Artist Advocates Global Distribution Social Responsibility Marketing Art & Production Case Studies
BandMerch - Artist Advocates
- BandMerch was founded as a family company, dedicated to creating, producing, and distributing high quality merchandise to fans.
- BandMerch prides itself on its reputation for superior artwork, product quality, client service, attention to detail, and integrity.
- BandMerch is a company made up of true fans who are dedicated to working hard for the bands, entertainers, and brands they love.
BandMerch - Global Distribution:
With offices positioned worldwide to best serve its clients and their fans, BandMerch has global reach in all major channels of distribution.
- BandMerch caters its touring services to fit the needs of the client and the venue, with the capacity to manage the full merchandise operation at clubs, arenas, sheds, stadiums, and festivals.
- BandMerch connects with fans at every event, aiming for the best customer experience possible.
- Clean, attractive, and crowd-drawing displays are a top priority as they maximize sales efficiency and reflect positively on the artist.
- BandMerch performs acute analysis of daily revenues by calculating accurate projections while recognizing specialized market trends.
- Exceptional detail management maximizes sales while minimizing wasteful expenses by ensuring product is always available and shipped as economically as possible.
- BandMerch maintains strong relationships and access to valuable resources worldwide, including professional road staff with years of experience.
- BandMerch has developed and maintains approximately 50 uniquely designed and seamlessly integrated web stores for a variety of bands and artists.
- BandMerch ships merchandise to fans in over 70 countries.
- BandMerch’s robust e-commerce platform offers live auction capabilities, value-adds, bundles, promotions, pre-sales and enter-to-wins.
- Real time sales are available upon request at any time.
- Shop Now
- BandMerch distributes retail merchandise to more than 30 countries worldwide, including Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the UK, Germany, Italy, and more.
- BandMerch has unparalleled relationships across all retail tiers, including high-end boutiques, specialty chains, mid-tier and mass retailers, and almost 2,000 independents.
- These relationships enable BandMerch to leverage sales and create effective and relevant marketing campaigns for its artists, including fan-art competitions, chain-wide contests, and in-store signings concurrent with artist touring.
- BandMerch protects the artist brand and effectively targets sales by driving the creative and utilizing its thorough understanding of the artists’ vision and direction.
- BandMerch maximizes global sales year-round through the efforts of its world-class, service-based, and consumer-focused sales team and a state of the art online business 2 business site.
- B2B Site Login-in
- BandMerch’s licensing department excels in offering the best in client appropriate product development and worldwide logo and image-driven licensing opportunities across a broad spectrum of categories.
- BandMerch does not do roster deals, or compel every client to use the same licensing partners for every category. BandMerch uses its thorough understanding of the artists’ vision and direction to customize the licensing program for each client by hand selecting the best suited licensing partner from its extensive network of partners.
- BandMerch finds the partners, negotiates the licensing deals, and collects and distributes the advances and royalty monies from sub-licensees that are right for the client.
- BandMerch maximizes licensing revenue by driving the creative, developing the products (always with the approval of the Artist), and monitoring the quality of pre-production samples before allowing production to begin.
Social Responsibility in Action
- In 2006, BandMerch became the first merch company to be 100% carbon neutral for all of its administrative operations, employee commuting, and travel.
- BandMerch specializes in a number of socially responsible product options, including:
- Domestic Production
- Sweatshop-Free and Fair TradeCertifications
- Eco/Sustainable Products and Materials (including organics, bamboo, recycled fibers, eco-friendly inks, and more)
- In addition to offering clients socially responsible product options, BandMerch actively develops innovative marketing tools to educate fans and affect positive change.
- BandMerch works with a number of artists who are on the forefront of social responsibility and activism, including: Rise Against, Linkin Park, Sheryl Crow, and Leonard Cohen.
Marketing
- BandMerch leverages integrated marketing campaigns across channels to maximize sales potential.
- Marketing tools such as banners, graphics and HTML email campaigns are provided if needed.
- BandMerch incentivizes fans to provide promotional support by offering discounts and product rewards.
- In addition to traditional promotions and contests, BandMerch also develops and implements special experiential marketing campaigns including fan art competitions and secret messaging on products or call-to-action codes on hangtags.
