This morning a friend of mine asked how it was possible for the T-shirt to sold out before ‘us’ (the majority of the fandom) even found out it existed. Who bought the t-shirt?
Well, we did.
It seems unbelievable, right? How can the t-shirt sell out before the core of fandom even knows about it’s existence. Before many BNF were even awake. Well, it’s something called statistics and the fact that whoever decided the number of t-shirts to produce probably underestimated the numbers when they where running their predictions.
Click Read More for a Big Ass Explanation on Why and How. Thank!
An extremely well done post (about the Destiel shirt) on a marketing level about supply, demand, equilibrium, possible reasons on initial short supply, the restocks, and generally How Marketing And Product Sales Work including consumer curves and all kinds of beautiful things that pretty much pan out to, like I been-said since I came to fandom with a thousand other statistics, the Destiel fandom is so much quantifiably huge-er than anyone gives it credit for, even the fandom itself that already recognizes how huge and in-demand it is.
(A few grammar issues but by the style, I imagine English isn’t their native language. Complain at them when you speak multiple languages flawlessly.)
As someone who has approx. 5-10% basic understanding of market economics, OP easily filled the gaps in my brain. Brilliant post.
Remember, PR/merch is not showrunning, but this gives you damn significant insight on how much potential Destiel holds. Just imagine. It seems to have massive untapped selling power.
Actually, I’m gonna add some thinkie thoughts to this with a disclaimer that this isn’t exactly my wing of niche experience once we leave the marketing and stats face of it, as much as what I can pull from common sense and a few available numbers.
I’m just gonna put out there that Hot Topic has a last reported annual revenue (that I can find off the bat) of 761 million ([2009] – which actually includes more than actual net income, it’s basically “sales”). There were 642 hot topic stores by last report in 2011 (same link, and also google). If we ignored digital since it wasn’t AS huge and mainstream back then, and gave an average of store revenue per store, assuming NONE was online around then, we’re still pulling around 3,200 revenue per store per day average (lower if we assume some sales were already online, but we’re actually gonna be generous to potential anti-argument here.)
Minding the listed sales rates of the shirt that have gone at about 100/day (sometimes like 60 on one and 40 the other etc), at 20-odd (depending which sale is being picked up on, since it’s rotated and costs have been like 23-26)… correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re looking at about a 2,300-2,600 net revenue from the digital store per day, from these shirts alone. Or the equivalent of 75% of a store’s sales (by our available numbers) pre-major-internet-boom-pre-digital-orders; and again, this . No wonder they’ve been emphasizing consecutively for two days that these are going fast.
I mean, this is extremely raw math so I’m not holding it to rule of law, but by the looks of it, this would be one of those days in a brick and mortar shop where you’re working retail and literally EVERYBODY is like “Do you have the Destiel shirt.” *sigh* “Yes here” “Do you have the-” “Destiel shirt?” “How did you know-” “We’re sold out.” “DAMNIT.” “They’re sending us another shipment in a few hours cuz everybody is selling out.” Then you get the oddball that’s there for the Pikachu wallet instead after three shirt purchases and two “Sorry, we’re out for a few hours, truck comes soon” notices.
Mind: I understand marketing, but actual sales totals (as in the business facing money management end) isn’t my specialty, so if I’m a wee bit off on the understanding of this… apologies. Feel free to correct if I’m on some kind of crack. But that is legitimately what it looks like from the numbers I can pull at a glance.
Why did the Hot Topic Destiel T-shirt sold out so fast?
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