After a harrowing VS4 we’ve been taking a mental break from schwag for the week. We’re still gathering it, rating it, and sorting it, but we’re taking a break from thinking about it. So if you have a specific question about schwag, billing, shipping, etc, just get in touch with Amy at support@valleyschwag.com. What follows is Jonathan writing whatever comes to mind on a Friday afternoon.

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One good thing about working in the South Park neigborhood is the food. A lot of places died during the post-dotcom dry spell, when hundreds of companies employing thousands of overpaid workers all went out of business on the same day (roughly). The ones that made it through did it by having really good eats.

Top of the list for quality is The Butler and The Chef, an authentic French bistro with a real live (insane) French Chef. This man is not afraid to throw you out if you take too long, publicly berate you for having bad taste, or simply refuse to serve you if he doesn’t feel like it. He’s also not afraid to make perfect food. I can’t explain it.

For something slightly cheaper and quicker the hordes choose Caffe Centro. Here you can wait in line and try to hear your competitors’ employees drop secrets of their next product launch. Want to know what Frog Design is up to, or which features are being added to Technorati next week, or when Adaptive Path’s next book will be out? Just pretend to read the menu (which is totally unnecessary — get the Caesar Salad), try to eliminate the chatter of all the architects, and hone in on what the scruffy-beard guy is saying to the girl with the Chrome bag.

If that scene is too overwhelming you can run across 2nd Street to Hennesey, a wine bar that secretly sells fresh sandwiches and good cheese. Get something to go and sit on the grass in the park (just watch where you step, there are a lot of dogs around). On a good day you’ll find the cool kids from VideoEgg, Mule, AP, Technorati, Frog, Apple, Yahoo, Google (”working from home” for the day), Odeo, Vertical Response, ActiveWeave, and whoever is just passing through. Bring a frisbee.

I can hear the familiar drone of the label printing machine doing its magic on the final batch of VS4 packages. They’re all international, and they should all be in the mail by 9pm tonight.

If you’re in the US and you haven’t gotten your VS4 package yet you should probably drop us an email (support@valleyschwag.com) so we can check on it. If you’re outside the US your package is on the way. As usual, we can’t really predict exaclty when you’ll get it, but it’s in the system. We decided to put customs forms on every international package this time, even though they aren’t technically required for everyone. Better safe than…returned.

Continuing the This Is A Good Week meme we’ve started our automated refund process for people who paid too many times via Paypal. Our system counts how many times each person has paid, counts how many packages we’ve sent them (including VS4, which we’re packing now), and refunds their Paypal account for the difference.

We’re running The Refundinator in batches, so some people will see their refund today and others will see it a little later. When our new payment system is up everyone will be able to transition with plenty of time for VS5.

If you haven’t paid in August yet your account will still be charged, but we’ll refund you within a day. To avoid this you can cancel and re-subscribe when we have the new system up.

We know this is a little annoying, and we thank you all for being so cool.

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ALSO: We got 400 packages out yesterday and another 500 packages done today. Go schwagpackers go!

We woke up this morning with a song in our hearts and a spring in our step. Nothing can bring us down today, not even a full blown attack on our integrity in the comments section of our previous blog post. No, today is a Good Day because before dinner we’ll take a truckload of schwadellic goodness to the post office.

Noona, Paul, and Dan (our special guest valleyschwagger) and myself have been packing like madpeople, and by 11pm last night we’d gotten the first 1200 labels printed and stuck on envelopes and a good 1500 new shirts counted, folded, and stacked. w00t!

We like to set expectations as often as possible, so here are a few little reminders.
1) It will take us a while to get every package out. We might still be mailing the first week of september.
2) The postal system can be s-l-o-w, especially when customs are involved.
3) As always, we guarantee that each package will have one t-shirt plus assorted schwag. Occasionally we have enough shirts for some people to get 2, but it looks like that won’t happen much in VS4.
4) There’s a slim chance that you’ll mistakedly get a shirt that you already have. If this happens just email us and we’ll send you a free bonus shirt. (But don’t lie, because Amy is a mommy and she can always tell when you’re not telling the truth.)
Yeehaw!

