Setting Up Merch for a Small, Distributed Product Team

Drive Password is a small product built by a small, distributed team. With no shared office, no meeting room, and no casual lunch where people from different parts of the project naturally connect, collaboration happens entirely online. It works well, but at some point we wanted something more tangible – something that marked the fact that this is a real team building a real product, not just a group of people sharing a Slack workspace.

Setting Up Merch for a Small, Distributed Product Team

That is where the idea of a team pack started. A pinned message, a shared playlist, or a virtual coffee can help maintain connection, but none of them signal belonging in the same way a physical object does. When someone joins a remote team, a “welcome to the channel” message is useful, but it rarely feels like an arrival.

From Async to Something Real

We wanted something a new team member could open, hold, and keep. Something simple that says: this is a real thing you are part of now. For a small product team working asynchronously, that kind of physical anchor can matter more than it seems.

When Your Team Has No Shared Postcode

The team is spread across Europe, across different countries and cities, with no central address to ship anything to. For a small team, this creates a disproportionate logistics problem. The effort of figuring out shipping can quickly start to feel bigger than the gesture itself.

Ordering from a local supplier and then individually re-shipping to several countries was not a serious option. Asking people to organise their own items and get reimbursed was not the right fit either. We needed one order that handled everything from production to doorstep, across multiple EU addresses, without manual coordination on our side.

Building the Pack

We kept the pack simple and practical: a hoodie, a water bottle, and a sticker pack. Nothing decorative, nothing that would end up forgotten. The goal was to choose items that could actually be used day to day – a hoodie worn at the desk, a bottle taken everywhere, stickers that end up on a laptop within the first week.

The Drive Password identity translated cleanly to print. The colour palette worked well on fabric, and the logo held up at different sizes, whether on a chest or sleeve print, embossed on a bottle, or cut small for a sticker sheet. We did not try to overload the pack. The point was for everything inside to feel intentional, not for there to be a lot of it.

One Order, Five Countries, No Logistics Headache

For production and shipping, we used SoMerch. One of the things that made the decision straightforward was that their catalogue is curated and tested – not a marketplace where you spend hours filtering through options of unclear quality. The hoodie fabric, bottle finish, and print quality across all three items came back at the level we expected. For something going to the people building the product, that standard mattered.

The process required very little from our side. We placed one order, submitted the addresses upfront, and production and printing were handled in-house. SoMerch packed each set into individual boxes and handled delivery across all EU addresses, without us touching the logistics once. For a small team with no dedicated operations function, that is the only version of this process that actually works.

When the Hoodie Shows Up on a Video Call

The feedback was quiet in the best way. There was no big announcement and no formal reaction – just people mentioning that the pack had arrived, a photo here and there, and a few small comments in chat. One team member wore the t-shirt on a video call a few days later without making a point of it.

That was roughly what we were hoping for. Not a staged moment, but a small shift in how the team feels about being part of Drive Password. A distributed team does not have many physical anchors. A pack arriving at your door is one of the few simple ways to create one.

If We Did It Again

There are two things we would do differently next time. First, we would collect t-shirt sizes earlier. We asked too close to the order date and had to chase a couple of people. Second, we would order a few extra units upfront for future hires instead of running a separate order each time.

SoMerch offers warehousing for exactly this: stock can be stored and shipped on demand as new people join. For a growing distributed team, that makes the whole setup easier to repeat without rebuilding the process from scratch.

Conclusion

For Drive Password, the team pack was a small but meaningful way to make remote collaboration feel more real. It gave a distributed team a physical point of connection, without creating a logistics burden. With one practical pack, one production partner, and delivery across multiple countries, the project stayed simple – and that was exactly the point.