To be honest, the real money is in merchandising and performances.
Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah, fashion merchandising, adoption melodramas, the gym, and ill-starred horseback riding to study art.
The Bullet Club keeps New Japan Pro Wrestling in the black. Far in the black. Because of me. I'm a part-timer in that company, and I hold the Tokyo Dome merchandising record and Osaka's. Funkos. Bucks on a career run. This Bullet Club may never be topped.
I was always into fashion because my mom has always been interested in fashion. She majored in fashion merchandising in college, and it's always been something we have in common.
I think it's one of the coolest things especially as a young actor, actually at any time - even doing my stuff with Avatar - merchandising, video games come out and action figures and plushie toys. It really ignites the kid in you.
When I was a kid, if I liked something from merchandising, I'd have to go to the toy store.
In rock n' roll, we don't sell records at all like we used to. Yet the artist still has to pay to make records. So you've just got to get out on tour and be smarter about your merchandising.
The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot.
I wanted control over the merchandising, the actual packaging of the product. That was a big factor. The only way for me to exercise control on all those levels was to start my own label.