The Elixir Shirt

Underjord is a tiny, wholesome team doing Elixir consulting and contract work. If you like the writing you should really try the code. See our services for more information.

I wanted there to be an Elixir shirt you could buy. I talked to some people. Made some calculations. Took some debatable photos. And now you can pre-order The Elixir Shirt.

The Officialness

This is an officially approved use of the Elixir logo trademark, by explicit permission from the Elixir core team. Usually the trademark can’t be used commercially. I was granted permission to make and sell products with the brand. We will make a small margin which if we’re lucky compensates my wife for the time spent packing and shipping. There is no software developer salary margins possible here. I did offer to kick back profits to the project but it did not seem worth anyone’s time in terms of book-keeping.

The Shirt

We don’t want to do quick and dirty when putting things in the world. We’ve tried a bit of print-on-demand and it is awful quality. Always. So this is transfer print which we’ve tried for our company shirts before and which has held up very well for more than 3 years now. On the same shirts that we know and trust. Selected with the same principles we use for ourselves. Organic, Fair Trade and long-lasting.

When Frank had tried his Nerves shirt for the first time during Code BEAM this year he literally told me, as if surprised, “this is a very high quality shirt!”. I could not have been more pleased.

The Path

I’ve had lots of fun with this. To a large degree because it is a big mess of people. Frank and Nerves was on board early which is why we made some shirts up front there and we can already sell the Nerves shirt, also we know it won’t move any major volume (yet?). José (Valim, creator of Elixir) was very open-minded about the whole deal and checked in with the team when I had a more complete plan and had verified I was happy with how the Nerves shirt came out.

Then there was the local print-shop that I already knew did good work and was easy to talk to. We sat down with them and talked through the possibilities, any advantages of scale and larger orders, where the costs are. They are lovely to collaborate with and I love working with someone local. A mix of emails, handshakes, phone-calls and meetings. Human-scale.

Most importantly I’ve worked on it with my practical-minded wife who checks my sanity-levels as we go but also trusts my gut a bit, leans in and helps me make a wild idea happen. And she takes on a bigger role in this working out than I do. She is the logistics department, I’m just the backup help if things take off. My main role is as the marketing department I suppose.

Putting physical things in the real world is kind of fantastic so I’m very excited to try and do more of it. And we’ve tried to do it in a way that we can stand behind fully. The process is hyper-local, small-scale and very personal. We have made choices that make for a more costly but less wasteful item.

Potential futures?

If this works out well we have many more paths, plans and options. But really. I expect this to be quite low-volume. A routine trickle if anything with occasional bumps for conference season when alchemists want to dress up perhaps?

Mostly I’m happy if people get shirts for the projects I enjoy so much and are happy with them.

Let me know how you like this little venture. I’m at @lawik and lars@underjord.io, as per usual.

Underjord is a 4 people team doing Elixir consulting and contract work. If you like the writing you should really try the code. See our services for more information.

Note: Or try the videos on the YouTube channel.