New FIRST Website Idea?

[lakstick]

Greetings from The RoboDawgs, Teams 216, 244, and 288!

Some team members and I have been throwing around the idea of creating a website that would basically work as the middleman for buying/selling your FRC shirts. This idea comes from our frustration in the fact that very few teams make shirts available for purchase online (Team 254, and Team 610 for a limited time after becoming champs are some of the few that come to mind). I speak on behalf of the members of our teams, that we would be willing to pay to purchase certain teams shirts!

Here's our solution!

Teams would be able to work through the website to sell their official team shirts to paying customers through the (hopefully) acquired domain www.FIRSTGear.com!

The ordering process would go approximately as follows:

1) User browses site for a wanted shirt (Options would change daily as other users are able to buy and sell shirts from their personal collection, however it would be noted if purchasing directly from the team)
2) User orders shirt (enters shipping information as well as pays for shirt)
3) Team is notified via e-mail that an order has been placed. E-mail will contain shipping address as well as verification that amount has been deposited in a pre-setup PayPal account)
4) Team ships shirt to given address (Shipping included in payed amount by user)

The reason for this post comes down to this: What do you think?
-Would you use the site to purchase other team's shirts?
-Do you think your team would be willing to sell your shirts on this site?
-What other functionalities would be needed before you used this website?

The idea for this website is in the infancy stage, so no promises (regardless of feedback) that this will ever happen, however, we think this is a great idea, and hope you all do as well!

Thanks, and we hope to hear from you all soon!
-Mak

[MrTechCenter]

I would be totally willing to use this site. I love t-shirt trading (or in this case, buying and selling). I would definitely buy t-shirts from here. If my team happens to have a surplus, which we never really do, but who knows I think we could put a few on the site and sell them. The only options I would like to have on this site is a search function to search for specific team numbers, and filters such as year (season) and size.

[nicholsjj]

If I were you all I might even consider taking this site past just t-shirts. You could mold the site to make a sort of Craigslistesque First website in which teams could post certain items to sell. A site like this does sound neat, but it might be to tight of a market especially for just t-shirts.

[ehochstein]

On that note, I believe it would be a great site to sell/trade team paraphernalia as well. Maybe giving out the items generally hand out for free at the competition for cheap + the shipping cost.

My team would certainly place some tshirts on the site, functionality wise I would suggest creating a highly customizable store. Basically allow teams to control the qty and price of items as well as the shipping costs.

[Justin Montois]

Not sure of it's feasibility, but I was thinking about something like this today reading about the IRI Silent Auction.

I think a website that maybe had monthly auctions that teams could donate stuff to would be a great thing for the FRC community to have. That way, when something like a natural disaster happens or a team needs some help or something, teams can donate some stuff to be auctioned off to support that cause.

Each month it could change to help a new cause or certain causes could be a three month thing or a 2 week thing.

Also, I can't get enough Tshirts...

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by nicholsjj

If I were you all I might even consider taking this site past just t-shirts. You could mold the site to make a sort of Craigslistesque First website in which teams could post certain items to sell. A site like this does sound neat, but it might be to tight of a market especially for just t-shirts.

All of this. The t-shirts could be the main focus, but definitely don't discount the usefulness of opening it up to just about anything. Buttons, pins, hats, "ears", old game pieces.

This could fill in a void that no other site has really done well yet.

[Peyton Yeung]

I'm always up for more tshirts

[Zach O]

I'd be more interested in your site/service if you had posted on CD with a finished product.

How do you plan on handling transactions? Is it going through some third party service? How am I sure that my financial information is secure? Also, what happens when I send someone money for a t-shirt and I never receive my t-shirt? Who refunds me?

[lakstick]

Originally Posted by Zach O

I'd be more interested in your site/service if you had posted on CD with a finished product.

How do you plan on handling transactions? Is it going through some third party service? How am I sure that my financial information is secure? Also, what happens when I send someone money for a t-shirt and I never receive my t-shirt? Who refunds me?

Understood that a finished product would be most desirable, however as stated before, this idea was just thought up, and we wanted to know the response of the general FRC community before delving into production.

Financial transactions would be handled through PayPal, the easiest and trusted financial transfer service available.

The "third party" you mentioned would be us, simply creating a place in which a user may contact a team without the hassle of discovering email addresses or street addresses.

The website would work in a similar way as both Craigslist and Ebay, the purchasing ability as Craigslist, where users set the price as well as list the information about the item, but feature the return policy as Ebay (We want you to be happy with the product you are receiving.) If the wrong product is delivered (most likely from a user, not a verified team), you may report the user to us, and the user will be contacted. If the site grows enough, we may be able to work with the team of which you are attempting to purchase said shirt from to work out your problem.

I hope this answers some of your questions and concerns!

-Mak

[Starke]

Originally Posted by lakstick

The reason for this post comes down to this: What do you think?
-Would you use the site to purchase other team's shirts?
-Do you think your team would be willing to sell your shirts on this site?
-What other functionality would be needed before you used this website?

I think that what you have is a cool idea. It would be nice to have one place that we could/buy/sell/trade and FIRST related shirts. As you mentioned, it would almost be a Craigslist or Ebay for FIRST related products. There is already a Swap feature here on CD. I am wondering if it would work similar as what is already on this site or would need to be completely different.

Originally Posted by Zach O

I'd be more interested in your site/service if you had posted on CD with a finished product.

I am in agreement with Zach on this one. It is tough to talk about functionality, user interface, and overall design without seeing a final or draft product. When I launched FRC Designs, I asked for general feedback as well as overall design ideas (See here and here). Try putting together something for us to look at and try out so we can give you more in depth feedback.

Good idea! Take it to the next step.