Posted by bendygirl on July 9, 2015 at 1:55pm
Just wanted to share that our event sold out yesterday.
https://www.drupalgovcon.org/drupal-govcon-2015
This year for our 3 day event, there will be the event opening social, a pre party, pre training, event training, and lots of other one off parties and, LOADS of amazing sessions. We're even opening up the BoFs for scheduling.
My only regret is that we still don't have the budget available to do T-shirts.
So, I'd like to know how other camps do that. Do you just not do them? Do you get sponsors for them? Do you do no lunches so you can do shirts? I'd really like to know for next year as this is one of our hot items for our 5th event. We want shirts. So, tell me how to pull that off, please!!
Comments
Congrats on selling out your
Congrats on selling out your event!
For MidCamp, we limited free shirts to the first 100 people that signed up, then we printed another 100 to sell. It worked out really well.
I build websites, push pixels, move type, make media, plan camps, tap mana, roll for initiative, eat like a boss, chase food trucks and like an #eggoneverything. Sponsor my travel and I will record and post your camp sessions!
For NJ Camp we did free
For NJ Camp we did free t-shirts for volunteers and speakers. We haven't done them yet for attendees because of budget and also logistics. Having to order a lot, with overage, find storage, and request sizes from attendees makes it one of the more tedious things to pull off.
We'll try one year (maybe next camp.) My advice would be to plan well in advance. You need to figure out designs, and get samples from different manufacturers. The quality, comfort, sizing(!) and price vary considerably. (If people don't like to sizing, cut, design, or comfort of the shirt they just won't wear it, which is a waste.) And if you want to request sizes from attendees, you need to make sure that is included in your registration before your registration period begins.
For NJ Camp we always have one or two decent pieces of swag, so shirts would come out of our usual swag budget. We try not to exceed $4-8 range, but shirts would break that and would require another sponsor. Usually, that is how we look at things. We do our budget, and figure out how much we have for swag. Then, we decide if want to get item X, we can do it with out current budget. If we want item Y, we need to get one more, let's say, Gold sponsor. This has also caused us to finalize our swag plans late in the schedule, which rules out shirts.
We have not yet explored asking a sponsor to outright pay for shirts, and even put their branding on it, but I'm not apposed to the idea. We'd probably make a special category of "t-shirt" sponsor in the prospectus, like people do for room or after-party sponsorship.
I think the way Midcamp handled it was fine (I bought one.) The only downside would be if you sell out, and people who actually wanted to shirt couldn't get one. Otherwise, it is a good way to put a constraint on it, and not waste budget if you are unsure.
Overstock is definitely the
Overstock is definitely the worst. For Fox Valley's camp, we definitely ordered too many, and they are still in storage. Because of that, the plan at MidCamp was to sell out.
For us, the shirts serve three purposes: incentivize early registrations, identify people who can help you on-site (different colored shirt), and get some extra revenue for the next camp's venue deposit.
Every little bit helps.
I build websites, push pixels, move type, make media, plan camps, tap mana, roll for initiative, eat like a boss, chase food trucks and like an #eggoneverything. Sponsor my travel and I will record and post your camp sessions!
We've used Bands On A budget
We've used Bands On A budget (https://www.bandsonabudget.com/) for a number of things, since they are a NJ company, and one of our organizers knows they well. I think we had them do our volunteer shirts. They have pretty good customer service from what I recall. In the past we've gotten items and apparel from 4imprint.
Kevin, do you have any ideas for what you can do with the extra shirts? For us, I think we'd give away extras at our meetups to try to entice attendance. We've done that with other things in the past. But, if we had 30 extra shirts that might be too many to give away.
Another idea is to not tailor the shirt design specific to the camp or at least year. That makes it easier to give them away at other events, like meetups or sprints.
Giving away shirts at Fox
Giving away shirts at Fox Valley meetups was the plan, but bringing them to/from is a pain. For MidCamp, I kept the year off the shirts this time so we can sell them next year. I liked BADCamp's solution for old shirts: trade in a new one for two old ones. Good way to cycle out old inventory.
We also use a local shirt shop, which ends up being cheaper than online. Our shirts were under $7 each, so the on-site sales covered the total cost of free/paid shirts, so it ended up that the shirts paid for themselves. Of course, there's no guarantee that you'd sell enough to pay for them, so you have to evaluate that risk.
I think having a smaller supply helped increase on-site sales.
I build websites, push pixels, move type, make media, plan camps, tap mana, roll for initiative, eat like a boss, chase food trucks and like an #eggoneverything. Sponsor my travel and I will record and post your camp sessions!