Whilst mousemats and coffee mugs can be made to the same size, T shirts need to be made in multiple sizes. And despite what happen at Wikimania in Buenos Aires, that normally involves the complication of different garment sizes rather than just printing M, X, or XL on the same sized garment. If you have to sell the entire production run at full price in order to cover your costs multiple sizes add to the complication.
I'm not a fan of merchandising as part of a charities function. But if it is done it should have the saving grace of having a sufficient markup to help finance the organisation.
Now what would be cool would be Wikipedia calenders. Flowers, sports events historical events - we could theme quite a few and they'd make great gifts. It would also be a good article improvement process as the nominated articles for the calender would be liable to get good scrutiny and input whist we discuss which should go in the calender. OK we would need wmf agreement to do this as a fundraiser sold outside the membership, but there is a well established charity market for such things. I for one can think of half a dozen calenders that I might buy as winter solstice presents for assorted friends and relatives.
WereSpielChequers
2009/9/14 Isabell Long isabell121@gmail.com:
2009/9/14 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/9/14 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:
I would take it as a given that this would be restricted to UK-only delivery to avoid trading on the WMF's toes, or that of any other chapters.
"Wikipedia" t-shirts should probably be UK-only. "Wikimedia UK" t-shirts may as well be global, although I'm not sure many people outside the UK would want one (unless they buy it at a WMUK event as a momento, I guess, but that would be selling it in the UK, so is irrelevant).
I'd want one, although I live in the UK now so that makes sense! T-shirts would be a good idea with just Wikimedia UK written on.
-- Regards, Isabell Long. isabell121@gmail.com [[User:Isabell121]] on all public Wikimedia projects. Freenode Community Co-Ordinator - issyl0 on irc.freenode.net PGP Key ID: 0xB6CA6840