Merchandise: Dos & Don'ts

Whilst it's important that bands continue to release great music and adapt their sound to fulfil the creative aspect of their careers, they also need to find ways of making money in order to keep writing and performing great music. Since record labels and digital distribution have made it difficult for bands to make substantial money through selling music alone, it's up to bands to release quality merchandise alongside their records and live shows if they want the extravagant Rock star lifestyle to help inspire their next big album.
There are undoubtedly plenty of safety regulations regarding certain types of merch but this blog post will be looking at Dos & Don'ts in a more comical, common sense manner that plenty of bands have neglected to consider when putting their name/image on T-shirts, mugs and tampon holsters. If you're a small Rock/Metal band who are just about to hit the big time and have no idea which route to take when making/selling merchandise, you should probably consult a proper website with actual business advice...BUT if you like Rock/Metal music, my blog posts and want to read something lighthearted looking at golden rules and cardinal sins of physical merchandise, enjoy the following six paragraphs!

DO use high quality material
If any of you have ever been to a gig and stopped by the merch stand, you'll know that even the smallest item can have a ridiculous price. Keychains for £10, T-shirts for £40, pointless programmes with pictures and information about the band that you can find online for free for any amount of money that isn't £0. It's a given that you're going to have to pay a stupid amount of money for what's basically a glorified way of saying you support a certain artist so it should go without saying that the thing you're charging fans through the nose for should be high quality. Your clothing should last for years, your jewellery should look attractive and not pinch the skin, your beer should taste good and get you comfortably shitfaced at a decent pace. If you put out a crappy product, you're no better than the shitheels who sit outside concert venues selling knock-off tat that'll fall to pieces after a couple of uses. Bands need to distance themselves from these wankers with high quality merch and speaking of those tosspots outside venues...

DO use a variety of designs on your products
The most common type of merchandise found at gigs and online stores are T-shirts. These are your moneymakers that not only sell for a high price but spread the word about the band too; if someone's wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt from a new tour with an interesting new design on the front and some tour date info on the back, they're essentially advertising on behalf of the band. With that in mind, you need to make sure that your "adverts" are eye catching and not just the same logo or mascot design that everyone's seen before for two reasons; primarily to give fans a new piece of art to add to their collection but also to distance themselves from aforementioned tat peddlers who are relying on shitty copies of album covers and stock photos for their pissweak goods. If you're a big name band with millions to spare, you can afford to come up with some new designs for baseball caps and posters, although you can still sell merch with old album covers and mascot photos if you're selling them WITH new designs.

DO know your audience
This piece of advice could probably be applied to any situation ever created but fuck it, I'm bringing it out again! When coming up with ideas for things to sell your loyal fans, you need to know exactly who your fans are. If you're a contemporary Indie band that's just getting started, you shouldn't be selling products for a more mature audience like the official Arctic Monkeys sleeveless sweater vest or Arcade Fire chewing tobacco. Likewise, if you're a Classic Rock band on a 40th anniversary album tour with one surviving original band member left, you probably don't want to produce a mobile app/game based around your back catalogue. Obviously you want to appeal to a wide audience but you should be doing that with your music, not trinkets. Trinkets are for the fans you've already hooked who are desperate to support you and show everyone how much they love you.

DON'T go overboard
We all know how ridiculous KISS are with their merchandise and who knows, maybe some of you have even purchased some of the more extravagant officially licensed KISS products as the KISS Kasket, KISS Waffle Maker and even KISS air-guitar strings. However, KISS aren't the only band to go overboard with their merch. U2 have released Achtung Baby condoms, The Rolling Stones have released a tongue and lips telephone, Muse have released towels with some of their lyrics on and Rammstein have released dildos. Some of the more ridiculous items in a Rock band's merch store are likely designed to be gag products but you shouldn't go overboard with those either. Pick one, maybe two, silly ideas if they're cost effective but focus most of your budget on designs that fans will get the most out of. A hoodie or unique band patch will give more joy to your fans over a longer period of time than an air freshener that smells of generic scent...unless your band happens to have released a song/album named Generic Scent.

DON'T make regional exclusive merchandise
Decades ago when world tours were more difficult for Hard Rock bands to pull off, selling certain types of merchandise exclusive only to areas in Europe or Asia was understandable. However, now that products are cheaper to make and the Internet has made it possible for someone to receive something they ordered from the other side of the planet in a few days, there's no real excuse for popular Rock/Metal bands to pull this shit anymore. I'm not saying that bands shouldn't release artwork or merch based around certain areas of the planet that start off being sold in specific countries (e.g. a T-shirt with the band's mascot in samurai armour or punching a kangaroo) but they should make sure that anyone with the money to pay for it is able to buy it afterwards, regardless of where they're geographically based. Granted that lesser known groups may find it tricky to do this but then again, it's unlikely that they'll be making regional exclusive content to begin with.

DON'T understock your merch stands at gigs
This is quite a tricky one to avoid but I've been to a couple of shows where whoever was in charge of getting enough T-shirts for each stand well and truly fucked this one up. Yes, it's impossible to predict how many fans will want certain shirts and no, you can't bring a stupidly high amount of merch to accommodate a rush that may never happen. However, when you've completely sold out of a certain T-shirt before the warm-up band's even played, that suggests you screwed up. The bigger the band, the more you should bring with you. This could also apply to warm-up bands, as they often have a chance to sell merch in between the doors opening and their last song. It's unlikely that a lot of people will want warm-up band merch unless it's a big warm-up band (e.g. Cheap Trick warming up for Deep Purple) but you should still stock accordingly.

That's me all caught up for the year so far! I'm not sure which posts I'll be writing in the near future but hopefully there'll be an album review coming soon.
That's not a tease, by the way. I'm genuinely hoping that a new album that I'm interested in listening to comes out soon after the dry spell of Q4 2017.