Goals and Objectives of this Request for Proposal
Open Source Matters, Inc., on behalf of the Joomla Project, aims to find a company or individual willing to create, manage and run a merchandise shop on the domain shop.joomla.org
The overall goal for the Joomla Project is to have a professional service with a good selection of quality products shipped to our customers without delay or undue cost. This is more important than earning commission although this is of course also considered during the proposal evaluation.
The Joomla Project expects to find a supplier who can design, manufacture (print) and ship merchandise products such as T-shirts, caps, stickers and similar merchandise bearing the Joomla logo and/or Joomla related promotional messages.
The shop will be promoted on the various web properties of Joomla as well as on social media and official Joomla events with the intent of allowing the huge user base of Joomla to purchase products directly to support the project. Additionally it is intention of the Joomla Project to purchase any merchandise needed by the project itself directly in the shop (with hopefully a quantity discount).
Responders
- Individuals, organizations and corporations are eligible to respond to this request.
- Responders should have previous experience developing and running an online store.
- Responders should be willing to share detailed accounting and financial data about the shop with Open Source Matters Inc.
- Responders must have the capability of shipping orders worldwide at a reasonable rate and without undue delays.
Scope of Work & Services Required
The awarded applicant will be required to develop, set-up, maintain, run, promote and update an online shop on the domain shop.joomla.org, using a Joomla e-commerce extension, at no costs to Open Source Matters or the Joomla Project.
The awarded applicant will be required to share a commission of each sold product following an agreed structure as well as provide detailed accounting and financial transparency.
The awarded applicant must agree to pay Open Source Matters the due commission according to a monthly schedule.
The awarded applicant must agree to handle all sales, enquiries, returns, refunds, complaints and issues in a transparent and timely manner following the general industry standards.
The awarded applicant will be licensed to use the Trademarks and Logos owned by the Joomla Project and should be able to create appealing designs themselves. Additionally the Joomla Project may submit designs for the awarded applicant to use. Both the Joomla Project and the Awarded applicant has veto rights and can reject designs or products proposed by the other party.
The shop shall accept payments in US Dollars and Euros and shall be available in English. Any proposal intending to offer a shopping experience in additional languages and currencies will be favoured.
Compensation
Open Source Matters, is not legally able to run an online shop itself because of its fiscal status. For this reason Open Source Matters is obliged to award a 3rd party applicant the job of setting up and running a merchandising shop in return for commission paid to Open Source Matters.
Commission payment should be monthly by VEEM.
Proposal Requirements
Responders are requested to write a proposal of how they intend to set up and run the online store in as much details as possible. We are especially interested in hearing about the following:
- Examples of which products would be made available at what prices (5-10 examples) and what packaging will the applicant offer
- If the applicant intends to provide a promotion calendar
- What profit sharing solutions will the applicant offer - What level of commission would be shared with OSM for each product
- What Joomla extension would power the store
- What relevant experience does the applicant have in setting up and running a merchandise shop
- What delivery method (cost and time) the applicant expects for each product (examples of countries)
- Which location(s) the applicant will be shipping from
- Which locations the applicant will NOT be shipping to
- What unique or special ideas the applicant may have for the project
- How long will the applicant need to set up the shop from being approved
- Anything else the applicant may find relevant for our decision
- Which discount structure would be reserved to Open Source Matters for quantity orders (e.g. to be sent to JoomlaDay, Joomla User Groups, etc.)
- Any proposed contract should be of a 3 years length with a mutually agreeable renewal clause
Submission Timeline
Terms
- The RFP can be withdrawn at any point without reason.
- No compensation will be given to any entity submitting a proposal or working on a proposal.
- The vendor selected for this proposal will be solely at the discretion of Open Source Matters, Inc.
- Open Source Matters, Inc. reserves the right to not award any applicant in the case no proposal meets the expectation or the requirements set by this RFP.
Questions from the potential vendors
Are rough monthly sales figures available from the current shop.joomla.org to give an indication of current sales patterns?
From May 2018 to the end of August 2019 (since then, nobody is in charge for the shop, so no marketing, no new products, no new designs): average of 20 sales per month.
Note: with availability of stickers, group orders for JUGs/JoomlaDays/events, new designs, the number of sales should be higher. And with a product range for J4, the number of sales should increase too.
Are visitor analytics available from the current shop.joomla.org to give an indication of the traffic profile?
Note that stats since September 2019 are not relevant as the shop was on cruise control. So stats to look at are from May 6, 2018 to August 31, 2019, when the Shop was properly managed with promotional initiatives and new products.
Is there statistics or estimates available on the numbers of people globally participating in Joomla User Groups, JoomlaDay events and interested in the Joomla project to assist applicants determine the potential size of the audience that may be likely to purchase Joomla merchandise?
A summary of the events held in 2019 is available in this article of the Joomla Community Magazine: https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/march-2020/joomla-events-team-report . A properly managed official shop would represent the "go-to" shop for local groups and event organizers, to purchase Joomla merchandise, supporting the Project.
Does the current shop.joomla.org have any Google Tag Manager and associated remarketing data configured at the moment, and would that information be accessible to the awarded applicant?
Google Tag Manager / Google Analytics is enabled on Spreadshirt already. When the RFP is assigned, the selected vendor would have access to the GTM/GA account for the property in order to define remarketing/retargeting strategy.
If there is no remarketing data available, can you confirm if the current shop.joomla.org is simply a basic interim storefront and features such as remarketing, retargeting, detecting cart abandonment and other SEM audience triggers had not been configured at any time due to the interim status of the service?
The current shop uses Spreadshirt that doesn’t provide any marketing automation, retargeting, remarketing, cart abandonment targeting mechanisms.
Where the applicant is expected to provide a promotion calendar, would the applicant have access to communicate to OSM associated entities (JoomlaDays, Joomla User Groups etc) through OSM communication channels, or would the applicant be building their own customer database from a cold start (ie a fresh list)?
The chosen provider should work with the Social Media Team to promote the shop. The provider will have to provide imagery / text to fit our accounts (OSM can provide the template and existing imagery to help - as I think we should be consistent in our communication). A promotion calendar would help to make more sales at defined periods. It’s not compulsory but would be a plus (special prices for Joomla’s birthday for example). Also, special prices for group orders should be provided for official events, JoomlaDays and JUGs.
Has there been any feedback on the current store that can be made available to applicants to see where pain points may exist for customers so that applicants can be aware of them and attempt to address them in their proposals?
Current pain points of the online shop: prices too high, quality is quite poor, no possibility of group orders, no stickers, no new design since August 2019, no discount, long and expensive delivery time.