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(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Dalton Sent: 14 September 2009 14:40 To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Merchandising 2009/9/14 WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)googlemail.com>om>: 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(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

2009/9/14 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>: 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(a)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(a)googlemail.com>om>: 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, 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.

On Sep 14, 11:37 am, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequ...(a)googlemail.com> wrote: 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