Only 12% of employees strongly agree that their company does a great job of onboarding, according to Gallup. A welcome kit won't fix a bad first week. But it is one of the few parts of onboarding you can plan and ship before the new hire logs in.
Two things decide if a kit works: what's inside, and when it arrives.
Start with the item they'll wear
The best data we know of on what people keep comes from the ASI Ad Impressions Study, built on surveys of nearly 25,000 consumers. In the 2023 edition, 61% said they would keep and wear promotional outerwear or fleece for at least two years. For T-shirts the number was 47%. For bags, 43% would keep one for two years or more.
That's why we tell people to spend on the garment first. A hoodie or quarter-zip a new hire wants to wear on a cold Saturday does more work than five desk items. Get the blank right (the fabric and the fit) and the rest of the kit can stay simple.
Then add things that get used every day
Drinkware also did well in the ASI study: 63% would keep and use it for at least a year. Pens and other writing instruments came in at 52% for a year.
A typical kit from The Swan Brothers holds:
- A branded t-shirt, hoodie, quarter-zip or polo in the new hire's size
- A water bottle or tumbler
- A notebook, a pen and laptop stickers
- A tote bag or backpack
- A welcome card, plus anything specific to the role
Cost follows the contents. At volume, a basic kit (screen-printed tee, notebook, sticker pack, pen) typically runs $25 to $40. Add a hoodie or quarter-zip, drinkware and a tote and you're at $50 to $80. Embroidered New Balance or Nike apparel, a YETI tumbler and custom packaging can push a kit to $100 to $175 or more. Volume pricing starts at 12 units.
Sizes are where kits stall
Every kit with apparel needs a size. Chasing sizes by email is where a lot of onboarding programs get stuck: HR asks, and the answer comes back a week late or not at all.
We get around that with an online swag store. The new hire picks their own size before the kit is packed, so nobody keeps a spreadsheet of who wears a medium.
The kit has to go to their house
Gallup's hybrid work tracker shows that as of May 2026, 52% of U.S. employees with remote-capable jobs work hybrid and 26% work fully remote. Only 22% work on-site. For most office roles, there's no desk to leave a welcome kit on.
So the kit ships to the home address, timed to the start date. That means one shipment per person, each to a new address, on a calendar that follows your hiring.
Here's how that runs at The Swan Brothers:
- You choose the products, the packaging and the budget per kit.
- You approve the decoration. Production-ready art setup is included.
- We decorate every item in-house and pack the kits.
- Finished kits sit as standing inventory in our Pittsfield, MA warehouse.
- When a new hire is confirmed, you send a name and an address. The kit ships to their home with tracking, and you get a confirmation when it leaves.
Individual kit shipments go out in as few as 5 business days. Because the kit is already built, it ships at standard rates with no rush charge. We track stock levels and plan the next run before the shelf runs out.
One more reason to keep it under one roof. When the apparel comes from one vendor, the tumblers from a second and the packing from a third, one late item holds up every kit. Here the screen printing, embroidery, digital printing and laser engraving all happen in the same building as the kit assembly, so the hoodie and the tumbler go into the same box on the same day.
What to do next
Pick the one garment you'd be glad to see a new hire wear on a weekend, and build the kit around it. Then tell us roughly how many people you expect to hire next quarter. We'll size the first run so kits are on the shelf before your next start date.
See how the onboarding kit program works, or book a call with The Swan Brothers and bring your logo.