Basketball-themed Merch on Amazon Merch on Demand: Are they as popular as you’d expect?

Basketball is a popular game loved by millions of fans worldwide. The sport’s well-known “uniform”, the tank top, is considered an iconic apparel item worn by both players and supporters.

If you’re a seller on Amazon Merch on Demand, you may be wondering whether there’s potential in this tempting category.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to discuss in this article.

How big are basketball-themed tank tops on Amazon Merch on Demand?

We embark on our research journey into basketball-themed tank tops by heading over to Merch Informer’s Products Search module.

There, we typed in the keyword “basketball” in the search box, selected the US as the largest marketplace, and chose tank tops from the available merch categories.

In return, Merch Informer displayed all of the listings that rank for this keyword.

From an initial glance at the insights, it becomes apparent that basketball tank tops are not among the trend-creating themes.

Why? Because listings’ Average BSR is incredibly high (2,543,870), while the market saturation is low (only 344 results).

Although there are few competitors in the niche, the average BSR indicates that the sales potential of this product type is quite low. This is an example scenario where lower competition doesn’t necessarily scream money-making opportunities.

Keywords, search volume and BSR

But are shoppers searching for basketball-themed tank tops on Amazon? What search terms are they using to find the right items?

We uncover these mysteries in the section below.

Analyzing approximately 50 short- and long-tail niche-related keywords, we determined if there’s consumer demand for this product type.

Below are our findings:

• “Basketball”: search volume – 77,541
• “Basketball apparel”: search volume – 1,615
• “basketball”: search volume – 1,160
• “basketball tops”: search volume – 1,135

It becomes clear that the seed keyword “basketball” generates a significantly high search volume (just over 72,000).

However, the search for apparel and related items plummets to under 2,000, with variations of the word “basketball’” getting a similar number of searches.

The data suggests that the segment is not very popular among buyers. But before we jump to conclusions, let’s see what the rest of our research reveals.

Keyword saturation

Above, we mentioned that the listing saturation of basketball tank top items is low.

But we also assessed keyword saturation across listing titles. This enabled us to discover what words and phrases sellers utilize most to win traffic.

Here are the top identified keyword categories and phrases we uncovered:

• Seed keyword: basketball (1,012)
• Related sports: sports (457), football (375), baseball (329), soccer (226), sport (148), volleyball (90)
• Audience: team (318), mom (213), fan (169), women (161), men (147), coach (135), player (132), kids (129), girls (100), dad (98), fans (91), girl (78), family (70), boys (70)
• Adjacent keywords: number (264), school (201), flag (196) Puerto (190), pride (140), Rico (137), game (122), support (121), cheer (108), play (76), Mexican (75), country (74)
• Occasion: birthday (205), Christmas (100)
• Design: funny (168)
• Merch description: apparel (162), jersey (160), clothing (69)
• Merch design type: vintage (128), graphic (80), retro (72)

These insights show that merchants are not only targeting the basketball theme. They are also going after other sports such as volleyball.

Why? Because this widens the target audience of the product.

Overall, the audience is enormous, catering to men and women, children, fans, and coaches.

In addition, our discoveries show that these apparel items are generally purchased as birthday or Christmas gifts, while designs are often funny, vintage, graphic, or retro.

When creating listing titles, sellers are also targeting words like “apparel” and “clothing”. They’re not necessarily referring to tank tops in particular.

This is an interesting revelation, given that the researched items fit into this specific category.

Pricing

To gain an understanding of the profitability of the market, it’s also key to examine the lowest, highest, and average prices in the niche.

With Merch Informer, this typically painstaking process is completed with a single click of a button.

Here’s what you ought to know about the prices in this category:

• Lowest price: $15.27
• Highest price: $55.00
• Average price: $10.12

Compared to other segments, the lowest price in this space is quite reasonable.

However, we see an extremely high maximum price, together with an average price, which is lower than the lowest in the space.

This creates a sort of pricing anomaly in this category.

A potential explanation is that some sellers have not optimized their pricing strategies, resulting in skewed results.

What are some of the bestselling merchants doing right?

When we explored the list of top sellers in the basketball-themed tank tops niche, we discovered something interesting.

Instead of seeing sky-high sales volumes, we noticed low BSRs.

For example, the seller Kentucky by LAMA Brand Tees with their product “Kentucky, Big Blue, Basketball, Football Tank Top”, scores approximately one sale per month. At the same time, it has one of the lowest BSRs in this niche (390,521).

Other “top performers” also have a BSR hovering in the 300,000s.

This suggests that while these sellers are targeting the right keywords, bringing in traffic from the ideal audience, they are not generating a sufficient number of sales.

In this case, high rankings on Amazon Merch on Demand do not necessarily translate into sales in the niche.

What is the turnover of basketball-themed tank tops?

But what’s the approximate turnover that a seller can expect in this niche?

When all of the 297 results that Merch Informer yielded for the category are at one sale each, profitability or turnover will depend directly on the sales price.

If we are to take the average price, it means that sellers are making, on average, around $10 per tank top sold. And royalties are much lower than that.

Since even bestsellers land no more than a single sale per month, we can conclude that this is not a profitable niche.

Should you wish to compete in the basketball tank top field, it is important that you study the buyer and seller side of the equation and carefully cater your offering to the audience.

The bottom line

Getting into a profitable niche is critical for your sales success on Amazon Merch on Demand. According to research data, the basketball-themed tank top domain cannot be considered such a market.

It remains unclear why there are so few sales in this segment, given that there is a relatively high search volume for the seed keyword “basketball”.

Nevertheless, what our research journey shows is that carefully studying your choice of niche before entering is crucial. And you can only achieve this with a helping hand from Merch Informer.

With a monthly subscription of only $9.99 per month, this handy tool can help you make the right choice before you waste your efforts and strive to compete in an uncompetitive niche.