Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
Le lundi, 1 mai 2017, 19.45:06 h CEST martin f krafft a écrit : > However, at the end of the day, all things considered, if Didier or > Person X would mark those items up, say, 5% to cover the incidentals > (not the time spent), then I wouldn't have a problem with that. Oh, just to make the records straight: this was done under the debian.ch umbrella, with essentially Debian-like money. When I wrote that "we" were not making margin, I implied "Debian made an approximately zero-cost zero-benefit operation". I even paid my own knives. -- OdyX
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On 02/05/17 06:35, Gunnar Wolf wrote: > Daniel Pocock dijo [Mon, May 01, 2017 at 09:00:34AM +0200]: >> Can you give an example of shipping costs from Mexico to the US and >> Mexico to Brussels (for FOSDEM)? > > Bufff... It's a matter of checking the weight and asking DHL, Fedex, > and all of their kin :-| > Could you give an example of weight for 10 shirts? That may be helpful for anybody who wants to calculate. >> I assume that if they were sent to a European country there would be >> VAT charges on arrival, between 8% and 23% depending on the country. > > IIRC, it's covered within the various free trade agreements our > country has. Maybe somebody remembers better than me in European > DebConfs (I've always ran away from handling monetary issues). > A free trade agreement generally eliminates the customs duties but not the consumption tax although with some care the tax can be managed. The consumption taxes (EU VAT, Australia, Canada GST, Switzerland MwSt) always have to be paid if the product would be taxed in a retail store. A few exempt items (books, gold bullion, some medicine) are not taxed at the retail level, so they are not taxed at the border. There are situations where it may not apply but care is needed to plan for that in advance: - if a tax registered entity does the import (e.g. if DebConf17 has a GST registration or collaboration with a local business) then they may be able to reclaim that tax, it looks like 5% in Canada, they would need to check in advance and ensure the paperwork is right - when bringing things to the EU, some countries charge a lower VAT rate, e.g. 15% in Luxembourg is less than 21% in Belgium and once they are in the EU, they can be moved to other EU countries without paying VAT again. - if they come into Switzerland it is only 8% but anybody taking them over the border into the EU in bulk would have to declare them and might be asked to pay the higher tax. Personal items (clothing, etc) carried out of Switzerland in your luggage is exempt but anything over 20 EUR posted out of Switzerland is taxed. So the bottom line is that people have to make extra effort to plan in advance or just pay it. >> I did a quick search for information on the polo shirts, I have one >> with a logo in red and the other one has the logo in red and "debian" >> in white. Both are embroidered onto the shirt and they last a long >> time. Here is an example[1] from China: >> >> 500 polo shirts x $1.90 = $950 >> 1500 polo shirts x $0.60 = $900 >> >> So it is cheaper to make 1500 than 500. I wonder if they would allow >> different coloured shirts (e.g. 500 black, 500 white, 500 blue) in a >> single batch. > > Those producers are best suited for high-volume production, I'm giving > you the numbers for a small, family-owned, family-worked workshop > where a DebConf run (~500 shirts among all variations) is usually the > largest work in the year. There is little economic difference per item > between printing 50 and 500. > As noted in another reply, I see them as a completely different type of product (polo shirt with only the logo, embroidered, one colour vs t-shirt with multiple colours and designs) so it is not a price competition, people could have both t-shirts and polo shirts. The screen printing solution you have described also sounds great and it is good that there is transparency about the supply chain. Regards, Daniel
Sourcing fair-trade t-shirts (was: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts)
