I've made over 200,000 Christmas sweaters for brands. Here's what 15 years of doing it has taught me.
By Ross Culliton, Founder, Roody
I did the numbers last week.
Over the past 15 years, I've made more than 200,000 custom Christmas sweaters for brands.
I've made sweaters for most of the brands you can think of — Google, Microsoft, Meta, Dell, BMW, Pepsi, Red Bull, Starbucks, IHOP, Virgin, Warner Brothers, Procter & Gamble, and over 1,000 others. We've also made sweaters for South Park, The Office, and Parks and Recreation.
As far as I know, I was the first person to make a custom Christmas sweater for a brand. Back in 2011, I was running a small Christmas sweater company when Nando's asked us to make 200 for a campaign. The campaign went viral — millions of impressions across social — and the phone started ringing.
Over the next few years we continued making custom sweaters for brands before eventually forming Roody in 2019, where we continue to make custom ugly Christmas sweaters but also lots of other products. At Roody, we plant a tree for every item we make.
No one publishes data on how many custom Christmas sweaters they manufacture for brands. Roody has made more than 200,000 fully knitted custom Christmas sweaters since 2011 — and in fifteen years of watching this category closely, we've never come across anyone who's made more anywhere in the world.
Here are four projects that taught me how this works.
IHOP, 2016–2017: a campaign that came back for an encore
In late 2016, MRM McCann reached out about a campaign for IHOP. They had a mockup and they wanted a fully knitted sweater.
IHOP's December 6, 2017 Instagram post showing the second-year campaign at scale. 5,152 likes. 369 comments.
We produced 250 sweaters split between MRM's office in Princeton, New Jersey and a fulfillment partner in Manhattan Beach, California. Delivered December 12, 2016.
The campaign launched. It worked.
The 2016 campaign worked well enough that the following December, MRM came back to do the IHOP sweater again. Different design, same vendor.
We produced the 2017 run. IHOP launched it on December 6, 2017 with a post that opened with their own framing: "It's HOLIDAY SWEATER season once again!" The post pulled 5,152 likes and 369 comments. The comments are the part that mattered.
The same post photographed two ways. Both images from IHOP's official verified Instagram account.
The comments were full of real people asking how to buy a sweater that wasn't for sale.
Real users asking IHOP how to buy the sweater. It wasn't for sale. They wanted one anyway.
"PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO GET ONE OF THESE!! I must have one!" — "How do you get one?" — "I need thisss" — "Will you DM me too plz!"
Within days of the launch, the account director at MRM was in our inbox:
Sweaters are a huge hit! Would it be possible to place another order of 50 or 100 in a rather quick turn time?
What followed was one of the most intense ten-day reorder cycles we've ever run. The request grew from 50–100 sweaters to 200 within 24 hours. The day after that, IHOP came back for an additional 20 units in XXL and XXXL — sizes that required pattern adjustments we hadn't done in the original production.
We started new production the night each approval came through. The whole reorder shipped before Christmas.
What it taught meA viral campaign once is luck. A viral campaign twice is repeatable. Repeatability is what enterprise clients are actually buying.
The reason MRM came back in 2017 wasn't that the 2016 sweater was clever. It was that the campaign produced measurable results IHOP wanted to repeat. The reason we could handle the urgent reorder wasn't luck either. It was that we'd spent years building the systems to absorb that kind of escalation.
The IHOP sweater is also a useful counterpoint to a lesson I'll get into later — that subtle references usually beat obvious ones. The IHOP sweater is anything but subtle. It has the IHOP logo on the house, the pancakes, the bacon, the eggs, the coffee, the snow. It's playful, specific, and unmistakably IHOP. That works for IHOP because the brand is fundamentally playful — a family restaurant chain that's already comfortable being a little ridiculous. The subtle approach Pinterest used wouldn't have worked for IHOP, and the IHOP approach wouldn't have worked for Pinterest. The design instinct is to match the energy of the brand, not to apply a universal rule.
The first order proves you can make a sweater. The second order proves you can run a partnership. I now treat every first project as an audition for the second one.
Virgin Galactic, 2019: a Christmas sweater that looked like a flight suit
In late 2019, the Senior Procurement and Sustainability Specialist at Virgin Galactic found us through our website. She was looking for custom holiday jumpers for two Virgin entities — Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company. 830 units, split between them.
