Distribution Search

www.theCHEstore.com

This is the first website I investigated, primarily because it is the top site that comes up when you type “Che merch” into a websearch. The primary slogan for this website is “for all your revolutionary needs.” I have emailed this site on April 23rd requesting them to answer a few simple questions about their business; specifically why they sell only Che merchandise. I got no response.

One important fact to know about this website is they claim that officially licensed Che Guevara merchandise is only produced through their business. To quote the site:
“All theCHEstore.com merchandise is available to qualified merchants at wholesale prices. If you are a distributor or retailer and are interested in an opportunity to resell licensed Che Guevara product, then contact theCHEstore.com.”

Additionally, if you own a website a post a link to the Che store they will pay you 10% of all sales generated by your link. This payment seems to be made primarily through PayPal. Once again, Che products are manufacture for this website only. What is most notable about this website is that they are paying money to be able to withhold their name. The only information available is that the site’s physical location is in Bellevue, Washington while the site’s domain is located in Canada (thank you to Daniel for showing me how to do this).

In terms of the actual merchandise itself, it ranges from t-shirts to clocks to lighters. I have provided a table with the number of each item I found and what color it was. The table can be found as the first page after this report. Over 90% of all the items you can buy on the site simply display the Korda image of Che. So a typical t-shirt would be black or red with Che’s head on it with no real text. I only found one t-shirt that deviated from this trend: it was black with the number 26 on the front of it and the slogan “Don’t forget the revolution” on the back. I have no idea what “26” has to do with Che and so I looked into it.

www.che-lives.com

This website claims to be a “leftist project” dedicated to the memory of Che Guevara. When you go to their merchandise store, it simply gives you a link to www.theCHEstore.com (giving some evidence that maybe all Che merch does go through that site). However, there are some Che items that are not sold through that site, but they are not clothes. For example, this site offers 38 posters for sale. When you click on one of the posters to purchase it, it takes you to www.allposters.com. The art and creativity behind these posters goes beyond what the Che store has to offer. While a lot of them are the typical Korda image on black or red, there quite a few posters that that are historical photographs blown up. One of these posters I recognized as the same one that I have in my room right now (I had bought it at a campus vendor at Washington State University last year). The majority of these posters, including my own, depict Che in a relaxed type of setting smoking a cigar and smiling. Now that I think of it, Che has only been depicted with two types of expressions in all of this merchandise: either the determined look in the Korda image, or him smiling in a casual manner. All of these posters are between 6-10$ except for a few art prints which are between 20-30$. This website offers the same 27 books as the Che store, through Amazon.com.

One thing I found interesting was that although the book I annotated, “Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message” implied that the image of Che in these posters have gotten to be more colorful and “peace” oriented since the 60’s and 70’s, only one of the posters on that website resembled this. The majority of the posters were black, black and white, or red with the typical Korda image.

Overall this website is much more purposeful than the CHE store. They are obviously not just out to sell t-shirts. On their site they have posted 8 links leading to websites talking about Che and his life (and consequently, his death). One such link of interest was called “The Death of Che Guevara,” which contains declassified US documents dealing with his execution.
However, after I typed this website name into the domain searcher I found that all the information regarding the website was blocked. The only piece of information that was available is that the site is located in Westchester, CA.

The Che Guevara Store at www.CafePress.com

And yet another piece of evidence that points to the possibility of theChestore.com having exclusive rights to official Che merch. Although you can buy t-shirts from this website that have a famous Che quote or his picture, there are no shirts sold with the Korda image on them. The quote says, “If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.” However, you can buy shirts from this site with just about every major socialist figure’s head on them! A few examples are Trotsky and Karl Marx. Surprisingly, these shirts are about the same price as a typical Che shirt you would find at the Che store (around 20$). The site gives you a choice of 20 or so types of t-shirts (plain cotton shirts that are white or black, etc) as well as a few backpacks and coffee mugs. You choose which type of clothing you want and they put the quote or picture on the shirt.

Ebay Searches

Ebay holds a much wider array of Che merchandise than even the Che store. However, most of the items I have observed still depict the tyical Korda image, even with items that were hand-crafted or not manufactured by the Che store. What is most notable about these items is that even the buyout prices on them seem to be about half of what you would have to pay for at the Che store. As a result I decided to take the average of all the t-shirt prices from Cafepress.com, the Che store, and the buyout prices on Ebay and compare them (this does not include shipping):


www.theCHEstore.com: $17.49
www.cafepress.com: $22.65*
www.ebay.com: $13.39

*Note that café press seems to be more expensive because instead of ordering a stock t-shirt, you pick the design and what type of clothing you want the image put on, so I am assuming they charge extra because of that, and because you can get the t-shirt custom fitted. For the purposes of this research the comparison between ebay (where individuals are selling their custom made shirts or reselling items they bought elsewhere) and the Che store might be more telling.

www.Zumiez.com and www.Hottopic.com

I searched through both of these websites because Zumiez used to sell Che t-shirts and hot topic is the kind of clothing store that could also sell them. However, after sifting through both of their catalogs I found not a single t-shirt with Che’s image. After contacting the Zumiez downtown and visiting Hot Topic in Capitol Hill, I was not able to obtain a useful explanation as to why neither store carries them anymore. The most plausible conclusion would be that Che shirts did not sell well enough in Zumiez stores to warrant keeping them in production.