Today I read that Gamestop was shutting down ThinkGeek.com, folding it into their main website. I was sad to see that something that played so heavily into my life was now reduced to essentially be just a kiosk in a physical store I would never have a reason to set foot in. I don’t know that I’ve ever written this story, so I thought I’d share it:
One day a package arrived at our office. When I say office, I mean that very loosely: when a small group of nerds inhabit a space for long enough, even a nice place turns dingy. And in the early days none of our offices even started out looking very nice. At this point in our history, we had rented several duplexes, living in the ones that were close enough for wireless internet access, and working in the one at the center. We called it the Geek Compound. It had air conditioning, an Arkanoid table, and our daily commute could be measured in seconds. Perfect for an era when we mostly worked almost all of our waking hours.
But back to the package at hand: it contained a bunch of random nerdy stuff. Stickers and shirts and the like. Perhaps to me most excitingly, fine glass glasses with a nerdy bit of programming lingo #include <beer.h> adorning them. I could C what they did there and it amused my sense of humor. I immediately really liked all this silly stuff they sent. So often when I would see merch of this nature it just felt pandering, but instead this big box felt more honest. It came from a real place of understanding of the nerd culture I was submerged in. Or maybe they just faked it better than anyone else! At least it was free…
We learned more about the mysterious mailers of these fine gifts and learned of ThinkGeek. We learned of Jen and Willie and Fraize. We quickly saw kindred spirit in their efforts and I almost immediately took word of this strange ThinkGeek thing back to Andover HQ and sang their praises at full volume. I thought we could work with these guys. Derek and Bruce, then the powers that be seemed to agree with me. It wasn’t long before Andover had a new geek focused e-commence site in their growing stable of nerdy web properties.
I didn’t have anything to do with the actual transaction, except to say that as a board member of Andover I approved of the acquisition strongly. I don’t remember how much we paid for ThinkGeek: I hope it was generous, but I kinda doubt it was. I had very little business acumen at the time, which led me to make several big mistakes and I suspect ThinkGeek was no different. None of us got out of that era with the solid gold rocket cars we would have earned as founders of half as successful businesses a decade later. But I was excited to have their team on board. It was a great fit, culturally and from a business perspective. We brought in ludicrous numbers of eyeballs, they sold exactly the kind of stuff that our eyes liked.
Over the years I didn’t interact with the TG crew all that much, but my experiences were always positive. They occasionally mailed me cool toys to play with. And all employees of Andover got an employee discount which I certainly made extensive use of: especially for their clever T-Shirts which we could get for peanuts. I routinely would order them for myself or gifts. I pretty much wore nothing but ThinkGeek T-Shirts for years on end… I’d like to lie and say it was to support the company, but mostly it was just because I liked the shirts and they were super cheap with that discount!
Today many of the shirts that survived hundreds of wearings and washings are in a box deep in the back of my closet that contains most of my “fashion” from that era. Stuff that prominently features logos and brands that make me feel the feels when I see them… so I make sure I don’t. But I’m also not really willing to throw it away either. Someday.
Over the years there were tons of fun moments. I especially remember hanging out with Jen or Willie at trade shows in the early years. They were always amazingly on top of things when we needed some swag for a corporate event or con or something. There was always a box of their stuff in a closet wherever our office was to give out as gifts to guests. Never underestimate the goodwill earned by free shirt! Especially when the shirt in question doesn’t feel like a faked attempt at humor by a cultural outsider.
They were perhaps best known for great April Fools Day jokes. For them, April Fools day was one of the biggest events of the year. Slashdot had always had great fun with April fools day, but for ThinkGeek it was some kind of Nerd Black Friday event. They never once asked me to link their stuff: they earned it just like everyone else. And at first they got huge traffic from Slashdot. But soon they didn’t need us. Their clever satirical products were often legit funny in an era where most corporate april fools day stuff is pandering or obvious. Some of their jokes eventually became real. Sadly, Over the years it seemed like the creativity faded and they became mostly just like everyone else. Felt all to familiar.
Corporate desires are fickle, and over the years the company shifted from a focus on Linux Hardware to SourceForge and eventually focused largely on ThinkGeek as the dominant wing of the corporation. SourceForge became almost a sort of software geocities with many confusing download buttons and a dated UI. Slashdot was usurped by more nimble competition capable of embracing social media. And so of course ThinkGeek became the center of the corporation: the unit with the most possible future upside for people interested in little things like future earning potential.
But what was once a logical partner to Slashdot and Freshmeat and nerd culture grew well beyond us. The “Nerd” thing broke out into the mainstream and the notion of what a Geek actually was increasingly became defined more by shows like The Big Bang Theory or Marvel blockbuster films than by what happened in Linux mailing lists and obscure and increasingly dated nerd culture websites. As that happened, the decision was made to split the company up into the tech part and the commerce part. Maybe that was to sell it for parts. Maybe that was to toss dead weight overboard. I have complex feels about all this too.
By this time, I was obviously no longer a board member. I had no influence on… well… anything. And while I still was fond of ThinkGeek, they just had to go and ninja Jamie from me. He was a great engineer, confidant and friend for almost all of Slashdot’s history. They needed him more than us of course: Our traffic was falling, and theirs was on the rise. But i’ll never forgive any of them for this terrible crime against all things good and true!!
From my outsider perspective it felt like their problems had more to do with product ideation, development, and order fulfillment than competent database management. But the numbers seemed good, and a suitable buyer was eventually found. Just as years before, VA Linux System had jettisoned their hardware unit in favor of SourceForge… ThinkGeek was freed of SourceForge and Slashdot, which by this point were probably the only properties worth anything. It made sense, but it was sad.
By the time ThinkGeek was sold, most of the people I knew had moved on or been relegated to positions of less influence and/or danger. Such is the way of many businesses: the founders are great at the start. They are the only people who can create something new. People who are stupid enough to stare into the void and make something out of nothing. But as an organization grows, its needs change. Skills of founders are not the skills of the future. A story I felt all too well having left my own creation in the hands of others who were simultaneously far better and much worse than I could ever be. But at least those who follow don’t have the historical baggage to drag them down. They embrace the future instead of clinging to the past.
I last saw several ThinkGeek folks in Dulles. Jen arranged for Carrie, then TGs social media person to drive my butt there since I was in downtown DC that week working for my totally unrelated employer at the time. The space shuttle Discovery was set for an epic flyover of the capitol, and then a landing outside the Udvar Hazy Smithsonian where it was to live out its days in a museum like a caged animal or something. It was an absolutely spectacular day. Wonderful weather, and a truly once in a life time kind of visual spectacle that any self respecting geek would have been thrilled to see if they could survive miles of traffic created by every other self respecting geek within a hundred miles.
I only knew a few people there that day, and they were all kind to me, but I seriously doubt any of them knew that more than a decade prior I had opened a box of merch in Holland Michigan, triggering what would become my tiny part in the history of ThinkGeek.
They were all pretty much socially awkward in exactly the way I was. You know: Geeks. You can spot them from a distance if you recognize the signals. At the time, a ThinkGeek shirt was a big one.
We had a lunch afterwards where I saw several familiar faces for the first time in years. Since then, we’ve really only ever met on the twitter.
Today I read that the current stewards of the ThinkGeek brand were shutting down the dot com that started it all. Of course, the special thing was gone long ago, along with the last of those beer mugs that I finally lost in a kitchen accident a couple years ago. But the people. The memories. The stories. It never turned out the way we all hoped, but it was still pretty great.
CmdrTaco 