Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana]

Hi,

Daniel and Giovani at Cryptorave (https://cryptorave.org) today:
http://imgur.com/a/Wwx1Q

Best regards,

- Mensagem original -
> De: "Paul Wise" <p...@debian.org>
> Para: "Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana" <p...@softwarelivre.org>
> Cc: "debian-project" <debian-project@lists.debian.org>
> Enviadas: Quarta-feira, 3 de maio de 2017 19:45:52
> Assunto: Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

> On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 12:38 AM, Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana wrote:
> 
>> Here in Brazil we are selling some products and using the money to organize 
>> free
>> software events in Curitiba like MiniDebConf, FLISOL, Software Freedom Day,
>> because it's very hard get sponsors.
>> http://loja.curitibalivre.org.br
> 
> Please add your webshop here:
> 
> https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/misc/merchandise.data?view=markup
> 
>> We don't have a non-profite organization, but we are planning to open one.
> 
> Once you have, it could become a Debian TO:
> 
> https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Auditor/Organizations
> 
> --
> bye,
> pabs
> 
> https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

-- 
Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls)
Curitiba - Brasil
Membro da Comunidade Curitiba Livre
Fone: +55 (41) 99198-1897
Site: http://www.phls.com.br
GNU/Linux user: 228719  GPG ID: 0443C450

Apoie a campanha pela igualdade de gênero #HeForShe (#ElesPorElas)  
http://www.heforshe.org/pt

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Paul Wise]

On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 12:38 AM, Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana wrote:

> Here in Brazil we are selling some products and using the money to organize 
> free software events in Curitiba like MiniDebConf, FLISOL, Software Freedom 
> Day, because it's very hard get sponsors.
> http://loja.curitibalivre.org.br

Please add your webshop here:

https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/misc/merchandise.data?view=markup

> We don't have a non-profite organization, but we are planning to open one.

Once you have, it could become a Debian TO:

https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Auditor/Organizations

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana]

Hi,

Here in Brazil we are selling some products and using the money to organize 
free software events in Curitiba like MiniDebConf, FLISOL, Software Freedom 
Day, because it's very hard get sponsors.
http://loja.curitibalivre.org.br

There is too a big demand to buy products with Debian logo, and it's very 
expensive to pay in USD and import from other countries. So, our small store 
has helped these users to be proud to use Debian.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/curitibalivre/33092175864/in/album-72157679059866304/

1.00 USD ~ R$ 3,20
T-Shirt is R$ 40,00 ~ USD 12,50

We don't have a non-profite organization, but we are planning to open one.

-- 
Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls)
Curitiba - Brasil
Membro da Comunidade Curitiba Livre
Fone: +55 (41) 99198-1897
Site: http://www.phls.com.br
GNU/Linux user: 228719  GPG ID: 0443C450

Apoie a campanha pela igualdade de gênero #HeForShe (#ElesPorElas)  
http://www.heforshe.org/pt

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Ben Hutchings]

On Mon, 2017-05-01 at 23:44 -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> 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.
[...]

It's not only the production of finished clothing that matters here
(though I'm glad to be reassured about this producer).  It is also
important to consider how the raw material is produced.  One major
cotton-producing country, Uzbekistan, relies on forced labour for
harvesting cotton.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Nothing is ever a complete failure; it can always serve as a bad
example.



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Re: Sourcing fair-trade t-shirts (was: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts)

[Martin Steigerwald]

Hello Martin.

martin f krafft - 02.05.17, 07:39:
> and the product we ordered was
> 
>   Stanley,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.

Okay, scratch what I just wrote. It helps to really carefully read all the 
details of your mail:

You found an even slightly cheaper source. Printing costs are higher at least 
when ordering 500 shirts or more compared to Memo. As I don´t know what 
printing partner Memo uses, it may be fairer tough. For me a price of 7 Euro 
per T-Shirt is totally acceptable, so I see no point replacing printing by a 
cheaper option if that cheaper option is less fair or socially sustainable. 
(Given the mission of Memo I bet they take fairness into account for printing 
as well… but I didn´t found a definitive information on that.)

Thanks,
-- 
Martin

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Martin Steigerwald]

Gunnar Wolf - 01.05.17, 23:44:
> 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.

Well, there is a Fair Trade label, that requires a standard to be followed¹. 
But as for organic… well the cheapest supply of certified organic *and* 
fairtrade shirts I know of in Germany is Memo (probably reselling shirts sold 
by Living Crafts). And they charge 6,95 Euro per shirt² ³. Okay, scratch that, 
at another webpage of them I found that depending on amount ordered price can 
be as low as 4,99 per shirt for 500 shirts or more[4].

