Premium full-service merchandise infrastructure for brands and artists who move culture
The Business
A full-stack, full-service merchandise business powered by float
We run the operation
Design, production, supply chain, D2C, retail, touring.
terrible* designs and makes the product, sells it and manages everything in between. 90 full-service clients, 400 in the wider eco-system.
No advances. No equity. Better returns.
We built the platform
float by terrible*
Every process and every transaction runs through our platform — sales, inventory, logistics, supply, data, reporting across every channel. 89% client retention. Platform revenue growing 40% year on year.
The more clients on float, the harder we are to replace.
The services business showed us what the industry was missing. So we built our platform. This investment takes float, our powerful new platform, to its next stage — and scales the operation to match its ambition.
Our Clients
Trusted by the brands and artists who define what music and culture looks like
The xx · RUM · Stamptown · Jamie xx · King Krule · Sampha · Japanese Breakfast · CHVRCHES · Oneohtrix Point Never · Underworld · Jamie Charlotte Marshall · Takanaka · J-digs · Crack Magazine
“Not one of these brands or artists were approached. They came to us.”
terrible* has a proven track record in music, brands, beauty and entertainment with 89% client retention. We have never done outbound marketing.
01 · The Market
A $250 billion creator economy. Physical products are its least digitised layer
$250b
Creator economy, growing at 23% CAGR (Grand View Research, 2026)
200m+
Active creators worldwide monetising audiences
High margin
Merch is the highest-margin, most loyal revenue stream a creator has
Every creator vertical — music, sport, film, gaming, comedy — sells physical products to their community. The infrastructure to do it well is fragmented, expensive and disconnected from supply chains. Most of them are doing it badly.
In music alone, 63% of first-week physical sales now go direct. Superfans spend 105% more on merchandise than average listeners. The demand is there. The infrastructure isn’t.
02 · The Problem
The dominant model in merchandise works against the people it claims to serve
20–30%
Industry standard commission rate
Advances
Pay brands and artists upfront, extract margin for years
Limited data
Artists have little visibility into their own sales
The advance model up close
Advances are short-term cash for creators, brands and artists, but they give up rights to quality, pricing strategy, availability and value. The advance givers prioritise recouping their own costs — and keeping the artist in recoupment to them for longer.
03 · What We Do
Everything creators, brands and artists need. None of the catches
| Terms | The industry | terrible* + float |
|---|---|---|
| Commission | 20–30%Taken off the top | 10%Plus 30% wholesale margin on manufactured products |
| Capital | AdvancesMisaligned incentives | No advancesNo equity taken from the artist |
| Data | Limited dataBrands and artists work blind | Full ownershipComplete data ownership through float |
Design. Production. Supply chain. D2C. Touring. Retail. Data.
float by terrible* runs every transaction and holds every data point. It is sticky because switching supplier means starting from zero on years of purchasing history, inventory intelligence and fan and customer data — which costs more than any advance compensates for.
04 · Traction & Financials
Built without venture capital. Margin up each year
£3.6m
GMV through portal*, annually
89%
Client retention, year on year
90
Active full-service clients
~£250k
Total outside capital raised, to date
Margin shift
Gross margin improved from 28% (FY22/23) to 61% (FY25/26) as we moved from less-profitable physical products to more profitable platform revenue, with fewer costs subsidised. Current YTD is running at 69%.
28%
FY22/23
61%
FY25/26
69%
YTD
Reported gross margin at three points, not a continuous series.
Commission & platform revenue
FY22/23 → FY25/26
Three consecutive years of commission growth across all territories, 30%+ CAGR across all years.
Unit economics
£9.4m
Cumulative GMV
£115k+
Estimated client lifetime value (GMV)
61%
GP margin (28% in FY22/23)
£38k
Average annual GMV per active client
£225k
GMV per team member
05 · The Platform
float runs terrible* internally and every client externally
We built it because we needed it ourselves.
Every transaction
Real-time sales across e-commerce, touring and D2C in one view.
Every data point
Inventory, splits, venue settlements — all held by terrible*, fully accessible to brands and artists.
The switching cost
Years of purchasing history, fan data and inventory intelligence. Starting over costs too much.
The compounding advantage
Every year of tenure adds data. Better data, better decisions, better margins. The moat grows with the relationship.
