Re: [libreplanet-discuss] joint merchandise production between projects (t-shirts, stickers, Swiss army knives, ...)

[Daniel Pocock]

On 01/05/17 18:49, John Sullivan wrote:
> Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> writes:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> There has been some discussion on debian-project about merchandise
>> production, mainly t-shirts and clothing[1] and one thing that came up
>> is the question of collaboration between multiple projects.
>>
>> Can people from any other communities share comments on how they
>> produce, store, distribute and account for merchandise like this?
>>
>> Is anybody aware of opportunities to reduce costs, for example, getting
>> stickers for some smaller projects made up at the same time that a
>> larger project or event makes stickers?
>>
>> Is anybody aware of non-profit-friendly organizations that may be good
>> to partner with to outsource merchandising?
>>
>> A few years ago Debian even made up some Swiss army knives[2], I think
>> there may still be a small number left with debian.ch
> 
> We're happy to share what info we have that might be useful -- you
> should send questions to sales@fsf.org.
> 
> Discounts / cost reductions normally come from larger quantities of the
> same product/design. But of course we could try negotiating with vendors
> as a group, to say that our business comes together or not at all.
> Probably in some cases that would get us better pricing. We haven't
> tried it.
> 

I think one good example where sharing would work is in stickers and
business cards.

The printing company usually cuts them out of an A4 or A3 sheet with a
guillotine.  If one sheet can fit 5 x 4 = 20 stickers, then the printing
company can produce 2000 sheets with 40,000 stickers divided up with the
guillotine for each organization.

Doing a larger run like 2000 or 5000 sheets would clearly bring down the
cost.

For screen printing t-shirts, such efficiencies are unlikely to be found
as they have to make up the screens individually for each design
although there could be some savings in administration and shipping
charges if many are done in one place.


> For projects that match up especially well with the FSF mission, we
> could consider mutually beneficial arrangements to sell and ship their
> merchandise from shop.fsf.org. We don't have an existing defined
> framework for doing that, but we have done it from time to time.
> 

That would be an interesting way to collaborate as well.

Do you keep inventory in a single country/location or could this work
well globally?

Regards,

Daniel