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
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