Drupal Store / Drupal Shop - for Drupal Association

Posted by elvis2 on December 6, 2007 at 5:31am

Hello fellow Drupalers,

Bence (http://groups.drupal.org/user/13320) has a point. Ironically I was on IRC tonight storming up this idea with amazon and webchick. Personally, the whole thought stemmed from wanting a Drupal coffee mug as a gift, much like http://buytaert.net/drupalcino. After asking around on IRC I was informed Boris has a site on cafepress (http://www.cafepress.com/drupal). That storefront should be on Drupal.org to generate more sales etc leading to a bit more funding for Drupal Association.

I know a lot has to take place to make that happen (Storefront design, volunteers, Drupal gear made, OK'ing orders, shipping them out, basic customer service issues etc). I know it won't be an easy task but once things are up and volunteers are working well together it should go fine. Besides, like Bence points out, other CMS' have storefronts.

If not have a storefront on Drupal.org, at least setup a node with links and images pointing to all the gear. The main thing is to make sure the community is involved (volunteering) and funds go back to Drupal.org.

I emailed Boris tonight to talk this over and hope something will transpire. If no designers step up to volunteer a design then I can contact a friend (http://visualnotion.com) to see if he would be interested. Let's get some feeback going here.

Comments

the Hungarian mugs

Posted by Gábor Hojtsy on December 6, 2007 at 10:04am

We have still some left from the Hungarian mugs (such as the one Dries was drinking his cappuccino from), but we don't have this infrastructure you explained to sell them. Actually I think that our mugs are better looking than the others I found, but that could obviously be highly biased. (Or mugs have a big Druplicon with a standard Drupal font text :). Look at this shop for example: http://www.cafepress.com/buy/drupal/-/pv_design_details/pg_1/id_4651982/... It has the old 2D drupal logo used still.

Hi Gabor,Would you be

Posted by elvis2 on July 14, 2012 at 9:25pm

Hi Gabor,

Would you be interested in sending me one? In return I will donate $15 to Drupal Association plus your shipping costs to my address.

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TODO list

Posted by Bence on December 6, 2007 at 4:11pm

There isn't so much tasks as you think. A fulfillment service can handle shipping, customer service, product creation. We definitely must outsource these tasks. Does Cafepress handle these?

Here is the TODO list in my opinion:

1) Mark the existing store as the official Drupal store, or create a new one. This page says now: "Drupal does not have any official merchandise; however since the Druplicon logo is licensed under the GNU GPL some people have taken it upon themselves to make their own." This is a mistake because people buy more likely from THE official Drupal store than from any other.

2) Write the FAQ, with questions and answers like:

Who receives the revenue from the Drupal Store? I payed X $, exactly how much will Drupal earn from my order?
How will the revenue be spent?
How can I order?
How long will it take to get my order?
How can I track the status of my order?
Do you ship internationally? How much does it cost?
I live in country X. How much tax should I pay?
Do you offer money-back gurantee?
I got my order, but it is broken/does not fit my size, what to do?
Do you offer volume discounts?
Where can I get customer service?

3) Setup a subforum for questions/feedback, and future product ideas for the Store.

4) Integrate and design the shop. Right now if you click on an item, you will be automatically redirected to Cafepress. Is it possible to integrate the shop? The buyer should only be redirected to the fulfillment serive checout, when he/she finished the shopping.

Because if the buyer are on Drupal.org while shopping, then it is more professional.

We need also design the shop.

5) Come up with more products: woman's T-shirts, mugs, Pen Drive, bags, caps.

We could also integrate the books about Drupal node (http://drupal.org/books) into the shop.

(Maybe we could list Drupal trainings as well?)

6) Create a new primary link pointing to the Drupal Shop. It should be better promoted.
We can design a few banners promoting the shop as well.

I can do these tasks:
-Write the FAQ
-Check out the forum of the shop regurarly
-Do administrative tasks
-Assist in creating new products

We need:
-programmers who can integrate the shop into Drupal.org somehow (if possible)
-designers who can design the shop
-an agreement whether or not create a new primary link to the shop
-site maintainers who will create the pages (forum, shop)

Of course you can criticize this post, these are only my ideas.

This is a good start, let's prioritize and sign up

Posted by Amazon on December 6, 2007 at 4:43pm

Hi, let's get some people to sign up for individual tasks and make sure we have clear priorities.

