The Backpack: Issue #27

All our best, monthly news in one branded pack.

Friday, December 15

• Trends: Pantone’s Peach Fuzz (Color of the Year)

• Top Merch News: Year-End commonsku Recap!

• IYKYK: ACH Payments with Stripe are here!

• Vibe Check: Heinz is Serious About Protecting Their Brand Color

• Can't miss content: Pinterest’s Annual Trend Report

Market Leaders Lead with Merch (Hello, Frank Ocean)

Once upon a time, musicians relegated their merch to the back table only, but more and more musicians are using merch as a press release, to build pre-album release hype. Case in point? The ever-elusive Frank Ocean. No one knows what he’s up to, but he just dropped a brilliant merchandise collection in anticipation of what? A new album? Perhaps. No one knows. But these jacquard soccer shorts are rad and also, a little trend insight for merch. Note: The music industry’s love of merch is not just about marketing, it’s also about survival.

Pantone’s Color of the Year: Peach Fuzz

Pantone’s annual color drop is one of the most exclusive announcements of the year for anyone in the merch business because it’s a signal of things to come. Dropping the soft and genteel color “peach fuzz,” Pantone Exec-Director Leatrice Eiseman said, “In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless.” Want some merch inspo? Check out Pantone’s color of the year merch and if you want to know what happens behind the scenes, check out how they decide each year’s color, here!

What’s Trending in T-Shirt Design? Back to Boho

Kittl is a design program (think: Canva) that has a pretty rad handle on what’s trending in t-shirt designs, and one prediction? The return of Boho. The folks at Kittl break it down from colors to fonts and more here. They also throw out more trends that will be driving 2024 designs. Our fave? Kitschy retro. Or maybe Pixel Art. It’s a good rabbit hole to dive into next time you need some design inspo for your client’s merch!

Year-End Review Reveal: Over $1.8 Billion in Distributor Network Volume

Each year, we release a year-end review that celebrates the network growth and platform achievements we’ve worked hard to create for you, our customers! Here’s just a glimpse: E-Commerce Shops growth hit an all-time high with a 75% increase in Shops adoption, and the total number of sales projects created in the commonsku platform swelled to a 23% increase over the previous year! Want to read more? Check out the entire recap here!

Solving the "Your Order Is on Hold" Nightmare

PCNA handles over a hundred thousand orders in a quarter. Over a hundred thousand in one quarter. It’s an astounding volume. Especially when you consider the complexity of an average order in our industry. As we all know, everything in our industry is variable and it’s all done under fiercely tight deadlines. Given the complexity, if this industry has one major flaw, it’s being trapped in old ways of thinking about processes that we’ve come to accept as normal. But commonsku + PCNA are changing this! 

How to "Sell the Way You Buy" with David Priemer

While a Vice President at Salesforce, David Priemer had an epiphany during one of the company’s high-pressure selling periods: the sales tactics they were using were not working on him. Yes, the numbers still showed results, but through brute force rather than elegance and efficiency. David also discovered his teams were spending far more time on leads that did not convert to sales than on those that did. His company―and his entire profession―was acting with more than enough effort and hustle, but without enough awareness and empathy. They were not selling the way people buy, which is how he came up with his book: Sell the Way You Buy. Listen to our chat on the skucast with author David Priemer here!

commonsku connects your team, allows you to build shops in a snap, collab with suppliers, and get things done faster, better, and with more sanity. Here are your weekly platform hacks and helpful hints. If you know, you know.

ACH Payments with Stripe are here!

We're thrilled to announce that teams using our Stripe integration can now take payment from their clients via ACH on commonsku! What's that mean? ACH payments provide a low-fee live payment option for your team, allowing you to process payments on commonsku without paying any transactional fees to a credit card company. Got your back, backpackers!

Over 750 distributors trust commonsku and we would 😍 to talk to you; check it out, and let's have a chat at www.commonsku.com!

Virgin Atlantic's Lifestyle Collection: High Flyin'

Virgin Airlines is known for its impeccable style, from its hotels to its airplanes, so it’s a bit surprising that it has taken the Bransonites nearly 40 years to finally create a lifestyle merch collection worthy of their swagger. Designed with sustainable British designers Fenella Smith and Oliver, our fave piece might be this Princess Di-inspired Queen of the Skies sweatshirt or this luxe cream travel tote. It might have taken them 40 years, but sometimes a rad merch collection takes time to marinate.

What to Wear Next Time Your Shopping at Erewhon?

Well, Balenciaga, of course! The two brands just dropped a collab together to help make your drive to the grocery store for non-dairy super probiotic coconut yogurt even more outrageous than it already is… after all, doesn’t it kinda make sense to pay $15 for bread while sportin’ a $725 t-shirt? Okay, you're right, it's not really budget-friendly, but neither is that boujee oat milk! PS. Send that link to your client, next time they complain about t-shirt prices. Might give some perspective. 😉

Heinz is Serious About Protecting Their Brand Color

Heinz + Wunderman Thompson dropped a brilliant Pantone campaign to fight ketchup fraud. You know all about ketchup thievery, right? It’s when restaurants refill their Heinz bottles with any cheap-o non-brand ketchup (which obv lacks that Heinzy taste). The new campaign is a cool way to use color matching to convey a critical lesson in brand. And of course, this led us to wonder: What’s the Heinz merch game like? Answer: Zingy, of course. Not only can you personalize your own bottle (hint: Santa), but they’ve got fun apparel, including this Holiday Sweater.

👀 Speaking of trends: Pinterest released their annual trends report including kitschens (misspelled on purpose), western gothic, and maybe our fave: Café core. Full wrap here!

🛍️ You can’t walk a Parisian street without seeing these totes from Jimmy Fairly (the Warby Parker of Paris): cool designs, brilliant distribution, and often out of stock!

🌮 Forbes breaks down the most fun food merch, holiday edition. Need another opinion? The Takeout says it might be this Extra necklace from Chipotle.

👕 An outsider (i.e., non-industry type), shares the secret we already know, The Secret Behind Quick-Turn Merch: A Strong Partner.

🔥 Uh-oh. Gen-X stampede on the horizon. NYC streetwear brand NOAH just dropped a killer merch collection for The Cure. Just like heaven.

📈 Bloomberg calls it: Merch is the weirdest and coolest trend in business.

🐶 Yeah, we know it’s a 2-year-old video, but did you see Raising Cane’s CEO interview their official mascot (RIP), Cane the Labrador, using a tiny mic? It’s as adorable as you think an interview with a dog in a branded bandana might be. Oh, and their merch is pretty sweet too.

🤓 Still working on those 2024 sales goals? We got you: If you missed it, here’s our webinar on 8 benchmarks you can use to set your goals for growth.