The idea was suggested at Mittens that a range of AGS-related merchandise would be a cool idea. Any profit made would be put back into the community, most likely to help towards the cost of next year's Mittens hosting. So anyway, the questions are, if there was AGS merchandise: a) how many people would be interested in owning some? b) what kind of stuff would you like to see, and c) how much would you be willing to pay?
Bear in mind that stuff that's made in small, limited runs is rather more expensive to produce than the huge quantities normal clothing companies would create. Obviously we'd try to keep costs as low as possible, but the prices would need to be at least a bit above average.
Oh dear god, an AGS cafepress? :p A real blue cup would be awesome, that way there would only be ONE official AGS blue cup :) If products could be hand-made that would make me so much more interested, but yeah, I might buy some tackypress items in the near future.
As you've mentioned this, I think it's worth mentioning the other "money" matter discussed at Mittens, which is a donate button - all proceeds going towards future Mittens. We know CJ doesn't want the money, but something like that could easily pay for whever we stay each year.
So i'll recap
a) Can't speak for anyone else but myself, which is a maybe
b) Mugs, t-shirt, caps
c) No more than 10 quid for any item
I want to sleep with CJ: http://www.ryanrego.co.uk/pillowcases.htm
Isn't "Please Donate" just begging for money, but with a festive hat on? :=
I do like this merchadise idea, though. Keyrings, patches, buttons, mobile phone strap thingies, doodads, etc; all small and cheap to ship.
Mouse pads, mugs, T-Shirts, Hats, bobbing head Chris Jones desktop "buddy"...
Endless possibilities. :D
Not that I'd ever buy any. Worthless tat. But coming up with ideas is fun :P
EDIT: Stickers, those rubber wristband things, pocket watch fobs...
...condoms...
QuoteIsn't "Please Donate" just begging for money, but with a festive hat on?
No, not the way I see it. Just because there's a donate button it doesn't mean you
have to, but some kind souls feel inclined. No-one asked Volmel to pay $200 and keep the ezboards up and running ad-free, but she did. And that was a very kind gesture that just about all the ezboard users were thankful for. Plus, it's not like Mitteneers don't save up all their own money anyway. Having accomodation or other essentials paid for at Mittens would be a god-send, but, Mr Chris, I guess you'd have to attend an international Mittens to fully appreciate it ;) :P
Ah, yes. But that was a service for all. Mittens is for an elite few (although, of course, open to all), and paying for them to have fun is like paying for a hooker for some random dude in the park. :P
A donate button for these forums, or for the hosting services on the American Girl Scouts server is a damn good idea. And I'm surprised it hasn't been added before now. :)
Well sure, that's just as good. But perhaps you missed what AGA said;
QuoteAny profit made would be put back into the community, most likely to help towards the cost of next year's Mittens hosting.
He has similar intentions! Only with his idea you get a festive mug, pillow case or rubber duck!!! :D Fair enough, though - services for all are obviously better. I may have dreamt it but I'm sure I heard CJ say he has no problem funding the forums.
Mittens is nice, and I begrudge nobody who makes the effort to attend, but I feel having strangers donate for it a little off.
Plus, AGA said profits from any merchandise would fund Mittens, which is fine as far as I'm concerned, as profits could be used however he sees fit.
But donating for Mittens? No :P
i've always wanted a roger doll ever since one was included in a BG Blitz entry ages ago, i can just imagine what it would look like; one eye bigger than the other on a thick plastic head attached to a floppy body with the same thick plastic black shoes.
a big cardboard cutout would be awesome too :D
I would love to buy a blue cup or tee shirt etc. I won't be going to any Mittens but don't mind donating with buying things like this.
Cost anything close to $ten would work for me.
I'd buy the cup. Maybe a mousepad? Adventure games usually involve a lot of mouse clicking, after all. :)
edit: oh, it was mentioned already. But I'd buy a mousepad.
...wallets, bobble hats, fingerless gloves, golf tees, inflatable sheep, temporary tattoos, sunglasses, SHOT glasses, lighters, matchbooks, neck apparel, coasters, penants...
EDIT: The cup is the best idea, I think. Either just an actually blue mug with "AGS" on it, or one of those little collectable mini mugs, just big enough to hold a dormouse's beer. The mousepad too, the foam type, would be light and not to expensive to ship. A glass AGS shot mug/glass would be cool too :D
...endless possibilities...
At no point did I mention CafePress. If we're going to do this, it's going to be done properly.
This is a great idea. I would personally love to have a Big Blue Cup to drink out of and show off my AGS pride.
