20 ms·

I Sell Onions on the Internet

3015 points by eightturn 7y ago

AtTheLast 7y ago
Thanks for sharing your story. I think there are a lot of people out there like me not looking to be a unicorn company, but would love to be the next VidaliaOnions.com
garren 7y ago
That's awesome. A couple responses to yesterday's thread regarding bookmarked hn quotes really opened up my eyes regarding building and maintaining side projects. I picked up a book, "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup" which has been informative (if a little dated). This article is a great supplement to that book, and is inspirational to a 9-5'er like me. [0]https://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/dp/0615373968 https://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching... | https://startupbook.net https://startupbook.net
- tstrimple 7y ago
  Rob & Mike's podcast is great on this topic as well. https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com
- iscrewyou 7y ago
  Can you please refer me to that thread?
- rwalling 7y ago
  Author of Start Small, Stay Small here. >> if a little dated Argh! I know. I literally opened the Doc this week to start to parse out sections to update. It’s overdue ;-)
  - simonebrunozzi 7y ago
    This is one of the reasons why I love HN so much.
baldeagle 7y ago
This is an American dream-esque article about a boy and a domain name. They meet, he wins the auction, and they start spending time together. The domain name, she calls to him and eventually they hook up with an industry group and bring onions to the world. While on the face of it, this may not seem like the best business plan - I actually really like it. He found something personal (domain knowledge from his home state industry), something with a good customer need, and filled a niche of better customer service and process. Here, everyone wins... So I guess it is also an 'invisible hand of the free market' dream too.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ddtaylor 7y ago
Originally I was expecting an article about mining .onion domain names, but this is good too!
- theandrewbailey 7y ago
  Though vidalia.onion would be a stylish domain name. It'd be better than vidaliaonion.io. \s
jacurtis 7y ago
I just have to stop and say that this was an immensely fun and exciting post to read. So much of the business stuff we read now is bullshit. It is stupid people getting lucky and riding on VC money while making more stupid decisions but ultimately dumping enough investor money into it that it works enough to get sold. At which point, that founder then goes around and tells the same stereotypical story of dropping out of college, running out of money and getting investment on the day they were planning on giving up, etc. We have all heard the bullshit before. So I was genuinely grateful to read a real business story. The owner saw an opportunity, took it when other people probably wouldn't have, and just genuinely worked hard to get where he is. This is inspiring because anyone here could do it too if they wanted to. I don't mean selling onions specifically, but I mean they could just go out there find a product, work hard towards selling it, team up with manufacturers/producers, etc and make the dream come to life.
- blantonl 7y ago
  Not to mention he's actually having a lot of fun doing this, and he specifically throws shade at what you've described above (and what we typically read about here on Hacker News) Them: We leverage automated machine learning to enhance your existing BI visualizations with more proactive insights Me: I sell onions on the internet So good.
- noxToken 7y ago
  Yes! This was an odd read (in a good way), and I definitely enjoyed. No cruft. No BS. No "one weird trick" hooks. Just a person stumbling into a business opportunity and taking a shot in the dark. Kudos.
- duxup 7y ago
  This doesn't seem unlike super cool hip startups where the key to success is clearly hip company onion culture that could be better expressed with professional photos of the onions working in various locations / having a good time.
  - vram22 7y ago
    Or like the startup team page where they have, say, Vidalia (an onion, in a cool red-and-white gown of sheaths) instead of the obligatory human-named dog :)
Aromasin 7y ago
I've been umming-and-ahhing over an entrepreneurial endeavour for a while now. I'm very tempted now to just go out there now and see if I can get a good domain name. Letting the domain make the business decision for me seems fun.
- jermaustin1 7y ago
  This is a potentially addictive and risky venture. I've personally bought hundreds of domains over the years, and professionally in the thousands. I've probably broken even or profited a little. Most of the domains I buy for the name just sit there unused for 5+ years.
  - Aromasin 7y ago
    I don't necessarily mean as a career path. More-so as an out-of-work hobby to keep me occupied. By buying a good domain name, that would probably give me the kick I need to do something with it!
- detritus 7y ago
  My personal advice would be: Get the rest of the pieces in place before buying the domain name. I've probably bought dozens of domains over the years with an eye to a specific Great Business Idea underpinning them, but for some reason the act of buying the domain seems to stall my interest. They were all good ideas, not duffers, evidenced by subsequent pick up years after. I just never bothered. Bother first, domain second! :)
mywittyname 7y ago
This is really inspirational: who knew that such a rudimentary site could be a viable business?
