Matt (Indigo’s new lead web developer) and I have been working hard with the great guys over at Automattic, to produce a fully bespoke e-commerce website, hosted on Indigo’s servers, to sell WordPress apparel and merchandise.
San Francisco based, Automattic are the creators of the open-source WordPress blogging platform (available for free), one of the post popular blogging software packages in the world, with over one million blogs hosted on WordPress.com alone. Indigo are handling all aspects of their merchandise project including screen printing, fulfilment, distribution and customer service, and even shooting the model photographs (above)!
There are two styles of shirt, mens and womens, screen printed in one colour, on American Apparel garments. Automattic identified the American Apparel brand as the apparel of choice due to their excellent fit, ethical credentials and consumer awareness of the brand’s quality.
In effect Indigo has built two stores; one for North and South American customers, with pricing in US dollars and one for international customers, with pricing in GB pounds.
Indigo’s first major project in the United States and we are using some sophisticated order management programming to send the Americas store order details (once payment has been verified by PayPal) to either Chicago or Los Angeles based distribution centres (managed by Shipwire), depending on where the customer is based, to save on customer shipping charges. Indigo also has implemented a dedicated toll free telephone number (1-800-293-9693) to handle US customer enquiries. International orders are shipped from London.
This project has been tremendous fun and highlights our desire to provide dedicated solutions for clients rather than just shipping a box of printed t-shirts to a customer’s office. We have always been big fans of WordPress, it the software that has been powering our own blog for over three years, so it is great to give something back to the people that originally built it. So, please, buy a WordPress t-shirt, support their great software. Prices are a very reasonable 17 USD, or 9.50 GBP, for either style of tee.
The price for the shirt is reasonable, but $9.75 for shipping and handling? Ugh.
Will,
Thanks for the feedback. Shipping costs have been reduced slightly but we are using UPS to ship orders which ensures there is a tracking number and insurance. Of course shipping also covers the pick and pack costs.
Alex
Guys… It’s great to hear that you went out of your way to make it international, and that you’ve got some fancy distribution scheme, but the Canadian prices are AWFUL.
$17.50 of SHIPPING on a shirt that only costs $17.00 is not only outragously high, it’s ridiculous and kind of pathetic. Do you actually expect anyone to pay twice the price of the shirt because of delivery? And can you imagine an actual human being who is so concerned with tracking numbers and packaging that they are comfortable with these luxuries doubling the price?
Lets get serious guys. Canada is very close to the states. You can ship a shirt to Canada from the states for $5. Either you’re trying to rip us off (I don’t think you’re trying to rip us off, so…) or you’ve just made a very very bad business decision regarding mail providers. You will not sell very many shirts this way. PLEASE PLEASE reconsider using USPS ground as an option, at least to Canada where it really is close and cheap and relatively fast to use ground mail.
Jeremy,
We are def. not trying to rip you off and the issue is our fulfilment center only uses UPS not USPS, for ‘insurance purposes’. Based on the comments, we are investigating options for Canadian deliveries and will come back to people shortly once we have worked something out.
Thanks for your feedback – we are acting on it!
Yeah, the shipping costs are insane for a t-shirt…
Is the shipping price better now for our T-shirt yet? A shirt could be shipped for $3.00 or less, $10.00 is just a rip off.
Hello,
This is Nate with shipwire.com. We are helping Indigo handle their fulfillment for the WordPress t-shirts. The T-shirts can now ship out via USPS to make US deliveries much more cost effective.
We’re working with Indigo to ensure that Canadian and worldwide deliveries can be as cost effective. Our typical model is to help a merchant move inventory into the country (Canada) to cut shipping prices. The international aspect of the shipping such as customs, tax and shipper is what drives the fulfillment price (rather than just distance). We hope to be able to help Indigo and WordPress move inventory into Canada if the demand is there.
Thanks to Indigo for this opportunity and thank you to everybody on this blog for your passionate follow-up that we offer the best fulfillment experience to end buyers. https://www.shipwire.com/w/blog/ for more info or to contact us.
Nate
Thank you for the feedback.
The shipping charges vary dependent on location rather than increasing the t-shirt price to subsidise shipping costs to far flung destinations. For a branded American Apparel t-shirt, that raises money for an excellent project, we think it is important the t-shirt unit price is not too high and have variable shipping charges that include tracking.
even more advertising for wordpress?
You have a very good shirts.
Great venture guys hope it goes okay. You should come up with some “cool” tees rather than just the wordpress logo.
Nice color, look like Liverpool’s football-jersey
looks great!
We print a lot of American Apparel t-shirts and they are great t-shirts for style and quality. We were actually considering creating a t-shirt store for computer tech t-shirts screen printed with different things. We should get a bunch of these t-shirts off you and sell them.
You have given me an idea for my printing business in Australia. Thanks!
Very cool shirts, but should have more styles to choose from. Nice though.
Can we get these in Australia?
@Jon: Yes – you can purchase from the ‘world’ store
Oh yay I just can not wait to purchase a shirt as long as the shipping is right. Did I read a comment right, $10 for shipping, now come on that is just a rip off. Surely you can lower that to a maximum of $5.
Also I just checked out some shipping info and even $5 on shipping will be way too much. I agree with the commenter up there, no more than $3, I hope you will be offering more than just t-shirts though! A coffee mug would be what I would want most of all, considering how much coffee I need in order to write all the time!
Love the idea, I have the shirt too :).Green works best for the shirt!
Has just tried to purchase the olive tee & USB drive from the world store, but found no paypal payment option 🙁
@Robin – the world store uses worldpay a major credit card processor here in the UK and accepts all major credit cards.
People like to moan about delivery charges but when its the wrong size or wrong colour they expect it picked up for free, well nothing in life is for free somebody has to pay…
I like the color.Are there new styles available yet?
good price for the T-shirt,Are there new styles available ?
Doesn’t matter if shipping and handling is $9.75, I still like the shirts and they are worth it.