What POD service will we use?
I think if we set one up, delivery should be as International as possible. Unfortunately this means two things as far I have read about those tools: delivery costs increase, and it usually needs a self-stored store. Thus I think the Printify is not bad but also not super ideal. CafePress would avoid the self-storing of the store but they do not deliver very widely. I think the choice would be between PrintFul or Printify, but I haven’t yet got feedback from my acquaintance so I would want to wait to put my finger on one of them or a third.
Is it something that integrates with CP, or a standalone service?
It will most likely be a self-stored, WC integrated solution. Printify does ship their own integration plugin which works with old WC and WP, so that would mean theoretically it should also work with CC. But CC is an outdated unsafe piece of do-not-touch-me IMO. We should not use it. And that presents a problem, we are literally not capable of running an eCommerce store with CP. Not safely or with updated and maintained plugins anyway. So that brings back the question of self-stored vs something like CafePress which builds the shop for you…
Who will be responsible for monitoring sales and making sure everything runs smoothly?
No one can do this but directors. I have been asking since last year for more diversified access to the core things such as Git Repos, Websites, Servers, and other controls. This has not been done, partially also because there likely is not enough trust in eventual “helpers” or “fallback people”. Thus, IMO, this should be done by those who do have the access to do things when they need to. “monitoring sales and making sure everything runs smoothly” means that you can react when it is needed. If someone without any rights or caps monitors, that person won’t be able to react when it is needed, and thus, the whole monitoring is for nothing, as they still would need to “wake up” someone who can react.
What items do we want to sell in the shop?
That is another question that should if possible be defining the choice of the platform used. The best would literally be if we could just upload our creatives and the prospects could build their swag by choice. So we wouldn’t have to say “we have shirts and long sleeves and coffee mugs but no mousepads”. I’m not sure such service exists. If it does not, and most services do seem to force you to build a stock of things first, then I would propose to offer shirts in perhaps 3 sizes unisex, perhaps long and short sleeve or short sleeve and a hoodie, as well as some more techie/nerdy related stuff such as a mousepad, surely a sticker (transparent/shaped) and perhaps a hat. I think the stickers is the most important actually. These can go on a lot of items, while shirts is really something you probably would buy for meetings, which we don’t have.
Let’s wait until next Monday to see if I and @Ttown hear back as well from our acquaintances about what they use. Once we have a choice for the service, we can start with few small items such as stickers. If it pulls, or we get lots of requests, we can also add shirts/hats/etc.
(Let’s cross fingers we can actually find a service that allows the prospect to build their own swag, that would remove this rather restrictive choice)
I would say, given the issue with CC, we have to go for a service that provides us with a store, in any case, unless we want to run it on WP 
(which is not a tabu, IMO. Choose the right tool for the right task…)
(and share this often so it doesn’t get buried)
