A How-To Guide on Creating Merchandise for Your Own Brand

Creating a brand is a fun way to develop your iconic business personality, connect with your consumers and solidify yourself within the corporate market. Once you have an established brand, the next step can be creating merchandise for your own brand that is exciting and useable to market to new or existing consumers.

Business and brand merchandise is always a useful corporate tool, and it can be as fun to design and make as it is to wear and use.

Why Make an Effort for Creating Merchandise for Your Own Brand?

Some businesses may appear more suited for merchandise than others. For example, creative businesses or businesses that deal in similar merchandise may seem more well-placed to sell custom promotional products on the frontlines. However, the truth is that all businesses can benefit from creating merchandise for their own brand, no matter the product or service.

Creating merchandise for your own brand can give you the freedom to sell, use as swag and use as custom products for any service. It’s a great and creative way to get your brand design out there and make some extra business income while doing so.

Creating Merchandise for Your Own Brand: How to Do It?

Ready to start creating merchandise for your own brand? Here’s how.

Identify the Target Audience for Your Merch

The first step is naturally going to be starting to plan and design your desired merchandise. However, to avoid wasted investment and effort, it’s key to first research who you’re going to be selling to. Your target audience may have a particular preference for the kind of branded merchandise they prefer, so it makes sense to tailor for that instead of trying to design something you personally like (and therefore might not sell).

Your target consumer may favor branded t-shirts or custom-made hats, so you, therefore, want those at the top of your priority list when creating merchandise for your own brand and creating custom merch that’s going to sell.

In identifying your consumer, think about:

• Their style and the type of clothing shape they’d most prefer


• The color choices which might appeal 


• The seasonal relevancy of your clothing (jumpers, tank tops, crop tops, etc.)


• The brands they interact with or follow on social media


• The age range of your consumer and the merch they’re most likely to use


Develop a Variety of Products

While it’s important to make sure you’re designing the type of products your consumers want when creating merchandise for your own brand, it’s also important to have various different products. Anyone willing to buy merchandise is usually happy to browse a range of products and see what you have on offer, rather than only having the option to buy one thing. Happy merchandise consumers may also return to your online store to buy a different item next time, so having a choice is key.

Great (and relevant) merchandise items can include phone cases, different shirt designs, printed t-shirt options, hats, clothing accessories, and a handy tote bag.

Decide How You Would Like to Stock Your Merchandise

When you’ve started designing and creating merchandise for your own brand, you need to think about how you’re going to best stock it.

Before you invest in a large order of merchandise and fill a warehouse full, you need to be sure it will sell to avoid extortionate upfront costs that you might not get back. Planning a selling and stock strategy for your merchandise is key. To save money in stocking ready-made items, you may want to offer a print-on-demand service for clothing items and other merch items to avoid waste.

If you find that your merchandise takes off exceptionally well, you may then want to consider stocking up on a few key items to make sure there’s no order delay.

Whatever you choose to do when creating merchandise for your own brand, let the customer know the ETA.

Create Your Online Store

You’ll need a place to sell your merchandise, after all, and opting to sell online is what most consumers these days will expect when browsing for merchandise. You can either choose to make a standalone online store dedicated to only branded merchandise (which you can promote and link back to through your social media and main website), or you might want to make your main business website include an e-commerce tab where custom merchandise can be purchased on the same site.

Promote Your Merchandise

To start selling your merch successfully, you need to start promoting your merch. The process of creating and selling is only the beginning, after all, you then need to be sure that you’re promoting to the right people. Promoting merch through social media is one of the best ways you can hit your target market and create fun and relevant video posts to show off your merch, as well as high-quality images.

You can also promote your merch through email newsletters or advertisements on your main website. Offers can be incorporated when creating merchandise for your own brand, too, like a free t-shirt with any order!

Designate Customer Service to Branded Merchandise

When looking to sell merch, you also need to think about the customer service side of things. Creating merchandise for your own brand can be fun and successful, but it’s still a product, so that means there’s still a chance of problems, delays, or complaints. Therefore, you may want to think about having a standalone customer service contact, email address, or telephone number to discuss only merchandise. This can help you stay organized with the customer service side of things for your business and merchandise and avoid overlapping the two. 



Creating merchandise for your own brand and creating a unique item that consumers will love is a very rewarding process for businesses and a great chance to show off your brand. If you can see consumers enjoying your branded merch as well as the business product itself, it’s a win.