Last year I found and purchased some Atlas Shrugged themed t-shirts from TeePublic. They quickly became some of my favorite t-shirts.
The open marketplaces set up of TeePublic allows designers from all areas and walks of life to design very cool clothing and make it available to anyone. It is fantastic, but unfortunately you can’t find a lot of stuff there because of IP laws. There are only a few Harry Potter options and even fewer Game of Thrones designs.
Most TV or movie studios have specially licensed merch and 95% of it sucks. They own the IP so there is no competition for brand merch and as a result there is a massive lack of creativity (Look at the Harry Potter merch for an example).
We no longer live in a world where it makes sense for an IP owner like Warner Brothers to rely on one designer to make merch. Instead, they should embrace the idea behind TeePublic and create their own platform.
You could great a Warner Brothers version of TeePublic, where they allow you to use their IP and simply take a cut of all the sales. They can still protect their IP by blocking its use on other sites, but take advantage of all the great creative fans out there who could create and sell awesome designs on their platform.
They could also use the platform as a discovery tool to create better merch to sell in their in-person locations or at retailer. With thousands of designers competing to sell Harry Potter shirts and mugs on the WB platform, you would no doubt end up with better design options than you get from the handful of designers pumping out uninspired HP merch like you have today.
If they didn’t want to get wrapped up in the logistics of creating their own platform, I’m sure a company like TeePublic would be a great ally in making something like this happen.
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