First Merch Drop is Live!
We are finally ready to put together some Indie Sellers Guild merchandise and we want to use it as a way to promote all of our amazing artists!
Submit your design for one of our three merchandise items by October 31. Then the ISG will set up a fun competition on our Instagram to select the winning designs. You get your work shown and credited (with links of course!) and we have a fun battle of the designs for our audience to vote on and get excited about what we will offer.
We found this awesome unionized, co-op print shop in the US, Worx Printing, that will give us a print on demand merchandise store FOR FREE as a nonprofit! The favorite merch items voted on over the summer were a t-shirt, pack of stickers, and a tote bag. And if the store is successful we can add more items in the future!
Right now we are asking for artists to submit merch designs by the end of October using this form on our website. To submit a design you must be a verified seller member with the Indie Sellers Guild. Don’t worry if you aren’t an ISG seller member yet! Seller membership is free, and just requires a quick application with your business info and some behind the scenes photos to show that you design/make/curate your own work.
How to check if you’re verified
Login to your account. Click “Account Info” under the “My Account” Menu:
At the very top of the page it will tell you which type of membership you have.
To apply for seller member, click this link in the menu:
If you sent in an application and it is still pending, please contact us and let us know you plan to submit a design for merch and we will fast track your application. We do this for anyone who offers to volunteer for the Guild.
If you haven’t yet signed up for an account on our website, you can do so right now! Then make sure to also follow the steps above to verify your seller membership.
Our Discord community came up with 4 great slogans, and we have an ISG Brand Kit already prepped for you. But the goal is to showcase all of your amazing talent, not just hype our logo, we want to show everyone what our members can create. We have templates, file information, and design tips all with that form on the website. And if you want to participate but aren’t a digital artist, we have you covered! You can still submit your design and one of our volunteers will help you digitize it if you win. Once all the designs are submitted, we’ll match them up by merchandise item and slogan and get our battle going!
If your design wins, we ask that you donate it to us for a year except for use in a portfolio (we can give you a receipt for your taxes). After a year we will either buy the design or release it back to you. When we release a design, either after a year or because it wasn’t selected as a winner, we ask that you remove the ISG logo and branding and then feel free to use it however you want! So even if you don’t win the competition you still get your work shown and can use the design for your own business. That’s another reason we want our artists to create designs showing off their style.
The goal is to have the competition in November, with winners picked and sent to the print shop in time for Small Business Saturday. That way we can buy merch as holiday gifts, appreciate and show off the work of our fellow artists AND help support the Guild. For every item purchased the Guild will receive $5.
The money raised will be used to:
- Pay a lawyer to make sure all the Guild’s tax exempt paperwork is good to go, no messing around with the IRS here.
- Pay to set up an awesome new membership site for Guild members. We’ll be able to make networking groups, put up resources in Wiki pages, have a better shop directory, all kinds of fun things!
- Pay our officers part time so they can afford to keep putting in time each week to making the internet better for creative indie sellers.
We hope you will send us a design, share, vote, and buy merch! We can’t wait to see what our artists make!
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