Who we serve / Small and growing businesses
Merchandise good enough to carry your name.
We work with professional services firms, startups and growing companies, and owner-run businesses of every kind. A law firm’s holiday gift and a shop’s best-selling mug have little in common, except that each has to be right the first time.
Jump to: Professional services firms · Startups and growing companies · Local and owner-run businesses
Professional services
For professional firms, a client gift is a sample of your judgment.
Law firms, accounting practices, wealth managers, insurance brokers and consultants sell judgment for a living, and clients read the gift that way. Food and flowers are gone in a week or two. A well-made object that a client uses at their desk is still there next tax season. It also lands better in July or January than in the December rush.
Gift rules apply to many of your clients and to some of you. Federal employees can accept very little. FINRA caps what its member firms give to people at the businesses they work with, with an exception for logo items of nominal value. The IRS still lets a business deduct only $25 per recipient per year. We ask about these at the start and choose within them. Our practice was shaped by a trained trademark lawyer, so how your mark appears on an object gets checked carefully.
We worked with one DC law firm for eight years, from embroidered jackets to boxed tumblers. When an order has had to reach a secure building on time, we have delivered it ourselves.
Startups and growing companies
Growing companies need merchandise that keeps up.
A first trade show booth, gifts for the clients who matter most, merchandise for a launch or a conference, and kits for new hires when you’re adding people. Growing companies often need all of these within a year, usually on short notice and on a budget that has to show results. We plan around your calendar and choose items people will keep using.
For software companies we have made notebooks, seed-paper postcards, custom socks, booth banners and the tablecloths that go under them. When you do bring on new people, we can ship kits one at a time or for a whole cohort, wherever they live.
Planning a trade show, a launch or a new-hire kit? Start a project. A rough idea is enough.
Local and owner-run businesses
Local businesses people know by name.
We’ve made referral pads and creative, on-brand stress-relief toys for a dental practice, and staff T-shirts and key fobs for a pet-sitting company. A DC wine bar and market has reordered its own wine totes and T-shirts for a decade. When a business sells what we make, the product has to look like retail and leave room for margin. We help you choose quantities you can sell through, and we reorder when a design takes off.
What we bring
- Products chosen for the person receiving them and the rules they work under
- Small runs and one-off orders taken as seriously as large ones
- A proof on every order, and samples when a piece has to be exactly right
- One contact from the first idea to delivery
Food and flowers are gone in a week or two. A well-made object a client uses at their desk is still there next tax season.
Common questions
Questions we get asked.
Do logo gifts count against our gift limits?
Often they don’t, at least not in full. FINRA excludes logo items of nominal value from its $300 limit. The IRS excludes widely distributed branded items costing $4 or less from its $25 cap. Government recipients are stricter. Tell us who is receiving the gift and we’ll choose accordingly. Your compliance team has the last word.
Can you ship kits one at a time as people join?
Yes. We can send individual kits as people start or a batch for a cohort, and we’ll show you what each option does to the price per kit.
What are the minimums?
They come with the product and the way it is decorated. Some items start in the dozens and others in the hundreds. We’ll tell you up front and suggest something else if the numbers don’t fit.
We work with Cedar Collaborative. How does this fit?
Cedar Collaborative is our sister practice. If they’re helping with your marketing, the merchandise can follow the same plan and calendar, and you won’t have to brief two teams from scratch.
Tell us what you’re working on.
A rough idea is enough to start.