What Is a Medal Slider? (And Why Everyone Suddenly Has One)

If you've scrolled past one on Instagram and wondered what it actually was, here's the short version: a medal slider is a small, flat piece engraved with a name (and usually a time, a date or a short message) that threads directly onto the ribbon of a medal, sitting flush against it. The medal still does the job it was always going to do. The slider is what makes it yours.

Most medals look the same regardless of who earned them — same shape, same event branding, same ribbon. Hang six of them on a hook by the door and you genuinely can't tell which was the half marathon and which was the charity 10K without picking each one up. A slider fixes that at a glance, permanently, without doing anything to the medal itself.

How it actually attaches

Every slider has two narrow slots cut into it. The ribbon comes down the front of the medal, threads through the top slot, runs behind the engraved face, and comes back out through the bottom slot on its way to the medal. No glue, no clips, nothing that can fall off — it's held in place by the ribbon itself, the same way the medal is.

Why wood, and why laser-cut

Ours are laser-cut from painted wood, then laser-engraved through the paint layer to reveal the natural wood colour beneath wherever your text sits. That's the detail that makes it last: the lettering isn't printed or stuck on top of anything, so it can't fade, peel or scratch off in a kit bag. It's cut into the material itself.

Who's actually buying them

Mostly it's the person who earned the medal, buying one for themselves straight after the event. But a big chunk of orders are gifts — someone buying one for a partner, a parent, a kid, as a "well done" that's more personal than a card. And increasingly it's organisers and coaches ordering a batch at once, one per person, all from a single shared link.