AIP-269: Request for use of Apecoin Digital License in order to create and sell merchandise

Final AIPs Rejected AIPs
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Proposal Name: Request for use of Apecoin Digital License in order to create and sell merchandise

Proposal Category: Core: Brand Decision

Abstract:

This proposal seeks to grant Livefast9986 a one-year license for the commercialized use of the ApeCoin logo. The usage will be for producing and selling merchandise, such as Patches, T-Shirts, and Hoodies.

Author Description:

I am LiveFast9986, the Community Manager and one of the main contributors for the DAOpunks, and a recent owner of a Mutant Ape #28526. I have been active in DAOpunks for over a year now, and during my tenure in DAOpunks I have worked on our Interim Governance and Grants Frameworks, facilitated one of our Grants Rounds, launched an supplement NFT project for DAOpunks, called I AM A, that also included launching new merchandise that I had designed and implemented on the DAOpunks Shopify page.

The origin of this project started off because I enjoy collecting patches and t-shirts of various projects that I belong to and/or that I believe in (please see attached photo). Originally, I wanted to create a handful of Mutant Ape patches for myself to put on my backpack and my hat, but thanks to fellow community member 0xSword, they had encouraged me to think bigger and more broader and to try applying for this Digital License in order to be eligible to create more patches and other merchandise for both myself and our fellow community members as there is a desire within the community for merchandise.

Backpack and Hat

Backpack

Collection of Patches

Motivation:

The drive behind this proposal is to provide members with a means and opportunity of purchasing officially licensed Apecoin DAO merchandise. This will allow members of the community or anyone else to showcase their enthusiasm and support of the ApeCoin brand, the community, and the DAO.

This also provided the inherent benefit of free advertisement and marketing of the DAO by virtue of its community members wearing, talking about, and sharing photos of themselves and their merchandise on social media, which will expand visibility of Apecoin DAO with the potential to bring in new members.

Lastly, this project also provides additional value to the Intellectual Property belonging to Apecoin DAO. As the success of this project will increase the value of the Apecoin DAO’s IP allowing more flexibility and more options for additional or future licensing deals or arrangements.

Rationale:

Endorsing community-led initiatives encourages active engagement, fosters loyalty, promotes creativity, and broadens the reach of the ApeCoin brand. This proposal creates a win-win scenario where the community member, myself, benefits from their creative endeavor, the community at large get access to officially licensed merchandise, and Apecoin DAO has its visibility increased while also having the value of intellectual property increased.

Specifications:

  1. Livefast9986 is granted a one-year license to use the ApeCoin logo and its derivatives for the purpose of creating and selling merchandise.

  2. Livefast9986 will design and launch a T-shirt and/or a Hoodie, utilizing a Print-On-Demand service, with the potential for additional clothing types and other merchandise based on sales and demand. Here is a potential design for a shirt:

T-Shirt - Blue Front and Back

  1. Livefast9986 will design and launch Apecoin branded patches, with the potential for further designs within the year based on sales and demand.

  2. Livefast9986 will be eligible to hire artists to create new derivative art of the Apecoin logo for commercialized use based on the previous sales as stated above in 2 and 3.

  3. Livefast9986 will not create superfluous merchandise, and the merchandise that created and sold will have the primary goal of being affordable (for example ~$25-35 USD t-shirts), that is of good quality,and that is globally available with reasonable shipping costs.

  4. Livefast9986’s sales posts on Twitter will be retweeted occasionally by the main ApeCoin account to boost awareness and availability.

Steps to Implement:

  1. Design any additional logos to use with merch (ex. an AIP-269 logo indicating Officially Licensed by Ape Foundation)
  2. Create test prints of each merchandise for QA and Photos
  3. Create online store, and process any necessary paperwork from creation of said online store.
  4. Make formal announcement on Twitter/X/Discord of the online store being live.

Timeline:

Following approval, the licensing agreement could be prepared and implemented within approximately one month. Livefast9986 will then begin placing orders for production, launch an online store, and begin taking orders for the sale of the merchandise within approximately one month of the licensing agreement. Occasional progress reviews and promotions via retweets on the main ApeCoin Twitter account will continue throughout the year. The license term will end one year from the agreement execution date.

Overall Cost:

There are no direct costs to the Apecoin DAO associated with this proposal, as it does not involve a grant but rather a digital licensing agreement. Potential indirect costs may arise from any legal or administrative requirements related to the licensing agreement, and these should be anticipated and planned for.

8 Likes
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Reserving the first comment in the event edit or updates are needed.

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Hey , @LiveFast9986 I am in favour for it . The way I see it is a Win Win situation for both parties and at the same time it gives us the opportunity to create brand awareness

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Thank you! I hope other see it the same way.

Do you have any questions or concerns that I may be able to answer?

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How will the merch produce be selling? Setting up an e-store and shipping globally ? What are the price range of the products you are targeting to retail at?

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I will be setting up a Shopify Store and linking it with Printful, a Print-On-Demand Service that I’ve used and am using for my DAOpunks merch. It has shops set up globally so it will make order and shipping items easier and cheaper for people globally.

The goal is to have patches be around $10 each (may vary depending on the size and quality of the final design) with T-shirts around $30-35. By keeping this affordable, more people will be inclined to purchase one. I understand there may be concerns about quality, however, as I mentioned, I have used this service before and I felt pretty happy with the overall fit and feel of the t-shirt I designed and ordered so I do not see this being an issue.

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That’s reasonable and fair. Looking forward to it. :+1:

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We need this, we need more merch :joy:, if this gets approved cant wait to get my hands in some!!!

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So glad you’re asking for permission to use the logo. There are quite a few stores on Etsy, RedBubble, Amazon selling unofficial merch with the logo, ugh.

