Tshirt sales

I had an interesting experience yesterday that I wanted to share and analyze, because I'm not exactly sure what happened.

Each year, a student group puts on a conference. The topic of the conference is not relevant, what's relevant are the logistics. The conference is free, but attendees are encouraged to register to receive a free tshirt and pay a fee if they'd like food throughout the weekend. Every year, most of the attendees register. However, there is always a number of folks (local students who see advertisements on the bus or quad, for example) who show up without registering and happily receive a free tshirt.

Of course I have no problem with these logistics. I'm not criticizing the way anything is run; each year the conference is a wild success. However, as a capitalist, I am trying to see a way to make (even just a little) more money from something like this, without sacrificing the quality of the conference or anybody's experience. Everyone loves free stuff, but I hypothesize that NOT giving away free tshirts to UNREGISTERED attendees will not affect the overall quality of the conference experience for the participants.

I suggested selling each spare tshirt to anyone who wants one at the conference for something like $10. Due to some existing funding situations, it costs close to $2 to print each tshirt. If we have 100 spare shirts, and we sell them at $10 a piece, that's 800 dollars without really sacrificing anything. Sure, it isn't enough to hire a speaker or pay for anything really enormous, but it's completely effortless. And what's the downside? We don't sell them all? We have boxes of conference tshirts from years past, so that argument doesn't make sense.

The reactions I got were mixed, but I can't remember a single one who thought it was a good idea. I'm not upset, I'm just surprised. It could be that most people don't think the same way I do. Perhaps I came across as a cutthroat capitalist who wants to make money at the expense of anything else (this is ridiculous, I think). Either way, I'm still at a loss to explain why this idea was shot down.

After this debate, a friend (who had been eating a fortune cookie) walked up and handed me the fortune. It said "You will do well in expanding your business." I now keep this in my wallet :-)

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Oct 08, 2009

Daniel Freedman said...

Good idea!

Nick Tabick said...

I think the big problem sets in when everybody who's paying $10 for a t-shirt looks over and notices that the line next to them is full of people who don't have to fork over a cent just because they signed up for it (for free) online. Additionally, there's the question of whether $10 is a little much for a shirt that costs you $2, because I can order t-shirts from other websites that cost considerably less than a Hamilton.

You also have to consider that this conference might not be held for monetary gain. Considering it is most likely powered by donations, the people backing the donations might not be as eager to hand out money for any future events if they notice that people (or organizations as a whole) are making money from their efforts (or just generally conduct themselves in a manner that says they don't need or want the charity). I mean, sure, their money could just go to the organization directly if the sponsor still wanted to make a donation, but such behavior makes them at least rethink whether they need to be spending this money on your group in the first place or whether they can come up with better causes where the money might actually be more needed and/or appreciated.

I'm not saying that your suggestion is a bad idea, but if it were to be done, it would need to be done in a manner that doesn't offend anyone. Perhaps the conference is free, but there is some registered-attendees-only section that wearing a t-shirt gets you admittance to? *shrug*

Dave Paola said...

@nick: Of course making money isn't the goal. But we do make money. We charge people for the things we pay for (food, for example). Funding from companies helps with speakers and SORF pays us (some) of the money for the speakers. But the rest is on ACM's bill. It's not offensive to make money so that next year we can continue to get cool speakers. ACM profiting from conference is not as much of an issue, I think. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to put on, and companies do not give us that kind of money. Who are we offending by trying to make some money for next year's conference?

Also, the cost of making the shirt is irrelevant in the decision of whether or not to sell spare tshirts. It's about the total cost of conference, not the cost of ordering tshirts.

Also, registration is free and quick (if you just want the tshirt). If someone is so upset that they didnt get a free tshirt, they should've registered. Advertisements are literally all over campus for this event. The unlucky ones are outliers.

Overall, the point is that with no extra effort and no downsides (other than the occasional unregistered attendee being mad they didnt register), we have the possibility of earning an extra 800 bucks.

I guess that's true. I am curious to hear what some of the other reasons for not wanting to sell the spare t-shirts were, though.

(Also, based on the way you tiptoed around mentioning names in the original post, I thought you didn't want to mention specific groups for a reason. I'm guessing that's not the case with that reply, though. ;) )

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Tshirt sales

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