A couple months ago I made a call for swag and you guys delivered. I’ve got a stack of koozies, stickers, and other gear that I’ll be featuring, two at a time, on the blog. Hopefully, with my super-scientific analysis, we’ll spark some ideas for sweet swag to line-up for next season. If you missed the first few battles, check out round 1 here, round 2 here, round 3 here, and round 4 here.

The Criteria
I’m going to judge the swag on four areas and give a score for each to determine a winner:

• Cool: would I actually want to use it?
• Useful: is it something I could use on a regular basis?
• Branding: do I know it’s tied to a certain resort?
• Unique: how common is this sort of swag?
• Price: this is a new one, to compare the cost to produce each item

With a score of 1-10 on each, we’ll end up with a score out of 50. Onward.

Contestant #1 – Sunshine Village
Snowboard Shaped Bottle Opener

I don’t use bottle openers much, so correct me if I am way off on these ratings. But, even so, I like this little piece of swag.

• Cool: 8 – When you are a snowboarder, and that is part of your identity, every little bit helps to point that out, even your bottle opener.
• Useful: 8 – Small and lightweight, when a bottle opening need arises, you’ll be ready.
• Branding: 9 – Hard to miss a nice Sunshine logo on one side of the opener.
• Unique: 9 – I can honestly say I’ve never seen a snowboard shaped bottle opener.
• Price: 6 – Probably not the cheapest bit of swag to produce, but not the most expensive either.
• TOTAL: 40

Contestant #2 – Sugar Bowl
Stainless Steel Bottle Opener

When I got Sugar’s swag package, I didn’t expect to find what I did. This bottle opener is legit. Sturdy and classy, it really stood out from the rest of the pack.

• Cool: 7 – Lower on the cool scale but higher on the classy scale (maybe I need a new rating system for “classy”)
• Useful: 7 – Not quite as portable, but dang useful. And, in a pinch, it’s tough enough that you could probably use it as a crowbar for any construction/burglary needs.
• Branding: 10 – The logo is also classy and printed very sharply on one side.
• Unique: 10 – I gave this a 10 because it’s such high quality compared to most swag. I wouldn’t throw this away even if I had a dozen openers already.
• Price: 4 – The downside is, of course, the price. It costs more to produce, but does the extra value that creates make up for the cost?
• TOTAL: 38

Winner: Sunshine Village
I’ll tell you what, if I hadn’t chosen an arbitrary list of criteria to rank these items, I’d have a tough time not declaring Sugar Bowl the winner. When it comes to sweet looking goods, that opener is tough to beat. But, with the criteria as it was, and a clever snowboard-shaped opener in the ring, Sunshine Village came out on top. Sunshine has a lot of fun, simple swag that reminds me of the vibe I get from skiing. The sun glasses, the bottle opener, etc. all fit the brand so they certainly deserve such a prestigious award as a Swag Wars victory.

Want your resort’s swag included in the next round? Either email a picture to me at contact@slopefillers.com or, if you have some to share, mail those goodies to:

Gregg Blanchard
506 Crazy Horse Circle
Edwards, CO 81632

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.