To Swag or Not to Swag: Tip to Brand Your Tchotchkes on a Shoestring

It's interesting to see how resourceful people become when starting their own business. Especially when budget is tight, creative juices go into high gear. I recall my days in corporate marketing when every event, whether it be a sales conference, partner summit or tradeshow had to have tchotchkes. ("Tchotchke" is Yiddish for those corporate giveaways you see at tradeshows, usually small trinkets branded with the company's logo. If the tchotchkes are really cool, some people even call them "swag" or "schwag.")

It is not uncommon for marketing managers to spend upwards of $20,000 per event for straight swag. For some of the higher-end swag, it could cost up to $30 per product when you're dealing with custom branded USB drives, mini-mice and golf gear. All in the name of brand awareness - an unquantifiable, zero-ROI marketing expense. So why do they do it? Because they can.

But where there's a will, there's a way, and small business owners excel at finding the best resources under desperate measures. Ever since I've started my own company, I've become more skilled and more disciplined at making my marketing dollars stretch. When I wanted to create my own branded tchotchkes, someone had introduced me a vendor that could set up a store front for my branded products, manage the inventory, fulfillment, returns/exchanges, payment and customer support all with no upfront costs. The best part was that there was no minimum when I had been used to buying into minimum quantity requirements of 500 units. The vendor is Cafepress (www.cafepress.com) - a 6 year old start-up in Foster City that is backed by Sequoia Ventures. You can brand various items with your artwork to use as tchotchkes or set up an online store and sell your branded products. I didn't see any mini-mice or USB drives, but you can get started with your basic apparel, mugs and office accessories, to name a few. If you decide to sell your products, Cafepress mails you a monthly check with your earnings.

As I come across these types of resources and tools, I will continue to publish them to my small and medium business (SMB) community, SMBxchange, Inc. To share best practices, get your business featured on the site, and learn about new technologies, products and resources, join www.smbxchange.com

Betty Liang, spent most of her professional career in various marketing management positions with companies such as Ricoh, Cisco, and Oracle. She is now focused on her own small business helping other small and medium businesses advance their technology capabilities through exchange opportunities.