How Jaapi used Printful to build a no-waste million-dollar swag business

"Companies spend thousands on employee swag that collects dust in warehouses, gets lost in international shipping, or sits unworn in closets.

Karim Parto built Jaapi to fix what's broken in the swag industry.

Instead of companies bulk-buying 500 identical hoodies and crossing their fingers, Jaapi provides companies with personalized swag stores where employees can choose what they actually want. Employees in Brazil can opt for tank tops, while your Stockholm crew can choose beanies, all produced locally and shipped from the nearest fulfillment center.

The model works: Jaapi is bootstrapped and approaching $1 million in revenue by making swag simple, sustainable, and actually useful for global teams. Here's how Karim built a smarter way to celebrate your people."

The hidden complexity behind “simple” swag requests

Karim Parto discovered the team swag problem while working at Swedish tech startups. What seemed like simple requests (polos for an event and welcome gifts for new hires) demanded hours of coordination and planning.

“Everyone thinks getting team member, teammate swag is super easy until they do it for the first time,” says Karim. “I was emailing forms, collecting everyone’s sizes in Excel sheets. We had people in the UK and France, so I had to figure out packaging, shipping, and minimum orders with vendors.”

The results were predictable: boxes of leftover merch in the wrong sizes, missing popular items, and hours spent on logistics instead of actual work. Multiply this across every company event and new hire, and the inefficiency gets expensive.

Karim knew there had to be a better way.

What companies don’t see in bulk swag pricing

Most companies order team swag in bulk. It sounds smart since you get a lower price per item. However, hidden costs add up fast with warehousing, fulfillment fees, and excess inventory.

“Every single company has a closet or a room full of swag collecting dust,” Karim says. “Or you’re missing the size or color somebody wants, so you have to do another bulk order just for that.”

Bulk buying also means guessing what employees want – and usually getting it wrong. 

For global and remote teams, those guesses rarely work. Companies must hold huge inventories, and shipping or fulfillment fees are almost unaffordable. Sometimes, in all that chaos, some employees are overlooked.

“Some of our clients have employees in over 40 countries,” Karim says.

Rebrands, relocations, and team changes – all of it adds to the errors and waste.

Combining employee choice with local fulfillment

Karim realized the answer to the challenge was combining an ecommerce solution connected with print-on-demand capabilities:

• Ecommerce to remove the administrative burden

• On-demand printing to remove the waste

• A product range that lets employees choose what they actually want
  
  

“The ecommerce interface is the perfect solution, and we could combine that with Print on Demand. Then we’re solving people’s problems.”

That idea became the foundation for Jaapi.

“Initially, we thought we could use an already built ecommerce solution. But we quickly discovered that we must build our own thing from scratch with very specific features to solve our clients’ problems.”

Finding the right tech partner in Printful

Karim found Printful, and the API stood out to him. He thought it was the perfect foundation for building a custom swag experience.

Printful’s infrastructure helped Jaapi launch quickly. 

When Jaapi made its first few sales, Karim and his team didn’t handle a single t-shirt. The entire fulfillment process ran in the background, powered by Printful’s network.

It was a leap of faith – and it paid off.

“I have a non-traditional background in this industry. And when we sold our first product, the employees of the company got their first t-shirts without us ever touching them,” Karim recalls. “We just fully trusted Printful to do the right thing, which they did.”

That trust allowed Jaapi to focus on the platform, customer needs, and continuous improvement, instead of worrying about the logistics.

Why companies pick Jaapi for employee swag

Remote companies choose Jaapi for its flexibility and convenience. Whether their team is in Brazil, Europe, or Australia, everyone gets the swag that fits their lifestyle and season. 

Another bulk swag issue is that most employees end up with generic swag items they don’t like. They take them home out of politeness – then throw them out. Leftovers become surplus inventory companies eventually have to dump.

Jaapi’s global fulfillment model flips that script. Employees choose what they’ll actually wear without the company storing anything in bulk.

“Giving employees choice is, by design, more sustainable,” Karim says. “Because they can pick whatever they like and will more likely use the swag. They’ll wear it instead of giving it away or hiding it in a drawer.”

Scaling the mission

A major customer came to Jaapi with an unusual request, and it became the company’s biggest test yet.

“We got this request where we had to give the same t-shirt to 1,900 employees in 40 different countries. That kind of request would be impossible without the Jaapi-Printful partnership,” explains Karim. “We produce it at the facility closest to them, regardless of where they are in the world.”

Jaapi is approaching $1 million in revenue. Karim credits its on-demand swag and global-first approach for keeping clients and their employees happy.

Lessons for founders: Risks, trust, and feedback

Karim’s advice centers on one key insight: focus on what you do best and find reliable partners for the rest.

“Take risks. Trust partners. Don’t dwell too much on the details you don’t know,” Karim recommends. “The things that fail, you learn, you quickly adapt, and you fix them. You realize that what you thought would be a problem just isn’t,” he continued.

He quickly learned that real progress comes from action, not endless planning. What seemed scary or impossible often turned out to be minor details.

For Karim, success stemmed from building a flexible foundation, trusting the process, and solving the right problems. 

The approach worked because he knew what to own vs. what to outsource. Jaapi owns the customer experience. Printful owns the physical fulfillment. Neither tries to do everything.

Want to build your own business with customized products? Start with Print on Demand, so you’re ready to deliver anywhere in the world, no matter where your story goes.