Mugs

The lowest-commitment way into the catalog and the easiest gift to get right. The print goes under the glaze, so it survives the dishwasher indefinitely — which matters, because this is going to live next to a sink.

Eleven ounces is the standard American mug volume — a full pour of drip coffee with room at the top, or a generous tea. It is deliberately not an oversized novelty mug, because those get used twice and then live at the back of a cupboard.

The reason a mug outperforms a shirt as a gift is that it removes every variable you would otherwise have to guess. There is no size, no fit, no colorway and no question of whether the person likes how a tee sits on them. It also gets seen: a mug on a desk is read by everyone who walks past it, which is a meaningfully different outcome from a hoodie worn at home on a Sunday.