- nickjj 7y ago
  You don't need a fancy site to have a viable business. You just need customers. Sounds like they have their 1,000 true fans[0]. [0]: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
- sethhochberg 7y ago
  Craigslist, or perhaps Tarsnap, or many others providing services to people who know exactly what they're looking for. Being flashy helps sometimes if your customers are fickle and you need to sell them on something they didn't know they wanted, but if you've got an enthusiast audience or specialized product, substance is all that is required - at least at a fundamental level.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Every junkyard website is basically just a business card with the ability to search their inventory (or the fraction of it they choose to list) on car-part iframed in.
  - mywittyname 7y ago
    Craigslist provides a very common, broad service to a broad demographic of people. Almost everyone will want to sell something or buy a used product once in their life. This site provides one very specific thing to a niche market. It's the difference between opening an office supply store vs a site selling one specific type of rubberband.
- bob_theslob646 7y ago
  It is not that viable to be fair. The costs of shipping is killer.
  - 7y ago
njepa 7y ago
It was a fun read. But also a bit sad that it takes thousands of dollars and a lot of available time (which many people don't have) to do something as fundamental as this.
- latexr 7y ago
  I have available time. Get me someone with thousands of dollars (and willing to risk them) and let’s collaborate!
  - hopler 7y ago
    Drop in on your local bank and SBA. They are looking for people like you.
    - latexr 7y ago
      A loan has to be repaid. Since most projects fail, odds are not on my side. I have no desire to dig myself into a hole. This is why it’s more common for people that are already well off to be entrepreneurs[1] — they have a safety net. [1]: https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene-for-risk-they-come-from-families-with-money/ https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene...
      - freeone3000 7y ago
        A business loan is issued to the business, not to you as an individual. Failing to repay the loan means your business goes into collections (and possible bankruptcy), not that you as an individual suffer for it.
        cm2012 7y ago
        No one gives out unsecured business loans to start-ups.
        deadmetheny 7y ago
        Please don't speak of things you know nothing about. No brand-new business would ever get a loan issued without a signature from some person or established entity who can be held liable if the business defaults. Source: I have owned multiple small businesses.
rhacker 7y ago
Buy buy buy, they are shipping soon: (I'm not affiliated in any way) https://www.vidaliaonions.com/ https://www.vidaliaonions.com/
nkrisc 7y ago
Thoroughly enjoyed this. I'd love to read a bit more detail on his process of spinning up the customer relations sides of the business that he mentioned. What was the hardest thing to get right? What were the unexpected pitfalls?
- eightturn 7y ago
  Peter here (author).. happy to share a little more. I oddly enjoy the customer relations side the most. It's so old school - alot of my customers are surprised when a real human picks up the phone to take their order. The hardest thing to get right (and we continue to refine) is the logistics part. The pitfalls I encounter are the very tight margins. If I take my eyes off of operations, I could quickly go under water.
swalsh 7y ago
I would say this is crazy, but truth be told... if I saw someone selling like super high quality heirloom tomatoes online... I'd probably buy some. But what I've actively searched out, and have yet to find is someone selling lobster stock. Sometimes if i'm lucky, I can pick up some from my local fish monger... but it's uncommon.
- technofiend 7y ago
  Probably what's holding that back is shipping cost since stock is mostly water, quite heavy and needs to be sent frozen or at least cooled with freezer packs, further adding to weight. My favorite place for andouille sausage [1] will ship cooled packages but the shipping costs are roughly equal to the product cost. So whenever I drive to New Orleans I take an ice chest with me netting twice the product for the same price. [1] https://www.cajunsausage.com/ https://www.cajunsausage.com/
  - swalsh 7y ago
    There's a way to make it by reducing most of the water away so you get a 20x concentrate that's quite shelf stable... and probably cheap to ship. Here's an example (https://www.morethangourmet.com/ https://www.morethangourmet.com/) these stocks are quite good.
    - technofiend 7y ago
      I shall bookmark that. Thank you.
- tmountain 7y ago
  Amateur tomato grower here. One key difference between the flavorless tomatoes you typically find at the grocery and heirloom varieties is that the non-heirloom tomatoes are genetically optimized for shipping durability while the heirloom varieties are optimized for flavor. I'm not saying you can't ship heirloom tomatoes, but they're definitely more prone to bruising, so this is likely an obstacle in shipping them over longer distances.
