The Merch Manual
How the merch business works, written down. Each chapter answers one question, and every figure in it carries its source and the day it was checked.
ReviewedHow to read it
The Manual is free to read, and there is nothing to sign up for. It is written so that an artist or a tour manager could run their own merch from it.
Under every figure is a line that says where it comes from, how far to trust it, and the day it was last checked. The label on that line is one of five.
- Filed or disclosed
- The company’s own filing, accounts, price list or published data.
- Official source
- A regulator, a government body or a standards body.
- Third-party estimate
- Somebody else’s reporting or estimate. Sources of this kind often disagree with each other.
- Divini’s own data
- Our own count or arithmetic, including any sample we have worked through.
- Not public
- No figure is published. The chapter says so, and does not guess.
Each chapter also shows the day it was last reviewed. A chapter that has gone twelve months without a review says so at the top, because prices, fees and thresholds move.
The chapters
- 05
The merch table
How does merch work on tour?
How merch works on tour: hall fees off the top, moving the stock, who sells it, what to print, the size curve, and the nightly settlement.