Spin off the merch department

TrickG · March 20

Was watching the video about tax write off shirts, left a comment on it. Given LTT moves a LOT of shirts (and other merch), LTT should consider spinning off their merch design department in to a Promotional Products company (fully owned and managed by LTT of course), and join the promotional products associations, PPAC in Canada, and I believe it's ASI (it's been a while) in the US, and get in as a tier 1 promo vendor, making the LTT store a customer.

the margins and markups on promotional products are insane, and it would bring down the cost of things like tshirts dramatically - for the same shirts.

granted, a lot of the products you get from Promo vendors are garbage - you wouldn't save anything on things like high quality, self designed backpacks, screwdrivers, etc, but tshirts? You could save a lot - to the point where a tax write off shirt would only cost you $2-3 dollars, you could sell them 10 for $20, and barely lose money, still get your tax write off.

Plus, you could offer other tech youtube channels a cheaper merch avenue, "send us your design, we'll sell you high quality shirts with your designs in batches of 100 for much less than you're paying now."

LTT Promo could be a cash cow to the point they could be a legitimate sponsor of LTT videos.

Brinstead · March 20

isn't that what Creator Warehouse is?

LogicalDrm · March 20

Since it isn't well covered, you can be forgiven. But as noted above, Creator Warehouse as in the designing, prototyping, quality control and selling of LMG merch is already its own sister company. Its head is Nick Light (same way Luke is for Floatplane).

From your post, only benefits for signing as customer of something bigger is cheaper bulk prices on shirts. Maybe selling or producing other creator merch (both of these are already a thing). It is bit funny since you say cheaper shirts and same time mention bad quality of generic merch. The main reason for Linus to stop with cheap bulk shirts and design/quality control externally was quality. As for the price, $20 for a shirt is $5 higher than what good quality shirt costs. Consider it being merch and being something creators use to fund their existence. You pay $15 for a shirt, then $5 to monthly sub to creator. Quality shirt will become cheaper over time.