The shop of the No Gods No Masters Cooperative was launched in 2009 as a non-profit clothing store. Because the shop didn’t make any profit, it didn’t have the funds for web development, and the shop suffered from a poorly-made website with a lot of problems. So the tech team got involved in the development of a brand-new website.
This is the first major website redesign in 10 years, needless to say, the old version was long due for an update. We don’t use third-party software to run this website – we built our own. Our cooperative requires very specific needs so our website was entirely built from scratch by our web developers who have been working tirelessly for over 1 year to make this possible.
Why the shop needs a custom-made platform
The short explanation is what we need to run this shop didn’t exist, so we had to create it.
But also because of these reasons:
- We think that making our own platform and using open-source tools fits better with our principles that using a capitalist platform like Shopify.
- Print-on-demand means each order has to be programmatically sent for printing
- The shop uses an API to send orders for fulfillment, which absolutely requires custom coding – that’s the only way.
- A big part of the shop is product customization, which again requires custom coding to be integrated with the shop’s order flow.
- The shop has the unique characteristic of being a self-managed cooperative involving many bands and artists. This means that each sale has to be attributed to the artists, and our partners must be able to login into the coop member area to track sales and view statistics.
- There are so many t-shirt designs and it needs to be grouped by categories and tags to represent each topic.
NGNM wiki – explaining the origin of the quotes and symbols found on our t-shirts (update 2021)
At NGNM, we consider an activist t-shirt is not just some boring consumer product – it’s important to understand the meaning of the different symbols printed on our shirts. With so many acronyms and slogans, sometimes even codified (1312 = ACAB), it can be confusing for those who are unfamiliar with anarchism.
This is why our now displays a detailed description of each t-shirt with explanations of the symbols, their meanings, and their historical origins. These texts provide a better understanding of the social struggles that inspired our designs. This information also helps to become familiar with the authors of the many quotes found on our t-shirts
- A “161” t-shirt will inform you that the numbers represent the position of the letters AFA in the alphabet, which is an acronym for Anti-Fascist Action
. - A quote from Makhno will show you the biography of Nestor Makhno and the history of Makhnovtchina. We learn, among other things, that Makhno was the inventor of the Tachanka, a machine gun pulled by a horse, another symbol found on our t-shirts.
. - A band’s t-shirt will display their biography, history, and member list.
. - A t-shirt with a black flag will show you the history of the black flag and where its association with anarchism came from.
. - A t-shirt with a Ⓔ will tell you that the symbol means “Equality”
. - A “We can do it” t-shirt will tell the story of Rosie the Riveter and her association with the feminist movement.
This wiki is the culmination of a collective work over several years. Every t-shirt has been reviewed to add thematic tags for every struggle, every person, every band, and every symbol. Then, an explanatory text was linked to each label and was translated into 3 languages (English, French, Spanish).
These tags, more than 3000 in total, also allow better classification of our t-shirts and greatly improve search engine accuracy. It also makes it possible to sort the t-shirts by language.
Please feel free to report any inaccuracies or translation errors. You can also suggest improvements to descriptive texts
Wiki Example
Old website souvenir
Original Articles
- It’s here! Announcing the launch of our newly redesigned website
- NGNM wiki – explaining the origin of the quotes and symbols found on our t-shirts