It goes back to my main issue with LTT, they review tech yet have structured the company to do things that don't really support tech reviews. I know that Linus has a belief that they have good products and maybe they do, but the type of product design and manufacturing they do and have done is extremely expensive. Don't get me wrong, they make lots of money but it also costs lots money. Far be it for me to tell a successful business man how to run his shit but maybe LTT needs to scale back and focus on the core of the company and what makes the most profit with a down turn on the horizon?
I don't think Linus understands what the core of the company even is at this point. It isn't consumer tech reviews, it isn't being a lifestyle brand, it isn't a video production company that can act as outsourced labor, and it isn't a video hosting provider. It's trying to be a half dozen things at once while being mediocre(at best) at them.
Even just the "merch"(like I said, he's trying to make it a lifestyle brand) from his lttstore
7 backpacks and bags
2 listings for bottle lids for bottles that don't seem to exist
3 desk mats
4 packs of magnetic cable management clips(going up to $700 USD btw)
31 items in "Other" some of which doesn't have anything to do with LTT. steelseries, razer, corsair, etc. shit? But now we've also hit the point where some of these products have options, colors and sizes. The pens alone have 4 SKUs each. 15 for the water bottle colors and sizes.
3 different screwdrivers now, some of which also have color options.
This is already far more shit than most e-celebs try and sell as merch. Lets get to clothing!
4 products in cargo pants and underwear... some of is it sized XS through XXXL, but the pants are regular/tall, 8-10 waist sizes so that's another 20 SKUs for 1 pair of pants. The underwear is another 24. 28 for sweatpants, 7 for jogging pants.
6 hats, seems to carry them in medium and large, but they aren't even actually fitted hats so that's another 12 SKUs
30 more products for shirts/jackets/sweaters. I'm not even going to try and count this. 7 sizes, 2-5 colors let's call it 2 per since some have no option, that's another 400 SKUs
So basically 500-600(or more) products in his merch store, that's practically a small dedicated(this is the key word here) retail operation at this point. This should be it's own entire separate business entity with its own management structure, facility, and so on, but then he also wants to handle all of the logistics in-house, all while doing the design in-house, and even the marketing so he can show nerds in underwear as part of his lifestyle branding. And that could all be fine, except he seems to give this retail operation as much attention as he does his tech testing shit and video production.
He can't get what he wants the LTT brand to appear as right, how the hell is he going to handle a retail operation properly? There's a reason so many companies exist to handle this shit in place of doing it in-house even just from the logistics of shipping to customers.