With only about 30 members the UK chapter is at a very early stage with a limited internal market. If you had 3,000 members you could get some economy of scale and order say 100 T shirts, but with a market of 30 you can expect the price per item to be exorbitant. Producing ties, mousemats, cufflinks and presumably monogrammed bathrobes for the minority of those 30 who want such things is at best a distraction and at worst a drain on resources. Not least because selling stuff at cost means you have to invest the capital to buy the stuff hoping that if you sell all of them at full price you will recover your capital. That ties up capital and sooner or later you will make a loss when you discover that fewer than ten of your thirty members want a mousemat.
As for recruiting new members, perhaps you would. But you are also putting off prospective members like myself who would not join an organisation that is setting itself up to fail.
WereSpielChequers
2009/9/14 Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com:
At 23:40 +0100 13/9/09, Andrew Turvey wrote:
Hopefully it will be the kind of perk that will attract people who are already active in the projects to become members. As to selling at above cost, the Foundation wasn't too keen on that - worried that we would develop into some kind of commercial arm of the Foundation, which is not really their idea of the role of chapters.
Andrew
Run that by me, one more time?
Why then seek to gain a tax advantage?
Gordo
-- "Think Feynman"///////// http://pobox.com/~gordo/ gordon.joly@pobox.com///
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
2009/9/14 WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@googlemail.com:
With only about 30 members the UK chapter is at a very early stage with a limited internal market. If you had 3,000 members you could get some economy of scale and order say 100 T shirts, but with a market of 30 you can expect the price per item to be exorbitant. Producing ties, mousemats, cufflinks and presumably monogrammed bathrobes for the minority of those 30 who want such things is at best a distraction and at worst a drain on resources. Not least because selling stuff at cost means you have to invest the capital to buy the stuff hoping that if you sell all of them at full price you will recover your capital. That ties up capital and sooner or later you will make a loss when you discover that fewer than ten of your thirty members want a mousemat.
That is an excellent point. Without a profit margin you are guaranteed to make a loss if you don't sell everything. Since, as a charity, we can't take significant risks that means we have to make very small orders, increasing the price even more.
A restriction to "members-only merchandise" is wrong, doubly so with current low membership levels. When you're talking about a 10k+ member base, then I can see a point to members-exclusive merchandise; this complementing a range of items available to the wider public.
I'm also against the 'at-cost' idea. For members, I would say a discount (in reality, lower margin), is perfectly acceptable. I believe most other charities that use mechandise to raise funds treat their members and the public in this slightly different way.
What I would look at is merchandise for the public, with a reasonable markup. Can WMFUK undercut the cafepress store? If so, then without coming across as mercenaries, an effort should be made to set up a store on the WMUK site.
Someone more familiar with the financial planning side of a business should give input on this. WMUK doesn't have the manpower to manage inventory and order fulfilment. What companies do other UK charities work with to do this? What sort of outlay and risks are involved?
I would take it as a given that this would be restricted to UK-only delivery to avoid trading on the WMF's toes, or that of any other chapters.
Brian.
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Dalton Sent: 14 September 2009 14:40 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Merchandising
2009/9/14 WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@googlemail.com:
With only about 30 members the UK chapter is at a very early stage with a limited internal market. If you had 3,000 members you could get some economy of scale and order say 100 T shirts, but with a market of 30 you can expect the price per item to be exorbitant. Producing ties, mousemats, cufflinks and presumably monogrammed bathrobes for the minority of those 30 who want such things is at best a distraction and at worst a drain on resources. Not least because selling stuff at cost means you have to invest the capital to buy the stuff hoping that if you sell all of them at full price you will recover your capital. That ties up capital and sooner or later you will make a loss when you discover that fewer than ten of your thirty members want a mousemat.
That is an excellent point. Without a profit margin you are guaranteed to make a loss if you don't sell everything. Since, as a charity, we can't take significant risks that means we have to make very small orders, increasing the price even more.
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
2009/9/14 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:
I would take it as a given that this would be restricted to UK-only delivery to avoid trading on the WMF's toes, or that of any other chapters.
"Wikipedia" t-shirts should probably be UK-only. "Wikimedia UK" t-shirts may as well be global, although I'm not sure many people outside the UK would want one (unless they buy it at a WMUK event as a momento, I guess, but that would be selling it in the UK, so is irrelevant).
2009/9/14 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/9/14 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:
I would take it as a given that this would be restricted to UK-only delivery to avoid trading on the WMF's toes, or that of any other chapters.
"Wikipedia" t-shirts should probably be UK-only. "Wikimedia UK" t-shirts may as well be global, although I'm not sure many people outside the UK would want one (unless they buy it at a WMUK event as a momento, I guess, but that would be selling it in the UK, so is irrelevant).
