[hackerspaces] Speaking of shwag exchange...

[Miikka Saukko]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Koen Martens wrote:

> Anyway, the point is, such a hackerspace could have their own shirts, to give
> away to their members, but in addition sell them on the webshop. Either by
> handling shipping themselves or let that be handled by the webshop or even let
> the webshop produce the shirts (which is more like spreadshirt indeed).

  For some time I've had an idea of creating a 'open source'
  t-shirt/sticker service for more or less on topic designs, but haven't
  had the time or energy to do anything about it. So here is the general
  idea if anyone likes it.

  If the designs were to be distributed instead of the physical objects,
  the shirts/stickers could be printed near the customers (in hackerspace,
  by printing company, in home etc). This would help in several different
  aspects:
   1) Shipping. In places else than US/Central europe the shipping is
      usually more expensive than the shirts/stickers themselves (if the
      company even ships them outside some predefined area). And also in
      ecological point of view, this reduces the need to ship things
      around.
   2) Sizing. If shirts are printed on own shirts, one always knows the
      sizing of it. Anyone who has compared sizing of asian, european
      and US sizing knows the difficulties. And you can never know which
      sizing each vendor uses. Last time I ordered a t-shirt from european
      organisation the XL was _way_ too small -> money wasted and huge
      disappointment (combined with high shipping rates, the returning
      is not a viable option).
   3) Quality. Sometimes we need a shirt/sticker for a long term usage, and
      sometimes just for a short period of time. This would enable people
      to decide the quality of the shirt/sticker themselves.

  It would be nice if some t-shirt website would allow the distribution of
  shirt/sticker designs. I'm not aware if there are any sites doing this in
  the larger scale. Site could also include some way of donating money for
  the designer if the design ends up in a shirt (hackerspaces could
  organize t-shirt printing and then donate fixed amount per shirt to the
  designer/originating organisation).

> Gr,
> Koen

  Best regards,
-- 
  Miikka
  otter at iki.fi  -  http://saukko.org