It's also broken.
Size information is screwy. You can see other affinity B2C sites and the dkos site at Blue Collar Distro
There's not a single coffee cup on the dkos page. There is not one sticker, not a poster, not a single item of jewelry. And it's a mystery that our Big Dog guy is not on anything:
Meteor Blades with his vampire squid.
The Store sells 9 tee-shirts and 1 water bottle. Well, 6 tee-shirts if you count what can actually be ordered.
In place of sending in $3, here's my B2C-experienced consult/whine/quality_control_take on how to generate another $10,000 a year (or more) for dailykos dot com. Sound fair enough?
And please, please suggest additional products. Throw in your ideas. Include favorites among DKOS-related art work with your comments. Let's get these guys moving.
No quality control, no quality.
That's one of the more obvious thoughts that go with modern management practice. You will hear all manner of complaints and excuses from people as they try to avoid having a quality control cycle applied to their part of an organization. But you will not hear anybody arguing against the basic assertion: quality demands effort.
Well, folks, the online store can be observed here: shirts
If you go to the home page for the site, you can compare performance of the DailyKos "Shirts" operation with other online stores: Blue Collar Distro
That link lets you see all of the products that are being offered. The general pattern for commoditized items bearing a seller's logo or pattern is simple enough.
1. Get your order;
2. Get the item made using a plain/undecorated base item and printing services from the Blue Collar Distro provisioning system; and
3. Send it out.
There are a hundred automated store-in-a-box web services out there. Probably more if you look around. But here's Daily Kos with 600,000+ registered users and this "Shirts" online store has up 6 shirts and a water bottle.
And it's Christmas season last I looked !! Tell me those 600,000+ registered users wouldn't have generated 6,000 discrete sales !
But the shelves are bare. It looks like Russia in 1942.
No hoodies, no sweats, no watch cap. Nothing near the typical array of goodies you'll see for the other online stores. No Girl's Stuff, no posters, no art, no bags. No section for imports.
No patches, no key chains, no skate decks. No jewelry. No pins.
The Dennis Leary "MERRY 'UCKIN' CHRISTMAS" coffee cups at the site are selling gangbusters !!
Denis Leary: Merry F*in' Christmas Color Changing Mug
No F**in' COFFEE CUPS at all for Daily Kos supporters.
Shirts in a variety of colors can be manufactured after orders are placed. Basic colors and seven sizes are available from the web site:
Printed on American Apparel t-shirts.
The actual "Men/Unisex" sizes available and the chest widths in inches are as follows:
XS (16-17)
S (17-18)
M (19-20)
L (21-22)
XL (23-24)
2XL (25-26)
3XL (27-28)
Note: the XS extra-small and 3XL size tee-shirts are never made available for DKOS purchasers.
Here's the point where we get to hard-core quality control. The sizes posted in the DKOS listings are screwed up. Let's do a quality survey. Here are the sizings and availability-for-sale data by shirt type, listed in the order of presentation:
1. Flag Man (Cranberry) Girls T-Shirt
(no small)
(no medium)
(no large)
Extra-Large
(no 2x-large)
2. Build CommUNITY (Black) Girls T-Shirt
(no small)
(no medium)
Large
Extra-Large
2X-Large
3. Tom Tomorrow (Black) Unisex T-Shirt
(no small)
(no medium)
(no large)
(no extra-large)
2X-Large
4. Netroots Nation Flag (Black) Unisex T-Shirt
Small
Medium
Large
Extra-Large
2X-Large
Out of Stock
"This item is currently sold out :("
5. Flag Man (Cranberry) Unisex T-Shirt
Small
Medium
Large
Extra-Large
2X-Large
Out of Stock
"This item is currently sold out :("
And it also has a "ships in 2 weeks" tag mixed in with the sizing selection list.
6. Daily Kos: I Build CommUNITY (Black) Unisex T-Shirt
Small
(no medium)
Large
Extra-Large
2X-Large
In Stock
7. Orange Dog Democrat (Black) Unisex T-Shirt
Small
Medium
Large
Extra-Large
2X-Large
Out of Stock
This item is currently sold out :(
8. Petrolcide (Black) Unisex T-Shirt
Small
Medium
Large
(no extra-large)
(no 2x-large)
In stock
9. Flag Man (Natural) Unisex T-Shirt $15
Small
(no medium)
(no large)
(no extra-large)
(no 2x-large)
In Stock
As a general case tee-shirts can be silkscreened or transferred using any base size that is large enough across the chest to fit your pattern. You get the order, the provisioner makes the shirt, the system sends it out.
No eye patch. Literally and figuratively.
With apologies to everyone involved over the years, it seems to me that the creative crime here is that nobody has gotten around to doing a suitable portrait/caricature of Meteor Blades.
By a country mile MB's the coolest guy going at this shindig -- our "Johnny Cash" figure. Our own in-house frappin' pirate !! And there's nothing.... Give our kids a choice of tee-shirts between a politician, any movie star, any NASCAR driver or football player, any "suit" and our own MB. The winner is going to be Tim Lange.
Who else has a pet vampire squid ???
Nothing against kos. But he's the guy who you send to meetings with bigwigs. He's the guy who writes the book "American Taliban."
A stylized line-drawing of the old pirate and his squid are what you put on tee-shirts.
Tell me we wouldn't do 5,000 items a year out of the web site and turn a minimum of $10,000 for Daily Kos with a Meteor Blades line of items ??? The guy's a Effin' classic !
Dennis Effin' Leary ??? The guy doing top level sales of his Irish-ized Christmas cups? He'd be a solid typecast for MB's little half-brother.
Anyway, please suggest products for a revamped DailyKos online store. If you know of online sites that do a better job than this Blue Collar Intro operation, there should be room for discussion and making recommendations there as well. Time to shine a light on what can be done to generate additional revenue for DailyKos dot com.
If you want something, put it up for people to see it. Show everybody examples of good sites, good products.
Happy New Years to Everybody !!