#what i really want tho is for the resellers to put the merch on there

[some-different-account]

why didnt i watch a livestream of the mcr concert in auckland

[dojae-huh]

I am not familiar at all with merch sales be it within the kpop community or not, but of course, I heard a lot about Doyoung's merch or related things that were sold out. It makes me wonder a lot about Dozennies. What are their average age, their professions and their schedules. Because things have been sold out quite frequently recently, I would always imagine that most Dozennies are working young adults who are probably around the same age as Do. You gotta be able to have financial means to buy these things. Most are not expensive but some are not that cheap either.

And they are always updated on Do's because they were so fast in buying all these. Sometimes, I also wonder if it's just the same people buying his products because most of these are sold online. Like I do read that some fandom do bulk orders to help the idol. Honestly, the only thing I'm concerned with with bulk ordering is what do they do with it. Resell it at a higher price? I guess better than just shoved into a corner collecting dust. I just don't have the experience of buying merch, so I don't really know the competition to get these things. My friend's an Army though and I've seen the immense struggle when buying albums (that's the closest experience I have). Is it possible that for highly competitive fandom, these purchases are kinda like gambling because you'll never know if you get to check the items out and that makes people addicted in some way? (at this point I'm just rambling but interesting tho)

And one thing I always wonder about kpop merch is that the products are more frequently released compared to other fandoms I think? Like not just companies merch, they also have collabs like sanrio, nr, etc. How do fans keep up with this constant release of merch and collab? Because I think when you become an ambassador for brands, it is to increase the sale of the brand itself. And when you pick nct as ambassadors, the market is most likely the fandom right (or no?) If it is, how can the fandom keep up with all the sales or am I underestimating fandom purchasing power? Or perhaps I overestimate the quantity of the products they plan to sell.

Idol companies don't earn with music. They earn with merch and concerts. Btw, SM is a company that produces very little merch in comparison to others.

I'm a book illustrator, but the books I illustrate have very low number of copies. From 500 to 3-5k. Maybe some had more, I don't have author copies for all and not all have the data. And publishing companies still spend from half a year to two years to prepare such a book. The trick is to put out something on the shelves all the time, to gain from the volume. K-pop groups have millions of fans. And almost all fans buy merch in one form or another. 1mln will buy an album, 200k will buy a poster, 20k will buy a mug, another 20k will buy Sanrio stickers, yet another 20k will buy a magazine.

A fan doesn't need to know and buy all merch released, I doubt it's feasable even for the most rich and crazily commited, it's enough for him/her to buy from time to time. Fanclubs help to keep up with the info and make collective orders. There are k-pop merch shops that work as middle men as well.

I'm a pretty merch resistant person, I don't like to spend money on things that collect dust, but even I fall to "I want to treat myself" and "I want to have fun". I can buy well produced merch or cheap merch. Especially if it's sparkly, haha. I don't need a plastic standie even for free, but a clear file is a product I'll take. Smart companies diversify their offer.

To sell merch companies invent different strategies and fuel the competition among fans. Fans buy merch to show off (look how rich I am, I have hundreds of lightsticks), to show dedication to their bias (look what a big fan I am, I made a shrine), to satisfy human's innate instinct to collect (idol cards, the hunt for limited editions), to support their bias (buying the endorsed stuff, taking pictures of it, posting on socmed and tagging the company), to win the race with other bands (this applies to the albums mostly).

Bulk buying. Honestly, I think the majority of the albums get into the hands of fans. There are not that many fans who can buy 100 albums to pull out cards and then drop the photoalbums in trashcan. Cases like that just make news. Fans give out the albums to non-fans (to PR their group), give for free to the fans with no money or re-sell on forums for half the price. Think about it, Sticker sold over 2mln. Jaehyun alone has more than 10mln subscribers on IG.

As for working adults. Sure, "now I grew up and can buy whatever I want" exist, but the majority of merch buyers are teenagers who get their money from their parents or from part-time work. Studying in Uni/working adults need to pay rent, buy work clothes, pay off their college loans, buy textbooks. Teens, on the other hand, need to show off before their peers, be better, have the latest toy. Nowadays the "toy" is loads of k-pop merch.

Companies like NR win from selling directly to fans and from fans advertising the brand/products on socmed. Plus the idols simply work as pretty models who know how to appeal. It's not nesessary to know who they are to be pulled in and be affected. The ads are showed on screens in cosmetic shops.

Doyoung has a lot of younger fans, at least the ones that write/call him. But I agree that he should attract more young adults than, say, Mark. His core fans like him for the voice first and foremost, for his life advice/grounded personality/emotional support secondly.

