Dear Fellow Nerds,

As the year comes to a close, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the incredible journey nerdyStuff has embarked on in its first year. It’s been a whirlwind of creativity, challenges, and growth, and we’re so grateful to have you all along for the ride. Here’s a look back at what we’ve accomplished and what’s on the horizon for 2025.

2024 in Numbers

This year, we proudly launched 7 new products, including:

• 1 sweatshirt
• 3 t-shirts
• 1 hoodie
• 1 mug
• 1 special collaboration t-shirt with Superlinear Academy

They formed 3 unique collections:

• Math Nerds – celebrating rigorous mathematical concepts.
• Big Days – highlighting pivotal moments in human science and technology history.
• The Coming Wave – capturing the spirit of AI and tech memes.

Thanks to your support, nerdyStuff products have reached hundreds of customers across three continents. Our most popular items? The AIAYN T-Shirt and the Sunday Coding Club Hoodie—fan favorites that continue to make waves in the community.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

1. Manufacturing Hurdles

We began with a traditional manufacturing model: sampling, bulk orders, and holding inventory. This taught us some hard lessons:

• Estimating demand for bulk orders is tricky without a customer base.
• Turnaround times (e.g., two months for our first product, the Normal Distribution and the Galton Board Sweatshirt) can mean missing peak selling windows.
• Costs of overseas production aren’t as advantageous as expected for small orders, especially with international shipping overhead.

To adapt, we explored alternatives like pre-sales and print-on-demand (POD) platforms. Pre-sales allow us to gauge demand before production, while POD streamlines logistics but comes with quality control challenges and slimmer profit margins. Moving forward, we’ll continue refining these strategies.

2. Marketing Woes

Marketing turned out to be one of our biggest challenges. Here’s what we tried:

• Paid ads: Effective but costly, consuming the largest chunk of our budget.
• Original content: Time-intensive and difficult to sustain.
• Creator collaborations: Our most promising avenue, leading to authentic content and support from creators in tech, science, and personal growth spaces. While influencer collaborations didn’t always translate directly to sales, their encouragement validated the potential of our niche market and strengthened our resolve. 

Looking Ahead to 2025

We’re excited to build on this year’s learnings with ambitious plans for the future:

• Faster Product Drops: Expect a higher frequency of new designs hitting the market. Your feedback will shape what comes next!
• Expanded Collaborations: We’re formalizing partnerships with influencers to amplify our reach and impact.
• Growing the Team: We’re opening opportunities for volunteers passionate about marketing and operations to join us on this journey.

THANK YOU

From the bottom of our nerdy hearts, thank you for believing in us and supporting nerdyStuff this year. We’re just getting started, and we can’t wait to bring even more creativity and community-driven designs to life in 2025.

Here’s to a year of big ideas, bold designs, and nerdy breakthroughs.

Yours in nerdiness,

Justin