The Pellicle Shop is (Back) Open for Business!
Hello folks! We wanted to give you a quick update as we’re very pleased to announce that we have recommenced selling merchandise, and we have a brand new t-shirt available for pre-order.
Presently we make 90% of our income thanks to readers like yourselves subscribing via Patreon, and the remaining 10% comes from our sponsors Loughran Brewers Select. However, we’re still in a position where we’re not quite breaking even, and our lack of financial resources means we’re not able to commission as much as we’d like to. While growing subscriptions will still be the primary source for funding for Pellicle, selling a few, well thought out bits of merch will help boost our income and give us the flexibility we’re craving. For example, selling 80 t-shirts will, once we’ve covered costs, fund one of our weekly features in its entirety.
Speaking of t-shirts, today we’re very excited to announce pre-sales of the ‘Black Beer’ t-shirt, as featured in last year's feature Same As It Ever Was — On Class, Exceptionalism and Craft Beer, written by AJ Cox, and illustrated by Jessica Wild. We’ve worked with Jess to produce a black version of the t-shirt featured in the article (because the last time we did a t-shirt, most people asked why we didn’t do a black one…)
Ready to order? Simply click on the image below to head straight to our online shop. (And yes, we ship internationally.)
We gave our subscribers exclusive access to this pre-order earlier this week, and now we’re happy to open up orders to our entire readership. You can head over to the Pellicle shop and in a few weeks time we’ll ship you your brand new shirt, which will be screen printed in Manchester by Anchor End. We’ve chosen them because we were really impressed with the merch they produce for our friends at another fellow Manchester business, Track Brew Co, so if you’ve ever been into the taproom and admired the quality of their merch, you can be assured as ours is coming from the same place.
In a very Pellicle twist, something else we’ll also be doing is paying the artist or designer of each piece of merch a commission. 10% of all sales from these t-shirts will go straight to Jess, meaning that when you buy a piece like this you're not just supporting us, but one of our contributors as well.
If you head over to the shop you’ll also find a few other interesting bits and pieces, including signed copies of my books, Modern British Beer and Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars, plus photographic prints of the latter which are currently on display within Balance Brewing’s taproom, also here in Manchester. Every purchase you make in our shop will go towards supporting our mag, our team and the freelancers we work with. Makes you wonder why we didn’t do it sooner, really…
We’re already in the process of planning a few more pieces, including Pellicle dad hats, more prints of the artwork and photography from your favourite features, and an exclusive long-sleeved Pellicle t-shirt to mark our 5th anniversary this May. One extra thing we’re going to do with merch are single print runs, which will hopefully help keep things fresh and exclusive for you folks. This means if you want a black beer t-shirt, get your pre-order in, as when they’re gone, they’re gone!
Finally, if you want first dibs on merch drops then head over to our Patreon page and subscribe. Those of you on our £8 tier or above will also receive a 10% discount code that can be used as often as you like, on all purchases. We’re constantly looking to add new perks for all subscribers, with the latest being our message board that’s open to all, regardless of the tier you join. If you want to tell us what pieces of merch you’d like to see next, why not subscribe and come in and join the conversation happening over there. It’s very chill and Web 1.0.
Happy shopping, and we look forward to revealing new pieces of merch to you all over the coming months.
Matt and the Pellicle team x
