Monday, December 06, 2010

Distributing celebratory #Wikipedia t-shirts

When you organise a party to celebrate Wikipedias 10 year anniversary well in advance, you can apply for enough t-shirts. These t-shirts will be send in batches of 50, they exist in many patterns and, they are nice.

The challenge that I want to raise is in the distribution. The obvious distribution can be covered by the DHL, FEDEX and what have you of this world. The not so obvious distribution is in the sizes of the t-shirts. We do not share the experience with t-shirts with Linux. We have a different problem.


Our problem is in the difference of our communities. The Scandinavians, Germans and Dutch are big while the Indians, the Indonesians and the Albanians are small. So the distribution of the sizes of the t-shirts have to be considered when a box of t-shirts is packed.

There is one thing in this problem that I like; it is not mine. I just want a t-shirt in my XXL size to celebrate :)
Thanks,
      GerardM

5 comments:

Steven Walling said...

Nice post Gerard. :-)

You're 100% right that shirt sizes are one of the biggest problems in shipping t-shirts around the world. That's why we're letting the professionals take care of it for the most part.

Social Imprints, the company that we're sourcing the shirts through, have a huge amount of experience in this very question. They've printed shirts and other merchandise for big touring bands and international non-profits before, so they know the right balance of sizes for worldwide distribution.

I assume that since you're wanting a shirt, you'll be going to some of the events in the Netherlands?

GerardM said...

What I want is photos of a model wearing the different shirts. Either have someone good looking pose for you or send me one in every pattern and you get me as a poser.

PS I will also wear them advertising the event
Thanks,
GerardM

Steven Walling said...

That's a great idea. I'll recruit someone to model them and post some shots.

pfctdayelise said...

It's not just Dutch, Indians and Albanians you need to worry about. Some women's sizes and cuts would be nice.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/T-shirts

And from my history of Wikimania t-shirts, it is the same problem as with Linux t-shirts :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfctdayelise/5173687358/

jay walsh said...

Hiya - actually we'll have unisex and women's sizes for everyone. We're using tultex, which is a pretty good company that we chose due to their wide range of sizes, and because they have the most consistent sizing across most manufacturers:
http://www.tultex.net/

We'll have more unisex than women's sizes, but hopefully enough to go around!