James Redmond wrote:
On Aug 28, 2007, at 1:05 AM, Sage Ross wrote:
Perhaps we could arrange a Wikimedia "Loves Threadless" competition to generate some more T-shirt designs worth buying.
/me arrives late to the party
This is a WONDERFUL idea, IMHO. Not only does Threadless have a dedicated and talented community of artists, but they'd also handle the "storefront" part.
The American Red Cross did a "loves Threadless" competition in April 2006 in honor of their 125th anniversary. Three winning designs were selected from hundreds of entries, and for each shirt sold with a winning design, Threadless donated $5. (I am not certain how much Threadless eventually donated.) http://www.threadless.com/loves/redcross
As far as I'm concerned, this avenue is worth exploring.
I'm a bit wary of the "Wikimedia Loves Threadless" phrasing, which sounds a bit too much like we're endorsing a tshirt company, rather than just having them print shirts for us. Is there a way to do this without that wording? If we *were* willing to do something that vaguely implied endorsement, surely there are companies willing to pay more for the privilege? At $5/shirt, and even a very generous estimate of 10,000 shirts sold, that'd be $50,000, which isn't all that much when compared to other avenues for Wikimedia's income (the January fundraiser netted about $1,000,000).
-Mark