EVERYTHING IS MERCH
Merch is not dead. It’s literally everywhere
Is Millionaire Speedy a luxury bag or merch? What about the Balenciaga Maxi Pack? Some people’s idea of merch is Trump’s gold high-tops. Merch as a status symbol. Merch as a subgenre. Merch as a style statement. Merch as an identity marker. Merch as something of waning cultural relevance.
How old-fashioned.
Rather than being a retail’s side gig, modern merch has become its main act. Merch has always been a high-margin moneymaker, so a subtle but all-encompassing transformation of retail’s operating principle into merch makes economic sense. Through the process of transubstantiation from a youth culture artifact to a killer business model merch has been turned from its original purpose, meaning and aesthetics into retail’s main product category and the only remaining genre. Consumers have learned to buy everything as merch, and there is no going back.
The term “merch” originally referred to items made for music fans, where items like t-shirts were sold on a band’s or musician’s tour. From music, merch spread to sports, film, gaming, art, fashion, design, travel, and entertainment.
Merch’s original value has never been in the physical item itself — after all, a band shirt is just a t-shirt, but in the social and cultural capital associated with it. Partly this stemmed from the fact that originally one could only buy merch at concerts, thus signaling true allegiance to a cultural artifact. Thus, unintentionally, merch also operated on the concept of scarcity.
Read the rest of this story on the Sociology of Business.
