Photo by LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images
It seems we’ll be covering our ugly mugs for the foreseeable future, so why wouldn’t companies look to slap their brand across your face?
It’s valuable real estate
To date, 60k Etsy sellers have sold a collective 12m masks, bringing in $133m. With a COVID-19 vaccine still far away, it’s likely masks will become as quotidien as socks and undies.
And just as we assume people have more than one pair of those, it’s likely they eventually will amass a wardrobe of masks, making face coverings a legit revenue source.
The CEO from one licensed merch retailer estimates that Americans will snap up as many as 5B masks during the first 12 months of the pandemic.
And mask licensing deals are a big get
Disney sells face coverings featuring the likes of Elsa and Anna, Mickey Mouse, and Baby Yoda.
Trevco’s subscription-based MaskClub will send you a mask a month featuring such licensed likenesses as Elmo, Hello Kitty, and the poop emoji. That is, it would have — before its inventory sold out.
Kim Kardashian West’s lingerie line sold out its stock of seamless, skin-tone masks within hours. Keep up with this, bitches.
Businesses gotta put their money… where their mouth is
But it’d be a bad lewk to profit from items deemed so essential. That’s why many companies are donating some or all of their mask-sale proceeds to charity.
Disney, for one, will donate up to $1m from mask sales to the nonprofit MedShare, which delivers medical supplies to vulnerable communities.
