Sleep Token
‘EVEN IN ARCADIA’ LAUNCH RANGE
the brief
For Sleep Token's upcoming fourth album 'Even In Arcadia', I was tasked with crafting the merchandise range for their Australian store.
Given the band had gone through an astronomical rise after the release of their previous album 'Take Me Back To Eden', the band needed a fresh perspective on their merchandise that would speak to the new fans, while also appealing to the cult of legacy fans.
The PROBLEM
As Sleep Token have exploded with popularity worldwide, their merchandise operations have become a monolith of world-wide band operated stores & third party retail channels.
Now with 4 official online band-owned stores and over 80 retail channels, the Australian store now needed to compete globally against these outlets all being run with different creative direction. Not only were these other stores far bigger in production scale & creative teams, but they controlled much bigger markets such as America and Europe.
DESIGN INTENT
For this range to really sing as the lead merchandise outlet for Sleep Token, I knew this range needed to take some big steps into new product categories to make the range more unique and exciting for the audience.
As we were given the brand identity for this album, the key to this range was the colour palette. The band often stick to a specific colour foundation for their rollouts, so from an apparel perspective I opted to incorporate the tones between the garments & designs on the garments to give the range more variety.
For the new product, I wanted the items to extend the universe of Arcadia without feeling like too much of a stretch to their audience. I felt accessories would be a great opportunity for growth as you can offer a mixture of pricepoints, while introducing new concepts to customers without too much risk involved.
The INSIGHT
The unique draw of Sleep Token is that they have this vast creative world that supports the music, and that exact draw for the fans guides their interests in other media categories.
The same fans often love vast creative worlds such as Harry Potter, Star Wars or even League Of Legends & The Witcher to name a few.
What these other brands do so well, is that they put equal emphasis on their accessories & non-wearable items, which give fans other ways of supporting the brand with unique items.
THE OUTCOME
The range performed tremendously, which the units across the range moving 3x as much as the previous album launch back in 2023.
With the increased emphasis on the accessories for this range, there were many more unique options for the fans to purchase on the Australian store that you couldn't find anywhere else, giving the range a big boost of sales. Not only were the accessories varied in product category, but the differing price points allowed for fans to build their own bundles from the different price points of products available.
Personally my highlight of this range was getting to design a custom OBI strip for the Australian exclusive Vinyl. I'm a massive Vinyl nerd, so we numbered the two different presses with a custom gold embossing, which made the product one of the more hyped pressings available at launch.
