How to Grow Your Small Business With Merch

If you’re looking to grow your small business, there’s no better tool than merch! At Spreadshop, we have thousands of shop owners that run their own small businesses and side hustles. And they all have unique merch to match their mission.

It’s easy to slap your logo on a t-shirt and start selling, but it’s not as effective as other design strategies. Why not create a likeness of yourself, or design a fun graphic to use as a symbol for your brand? Merch has the potential to connect you with new customers and partners. If it’s done right, there’s no telling how far you can take your business.

Check out what some of our shop/business owners are doing to promote their brand and make a profit in the process!

Make Your Brand Feel Like You

Your personality and overall presence are key factors in selling your brand AND merch. Having that personal connection with others is going to set you apart from competitors. It also shows you don’t take yourself too seriously.

Bake It Out Witch is a one-woman (or one-witch, we should say) show run by Payton Stantis. Payton is a boutique baker from Biringham, Alabama who concocts delicious and spooky creations. She claims her “witchcraft” is just combining the right ingredients, but her appropriately designed logo suggests otherwise. A pastel hair-colored witch winking and wielding a whisk is on brand and a cute, cartoon take on her likeness.

When you see that design, you instantly get a sense of who Payton is and what her business is about. This is a logo that would look just as great on t-shirts as it would on delivery boxes or bags. It translates in all areas of her business. The likeness also doesn’t need to necessarily be associated with her business – it can stand on its own.

Grab Attention With Key Symbols

Text alone sometimes isn’t enough to engage people and bring them into learning more about your business. Strong graphics or symbols can help to catch peoples eye and make it easier for them to form an association with you. It’s a more engaging and visual business card. Take something that is obvious or more of a play-on-words depending on what you want the vibe of your brand to be.

Kimberly runs Born in a Barn Boutique, a business that specializes in restoring old furniture and giving it new life. She’s all about the rustic, homestead look, so having a barn as part of her logo makes perfect sense. Symbols like that are great to help attract people with similar interests. A barn conjures up different images than a log cabin would. What’s a graphic that would work well with your brand? There’s got to be something that can easily connect you to your audience. These kind of symbols stand out on tote bags, water bottles, and more.

Sell Your Name Multiple Ways

You might have a classic logo that feels tried and true that works for you. But what about changing it up for your Spreadshop? Different fonts can attract different people and help diversify your brand. Your business doesn’t have to feel static – it can be ever-changing.

CFL Plants is a plant swap business run by Cayla, a passionate plant mom. She cares about the impact plants have on her community and wants to educate others on how they can be the best plant parents. Her merch is clean and aesthetically pleasing. She has different phrases she uses and logos that reflect her social handles and look of her business.

Cayla takes some awesome photos that showcase her merch and plant progress. The large leaves resemble one of the icons you can find in her logo. Having merch available is one thing, but you’ve got to promote it. Take advice from some of our favorite content creators and see how you can use their strategies for your business.

Think Outside the Box

Maybe logos and symbols are too ordinary for your business. We love to see the creative ways shop owners interpret their brand, like Emily and the Kind Mind. The Kind Mind Project is a podcast Emily launched to help women achieve personal growth through a better mindset. One of the podcast’s mottos – To put more honey in my head, one drop at a time – has made it’s way into Emily’s merch line for her business.

This type of merch is ideal for people who have been following your brand because they’ll know what these insider phrases mean. It also forms a deeper connection. For those that don’t know, it provokes conversation and creates and opportunity for you to talk about your business. Making this extra effort emphasizes your creativity, too. You’re able to look at your brand from a different point of view that feels fresh. Merch is a fun way to promote your small business and help take it to the next level.

We hope these shop owners inspired you to come up with your own merch ideas for your small business. Making and selling merch is easy when you use Spreadshop. You upload the designs and we take care of the rest. Plus, it’s FREE!

Start designing your own merch line today!