Back in the summer of 2017, we ran a rather successful GoFundMe campaign to collect funds to get some swag made, and shipped to the project’s contributors. It was great to see all that support pouring in, but it was bittersweet… for I would have loved to have been able to materially thank back our supporters. Alas, making custom printed gear quickly gets expensive, and crazy shipping fees essentially doubled it up.
So this time around I decided to bite the bullet and make a more significant initial investment, and actually start an online shop and keep an inventory in stock that can be shipped to supporters whenever, without needing to wait for prints, or paying too much for too few items being made, severely limiting profitability and driving prices up.
I guess I’ll know soon enough if I still have my old merchandise planner’s touch! If the inventory turns too fast, I’ll miss opportunities and may have to delay shipments to replenish. But if the markup is too high and stock isn’t moving quickly enough, I’ll probably need to take markdowns.
I’ll be writing an article about the particular workbook I’m using to track all that next – I want a bit of VBA code to simplify tracking sales and invoicing.. but for now I’m just thrilled to start shipping all the goodies!
I’m very happy with how everything turned out. That beautiful yellow ducky mug will probably only ever be printed in small batches, for they are quite expensive and I’m unfortunately not going to be able to have a better price for them unless I make them in very large batches. Everything else (even t-shirts, to a degree) has the potential to eventually get to a very decent price point – the goal is obviously to collect some funds to help finance the costs of hosting and securing the blog and website, but I want this inventory to move and don’t mind taking a lower margin if there’s enough volume to drive enough sales to just keep the shop afloat – time will tell!
Rubberduck News 