Using Threadless To Source Band Merch Ideas

Posted on 20 January 2010 by gregrollett

Last week we talked about Musician Outsourcing and how you can use freelancers and virtual assistants to delegate tasks. One of the big ones for musicians is merch design.

In today’s music marketing video, I wanted to share a tip to finding some of the best freelance t-shirt designers on the planet. This is a real simple trick and can produce some amazing collaborative results. The source of the ideas is t-shirt and crowdsourcing community Threadless. Check the video to see how to utilize it for your band merch designs.

Threadless is a great community for unique t-shirt designs. In your new marketing plan for 2010, you need to create a USP (unique selling proposition). What makes you stand out? Does a t-shirt with your logo on it do your music and the culture behind your music much justice? Probably not.

Look for designs that match your:

  • Album feel
  • Album colors
  • Culture
  • Fan characteristics
  • Style of your fans
  • Designer who has a similar vision
  • Something that grabs attention

After digging through the Threadless community be sure to contact the designers and see how you can create a relationship with them. Some things to look for are upfront design costs, possible partnerships, cross-promotion and marketing, finding local designers to have a merch table at your shows or lock them into a long term partnership (design our next 10 shirts, etc).

The next step in the New Music Economy system would be to use a site like Audiolife to handle t-shirt printing and drop shipping to your fans is a great way to go. Here is why:

When testing out new designers you want to see how the shirts resonate with your fans. Why not get them into your fans hands at cost without having to order 100, 200, 500 of these shirts and only sell 20. Use Audiolife to test the new designs, color patterns and price points. Then go and buy a ton of them for a tour.

What do you think of using a site like Threadless to source your band merch designs? Have you tried an approach like this? What were the results? Let’s talk in the comments.

-Greg Rollett