Duck Tales: Dax (our mascot) is coming to the physical world, on shoes, shirts, and security keys (Ep.32).

3 Jun 2026 · 24 min

Episode Duck Tales: Dax (our mascot) is coming to the physical world, on shoes, shirts, and security keys (Ep.32).

0:00 23:35

In this episode, Gabriel (Founder) and Dan (Brand Strategy) discuss our first set of branded collaborations, where the idea came from, and why people would rep Dax in public.

Show notes: Shop the collaborations here

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If you have feedback on Duck Tales, or episode ideas, email us at podcast@duckduckgo.com

Gabriel: Hello again. Welcome to Duck Tales, the show where we delve into all things DuckDuckGo. I’m Gabriel. I do a bunch of these, but not all. I’m the founder of DuckDuckGo. I’m here today with Dan. Dan, you want to introduce yourself?

Dan: Yes, absolutely. Hey everybody, I’m Dan. I help lead the brand strategy team and I’m excited to be chatting with Gabriel today.

Gabriel: Cool. So we’re gonna actually turn it around today and Dan’s going to interview me a bit about something special we’ve launched recently. That said, before we get started, we have a new email podcast at DuckDuckGo.com where we would love your feedback about Duck Tales. What episodes should we run more of? What do you like? What do you don’t like about the show? Should I get a real microphone? Blah blah blah. Please email us. We’ll we’ll read it and get back to you. But now we’re going to turn it around and Dan, take it away.

Dan: Amazing. Before jumping into the questions, I’ll first just introduce this special topic we’re gonna dive into. Today we’re here to talk about the how the DuckDuckGo brand is doing collaborations. And we’re doing branded collaborations with Atoms Shoes, with Cotton Bureau Shirts, with Yubico Hardware Passkeys, and more collaborations to come in the near future. So before diving into the specifics about why we chose each of those collaboration partners, we want to take a step back and chat about why, in general, we’re doing collaborations. We want to chat about brand and the DuckDuckGo brand in the larger landscape that we live in, and just have an interesting conversation about this exciting new work stream we’re doing. So with that in mind, I can jump into the first question. The first question is why go physical now? And to add a little bit more meat onto the bones of that question, allow me just to explain in a little bit more depth. It’s really interesting to see how some brands are bringing gaining cultural influence in unexpected ways. For example, a brand like Teenage Engineering makes audio hardware, but has become a lifestyle statement. A brand like Starface makes acne patches, but it has become a signal a symbol of empowerment. And so that brings us to DuckDuckGo, which is an internet privacy company now releasing branded collaborations with fashion and technology hardware companies. So the first question is, why does it make sense for DuckDuckGo to go from a purely digital brand to one with a physical presence in people’s lives?

Gabriel: Yeah, and and if everyone is aware, Dan is relatively new, so he doesn’t know all of DuckDuckGo history. And I this is not as thought out as you might imagine. But let me take you through some of that history. So when when we first started, it was just me and I we’ll get into this a little more deeper, but I really like offline stuff. I mean as most people do, but like particularly like good products and showcasing

Dan: Yeah.

Gabriel: stylish things and whatnot. So I very early on made stickers and t-shirts. And for several years I would send people stickers for free. You could there was a there was a like a place on the site you could put in your information. I’d only use it to study the sticker and delete it in a privacy respecting way. But I probably sent liter I probably mailed thousands of individual people stickers out. At some point and people love it. And then we also had you know I I almost exclusively wore t-shirts for a long time and I I really had a…

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