also sprach martin f krafft [2017-05-01 21:37 +0200]: > Make it fair-trade and printed by people with disabilities, like > we did for DC15, and it was somewhere around $8. Since people have asked off-list: the contractor that Daniel Lange identified was Caritasverband für Stuttgart e.V. Bereich Arbeit, 7 Siebe +49 711 8878652 and the product we ordered was Stanley&Stella,STTM528/STTW006,"Leads2,"Loves",Biobaumwolle + Fairtrade,Kids STTB938,"paints" at 4.79 €/piece. Printing was 2 € each, as well 30 € or so one-time incidentals, net price. Since they work with people with disabilities, they only need to charge 7% VAT (vs. 19%) in the EU, which helps keep the price low, and in the end, you end up with something close to 7€/shirt (we printed 700) of them). If you want to work with them, you might want to quote the following from our order: Contact person: Herr Schupp Order ID: 2015-19310-287 E Hope this helps. -- .''`. martin f. krafft @martinkrafft : :' : proud Debian developer `. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems murphy's law is recursive. washing your car to make it rain doesn't work. digital_signature_gpg.asc Description: Digital GPG signature (see http://martin-krafft.net/gpg/sig-policy/999bbcc4/current)
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
Martin Steigerwald dijo [Mon, May 01, 2017 at 10:13:58PM +0200]: > > Make it fair-trade and printed by people with disabilities, like > > we did for DC15, and it was somewhere around $8. I'd still buy > > a shirt for $15 or so every now and then if it was a witty new > > design and a cut of the proceeds were donated to Debian. > > I would not have any issue with paying an extra fee for fair-trade, organic T- > Shirt. That most are not at FLOSS events is a reason why I sometimes do not > opt for a T-Shirt at all. > > The very cheap approach of T-Shirt doesn´t go along well with any kind of > idealism. Its very nice to hear in retrospect that the DC15 T-Shirts have > been > fair trade – I didn´t know that. Note that "fair trade" is a quite squishy notion. Speaking as a friend of the producer, I can assure you that the printing process of our usual Mexican dirt-cheap shirts are as fair-trade as they can be; I cannot assure the details for the fibers to be organic, and I won't claim the shirt maker themselves are overly idealistic, but the printing process itself is not a "sweat shop", but a small family business that struggles to survive _and_ help our movement, in which they believe. Of course, it helps that our country's economy is way cheaper than Europe. I make a quite decent living and earn surely quite a bit over average (several stddevs in fact), but I am still quite close to the USA minimum wage. So, yes, a $3 shirt provides good value to their printers in our reality.
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
Daniel Pocock dijo [Mon, May 01, 2017 at 09:00:34AM +0200]: > Can you give an example of shipping costs from Mexico to the US and > Mexico to Brussels (for FOSDEM)? Bufff... It's a matter of checking the weight and asking DHL, Fedex, and all of their kin :-| > I assume that if they were sent to a European country there would be > VAT charges on arrival, between 8% and 23% depending on the country. IIRC, it's covered within the various free trade agreements our country has. Maybe somebody remembers better than me in European DebConfs (I've always ran away from handling monetary issues). > I did a quick search for information on the polo shirts, I have one > with a logo in red and the other one has the logo in red and "debian" > in white. Both are embroidered onto the shirt and they last a long > time. Here is an example[1] from China: > > 500 polo shirts x $1.90 = $950 > 1500 polo shirts x $0.60 = $900 > > So it is cheaper to make 1500 than 500. I wonder if they would allow > different coloured shirts (e.g. 500 black, 500 white, 500 blue) in a > single batch. Those producers are best suited for high-volume production, I'm giving you the numbers for a small, family-owned, family-worked workshop where a DebConf run (~500 shirts among all variations) is usually the largest work in the year. There is little economic difference per item between printing 50 and 500.
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 12:44 AM, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote: > If there's interest, I would _really_ recommend finding a trustable and > specialized partner (such as EnVenteLibre) to manage that, even if Debian is > to provide the initial funds and/or let a certain percentage go. Some of our existing merchandise vendors seem suitable, for eg: https://www.freewear.org/?page=foss_events https://www.freewear.org/?page=foss_orders -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Re: If Debian support OS certification?