These were holiday gifts for the people who actually build and fly spaceships. The Spaceship Company team in Mojave, California — engineers, technicians, manufacturing. The Virgin Galactic team in Las Cruces, New Mexico — pilots, commercial operations, customer ops. People who spend their working lives inside real aerospace systems.
A generic logo'd Christmas sweater would have been embarrassing for that audience. Virgin Galactic was selling commercial spaceflight tickets. Their employees know what the brand stands for. The gift needed to not undercut the seriousness of the product.
The Virgin Galactic and Spaceship Company custom jumper, 2019. The patches give it the authentic feel — like the patches astronauts wear on real flight suits.
The design we landed on looks like a flight suit. Navy body, cyan panels on the shoulders and chest, yellow piping running down the centre like a zipper line. Custom patches — one for Virgin Galactic, one with the TSC badge, one snowflake on the arm. The patches are what make it work. They don't read as decorative. They read like the patches astronauts wear on real flight suits, which is exactly the right reference for the audience that was going to wear them.
Two of the original brand logos couldn't be knitted at the level of detail required. Most vendors would treat that as a compromise — substitute a less-detailed knit version and move on. Our production manager proposed custom patches instead, and the Virgin Galactic design team revised the artwork to combine them. The patches turned out to be the design feature that holds the whole thing together. The constraint produced the best version of the sweater.
It's a Christmas sweater that the people who build spaceships were happy to wear. That's a harder design problem than it sounds.
The sustainability piece mattered too. We'd committed earlier that year to planting a tree for every item we made through Eden Reforestation Projects, and Virgin Galactic's procurement specialist wanted to know it was real before signing — what the documentation looked like, which projects would receive the 830 trees. We had specific answers. After delivery they chose Madagascar. 830 trees were planted on their behalf in early 2020. Each jumper was packaged with a note about the tree being planted in its name.
What it taught meThe best brand sweaters reference what the brand actually does, not just what the brand is called.
A logo on a sweater is what every vendor does. Designing a sweater that looks like a stylized version of the brand's actual product is a different category of work. The Virgin Galactic jumper functioned as a Christmas-themed flight suit. That's why the people who wear flight suits for a living were happy to put it on.
The pattern shows up across the strongest projects. The Google sweater has Chromebooks knitted into it. The IHOP sweater is built around pancakes, bacon, and the IHOP house. Pinterest has push pins. None of them work because the logo is well-placed. They work because the design captures what the brand actually does.
Pinterest, 2021–2024
In 2021 Pinterest ordered 100 custom Christmas sweaters from us. The brief came in through our contact form in August. The Workplace Events lead at Pinterest wrote it in a single sentence:
I have attached our Pinterest 'P' but would only want it incorporated maybe once or twice somewhere subtly on the sweater. It doesn't need to be a repeat pattern anywhere.
We designed it around what Pinterest actually is. Snowflakes, push pins, fair isle patterns, the "P" appearing twice and subtly. Delivered in October 2021.
In 2022 Pinterest came back for 1,350 sweaters. Same design, refreshed colors. The reaction had been so incredible from the internal staff that they ordered 1,350 sweaters.
Two weeks after Pinterest distributed the 2022 order internally, this email arrived from the same buyer, unprompted:
Thank you so much for putting together the sweaters for us again! It was a HUGE hit amongst the company, and there are now employees who are organizing to purchase sweaters out of their own pockets, and we've been asked to share your contact info.
Pinterest employees were trying to buy more sweaters with their own personal money. Pinterest the company had already ordered 1,350. The recipients still wanted more.
The program continued in 2023 and 2024. Same design, refreshed colors each year. Employees still request them. Pinterest remains an active Roody account in 2026.
What it taught meWhen the sweater is good enough, the recipients try to buy more of it themselves — and the company orders more the next year because the demand inside the building made the decision for them.
Google, 2021: the happy problem
An Administrative Business Partner for a team at Google reached out in early October 2021. The original brief was roughly 300 sweaters for a single org.
The Google custom Christmas sweater, 2021. 477 units, shipped to individual addresses across the US, Canada, India and 8 other countries across Europe and Asia.