We just got a note from Anthony at Ape Do Good silk screening saying that our biggest load of shirts are ready for pickup. This means we’re nearly ready to ship Valleyschwag 4. Woohoo! I’ll update everyone here when we have an exact ship date. He also sent some photos showing how the magic happens (shown below with the secret parts blurred out).

We’re also making good progress on the payment system. We should be doing a mass refund for extra payments starting next week. So far we’ve been doing them individually, a tedious but meditative process using Paypal’s surprisingly slow website. If you’re eager to get your refund soon just shoot us an email at support@valleyschwag.com and include the email address you used to subscribe.

I came across this post from Chris Coyier on FreshArrival and thought it was worth quoting in its entirety.

Alongside the DateMyPet.com frisbee and iDont.com T-Shirt in my ValleySchwag Bag this month was a little red measuring tape with a logo for RedRoller.com on it. I had never heard of it, but they proport to be “The Best Way To Ship!”

The easiest way to explain it is RedRoller does for shipping packages what Priceline or Hotwire does for traveling. You enter where you are and what you want to send and RedRoller gives you a list of the different companies that will ship it, how long it will take, and how much it will cost. For example, for me to send a package from Madison, WI to Portland, OR that weights 1.5lbs in a Soft Pack will cost me $72.57 to get there tomorrow by 8:30am (FedEx), $36.53 to get there by 10:30am (DHL), or $18.80 to get there by noon (USPS). If I really didn’t care how long it took, I could get it there for $2.21 in a week through the USPS. Curiously absent was UPS - which wasn’t even listed in the “Excluded Services” like Eastern Connection or OvernightExpress.

You can decide on a method, pay for it, print your labels, and arrange for pickup all through your RedRoller account. There is also eBay integration. How very useful. How has this not existed until now?

Nicely stated Chris. With the tens of thousands of schwag pieces we handle I’d only glanced at the measuring tapes and hadn’t had a chance to look at RedRoller until I saw this post. I quickly confirmed that USPS priority mail was the best shipping method for domestic schwag. Alas, RedRoller doesn’t seem to have much non-US coverage for now.

This is one of those services that may appear underwhelming until you think about how long it would take to compare prices manually. Nice work RedRoller.

(If you have thoughts on any of the Valleyschwag companies just post them to your blog and email support@valleyschwag.com to let us know about it.)

There is a legend at Yahoo that no employee has an office. Everyone from the CEO down gets an equally sized cubicle, since each person is of equal importance.

Of course this legend isn’t really true. Some Yahoo lawyers and accountants have cubicles with doors and the CEO simply reserved a conference room indefinitely, but the guy who runs the badge system actually has his very own private office. Inside is a computer, a camera, and a fancy printer used to make RFID security badges. There is also a complete collection of Yahoo schwag.

When I say “a complete collection” it is probably hard to imagine what I mean. This is a company that has hundreds of internet properties (as they call them), each one of which competes with a whole industry. Their marketing strategy has always included showing up at every conference and giving away piles of stuff. The Security Badge Guy has a sample of every single piece. There are stickers, pens, mousepads, backpacks, gym bags, messenger bags, frisbees, beach towels, a floating water thing, a huge foam cowboy hat, stuffed toys, board games, and anything else you can imagine.

But I can’t find a photo of the guy or the office anywhere. The problem, of course, is that he’s in the security office. I don’t think they really allow photos in there. They’re very private. The real irony is that everyone who’s ever worked at yahoo in sunnyvale knows this guy and actually had their photo taken in the office, but he uses the only boring blank spot as the backdrop.

I want to share the glory of the Security Badge Guy with the people. I’m sure somebody has a picture to send us. Or maybe some Yahoo will sneak in and take a photo for us. (Lantzilla, obviously a schwag fan, probably has a nice camera.)

We had an unexpected day of downtime when some script kiddies (sorry, l33t h4×0rs) broke our server. We’re back now thanks to the efforts of Scott, Sean, and Cameron. Credit card information is stored securely at Paypal and wasn’t compromised. We’re a little tired, but we drank some Rockstar and we should be fine.