Would it just be a plain blue cup, which i could go to K-Mart and buy or will it say Adventure Game Studio or AGS? Could it be personalized with our names on it or something. That would be cool.
How about an AGS Flask, for all us drunks on the forums. :)
Inflatable CJ?
What???!
Did someone already make an "AGS games collection" by the way? I remember something like that.. you know, large sized games for those with slow connections.
You can't seriously expect to sell AGS kitsch in any volume. I'm looking at a market of 3427 as I'm writing this, and I've got a funny feeling that only a very, very small proportion of us would spend $10/Euros/pounds, especially when at least 50% of that will be shipping (as for a mug) -which, incidentally, does not leave a large profit margin after cost.
The alternative is to jack up the price, but that would shrink the market to roughly the same pool of people who would spend 100s to come to Mittens anyway. Although, it would be nice to have a commemorative T-shirt of M'07: The Canadventure! Hmmmmmm......
Perhaps if you mass produce something cheap but with high symbolic value; something easy to ship and infinitely adaptable.... I like the patch idea: it can go on your clothes, your baggage, your pillow, your.... blow up doll........ I'm sure if you had a run of several thousand the price would be negligible per unit, and you'd probably be able to sell them all over the course of the next decade for a fairly healthy profit.
Since it might support something to do with AGS, I'd pay $6-10 CND for a well designed patch.
Quote from: BaRoN on Fri 17/11/2006 01:42:58
I like the patch idea: it can go on your clothes, your baggage, your pillow, your.... blow up doll........
Hehehehe!!! It works as a puncture repair kit!
Quote from: ManicMatt on Fri 17/11/2006 02:30:49
Quote from: BaRoN on Fri 17/11/2006 01:42:58
I like the patch idea: it can go on your clothes, your baggage, your pillow, your.... blow up doll........
Hehehehe!!! It works as a puncture repair kit!
Or you could slip it under a door to catch a ... ooops, wrong discussion. :)
I think a big blue cup would actually be pretty cool. Putting a label on it would seem to ruin the purity of it, but like Domino says, it does seem like it needs something to distinguish it.
I wouldn't use a mousepad ... I'm all about optical mice. But I might buy a fine leather jacket. ;)
Optical mice need mousepads to work when used on a glass surface, for example.
I was thinking that the blue cup could be plain, with a nice logo printed on the bottom or discreetly around the base under the handle, to identify it as official AGS merch. But at a glance it would be The Big Blue Cup.
I get the feeling a very few amount of people have glass surfaces where they have their computer, and an even smaller amount have optical mouses with glass surfaces where they have their computer.
Eagermind: :D
I've had the experience of trying to use my laptop's optical mouse on a waiting room's glass table, so I've since tried to keep a thin mousepad in my laptop bag. But it was just an example of a relatively cheap but useful item to sell. If enough people feel that a mousepad is obsolete, we could try the patch idea, although personally I hate to have patches on my things so I'm not likely to buy that.
We're all pretty well agreed on the cup though ;D that must be sold!
I'd be happy to design a Cuppit T-Shirt with lots of spurious text on it :)
Mmmm my first thoughts after I saw this thread's name before I clicked on it were, yep a BIG and I mean really huge jumbo blue cup with a distinct AGS logo and in the way that auriond suggested, a small line of the logo down one side or at the top around the mouth piece.
I have other ideas too:
* an AGS blanket, blue with ags on it for the cold nights we endure designing our games when we dont want to go to bed yet (and yes the cold winter stay in at home days too).
* the official AGS book - story of how CJ started it, maybe his biblography. I can write some of it if you like? But would also have other writers from here who could be part of this.
* Blue coloured pens with a blue cup at the end of it
* AGS games for mobile phones
* car seat covers - black or whatever colour, with the blue cup and logo on them
And I am all for the others' ideas like keyrings, mouse pads, shot glass, t-shirts, beanies and more other stuff. I am also very keen on the idea of a roger doll!!!! That would be very original and then maybe later down the track, some of the ags members' game sprites as soft toys (I did make a paperclip character soft toy in 1999 and it was much loved by those who knew clip so I think the soft toy idea could work.....) and I love the pillow idea as well!!! Good idea to have merchandise to raise funds to keep this going, its such a good community and one that we should never take for granetd as I feel Sierra and Roberta didnt have this kind of support 20 years ago ;). Anyhow... I hope some merchandises do come up for this community.
