A Shop for Linden Waldorf

An online shop for Linden Waldorf can provide Linden with revenue from both outside and inside the school community and from both local and nationwide customers.

This shop can exist without purchasing, manufacturing, or storing merchandise, and come at a cost of about $41/month to run.

It's low-risk, low-overhead, low-maintenance, and potentially high reward.

  • Print-on-Demand

    Print-on-demand (POD) is a business model that allows products to be printed and shipped after an order is received. This eliminates the need for sellers to purchase and manage inventory.

    Here are some benefits of POD:

    • No upfront costs: There's no need to pay for printing and storage before selling products. Instead, you pay your print provider after the customer has paid for their order. 
    • Test products without risk: You can try out new product lines or designs without the risk of buying inventory. If a design doesn't sell, you just delete it. 
    • Avoids wasted stock: Since products are only fulfilled once an order is made, there's no risk of having leftover stock. 
    • White-label approach: The print provider prints and ships the products on your behalf, so there's no mention of them on the product or packaging. 


    To get started with POD, you:

    1. Set up an online store on an ecommerce platform or marketplace (like Shopify, which integrates with nearly all POD providers).
    2. Connect your store to a POD platform.
    3. Create custom designs and add them to products.
    4. Publish the product listings on your store.

  • Dropshipping

    Dropshipping is an online retail model where a seller doesn't keep inventory or handle shipping.

    How it works: When a customer buys a product, the seller purchases it from a third-party supplier, who then ships it directly to the customer. The seller only pays the supplier for the item after it's sold. 

    Benefits: Dropshipping is a popular choice for entrepreneurs because it allows them to start an online store quickly and with minimal overhead. It also eliminates the need for inventory storage and finding a warehouse.

    The top two POD dropship companies are:

    Printful

    Printify

    Visit the links to see the range of products and learn more.

    While they work a bit differently, both of these companies provide...

    • Consistent quality products
    • Consistent quality shipping
    • High quality mockup images
    • Easy to use product design and publishing tools

    Products from both providers can be sold alongside each other in the same shop.

Costs:

$39/month (paid monthly) or $29/month (paid annually) for a Shopify account and $14/year for the domain + the cost of additional accounting and IRS filing.

To make design more accessible for more team members, you can also add Canva Pro for either $15/month or $120/year.

These are the only costs necessary to begin and run your shop.

Marketing:

Marketing costs can be taken on if/when business allows, but free marketing is available to begin with by asking our Linden community to share our shop with their friends, families, networks, and other communities. Since this shop is a non-profit endeavor, we would have access to earned media exposure that might not be available to for-profit DTC retail businesses.

QUESTION: Would shop revenue be subject to taxes as "unrelated business income" or would this revenue qualify as fundraising?

Design:

Key to capturing revenue outside of the school community is designing products that people outside of our community would buy. Designs would be grounded in cherished Linden values and traditions, but in most cases would not include Linden Waldorf School branding.

Design cues:

  • Youthful
  • Trendy
  • Nature-inspired
  • Waldorf themes
  • Linden themes
  • Some Waldorf visual identity has historically included the art nouveau style. Rock music imagery from the late '60's and early '70s also pulled from the art nouveau style.
See some examples here!