Loosening the Reins on the Schwag Wagon

We’d planned mail Valleyschwag 4 this week, but some of the cool stuff that was committed fell through at the last minute, and the package was going to be lame. Lameness is not to be tolerated, and our company was founded with a philosophy of agility and iterative improvement, which we’ll put into practice today with Valleyschwag.

We’re taking the feedback you’ve sent and using it to switch things around. Most feedback has been very positive, but there have been three nagging problems that we’ll try to solve all at once. (Some of this was mentioned in the previous post. More detail below.)

Problem 1: My schwag is late.
Everyone wants their project to be cheap, fast, and good, but as anyone in web development knows you can only get two of ‘em. We want to keep valleyschwag cheap (ten bucks plus shipping! cheap!) and we want it to be good (more schwag! cool packaging!) so we’re going to sacrifice fast. We’re switching to a less defined shipping schedule. We’ll send out packages when we have the right stuff to make them great, not on a specific date. Whether it takes four weeks or 8 weeks, we’ll make sure your stuff is up to snuff. (And we promise to rhyme anymore.)

Problem 2: You billed me twice and you haven’t sent me anything! You Bastards!
This problem is an offshoot of problem #1, and the solution is implement our fancy new payment system from TrustCommerce. For those who have paid too much, we’re going to even things out and credit your accounts in the next few days.

Problem 3: I want more better schwag.
Easy, we’ll just take a bit more time and gather more stuff. We’re still only promising one shirt plus assorted schwaggage, but we always aim for more, more, more!

If you have something to say about these changes just jog over to our blog. If you really hate change, or you’re bored with us, you can go to http://www.valleyschwag.com/ and unsubscribe. It will make us cry, but if you love somebody set them free.

We’re still figuring out how to make Valleschwag work for everyone and be the greatest web schwag subscription service around. It’s a funny idea for a business, but we think it’s viable long-term if we can get the rhythm right.

Hey, good news: a new payment system is on the way from TrustCommerce. They seem to have the best payment setup around, and they’re a heckuva lot more flexible than Paypal. The big change for you, our members, is that you’ll be billed when your schwag actually ships. No more paying-then-waiting-a-month. Woohoo!

Novachild got wind of this yesterday and commented:

“They’re supposedly working on another payment system. That will be nice. Heck, if they only charged at delivery, they wouldn’t necessarily have to make it a monthly thing. They could go bi-monthly and give themselves more time to collect quality schwag.”

Not a bad idea. We’re not going bi-monthly, but the new payment system will add scheduling flexibility that we’ll use to make each package as good as it can be. Since schwag supplies are so variable from month to month, we’re going to take the time we need to gather quality stuff and send it out when it’s ready.

Some packages will make it out in a month and some will take longer. It will be like a surprise, but we’ll always let you know before we bill you, so you can cancel if you maxed out your balance gambling in Las Vegas.

We still have to hitch up the new payment system and transition over, a process that promises to be fun and interesting. We’ll keep you updated on progress, with technical details for those who are into that sort of thing.

Some of you will certainly have opinions about this, which we invite you to share in the comments. If you feel angry with the old payment system you can express that here. This is your safe place. If you’re not a writer feel free to record a video or a song about the old billing system and link to it in the comments.

Some of you noticed that we hadn’t posted anything in a while.

This lapse was caused by the unavailability of the regular posters: Thor and Amy were on a road trip through the Pacific Northwest and Jonathan was passed out on the floor in a back corner of the office for an entire week after the Hoedown.

Everything has now returned to normal, and Jonathan will be hosting the blog while Thor and Amy concentrate on some client work.

Today we’re checking out some antique schwag for inspiration. The Museum of Online Museums has a nice collection of links to collections, and our current favorites are the museum of Classic Nevada Casino Matchbook Art and the museum of East German Paper Bags.

We don’t think the postal service likes us shipping matches, and we had enough paper bags last month, but a little extra inspiration is always good. We’re sure there are plenty of other classic schwag collections out there — can you find some and add them to the comments?