Feeling Seen

Feeling Seen

LOCAL MERCH MERGER IS A SPIFFY NEW LOOK FOR THE MUSIC BIZ

By Nick Spacek

Six months ago, with absolutely no fanfare or even an announcement, Kansas city’s Seen Merch purchased long-running Lawrence businesses Blue collar Press and the online counterpart known as Merchtable. For such an epic merger of two companies responsible for merchandise for acts like boygenius, Iron Maiden, Turnpike Troubadours, Willie Nelson, John Denver, and countless others, it seems remarkable that it would go unheralded. However, given what Seen Merch founder and CEO RL Brooks had going on at the time, it’s understandable.

“May 3 of this year—the day before I had my first child—was the day,” says Brooks with a smile. “So yeah, that’s a big couple of days—signed the deal in the hospital parking lot. It was very wild. I had a business baby and a real baby.”

Brooks goes on to talk about the two companies that have existed side-by-side for well over a decade. Both started small, in a garage, and have expanded to help clients and customers worldwide.

With talks starting over a year ago in Summer 2022, it’s been worth the work, says former Blue Collar Press president Sean Ingram, who—along with partner Jim David—worked his last official time in office just days after I spoke with Brooks.

“We were the missing pieces for each business, so it just made a lot of sense,” says Ingram of the sale, a point echoed by Brooks while discussing the fact that the Merchtable and Blue Collar Press sale has been the biggest purchase thus far in Seen Merch’s history.

“I mean, literally, we were aligned culturally in demographics,” Brooks says.

While he’s quick to acknowledge that Seen and Blue Collar have always been competitors, he’s equally quick to mention that he’s always been a fan of what Ingram and David had been doing. Brooks is part of the eldest wave of the emo/screamo scene, having been the guitarist for local genre stalwarts in Flee the Seen, whereas Ingram and Brooks rode the mid-to-late ‘90s post-hardcore and indie movement as members of Coalesce and the Anniversary, respectively.

“It’s weird,” says Brooks. “We never really tussled. We never really ran into each other, but I was building the business, I think, at a higher rate. But they were also building the business in a certain segment at a higher rate. It’s kind of like our strengths were really aligned: Where they needed more power, I had it, and where I needed more power, they had it. It’s really been an awesome marriage.”

When it comes to timing, the way the sale of Blue Collar and Merchtable happened to Seen was kismet, really, according to Brooks and Ingram.

“Funnily enough, we have the same lawyer, and our lawyer put us together,” Brooks says. “Sean and Jim were looking for an exit, and we have been in acquisition mode. Of course, our lawyer knows that. I didn’t know they were thinking about it. I had a feeling. I don’t know where in the universe that came from. I kind of always knew that we were going to collide one day.”

“We went through two really difficult things, and it just kind of shook us,” says Ingram.

The first was losing Blue Collar’s third partner—a story that Ingram’s not at liberty to discuss—coming on the heels of the pandemic.

“It was just bizarre and unexpected,” Ingram says. “We were looking at band merch and stuff and were just like, ‘Well, maybe this is the right time to exit.’”

Ingram explains that another question was how to solidify the business so it grows and then, essentially, get out of the way.

“Jim and I are also older,” says Ingram. “We’re approaching 50, and being on the up and up on all of the new bands was getting more difficult. It’s kind of the age thing, but also just recognizing that if we’re gonna do it, this is the time to do it, and the way we should do it is such that the company will continue to keep feeding people and give people new opportunities to grow alongside it.”

Upon discussing growth, Brooks reflects on the early days of Seen Merch and some of his first sales that ultimately pioneered the company’s expansion.

“The acquisition stuff really came naturally,” says Brooks. “The first one was Ink Tank Merch in Omaha, which was the merchandising arm of Saddle Creek Records.”

Brooks knew the production manager there, as well as the folks at Saddle Creek, and at the time, they were moving a lot of their operations to LA and didn’t know where to land their merchandise efforts.

“I said, ‘Sell it to me. I know what needs to happen with this business,’” Brooks says. “It’s been awesome. It was really the basis of that. Then we bought KC ScreenPrint.”

This particular segment of the merch business is called “contract decoration,” in which marketing folks work with businesses. Brooks says it’s not as sexy as making band t-shirts or warehousing a label’s catalog of vinyl records, but the music industry is so tumultuous that Seen was really looking to find some stable, foundational pieces to add to their holdings. Blue Collar and Merchtable add another sturdy and functional business element, which means Seen can continue to do what they do best.

“It’s scaled,” Ingram says. “He figured it out. His quality is high. His customer service works.”

Doing tours and significant events where you need semi-trailers full of merch isn’t something Ingram ever really focused on with his role in sales and customer relations, but he is over the moon about how Brooks and Seen Merch have dialed it in.