Snappy acquires swag-gifting startup Covver as it seeks to roll-up players

It is now widely accepted that customers and employees who receive corporate gifts appreciate the brand a lot, and not for a lot of expense. The market for this has thus exploded. A market player, based in New York agilewhich has raised more than $125 million to date, is now making acquisitions CoverA corporate merchandise gifting platform. Terms were undisclosed, though TechCrunch understands the deal involves a mix of cash and shares.

Covver was previously backed by TLV Partners, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and has raised $7 million to date. It specializes in swag-style merchandise for companies, and also offers point-based recognition solutions for employees. It automatically personalizes products. So for example, someone can send me swag with my job title (editor-at-large) and the system will automatically generate swag with my job title, no graphic design required.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Honey Goldstein, co-founder and CEO of Snappy, said Covver’s expertise in swag and company store solutions complements Snappy’s ability to deliver such gifting experiences, and the platforms will integrate, making Covver functional. “Swag channel” on Snappy’s platform.

“What CoverVar created was an amazing experience for Swag that is based on AI and does it very well and innovatively,” he said. “They were experts in swag. So we felt this solution could take all the magic of personalization and bring it into the collective world of how we can make gifting better to become the leading global gifting platform.”

“There are nearly $50 billion worth of gift cards, just in the U.S.,” he added. “The corporate gifting world is worth about $260 billion. But people don’t know what to buy, so they use gift cards. So that provides choice, right? But it becomes very transactional. It’s ‘Hey, Mike, here’s 100 bucks!’ But I wanted to make you happy. So what we want to do is make gifting easy, but still retain the magic and personalization.”

In a statement, Covver CEO Roee Hemed said: “By joining forces with Snappy, we are opening up new possibilities for our customers, including expanded product solutions and the ability to leverage Snappy’s trusted gifting platform.”

Snappy was first launched at TechCrunch Back in 2016 as a consumer app, and bootstrapped its progress until it eventually raised significant capital from investors including Hearst Ventures, Kumra, 83 North and other VCs.

It claims more than 47% of Fortune 100 companies as clients, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Comcast.

However, it has competitors. Shipping Collected $152.7 million to date, postage Raised $46 million, and Dublin-based corporate gifting platform &Open Raised $26 million in 2022.