Why 80% of Branded Swag Gets Thrown Away - Conor McKenna (GoSwag)
Innovation and Private Capital x auliumShow Notes
Most corporate swag ends up in the bin or as pajamas — over 80% of branded gifts are thrown away or given away within months. Conor McKenna and his co-founder built Go Swag to fix that staggering waste by flipping the merchandising model on its head: premium quality, global logistics, and a tech layer that turns brand chaos into seamless gifting at scale.
The conversation traces Go Swag's journey from a 180-pound bootstrap in a Glasgow co-working cupboard to powering swag for Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, and ElevenLabs. McKenna explains how fragmented suppliers, procurement bottlenecks, and terrible recipient experiences created a trillion-dollar sleeping giant that tech founders ignored because it felt unglamorous. Go Swag's answer: white-glove service powered by software, warehouses in three regions, and a design team that refuses stress balls. The company recently raised $5 million, doubled headcount projections, and launched an AI tool called Sonny to recommend the right product for the right moment — no catalogue overwhelm, no two-foot logos turning employees into billboards.
**Key Discussion Points:**
🎯 Premium doesn't scale — unless software does the heavy lifting across customs, taxes, branding, and global fulfilment 🧠 Early traction meant big companies bending procurement rules to pay a tiny startup because the industry couldn't match the service 🤖 AI is refining thousands of SKUs and branding methods into tight recommendations in seconds, not years of experience 🌍 Being Scottish-founded in a small economy forced immediate global expansion — a defensive advantage through volatility 📦 The "stress ball rule": Go Swag turns away requests for cheap plastic tat and pushes clients toward fewer, better, useful items
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About Conor McKenna [CEO and co-founder of GoSwag]: Co-founder and CEO of GoSwag, a corporate gifting platform built from Glasgow that uses AI to manage sizing, product selection, and fulfilment for enterprise clients. Before starting GoSwag, he spent about a decade building software with his co-founder before walking into the corporate gifting industry as an outsider. He bootstrapped the company for years, growing it to a 30-person team, before raising outside funding and launching a major expansion into the US market.
About Aulium: Aulium is a video show exploring Innovation and Private Capital, hosted by Thomas Viguier.Connect with us: ➡ Aulium on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aulium ➡ Thomas Viguier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tviguier/
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