: Elsewhere in this thread Martin Frost provides a quick and cogent analysis of what it would take to implement something like this. The bottom line is that it would take up a whole bunch of volunteer time and effort, ultimately providing the IJA with very little benefit. : This reinforces a thought I've had for some time: the IJA should get out of the retail business. : In my experience as a Board member and volunteer for the IJA, the IJA's most active members spend relatively little time on the IJA's core mission of serving the juggling community, and a whole lotta time on basic housekeeping. : The retail side of the IJA (videos, t-shirts, etc) requires an enormous amount of housekeeping: orders have to be taken, payments have to be collected and accounted for, orders have to be packaged and shipped, and the inevitable problems have to be sorted out. This consumes valuable time and energy that could arguably be much better spent on things like making World Juggling Day a really big deal, improving the IJA's outreach, etc. : From talking to Dan Howard (outgoing Treasurer) the bulk of the administrative accounting work has to do with individual merchandise orders. From talking to Joyce Howard (Merchandise Director), setting up the web store is turning out to be one of the most difficult and time consuming parts of getting the new web site up and running. : All of which leads me to ask: why is the IJA in the retail business at all? Yes, absolutely, the IJA should continue to produce its videos and make them available. And yes, absolutely, back issues of JUGGLE should be made available for the few who want them. : But the IJA could handle all this on a wholesale-only basis. The videos could be sold by one-time offer at the festival and otherwise through juggling retailers. Stagewrite already handles back issues of their other publications; I'm sure we could come to an arrangement where they handle back issues of JUGGLE. : The one wrinkle in all of this is that it would be difficult (though not impossible) to offer member-only pricing for IJA merchandise without an IJA member store. But I honestly don't see that as a big deal --- we've gone most of our history without member-only pricing and I haven't seen a significant change in membership levels that could be attributed to the dual pricing structure. : Greg Since becoming IJA Merchandise Director about a year ago, I've tossed around the idea of the IJA getting out of the retail business also (especially when I get really frustrated with shipping details, order errors, etc.). We just started selling our DVDs wholesale a year ago, so we're really new at this experience. Greg is right that we need to take a good look at our goals and see if we're spending too much time on details that could be handled better by retail stores that are already set up to deal with customers. I think we need to look at the numbers. We will have the 2004 financial report in a few days. Dan Howard (former treasurer) will present it at the board meeting on Wednesday night. Then we can see what our income and expenses were for a full year (the first full year of operation since the IJA became full-volunteer again). I'm hoping those numbers will give us a clearer picture of how much net profit we make from selling DVDs, old magazines and shirts. Joyce