Blog: Moonshot Finale
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 5:05 pm
Indeed, we had. I myself pointed out virtually every other major opensource OS has one and it would be a good thing as a brand-recognition and for potential financial gains (selling plushies). And the response was - and I thought it utterly ridiculous, to be frank - : "But, ermm...well, look at Haiku. They don't have one. So we don't neither."Alahndro wrote:If I remember it correct, there once was the question why Reactos does not have a mascott. Linux have its pinguin and suse its chameleon.
I also like the plushie ReactOS logo the bunnies are carrying on their backs. I think we have a mascott.
Z98, I don't think they'll be the last ones to be produced...
Lol. No, it wasn't you this time. It was Amine.Z98 wrote:I don't recall referencing Haiku, though Victor or Amine might have. But ultimately it's my position that you need to counter convincingly to overcome internal resistance from the project since I'm the one that expresses the project's position the most explicitly. My position basically boiled down to no one offering a strong argument for why having a mascot was so important. Much as how Haiku not having a mascot is not an argument for not having one, that other projects have mascots does not provide any sort of argument for having one. And seeing as the actual development of any mascot will require a fair amount of time and effort before they can be exploited for any kind of gain and no one could seem to present concrete steps for completing the necessary work pretty much made clear that no one was that serious about the idea.
I suppose I need to make clear that at this stage the project still does not have an actual mascot. The hackbunnies are basically little pieces of the project's history. To turn them into mascots would require a much bigger chunk of media to be prepared and a more complex design. The bunnies that were created for the crowdfunding campaign can at most be considered prototypes. To actually turn any sort of mascot into plush toys for sale would, again, require that the project have the storage capacity for an actual production run and the manpower to handle inventory and sales. This is not trivial and amounts to basically a full time job. There is a reason that a lot of projects outsource sales of things like shirts or mugs or USB drives to third parties, even if it cuts into margins. As plush toys are pretty much custom designs, they are not something that the various outsourcing firms offer and companies that do make them expect the commissioning party to handle distribution afterward.
OK, so there's really only 1 "extra".Z98 wrote:Technically nine claimed, seven from the backers, the black one I'm keeping, and one going to KJK.
That is one reason why I was asking you.I'm also the one that technically owns the three extras since I'm paying for the extra costs incurred.
OK, that makes sense, just 'thinking out loud' so to speak.And the chances of a second run in the near future is very slim. The per unit cost is too high and the turnaround time was something like three months for these ten. Until , we're unlikely to do it again.
Here, you are talking about logistics. While logistics are important in the de facto deployment of a pluche mascot (when selling it), it has no direct bearing on the principle of why a mascot would or could be beneficial or not.Z98 wrote:You present arguments about how useful a mascot would be if actually employed. As you have yet to demonstrate how the project is to find the manpower and time to generate the necessary media, find the space for storage, and ultimately deal with the logistics of directly managing shipments and a store, what you have not done is demonstrate how the project would actually employ said mascot. If the project cannot employ the mascot in a meaningful way, then any of the advantages you keep bringing up might as well not exist since they are directly dependent on it.
Is there a possibility to let a third party handle some of these aspects? For instance, like contracting an already established webshop (not specifically our own, thus) to deal with storage or at least with the shipment of these hackbunnies? Granted, they would probably ask a percentage, but it still could be advantageous and a viable option.Z98 wrote:The only people who might have the space for storage do not have the time to manage individual shipment. The number of people who might be willing to work on this number at most two, neither of whom live close to each other and neither of whom have enough time to handle shipping. The project is not willing to spend money on warehousing, not when the projected market is not expected to be able to even absorb 1000 bunnies quickly enough to allow for a decent ROI that is usable to the project.
Well, I'm not getting this completely. If you are of the opinion that you won't run down the 1000 bunnies quickly, this means the selling average per week would be considerable low: 1-2 per week? But if it's that low, why couldn't the two people you spoke of deal with sending a couple of bunnies per week? That seems reasonably doable, after all, then. I thought the whole point was they couldn't handle the large volumes to send, but then it would be run rapidly enough down for someone else too.Z98 wrote:Third party webstores don't work that way and even if we find an exception, the projected market isn't big enough to run down an inventory of a thousand bunnies quickly enough for us to risk incurring long term storage costs. Doing something for "fun" is not a sound reason for committing the project's money unless there is a guaranteed payoff that results in a net gain.