The Bard Shop is OPEN!!!
The Bard Store went live this weekend and we are so excited about this. We’re able to bring some cool, quality merch to our fans very early on and with great ease.
We decided to utilize Threadless for a few reasons. The on-demand creation of their items allows us a low cost/risk way to offer dozens of items. Frankly we couldn’t offer many of these items if we had to buy them up front, store them, and ship them. Threadless offers high quality items as well. I know because I’ve bought some from Pulp716’s store. And one of the coolest things is that Threadless makes it super easy to earmark your designs to support vetted non-profits. If you’ve read some past BardBlogs you’ll know we want to become a Benefit Corporation in time, so we’re thrilled at this option.
EVERY Band of Bards design on Threadless supports a different charity. Now and forever. We aren’t donating just during ‘the right’ months or on special days. We’re giving a portion of sales all year round. So you can support us and you’ll be able to support a cause that’s special to you as well. This is how we live the Comics Doing Good mantra.
Speaking of support – our online merch sales all go toward supporting operations. The money you spend isn’t going into our wallets, it’s going toward creating indie comics. This is a key part of our strategy as it reduces the reliance on crowdfunding or taking on debt. I know, I know, nobody wants to hear the mundane business strategy crap. The fact is comics are expensive to make and you have to sell several thousand copies of a book for it to be self-sustaining. That’s a tall order and one that we’ll have to gradually work towards. In the meantime merch sales help to create another income stream that supports the mission of Band of Bards. So thank you to everyone who supports us this way!
Another great feature is the ease of Threadless. We’ll be able to easily & quickly create designs for each of our published titles, which has a big impact on the creative teams. Given our desire to be a publisher that improves creator compensation we have decided that a majority of the profit from these sales will go to the creative teams. Our hope is that this is one way to show creators how much we value them and truly want to make indie comics more equitable. You work hard to bring your ideas to life, you should reap those rewards. This also gives fans a way to confidently support the creators they love. So if you want to put some duckets in your fave writer or artist’s pocket this is a sure shot!
Well, that’s about all I’ve got to say about that. We hope you visit the store, there are almost 50 items for each design and a ton of options to choose from. We’d love to hear your opinions too. Admittedly some of the prices seem on the higher end for some items. We’ll be working on bringing some of those options in-house and at lower cost. For now this is a start. One more step onward & upward.
#ComicsDoingGood