Can you give an example where 5 products turn into 20? You don't have to add whole collections any more, you can add a product category, for example "Men's Hoodies", this way you end up with 2 products, because there are two different men's hoodies among the available products, one is more light-weight and cheaper, the other is warmer, sturdier and slightly more expensive. That's not that hard to handle, I'd expect someone wanting to purchase it would want the option of choosing between such qualities.

I asked the Spreadshirt about the colors issue, they replied they are implementing a way to limit product colors, and will post a blog post and send out an email about it when it's ready (should have been this past week I think). This is a necessary feature in any such shop, as it would solve our problem of having mostly black logo.

I think we all agree there's no obstacle to using any other service, we might have more than one shop too. But there are a lot of things to consider, choosing products and colors is only one issue. There are shops out there that get bad reviews about shipping, product quality, payment options, product prices, community options (in Spreadshirt we can allow our designs to be sold in other Spreadshirt shops, even people who've never heard of Inkscape can like our designs and learn about Inkscape that way, this is where the smart strategy about the designs and product copy come into place). Spreadshirt scored highly overall. Don't forget we need the conservancy account tied into it, so another step in the process that adds more work which is why it's important to be sure about what we decide to use.

Please do try to find a better option, but you might feel equally frustrated with others too. It's not as easy task as it may seem before you get into details...

It would be good to come up with a prioritized set of requirements of what we're looking for, to make it easier to evaluate possible services.

If you just throw yourself into learning about 5 different services and trying them out you may end up with 5 equally frustrating options that differ in how they're inadequate, and you won't know which one to choose if you're not clear on what you want your end goal to be. We seemed to have gone into this with an assumption that there are printing shop services out there, with time certain services float to the top which makes it easy for us to pick the best suited one. In reality it doesn't seem that easy to me, but YMMV.

You can clear out and start over if you like, although you can keep the logo designs I uploaded, they aren't likely to change. Don't use them in the shop until they implement the product color control to avoid "black on black" problem.

Do we have the appropriate titles and text for the designs that answer visitors questions and help with enticing them buy? We need that independent on which service is chosen. Or do we for now only rely on enthusiastic community members who already know Inkscape and want to purchase something?

What do the branding guidelines say about the "black on black" problem? If we're missing this, then we should come up with a good sensible solution for it and include in the guidelines for everyone to follow and keep Inkscape image consistent.

Are we in a rush to set up the shop? Do we expect a lot of revenue from it? I guess this ties to the overall question of what we're after.

What other designs should be there in shops besides Inkscape logo?

Mihaela

Okay, finally got time to read the writeup. Thanks for the patience everyone, been frantic at work lately.

Unfortunately, I didn't find any solutions to the biggest problem: Spreadshirt automatically makes way too many variations on just a single product.

The only real solution is to come up with one design, which works on all colours, and seek other platforms for selling a variety of designs.

As you can see, just one design on 5 products is made into 25 products, about 20 of which no one with any sense would buy. :)

So I'll work up a black logo with white rim design, load it up, and I'll keep looking for a more sane platform for handling multiple designs.

Can I clear out what's in the shop?

Thanks for the help everyone.

-C

On Fri, 6 Apr 2018, 19:05 Bryce Harrington, <bryce@...961...> wrote:

On Fri, Apr 06, 2018 at 03:12:17AM -0600, brynn wrote:
> Will there be a way, with Spreadshirt, to upload our own unique items, such
> as art work prints, jewelry made using Inkscape, calendars with
> Inkscape-made images, things like paperweights made via Inkscape and CNC,
> etc, etc?
>
> I think being limited only to the products which Spreadshirt (or any similar
> kind of shop) offers, no matter how we can hack out a unique display, is not
> doing Inkscape justice (from a shop persepective).  I think we should look
> towards selling products what are actually made with Inkscape (and not just
> the logo added to the shop's default products).

It's a good point.  Certainly spreadshirt doesn't have to be our only
merchandise site.  It's main advantages are that we don't need to
maintain inventory or or large print runs, and that the money plumbing
with SFC is already in place.  So, it's worth pressing ahead even if we
use it only in a limited capacity; it's a good learning experience for
our project if nothing else.

> I think we should look toward running our own shop -- at least someday.
> Yes, I realize it would take a lot of work.  But couldn't we look towards
> doing that someday??  (especially since we have our own webspace now)

Etsy or even ebay might be worth looking at for more DIY products,
although I'd guess that running a store would be a project in itself.

Bryce