On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 08:35:07AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: > On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 5:15 AM, Thomas Goirand wrote: > > > While it is nice to answer the way you did, here, Debian is missing yet > > another opportunity that other commercial distro would not. Maybe we > > should have a BoF at debconf Montreal about this. > > Please do register a BoF, I'd be happy to attend if I can. Me, also. > > Quanta is a company shipping servers. If I'm not mistaking, they're > > located in Shanghai. One thing they used to do (and probably continue to > > do) is building servers matching open specifications from the "open > > compute" project. That really appeals to Debian moral standards, IMO. > > Thanks for the info. > > > What they are interested about, is having *us*, Debian, to certify that > > their hardware work on our system, so that their customer trust they can > > buy it to run Debian. It'd be a bit weird if they were certifying > > themselves. > > I think that Debian members/contributors do not and should not hold a > monopoly on verifying that Debian works on a particular piece of > hardware. > > I think a better approach would be to produce a Debian Live image that > on boot checks as much of the hardware as possible automatically and > lists a checklist for verifying the rest of the hardware works. Anyone > could run the image and the resulting report could be uploaded to > hardware.d.o, where it would be displayed publicly and count as a > "certification". This way users can trust Debian to run on the > hardware and there is no monopoly on certification. ISTR Ubuntu's > certification stuff works similarly except that only Ubuntu can give > the certification mark, probably in exchange for money. > > In any case, hardware vendors are in a much better position to be able > to certify that Debian runs on their hardware than we are. They know > exactly what functionality should be present and have access to get > more hardware in case running Debian bricks their devices. Wearing my DSA hat: fully agree. > > Now one idea: one way we could provide the certification would be asking > > for hardware sponsorship. This way, we (ie: the DSA team) would get > > "free" hardware, in exchange for a certification. Obviously, we'd need > > to discuss this with the DSA. > > With my DSA hat on, we don't like being guinea pigs for development > boards and pre-release hardware. This kind of hardware tends to be > unreliable and require too much hand-holding. That said, we definitely > welcome hardware sponsorship and partners. Wearing my DSA hat: fully agree. So tired of flakey hardware. Wearing my Partners hat: what value a certification that was 'bought' by donating hardware (or a variable amount of funding) to Debian. I'd prefer a declared fee structure for the service, for transparency. That said, I'd far prefer Paul's suggestion of a Live CD. > > Then we'd need a kind of "Debian certified hardware" logo that we would > > agree the certified company use for some hardware. This would need SPI > > approval, since that's the entity owning the rights for the Debian logo. > > I expect we can probably get a logo created by updating this: > > https://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/RequestArtwork > > Often it takes some promotion for the right people to notice though. -- Luca Filipozzi http://www.crowdrise.com/SupportDebian
Re: If Debian support OS certification?
On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 5:15 AM, Thomas Goirand wrote: > While it is nice to answer the way you did, here, Debian is missing yet > another opportunity that other commercial distro would not. Maybe we > should have a BoF at debconf Montreal about this. Please do register a BoF, I'd be happy to attend if I can. > Quanta is a company shipping servers. If I'm not mistaking, they're > located in Shanghai. One thing they used to do (and probably continue to > do) is building servers matching open specifications from the "open > compute" project. That really appeals to Debian moral standards, IMO. Thanks for the info. > What they are interested about, is having *us*, Debian, to certify that > their hardware work on our system, so that their customer trust they can > buy it to run Debian. It'd be a bit weird if they were certifying > themselves. I think that Debian members/contributors do not and should not hold a monopoly on verifying that Debian works on a particular piece of hardware. I think a better approach would be to produce a Debian Live image that on boot checks as much of the hardware as possible automatically and lists a checklist for verifying the rest of the hardware works. Anyone could run the image and the resulting report could be uploaded to hardware.d.o, where it would be displayed publicly and count as a "certification". This way users can trust Debian to run on the hardware and there is no monopoly on certification. ISTR Ubuntu's certification stuff works similarly except that only Ubuntu can give the certification mark, probably in exchange for money. In any case, hardware vendors are in a much better position to be able to certify that Debian runs on their hardware than we are. They know exactly what functionality should be present and have access to get more hardware in case running Debian bricks their devices. > Now one idea: one way we could provide the certification would be asking > for hardware sponsorship. This way, we (ie: the DSA team) would get > "free" hardware, in exchange for a certification. Obviously, we'd need > to discuss this with the DSA. With my DSA hat on, we don't like being guinea pigs for development boards and pre-release hardware. This kind of hardware tends to be unreliable and require too much hand-holding. That said, we definitely welcome hardware sponsorship and partners. > Then we'd need a kind of "Debian certified hardware" logo that we would > agree the certified company use for some hardware. This would need SPI > approval, since that's the entity owning the rights for the Debian logo. I expect we can probably get a logo created by updating this: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/RequestArtwork Often it takes some promotion for the right people to notice though. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Re: If Debian support OS certification?
