On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 23:48:55 -0500 Kristopher Gamrat chaotickjg@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Calvin Morrison mutantturkey@gmail.com wrote:
<snip> > What about Coffee Mugs? it's easier than t-shirts (sizes, types, > custom imprints, a whole mess). We could ask for a minimum X dollars > for a mug, and allow users to bump it higher. plus most people rely on > a trusty coffee mug at work, making it rather useful. > > What do you guys think?
I think we should do both the t-shirts and the mugs. How many types of t-shirts are there? Regular t-shirts and polos? Heck, if I had the money and TDE had the coffee mugs and polo shirts, I'd definitely donate for both, that way I could walk around promoting TDE with a flashy logo that people would be interested in, perhaps look up or ask me about 8-)
The biggest problem with the shirts is finding a reliable and trustworthy silk-screener, but that's what social networking, Google, and real-life contacts are for, right? :-)
There's always the option of using one of the on-line drop-shipping item-printers--basically, companies that will print and ship the item for you and give you a cut of the sale price. There are about a half- dozen of them out there:
Zazzle currently offers the widest selection of things-you-can- print-on (apparel, mugs, mouse pads, stickers, iPod cases, etc etc ad nauseum), but their contract contains a nasty little clause with a rights-grab for any correspondence you have with them, any posts on their forums, etc. (it doesn't extend to designs you print with them, but I find it a bit disturbing on principle).
Spreadshirt has a better contract, but they only do fabric goods, so no coffee mugs.
There's also CafePress (requires a monthly fee, IIRC), Redbubble (based in Australia, so the shipping fees to US/Canada/Europe are likely to be high), one that does mostly organic/free-trade apparel whose name I can't remember, and a couple that are like Spreadshirt but with contract clauses similar to Zazzle.
I've done silkscreening on shirts before, but I'm not good enough that I think it's a good idea to have our fundraising efforts rest on me, and there are a bunch of logistical problems anyway--it's very difficult for me to get supplies here, and they're expensive enough that I would want cost remitted to me, and . . . well, you get the idea.
There's also the option of hiring a commercial screen-printer for a short run, but they're likely to want payment up-front and have a minimum run size of 200 items or so, which someone then has to store and arrange to ship out.
I would say the minimum-effort option is to go with Zazzle or Spreadshirt.