#Why even have an official merch store if you're not gonna use it?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

jovial loom
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I was unsure even making this since I don't really like discussion posts but after seeing the unreleased evil birthday merch and mulling over it after the post stream talking and not seeing this brought up in another discussion post, or at least I couldn't find one, I'm making it.

The first time I saw neurosama.shop, I thought to myself, "wow what a great idea, an official merch store we can get merch from that should be good quality", the subathon merch and the lava lamp being the initial release was a great way to build hype, and I was excited to see future merch, then the subathon ended, a month pasts, still no merch, another passes, no merch, apparently vedal was gonna release evil birthday merch as we learned during the dev stream, but he didn't because he didn't wanna be corpa for some reason, so another month passes with no merch, and we're now in June, meaning it has been 6 months and all that sits on the merch store is sold out merch, no neuro merch, no evil merch, not even vedal merch, there is nothing, I understand making merch is hard, you have to comm artists, get the actual products made somewhere, but surely in 6 months you could release something, like even a keychain would be fine.

There's also the fact that when the official store went up, the uwumarket store went down, this makes sense since obviously if you have your own store, there's no reason to work with a company like uwumarket, however, unlike the official store, the uwumarket site actually had merch, now uwumarket isn't the pinnacle of merch quality or anything, but they're still good and the killing of the store instantly evaporated any merch sold through them, and they had a lot of merch of both neuro and evil, keychains, shirts, rugs etc., I even bought some and I like them, and it stings a bit knowing nobody else can get that merch since it's not like uwumarket was meant to be limited time, nobody thought the site would get nuked because vedal switched to an official store.

The final point is how this alienates new swarm members, when asked about how you can get official merch, I could link the uwumarket store and new members could buy what they wanted from it, now I have to link to the official one and sheepishly say "it doesn't have any new merch rn so just bookmark it for later" which sucks since it means there is currently no way for a new swarm member to obtain merch officially, so the only way is to hope the community sells it, and while they all make great stuff, it's not official meaning it doesn't directly support the twins and vedal, which is one of the reasons people buy merch, to support who they're buying from.

I'll post a tldr summary at the bottom here, the official merch store is unused, the uwumarket site is dead, and nobody can purchase merch that directly supports the twins and vedal, and that sucks.

languid forum
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Yeah unfortunately this type of things is also a full-time job. Running around setting up a merch items is not easy. Thats why there are people that are specialized in building brands and marketing.
It's a shame really... Neuro (and evil) is a strong brand, im sure many company will love to partner with Vedal to create something. But all this also takes time away from development, which we know what Vedal wants to do.

edit: not saying that Vedal isnt doing the above, he said he was working with different companies to develop those 5 original songs, but perhaps making t-shirt and what not isn't exactly at the top of his list.

high kettle
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the merch he showed for evils birthday was quite ... lazy. But the thing i am most suprised about is the fact that Evil plushy has no rerun. It's been such a long time now and its impossible to get one without paying like 300$ bcs only scalpers sell them.

jovial loom
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it's more about the fact it was planned to release at all, simply having merch to sell is like the bare minimum

tough zephyr
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but there will be some Neuro merch?

jovial loom
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who knows, that's another problem, no communication

high kettle
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I was excited for evil merch on her bday evilBwaa

jovial loom
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I'll take any merch at this point, I just want to be able to support while buying cool stuff

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but vedal doesn't want to "be corpa"

tough zephyr
jovial loom
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yes and we're getting the vedal plush because of it

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it will likely be sold through the official merch store in combination with makeship

keen yacht
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but i agree it's important to have at least some merch always available
having breaks where there's absolutely no merch being sold sucks to those that want it

asking for evil plush reruns is unreasonable though, in the first place makeship is supposed to be a one off run, you're not supposed to get reruns
neuro rerun was just a rare opportunity that usually wouldn't happen

jovial loom
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he said he was working on the vedal plush and stuff, but nothing we(and by we I mean chronic nn posters) didn't already know about

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I'm sure it was news to some people though

fluid sage
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I've been seeing more and more swarm members like me coming from evils bday machine love and wanting merch

