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Merch Table Math: How Indie Tours Really Make Money · Clone Wars: The Spinoff

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  I- I- I was standing in front of the venue in Chicago, right?
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  It was a, uh, a five-hundred-cap room, and I looked at the box office statement,
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  and then I looked at the, the cardboard boxes we had stacked behind the merch table.
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  And the math- the math just completely broke my brain.
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  We're talking thirty to fifty percent of the total touring income for an indie run
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  is just coming from those boxes.
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  If you're in a five-hundred-cap room, you should be pulling,
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  like, eight to twelve dollars in merch revenue per paid head.
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  Every single person walking through that door is a potential twelve-dollar bill,
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  man.
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  Wait, twelve dollars a head?
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  Calvin, that's wild because most people think the ticket is where you make the bag.
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  But after the door split, the booking agent taking their ten percent,
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  the venue taking their piece of the door...
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  you might only be taking home three or four bucks profit on a twenty-five-dollar
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  ticket.
• 0:55
  Exactly.
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  The ticket money is basically just paying for the gas and the hotel rooms at that
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  level.
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  I mean, as a- as a currency guy, I look at the velocity of that cash.
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  If you sell out that five-hundred-cap room, and you hit that ten-dollar-a-head
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  average, that's five grand cash, straight in the bag, before you even talk about the
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  guarantee.
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  You move up to a fifteen-hundred-cap room, even if the average dips slightly to
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  eight to ten bucks a head because of the crowd density, you're still looking at
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  twelve to fifteen thousand dollars in high-margin cash flow in a single night.
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  That is the difference between a promotional tour that drains your bank account and
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  an actual sustainable business.
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  But the thing is, you gotta stay lit to survive, right?
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  And you can't be lit if you treat the merch table like an afterthought,
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  like some little side table with a dusty-ass tablecloth and a sharpie.
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  The show itself- the actual performance- is just the commercial.
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  The merch table is the cash register where they actually buy the product.
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  If they love the music, they want a piece of that experience to take home.
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  They want to own a piece of you.
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  Mm, that's a facts.
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  But what actually moves, though?
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  Because I see artists ordering all these crazy items, like custom embroidered
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  windbreakers and- and lighter cases, and then they're just hauling those boxes from
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  city to city, hurting their backs, and nobody's buying.
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  Oh, man, I made that mistake early on.
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  I spent like, three grand on these custom-dyed, heavy-weight hoodies with this super
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  intricate sleeve embroidery because they looked incredible on my Instagram feed.
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  But on the road?
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  In the middle of July?
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  Nobody wants to drop eighty bucks on a heavy hoodie when they're sweating through
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  their shirt.
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  What actually sells after a set is the immediate connection.
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  The classic tour-specific tee with the dates on the back.
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  They want the shirt that says "I was there."
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  We sold out of the standard thirty-five-dollar black tee in three days,
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  while those fancy eighty-dollar hoodies just sat in the trailer,
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  taking up space and getting damp.
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  You have to design for the post-show adrenaline rush, not for an online boutique.
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  And speaking of those margins, the contract side is where artists get absolutely
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  slaughtered if they aren't paying attention.
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  The venue merch cuts.
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  In the US, major club venues will routinely slide a clause into the contract
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  demanding fifteen to twenty-five percent of your gross merch sales.
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  Think about that.
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  You bought the blanks, you paid the screen printer, you hauled the boxes,
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  and they want a quarter of the top line just for letting you set up a table.
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  But- but here is the play: under a three-hundred-cap room, you can almost always get
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  that fee waived if you negotiate it upfront.
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  You have to scratch that clause out of the contract before you sign it.
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  You gotta read the fine print, man!
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  If you don't cross that out, you're basically paying the venue's electric bill with
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  your t-shirt sales.
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  It's crazy.
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  Yeah, and it's also about how you manage the risk of that inventory.
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  You can't just drop ten grand on shirts and hope for the best.
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  The smartest indie setups I'm managing right now, they use a hybrid model.
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  They do about thirty-five percent print-on-demand for the online store so they never
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  hold dead stock.
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  Then they do thirty percent bulk-ordered, high-quality tour exclusives for the
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  physical table, and thirty-five percent vinyl.
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  That way, you aren't betting the entire tour's survival on one massive print run.
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  And that vinyl- man, vinyl is a different beast.
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  Fans will buy vinyl even if they don't own a turntable.
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  It's like a- a giant, beautiful physical art piece.
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  We sell our vinyl for forty bucks.
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  It costs us maybe twelve dollars to press, jacket, and shrink-wrap if we do a run of
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  a thousand.
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  That's a massive margin.
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  But you have to be smart about where you drive the traffic when you aren't on the
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  road.
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  Like, Bandcamp Fridays.
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  On those days, Bandcamp waives their revenue share, returning about ninety-three
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  percent of the sale directly to the artist.
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  Compare that to the standard eighty-five percent on regular days,
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  or worse, the tiny fractions of a cent you get from streaming.
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  We did a push last month on a Bandcamp Friday, just selling a limited edition
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  color-way of our latest vinyl, and cleared six grand in twenty-four hours.
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  That paid for our entire van rental for the upcoming fall run.
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  Let's look at the actual unit economics of this, because this is where the business
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  becomes beautiful.
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  A standard, high-quality bulk-screened tee costs you maybe seven to nine dollars to
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  produce if you're ordering five hundred at a time.
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  You sell that at the table for thirty to thirty-five dollars.
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  That is a sixty to seventy-five percent profit margin.
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  Tote bags?
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  You can buy those canvas blanks for two bucks, screen print your logo for fifty
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  cents, and sell them for fifteen dollars.
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  That's over an eighty percent margin.
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  These aren't just souvenirs; these are high-yield financial instruments that fund
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  your independent career.
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  When you own the masters, you own the designs, and you own the direct relationship
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  with the fans at the table, nobody can put a ceiling on your business.
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  That's what I'm talking about.
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  Keep it independent, keep the margins high, and keep that table packed.
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  Good chatting, y'all, let's go get these boxes loaded.