AI Transformation · Concert Merch

AI Transformation for Concert Merch, Led by Someone Who Lived the Chaos

Fourteen years inside live commerce, artist merchandise, ecommerce, fulfillment, touring inventory, and reporting, turned into practical systems for the work merch teams fight through every day.

I learned this business from the inside: venue floors, vendor timelines, artist teams, Shopify launches, warehouse mismatches, settlement reports, inventory drift, and the spreadsheets everyone quietly depends on. Now I help merch companies turn that chaos into systems teams can actually trust.

Book a 30-min teardown Or email me directly
The receipts
01
72%
of un-syncable inventory rows auto-resolved
02
11,300+
SKUs unified across 202 artist accounts
03
23/23
tour reports emailed in ~99 seconds
04
16,000+
warehouse products reconciled, live
05
5 × 3
revenue streams × systems in one dashboard
06
~150
artist roster auto-monitored every morning
The approach

I learned the business organically in the chaos, then started designing the systems it was missing.

Most merch companies don't have a people problem. They have disconnected tools, duplicated data entry, fragile handoffs, and reports that arrive too late to change the decision. I map the operating mess, design the workflows, and help turn them into internal tools teams can actually trust.

The systems

The operating layer behind modern merch.

Inventory integrity, settlement automation, PO workflows, reporting, forecasting, and barcode sync, mapped as operating systems instead of isolated tasks.

01

Inventory & Catalog Accuracy

★ Flagship

Make your warehouse counts and your tour-ordering platform agree on every SKU, automatically, so coordinators stop ordering stock you don't have and ops stops re-typing numbers by hand.

Why this matters

Inventory reconciliation across fragmented channels is the #1 operational pain in merch. When the warehouse system (ShipHero) and the tour-ordering platform (atVenu) drift apart, tour coordinators order quantities that don't exist, orders get edited down, and an ops manager burns hours re-keying counts venue-by-venue after every cycle count. One broken catalog mapping silently drops an entire artist. This is where merch companies leak time and trust in their own numbers.

Inventory & Catalog Accuracy

Warehouse-to-Tour-Platform Inventory Sync (ShipHero ↔ atVenu)

~11,300+ SKUs across 202 accounts Catalog scope reviewed~72% (463 of 638) Previously blank rows resolved
Read the case study
Inventory Integrity

Warehouse Barcode Integrity Sync

ShipHero + ShipBob Systems reconciledHourly sync path Check cadence
Read the case study
02

Revenue & Settlement Automation

Get every show's settlement and every tour's revenue out of PDFs and spreadsheets and into your accounting system, with a built-in balance check that catches discrepancies before they're booked.

Why this matters

Tour settlement is the most universally hated workflow in merch: late-night, calculator-and-Excel reconciliation of venue cuts, sales tax, card fees, cash, and artist splits. One early data-entry error creates a butterfly effect down the whole tour, and broken formulas cause artists to be over- or under-paid. The numbers then have to flow into the ERP for revenue recognition by hand. Automating this is the single most resonant hook across every tour-focused merch company.

Revenue & Settlement Automation

Settlement-PDF-to-ERP Converter

4 Settlement deal types supported~18 Fields structured per settlement
Read the case study
Revenue & Settlement Automation

Automated Weekly Touring Revenue Reports

23/23 Reports generated and sent61 Shows detected for reporting
Read the case study
03

Procurement & PO Automation

Stop re-keying purchase orders between your ERP, your project board, and your warehouse, with one source of truth, automatic warehouse routing, and split-shipment handling that doesn't break.

Why this matters

The cross-system PO lifecycle, create in the ERP, track in a project tool, receive in the warehouse, reconcile back, is a manual, error-prone relay. Quantities, warehouses, and dates land wrong; split shipments get miscounted; two teams use different status terms so the data drifts. PO processing and receiving are repeatedly cited as manual bottlenecks in merch operations.

Procurement & PO Automation

ERP-to-Project-Board Purchase Order Sync

4 production workflow fixes Recurring PO data issues resolved~15 min to ~1 min Board setup time reduced
Read the case study
Procurement & PO Automation

Automated PO Receiving (Pilot) and Supporting PO Tooling

~10-15 min to ~30-40 sec Receiving time targetedCombines quantities across split documents Split shipment handling
Read the case study
04

Custom Business Analytics Platform

Put touring, ecommerce, and finance revenue in one role-gated dashboard that refreshes itself, so anyone can answer 'how is this artist doing vs last year?' without stitching spreadsheets.

Why this matters

Merch revenue lives in separate systems, live-show sales in one platform, ecommerce in each artist's storefront, retail/licensing/supply in spreadsheets. Answering a basic cross-channel question means pulling numbers from everywhere and hand-stitching them, across a roster of ~20 bands each with its own managers and A&R stakeholders. Reports are stale the moment they're assembled. A single source of truth across systems is exactly the white space in this market.

