The claim that's made in this blog - that Kagi 'owns a t-shirt factory' seems disingenuous, or lazy at best. Kagi's own blog says that instead of going with a major branded merch manufacturer/distributor, they chose to work with a small print shop instead. Nothing about blowing funds on an actual factory/print shop. "Owning a merch operation end to end" just means they're not paying some manufacturer to do production, warehousing, order fulfillment/drop shipping, etc.

I do not understand this distinction. Either they "own" the merch operation "end to end", or they don't. You can't have it both ways.

You can contract facilities or output percentage. You don't have to only "own it end to end" or not.

If you contract facilities then you don't "own" the merch operation "end to end".

Kagi's post says further down that they

> allocate[d] nearly a third of our investor-raised funds to produce and freely distribute 20,000 t-shirts

Though it sounds like they don't actually own "a t-shirt factory", but rather a t-shirt distributor.