Idea for funding Cantr...

[cantrpotatoe]

I think that Jos should start a cantr store, with t-shirts, mugs and stickers (and those cool pens everyone wants to steal for no reason at all )


it would raise money and give no IC benefit...

[jeslange]

We'd need to know how serious the demand is for the various items, which a poll attempted to show a while back.

We have several hundered players, which is not a very large market. Items like t-shirts and mugs are cheaper in bulk, and the discounts are generally not given until at least 50 or 100 of the item is purchased. Of our several hundred players, let's say only 50 people will actually purchase a shirt, and Jos has already paid for 200. He'll have a closet full of stuff that may be a financial loss to the game, or that at least won't make profits for a couple of years possibly.

Perhaps there is a Cantr player who's job might allow us a little loophole. For example, my brother-in-law was working at a shop that makes hats and shirts and trophies and such, and if I'd thought about it before he changed jobs, Cantr might've been able to get t-shirts or hats made with no labor costs (since my brother-in-law and I would be making them).

Does anyone have access to a product or service that Cantr could purchase at some sort of discount, due to the player providing the labor, or something like that?

[Nick]

I volunteer to enslave west and make him do it.
Someone hand me a crossbow...

[nitefyre]

I volunteer to enslave west and make him do it.
Someone hand me a crossbow...

*has broken all his crossbows in rage when they miss; so he hands him a bone club that he's never used*

That'll hafta do.

I like the idea of a gift shop...but I really don't think it'll work.

[Junesun]

There is a way: have an internet shop like those offered by cafepress.com . There you don't have to order items in advanced, you just have to supply a few layouts and wait for people to buy them. Cafepress then creates them and handles shipping, billing etc. After a while, there is a mass discount (when a total 50 of the same item are purchased?), even though I doubt that they produced all those items at the same time, without knowing whether they would ever sell them.

Unilang, a community of people who love languages of which I am part, uses cafepress, so I can tell you about the pros and cons.

Pro:
- no need for mass orders
- no advance payment; the only ones who pay are those who received the items (unless we opt for a Premium solution)
- shop webpages are provided at no cost, on cafepress webspace
- after providing the design for items, we don't have any more work; cafepress handles the rest
- international shipping is no problem, though cheapest shipping is within the US

Contra:
- limited to the items they offer (but afaik they offer anything we could wish)
- quite high prices for anything
- in the free version of the shop you can only have one possible design for each item, e. g. one image to put on women's t-shirts, one image to put on men's t-shirts, one image to put on cups... only in the premium version can you offer e. g. 4 different t-shirts.

I'm not sure whether cafepress.com is the best the net has to offer in this respect, perhaps there are similar websites with better conditions. It's worth looking into.

If we don't want such a shop, we could just make lists of people who want to buy a certain item, order them locally once we have enough people and then send them out in all directions. I'm just not sure that the time and money necessary for that would be less than if we let cafepress or a similar service handle it.

[swymir]

Damn when i was first reading this post my clever answer was going to be for Jos to send a picture of him showing the thumbs up sign with a note that says "you are great" or something, but I was beat to the point. That sure would be worth $5 in my book, though. Hell I lost more then that playing poker tonight. Although I will say i was up $40 at one point. Not bad betting quarters and dollars, but I digress.

[Sparkle]

I am always thinking it would be cool if Cantr could be on X-box Live. So I was thinking maybe Jos could sell ideas to X-box or Sega giving them ways to come up with a new game constucted with Cantr in mind for the game console. I believe he would make millions.

[The Industriallist]

Not something I've researched yet, but how hard would it be to create an e-check capability for cantr?

[XBL]

What's e-check?

On inkoopacties.net there are so called (in english... lol): buy-together-actions. Explanation:

You try to get as many people together as possible, to buy one, or multiple products from one distributor. That way you can get a high discount on this product (or one these products), since you are ordering together.

Maybe we can do the same? Just put up a message which allows people to easily (easily!) vote if they want merchandising. If there are enough people (like: more than 75) we can look further what kind of stuff we want.

I really want a green shirt with orange letters saying "A man in his twenties" .

Jochem

[The Industriallist]

It's a mechanism to do exactly what paper checks do, but without the paper. I just thought it might be easier to use than the donation methods that are set up now...

http://www.echeck.org
Rather a lot of babel in there, and technical terms, and that site is a theoretical discussion, not a specific offer...

It looks to me like it probably would be exceedingly difficult to set up and have high fees. But I might just not be finding the right sites.

[west]

I really want a green shirt with orange letters saying "A man in his twenties" .

Jochem

You mean like this, Jochem?


http://customink.com/cink/r.jsp?E=skasn ... cantrman20

This has been in the works (or at least in discussion) for several months now, and now that I'm in the marketing department hopefully something will come of it

[Nick]

Instead of nothing worth mentioning, it should have a description of a t-shirt, would make more sense. It would be neat if we could have a women in her twenties, or thirties, etc.

I am more in favor of having smaller items like pens, buttons, and mugs. Cheap to make, and more likely to sell. I wouldn't wear a shirt from an internet game, even Cantr. And I'm a fanatic; think about what your average Cantr player thinks.

[Jos Elkink]

I wouldn't wear a shirt from an internet game, even Cantr. And I'm a fanatic; think about what your average Cantr player thinks.

I would rather buy a t-shirt than have a mug of Cantr. And I am hardly a fanatic, am I? :p

No, seriously, I think the t-shirts must definitely be part of the set ... And I am sure some people will buy them.

[AoM]

Dude! That T-shirt is awesome!

Sell that!

~AoM

[west]

workin' on it

that's only a rough draft of course. It can be tweaked & if we sell it presumably we'd sell mens & womens' versions as well as a 30s, 40s, 50s version if there's enough demand.

Merch planning is still in preliminary stages, but in the time-honored motto of the Programming Department,

"We're working on it"