What's going on in the Poloverse

its called google maps robbie. you should google it.

Haha so funny

Luca has make up on

wahey, B made a joke

This is an awesome idea

http://hoserstore.com/

Do they only accept teams that have won stuff?

Nice idea but the prices are way too high...
And repost...

I'm weening myself off slowly. www.fixed.org.au just ain't the same.
I'm about to bin a load of Rusty Rims tshirts also.

I'll take one in L Joni...

Nice idea but the prices are way too high...

I think for a good t-shirt and well printed (Polo is concentrating on quality), £19 is ok.

I'm probably their best customer, I bought 5 of them a while back.

I'll take one in L Joni...

Me too.

I think for a good t-shirt and well printed (Polo is concentrating on quality), £19 is ok.

I'm probably their best customer, I bought 5 of them a while back.

Yeah I don't think it's that expensive... It's not Rapha prices, but it is probably slightly more than I'm willing to pay at the moment, if you see what I mean?

what do the rusty rims t-shirts look like?

This is an awesome idea

http://hoserstore.com/

If it takes off Polo is a genius.

The deal isn't that good for the teams in my opinion (especially as they have to provide the design and seed monies) but I can see why non-Euro teams use it (shipping kills selling their own stock).

I'll take one in L Joni...

what do the rusty rims t-shirts look like?

Ha. I have 2 mediums that are huge. They're black polo shirts with our orange logo on the back and Vaidas small logo on the front.
Kev you'll have to come get them tonight.

The deal isn't that good for the teams in my opinion (especially as they have to provide the design and seed monies) but I can see why non-Euro teams use it (shipping kills selling their own stock).

Yeah, I don't really understand the seed money bit, that surprised me when you told me. Surely if Polo is taking the majority of the profit then he should be taking the risk on the investment. Maybe the cost price of t-shirts and setting up the screens is higher than I think.

I totally see there is a market for teams who want a no-hassle low return source of income, but I don't really get why teams with established t-shirt selling income (Clowns, Tigers) do it.

As far as I’m aware, no seed money has come from teams to help fund Hoser. Polo is funding it all himself and on the scale that it is currently, I very much doubt he’ll be able to retire just yet.

Personally, I think the price per tee is justifiable based on the garment quality and that all printing is done by hand.

Polo approached teams which have an iconic identity. With the idea is to help make each team design more widely available in the community, through one centralised source and at no cost to the teams involved.

For every tee sold, the relevant team gets a little bit of commission, which IMO is a nice way for Hosor to give back to the team.

For Cosmic, we saw it more as an opportunity to collaborate with a friend than rake in loads of money.

We were able to offer a different design that we wouldn’t have been in a position to have done previously. And of course, we wanted to show support for Polo’s new start up venture. After all, it’s good to support those doing good things within the scene.

Hi guys,

Thanks for speaking about the Hoser project.
I should give you some informations about it, because I have absolutly no problem to be transparent..

For the history, we thought and created the project in our mind with my team-mate William. Finally he has to move in Paris for work and now I'm running it alone.
First of all, I would like to tell you that Hoser is a little project, born by passion, and certainly not a big business. I have a work on the side and I try to use my free time for Hoser. The two main ideas are :

• to provide bike polo t-shirts from one location, in the entire world, all the time, not only during tounaments.
  
• propose a global service for teams who wants to sell their t-shirts (manufacturing, printing, promotion, shipping, redistribution, etc.).
  
  

As John said, the idea is also to provide good quality t-shirt and good quality print (great designs from Bike Polo deserves it), for sure it's more expensive that the bike polo t-shirts we used to buy during tournaments, but it's not printed on t-shirts made in taiwan or china or bangladesh (Fruit of the Loom, B&C, Gildan, etc.), Hoser t-shirts are made in Portugal and the print are made in Toulouse. Hoser also has to pay taxes and paypal on each sale... Hoser pay a website, pictures for the website, etc. All this explains the 19£, which I don't think it's very expensive (in my opinion).

