Re: REC.KITES T-SHIRT

Subject Re: REC.KITES T-SHIRT
From abw@peritas.com (Andy Wardley)
Date Tue, 23 Jul 1996 04:50:57 -1000
Newsgroups rec.kites
One in a series of three:

The Story So Far...

Rick's doing these T-Shirts. Frank wants to do his own. Andrew suggests we support Rick's venture without introducing competition. Frank gets the hump with Andrew. I step in.... 

Andrew Beattie wrote:
> I think that it would be courteous to support Rick's project by
> letting it run it's course before muddying the waters by producing
> competing designs.

Frank Kenisky IV responds:
> WHY?
> [...]
> And what is your project, control of rec.kites and the t-shirts?

Take a chill pill, Frank. Andrew suggests "it would be courteous" and doesn't state "Thou shalt not...because I SAY SO". 

> I feel more is better. Brings the cost down. Less is allowing to
> create a monoploy. Higher prices. Tell you what rich boy, you can buy
> us all a brand new rec.kites t-shirt.

Sorry, but when did rec.kites become a business? I hardly think printing a few T-Shirts constitutes a money making venture in which the evil monopoly (Rick) gets to rip off all the innocent punters (us) who have no choice but to buy a rec.kites T-Shirt (having lost all free will to decide if we want one or not because of Andrew's hidden mind control messages uuencoded in his .signature file).

And exactly how big is the current market place? How many people are likely to buy a rec.kites T-Shirt? (that's a rhetorical question - no "Me Too" postings please). I would guess it's less than 50 people, perhaps 100 at most. Considering the number of T-Shirts you need to order to secure a reasonable per-piece price, I would guess that Rick's going to have a tough job breaking even *without* any competition. With two competing designs and a market potentially halved, that pretty much blows both people out of the water.

I don't know Rick personally, but I do know that people who can normally be bothered to go to the effort of getting a T-Shirt printed (or organising a Kite Festival, Web Site, etc., for that matter) generally don't do it to make a lot of money, but from a sense of wanting to give something to the community at large. I respect both parties for wanting to undertake the venture but agree with Andrew that we shouldn't let Rick fall flat on his face seeing as he's already put effort into the project on our collective behalf.

A