Your Product (+ Tshirts, Lunchboxes, pens...)

[DanMarshall]

Has anyone got any experience with clothing/ merchandise?

There are a few places (like cafe press) where I can send a logo for Tshirts/ Hoodies etc and then just mark up their prices. Seems it doesn't cost me a penny, so is probably worthwhile doing.

Gibbage is a relatively strong IP, and I could easily do some quite funky designs with it. Is it worth my time? Anyone tried this? Seems most gaming sites sell clothes these days... any Indies doing it?

d

[terin]

Most places do it more to help promote their product, offering the clothing at little or no profit. The reason is the volume on shirts is going to be low even for a hit game, but some shirt sales potentially bring in tons of word of mouth traffic as people discuss what the hell that thing on their t-shirt is.

-Joe

[Fost]

Cafepress is cheap to run (or free if you use a limited account) , but to get some sales you need to make sure you promote it a little on your site.

I wouldn't look at it as an additional income though:

Markup (using cafe press at least) is never going to be much.
Cafepress prices are pretty high, postage especially outside the US, which is going to put a lot of people off.
You are only ever going to get about 1% of the people who have bought your game (that's about what we get anyway), buying merchandise.


We look at it as a pure marketing excercise - the more people who have your mousemat, the more people who are doing free advertising for you, so you might aswell sell them at cost. We make no profit from them.

The one way you can make merchandise work is by creating a completely free game - then you'll be able to have a far larger user base you can sell your items to.


Currently I'm arranging for a 12" plush toy of our Mr. Robot characters, where a big robot will be carrying the little one attached by velcro (like in this image: http://www.moonpod.com/board/images/misc/Hitching-A-Ride.jpg). Plush toys are much easier to get made than plastic figures. Selling this at cost from our own site means it should be cheap enough for people to get them. Although truth be told, I just want to do it because it's cool :o

[digriz]

It's worth using cafepress for the US & Cananda. If you want to cover europe take a look at spreadshirt.co.uk


I found that the cost of shipping t-shirts to the UK and Europe from CafePress can cost almost as much as the t-shirt.

There have been other threads on indiegamer discussing the general idea of merchandising and anyone who has tried it realised it was pretty much a waste of time....but it costs nothing to set up the cafepress and spreadshirt accounts apart from your time.

So if you want a gibbage shirt for yourself, it's worth doing? :D

Do i get a free shirt for hosting the demo for a month ;)

[EDIT] I guess myself and fost posted at the same time.