EVE General Discussion

I'm not a businessman, Jacques, but could it be a 'chicken-and-egg' situation (or do I mean 'Catch-22')?

If they don't have the sales volumes they can't get attractive pricing, and they won't get those volumes if the prices seem unreasonably high (postage included)..

Looked at it, but like other folks it just didn't have that 'must-have' pull about it. An earlier comment suggested to me that someone in the company might have said ' we must have a merchandise store' or 'the players are bellyaching for a merch store', without giving it much more than business-model thought.

Another thing is that EVE's players seem generally to be quite demanding about quality. If you follow some of the comments about the work of the Art Dept, you'll see what I mean. There's a cost to quality and variety in product creation, and perhaps CCP just don't want to justify the outlay.

Either way, the store is disappointing and didn't make me reach for the plastic. Some of the earlier suggestions in this thread are excellent, but, well, what I said...

How to build a sensible online store for branded merchandise:

1) find a partner whose business is custom branded merchandise and sells & delivers it worldwide at competitive rates
2) license your IP brand products to them and co-develop what items you want to brand and how (t-shirts yes, dildos no; ship artwork yes, your devs' mug shots no)
3) ask them to build you, or build it yourself, a storefront microsite for selling the custom apparel branded with your IP, based on the backend code they already use for operating their business
4) charge a royalty fee for each print/embroid of your IP and let professionals bother with production, storage and delivery of the item
5) relax & profit

When you need to travel to a city with no regular air links, you don't start by finding someone who can build an airplane for you while you take flight lessons. You just hire a travel agent to charter a flight for you and let the airline bother with the details of actually flying an airplane to your destination in time.

But, who knows?

Awww, this is getting interesting!

- the shop itself is created & a maintained through the company Brightstores, which hosts & provides custom storefronts and backend management for corporate stores. So far so good, with plans starting at 145 $ per month, they seem a competent corporate store service

- the assets in the store are designed and manufactured by Development Plus Inc, an agency specialyzed in game and media custom swag. Maybe you've heard of guys like Rockstar Games, HBO or some Coca Cola Company; those are clients of Development Plus Inc. So certainly there's a solid, competent company behind the design and manufacture of EVE's premium swag.

- what I haven't found, is who stores & delivers the items. My guess is that it could be CCP USA themselves, since Brighstores manages webstores and inventory but no physical items, and DP designs and manufactures the items but doesn't sells them.

So the unprofessional blopper of the EVE Store's shipping prices would be CCP's responsability. The items may not be of everybody's liking and certainly they're priced as what they are, custom designed and manufactured premium swag, but both the design and purchase/inventory process are in the hands of competent professionals.

Of course it's CCP who decides whether they want ordinary swag or premium swag, and simple branding or full fledged design, and whether they use Rixx Javix's awesome artwork or don't, and then EVE nerds will buy it or don't. But the moment someone OK'ed a delivery process that charges 80 dollars to customers for no good reason, all the hard work went down the drain.

Maybe CCP will sort it, maybe don't. They're in a tough place to sign a deal with a parcel service as volume is the op-word for parcel costs and EVE will never generate enough volume. That's why I suggested to sign the deal with someone who already is shipping thousands of items each day and haves a good shipping plan, specially since shipping prices are one of the historical complains about the EVE Store(s).