On 03/14/2017 05:17 AM, Paul Wise wrote: > On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 10:27 AM, Eric Lai (賴裕文) wrote: > >> This is Eric from Quanta Cloud Technology, Taiwan. >> I am in charge of server hardware certification. >> We would like to know if Debian can perform hardware certification as well. >> If support, please advise the process and any document we can refer it. > > At this time, Debian does not have a formal hardware certification program. > > If you are interested in checking how Debian works with your hardware [...] Paul and others, While it is nice to answer the way you did, here, Debian is missing yet another opportunity that other commercial distro would not. Maybe we should have a BoF at debconf Montreal about this. Quanta is a company shipping servers. If I'm not mistaking, they're located in Shanghai. One thing they used to do (and probably continue to do) is building servers matching open specifications from the "open compute" project. That really appeals to Debian moral standards, IMO. What they are interested about, is having *us*, Debian, to certify that their hardware work on our system, so that their customer trust they can buy it to run Debian. It'd be a bit weird if they were certifying themselves. Now one idea: one way we could provide the certification would be asking for hardware sponsorship. This way, we (ie: the DSA team) would get "free" hardware, in exchange for a certification. Obviously, we'd need to discuss this with the DSA. Then we'd need a kind of "Debian certified hardware" logo that we would agree the certified company use for some hardware. This would need SPI approval, since that's the entity owning the rights for the Debian logo. Thoughts anyone? Cheers, Thomas Goirand (zigo)
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On 01/05/17 21:33, Adam Borowski wrote: > On Mon, May 01, 2017 at 07:45:06PM +0200, martin f krafft wrote: >> For many of us, it goes without saying that we'd not take a margin >> off merchandise we create/sell for our project, mainly because of >> our idealism. >> >> However, at the end of the day, all things considered, if Didier or >> Person X would mark those items up, say, 5% to cover the incidentals >> (not the time spent), then I wouldn't have a problem with that. >> It'll certainly help if they were entirely transparent about it, >> though. > > I for one would be glad even if he _did_ take a fair fee for his time spent. > > And it would make a difference: > > # It's been fun in 2011, but I would not do it again, no. I have better > # uses of my Debian time. :) > > If you get compensated beyond the costs, you don't get that warm fuzzy > feeling of doing gratis work, but still do provide a welcome service to > members of the project. If that can tip the threshold between the service > being provided or not, then why not? > There are various reasons why not: - opportunity cost: time spent on this is time not spent on other things where people have more to give - financial reward isn't always a smart motivation (see Lepper and Greene, 1973) - Debian's constitution states we are volunteers, so if people do stuff like this with Debian money maybe they can't personally be paid for it. but I personally have no objection to somebody profiting from this if they are transparent about it and provide a good service to the community. >> Note also that there's nothing that prevents Person Y from producing >> Debian merchandise and offering it with a more substantial markup. >> If people buy it (i.e. the price is right), then everyone benefits… > > Note the data mentioned in this thread: > * decent printed shirts cost $0.60 in a large batch (including the > manufacturer's profit) > * "very good quality" printed shirts made in a small batch retail for $3 if > you skip most of the "rich country" artificial markup (ie, the price you > pay in shop is "what the market will bear" rather than just what would > keep the seller in business) > > Thus, there's a massive gap between doing it for costs and a full commercial > operation. It's not hard to find a sweet spot in between that would flood > relevant places with people in Debian-themed clothing while not cutting into > volunteers' unpaid time. > Those are very different cases though: the embroidered shirts would probably be more simple (just the logo) and designed for a long shelf life. The screen printed shirts may have more topical designs (e.g. for DebConf17 or Stretch) and in these cases the smaller quantity is fine. Regards, Daniel
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
martin f krafft - 01.05.17, 21:37: > also sprach Adam Borowski [2017-05-01 21:33 +0200]: > > Note the data mentioned in this thread: > > * decent printed shirts cost $0.60 in a large batch (including the > > manufacturer's profit) > > > > * "very good quality" printed shirts made in a small batch retail for $3 > > if > > > > you skip most of the "rich country" artificial markup (ie, the price you > > pay in shop is "what the market will bear" rather than just what would > > keep the seller in business) > > Make it fair-trade and printed by people with disabilities, like > we did for DC15, and it was somewhere around $8. I'd still buy > a shirt for $15 or so every now and then if it was a witty new > design and a cut of the proceeds were donated to Debian. I would not have any issue with paying an extra fee for fair-trade, organic T- Shirt. That most are not at FLOSS events is a reason why I sometimes do not opt for a T-Shirt at all. The very cheap approach of T-Shirt doesn´t go along well with any kind of idealism. Its very nice to hear in retrospect that the DC15 T-Shirts have been fair trade – I didn´t know that. -- Martin
