Sales Plan

This is a draft of a new or in-progress document, and is likely to have a few people specifically working on it. You may wish to check in on the discussion page to see what the purpose of the document is and who's working on it; then feel free to give this article love and attention if have extra of those things.

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Thrift Store Plan

SWOT

Keep the thrift store going.

	Good (for Free Geek)	Bad (for Free Geek)
Internal (to Free Geek)	Strengths: Strengths are advantages we have that are internal to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things we do.) Ever rising income, improvements in shopping experience and merchandising, ever-increasing efficieny (more work can be done with the same amount of labor). Slowly improving volunteer base. Our prices remain leading edge because of the large amount of volunteer labor we have. Our intellectual capital widens reuse opportunities dramatically. A supportive group of volunteers and staff. Pricing control given to one person (the Sales Coordinator) allows for rapid response to changes in value (depreciation through obsolecense) and quick reaction to gluts of product.	Weaknesses: Weaknesses are problems we have that are internal to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Things we do poorly or not at all.) Poor flow control makes for a good deal of redundant labor (improving). Point-of-Sale limitations (e.g., no scanners (therefore slow transaction time), single till, limited ability to handle quick transactions make using the space as intensively as possible difficult. Small footprint limits the overall number of customers that can be handled. FG often attracts personalities that are not ideal for a retail environment. Improvements in appearance are largely capital intensive, and that money is slated for more mission-intensive endeavors. We can not sell enough computers to keep our build volunteers busy. We have a less service-oriented group of volunteers than most 501(c)(3)s (probably because of the tit-for-tat nature of "you do somethings (volunteer), you get something (a computer)." Too much time spent hunting for small parts for non/marginal volunteers. We have no effective, consistent, and implementable system for dealing with people who abuse their volunteer discounts for profit.
External (to Free Geek)	Opportunities: Opportunities are advantages we have that are external to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things that will or could happen to us.) Our good name in the community allows to operate without offering money-back on returns (good faith). We have a small but extremely regular group of customers. Our volunteers like us enough to act as word-of-mouth advertising. Our customers will frequently help answer questions for customers when we are busy. Microsoft and Apple both offer outrageously priced products. Widespread poverty makes our products attractive.	Threats: Threats are problems we have that are external to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Bad things that will or could happen to us.) Most people who know about Free Geek do not know that it has a thrift store (or for that matter, where it is). Our web page is quite inaccurate at this time about which things we have. Our external sign is only readable at short distances in bright light. Linux is not a household name, and there is a good deal of apprehension about "taking the plunge." American consumers are used to warranties and returns. People expect technology to "just work" (yes, still!) and do not want to monkey with things like codecs. Resellers quickly learn our discount is vulnerable to manipulation.

See also Trends and Attributes | What do we want to do?

Online Sales Plan

State of the program

Online sales is proceeding pretty well at this point. The program has five regular volunteers at the moment, and income from eBay auctions alone is steady at $1700-2000 per month.

Current and past issues

Some people view online sales as something that robs volunteers of the opportunity to acquire "good stuff" in the store. For the most part, online sales tries to sell things that Free Geek either has way too much of (e.g. lower-end memory), has no real place for (e.g. random oscilloscope parts), or would otherwise recycle (e.g. broken laptops for parts). Things like DDR memory or high-end video cards will not be sold online until they become commonplace throughout Free Geek.

Trends and predictions

As volunteer involvement increases, so will revenue from online sales. However, online sales will probably need to be restructured in the future to accommodate more than a handful of volunteers in searching, testing, and listing.

Eventually the program will become a revolving door; volunteers will come here, learn what they want to about online sales, work until they are satisfied, and use what they learn to sell things online and run their own auctions, among other things.

SWOT

Make online sales an ongoing program

	Good (for Free Geek)	Bad (for Free Geek)
Internal (to Free Geek)	Strengths: Strengths are advantages we have that are internal to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things we do.) Provides another option for volunteers that are interested in something other than the Adoption/Build programs Allows for the reuse of items that wouldn't normally be reused Pays for itself	Weaknesses: Weaknesses are problems we have that are internal to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Things we do poorly or not at all.) Many potentially-salable items slip through the stream due to lack of knowledge pertaining to their value Currently small-scale; doesn't presently provide us with a significant income stream
External (to Free Geek)	Opportunities: Opportunities are advantages we have that are external to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things that will or could happen to us.) People like spending money on weird computery things we have and don't need	Threats: Threats are problems we have that are external to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Bad things that will or could happen to us.)

See also Trends and Attributes | What do we want to do?

Bulk Sales Plan

State of the program

We are chugging along at a steady pace.Most of the items we are selling are unusable in Free Geeks other streams because we have so so many parts.

Current and past issues

Bulk sales has grown slowly. We are not currently structured to handle larger requests for items in bulk.

Trends and predictions

Bulk sales will grow as we find more partners in the Reuse business who are looking for bulk used parts.

SWOT

Please define a goal for this SWOT

	Good (for Free Geek)	Bad (for Free Geek)
Internal (to Free Geek)	Strengths: Strengths are advantages we have that are internal to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things we do.)	Weaknesses: Weaknesses are problems we have that are internal to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Things we do poorly or not at all.)
External (to Free Geek)	Opportunities: Opportunities are advantages we have that are external to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things that will or could happen to us.)	Threats: Threats are problems we have that are external to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Bad things that will or could happen to us.)

See also Trends and Attributes | What do we want to do?