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Not being corpa at least for big stream events is kinda 🤨

ivory lily
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Guys vedal said it himself, he was too much in his own head, and worrying he would look too much corpa, I’m pretty sure he gets now that we want the merch, he’ll do it next time

jovial loom
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again this isn't just about the evil merch, it's about how unused the site is as a whole, the evil merch just sticks out because it was an actual use for the site and people would have bought it

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unless his opinion about "not looking corpa" applies to the idea of the site as a whole now, in which case why even make it

worldly crest
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Yea, no shit people can choose to buy or not, but sometimes it's not actually that simple. People don’t always make the best decisions for themselves. He can feel like he’s manipulating or exploiting people’s good will especially because he was riding off the high of the subathon (which some people do think is “farming” an audience) and that crazy hype train. Plenty of grifters out here that always seem to want to sell you something and those people don't really care or have good intentions regarding who they get their money from or how they get it as long as they get their money. Vedal just doesn't want to feel like he's one of those people. He can also feel some sense of imposter syndrome in that he doesn’t “deserve” it.

Basically, like he said, he was definitely getting too in his head over it and overthinking it but it's somewhat understandable why if you look from his perspective. Either way he should know now and will probably get some more merch going soon enough beyond vedal plush

elfin mist
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A little offtopic but looking at all the discussions makes me realize how big of a scope Vedal's role encompasses due to him being at the helm of most of the operations, he has to: develop neuro, do meetings on future events and plans (like concert and music), manage website, manage merch, maintain previous tech (like when updates break apis), manage costs, manage employees while keeping active communication, and probably a lot more while trying to maintain a healthy work life balance & sleep schedule.

jovial loom
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he doesn't do that last thing LULE

elfin mist
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I added that part in cus he said he was trying so points for effort PauseSama

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It was all fun n games til he mentioned what time his first meal was and I went "wait ... that's when I eat.... oh no...."

crisp shard
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If I were Vedal I'd personally be worried not about me shilling the product too much, but the twins doing so. Because there's no real (easy) way to stop them from doing that without some hard-coding.

jovial loom
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people are fine if the twins shill stuff usually since they understand they don't know any better

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as long is it's their own stuff and not somebody else's I don't see that being too big an issue

crisp shard
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Right, I just worry that, with how much the twins like running jokes and memes, they'd kinda drive it into the ground, especially if chat showed an interest, since they were made to entertain after all, and it might annoy some people if the twins talked about merch a dozen times per stream.

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But I do think, if there was moderation to it, then them advertising the merch would be fine, even downright cute. My main concern is the frequency of it. 😛

worldly crest
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I always find it funny and amusing when they shill abandoned archive

hard wraith
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While your message is applicable to any context, I would definetely say that in context of this evil birthday Evil merch specifically, Vedal did really get into his own head and went the other direction. Because - yes, it's absolutely fair to be worried about farming the fans too much, but there is a big difference between random merch drop and a big event like bithday stream.

Even if it's an AI that doesn't actually have a birthday, for vtuber fans birthday merch generally speaking isn't seen as exploiting the fans, but it's quite expected. Heck, nowadays even small vtubers do it. So it's like people people see the merch as part of the package - it's both a way to support the creator, but also something they want to have

(Mind you I do not actually have stake in Neuro merch specifically, but as a vtuber fan in general I really needed to talk about it ^^' )

midnight valve
# keen yacht but i agree it's important to have at least some merch always available having b...

fyi thats just not true, they have a whole event dedicated to reruns and thats actually where the neuro plush had its rerun, but even outside the event after reading their tos and guidelines they make it clear they can make a rerun with approval of the product owner and if they see there is enough demand for it from the fans, granted they might fix some issues with the product (in our case evils skirt) and market it as v2, but at the end of the day its still just the same plush getting a rerun

keen yacht
jovial loom
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they've only done 2 timewarps in 2023 and 2024, and both were extremely successful and all reran plushies got funded again

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now the evil plush rerun wasn't a timewarp, but as krrot said, if the plush creator gives approval and makeship sees enough profit in it, they could rerun it whenever