Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts

From	Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.project
Subject	Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
Date	2017-05-01 09:10 +0200
Message-ID	<tCdD3-5YK-5@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	<tBVG9-2Jw-5@gated-at.bofh.it> <tCalQ-3Jg-7@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

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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

Thread

producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-04-30 14:00 +0200
  Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Sebastiaan Couwenberg <sebastic@xs4all.nl> - 2017-04-30 14:20 +0200
    Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> - 2017-04-30 19:20 +0200
    Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Luca Filipozzi <lfilipoz@debian.org> - 2017-04-30 20:10 +0200
      Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 07:50 +0200
    Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-04-30 21:40 +0200
      Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Sebastiaan Couwenberg <sebastic@xs4all.nl> - 2017-04-30 22:10 +0200
        Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-04-30 22:10 +0200
          Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Sebastiaan Couwenberg <sebastic@xs4all.nl> - 2017-05-01 00:20 +0200
      Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> - 2017-05-01 09:20 +0200
  Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@galactic.demon.co.uk> - 2017-04-30 19:50 +0200
    Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Didier 'OdyX' Raboud <odyx@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 18:20 +0200
      Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-05-01 18:30 +0200
        Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Didier 'OdyX' Raboud <odyx@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 18:50 +0200
          Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 19:50 +0200
            Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 21:40 +0200
              Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de> - 2017-05-01 22:20 +0200
                Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> - 2017-05-02 06:50 +0200
                Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de> - 2017-05-02 11:50 +0200
                Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> - 2017-05-02 22:50 +0200
                Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana <phls@softwarelivre.org> - 2017-05-03 18:40 +0200
                Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2017-05-04 00:50 +0200
                Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana <phls@softwarelivre.org> - 2017-05-06 16:50 +0200
              Sourcing fair-trade t-shirts (was: producing, distributing, storing  Debian t-shirts) martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> - 2017-05-02 07:40 +0200
                Re: Sourcing fair-trade t-shirts (was: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts) Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de> - 2017-05-02 12:00 +0200
            Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> - 2017-05-01 21:40 +0200
              Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-05-01 22:40 +0200
            Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Didier 'OdyX' Raboud <odyx@debian.org> - 2017-05-02 08:20 +0200
          Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2017-05-02 05:10 +0200
  Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 05:40 +0200
    Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-05-01 09:10 +0200
      Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Bas Couwenberg <sebastic@xs4all.nl> - 2017-05-01 09:20 +0200
      Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> - 2017-05-02 06:40 +0200
        Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-05-02 08:00 +0200
  Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 09:30 +0200
    Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2017-05-01 09:40 +0200

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