ThinkGeek
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| ThinkGeek | |
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| Type of Company | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| Headquarters | Fairfax, Virginia, USA |
| Industry | Retail |
| Owner | Open Source Technology Group |
| Slogan | Stuff for Smart Masses |
| Website | ThinkGeek |
ThinkGeek is an electronic commerce company based in Fairfax, VA as part of the Open Source Technology Group. It sells items that mostly cater to PC enthusiasts and other 'geeky' social groups. Their merchandise consists of clothing, computer hardware, toys for around the office, caffeinated drinks, and candy.
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[edit] History
Three out of the four founding members started an ISP based in Northern Virginia in 1995. A short while later, the founders had the idea of publishing an online retailer which sold merchandise targeted to electronic enthusiasts, such as programmers, engineers, students, open source developers and the fast growing Internet culture. After a few months of operation, the website was Slashdotted. Promptly thereafter, ThinkGeek was acquired by Andover.net (which would go on to be known as the Open Source Technology Group).
[edit] Software
ThinkGeek runs on a system developed primarily in Perl, but other request response servers are usually a hybrid between different OS Software and Programming Languages. Most of the servers run Debian and Gentoo Linux.
[edit] Hardware
ThinkGeek utilizes five front-end servers with dual processors for serving content to customers, and a single dual processor web-server for administrative tasks.
[edit] Website Features
[edit] Products
The navigational panel on every ThinkGeek page contracts and expands in branch format to display subcategories of products.
- T-shirts
- Other Apparel
- Geek Toys
- Gadgets
- Home & Office
- Computing
- Caffeine
- Electronics
- Books
A majority of products sold on ThinkGeek are heavily related to (and sometimes only understood by) Internet culture. Some T-Shirt designs include stick figure with a decapitated anus, with "LMAO" as the caption, a ROFLCOPTER (an ASCII drawing of a helicopter comprised of internet slang), the Intel Pentium Processor logo replacing "Pentium" with "Geek", and a pixelated 1up Mushroom from the Super Mario Brothers games series.
[edit] Geek Points
ThinkGeek runs a points for reward system. The more products a customer purchases from ThinkGeek (provided they're enrolled in the Geek Points program and meet the qualifications), the higher quality of rewards they can claim. The requirements to join this program state participants must be at least 18 years old, must live in the U.S. or Canada, (mainly because the laws regarding reward programs vary in different countries) and must have a ThinkGeek account to accumulate and use Geek Points. Geek Points will expire after 3 years for active customers and cannot be transferred for money, or to other accounts.
