The new home of Official Mozilla Gear is coming soon! The site will official launch later this year, and many Mozillians know that this has been a long time coming.

It will be built for the public — where anyone can go to get Mozilla merchandise for personal use including t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, hats, and more. As with all things Mozilla, it’s taken a village to get it done. Dozens of people have given their input, expertise, ideas, and time over the past year with one goal in mind: to build a place for anyone to go online and buy gear to show their love for Mozilla and our mission. The project was led by Foundation staff members in close partnership with Creative, Community, and Engagement teams across Mozilla.

When the site is live, anyone will be able to purchase branded gear for their own personal use and have it shipped directly to their door. (Note that Mozillians including staff, Mozilla Reps, and community leaders should still follow the existing procedures to order gear for approved purposes here:  https://wiki.mozilla.org/GearStore).

We’ll post updates to social media when Official Mozilla Gear site is open for business, so follow @mozilla on Twitter and Facebook to get updates about gear.mozilla.org. You can also chime in on the #mozillagear IRC channel.

In addition to a broad coalition of folks across Mozilla, we’ve been working with vendors who are among the best in the business at building fan-centric, brand-driven online stores:

• Treehouse Brand Stores: Provides all customer service for Official Mozilla Gear, in addition to 3rd-party logistics, inventory management, fulfillment, gear design, and more.
• Shopify: Provides the front-end e-commerce infrastructure for the Official Mozilla Gear web site.

It’s different, because we’re different.

When we started this process nearly two years ago, we knew this couldn’t be like any other online hub for gear. It had to represent the mission and vision the Mozilla community stands for. Plus, we knew in the long run we want to help reduce headaches and improve logistics for getting or sending gear to people who love Mozilla. Here’s what’s different:

Simple global shipping rate for at least one T-shirt. We believe anyone, no matter where they are in the world, should be able to get a T-shirt right to their door. Sounds simple, but the business of global shipping isn’t set up for this egalitarian concept. We’re working on setting up a standard shipping rate for at least one popular item.

No professional models. Just real Mozillians. Mozilla gear is about expressing pride in who we are and what we’re building together. That’s why real Mozillians model the gear on gear.mozilla.org. Our vendor companies typically work with professional models for their clients, but they were game to try. Any hesitation disappeared after seeing the results — everyone loved the photos from the first shoot. There will be more shoots as we add and diversify items for sale, and we want images on gear.mozilla.org to always reflect our incredible community.

Donations go to the Mozilla Foundation. Donations from Official Mozilla Gear will fund global engagement and education efforts that exemplify the principles in the Mozilla Manifesto. That includes projects like Mozilla Webmaker that give people the tools and skills they need to move from using the web to actively making the web.

V 2.0 and Beyond

We’re just getting gear.mozilla.org V 1.0 off the launch pad with initial inventory and infrastructure in place, but this is just the beginning. It’s intended to grow from here, and there are lots of exciting things on the roadmap:

• Coupon codes. For now gear.mozilla.org is for individuals to order gear for their own use. Eventually we’ll phase in coupon codes that can be securely generated and distributed to individuals or groups of people who can visit gear.mozilla.org and order gear for themselves.
• Localization. Translating the Official Mozilla Gear site is incredibly important. Mozilla is a truly global organization, so our gear must serve the world. It’s also a challenge given varying currencies, payment gateways, and frequent content updates, but we’re committed to adding new languages in the near future.
• Expanding inventory. We’ll be adding new gear regularly, and trying out new item categories to see what the community wants (kids’ sizes? pet gear?). We have a long list of ideas, but if you’d like to add your merchandise requests to consider for future gear you can add them here.
• More photos of Mozillians from more places. Who can best represent our gear? Us! We’ll be holding more photo shoots in more places around the world as additional merchandise is cycled into gear.mozilla.org’s inventory. Contributors, interns, staff members, volunteers and others who love and support our mission will be invited to wear new gear and spend a few minutes in front of a camera.

Hack it

Where else can we take Official Mozilla Gear? We’re only limited by our community’s collective imagination. Ideas have been swirling, here are a few:

• Offer t-shirt design contests wherein the community submits designs, votes for the winner, and winning shirts are offered for purchase;
• Feature items crafted by Mozillians;
• Holiday promotions on Pi Day (March 14th), International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th), May 4th (Star Wars Day) or other holidays;
• Plant coupon codes as “easter eggs” in product code …

Have another idea? Please share it with us! Leave your idea in the comments, or in the IRC channel #mozillagear.

TIMELINE

Event	Date
Treehouse vendor privacy review bug filed	4/9/2013
Treehouse vendor sec. review filed	4/9/2013
Treehouse vendor privacy review completed	4/12/2013
Treehouse vendor sec. review completed	4/19/2013
Shopify vendor security review bug filed	5/14/2013
Bug filed for Shopify contract approval	7/15/2013
Bug filed for Treehouse contract approval	7/29/2013
Treehouse contract approved & executed	4/11/2014
Shopify security review bug resolved	4/15/2014
Merchandise selection process begins	4/17/2014
Initial line of merchandise finalized	6/22/2014
Shopify contract approved & executed	7/21/2014
Sample items delivered to Mozilla	8/14/2014
gear.mozilla.org first photo shoot	8/19/2014
gear.mozilla.org internal QA & soft launch	11/6/2014
official public launch	11/2014