Cotton Bureau Collaborations #001: DuckDuckGo
Last year our friends at DuckDuckGo approached us about teaming up to offer a line of t-shirts and other merch. Earlier this week the first round of items dropped including the Dark Mode tee featuring erstwhile DuckDuckGo mascot Dax in striking black-on-black.
To kick off our new partnership, we hallucinated an entire interview with Duck.ai which we are presenting below. Just kidding, we fired off a few questions via email to learn more about why they chose to work with Cotton Bureau and what might be next.
Hello! Thanks for taking a few minutes to chat about the recent DuckDuckGo / Cotton Bureau collaboration. As privacy-valuing users and paying subscribers to Duck.ai (thank you for adding device sync, btw), we’re big fans of what you all have been doing lately. Add to that our long-standing admiration for your principled approach to running a business, and we can honestly say it’s a privilege for us to finally be teaming up on this new line of shirts and other merch.
Would you mind telling us a little bit about this collaboration?
Thank you, that's very kind. At DuckDuckGo, our mission has always been to raise the standard of trust online, helping people protect their privacy across browsing, search, email, and AI. This collaboration is an extension of that mission into the physical world. We partnered with Cotton Bureau because you share our values: care, quality, and respect for the people who use their products.
Well, shucks, thank you. We couldn’t agree more, and it’s gratifying to see the effort we have put in over the last decade plus translate into opportunities like this.
So, why does a search engine / private browser / AI chat anonymizer want to sell t-shirts and other things? Surely you have your hands full already.
Millions of people have made the choice to use DuckDuckGo every day, and we wanted to give them a way to wear that choice proudly and with quality. It's a fun way to celebrate the people who have championed DuckDuckGo over the years. A shirt becomes an everyday signal that privacy matters and that there's a community of people who believe the same. We've always thought privacy is something worth wearing on your sleeve, so we figured we'd make that literal.
Well said. But, be honest, was this all Dax's idea? It’s at least a little bit loony.
As you can imagine, Dax is extremely private. So private, in fact, that not much is known about him. Even we struggle to keep up. But we've heard through the duckweb he's very excited about this collaboration. Let's just say he may or may not be the de facto creative director around here (among many other roles he prefers to keep under the radar).
Will there be more product collaborations in the future We understand Dax is notoriously private, but surely he can give us a hint or may be a portentous nod.
There is no need to be private about supporting privacy. We look forward to more collabs in the future!
In addition to maintaining a shadowy persona, we know Dax and the rest of the team are busy, so we’ll try to wrap this up quickly. DuckDuckGo is famous for protecting users’ privacy. Does donning the Dark Mode tee offer similar protection in real life? Would one be immune from, say, identity thieves and malicious snoopers with long-range microphones like they use in the movies to listen to your conversations?
You’ll have to download our app for that! Which you should absolutely do.
Done! While we’re a little bit disappointed the t-shirt doesn’t come with superpowers, we knew it was a long shot. We’ll let you go now so Dax can get back to his life of fighting crime optimizing search and keeping you safe online. Thank you so much for your time!
P.S. You can view the entire set of collaborations on DuckDuckGo, including the svelte all-black Atoms and the spy-grade DuckDuckGo Yubikey.