About Merch.com
By Spike Xavier
Most companies start out to make money. Not Merch.com. Merch.com started out to change the way bands made money. Merch.com was born out of a do it yourself attitude which was so prevalent in the punk rock movement of Orange County and elsewhere in the early 80's. I started what would become merch.com in my bedroom so that my friends and I could sell our merchandise directly to our fans. No middleman. The internet was a new frontier in 1996 and although my van touring days were well behind me, the life experiences and values formed in those years forged the vision of a new kind of company. We had something more powerful than a tour van, we had the internet. This was the tool which would continue the legacy of no boundary between the artist and their fan base.
When I say artist I'm not referring to a ?brand' I'm talking about a band. I'm talking about artists committed to their art and fans who are committed to helping the band continue by attending a show and buying some merchandise so that the band can continue on making music. These types of bands didn't get rich and their fans didn't go broke it was a circular relationship and it was an amazing time.
Like any great idea, there were many challenges but it was not long at all before my friend Bill Fold who managed bands and put on shows came over to my house in Fullerton one night to see my little operation. As it turns out he was in the process of starting the exact same thing and we decided right then and there to just do it together. We figured it would be fun and I knew one thing about Bill from working with him in some of my bands, he worked very hard.
Back in those days everyone involved in putting on shows or playing them at that level worked very hard because you did everything yourself or with the help of a very few people . I had a great work ethic because I was blessed with an amazing role model in my father. He was a marine (thus the name spike) and ALL marines work hard. My father told me several times, ?I don't care if you load trucks, empty trash cans, or run a corporation, you just make sure you work harder than anyone else around you and never quit?. My other inspiration was Black Flag. Black Flag toured the world in a Van with no radio or video support. The internet did not exist in their touring years other than as a government experiment. Another inspiring aspect of Black Flag was their seeming commitment to their artistic vision. They didn't sound like anyone else before them and that inspired me. Before merch.com started I was in a band which started in 1982 called Mind Over Four. The band was 100% original. We set out to merge all of our influences and create our very own sound. We rehearsed 6 nights a week after work for 3 - 5 hours a night and on the 7th night we passed out flyers. We continued this for several years and developed our art until we got a break and Dag Nasty took us on a U.S. tour as their support act. We did the entire tour in a GMC Jimmy which is like a small Ford Explorer. Doug Carrion (Descendents, Dag Nasty, For Love Not Lisa, Ultra head, Humble Gods) showed me the ropes and once we met all the promoters (hard working fans) on that tour I just kept booking shows and we pretty much stayed on and off the road for the next 8 years. We would go out on the road, and when we ran out of money we would come home and get jobs and save up and go back out again. We toured the United States in car or van many, many times. We drove ourselves, booked shows from payphones, ate dirt and relied on the kindness of those people who cared enough to work hard and put on shows and give struggling bands some pizza for the privilege of having a great night.
It was an amazing time. We struggled through many hardships including snowstorms, mechanical failures, fist fights, emotional rollercoaster's, tiny crowds and an extreme lack of funds. I never considered giving up because I had my father as a role model and our punk rock and independent band van tours were absolutely nothing in comparison to the struggles and sacrifices people in military service endure.
Bill Fold took the path of promoter and band manager. He had booked one of the bands I played in called the Humble Gods several times at the Barn in Riverside California. We had some amazing shows. We even went to Hawaii twice once to play with the Foo Fighters and once to play some shows with Bad Religion. Fold went with us and we became close friends. The Humble Gods went on to sign with Hollywood Records but the death of our good friend Rob Harris and years of van tours had taken their toll on my psych and I decided to retire from touring and just stay home and work my warehouse job.
After a while I began to run the shipping section of the company. It was growing fast and I worked directly with Fed Ex to re do how we processed the high volume truck loading on the docks. I also began to run the credit card processing with batch program commands and began to understand and really enjoy the entire fulfillment process. Right around this time (1995) the internet became real news. It was all dial up at the time but something about it clicked with me. I decided that I would start my own internet company to sell band merchandise directly to the fan. I did my band (Corporate Avenger) at the time and my brother's band Kottonmouth Kings and Drown and 20 Dead Flower Children and some other bands I was friends with. When Bill Fold came to my house and we joined together he brought in the Aquabats and we began adding bands. We expanded fast and within a couple of years we had a several thousand foot warehouse and something like 20 or 30 employees. It was fun and exciting. We bought our own screen presses and ran a print shop so we could print the bands t shirts and stuff for them for their tours as well. It was amazing. We even got hit up by some Venture Capital firms who wanted to invest in us and ?take us public' which was the thing that was starting to happen at the time. We seriously entertained the idea thinking how funny it would be if we all ended up rich off of this whole thing but we elected to just stick to our guns and grow the business organically. We had 2 friends invest some money and we took on some partners who were also our friends and we all just invested our own money and time into the business.
Eventually we grew into buying and re selling officially licensed products as well as providing fulfillment services for bands. That's pretty much what the company does today. And it does it very well. As other companies began to do similar things to merch.com people would ask me what was different about merch.com and I would say that the main difference is that we would get in our 1987 Tan Toyota Truck (affectionately known as ?bound to be a classic') and drive down to Gardena get our t shirt back if we found someone trying credit card fraud and the other companies probably wouldn't. I thought that pretty much summed it up. We had some amazing characters work with us. Of course one of the most colorful was Scott Hall (RIP) who was our art department. We kept Will Perry on staff just to give the bands the look as they toured the facility. It was a unique work environment. If we caught someone stealing some shirts, we would called them into the office and speak with them about it and all end up laughing hysterically about it. We just chalked it up to a learning experience for a friend, no big deal. We would just tell them next time to just ask. That was it. One employee was so amazing at catching naps on the clock that we nicknamed him (insert his last name here) van winkle. We would catch him sleeping and just laugh. Most of the time we wouldn't even wake him up, he was a very hard worker so it didn't really feel like he was doing anything wrong.
Sometime around 2004 I left southern California to pursue the study of computing and I no longer own any of merch.com. I am so proud to be a part of this company's history. I hope to see it take its place in the internet history it deserves. It was a very far ahead of its time company with an incredibly colorful cast of characters. If it means anything at all, and it does to some of us, know that when you buy something from merch.com you are working with the real deal in every sense of the word. Think: Black Flag, the Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front, Fear, Miles Davis, No Doubt, Social Distortion, Nine Inch Nails, Bad Religion, At The Drive In, Minor Threat, Johnny Cash, the Clash, and you'll be thinking Merch.com.