Getting the Most Out of Merch: Part 2

As featured in: Performing Songwriter Issue #59, January/February 2002.  Visit performingsongwriter.com to order back issues or subscribe.

By Bill Parsons

Part 1 | 2 | 3

WHAT MAKES FOR SUCCESSFUL MERCH?

If you go out to see live music, you know artists can get pretty creative about the kind of merchandise they offer. To be sure, T-shirts are perennial. But my interviewees told me they’ve seen everything from songbooks to underwear. In fact, it turns out there is no one-size-fits-all prescription for successful merchandise. According to my interviewees, the ingredients for successful merch have less to do with the actual product being sold than they do with the quality of the product and the extent to which the product appeals to its target audience and accurately projects the artist it’s promoting.

“It’s always nice to have merchandise that people take home be quality because it reminds them of the show,” offers Jars of Clay’s Haseltine. “I’ve hated putting out merchandise that isn’t quality. Some tours we’ve gone for the deal with a merchandiser, and they give you T-shirts that shrink after washing two times. Now,we always try to go with a company that give us quality T-shirts.”

“I’ve never seen something consistently tried that didn’t work for some artist,” observes Bulletproofstore.com’s Romanoff. “Dar’s songbooks sell well, and that’s all about people wanting to play songs. Most of them are accessible to the medium-level guitar player. But it wouldn’t work for an artist whose work was incredibly complicated.”

“We have a few stickers geared towards the label,” reports Righteous Babe’s Begley. “We also have hats, and the hooded sweatshirts sell quite nicely. After some trial and error, we realized that when we put lyrics on the shirts or posters or whatever, they would be more popular because people really wanted the words. I think you have to know what kind of people like your music. If you have shirts, they have to be pleasing to them or else they won’t buy them or wear them--especially if what you picked to put on the T-shirt has nothing to do with music. It’s gotta be cool, or it’s gotta be interesting in some way.”

Indeed, Romanoff’s observation and Begley’s experience at Righteous Babe underscores a theme that virtually all of my interviewees came back to again and again: Know your audience. When it comes to merchandising, demographics is destiny.

“You gotta know who your audience is,” stresses Haseltine. “If your audience is 30-50 year olds, you’re not gonna put together a baby doll T-shirt. It’s a lot about being smart. You gotta see what your audience is wearing. Some bands sell more sweatshirts than T-shirts because they perform in the north, and audiences in the north wear more sweatshirts.”

“Think about who your audience is,” echoes JBE’s Schneider. “If you are a veteran songwriter in the folk circuit, I don’t think that crowd is buying T-shirts in such voracious numbers as to impact the bottom line. If you’re hitting an age group like college or high school kids, that’s where you find people who want to show off to their friends or own something from a vanguard artist because no one else does. That’s why Dave Matthews is so successful with that kind of merchandise. He’s got hip designs and people want to belong to the club-- with a Dave Matthews ski hat or something like that. Or with us, if you work in a cubicle, you might be drinking your coffee out of a Jim’s Big Ego Stress Mug. You definitely have to think about your market.”

“The one thing to think about really seriously is demographics,” underscores Musictoday’s Nye. “Who is your music appealing to? If you wanted to go at it from a backwards standpoint, you could construct a band that was geared entirely to sell merchandise. Marilyn Manson might be one example of that. That guy has sold so much merchandise. The metal heads buy a lot of merchandise. Bands like Metallica, Staind and Disturbed sell a lot of merch. I don’t know if the metal message is so strong that people feel the need to perpetuate it or what. Metallica even sells panties. Now, I’m not sure a lot of girls are out there buying Metallica panties--but their boyfriends probably are, because maybe they think it’s funny. Another example might be MxPx and the skate punks. They’re a band that appeals to a lot of younger suburban kids with mom and dad’s credit card. They’re big into image and will go to great lengths to make that image known. There really isn’t a formula for all of this, but demographics are super-important.”

WHEN TO START THINKING ABOUT MERCH

When merchandise sells, it’s a win-win all the way around. Fans get apparel and memorabilia to remind them of a cool show and to help them make their statement out in the world. And artists get a valuable, additional income stream--along with invaluable, three-dimensional promotion. But when merchandise doesn’t sell, artists wind up hauling tons of stuff around or storing surplus boxes of swag in their garage. Not to mention bumming out about losing their initial investment.

So, how do you know when it’s time to start thinking about merchandise? With the proviso that artists start small, some of my interviewees recommended merchandising right away.

“We started with two T-shirts even before our first CD,” explains The Floating Men’s Evans. “We had a friend who was doing some posters for us for a couple of shows and he came up with this really interesting concept for the floating man. It was this balloon-looking guy. We thought it would be cool to put it on a shirt, and we had it at shows pretty early on. I think it was a good idea and I’ll tell you why: When people are at shows and they like the band, they would prefer a CD, but they want to take something home, and a lot of times people haven’t gotten around to doing recordings yet. T-shirts are cheap to make these days. My only caution would be not going overboard with more than a gross (i.e. 144 shirts) initially. Anything you can do to get the name of the band in people’s hands so they can take it home with them is a good idea. We still see people in our shirts all over the country.”

“Our situation was unique in that we jumped on opening for a major act on our first tour,” recalls Jars of Clay’s Haseltine. “It was before mixing our record. So we jumped on tour, and they said we could make T-shirts. But it’s probably not what we would have done otherwise. I think we would have done more stickers, car decals, stuff like that. Maybe it’s just that side of me. I don’t wear a lot of concert T-shirts myself. I don’t check out bands on T-shirts. But if I see a cool logo on a car, I’m more apt to check it out. That’s where I would start. It’s a lot cheaper. The overhead is lower. And you get your name out there as a band--along with as many demo tapes as you possibly can.”

“From what I see, it’s obviously imperative to start making merchandise as soon as you can,” offers Musictoday’s Nye. “I haven’t really seen the side from bands that didn’t make it, but I can’t imagine putting out T-shirts would be a harmful thing.”

Firing up the merch on a small scale right off the bat is one way to go. But some of our industry pros recommended a more wait-and-see approach.

“I think artists should consider merchandising when their fans start asking for it,” suggests Bulletproofstore.com’s Romanoff. “Or when they have the cash flow to lose the money if the T-shirts don’t sell. I know a few younger artists whose merch didn’t sell very well and the reason was because they were relatively new artists who only had one CD. Most of the time, T-shirts sell best when fans already own everything and they’re at a show and they want to buy something else.”

“Look at your live performance,” advises JBE’s Schneider. “How many people are you performing in front of? Is it growing? Was it 25 yesterday, and 50 or 100 today? If you’ve got a roomful of 100 people, there’s a good chance a percentage of them will be excited enough about what you’re doing to want to spread the word by owning some of your merchandise.”

Part 1 | 2 | 3