If you’ve ordered with us before, chances are you reached for the usual suspects: yard signs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, maybe a stack of palm cards. Those are workhorses for a reason. But they’re also the products every campaign orders, which means they’re not always the ones that make your campaign stand out.
Here are five products in our shop that punch well above their weight, and that most campaigns don’t think to order until they see another campaign using them. Each one solves a specific problem, fills a specific moment, and gets your name in front of voters in a way the standard stuff can’t.
Walk into any campaign HQ on a Saturday morning and count how many people are looking for a working pen. It’s never zero. Volunteers need them for sign-in sheets. Canvassers need them for clipboard notes. Petition gatherers need them for signatures. And somehow, no matter how many you buy at the office supply store, they all disappear by week two.
Custom-imprinted Sharpies solve two problems at once: they keep the supply moving, and every single one becomes a tiny billboard with your name and logo on it. They’re available in 19 vibrant colors with the ink color matching the barrel, so you can match your campaign palette. Hand them out at petition tables, voter registration drives, town halls, and volunteer trainings.
Best for: Petition drives, voter registration, volunteer kits, town hall sign-in tables, donor swag bags.
Here’s a stat every canvass director knows but doesn’t love: most doors don’t answer. You can knock 50 doors in an afternoon and have real conversations at maybe 10 of them. The other 40? Until recently, those were a wash. A piece of literature on the doorknob, a hope, a prayer.
Custom sticky notes change that math. A volunteer can stick a personalized note right to a door, a window, or a piece of literature: “Sorry I missed you, Mrs. Garcia! Wanted to share why I’m supporting Jane Smith. Best, Mark.” It’s personal, it’s warm, and it leaves something the voter actually picks up and reads instead of stepping over.
They’re full-color, and available in eight sizes from 3"x3" up to 5"x8". And they’re not just for canvassing. Use them as desk swag at your HQ, as add-ons to mailers, or as a fun fundraising thank-you.
Best for: Canvassing in lower-density areas, lit drops, HQ desk supplies, mail piece add-ons, donor thank-yous.
Bandanas are one of the most flexible items in the shop, and almost nobody thinks to order them. They work as wearable swag, sure, around the neck, on a wrist, tied to a bag strap. But they also work as event decor: tied to canopy poles, clipped to fences along a parade route, draped on tables, twisted into rally streamers. One product, six uses.
Ours are 22"x22", 100% cotton, union-printed in the USA, with a generous 18"x18" imprint area, so your design has room to breathe. They come in 19 bold colors, which means you’re not stuck matching everything to a single shade. They’re lightweight enough to hand out by the hundreds, durable enough to last for years, and visible enough to read across a crowd.
Best for: Outdoor rallies, parades, festivals, county fairs, GOTV weekends, marching contingents.
The best campaign merch is the merch that gets used. A yard sign goes up for three months and comes down. A bumper sticker is great if the supporter actually puts it on the car.
A grocery tote? It goes to the store every week. Sometimes twice. It goes to the farmers market, the library, the pharmacy. It rides on the passenger seat. It hangs from doorknobs. It is, without exaggeration, the longest-lasting form of mobile signage you can put in a supporter’s hand.
Our grocery totes are 12"x13.5"x8" with a real gusset (so they actually hold groceries), reinforced double handles, union-printed, and available in 10 colors. You can add a plastic support insert for $0.20 a bag if you want them to stand up at fundraiser tables. They’re also a fantastic “premium” gift for monthly donors and sustaining members, the kind of thank-you that keeps reminding them why they gave.
Best for: Fundraiser thank-yous, monthly donor gifts, voter outreach in dense neighborhoods, conference and rally giveaways, GOTV weekend kits.
This is the premium item on the list, and it earns its spot. A 17-oz double-wall stainless steel water bottle keeps coffee hot for 12 hours and ice water cold for 24. It has a leak-proof screw-on lid. It’s the kind of bottle that ends up on someone’s desk for three years.
Yes, the per-piece cost is higher than a t-shirt or a bumper sticker. That’s the point. Use them strategically: as a major-donor thank-you, as a staff or volunteer captain reward, as a headline giveaway at a high-profile fundraiser, or as part of a swag package for big-dollar event tickets. One bottle handed to one person at the right moment will outwork a dozen of almost anything else, because it gets carried daily, in public, for years.
Choose from screen-printed or laser-engraved imprint methods. Multiple matte and metallic colors are available. They’re union-printed in the USA, so even though the bottles themselves are imported, your money is still supporting union jobs at home.
Best for: Major-donor thank-yous, top-tier fundraiser ticket packages, staff and volunteer captain rewards, end-of-cycle appreciation gifts.
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The reason these five products work isn’t that they’re flashy. It’s that each one fills a real gap in a campaign’s outreach, the canvass that didn’t answer, the volunteer hunting for a pen, the rally crowd that needs something to hold up, the donor who deserves something more than a form letter.
Most campaigns lean on the same three or four product categories because that’s what they’ve always ordered. The campaigns that stand out are the ones that round out their kit with a few smart extras. If you’ve been ordering with us for a while and want to brainstorm what would fit best for your next push, give us a call. We make a lot more than yard signs and t-shirts, and we’d love to help you figure out what else belongs in your toolbox.
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