*This article was originally posted on COVER’s note on April 11, 2023.

Hello everyone!
hololive productions has now been going 5 years strong, with our hololive SUPER EXPO 2023 Supported By Bushiroad and hololive 4th fes. Our Bright Parade Supported By Bushiroad events on March 18 and 19 also a resounding success!
But what is an event without merch? Were you able to get any of our merch not just at the events, but online as well?

Almost all of our hololive production merch is coordinated and considered on a daily basis by staff in our MD (Merchandising Department) before going on sale. This time, we were lucky enough to hear from M, I and H from MD.
MD’s responsibilities may only be in merch sales, but there are a lot of things to consider and coordinate before any merch is launched. Through this interview, we get an insight into the ups and the downs of working in merchandising, and hopefully you get a unique sense of what production looks like before your beloved merch reaches you!

Interviewees from MD:
H: Alliance Team Manager
M: IP Strategy Team Leader
I: Product Planning Director, Influencer Team 

■What does each team in MD do?

──First of all, let’s have some self-introductions as well as telling us what you’re in charge of!

M: I’m an MD IP Strategy Team Leader. Our team mainly looks after the company’s official merch from what you can get at events to things like 3D acrylic stands etc., as long as it’s company-led merch, not talent-led stuff.

I: I’m part of the MD Influencer Team. We are mainly in charge of anniversary merch for hololive JP talents, for things like birthdays and years active. This is talent-led merch though which is different from other official merch. 

H: I’m in the MD Alliance Team. We are in charge of launching new merch brands under hololive productions and planning/developing merch in collaboration with other companies as part of new business model development that is different to the merchandising we have had up until now. 

──Right…! So although the three of you are all in the same department, you all have quite different jobs!

H: That’s right (lol)

What M’s and my teams do is similar in some ways in terms of product planning as a company. But I think that I’s team is quite different. Whereas M’s and my teams develop merch from the company side of things, I’s team works on merch that talents themselves have planned out.

──What do each of your teams look like, and what are your positions/roles within your team? 

M: I am a team manager in a team of 7, including those in multiple roles. The IP Strategy Team is still pretty young as a relatively new team created during the company’s reorganization in January.

I: While my team itself looks after talent-led merch, my specific roles are managing merch production with manufacturers, and making specification adjustments, etc!

Actually, our team is separated into two smaller teams, the front (that coordinates with talents, managers, and other departments in a company coordination capacity) and the middle (that coordinates with vendors and manufacturers for merch production). This structure allows us to produce high-quality merch by having team members who have knowledge in merchandising work across both teams.

H: The Alliance Team that I’m a manager in was created in April 2022. In the beginning, although it was called a ‘team’, I was basically doing everything myself, but since January 2023, we’ve been working as a team of 5 including myself!

■Regular duties

──I know this is a difficult question as at COVER a lot of different kinds of work can come up on any given day…(lol) but what does a regular day look like for you?

M: Well, I get to work at around 11 most days as we work on flextime, when I check my emails and my tasks for the day. I have around 3-4 meetings a day, and then I usually have about 6-7 ongoing tasks for every project, so I continue to work on those.
We just mentioned the front and middle teams but, now that we finally have some more members join the IP Strategy Team, many of the members are now just focusing on one role rather than working in two concurrent positions.
We really do have a wide variety of jobs, from devising plans to project estimates, contacting manufacturers, drawing up purchase order documents for illustrations and merch and selecting illustrators. There are still areas where we’re short-staffed so if anyone’s interested, please apply!

I: Of course, I check my emails and tasks before getting started on other work, but my team mainly has meetings with manufacturers, rather than internal ones.
We need to make time for checking the physical products and having these meetings otherwise there may be some misunderstandings.
We also request quotes, make design request documents, and design templates, etc. so there’s usually a lot of hands-on work I suppose.

