[terzdesign]

Hey all with Merch accounts!

I'm just trying to get the lay of the land with this service as it is brand new to me.

So... After the Super Bowl on Sunday I made a drawing of an Eagle taking a crap on a cartoon version of Tom Brady. Friends thought it was funny so I submitted it to Merch. It was rejected due to copyright. There are no logos, no text in the design at all, just an original eagle (painted green) and a very poor cartoon rendition of the quarterback with only a number 12 on his shoulder.

So, after looking over what other people are submitting, I can't really tell why mine was rejected. It obviously references the super bowl, still others are way worse. One has a posterized version of Brady that says "Believe in Brady" in patriots colors. Somehow that passed which makes me confused. Another simply says "Philadelphia Football World Champs" in team colors. Someone please explain this to me. Yet another has a ripped-straight-from-google photo version of Nick Foles with a dog mask on and the Eagles logo removed from his jersey... That one is pathetic. How do they determine what they will or will not accept?

 

[NoXid]

First, are you sure those other designs are actually Merch listings? You can tell by looking at the mockups and sizing charts. Amazon has different rules for MBA (since they are physically producing the product as well as being the seller of record) than they do if someone prints their own designs and sells them on Amazon.

Second, bots do at least the first pass at the approval (probably all of it). They may or may not be able to make sense out of the art itself, but they CAN read the description and bullet points that you enter for the listing. Any mention of anything or anybody that could in anyway be associated with a trademark or brand or company or famous person will cause your item to be rejected. PERIOD

Third, Amazon has been evolving its process (as the use people are making of their service is NOT what they had initially intended), and they have been totally overwhelmed at times. So some stuff got approved in the past, or maybe even today, that would not be approved tomorrow, or the next time the submitter revises the item.

My second design included the word "****." MBA policy says that profanity is not allowed, but it does not define what profanity is. So I searched for T-shirts with that word, and then looked for the ones that used the MBA mockups and sizing charts, and I found shirts with that word on them. So I submitted my design, and it was promptly rejected for Profanity

In short, you probably won't make it past their bot if your text contains any words that could be references to someone else's IP or any words they think might be naughty.


Also to be clear. Your design was intended to refer to the IP/fame of others and thus leverage their popularity for your own profit. DO NOT GO THERE. That is IP infringement under the law, and MBA is severely uptight about that. Your account will get closed down if you persist with that sort of design, as that is an intentional IP violation, not an accidental usage of some word or phrase that you did not realize was trademarked.


Have you looked on the Amazon/MBA forum? Also read related topics on Reddit. Also take some deeeeeep breaths and have a beer ;-) Regroup, and come up with some fresh designs.

Today I just received samples of 4 of my designs. The prints feel more rubbery than I expected, but the colors came out pretty well. But then I tweaked the utter living hell out of them based on my understanding of the limitations of DTG.

 

[click here]

has this been a good avenue for you NoXid?

i know i see posters on here all the time looking to buy one of these accounts,
and it can take over a year to actually get one

you are right though,
from my limited understanding, it looks like they have no desire to go the ebay free-for-all route

and may actually proactively/retroactively begin a purge,
a person does not want to get caught on the wrong side of that wave

 

[NoXid]

has this been a good avenue for you NoXid?

i know i see posters on here all the time looking to buy one of these accounts,
and it can take over a year to actually get one

you are right though,
from my limited understanding, it looks like they have no desire to go the ebay free-for-all route

and may actually proactively/retroactively begin a purge,
a person does not want to get caught on the wrong side of that wave

Exactly. I've done a lot of reading on the MBA forum, Reddit, even watched some vid-blog stuff
and one thing is clear: your time on MBA will be short if you keep trying to get away with designs that have meaning only due to someone else's IP, name, fame.

As to results? I'm at Tier One, 10 shirts, and just got the last of those up and approved two weeks ago, I think? So far, I don't think I've sold anything to anyone other than myself

eBay, Etsy, and the like, wait for an IP holder to complain about an infringing design. But MBA was conceived not as a place for selling random designs to random consumers, but as a place for a band, or company, or actor, etc to sell their MERCHANDISE to their fans. I think the MBA review process is there to ensure that Amazon doesn't end up manufacturing a bunch of fake Disney or Madonna merchandise and end up in court.

But then people started making YouTubes about getting rich quick with MBA and it turned into a sort of RedBubble, but with rules and process tailored for a different thing altogether.

As to getting rich, quick or otherwise, I doubt it But perhaps some YouTubers got nice monetization out of their blog channels

For me, it is an outlet for more colorful designs that I don't want to add to my screen printed line, and which I want to put on black shirts (for white shirts, I'm doing my own JPSS).

We'll see. I am at least relieved that the prints came out well enough.