[pRFP] ENS DAO Merch Store

🌱 ENS Ecosystem Community
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Deadline Extended

I am extending the deadline to next Wednesday (06/08) at 11:59pm UTC to accommodate more submissions.

Status
Submission Period: Closed
Question Period: In Progress
Applicant Chosen —
On-chain Vote: —

Overview

The Community Working Group requests a proposal for a merchandise store to be created and managed by a third-party operator. The third-party will create an online portal that allows for the sale of officially branded ENS DAO and/or ENS merchandise for public purchase and global fulfillment. The 3rd party will also be responsible for the day-to-day operations and maintenance of The Store and the various customer orders.

This Request for Proposal (“RFP”) is issued to describe the selection process for the creation and ongoing management of the ENS Merchandise Store (“The Store”). The Store will be managed on a day-to-day basis by an entity known as “The Operator.”

Two separate awards will be given: one award for the creation of The Store and one award for the management of The Store (see Award Strategy below).

Scope of Work

Applicants may submit any business model or methodology that would satisfy the minimum requirements.

Scope of work includes:

  • Creation of The Store
  • Day to day management of The Store
  • Responding to customer inquiries in a timely fashion (SLA on response should be 24 hours)
  • Liaising between customer and manufacturer when issues arise on individual orders

Note: The DAO will provide approved artwork or assets to be used for merchandise.

Selection Criteria

The Community Working Group will field proposals from members of the public, DAO members, non-profit entities, for-profit entities, and any other independent contractors.

Preference will be given to applicants based on demonstrated ability to execute a merchandise store on behalf of the ENS DAO.

Demonstrated ability is defined as qualifications or history of prior experience running an e-commerce store, producing and selling graphic artwork at scale, or other justifications proposed by the applicant in their proposal.

Required Minimum Capabilities

The required minimum capabilities of The Store shall include:

  • Accept Cryptocurrencies
  • Credit Card payment processing must comply with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS).
  • ENS or ENS DAO branded clothing and swag
  • Clothing Sizes in multiple unisex sizes
  • 3-5 additional Swag items
  • Customizations that include individual ENS Names.
  • Global fulfillment and shipping
  • Accept a variety of global currencies

Preferred Capabilities

  • Express shipping is available
  • Eco-friendly sourcing of goods and services
  • Selection of items above and beyond the minimum required 3-5 swag pieces
  • Ability to include new products based on consensus requests from the community
  • NFT or innovative integrations

Applicants should describe the following in their response:

  • Timeline for creation of The Store
  • If the applicant will perform the creation of the store or sub-contracted.
  • Description of customer payment method and process
  • Description of customization capabilities
  • Description of fulfillment service and shipping process
  • Amount requested for Creation Award
  • Amount requested for Management Award

Timeline

Timeframe Dates Description
Submission Period 14 Days (Extended) 05/17 to 06/08 GMT Applicants may submit proposals.
Question Period 7 Days 06/08 - 06/15 Questions fielded following submission period.
Approval Period 7 Days 06/16 - 06/22 Working Group will select applicant(s).
Executable Proposal Standard Timeframe — Working Group announces chosen applicant(s) and submits proposal to vote for authorization DAO funding.
Expected Delivery Determined by the Applicant — Applicant delivers per their timeline.

Award Strategy

The Store will be run with a non-profit strategy while seeking to be self-sustaining through the profit margin. The Community Working Group will provide two award types for this request.

  • Creation Award - The Community Working Group will provide an award for the completion of the creation of The Store.
  • Management Award - The Community Working Group will fund the Store’s management in 6-month increments, paid at the beginning of each 6-month increment. The management award amount can be revisited in future cycles if The Operator finds economic imbalances and presents those to the DAO.

The Operator will serve the ENS DAO, and the ENS DAO will retain the right to replace the Operator without cause. If an Operator is removed, the Management Awards previously paid out will remain with the previous Operator.

All design elements will have to be approved by the Community Working Group. Any design elements, deliverables, or inventory will be the intellectual or physical property of the ENS DAO.

RFP Manager

The RFP Manager is @coltron.eth.

All submissions will be sent via forum message to the RFP Manager on or before 11:59 06/08 GMT The RFP Manager will post submissions in this thread to initiate the question period. At that time, the DAO members may submit questions to the applicants.

This structure prevents copycatting, bidding wars, and protects the competitiveness of applicants’ submissions.

Budget

This RFP is an OPEN BID by all applicants. Applicants determine the budget.

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ATTN: Applicants

  • A mock submission may be found here.
  • We are flexible to accept any business plan as long as the minimum requirements are satisfied.
  • All submissions will be sent via forum message to the @coltron.eth 11:59 05/31 GMT.
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Great job, this format should serve as a good example of a pRFP!

  • Custom orders or capabilities for custom orders

What does this one mean specifically?

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:100: agree.

@Coltron.eth would it be beneficial to push out a tweet about this?

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Thanks for this catch, it’s unclear. Many people have expressed they want the option to include ENS Name on merch.

This will be an interesting challenge to solve, but the applicants will ultimately decide how they want to tackle this.

Will do today!

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Could you clarify the non-profit role? Does that mean all proceeds go back to the DAO?

