Communications Report for Oct Meeting

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sdingwell

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on: October 02, 2010, 11:34:17 PM
The Communications Committee wrote a congratulatory letter to the new UoF Chapter for their start-up events and for the publication of their first newsletter, which carries a catchy name "The Tickseed Times"

It is our fervent hope and intent to bring the completed handbook to the meeting.

We met with Finance Committee on conference call; see Finance Report.

Researched the issue of merchandising.  ::) How can I resist?

We have had a generous offer to get our merchandising effort launched from Greg Krolczyk. Greg is on the BOD of the Conradina Chapter and also the owner/operator of Skim City in Indialantic. (Skimcity.com) Skim City sells boards to the pre- and teen crowd both online as well as from a bricks and mortar store. Greg is generating sales in excess of $500,000 and has been in the retail business for 40 years. Interestingly he tells me he is 'kicking the crap out of last year."

I have read a detailed proposal from him and also had lengthy conversation on phone. He is offering a substantial donation of time and expertise to make our online sales a real possibility.

There will be some start -up costs, of course.
Briefly:
a storefront - software that shows the goods for sale, and place to host it (our website)
an SSL Certification - cert that shows you are a safe site
a Gateway -  service that accepts customer’s credit card and approves sales depending on choice of Gateway, might need machine to process cards (more $)

GoDaddy can give us all the above for around $85.

Merchandise - our choice, basic rule of thumb in setting your price is to double your cost. tee shirts, mouse pads, mugs, bookmarks, hats, tote bags etc

He also has some creative ideas for getting FNPS artists, photographers, jewelers, etc to offer their goods on the site and increase our income, and has thought out in detail how it would work and how we could structure the commission fees.

He is offering to do the set-up in conjunction with our webteam, to store all the merchandise, to photograph it, load it online, and do the mailing. Meaning he intends to donate those services.

 Monthly hosting for the storefront would cost about $10, included above, and would show a small store of around 20 items, which Greg suggests would be fine to start out with. "When the dollars start rolling in," we can up it to a $30 site that would show 100 items.

UPS and USP come to his place everyday; he would mail the items that he stores for us, and he would notify the owners of items we have on consignment so that they could mail them. He suggests that we tack on a a one dollar handling fee (software would do this automatically) to help with costs related to shipping - paper and ink to print invoices, tape for overstuffed boxes etc.  The one dollar fee would be passed on to whomever did the shipping - him if he had the item, or the artist if the item was in artist’s possession.

His final words “Be prepared for success” and “Christmas is coming”

Would like to beg for help with timely news for Twitter. You who are in the forefront of breaking news, interesting research, great plants (or photos!)  just put "Twitter" in the subject line, and a link or news item in the body. You don't need to wonder how to address me, or whether to say "cheers, love, peace," at the end. JUST SEND NEWS!

Ditto ditto ditto for Blog. Send me things you'd like me to blog about, or write a piece for me to post. The more the merrier!

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