Non-military participants at airshows - any merch interest?

[DanBeeden]

Hi all,

This questions spans the military and civil aviation worlds, so I hope its ok to post here! Having attended most Air Tattoos and various other shows over the past 25 years, I am pretty familiar with the types of merchandise that participating military crews bring with them, the often significant demand for it and what people are paying. However, with shows like RIAT, we are seeing a reasonable number of interesting civilian types also attending. I would be interested to know if there is anything like a comparable level of interest in merch (patches, etc.) that comes with non-military participants? I appreciate this totally depends on the type of aircraft involved and who it belongs to, but over the years we've seen aircraft like the FAAM 146, Swedish and Dutch Coast Guard types, Swedish Historic Flight, the Oil Spill Response 727, and so-on. I don't know if any of these examples had merch with them? If they did, or if they attended again and brought patches etc. with them, would people buy it?

I'd be very interested in hearing people's thoughts.

Best wishes,

Dan

[Professor_M]

TopAces were selling in front of their Skyhawk in 2022 (wasn't looking to see if they were selling again in 2023 by the Alpha Jet), it was one of the few stalls that I purchased from - I tend to only buy from a couple of the crews, ones of particular interest to me (rarer/older types), or else I'd be spending far more than I would like.

[VectairQRAD]

Regardless of if the operator is military or civilian I will always consider something if the design is interesting or from a unique operator. Though I think this, like any sort of hobby/collecting is highly subjective and is definitely a case of each to their own.

[DanBeeden]

Many thanks for the replies gents.