BACKGROUND

COVID-19 forced small businesses to close in practically every neighborhood across the United States. While some were able to shift their businesses online, selling food via delivery services or gift cards on their sites, many of the more traditional mom-and-pop shops, such as dry cleaners and bodegas, lacked the e-comm savvy necessary to make this pivot and keep revenue coming in - with many having no online presence at all. Meanwhile, locals were looking for ways to help keep their favorite stores afloat, and the creative community was also looking to give back.

IDEA

Merch Aid is a first-of-its-kind nonprofit ecommerce platform that enlists leading artists and designers to create exclusive merch (such as clothing, bags & posters) on behalf of local small businesses unable to generate income for themselves during the lockdown. The merch was sold exclusively on its own website and Instagram, with 100% of the profits going back to the respective small business owners.

Following the death of George Floyd, Merch Aid also collaborated with leading Black designers, creating merch for Black-led nonprofits.

STRATEGY

When small businesses shuttered overnight due to COVID, there was an outpouring of emotion from customers across social media, mourning their absence. The shutdown revealed that patronage at these neighborhood businesses extends beyond the transactional. Meaning that locals aren’t just customers of small businesses, they’re fans. 

We saw an opportunity to turn this sentiment into support by providing these “fans” with unique, designer merchandise they could proudly tout as tokens of their relief contribution. In order to create meaningful change rather than one-off stunty collections, we urged designers to choose businesses they authentically cared about.

To drum up immediate excitement and buzz, we partnered with industry leaders and focussed our efforts on Instagram where fans could seamlessly share content and purchase the merch directly through the app. The drops were structured to optimize sales while building brand love and awareness for the businesses in need.

EXECUTION

Quite different from your usual PSA, Merch Aid uses a drop release schedule with a limited number of designs, driving hype to almost Supreme levels. Starting April 2020, every day at 5pm, a new item of merchandise would drop on getmerchaid.com and as a shoppable post on our Instagram, as well as on the Instagram of the designer who created it. 

Drops were teased in advance through Merch Aid’s own channels, PR and through the participating designers. As word spread, the merch went from selling out in just days, to within hours - generating significant income for these small business owners, helping them pay rent and staff wages. 

Merch Aid became such a hit New York, it expanded to other cities with even more sell-out collections. And following the death of George Floyd, we partnered with Black designers to benefit the Black community for our most supported collection ever.

RESULTS

To date, Merch Aid has sold over $350,000 worth of merchandise.

Merch Aid has helped 44 small businesses pay rent and expenses.

The program scaled to new cities, and sparked copycats across the globe - solidifying Merch aid as a game changing platform that has the power to save livelihoods today and tomorrow. 

The site skyrocketed into the top 5% of Shopify stores, and our Instagram has attracted over 11,000 followers. 

Merch Aid was also celebrated by national and global press for its innovative approach to fundraising merchandise -  with over 148M in media impressions. 

“An ingenious way to pump cash into small businesses” - FastCo 

“A new way to help struggling NYC businesses” - Time Out

“Can fashion merch create real change? This group of creatives prove its power” - Vogue 

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