Employee Incentive Ideas For Companies Tired of Generic: Weave Case Study
Most employee incentive programs collapse for one predictable reason: the reward feels like an afterthought.
Weave, a patient communication software company with more than 850 employees, wanted the opposite. When their monthly employee rewards program launched, they needed every piece of the kit, down to the smallest detail, to hold up next to the custom Nike By You sneakers and JBL speakers sitting alongside it.
That's what brought Chandler, Weave's Creative Lead, to Laced Up. Each month, five employees get pulled aside for a "surprise and delight" moment: personal recognition, delivered without warning, wrapped in a kit built to feel like a genuine prize rather than a participation trophy. Chandler wanted a custom lace in that kit, and he wanted it to earn its place.
"I want custom laces to be part of the prize." — Chandler [name changed for privacy], Creative Lead, Weave
Quick Look: The Detail That Kept Weave's Reward Kit From Feeling Like Everyone Else's
Laces get worn daily, long after the initial excitement of any reward wears off, which is the brilliance of why Weave wanted to include them as a part of their employee incentive ideas.
Here's how the project came together:
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Industry: |
Healthcare Technology / Patient Communication Software |
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Problem: |
A reward employees might dismiss as filler next to premium gifts like custom Nike By You sneakers and JBL speakers |
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Product Used: |
8mm Flat Polyester Laces, Tone-on-Tone Printed "WEAVE" Textmark, Custom Branded Aglets, Black Sticker Packaging |
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Order Volume/Scope: |
200 pairs across 4 colorways (Black, Medium Gray, Navy, White) |
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The Big Win: |
A recurring supply built to sustain a monthly rewards program for 850+ employees, delivered on schedule even after an error by the shipping provider mid-project |
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The Weave Story: Software Built Around Staying in Touch
Weave builds patient communication software for dental and medical practices; specifically, the texting, scheduling, and payment tools that keep patients connected between appointments. The product exists to close a gap: making sure a practice never loses touch with its patients. That commitment to staying in touch shows up in how the company treats its own team, too.
Weave has grown past 850 employees, and growth at that scale can make individual contributions harder to notice. Leadership addressed it directly with a formal recognition program: five employees singled out every month for a "surprise and delight" moment:
- No warning
- No application process
- Just genuine acknowledgment paired with a kit of premium items
A company whose entire product is built on reaching people individually has a lofty standard to live up to internally. Building an employee reward around something genuinely well-made, instead of a mass-produced throwaway, was Weave staying consistent with its own thesis.
The Real Constraint: Subtle Enough to Pair with Anything, Distinct Enough to Matter
Most branded laces have one objective: put a logo somewhere visible.
Weave's goal was harder: the lace needed to sit inside a rotating reward kit next to custom Nike By You sneakers, JBL speakers, and branded backpacks, month after month, without ever reading as the cheap add-on in the box.
Subtlety was not a suggestion. Chandler was specific: "Create a little bit of contrast between the lace color and the logo, but overall we want it to be subtle." That ruled out the louder options on the table, a full repeating wordmark or an oversized graphic pattern, in favor of a tone-on-tone textmark that read as intentional rather than purely promotional.
Volume added its own pressure. At a 200-pair order, Laced Up's production minimums capped Weave at four colorways instead of the eight or eleven Chandler initially considered. Four colors had to do the work of representing Weave across an entire year of monthly highlights, which meant every one of them had to own its own space.
What Laced Up Delivered: A Rewards Kit That Survived Its Own Shipping Disaster
The final laces were 8mm flat polyester, printed with "WEAVE" in tone-on-tone Helvetica Bold near the aglet on both sides, finished with clear aglets stamped with Weave's logomark. Four custom colorways made the cut: Black, Medium Gray, Navy, and White.
Getting there took real back-and-forth. Laced Up worked through five different color-count options with Chandler before landing on four, confirmed the exact gray shade against Weave's standard palette, and matched the typeface to Helvetica Bold at his request before a single unit went into production. Nothing shipped until Chandler had signed off on the specifics himself.
Then the actual shipment vanished. The shipping provider lost the original 200-pair order somewhere in transit, and after days of chasing it down with no resolution in sight, Laced Up made a call: stop waiting, absorb the cost, and rebuild the entire order from scratch on an expedited timeline. A second batch went into production immediately, at no charge to Weave.
That batch shipped, arrived on schedule, and closed the loop: 200 pairs across four colorways, in Chandler's hands in time to keep the monthly recognition program running without a gap.
The Verdict: What Chandler Said After Everything Went Sideways
"That's so frustrating. I appreciate you guys going above and beyond to fix a problem that wasn't yours to begin with." — Chandler, Senior Art Director, Weave
The shipping provider lost the package, completely outside of Laced Up's control. But Chandler didn't thank us for an apology; he thanked us for fixing something we didn't break.
The same logic applies to any employee incentive program that actually works. Nobody remembers if the box arrived exactly on schedule. They remember who treated the screwup like their own problem to solve.
Related Case Studies: 2 Health Brands That Skipped the Standard Conference Freebie
Weave isn't the only company in the health space that decided a giveaway didn't have to be disposable. Two other projects took the same approach in very different settings.
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Averitas Pharma
needed fully branded laces and lanyards for a national sales meeting in Dallas, on a production window measured in weeks, not months. Laced Up matched the timeline and the design ambition, and every attendee wore the same well-made gear through a multi-day, high-visibility event.
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Mural Health
connects providers to participants for clinical trials, an industry where trade show tables are stacked with giveaways nobody bothers to keep. They used custom laces to put something on the trade show table that actually matched the precision of their product.
Choose the Right Employee Rewards Before You Launch Your Employee Incentive Program
Most companies get the strategy right and the execution wrong. They pick a cadence, decide who qualifies, budget for it, then spend the actual dollars on whatever vendor quotes the lowest price per unit.
Weave's project worked because they treated the physical reward with the same rigor as the program itself.
A one-time event gift only needs to survive a single afternoon of excitement. A monthly reward has to survive eleven more rounds after that, sitting next to whatever ships in the following month's kit, without ever looking like a rerun.
Employees can tell the difference between a reward that was designed and one that was just ordered.
If you're building or rethinking an employee incentive program, that's the detail worth getting right before anything else. Contact our team, and we'll help you choose custom gifts built to hold up past the first month.