My PR kid was told during the Chairman’s award presentation at the Purdue Boilermaker Regional that Home Depot now sells the Cree 60w for $8 regular price.
Since I drove my own vehicle to Purdue, I was way ahead of our buses as we headed to Golden Corral to eat, so he and I stopped at HD and checked.
Worse than we were told. $6.97 plus tax!
Online at HD it shows $9.97 but we confirmed that in the store it was $7 and it said "New Lower Price).
I sold 50 of these without hardly trying, over the last 2 months, and I’m pretty sure the $13 with no tax being cheaper than HD’s $13 + tax was a big selling point. It’s too bad there wasn’t some deal that HD would not drop the price for longer.
Now I’ll have to sell them by saying $13, and $10 of that is a donation to the team. Or we’re going to have to drop the price. That’s too bad being I lived in a very depressed county and sponsorships are almost impossible here.
Yeah, we’ve always felt that the LED deal was not really a very good way to earn money. It has always seemed faster and easier just to ask people for donations, and we frequently get them. Trick seems to be finding the right people to ask.
We had a really wacky fundraising experience recently. One of the parents said they knew somebody who was entering into a community restitution agreement with the state on account of some illegal acts. So he has to make a $3,500 donation to a local non-profit of his choice. Would we like the money?
We had luck with the older bulbs (still have some left to move this summer once we get some distractions out of the way like Championship) and the $10 price point. I imagine it’d do best in concert with some other items (say, bumper stickers or buttons) at lower price points, so that people can support the team however they can.
The best way to present these involves a phrase like: “Please help us by making a donation in support, we’ll acknowledge your help by giving you an LED lightbulb for every $10 in your donation.” My FLL team has just raised enough on their first round to get some EV3 Mindstorms equipment. They need more.