Philadelphia's Grayscale Are Changing The Business Model For Band Merchandise

In 2019, records sales and streams are not the primary source of revenue for most young artists. While this isn't groundbreaking news, it's made touring and merchandising the main assets for brand development and an artist's financial dependency. As it relates to merchandise, most bands offer quantity over quality in their product catalogue, as it usually makes for a greater profit margin. While it's not exactly a poor business model, it often produces poor and unsustainable products for the consumer, or fans rather. Whether it's a shirt with a graphic that fades after the first few washes, or a zip-up hoodie that breaks after the third month, band merchandise is notorious for its ephemeral lifespan. Grayscale on the other hand; a young and talented alternative rock band from Philadelphia, PA, they're here to change the merchandising formula.

From a simple glance at the band's online store, their merchandise is undoubtedly a major step above most young bands, and even many mainstream artists. From the photography, the designs, and just the overall presentation of their apparel, some might confuse Grayscale as a new streetwear brand, rather than one of the alternative rock scene's finest new bands. Elaborating on how the band created such a successful merchandise model, vocalist Collin Walsh and creative director Jordan Mizrahi, detail the evolution of Grayscale and how it's become a clothing brand just as much as an alt-rock band.

Collin: Jordan and I grew up going to shows our whole lives, and the same issue always arose where you would buy a really crappy t-shirt from a concert, and you'd come home and wash it twice and it would just fall apart. It was always a major bummer and for us being fans of music it was something very apparent. When it came time for us to handle it ourselves, we were like "we have a lot of background on this kind of stuff let's do it different." The first step in all this was, let's focus on having really quality merchandise. That was the first toe in the pool of "let's not just do it based off of how can we have the highest profit margin," let's really focus on the quality, starting with the garment, and then the garment became "let's focus on the different kinds of decoration, let's try multiple kinds of embroidery, let's try screen printing, let's take the garment and experiment with it." From there it kind of exploded in working closely with our merchandising company, Second City Prints, they're based out of Chicago, IL. We then started getting heavily into sampling, and we were the first band to go to our merchandise company and say "with every item that we do, we want to do samples, sometimes multiple rounds of samples and test the quality to make sure the embroidery sits the right way, to make sure the garment is heavy enough so it doesn't pull the embroidery, to make sure the different kinds of ink and plastisol sit the right way on the different kinds of garments." That's where a lot of the experimentation started. Whenever we're touring or around the globe, any day we have an off day we're at a mall, we're at stores, and we're taking notes of clothing we like, touching clothing we like, buying clothing we like, and we're bringing it home or sending it back and forth to the people that handle our merch in Chicago. It just became this hyper focus on quality, the decoration methods, the sampling, and the research and the development of really cool merch that wouldn't fall apart when you washed it.

For the economic part, I don't mind sacrificing some profit margin if people are happy with this. The way that it started was let's do all this research, come up with this really cool merch, and let's charge the same amount as everyone else, and that opened a whole can of worms and kind of disrupted the industry in many ways amongst our peers, as far as touring and basic online merchandise goes in general. Giving a much a higher quality for a similar price in any kind of economic setting, it's supply and demand, it's economics 101, so it starts to disrupt things a little. From there, once we started doing that and when people and our fans picked up on it is when it really took off, and then came the next phase of we're going to do this merch on tour. You know, we put up a couple items online, but why don't we start taking a more modern retail approach, and more influence from these brands that we love and let's do online merch drops. We're just taking the modern retail lifestyle brand business model and we're applying it to the band-merchandising world.

Jordan: I think a great of example of how we pushed these boundaries was our tent at Warped Tour. You know, the way it works is every band and every vendor has their own tent, and you walk up to their tent in the 98 degree blistering sun, and you pick out your t-shirt, you pay for it and they hand it to you, and then you move onto the next tent. It's been like that for 25 years, and with this kind of more experiential design, where we're bringing this modern retail approach to our online store and our touring, we were like "why don't we make our tent a store?" That seems like the only logical approach to something like this, as much as it is important for us to have the quality come across in the garment and the design, it's also so important for the customer to have a unique experience buying their item. I think that goes a long way in our brand. So we went against the traditional idea and we had two tents at warp tour, clothing racks, and green turf for people to stand on, outside of the sun. It was going against the grain in a lot of different ways, "it's going to be hard, you're not going to want to do it," but that stuff means so much more to us, like we'll put in the hard work no matter what, as long as the fans and the customers can have a great experience buying something they'll love and remember.