For an english exemple, a Chunk t-shirt is sold 28£. And every tournament I go, I propose to sell them 16£ (because I can avoir paypal). You have to follow that on the facebook page ;)

For the deal with teams, if they all accepted to be in the project with enthusiasm, I think it's quite good. Maybe they win a little bit less than if they sell t-shirts themselves during tournament and on facebook, but as I said before, Hoser propose a "global service". The team a nothing to do, except advertising, and at least earn some money.

And last thing, when I ask the team to invest with Hoser (first 9 t-shirts was a personnal investment), it's because I want the team to feel implicated in the project. I can't invest money every months or two months, and I have many ask to be on the Hoser store, I had to find a way to make more t-shirts, as quickly as possible. Of course they get a bigger return on investment with that. I don't earn money with Hoser and if next year or in 2014 I could help my polo travel with that, I will be very happy !

I hope it helps you to understand the Hoser project.. Next tees will be Edisons & Paris Bike Polo normaly ;)

See you soon on the court !
Polo

Thanks for the explanation Polo, good luck with it all.

Perhaps you could consider a third option where both the team and yourself donate the proceeds towards future bike polo tournaments (or other similarly good cause)?

Bike polo is not a 'good cause'.

If anyone is feeling charitable, please donate the proceeds to the future of lives in danger, not this stupid sport.

And I'd like to add that I think it's great that we have enterprising people within polo that are finding a way to support themselves from the game they love. Well done and good luck.

^^ Buzz kill.

Bike polo is not a 'good cause'.

If anyone is feeling charitable, please donate the proceeds to the future of lives in danger, not this stupid sport.

And I'd like to add that I think it's great that we have enterprising people within polo that are finding a way to support themselves from the game they love. Well done and good luck.

Couldn't agree more!

Bike polo is not a 'good cause'.

Couldn't agree more!

We fundamentally disagree here, here's the opposing view:

We're now at the point where the teams attending tournaments have more combined funding/support/freebies than the tournaments themselves, the ladder is slowly being pulled up behind the "elite" in the name of "innovation" and personal gain in the hope that the future of the sport is certain.

There are now less tournament organisers than business owners in bike polo, this will become a problem as tournaments (and all other volunteer-dependent aspects of bike polo) fail to become commercially viable, we're no where near this point currently... we're just hoping the funding/volunteering holds out.

Bike polo cannot currently sustain the direction it's heading in without the time/efforts of bike polo players. Every time someone perceives others to be making money from bike polo their desire to get involved without personal reward diminishes.

By sharing proceeds/benefits/whatever with the wider community you return to social norms and everyone feels at ease with pitching in again.

I'm not saying I'm right, but this is where I'm at. We can agree to disagree?

If anyone is feeling charitable, please donate the proceeds to the future of lives in danger, not this stupid sport.

The two are far from mutually exclusive! In fact the former would actively increase the chance of the latter (social norms).

We can agree to disagree?

Of course. It's my favourite pastime, I'm not interested in arguing.

I'm not sure it's as oppositional as all that, but I agree that the pressing issue is tournament organisation and not another person to buy ski poles from.

People have said it before, but I think we may need to start paying more for tournaments. I've read that some people/scenes end up out of pocket after spending weeks/months organising something in their spare time, which is just crazy. We broke even despite a sponsor not paying us at the UK Champs, but only because we got the venue for free.

If we can't find a paying audience for polo, we'll probably have to shoulder more of the costs ourselves. I can see why this is a bit offensive to the organisers, hustling for money from everywhere and x number of teams roll up with paid-for airfares and bling bikes without contributing anything.

It seems like at the moment we're punching above our weight. Either the sport grows, sponsors remain keen and organisers stay happy working for free, or we move to a different model (smaller tournaments, fewer teams, more games for everyone, £60-100 per team?)

Key part is "sport grows." If this happens, anything is possible.