[Foundation-l] Alternatives to Cafepress

[Peter Halasz]

The "Wikipedia is Completely Neutral Towards Threadless competition"
doesn't quite have the same ring to it, but sure, it could work.

As for the comparison with the fundraising... Unlike the fundraiser, a
threadless competition/t-shirt wouldn't need to (and shouldn't) be
advertised as a banner to every user. Also, it would help increase
"brand loyalty" and "brand awareness" which the fundraiser doesn't do
(at least not in the same way), so the tshirt thing has its own
advantages. And the two are hardly exclusive. Increasing Wikimedia's
revenue by 5% (Delirium's generous estimate) couldn't be a bad thing.

Personally I'd just like to have a Wikipedia tshirt that I'd be
comfortable wearing around non-geeks.

Peter.

On 8/31/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>