May I suggest shortening the time period? I think there are a lot of people who want official merch.

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"The Store will be run with a non-profit strategy while seeking to be self-sustaining through the profit margin. "

The operator will retain the profits. To be clear, profit for our case is the revenue generated from merch sale less expenses and liabilities for maintaining the online storefront and upkeep of inventory.

This incentivizes the operator to run the business well in order to maximize their return while ensuring the store remains self-sustainable. Really, the operation bears some similarities to a concession agreement.

We can negotiate finer details before selection. If an applicant submits a well-devised business plan that works for the DAO, it will be entertained. Finding a competent operator is my primary concern at this stage.

No. I don’t think this should be rushed.

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I’m not sure if there is a conflict of interest here or not, as a delegate, but Giveth, Commons Stack and TEC have all worked with General Magic to build swag shops (and a variety of other things). And it’s been GREAT!

I co-founded GM as a web3 Public Goods dev team for hire, and this is a perfect opportunity for us to jump in and support ENS!

Edited to remove proposal info… will add back soon :smiley:

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TY coltron

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Question Period - Open

For the next seven days, the following submissions are open to DAO Discussion.

At the conclusion of this period, the RFP manager and community stewards will decide if one of these proposals will be put forward to a social proposal.

How to ask a question

Please follow these guidelines to keep these discussions easy to track.

  • Questions: Craft your questions mindfully and succinctly to elicit the information you are seeking. Tag the submitter if possible.
  • Responses: Address questions fully as a reply with inline quotes for easy sorting.

Remember: This is a Q&A, not a debate.

The Proposals

Proposal 1

Submitted by: @accessor.eth
Link to Proposal: Proposal #1

Proposal 2

Submitted by: @Griff
Link to Documentation: Proposal #2

Proposal 3

Submitted by: Rob from Juniper
Link to Documentation: Proposal #3

Proposal 4

Submitted by: @SOFam
Link to Documentation: Proposal #4

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Here are links to merchandise shops topdrawermerch.com has recently completed.

Bored Ape Yacht Club

Coachella Music Festival

Invisible Friends

IOTA

Snoop Dogg

Gutter Cat Gang

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@Griff Will the proposed merch store support individually customised items?

Is it possible to get a breakdown of the $1k/mo support fee for the store? This seems high for a largely automated system that is not likely to have high individual support costs.

Rob from Juniper: Will Juniper’s store support individually customised items?

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You know it!!! We are testing the process now. Hopefully I will have a griff.eth shirt in my hands soon, will send pics ;-D

Is it possible to get a breakdown of the $1k/mo support fee for the store?

On the user support question, I will update in a few days, I am at a conference and missed my chance to confirm the breakdown for that.

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Hey Griff, let me know if you have any updates on the sample shirt.

Myself and @5pence.eth plan to review these at the conclusion of the public question period, if you have any supplemental information to submit before tomorrow evening, that would be great.

@nick.eth I pinged Rob via Twitter and e-mail. Awaiting response.

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The $1000 a month will pay for marketing and technical/customer support.

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Is it possible to get a breakdown on that, though? What sort of marketing? How much customer support do you anticipate having to conduct?

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From Rob:

" As for individual customization, unfortunately not. All of our products are done via factory lines and don’t allow for that level of micro-customization, such as your own name on a product.

I’d be cautious of that request and if it’s something that you really care about. Usually the only people who are willing to do that are print on demand companies. You get your name on the product, but then the product itself is quite poor quality. So it’s a trade off."

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Perhaps printed transfer papers of ENS names could be provided by the store, so that the user can put it on their own clothing with an iron?

That way the t-shirts could be from a factory line, and just the transfer paper could be printed by the shop - which shouldn’t be a lot of overhead as you can print many in one go :slight_smile:

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@Cthulu.eth This is definitely something I foresaw being an issue.

I have found a super niche solution that I think will work for us.

After @5pence.eth and I rate these based on minimums, I’ll suggest this process to all the qualified submissions (to keep it fair). If this is an absolute must, we can make a judgement based upon their ability to work this niche printing process into their design/procurement methods.

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I understand that it’s important to everyone to want to have their names on their merchandise.

Look at it from the perspective of the person printing the shirts.
Each custom name requires a unique custom silk screen for printing. That means the producer has to:

Receive the order > check inventory for size, product etc. > Design and print a template according to the request > cut the template > (one per color / layer ) > print the ink on the product, let it dry individually, print a specific shipping label for that particular print, double check it, package it, then ship it. That is for one shirt order.

There are 1.3 million + names registered. 400K+ unique wallets ( if i remember correctly ) say 10% of wallets want their name printed. that is ~40,000 custom prints. 40,000 … 200K+ twitter followers.

the engagement has not been tested before. we have no Idea how many people will actually order a shirt.

if a person could do the entire process for one shirt every 5 minutes for 40k shirts-- that would take 6 months of round the clock non stop work.

Also, I have secured @ensmerch handle on twitter.
Any marketing, social media is all priced in with the ROI with selling over 500 shirts. That is my goal and very feasible IMO. PreSale will last about a week then full merch store comes with nice jackets, nice collared shirts etc.