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
also sprach Adam Borowski [2017-05-01 21:33 +0200]: > Note the data mentioned in this thread: > * decent printed shirts cost $0.60 in a large batch (including the > manufacturer's profit) > * "very good quality" printed shirts made in a small batch retail for $3 if > you skip most of the "rich country" artificial markup (ie, the price you > pay in shop is "what the market will bear" rather than just what would > keep the seller in business) Make it fair-trade and printed by people with disabilities, like we did for DC15, and it was somewhere around $8. I'd still buy a shirt for $15 or so every now and then if it was a witty new design and a cut of the proceeds were donated to Debian. -- .''`. martin f. krafft @martinkrafft : :' : proud Debian developer `. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems "was aus liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von gut und böse." - friedrich nietzsche digital_signature_gpg.asc Description: Digital GPG signature (see http://martin-krafft.net/gpg/sig-policy/999bbcc4/current)
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On Mon, May 01, 2017 at 07:45:06PM +0200, martin f krafft wrote: > For many of us, it goes without saying that we'd not take a margin > off merchandise we create/sell for our project, mainly because of > our idealism. > > However, at the end of the day, all things considered, if Didier or > Person X would mark those items up, say, 5% to cover the incidentals > (not the time spent), then I wouldn't have a problem with that. > It'll certainly help if they were entirely transparent about it, > though. I for one would be glad even if he _did_ take a fair fee for his time spent. And it would make a difference: # It's been fun in 2011, but I would not do it again, no. I have better # uses of my Debian time. :) If you get compensated beyond the costs, you don't get that warm fuzzy feeling of doing gratis work, but still do provide a welcome service to members of the project. If that can tip the threshold between the service being provided or not, then why not? > Note also that there's nothing that prevents Person Y from producing > Debian merchandise and offering it with a more substantial markup. > If people buy it (i.e. the price is right), then everyone benefits… Note the data mentioned in this thread: * decent printed shirts cost $0.60 in a large batch (including the manufacturer's profit) * "very good quality" printed shirts made in a small batch retail for $3 if you skip most of the "rich country" artificial markup (ie, the price you pay in shop is "what the market will bear" rather than just what would keep the seller in business) Thus, there's a massive gap between doing it for costs and a full commercial operation. It's not hard to find a sweet spot in between that would flood relevant places with people in Debian-themed clothing while not cutting into volunteers' unpaid time. (Obviously, not everyone finds organizing such an operation fun -- I for one would find doing this myself abhorrent, my contributions are 10% code fixes 90% wise-ass remarks -- but Debian is pretty diverse, and some of us have a modicum of skill here.) Meow! -- Don't be racist. White, amber or black, all beers should be judged based solely on their merits. Heck, even if occasionally a cider applies for a beer's job, why not? On the other hand, corpo lager is not a race.
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
also sprach Didier 'OdyX' Raboud [2017-05-01 18:44 +0200]: > If there's interest, I would _really_ recommend finding > a trustable and specialized partner (such as EnVenteLibre) to > manage that, even if Debian is to provide the initial funds and/or > let a certain percentage go. For many of us, it goes without saying that we'd not take a margin off merchandise we create/sell for our project, mainly because of our idealism. However, at the end of the day, all things considered, if Didier or Person X would mark those items up, say, 5% to cover the incidentals (not the time spent), then I wouldn't have a problem with that. It'll certainly help if they were entirely transparent about it, though. Note also that there's nothing that prevents Person Y from producing Debian merchandise and offering it with a more substantial markup. If people buy it (i.e. the price is right), then everyone benefits… -- .''`. martin f. krafft @martinkrafft : :' : proud Debian developer `. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems it is ok to let your mind go blank, but please turn off the sound. digital_signature_gpg.asc Description: Digital GPG signature (see http://martin-krafft.net/gpg/sig-policy/999bbcc4/current)
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
