Merchery

A selection of customisable corporate gifts / Source: Merchery

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7 MINUTE READ

Nate Tyler

WHAT WE SAY:

The promotional product industry is worth USD 64 billion worldwide, and isn't going away anytime soon. A poll found that creative agencies are split - 52.6% love branded merchandise, while 47.4% say it’s no longer relevant. Rather than adding to the drawers full of plastic USB sticks, Merchery decided to create sustainable gifts that people will actually use.

While the brand does have some plastic products in its catalogue, and other items that don’t have good disposal routes, we love the shift towards thoughtful gifting of quality, sustainably made products.

KEY FACTS:

Merchery provides sustainable branded promotional products for companies to gift to employees, prospects, or clients. Rather than simply partnering with a distributor and selecting from their stock, each product in Merchery’s catalogue is chosen individually, with a focus on value and longevity.
The catalogue has more than 600 products for clients to choose from, including office supplies like Moleskine notebooks and Wooden pens; apparel like t-shirts made from organic Cotton and hoodies made from cotton-polyester blends; bags such as totes and backpacks; drinkware like tumblers and coffee cups; and kitchen items such as french presses and pepper grinders. For people who don’t want a physical product, the company also offers donations, and is looking to expand into experiences.
In a conversation with PlasticFree, Frederic Jonsson, partnerships manager at Merchery, explained the checklist the company runs through when curating items for its catalogue. It considers aspects such as aesthetic value, branding potential, functionality, material specifications, and innovative features.
Merchery scrutinises all material certifications, ensuring that the products are durable and sustainably made. Once items are vetted, they're added to the company's catalogue for clients to select.
The company works with both factories and brands to source top quality products, offering local items where possible. Household brands available in Merchery’s catalogue for corporate branding include Yeti, Patagonia, Nalgene, The North Face, Karst, Zippo, Kinto, and Camelbak.
Merchery supplies products to direct clients and creative agencies, with the two services operating separately. It provides direct clients with their own online shop. For instance, an HR manager will pick out items in Merchery’s catalogue that fit within the company’s budget. Merchery deals with the logistics and can even store the items in its warehouse. When an employee is onboarded or has a birthday, the HR manager can give them a voucher to shop online for branded items. In this way, people are offered products of value and purpose.
For creative agencies, Merchery offers more creative leeway, coming up with a bespoke package that complements the agency’s client's brand.
Client branding was the spark for Merchery's conception. The founders, Simon Polet and Benoit Fortpied, launched a reusable water bottle brand, with many companies requesting their logo on the bottles. From there, the pair ventured into sustainable promotional products, using the revenue from their water bottle project to fully bootstrap Merchery in 2020.
In January 2023, the two co-founders brought their network of trusted entrepreneurs together to form a small investment panel, raising EUR 1 million (USD 1.11 million). The investor panel offers mentorship to the brand, and all panel members are active in sustainability practices or US businesses. Jonsson stated that Polet and Fortpied have no interest in venture capital funding, opting to stick with people they know and trust, and that growth at all costs is not the goal.
Merchery is a Belgian company, and opened an office in New York in 2023. The brand has specific catalogues for US and European customers in order to locally source as many products as possible and limit emissions from transportation.

Merchery offers different catalogues for its European and American customers / Source: Merchery

Sustainable business gifts / Source: Merchery

DIVE DEEPER:

The promotional swag industry is worth USD 64 billion worldwide, and much of it features plastic. USB sticks alone make up 7.5% of promotional products, while writing utensils sit at 6.1%, totes at 8.4%, and shirts at 26.6%. With these items unwanted by almost half of creative agencies, they will ultimately come to little more than waste, creating GHG emissions in their manufacturing and plastic waste and microplastic pollution in their disposal.
This raises the question of why merchandise is needed at all, and whether it is feeding overconsumption and generating avoidable waste. Jonsson admits that merchandise is not a necessary item, stating that "people don’t need more merch". However, Merchery maintains that the market isn't going anywhere - companies "still want hoodies to hand out", and the employee or customer relationship is enhanced through the receipt of physical gifts. The company has reached the conclusion that "merch is kind of a necessary evil."
Mercury's novelty lies in the way it curates and creates merchandise. It specifically seeks out functional and practical items, such as pocket leather journals and hoodies. According to Jonsson, "these are things people are going to actually use. Merch has this bad reputation of not being necessary. But what if you make items that people will actually find useful? We’re always going to use pens and notebooks, but we need to be smart about how we hand them out."
The company is passionate about using sourcing and transparency to change the industry, showcasing a complete list of suppliers on its website. While some of its brand partners have factories in China and other Asian countries where manufacturing is prevalent, the company has moved all of its direct factory partnerships to Europe. For example, its garment manufacturing has moved to Portugal "which has the same capacity for crafting", limiting transportation emissions, a substantial share of its carbon footprint. Jonsson says this does add a small premium to the company’s products, but the environmental savings are worth it. The brand avoids shipping across Oceania altogether, but when it must, air freight is out of the question.
Merchery tracks its carbon footprint through Tapio, a fellow Belgian sustainability startup. The majority of the company's footprint comes from the manufacturing of its products, and the shipping miles attached to them. The brand’s goal is to be carbon neutral within a few years.
The company’s New York office is already building partnerships to expand its US catalogue, focusing on local offerings as much as possible. The brand actively seeks out vegan products, and Jonsson claims that the only animal product listed is a reusable beeswax food wrapper.
Merchery’s client list is long, over 1,000 strong, and the company has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. These include Netflix, Lacoste, Stripe, Highsnobiety, Dior, Kickstarter, Spotify, Uber, and Google. Among creative agencies, Merchery has worked with Pentagram and Layers.
The brand doesn't work with oil and gas companies, or venture capital firms that fund fossil fuel companies. As for companies like car manufacturers, Jonsson says that "if a car manufacturer comes to us, and we refuse to work with them, then they could go to someone else and get unsustainable products."
Merchery is a B Corp company, and part of 1% for the Planet.

"Merch has this bad reputation of not being necessary. But what if you make items that people will actually find useful? We’re always going to use pens and notebooks, but we need to be smart about how we hand them out."

Frederic Jonsson – Partnerships Manager, Merchery

Key Design Considerations:

Usability

Merchery understands that no matter how beautiful a product is, it needs to be usable or it will go to waste. This is one of the pillars of its business, and one of the pillars of sustainability in general. If you're looking to introduce branded merchandise, consider products that are directly relevant to your employees and clients, so that your merch has a reason to exist rather than adding to the clutter.

Go plastic free

Merchery's catalogue gives its clients the option to choose from many products. Some of the items it currently stocks are not plastic free, such as apparel and bags, which can shed microplastics while in use. Hoodies made from a blend of cotton and polyester are substandard, so do your due diligence and study the composition of every product you select, ensuring it complies with an existing waste stream or has a lifetime of use.

Goods vs experiences

A more radical solution to the problem of promotional products and the waste they generate is to eliminate them altogether, and Merchery says it's looking to diversify its portfolio by offering experiences. Replacing items with experiences could also offer much more in terms of marketing and brand loyalty. Millennials prefer experiences over goods, and opportunities to connect with people and lifestyle trends are trumping product ownership. A viable alternative could be organising team-building activities and day trips, or offering class passes for a fitness studio. As for product promotion, hosting exclusive events and in-store experiences - such as facial treatments to showcase your skincare products - is a waste-free marketing route that could bring an end to cheap merch, plastic products, and unnecessary waste.