Hey there friends in bands! Merch Partners?

[Amelia G]

Hey guys, I've had someone assigned to researching current merch companies for a couple months now. We've halfway interfaced with a number of companies. But I need to get to the actual making it happen stage before Xmas. Over the years, Blue Blood has moved thousands and thousands and thousands of merch items, usually with the help of large manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution partners.

I'm not really set up for wholesale and constant pick and pack and warehousing and all that. So I'd ideally like to set up some partnership relationships to handle the various hard goods ends of my business.

Basically, I need to partner with one or more companies who can handle stuff like storage of Blue Blood hoodies and T-shirts and teddy bears and suchlike. I need someone who can manufacture in quantity and on time. I need someone who can deal with the day-to-day shipping and customer service.

It is a sweet deal for the right merch company. I tend to work with really amazing artists and Blue Blood has people around the globe who want to rock the Blue Blood look.

I could go with all one big company which can handle all of it or I could go with three to handle the different aspects or I could take the whole thing in-house and also do merch warehousing, manufacturing, and distribution for other folks. I really really really don't want to have to do the whole thing myself. I already need seventeen clones of myself to get done the things I'm working on now. It was so much nicer when I had other people handling it. I was more than happy for them to take their $ cut, so I didn't have to do what they do, in addition to what I do.

Suggestions anyone?

[TheQuietPlace]

Are you looking for artists to help distro BB merch?

[Kidthorazine]

from my experiences its best to either have one company to handle all aspects, or to have a company manufacture the merch and then do the storage and distribution in house, if you have three companies that handle different aspects it will probably cost more, and wont be nearly as efficient unless all three companies have some sort of affiliation and all coordinate well. I would find a good manufacturer (I only deal with smaller local manufacturers so i cant help much on that one) and then hire people in house to handle customer relations and getting the stuff shipped (UPS is the way to go for shipping) and then just rent some warehouse space and hire people to do that. that way you can synch everything up and youll have direct oversight instead of having to rely on several companies to coordinate with each other on everything.

[Amelia G]

from my experiences its best to either have one company to handle all aspects, or to have a company manufacture the merch and then do the storage and distribution in house, if you have three companies that handle different aspects it will probably cost more, and wont be nearly as efficient unless all three companies have some sort of affiliation and all coordinate well. I would find a good manufacturer (I only deal with smaller local manufacturers so i cant help much on that one) and then hire people in house to handle customer relations and getting the stuff shipped (UPS is the way to go for shipping) and then just rent some warehouse space and hire people to do that. that way you can synch everything up and youll have direct oversight instead of having to rely on several companies to coordinate with each other on everything.

I've got manufacturing covered with relationships with both punk rockers who can do prototype runs as small as one item and big production folks who can easily turn around 100,000 units. But I live in Los Angeles where real estate is expensive. I could get a warehouse and office in another city to handle hard goods, but then I would also need to do warehousing and shipping for other artists, in order to have the economies of scale. And it really seems to me that there are already merch companies out there to do this. I don't want to compete with them.

I want them to do what they do and free me up to do what I do. I'm capable of running yet more business stuff, but I would way rather be creating beautiful images or writing the Great American Novel or having adventures in distant lands or talking about freaky stuff on MTV.

[Amelia G]

Are you looking for artists to help distro BB merch?

Like to take on tour and add to their merch booths?

[Mr Karl]

you might want to think of hiring one person to handle everything....broker, thats the word, they know where the best slaves are, I was in the printing business for a long time and that's about the best way to get all that done, otherwise your basically doing all the legwork yourself, best way to check a broker, see if his supplierers make him pay cash.
It makes my head hurt to think of all the work, connections, yapping, and etc. shit that's actually involved in all that these days
Yeah hire a decent broker and you'll save a lot of hassle and you only have to deal with one person,
Or get some mokeys and train them,

[TheQuietPlace]

Like to take on tour and add to their merch booths?

Yeah, I might be able to help you out with that. I'm really good friends with a band in seattle. I'll talk with them.

[Mr Karl]

out of curiosity, what sort of numbers are you looking at? inventorywise
because your stuff is pretty easy to produce and unless you constantly need thousands you could find some out of the way place to deal with everything up to the marketing and distribution pretty easy

maybe I'm just cunfused about what your actually looking for

[Amelia G]

out of curiosity, what sort of numbers are you looking at? inventorywise
because your stuff is pretty easy to produce and unless you constantly need thousands you could find some out of the way place to deal with everything up to the marketing and distribution pretty easy

maybe I'm just cunfused about what your actually looking for

In the past, I've dealt with companies who were able to do wholesale distro and such which greatly increased the few thousand pieces I would be likely to move at conventions and such. Some companies which do wholesale distribution will also take care of mailorder and warehousing and I would prefer this. Most companies, which do wholesale and mailorder pick and pack and customer service, also want to have the manufacturing contract. I can deal with the manufacturing end myself, but I don't mind giving someone that piece of the job in order to make a deal for the rest of the stuff which I would prefer not to have to handle.