Lazerbeat
Offline
Tokyo, Japan

Over the last weekend it kinda hit me how massively helpful selling a bunch of merch over the course of a show / festival can be to a performer. Kinda dumb not to pick up on this earlier I know but I think it is an area shows here could be better. I've given it a bunch of thought over the last couple of days and I had a few ideas which might make running the merch table easier and might sell a few more CDs or shirts. I'm also kinda stumped on a couple of points...


1 - I did actually do this, but print out a bunch of sheets with

Item / number recieved / price / number sold / to pay / pay to

And put them all on a clipboard so it is easy to enter merch, total it all up and pay out


2 - Buy a few dollar store plastic cd storeage boxes and make some dividers do you can keep your "stock" quickly accessible and easy to keep track of. Didn't do this!


3 - buy a bunch of clip lights and a multi adaptor, venues are dark, hard to see merch, hard for merch staff to work. Didn't do this!


4 - make sure you have a cash box, calculator, rolls of tape, price tags, pens and markers. Kinda did this.


5 - Think of a decent way to display shirts. This baffles me, basically the venue where we do our show has a very very small area for merch and no hooks / hangers for shirts. We have ended up duct taping shirts to the wall which isn't really ideal and wastes a bunch of space. In trying to think of some kinda free standing portable rack to put behind the merch tables with the shirts on. Any ideas?


So does anyone have any other ideas for making running merch tables easier / more profitable?

Also in my experience, CDs and shirts are the only things which really seem to sell. Ctrix has done pretty well with USB sticks packed with data, anyone had luck with other types of merch?

Fudgers
Offline
Indiana

tri-fold presentation boards! It's like a science fair, you can hang xmas lights, prices/merch can be displayed, and you can make them look really cool in a relatively small space.

chunter
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Brunswick, GA USA

A lot of that sounds like it came from http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2012/08/7 … h-display/

It may be your branding as a musician, but you're  still selling stuff so the principles are the same.

Sell what your customers want. Appeal to the full range of ages and genders present and full and empty wallets too. That's all I can say, really.

Get some wall racks from a closed/closing store.

Last edited by chunter (Oct 24, 2012 6:04 pm)

herr_prof
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Unsubscribe

I encourage artists to hang out at the merch table after their set, cause then if people really want to talk to you they can buy some merch first.

SketchMan3
Offline
NC in the US of America

Maybe you could have posters of the designs on the shirts so you don't have to display the actual shirts? I'd imagine the posters would take up a bit less space than the actual Ts.

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA

You can fold a sample over a piece of cardboard with the business part showing, but then your table will look  like an Old Navy.

danimal cannon
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buffalo, NY
herr_prof wrote:

I encourage artists to hang out at the merch table after their set, cause then if people really want to talk to you they can buy some merch first.

THIS THIS THIS.  Every time people sell merch for me I sell dick.  I've had several AWESOME shows where I sold almost no merch because I wasn't at the merch booth and other people were selling for me, even when I pushed the merch hard from the stage.

I'm trying to find ways to make my merch sales more consistent, so I can budget better when I travel or tour

Last edited by danimal cannon (Oct 24, 2012 6:13 pm)

Telerophon
Offline
Austin, Texas

You can use SquareUp if you want to look like a tool and lose some sales in service fees. roll

Seriously though, I've used that as part of a street team for a nonprofit selling merch at events, and it's not a bad tradeoff if you think being able to accept credit cards will up your sales volume enough to offset the loss in service fees. It's something less than 10% if I recall correctly.

danimal cannon
Offline
buffalo, NY

What are you talking about?  The Square is awesome, and the fee is 2.75% per purchase.  Meaning for a $10 CD purchase, you give them 28¢. 

Guess what?  That's better than retailers pay to accept credit cards.  There are plenty of retailers that use The Square now.

The Square will send you a device for free.  If you buy one in the store, they will give you the cost of it back in your account.  Yeah, only tools use The Square...

Last edited by danimal cannon (Oct 24, 2012 8:49 pm)

kitsch
Offline
matt's mind

i use square,

and, the paypal here is out too, the basic rate is better but the rate for exceptions is higher.  so using that too, showed up in the mail today wink 

this type of tech is great, i had checked out other similar things before the square came out, the rate is sooo much better this way.

Timbob
Offline

Hi
I run the merch table at the Eindbaas gigs, and we do get a lot of sales there. You've mostly got 2 groups. The first one is the group that comes in at the start of the night and says: "Hi, all shirts and cd's please."

And then there's a group that just casually stops by to take a look.

What also helps is that we've got a cool table. People are attracted to it anyway smile

What I try to do is keep the table as clean as possible. put one of each cd on the table, the rest in boxes.
hang shirts behind you. and organise everything. (last time i got one big box with all shirts in them... trying to find a medium yellow shirt in a messed up box with 20 people waiting.. no fun.) make sure you can pick out what you need quick.

If you sell posters, be sure to have them pre-rolled. saves time. Also, if possible, you could offer that people buy stuff, and leave it at the merch desk to pick up at the end of the night. I had a lot of people who wanted a poster, but didn't want to walk around with it the rest of the night. If you organize something like a merch-wardrobe, people will buy more stuff knowing they can pick it up later.

Also, having a cute girl selling stuff helps too tongue

And we've got stuff for everybody. Not just shirts and cd's, but also handmade 8bit stuff, necklaces, bags, hamabeads. stuff like that. Works great for when the boyfriend wants to get a shirt, and then the girlfriend sees the cute mario earhangers...

Have price lists on the wall, so people know what stuff costs.

this post is totally fragmented, but ok.

Also, bring pens, paper, tape, some rope.
Cloth-hangers are very usefull for the shirts. you could hang them on a wire on the ceiling, or a radiator or something. Or just tape them on the wall if they let you.

Be sure to have change.

And the part about the artists hanging around the merch table works.

That's about it for now... I think.

ok bye! tongue

kineticturtle
Offline
Matthew Joseph Payne

Square is awesome.

Standing by the table after your set is necessary.

This is how we solved the dark venue problem:

Custom merch sign made in LogoNES.

basspuddle
Offline
washington

I don't play shows

Make sure someone doesn't try to distract you to get shit for free

Telerophon
Offline
Austin, Texas

I'm going to eat my crow and admit that I mixed up my details on the square.

I'm glad to hear you've all had better experiences with that service and technology than my admittedly very limited experience.

Rainbowdragoneyes
Offline
The Mountains

This is a "wire shelf" you can buy at Home Depot in varying lengths, lots of bands use these to display their Tshirts:

So lean that against the wall and clip your shirts to it, get you some lights to illuminate that shit, and construct an elaborate setup not unlike the one in this fantastic picture taken with a BlackBerry™, the serious photographer's #1 choice of phone for the 21st century:

SKGB
Offline
Godzilladelph

Idk why, but the SKGB bootyshorts sold pretty fast