The Backpack: Issue #12

All our best, monthly news in one branded pack.

Hey, friends! Welcome to our newly revised (monthly) newsletter, “The Backpack” bringing monthly news that features trends in merch, top articles, podcast episodes, and global news impacting merch life. Miss an article or an episode? We’ll highlight the best of, right here, each month!

Friday, May 5

• Top Merch News: What Top Merch CEO’s Think

• Vibe Check: FastCo, Still Takin’ Swings at Swag

• Trends: Merchella!

• Can't miss content: Big brands, Merch, & Love

• Backpack Read-Along: An Exclusive Seth Godin Book Drop!

New Look, Who Dis?

Who got a new lewk? Yours truly. Ksenia, Kate, and Lucia styled a whole new outfit for the commonsku blog just in time for our Met Gala red carpet appearance making it easier to nav and find tips you need to help you run your biz. Example? Use search to deep dive into our archives about compensation or culture. Hop on over to the community page and bookmark that baby now (if you’re the bookmarking kind) – let us know what you think!

What are Top Distributor CEO’s thinking?

As part of our worldwide customer listening tour, commonsku held its first CEO Summit at the beautiful Bisha Hotel in downtown Toronto with over 20 top executives from some of the largest distributorships in the industry gathering to connect and share best practices on topics ranging from AI to sales incentives and compensation, HR and culture, and more. What are they thinking? Here are 16 inspiring ideas dropped and more than a few bold trends about driving innovation from some of the most progressive distribs in the biz! To busy to read? Listen to the article here!

FastCo Still Takin’ Swings at Swag

This time from an op-ed by a brand consultant who (at least) does give it up for an effective use of swag, but still, does FastCo got swag on an annual hit list in their content calendar? Maybe they can shift their sights to the consumer driving the demand. After all, we’re not the ones who came up with the idea for a bed party.

“The Official Succession Merch Sucks”

Strong words from The Cut. Stronger words from High Snobiety: “HBO’s Official Succession Merch Tells Quiet Luxury to F*%k Off!”. The scuttle: HBO dropped new Succession swag (I mean, we linked to the Succession shop waaaay back in March, so, I dunno know why the internet just claimed it dropped). Anyhoo, fans are up in arms over the sloppy logo slaps and uncreative merch: “We need a new team on swag. Y’all are not serious people.” Ouch. But Prestige TV Finance Bro Merch is booming and besides, that Waystar Royco Flight jacket in the last episode? Designed by Jeremy Strong himself. BTW: Merch makes an appearance in almost every episode, even if it’s a part of the whole market-speak love language thing.

Inspo Alert: Merchella

How are the biggest music fests stylin’ merch? Both Stagecoach and Coachella just concluded with over 200,000 combined fans baking in Cali heat. The biggest hitmaker?  Merch. (What’dya think we’d say?) For some design inspo, check out both the Stagecoach and Coachella stages (a la shops) to see what trends are crushin’ it. BTW: If those two shops look oddly similar, both are produced by Goldenvoice (parent company of both fests) and the merch by Top Drawer. And we’re srszly thinking of hosting Merchella, which may or may not feature Frank Ocean doing nothin’ but showing up in a sick corset hoodie lip sync’n to Boygenius.

Bring on Corporate Pink?

Yeah, we know: blue, black, white, and gray will forever be the deep-stock safe bets in corporate couture, but get ready to stock up on pink cause the trend is HOT. The new Barbie movie set to release will be the second wave of pink trend setting because “The return of Barbiecore rose in popularity in the fashion industry first. Fashion runways and red carpets have had an influx of hot pink” (Stylecaster). For pink inspo, check out Mattel’s Barbiecore merch here.

Whoa, AI’s Gettin’ Merchy. 

Welp, here it comes. AI platforms can now build you a brand identity in minutes (Looka) and even allow you to generate AI art to print on mugs, phone cases, t-shirts, and more, all on-demand (Baked). Ready to really lose your human mind? Futurepedia is the largest AI Tools Directory and hosts over 2,000 tools with dozens added daily. We’ll be swimming in bots by year-end. But don’t worry backpackers, we’re scoutin’ doom patrol for the merch world and the good news? Whether racing or golf, you just can’t replace a bespoke, tactile, human-to-human merch experience.

Pssst! [Librarian voice], we got a secret to share: We have another Seth Godin exclusive for ya. His Sethness joined our very own Mark Graham and Bobby Lehew this week and recorded a special skucast episode to be released on May 30, 2023. Subscribe wherever you get your casts and for an easy jump to your fave listening platform, hop over to our new skucast page! 

🍃 How an effective rebrand led to organizational harmony at chameleon like. 

🌎 Projects in Europe? The UK? Steven Ward’s your guy! 

👊 commonsku customer Tiana Gamble was honored as the 2023 SmallBiz Editor’s Choice Award winner, check out Tiana’s story about “breaking down barriers” here.

😱 Cool trend: Using merch for exclusive incentives that drive customer loyalty love. Everyone from Russel Stover to Panera Bread to Google, gettin’ in on it!