Le lundi, 1 mai 2017, 18.28:37 h CEST Daniel Pocock a écrit : > On 01/05/17 18:14, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote: > > The cost structure for that one-time project made it possible to sell the > > Debian-branded knives for the same non-branded retail price. That's really > > cool, but also meant an inexistant margin. > > > > But add to that the effort it took to collect pre-orders, then orders, and > > then manage the stock and the international shipping for small and > > expensive little gems that were acquired initially in an expensive > > currency (CHF); wedidn't make a penny worth of margin, for _a lot_ of > > administrativia and effort. > > Thanks for the update on that > > Would you consider it worthwhile doing an exercise like that again if > people were ordering them in batch to be delivered at DebConf? The administrativia overload still stands: pre-orders, stock management, money collecting (in various currencies, of course), etc. Such orders come with minimal monetary amounts (to reduce the cost-per-unit of the branding), which then implies carrying around merchandise worth thousands of dollars, in easy to steal (very small) items. It's been fun in 2011, but I would not do it again, no. I have better uses of my Debian time. :) If there's interest, I would _really_ recommend finding a trustable and specialized partner (such as EnVenteLibre) to manage that, even if Debian is to provide the initial funds and/or let a certain percentage go. OdyX signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On 01/05/17 18:14, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote: > Le dimanche, 30 avril 2017, 17.42:53 h CEST Andrew M.A. Cater a écrit : >> Debian.ch did one very cool piece of merchandise - customised Victorinox >> knives with Debian logo. Fantastic, useful - and potentially illegal to >> carry but a lovely thing. I think it took a huge time to organise the >> logistics although the cost wasn't huge since the manufacturers do this >> regularly and the retooling isn't massive the overhead was high. > > The cost structure for that one-time project made it possible to sell the > Debian-branded knives for the same non-branded retail price. That's really > cool, but also meant an inexistant margin. > > But add to that the effort it took to collect pre-orders, then orders, and > then manage the stock and the international shipping for small and expensive > little gems that were acquired initially in an expensive currency (CHF); > wedidn't make a penny worth of margin, for _a lot_ of administrativia and > effort. > Thanks for the update on that Would you consider it worthwhile doing an exercise like that again if people were ordering them in batch to be delivered at DebConf? That would eliminate individual trips to the post office, packaging and other administrivia? Regards, Daniel
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
Le dimanche, 30 avril 2017, 17.42:53 h CEST Andrew M.A. Cater a écrit : > Debian.ch did one very cool piece of merchandise - customised Victorinox > knives with Debian logo. Fantastic, useful - and potentially illegal to > carry but a lovely thing. I think it took a huge time to organise the > logistics although the cost wasn't huge since the manufacturers do this > regularly and the retooling isn't massive the overhead was high. The cost structure for that one-time project made it possible to sell the Debian-branded knives for the same non-branded retail price. That's really cool, but also meant an inexistant margin. But add to that the effort it took to collect pre-orders, then orders, and then manage the stock and the international shipping for small and expensive little gems that were acquired initially in an expensive currency (CHF); wedidn't make a penny worth of margin, for _a lot_ of administrativia and effort. OdyX P.S. We transfered the stock to EnVenteLibre, and they still have some: https://enventelibre.org/goodies/17-couteau-suisse-debian.html signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 3:20 PM, Paul Wise wrote: > The official view of the Debian project in the past seems to have been > that we leave the distribution of physical items up to our vendors, > for both merchandise and CD/DVD/BD/USB. PS: some of our merchandise vendors will do specific orders for FLOSS events and even custom designs for specific events like mini-DebConfs. One has even done both for Debian: https://www.freewear.org/?page=foss_events https://www.freewear.org/?page=foss_orders -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 7:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote: > On several occasions people have asked me about Debian t-shirts and the > polo shirts when I'm going to an event or after seeing a video where I > am wearing the polo shirt. Are you reminding those folks about our merchandise page? https://www.debian.org/misc/merchandise PS: I've just updated the page a bit: https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/misc/merchandise.data?r1=1.70&r2=1.71 https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/misc/merchandise.def?r1=1.44&r2=1.45 https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/misc/merchandise.wml?r1=1.7&r2=1.9 > - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary > goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure? The latter seems more appropriate for a non-profit but I'm not sure we should be undercutting our merchandise partners, especially the ones that donate a portion of their profits to Debian. > - would it be reasonable for 1% - 2% of Debian's reserves to be tied up > in slow moving inventory items like t-shirts that take up to a year to > fully turnover? As the reserves are mostly kept in cash Debian probably > loses at least that much to inflation each year anyway. The official view of the Debian project in the past seems to have been that we leave the distribution of physical items up to our vendors, for both merchandise and CD/DVD/BD/USB. I don't think that should change. https://www.debian.org/misc/merchandise https://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/ -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On 2017-05-01 09:00, Daniel Pocock wrote: Can you give an example of shipping costs from Mexico to the US and Mexico to Brussels (for FOSDEM)? Please note that for FOSDEM the bulk of the merchandise is provided by Debian France. Kind Regards, Bas
