I don't even think merch is a solved problem. Consider the state of merch for everyone who operates in NA:
Cover - runs their own merch on the same pre-order model as their JP team, including all production sourcing and fulfilling. Back in 2020/2021 the delay could be 9-10 months, now 4-6 months.
Nijisanji - run fulfillment for merch subcontracted through Sony Music Solutions, combo of generic stock merch and preorders.
Brave - runs merch piggybacked on their JP merch team, never saw more details as they aren't public. Looks to be the pre-order model.
VShojo - subcontracted their merch. The subcontractor was notoriously bad and fulfillment delays and quality issues were common. About 2 months ago these issues promoted them to swap to a new subcontractor though there was evidence they had dropped the old as long as 10 months ago with a new merch website and working with one-off merch partners over the last 10 months.
Phase - runs their own merch on the pre-order model, basically cargo-culting Hololive. Fulfillment and quality issues reminiscent of early Hololive.
Idol - never fulfilled a single piece of merch, until the partnership with Brave. Multi-year delays until Brave stepped in.
I'm less familiar with smaller corpos but who is even left these days?
There's also a number of independent merch stores that do contract merch for indies and small corpos:
Kawa Entertainment - take about 16 intakes a year for independents or small companies and does custom contract merch fulfillment for them. I've heard they're competent and decent quality. Ignoring their failed vtuber business as they were always a merch first company.
UwUmarket - Merch focused business that produces generic merch for anime adjacent creators on contract. Generally okay.
Copium Store - went under leaving thousands of orders for several big independents unfulfilled, and taking all the money.
And of course people like Doki and pre-VShojo Kson who run their own merch for fun and get scammed for the privilege. And indies can also go with Print-On-Demand services.
So the people with this problem figured out are:
1. JP corpos who have been in business since 2018.
2. Independent stores who have been in business pre-vtubing.
That's it, that's literally it, Idol was wildly worse than Phase, VShojo was worse than Phase, literally no one had competent merch businesses without being an old JP corpo or an old NA outsourcing business.
e: nothing here excuses poor quality slow merch, I've just yet to see this shining example of a mature industry when it comes to custom merch fulfillment
Cover - runs their own merch on the same pre-order model as their JP team, including all production sourcing and fulfilling. Back in 2020/2021 the delay could be 9-10 months, now 4-6 months.
Nijisanji - run fulfillment for merch subcontracted through Sony Music Solutions, combo of generic stock merch and preorders.
Brave - runs merch piggybacked on their JP merch team, never saw more details as they aren't public. Looks to be the pre-order model.
VShojo - subcontracted their merch. The subcontractor was notoriously bad and fulfillment delays and quality issues were common. About 2 months ago these issues promoted them to swap to a new subcontractor though there was evidence they had dropped the old as long as 10 months ago with a new merch website and working with one-off merch partners over the last 10 months.
Phase - runs their own merch on the pre-order model, basically cargo-culting Hololive. Fulfillment and quality issues reminiscent of early Hololive.
Idol - never fulfilled a single piece of merch, until the partnership with Brave. Multi-year delays until Brave stepped in.
I'm less familiar with smaller corpos but who is even left these days?
There's also a number of independent merch stores that do contract merch for indies and small corpos:
Kawa Entertainment - take about 16 intakes a year for independents or small companies and does custom contract merch fulfillment for them. I've heard they're competent and decent quality. Ignoring their failed vtuber business as they were always a merch first company.
UwUmarket - Merch focused business that produces generic merch for anime adjacent creators on contract. Generally okay.
Copium Store - went under leaving thousands of orders for several big independents unfulfilled, and taking all the money.
And of course people like Doki and pre-VShojo Kson who run their own merch for fun and get scammed for the privilege. And indies can also go with Print-On-Demand services.
So the people with this problem figured out are:
1. JP corpos who have been in business since 2018.
2. Independent stores who have been in business pre-vtubing.
That's it, that's literally it, Idol was wildly worse than Phase, VShojo was worse than Phase, literally no one had competent merch businesses without being an old JP corpo or an old NA outsourcing business.
e: nothing here excuses poor quality slow merch, I've just yet to see this shining example of a mature industry when it comes to custom merch fulfillment
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Also she was just looking for a manager so that alone tells me she isn't gonna be apart of phase any time soon.