I'd want one, although I live in the UK now so that makes sense! T-shirts would be a good idea with just Wikimedia UK written on.
-- Regards, Isabell Long. isabell121@gmail.com [[User:Isabell121]] on all public Wikimedia projects. Freenode Community Co-Ordinator - issyl0 on irc.freenode.net PGP Key ID: 0xB6CA6840
Whilst mousemats and coffee mugs can be made to the same size, T shirts need to be made in multiple sizes. And despite what happen at Wikimania in Buenos Aires, that normally involves the complication of different garment sizes rather than just printing M, X, or XL on the same sized garment. If you have to sell the entire production run at full price in order to cover your costs multiple sizes add to the complication.
I'm not a fan of merchandising as part of a charities function. But if it is done it should have the saving grace of having a sufficient markup to help finance the organisation.
Now what would be cool would be Wikipedia calenders. Flowers, sports events historical events - we could theme quite a few and they'd make great gifts. It would also be a good article improvement process as the nominated articles for the calender would be liable to get good scrutiny and input whist we discuss which should go in the calender. OK we would need wmf agreement to do this as a fundraiser sold outside the membership, but there is a well established charity market for such things. I for one can think of half a dozen calenders that I might buy as winter solstice presents for assorted friends and relatives.
WereSpielChequers
2009/9/14 Isabell Long isabell121@gmail.com:
2009/9/14 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/9/14 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:
I would take it as a given that this would be restricted to UK-only delivery to avoid trading on the WMF's toes, or that of any other chapters.
"Wikipedia" t-shirts should probably be UK-only. "Wikimedia UK" t-shirts may as well be global, although I'm not sure many people outside the UK would want one (unless they buy it at a WMUK event as a momento, I guess, but that would be selling it in the UK, so is irrelevant).
I'd want one, although I live in the UK now so that makes sense! T-shirts would be a good idea with just Wikimedia UK written on.
-- Regards, Isabell Long. isabell121@gmail.com [[User:Isabell121]] on all public Wikimedia projects. Freenode Community Co-Ordinator - issyl0 on irc.freenode.net PGP Key ID: 0xB6CA6840
2009/9/14 WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@googlemail.com:
I'm not a fan of merchandising as part of a charities function. But if it is done it should have the saving grace of having a sufficient markup to help finance the organisation.
It's not a matter of being a fan or not - merchandising is not part of our function, it can only legally be done for the purposes of raising funds. Raising funds by attracting more members is a possibility, but I'm sceptical that it would raise enough funds to be worth the risk of unsold stock. If there is significant risk (which, without a profit margin to help absorb losses, there would be) then it would have to be done through a trading subsidiary, anyway (without the risk it would fall under the small trading exemption so could be done directly), and that will incur admin costs.
Now what would be cool would be Wikipedia calenders. Flowers, sports events historical events - we could theme quite a few and they'd make great gifts. It would also be a good article improvement process as the nominated articles for the calender would be liable to get good scrutiny and input whist we discuss which should go in the calender. OK we would need wmf agreement to do this as a fundraiser sold outside the membership, but there is a well established charity market for such things. I for one can think of half a dozen calenders that I might buy as winter solstice presents for assorted friends and relatives.
Now, that is a fantastic idea! They would be very cheap to produce (in terms of money - lots of volunteer labour would be required) so could be sold cheaply while still having a decent profit margin. It would be a great way to advertise (extracts from) featured articles - showing off our best articles could do a lot of good.
2009/9/14 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/9/14 WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@googlemail.com:
I'm not a fan of merchandising as part of a charities function. But if it is done it should have the saving grace of having a sufficient markup to help finance the organisation.
It's not a matter of being a fan or not - merchandising is not part of our function, it can only legally be done for the purposes of raising funds. Raising funds by attracting more members is a possibility, but I'm sceptical that it would raise enough funds to be worth the risk of unsold stock. If there is significant risk (which, without a profit margin to help absorb losses, there would be) then it would have to be done through a trading subsidiary, anyway (without the risk it would fall under the small trading exemption so could be done directly), and that will incur admin costs.
It's REALLY EASY for a charity to end up with boxes of T-shirts under the bed.
The conditions WMF have put on merchandise, as described here, sound basically onerous and no different to "no, you can't do it at all."
- d.
It's REALLY EASY for a charity to end up with boxes of T-shirts under the bed.
I second that!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loopzilla/72034640/
Gordo
On Sep 14, 11:37 am, WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@googlemail.com wrote:
... but with a market of 30 you can expect the price per item to be exorbitant. WereSpielChequers
Vistaprint, for instance, can do a single custom made double sided T shift for less than a tenner - of course the price comes down the more you order, but you don't need to have a particularly large order to make them sellable.
The plan is to have 100 members by next spring, so if we achieve that our market will be larger!
Andrew
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org