NEAR SWAG 2.0 - Updates & Objectives

Hello NEAR community! :open_hands:

My name is Frederik (hansson.near), and I am based in Copenhagen, Denmark. I have a 10 years background in design, sales & marketing and strategy within fashion - working and consulting primarily for brands within the high-end designer brand segment.

With this post I want to announce the foundation of Swagger DAO founded with the main goal of strengthening the community through swag, culture and fashion. More info to come!

As the first project in Swagger DAO, we’ve have been working on some updates for the NEAR Swag and the store. The main object of NEAR SWAG 2.0 is to create the best print-on-demand apparel and merchandise collection and store set-up in the crypto space for the NEAR Community. :fire:

Over-all, the aim of this update is to:

  • Explore and push the boundaries of crypto swag fashion and commerce from a both product, marketing and technical integration aspect. That said working within the limits of the dogma of maximum automatization using print-on-demand production.

  • Present quality sourced goods manufactured and handled logistically in the most environmental and cost efficient way with the best NEAR SWAG product ever.

  • Develop processes for NEAR Swag to autogenerate, develop and create graphics and products in co-creation through various communities, projects and guilds within the great community of NEAR.

In order to make some nice products, we have to:

  • Source quality products with an automatized supply chain. NEAR is not a clothing company with actual stock of goods. We will crunch those challenges by choosing solutions that create automatization which means:

  • The production supply chain link is automatized via Printful’s print-on-demand services offering low cost production locally in their production network upon order confirmation.

  • All clothing products will have a NEAR logo printed on the inner back for a full NEAR SWAG product experience and not a branded Fruit Of The Loom t-shirt with logo printed on front as it is today :slight_smile:

Then, by connecting these services and solutions, NEAR SWAG becomes a swag brand that runs with a fully decentralized and automatized design-, marketing-, production-, commerce-, payment- and logistic operational set-up.

To do this we would like to :

  • Use the metrics of fashion commerce, PR and brand building to increase anticipation, excitement and hype of new NEAR SWAG product releases.

  • Make products that both employees, developers, contributors, guild members and fans of NEAR etc. are dying to show off everywhere they go, because it’s a nice product that represents a project they truly believe in.

    • Furthermore present a product that appeals to non-crypto natives and in the end also serve as a NEAR on-boarding touch point and case study on how to tap into different creative business genres.
  • Encourage the community to participate whether it’s setting up bounties, events and collabs etc. within NEAR guilds, communities and dApps in the design and graphic development process to accumulate content and material for a full circle NEAR community brand journey.

A few facts about the store and upcoming initiatives:

  • New store design - build on dShop on Origin protocol
    The store is built on the world’s first decentralized e-commerce platform, blockchain-powered project Origin Protocol on their dShop solution which offers integration with decentralized printing company Printful.

  • Pay with $NEAR, other cryptocurrencies or credit card
    Payment with NEAR token is already possible as well as Moonpay for other cryptocurrency payments such as ETH and DAI. Payment through Stripe integration for credit card payment with VISA or Mastercard is also possible.

  • NFT minted for each NEAR SWAG product
    Each product from NEAR SWAG will have an NFT minted presumably via Mintbase which the buyer receives to their NEAR address upon claiming it after order confirmation in the store. This integration will be added in 4-6 weeks from now. That means that this will be the last NEAR SWAG products without NFT. What an archive piece in 20 years! :gift:

Some collaboration ideas for NEAR SWAG where some are already in development:

  • Mintbase integration / CC: Carolin Wend, COO Mintbase and Nate, CEO Mintbase
  • NEAR Swag x Mintbase x Somnium Space / CC: Carolin Wend, COO Mintbase and Artur Sychov of Somnium Space.
  • Paras collaboration / CC: Riqi / Paras
  • Berry Club merchandise collaboration / CC: Evgeny Kazyako
  • NEAR Meme Pool
  • Sandbox / CC: Ozy / 4NTS GUILD

And yes! This update proposal of NEAR SWAG is made with the upcoming brand direction in mind, and is due to that influenced by the explorer archetype and thoughts from the community summarized in the marketing updates from NEAR Marketing Team presented on gov.near.org and the open brand page.

Within next week the new collection will be uploaded and live on the NEAR Swag Store and from there - everything can happen! :wink:

We are looking forward to your feedback, and we are even more excited to get in touch if you:

  • Would like to collaborate on this project or see some possibilities I have yet to discover related to NEAR Swag.
  • Are a designer who would like to contribute to the NEAR SWAG Project. Join us at FIGMA!
  • Have feedback on the ideas and plans for the project.

For further information and updates, join us to explore at:

SWAGGER Community Chat: Swagger DAO Telegram

Twitter: @SwaggerDao

Thank you for your time!

Swagger DAO :fire:

16 Likes

Awesome! We can even do a fashion show with digital NEAR swag in Somnium space. So much we can do!

3 Likes

Yes, very cool! I was just going to ask if you are planning to make skins/wearables out of it as well?

3 Likes

Great initiative! Popped into the Figma, looks blank. I’ve followed on twitter and joined the telegram group.

