"Alizée America" Promo Items - Concepts !

[The Cap]

Originally Posted by espire

Alright, I think that I can see what's going on between The Cap and OGRE; a misunderstanding.

I have an inkling of what process The Cap plans to use, and it does not require any sort of investment, rather a "print on order" method, where every order is made by the final buyer in quantities as low as 1. This has many obvious advantages over the traditional, but slightly cheaper in the end, upfront investment model.

The only real question is... who's going to get all the profits?

Exactly right about the process - on-demand ordering of items by the end-user directly from the supplier. No inventory, no advance orders, no exorbitant set-up fees for digital pre-press, no worries about sizes. Customers worder directly from the maker at any quantity they choose, and a storefront is easy and fast to set up. Credit cards would also be welcome as well.

As to the "upfront investment model" being cheaper ... not really, and not always. Costs have a way of hiding in odd places. Unsold pre-ordered stock costs money as long as it goes unsold. Pre-press and digital prep costs can be anywhere from just under $100 to a few hundred dollars, depending on the vendor and their manufacturing processes. Pricing is also high in the traditional model when higher-quality or name-brand raw materials are used in manufacturing. Lastly, the more traditional model isn't likely to come with an on-line storefront, where customers can use credit cards to make purchases.

The costs in the upfront investment model are high, typically - so high that in order to produce, for example, a high-quality embroidered product, the final cost to the customer could easily exceed the on-demand printed-design model after recovery of expenses.

As to profits ... a touchy subject. As OGRE stated in one of his posts, "Non-profit does not mean pro bono". Whatever profit margin could be created would likely be small, but it would be some minimal compensation for the responsibility of creating the graphics, selecting and designing the product designs, "managing" the on-line store, etc.

On the other hand, the idea of donating profits to the site is also a very attractive idea ... however, the "store" and it's products are effectively free advertising for the site (remember, these items are promoting THE SITE, not Alizée ... the SITE promotes Alizée, to split hairs). If the products draw more users to the site, the "profit" the site realizes is manifested in increased traffic and more registered users.

There would also be the possibility of selling the items at no mark-up whatsoever. The items would get to the end-users at "cost" - the base price established by the manufacturer for an item without any profit added at all. It may not be fair to me to put in all the time and trouble for zero compensation, but it does avoid the issue of who gets to keep any profits, since there essentially are no profits to be had by anyone except the manufacturer.