Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Merchandise

1. I'm reading The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, and it mentions how there was a huge wave of ridiculous amounts of merchandise when the show first came out. I remember that and wasn't especially surprised by that at the time, but I can't see that happening today. I can't articulate why, I just can't imagine any new TV show, no matter how awesome, successfully selling that much merchandise. Has society as a whole evolved, or is it just because I'm not longer in child world?

2. After Eddie Izzard's gig, there were these guys right outside Massey Hall selling bootleg merch - T-shirts and DVDs for like $5. (Which I thought was rather rude - Eddie himself was right there inside and could have come out at any time!) But I wonder how big the market for that stuff is? For the t-shirts, you'd have to be fan enough to want a tour t-shirt (i.e. they were the big square black ones with the name of the tour and all the cities, not even the cute and humorous Cake or Death and Covered in Bees shirts), but not fan enough to want your money to go into Eddie's pocket (and be okay with it going in some random guy's pocket) even while you're still carrying the endorphin rush from the three-hour show he just gave us.

For the DVDs, the same fan-enough/not-fan-enough balance applies, plus you'd have to be un-savvy enough not to know how to download the shows for free online, but still savvy enough to have gotten tickets for this sold-out barely-advertised show (and to have enjoyed the show you just finished watching enough that you want DVDs of more so immediately that you can't wait until you get home and can google the thing.)

From what I know of the fandom, that seems like a very narrow slice of the market. I wonder if these guys picked Eddie specifically (and, if so, why), or if they do this for every single show that comes into town? I wonder what their margins are like? In my experience, Eddie fans not only tend to be savvy, but also are rather inclined to care about Eddie personally, to the extent that people would think about whether they're taking money out of Eddie's pocket by buying bootleg merch. (That's not to say no one would ever bootleg, but thought would at least go into it.) I wonder how their margins on Eddie merch compare with their margins on other merch?

3 comments:

laura k said...

"Has society as a whole evolved, or is it just because I'm not longer in child world?"

I think the latter. Not that most things reach Simpsons proportion, but (eg) I had to take a GO bus home shortly after a Jonas Bros show had let out (something you must avoid at all costs!) and the kiddies were covered in merchandise.

"I wonder if these guys picked Eddie specifically (and, if so, why), or if they do this for every single show that comes into town?"

Every show, I believe.

impudent strumpet said...

If they do do every single show, I'm getting increasingly curious about what the margins are like. They have to constantly monitor which shows are coming in and make new bootleg merch. I can't imagine that they'd sell much more than 20 items per show (I didn't see them sell any, and we were hanging around outside for a while), which would mean they're grossing no more than $100 a day...it doesn't make sense.

laura k said...

I've wondered about this too.

I should qualify, they probably don't come out for every single show. I saw a couple of serious jazz shows at Massey Hall and didn't see any boots. So do they know their audience that well? Know that jazz people already know where to get high quality recordings and will never buy crap on the street? Or know that the demographic was older? Dunno.