[Marketing] Re: [theforum] cafepress etc

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Tue Feb 17 08:43:24 CST 2004


Martin Paul Burns <martin.burns at uk.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> Couple of questions;
> 1) do we have any baby toddler sizes - noting that the number of evolt
> bairns is growing all the time ;-)

There are baby products available - i just set up a toddler-tshirt, a
creeper (one-piece) and a bib -- dunno why i skipped these previously.  
i
suppose because my toddler is now a teenager :-)

> 2) The main barrier to selling more to me is that you're paying
> shipping from the US, and then our local post office charges sales
> tax and charges you for collecting it on behalf of the government
> (and sales tax on the charges), which gets really expensive really
> quickly - a single shirt ends up as $50 or so. Any chance of having
> something similar EU based?

i hope stef can swing something on that side of the pond!

another possibility to consider, we can order our *own* stuff from
cafepress in bulk (quantities of 15 or more, with mixed sizes ok) and 
not
only do we not have to pay our own $5 markup, we get and additional
(similar) discount.  although there would still be some shipping cost 
and
some VAT taxes i'm sure, we could make a bulk buy, and a bulk shipment 
to
some stragegic point euro-side.

See: Cafepress Bulk rates
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/bulk.aspx

for instance we can buy 15-plus t-shirts which currently cost us $13.99
and we markup to 19.00, for $9.00 each.  we'd have to:

     1. determine bulk buy + bulk shipping cost
     2. research import taxes that will be levied
     3. do the math to determine a euro price
        that covers this cost + re-shipping "locally"
     4. oh yeah, and setup a website + merchant account

hmmm, maybe that's the hard way :-)

but one thing *is* apparent.  whether we get product from cafepress or a
local manufacturer, we'll still need #4) an "euvolt gear" ecommerce 
site,
a payment processing solution and a merchant account.

perhaps we can rally the troops (on the list) to pitch in and build 
such a
thing (shamelessly ripping off -- oh, say... cafepress frinstance as a
spec :-) -- it'd be a nice addition to the list of projects evolt
publishes as open source on sourceforge, as well as a starting point to
inspire stef's friend to ramp up for some real orders.

who knows, we might be able to help the guy fill the entire UK niche 
for a
cafepress-like service, get a cost-effective evoltgear store euro-side 
and
grow ourselves a generous commercial contributor in the process :-)

-dave

---
evolt.org wiki: http://freezope2.nipltd.net/acorn/evolt/
-
How can you help?
http://freezope2.nipltd.net/acorn/evolt/FactFindingMission



More information about the theforum mailing list