Turning convenience into cash

Cos I know you're probably a sticky beak like me, I want to show you something I don't think I've ever fully broken down before.

Ya know that $40k I mentioned on Monday? Well, I want to pull back the teal curtain on exactly how that works, because the detail matters and I think there's something in here worth you seeing.

Now helping clients with merch ain't my full game by any means. It's something I sorta fell into when I was helping businesses with how their brand is experienced. And through this, I discovered 3 things:

Ordering merch is easy for me, but feels hard for clients.
Clients who send merch or use it at events often hate the process.
Creating a perfect merch experience for a clients is a low-key super power of mine.

So, like, why not make money off that?

To set the scene, when a client needs event collateral, think general merch, signage, print, branded anything, here's my actual process.

I chat with the client about their event, get the low down on any themes and understand the budgets. Often I ask if the stuff they want is for a high-value client (e.g. they are likely to convert them into a customer that pays) or is the aim more about low-value pursuits, think freebie hand outs of webcam covers with their logo on it. This sets the scene for how much I can squeeze the creative juices.

I then go to my suppliers and get quotes. I charge a markup of between 1.2x and 1.3x times the supplier cost. So if a batch of tote bags costs $500 to produce, I'm charging $600 to $650 for that line item.

Then on top of that I add a project management fee. Usually a flat fee based on how much coordination is actually involved, things like liaising with suppliers, managing artwork files, chasing approvals, making sure everything lands at the venue looking right and not like someone's Year 9 art project.

Smaller jobs sometimes get a higher multiplier because the admin doesn't shrink just because the order does. A job that takes me four hours of back and forth to manage shouldn't pay me like it took ten minutes. And I've never had a client push back on any of it. Not once.

Because they're not paying for the tote bags. Or caps. Or glitter tattoos (have had that one for real).

They're paying for not having to know what a bleed is.
They're paying for not having to chase a supplier or manage approvals or figure out if the Pantone matches on a different substrate.
They're paying to hand something stressful to someone they already trust and have it come back sorted.

That is worth a markup and a management fee. Convenience is the product. It always was.

Now here's where I want to be really straight with you.

This is my specific situation. I have 16 years of supplier relationships, clients who already trust me, and a design business that lends itself naturally to this kind of add-on. I'm not sitting here telling you to go replicate my exact model and expect the same result. That wouldn't be honest and honestly it would be a bit annoying of me.

But what I am saying is this: convenience has a dollar value, and most creatives I know are delivering it constantly without ever putting a price on it.

Maybe it's not merch and event collateral for you. But is there something you do for your clients that just... makes their life easier? Something you've quietly absorbed into the job because it felt too small to charge for, or too hard to explain, or because you weren't sure you were allowed to?

Convenience is worth charging for. Put the price tag on it.

And if you're sitting there thinking you've got a version of this in your business but you're not sure what it looks like or what to charge for it, you know where to find me.

Go make money.