EDIT: Sorry forgot to put in how much I would pay max: $20-25 Australian dollars is the max I'd go to. You might need to take in consideration the varying currency amounts for other countries. Shipping is another consideration, but it can be done fairly cheaply if you think of the environment in terms of recycling old packaging ;) and negotating a small package. I have had many items from ebay sent to me from England and they were surprisingly much cheaper from there than from Aussie and USA even though the currency is much higher in England :).
I'm keen on all the ideas I've seen so far. I'd probably be willing to buck some cash for some of the item ideas that I've heard about. I would definitly need a big blue cup coffee mug!!!
I think a boxed edition of AGS + manual, as discussed with Matt Goble in the past - would be the best selling item of all.
Zazzle is better than Cafepress.
Use Zazzle.
Put a blue cup graphic on a T-shirt.
It will rule!
Sell outs....
Oh wait, I would too.
Anyways, I also think the most sellable item is the cup itself (besides a boxed version of AGS).
I've found a 30 oz "Big Daddy" one on this one site, but the page seems to have some webmaster problems, as it seems to be half-referencing their 20 oz mug on parts of the page...
http://www.beldecal.com/cm/Ceramic-30oz-bd.htm
A 30 oz mug on your desk definitly demands attention... That is until I found this novelty mug site: http://promotionalproductsandideas.com/BUSINESSPROMOS/index.php/weblog/C10/
(http://promotionalproductsandideas.com/BUSINESSPROMOS/images/uploads/JUMBOMUG2.gif)
Okay, so that may be a tad too rediculous for us to be putting on our desks, but then again, we are the bigbluecup. But are we 1 & 1/4 of a gallon big?
----------------
Then there are these optional ones:
(http://www.promopeddler.com/prodpics/prodimgs/3350000/3350132.jpg)
http://www.promopeddler.com/Detail/52770/2016B
(http://www.promopeddler.com/prodpics/prodimgs/3460000/3463128.jpg)
http://www.promopeddler.com/Detail/34330/CT225
This ones almost pixely... Like our beloved low resolution. It even has a square handle! Perfect for pixelation.
(http://www.promopeddler.com/prodpics/prodimgs/3860000/3868749.jpg)
http://www.promopeddler.com/Detail/71920/3884E
Just gorgeous.
(http://www.promopeddler.com/prodpics/prodimgs/3280000/3286152.jpg)
http://www.promopeddler.com/Detail/36705/7109-COB
Rather nice, too.
Rather than an actual blue cup, I would totally buy a T-Shirt with a picture of a blue cup on it. But I think it would be funnier with only a blue cup - no text or explanation or anything.
Maybe that's just me? I would pay 20-25$ CDN or so.
Guys, this idea sounds phenomenal. I hereby offer my services as a graphical designer to design whatever graphics need to be sent out to vendors to print merchandise out. I can even show you guys some sample mousepads, for example, and much more. Please, whoever sets this idea in motion, PLEASE keep me in mind. ;)
I would of course have to ask if anyone had any previously-made images of the blue cup and other AGS-related imagery.
I think if this does go through, you should try obviously try to get an estimate in cost for something with the sliding scales based on number of people willing to buy objects.
I'd say it be far easier to just stick to one item a year. A blue cup mug, or a t-shirt would be obviouse choices. Collecting money before actually going out and buying things might be your best bet as far as raising money. It seems everyone's willing to go to about 10 dollars. However, I'd say the cost of making and then shipping an item is probably higher than that, I'd be willing to spend about 20 dollars on a mug or shirt, which really isn't that much money. Maybe a little over three hours of work on minimum wage (depending on where you live). Which, I've definatley got more than three hours worth of work and enjoyment out of AGS's editor and community. I've dropped more than 20 dollars on a meal, honestly, if I had a full time job right now, I'd put more than 20 dollars in.
-MillsJROSS
Working in the prouct branding industry, I can tell you firsthand that, at least in the U.S., there are tons of companies that will manufacture items with your own logo or custom design on it. I don't know about drop-shipping, though (shipping directly to customers instead of storing them as inventory on your own and selling them from a warehouse, like we do at my job).
Can I ask, why do so many people bash Cafepress? What's wrong with them?
I think that the first 3 items that should be made are:
1. The big-blue-cup (obviously)
2. A t-shirt with a blue cup on it (would be a good seller)
3. The boxed edition of the ags manual (sounds like a really good idea, although I don't know how well it would sell, being it can be d/led for free)
I also think that a portion of the proceeds should be put somehow in to the community!!! Good luck all on getting some items done......