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Comanche Club Storefront


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I'd like to get the ball rolling on seeing if we could get a storefront setup on the new site. I envision it showing up as an additional tab amongst the existing News, Members, Forums, and Shoutbox tabs.

 

From what I can tell, it looks at though we have at least 3 different people supplying Comanche Club swag (t-shirt, hoodies, hats, decals, stickers, etc.) so the biggest hurdle would be whether we can get the storefront setup with multiple vendors.

 

I'm willing to help out in any way I can, whether it be from the administrative side of things (setting up the storefront, testing, etc.) to putting up some capital to get a Comanche Club product to market.

 

Lets discuss...

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just 2. Aaronbtxnc handled our last shirt/hoodie order (and still has hats left). I do the stickers/coozies/etc.

 

biggest hurdle is that demand is low and preferences for a product vary wildly. the second is that I can't afford to have product on hand, sitting around waiting for someone to buy. waaaaay too much money for a broke guy like myself to invest. Coozies alone are going to be over 200 bucks and the CC bank account is way less than that (just paid the annual website fees). that's why we do pre-paid batch orders on shirts/hoodies/hats. I tried my hand at it and we lost money. Other members have stepped up and handled an order or 2, but they eventually lose their ambition after discovering the "joys" of selling mail-order. I keep doing the stickers because there's a lot less on the line (even so, I just bought 65 bucks worth of stickers).

 

I've thought about doing one of those online buy-as-you-go sites, but haven't put any serious effort into the research.

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We should be able to gather data from the last shirt/hoodie sale to get an idea on what colors/styles were the most popular and then keep a stock of those. I understand the initial investment problem and not being able to move product quick enough - which is why I offered to front some capital. I am aware that many of the members on here do not have deep pockets, hence why they own a 20+ year old vehicle that can be had for less than $1,000.

 

The first order of business would be to get the IP.Board Storefront installed and tested. If you have stickers/coozies/etc available, we could list those and give a whirl.

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We should be able to gather data from the last shirt/hoodie sale to get an idea on what colors/styles were the most popular and then keep a stock of those. I understand the initial investment problem and not being able to move product quick enough - which is why I offered to front some capital. I am aware that many of the members on here do not have deep pockets, hence why they own a 20+ year old vehicle that can be had for less than $1,000.

 

The first order of business would be to get the IP.Board Storefront installed and tested. If you have stickers/coozies/etc available, we could list those and give a whirl.

 

you'll need to talk to Alexia about the actual creation. :thumbsup: way outta my realm of knowledge.

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Is it something I could buy and hand over to you to be integrated?

 

Sorry, I totally missed this. Yes, you can, though I think it might have to be bought under my account.(Not sure if they would let you just buy IP.Nexus separately.) We could do a PayPal transfer for it.

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Secret? I would assume so since I'm the only one that knows about it. Well, my dog has an idea of what's going on.

 

Stash? Not really, I don't have the space to stash anymore.

 

Club made MJ parts? Only if that means made FOR the Club and not BY the Club.

 

Although, after doing a bit of research on the investment of IP.Nexus plus their bi-yearly fees to obtain their tech support and upgrades, it would be cheaper for me to set up a store off the forums.

 

Oh well...thought it'd be cleaner/simpler to have it all integrated into one place.

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just my thoughts:

we currently have a "craigslist" style store, where every puts up their random stuff and extra parts for sale, and thats good and all but I can't ever find anything in my state.

 

From what I gather you want to make a "ebay or Amazon" style store, and Have is set so whoever makes the T-shirs, stickers, or whatever, can have a cleaner way of searching for stuff taking orders.

 

So for example under the Store tab you could have sub categories of

 

Clothing

  • T-shirt
  • Hoodies
  • Hats

 

Comanche Accessories

  • Stickers
  • Can Coozies

 

 

I like your Idea and hope it pans out in a cheap and effective manner. But i agree with Pete, about there may not be enough people interested in the store items. I run a Gym with over 1300 members between the two locations and none of them use the online store to purchase gym goods (that corporate forced upon us and we pay for against our will), and we have posters advertizing that our members get 20% off everything. We are also selling T-shirts in the gym for a 3rd party and i sell one maybe every 3 weeks for 10 bucks.

 

I don't mean to shoot down your Idea but i just think we do not have an active member base large enough to support a store full time store yet. Maybe you can get with Pete or Alexia to get some forum stats. Like how many active members in a months time, how many views to the current classifieds sub forum. that would help get an idea on member usage

 

as an example

Here is the current usage of my gym in a 30 day period Green= current and up to date - yellow= past due, bad address, bad billing info, or about to expire - red= expired account, frozen account, canceled account, 90 days past due, or transferred account

481555_4893713181194_1020228198_n.jpg

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I really just wanted to get the store because

 

1) I thought it was a free (or close to it) add-in to the IP.Boards forum software. This software is all about preaching open source and low cost...

2) I have a few nick knacks I wanted to toss on there. These are things that can be produced in quantity or on-demand so no one-off's, custom parts, etc.

 

I just threw the idea of having our apparel on there because the legwork has already been done on the design and purchase so I figured it would be a good way to kick off the store.

 

I agree that we don't have a big enough memberbase to pursue a full-fledged store. We also don't have enough member's with deep pockets...we all drive 20+ year old pickups, afterall :yes:

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have you thought about setting up an amazon store, i am not sure what the cost would be, but i have seen buttons that say "purchase this item at amazon" so in theory you could use the forum as a e-Catalog and have that button going to your listing in amazon or ebay, or whatever 3rd party store you plan to use

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  • 4 weeks later...

You could take a poll and see how many people would purchase CC items if they were easier to get to and buy. Also if you did a store tab you could move everything from the sale section in classified and put it into the store tab and then you could further organize it from part type and or state/region. Just my thoughts I would certainly buy stuff if it was alittle easier to get to and access

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the problem is that I am not a business. I get decals and such made up simply because the guys want something to show pride in their club and I'm happy to oblige. I'm not making money on these endeavors, nor am I looking to expand into doing so. Getting the bigger items made and shipped out is a real pain in the butt (as attested to by the fact that the shirt/hoodie orders have been handled by several members so far and each one eventually calls it quits).

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