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 09:37:11PM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote: > "Non-profit" means that Debian does not distribute surplus profits back > to people such as shareholders. It does not mean that Debian can not > make a profit on the sale of a t-shirt, as long as that profit is > re-invested in the organization. This will be highly dependent on the local laws for whatever trusted organisation the proxies it for Debian. On the other hand, I at least would prefer if Debian didn't put in money to have a stock of merchandise. Merchandise seems to happen anyway. -- I want to build worthwhile things that might last. --joeyh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On 01/05/17 05:36, Gunnar Wolf wrote: > Daniel Pocock dijo [Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 01:53:49PM +0200]: >> >> Hi all, >> >> On several occasions people have asked me about Debian t-shirts >> and the polo shirts when I'm going to an event or after seeing a >> video where I am wearing the polo shirt. >> >> At some events there are opportunities to mass-produce things in >> collaboration with the event team, lowering costs and avoiding >> the cost of shipping into the event. For example, the FOSSASIA >> team produced a lot of roll-up banners and three Debian banners >> were included in the batch. Similar deals can lower the cost of >> t-shirt production, especially when the event takes place in a >> location where costs are lower. >> >> A few people have expressed concern about the production of >> t-shirts though: (...) > > Just my experience here: > > Many years ago, my then-couple and me ran a textile printing > small-scale workshop. She still runs it, and she will print > DebConf's shirts this year (as she has repeatedly done - DebConf 6, > 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15 and 17 shirts all went through her hands :) ). > Of course, back in the day, we printed many shirts related to Free > Software projects. We even made some minor trademark violations > which I openly acknowledge as such (i.e. we printed IIRC 50 shirts > with the Firefox and the Mozilla logos for the Firefox 1.0 release > party... Only to find out later they did have a trademark policy... > Oh, we were young and innocent :-] ) > > Anyway, beyond the memory trip... T-shirts are *awesome* for > promotion. Good material T-shirts much more so - I still have in > very good condition most of my home-printed shirts... With our > production starting in 2004. I did take a bag of shirts to several > conferences (several local ones, and at least I took a case with > probably 50 to DebConf5 in Helsinki). > > Thing is, sadly, I hate manning the sales booth. Selling shirts is > a quick way to make money. If you print in "cheapish" countries > such as mine (Mexico), a very good quality shirt+print would cost > around US$3 if my numbers are right. I am *stumped* to find ~US$30 > shirts for sale in the USA; I have bought a couple of debian.ch > shirts (which are great!), but it's hard for me to understand where > the price comes from. Of course, then I remember what is said about > .ch... > > Anyway, if any of you is interested: We have found for DebConf that > if most often makes a lot of economic sense to print shirts in > Mexico and ship them via the usual courier services; if any of you > is interested, even in relatively short runs of products, I'm sure > Gaby will be happy to provide good work and material (and, of > course, I can provide the contact if needed). You mention > "economies of scale" - It does not really matter. I am not up to > date with prices, but they should have not moved much... The cost > for making one silk-screen original (for a workshop that does _not_ > have their own development lab) is about US$5 per color. Shirt > prices go down at around the 10, 25 and 50-items, but beyond there, > you won't gain much. > > It usually makes no sense, so, to make big print runs and lug / > move around stock. It's best to just print as you go, and that way > even just take "current" designs to each event (plus some bits of > stock you have left over)... If I were to offer you, for very > cheap, our shirts for Sarge or Etch, I don't think you'd be very > interested! That would become lost money. > Can you give an example of shipping costs from Mexico to the US and Mexico to Brussels (for FOSDEM)? I assume that if they were sent to a European country there would be VAT charges on arrival, between 8% and 23% depending on the country. I did a quick search for information on the polo shirts, I have one with a logo in red and the other one has the logo in red and "debian" in white. Both are embroidered onto the shirt and they last a long time. Here is an example[1] from China: 500 polo shirts x $1.90 = $950 1500 polo shirts x $0.60 = $900 So it is cheaper to make 1500 than 500. I wonder if they would allow different coloured shirts (e.g. 500 black, 500 white, 500 blue) in a single batch. Regards, Daniel 1. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/100-cotton-High-Quality-Customized-Logo_60450761521.html