Printing would be on top of that and I think when done through them be 
dependend of amount of shirts ordered, getting cheaper per shirt with larger 
amount. However I like the way of printing organizers of DC15, Martin, you?, 
found very much. But for the sake of completeness on [4] I also found the 
printing costs which would be 0,65 Euro per shirt in monochrome print and 0,87 
Euro per shirt in multicolor print for 500 or more shirts. I am not sure who 
is their printing partner, I would not be surprised if its some organisation 
with people with disabilites or another socially engaged organisation as well. 
However I think someone would need to ask them – I won´t do at the moment 
cause what DC 15 team would seems to be just fine to me.

[1] I believe this standard applies:
https://www.fairtrade.net/standards/our-standards/textile-standard.html

[2] For men:
https://www.memo.de/Bio-Herren-T-Shirt-mit-Rundhalsausschnitt.html?ono=F3779

[3] For women:
https://www.memo.de/Bio-Damen-T-Shirt-mit-Rundhalsausschnitt.html?ono=F3730

[4] Special memo shop for advertising articles: 
http://www.memo-werbeartikel.de/ws_shop/index.jsp?groupId=18600=group.jsp

> 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.

I doubt that anyone would offer a certified fairtrade and organic shirt for $3. 
One point of fairtrade *and* organic is to pay more to the producers, so there 
is a limit as to how cheap they can become. Above is the cheapest source in 
Germany I am aware of. And for my personal feeling thats already quite 
ridiculously cheap given that they are certified organic and fairtrade, but 
here might be indeed at play that working costs in other economies are lower 
than the extremely high costs in Germany I partly which sometimes almost drive 
tears into my eyes when looking at a paycheck. As far as I have seen in [2] 
the production for these shirts is in Asia.

Of course 7 Euro per shirt or 5 euro per shirt for 500 or more might be 
considered to expensive to Debian events. Personally, I am more than willing 
to pay a higher price than that. Even for shopping privately the prices for 
those shirts are low enough for me to never ever even consider to buy anything 
less than this quality for cotton based shirts. I want pesticide free and at 
least somewhat fairly dealt clothing.

Thanks,
-- 
Martin

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Didier 'OdyX' Raboud]

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

[Daniel Pocock]

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)

[martin f krafft]

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,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.


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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Gunnar Wolf]

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

[Gunnar Wolf]

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

[Paul Wise]

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: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Adam Borowski]

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

[martin f krafft]

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.


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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Didier 'OdyX' Raboud]

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

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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Daniel Pocock]

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

[Didier 'OdyX' Raboud]

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


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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Paul Wise]

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

[Paul Wise]

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=1.71
https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/misc/merchandise.def?r1=1.44=1.45
https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/misc/merchandise.wml?r1=1.7=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

[Lars Wirzenius]

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


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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Paul Wise]

On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 2:01 AM, Luca Filipozzi wrote:

> Debian should avoid being in the hard good business.
>
> If we want to make it easy for people to obtain Debian-branded /
> Debian-benefiting products, we could go with a print-on-demand service such as
> https://scalablepress.com/ or https://printaura.com/, using a storefront we 
> put
> ourselves, use theirs, or use a 3rd party such as https://www.etsy.com.

There are already various vendors of Debian-branded products here:

https://www.debian.org/misc/merchandise

As well as the inevitable community production of Debian-branded products:

https://wiki.debian.org/Merchandise

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Gunnar Wolf]

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.

Greetings,


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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 04/30/2017 10:05 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> On 30/04/17 21:54, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
>> On 04/30/2017 09:37 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>>> On 30/04/17 14:18, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
 On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?

 There are more reasons than these two.

 For the t-shirts that I had made and sold at the T-DOSE & FOSDEM
 conferences the primary motivation was user demand. Especially at T-DOSE
 I got several questions if we had T-shirts and had to tell them no, this
 resulted in having shirts made the next year.

 There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had
 made yet, but am considering.
>>>
>>> Let me put it another way: when you are trying to meet that demand from
>>> people, do you make that effort because you want to raise money or
>>> because of brand, community, etc?
>>
>> I do it as a service to our community.
>>
>> Debian doesn't need to sell merchandise to raise money, the project gets
>> more in donations than it spends.
> 
> That's exactly what I was getting at with that question, I suspect most
> people will agree any merchandising is not for fundraising.

Not for Debian. For projects that don't get as many donations it can be
a good way to raise money. Buying an t-shirt is a nice way to contribute
financially to a project and get something tangible in return.

> Taking that point further, if the goal is community, do people feel that
> merchandizing should break even or that it can actually be subsidized?
> I've heard different opinions on that from different people already.

I don't think people should subsidize merchandise unless they want to
(e.g. have plenty of disposable income to burn). In practice the price
charged for merchandise tends to be the cost price rounded up to avoid
small change. This little profit is then donated to the project. Making
a profit should not be the goal of Debian merchandise in my opinion.

