Why Everyone Suddenly Has Merch

JODIE:

“Welcome to The T-Shirt Bakery Podcast — where we explore the future of print, apparel, branding, and the operational shifts shaping the industry.”

I don’t think people fully realise how weird clothing culture’s become online.

MATT:

…in what sense?

JODIE:

Well everybody suddenly has merch now.

Creators have merch. Podcasts have merch. Weird niche gaming communities somehow have hoodies now. Everybody’s selling something wearable.

MATT:

And what’s strange is most of it doesn’t really function like traditional fashion anymore.

JODIE:

No — it’s doing something else.

MATT:

I think the internet changed what clothing culturally represents, actually.

That’s probably the bigger shift underneath all this.

Because apparel increasingly behaves less like:

“what looks good?”

and more like:

“what instantly communicates something about me?”

JODIE:

That feels very internet-shaped though.

MATT:

Yeah, completely.

Because older retail culture depended much more on broad appeal.

You wanted as many people as possible understanding the product.

Whereas internet culture fragmented everything.

Now everybody lives inside slightly different internets.

JODIE:

That line genuinely feels true now.

You can sit next to somebody all day and still experience completely different online worlds.

MATT:

Yeah.

One person’s feed is all gym culture and productivity stuff, somebody else is deep into anime communities or weird hyper-specific design accounts… and somebody else just lives inside football memes all day.

And all that stuff slowly shapes identity whether people realise it or not.

JODIE:

Which is probably why clothing changed too then.

Because eventually people want to wear parts of those identities physically.

MATT:

I think that changed everything actually.

The internet didn’t just change fashion —

it changed clothing culture.

Clothing became one of the easiest ways to make invisible online identity physically visible.

JODIE:

That probably explains creator merch as well.

Because objectively some creator hoodies are incredibly simple.

MATT:

Most of them are.

JODIE:

Which means people obviously aren’t buying them because:

“this is one of the greatest design pieces I’ve ever seen.”

MATT:

No — they’re buying participation.

Or familiarity maybe.

Recognition… that feeling of belonging to something slightly bigger than just the product itself.

And honestly I think recognition itself became part of the value.

JODIE:

That’s interesting because certain hoodies almost function like social shorthand now.

MATT:

Yeah — although honestly I think it’s even more specific than shorthand.

Some products genuinely function like visible community signals now.

And weirdly the product often works better if not everybody understands it immediately.

JODIE:

Which honestly is almost the opposite of traditional retail thinking.

MATT:

That’s probably the weird shift.

Traditional retail depended on scale.

Internet commerce changed the economics underneath that completely.

Now small but highly aligned audiences can sustain entire apparel brands online.

JODIE:

And some of those brands are tiny compared to traditional fashion companies.

But culturally they feel much bigger.

MATT:

Because specificity creates emotional efficiency.

JODIE:

That’s a very smart sentence.

MATT:

…I mean, maybe.

But I do think it’s true.

Highly specific brands create emotional recognition ridiculously quickly.

People feel:

“This understands me.”

Whereas generic branding often feels emotionally flat online now because audiences are so fragmented.

JODIE:

I think that’s why broad “appeal to everybody” branding feels weaker online generally.

MATT:

I think internet culture rewards alignment more than neutrality now.

That’s probably closer to what changed.

Products don’t necessarily need everybody understanding them anymore.

They need the right audience recognising them immediately.

JODIE:

That feels really true with internet humour.

Some shirts almost look confusing unless you already understand the reference.

MATT:

Definitely.

And older retail logic would probably see that as a weakness.

Whereas online it can actually strengthen community feeling.

Because recognition creates emotional gravity.

JODIE:

That’s probably why certain smaller brands feel weirdly strong online.

MATT:

Yeah, I think so.

Because community resonance matters more than raw visibility now.

A lot of internet-native brands understand culture better than they understand fashion traditionally.

JODIE:

That’s interesting actually.

They almost behave more like communities that happen to sell clothing.

MATT:

—or ecosystems maybe.

The clothing almost becomes the physical part of the whole thing.

JODIE:

Which honestly sounds slightly dystopian when you say it out loud.

MATT:

Yeah… although I’m not even sure people experience it negatively most of the time.

I think humans naturally want visible belonging.

The internet just multiplied the number of identities people can belong to simultaneously.

JODIE:

That’s true actually.

People don’t really belong to one thing anymore.

MATT:

No.

Somebody might be into a creator community, gym culture, some niche humour account, maybe a fandom ecosystem on top of that…

Identity stacks now.

And clothing became one of the easiest ways to externalise those layers publicly.

JODIE:

And most people probably aren’t consciously thinking:

“I am now expressing layered internet identity through apparel.”

MATT:

No —

they just think:

“This feels like me.”

Or:

“These are my people.”

That’s what makes the behaviour interesting actually.

A lot of this feels emotionally intuitive before people intellectualise it.

JODIE:

Which is probably why certain products feel emotionally stronger despite being visually simpler.

MATT:

Because modern apparel increasingly functions like community infrastructure more than traditional fashion.

The emotional value’s often less about the design itself and more about familiarity, shared humour and feeling understood… all that sort of thing.

Not aesthetics alone.

JODIE:

That’s probably the strangest thing underneath all this actually.

The internet didn’t just create more clothing brands.

It changed what clothing is for culturally.

MATT:

I think that’s probably true.

And honestly, the behaviour became so normal that everybody stopped noticing how unusual it really is.

JODIE:

Matt, thank you.

MATT:

Thanks for having me, Jodie. That was a really interesting one actually.

JODIE:

And thanks to everybody listening to The T-Shirt Bakery Podcast.

If you’re looking for custom apparel, branded merchandise, or print support for your own projects or business, you can find us online at The T-Shirt Bakery — we’ll leave the website link down in the description as well.

We’ll see you in the next episode.