Fedora Store and sources

Jeffrey Tadlock linux at elfshadow.net
Thu May 15 12:39:09 UTC 2008


On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 7:34 AM, Jonathan Roberts
<jonrob at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Hey all,

Hi Jon!

> one thing I think we should definitely consider in creating a Fedora
> Store and where we source our materials from. From my own perspective,
> if we're going to run a store like this we can't get t-shirts, hats
> etc and/or cotton that has been manufactured by companies who don't
> pay a fair wage in awful working conditions. Maybe we should explore
> fair trade suppliers?

We are looking to have all of the purchase transactions, printing and
such handled by a 3rd party.  Fedora does not currently have the means
to handle maintaining the inventory or purchasing infrastructure.
This has had us looking at places like cafepress, spreadshirt.com and
such who do printing on demand to help make sure Fedora Project does
not end up with money sitting on shelves as inventory.

>From the 3rd party print on demand vendors the Store SIG has evaluated
so far, spreadshirt.com seems to offer the most reasonable solution at
the moment.  Some of the pros and cons for them are listed here (as
are some from other vendors we looked at):

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Store/PotentialDistributors

Spreadshirt does offer American Apparel shirts who say they are
"sweatshop free".  They also offer an organic shirt which is listed
as:

"Certified by the Control Union World Group, to the Organic Exchange
100 guidelines and the SKAL International standards for sustainable
textile production."

Now, spreadshirt also offers more traditional shirts and are not an
exclusive Fair Trade shop.  But at least we present a potential Fedora
store customer with a choice to support fair trade.

> Is fair trade popular in the US? It's certainly gaining traction here
> in the UK and I'd be happy to work on this. I already have a few
> possible connections that I'd be able to explore.

To be honest, I am not sure how popular it is in the US.  My wife
keeps our family very well aware of it and she does make an effort to
buy fair trade goods.  Not sure how prevalent it is beyond my
household though.  :)

If you have something in mind, feel free to outline the details and
post to the list and update the Potential Distributors page:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Store/PotentialDistributors

If you can find something that meets the basic requirements [1] of the
store then we could certainly consider it.

Thanks!
Jeffrey

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Store#head-15d00b5f393cafd637c16762747cc02d76e91099




More information about the Fedora-marketing-list mailing list