The AI & data intelligence play
float sees fan purchasing behaviour before labels, agents or publishers do. A sold-out tour tee is a genuine demand signal you can’t fake. Over time, float uses AI to build a picture of artist trajectory — predicting demand, optimising inventory, and surfacing insights that have value well beyond merch.
06 · How We Grow
Six ways to grow — most already in motion
First outbound ever
We have never done meaningful outbound marketing or lead-gen. The raise funds the first structured client acquisition effort in company history.
Scale US operations
The UK model, deployed in the US, at scale. Capitalising on increased UK Music Export focus from HM Government as a firm entry route.
Pricing normalisation
Moving to 10% net with full cost pass-through on all platform costs. A 50% net take-rate increase on existing GMV. No new clients required.
Service tiering
Higher-tier fees for full-service clients. A lower-barrier entry point for high-potential emerging artists, bringing them into the ecosystem early and growing with them.
Vertical expansion
Sport, film, comedy, gaming. The operational model transfers and we already have clients in these new segments.
terrible* store
A terrible*-branded D2C storefront for early-stage artists. High-potential artists get to market without upfront cost, benefitting from cross-pollination with others. terrible* gets early sales data on emerging talent before the rest of the industry has any visibility.
07 · Roadmap & Vision
18 months to scale, and three ways to win beyond that
Phase 1
Deploy · Months 1–6
- First outbound programme.
- Pricing normalisation — 10% with full cost pass-through. 50% net take-rate uplift.
- terrible* store build — own-label, whole-roster listings and artist collab planning.
Phase 2
Scale · Months 7–12
- US market growth — roster relationships as entry point.
- Vertical expansion — one adjacent category.
- float revenue target — £325k annualised by month 12.
Phase 3
Expand · Months 13–18
- Wider EU fulfilment reach.
- Second raise — subject to revenue targets.
- Service tiering — lower-barrier entry for emerging artists.
The longer view
terrible* store
A retail infrastructure business with a brand. Standalone, or spins off.
float as data intelligence
The first platform to use AI to see which artists are breaking, before labels, agents or anyone else.
float as platform
White-labelled to competitors, or acquired. Nobody has built the full stack. We have.
08 · The Team
Founded and run by people who know this industry from the inside
Tersha Willis
CEO & Co-founder
Financial services and private equity (Rothschilds, KKR, Fidelity, BNY Mellon). Built terrible* from a streetwear brand into a full-service merch operation.
Jack McGruer
COO & Co-founder
20 years across consumer and music. Experience at major and independent labels. The industry relationships that open doors.
Ed Hayes
CTO & Co-founder
Festival headliner and top 10 UK chart credits. Spent the last five years building the tech stack that runs terrible*.
Rich Cahill
CRO
Designer, investor and business development leader. 10 years building AI tools for lifestyle companies, fashion houses and vehicle companies. Joined terrible* from Lovable.
Advisors
Simon Wheeler — Digital Director, Beggars Group (minor stakeholder). Strategic advisor.
Brent Stiefel — Founder, Votiv (US-based entertainment company). Investor and strategic advisor.
09 · The Ask
Raising £750k at a £7.5M pre-money valuation
Valuation
float / platform fees£255k revenue · 10× multiple
£2.55M
Wholesale revenue£1.41M (4-year average) · 3.5× multiple
£4.94M
Pre-money ask
£7.5M
Use of funds
Founders retain 89% equity, following two smaller rounds totalling ~£250k capital. Approached by two major label groups and two rollup ventures over five years — declined in order to deploy float. Five-year GP growth to 61% underpins the revenue multiple.
Market opportunity
$1.35T
$252B in 2025, growing to $1.35T by 2033 — a 23% CAGR. Vertical expansion (sport, film, comedy, gaming) and the terrible* store both target this broader economy, not just music.
Grand View Research, 2025
$16.3B
The global music merchandise market by 2030 — the core category terrible* already serves profitably today, before any vertical or geographic expansion factors in.
MIDiA Research, 2024
“Whoever owns this platform will own the entire category of merchandise.”
Road to IPO
Fanatics — the licensed sports merchandise and commerce infrastructure giant — is reportedly one of the names circling a 2026 IPO, paving the way for terrible* to go public.