Steve Gerstman has twenty years in the music merchandising business, having worked at Winterland, Signatures and Brockum. He started Steve Gerstman Services, Inc. in 2001, which currently incudes among its clients Eric Clapton, Queen and Stray Cats. In 2007, Gerstman began Cut Merch (www.cutmerch.com ) which he calls the "First 21stCentury Merch Service."

INSIDE TIPS ON TOUR MERCH:

You have finally booked some shows – congratulations! – and now you’re looking forward to the big day.  And if you haven’t been living on Mars for the last few years, you know that selling merch is a way to make money.  After all, touring can actually cost you money, especially at the beginning, and selling merch can make the difference between costing you money and breaking even – or even making some!

1. PLANNING THE TOUR MERCH

Like other aspects of your tour, you need to think through what you will want to sell on your dates and, very importantly, how many to produce.  Regarding what items, don’t try to get too fancy or different with your tour merch.  There are many reasons why bands sell t-shirts, mostly black if they are of the rock variety.  It is because (1) that’s what their fans want and expect, and (2) they provide good profit margins.  It is important to try to figure out how many to produce, an issue I will deal with later.  Along with t-shirts, sell your CD if you have one.  If you are going out for the first time, or in a city where you are appearing for the first time, or if you otherwise are playing to new people, and you are playing in clubs that hold less than a hundred people, that’s all you really need to have.  If you want to carry more, consider a keychain or poster, or a girl’s shirt.  (Baseball caps usually are embroidered, and you won’t want to incur the set-up costs for a small run of caps.) 

2. DESIGN

If you have a CD cover design or a design on your website or MySpace page, use that, or at least tie it in.  If you have a logo on the CD, use that.  Don’t make changes in typeface or colors if you want to project an image to people that they will remember.  T-shirts are billboards for your band, and having the t-shirt reflect the same (or similar) images as your CD cover and your web presence will help people remember you and associate it with you.  I also recommend that you make your tour merch tour merch, by which I mean that people who buy merch at shows like to see (and show their friends) that they “were there.”  An itinerary back (if there are, say, six confirmed dates or more) does that.  If it’s less than six dates (say, in a month’s time), then you might not want to date the merch – because you will want to sell them over a longer period of time, and you won’t want to sell “stale” product.  Finally, keep your designs simple.  That means only print two sides (forget sleeves) and keep the colors down.  Going crazy on prints and colors on a short run of shirts raise the cost more than you can make up on the price you sell them at. 

3. PRODUCTION

You have to balance the number of items you produce with the cost per item.  The more you produce, the less each will cost, but the more you are out-of-pocket.  It is the goal of every merchandiser and band to come out of each tour with as few items as possible, especially if you’ve “dated” them with an itinerary back or other date. It probably isn’t as critical when it comes to CDs as you probably have a garage full of them.  If you do a keychain, a simple acrylic one that uses a digitally created photo is the cheapest to produce, and the result, with two sides in color, looks pretty cool.  When you are thinking about how many shirts to produce, consider the number of people you expect at each show, the number of shows, and then multiply that by the “per cap,” meaning what you project you’ll sell per attendee and divide by the price you will sell them for.  Whew!  There’s a tool on the www.cutmerch.com website for this you can use for free.  Go to the site and send a note.  It’s called the “forecast tool.”  Another resource for posters or handbills (you may want to give out handbills at the shows) promotes your website, announce tour dates or record release, whatever.  It’s www.psprint.com.  Very reasonable prices for anything printed on paper and easy to use website.  Regarding the print run for apparel, try to meet the minimums that keep per item costs reasonable.  As to what “reasonable” means, you need to shop around.  And don’t forget that your costs may or may not include set-up costs.  Don’t assume: Ask!

4. SALES