float by terrible*

Merchandise is often the most dependable income an artist or brand has, yet most either run the supply chain themselves or hand it to a middleman who takes a large cut and an advance. float, built by the merch company terrible*, runs design, production, fulfilment, sales and data as one managed layer on a lower commission.

For a band or a creator, merchandise is often the most dependable money they make, and the least organised. The choice is to run production, stock and fulfilment themselves, or to sign with an intermediary who pays an advance, takes a commission for years and keeps the sales data. Either way the artist ends up without control of the business or the information that could grow it.

terrible* built float by being its first customer: it ran merch for artists across online, touring and retail, and wrote the platform it needed to track every order, split and venue settlement. float now runs that operation for every client, with the data owned by the brands and artists on it. The client list arrived by word of mouth, since the company says it has never done outbound marketing, and the plan is to carry the same model from music into sport, film and gaming.