Tom Rector, CEO of Noblesville, IN-based distributor ScreenBroidery (asi/305623), knew he wanted to enter the world of seamless e-commerce – but he and his team also knew they had to come at it from a fresh angle.

So they turned to one of the company’s core values – sustainability – and built on the concept to launch a new platform called Swag for Humanity.

Tom Rector, ScreenBroidery (asi/305623)

“Sustainability is becoming a bigger deal within the marketplace and within the industry,” Rector says, adding that ScreenBroidery wanted to marry that concept with a user-friendly shopping site to “carve out our own little section of that online world.”

Swag for Humanity is a highly curated collection of promotional products that are grouped into categories like giveback, recycled, B Corp, responsibly sourced, rPET, biodegradable and USA-made. The site also sorts products by brand – letting users search by big names like Nike, Patagonia, CamelBak and MiiR.

“We want it to be a very small selection of really, really good stuff with really, really good stories that we know will fit the mission and values that customers are looking for,” Rector says.

The story behind a sustainable product is one of the most important things to ScreenBroidery’s customers, Rector has found. “Price is up there, but it’s not as high as what you think; it’s not really a deciding factor,” he adds.

Swag for Humanity is ScreenBroidery’s first concerted effort to break into consumer-driven online sales, other than the many company stores it’s set up for clients in the past. It took about a year and a half to develop, but the distributor expects to continue tweaking the design as Rector gathers more data from site visits.

“We didn’t want to just do it, build an online store and throw it out there,” Rector says. “We wanted this to be a system that’s really easy to use with very few clicks and a very clean design.”

It’s still the early days for the new online venture, but Rector says that about a month in, Swag for Humanity is already getting a couple of thousand visits each day. In looking at the data, what’s surprised him was how many people were specifically looking for products with giveback programs, as opposed to name-brand items or products with recycled content – two areas he expected to drive traffic.

The biggest takeaway, though? “There’s definitely a market for sustainability,” Rector says. “This is important to consumers. They’re looking for this stuff, and they want this to be a part of their promotional products strategy and their gifting programs.”

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