The Halloween Waterfront
July 16th, 2011 by John WolfeJust wanted to give an update on the status of my Season of Shadows nonprofit Drinking Water project. As you may remember from my previous post, SoS H2O Giveaway, the plan was to start selling the bottles here at the site; charge a very fair price, but still make enough to recoup the cost of creating the bottles (to continue the bottle making process), plus have extra to donate to UNICEF’s Tap Project.
Unfortunately, even in the small experiment I set up, customizing, packaging and shipping the bottles ran into much more money than I anticipated. By the time I factored in all the supplies and shipping costs, the water just wasn’t going to be reasonably priced for visitors/customers — we’re talking some hefty prices for bottled water here!
But, if there’s three things you’ve probably learned about me by now: 1) I get really jazzed about certain projects. 2) I love coming up with creative and sometimes crazy ideas — to the point I should shut up about them until I figure out if they’re even gonna pan out. (Note to self: I probably should work on fixing that issue in therapy. 
) And, 3) I never, ever, ever give up, no matter what! So, even though selling SoS Drinking Water isn’t going to work for right now, I’ve decided to host multiple Season of Shadows Water Bottle Giveaways over the next several weeks — at least until Halloween and maybe even beyond.
I’m hoping the giveaways themselves will continue to raise some additional awareness about the Tap Project. And each time I post a new water giveaway, I pledge to make a $5 donation myself to UNICEF’s Tap Project.
I even added a new H2O page to the site to help keep the awareness alive and hopefully generate actual action based support of the amazing Tap Project.
Speaking of the giveaways, if you haven’t entered the 12-pack of SoS Water and the Mio Strawberry/Watermelon Water Enhancer yet, it closes in six days. I’ll be launching a new 6-pack Giveaway in the next few days… gotta keep you guys hydrated during your Halloween preparations.
July 16th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
John,
I`m so sorry things didn`t work out for you and your idea with the SoS water. I understand how much the prices have raised on everything.I`m sure one of these days you`ll be able to do something like this.
And your going to have more give aways. That`s just great more of a chance for me to win your cool product. I will check out the H20 page as soon as I`m done typing this out. keep up the great work and thanks again for everything.
July 17th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
I’m glad this new project is still going strong. It’s never fun to run into unexpected costs, which happened to me this year. It’s why I went from a Ghost Ship theme to a loose swamp theme – money’s tight this year (although come to think of it, money’s always tight in High School). Anyway, just wanted to say keep up the great work John!!
July 17th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
ssflipo13,
Thanks, man. I appreciate that. No worries though, like you were saying and coincidentally just as Debbie Rangel and I were also discussing in her recent comment under the SoS H2O Giveaway post, something will come from it. The idea may have to be tweaked quite a bit. But I like a good tweaking and I’ll figure something out.
Thank you, brother!
Damian,
Thanks! Sorry to hear about your plans for the Ghost Ship theme having to change. Sometimes I find scaling down can have its pluses, though. For example, maybe working on a smaller project gives you ways of learning some new technique that will come in handy when the project does allow you to go large again, too.
The swamp theme sounds like it’ll be groovy. In fact, I like the ideas the name is giving me.
Thanks again, Damian! You keep up the great work too and please keep me posted.
July 19th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Hmmmm… what if you have folks in different parts of the country that could get shipments of water from the supplier, assemble the bottles, labels, etc. and then ship them a shorter distance to people closer to their area than you might be in N.M.? I know Kieran and I would be so happy(!!!!!) to help in that way if you think shipping shorter distances might be better- i.e. SoS volunteers ship to the states nearest them and we have 6-8 people strategically located so all the water isn’t having to go quite so far? Does that make sense? I’m going to chew on this for a bit and see if there isn’t another solve that might keep this project going because I think it’s a brilliant one!!!
July 19th, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Camile,
I love the fact you’re thinking out some alternatives! Your great idea would offset some costs, but part of the issue resides with utilizing a PayPal form of checkout. PayPal as a standalone does not link up with USPS or UPS, so it’s almost impossible to give folks their exact shipping rates at the time of checkout. A lot of online retailers using PayPal overshoot/overestimate shipping for this reason — so they, as retailers, don’t get shorted, but unfortunately the customer gets way overcharged. Another option would be bringing in a full blown checkout/cart system that’s better at giving proper shipping rates at time of checkout, but it’s something I’d need to learn the ropes on with the software. PayPal is sort of an out of the box, ready to go type checkout service, but it has its shortcomings.
But I do have some other ideas. Please send me an e-mail so we can discuss it a little more. And thank you for your willingness and interest in the project. I love your enthusiasm!