The five questions to answer before you order custom merch

Ordering merch from Core takes about four minutes: pick a product, upload your artwork, check out. We built it that way on purpose. But the four minutes go a lot better if you've spent two minutes thinking first, because the difference between merch people fight over and merch that haunts a cupboard isn't the ordering. It's the thinking just before it.

Here are the five questions we'd ask you if we were sitting next to you. Answer them honestly, and the rest of the order sorts itself out.

1. Who exactly is this for?

Not "the team" or "the guests". The actual people. Your engineers who cycle in? Your regulars at the café? Thirty hens in Ibiza? Your ten best customers? You can't pick the right product until you can picture one of these people on an ordinary Tuesday.

And if the honest answer is "several very different groups", don't average them into one beige item. Minimums start at 10 units, so you can order caps for one group and totes for another instead of a compromise nobody loves.

2. When will they use it?

This is the question that does the most work. Not what should we get, think when will it live in their life? Their morning coffee? A cap or a mug. The commute? A tote. The gym? A tank and a bottle. Sunday on the sofa? A hoodie they'll refuse to take off.

If you can't name a real, repeating moment where the item fits, that's the item telling you not to order it. "Something for the goodie bag" is not a moment. It's how landfill gets a logo.

3. Would they keep it without the logo?

Your merch isn't competing with other merch. It's competing with the stuff people already own, their favourite tee, the tote by the door, the mug they always grab. If your item doesn't beat the incumbent, it doesn't get used, and the logo won't rescue it.

This is really a quality question in disguise. It's why we'd always rather you order 20 things people love than 60 things people tolerate. The heavyweight tee gets worn; the thin one gets binned. Same logo.

4. What do you hope they'll do with it?

Pick one thing you'd love to see happen: they wear it to your event, they post it, a friend asks where it's from, they request another for a teammate. One, not four.

It sounds like marketing homework, but it quietly makes every design decision for you. Merch built to be posted wants a bold, surprising graphic. Merch built to be worn weekly wants a small embroidered mark and colours from a real wardrobe. Decide the behaviour and the design brief writes itself.

5. What's your budget per person, not per unit?

Flip the maths before you set a quantity. "£300 on merch" can be 60 cheap things or 20 great ones, and the 20 will do more for you every single time. Fewer, nicer, for the people who matter most is the closest thing merch has to a cheat code. (Scarcity helps too. The cap someone had to ask for beats the one thrust into their hand.)

Then just order it

That's the whole exercise: five answers, two minutes, no strategy deck required. Pick the product that fits your answers, upload your artwork (SVG or a high-res PNG with no background, if you want it flawless), and a merch expert in London will check everything before it prints. Delivered across the UK in 7–14 working days, from 10 units.

Two minutes of thinking, four minutes of ordering. That's the effortless bit doing its job.