Re: producing, distributing, storing Debian t-shirts
On 30/04/17 14:18, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
> On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary
>> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure?
>
> There are more reasons than these two.
>
> For the t-shirts that I had made and sold at the T-DOSE & FOSDEM
> conferences the primary motivation was user demand. Especially at T-DOSE
> I got several questions if we had T-shirts and had to tell them no, this
> resulted in having shirts made the next year.
>
> There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had
> made yet, but am considering.
>
Let me put it another way: when you are trying to meet that demand from
people, do you make that effort because you want to raise money or
because of brand, community, etc?
>> - would it be reasonable for 1% - 2% of Debian's reserves to be tied up
>> in slow moving inventory items like t-shirts that take up to a year to
>> fully turnover? As the reserves are mostly kept in cash Debian probably
>> loses at least that much to inflation each year anyway.
>
> This is tricky, since Debian is non-profit and selling merch can be
> considered a for-profit activity.
"Non-profit" means that Debian does not distribute surplus profits back
to people such as shareholders. It does not mean that Debian can not
make a profit on the sale of a t-shirt, as long as that profit is
re-invested in the organization.
> Having Debian funds available for merchandise will lower the barrier for
> Debian people to to have it made since they don't have to invest their
> own money.
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Bas
>
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