Art & Production Quality
- BandMerch has an experienced and diverse in-house art staff that has earned a second-to-none reputation at the top of the industry.
- In addition to using BandMerch for merchandise and licensing design, clients approach BandMerch more and more frequently for logo development, branding, and album artwork design services.
- BandMerch works closely with its clients to transform the clients’ vision and direction into an outstanding brand and merchandising line.
- BandMerch has built a reputation for having the best production department in the business and for delivering top quality products.
- BandMerch represents its clients to their fans and customers, and is dedicated to enhancing the band/fan relationship with quality merchandise.
Case Studies
Demi Lovato
- BandMerch produced all the touring merchandise for Demi Lovato’s 2009 Summer Tour, a multi-city family concert event.
- BandMerch worked collaboratively with Disney/Buena Vista Concerts to adapt to their rigorous quality control standards and product development processes.
- BandMerch produced a 24-page program for the event, which featured various printing techniques and was succesfully tailored to the artist’s target demographic.
- All point-of-sale booths were customized to fit a specific color scheme geared to the core demographic, creating a fun and fresh atmosphere that proved to succesfully attract more foot traffic to the booths.
Leonard Cohen
- BandMerch developed and operated the touring merchandise for the highly-anticipated Leonard Cohen World Tour, which visited Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the UK, and 16 additional European countires.
- Leonard Cohen is concerned with ethical and social responsibility and wants to minimize the negative impact his merchandise has on the environment. BandMerch is equally focused on social responsibility and gaining access to high-quality products that are proven to be best for the enviroment. For this tour, BandMerch used a range of eco and socially responsible products including carbon neutral, bamboo, and RPET (recylced plastic bottles) garments. BandMerch utilized point-of-sale material displaying the ethical/enivromentally friendly nature of the products to increase awareness and sales.
- The product line consisted of a variety of items including eco-friendly shirts with private label Unified Heart embroidered custom tags, a high-quality jacket, show program, coffee mug, tote bag, silver ring, CD, DVD, keychain, lapel pin, tie, and a hand-numbered, limited edition silk-screened poster.
- The shows took place at a mixture of arenas, amphitheatres, outdoor shows, and stadiums, with capacities ranging from 2,000 to 47,000 people. BandMerch adapted its service offering to coincide with the venue type and capacity, operating up to eight stands and 20 mobile sellers for the bigger shows on the tour.
Linkin Park
- Since 2000, BandMerch has provided touring merchandise, e-commerce, retail and third party licensing worldwide for Linkin Park, one of the most celebrated touring acts in rock & roll.
- BandMerch has managed logistics and distribution at venues of all sizes, from small club shows (300 capacity) to large stadiums (80,000 capacity) worldwide, including remote regions in Southeast Asia and China.
- BandMerch developed partnerships enabling Linkin Park to be one of the first Western rock bands to sell into China at retail.
- BandMerch works closely with Linkin Park’s legal team to protect copyright and trademark ownership worldwide and to minimize counterfeit merchandise sales. This includes injunctions enabling law enforcement cooperation to crack down on bootleg merchandise near venues.
- BandMerch has produced and sold a wide array of products for all price points and ages, including programs, silkscreened collector’s posters, t-shirts, custom fashion pieces, sublimated prints, shoes, hats, collector tins, calendars, wallets, bags, belts, metal jewelry, electronics accessories, and baby/toddler clothing.
- BandMerch has executed a significant number of successful cross-channel marketing plans to drive sales and build fan loyalty.
Star Wars: In Concert
- BandMerch produces and manages the merchandise operation for the Star Wars: In Concert, multi-city and mulit-media family concert event.
- BandMerch works fluidly with Lucasfilm Licensing to adapt to their rigorous quality control standards and product development processes.
- BandMerch produced a 44-page comprehensive program for the event, featuring state-of-the-art printing techniques and specially developed content showcasing the music and imagery from all six Star Wars films.
- All point-of-sale booths are customized with unique display pieces inspired by the stunning Lucasfilm props and memorabillia exhibited in the concourse throughout the show experience, creating a upscale boutique aesthetic and succesfully attracting more foot traffic to the booths.
