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The issue in terms of effort and time isn't the putting it on a shop and selling it.
It's:
- Talking to a factory who speak broken English, and I speak no Italian.
- Finalising details with said factory
- Dealing with the Summer shutdowns (you aren't getting caps until October now)
- Receiving delivery
- Putting hundreds of caps in envelopes, posting them, tracking delivery failures, handling returns (expect 2-3% defect rate)
- Manually distributing caps to compass beers over 2-3 weeks (because there's always people who don't turn up when they say they will).
The act of designing them, putting them on the shop and pre-selling them, handling the stock control, ensuring money is received, accounted for, paid to the manufacturer or covers postage & packing... is actually not a big deal compared to manufacturing and distribution.
- Talking to a factory who speak broken English, and I speak no Italian.
Velocio-
Im sure that work could be divided up. More than happy to manage distribution.
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Which is a fair set of points.
However, we've kind of stalled at the design point which is another step further back and we continue to have no caps.
If the decision is taken to do another run of the original design then we can start working through those details with people who have the willingness and capacity to undertake them.
If we don't go ahead with that then new caps look as likely this year as they do next year and all those details will still need to be resolved. Pre-orders will facilitate the next steps and, as long as expectations are properly managed, then an October delivery isn't an issue. We talk all year round about the summer caps.
Thrasher
The_Seldom_Killer
I think the obvious answer is that we're depending on way too many people who's lives are frankly too busy and unpredictable to allow them to dedicate the time that they think this job deserves. That is, of course, a mark of their professionalism and commitment to the forum.
However, we already have a design, a good one at that. If the original designer has no objections then I boldly suggest that @Velocio opens up pre-orders in the shop and allow those of us either without caps or whose caps have not well weathered the long and inexorable march of time since the last caps were made, many aeons ago, to purchase our hearts greatest desire.
Of course, if such an endeavour were to turn a profit for the forum then perhaps that could be put towards retaining one of our beleaguered resident designers as a proper paying customer to design a new cap for next year. I say next year because, lets face it, summer is upon us, the solstice is fading into history and Winter Is Coming. Winter without a lovely, lovely cap.