SOTA merch!

Any chance you guys(portalarium) have thought of putting out a wall calendar for 2014? Concept art, screen shots, or a great picture would be the map of the continents... What do you guys think? Make it pretty rad, and a reasonable price and I'll pick one up!

 

Physical merchandise for the add-on store? How about a stylish feather quill for writing, or a fancy wooden drinking mug.. Both designed as though they were New Britannian items.

 

Yea, physical merchandise...
They already have shirts and a coin. I just threw out the calendar idea, cause I'd probably use it the most. I'd like a fancy drinking mug, but It'd probably get broken at my spot :/

Edited to correct spelling errors.

 

I bet a "Portalarium Developers 2014 Calendar" would sell, especially if Stephen wore a smedium-sized AC/DC shirt.

 

That's a great idea and I agree, But money doesn't last for ever. So might as well give them an alternative to bring in more funds.

 

If Portalarium isn't interested in managing merchandise, I'm pretty sure there are community members that would be willing to do the grunt work.

I think the issue is that even though several people may say they're interested in merchandise, only a few will actually follow through with a purchase.

It's a lot of work for very little return, so not worth spending company resources.

I'd be willing to help out, though. We won't get rich, but we could at least make it possible to put merchandise out there, and help spread the word.
I had some custom polos made, but in low quantity, they're pretty expensive.
There is at least one other guy I've spoken to that has made some merchandise.
You really have to sell 50-100 to break even, and several hundred of any item to start making money.

We would just need Portalarium's permission to try to get something going.

 

I suggested this the moment I saw "Men of the Avatar" in the standup notes a while back

 

There are several POD sites that are easy to use...I have several...Zazzle is probably the best of them as far as ability to put designs on items and set your own royalty amount. Their product line is larger than most and they try to utilize American made products.
It would take about 8 hours to get 10 different designs out on all the products they offer, there is a faster way, but it lacks in positioning quality and that's where most of the larger companies make their mistake.
Store could be set up to provide income in the long or short term.
Here is a list of the brands that use Zazzle.
Click Here.

 

I could set up a store (and reap profits) or have Fire Lotus or Rustic Dragon contact me and I could guide them through setting up. Then all proceeds could go to Portalirum. Its not much profit wise, but the fans would appreciate the capability to purchase items, and it provides advertising

 

Phone Case Shirt

Arrrghhh...can't edit my own posts

But...I just set up a shield store took me about 30 mins. Most of the products can take a few hours to show up (up to 24 hours) but there are links to 2 of them.

 

Caution flag here.

It's cool if it's your own design, but folks need to be careful using images they don't have permission to use.
However, Ronan has shown how easy it is to get something rolling, and it's his design, so it's legal.

Making custom SotA shirts for your own use, as I did, is probably skirting the law.
And I gave some away, to Portalarium staff.

Selling SotA merch without permission would definitely be crossing the line.

 

Yes which is why I used my design, just as an example to show the Portalarium team the possibilities. The items I threw up there are set at the lowest royalty available, it can go much higher. I've been a graphic designer for many years and that's another reason I feel Zazzle is much better than the other PODs. They are very strict about copyrights and trademarks.
Besides, I wanted a mouse pad (will show up later tonight in the store) with my Shield

 

Remember Shroud of the Avatar Museum (www.sotamuseum.com) is interested in all SotA merchandise to add to the collection to preserve what we can. We are accepting physical donations.

Early November I did order the 3 T-shirts and the coin. Just eagerly awaiting their shipment.

 

My suggestion?

Kickstarters..

First put together the idea and determine costs to make it happen, and how many/much you need to make to make enough of a profit to make it worthwhile taking into account sharing that profit with Portalarium.

Second, send portalarium an easy to understand and well laid out proposal. Indicating "Here's how much you would get if the project is funded.". If I was doing it I would send concept art or proto-types of the swag in question, a layout of what the kickstarter would look like, and an Excel spreadsheet showing the cost's vs. profit returns with an easy to look at bar graph based on different funding levels.

