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2024 WILL BE HERE BEFORE YOU KNOW IT – DON’T PROCRASTINATE! If you’re a Merch by Amazon creator then, as a creative entrepreneur, you’re probably given to paralyzing bouts of procrastination. Fear and panic should be wake-up calls, but they make your head spin, and you don’t know where to start, so you don’t do anything. That’s perfectly normal. I’m sure you’ve seen recent reassurances on social media that procrastination isn’t laziness (despite what we were taught), but fear – fear of failure, fear of success, fear of not knowing/having what it takes to advance. The logical voice on the other side of your brain is screaming at you to ignore these feelings because the clock is ticking and if […]

Merch by Amazon has empowered designers to create and sell a wide array of apparel, accessories, and merchandise to a global audience. In this ever-evolving landscape, the ability to capitalize on missed opportunities and unexplored product ideas is a key strategy for planning new products for the upcoming year. In the last two modules, we gathered data from 2023 for two key sources of information: Successful products Unsuccessful products Now you know what kind of products to replicate and which ones to avoid. It’s time to start putting this data to work, planning your next line of products. My recommendation is to start with your “backlog”. The products that you planned to get to but couldn’t for one reason or […]

In our third installment of “Projects,” we look at the strategies and insights that MBA merchants can use to forecast sales trends. As with our previous entry, take a moment to step back and take a deep breath before proceeding with the next phase of Product Development. Consider what you achieved in 2023. You had victories. You suffered setbacks. Each of them is the foundation upon which you will build your 2024 (and beyond!) product lines. This week, we will set aside our data but keep it in our minds. Looking at expert trend predictions and determining whether their insights are good for your products and, by extension, your company is part of how we make decisions about what products […]

We began our examination of “Projects” (one of the modules in this crash course) with a happy exercise: an analytical examination of what contributed to the success of your most successful products. That’s to soften the blow of this week’s second of four installments on a 2023 look back on “Products.” This time, we’re ripping off the Band-Aid to take a hard look at products that did not succeed, and preparing ourselves to make some hard decisions. To begin, take a deep breath and reflect on your accomplishments. Any attempt is a good attempt, and many failed attempts can provide invaluable information for the next round of better products. You’re making progress regardless. Understanding why certain products underperformed in the […]

If you want to grow, the first question you should ask yourself is, “What am I doing right?” Hard work is sometimes the answer. It’s not always luck. It is sometimes the cost. Whatever the reason for one of your product’s success, it’s in the data. That’s why the first step in this journey is to analyze the data from your successful 2023 products so you can replicate and build on that success in 2024. And data can sometimes come from unexpected places. It’s the first of four steps centered on “Products,” and it’s probably the most fun. As you have experienced, Merch-By-Amazon (MBA), with its powerful print-on-demand capabilities, has revolutionized the world of apparel and merchandise sales. This lowering […]