Update: I can’t believe this, but you guys bought all our stickers in under 24 hours. Thank you for your generosity! I’ve ordered another (larger) batch, which should be with us on Wednesday Nov 16. I’ll post here when they’re available again.
Update 2: We’ve set up pre-orders for the second batch of stickers, so you can order them now, although we won’t be able to post then until next week. Get clicking!
We’re testing the back-end behind our new online shop, and raising a bit of money for the day-to-day running of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The only product in the store at the moment is a teeny-tiny sticker, which we’re selling at an exorbitant cost to raise funds for the charity – really, we’re asking you to make a donation of £1 (plus shipping, and VAT where appropriate), in return for which we’ll send you a fancy Raspberry Pi vinyl sticker, cut to the shape of the logo. It’s just the right size to stick over your Windows key (it’s got a special coating for high-abrasion environments, so should put up with your pressing the Windows key a reasonable amount). It’s a nice fit on a Raspberry Pi case, over the SD card slot if you decide not to use a case, in the corner of your monitor, on your microwave – go wild! I have 1,000 in stock at the moment. If they look like they’re selling well, I’ll order some more. T-shirts are also in the works for when we’ve got fulfilment completely set up.
Raspberry Pi stickers - get them while they're hot!
Given we like to do things as transparently as possible, I should explain why we’re starting the shop off like this, selling something small, before we start selling the Raspberry Pi itself. We’re using the stickers to test a number of things. We’re checking the practicality of PayPal as a payment method and as a way of processing credit cards; we’re testing our shipping calculations for parcels; we’re ensuring that the shop software’s output of labels is acceptable; and we’re looking at inventory tracking. We figured the best way to do this was by selling something very low-value and very small. Hence stickers.
Initially, we’re using the Royal Mail to fulfil orders. We will eventually be changing over to a carrier with who will do warehousing for us too, and using them instead of the Post Office to send you your items, but while we’re only selling stickers as a test run, it doesn’t make sense for us to spend money on warehouse space we won’t be using.
We can only set the store software up to handle parcels, so it’s charging the parcel fee although that’s not what we’re paying. The postage fee we’re actually paying in the UK, for example, is the 46p it costs for a 1st class stamp. Sorry about that – there isn’t anything we can do about it. I’m actually stuffing the envelopes, sticking labels on and posting them myself, so any money above the cost of postage and cost of the sticker and envelope is going straight to the charity.