Third, get a legal document. A merchandising contract is standard enough it wouldn't cost a lot to obtain one, and chances are they may already have a standard set of terms they want to follow in a template form they can hand you if they agree to the project. I personally wouldn't do a project of this nature with them without one. Nothing against them or that I wouldn't trust them to honor an agreement, but rather that it ensures everyone is on the same page so that later there was no miss-understandings and hurt feelings.

^ steps 2 and 3 above show them you are serious, that its well laid out. You've made it simple for them to review. They have nothing to loose, your doing all the work, and your not taking up a ton of their time on tons of communication as you provided everything in an easy to understand format at a quick review. You have also protected yourself for your share of the profits for doing the work. They have protected the rights to their intellectual property.

Fourth - if you got this far, you run the kickstarter. Portalarium could community spotlight it (its in there best interests to do so, and again.. provide them with a pre-written professional spotlight.. no work on their side). You have no risk... you've covered the legal bases and if not enough people aren't interested, the kick-starter wont happen. If its funded, you know you made the necessary profit for the project and you proceed to deliver the product.

 

My t-shirt is listed as shipped... now all I can do is camp the mailbox spawn!

 

You will need some help camping the spawn. The last thing you want is someone to steal your mob right out from under your feet at the last moment. The shirts are to awesome to let someone campsteal it at the last moment. Allow me to assist you. ^_^b

 

Stile, sounds like you'd be the perfect person to get a calendar in my hands! Lol
A lot of great information for anyone to put anything together to work with Portalarium.

 

I dont feel there is enough of a buyer base at this point for swag to be honest.

You have two marketable groups. middle income and lower, and hi-mid income and up. The hi+ income folk are going to be the minority. They'll be the ones that will buy anything and everything so long as they have an interest in it, as they can afford to do so (not talking about the ones that have all their money tied up into assets.. but people with large incomes beyond their cost of livings.. the really smart ones). So you get all their sales, but they wont amount to much.

Then you have the rest. Most of them (such as myself), has bled myself dry pledging *laughs*. Sure, I can spend a few bucks here and there although I really probably shouldn't (using myself as the example).

hmm, let me go where im going another way. Take the calendar:

to make it be profitable AND worth the time, you have two options. Sell say a 100 of them at 40.00 each, or sell a 1000 of them at 8.99 each (im just making up arbitrary numbers). You can only afford to do the latter because of the purchasing breaks you get with your supplier. The former you have to charge so much more because your not buying enough to get good pricing.

For the former.. how many people are going to spend 40.00 on a calendar? probably not a 100 of them. only the ones who have enough money its meaningless or have a serious addiction to must having it all.. that wont be a lot of people.

For the latter, you have to get the word out to say.. 5000, or 10000 people to get your 1000 sales. The largest audience I know of that I can reach right now is the Google + group (500+ members). That's assuming all 500 are getting notifications or watching it regularly. I cant get the marketing out to enough people.. And that's probably more people then see any particular forum thread.

Now IF Portalarium gets involved and puts it in the store or community spotlights, it is probably hitting a bigger audience then that (so long as they are emailing their list of 25,000+ people). Of those 25,000 people though a very small percentage of them care much about that sort of stuff at this time.. We see the majority of them in these forums and in the Google and Facebook groups. Maybe a 1000 in all places combined? that may be pushing it. The other 24,000 probably made their pledges and for the most part are waiting for the game OR they only check up on things occasionally and they aren't so passionate or addicted to start buying up swag for a game that's not out yet, and that has a potential of not succeeding (I shudder at that thought).

So in reality.. I don't think its currently possible for Portalarium or anyone else, to successfully market swag to a large enough potential buying audience to sell it at a price that people are willing to buy it for... and that means selling it at a higher price. I.E. 25.00 for a t-shirt? No offense to Portalarium, but I can't ever imagine paying 25.00 for a t-shirt. I planned on buying all the swag for this game and being a collector.. I gave up that hope when I saw a Christmas ornament for 250.00 (understandably limited edition) and then again when I saw so many selections of t-shirts at 25.00 a pop. I just can't afford doing that without jeopardizing my financial living. Especially given what I have invested into pledges themselves.

