Sam started his career in merch in FMCG, with complicated merch programs, before opening Mercha. He built it on two core principles:

“We say no to a silly amount of requests that come in that the rest of the industry says yes to. One case is a Sydney radio station that wanted 250,000 plastic whistles for a New Year's Eve event on the harbor. We're like, they're just going to end up in the harbor or get dropped on the ground, no thanks.” 

Kayla got to sit with Sam to get his take:

What’s your personal favourite piece of merch you’ve ever received?

My favorite piece of merch that I've ever gotten would be a Blunt umbrella that was given to me by Blunt. It's such great quality and it's an amazing product, but I couldn't necessarily bring myself to spend $130 on an umbrella personally. Getting it was amazing because now I know I have an umbrella for life, and I will fight to the death if someone tried to take it out of my car and not put it back. So, that would be my first one.

And what's the worst piece of merch you've seen other than the 250,000 whistles?

I was about to say, if they went ahead with it, 250,000 whistles at seven cents a hit probably would be the worst piece of merch I've ever seen. The other things are just like a branded plastic poncho — single-use stuff that is destined for the bin. 

We received an inquiry once where they wanted umbrellas for like five bucks, and it's like, you're just not going to get a decent product for $5. Anything where there's a disconnect between the price and product, I think every time that's a crappy piece of merch. 

Unfortunately, in our industry, someone will fill the order.

That's true. So, when it comes to picking merch for a purpose, what kind of innovative reasons have people come to you with? Like, "we're trying to get this outcome, we think merch can help us get there." What are some of the strategies that you see people using merch for?

There's probably three key use cases that we see where people give it deep thought. 

The first one would be onboarding and using an onboarding pack to just really make sure that person has a fantastic first morning in their new role. Humans are pretty primal, so feeling like you're a part of the team with the colors and products, and just making that physical connection to the brand, is always a great way to put people at ease and help them feel a sense of belonging.

The second is a product launch. For a KitKat campaign we did these breakdancing tracksuits inspired by the Adidas Run-D.M.C. style. We had KitKats running down the side of the legs instead of the stripes, a Kit Kat pocket, and there was a drop essentially where people went on and tried to queue to purchase the tracksuits. When you're doing a product launch, it can work really well.

The last one that we're doing a lot more of is for digital businesses like fintechs or any sort of SaaS business where they've got a B2B sales cycle. There are drop-off points in the sales cycle where leads fall off, and oftentimes there's a lull in communication.

People are using merch to re-engage that person to get them through to the next point. We'll send out what we call an ABM pack that will say, "Hey Sam, just checking in to see how the review's going or if we need to schedule another demo. We're really excited about bringing this to life." 

In that case, you just marry the box to your buyer persona. If it's to a CFO, you'll lean towards maybe a Blunt umbrella. If it's to a marketing coordinator or a HR coordinator, you might lean towards a box that's more fun and out-there.

When you're evaluating merch, do you have a checklist in your head of criteria it has to meet for you to consider it “good”?

I think it's different for every pack because I always try and put myself in the receiver's shoes as to whether this is a good value exchange for me. We do research into the products that will work best for different buyer personas. At a fundamental level, we always recommend to buy better, but buy less. Anything that's a crappy product or low quality just gets tossed to the curb pretty quickly.

Tell me more about how much the merch changes between personas and scenarios, and can some merch really be given to (and loved by) anyone?

To a point, you can multi-purpose some things. For an ABM pack, no one wants to walk around being a billboard for another brand. It's either got to be a really quirky product if you want a loud brand on it, or the branding has to be pretty subtle because people just go, "I don't want to wear that or use that because it's got a giant logo on it."

Where do you look for inspiration for merch?

I look at brands that I like to wear outside of merch. 

More and more, we're seeing really good quality retail brands have an option that we can decorate and apply logos to. Bellroy is a good example. I loved Bellroy products before they even started selling into and providing a solution to our space. When they came in, it was awesome because the brand's fantastic, the products are such good quality, and they kind of do the heavy lifting for you. July is similar to that as well.

That's where we get our inspiration. Then you just go to different places around the world. I'm in Hong Kong and China pretty regularly for work, and there are some cool, fashion-forward stores where you go, "oh, that's a really cool tech case or that's an awesome tote bag. Let's see if we can work something similar to that."

Are there any industries where you think that industry in particular has terrible merch and they need to start again? For me, it's musicians. I think most musicians have the ugliest band shirts that you never want to wear. Who do you think does terrible merch?

I think pharmaceutical businesses do really crappy stuff, but I think that's because they can't spend over a certain amount on a product. There's legislation where the gift can't be worth more than $2 or something like that, so it's just all cheap plastic stress balls and plastic junk. I think they did that to themselves because they would give out Rolexes and stuff like that, and conflicts of interest started to arise.

I think the industry that does the worst merch is our industry, to be honest. Merch providers do the worst merch because across the board there is this acceptance of, "yeah, we know it's a cheap plastic product," but instead of guiding the brand on what might be a better use case, they're just comfortable to fill the order. Everyone's been given a crappy, shitty merch product from a business. Very few make the harder choice of trying to educate the brand rather than just going, "yeah, we can sell you a pen for 50 cents." 

Last question, what’s the one piece of merch you really want to make, and you’re just waiting for someone to order it?

We're doing a lot into Singapore at the moment, so I would love to do a fully custom mahjong set. We've pitched pickleball sets a few times to people, but no one's taken them up just yet. But I think a mahjong set would be pretty cool.