Kind Regards,

Bas

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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Daniel Pocock]

On 30/04/17 21:54, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
> On 04/30/2017 09:37 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>> On 30/04/17 14:18, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
>>> On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
 - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
 goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?
>>>
>>> There are more reasons than these two.
>>>
>>> For the t-shirts that I had made and sold at the T-DOSE & FOSDEM
>>> conferences the primary motivation was user demand. Especially at T-DOSE
>>> I got several questions if we had T-shirts and had to tell them no, this
>>> resulted in having shirts made the next year.
>>>
>>> There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had
>>> made yet, but am considering.
>>
>> Let me put it another way: when you are trying to meet that demand from
>> people, do you make that effort because you want to raise money or
>> because of brand, community, etc?
> 
> I do it as a service to our community.
> 
> Debian doesn't need to sell merchandise to raise money, the project gets
> more in donations than it spends.
> 

That's exactly what I was getting at with that question, I suspect most
people will agree any merchandising is not for fundraising.

Taking that point further, if the goal is community, do people feel that
merchandizing should break even or that it can actually be subsidized?
I've heard different opinions on that from different people already.

Regards,

Daniel

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 04/30/2017 09:37 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> On 30/04/17 14:18, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
>> On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>>> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
>>> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?
>>
>> There are more reasons than these two.
>>
>> For the t-shirts that I had made and sold at the T-DOSE & FOSDEM
>> conferences the primary motivation was user demand. Especially at T-DOSE
>> I got several questions if we had T-shirts and had to tell them no, this
>> resulted in having shirts made the next year.
>>
>> There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had
>> made yet, but am considering.
> 
> Let me put it another way: when you are trying to meet that demand from
> people, do you make that effort because you want to raise money or
> because of brand, community, etc?

I do it as a service to our community.

Debian doesn't need to sell merchandise to raise money, the project gets
more in donations than it spends.

Kind Regards,

Bas

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Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Daniel Pocock]

On 30/04/17 14:18, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
> On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
>> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?
> 
> There are more reasons than these two.
> 
> For the t-shirts that I had made and sold at the T-DOSE & FOSDEM
> conferences the primary motivation was user demand. Especially at T-DOSE
> I got several questions if we had T-shirts and had to tell them no, this
> resulted in having shirts made the next year.
> 
> There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had
> made yet, but am considering.
> 

Let me put it another way: when you are trying to meet that demand from
people, do you make that effort because you want to raise money or
because of brand, community, etc?


>> - 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.
> 
> This is tricky, since Debian is non-profit and selling merch can be
> considered a for-profit activity.

"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.

> Having Debian funds available for merchandise will lower the barrier for
> Debian people to to have it made since they don't have to invest their
> own money.
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> Bas
> 

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Luca Filipozzi]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 02:18:11PM +0200, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
> On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> > - 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.
> 
> This is tricky, since Debian is non-profit and selling merch can be
> considered a for-profit activity.
>
> Having Debian funds available for merchandise will lower the barrier for
> Debian people to to have it made since they don't have to invest their
> own money.

Debian should avoid being in the hard good business.

If we want to make it easy for people to obtain Debian-branded /
Debian-benefiting products, we could go with a print-on-demand service such as
https://scalablepress.com/ or https://printaura.com/, using a storefront we put
ourselves, use theirs, or use a 3rd party such as https://www.etsy.com.

If this is to be done as 'Debian', then we will need SPI's involvement.

-- 
Luca Filipozzi
http://www.crowdrise.com/SupportDebian

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 01:53:49PM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

I'd seriously suggest you chat to Steve, Phil Hands and others who've
been involved in this over the years. It's not quite a no-win scenario
but it's probably not far off. Get good quality polo shirts, for
example, that will lst for a few years - and someone will wear the same
shirt for a long time, to multiple events or whatever - but you can't
then sell them another shirt quickly. With the numbers of shirts you 
can reasonably sell in five years or so, it rapidly becomes a large
outlay of cash up front for a small, delayed return.

Debian tartan, even more so - high production cost and will wear for
many years - but still desirable :)

> A few people have expressed concern about the production of t-shirts though:
> 
> - production cost and difficulty of transporting in luggage, both
> relatively high compared to the cost of stickers and some other merchandise
> 
> - lack of volunteers willing to handle and dispatch inventory (this was
> raised by debian.ch after trying to retail some online)
> 

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.

