by subpopfan1 » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:00 pm
There's also an aspect of pricing that comes into play that i think a lot of fans are in the dark about.
When you sell merchandise at a concert venue, nine times out of ten that venue takes a percentage of your sales. This practice is absurd on so many levels i don't know where to begin. Basically clubs are more often than not just trying to grab every last possible cent. Can you imagine if a band went to the club and said "we want a percentage of your alcohol sales tonight"? they'd get laughed out of the building! But for some reason, it's acceptable for the clubs to take a cut of the band's merch.
The reason i bring this up is because it is a major factor in deciding what price merch is sold for. Budgets are worked so that you know EXACTLY how much money the band is making on each item sold. That wouldn't be too difficult if the venues weren't all taking a cut and all taking a DIFFERENT cut. i can tell you for a fact that Radio City Music Hall takes 50% (!) of your merch sales. So if you sell your t-shirt for $10, you're only getting $5 out of that...which probably doesn't even cover production, shipping and any of the other different factors present in producing the item.
There's really only two ways to combat this accounting nightmare - 1) pass the cost on to the customer or 2) don't sell any merch at all. So i guess the question is, would you rather have the option to not buy merch if you think it's too expensive or no opportunity to buy merch at all?
(as a sidenote, most venues only take a percentage of "wearables" ie, t-shirts, jackets, etc and not the more esoteric items like Inchophones or Stylophones)
There's also an aspect of pricing that comes into play that i think a lot of fans are in the dark about.
When you sell merchandise at a concert venue, nine times out of ten that venue takes a percentage of your sales. This practice is absurd on so many levels i don't know where to begin. Basically clubs are more often than not just trying to grab every last possible cent. Can you imagine if a band went to the club and said "we want a percentage of your alcohol sales tonight"? they'd get laughed out of the building! But for some reason, it's acceptable for the clubs to take a cut of the band's merch.
The reason i bring this up is because it is a major factor in deciding what price merch is sold for. Budgets are worked so that you know EXACTLY how much money the band is making on each item sold. That wouldn't be too difficult if the venues weren't all taking a cut and all taking a DIFFERENT cut. i can tell you for a fact that Radio City Music Hall takes 50% (!) of your merch sales. So if you sell your t-shirt for $10, you're only getting $5 out of that...which probably doesn't even cover production, shipping and any of the other different factors present in producing the item.
There's really only two ways to combat this accounting nightmare - 1) pass the cost on to the customer or 2) don't sell any merch at all. So i guess the question is, would you rather have the option to not buy merch if you think it's too expensive or no opportunity to buy merch at all?
(as a sidenote, most venues only take a percentage of "wearables" ie, t-shirts, jackets, etc and not the more esoteric items like Inchophones or Stylophones)