In 2010 we opened a webshop to symbolically sell Nothing — an idealistic project about sustainability, overconsumption and the surprisingly persistent urge to click “order” anyway.
Nietskopen.nl is a satirical webshop against overconsumption, founded in 2010. It symbolically sells Nothing and uses parody, interactive tools and explanations of sales tactics to make buying pressure easier to recognise and support more sustainable consumption choices.
The first Nietskopen had six products. Visitors could satisfy the ritual of buying without requiring new stuff to be produced, packaged or transported. Nothing™ and Nothing Gift™ became especially successful non-sellers.
Sixteen years later we rebuilt the shop from the ground up. New products, interactive buying routes and a full toolbox for taking commercial sales tactics apart — all free to order.
Scarcity, countdowns, price anchors, upgrades, subscriptions, recommendations, gamification and other techniques can make people buy faster and more often than they intended. Nietskopen exaggerates and reverses those tactics so they become easier to recognize.
We hope humour and insight help people recognize buying impulses earlier, spot commercial pressure faster and ultimately make more sustainable consumption patterns possible. A few fewer things is often an excellent start.
Nietskopen.nl is a project of Stichting Terra Futura. Since 2008 the foundation has launched around one hundred projects for a better world, inviting visitors and participants to take positive action as small or large “world savers”. Sometimes that means doing something. Sometimes it means very deliberately not doing something.
and the counter continues to rise with admirable commercial discipline.
products. All carefully unnecessary.
remarkably stable since the beginning.