Grand Opening: The Stan Shop

I finally put together a shop so everyone can order Stan t-shirts and mugs:

The art’s by Michael Malecki. The t-shirts and mugs are printed on demand by Spreadshirt. I tried out a sample and the results are great and have held up to machine washing and drying.

There’s a markup of about $4 per item, which is going straight into the Stan slush fund. No promises that it will be spent wisely, but it will go to the developers.

There aren’t a lot of other products from Spreadshirt that we can put logos on — most of the items (hats, tote bags, etc.) are text-only. But if there are other t-shirts or sweatshirts people want, we could easily expand our product line — feel free to drop suggestions in the comment box.

23 thoughts on “Grand Opening: The Stan Shop

    • We could add a user-contributed section that are general stats gag mugs and shirts.

      Maybe we could commision X’s keep the werewolves at Bayes mug design. The design was inspired by Rasmuth Bååth sending X a mug with Rasmuth’s design for a Bayesian mascot, make the puppies happy, which is of course, based on the cover of John K. Kruschke’s book.

      I also know for a fact that Michael Betancourt and Matt Hoffman have a number of such designs up their sleeves. In fact, Michael’s got oodles of them and Matt claims to have a “friend” making up other ones (does anyone ever really believe a “friend” did it?). Mitzi’s also suggested some good ones.

      Seriously, though, I thought it would just be too much clutter. But maybe not. We could also sell BUGS and JAGS t-shirts, too, though I think we’d have to get their permission to use their brands (I am not a trademark lawyer!).

      It’s also been suggested that we open an Amazon Affiliate storefront to sell books. We might make a few bucks, but shopkeeping is not an aspiration of mine (unlike, say, barkeeping, goalkeeping, or beekeeping).

  1. There’s only one thing keeping me from ordering one of each product; the fact that German customs will impound the package and/or charge 100% duty on it. That’s what they usually do (not that they are into trade barriers or anything like that; in other respects we are a free country).

    Perhaps you can find a way to ship it from somewhere in Europe.

    • I’ll have to see if I can get us set up on spreadshirt.de without my having to have international income and complicating my taxes. Maybe if I drop everything into the marketplace you’ll be able to see it.

      If 100% duty isn’t a trade barrier, what is?

      • Hi Bob; thanks. Please announce it if you can get it sold within Europe. I would like to have a Stan mug and t-shirt! I may even give Stan mugs as prizes to my best performing students in my Bayesian data analysis class.

        I was being sarcastic about German trade protectionism.

        Even if it’s impossible to buy something in Europe, the German customs will tax it 100%, presumably on the grounds that it takes away trade and taxes from the EU. I think they are absolutely ridiculous about it. If I want to buy a book in Japanese, I can’t do it, unless I am willing to pay more than twice the price (including shipping, from amazon.co.jp). I can’t buy books that are available only in the US. I can’t buy Kindle editions of books that are available only in the US (this might be amazon’s fault; not sure, but probably the EU laws restrict them). Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a pretty backward part of the world, not one of the economically most advanced countries in Europe.

        • I just recently bought two books (about 50€ value) from amazon.com without any problems and without paying customs. The official tax regulations are that below 22 € (including shipping cost), nothing will be charged. Between 22 and 150 you have to pay taxes but no duty and above 150 you must pay both taxes and duty. Usually books are way cheaper at the moment in U.S., so it shouldn’t make much of a difference. I think charging customs duties has little to do with being backward, both more with having trade partners that are doing just the same. Protectionisms is not a unilateral thing and I guess other states, including U.S., a neither less bureaucratic, nor less pedantic compared to Germany.

    • Well, I don’t particularly like the free trade agreement (TTIP) with the U.S. but 100% duty should not happen anymore when it is finalized. So you would just need to wait.

      • I just looked at the TTIP. Interesting. I wish they’d stop being so dickish and just open up to the world. If my sister sends me a small amount of clothes from India, the customs people impound it and want 100% of the value too for themselves, on the grounds that I might be running a business selling Indian clothes. They make me come in (a loss of 3-4 hours) to some center where they hold incoming stuff, and then I have to explain that this is for personal use and not for selling (sometimes I am successful, sometimes not).

    • We discussed that, as well as kickstarter, but Andrew had a very strong opposition thinking it’d be tacky given the amount of grant money we have.

      I just thought some extra $ from t-shirts might just drop a few hundred $ into a pot we could use to take people out to lunch or for drinks that we can’t otherwise get reimbursed through our grants at Columbia.

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