I heard the website Pickrset.com got an offer to be bought by Live NAtion for $1 million. Pickrset.com is a cool site that makes no $$ but possibly could with the right investment as they have a cool niche. It would be a good purchase for Live Nation to help expand into certain markets and other niches but apparently they want to buy it solely to shut it down.  They are scared of a little site. Go figure. Instead of buying them to help blow it up and put a spotlight on the cool idea and technology they just bought, they would rather just push it under the rug.

Smartpunk is for sale. Asking price $750,000. $150,000 in debt.  They have a good brand and the site looks great. Not sure how profitable it is though.

Merch now sold to Sony/Columbia. From what I hear they sold the record label as well which was probably the lions share of the value of that company. Merch now is basically just like any old average screen printer that you would find in almost any city in the country so beyond a couple of screen printing presses and a few tubs of ink there is no value there. I would say Sony probably made a bad deal. But hey, at least now when they sign a band to a 360 deal they can say they also own a couple printing machines and some jugs of ink. Classic, my 14 year old cousin just started a printshop in his parents garage. Maybe I should see if Sony/Columbia would be interested in buying his printshop?

Looks like Paramore is fuming mad about now having any zip Hoodies for their headlining appearance at Bamboozle in NJ last weekend. I would be too since weather reports were showing it would be cold and raining 10 days in advance of that show.  When other bands were selling over 200 hoodies, they sold 0.  They should call their merch company Warner Bros Records, wait no, thats a record label. Actually Atlantic does their merch, wait theyre a record label too but they own Fueled by Ramen which is also a record label that does merch too. The band ended up saying Fuck It because when they called Warner Bros Records, no one there knew anything about zip hoodies and apparently someone responded with “Honey, we have alot bigger problems goin on right now than having to worry about your little jackets…”.

Manhead Merch which is rumored to be in talks with Bravado about doing a deal. Lord knows how that would help the merch industry but Bravado has their checkbook open and is throwing money around at anything that moves.

Cinderblock is still looking for someone to buy their declining business.

Bandmerch has taken a huge hit since the departure of Matt Young. All of his bands left when he did. That goes to show you that there is still some loyalty in the business.  If Bandmerch can hire some experienced employees there they may be able to not fall apart. Their employee turnover rate is ridiculously high and apparently the working enviornment is extremely chaotic.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 4:58 pm and is filed under WAR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.