Lesson 3: Why you should hire a merch girl instead of a friend.
One of the most significant details that most bands seem to skip over is who is selling their merch. This is someone you are not only entrusting with your money and your inventory, but someone who you trust will do the job to the best of their abilities. Sure, in most cases whichever friend or girlfriend ends up doing it will work as hard as they can and are trustworthy, but is that all that matters?
You wouldn’t trust a friend who didn’t know anything about Pro-tools to record your album, you wouldn’t trust a record label without any artists on its roster to put out your album, so why would you enlist the help of someone who is unprofessional and knows nothing about merchandising to sell your merch? It seems like an easy way to save money, but in reality you could be using something as minute as that to give off an air of professionalism.
When a record executive or prospective manager is at a show scoping out new bands there are several things that are always on their checklist. How well does the band interact with the audience? How is the audience receiving the music? Do the performers have “star quality”? And what does their merch table look like?
Merch is a clear indication as to whether or not a band takes their music seriously and wants to pursue it professionally. If there are a couple of shirts strewn across the table, printed badly and nobody is at the table ready to sell some to prospective buyers it says that you aren’t thinking the whole “professional band” thing through. Something as simple as hiring a merch person promotes the notion that as a band you are willing to commit to being professional and taking major steps toward forwarding your career.
A merch person should be eloquent, know as much as they can about the band that they are working for, be helpful with fans and excited about the music. If you hire someone who is apathetic about these things, generally your sales will be lackluster, too. Fans want to know about the band, they want to ask questions and have an intimate band experience. Sometimes they aren’t able to get that at a show and often they are too shy to directly talk to a member of the band. This attention is often redirected toward the merch person, who, depending on their connection with the band and the type of person that they are, will either be helpful and friendly or shrug off the fans’ interest. Even the minutest details about a band or their music can make someone who was kind of a fan into a die-hard fan. It is an opportunity for fans to learn more about the bands that they see and potentially even buy more things than they would have otherwise.
Merch people need to be able to handle a rush of situations coming at them at once. When a band begins to make their mark and fans begin to line up at the merch table, there is often very little way of organizing the chaos. Being able to handle that type of situation with a calm demeanor and a smile is more difficult than it would seem. Security and Attention are of the utmost importance.
So please, before you ask your buddy to sell your merch for free, please consider hiring a professional.
Your Homework: Think about concerts that you have been to in the past where a) you spent time at the merch booth and felt connected with the band, and b) you felt brushed off or ignored by the merch person and didn’t end up buying any merch at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment