By George Pirounakis
Let me give you a post-Brexit reality check from the road: sometimes the smartest tour move is not moving merch at all.
You park your EU stock in Calais, you cross into the UK empty, and you stop pretending that dragging boxes through the border like it’s 2015 is somehow “hardcore”.
It’s not. It’s just dumb risk management.
Merch today isn’t just shirts and hoodies, it’s paperwork, liability, cash exposure and hours of your life wasted explaining obvious things to people with stamps and bad moods.
So you go in clean. No carnet panic, no “prove it’s EU goods” circus, no temporary import roulette, no surprise fees, no border debates about what a hoodie is worth. Just shows, work, and forward motion.
Make your merch in the UK. Not with a mate, not with a “friend of a friend”, not with someone who printed a tee once. You hire a professional, or you connect with a real UK merch company that knows the system, the taxes, the turnaround times and how touring actually works. You print locally, sell locally, pay locally and sleep better. UK production costs less than one border fuck-up, one delayed nightliner, one lost merch day or one customs fine. Every single time.
This isn’t playing it safe and it’s definitely not selling out. It’s adapting.
Post-Brexit touring is about cutting unnecessary risk, not romanticising suffering because “that’s how we always did it”. Store in Calais, cross empty, print in the UK, pick your EU stock back up when you’re done and continue like a professional.
Tour dogs don’t collect scars for the story. They remove problems before they become disasters.
- George Pirounakis is a merchandise and tour manager. He is currently on the road with Ensiferum.