For something like the shirts, I am sure they are very high quality at that cost. However the pricing structure is probably based on the small production run they did. I think they would have done better to do ONE shirt at a higher production run, to get a better quantity break then doing multiple images.. as each image is a different production run so lessens the opportunity for price breaks. For them to sell them at 10.00-15.00, which is what I WOULD pay for a shirt, they would probably have to order thousands if not tens of thousands of shirts. In doing that they would know that they would not sell them fast, but that it would be a long-term profit over a year or two OR they have that many interested buyers. They cant take that type of investment approach right now as the money they have needs to be used towards getting the game developed to put profit into the bank, beyond what it will cost to develop the next episode. At that point they then have money to invest into longer term-swag selling items.

Thats where kickstart is nice, its a way to verify and guarantee your sales, before investing into the product... but currently, I don't see it happening for the reasons I mentioned above. Whether an individual does it or whether Portalarium does it, there is not currently enough of a buying group to fund an entire large production run of a product. Large enough to make it cost affordable to the middle income and lower folks like myself that is

I would guess that's why we are seeing so few real life merchandise items. Oh don't get me wrong there are a few obvious ones that will do well, and has low risk, like cloth maps. But in general..

Now, once the games out, IF it is successful you now actually have 25,000 people playing it. The enthusiasm level goes up... You also have boxes on store shelfs (?), with flyers and adverts "buy a shirt'. New people signing up "add a shirt to your cart for 12.99", and so forth. Now your viable selling audience went from a 1000 or less.. to 25k, 50k, 100K, and up.. depending on success level. Allowing you to order merchandise in large production quantities giving you the ability to sell them at lower pricing to make the same profit margins per item. Knowing you will not only sell large amounts of it quickly, but because the game IS a success it will be around for a while allowing you to sell excess inventory continually for a while (also taking into account that the swag people buy also promotes and advertises the game itself so is marketing dollars as well).

Currently, any decent sales that CAN be made are going to be towards the people who have enough money (or are just crrrazzzy), to not care about cost. Looking at the silver serpent xmas tree amulet, there was originally 25 of them I believe? Maybe it was 20. I know one person who bought 5 or 6 of those (im observant that way, Can't help it).. Theres 7 left.. so that accounts for 13 of them. That means the higher income people that either have the money, passion, or just dont care about money, etc.. account for 7-12 of them. So that means any "high dollar" items anyone currently produces is probably going to have 12-30 buyers (im being generous as some people regardless of how much money they have may not have wanted to spend 250.00 on a plastic ornament, but might on a high quality product of other types).

Don't get me wrong, I think there ARE some money making oppertunites now, if you have the right product, work hard at it, and take the risk. Frank's shirts are a great potential example. Theoretically if he is able to get them made at a low cost.. and they are a very high quality polo shirt.. You can target the high roller audience and sell them for 50-75.00 each, making a huge profit per shirt. However say you have 20 people that buy 3 each, you sell 60 of them. The profit margin is large enough its some fairly easy cash for both Portalarium and Frank in that scenario.. Its not worth Portalariums time, but Frank, as a side project for some extra income? would make sense. But it works because its a high quality product, targeting a wealthier audience (or the collector addicts (which ive been that in my life for some things), with a large profit margin on it (assuming he can get high quality at a low price..which for something like that is doable). The other reason that works, is many of the people that CAN afford to pay that for a shirt, are going to be business professionals that wear polo shirts ever day, so its an appealing product to them (Once year about 7 years ago my mom gave me about 30 polo shirts, high quality she got from a guy she knew at work.. they where all practically brand new and polo brand. Reason? He made so much money that every year he bought about 30-50 new shirts and gave away the previous years worth.. so a large qty of shirts, only wore spread out over a year..Wish I could live like that! Not that I would, I know the value of a dollar to well).