Collin: It definitely has translated to the touring and live setting, it's been crazy online as well. In terms of the numbers, it really depends on the size of the tour versus the size of the drop, and also versus the price points. Obviously online we can get away with the really intricate super-mega-high quality items that are two hundred plus dollars, and that's not something bands really ever do on tour. However, this first headlining tour we just did, we actually did a two hundred and twenty dollar full on varsity letterman jacket made with 100% authentic leather arms, and just the whole nine yards. We had that on this headlining tour we just did, and we've never seen a band ever do anything like that or charge more than sixty or seventy dollars at a show. When we told our merch company "hey, this is what we want to make and this how we want to do it," they were understandably hesitant about the idea. Obviously that's something we'd do more online, but this time around we were like "let's do it for tour too" and it did work out. The inventory moved and they sold very well, and it's just been crazy.

Collin: We've been an active touring band for about two, two and half years at this point, and when you start off you get introduced to "okay how are we going to do our merchandise on tour, how are we going to do it online?"

We identified early on that in today's day and age, bands primarily make income playing shows and selling merchandise. When we figured out that that's the way the game was, we basically looked at ourselves and were like "we have no choice but to absolutely make the best merch possible. It has to be better than everybody else's, and it has to be the best we can possibly do." To some degree it's survival in the beginning, but I think the beauty of our merchandise is that it started off as this thing that we needed as a means of existing, and being financially stable.

Jordan: Collin and I grew up in the same school district, the same classes and everything, and we were in a band together early in our high school years. I was more often focused on our promo, our MySpace, how our gig posters looked, and Collin was very much more interested in growing his skills as a drummer at the time, and building that experience in the band. We kind of split ways a little bit throughout college, he was still focused on growing a band and I was working with brands and growing my brand development background. We came back together with this idea of revolutionizing the way band merchandise works, and while it was really daunting, by combining our experience and creativity, we were able to make it exciting, fun, and successful.

Collin: So Jordan studied Graphic and Interactive Design at Temple University, and I studied finance at Drexel University in Philadelphia. During and beyond my years in college at Drexel, I worked for the corporate Urban Outfitters headquarters in Philadelphia. I worked in the finance department which was seated right next to the buying and sampling departments, so where I sat working on the backend and numerical things with corporate Urban Outfitters, I was right next to this big creative hub in the office. I wouldn't call myself someone who was in love with fashion, because I feel like that's doing a disservice to people who do it for a profession. I don't consider myself someone who's super well versed in real modern fashion, however I've always had a serious interest in retail and the basic consumer level. [Grayscale] signed to Fearless records about two and half years ago, and at that point Jordan and I had become closer again, we moved in, and we were roommates in our apartment in Philly at the time. That's where all of these ideas started.

Collin: Yeah I'd say so, previously I had worked on the floor selling at Tillys, which is a similar type of store. However, in terms of the next level retail, working at corporate Urban Outfitters in Philly and multiple financial roles that touched into marketing, that's where I really found a love for it. So that's how Jordan and I came together, we're the two primary pieces that run the merchandising and marketing for the band, but basically in those years we spent in our apartment together, we would go through all of these ideas, and that's what birthed what is now the Grayscale merch-machine. While there was a survival aspect to this, there's also just an immense love for this. We're not just going to malls on off days and going to stores everyday just because we have to, we love doing this, we love clothing. I sing in the band and I write music, but I'm not good at photography, drawing, painting, or anything like that. For me it is my second artistic expression in a way. Yes it's out of survival, but we're so fortunate not only as musicians, but I get to do what I love also as a clothing business owner in addition to a person playing in a band.

All things Grayscale, including their new record, Nella Vita, can be found on their website/online store.