Merchandise Design Tips

Video Transcript

"Now when you're trying to sell all this stuff, you want to make sure that people like what they see. A lot of times, I'll be playing, performing at a festival or something and in a festival they're going to be a lot of people there who don't know who you are. They haven't seen your show. They're just going to be walking by in the big merchandise tent and when they see your stuff, if it's got something on that catches their eye they're going to be attracted to it even if they've never seen you because they're in the mood to buy. Think about it, they're walking through the merchandise tent, that means that they are interested in buying something. Make sure it's yours. So when people walk by my table, one of the first things they always say is, "Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha," that's what they say, right. So they point it out because they love this slogan; "I think funky white boy dancing is cool, right. This is our number one seller, it's all, it's gray and white, there's nothing flashy about it, right, it's just a slogan on the thing. All I have on here to say that it came from us is SpokenGroove.com, down at the bottom. That's my little advertising thing so that everybody who sees it likes it. Then I've got this other shirt, "When Legos Learn to Love", that doesn't even have our name on it, but people really want to buy it because they see these cute little Legos with the hearts and stuff on there. It's only two colors, that means that it's cheaper to make right. I've got this other t-shirt over here that says, "I know how to spell Skrickawocka", people always ask me about that. Well you know what I've got to do when they tell me that, I say; "Hey, well it's a, skrickawocka is the sound a tricycle makes when it has rusty pedals. It goes skrickawocka, skrickawocka, skrickawocka, and I wrote something about it. You want to hear it?" And then I perform the piece for them. So it's an intro into making a relationship with them. If you get in to the cd's, I designed all these things. A lot of people point this one out here. "Peter Nevland, Just My Mouth", my solo cd. Some people get a little scared and they go; "Is that really you?" and I go; "Well, yeah it is, check this out, see" and they go "Oh, yeah, i guess it's maybe, that's probably you, okay, cool." And they go for it, I mean they really love the design on this one too. Look, all these things I'm planning out way in advance, going how can I make something that people will want to buy whether they like me or not. So I've got two different ways that they can buy things."