The Soulblendr Blog

In the past few months I’ve spent a fair amount of time crawling from show to show asking the question…”If merch is so important as a revenue source (for both big and small act), why are you guys guessing about what fans might or might not want to buy”? Yeah, yeah, yeah, t-shirts, hoodies, stickers, we know the drill, it’s predictable. You can do so much better, have the quality, and the scale to see real $$

If I didn’t know any better I’d say that most of the merch out there does not nearly represent the artistic edge or cool factor of most of the bands I/we all see. T-shirts are not a merch strategy, and they are rarely inspiring.  Think about it, at any given show there are likely to be 5-10 amazing designers, graphic artists, artisan merch makers that would love to light up your merch, creating it with their love for your music at the center of the collaborative process.  Who better to help represent the artistic voice, the physical expression of your music as your merch travels from the parking lot to the world abroad? 

The Grateful Dead proved that the free spread of music (and merchandise design in many regards) was to become their strongest marketing asset, a secret weapon that on its face seemed counter intuitive to the industry, yet in the real world was actually quite brilliant in its applied simplicity and meteoric success.   Great merch is your physical billboard, your passionate brand, your unique voice.  Your fans are devoted evangelists, proud to be in the tribe.  Listen to them, then set them free!  I cannot think of a more relevant historical cast study of the power of social marketing or social brands then that of the Grateful Dead (35 years ago no less!) and how they enabled an army to be their eyes, ears, best marketing partners.  And no, there was nothing corporate about the Grateful Dead, they were like Winnie the Pooh, they simply “were” the Grateful Dead. To this day they are one of the most authentic fan savvy marketing organizations in the business.  OK, enough of my tangent. 

Music is a binding agent afterall; you love cool stuff as a band, and designers love your music..This shared bond, mutual respect and shared sense of expression should be bringing you two together to create amazing merch. Great cooks put their life energy, goodness, soul into the food they prepare for their customers. It’s the same energy for a designer that loves your music, and your fans are your dinner guests. The circle of good energy and authenticity is as real as the music itself…can you hear the dinner table chatter about how great the meal is?  Listen, I think you can…

OK, so here’s the BUSINESS point of this rant„,why guess at your merch?  Your fans can and should be at the center of this personal, emotional, and qualitative process.  We all know that fan engagement is EVERYTHING in today’s social mash up world.  You know and often welcome how they can share spread, mash, mix, butcher, and do almost anything (with love of course) to your music.  Why shouldn’t the same effort apply to your merch in some regard? 

This what you can do….

If you are small, come check out Soulblendr for one reason alone, create cool merch…You can find cool artists, or bring your own to simply use the platform, we don’t care.  You can collaborate on cool ideas, then we’ll take these ideas and auto post them to your facebook fan page to see what fans love.  If they love something then go ahead and make it, sell it, kick ass….No more guessing.  If they don’t then kill the idea, you’ll get instant feedback, and you spent nothing but a little time making sure that BenHur wristband was cool, or actually sucked….The difference could mean $1000 of wasted $$ on a wrist band your drummer loved but everyone hated….OR, $1000 well spent on stuff that sells out…!  This can make a real difference for you guys!  NO BS…

OK, so you’re a big band, this is now about real risk…$5000-$10,000 is not worth playing with.  You can find designers (lots of them) have 4-5 all working at once on cool ideas.  If they rock then great, if they suck then turn them down, it costs nothing to create and test concepts.  When you find the ones you love then the platform auto posts them to your fan page, and if you have 50,000-100,000 fans then you might see as many as 100-200 fans want a certain item almost instantly, before you’ve produced even one….You’ll see pure demand, hear feedback, and then off you go, place the order with the designer.  No wasted t-shirt runs, no excess inventory, no wasted $$ (which we’ve heard can be up to $5-$10K for big bands), and super cool merch worthy of your band..

This is about the business of music, and merch is an asset and revenue class that you guys (big or small) cannot afford to not get right.  Merch done well has made many bands amazing profits.  Again, big or small, I’ll say it again: Why Guess?  Use your fans to tell you what they love, they will love you for it, and like the Grateful Dead become your most valuable and authentic voice! 

On a personal note….Thanks to some very thoughtful folks in and around Mill Valley, CA for bringing back our crown jewel of music venues, the Sweetwater Music Hall.  Your generosity is inspiring, let the music shine on!

Over the past few years we’ve seen commerce evolve to a place where artists, bands and management can be pretty self sufficient selling tickets, music, posters, merch etc. on your site, or now, using some facebook apps (like ours) to sell direct to fan on your wall.  Truth is that version 1.0 for self serve indie commerce platforms is here…and it’s pretty good, OK, they’re good enough..

My job, our jobs arguably, is to keep pushing good enough to “great”, as long as it’s not disruptive to bands or fans, as long as it’s not a distraction for management or the label, and as long as it’s not a pain in the ass.   Nuff said, you get my point..

