Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg <sebastic@xs4all.nl>]

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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