The Power of Custom Merchandise: 4 Ways to Elevate Your Brand Identity

Importance of Brand identity

When it comes to the role a company’s brand plays in its identity, Ashley Friedlein, the founder of Guild, aptly states,

Brand is the sum total of how someone perceives a particular organization. Branding is about shaping that perception

In other words, a company’s brand is crucial in people’s decision to buy their products. One effective way to shape and enhance this perception is through selling custom merchandise. Custom merch includes a wide variety of items such as t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, hoodies, purses, shoes, and towels, essentially anything you can think of. If you're still hesitant about selling custom merch and its impact, don't worry. This article will discuss 4 ways custom merch can transform your company’s brand identity, making it more relatable and memorable to your customers.

1. Increases Brand Visibility

Whether it’s Supabase’s anime-inspired t-shirts or GitHub’s tote bags, custom merch can help create a sense of unity and belonging among customers, employees, and supporters of your brand. It also serves as an excellent tool for introducing people to your brand. In fact, 85% of people remember the companies that gave them branded merchandise. For instance, when I first started my open source journey in 2022, I heard about Hacktoberfest because they offer t-shirts to participants who merge four pull requests. This sparked my curiosity, and through learning more about the event, I quickly realized it was a fantastic way to improve my technical skills and engage with the open source community. Increasing brand visibility is just one of the ways custom merch can transform your company’s identity. Let’s explore another powerful benefit.

2. Strengthens Customer Loyalty

Offering custom merch or exclusive designs for brand advocates and customers as a reward for their loyalty creates a sense of belonging. For example, when Spleet Africa decided to use WiiCreate to provide merch to loyal customers, the CEO mentioned that the majority of stakeholders and the customers [who] received their merch felt like they were a part of the company’s community. I can attest to this as I found that I continued participating in GitLab’s monthly hackathons after winning two of their t-shirts. It makes me feel like I belonged to the community, which increased my motivation to contribute to their repositories. Now before you start rewarding your customers. Let’s look at another way custom merch can transform your company’s brand identity.

3. Amplifies Marketing Efforts

Custom merch is a powerful, real-life marketing tool that can significantly enhance your company's promotional efforts. In fact, more than 50% of consumers have a favorable impression of an company after receiving a promotional product. For example, I decided to follow Supabase’s X(Twitter) account and participate in their t-shirt giveaway after reading their blog post about one of their customers. It gave me the impression that Supabase is a fun organization that strives to make tech more inviting for people from all backgrounds. Now before you go, there’s just one more way custom merch can transform your company’s brand identity.

4. Fosters Authenticity

As cliche as the saying ”Authenticity wins” is, people do tend to respond positively towards a company’s merch when it is promoted in a genuine, non-salesy manner. In fact, 28% of customers find brands to be memorable when they highlight the stories of their audience using their products over the products themselves. For example, when Ramp, a custom t-shirt company, conducted their sales email campaign, they got around $10K in total revenue by presenting funny stories about themselves and their potential clients’ logos in a humorous way.

Embrace the transformation

Whether it strengthens your customers’ loyalty, amplifies marketing, makes your company more authentic, and increases its brand’s visibility, having custom merch can be the very tool that transforms your company’s identity. If you’re eager to explore more ways to leverage custom merch for your brand, check out the article, “Revolutionizing Your Brand: The Power of Custom Business Merchandise” and consider partnering with WiiCreate for stress-free custom merch creation. Additionally, follow my blog for more tech-related content and check out my socials on Linktree to connect with me.