Merchandise is a powerful way to extend your brand’s reach, build community, and create new revenue streams. From musicians selling tour tees to CPG brands creating collectible items, smart businesses use custom merch lineups to amplify their values and connect with customers on a deeper level.
“Make merch that’s collectible, memorable, and giftable,” says Amrit Richmond, founder of the consumer-insights platform Supermercato and the CPG newsletter and community Indie CPG.
In brand merchandise, there is no limit for inspiration, and the options are endless. Here are the benefits of custom merchandise, plus 14 creative ideas to inspire your next launch.
Benefits of custom merch
Selling merch online is more than an extra revenue stream. Here’s why brands create, make, and sell merch:
Extend brand reach
Custom physical merch acts like a megaphone for your brand. You can finish a can of seltzer in a few gulps, but you’ll wear the branded t-shirt of the company that makes that seltzer for years. What’s more, merch takes the idea behind your main product(s) into other rooms of the house. When a canned bean brand sells collectible bowls, a drinkware product makes fruit-shaped hair clips, or an olive oil brand makes reusable swizzle sticks, they all widen their reach.
Signal community
Just like in the case of music and genre-entertainment fandom, owning merchandise signals kinship and builds community. Fans love brands that create exclusive items—think Beyoncé’s online merch store’s custom physical merch, which includes seasonal drops, vinyl records, custom hoodies, and custom bags. Even college athletes are getting in on the merch game, with Campus Ink and its line of custom jerseys creating new ways to show support.
Expand into new product categories
Creative merch items allow you to test category expansions. What can start as a limited-edition run can then become part of the permanent product line. This happened with Glossier’s sweaters and hoodies, which became part of Glossiwear in 2019.
When you understand your target audience well enough to know what kind of brand collaborations they’d be interested in, you can expand your product line—and audience—with strategic partnerships. Collaborating on a limited-edition merch collection keeps your company top of mind with audiences that might not have discovered you otherwise.
14 creative merch ideas
- Apparel
- Embroidered hats
- Performance socks
- Hair accessories
- Makeup and toiletry bags
- Reusable totes
- Blankets and throws
- Towels
- Vinyl records
- Drinkware
- Kitchen accessories
- Puzzles
- Custom stickers
- Zines and books
Merch sells across countless categories. Whether you’re looking for unique band merch ideas, a branded product line for your ecommerce store, or gifts for fans of your restaurant, here’s some inspiration for your own custom merchandise:
1. Apparel
Custom hoodies, sweatshirts, and t-shirts can feature materials, colors, embroidery, and design details that reflect your brand personality. Soft drink maker Olipop partnered with Stay Cool for a line of embroidered sweaters and hoodies that follow the bright color palette of its own lineup, plus a hidden pocket that perfectly fits an Olipop can.
2. Embroidered hats
Whether they’re baseball hats, trucker hats, or even bucket hats, custom hats are highly giftable. Good Girl Snacks’ Hot Girls Eat Pickles cap put them on the map even before they launched their first product, and Dirt’s Girl Moss hat—a riff on the Girl Boss trope—took the digital entertainment newsletter into the real world.
3. Performance socks
Forget basic crew socks featuring your brand’s logo. “If they’re compression socks that you can use on a flight, that’s a very clever merch idea,” says Amrit. Brands in the fitness, performance, or outdoor spaces find performance socks a natural fit. Outdoor and performance-apparel brand Grin27’s socks have toe and heel reinforcement for durability and performance.
4. Hair accessories
Scrunchies, barrettes, headbands, and claw clips are an easy and affordable option that combines fashion-forward shapes and materials with everyday utility. For example, haircare brand Crown Affair’s green silk scrunchies recreate the brand colors, and Ghia’s clips (limited edition) convey the brand’s Mediterranean-lifestyle aspirations.
5. Makeup and toiletry bags
Makeup, skincare, and toiletry essentials need storage, and sturdy toiletry bags are the ideal canvas for your company’s visual elements on an everyday staple. Two makeup and skincare brands excelled in that. Glossier’s Beauty Bag and Ami Colé’s Ami Cosmetics Bag seamlessly showcase the companies’ lead colors in sturdy items.