H: A regular day for me is arriving at work at around 9, and spending the morning writing up plans and creating sales proposal documents. In the afternoon, I am in a lot of internal/external meetings: our team is heavily involved in getting plans off the ground so we have a lot of meetings discussing proposals. 

──Please tell us about the projects you’re currently involved in, and anything you may be struggling with!

M: March was all about EXPO merch. Besides that, I can’t really go into much detail, but I also handle other development merch production that’s different from regular merch as necessary.
I think all companies are the same, but such large-scale events as the EXPO are planned across the entire company, and there are many things that don’t go according to the original schedule. Therefore, the hardest part is having to keep making adjustments both internally and with manufacturers throughout! The bigger the event, the harder it becomes to make these kinds of adjustments. 

──So does that mean that contacting others and making adjustments is difficult in a company that has many departments like COVER?

M: Yes, especially for EXPO-related merch, we need to keep in contact with numerous departments at the same time. We of course need to run things by the creative and IP departments, but as well as that, we also need to get approval from a number of other departments for product specifications, which can be rather difficult!

──By the way, how many people are involved in selling a single piece of merch?

M: As well as the MD planning directors, we have the merch designers, quality assurance team that manages merch quality, the EC team that creates and manages pages for our online store, and product management team that looks after merch inventory. Then, depending on the merch, we have the project operations and live teams that plan content, the event planning team, talent managers who provide support in coordinating with talent, and of course the talents themselves are involved.
We also have the PR team for merch advertising and the CS team who take merch-related inquiries.

And this is just internally!
There are also the manufacturers that produce the merch – a whole lot of people are involved!

──For example, is there any kind of merch that would just about always be released?

M: This alone is quite different for each talent and project! For example, for debut merch, there’s no core dedicated fanbase as of yet, so we need to release a lineup that is easy for casual fans to get their hands on.
This might not be directly related, but in my team, we need the knowledge to choose the best product in every situation.
So as the IP Strategy team, we put extra planning into what kind of merch is best to emphasize the things we want to show.

──I see. And how about the Influencer Team, I?

I: Right now, we’re working on birthday celebration and two-year anniversary merch. As a lot of merch is made-to-order, we’re generally working on projects 4-6 months in advance.

──You’re working on projects that far in advance!?

I: The merch that the Influencer Team handles is in the development phase, so we start with having meetings with the talent, and then coordinate with manufacturers about design aspects, create illustrations, and make product designs and product information banners. If we are playing it safe, we generally need about 6 months from development to release.There are merch or specs that talents wish to have that we simply can’t reproduce, so one of the challenges in our team is how to decide on specs for particular merch.
I believe that the ability for our team to deal with requests is at a rather high level as talents have a range of different requests, and there are a lot of merch-related requests that manufacturers who we outsource to can’t fulfill!

──How about the Alliance Team, H?

H: The main mission of the Alliance Team at the moment is to “create merch brands under COVER”.
A simple example of this is in December of last year, we started a line of plushies under COVER.

We are considering ways to increase PR and our range of merch in line with the theme of developing official COVER merch, as different to that of hololive productions.
Simply put, what’s difficult is the fact that no one was doing this before, so it takes time for others to understand what we are doing. I know that gaining everyone’s understanding is inevitable when starting something new, but we are constantly trying to establish new brands by developing plans: both internally and for clients when we have a collab!

■Work environment and job motivation

──So what you all find challenging in your respective jobs is quite different! On the flip side, what are some enjoyable things or things that motivate you about your job?!

M: My motivations…well I entered this industry as I already liked VTubers, so just being in the industry is a motivation for me. Also, the scope for our plans is getting bigger by the day as there is new content appearing in the industry on a daily basis, so being in an environment that keeps you on your toes and able to pitch various ideas is another motivator for me.

I: In my case, as I’m part of the Influencer Team, being able to fulfill talents’ wishes really motivates me!
It does make me happy to hear talents say, “That’s super cute!” or “That’s what I wanted!” I also feel motivated when I see social media posts of all of our fans who get excited and post something like “I got my ____ merch!” when their orders arrive. I also get excited seeing merch that I’ve worked on when I’m out and about (lol).

