we want a mint store

[adamdmcbride]

its unanimous. all over the forums people are talking about t-shirts and mint gear. Its time that we have an official mint store that is hosted on the official website. most of us want mint gear that we can wear and show off to other people about how big of geeks we are, lets geek it up and have a place where we can purchase this gear.

Also a better way to earn money than advertisements on our homepage is by having mint making a little money off of the gear it sells in its store.

To get the ball rolling we will need clem to approve this and then after that we need to build the catalog for the store section of the site.

What can you in the community do? find online stores that will put mint logos on gear for cheap. For all of the gear we will need one that is low quality, that is really cheap and then one that is high quality for a reasonable price. so for example for shirts we would want a really low quality cheap shirt and a high quality reasonably priced shirt.

Please post on this forum the website that you have used in the past to buy gear or one that you just found on this post so that we can get this mint store up and going.

also. all proceeds of the mint store will go directly to mint and its developers for the awesome work that they do.

[vrkalak]

I just had an idea

I, like others here, am a memeber of an art site called: DeviantART http://deviantart.com
In spite of the name, I believe that DeviantArt is the #1 art site on the internet.

Well, on DeviantArt, 'we' (or a committee to represent us) could make and stock our artwork in DeviantART for viewing and for sale.
Of course, we'd have to buy an annual "sale" membership. (not much, maybe $30)

They sell printed artwork, posters, mugs, t-shirts, backpacks, mousepads, etc ... the list goes on.
We could have people visit the LinuxMint page on Deviantart, buy the product.
And DeviantART would print up and ship the product to the buyer for a small percentage of the profit.

We'd have to look into the specifics of it ... and get back to the Mint Team/Devs?
And of course, someone would have to keep our page on DA, up-to-date, and add new stuff.

There are a few other website like this that would show and sell and ship our products. (for a fee, of course)

Just a thought . . . ??

[adamdmcbride]

i love the artwork on deviant art. some of the most creative minds post their art on that website. it would be a good idea to have artwork on deviant art to sale, though we should still probably have our own store on mint.com. maybe you could ask deviant art who prints their stuff for them so that we could look at possibly using them also. let me know what deviant art says when you ask them who they use for the printing of all their gear. cheers

[vrkalak]

Sadly, there is already a Mint.com ... and it has nothing to do with us.

But, there are other sites that print and sell stuffs.

[adamdmcbride]

i meant linuxmint.com

[ibm450]

-o0o-

What ever happened to the Mint magazine every one was gas bagging about for months on end? Did that ever eventuate????

[TheTeZ]

it'd be great, but i doubt DeviantArt will tell us who they use....

[jlr1701]

Cafe Press might be worth checking out.

http://www.cafepress.com

I have had good luck with them in the past.

[vrkalak]

Existing Linux stuff on CafePress . . . We should be able to do this.

http://shop.cafepress.com/linux?cmp=knc ... 3495416011

[adamdmcbride]

cafepress does have high quality shirts. We could possibly use cafepress to make the high quality shirts and then resell them on linuxmint.com so that the distro makes some money. Though we will also need cheap shirts for people that want to support mint but dont have $25 bucks to spare.

[vrkalak]

Looking from a business viewpoint . . . there are 3 things customers want.

Good (quality) -- Fast service -- Cheap price

The Laws of Business, say you can only have 2 out of 3
Good and fast = but it won't be cheap
Fast and cheap = but it won't be good
Good and cheap = but it won't be fast

We will, of course, have to set the designs/artwork ourselves. Along with shipping package or label designs.

Since, we initially won't be ordering in volume and having to ship them all over the world = this won't be cheap.
I don't know that we could have them printed on quality t-shirts and shipped for under $25 ?
And in bulk orders, as most places will not print 'a few'

Not meaning to be a 'party pooper'

[adamdmcbride]

found a place that sells great shirts at a reasonable price. here is link to the site http://www.queensboro.com/web/exec/index.php

[Scoops]

Hi all.

I've had a quick look on CafePress. From what I have read there is an option to set up an on-line shop through their site. In fact there are 2 options. The first a Basic but Free option but this is limited and you could only sell 1 item per shop i.e. shirts, mugs, data CD's etc. It may even be more limited than that. The Second is a Premium Shop where you can access all their goods imposing your own design's on the goods you select. Cost is $59.95 for a years Shop subscription for the "US and Worldwide" shop.

I've been trying to have an on-line chat with someone from there to double check that they print the goods and sort out all the packaging etc. but I'm not getting any reply as of yet. Mind you I did misspell "shirt" so they may have taken offence even though I sent a quick oops!!!
The impression I get is that they do it all tough even returns but I'm still trying to confirm. I'll send an email to them.

Here's the link to the Business page.

http://www.cafepress.co.uk/cp/info/sell ... rc=hpmini2

Will keep you posted but let me know if you think it's an avenue worth going down.

Regards,

Daz.

[Scoops]

Quick update, on-line chat is now off-line but I found this in the Q&A Section

Q) Can I ship you products I manufacture in my online shop?

A) No, we do not offer any services that allow our shopkeepers to sell their own inventory through our online shops. We only ship products that are available through the CafePress.com service.

Therefore there is no need for stock etc. they do it all, which I'm sure will be better overall. I suppose the problem then is cost to customers is quite high but I don't mind buying a few items for the cause.

Daz.

[Scoops]

Me, again, last one I promise.

Info for the decision makers. The link below is the stock earnings info and performance structure.

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/s ... lume_bonus

I'm done.

Daz.

[SeanBest]

Linux mint should really invest the time into making a store. Lots of people donate, but I think a store would help a lot. Hopefully people would be more willing to "donate" by buying Linux Mint gear. And aside from that, tons of current Mint users would love some Mint gear.

Few ideas:

T-shirts (tons of options)
Coffee mugs (traditional & travel)
Hat
Backpack (would kill for one)
Laptop bag (would also use)
Mouse pad
Bumper sticker
Case badge
Stickers/decals

I'm sure tons of artwork would be donated by users and deviantArt members. Really all the team would need to do is say OK, get a store (homemade or through an existing service) make it public to users and ask for donated work (sure the art team could make some as well) quick approval from the boss and bam. A plus to using something like CafePress as well is that the artwork (if donated) is free and the only cost is the yearly store fee. If stuff sells great, if not, you were only out the yearly fee. But with the numbers of dedicated Mint users, I don't see sales being hard to get.

[vrkalak]

I noticed that several distros have a store? Fedora, Ubuntu, Puppy, Debian, Arch

Even, some no so 'huge' distros ... like #!Crunchbang ... they have a store.

*I have an email in to the Staff at #!Crunchbang ... to see the where, who and how of their store.

[Aevum]

Bump! I'd love something like this to take place!

[jykae]

Way better than just donations! I think many people will more likely to support Mint by buying t-shirt or a mug like I did when I was more into Ubuntu. Please clem hear us!

[jesica]

I will have a special account with the store if their was one,, it will be so cool