Twitch icon Ninja says he made a huge mistake when he was on top of the streaming world by not making his merch “special” enough.
Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins was once the most popular streamer on the planet with thousands of subscribers tuning into his Fortnite broadcasts before deciding to take a big andmove to Mixer.
The streamer remains one of the biggest names on Twitch to this day, but in his heyday, Blevins grew into a household name and had merch all over stores such as Target.
During an interview with MMA fighterDemetrious ‘Mighty Mouse’ Johnson, Ninja touched on how he expanded his brand from streaming to further establish himself and how he regrets part of how he handled things.
“I’m happy we did [the merch deals] but I wish I personally was a lot more careful about what we said yes and no to, because we were everywhere. And it was almost a bad thing,” the Twitch star explained.
(segment begins at24:35)
“We were in Target. We had a Ninja Nerf gun, but it was their competitor. We had 100 different Ninja shirts that came out. Eventually, it got to a point where it was so much, it ended up being in Fiverr. Is there anything wrong with Fiverr? No. But it’s not a good look seeing as Ninja shirt for $1.”
Johnson jumped in, noting how all the merch had “watered down” Blevins’ brand.
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“It wasn’t special,” the streamer added. “If I had to do it all over again, Jess (his wife) and I would have been more meticulous and thoughtful with the drops that we did. I think we would have done more drops… we knew shoe drops and how hype these things get, they sell out. We missed it. That’s a regret I didn’t think about until just now.”
Ninja further brought up 100 Thieves and how the org releases high-quality merch, pointing to the fact that he was wearing aNadeshotshirt during the interview.
“It’s just high-end, high quality. It’s obviously expensive, but this shirt’s gonna last forever. I wish we did more drops, but overall we did it and it worked. Our goal was to be everywhere. We had merch everywhere. We did plushies and we did toys.”
Michael Gwilliam is Dexerto’s Deputy Entertainment Editor in the US. He expertly covers trending stories across Twitch, Kick, YouTube, TikTok, as well as Overwatch, GTA, and Smash Bros. You can contact him at: michael.gwilliam@dexerto.com
