Premium full-service merchandise infrastructure for brands and artists who move culture
01 · The Business
We built float by being its first, best customer
We run the operation
Design, production, supply chain, D2C, retail, touring.
90 full-service clients, 400 in the wider eco-system. Our network and market knowledge mean we build the right platform, tested on our own operation before anyone else touches it.
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.
With float, complex operations become infinitely scalable.
float is the platform. terrible* is the proof, and the unfair distribution advantage. The next stage takes float further and scales the operation to match its ambition.
02 · 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.
03 · The Market
A $250 billion creator economy. Physical products are its least digitised layer
$250B
Growing at 23% CAGR (Grand View Research, 2026)
200M+
Active creators worldwide monetising audiences
High margin
Merch, 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.
04 · 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.
05 · What We Do
Everything creators, brands and artists need. None of the catches
Industry
Design. Production. Supply chain. D2C. Touring. Retail. Data.
float by terrible* runs every transaction and holds every data point. Sticky because switching supplier means starting from zero on years of purchasing history, inventory intelligence and fan and customer data, costs more than any advance compensates for.
06 · Traction
Three consecutive years of growth, across every territory
£3.6M
GMV through float v0.1, annually
89%
Client retention YoY
90
Active full-service clients
400
Brands and artists in the wider eco-system
Key numbers
Margin shift
Our 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 running at 69%.
Commission and platform revenue
£14k (FY22/23) to £255k (FY25/26). Three consecutive years of commission growth across all territories, 30%+ CAGR across all years.
Unit economics
07 · The Platform
float by terrible*
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 the artist
- 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
08 · How We Grow
Six ways to grow - most already in motion
First outbound ever
We have never done meaningful outbound marketing or lead-gen. We are now building 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.
09 · 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
- Service tiering - lower-barrier entry for emerging artists
The longer view
10 · The Team
Founded and run by people who know this industry from the inside
Tersha Willis
CEO
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
20 years across consumer and music. Experience at major and independent labels. The industry relationships that open doors
Ed Hayes
CTO
Festival headliner and top 10 UK chart credits. Spent the last 5 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. Joins 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