Locally sourced with love — the stories behind the Productboard Swag Store
Taking care of our employees is one of our key priorities, and we enjoy making the effort and celebrating special moments together. At the same time, our vision is one of a world full of amazing products that both function and delight. And we applied the same for creating our merchandise — the Productboard store.
Up until recently, we celebrated every anniversary, birthday, or other important moments of a Productboard employee with a personalized gift. Whether it was a flower bouquet, a cake that the person likes, or another gift that was related to their hobbies.
As our team grew from 100 people to 400 people, this started becoming more challenging. The personalized gifts will remain, but we wanted to make sure we would constantly give the same level of love to all our employees. We were searching for new ways to celebrate all Productboarders equally no matter where they were in the world. And we needed a solution that would scale.
“We created a global multifunctional reward system through which we will celebrate Productboard milestones, birthdays, and employee work anniversaries. Another great feature is the ability to send the company’s merch to our customers and business partners,” explains David Petříček, our Workspace Experience Lead, who was the brains behind the Swag Store.
Products
Sustainability, superb quality, and supporting Czech local brands
Our mission is to provide high-quality, comfortable, and sustainable products that people will feel great in. All of our items are carefully selected — our apparel uses organic or recycled materials and is fully GOTS-certified, reaffirming our merch is gentle on the skin as well as the environment. We do not want to overwhelm employees with things they do not want.
Inspired by Productboard culture
Before creating a product, we invite each small business to meet our Productboarders, joining our events so they can grasp the style and vibe of our people. On top of that, we continuously collect feedback from our team, in a nod to Productboard’s core pillar: Customer Centricity. The result is a shop packed with products exclusively designed for the needs of our company and culture. In short, we strive to create, sell, and source products that truly matter.
Story behind products
We love supporting small local businesses. You can clearly feel the story behind every brand that we decide to collaborate with. On top of this, we are proud to support spreading their names globally, with their brands being used and worn all over Silicon Valley, London, Vancouver, and Dublin.
Exclusive design backpacks from Braasi
One of our top partners is Braasi, a family-owned company that produces stylish signature backpacks from quality, locally sourced material. The design Braasi came up with for us offers our team a fully waterproof and padded safe space for the gym, office, or airplane luggage compartment.
It took approximately four months, which included sampling, prototyping, and continuous feedback from Productboarders, to get to the divine end-result backpack.
Apparel
We wanted top-notch company swag that is super cool, and our people would be proud to wear — proud to feel like a Productboarder.
Besides creating brand awareness, we also want to connect the brand to the people wearing our gear. The basis of everything is not to rely only on unisex things, but to focus on the specific requirements of employees. Thanks to the great diversification of our employees, we also need our company’s merchandise to be as flexible as possible. Additionally, The Swag is seasonal where it has 2 different collections every year. So the employees have the freedom to decide what they buy, in what color, style, size.
Inclusion of smart branding — touchpoints on every piece of merchandise. Minimalistic yet visible to create brand awareness.
Stationary
David decided to partner with Papelote, which features 21st-century stationery full of playful colors and patterns. Papelote uses eco-friendly and sustainable materials. The company created a journal exclusively for Productboard. Every single page of the journal is printed with Productboard logo ornaments. Its cover is made of durable Vega, a cellulose-based vegan leather.
Unicorn status
We recently closed our Series D round, pushing Productboard’s valuation to more than $1.7 billion, making us only the second Unicorn startup on the Czech market. We decided to celebrate our new status with a limited edition Unicorn Collection in our shop.
In addition to a limited apparel line, we collaborated with the small local toymaker Ababu. All toys are created with love and care by a team that’s mostly made up of single mothers, who are fairly rewarded for their work. All materials are suitable for young children.
So, how does it work?
We created our own Productboard currency. All Productboarders are given a certain credit balance to start, allowing them to make Swag purchases. Credit balances increase for birthdays, anniversaries, company milestones, and special Productboard competitions.
Fun fact: Productboard Swag is in such high demand that people lend, donate and send coins to each other in order to buy dream items from the store.
What’s coming?
Since launching our e-shop in December, we’ve offered more than 38 different types of items and received more than 700 orders. Our team is currently working on a new collection for spring, matching swag sets for parents and kids, VIP swag for key customers, and much more! Furthermore, we would like to connect it with gamification and reward people for being active in the community.
The Swag Store is another explicit illustration of our core value: build products that matter, together. The company’s swag represents and resonates with the people. We offer products that people truly love to wear and use.
Big thanks go to our partners BontonFilm Production, Brassi, Papelote, Ababu, Slippsy.
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Do you want to proudly wear Productboard Swag and help us to change the way products are built?
Stop by our careers page to see how you can make your impact! We’d love to hear from you!
