Couple on a beach with a colorful Trek Light blanket, text 'Pay What You Can' overlaid.

Pay What You Can

A Small Business Experiment

If you look around our site, you'll notice something special. Below the Add To Cart or Preorder button on most products, you'll find a new option that says Pay What You Can.

When you click "Pay What You Can", you'll see a popup. Just enter some basic info (so we can respond if needed) and enter the price you'd like to pay.

Each product has a set tolerance for automatic approval based on our costs - your offer may be approved instantly, or it may be passed on to us to manually review.

If your offer is below our costs then it may be denied, and you'll have the option to request another price point or accept an offer from our team.

Well, because we believe in it.

We did it once before during the hardest days of COVID, and while those days are behind us, we know firsthand that a lot of us are still struggling. 

We feel it as consumers, we feel it as parents, and we feel it more than ever right now as small business owners.

There's a reason that we almost never know that our favorite small businesses are struggling, until they post a farewell note on social media and close the doors:

It's hard to ask for help.

So most small businesses silently struggle, until it's too late.

This is our way of showing you that we're all in this together.

Some of us need extra help this year, and some of us are in a position to help others. It's that simple.

Our Pay What You Can program allows you to bring home the products you love at a price point that feels fair, and also Pay It Forward to support our small business and others in need.

We need your help as a small business to keep this 22-year dream going, so we're giving you all of ours this holiday season.

A scammer would say no here, right? So you shouldn't take our word for it.

But, we've got a 22-year history of building our little business with heart, no cap.

Read our story, check out the national press we've received, or the thousands of verified product reviews on our site - we think you'll realize pretty quickly that we're as real as they come. 💛

If you have the means, please consider buying from our shop at full price and know that your support means the world to our small business.

We've also created a Pay It Forward donation option in our shop. Every dollar contributed will help support the discounts that we provide to others, and help us to continue our mission of spreading happiness for as long as possible.

Beyond any monetary contribution, our biggest ask is that you help spread the word. If you use social media, tell your friends what we're up to. If you work for a media outlet, or know someone who does, let them know that we could use a little bit of PR love!

Sure, it's an honor system. If we see signs of abuse, we reserve the right to cancel orders or make changes at any time.

Like anything good in this world, please don't ruin it for everyone else!

Yes! If you see a Pay What You Can button on the page, then we are accepting offers for that product.

If a product is already on sale, then our discount range for approving offers is likely more limited than full-price products, but go ahead and name your price!

Of course. Just send us an email with a list of the products you're looking to buy, and what price point(s) work for you, and we'll either approve your offer or let you know what we can do to help out.

Right now, keeping our on-hand inventory low is a big part of how we survive during challenging times. But that also means more items are selling out faster than ever.

If your item is preordered, it means we have more on the way, and we'll always do our best to give an estimate of when it will ship. Please understand that predicting inventory arrival, especially during the holidays, isn't perfect and delays can happen.

If your item is in stock, you have nothing to worry about, unless you order last minute! We ship all in-stock orders right away, and most are delivered within 3-4 business days.

If you made an offer for a product and it was denied, we're truly sorry.

We're doing our best to accept offers that help as many people as possible, but we're still a small business trying to survive the same challenges!

If you have a special situation you want to discuss with us, don't hesitate to reach out.

As you can imagine, an offer like this is sure to attract spam & bots. It's also unavoidable that people will channel their inner Price Is Right strategy and try to make an offer of $1 for everything.

Our system has a built-in measure for trying to reduce spam - if your offer is significantly below our cost, the Counter Offer you receive won't necessarily be the lowest offer we would accept.

It's designed so we aren't automatically rewarding every unreasonable bidder and spam bot with a counter offer of the absolute lowest price that we would accept for a product.

But - we all know that spam filters don't always get it right, and we're doing our best here.

It's our sincere goal to help as many people as possible, so if you made a reasonable offer and received a counter offer you're not happy with, just reply to the email and we'll do whatever we can to help you!

Featured
in Parade!

Parade newspaper website with a headline about Trek Light's Pay What You Can holiday sale.

Shop small, dream big.

- Seth & Heather
Seth & Heather from Trek Light sitting on a couch.

Pay What You Can.

Name your price & bring home happiness. Really.