How to Sell Merchandise at a Rock Show

Video Transcript

Hi, this is David Jackel on behalf of Expert Village, and I'm here to talk to you about planning merchandise sales when you're booking a show at a rock club. Now, planning merchandise is something that people often look over until the last minute, because you think, "Well, I'm just going to take our merchandise with us, we'll set up our CDs and t-shirts in a corner and we'll sell it after the show." But, it's not always that easy. First of all, larger clubs oftentimes won't just let you set up like that, because they'll have specific areas designated for selling merchandise, and they're going to want their own staff selling it, and they're going to want a cut of your money, or they want you to have to hire their people to sell the merchandise. So, that's something you're going to want to find out about in advance. You're going to want to talk to the person who's booking the show and say, "What do you guys do for merchandise? Is there someone who sells it, or, better yet, is there a place where we can sell it ourselves?" Because, that way you don't have to deal with it. You're going to want to find out if the club has a table where you can sell the merchandise, if they allow you to ell the merchandise, because some clubs can be very pushy about business deals going on in the club. Certain larger clubs may ask for a percentage, a cut of whatever you make from your merchandise sales, because they may think, "Well, we're providing the store for you." If that's the case, maybe you can use that as a bargaining chip and say, "Well, we'll give you a cut of our merchandise sales if you guys can give us a better guarantee at the door." And, usually clubs are willing to work with you on stuff like that. But generally speaking, you're probably better off not having someone from the club sell your stuff, because, in most cases, this stuff works on a cash basis and cash can disappear very quickly. So, you don't want someone that you don't know handling your money and handling your merchandise. It's better if you do that stuff yourself, and find out if you can do that when you talk to the booking agent.

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