From clothing to merch

Merchandise is a very important part of K-pop, and there is a lot of it. The most well-known merchandise is of course the physical albums and the photocards inside these albums. However, my favorite type of merchandise is plushies! While in the Netherlands we tend to think of plushies as something for children, in Korea this is not necessarily the case. A lot of adults collect plushies as well, and K-pop companies and artists make use of this. In general, “cute” things are very popular in Korea.

In my case, I collect plushies designed by BTS. In 2017, BTS collaborated with Line Friends, a media company based in Japan. Line Friends already had its own line of “friends”, original characters of which they sell both online products like stickers for chatting and offline products like plushies, cups, house products and so on. With help from Line Friends, BTS created their own characters together named BT21.

Of course, to make the fans as excited as possible and to show how involved BTS was in the making of these plushies, everything was filmed and uploaded on Youtube. To this day BTS promotes these characters, and there are multiple stores in and outside Seoul where different products with these characters on it are for sale. Once again this shows how K-pop is not just music, it’s so much more. Merchandise is a very big part of K-pop, and companies are always looking for formulas that earn the most money. Combining K-pop with cute characters was definitely a jackpot idea for BTS and their company. I at least spend a lot of money on it!

Another thing that actually had me spending a lot of money were the stickers on my laptop. Let me tell you about those next.