Panino 7y ago
> I backordered the domain as a spectator, but for kicks & giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid. It's funny and beautiful how a moment of whimsy ends up being a fulcrum point in his life. It seems there's a lot of interest in gardening / food production among tech people. For me, one of the reasons I love gardening is because in many ways it's totally different from working inside with machines, but there are important and unexpected overlaps. For example if you have a solid understanding of the OSI model which informs your method of system design, you can easily move into gardening where knowledge of the layers of a forest plays a similar role. Having this experience in tech makes it easy to zero in on similar structural principles in gardening, learn about them, and apply that knowledge whereas many others clearly don't. Just like a person who doesn't understand the value of a proper foundation in tech (hardware, lower protocols like DNS, etc.), a similar gardener won't first seek to build strong healthy soil, and they will constantly fight against nature rather than work with it, doing more work while getting fewer results. As an aside, regarding onions: last year I cut off some green onion bottoms from the store and put them in the ground (including the little roots). They grew back and gave several more green onion harvests before winter set in, and now they're back on their own! Permanent green onion. You can do this with a number of plants, btw. Try it!
- tvanantwerp 7y ago
  Moments of whimsy are some of the most important. It was a moment of whimsy that led to me studying abroad in college, and another moment of whimsy that led me to meet my wife while I was there. Couldn't have been more than 5 total minutes of thoughts no more complicated than "yeah, I guess I'll give it a go" that shaped my entire life. And yet, I can spend another 5 minutes in the grocery store agonizing over which of two near-identical bags of chips to buy. Funny how that goes.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    I ultimately owe my software engineering career to wasting time posting on a phpBB for a webcomic.
  - mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
stephen82 7y ago
This reminded me of an old friend from school. He finished high school and decided to work any type of job would land in front of him. Meanwhile, his closest friends would finish school, go to colleges and universities and they would come back really proud for having a bachelor or masters degree. One day they met at a crepe shop. He was making his orders along with the other folks that were behind their crepe pans. "So...you work here mate?" "Yep." "Ah...shame. We make very good money, thanks to our degrees. Isn't a sad thing that you are forced to work in this shitty job?" "First of all, I enjoy doing this job; and second of all, how much are you earning annually, if I may?" "Around 35K euros". He burst to hysterical laughter. "I happen to make the least 1000 euros daily and this 'shitty job' happens to be mine; yep, I own the place. At my highest peak I earned 1 million euros and these guys you see working next to me are my employees which are getting paid more or less the same amount as you." I happened to be there when this incident took place; it was the best day of my life! ^_^
- draw_down 7y ago
  It turns out money is a good way to measure a person’s value! Oh, hang on a second...
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  (FYI, using code indents for non-code here mostly prevents reading your story on mobile.)
  - stephen82 7y ago
    Thank you for letting me know. I fixed it. +1
    - floatingatoll 7y ago
      Thank you and OMG that story
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- 7y ago
yowlingcat 7y ago
Agree with the other comment saying this was fun and exciting to read -- very well written and makes a strong point. I fully hope, when I am able to get off my lazy ass and do something, to sell a simple physical product that people already want. Food's a great example of this.
krisrm 7y ago
This is awesome. Always great to read about someone's hard work and dedication paying off. I love a good onion, but am not within the 48 lower states, so unfortunately I'll have to wait for the international delivery option :(
overcast 7y ago
This story brings a tear to my eye. I'll see myself out. But seriously, this is the type of side projects I dream of. Not the next soul sucking social network, but rather something meaningful and real.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  Your comment resonated with me. I'm just about the launch the a social network. Our whole goal was to design around authenticity, something that is severely lacking in other offerings.
  - overcast 7y ago
    Interesting, could you elaborate on the authenticity bit? How will it differentiate from current offerings?
    - rorykoehler 7y ago
      I don't want to spend too much time talking about it as I'd rather show it. I can say that we designed to focus on quality rather than getting drunk off the of the crowd as practically all other social apps do. Edit: Send me an email and I will be happy to let you know when we launch.
  - ehnto 7y ago
    If I were to offer some unsolicited advice. Authenticity arises out of real communities, and that is something social networks are quite bad at. They often focus on the self much more than communitiy participation. I think that's why old chat networks and forums were so good at building communities, as you had to truly contribute to be part of them. You didn't even have an identity until you contributed to the community and revealed it while doing so. Current social networks allow you to hit "join" or "like" and that's all the participation you need to get your validation. You're part of the group just by signing up, rather than because you helped make it a community by contributing. That's probably why this story resonates with people here so much. It's not just a tech business, it's an attempt to contribute and be an integral part of the local community. Not something every startup gets to do.
michaelbuckbee 7y ago
This was really fun, so I checked out the site - Least expensive order is a 5-pound box for $34.95 - Runs on Shopify - As they're seasonal, there are some built-in scarcity aspects I hadn't thought of (which is kind of neat business wise). Two aspects I might try if this was my business: 1. Some kind of "Chef/Restaurant" option 2. An option to send 1 beautiful onion (ala the referenced Harry and David's)
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Seconded: I would totally pay for 'ship this person an onion'
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Grade your onions and sell the top 10% at a premium! I sincerely believe that our society would be much happier and healthier if top-shelf/"celebrity" vegetables existed that could cost $XX, sort of like in Japan. Someone would probably pay $1000+ for "The best dozen onions of the season"
    - sorenjan 7y ago
      It's the opposite that's a bigger problem, a lot of all fruit and vegetables are thrown away because they're not perfect looking. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/us-food-waste-ugly-fruit-vegetables-perfect https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/us-food-...
