Printing Source Code onto a Shirt: A problem I didn’t know existed
The Problem
Last year, I found myself wanting to buy a creative, funny, and witty shirt with source code on it. I wanted the code to say something like:
This is very basic code, but I also had some slight tweaks to make in order to give it a more personal feel.
I simply wanted to print my own source code onto a shirt, or a mug, and I quickly found there were no options to do this efficiently.
If I wanted to print source code on a shirt, a hat, or a pair of socks. I would have to search, and find these items with pre-made code already printed onto them. A quick google will show you the type of products you will find:
At this point, we saw an opportunity for an experiment to see if consumers actually care about this problem. Using different SEO tools, we were able to see there were quite a few potential customers searching for t-shirts with code on them. They would use search terms like, “Programmer shirts”, “Coder T-shirts”, etc.
This is when we decided to build https://codemer.ch
Solution
Code Merch allows you to simply write code in the browser, and print it directly onto various types of merchandise — including shirts, socks, hat, notebooks, clocks, etc.
Hence the name Code Merch, or Code Merchandise — also a play on “to code merchandise” 😋
The process is as follows:
- Visit codemer.ch
- Click “Get Started”, or go to codemer.ch/create
- Open the Code Editor
- Type your code
- Click “Compile”
Once your code is analyzed, you will be able to choose the product type you want to print the code onto. Code Merch will then generate a quick visual mockup for you to approve.
We have added new products since we launched the site last year, so there are quite a few options to choose from.
After you select the product type, you then choose any variation of the product — color, size, etc.
Once you’ve made your selections, and approved the mockups, you can then make your purchase.
That’s it! We aimed for the process to be as simple as possible, while still providing you will flexibility in your customization.
The First Prints
Once we built the end-to-end system, we then wanted to test it for ourselves. In order to do this, we designed many T-shirts, Mugs, and other items using the editor itself. The results were exactly how we expected. Since then, we also enhanced the editor to allow for positioning of the code onto the product. Here is our first mug:
A FREE NFT for EVERY purchase
Since we see a rise in fashion brands using NFTs to provide “proof-of-purchase”, we thought it would be a great opportunity to provide customers with a free NFT for every purchase made.
Every time you make a purchase, you are allowed to “claim” an NFT for your product. Currently, you have to actually create a product to get the free NFT, as this mitigates against people minting an NFT of the same item, with the same code on it, from the same creator. While in beta, we were minting the NFT to a testnet, and are now migrating the scripts to mainnet.
This approach may seem novel, but we believe this method of minting NFTs for every purchase of merchandise will become more common among brands.
Supporting Many Programming Languages
Currently codemer.ch supports 60+ Programming Languages, 20+ Editor/Syntax Themes, and hundreds of products.
Our goal is help that small niche market of developers, and others who want to print custom source code onto products — for themselves, and others.
Let us know your thoughts on Code Merch, and feel free to give it a try. If you want to learn how we built it, let us know in the comments, and we will do another post on the technical details & challenges!
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