Hi Merchies,

Got a boring company? Good for you, it probably means you actually generate revenue, aren’t setting money on fire every month and are running a legitimate business!

It also means that you have the chance to make some merch. Some sweet sweet merch, that non-customers might enjoy, even if in a semi-ironic kinda way. (Gaz note: yeah I wore an employee shirt by the gas station ampm in my teens. It was the fashion at the time, fight me)

Today we’re profiling a couple of groups that do some very boring things and produce some merch/run some merch stores that showcases a little more thinking outside the box.

And if you think your customers/audience won’t wear your boring brand’s merch, guess the next best question would be: “did you even ask them?”

Gaz & Kayla

Bit of DRIP DROP lore for you, Moly’s posts on Instagram came upon my feed and were a huge influence on me asking Gaz to start this newsletter with me because my reaction was “why are chemical manufacturing brands doing such cool merch?”

Then I was like, maybe it’s just America? So I asked my Australian friend living in the UK with a PhD, working in academia, attending international science conferences what the merch was like and his response was along the lines of, “science merch is so good, they splash out for the good stuff, I LOVE IT.”

Moly is a chemistry PhD student who decided to just start emailing brands related to her field of study and straight up asking them for merch. She’s gotten a very fun range of items which definitely display just how good merch can be, no matter what your company or industry is.

Here are some standouts:

Really the tip here is just do anything? Plushie llamas, functional work stuff, branded items you just put your logo on. Don’t overthink it.

A few might wonder how we decide on what we each write about in DRIP DROP each week. Goes something like this usually, in our weekly WIP:

Q: What you writin’ about?
A: Dunno. What you writin’ about?
A: Dunno I guess. Actually, I was <doing activity> and saw <signal> and…

Maybe a little facetious. We’re marketers always thinking about content and brand building etc. But the point is that Kayla said she was writing about a fairly boring brand’s merch profile, so I took note and said “touché” and off I went curatin’

Decided to go in a couple of directions here. Some a little more local (Australia. VERY Australian). And some sourced from the rabbithole and some sourced from where you’d least expect (a saved link, to do *something* with some day)

Yeah, so I’ve been in and around the venture capital space here in Aus/NZ for a while now, so I do love my brands and I do love my merch but I do also enjoy knowing about the funds and who/what they invest in. Plenty of them in Aus are fine I guess, but I do enjoy keeping tabs on those who have a unique difference.

Been keeping an eye on this group Slow Ventures. Like their vibe. The strapline says “Seed capital to accelerate creator entrepreneurs” but they essentially will invest in plenty of fairly boring solutions (albeit still intending to grow to be massive companies) but they will invest pretty patient capital into these ventures (aka they’re not fiends needing companies to grow at all costs/probably flame out)

Anyhoo. Great sense of humour. And a great merch shopfront. Haven’t yet landed on whether any of it is in anyway legit purchasable or complete parody. But, made me chuckle, and that’s what we’re all here to do, right?

Down the rabbithole, and I was keen to see who in the Slow Ventures portfolio had done some great merch! A few I didn’t care much to profile, but I uncovered this sweet capsule from 2020 by Casper, a sleep company, and a very decent sized one at that.

Their drop in 2020 titled ‘Welcome to the Casper Rest Stop’ contains a whole bunch of really thoughtful, sleep-inspired merch, and it’s worth just seeing what eventuates from a stunt exercise so to speak. It’s really very good!

All this venture capital deep divin’ had me needing a bit of a return to the grassroots, and who better to lean into than motherfahking Jim of Jim’s Mowing and Jim’s Group fame.

For those who didn’t grow up in Australian suburbia. Jim mowed lawns, then started a franchise of that, then more franchises, and now he’s a national treasure and now they make merch.

We’re talking merch for Jim’s Antennas, Jim’s Mowing, Jim’s Cleaning, special drops for Movember…we’ve got Jim’s Monopoly for christs sake, so whilst I can appreciate those who feel this is more cash-grab and too much, I actually rate it, as there is some decent nostalgia value here that plenty who purchase can show off to those in their life and see the nostalgia rise in their eyes.

Boring, but not booooring. Make something out of nothing, lean into nostalgia, have fun with it, try it, try something, do something, do anything, try a merch drop, raise money for charity if you want to, but just lean into it because gonna gonna gonna means never never never in reality.

But, if you must, tether to the ‘thing’ you do. Find out if there is an international day for that on Days of the Year (same tip as a past issue). Create a campaign around it, if its intended as a stunt. Send the merch to customers, ask them if they want it. Your brand might be boring. Doesn’t mean you have to be.

Check out the DRIP DROP Sublime for more merch inspo