Vendor Spotlight: Brilliant
I love Swag!
Well, let me refine that…I love GOOD swag.
We’re not talking about the badly branded, plastic water bottle currently collecting dust in your kitchen cabinet.
(I know you feel guilty throwing it away. It’s okay. 😉)
I’m talking about thoughtful, useful swag. When done right, swag can be the perfect accompaniment to your event, the coolest way to promote your brand, or the most intentional way to recognize your employees and customers.
In my time I’ve dealt with A LOT of swag vendors. Some have been great, some have been okay, others have downright bombed the assignment! But since I’m not in the business of dealing out scathing reviews, I’m going to take this post to recognize a company who lives in my coveted category of “Flawless” vendors…
You might be expecting me to go into the origin story of Brilliant about now. Perfect segue…but, nope. Telling a story you can find with a simple google search is not why you’re reading this post. To remain intentional with your time, I’m going to jump right to the stuff you won’t find online. MY personal reasons why Brilliant is my hands down, #1, go-to swag vendor.
The Top 4 Reasons I love Brilliant
The Creative Partner: There’s one word to describe Brilliant’s customer experience - personal.
From day one you’re matched with a creative partner (love that title! 💗) to design and execute your project. This person takes real time to understand your vision and brainstorm ideas for it. Once the two of you have a general direction, they create a look book for you. This is a digital catalog of all your swag options based on your ideas. What I love most about this process is it works for both seasoned swag designers and first-time creators. Brilliant’s creative partners are exceptionally trained to decipher how much help you require and provide a customized experience. Making even a swag noob, feel like a pro.
(Shout-out to my one and only Brilliant CPIC, Maggie Sackman! I couldn’t have done any of it without you. 🫶)
Brilliant Culture: I believe the health of your company culture is often reflected in the work you produce. Meaning, if you have an exhausted, under-appreciated team, you’re going to produce a boring, uninspired product.
Millie Tadewaldt, the founder of Brilliant, agrees with this sentiment. Which is why she built her team with a people-first approach. Founding the company on values like: Investing in You, Health & Happy, & Time to balance.
Now why is their internal culture a top reason why I love them?
Because her investment in a happy, healthy work environment created a team of appreciative and loyal people. Fulfilled team members usually want to demonstrate their gratitude for a company that genuinely cares. How do you think they do that?By giving stellar experiences to customers like me. Vis-a-vis I reap the benefits of their cultural investment. Which is why I respect Millie’s approach and recognize that it is one of the main reasons I keep coming back to Brilliant.
Thanks Millie! I see you and your culture flex. 🥂
Custom Storefront: When you do swag for as many people as I do, the process must be super automated. That’s why when Trello reached over 200 people I decided to set up a Brilliant storefront. The “Storefront is a full-service warehousing and fulfillment solution for all your swag needs. It provides full access and visibility into your inventory from anywhere, admin accessibility for team orders and approvals, helpful inventory reminders and detailed reports.” It is truly an end-to-end solution, for both team and customer facing needs. It also leads me to the last reason I love Brilliant…
(To be clear, this is the last for this post….there are plenty more reasons to love them. 💟)Fulfillment Services: They are experts in full-service fulfillment needs. They handle everything, from warehousing & bespoke packaging, to global shipping and delivery. Their platform continuously monitors the status of your shipments to combat any delays or issues, and if any arise promptly addresses them. Not to mention they are wizards in the complex world of international customs. I’ve sent hundreds, upon hundreds of swag gifts with them, and I can count on one hand how many errors I’ve experienced! It’s truly magical how they take care of every detail. 🪄
My Receipts
I’m a person who likes proof. If you’re telling me something is great and I should use it, I want proof of how it helped you.
Surely you don’t expect me to trust something you haven’t tried. 🧐
Consider these past projects, my receipts for why you should check Brilliant out for yourself.
1. The Trello to Table Cookbook Kit
In 2021 I was tasked with developing a holiday gift for the Trello team. I landed on designing a cookbook that was made up of favorite recipes from our own staff. We called it, Trello to Table. (Title credit to Rani Shah, the most talented brand strategist I’ve ever met 🫶.) I looped in a gifted graphic designer, Cindy Duong, to illustrate the cookbook, and provide the design for the holiday kit. The kit included the hardcover cookbook, a branded spatula, apron, and stickers (Always stickers! 😂).
Now I hate to admit this, but I came up with this idea super late in the holiday gifting game. Even for smallish teams, you have to think about holiday gifts in July, especially if they’re custom. I thought about this in October. 🤦🏻♀️ Now, any other swag vendor would have said “We can’t make that timeline work.” Not Brilliant. As usual, they were just as excited and eager to pull this off as I was. We designed the kit in 2 days, they expedited production and they were able to fulfill a delivery date, for 300 global employees, by late December! 🤯
I told you…freaking wizards! 🧙
2. The New Hire Swag Kit
Since Atlassian was primarily a remote company, new employees typically onboarded from their home. I wasn’t a huge fan of this practice for new Trellists, so I decided to sweeten the pot. I collabed with Brilliant to create a new hire swag kit. On an employee’s first day, I would reach out via slack, offer myself as a touchstone on the team, share some need to know info, then trigger an email from Brilliant. This email held a private, one time access link to claim their new hire swag box…should they want to. 🤔
The box was awesome! High-quality branded t-shirt, super plush hoodie, notebook, power bank, a whole bunch of fun, useful goodies. But the cool factor of this kit is not why the project was special. It makes the top of the list because it was my first experience offering an “opt-in” to my swag.
If I’m being honest, before Brilliant, I didn’t give much thought to sustainability practices in swag. I always ordered in bulk, and sent the same thing to everyone. That’s what most companies did. What I didn’t realize is how incredibly wasteful it is to create huge bulk offerings and send them without knowing if they’re wanted. For all we knew ½ of our swag was ending up in landfills. Not very eco-friendly. ♻️
Brilliant made this project my crash course in responsible swag creation. We ordered a realistic number of kits, stored them in their warehouse, and shared an email with the opportunity to redeem one. This process was not only environmentally responsible, it was fiscally responsible. We saved a ton of money on inventory and shipping costs!
This is why I felt it was important to share this particular project. It’s a shining example of how wonderfully unique Brilliant is. Many other companies would have happily agreed to a bulk order. Sending expensive kits, all over the world to every person automatically…that’s a lot of money to miss out on. 💸
Brilliant is different. They genuinely care about building a collaborative and mutually beneficial relationship, because they know the best currency isn’t money…it’s trust.
This project holds a memorable lesson for me, which I hope I’ve now handed down to you. 🙌
I leave you with this…
The swag industry is a saturated one. So many different vendors promising quality items at competitive rates with expedited timelines. It’s hard to know which ones make good on their claims. I know I’ve learned the hard way with quite a few.
That’s why I felt it was my duty, as your resident employee experience advisor, to shine a big ole spotlight on the right one.
If you have a large-scale swag project taking up space in your brain right now, reach out to Brilliant. They will make your wildest swag dreams come true.