I can think of a couple other ideas that would do well now IF you can source a manufacturer for it. A high quality chess-set. VERY high quality.. something you get made for 500.00 a set, you have 20-30 sets made, and sell them for 1000-15000 per set, again targeting that select audience. Or a working darkstarr Moondial, desktop size.. Starr would have to buy one! But say you find a clock maker that is in-between jobs so willing and capable of making something like that, at 300-600.00 per dial and will make them to order.. You sell them for 1000-1500 each to the select target group, again making good money. But again, both these projects for Portalarium is a fairly small return vs. the time to source a maker, do concept, make proto types, market it, collect money, ship it, etc.. by the time their done their labor vs. profit return is small enough its just not worth the time. Side project for someone like me IF I was willing to take the risk? could be a decent payoff as a Saturday gig while im watching TV.. its a second job when its all said and done, but one that was fun and enjoyable from the comfort of my home. But by the time your done, i bet the hourly rate isnt very high

all that said though, i could be completely way off base and full of icky goo. Im not claiming to be an expert, just my take on things. I don't have actual Data as far as to how many people really pay attention to what Portalarium emails out, levels of interest, and things like that... but they have a clearer picture then I do and given there are still shirts in the store, how many they stated they where ordering, how many are left, how quickly they tried to offer up a sale, and how many active people we see on the social sites and in the forums.. Id be willing to wager my guesses arent far off the mark.

The down side (for people that do want to get involved in merchandising for them)? Once the game DOES come out, and if it IS successful, giving that large audience to market to and be able to effectively offer decent products at lower price points due to volume.. They would be a LOT harder to approach and get into bed with on letting an average individual do projects like this with, because at that point there is justification to hire a marketing/purchasing guy (or even one of each) to do all that for them to capture all the profit instead of sharing it by out-sourcing. Meaning you'd have to come up with some REALLY unique ideas to get them to be interested.

I do know of one idea I have now that I could make money on if they allowed me, because i could make it profitable whether i sold one or a 100.. but *shrugs* it would be a lower number and its just not worth the effort for a few bucks when its all said and done. Id need to sell a LOT to make it worth my time.. by the time that would be viable, they'd just do it themselves (I already sent in the suggestion a while back for them to table as a future swag idea.. in short i gave it away for free.. but it wasn't ultra original and I knew I wasn't going to do anything with it).

I had another idea they could use now, and immediately start making some money on, at zero cost and zero work to themselves I sent them. I haven't seen them do anything with it, but that makes sense also as its a one time deal in a way (sort of like the silver serpents, once theyre sold.. theyre sold).. and it would make more money if they waited until the game was out, as if successful they could charge more then, then they could now.

Anyway, sorry for the wall.. but that's my take on the whole economic's of them or us trying to sell SotA swag and the challenges that exist with it, now vs. later, etc, etc.. and unfortunately it is a wall worth of data as your talking economics, supply and demand, marketing, sourcing, supplier contracting, purchasing all wrapped together.. lot of topics! As a company, they arent going to try to take the time to explain all of that to people though, so I figured what the... I would and people can read it or note. Or I could be dead wrong *shrugs*, just my thoughts on the topic to be honest.

All that said, when the game DOES come out, if they want to hire a purchasing, sourcing, supplier contracting guy, with a touch of sales and marketing experience, two degrees (admittedly, both associates), an IT professional certification, and 20 years of inventory management experience... They can count on a resume from me! <Shameless plug to plant this thought in their mind in a 1-2 years when they have millions of customers and say "we need to hire someone to handle buying all our swag and managing the insane inventory>. *chuckles*

Im sure we will eventually see all the cool swag we want.. it's just not going to be until the game is released or around that time.

If I was a graphics guy though, id create graphic themes.. high end screen saver with music, cursors, browser skins, explorer skins, background images, the works! A top rate high quality package, and ask them to let me sell those for a percentage. no per piece cost.. do the work once, and then sell unlimited quantity. Could sell them at 5-10.00 each as a download, and put a term in your agreement with them as to how long you get to sell them for before you have to stop.

 

I would be interested in an official Shroud of the Avatar pint glass

 

I'll just have to see what direction everything goes. Thanks for all the economic insight.
So, on another note... Whether anything would actually be made or not. Keep the ideas rolling in, it can't hurt anything to voice your opinions!