We have ideas around this too, so if you get the logo approval here and you plan on doing this full-time, there might be space to build something larger:

Link to proposals here.

Good luck.

SSP🤙🏽

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Thanks for your enthusiasm! I will do my best to not disappoint.

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Thank you for sharing this. This was a fascinating read and insightful on how I should handle and prepare myself.

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I love this Proposal. Such Initiatives are required from Apecoin community members. I will definitely support this.
Can you please also bring out in brief how this Proposal will benefit the Apecoin DAO, will there be discounts for purchase in APE, royalty share, or something else?
Thanks and Regards
Srini

6 Likes
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As i mentioned above in the section of Rationale:
Endorsing community-led initiatives encourages active engagement, fosters loyalty, promotes creativity, and broadens the reach of the ApeCoin brand. This proposal creates a win-win scenario where the community member benefits from their creative endeavor while ApeCoin and its community members gain from the increased brand exposure.

But let me take this opportunity to talk and expand a bit more for you and anyone else wanting a bit more. This proposal, from an optics perspective, is quite enticing and valuable for Apecoin DAO for a few reasons right from the start.

First - this proposal is not asking for any money in order to get started. The entire endeavor is shouldered on myself to produce, execute, and deliver merch that utilize the Apecoin Logo and brand.

Two - the community appears to be hungry for some type of merchandise that they can wear and showcase. By providing something that is both affordable and available to them will help to not only allow them to proudly display their support and love for the community, it will also be free advertisement to those who see it.

Three - the proposal itself is unique in that it is asking for a license to use the IP of Apecoin DAO. While itself this is nothing new, it does showcase a bit of outside the box creativity on what community members can do and/or ask for of the DAO while also showing Apecoin DAO the value they hold of their own IP that it a member is seeking permission for its use.

I hope this helps bring more clarity of the benefits. Please do not hesitate to ask me any additional follows up or concerns about how this can effect or benefit Apecoin DAO.

As to your comments about Discounts in $APE, royalty share, or other aspects. These are all great ideas and ones that I have thought about but did not include in this proposal at this time. However, since you have asked, I’m happy to delve a bit deeper into this. If this is approved, I will not be taking payment in APE initially. This is because my goal would be to set up the web-store and put forward the T-Shirt and Patches first and see how that does first, as I will need additional time to set up an alternative payment method and handle all the implications of being able to take payment in $APE.

As for Royalty Share, are you asking with respect to Apecoin DAO or in general? For right now, I don’t have any percentage established that will return back to the DAO but I am happy to discuss and talk about it if that is a concern. As for in general, a big dream of mine would be to hire artists within the community and pay them for new designs and give them a percentage of sales profits of their work.

I hope I have satisfactorily answered your questions. Please let me know if I missed anything or if you have any follow up.

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Hello @LiveFast9986,

Taking payment in $APE should be a minimum requirement on any IP licensing deals the DAO does imo.

The good news is that there are easy ways to do this - I’d reach out to @apecoincarpetman for feedback on their $APE payment integration.

With the quality of NFT merch reaching meme-status, I’m hesitant to support any print-on-demand plays without a clear plan for quality control. How much product have you personally seen from the platform you’re suggesting? Thanks,

BT

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Thank you for feedback. I can see you point on how the DAO should have a minimum requirement of taking $APE. I am not at all opposed to it and I would love to have it at launch, but I would like to set expectations reasonable and manageable of what to expect at launch.

I will definitely contact @apecoincarpetman and also the ForeverApes for advice. I looked into Coinbase Payment recently as they also have integration with what I plan on using, so it does seem that I can have payment taken in $APE from the start if I use their service.

You are absolutely right to be concerned about quality and print-on-demand plays as I too have similar concerns. I have personally ordered some products (two designs I personally have on-hand from the company I plan on using for fit and print quality) for other projects I am working and I’m quite happy with and will be using the same shirts for this. While there may be a disconnect between what I find satisfactory and what someone else may say, I will take that feedback and try to improve on it to ensure that there isn’t any egregious issues. A failure on my part of this project would be if the community felt that this was terrible executed and meme-worthy.

Any future design I do plan on making and/or releasing, will always be reviewing first for print, quality, and feel, before any type of release. The goal of this project is to find a healthy balance between reasonable cost, fit and feel, and global availability of merch that the community enjoys. I am not here to try and become rich or extort the community from this endeavor.

I hope this addresses your concerns. Please let me know if you have any additional thoughts or concerns.

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Hey Guys,

I’m using Ape integerated via bitpay through Shopify. The product is listed on Shopify. The buy button everything is customised & we also have Tokenproof to check if the buyer has ape. Coinbase didn’t work in india but bitpay does. I hope this helps. If you need more info I’m happy to help. Good luck

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Thank you for your input. I was not aware of BitPay but I will definitely look it into and consider it.

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I love getting more APEcoin merch out into the world; Will you have all of the designs in the actual AIP? I think we should approve the design, unless it is simply the merch with logo.

I do think it will be FIRE to get some dope designs around the logo done. That way people who don’t even know about the DAO may just like the designs and buy too!

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I would ideally want to not limit myself to designs that are only a part of the actual AIP, as this idea is not about selling a specific T-Shirt or Patch but rather a request for usage of the IP of the Apecoin Digtital Assets for the purposes of selling T-Shirt, Hoodies, and/or Patches.

While the first round of T-shirts/Hoodies and Patches will be limited to “simple” designs that utilize the the current Apecoin logos, I would like to expand this usage to hopefully and ideally hire artists within the community to make designs and pay them for it and have them receive royalties from sales.

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Then would the community or DAO be able to approve the way in which the IP is styled and used? Or guidelines for the way the IP will be displayed?

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