What occurs when merch stops being an afterthought and turns into an energetic revenue-generator? Merch Cat says its elevated concentrate on know-how and analytics can increase artist merch income by as a lot as 20%, whereas strategically crafting a extra dependable course of for stock administration, gross sales monitoring, and decision-making.
For artists and managers, merchandise usually takes a backseat to music creation, releases, and touring. As a end result, merch presents itself as a chaotic afterthought — ridden with routine disruptions of procurement, high quality checks, stock points, knowledge monitoring, and achievement challenges.
Vanessa Ferrer, founding father of Merch Cat, lately sat down with DMN to debate how a complicated system of stock administration and monitoring permits artists to considerably develop their merch income stream. In a bid to make sure merch represents a refined and dependable income class, Merch Cat has monumentally expanded its concentrate on tech to amplify merch processes for artists, managers, and labels.
“It’s all about merch strategy,” says Ferrer whereas including that the business wants to regulate its strategy to merchandise and ‘place merchandise strategy at the forefront since merch is a lucrative business component.’
The firm dedicates complete consideration to merch metrics administration ‘to optimize value for artists.’ “It’s an intuitive process and streamlined workflow, with tech that does the work behind the scenes to ensure an optimized data output consisting of usable reports and analytics,” says Ferrer. Just lately, Merch Cat joined forces with DMN to additional develop its merch footprint.
Merch Cat’s continuously-expanding roster contains artists and bands like The Marshall Tucker Band, George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic, Noel and Ben Haggard, Jesse Dayton, Struggle Jennings, Britnee Kellogg, and others. Also on board are business advisors Ted Cohen (TAG Strategic), Rich Stumpf (Hawkeye Music Group), and Lou Plaia (Sentric Music) — a trio that Ferrer says ‘aims to help expand the client base, extend industry reach, and consult on business strategy.’
Ferrer believes streamlining merchandising processes with know-how can generate usable insights from gross sales knowledge. With user-friendly tech geared toward tackling stock administration and metrics, Merch Cat is ‘helping change the game for live show merch sales, where a vast majority of sales happen.’
With a concentrate on that side, Merch Cat’s Music Merch Manager App presents an upgraded analytics dashboard with ‘Merch Metrics’ — filled with important insights to allow artists and their groups to simply make merch selections.
The app locations your entire merch business on one cell system, permitting artists to shortly and simply enter stock, import exhibits from Bandsintown, observe gross sales and earnings at a look, mechanically generate settlement studies with the venues’ music and merch splits, and extra. Merch Cat can be built-in with Square as its fee processor, making it a seamless transition for pre-existing accounts.
Ferrer explains that artists achieve a whole snapshot of important data corresponding to what sizes, types, and portions followers are buying. It additionally exhibits which objects generated the very best gross sales. “It keeps all the data centralized, and the analytics in one place.”
This knowledge is core to optimizing income, Ferrer believes, because it ‘further expands your merch strategy, offers central inventory, sales tracking, and analytics.’
On the opposite hand, Merch Cat’s FAN app is the artists’ digital storefront, which Ferrer says ‘allows fans to buy merchandise before, during, or after the show.’
She provides, “Fans receive a code for their purchase and can pick it up at the table. Or they can choose to have it shipped to their home.”
With an ‘artist-friendly interface,’ Merch Cat is deepening the connection between artists, their merch, and followers. Apart from the combination of the online retailer through a widget, the app has additionally added a Spotify participant to the artist’s profile.
To make sure that artists can supply merchandise that they’re proud to place their identify on, Merch Cat additionally presents merchandise procurement as a value-added service, guaranteeing high quality merch at artist-friendly costs.
Ferrer says this may enable artists to earn increased revenues with extra aggressive margins — and result in happier followers.
New York-based rock band Hollis Brown can testify to that. On their summer time tour, following a ‘merch strategy’ tie-up with Merch Cat, the band witnessed a 20% enhance in merch gross sales. According to Hollis Brown’s administration firm, ‘Merch Cat helped strategize to revamp the merch line,’ and supplied accurately-tracked data on stock ranges that optimized organization and income.
Other musicians and bands have additionally revealed the numerous methods through which Merch Cat has helped them obtain their merch objectives. Via Merch Cat’s Merch Metrics, Hannah Wicklund’s vinyl and CDs turned top-sellers at dwell exhibits. Melissa Menago discovered a method to promote merch earlier than her report launch present — additionally throughout the present and after it — through Merch Cat Fan. Rock band Broke City attribute their ‘biggest merch night ever’ to Merch Cat streamlining the merch desk course of. And steel and classical fusion band The Breathing Process say Merch Cat has been a ‘game changer,’ enabling them to resolve their merch stock issues.
So what precisely does Merch Cat carry to the desk that allows artists to have a profitable merch business? Ferrer believes that aside from its know-how, it’s the ‘human aspect’ and ‘personalization’ that differentiates Merch Cat from its rivals.
“Merch Cat brings the whole gamut, Ferrer relayed. “We’ll develop your merch strategy, get you the merchandise at a targeted price point, put it on Merch Cat, use Merch Cat to sell, and then look at analyses and insights to optimize the strategy even further.”
Putting collectively an efficient ‘merch mix’ Ferrer says, requires a concentrate on ‘understanding your fans, maximizing your profits, and reducing waste.’
“With a robust strategy backed by data, you ensure you capitalize on every opportunity of a sale. Our technology and insights bring you the information you need so you don’t lose sales because your fans arrived at the table and left because they had to wait too long, or you don’t have the style or size they want.”
According to Ferrer, one in all Merch Cat’s most outstanding upsides is that it doesn’t require days of set-up time — because of a user-friendly workflow and interface.
“If you know your merch inventory, you can use Merch Cat after you’ve arrived at the venue,” explains Ferrer, including, “You can do it all on a mobile device — in a pinch.”
When artists embrace a extra refined system spanning stock buy, real-time studies, and fee monitoring, Merch Cat guarantees they’ll ‘merch better, increase profits, make their fans happier, and spend more time doing what they love.’
