What is company fashion and how can it help companies elevate their employer brand? In simple terms, it’s the act of crafting branded company products for employees, customers, and any other relevant stakeholder involved, thus transforming silent fans into outspoken brand ambassadors.
Companies have been incorporating the idea for decades. But the majority have yet to acknowledge its relevance. As a consequence, company t-shirts usually end up somewhere in the back of our closets. It’s time to up your game and strengthen your identity, or better said, your employer brand!
Introducing Merchandise Essentials
To strengthen your employer brand, company fashion can be a very powerful tool. You just have to learn to use it wisely. In 2013, “two motivated young guys with huge dreams” came up with the idea to build a company that would revolutionize the way organizations see and use company fashion items to reinforce their employer brand.
From graphic design, logistics, and production, all the way to consulting, merchboxes, and product development, Merchandise Essentials takes care of every step involved in the making of memorable company products.
For decades, we’ve been using different tools to attract and retain top talent. Social media campaigns, internal events like competitions, hackathons, and numerous other benefits meant to keep employees engaged are common strategies in talent acquisition, HR, and recruitment. The unique approach of Merchandise Essentials goes beyond the conventional branded products. To challenge the status quo, the company is on a mission to make merchandise a core tool of employer branding.
“We are on a mission to do better. To aim higher. To raise the bar, not only for ourselves but for everyone around us. Of all the tools used by Entrepreneurs, Marketing or HR experts, merchandise must be the most underestimated one, and we want to help you to unlock its full potential. And in doing so, we want to help our customers reach their strategic objectives, with the utmost respect for our planet.”
Employer branding, merchandise & sustainability
The Merchandise Essentials ethos is sustainable merch “with respect for people and the planet”. The team works with organic, certified materials to develop branded products of the highest quality. Since inception, the concept has been on producing eco-friendly company fashion under sustainable working conditions.
“We don’t create t-shirts to mow the lawn or to paint your house. What we mean with this statement is that we only design clothes that people actually will wear! Clothing that doesn’t get worn is just waste. By making our clients aware of the fact that merchandise should be worn (a lot), we automatically make sure that our merchandise doesn’t get wasted.”
To help neutralize CO2 emissions, Merchandise Essentials plants one tree for every 50 packages sent, their ultimate goal is to plant a forest via their partnership with Trees for All. It doesn’t get any cooler than that!
Company fashion meets employer branding
Merchandise Essentials went on to develop awesome, sustainable, and ethical merchandise from idea to in-house product development. Forget all about your company logo printed on a backpack you barely use, and stand out with merchandise that fits your business. Creativity lies at the heart of Merchandise Essentials, as placing logos on quality clothing is not enough to stand out.
To elevate your employer brand, sometimes you need to go that extra mile for your people. This is where experienced creativity and strategy enters the mix. The result is meant to entice, exceed expectations, and ultimately, become memorable.
“At Merchandise Essentials we see that quality merch is a vital part of many successful campaigns being run by our clients. That’s why we made it our mission to help businesses implement customized clothing in order to achieve great results. Whatever your challenge or idea is, bring it on. We’re here to make it happen.”
Your employees, your greatest asset, your brand ambassadors!
You have an organization with a strong mission everyone believes in. Your company culture resolates with your people and it’s humbling to see them live and breathe your values. But how do you spread the word externally? The answer: by transferring employer value propositions on to cool merch.
Merchandise Essentials teamed up with SumUp, a leading mobile point of sales (mPOS) provider which allows small merchants to accept card payments in a blink of an eye everywhere around the world.
SumUp had a dire need to engage their future talents and generate a stream of interns. In response, Merchandise Essentials responded by creating fully custom hoodies that were something else than just a logo.
“One of my responsibilities, when I launched our department, was to find a way to bring art and our internal community together, bringing a sense of belonging for our community. We approached this idea to come up with our own branded hoodies and beanies with Merchandise Essentials, and what I really appreciated with them was how well they understood our organization, our culture, and what we were trying to accomplish.” (Jeffery Lovejoy, Future Talent Programme Manager, @SumUp).
It’s no secret that your employees are your greatest asset. With proper employer branding, you can convert them into brand ambassadors. There’s only so much you can do with the digital, and sometimes it pays to go offline and see what other strategies you can use to elevate your brand and business.
Learn more about Merchandise Essentials: https://www.merchandise-essentials.com/
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