EPT
As the guy personally in charge of the teamliquid store, I would like to shed some light into the Euro store delay, in doing so I will be completely honest about the reality with it and and how the store itself is going to work.
I will start with the idea behind the Euro store. My goal with it (I'm sure the TL staff shares this vision with me) is to build a platform on two continents, providing equal terms of service for both our US and european customers. That includes consistent store policy regarding returns and exchanges, fast reliable and cheap shipping. In order for the Euro store to be sustainable in the long term, we need to find manufacturers to reproduce all our items in Europe as they are sold in the states - consistency in quality is very important as I believe everyone should be getting the same products. Importing our set of products from the states is not optimal - we can do it only for chosen products, unless we want to deal with shipping and duty taxes every time which ultimately will raise the end price by quite a bit.
The problem with our current shirt offering is that they were not designed to be reproduced in Europe. The 3s shirts (spirit, swarm and steel) were designed in the summer of 2011, back then we just picked the best shirt we could find in the States and now in Europe we realized that no manufacturer works or even knows about the brand that we are using. Recently we managed to find a local distributor which sourced the blank shirts we are using for the Spirit, but at this point we are unable to source the shirt we are using for the swarm, steel and winged pony designs. There are a couple of options we have, like importing the blank shirts from another european country or even from the states, but again that wont be optimal as we want to be as flexible with our production as possible - we don't want to be out of stock constantly. As for the hoodie - its just incredibly expensive - we simply cant keep its price as it is right now. One way or another we will get to sell all our items in Europe, we just need to find a sustainable model which offers the best prices for you.
Speaking of prices I want to be transparent and realistic on the matter - the vast majority of our current products will get a slight price increase in Europe. We will do our best to keep the prices equal from our end, but there's still the 20% VAT on all goods sold in Europe. Does that mean all our products will get a 20% price increase? No, we will compensate part of the price increase, but there's still going to be a difference. Products that are not going to be priced differently are the posters and the mousepads. So for everyone hoping for lower or at least equal prices, I'm sorry but its just not realistic and not achievable for us. Even if we want to keep the integrity of our community this is just not how the european market works. To make a real life comparison, I would really like to get the iPhone at 600$ like the americans do but in Europe we get to pay 600 Euros.
I'm really sorry if some of you guys are waiting for lower prices and holding back your orders for the past 2 months. As I said the benefit of the European store will be the much faster and cheaper shipping as well as the better service provided. It really is the best solution in the long term for both you as a customer and for us as a retailer.
So here's the big question - when the fuck are we going to launch it?! Well, I really can't give an honest answer on that. At this time we have all posters, the mousepads, the keycaps and the Spirit shirt on stock. If we decide to just import a bulk of our other shirts and hoodies we can launch the Euro store as early as October. We can also launch it sooner but w/o all items. It's really a hard decision to take, but I can assure you that the Euro store is been worked on every day, we still consider various options like importing the hoodies vs producing them in Europe, perhaps even changing the shirt model to another one (which I really dont want to do).
I was overeager to announce the Eurostore back when we launched the hoodies - I wasn't completely informed about the complications of this venture and I misled all of you as well as the rest of the TL staff. I can only work hard now to make sure the Euro store is actually worth all the wait. I'm really really sorry if you are upset and disappointed, but please blame it on my incompetence and not on the entire TL staff.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask!
) would be happy with anything for a start, then slowly move on to offering more and more stuff as you figure out the details on different kinds of merchandise. Might also help
