Creating a community storefront
On this page
- What is a community storefront
- Revenue and expense model
- Pop-up Store
- How do I sign up my project community up for a store?
- What else can I do besides offer items for sale?
- Vendor Contact Information
What is a community storefront
A community storefront is an online store that sells project or community branded merchandise to the public. Examples of typical merchandise include t-shirts, hoodies, water bottles, stickers and socks, but there is a wide array of clothing and miscellaneous items available from most vendors.
Example stores:
- https://store.cd.foundation
- https://store.cncf.io
Revenue and expense model
Pre-printing vs print-on-demand
There are two general models: Pre-printed stock, and print-on-demand. When you choose pre-printed stock, you pay for everything up front, but have a lower per-item cost. By contrast, print-on-demand involves no initial outlay, but your items are more expensive. The main service used for this is Spreadshirt
Pinnacle Branding can offer a mix of both models - pre-printing for common items (stickers, t-shirts in common sizes and colors, water bottles), and print-on-demand for less-common items (novelty items or less-common sizes). The right mix between the two will depend upon your community; there is no single right way to do it.
Pricing strategies
You can work with Pinnacle Branding to set pricing. Your prices can range from free (for example, a swag kit for governing board members or for incentives/rewards) to subsidized to profit-generating. As with any situation where you’re setting the price of the item, you need to gauge your community’s willingness to pay the price you’re setting. If your goal is to raise awareness, you may have a good reason to subsidize the goods and increase their reach. If your community is already very enthusiastic, they may be willing to pay the full price of the item.
Expenses
The overall cost to run a store will also depend greatly on how many items you offer. Small communities may not need a lot of variants of items - for example, you may be able to get by with a t-shirt, a hoodie, a sticker, and a water bottle. Larger communities may want to have multiple options so everybody isn’t wearing the same shirt at the local meetup.
Pinnacle sends an invoice or makes a deposit at the end of the month.
Pop-up Store
One final consideration is that at your request, Pinnacle can create a pop-up store and bring it to events. They need to be compensated for their travel expenses, but this can be a good way to move a lot of merchandise. Drew can work with you on identifying items which move well in pop-up stores.
How do I sign up my project community up for a store?
The first step is to verify the community wants a store. Check with key stakeholders before doing a lot of work. This accomplishes two things. It ensures the project is aware of the work, and flushes out anyone who might have very strong opinions. Addressing the latter early can save you a lot of work down the road.
Make sure you have vector versions of your artwork. You should have color, all-white, and all-black variants. Creative Services can help you with this if needed.
Contact Drew at Pinnacle, and send him the artwork. Drew will ask you a few clarifying questions, and build out the store and some basic items. Pinnacle will also ask you to provide them with guidance on the mix of pre-printed and print-on-demand items.
When complete, Drew will provide you with a preview link. Share this with stakeholders to get feedback on the store design and the items in the store.
Set up a forwarding subdomain in ITx (e.g., “https://store.yourproject.org”). You will need a CNAME entry in the DNS record for this. ITx doesn’t support this yet, so please open a ticket. What should I include in my store?
Recommended items:
- Hexagon stickers, using the 2” template. If you do this, make sure you get a proof from Pinnacle (stickermule will send it to them) and double check the height is 2”. If it comes back smaller, the sticker honeycomb won’t work properly.
- Larger die-cut laptop stickers with your logo
- Stickers with pride variants of your logo (Creative can help with this)
- A t-shirt, but avoid white unless your community specifically requests it. This can be touchy.
- A hoodie
- A water bottle
You should also ask Drew what is selling well in other communities.
What else can I do besides offer items for sale?
Pinnacle can offer items for sale a la carte, but they can also create bundles. You can offer kits, for example:
- An “advocacy” kit with a hat, water bottle, and 5 laptop stickers
- A “you-were-one-of-the-first-50-to-pass-the-cert-exam” kit with a custom hoodie
- A “local meetup” kit with 50 mixed stickers
- A “local event” kit with a mix of t-shirts
These can be offered for a fee, or Pinnacle can provide you with discount codes to distribute. If you have local meetups or events and they request giveaways, this is an efficient way to do it.
Vendor Contact Information
You’ll find the vendor contact information on the team’s 1Password vault (vendor contact note).