[Foundation-l] Alternatives to Cafepress

Sun Aug 26 20:54:45 UTC 2007

On 8/26/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Do you really need "industry knowledge" to sell mugs and t-shirts?
> I thought knowledge about the community that is going to *buy*
> these items is more important.  Where and how do people normally
> buy their favorite t-shirts for projects such as Wikipedia?  I'd
> say Cafepress is the mainstream alternative, at least for the U.S.

Printing the Wikipedia logo on t-shirts is one thing, but developing a
full product line of Wikimedia-branded merchandise is something that
deserves some careful thought and professional attention.

> A month ago I made a T-shirt printable large logotype for the
> Swedish Wikipedia [[Image:Wikipedia-logo-sv-large.png]].  When I
> asked if I could print this and wear, I was told to print nothing
> before there is a Swedish chapter established.

I don't know who told you this, but either they were misinformed or
you misunderstood.  While a Swedish chapter with which we have a
trademark agreement would be able to arrange such a thing, just as the
German or Polish chapters could, there's certainly no plan I'm aware
of to delay merchandising of language-specific products until we have
chapters whose members speak those languages.  I expect that any
future merchandising plans will include designs that reflect the
linguistic diversity of the various Wikimedia projects.

In the meantime, I'll note that the Foundation has never sued anyone
for printing logo Ts for themselves and a few friends, so long as you
don't make them generally available to others.  Selling stuff printed
with Wikimedia's trademarks is a can of worms that everybody's
particularly cautious about, and quite reasonably so.

Austin