A merchandise platform which has made millionaires of 30 YouTube stars has named London as its European headquarters.
Led by Liverpool-born CEO聽Chris Lamontagne, Silicon聽Valley-based TeeSpring has invested $1 million聽into its UK operations as it backs content creators on these shores聽including Mr Bean, which has聽more than聽11 million聽subscribers, and Simon鈥檚 Cat, which has almost five million.
The platform allows successful YouTubers to sell and advertise their own merchandise across their videos instead of聽having other branded adverts allocated to them. It聽deals with all manufacturing and shipping of this merchandise and can even provide an online shop for fans to buy T-shirts and other branded products.
In effect, it allows content creators to connect their聽fans to their brand聽and allows them to become a business.
鈥淚f you had a desire to start a business you would have to find a supplier, a manufacturer, a shipping partner, a payment provider. TeeSpring cuts out all of that and you come with an idea and you’re able to put your design onto a product,” Lamontagne told 老九品茶Cloud.
鈥淎ll you really need to have a business is ideas: it takes out all of the complication of the supply chain and all the messy parts of eCommerce.
鈥淚f you think about the cost associated with starting a business, I think that’s what puts most people off as you have to invest in the supply chain to buy products.
鈥淭eeSpring is free but聽our business model is that you create products and upon selling, we then take the margin out of the product itself. So the concept there is called pre-commerce.鈥�
Teespring has聽shipped over 25 million products and paid out over $300m to its sellers to date.
鈥淐reators build up this following and at some point they have to start pushing ads to these people and that’s effectively how they make money –聽but all of a sudden ads appear all over their videos,”聽continued Lamontagne.
鈥淭hey don’t want to feel like they’re selling out. They’ve built a loyal fan base so the minute they do become bigger, all of a sudden ads as an ecosystem is like a necessary evil.
鈥淸Our system allows fans to say]聽‘I follow this person or I enjoy this person’s content and I want to support this person –聽but I don’t want to support them by having to click on an ad’. ”
Lamontagne was recently promoted to the CEO position from his prior role as聽VP聽commercial and has previously led growth plans at both investment house Hambro Perks and taxi app disrupter Gett.
He says helping to create 30 millionaires “is a great story” but believes that what is happening further down the ecosystem is more important.
“What sits behind all that is just tons of people who are able to go on and live and create the way they want to, so while I’m super proud of the 30 millionaires, I’m actually more proud of the hundreds of thousands of creators who rely upon TeeSpring to make a living,” he said.
鈥淪o I think as the business continues to grow we want to work with more creators, we want to work with more designers and artists and people who’ve got ideas.
鈥淲e want to look to try and integrate and partner with other similar ecommerce and social media platforms to be able to create this real deep distribution layer of being able to get this content into other places where customers are.”
There are plans to expand the current聽London聽workforce of ten, which is聽made up of designers, account managers and marketing professionals聽and has been based in Bermondsey for around 18 months.
Teespring also聽has聽offices in Spain and remote employees across Europe.
鈥淲e just saw so much organic uptake in the UK markets from content creators, particularly high-profile YouTubers,” said Lamontagne.聽鈥淚 think specifically what we want to do is grow the team in London –聽we want to be better represented throughout the UK.
鈥淲e’ve got exciting things coming up right in the next six months with a bit of a new look and some exciting announcements, so all in all 2019 is prepped to be a pretty big year for us.
“Announcing this expansion to Europe is just the start:聽we feel there’s a really healthy roadmap for the next 12-18 months.”