Advocacy geeks,
We have two ways of handling shirts available to us:
1) Order a large number of shirts etc. with the Postgres 9 design from a
shirt printing company, and offer them in exchange for donations as a
fundraiser, both online and at conferences
2) Leave "selling" of the shirts to Zazzle.com/CafePress/etc., and only
do one small run for an event where we "launch" Postgres 9, plus the
volunteer shirts.
The main reason I'm considering (2) is that, as I measure it, we lost a
significant amount on the blue Postgres shirts. Between the odd sizes
which we had too many of (I gave 40 Women's XL to GoodWill), and the
cost of shipping (shirts are heavy) and storage I'd judge that even
though we made $12 on each shirt we got a donation for, it was still a
net loss for SPI fund. (2) would also have the advantage that we could
offer a variety of merchandise: hoodies, hats, totes, underwear, etc.
Drawback is that we'd get very little $$$ per item (like, $1 to $4) and
wouldn't have a reserve stock of shirts for general use.
I'll also have some difficulty taking (1) seriously unless someone on
this list steps forward to volunteer to be "swag czar" for the
US/Canada. Europe has Andreas to do this, but currently nobody here is
interested in spending many hours of volunteer time to track shirts.
So, feedback?
--
-- Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://www.pgexperts.com