The Backpack: Issue #20

Hey, friends! Welcome to our newly revised (monthly) newsletter, “The Backpack” bringing monthly news that features trends in merch, top articles, podcast episodes, and global news impacting merch life. Miss an article or an episode? We’ll highlight the best of, right here, each month!

Commission Models & Profitability

When the 50/50 commission split was created (at least forty years ago), the sales process consisted of salespeople selling out of catalogs, and the marketing support consisted of flyers, business cards, and some self-promo, there was no technology and the “support” for a salesperson was simple and the expense low. Back then, there were no ERPs, CRMs, shops, artwork programs, email programs. There were no websites, online product search tools, social media, or digital ad spending. Yet ye olde 50/50 split, the industry’s traditional compensation model, hardly changed. If you’re still stuck in 50/50 mode and want to consider an upgrade, check out our recently updated post, Why the 50/50 Split Needs an Overhaul.

skucast + Promo UPFront Crossover

Everyone’s favorite weekly duo Kirby Hasseman and Bill Petrie, swung by the skucast studios (err, Zoom) for a chat about Industry Trends Driving Innovation Now, and Mark Graham and Bobby Lehew dropped by the Promo UPFront studios to talk about everything from the moral and spiritual import of merch to musical instruments. Thanks, Kirby and Bill for letting us crash your show, hope we didn't break anything!

The Astonishing Growth of Delegate CX

Delegate CX, known as DCX, grew from 20 employees to 1500 employees in two years. A trajectory that amazes even DCX’s founder and CEO, Craig Dunlap. DCX is an outsourcing agency that helps US businesses in the promo industry hire talent through their outsourced talent pool in the Philippines. We sat down with CEO Craig Dunlap to talk about this astonishing growth, their new e-commerce academy, and the incredible cultural exchange happening between American and Filipino employees, plus, the new DCX + commonsku collab!

Kodiak Merch Raises $70k with the Help of Zac Efron

You know Kodiak, right? The creators behind your late Saturday morning flapjack and waffle-thon, the pancake pros with the growlin’ grizzly bear as a logo? Well, turns out the griddlecake team is super passionate about real-life grizzlies and they teamed up with Zac Efron to create a limited edition merch collection in support of Vital Ground, a land trust that conserves and connects habitat for grizzly bears and other wildlife. How effective was it? The community raised $70,000 from all KIW (Keep it Wild) gear sales in support of Vital Ground. Check out the hilarious retro 70s-style vid they created with Zac to boost their merch initiative. Kodiak gets our honorary backpacker nod for their awesome merch initiative. Now, let’s all hit that gym floor to dance and sing in unison to make Zac proud: “We’re all in this together, once we know, that we are, we’re all stars…”

Is Your Public Library Merch This Cool?

The Brooklyn Public Library, a.k.a., Bklyn Public Library, has a rad brand strategy. For one, the team behind the famous “Books Unbanned” program at Bkln won librarian of the year (didn’t know there was such a thing, but how cool is that?), plus, the folks at the Bkln are constantly pushing boundaries. Example? Bklyn Library hosted Jay-Z’s exhibit The Book of Hov as a tribute to the Brooklyn-born artist and to help commemorate Jay-Z and 50 years of hip-hop, they released 13 limited-edition library cards featuring artwork from Jay-Z albums, resulting in 14,000 new library accounts. 14,000! Cool merch campaign, makes us Crazy in Love with Bklyn!

Have we Reached Peak Collab?

That’s what The Atlantic suggests with their not-so-subtle outcry, Make the Collabs Stop. Author Amanda Mull makes some great points in a fair and balanced article, to wit: “there are good collabs and bad collabs … the bad collabs … are more like consumer-brand Mad Libs.” Mull calls the collab a “ubiquitous marketing tactic (and frequent aesthetic boondoggle).” She argues that judging a brand collab on its paired merit doesn’t matter since the primary objective is getting attention. “Whether the attention is positive or negative scarcely matters. The brands involved have set up shop in a corner of your brain, even if for just a few comments, and that’s all they wanted to do in the first place.” But who’s to judge? After all, these Cheetos macramé sneakers are pretty rad, no? And TBR, we srsly love this cold Weeknd + Blue Bottle merch collab. What say you, backpacker? Are merch collabs running dry?

Merch as the New Social Signifier?

What’s on the front page of Trump’s official campaign merch site? You guessed it. Moments after the picture surfaced, the Trump campaign was high on the merch train, just like every Etsy entrepreneur with a heat-o-matic press. But for the merch pro, here’s where it hits different: It’s not just us noticing the phenomenon of merch as a critical part of a campaign strategy this year. The New York Times wrote about “The Secrets of Debate Swag” and what we want to point out are the one-liners that really bring it home about the effectiveness of merch:

• “People like the tangible sense of participating in a campaign.”

• “If someone just asks if you want to donate, you might say no … but if you can get a T-shirt?”

• “It’s one of the biggest changes over the last 20 years.”

Backpack take-away? At one time, merch was simply proof you were there at the Rolling Stones concert, at the Taylor Swift mega concert, etc. Now? Merch is a social signifier, perhaps more vital to our cultural conversations than even we realize. Lots to unpack there, backpackers, but we’ll keep an eye out! And BTW, it’s not just the U.S., New Zealand’s politicos got a lively merch game too!

A Few Short But Important Lessons via TikTok

• Promo pros: Do not be the CVS receipt of packaging with your merch kits.

• Also, promo pros: Advise your clients to do better than this for their employee appreciation (but it’s really sweet how that story turned out). Kevin Ford is our new hero. Next time we’re grumbly, we’ll just watch Kevin unpack his employee gift and let him teach us a thing or two about gratitude.

skuconX is Live!

skucon, the conference that inspired a new generation of innovators, explorers, and dreamers in the branded merch industry, is back! It’s a team-electrifying experience where you can come together to be inspired, challenged, and pushed to dream bigger and reach higher. skuconX marks the 10th time the industry’s most innovative thinkers will gather together to connect, learn, and re-ignite alongside like-minded pros! (Read skucon's origin story here!) Join Joey Coleman (author of Never Lose a Customer Again) and a few of your closest merch friends as we celebrate our 10th journey together in the only way we know how: by imagining a bolder tomorrow! skucon always sells out quickly so grab your team tickets now! 

📣 Social: LinkedIn is cool now.

🐶 Drake drops new merch ahead of his new album. Just for all the dogs.

♻️ YETI’s environmental mic drop

🚗 Road trip merch: Take the Bangtan boys on the road with you.

☕ Cole Hauser Yellowstone’s Rip Wheeler has a new coffee company and some rad merch to boot.

Customize to Strategize! 

A solid sales strategy relies on crystalizing a clear vision and executing a solid plan, but first, your strategy relies on knowing your numbers and thankfully, we’ve made that a lot simpler with custom sales reports!