I pitched a business plan to the owner of a design-your-own footwear business, to take his technology into the music merchandise market. I ran and developed the music merchandising arm of the business, signing up artists, management and merchandise companies to work with us, running the website and social media, managing the products and doing footwear designs.
I met Adam at a craft fair, we got on really well and he showed me his app for designing your own footwear, which he was developing
After writing a business plan and presenting it to him, we worked together to launch a music merchandising division to his business, which he supported me in building and running. We signed up hundreds of bands, including Motörhead and The Libertines.
After helping guide the website design and development, I managed the products and the website content using a custom CMS.
I created many of the designs which we sold using the artwork belonging to the various bands.
On social media we faced that challenge of connecting with fans of many different genres whose natural instinct was to be tribal and hate the genres they didn't identify with. To maintain a close relationship with them and to prevent them targeting the main brand with their animosity, I conceived and designed a series of avatars, representing the major genres, which interacted with the customers for the brand. This allowed the fans to point their musical taste and objections at these fictional creations, keeping the brand's voice out of the arguments and elevating its profile above the the issue of musical genres.
