The Box of Shirts Nobody Ever Opened
A few years back, I worked at a place that ordered way too many branded shirts for a company event. Like, way too many. We had maybe eighty people show up, and someone had ordered three hundred shirts. So after the event, we had this giant box just sitting in the corner of the supply room, taped shut, waiting for a decision nobody wanted to make.
Nobody really talked about it. It just became part of the furniture. Every few months, someone would open it, grab a shirt for painting or yard work, and close it back up. Years went by like that.
Honestly, this happens a lot more than people realize. Businesses order promotional merchandise for an event, guess wrong on the numbers, and end up with a bunch of stuff that just sits there. Nobody plans for the leftovers. They just kind of exist, taking up space, until someone finally decides to throw them out.
That's actually why I got curious about a program called SwagCycle. Grossman Marketing Group started it to deal with exactly this problem. Instead of those extra shirts, mugs, or bags sitting in a closet forever or getting tossed straight in the trash, they get a second chance to actually be used by someone who wants them.
It made me think differently about how companies order branded promo products in the first place. If you know there's a real plan for the extras, ordering feels a lot less risky. That's the part most people never think about when they're deciding on swag promotional products for the next event.
Anyway, if your office has its own version of that mystery box in the supply room, it might be worth looking into what Grossman Marketing Group and SwagCycle are doing about it.