      - cwkoss 7y ago
        I think that increasing the unit price of produce would reduce pressure on farmers to optimize for volume. A lot of the waste is a result farmers optimizing volume over nutritional quality because the market doesn't really have a place for "top-shelf" produce currently. Vegetables can vary by an order of magnitude in nutritional density based on growing and harvest conditions. I wish there was a way to pay 10x for vegetables that are reliably 10x more nutritionally dense (as verified by laboratory analysis of random samples from every harvest).
Diederich 7y ago
My wife is from Georgia, and I've visited many times. I don't really like onions. But real Georgia Vidalias are something special.
fma 7y ago
I actually had this exact same idea in like...2011. So, ideas are worthless without execution. I used to work in Middle Georgia where Vidalia Onions are plentiful. I went to visit a friend in NYC, where Vidalia Onions are scarce. I brought some with me on the plane... The plan was I'd just run to the local grocery store and just fulfill online orders and if demand was there, purchase from local farmers. I didn't get any further than than just mentioning the business idea. Kudos to Peter for executing and meeting a need. Looks like he also owns onions.com, so they are making enough money to acquire that domain name.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  Sometimes even execution is worthless. It doesn't sound like this guy is making a ton of money and he says he's doing it for fun, not because it's profitable. Though I'm sure it turns a profit in general.
- hopler 7y ago
  I've never known NYC, the sitting famous for a bodega on almost every block, and street vendors with cars of produce, to be short on any produce available in USA. https://www.myfreshgrocer.com/nkz/exec/Phone/Product/Display?productId=260093330 https://www.myfreshgrocer.com/nkz/exec/Phone/Product/Display...
  - lloyddobbler 7y ago
    Case in point - they appear to be short. https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7q4injeb2w8du8/Screenshot%202019-04-23%2010.57.28.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7q4injeb2w8du8/Screenshot%202019-...
- hinkley 7y ago
  I looked this up one time, why this was such a big deal. Vidalia's are finicky like wine grapes. You need the right microbiome, you can't just plant them everywhere because demand is high. They might grow but don't taste right. I suspect that, like vinyards, if demand stays up long enough we'll find all sorts of weird little spots all over the world with nearly the right kind of soil and moisture and heat. [edit] Rereading: It's a regional appellation but the taste has much to do with low sulfur content in the soil.
barillax 7y ago
Great story. One quick bug report: your Bulk & Wholesale page has a broken contact form: https://www.vidaliaonions.com/bulk-wholesale/ https://www.vidaliaonions.com/bulk-wholesale/
- eightturn 7y ago
  darnit.. thank you.. now fixed.
iheartpotatoes 7y ago
It sounds like he created a co-operative. This is the case in Oregon where lots of milk growers...er...dairy farmers pool their resources into a funnel organization, Tillamook Farmer's Co-op, that handles packaging, distribution and marketing. This is such a wild story tho, I loved reading it.
- moate 7y ago
  Not really a co-op. Unless I misunderstood something, he contacted a single farm and is basically acting as their digital marketing side. They got so good at this that the other farms in the area decided to stop competing on this front(DTC online sales) and focus on other segments of their business. That's what I assumed he meant when he said "other farms started sending people our way". I believe M&T is a single farm/growing operation.
  - brodouevencode 7y ago
    There are very few co-ops in the South as compared to other parts of the world. There is a lot more direct-to-mass production/buyers farms here as well as a lot of "factory" farming. That being said what he's doing is something that is hard to reproduce simply because Vidalia onions cannot be grown except in a certain geographic area. You can take the same onion and grow it elsewhere, it will taste exactly or very close to the same, you just cannot sell it as a Vidalia. I'm surprised that there aren't more of the boutique style shops for things like Vidalia onions, Georgia peaches, etc. Source: born, raised, lived whole life in Ga within a farming family.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      It's weird that this was done with special legislation. I see that the US does not have any general mechanism for such situations, although it has done this for these onions and for Tennessee whiskey specifically. The EU has a system-wide concept of products (mostly but not exclusively foods) that are by definition produced in a set region, by a particular method etcetera called the Protected Designation of Origin. This is inspired by laws in some of its member states (most famously France's AOC laws which protect Champagne) but because it's a system rather than being stapled into the law for one specific product it makes it practical to use for less famous things where the heavy lifting of actual legislation would be too much to ask. If your town produces a peculiar furry hat, and then one day sales of the furry hats begin to drop off because it turns out somebody is making replicas in China and selling them under your town's name, applying for PDO is a relatively straight forwad way to fix that across the entire EU without trying to attract attention from legislators in two dozen countries. Of course PDOs can be abused (e.g. arguably protection of Newcastle Brown Ale was pointless, its only producers were indeed in Newcastle, but when they decided to move they simply applied to discontinue the PDO status...) but overall it seems like having a framework makes more sense than only doing this as actual national legislation (a rule saying Vidalia onions are from Georgia only works because the US government enforces it, the part in Georgia state law has very little effect)
diNgUrAndI 7y ago
I wonder about the domain name snapping business. Are there people doing this full-time, buying expired domains in bulk?
