
Merch by Amazon - johnsocs
https://merch.amazon.com/landing
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devindotcom
Great until they decide to offer their own line of merch and yours isn't
allowed in the store any more...

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Zikes
They wouldn't want to confuse their customers with merch that's not compatible
with their body types.

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austenallred
And in other news, Teespring is launching an ecommerce store.

Seriously though, the thing that Teespring really nailed for me is the
experience. It's so unbelievably smooth, hats off to that team. Every inch of
the product is very well thought out.

I just doubt that Amazon can do something as well when it's one of the million
things they have on their plate.

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zeeshanm
Well, Amazon also has an army of middle managers, engineers, and others.

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chc
When has an army of middle managers ever been a competitive advantage?

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balls187
See US Army.

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plonh
US Army's huge bombs and its row and rows of cannon fodder are its main
strength.

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throwketchup
What good are bombs and cannons if you don't have fuel for the bombers or
shells for the cannons?

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shostack
So...they're going after Teespring?

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datamingle
Probably understood this business more after their acquisition of Twitch.

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shostack
I don't follow...can you clarify please?

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kak9
Many streamers/ esports teams / etc make good portion of their money from
selling merch.

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shostack
Ah, makes sense. Thanks for the context.

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MRSallee
Strange that the artwork upload doesn't seem to support vector graphics. They
want a rasterized JPEG?

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mikeash
This name will raise unfortunate associations for fans of the Penny Arcade
comic: [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/01/05](http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2005/01/05)

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JoshTriplett
Interesting; in addition to competing directly with sites like Zazzle and
Spreadshirt (with the Amazon name attached), they've targeted their marketing
specifically at mobile app vendors making shirts to go with their games.

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petra
Maybe the revenue here is small for them, but the possibilities and
relationships it opens to them with app developers are good, and could help
their app store indirectly.

For example , they are currently working on paying developers through in-game
ads.Another source of payment could be t-shirt discounts, or t-shirt marketing
services.

EDIT:and let's not forget - if t-shirt game marketing becomes popular , and
most such t-shirts would be for games in amazon's appstore , that would create
a powerful marketing tool for amazon's appstore.

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paulcole
I love these weird unexpected Amazon projects. They're like the opposite of
Google's moonshots.

"What bizarre project with small potential can we pour a bunch of time and
money into today?"

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petra
I think it somewhat looks that way ,because Google is a technology driven
company, while Amazon is more business driven.

So one creatively manipulates technology - you raise doubts about what weird
technology will they be using( internet baloons ??? ) , while the other
creatively manipulates business models - so you raise doubts about the
business model .

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byoung2
I wonder why Amazon didn't get into this business 10 years ago...

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ljk
Hindsight is always 20/20...

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balls187
Introducing Amazon Hindsight

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kumarm
No details on whether you can sell only to US customers or worldwide. SDK
Seems small enough for people to integrate into Games and make some easy money
if supported worldwide.

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rdl
Not a single thing about the type of t-shirt? This basically guarantees it is
the crappiest possible t-shirt with printing, not something you'll actually
want to wear, right? i.e. something like cafepress.

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Grue3
T-shirts only? You'd think Amazon would be able to offer more merch variety
right off the bat. Mouse pads, coffee mugs, all the stuff, like Cafepress
does. How many T-shirts does a person need anyway?

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pearlsteinj
Interesting business model...Promoters design shirts then advertise to their
customers to buy them? Amazon gets the $$ and the promoters get brand
awareness and a few cents of royalty...

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nightbrawler
Their example shows that a shirt selling for $19.99, the designer/promoter
would get $8.89 royalty. More than a few cents and not a bad deal for not
having to deal with the actual production.

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pearlsteinj
And if you use anything but their lowest quality shirt and make it double
sided then your cut is dropped to about $3.40..true it's more than a few cents
but still a pretty small cut per shirt.

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adventured
That depends on the volume you're moving.

With their volume discount (400 per week), and a nicer quality shirt, you can
make ~$7.30.

