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
