EVE General Discussion

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?

Hey CCP why was this vendor chosen? I haven't tried to order anything yet and if I do i'm in Texas so i won't get screwed, but lots of my UK/Euro corp mates are disgusted.

First off, who in the high hells uses the United States Postal Service to deliver goods to in international clientele? It would be like me saying "screw emailing that guy, i'll just tie a note to this carrier pigeon and hope for the best...sometime next month". I don't know of ANY reputable companies that deliver things via USPS, and if they did they'd give you the option of using UPS or FedEx.

Hell, FedEx and UPS are CHEAPER for the company itself, what kind of partner did CCP pick that uses a more expensive (to them) method of shipping? And already several of my corp mates are complaining that the vendor is out of stuff they want to buy.

WTF CCP? This doesn't inspire confidence or make me want to buy stuff from them, a shop like this should be a very simple matter. Someone in your company seems to have dropped the ball on vetting this partner's operations and capabilities.

Hoodies and jackets with faction insignia, please- colors should reflect individual faction style.

UPDATE 2016-19-NOV: Just received EVE logo hoodie and am disappointed.
Ordered a medium, should have ordered a large. I'm not fat, but this thing is tight and clingy, with very thin, stretchy fabric. Not at all what I think of for a hoodie. Maybe for a stripper...

Even if it fit, the material is so thin that I can't imagine it providing any warmth.

Two frowns.

I am really scratching my head over this.

I think the last time ccp shared subscriber locations was back in 2008 but I wouldn't be surprised if the spread is still similar. If that's the case then they have just opened a store that is only really viable for 37% of their market.



( 2008 subs data:

United States - 37.06% subscribers ; 87,091 out of 304,177,000 citizens ( 0.0286% of population - one in 3493 humans )
United Kingdom - 13.92% subscribers ; 32,712 out of 60,587,300 citizens ( 0.0540% of population - one in 1852 humans )
Others worldwide - 10.50% subscribers ; 24,675 out of 5,549,445,701 citizens ( 0.0004% of population - one in 224902 humans )
Germany - 8.05% subscribers ; 18,918 out of 82,210,000 citizens ( 0.0230% of population - one in 4346 humans )
Russia - 5.54% subscribers ; 13,019 out of 142,008,838 citizens ( 0.0092% of population - one in 10908 humans )
Canada - 4.84% subscribers ; 11,374 out of 33,275,000 citizens ( 0.0342% of population - one in 2926 humans )
Australia - 3.04% subscribers ; 7,144 out of 21,310,000 citizens ( 0.0335% of population - one in 2983 humans )
France - 2.47% subscribers ; 5,805 out of 64,473,140 citizens ( 0.0090% of population - one in 11107 humans )
Netherlands - 2.30% subscribers ; 5,405 out of 16,408,557 citizens ( 0.0329% of population - one in 3036 humans )
Sweden - 2.28% subscribers ; 5,358 out of 9,196,227 citizens ( 0.0583% of population - one in 1716 humans )
Denmark - 2.24% subscribers ; 5,264 out of 5,475,791 citizens ( 0.0961% of population - one in 1040 humans )
Norway - 1.43% subscribers ; 3,361 out of 4,752,735 citizens ( 0.0707% of population - one in 1414 humans )
Finland - 1.05% subscribers ; 2,468 out of 5,308,208 citizens ( 0.0465% of population - one in 2151 humans )
Ukraine - 0.90% subscribers ; 2,115 out of 46,372,700 citizens ( 0.0046% of population - one in 21926 humans )
Poland - 0.84% subscribers ; 1,974 out of 38,518,241 citizens ( 0.0051% of population - one in 19513 humans )
Austria - 0.81% subscribers ; 1,904 out of 8,316,487 citizens ( 0.0229% of population - one in 4369 humans )
Belgium - 0.75% subscribers ; 1,763 out of 10,584,534 citizens ( 0.0167% of population - one in 6005 humans )
Romania - 0.67% subscribers ; 1,575 out of 22,246,862 citizens ( 0.0071% of population - one in 14129 humans )
Spain - 0.59% subscribers ; 1,387 out of 45,200,737 citizens ( 0.0031% of population - one in 32601 humans )
Hungary - 0.41% subscribers ; 964 out of 10,041,000 citizens ( 0.0096% of population - one in 10421 humans )
Brazil - 0.31% subscribers ; 729 out of 186,757,608 citizens ( 0.0004% of population - one in 256359 humans )

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).

I put in a nice $148 order on launch day (the 15th), had problems mentioned earlier with 2/3 of the shirts that ran out at Vegas not being in stock. Still haven't received updates after that -- no tracking number, no updated invoice.

Has anyone actually got past the initial ordering phase? Like having the order status change from 'NEW' or get a tracking number, or just having the stuff show up?

Edit: Finally got my shipping confirmation at 2 on the 22nd.

I was browsing for some of the shirts, just in case I saw something I liked, and most of the merch is out of stock.
What gives?
How did you sell out of medium and even large type shirts?
Where's the rest of the stock?
Any kind of ETA on a refill?
Shouldn't there be a box I can tick so an automated service will email me when stock is back in?

Sorry to hear the quality is bad. I guess that's one item of my list of considerations.

So zero comment by CCP about the issues people are raising over this anywhere on any of their official platforms for communication? Good to see the community management team are super busy with Reddit posting instead.

Doesnt even matter if the shipping price is too high if you are out of stock for those items. Seriously, from the items I checked, they are out of stock, all 3 of them that I considered worthy of buying.