Scrap mugs

[nibz33]

I'm just working away printing off today's batch of mugs and I started thinking about clearing out the build up of mugs that I have rejected over the last few months. I'm quite fussy about what I send out so anything with a slight blemish from printing has been boxed up and put in my quarantine area. I have been contacting local charities to see if they could use them, but so far I've had limited success. I can drop some of the generic designs to the local Oxfam as they would likely be able to sell them but the personalised mugs would be difficult for them to sell
Has anyone got any ideas of charities that would actually want mugs to use rather than sell? It'd be a shame to smash them up and send them off to land fill.

Cheers

[James990]

I donate all my scrap mugs generic or personalised to my local Community Centre, they sell them for about 50p, and it helps their funds, so don't know why a local charity to you wont take them?

[scotty44]

Im sure a drop in center would take them, anywhere local that's open to the homeless etc.. ?

[nibz33]

Thanks both, you'd think it would be easy to give things away but they all seem to have too many mugs. There must be a big manufacturer of mugs local to me swamping the charity shops!!!
I tried the drop in center but they said they did not need them but I did manage to give some to the dogs home and I've not tried the local community center yet, so I'll give them a call tomorrow.
I'm starting to think my sales technique is very poor when I can't even get people to take them for free!!!

[pisquee]

We've used ours as a marketing/PR campaign - put post on FB asking for people to tag charities that could do with free mugs. Offer them in box quantities of 36.
You get a LOT of organic attention on that post, with all the likes, shares, and people mentioning charities, especially if they tag their FB pages too, all for the cost of shipping some boxes of mugs.
You could even do follow-up posts showing the places the mugs have gone to, photos of them being used etc, get quotes from the charities, try and get local press involved for a feel-good story.

[Justin]

...and you could slip a few 'proper' mugs in with your logo and contact details

[willd]

...and you could slip a few 'proper' mugs in with your logo and contact details

Now that's a little devious!!!

Clever though

[nibz33]

Yes, I like both of those suggestions. I'm not a big Facebook user so I had not even considered that avenue, but I can see that working well. Getting a bit of promotion into the bargain is a nice touch. Thanks both.

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

[GoonerGary]

I've donated boxes of mugs to a local homeless shelter and blank mugs to a council run arts charity who in turn sell them to community groups who raise money for themselves.

[Disky]

I give mine to local snack bar ,,,, loads of companies go in ther