Jsharm 7y ago
My understanding was that the actual domain name doesn't make much difference? I setup http://www.drivinglessonslimerick.com http://www.drivinglessonslimerick.com for a friend (I'm not a web dev) and it is on the second page of results when I search for Driving Lessons in Limerick. $2200 seems way too much, the value here is in this Onion business not the domain.
- xeromal 7y ago
  It's definitely the domain if you understand the clientele. I'm also from GA and old southerners are pretty particular which can be both good and bad. They only will search Vidalia Onions in google so having that domain + some good SEO definitely delivers them to you. I bet repeat customers still search that term instead of going directly to the domain. Their benefit is that they love local things such as vidalia onions or boiled peanuts that they know are grown locally. I'd wager most of this guy's sales come from the south.
  - rpeden 7y ago
    I don't think it's just old southerners. I know quite of young people for whom Google basically is the internet. They never enter addresses in the address bar, and always do a Google search for the site they're trying to get to. These aren't dullards, either. They're smart people who are talented in their own fields. They're just not techies and the Googling-for-everything workflow works well for them.
achenatx 7y ago
Funny article. Like a lot of people I also collect domain names, some day hoping to make a business out of them. :) My current business and startup take too much time, but some day..
someguy1010 7y ago
This post makes good use of one of the 48 laws of power. Law 30: Make your accomplishments seem effortless
- war1025 7y ago
  What is your opinion of that book? I just looked up the summary of the 48 rules [1] and it seems pretty morally questionable. Maybe that's the point? [1] http://the48lawsofpower.com/summary http://the48lawsofpower.com/summary
everdev 7y ago
> I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid. 5 minutes later, I was the proud owner of VidaliaOnions.com For those that are looking to replicate the success of this Vidalia Onion business only have a $10 budget for a domain here are some other options: onlyvidalias.com vidalias.net tryvidalias.com yummyonions.com ordervidalias.com buyvidalias.com organicvidalias.com vidaliafarm.com allvidalias.com simplyvidalias.com
- dmix 7y ago
  SEO is more than just keywords in domain names, you're buying into a long-term investment. His domain cost $2200 because it likely had lots of backlinks and page rank in Google, which is how he was able to get 600 orders (about $30k in revenue if my math is right) in the first year. It's also the perfect combination of the two keywords with nothing else. You'll automatically be at a disadvantage. But every large market typically has 1 leader and 1-3 other smaller companies who can survive. I doubt this is a large enough market where being #2 or #3 is going to be lucrative. You might as well find other niche premium vegetables. Like 1-800-Flowers and Harry & David (which the author mentioned) does... https://www.wolfermans.com https://www.wolfermans.com made a decent-sized business selling premium english muffins.
  - everdev 7y ago
    It was a joke :)
    - dmix 7y ago
      Oh true. The author was also promoting domain name driven businesses [1] so I was mostly replying to that idea and other thoughts I had to sound off on the topic :p https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/ https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/
  - shanecleveland 7y ago
    History back to 1996: https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.com https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.co... And someone was running the same business on it just before him: https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.com https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.co... Good strategy. I've seen it suggested to check the wayback machine archive before buying a domain name to make sure you can recreate the same content and backlinks that already exist to take full advantage of any existing SEO.
dchuk 7y ago
So, only slightly related to this article, but I’ll say it anyway: I’ve bought domains for years. Through that process, I’ve developed a specific routine to evaluate a name prior to purchasing. I’ve been sketching out a plan to build a web app that largely automates this evaluation process, that I would hope to release as a small side project SaaS in the future. Anyone here interested in such a thing?
- stanleydrew 7y ago
  Yes.
- RussianCow 7y ago
  Can you share the "specific routine" you developed? I understand if it's your secret sauce and you want to keep it to yourself, but I also would never use this if I didn't know how it worked.