Custom Business Analytics Platform

Custom Business Analytics Platform, Unified Merch Revenue Dashboard

5 income types across 3 systems Revenue streams unifiedEvery 30 minutes Touring data refresh
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05

Predictive Forecasting & Operational Alerts

Move from gut-feel ordering to data-backed per-head forecasts, and let the system tell each rep about new shows in their territory every morning, instead of clicking through the platform by hand.

Why this matters

Dollars-per-head is the core merch KPI, and most shops still forecast off gut plus last-tour numbers, under-forecast and you stock out and lose same-night revenue; over-forecast and you write off dead stock. Meanwhile, finding new shows in a rep's territory means manually clicking through ~150 artists on the ordering platform. Both are high-leverage, greenfield AI/automation use cases in a market where back-office ops AI adoption is still low.

Predictive Forecasting & Operational Alerts

Predictive Per-Head Merch Sales Forecasting

~45,800 show-level rows Training data~0.71 R-squared on held-out split Model signal
Read the case study
Predictive Forecasting & Operational Alerts

Daily Tour Alert System (New Shows in Your Territory)

~150 artists Roster monitored~1,800 in one pull Upcoming shows captured
Read the case study
Trev Burnham
Trev Burnham · Nashville
Who's driving

Fourteen years inside the machinery of live commerce and artist merchandise.

I've worked across the surfaces where merch companies actually win or bleed: venue floors, touring inventory, vendor timelines, artist and management expectations, ecommerce launches, warehouse handoffs, customer-facing store issues, reporting, and reconciliation.

That context is what lets me see the full operating system, not just one department's task list. I know where the spreadsheet is hiding, where the duplicate entry starts, where systems drift apart, and where the team stops trusting the data.

My work turns those patterns into practical systems: sync monitors, launch workflows, reporting engines, PO automation, forecasting models, and dashboards that give operators a cleaner way to run the business.

▸14 years across merchandise, live events, ecommerce operations, client/vendor workflows, touring inventory, and fulfillment.
▸Hands-on fluency with Shopify, atVenu, ShipHero, 3PL logistics, NetSuite, Monday, Klaviyo, reporting workflows, APIs, Python, and AI-assisted internal tooling.
▸Operator judgment plus systems architecture: I define the workflow, pressure-test it against real edge cases, and drive adoption so teams trust the output.
Who it's for

For merch teams running more complexity than their systems can handle.

Best fit: independent or mid-market merch teams running touring, ecommerce, and fulfillment across tools like atVenu, ShipHero, 3PL logistics, Shopify, NetSuite, Monday, and spreadsheets. If inventory, revenue, POs, or reports have to be reconciled by hand, that is the operating layer I help design.

The profile

  • Independent full-service touring + ecommerce + fulfillment shops (the core ICP)
  • Tour-vending / on-site-sales firms with heavy nightly settlement and inventory reconciliation
  • Legacy/family-owned production + merch houses still running manual/spreadsheet ops
  • Tech-forward marketplace/POD players (warmest near-term AI buyers; adjacent, position carefully)
  • Label-/PE-owned global merch arms (later-stage lighthouse expansion, long sales cycles)

Who I talk to

  • VP / Director of Operations (primary economic buyer, owns the day-to-day pain)
  • Head of Ecommerce / Director of Fulfillment & Logistics
  • Founder / Owner / COO (single decision-maker in owner-operated shops, fastest cycle)
  • CFO / Controller (sign-off, since pain is framed as revenue leakage and settlement accuracy)
  • Operator, account lead, or settlement analyst responsible for keeping the workflow moving

The pains I solve

  • Inventory reconciliation across venues, 3PLs, and the ERP, counts drift and SKU/catalog mapping breaks (blank-row settlement bugs)
  • Nightly settlement reconciliation done on calculators and fragile spreadsheets, causing artist over/under-payments
  • Manual cross-system PO lifecycle: create in ERP, track in Monday, receive in WMS, reconcile back, error-prone relay
  • Per-head ($/head) demand forecasting still done off gut and last-tour numbers, stockouts or dead stock
  • Fragmented tooling with no single source of truth; spreadsheets glue atVenu, ShipHero, Shopify, NetSuite, and Monday together
  • Lean teams running large volumes, the 'do more without adding headcount' squeeze

Does your merch operation still run on

Book a 30-minute discovery call Email me directly

Tell me where your merch ops still runs on spreadsheets, inventory drift, nightly settlement, PO re-keying, or gut-feel forecasting, and I'll tell you, honestly, what's automatable and what isn't. No pitch deck, just an operator's read on your stack.