LlamaCasty/TASKS/task-54-marcom-free-merch.md

TASK 54 — Marcom round: free-forever positioning + merch (queued 2026-10-08)

Catalog: TASKS.md — status and requirements live here.

Why: the monetization decision changed. LlamaCasty launches watermark-free and free as in beer, forever — no paid tiers, no branding flash. The old watermark-paid-delta plan (TASK 10) is superseded. Money, if any, comes from gratuity and branded merch, never from gating the app.

History of the ruling (creator-led, 2026-10-08): feature set is locked for v1; there are no new pricing tiers to build. The compensation decision: ship the app free and watermark-free, put a coffee jar / merch storefront in front of people, done. Assistant recommendation that was accepted: print-on-demand merch instead of a tip jar for the main channel, because a t-shirt the viewer wears is free advertising a donation is not.

Done so far:

• ✅ llamacasty.com stripped of ALL pricing (2026-10-08): plans ($0/$10/$400), the feature chart, the "made with LlamaCasty!" flash copy, and the #pricing section replaced with a free-forever band: "Free forever. Completely yours." — no watermark, no branding on stream, no subscription, no account. Nav + footer relinked to #free. Deployed + verified live (0 pricing refs).
• ✅ Ruling recorded: no watermark, no branding-flash, app ships as-is.

Merch plan (accepted, corrected 2026-10-08):

• Printful as the producer/fulfillment (quality + creative control). CORRECTION: Printful has no first-party storefront available to us — its "Quick Stores" is US-seller/US-buyer only (and no custom domain), so it never appears on the store-connect page. A storefront layer is required. Chosen: Big Cartel (free plan = 5 products, custom domain, artist/independent positioning — the exact lineup size) integrated via Printful's connect flow; Square Online's free plan is the fallback. One store only, linked prominently on llamacasty.com and in the app's About pop-up ("so it's always present").
• Small lineup: 3–5 items to start (t-shirt, mug, sticker set — the llama logo is the obvious draw). Assets live in llamacasty.web/assets/img/ (icon-512.png, logo.webp, gramps-480.webp).

In-app tasks bundled here (small, App-layer only):

• ☐ Branding-flash text becomes "llamacasty.com" (single small mention) instead of the "made with LlamaCasty!" overlay — pending the "no branding, completely yours" wording conflict: a streamer showing zero branding and a streamer showing "llamacasty.com" are different promises; creator to pick.
• ☐ Add the merch/storefront links to the About pop-up so the store is reachable from inside the app at all times.

Marcom write-up: capture this whole decision (positioning, competitor note — Meld Studio runs free core + paid AI tiers and a merch store; ArtCraft monetizes AI credits — the free-forever difference) into the dedicated marcom.md file once the creator creates it. This task file is the working copy until then.