Mintbase/Paras integration:

  • Is this for merch with the platform logos or is it for artists and collectors to collect royalties on physical items featuring NFT graphics?
  • Will be some interesting licensing aerobatics if it’s getting artwork on merch, Paras TOS was based on nftlicense and allows collectors to take 100% of the profits from merch sales but doesn’t transfer the copyright :thinking: :thought_balloon:
  • As an artist I’ve wanted to sell and NFT where the owner splits merch profit with me. If there’s an icebox to fill up with random scope creep :wink:

Side note… too bad Printful doesn’t take crypto payment and still needs to be tied to paypal/cc. That’s the last piece I’d need to entirely automate a CODAME merch shop :yum:. Maybe if NEAR teams up with Origin we’d have enough momentum for Printful to hear us out :smirk:

1 Like

Hey @starpause!

Thank you for your nice feedback and for joining us! Support and feedback means everything! :love_you_gesture:

The Figma doc will be updated today with the timeline and project plan for NEAR SWAG 2.0. We will use it as a working document where the NEAR SWAG core collection that launches in a week will be uploaded mid next week. A lot more information about this will go out with the community update on TG tonight! :globe_with_meridians:

To answer your questions:

  • Overall, the NEAR SWAG 2.0 is an update on the current store.near.org. We will give at a make-over with better products, new items with more features (and more to come!) and an improved website. We are playing a little bit around, but naturally with huge respect to the NEAR brand and community. We want to make you feel hyped as fuck! :surfing_man:

  • There is a lot of ideas for collaborating with Paras and Mintbase! Right now, the project is not made from the Mintbase / Paras merchandise perspective, (that would be cool to do too though!), but a NEAR SWAG user experience / technical collaboration angle that links these groups of the NEAR ecosystem together. All profits from the NEAR SWAG is going back to the ecosystem btw! :muscle:

  • With Mintbase, the idea is to mint an NFT for each physical NEAR SWAG product. From there we can do wearables with Somnium Space as @MoniBlockdiver propose! We will be able to do that when Mintbase has launched with NEAR.

  • In regards of Paras. Our focus in a Paras collaboration could be to create a NEAR SWAG NFT collection with graphics from the collection at the Paras platform. So right now it’s not from the artists side, if we talk Paras collab. That would be cool to do, but there is indeed something to look into in terms of the copyright.

Could be interesting to discuss how to crunch that some time, since it also applies in regards of duplicating projects with different external partners?

In regards of Printful. As I understand, the transaction happens on the NEAR SWAG store on Origin (if paying with NEAR) to NEAR wallet, sending the order to Printful, whom then charges the NEAR’s paypal/cc. But there is small contradiction with the cross payment between the customer transaction and the actual production transaction. Despite that the customer is in the ecosystem at all times, but indeed; that last integration would be da bomb! Momentum will come to NEAR, I have no doubt. :muscle:

Have a nice day!

5 Likes

I LOVE this idea! Thanks so much for taking the initiative and moving forward.

Just last week I was mentioning on the Createbase Telegram channel that I would really, really like to have T-shirts (and mercy in general) with the artwork from my Berry Cards. Owning the cards makes me happy, but the pixelated artwork is so unique and quirky I want to wear it, show it to the world, a perfect conversation starter. Some additional thoughts along these lines were having the Swag as NFTs so being able to create limited editions of each design AND being able to distribute profits to the original artist, etc.

I understand that at the moment Swagger DAO is focused on pimping the Near Swag and push the brand out there - which is amazing! I’d love to help in any way I can and I am looking forward to the next stages of expansion (and my sick Berry Cards NFTees :slight_smile: )

2 Likes

I’ve been working with NFTs mapped to physical item fulfillment, including clothing and other items. Would love to stay in touch on this.

2 Likes

Hey Ron!

Thank you for your feedback. Super exciting!

Can you join our Telegram group @SwaggerDAO and dm me @frederikhansson at TG? Would love to hear your thoughts and experience. :muscle:

Oy @satojandro!

Thank you for your nice words! Then I guess, we hit the right spot - Swagger DAO would love to make your dreams come true! Please check out our project plan at FIGMA where our ideas are summarized. Link above. :point_up_2:

We are talking to Berry Club about how to do execute this. The obstacle right now is the ownership rights per board that are somewhat unclear, since in theory the art belongs to the author of each bit, but on berry.cards they are for sale where sales goes to Createbase fund. We really want to make it happen with the distributed profit, so all contribution to make the integration is highly appreciated.

For now, we can hopefully make some staple Berry Club Swag items!

Would love love to brain more, so please dm me at TG @frederikhansson :wave:

1 Like

+1 interested in this topic if you can add me to the TG thread or move it to the swaggerdao room :eyes::thought_balloon: @starpause there

Also interested in collaboration with this project. I am the organizer of Decentralized Brewing Co on PARAS

2 Likes

@frederikhansson Love the Swagger DAO.

. Would love to connect with you. We’ve created merch lines and contributed in various local fashion lines in our work in branding and marketing. In addition, we are heading to Bonnaroo for an activation the first week of September and are looking to create some promo swag for giveaways.

2 Likes

nearswag.com dropping soon

1 Like