  - dchuk 7y ago
    It's actually not that crazy/secret, it's simply compressing a many-step process down into a single, flat step. Whenever I'm looking for a good domain name, I'm trying to consider things like searchability, is the .com available, are there no shorter .com's taken, are there already projects/apps/sites with very similar names out there, do the Google SERPs come back with off-putting results, etc. I have done this by hand for a long time, but it's error prone and time consuming. Very straightforward to automate down into a one step process.
- RyanDagg 7y ago
  I've been interested in doing something like this. My email is in my profile.
dwighttk 7y ago
I’m a sweet onion fan. I didn’t realize that Texas sweet onions were a different variety: https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/the-texas-sweet-onion/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/the-texas-sweet-onion/ (They’re real good)
paulcole 7y ago
Reminds me of the accidental tumbleweed magnate: https://www.business-opportunities.biz/2013/04/10/the-worlds-most-successful-accidental-tumbleweed-saleswoman/?amp https://www.business-opportunities.biz/2013/04/10/the-worlds...
- all2 7y ago
  Is that a business opportunity? Something like "develop my domain"? Like a land-owner who lets tenants develop? So, you pay for the domain name, list it on the development site, and a developer (say me) can pick and choose from what you have and build a product on your property. There's a contract, you get x% of proceeds from my endeavor, I get a domain name specific to my needs, and we all benefit. The contract would also specify a dwell-time. I get 12 months, or 2 years, or whatever on the property. Then the contract comes back up for negotiation. Maybe a sale is negotiated (you want my development, or I want your domain name).
  - cure 7y ago
    A little bit like having a lease on your business address, yeah, I could see this work. It may be a lot better for the person owning the domain than for the person developing the property, though. You'd need good contracts - you'd need clauses around trademarks, etc.
    - all2 7y ago
      > It may be a lot better for the person owning the domain than for the person developing the property, though. This is why I specified renting a redirect, so the developer maintains their IP. I suppose if I (the developer) were to build branding specifically around a domain name (which seems common) then renting could become more of an issue, especially if a new rental agreement cannot be negotiated. > You'd need good contracts - you'd need clauses around trademarks, etc. This is the other thing I was pondering. At the start it would essentially be a Craigslist sort of match-making service, and so solid contracts would have to be between individuals without guidance from the service. Eventually, though, the goal could be to have the company be a registrar in order to control domain names under contract and payment processing (to make sure everyone gets what they agreed to). I'm not sure the second point above is where a service like this should go, though.
SonicSoul 7y ago
sorry about a tangent, but that Indian Jones scene bothers me so much. i mean... there are so many safer ways to validate you can take that first step. i'll name a few 1. crouch down and reach out your leg gently tapping the "invisible ground" 2. throw a pebble. 3. throw a bunch of sand to see exact available surface area. i mean.. he's a scientist.
- smogcutter 7y ago
  Sure, but the point of the trial is that he needs to take a leap of faith. Within the world of the movie, I bet those tests would have failed. Plus if there's "really" an invisible bridge you could throw a pebble at, it should already be covered in dust anyway. Unless the guy who lives in the grail room comes out and sweeps it or something.
- overcast 7y ago
  It's a leap of faith, you're not supposed to cheat it. However after crossing the bridge, he DOES scatter sand over the surface area revealing the bridge (which was really just a camouflaged stone illusion shown by an alternate viewpoint)
  - SonicSoul 7y ago
    he DOES scatter sand over the surface area revealing the bridge (which was really just a camouflaged stone illusion shown by an alternate viewpoint) that's the point of my rant! :)
    - marc_io 7y ago
      Yeah, but he did it AFTER the leap of faith. It makes all the difference. This is all about letting go of your ego.
- acheron 7y ago
  While we're at it, "IEHOVAH" begins with an I because there was no J in the alphabet then. So why is there a J carved into the floor?
rmellow 7y ago
Why didn't the farmers just independently open an Amazon shop before he came along? Is it just the case that they're not tech savvy enough? I'm not downplaying what he did - it's really cool - what I'm trying is to get a better sense of the business dynamics here.
- stanleydrew 7y ago
  I think it's less about tech-savvy and more about deciding to go larger-scale and adopt all the problems that come with that. Handling order fulfillment and customer service isn't something most farmers probably want to do.
- grecy 7y ago
  Like the other reply says, it's probably just the farmers don't have time or don't want to. I expect you could make the same comment about just about everything on the planet that is grown or made, but then sold by someone else. The original person could try to sell it to consumers, but that would take so much time and effort they wouldn't have time to grow/make the thing in the first place!