The easiest place to start is to run the store from the http://association.drupal.org website and then come up with some designs for where to add the store on Drupal.org. I am not convinced it's worthy of primary navigation.

I'll agree to get the Drupal association bank information for the CafeStore to be an official store.

Cheers,
Kieran

To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield

New Drupal career! Drupal profile builders.
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We can help on product designs

Posted by laura s on December 6, 2007 at 6:30pm

We can help on product designs, at the very least.

Cafepress doesn't have the best deals for mark-up, but given that this goes a large part towards marketing as well, it does solve the fulfillment job, which is certainly non-trivial, and they have a lot of different kinds of products.

For adding a link from d.o, I'd think that a button for something like Drupal swag would suffice. The question would be the required dimensions and color palette to complement the d.o layout an design.

Laura
pingVision, LLC

_{Laura Scott
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development}

Great!

Posted by Bence on December 6, 2007 at 7:31pm

Great, thank you! We should come up with new products, there are not so much. Could you also help design the shop itself?

Question: can we somehow integrate the Cafepress shop on drupal.org? I think it is better if we redirect the buyer only by checkout.

Drupal Dojo store and collaborative workshop?

Posted by gusaus on December 6, 2007 at 6:54pm

A project like this would seem ideal for an 'open collaborative workshop/learning experience' in the Drupal Dojo (added it to the workshop idea list). Next version of DrupalDojo.com (brainstorming on Dojo2.0 here) might be another good place for this type of store.

Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions

Gus Austin

'Donate' primary link?

Posted by Bence on December 6, 2007 at 7:40pm

Or what about a Donate primary link? This would differ from the Contribute primary link, because on the Contribute tab you offer your TIME, and on the Donate tab you offer your MONEY.

Under the Donate tab there would be the donation option, and the Drupal Store. And the donor list.

Yes, clear priorities are

Posted by Bence on December 6, 2007 at 6:13pm

Yes, clear priorities are important, I will try to set up goals and order them.

Do you mean that we could launch the store on the http://association.drupal.org website? Well, it is a good start for testing only, but then we should move the store to Drupal.org to generate 20 times more traffic.

I am not convinced it's worthy of primary navigation.

1) I would ask Boris Mann how much income did the Cafepress shop generated?
2) Create a poll whether it's worthy of primary navigation or not.
3) We could ask other open source communities (definitely not Joomla) about their income from their shop, why not would they whisper? Ubuntu and Creative Commons have much lower traffic than Drupal, but we can get an estimate. If we email they with a something@drupal.org address, they would respond IMHO.

Update: I have just visited a few websites, and they link their store on the front page:
http://www.ubuntu.com/ Products > Merchandise
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/ Store
http://creativecommons.org/ Support > Store
http://www.joomla.org/ Shop

Comparison

Posted by elv on December 7, 2007 at 12:51am

There is already a wiki page comparing products shops with lots of answers.

Spreadshirt seems to be the only shop able to ship from the US (facility in Greensburg, Pa.) and Europe (It's a german company). So the shipping cost is similar on both side of the big pond, which is great.
The quality of their "flex" (spot colors) printing process is excellent.

Using local shops

Posted by Amazon on December 7, 2007 at 3:02pm

One of the problems we've had in the past is the expense for shipping. I think setting up local shops and offering comparable designs would be helpful.

Laura, if you can follow through with a new set of designs then we could make them available to all the local shops.

The Goodstorm Drupal shop is pretty out of date. If there are new designs, I could hand the store management to someone to help build it up.

Cheers,
Kieran

To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield

New Drupal career! Drupal profile builders.
Try pre-configured and updatable profiles on CivicSpaceOnDemand

Love to

Posted by laura s on December 7, 2007 at 3:51pm

Any specific parameters we should bear in mind?

Laura
pingVision, LLC

_{Laura Scott
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development}

After putting more thought

Posted by elvis2 on July 14, 2012 at 9:26pm

After putting more thought into this, I think this idea is not so great after all. The only way it would work effectively is to have an already established Drupal company (a team providing drupal services IE, pingVision, Bryght etc) doing all the leg work (CS for orders and shipping). Even then, the company won't be able to fork out tons of free time.

Any more thoughts?