How demand grew for One Direction merchandising - Kevin Buckle

One Direction merchandise dolls

A customer was looking for a birthday present for their daughter and asked if we were able to source any One Direction merchandise. We had just started stocking mugs after several requests from girls in school parties looking to buy a present for their dad.

AC/DC seemed to be the most popular and based on other requests we got in an AC/DC mug as well as others from Pink Floyd and David Bowie who would later prove to be a popular birthday present.

In looking through the lists of mugs available from our suppliers I was sure I had seen a One Direction mug and promised the lady I would get one in. When she collected it she was extremely pleased and asked what else was available. As it turned out there was a lot.

There was a set of badges, a bracelet, two different notebooks and two different pencil cases, a pendant and a pair of earrings. They were sufficiently low priced that I was able to sell them for two or three pounds each and I was amazed at how quickly everything sold.

Quite quickly I was buying the mugs by the box even though at eight pounds that was the most expensive item and soon realised I needed to order the other items in much larger quantities too. One thing I had steered clear of was the T-shirts on offer but I would get asked a lot if anything was available.

My main reason for hesitating was that though there were quite a few designs they were all in ladies sizes and normally not available in every size. However after a while and a mountain of requests to just get what I could, I realised that nearly all the girls asking would actually be happy with ladies sizes and between all the designs there was something for everybody.

We do, of course, stock all the One Direction compact discs and have managed to secure a supply of two of their albums on vinyl. On top of One Direction we also have variants of albums by Harry Styles that are no longer available in the UK and even a couple of CD singles that were for a long time only available from Harry’s own website.

While we have a good range of One Direction hard-to-find stock, that only represents a very tiny proportion of all the things we source, and people are just as likely to get excited by a rare Ghost seven-inch or a couple of Elliott Smith albums only available on import.

It was one thing that did excite me about launching a new website in that we do intend to put all these hard to find items in one place regardless of genre or whether it is music, clothing or a pack of cards.

In a sad twist, one hard-to-find item I recently acquired was a Liam Payne doll. Understandably I’ve removed that from our plans.