The Cure for Identity Heartburn: How One Pharma Giant Fixed Merch Chaos
Imagine a global leader in the pharmaceutical world, a company renowned for groundbreaking products and diverse teams that impact lives every single day. You’d think an organization that masters complex molecular biology and navigates intricate global regulations could easily handle a few thousand t-shirts, right?
Well, hold your stethoscopes.
Before their digital makeover, this pharma giant’s branded merchandise management was actually causing a significant sourcing headache. With thousands of products and employees scattered across the globe, they were suffering from a chronic case of “Merchandise Chaos”.
What started as a simple desire to make products more meaningful for the team turned into a tangled web of manual processes and inconsistent designs. It turns out that even for a world-class organization, merchandise sourcing at scale can be a bitter pill to swallow if you do not have a healthy system in place.
The Diagnosis : When Manual Branded Merchandise Management Becomes a Chronic Headache
On the surface, branded merchandise felt like a small thing. In reality, it was quietly becoming one of those problems that kept resurfacing, no matter how often teams tried to work around it.
1. A Setup That Didn’t Hold Together
Before this pharma leader found a better way, company branded merchandise was being managed in bits and pieces, with no real structure holding it all together.
2. Too Many Vendors, Too Little Control
Different teams worked with different vendors, which meant very little control over how corporate branded merchandise actually turned out.
3. When the Brand Starts Looking Inconsistent
Colours shifted. Logos moved. Quality varied. Over time, the brand stopped looking consistent, even though the intent always was.
4. Scaling Only Made Things Harder
As merchandise sourcing grew, vendor coordination got messier. Without a central system, managing it at scale became increasingly difficult.
5. Simple Orders Took Too Long
Ordering a polo shirt or a branded mug should have been easy. Instead, it meant approvals, follow-ups, and waiting. What should have taken a day often stretched into a week, slowing teams down and creating unnecessary frustration.
6. Logistics Got Complicated Fast
Bulk orders for events and Rewards & Recognition programs added another layer of complexity, especially across regions and time zones.
7. No Clear View of What Was Happening
With no dedicated corporate merchandise platform, pricing shifted, tracking was patchy, and there was no single place to manage everything.
At that point, it was clear the issue wasn’t effort. It was the lack of a system built to handle this properly.
The Treatment Plan : Implementing an Enterprise Brandstore for Centralised Merchandise Sourcing
Instead of continuing with temporary fixes, the company decided to rethink how branded merchandise was handled altogether.
1. Bringing Everything Into One Place
The solution was a centralised merchandise sourcing setup, built as an enterprise brandstore that teams across the organisation could rely on.
2. Designed for a Global Workforce
The brandstore worked across regions, making it easier for distributed teams to order branded merchandise without getting stuck in procurement loops.
3. Easy to Use, Wherever You Are
With a simple interface and features like currency selection, employees across locations could access the same custom branded merchandise without friction.
4. One Place for Everything On-Brand
Every item on the platform was pre-approved, which finally brought consistency to how company branded merchandise looked and felt.
5. Making Space for the Company Story
Alongside everyday merchandise, the brandstore also included a subsidised Founder’s Legacy Book, making the company’s story accessible to everyone.
6. Less Back-and-Forth, More Flow
Behind the scenes, the corporate merchandise platform replaced emails and follow-ups with digital workflows that could handle both individual and bulk orders.
For the first time, branded merchandise had a clear structure behind it.
The Prognosis : Improving Vitality with a Branded Merchandise Platform for Large Organisations
Once the brandstore was up and running, the difference showed up quickly, not just in speed, but in how confidently teams could get things done.
A Noticeable Shift in How Things Worked
Branded merchandise stopped being a recurring issue and started behaving like a well-run system.
Costs Became Predictable
With standardised pricing in place, budgeting for corporate branded merchandise became far more straightforward.
Smoother Rewards & Recognition Programs
Billing and fulfilment for Rewards & Recognition orders began running smoothly, keeping finance and marketing aligned.
From a Week to a Day
Processes that once took up to seven days were now completed in a single day.
Fewer Delays, Fewer Escalations
Manual approvals and vendor negotiations dropped away, making the entire process easier to manage.
Employees Got More Choice
Employees could pick their own branded merchandise, pay online, and have it delivered globally, all through one platform.
A Brand That Finally Looked Consistent
From a single polo to a large event kit, every piece of internal brand merchandise now reflected the same standards, everywhere.
By centralising branded merchandise through an enterprise brandstore, this pharma company turned a constant source of friction into something that simply worked.
What happened next is where it gets interesting.Read the full case study.
Conclusion: When the Chaos Finally Settled
At the end of the day, nothing magical happened here. Branded merchandise didn’t suddenly become simpler. It just stopped being handled in a complicated way. Once it moved out of inboxes, spreadsheets, and follow-ups, things started flowing. Orders moved faster. The brand finally looked like one brand. And teams stopped spending time on things that should have been easy to begin with.
That’s exactly what our Brandstoredoes. It gives teams one clear place to manage company-branded merchandise, with everything already approved and ready to go. No guesswork. No chasing. Whether it’s one polo or a global rollout, the experience stays consistent, predictable, and easy to handle.
Behind that sits Mandaala, built on a MerchTech approach. We treat merchandise like a system, not a scramble. The Brandstore is one part of how we do that, but the bigger idea is simple: when merchandise is set up to run quietly in the background, brands stop firefighting and start focusing on what actually matters.
Got merch chaos of your own? Let’s fix that.
Mandaala is the solutions arm of PrintStop India.