6. Reusable totes
Forget plain tote bags. Since everybody needs bags, making them in innovative shapes can lead to marketing buzz, if not virality. Think Panera’s elongated BAGuette or gluten-free pasta maker Senza’s LIL Tote, designed to only fit one box of their pastina (or your keys and wallet).
7. Blankets and throws
Custom blankets and throws immediately add texture and coziness to any living space, while letting you play with your company’s color scheme and design system. This works even if home goods aren’t your main category—non-alcoholic drinkware Ghia’s Totem Throw Blanket and condiment brand Fly By Jing’s To The People, Food Is Heaven blanket expand those CPG brands into home décor.
8. Towels
A custom towel can amplify your brand in parks, beaches, and other outdoor areas. Think of retro-inspired sunscreen brand Vacation Inc. and makeup brand Glossier’s signature towels. On a smaller scale, a kitchen towel like spice purveyor Diaspora Co.’s Spicy Dish Towel Trio can brighten even the most minimal kitchen space.
9. Vinyl records
If you’re a digital-first business with video and video-game releases plus a fan base that loves collectibles, vinyl records of your soundtrack create the ideal analog companion to your main product line. Follow the lead of (or directly collaborate with) the American merch company iam8bit, or even film-production company A24 and its vinyl releases. Plus, album covers become the perfect canvas for custom art.
10. Drinkware
There’s an art to artfully mismatched tablescapes, and a set of drinking glasses—such as Ghia’s Totem Glasses—and custom mugs make perfect housewarming and hostess gifts.
For Gen Z in particular, hydration is paramount, as is sustainability. Customize bottles, flasks, and portable, insulated tumblers with your company’s colorways and key art for optimized hydration on the go.
11. Kitchen accessories
“Art for your kitchen” is what Amrit calls branded spatulas, cutting boards, pots, cutlery sets, and even smaller items such as salt cellars and pinch bowls. She references the 2023 Fly By Jing x The Caker chocolate-cake kit as an example, which features a red spatula and Fly By Jing’s signature oil in the kit, and one of Senza’s PR kits, which came with a red spatula. “It was a name-brand spatula, but it didn’t have their logo on it, and I used it all the time,” she says. “But their brand was something that now I think about when I see this red spatula.”
12. Puzzles
Puzzles combat doomscrolling, benefit the brain, and double as home décor once finished. Forget landscapes and renditions of paintings. Brands like Le Puzz have retro-kitsch, high-camp artwork, and also collaborate with beloved DTC brands such as the sunscreen brand Vacation Inc.
13. Custom stickers
Custom designs can find a perfect home in stickers that promote your business, brand, band, or event, encouraging experimentation with design and art direction. You might use stickers to show off your brand mascot or album art. Consider the viral success of Glossier’s sticker collections and drops, which started as free add-ons to any purchase and are now coveted collectibles.
14. Zines and books
From a brand’s perspective, zines and books deepen brand storytelling and allow for creative experimentation with lower production costs compared to other limited edition items. From a customer’s point of view, these make for great gifts. Consider A24’s behind-the-scenes screenplay collection, or a zine showcasing drink options, like Diaspora’s Drinklet zine? “A [brand] book is a fantastic gift for the holidays, for birthdays, for Mother’s Day,” says Amrit.
Merch ideas FAQ
What are the best merch ideas to sell?
While novelty items generate buzz and lend themselves to viral moments, high-quality staples such as apparel and accessories strike the perfect balance between design, brand awareness, and versatility. Cool merch ideas include hoodies, t-shirts, and sweatshirts. Hats can be elevated with custom artwork, materials, and cuts, and can outsell novelty limited-edition items. Industry-adjacent categories are also a great way to expand into merch, like Vacation Inc.’s beach-appropriate accessories.
What are examples of merch?
While one brand’s merch is another brand’s main product line, examples include hoodies, sweatshirts, t-shirts, hats, tote bags, jigsaw puzzles, keychains, mugs, and water bottles. Film, TV, and video-game companies release merch in the form of art books, figurines, plush toys, and vinyls.
What merch does Gen Z like?
Gen Z—the first generation to grow up with the internet—has preferences shaped by online subcultures, the COVID-19 pandemic, nostalgia, and a keen eye for sustainability. Think reusable bottles, insulated coffee mugs, and reusable bags that align with their values while serving practical purposes.
