Merch Platform Spring Now Lets Creators Mint And Vend NFTs

Merch manufacturer Spring (formerly Teespring) has teamed up with Bondly, the company behind Logan Paul’s recent $5 million NFT sale, to let creators mint and vend NFTs on its platform.

Through the partnership, Bondly’s technology will be sewn into Spring’s site, allowing creators to make custom NFTs the same way they make physical products like T-shirts and plushes. Physical and digital items can be listed side by side in creators’ Spring shops.

Spring says it and Bondly will also offer ways for creators to specifically market their NFTs, and that Bondly will additionally “provide expertise to develop new digital experiences between creators and fans.”

“NFTs give creators the ability to produce and more important, own their digital creations,” Chris Lamontagne, Spring’s CEO, said in a statement. “This is an opportunity for creative people to sell their products on the internet in a way which has not been done before.”

Spring works with around 450,000 creators, and up until 2020 focused almost entirely on helping them create and vend physical products. But over the past year, it has seen more and more value in digital products–everything from songs to photo editing presets to, now, NFTs.

Spring said in March that it expects digital products will account for a whopping one-third of creator merch revenue by the end of 2022.

Bondly, meanwhile, launched in November 2020, and describes itself as a “swap protocol” offering products that facilitate peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions. Its goal, it says, is to “use arts, games, anime, music and brands based NFTs to bridge non-crypto audiences to join the crypto world.”

Bondly tech powered Logan Paul’s February NFT drop, which sold 3,000 tokens of a digital, anime-style drawing of the YouTuber. $1.3 million worth of the tokens sold within 30 minutes of the drop, Bondly says.

The organization was also behind the release of Darken the Shadow, the world’s first NFT music album. Singer-songwriter PelleK listed 200 copies of the album on Bondly’s BONDSwap marketplace, and sold out in less than two hours, generating $160,000.

“Spring and Bondly are perfect partners because we see NFTs as a fan engagement tool and work to create tailored, perk-enabled NFTs to increase the market value for creators,” Brandon Smith, Bondly’s CEO, said in a statement. “We focus on quality first, so that each NFT will stand the test of time and maintain its value to the fan, ensuring their perception of each creator not only remains as good as before the sale, but also actually enhances how they feel about them.”