[wonday]

hey! i hope this is okay to ask but I've recently gotten into monsta x and i was looking into buying a copy of the fatal love album!! i was wondering if you had some advice on where the best place/website to buy them is?? thanks!

hi!! that’s totally fine! welcome to the fandom, new monbebe! :D fatal love is definitely a good start to your journey! thank you for contacting me about this. i’m no expert but i’ll try to help you as much as i can. i’m not sure if you’re new to buying kpop albums in general so i’ll try to give some tips about that too in hopes of helping! :)) 

when thinking of buying albums i think where you order from largely depends on where you live and what your budget is! (atleast it’s like that for me) i live in europe, specifically a smaller country (we don’t have any kpop album resellers or shops here) so getting albums for me is quite difficult and expensive. what i’ve learned over the years is to definitely not rush into anything and scope out all the options before you make a purchase.  people usually buy from ktown4u and subkshop as they have the cheapest prices and special preorder benefits (like photocards exclusive to their website only) that you won’t find anywhere else. if you collect photocards of a certain member or members, those are a good place to get your hands on some exclusives!  for me, shipping on those sites is usually 30+ dollars so i can’t buy anything from them and have to resort to some other methods. overall, i can’t rate them cause i never bought from them but i know they’re probably the best sites out there. i bought quite a few albums from cokodive. they’re not the cheapest but still cheaper than ordering from ktown or subk. their packages always arrived fast though i did find some damage on the corners of the albums sometimes (but i can’t blame that on them since i know how rough the delivery can be) amongst other albums i got my monsta x ‘we are here’ album from them and though it didn’t have any preorder benefits (cause i ordered it quite late) they still put a freebie poster inside! they’ve also been the site with fastest shipping for me. overall an 7.5/10 because the corners of the albums sometimes got damaged and their price is a bit higher than the other sites.  my 2nd most used site is probably ebay (which many people shun cause of the shady sellers?) but honestly there’s nothing to worry about if you know good sellers. i ordered my wonho album from play_store on ebay and it arrived quite fast, around 2 weeks for me. and it was in perfect condition (plus i got exactly the photocard i wanted :’D) overall 8/10 because they were a bit pricey but the package came quite fast. both my fatal love albums i got from the uk seller lovego5rae on ebay (they also have a twitter and instagram with the same username i’m pretty sure) who’s a reseller.(meaning they buy the albums from a korean site in bulk and then resell them in europe so it’s cheaper). they specialize in monstax so they also have some cute twotuckgom merch listed as well. i got the ktown4u preorder benefit photocard since they got their bulk order from them. now i was super pleased with this seller, they’re legit one of the best resellers i have come across and have great communication (i even had a nice chat with them when we talked about my quadruple/full album minhyuk pull LOL). even tho they did give me the same preorder photocard (i got 2 shownus, if anyone wants to trade lmk ;)) the albums honestly arrived in great condition, probably the best condition from all the sellers i mentioned before, and they even included a cute little i.m card in my package. so i would definitely recommend them if you’re in europe.  overall 9.5/10 because they’re a reseller so the albums need to reach them first and then they ship them out to you which can take a while to arrive (around a month) there is one more site i ordered from, only once but i had a very, very, very pleasant experience, which is catchopcd! now i believe this site functions somewhat like ebay (feel free to correct me if i’m wrong) meaning that there’s different sellers, but they all ship from korea. now their prices are honestly some of the best i’ve seen as is usually the case when it’s a korean seller. the shipping i took had tracking, was really cheap and arrived so? damn? fast?! i’m talking like a week at most, couting the weekend. now this is a whole story because the album i was buying was nct 2018′s empathy (which is like my favourite album in the entire world and i spent approximately a year and a half looking for it at a decent price). when they listed it on the site it said the album is being sold because it had damages on the packaging, but the album arrived in pristine condition and still wrapped in it’s original factory wrap?? like there was not a scratch on it and it honestly arrived in much better condition than some of the sites i ordered from before. i was really extremely pleasantly surprised lol. i left a review on their site and they actually gave me a discount for the next purchase so i’ll definitely be buying from them again. their customer support was also freaking amazing. overall, and i’m REALLY sorry for the long post, i had great experiences with most of these sites/sellers so it really depends on where you live and how much you’re willing to spend. i can only afford a few albums per year so i wouldn’t say i have as much experience as some other kpop fans on these sites, but i’m glad you asked me for advice! if you’re in europe like me i would say catchopcd and lovego5rae on ebay are the best two, followed by play_store on ebay and cokodive. if you’re in asia or america, i think you’d definitely be safest ordering from ktown4u and subkshop! if there’s anything else i can help with, please let me know! (and again, sorry for the extremely long post...it kinda got out of hand TT)

[kitto-toberu-sa]

Digimon The Real World Report

Not an entirely positive review, but I tell it as it is. 

I agreed to meet friends at 10am, despite the exhibition not opening until 11am and the website asking people not to line up early. My friend arrived at 9:30 and still had 30-40 people in front of her. The heat was really bad – it’s not meant to get hot for another few weeks, but it feels like we’ve skipped spring and gone straight to summer :/

We had to climb the six floors up to the exhibition, leading to very confused looks from the other shoppers. We had our tickets checked and those of us who bought the expensive tickets to get the goods got them then. There were flowers at the front door to celebrate the exhibition opening from important people (usually it’s from producers, VAs etc, but I’m not good with kanji and was trying to find my camera, sorry ;; I believe there are photos on the official twitter tho) We then got to go through in batches of 10-20 people and got given the sticker etc then.