H: Of course, what these two have just mentioned is the same for me too, but as well as that, I have a lot of opportunity to be involved with many people both inside and outside the company through the nature of the many projects I’m a part of. So, being asked to do another job from other IP holders, or producing results that lead to future projects and clients saying “Next time, let’s do it like this!” makes me glad to be a part of such projects.

■Up until joining COVER

──Please tell us about your previous jobs, and the reasons why you joined COVER.

M: I worked for a company that planned, produced and operated voice actors’ web series and content targeted at a female audience. I was involved in everything from series production to event planning and operation, merchandise planning, and content management. So, having experience in a range of areas got me thinking about narrowing my career focus to the fields I’m most interested in…
At that time, there was a lot of excitement around the VTuber industry, and even I was into watching them too, so when I knew I wanted to work in this industry, that’s when I decided to change career paths!
To tell you the truth, there have also been some unknowns about where this industry is headed, but COVER having its sights set on things like the metaverse and not just the VTuber industry was a deciding factor for me.

I: For me, I was working at a merchandise production agency. I was originally in charge of creating concert merch for entertainment-related projects, but from my second year I was transferred to the food department…
So moving away from the entertainment side of things made me decide to change jobs. The reason why I chose COVER was of course because I can be involved in entertainment, but also because I can lead the planning and create merch that I was involved with from the agency side from the publisher’s side of things.

H: Actually for me, COVER is now my 4th company.
My first job was for two and a half years in planning/development at a claw machine prize company, but I wanted to be involved at the core of character business so I changed jobs. My second job was then at a content holder company that owned the copyright for famous characters where I was working on out-licensing with large sponsors as well as creating merchandising strategies for 4 and a half years. After that, my third job was launching and developing new projects in the content business.
So, mainly in charge of creating merchandising strategies for the start-up of anime production committees!

So that’s what brought me to COVER, and the deciding factor for me was that the content here feels newer than anything else around. With other anime and manga I’ve been involved with up until now, the workflow never really changed despite the product being different, so it was perfect timing as I was looking for a new challenge.

──Naturally you all have different reasons for joining but that’s fascinating!
What were your first impressions after joining COVER, and did you feel there were any gaps you needed to overcome?

M: For a while after joining COVER, I was mostly in charge of holostars talent merch. I think what struck me the most was that, although I had some idea of what to expect, I didn’t realize how closely we work with talents until I got involved in the work myself.
I was surprised because this was the first time I’d been involved with a workflow that is actually based on what the talent wants rather than the company having some sort of control over what is produced which is the norm.
Also, there were a lot of women in MD which has made it easy to work: there are even more now since I joined, with the ratio at probably 70/30.

I: That was probably a big thing for me too. My team also has a lot of women, but the biggest thing I found when I joined was the casual nature of the work environment. Everyone is working closely together with a lot of people asking for advice or sharing the occasional random story, and it makes it easy to talk to each other because we’re all between 26-32.

The first project I was involved in after joining was Sakamata Chloe’s Birthday Celebration merch. Similar to M, I was surprised by how much we were able to fulfill Chloe’s wishes because the specs weren’t anything I’d seen up until that point at previous companies.

The actual merch is just this bracelet here, but I remember it being quite challenging to work out how the manufacturer is going to create it because there were specs I hadn’t seen before (lol).

The gap that I’ve experienced is that it’s mostly development rather than planning. Among a sea of companies that generally create merchandise based on previously sold items is COVER that tries as best as possible to release merch based on what the talent wants and we work towards making that happen.

H: There are two things that were different from what I expected.
Firstly was that nothing was really decided upon more than I’d imagined (lol).
The second thing was, although I guess it’s to do with being part of the company’s work environment, but how closely President Tanigo works with us.
Although there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a lot of things being undecided as we were a new team, I remember it first feeling much like a venture company.

