The Importance of Ownable Merch

I love t-shirts. Like, really love them. I’ve got an entire drawer dedicated to the obsession. One drawer. Multiple layers. We’re talking stratum. I just counted: just shy of 50 shirts are crammed in there. Sometimes I can’t even shut the dang thing. It drives my wife nuts. If she ever leaves me, it’ll be over my inability to Marie Kondo this cotton catastrophe into something manageable.

I’ve always been a sucker for merch — shirts, hats, toys, pins, you name it. I still remember zooming around the neighborhood in my iron-on Flash Gordon tee and thinking I was the coolest thing this side of Planet Mongo. Or the time I was supposed to be learning the multiplication tables but instead practiced drawing my Admiral Ackbar shirt (while looking at it upside down) into my Trapper Keeper.

Priorities.

But my love for merch —  specifically wearable merch — came with my obsession with Monster Cookies and a shirt I wore until it literally fell off me. My mom clipped proofs-of-purchases for months and then mailed them off just so tiny me could broadcast to the world: I love these cookies!!! People needed to know. I was four, but I had a message, and that message was printed in bold across my chest.

I bring all of this up because that’s what merch is all about, isn’t it? Broadcasting to the world what your brand, and by extension, you are all about?

Ownable merch is magic. It’s how you smuggle a brand away from itself and into your real life. It takes all that big, abstract stuff, like values, stories, vibes, and shrinks it down into something you can wear, hold, stick on your laptop, or pull over your head when you need a little confidence boost. Suddenly, it’s not just a logo anymore. It’s your hoodie, your enamel pin, your perfectly broken-in dad hat. (Or your overflowing drawer of Godzilla tee's ;)

That kind of physical connection? It’s sticky. It keeps the brand close, even when you're nowhere near it.

Here are 5 quick reasons you shouldn’t sleep on ownable merch:

It extends the brand experience.

Let’s rewind to 2019. Glossier, already the queen of cool-girl skincare, dropped a soft pink hoodie—and the internet lost it. Not a product. Not a serum. A sweatshirt. But not just any sweatshirt: this thing became a uniform. A badge. A wearable wink that said, “Yeah, I get it.” GlossiWEAR turned their fans into walking billboards, and even people who’d never tried the products wanted in.

The hype? Very real.

Waitlist real.

Celebrity real.

Suddenly, the brand wasn’t just on your shelf; it was on everybody's back.

It sparks conversation (and UGC).

Great merch isn’t just something you wear; it’s a conversation starter.

A signal.

A wink across the room.

Liquid Death nailed this by turning their chaos-loving vibe into merch people had to have — shirts, skate decks, even air fresheners. Fans didn’t just drink the water; they wore the brand. And in doing so, they helped it explode across subcultures and social feeds without a dollar of traditional advertising.

It creates new revenue or loyalty streams.

Merch isn’t just a brand booster. It can be the brand. Drop it with intention (or scarcity), and it becomes a product line, a loyalty play, even a lifestyle. YETI gets this. Their hats, shirts, and patches aren’t just extras; they sell out, rack up revenue, and let fans live the rugged identity.

You're not just buying a cooler... you’re buying into the whole damn ethos.

It builds community and signals belonging.

Wearing merch can feel like a secret handshake. It’s also a quiet “me too” for people who get it. It builds community without saying a word. Patagonia understood this early on. Their patches and tags weren’t just branding; they were badges of belief. Sustainability, adventure, activism… all stitched into gear worn with pride.

It wasn’t just apparel. It was alignment.

It reinforces internal culture.

Don’t sleep on the team. Ownable merch builds internal pride just as much as external buzz. A good shirt makes people feel like part of something bigger.

A great sticker?

It ends up on every laptop in sight.

Mailchimp’s Rainbow Room nailed this with quirky, high-quality merch that employees actually wanted to wear. It reinforced their creative, offbeat culture and made a B2B brand feel surprisingly human.

Wrap it up, Schroeder.

At VIA Studio, we’re merch people. Always have been. We know the power of a good tee, and we’ve seen it work. When Bernheim Forest & Arboretum rebranded, a simple shirt helped rally the internal team. From there, we rolled out designs for hats, magnets, bottles, bags, and — naturally — t-shirts for both big and little nature lovers. Today, the faithful foresters are out there repping local art and conservation with pride. Branded swag never looked so mission-driven.

And let’s not forget the Jack O’ Lantern Spectacular. Tees, hoodies, pins, stickers… we did it all. We’ve seen firsthand what good merch can do: their sales continue to climb every year, and the stuff isn’t just worn in October. Folks rock it year-round. I’ve seen it at the grocery store in June. I’ve worn it in March. Great merch doesn’t go back in the box after Spooky Season. It becomes part of the rotation.

So yeah, we believe in merch. The kind you want to wear because it means something. It’s storytelling you can zip up, slap on a water bottle, or gift to your four-year-old future brand ambassador. If you’re thinking about how merch could play a bigger role in your brand’s story, we’d love to help.

Check out more of our work at via.studio. And hey, if you ever stumble across a vintage Monster Cookies shirt* in adult sizes, do the right thing. I’ll owe you forever.

* I wish I had a pic to share, but alas, some things are lost to time. Trust me, though, that shirt was the bees’ knees.

Epilogue

Sometimes merch sticks around longer than anything else. This shirt, for example, was part of the 2016 rebrand of Louisville’s Waterfront Park. That’s nearly a decade ago. The rest of the launch materials have come and gone, but this shirt? Still going. Still selling at events. Still making its way into new hands. Still making people smile. When merch is well-designed and genuinely wearable, it doesn’t just support a brand, it helps carry it forward.