My stump speech for the New Year is that we need to be careful as it’s starting to smell a little like tour van funk, we are in the middle of winter, dark, cold and lazy about partial solutions.  My bone is with the empty commerce storefronts that bands pay a lot of rent for.  Truth is that this V 1.0 commerce landscape of ours, in the we’re starving, need $$, gotta sell more merch or die as a cool band world, is not even close to a smart answer..Renting an empty commerce solution proves nothing, and makes nothing, it’s the beginning of more headaches and costs.

More bands say how the store costs more than the stuff inside as a percentage of net sales over the course of the year, and the resulting sell through of tix, cd’s merch is not really killin it for the band, kind of break even..often a bummer, when the thing we need most is good merch sales.           

I also keep asking bands of all sizes why don’t you engage your fans, create, collaborate, talk to them more, show them cool merch ideas before you even spend the money, let them tell you what they love and want to buy now?  Most say wow, we’d love to but it’s hard, we just have a store with t-shirts, we kind of know it sucks, but hey.. <cool shrug>

It kind of feels to me that most bands are getting ripped off with 1/2 a commerce solution, when the last thing they can afford is guessing on what their fans want, and then needing to upfront the costs to create merch that their fans don’t know about or necessarily want until it’s water under the bridge…

So, I gotta say that you really do not have to rent an empty storefront, you don’t have to guess about what fans want, and you don’t have to risk unwanted merch anymore…

Our vision was simply about lighting up a super cool collaborative community, one that we’d all be psyched to join, but more so, we wanted to make the business of merch creation a REAL F-ing solution, something that started with artists empowering artists and then evolving into a platform, an “end to end” answer for merch creation, testing, and commerce that really helps bands that needed it most, and then, eventually grows to true scale for major players.  We wanted to empower creativity first, then we wanted to minimize risk second, then we wanted to accelerate sales third..You really can do all three without spending penny one….

OK how?  Well, In all transparency we simply share the risk as your merch platform partner.  We do all the upfront work, costs, facilitation, and then in the end we take a final value fee for the transaction BUT, only after you see results through the sales of your merch.  We don’t get paid unless you do first…How’s that for a novel thought? 

So let’s review -

Rent an empty storefront for $20-$199/month or join a collaborative community where artists create cool merch with other artists, use cool tools to instantly do fan testing, then when your fans tell you they love the products, then, and only then, do you buy them to stock your shelves.  You then place them in your free Soublendr storefront on your facebook wall.  And you know what, we’ll even let you upload and sell your current merch in your Soulblendr storefront as well….

So, I ask you….why rent an empty storefront? 

Anyone that has spent significant time in a touring band has, more than likely, had his or her fair share of tour-merch woes. You want more than anything to stay focused on the music but occasionally outside forces get in the way. Merch should be a fun and exciting way to express the feeling your group wants to portray and that your fans would like to represent on your behalf. You don’t want to inherit an entire new set of headaches.

As someone who has spent a large portion of the last decade or so in a touring band, I can’t tell you how many times frustration over merch has made my head nearly explode. Looking for an example? How about this classic one, you’ve seen the hot new merch items that your peers are crafting and the fans seem to really latch on to the look. So you have a designer make something really nice in that style, let’s say you’ve decided that your band needs a sideways print on a neon yellow long sleeve (This isn’t specific just a random example). You finally get the design back, send it off to be printed in some far away land, get them back, throw them in the trailer and hop off in the van.

Fast-forward two months. Tour is over and you still have boxes of these neon shirts. It would seem that by the time you crafted these neon beauties, it was too late and you missed the fad. Well, hope your family reeeeeeally wants some bright sideways print band shirts for Christmas!

What SoulBlendr is introducing is a streamlined band-designer-fan platform. You can see what your fans are interested in, in real time. The designers can create amazing and unique merch on the fly. Everyone decides they want all over print one-sleeved pull over sweatshirts? Well, who are we to question that? Then they can be crafted as you go, sent out to you on tour and allowing analytics to see how well they are doing.

SoulBlendr really is a one-stop-shop for bands, fans and designers. Bringing the best of each forward in order to help each other out. It is really exciting to see the future of band, designer and fan coming together!

Welcome to the official Soulblendr Blog and thanks for joining us on our maiden voyage upon the SS Blogger Maria! 

We’ve manned the rigging and hoisted our well-designed, custom-made sails, as we set out to discover new lands inhabited by…

Talented Designers, 

Fabulous Bands, Brands, Performers…

…and Musicians with Fertile Colonies of Passionate Fans!  

Haul in the gangplank me hearties!

As we shovel coal from the bowels of this sea-worthy vessel, we look forward to bringing those who join us to uncharted territories filled with innovative merchandise, inspired design collaborations and hopefully a whole new, round world that more easily connects designers with bands and their fans to make better merch that sells!

Hop on deck or walk the plank and Sail ho me squiffy men! Sail ho!

Love Soulblendr