I had someone ask me what I thought about LTT's screwdrivers [...] why do people buy shit like this or that backpack?
I'll stand by the original Linus screwdriver and their mousepads, genuinely good products. I think that the original model for their store (which they've since gone away from) to release quality versions of products that are hard to find reliable/quality versions of was a good angle to take. Along those same lines, they sell Honeywell thermal pads and Rackstuds, decent niche products that probably benefit from consumer-facing distribution.
Issue is there aren't enough simple products that have wide market appeal.
Then the merch (t-shirts and waterbottles) are just YouTuber crap, but since they've already sold their audience normal LTT logo swag years ago, they now have full-time clothing designers coming up with nerdcore aesthetic nonsense. Love the Black/pink polo with snaps instead of buttons or a computer-themed onesie, sure they've sold dozens of these.
In general, given the small nature of their store's possible customer base for this slop, they're forced to constantly cycle new designs/styles to sell to the same handful of people willing to "collect" all the LTT gear.
That kind of feeds into their overall gamification for the webshop, FOMO for ephemeral products, giveaways for buying products, ultra rare 1/500 limited versions of their merch, blind box pins, random grab bag, limited time secret deals, random Linus-signed merch, etc. They sell enough to sustain the store and pay for the design staff, so it's "worth" it, but the number of total sales for this shit is TINY given the viewership of his channel.
Beyond the clothing, the rest of their store is a complete disaster, $70 jenga sets, baby toys, pet beds, pillows, and other random straight-from-China goods that only a shopping addict would consider buying.
Since releasing his backpack a couple years ago, none of Linus' big bets have paid off, they redesigned the entire store around their magnetic cable management system that flopped, women's clothing has been tried unsuccessfully multiple times, different sized bags have all underwhelmed, and most recently their ifixit knockoff set just resulted in ifixit pulling ads. The only semi-successful launch was their bolt-action pen which; at $30, is a weird middleground price for a pen imo (though I've heard it's alright.)
In any other timeline, I'd laugh at the idea of a YouTuber store, but I really do think that initial vision had some promise. Cables (HDMI/DP, USB, and CAT6A) were something Linus talked about years ago that could have been a huge boon (if not branded obnoxiously). They walked away or shelved the idea in favor of this other direction that I really don't think has a long-term future. Maybe they'll find one or two products that explode for some reason or another, but I doubt it.
($69.99 USD) to electrocute yourself" and then the very next short he's poking the sponsored Seasonic 
