Merch

[ LiB ]

Merch

It helps to have things to sell at your shows. Merchandise, or merch , is often the difference between making enough money to make it to the next city or not. I remember on Bomb's first tour, pulling into Omaha and running out of gas, hours before the club opened. We were starving. We saw some punk rocker kids on the street, jumped out, and sold them two T-shirts. This gave us enough gas to make it to the show; we bought macaroni and cheese and went over to one of the punker's mom's house and cooked the mack and jack and hung out until sound check.

You should have T-shirts, stickers, and CDs. It is usually the roadie 's job to sell them while the band 's onstage, but if so, he should be set up somewhere that he can still see the stage and run up and attend to it if something falls apart while the band is playing. And he should keep the money in a money belt or butt pack (harder to steal than a wallet) when he leaves the merch table.

If you find that it's easier, you might just set up after your set. Unless your merch is amazingly cool looking or you've been in that town before or have a following, it's unlikely you'll sell much before you play. You'll have to wow 'em first.

Be willing to cut deals on merch, but have your bottom line that you'll not go below. It should be slightly above wholesale.

Well before you leave, find a good place locally to get merch made up ahead of time in your town and deal with someone who's going to get it done in time so you have it to take with you. Some bands that sell a lot of merch on tour have working relationships with people who exclusively deal with bands and will make up more T-shirts quickly and overnight stuff to you on tour. Make sure that you have it shipped to someone you trust a few towns ahead. Shipping to the club is a last resort.

Bands that do a lot of merch business, like Gwar, who probably sell more T-shirts than they do records, sometimes have someone whose dedicated job on tour is to man the merch table. And they bring an actual table. Or two.

NOTE

My friend Newt with Insecto has a cool portable display case built into a closable carrying case to show the wares available. It is easy to carry, sets up in a few seconds, and has blinking lights to attract attention. He usually sets this up to show what kind of Insecto panties and baby-Ts are for sale and then does the actual selling himself off the side of the stage after they play.

Figure 16.4. Insecto merch booth , folded up.

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Figure 16.5. Insecto merch booth, set up in a bar.

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Some clubs will try to take a percentage of the merch sales. I feel this is unethical. Find out ahead of time and use this as one of the points to take out if you have any ability to bargain, especially on your second tour if you did well on your first.

You can always just sell the stuff later out of your van when they aren't looking.

My recommendations for merchandise:

  • Buttons

  • Photo reproductions. You can get them printed up at any print shop in Hollywood (look for the big signs that say HEAD SHOTS in the window. But if you don't live in Hollywood, most print shops can make them. Get a friend to take the photo, or do it yourself.

  • Stickers (including bumper stickers): www.stickerguy.com. Best prices, best qualityvinyl stickers that last a long time, but long turn -around about six weeks. They will not do work for major label bands. Indie only.

  • T-shirts

Make sure you work with high-rez graphics files only. I am so sick of people making flyers, and especially stickers, from the 72 dpi images they take from their Web sitethat look like crap. Graphics for print must be 150 dpi or more. 300 or 600 is best. It's not that hard to do. Conversely, I am sick of seeing high-rez graphics on Web sites. They take forever to load. A good way to do this is the way I do it on www.kittyfeet.com/30bucks/30press.htm.

It's low-rez Web images that link to printable high-rez ones. That is how you do it, people.

NOTE

I have a "friend" who bootlegged 100 copies of his own documentary film and sold burned DVDs on tour because the company he had his exclusive deal with wouldn't give him any tour support. He did it to make enough money to get to the next show each night, and it worked. It was the difference between losing and making money on his European tour, and it didn't take any bread out of anyone 's mouth. If anything, the tour made money for the company by increasing awareness of his film.

NOTE

Some bands, particularly in Europe, take small quantities (between one and ten) of merch items from other bands and labels and sell each other's wares at all their shows. They call this their "distro," as in, "Help me set up the distro, please ." It's a table where they sell their own and their friends 'T-shirts, CDs, fanzines, DVDs, and so forth. They trade their stuff to each other or sell it to each other for this purpose dirt cheap.

These distros help everyone; each band has more exposure, and fans get more options. It also gives them more stuff to sell, which makes them more money. It also makes you look more legit if you are just starting out and only have one or two products of your own.

[ LiB ]


[d]30 Music School
The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride, Book 1)
ISBN: 1592001718
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 138

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