Merchandise is important for both fans and brands. For fans, merchandise allows them to publicly display their support for an artist and feel like they are part of the artist's history. For brands, effective merchandising through proper display and marketing can significantly increase sales and give customers a memorable shopping experience, making them more likely to purchase exclusive merchandise and boosting brand revenue in the long run. However, small brands need to find the right platforms to sell merchandise in order to benefit from existing customer bases without incurring costs that exceed potential profits. Partnering with established retailers is one way for small brands to merchandise successfully.

1. Importance of Merchandise
By Chris Palmer

2. What is merchandise?
• Merchandises definition is to promote the sale of goods, especially by
their presentation in retail outlets.

3. Why this is important: Fans
• Merchandise is important as it allows the consumer to show they are
a part of the brand. The merchandise allows the fans to have a item
of clothing which visually shows that they enjoy the artist. This also
can be seen to be important as it shows a significant part of the
artists career as merchandise is usually brought out when an event or
new material is brought out. This allows the consumer to be apart of
the history of the artist which would make the consumer feel wanted
and if we look at the business model of Maslow this would create
loyalty towards the brand.

4. Why this is important: Brand
• Effective merchandising has a significant positive impact on sales.
Pricing, proper product display, packaging, promotional marketing
and sales signs can shoot sales upwards and give the customers a
memorable shopping experience. Customers are more likely to buy
the merchandise as it can be seen as exclusive therefore the revenue
of our brand would increase which results in better quality products
for the consumer and better financial benefits for us in the future.

5. Business opportunity's
• Obviously as a small brand we do not have a large scale in order to
sell our merchandise on. This would pose a threat as the costs could
be higher than the profit made which in turn would have a negative
impact on cash flow of our brand. This then shows the importance of
merchandise as it makes us find a platform in which to sell our stuff
on which then creates links between us and businesses which
therefore allows us to put our merchandise on a platform which
already has a mass following and if all goes well it would allow us to
put our later merchandise on the same website. This Can be seen
with the purpose merchandise and Selfridges.