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
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