Why we created a store that generates us no revenue

If you keep up with us on Instagram, you’ll know by now that we launched our first official Longboard Dancing World Store! It’s up and running now, and at the time of writing this article, there is a small selection of clothing items and coffee cups, all which rock our official logo.

We will make ZERO money with this store.

If you’ve read my story on why I started Longboard Dancing World, you’ll know that, above all else, my main mission was to expand our awesome community through this site and social media.

That still holds true.

The shop is hosted on Spreadshirt, most of you have probably heard about tehm, but in a nutshell it’s a company that lets people upload their designs and sell them however they want. There is capability to earn money with your designs on Spreadshirt, and most people do so. But I chose to disable that for two main reasons.

1. Like I said, my priority here is to build community, not make money. I felt that gaining profit on each sale was counterproductive to this and made the project feel more like a “business” than a community.
2. It cuts costs for people actually buying the product. What’s cool about Spreadshirt is you can setup a shop with your own designs, and they take care of the rest. I don’t have a physical stock of pre-ordered T-Shirts sitting in my closet that I need to sell. You place an order, Spreadshirt prints it and ships it, and in this case, they get 100% of the profit. By me choosing to forego profit for myself, everything on the store is actually 20% cheaper for the end purchaser. This enables more people to buy the shirts, which in turns grows the community, and supports point number one.

I did think about turning on the profit option on the store, as in the end, I am still one person completely financially funding this site – upkeep, sticker printing and sending, and everything else. It would be nice to get some financial support to keep small things like that running, but as I’ve already made clear, that is not the case here with this shop.

Instead I will be setting up a donation function on the site in the future, so people who want to support what I am doing can do so on their own terms, when they choose.

More on the details of the shop itself

Being a vegan and someone who is generally concerned about the welfare of our planet and all of its inhabitants, it was important to me that I found a way to produce branded goods with the smallest amount of impact to the planet as possible. Below are some details on what you are getting and supporting when you order from our online store.

Spreadshirt at a glance

So Spreadshirt is currently hosting our online shop. What a lot of people don’t know is that Spreadshirt is actually based in Leipzig, Germany, where I live as well. (Their headquarters is literally about a 15 minute walk from my apartment lol). They have generally a very forward mentality, and as a custom design company, they’re pretty transparent with their practices. Pulled directly from their responsibility page, you can expect the following when you order an item from Spreadshirt (this applies to any product they host, not just our store):

• Commitment to the environment and employees across their entire worldwide operation.
• Numerous active social outreach campaigns. I’ve witnessed this first hand in their HQ. They have mountains of returned clothing items that were incorrectly printed or ordered by customers, which they save and give to employees or donate to various charities.
• Transparency on their website on how they do business, documents for things such as their code of conduct & product origin guide are readily available in plain English, for the whole world to see.

Furthermore they offer worldwide shipping, and a 30 day satisfaction guarantee to make things right in case something is not produced correctly.

Stanley & Stella at a glance

When setting up a shop with Spreadshirt, you have a wide array of actual products to choose from for your branded merchandise needs. Specifically for our store, I made sure that every piece of clothing available only came from Stanley & Stella. The brand was founded in 2012, and has one of the most impressive resumes in terms of the lengths they go through to provide responsible clothing at reasonable costs. Their ENTIRE SOCIAL REPORT FROM 2018 is publicly available, which outlines their entire plan going forward on how they’re going to move forward as a socially responsible brand. At the time of writing this article, they hold the following certifications:

• Oko-tex
• OCS Blended
• OCS 100
• Fairware Foundation
• GOTS
• GOTS 85
• GRS
• PETA Approved

So when you buy one of their products, you know it’s organic, ethically sourced and created, organic, and didn’t hurt a single animal in any way during its production. That standard gets passed on to the items available in our Spreadshirt store.

So go on, buy something and help us spread the stoke, while feeling good about it!

We hope you dig this story on why we wanted to open this store, what was important for us in the process, and what we hope to accomplish.

Spreadshirt offers 15% off for the first two weeks of a new store being open, so now is the best chance to get your brand new LD.World merch. Don’t miss out! (Ends September 30th, 2019)