I will be honest. The exhibition wasn’t that great. It was fun and nostalgic, but more than half of the stuff had ‘no photo signs’ and there were ‘guests’ (media?) walking around with luggage and just looking generally confused. Add that to the amount of people and the heat and it wasn’t the best experience. Staff weren’t prepared for the amount of people/the passion of fans and were often in the way of photo shots and were INCREDIBLY slow at the cash register. I spent maybe 30-40 minutes in the exhibition, and close to double that in the store.

One guy likened it to war and I’d be hard pressed to say he was wrong. People were pushing, there were CLEARLY resellers, some postcards were damaged due to fans grabbing and pushing. Most people had lists of what they wanted, grabbed their stuff and left. Others inspected every single piece of merch, wondered and kept coming back. It was hard to even get to the merch as people kept pushing. Keep in mind a lot of people had big shopping bags and or/ita bags, so things were catching, people were bumping their heads when they were getting on the ground to get stuff on lower shelves, it was hot and people were super slow.

I’m all for taking your time, but if you’re pondering, leave the line and come back later. One woman was with her boyfriend. He was clearly the fan, she was tagging along. She kept picking up post cards randomly and showing them to him (outside the line) and he was like “I just want Koushirou”. Of course she had no idea who that was so kept picking random ones :/

People were limited to 30 can badges. I believe in total, not of each type. By the time I was in line, they had staff making us empty our bags and counting badges, putting them in plastic bags and numbering how many gold or summer badges we had. This made the badges easy to do at the cash register, so it was a good idea.

The exhibition itself was cheap looking. Very cute and nostalgic, but it was pretty clear this was a quickly thought up cash cow with the intent of getting people into the shop or paying a premium for the limited goods through the expensive tickets. My friend said this as well, so it isn’t just me being bitter. Am I glad I went? Yes. Was it fun? Yes. Would I go again? No.

It may seem like I’m being bitchy, but there’s only so much you can gush about cardboard lol It was a good experience, but some Digimon BGM mixed in with Butterfly etc would have made a big difference. Staff acting like tour guides could have been cute. Voice overs from Gennai or the kids (even generic things like “watch out!” “over there!” etc) would have made it feel like an immersive experience.

You start by seeing a cool holo thing of Gennai. Would have been nice if there was a voice over, but it was basically just tri (?) themes playing in the background. We then walk into Pinochiomon’s world, so you see a bunch of his minions with signs saying ‘puzzle’. Takeru is off in a corner with a generic happy face while Pinochiomon is standing at the bottom of fake stairs. Patamon is at the top, unable to come down because Pinochiomon is a dick. –insert ‘great friends you got there’ audio here plz-

We then see Yamato and Cherrymon. Gabumon is next to Yamato. Lots of the art is just generic art, like Yama’s ‘cool guy’ pose.

There were crests hidden around the area but I only found three… Apart from the brothers, there were no cut outs of the kids you could take photos with. Maybe they switch them out? Seems weird to not have Taichi at least…

Next room is no photos. All about the Digivice toy line and a bunch of samples which was cool. Then a bunch of storyboard art, which was cool. Nice drawing of Sora and Taichi’s apartment. There was a Gennai cut out with a bridge behind it, where you could take pictures. Now, I don’t know about you, but Gennai was never a fave of mine and I don’t think a lot of people will really see him without remembering that infamous Tri scene now. Also, who would you rather? A picture with a Digimon or a Chosen, or an old geezer? A fun thing, but you gotta wonder who made the decisions here.

Next room was more bad mon cut outs before we see the puzzle thing. Remember when the kids needed to go to the real world and they had to solve a puzzle to open the gate? That, but there was a button in the middle. Press the button, a gate on the tv opens. Again, who made this decision?

It shows a variety of sad Adventure scenes.

Angemon dying? Done. Leomon? A groan/laugh went through the crowd. Taichi being forced to leave Hikari? Check.

“Hey, what should we show videos of?” “The kids made a triumphant return-“ “No.” “No?” “Make them suffer.” “The fans who have been supporting our franchise for years? Waiting in long lines for overpriced goods? Having a good time and keeping us in business?” “Yes.” “Make them suffer?” “Yes.” “…alright then.”

I thought it was just a reel of deaths until the Yagami one came up lmao.

The next room has the train. The front of the train had the Tri intro video (Taichi, 17 years old – that one). We couldn’t take photos of this which is really stupid considering it’s been on youtube for free for years lmao.

You could go in the train (boring on the inside - no decoration, just plain walls. even if they’d just painted the inside to look like the real train it would have done a lot) and lots of people were taking poses from the final scene. When you were in the train, if you looked out the window, you could see cutouts of the mons, which was really cute. It would have been nice to have staff photographers or to have lines so people could take photos without having 30 randoms in the background.

That was it.

It was just the store after that. It was fun and I’m glad I went, but I wouldn’t rush back. Rather than an exhibition, it seemed like something you would find at a convention.