The Unmakers: How Mercha is reshaping Australia's promo merchandise sector

Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade. Today we talk to two of the co-founders of Mercha - Ben Read and Sam Hardy. Plus, the top of town pushes down the Unmade Index.If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:* A complimentary ticket to all of Unmade’s events, including HumAIn (2025), REmade (September 2025), Unlock (31 October), and Compass (November);* Member-only content and our paywalled archives;* Your own copy of Media Unmade. The Unmakers: Meet Mercha - ‘A digital platform in an analogue industry’Mercha can claim to be the first branded merchandise player in Australia to have fully digitised its processes in what remains marketing’s arguably most analogue sector.Last month the company wrapped up a $300,000 crowd-funded seed round, valuing it at around $10m.In today’s edition of The Unmakers, Unmade’s Tim Burrowes talks to CEO Ben Read and chief revenue officer Sam Hardy about why the promotional marketing sector has taken so long to scale up in Australia. As Hardy puts it: “Mercha is a digital platform in an analogue, old school industry.”Over just three years, Mercha has ramped up to a turnover of $2.9m in the last financial year.Promotional merchandise is also a sector facing headwinds as sustainability moves further up the agenda. Mercha claims to be part of the solution by focusing on products that people will want to keep. Says Read: “It is shocking to me that 66% of promotional products end up in landfill. That is just disgusting to me. It should never happen.“We're trying to be better than an industry that is not trying hard enough.”By way of example, Hardy adds: “We had a radio station out of Sydney ask us very early on in the piece to do 250,000 whistles for a New Year's Eve event. Plastic whistles next to the harbour. And it would have been great, the revenue. But we turned it down.“I draw the line on offering people crap that's going into the bin or offering people product that's not made fairly.”Unmade Index red up top, green belowThe Unmade Index slipped on Wednesday after Nine, the biggest locally listed media and marketing stock lost 1.6% to fall back to a market capitalisation of $1.9bn.The move added to the daylight between Nine and its 60.1% owned subsidiary Domain. Domain slipped by 1.2% yesterday.Ooh Media was also on a losing trend yesterday, slipping by 1.1%In the mid market, ARN Media and Southern Cross Austereo both saw slight improvements.Vinyl Group, which this week announced the acquisition of blockchain music collectibles business Serenade, rose by 9.5%. In the company’s annual report released on Tuesday, it said it had written down the value of its Vampr “LinkedIn for musicians” platform, founded by CEO Josh Simons, by $1.8m, but remained “bullish”.The Unmade Index slipped by 0.7% to 461 points.Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio. As disclosed in the podcast, at the time of recording this interview, I was considering taking part in the Mercha crowd funding round on Birchal, via my super fund. I did choose to investWe’ll be back with an end-of-week update tomorrow.Have a great day.Toodlepip…Tim BurrowesPublisher - [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit unmade.substack.com