On Thu, May 19, 2005 at 01:32:29PM +0200, Dave Neary wrote: > > As many of you know, we have an informal merchandising arrangement with > Sourcewear.com which has raise a few dollars this year (not much, though). > > I would like to improve on this relationship, and I know that Federico > at sourcewear feels the same. For my part, I'd like to see better > products, and more products, as well as formalising the cut we get from > merchandising (this is currently an informal arrangement, I think that > we should get an engagement on paper). > > For their part, they would like to continue having their logo on the arm > (which I'm OK with), and they would like to be our official merchandiser > - that is, have a place in the sidebar on every page, and a place of > prominence on the front page. > it would have been interesting to see what a simple little "advertisement" would have done to help improve the success of the company (which does not sound very successful -- gimp has a huge user base, i think). simple like a once every other month mailing to the user lists mentioned on the web site, explaining the merchandise, providing urls and explaining the deal.
one thing that makes walmart so successful is that they put the stores in the neighborhood of the people who they think will shop there. (how they did their research is another matter ....) in my opinion, the relationship between anything with the name "source" imbeded into its name tends to mean that an extremely leecherous relationship with TheGIMP is already happening or just around the corner or in developer terms "planned". > That's why I'm writing here. Is this arrangement OK with people? I will > firm things up quickly with Federico if it is, but I didn't want to > start negociating something without running it past the communtiy that > has stuck with the GIMP. > > Lazy approval is in effect - if you haven't replied in 3 days, I'll > assume everyone's happy with this. > when i first started using this freesoftware, i thought it was really cool and went around looking at the other projects and their merchandise. there was no gimp stuff there. everything is so blurred since then -- their logo on the shirt and the need for gimp to advertise them, i think that if Federico had been interested in selling tee-shirts, he should have tried some email to the user lists first or perhaps contacting gimp web site to get a mention there. while we are looking for "merchandisers" official and not, we should also review how interested and successful their company has been in promoting stuff. for instance, i would have mentioned gimp merchandise on my web site -- no problem. the problem apparently was in the company seeing the need for help from gimp or is it an all or nothing attitude? perhaps Federico could explain things himself? too much go-between for one person and you start to consider the go-between to perhaps be part of the many problems. i do not want to do this. thanks, carol _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
