Investments & development for an
Inc. 500 fastest-growing
company: an
all-in-one SWAG platform

Invetment check size
$50,000
Project Duration
From 2016 till now
Team members involved
  • CTO
  • PM
  • Developer x11
  • QA x4
  • QA Automation x2
Tech stack
  • AWS Cloud
  • Javascript
  • Nodejs
  • ReactJS
  • MongoDB
  • RabbitMQ
  • Redis
  • PostgreSQL
Job Story

Market challenges

We met with Swag co-founders Jeremy Parker and Joshua Orbach in New York, late September 2016. They had an ambitious goal to change the way the whole promotional apparel industry operates. For B2B clients designing, producing, and delivering branded promotional products was a big hassle.

Swag designs and mock-ups were sent by fax; many time-consuming negotiations and organizational nuances were handled through different channels and sources. Getting quality branded merch in time was a challenging task to complete.

Jeremy and Joshua wanted to create an innovative all-in-one solution, but a templated Shopify platform was all they had at that moment. In the beginning, they only thought about adding plugins to automate calculation and ordering processes. It could never be enough since their mission was to automate the entire buying experience and deliver swag that people want to take.

That’s when Aleph1 advised them on building a custom all-in-one platform and started MVP development.

Startup success timeline

Client onboarding in September
MVP launch

Aleph1 invests $50,000 in SWAG
Swag.com raised $120,000 Pre Seed in July
Facebook, WeWork, and others use this startup to make swag in November

100% growth

Swag.com raised $940,964 /Seed

Swag.com raised $885,000 /Seed
Total Funding Amount $1.9M

Exit stage. 368 position in the Inc. 500 fastest-growing US companies with 1,308% growth.

Tech Challenges

  • MVP

    An MVP for us was more than a kit of useful features. It was a challenge in organizing ideas, goals, tools, and solutions to transform them into a first version of the platform that could give our customers all they need.

  • Stack and tools

    On the one hand, we needed a stack and tools for a quick start because the time to market is a crucial factor in e-commerce, and on the other hand, it should be good in the long run as scalability is the second most important future-proof factor.

Delivery

For the MVP stage we implemented:

  • product catalog
  • SWAG product builder
  • checkout
  • order processing flow

Now

We’re constantly improving our platform to give customers all the power in the world to shop, store and ship the best swag and gifts around. So tons of features are used for automating and simplifying the entire swag buying and managing process.

Swag in a Box

The fun way to onboard new hires and show employees or favorite clients how much you care is by sending them the good stuff in a box.

Swag Distribution

An ability to easily manage and distribute all of your swag from one central portal. Allows sending swag to one location or thousands of locations at once.

Swag Gift Giveaway

Corporate gifting for teams, clients, and leads in a simple way. Send a link to let people choose their custom gifts.

We fund and build tech products to scale

Let’s work together to build something amazing. Share your project details and our team will reply to figure out the next steps to your success.

We fund and build tech products to scale

Let’s work together to build something amazing. Share your project details and our team will reply to figure out the next steps to your success.
Submit a Pitch

We’re looking for the next generation of companies, products, and innovators. If you’re in the process of scaling your business and need funding, get in touch.

Fill out the information and our team will follow up with any additional questions and work to schedule a time to meet. We’re excited to hear more!

    Schedule a pitch

    Schedule a call