My previous company was a mega venture with over what was said to be 20,000 employees, so there are many times where I feel that a lot of conversations move quicker.
Something else I thought was really great compared with my previous job was that, as long as we keep up with our meetings, I can get what I want to get done efficiently as well.
In a lot of large companies, there are always meetings to make sure someone understands something…

This is also what the head of MD was working on, but at COVER, hololive is quite popular, and as we expect a certain amount of sales, we are able to put money into development that can’t be done with other IP.
Therefore, if we’re able to get past the initial costs, we can put money towards what the MD planning team wants to do and not just for the talent. This and being able to somewhat include your own ideas into product development look pretty attractive for someone in merchandise planning, no?!

■Advice for those joining COVER in the future

──So, do you have any advice for anyone joining COVER from another industry?

M: I think it would be good to keep in mind the content workflow and that at least one part of any project is merchandise sales from an IP holder standpoint.

Currently, we have active talents and thankfully we are getting reasonable returns from our sales, but rather than just recklessly moving forward amidst limited resources, it is important to think about and carefully choose what measures to take, and what sort of impact they might have when doing your work.

I: I think it’s the same for all teams, but it’s essential to have good progress management skills as you’re coordinating with other departments, talents and manufacturers at the same time.
As well as this, there are many times where you need detailed coordination in all facets, like making considerations for talents. So, I think that those with production/manufacturing management experience will be able to use it here.

This might be obvious, but those who can consider what merch they themselves and consumers would want are strong assets here. And those who have an understanding about similar content and entertainment itself are even better.

H: If you’re in merchandise planning and development, the skills that M and I have mentioned are rather necessary. Also, this may be a little general but I think that those who can use the input they have and effectively turn it into output are suited to COVER. However, not just simply turning something into text, but those who can document things into easy-to-understand PowerPoints and spreadsheets are rather strong assets I think.

These skills are quite useful in situations when you have no choice but to communicate with other departments and you’re without a product!

──In the future, what kind of person would you like to join your teams?

M: At the end of the day, our department has a lot of products, so someone who can handle that (lol). Also, personally, as the landscape is changing, I believe that we need to expand our apparel sector moving forward. Apparel is a different area that requires different knowledge to that of miscellaneous merch so we could use people with that sort of knowledge!
And as I mentioned earlier, I would love those who have the ability to coordinate smoothly both internally and externally to join our team.

I: Of course experience in merch production is great, but also as the Influencer Team produces anniversary merch, I would like those joining to like at least one of these products. Someone who can imagine what they would like from a fan’s point of view, or what they would want themselves would be great as we are producing merch for our core fan base.
Another quality would be someone who has the ability to grasp nuances when communicating with people and translate those into products as we have a lot of interactions with not just internal staff but various different people including talents.

H: In the Alliance Team, I would like to have someone who can look at something and be able to break it down. I would like to add people who can properly think about why something is popular, and the process rather than just the result, and then people who can turn those thoughts into action.

──Lastly, what is the appeal of MD as a whole?

H: As has been said by I a few times already, we in MD properly look at the kind of response we get on social media about the merch we ourselves worked on! We take your opinions into account when working on merch so the next ones can be even better!

M: I actually really pay attention to how our fans will respond (lol)! We have already talked about this, but compared with other companies, I think COVER has a good work atmosphere.
There is a large amount of freedom in planning and development where planners can enjoy the work they do, and if you’re someone who can look at content as an IP holder with an operational point of view, then I think you can execute your planning with even more freedom.

H: As long as you have been involved in merch production and manufacturing, if you are proficient in coordination and merchandise, then you can work in MD!

──Thank you very much!

What did you think?
We heard from a few members from MD in the Strategic Sales Department who assist with merch production at COVER! We plan to continue to release various goods for all of our fans to enjoy, so please check this link for more updates!