Two weeks later, she emailed with what she called a "happy problem":
The sweaters were so popular that we're bubbling it up to a larger org.
The mockups alone had triggered the order to expand.
By the time the order locked in on November 5, Google had committed to 477 sweaters going to individual addresses across the US, Canada, India and 8 other countries across Europe and Asia.
Our job to ensure each sweater was shipped to each recipient without any customs, tariffs or other issues for the recipient - to make the process completely seamless.
The back of the Google sweater. Custom knitted pattern wraps the entire garment — no plain panel.
Shipping 477 sweaters to individuals could have been a logistical nightmare for the Google team. The Roody team used their logistical experiene to ensure the process was seamless.
Where a package was delayed or inspected by customs, our team handled the whole process including the phone calls, documentation etc.
What made the project so worthwhile was the amazing feedback at the end/p>
I appreciate all of your updates! This experience has been A+++.
Since that project we have developed 8 new versions of custom Christmas sweaters for Google teams in more than 20 counties including Ireland, US, Canada, India, UK, Germany and many more.
What it taught meMake logistics easy - handle every single part of the process. We have since built a tracking dasboard for clients to track every package easily
Want us to make one for your team?
Minimum order is 100 units. Standard production is 30 days. We handle the design.
What 15 years of making 200,000 sweaters taught me
The custom Christmas sweater business in 2026 is a different business than it was in 2011.
In 2011, when Nando's commissioned those first 200 sweaters, the category didn't really exist. The campaign went viral partly because of the novelty — people hadn't seen a brand do this before.
By 2016, when IHOP launched their first campaign, the format was familiar enough that audiences could share it as a recognizable thing.
By 2019, sustainability had become a real procurement criterion.
By 2021, enterprise tech companies — Pinterest, Google, and many others — had built workplace events teams running annual sweater programs at substantial scale.
By 2026, the category is its own established part of the corporate gifting world.
A few patterns survive 15 years of category evolution.
Knitted always wins. Printed sweatshirts exist. They're cheaper. They don't feel like Christmas sweaters. They feel like printed sweatshirts. Every project we've done for Google, Microsoft, Meta, BMW, Pinterest, and the rest has been knitted.
The first design is usually right. Big brands pick version one or version two about 80% of the time. The projects that struggle are the ones where the client insists on iterating to version six or seven, tweaking things that don't materially affect the outcome. Trust the first instinct.
Match the energy of the brand. Pinterest's "incorporated subtly" approach worked because Pinterest is a quiet, design-focused company. IHOP's "logo, pancakes, bacon, eggs, snow scene" approach worked because IHOP is a playful family chain. The design instinct that gets it right is matching the brand's actual personality, not following a universal rule about restraint. The wrong move is the brand that doesn't know which one they are — too subtle for a playful brand reads as cold, too loud for a quiet brand reads as merch.
The sweater is the campaign, not one item in a gift haul. The brands that get viral results lead with the sweater as the moment. The brands that bury it inside a box with a candle and a mug get muted responses.
Order early. The cost difference between a September order and a late-November order is substantial, and almost entirely shipping. The teams that learn this in year one save real money in year two. Our standard production time is 30 days, and earlier orders cost meaningfully less to ship.
Always get a custom neck label. A generic blank-manufacturer's label makes a sweater feel like decorated stock. A custom label makes it feel like a product the brand actually made. The cost difference is small. The perception difference is significant. Almost no one asks for it proactively. Ask for it.
The thing I've come around to after 15 years is that the sweater itself is the smallest part of the work.
The design matters. The knit quality matters. But the real differentiators are upstream and downstream of the actual product.
Can you absorb a mid-production order expansion? Can you clear customs in a country your factory has never shipped to? Can you handle a corporate card payment structure that requires three separate transactions? Can you ship to 477 individual addresses worldwide and personally resolve the 12 edge cases that surface?
Those are the questions enterprise procurement is actually asking, even when they're asking about thread count and lead times. The vendors who answer those questions correctly become the ones enterprise clients come back to. The ones who don't, don't.
That's been the business for 15 years. I expect it'll be the business for the next 15.
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Custom Christmas sweaters for your team, your clients, or your next campaign. Knitted not printed. We handle the design.
