Written by  Kevin Chisholm - American Guitarist - www.american-guitarist.com

This can be a real catch 22. You want to bring merchandise because you want to sell it at your gigs to help offset costs and further your profits. Unfortunately, some merchandise can be easily damaged. The most common items to sell at shows are T-shirts, Posters and CDs.

T-Shirts: This is probably the most travel-friendly merchandise. T-Shirts will most likely not “Break” in transit. Also, they can be kind of shoved into place to fit around other items. The worst that can happen is that they might be very wrinkled after being un-packed. A few things you can do to minimize this are:

• Fold T-Shirts well before packing
• Consider placing several T-Shirts together in a sturdy plastic bag which can severely minimize wrinkles
• Bring a lightweight and inexpensive travel iron with you for quickie touch-ups before displaying (be careful with silk screened T-Shirts when ironing)

Posters:  This is a bit of an issue but it is manageable. A few suggestions:

• Never fold posters; a crease in a poster is not attractive
• Consider rolling up posters for crease-free protection

CDs: CDs are probably the least travel-friendly items. The main issue is the CD case (Jewel Case). These break easily. The softer CD cases can minimize this issue but are less attractive to buyers. People tend to like buying the standard hard plastic jewel case that has a back insert as well as a cover insert. A few suggestions to minimize damage to your CD merchandise:

• Pack the actual CDs separately from the jewel cases. CDs add weight, which makes the jewel case react even more to gravity and momentum (i.e. when being dropped or shoved around in a suitcase or road case). Put the inserts in the jewel cases ahead of time, but keep the CDs all together in a separate bag. Before the show, you can put aside some time to prep enough CDs for the evening’s show (i.e. simply put the actual CDs in the jewel cases)

• Purchase Jewel Cases locally. This minimizes the need to travel with them and risk breakage (which will most likely be an inevitability). This can severely reduce your overall travel weight (a big plus when flying). But, this also requires some logistical forethought. You will need to research every city you travel to in order to determine where to purchase the CD jewel cases. If you take this approach, be sure to confirm the following:
• Store location
• Store hours (will you have time to run this errand before your gig?)
• Availability (just because they do have cases, doesn’t mean they have 100 of them!)
• Availability of the exact kind of case you want as well as desired color
• Price including local sales tax

Written by  Kevin Chisholm - American Guitarist - www.american-guitarist.com