Capping off 2024 by officially announcing @swagup has been acquired by @BDAinc - The World’s Leading Branded Merchandise Agency

What started as an experiment out of my mom’s garage 7 years ago quickly turned into something beyond my wildest imagination

The SwagUp journey has felt like 20 years of hard knock lessons of business jammed into a third of that 

From building out a fulfillment center that ships 100’s of thousands of packages, creating a first of its kind tech platform and model, generating nearly $200m in Sales, bootstrapping through hyper growth, rapidly hiring and then having to do multiple layoffs, working on high profile projects with the worlds best companies, working and reworking our rev org, building a brand from nothing, almost dying many many times and having to resuscitate ourselves

The SwagUp story is one of constant chaos masquerading as calmness

We have so much left to do and that’s what this partnership is all about 

These last two years have been hard, for a lot of companies for a lot of reasons, and we’ve been no stranger to that (especially with swag being as discretionary as it is) 

Instead of spending our time and attention investing in growth and pulling ahead, we’ve been playing defense, focusing on things like margin expansion and cost control - while essential, are not what we are ultimately after 

BDA, while being one of the largest players in the space, is still founder-run

I have a ton of respect for Jay and their team, as do they for what we have built - we complement each other very well 

I’m excited to invest aggressively in the platform, the brand, our customers, but most importantly the team - we have an incredible group of people and they deserve the resources and support that this partnership will bring - I can’t wait to see what our team can accomplish going forward and what this opportunity means for each of them 

Thank you for those who supported us along the way, whether investors, partners, vendors, team members (past and present) or our customers who placed trust in the challenger upstart - you’ve all helped us get here and will always be a part of what SwagUp will ultimately become

As for me, I’m not going anywhere - we have a ton of unfinished business!!

I’m excited to pour fuel on the fire and take SwagUp to new heights - there’s so much left to do to simplify the way companies create and disitbrute branded merch advise globally and I’m confident we will continue to lead the way 🚀