[affs-project] What a set of mugs

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2023-09-21 at 14:38 +0100, adam at thebowery.co.uk wrote:
> In theory we will aim to sign up 10 people a day, so there is income
> from that aspect also. Part of the merchandising campaign should not be
> considered solely along the lines of "making money" but also with the
> idea of drawing attention to ourselves, and if that means we sell
> nothing but have attracted new members the campaign has worked well.

Yeah, I think a target of 10 per day would be nice - even better if we
can achieve it, but that's certainly where we should be aiming.
I would definitely underline the fact that this merchandising is not
about generating revenue - the margin we will be taking on various items
will definitely be aimed at ensuring that we cover costs (and,
therefore, generating profit as a comfort zone, not a target). The two
more important functions of the merchandise are a) to build awareness of
ourselves to people ("What's that shirt you're wearing?" etc.), and b)
to act as an incentive to get people to join up (since AFFS Shop will be
cheaper, in general, to members).
AFFS does of course seek to generate money, to fund various activities
(either AFFS activities, or other people's activities), but the function
of sales is not revenue generation and isn't likely to be. And
especially for this expo, we won't have much stock, because we're
essentially testing how much extra incentive this kind of thing is.
Cheers,
Alex.