drinks, dust, or sun rather than chasing an Instagram photo |
| Corporate offsite | Premium Hoodie, Enamel Mug, Crew Socks | Collect hoodie sizes beforehand and use artwork tied to the location or offsite |
| Low-budget meetup | Kiss Cut Stickers, Pin Buttons, Greeting Card | Let people choose a design and turn the card into something worth keeping |
One of the best ways to make choosing event swag easier is to match what you are giving away to the experience itself. If you are hosting a booth at a tech event, it always makes sense to offer things like desk mats or laptop sleeves.
For trade shows, tote bags make a lot of sense since people will be stocking up on goods as they are browsing booths. Music festivals and outdoor events are a great opportunity to have some fun with coolers, hats, or less common apparel options.
Corporate offsite events give you a chance to give something premium to people you have already built valuable relationships with. Premium hoodies or beautiful mugs can take the connection you have with those supporters to the next level. On the other hand, for a low-budget meetup, you can keep things affordable with stickers, buttons, or greeting cards.
Where to Order Event Swag
| Platform | Best for |
|---|---|
| Fourthwall | Zero minimums, 417 products, 5 to 8 day shipping, from $9.25 |
| Printful | Bulk discounts over 25 units, wide bag catalog, Shopify integration |
| Sticker Mule | Stickers, buttons, magnets, pins, packaging. Free proofs, around 4 day turnaround |
| 4imprint | Lanyards, power banks, pens, table throws. Real minimums, 24h production on some SKUs |
Once you have got a list of ideas to work with, the next step is figuring out where you should be ordering from. 4imprint feels like the most obvious choice for a big range of practical products, ranging from power banks, to pens, though there are minimums to be aware of, and only some SKUs support 24 hour production times.
Sticker Mule is the affordable choice if you do not want to spend a fortune on giveaways. You can create a range of stickers and buttons, plus there are free proofs. Still, sometimes it takes up to four days for items to actually be produced.
Printful is a good choice if you want premium quality, and plenty of variety. If you are ordering 25 units of the same base product, you can mix sizes, colors, and artwork while keeping the bulk discount, which makes it particularly useful for apparel.
Fourthwall is the more interesting option all around if your event is part of a larger campaign. You can order without a minimum, choose from a range of products for both everyday attendees and VIP sponsors, plus you are guaranteed to get premium results every time.
Even better, Fourthwall is the only partner that also gives you an environment where you can set up a branded store too. That means you can send visitors to your website, let them pick the size or color they want for a product, then ship it to them after the event is over. You can even start selling your merch to everyday customers, or create a new source of revenue with memberships, digital downloads, or custom goods, outside of the event scene.
Beyond the Event: Running a Company Store for Your Team
Most of the advice above assumes a one-off order for a specific event. But if you are a startup or a company of a few hundred people, the same setup solves a much bigger and more annoying problem: getting branded clothing onto the backs of your own staff.
The traditional approach is to guess. You order a few hundred shirts and hoodies across every size, stack them in a cupboard at head office, and hope the spread was right. Then someone has to build a package for each new hire, find their size, box it, and post it. You end up with forty extra XLs nobody wants and no smalls left by March.
A print-on-demand store flips that around.
| The old way | The store way |
|---|---|
| Bulk order across every size, upfront | Order nothing until someone claims an item |
| Stock sits in a cupboard at HQ | No storage, no stock |
| Someone manually packs and posts each new hire kit | New hire gets a URL and orders their own |
| Wrong sizes get worn once or binned | Each person picks their own size and fit |
| Reorder when a size runs out | Catalog is always available |
| Cash tied up in inventory | Spend happens as items are claimed |
Here is the pattern I have seen work well. A company with a large field sales team sets up a private store with an approved set of branded items, shirts, polos, outerwear, a bag. Every rep gets a fixed annual allowance to spend in it. New starters get the store URL on day one instead of a mystery box in the post, and everything prints on demand and ships straight to their home address. Nobody in ops touches a cardboard box. Fourthwall is the platform I would point at for this, mostly because it is the one that treats company stores as a supported use case rather than a workaround, with no minimums and no monthly fee to keep the store open between orders.
How to actually fund it on Fourthwall
Fourthwall gives you a few mechanics here, and they suit different programs:
| Method | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Giveaway links | Generate a batch of single-use links, one product per link. The recipient picks their size and enters their own shipping address. Your card gets charged when the link is redeemed, and you can export the whole batch as a CSV | New hire kits, client gifts, conference follow-ups |
| Gift cards | Digital credit redeemable across multiple orders in your shop until the balance runs out | Annual clothing allowances where people pick their own items over time |
| 100% off codes | Codes that cover the full order value | Ongoing internal programs where you want staff browsing the full catalog |
| Standard order to one address | A normal dashboard order shipped to HQ or a venue | Booth stock and event day inventory |
A couple of details worth planning around. Giveaway links cover one product and one redemption each, so a program with a shirt, a hoodie, and a hat needs a separate batch per product. You will also need a payment method on file, since your card is charged at the moment someone claims their item rather than upfront.
You can point your own domain at the store, so people land on something like swag.yourcompany.com rather than a generic subdomain, and custom inserts let you drop a welcome card into every new hire package automatically.
Where the trade-off sits
On-demand pricing is flat. There is no volume discount waiting for you at 500 units, so on pure unit cost a traditional bulk supplier can still come out cheaper on a single large run. What you are buying instead is the removal of everything around the unit: no inventory, no storage, no dead stock in the wrong sizes, no ops person packing boxes. For most companies under a few hundred staff, that trade lands in favour of the store.
One honest caveat: Fourthwall’s public case studies are creator-led, so you will not find a company store like yours in the showcase. If you need references before committing, ask their team directly.
None of that changes the core maths. For a company in the ten to three hundred range, Fourthwall removes more cost than it adds, and because it operates as Merchant of Record it handles sales tax and buyer support on every order rather than pushing that back to your finance team.
Startups: the same store, two jobs
If you are smaller, the store does double duty. The same catalog that kits out your team also covers the merch you hand out at a sponsored event or send to a design partner, and you can make it public if you ever want customers buying it too. That is the practical reason I would pick a store over a one-off order form even at ten people. You set it up once for the team, and it is already there the first time you sponsor something. The same Fourthwall store can go public whenever you want customers buying it, and you can bolt on memberships or digital products from the same dashboard.
The Event Swag Worth Trying This Year
Event swag can be a great way to attract people to your brand, improve customer relationships, or even expand your promotional efforts. The last thing you want to do is spend your entire budget on products people are just going to throw away.
I would start with a small list, a handful of affordable options like stickers and magnets you can give to everyone, some practical products like mouse mats or tote bags, plus a handful of apparel items so people can keep advocating for your brand after the event.
Pay attention to what people actually pick up, as well as what they share online, you will be able to see people either complimenting your products, or ignoring them completely just by checking out social media. Once you have got that information, you can plan more effectively for your next event.
Fourthwall gives you an easy way to source all of them, and make sure you have a website people can visit if they want to find something in their preferred color or size after the event is over. That is why I would use it over most other swag merch providers, particularly if you are a company planning on attending a lot of events, or creating a wide range of branded items.