- eightturn 7y ago
  Peter here (author).. They didn't have a need, desire, or employee to run that type of operation. The farm didn't have a website when we started, so my sales pitch to them at the start was 'Even if we miserably fail in this project, at least you'll get a free website out of it'..
ai_ia 7y ago
This is by far my favorite post on Hacker News. :D
gottebp 7y ago
Just look at the dignity here in this humble creation he has made! > [...] she interrupted me mid-sentence and hollered in exaltation to her husband: ” THE VIDALIA MAN! THE VIDALIA MAN! PICK UP THE PHONE!” The happiness I feel reading that is so sublime. His work is needed and appreciated -- and what a humble trade with a beautiful simplicity to it. It is repeatable; others could do this too! Imagine what our communities would be like if most families had a little something like this. It reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's "Three Acres and a Cow" [1] slogan (implying that can be enough). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Economic_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Economic_theory
- mathewsanders 7y ago
  I hope I wasn’t the only person here who thought of the egg man scene in Pink Flamingos when they read this :)
  - beat 7y ago
    You weren't.
  - simonebrunozzi 7y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elzEOs2pY38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elzEOs2pY38
_i____ii_______ 7y ago
Who... buys onions on the internet?
padobson 7y ago
I spent a minute thinking about a product local to me that had the same appeal. I typed http://michiganlamb.com http://michiganlamb.com into the browser and discovered the concept is not uncommon.
- mooreds 7y ago
  Yes, I think it's pretty common (here's one around me: https://locavoredelivery.com/ https://locavoredelivery.com/ ), but still delivers value and can be a good business. Reminds me that middlemen provide value in a lot of ways, even though they are hated and everyone thought the internet would disintermediate them all.
  - Simple_Guy 7y ago
    the only people who hate middlemen are people who cannot into economics.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    Yep. Even if it has never been easier for the maker/producer to setup their own Shopify store, it's still not enough. Sure a decent website on shopify is better than nothing, but most likely only your current customers will go. You need extra skills to bring NEW customers: marketing, SEO, social media, etc.. and chances are that it's someone else that will have those skills.
- gadders 7y ago
  I typed in "Kentlamb.com" and found out Kent Lamb is the name of an attorney.
  - pcnix 7y ago
    I remembered this comment when I noticed that the person that wrote the Dockerhub breach blog post [0] was a Mr. Kent Lamb. Baader-Meinhof? [0] - https://success.docker.com/article/docker-hub-user-notification https://success.docker.com/article/docker-hub-user-notificat...
eightturn 7y ago
Peter here (author) - happy to answer any questions..
- ztoben 7y ago
  You mention putting purpose over profit, but I assume you still make a reasonable living doing this from the sounds of things. Is this your only job currently? What's the tech stack like? Thanks for a great article :)
  - eightturn 7y ago
    It makes enough to make me happy. And yes, I have other projects (jobs) that bring in revenue.
- 7373737373 7y ago
  Great post! How do you decide which tasks to do yourself and which to outsource? Also, at what point do you consider incorporation?
  - eightturn 7y ago
    We're an LLC. Regarding tasks -- there really wasn't any deciding. We just starting doing stuff. The farmer grew the Onion, and I built out all the online stuff and logistics. When pain points arose, I tried my best to find software to shoulder those loads. But I made sure to never outsource my phone calls. I answer those. I wanna talk to my customers.
    - giarc 7y ago
      How does the farmer get the orders?
      - eightturn 7y ago
        Our online orders come through me. The transaction is made online, or over the phone.
DomainerDrew 7y ago
Turning a domain name into a business. Even more simple than that really, taking an existing industry and using a domain name to create a front end to that industry. There is opportunity everywhere. Especially if you don't require creating a billion dollar company. Thanks for sharing Vidalia Man.
sanjayts 7y ago
Great read! The blog has another post which I found personally interesting -- Slow Down & Wander [1] [1] https://www.deepsouthventures.com/slow-down-wander/ https://www.deepsouthventures.com/slow-down-wander/
sametmax 7y ago
This is what a marketing piece should be. This is an ad I'm happy to read. Were I in the US, I would totally order onions from this guy.
bikamonki 7y ago
Wow! What an inspiring reading :)
guest2143 7y ago
I thought this was going to be a new version of the onion router.....
fataliss 7y ago
That's the kind of lifestyle business I dream of finding myself into. Except maybe I'd want it less involved with customer service, but roughly similar. Somehow that's much more appealing to me than heading the next big buck hot startup out of my SF penthouse office. Guess there has to be some for everybody :) That was a good read and I bet that to the core more people resonate with this than most startup jobs!
h4t 7y ago
Boy did this article surprise me. Glad I clicked on this!
ycombonator 7y ago
What an incredible story. Encapsulates American entrepreneurial excellence !
coderintherye 7y ago
Sort of ended up in a similar boat: I sell hemp on the internet at https://www.cascadiablooms.com/direct https://www.cascadiablooms.com/direct These stories are good to tell, sometimes what can help a farmer the most is just someone who can help market and sell their crop.
jamiegreen 7y ago
As of 5 minutes ago I am now the proud owner of VidaliaOnions.co.uk..... UK vidalia market here I come!