> Personally, I feel that clothing makes a particularly strong impression
> as people only wear one t-shirt at a time and if they choose to wear a
> Debian t-shirt, that is a strong endorsement of the Debian project. 
> Conversely, if there is an absence of Debian t-shirts in the community
> (or if Debian was to produce too many shirts that all look the same)
> people wear other things.
> 
> I also feel that the relative effort for a developer to organize a batch
> of 100 is not much more than the effort of producing 10 or 20.
> 

See above :(

> This brings me to a few questions:
> 
> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?
> 

Debian isn't "a brand" per se - and look back years in the mailing list
about logos, copyrights etc. - maybe the DPL may have a different view?

> - 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.
> 

Some of SPI's revenues - as the umbrella body that handles finances -
come from providing tax/admin/donation handling for other projects. They
can best handle cash - handling physical inventory / accounting for it /
exchange rates / writing down storage costs might be too much.

> - what is the best strategy for production and distribution?  Would it
> be cheaper and less effort for volunteers if 10,000 shirts were simply
> produced in China and divided up between every developer willing to
> distribute them within their local community at their own pace and
> without formal inventory controls?  Or is it better to produce small
> batches when the opportunity arises?

10,000 shirts might be the project sales for thirty years if you're
unlucky :(

> 
> - what should be produced?  In low quantities we get very standard
> t-shirts.  In higher quantities we may have more choices of fabrics,
> more distinctive styles and printing techniques that last longer.  We
> could even produce some rolls of Debian fabric for people to have
> tailor-made shirts, table cloth, curtains, etc.
> 
> - what aspects of production are people willing to volunteer for?  For
> example, some people have volunteered to create t-shirt designs and
> other people have volunteered for Debian booths at events.  What other
> tasks do people need to volunteer for, e.g. keeping inventory, and are
> there volunteers?
> 
> - has anybody looked at any strategies to completely outsource
> merchandising or to do such things jointly with other groups to get
> economies of scale?  For example, at some events the Debian t-shirts can
> be retailed on a table run by the local community without developers
> needing to be at a booth, all we may need to do is bring the stock and
> take it away again later.
> 

It 

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Don Armstrong]

On Sun, 30 Apr 2017, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
> There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had
> made yet, but am considering.

I was hoping to go in with a group of people on some hexagonal laptop
stickers, myself.


-- 
Don Armstrong  https://www.donarmstrong.com

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. 
 -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?

There are more reasons than these two.

For the t-shirts that I had made and sold at the T-DOSE & FOSDEM
conferences the primary motivation was user demand. Especially at T-DOSE
I got several questions if we had T-shirts and had to tell them no, this
resulted in having shirts made the next year.

There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had
made yet, but am considering.

> - 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.

This is tricky, since Debian is non-profit and selling merch can be
considered a for-profit activity.

Having Debian funds available for merchandise will lower the barrier for
Debian people to to have it made since they don't have to invest their
own money.

Kind Regards,

Bas

-- 
 GPG Key ID: 4096R/6750F10AE88D4AF1
Fingerprint: 8182 DE41 7056 408D 6146  50D1 6750 F10A E88D 4AF1

producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Daniel Pocock]

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:

- production cost and difficulty of transporting in luggage, both
relatively high compared to the cost of stickers and some other merchandise

- lack of volunteers willing to handle and dispatch inventory (this was
raised by debian.ch after trying to retail some online)

Personally, I feel that clothing makes a particularly strong impression
as people only wear one t-shirt at a time and if they choose to wear a
Debian t-shirt, that is a strong endorsement of the Debian project. 
Conversely, if there is an absence of Debian t-shirts in the community
(or if Debian was to produce too many shirts that all look the same)
people wear other things.

I also feel that the relative effort for a developer to organize a batch
of 100 is not much more than the effort of producing 10 or 20.

This brings me to a few questions:

- how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?

- 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.

- what is the best strategy for production and distribution?  Would it
be cheaper and less effort for volunteers if 10,000 shirts were simply
produced in China and divided up between every developer willing to
distribute them within their local community at their own pace and
without formal inventory controls?  Or is it better to produce small
batches when the opportunity arises?

- what should be produced?  In low quantities we get very standard
t-shirts.  In higher quantities we may have more choices of fabrics,
more distinctive styles and printing techniques that last longer.  We
could even produce some rolls of Debian fabric for people to have
tailor-made shirts, table cloth, curtains, etc.

- what aspects of production are people willing to volunteer for?  For
example, some people have volunteered to create t-shirt designs and
other people have volunteered for Debian booths at events.  What other
tasks do people need to volunteer for, e.g. keeping inventory, and are
there volunteers?

- has anybody looked at any strategies to completely outsource
merchandising or to do such things jointly with other groups to get
economies of scale?  For example, at some events the Debian t-shirts can
be retailed on a table run by the local community without developers
needing to be at a booth, all we may need to do is bring the stock and
take it away again later.

Regards,

Daniel