Merch Store

Located at: merch.owncast.online

Due to popular demand over the years, we're putting up a store to allow people to buy a T-shirt and maybe a couple other Owncast branded items. This will also be a way for people to support the project in a small way.

Releasing this in tandem with the Owncast 5-year anniversary in May 2025 would be a nice thing to do.

Each item will be marked up a few dollars, and this will be deposited directly into the Owncast Open Collective account via bank transfer.

TODOs

• Decide on a sticker vendor
• Order pins
• Order stickers
• Shipping materials for pins
• Shipping materials for stickers
• Tweak Owncat to how we want it
• Design the actual productsLogo hoodieBasic t-shirtOwncat hoodie5yr anniversary shirtOwncat mugLogo mug
• Place sample orders for items we need to test
• Make enamel cup logos larger?
• Does hoodie logo have a black background option?
• Setup shipping weights for each product
• Update website to add a link to merch store (incl. Footer)
• Take product photos

Vendors

Role	Vendor
Storefront	BigCartel
Item fulfillment	Printful
Bank account fiscal sponsor	Open Source Collective
Sticker fulfillment	Sticker Ninja
Pin fulfillment	Vivipins

Launch Date

Owncast first commit day (the anniversary) is May 23rd. I won't be available on that actual day, but the actual day doesn't really matter.

The week of May 12th is our target.

Items

Standard items people sell as merch is probably what we'll do as well. The Printful product catalog shows options. We can offer up to 50 items in our storefront.

• T-shirts
• Hoodies
• Coffee mug
• Stickers
• Pins
• Patches
• Winter beanie hat
• Owncat Mascot

Other ideas?

• Travel mug?
• Tote bag (sustainable choice for everyday use)

Owncat Mascot

While many use cases, audiences, and installations of Owncast are serious, others are fun. Many open source projects have some sort of fun mascot to use when appropriate.

Thanks to the generosity of Mitch Effendi, we have a fun cat mascot to use on branded items. This is "Owncat".

Owncat is a grinning cat, wearing a purple hoodie, emblazoned with the Owncast logo.

We haven't had any discussions on anything regarding this mascot, so everything is up in the air. How we refer to it (Owncat the streaming cat?), in what cases we use it, etc.

5 Year Limited Edition Anniversary Shirt

Mitch, who designed "Owncat" is going to design the 5 year anniversary t-shirt. He's commissioned for this through Owncast and will be paid as an expense through our budget.

This would allow people to feel like they were really involved with the project by showing they were there for the milestone, and everybody likes limited edition items.

It should be fun for everyone.

Giveaways?

For launch, should we give away a couple of free shirts (max 3) in some way to create some buzz? This might be something a team member would have thoughts about.

• rol3517@gmail.com was the 5,000th follower of Owncast on the Fediverse. We should give him a code for some free stickers or a t-shirt or something when the store goes live. DONE