When Merchandise Is Your Superpower
A hands-on approach to merchandise turned Huge Brands into a major player in the sector.
In his late teens and early 20s, Jeremy Conder toured the world, playing music with metal and hard-core punk bands, including his own, I Am the Ocean. The bands were successful, but they made more money from merchandise than anything else. Conder took care in creating the merchandise, partnering with skilled artists to design T-shirts, hoodies, and accessories. He paid attention to retail trends and often introduced new items. Merch became bragging rights.
So, in 2010, when Conder was ready to hang up his bass guitar and stop living out of buses and vans, he made merchandise his full-time focus. He founded Huge Brands to specialize in merchandise for the music industry but quickly spotted opportunities for expansion. “Just about every industry is being more thoughtful about merchandise and going for retail quality,” he explains. Today, Huge Brands provides merchandise for retailers, brands, and corporations across nearly every vertical.
HANDS-ON SALES
A knack for spotting opportunities is part of how Huge Brands has achieved consistent, fast growth and landed on the Inc. 5000 for five consecutive years. Conder says the company’s purpose is to “facilitate opportunity where potential exists.” Sales numbers reflect this. Client spending typically increases 40 to 70 percent from year one to year two, because Huge Brands shows customers additional ways to use merchandise to drive business results.
Clients are assigned a single point of contact “who loves their brand as much as they do.” In a world of automated everything, this consultative approach stands out. “We don’t have a website where you say, ‘I want this product,’ and then upload a logo and just slap it on there,” Conder explains. “Merchandise is our thing—it’s our superpower,” he says.
BUILT TO SCALE
Company growth creates new opportunities for employees, and Conder wants to ensure they can advance their careers internally. In addition to organic expansion, Huge Brands will grow by way of industry consolidation. Conder is exploring acquiring or merging with “a handful of awesome companies” whose customers would benefit from Huge Brands’s signature hands-on approach.
After such fast-paced growth, the business is catching its breath, auditing operational processes to prepare for the next level of growth. “We are thinking, ‘OK, this works now, but that doesn’t matter. Will it work at 10 times what we are doing?’” he says. Creating sustainable, systematic processes will ensure Huge Brands can deliver personalized, consultative services—its superpower—no matter how big its customer base gets.