Re: [libreplanet-discuss] joint merchandise production between projects (t-shirts, stickers, Swiss army knives, ...)

[John Sullivan]

Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> There has been some discussion on debian-project about merchandise
> production, mainly t-shirts and clothing[1] and one thing that came up
> is the question of collaboration between multiple projects.
>
> Can people from any other communities share comments on how they
> produce, store, distribute and account for merchandise like this?
>
> Is anybody aware of opportunities to reduce costs, for example, getting
> stickers for some smaller projects made up at the same time that a
> larger project or event makes stickers?
>
> Is anybody aware of non-profit-friendly organizations that may be good
> to partner with to outsource merchandising?
>
> A few years ago Debian even made up some Swiss army knives[2], I think
> there may still be a small number left with debian.ch

We're happy to share what info we have that might be useful -- you
should send questions to sales@fsf.org.

Discounts / cost reductions normally come from larger quantities of the
same product/design. But of course we could try negotiating with vendors
as a group, to say that our business comes together or not at all.
Probably in some cases that would get us better pricing. We haven't
tried it.

For projects that match up especially well with the FSF mission, we
could consider mutually beneficial arrangements to sell and ship their
merchandise from shop.fsf.org. We don't have an existing defined
framework for doing that, but we have done it from time to time.

-john

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