Current merch leaders

I'm not insinuating that WWE has a particularly high-brow sense of fashion or anything, it just seems that Reigns' merch is among its own category of awful.

I feel the same way about most of Bryan's merch, too. I'm a huge fan of the guy, but it took me until there was a massive sale to buy a t-shirt of his, and even then, I barely wear it.

I'm curious how they account for merch sales at other retail outlets. I get the Cena is current king of the merch, but why is it that KMart only carries his stuff? Like for nearly a year Bryan was the hottest star on the show, but I never saw a single Bryan shirt or blanket at Kmart.

How do they expect to grow another stars brand if they dont put stuff out there? Kids loved Bryan too... I work at a comic shop, and whenever a family buys the WWE book I ask who their favorite worker is and I heard Bryan mentioned as much or more than anyone. (Obviously a small sample size, still a valid question(s) )

They need to make some Torrie Wilson things! She could take down John Cena from #1.

All serious, it shocks me that the Macho Man was not in the top 10 because you see those purple shirts in the crowd more than any other shirt I think.

What? You've never seen parents put their kids on leashes before?...

That way when the kid asks for something at the show, you get em something they want -- and you can use. Win/win. Go Reigns.

TBH I don't find him stale.

In fairness though, I wasn't watching WWE from 2005-12, so I've had less time to find him stale.

Yeah, which I agree with that logic, but then don't you get into the issue of assigning value to a ticket for a specific individual? You're right that shirts are more expensive at events, $30 versus $25, so I would think that maybe they want to look at total units sold and take dollar amount made into account. So essentially assigning where those dollars were made, which they seem to be doing, but looking at profitability. I just have a hard time saying that because I'm a Seth Rollins fan, and I bought a Seth Rollins t-shirt, that he's the only reason I spent $80 on a ticket to go see the show, especially in todays WWE landscape. I think that might primarily be true for Cena, and it would have been true of Bryan and Punk at various points over the last 2-3 years because of the nature of their rise to popularity, but those guys, at least to me, are exceptions to the rule.

For me, if Ambrose sells 100 shirts on the internet, and 50 shirts at a live event, that's better to me than Sheamus selling 110 shirts at a live event and 5 on the internet. That's probably a really horrible example haha, but there are just a lot of variable factors to look at when trying to assign financial gain of a live event sale to one individual. I mean if the Rock were advertised I get it, but for a standard show with the main current roster I think it's more difficult, and thus easier to look at total dollar amount made on merchandise by an individual. Which also gets back into merchandise available, because WWE completely controls that element of the sales, largely basing it off of who is currently getting a big babyface rub.

I had no idea that Stings merchandise never sold well in WCW and TNA

So glad to hear Sting is selling. Just imagine how his sales will rise when he finally gets on TV.
Nothing else really surprised me. Once Bryan gets back on TV his sales will rise.