MERCHANDISE
Aptly put, it would’ve been a missed opportunity to not sell anything at an event with 600+ people in attendance. I worked closely with Team Regen’s director to both design and decide on pieces of merchandise to sell at the event. To attract as many customers as possible, the shop was placed right beside the entrance to the venue and entryways into main areas of the venue.
The main goods on offer included The Regen Survival Bag (which included a selection of items), stainless steel water bottles, limited edition vintage styled baseball caps, basic edition baseball caps, bang-bang sticks, the Full Poster Canvas and leftover merchandise from previous events. 6 of the 72 movie poster parody designs were also available, but not for direct purchase (explained below).
The designs for the merchandise were simple and served to function more as memorabilia for the event rather than designer pieces. This appeared to be successful enough as we sold out of all caps, all but a few Survival Bags, most bang-bang sticks and a supermajority of water bottles. In an ideal world where I may have had more time, it would’ve been fun to individualise each piece of non-poster merch more with original designs rather than just the logo.
WHAT'S IN THE BAG?
The Regen Survival Bags were the piece of merchandise we encouraged attendees to purchase the most. Each purchase provided the customer a tote bag, a USB power pack, sunglasses, a bottle opener, bang-bang sticks, a poster design of their choice and a mystery gift courtesy of our sponsor Curry’s PC World.
Aside from being a great value for money with multiple useful items, it established a physical and visual link between the brand and the event as people would walk around the venue in their bucket hats or would wave their bang-bang sticks during popular matches. Many customers have said that they still use items like the bottle opener, charger or bucket hat during every day life, which may have lead to additional brand loyalty.
HOW PEOPLE GOT THEIR POSTERS
To avoid any legal complications regarding the sale of posters that both parody famous movies and utilise Nintendo’s 3D models, they were not available for direct purchase.
Instead, when a customer bought any piece of merchandise, they were provided a poster tube that contained a random print of one of the 6 featured (and most popular) designs for free. If a customer bought multiple pieces of merchandise or a Regen Survival Bag, they were allowed to pick which design they wanted to be additionally gifted. This system lead to a giant uptick in merch sales compared to previous events, earning over £6000 in revenue, greatly exceeding our production costs.
Only 6 of the 72 poster designs were offered as average production costs would essentially rise exponentially for every additional design offered - a small vote was held with community members to figure out which designs were most popular as to satisfy as many customers as possible.
Following the event, all 72 designs were available to be purchased online, with the designs being posted globally. Additional prints of most designs were produced during online orders so that previously unavailable designs could be made physically available at future events.
