Learn how to sell your Bands Merchandise. The merch booth is a large source of income for a band. Most of the time, a band makes more money from their merch booth than they would’ve from the door of the show itself. However, most bands treat the merch booth as an afterthought. Some bands don’t even set up their merch booth at all. Even if they do, it’s usually just a few t-shirts thrown on a table in the corner. If you want to make money as a band, you need to treat your merch booth as seriously as you treat your live show and your recorded album. Below are some basics of an effective merch booth. Catch the Eye The very first thing when putting together your merch booth is to make it attractive to the eye. Make it look like an obvious merch booth. Throwing t-shirts on the table doesn’t cut it. Have a stand of some sort that can be set up on a table. With this stand, you can display all your merchandise clearly for the room to see. A cheap way to do this is to buy some cheap wire shelves and string them together with zip ties. The added benefit of this method is that it can fold up easily making for an extremely mobile merch booth. Without an elevated stand of some sort, people most likely can’t even see that you have merch set up. A stand on a table elevates the merch above people’s heads, allowing people to see that you have a merch booth from across the room. Your merch stand should be clearly visible, otherwise your sales will be clearly invisible. Location You want to make sure that your merch booth is in a location that people easily walk by it. This can be difficult at smaller clubs. Avoid putting the merch booth right by the stage. When other bands are either playing or loading their gear, people are unlikely to come anywhere near your merch booth. People are a little intimidated to go right up to the front of the stage for something. They will feel the whole room is watching them. And that is scary to most people. Avoid being in the most darkest distant corner in the club. Even though there is plenty of room for you to set up your merch booth, you are in a place that people don’t want to go to. You want people to stop at your merch booth on a whim. If you can, make sure your merch booth is located in the spot where people will have to pass it in order to leave the club. As people are leaving the club, that is when they will make a purchase. Light Without light, it is very difficult to see your merch booth in a dark club. Consider adding lighting to your merch booth. I personally use rope lighting for my merch booth. At one point I used Christmas lights and discovered something important, Christmas lights break too easily. Once Christmas lights break, they leave nasty shards of glass for you to cut your fingers on. Rope lighting is flexible and will curl around your merch booth easily. You will also want to have a 100 foot extension cord and a power strip. Outlets at clubs can be unpredictable. Some places have a ton of outlets while others have them nicely hidden. An extension cord will make sure you can have light on your merch booth regardless of where the outlet is in the club. Tip: When hunting for an outlet at a club, always look up. Outlets are often in the ceiling. A power strip isn’t necessary, but it can be extremely helpful. If you went to that much trouble to light up your merch, might as well be able to charge your tablets and cell phones at the merch booth as well. When you are a band on the move, your devices are constantly running out of charge. Folding Table You need to have your own folding table. They are inexpensive and indispensable. You can never predict if you will have a table available to you at a club. Even if the table is available, that table might not be big enough for your merch or your merch stand. With your own merch table, you can control where your merch stand is going to be set up. You can pick the most ideal location without relying on the club to provide you that location. Make sure the table folds to make it easier to transport. From Cheap to Expensive For your merch, make sure you have items that range from $1 to $100. Items at one dollar give the casual person who enjoyed your show a chance to get a memento to remember the event by. Items at $100, though less frequently sold, are perfect for the avid fan that wants everything from your band. Psychologically, higher-priced items compel people to buy more of your middle tier items. Check out the book Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive . In this book, they discovered that having a cheap item, an average priced item, and an expensive item drives way more sales of the average priced item than if that average priced item was sold alone. Something for Free Having something for free at your merch booth is a great excuse to get people to your merch booth. You want to give people an incentive to come visit you at your merch booth after your show. A freebie or a gift is a great means to do so. Once a person is at your merch booth, they are more likely to buy something else. Plus, psychologically, giving someone something for free makes them feel like they owe you. If they appreciate your free gift, they may purchase something that is disproportionately more expensive than the free gift. Again, this is another insight from the book Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. Consider Pay What You Want Many bands have been making more money using the pay what you want model. The band Mark’s Midnight Carnival Show outlines how they made significantly more sales by selling their CDs using the pay what you want model. Pay what you want