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.
That's a very reasonable concern :)
>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:
One concern I'd have is that "sweatshop free" is very different to
somebody receiving a fair wage for their work. But I guess it's a step
in the right direction.
"Certified by the Control Union World Group, to the Organic
Exchange
100 guidelines and the SKAL International standards for sustainable
textile production."
Organic cotton is a significant +. I don't suppose people know about
the issues surrounding growing cotton, but it does account for
approximately 15-20% of the world's pesticide use, some of which makes
it's way into water supplies etc.
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.
I guess my question would be, if we have the option, would we want to
support non-fair trade and manufacturing practices?
> 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
I will see what I can come up with :) I think the print on demand
limit could be a problem though, but I'm at least pleased to see that
spreadshirt.com makes some effort!
Best wishes,
Jon