means the customer names their price. The customer can pay one dollar for your CD or $30. Whenever they offer, you smile and accept it. Though it sounds like everyone would just give you a dollar, people end up paying way more than expected. For a $10 CD, some people will end up paying $20. Just make sure to announce that deal during your show. Given a brief explanation from the stage. Otherwise, people will be clueless. Tip Jar Always have a tip jar at your merch stand. A tip jar allows people to show their appreciation through dollars. Without the tip jar there, you definitely will not make that money. A tip jar also allows people to pay for your merch when you are not at the merch table. Ideally, someone would always be at the merch table, but that isn’t always possible when you have to play a show and load gear. Email Signup You need to have email sign-up sheets at every show. If you don’t know why email is so important, I’ve written a few articles for you. Here’s the first one. Neatly print out the email lists. Leave a large amount of space for people to print their first name and email address. Pretend people are five-year-olds learning how to write. That’s how much space you should be for them to sign up. Use clipboards for the email list. This lets someone grab the clipboard to write down their email address, or for you to hand it to them to write down their email address while they are standing in line. Just a loose sheet of paper won’t do. Go to your local thrift store. You can find a ton of cheap clipboards for next to nothing. Have a shit ton of pens. People will constantly walk off with your pens. Pens break. Pens get lost. By a big bag of pens. It doesn’t cost much. Have small led lights so people can see to write their email address. Clubs are dark and it’s difficult to see to write things down. An inexpensive battery-powered LED can make a world of difference. Make it Clear What You’re Selling Don’t assume people will know what you’re selling by simply looking at your merch booth. Write it out in big letters. Make it clear you have both men and women’s shirts. Write down that you have a CD for sale. Write down that you have buttons and stickers. What is obvious to you is not obvious to everyone. If you wanted to sell, make it very obvious. Arrange T-Shirts for Easy Access T-shirts are pain in the ass. If you have no organization to your t-shirts, you will be spending 5 to 10 minutes just trying to find one sized shirt. In that 5 to 10 minutes, you can be losing 5 to 10 customers. If you force someone to wait for 5 to 10 minutes for one shirt, they are less likely to buy from you ever again. Customer service 101. For my band, I bought a cheap plastic set of drawers. I separate the T-shirts by a piece of cardboard in the drawers, so I know which T-shirt is which. I simply open the drawer and grabbed the requested size t-shirt. Quick and easy. You can also use small bags to sort shirts together. Just make sure the bags are labeled and that the shirts can’t fall out of the bag easily. Always Be At The Merch Stand Whenever you are not at your merch stand, you are losing money. Even if there is only five people at the club, you are losing money. You cannot make money if you are not at your merch booth. Repeat this to yourself. Always assign one band member to constantly be at the merch booth. You can switch out with other band members periodically throughout the night, but always make sure at least one person is there constantly. If you trust one of the other bands, you can even help each other when you’re playing your show. You can sell the other band’s merch when they are playing, and they can sell yours when you are playing. But really make sure you trust the other band. Otherwise, you might as well not have a merch booth at all, if no one is going to be in charge of it all night. It pisses off your fans when they can’t buy your stuff. Again, customer service 101. First thing set up, Last thing broken down In addition to always being at your merch booth, your merch booth should be set up all night, through the entire event. I’ve seen bands immediately pack up their merch right after playing. I went to buy their stuff at the end of the night, and they were gone. Many times, people purchased my merch as they were leaving the club at the end of the night. Yes, this is boring to sit there for hours waiting for a sale. But you know what’s worse than waiting a couple of hours? Being broke. To make sure you get the most sales possible, your merch booth is the first thing to be set up and the last thing to be broken down. It needs to be up and running when the first person walks into the club and when the last person leaves. Call-To-Action from Stage Make pitching your merch booth part of your set list. Actually write it down in your set list. Practice pitching it during your rehearsals. Even with blazing lights and your merch booth located by the exit, people will still not know you have a merch booth or anything for sale. Let people know you have something for sale from the stage. Let them know you have something for free at your merch booth. Let them know they can sign up for your email list. Mention your merch booth in the middle of your set, before your last song, and before you leave the stage. You don’t need to say the exact same thing each time, but people may not have heard you the first time. Plus, telling people to take action makes them take action. Amazing but true. Peace and Love..... Good Luck..... ONE LOVE....
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:05:55 +0000
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