- echelon 7y ago
  Vidalia onions come from Georgia, in the agricultural belt south of Atlanta. I know you're probably joking, but you should order some. They're delicious.
  - jamiegreen 7y ago
    I actually wasn't joking, I did buy it (it was unregistered so it was only 6 quid), but now perhaps it was rather pointless if Vidalia onions only come from around Georgia. I just read the article and then googled to see if the uk domain was free.
rdiddly 7y ago
What I liked most about this story was the fact that he went into it kind of ass-backwards - domain name first (almost by accident too), then the business.
- bduerst 7y ago
  That's what makes this story unique. The domain speculation industry thrives almost entirely on the opposite.
adriansky 7y ago
> I got along quite well with the 3rd farmer I met, so we decided to partner & give this a shot. Just curious, how were the first two farmers you met?
- eightturn 7y ago
  They were all great, honestly. The first 2 had different operations. Farmer #1 would have worked, but they didn't have a packing shed. Farm #2 seemed ambivalent, so I was concerned whether my orders would go out on time.
joshfraser 7y ago
Had no idea when I clicked on that link that I'd be contemplating buying a box of onions. I've never tried a Vidalia but now I'm intrigued.
- beering 7y ago
  This is part of the marketing too, right? Reach more potential customers by writing an article and getting it to the top of a popular news aggregator. Especially with an audience that 1) will find it genuine, and 2) is likely to try out an interesting online product.
IgorPartola 7y ago
It seems like operating an online business is 5% software hackery and 95% finding a cool thing to sell, finding a supplier, building a supply chain and fulfillment system, and customer support. Think about it like this: if you can find a thing to sell on a street corner, you can sell it online. Seriously. Say you found these awesome fucking USB-C cables for about $1/each from a Chinese supplier. You think people will pay about $15/each for them, so you set up `awesome-fucking-cables.com` and start selling them. Registering a domain and setting up a web shop is the easy part, but it tends to be what people focus on. Some ideas of the stuff you could sell: - Kombucha - Specialty sodas - Heirloom seeds - Specialty light bulbs and/or batteries - Spice packets - Carpet cleaning powder - Dice - Specialty candles - Prepared origami paper - Specialty pens/pencils/crayons - Funky hair accessories (someone recently asked me why there aren't many superhero themed ones because it would be a huge market)
- bduerst 7y ago
  My wife paid for her grad school entirely by selling direct-from-manufacturer fashion goods, from China, to middle-aged upper/middle-class women in central Europe. The crazy thing that made it all work, IMO, was that the website was invite only. The women used the exclusivity as a status in their social circles, and invites as favors. It's fascinating how these small market niches exist but it really is the other 95% that makes them take off.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
I loved this piece. I'm from Florida and Vidalias are a staple. Whole wheat bread, lightly toasted with a smear of mayo and a thick slice of Vidalia. Mmmm... So good.
- eightturn 7y ago
  add cracked pepper and a squeeze of lime.. mamma-mia!
Marazan 7y ago
The most impressive thing was the bit where he spent 2 grand on a domain name he didn't want and didn't think "Oh shit, I've just blown 2 grand I needed to..."
- bduerst 7y ago
  I've worked in the domain space. Two grand is not that bad of a deal for a semi-common object, especially if there is an industry behind it.
ggm 7y ago
More detail on the cardboard shipping box debacle needed!
- eightturn 7y ago
  see above : )
vram22 7y ago
Cool image. Can drag / rotate it, etc., along at least 2 axes.
laurex 7y ago
Couldn't help but think of this [Planet Money episode](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episode-657-the-tale-of-the-onion-king https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/epis...) about a man who cornered the onion market with some repercussions.
magoon 7y ago
Unintentional ad, in a way —- one that caused me to visit, delighted me, and makes me delighted with HN.
zeckalpha 7y ago
Just be careful of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
- phyzome 7y ago
  Oh wow, that's wild.
WMCRUN 7y ago
The title alone makes this worth reading.
Not_anchovie 7y ago
While unique and somewhat gratifying that you can build a business with just a chance at a good domain and some internal motivations, do you find yourself adding value over other means of onion sales? Oh, and please downvote. Thank you.
jbotz 7y ago
+1
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
allnacho 7y ago
Lots of posts nowadays are just people humble bragging. This was read as an honest account of an enjoyable business ride. Thanks for sharing this!
- eightturn 7y ago
  you're welcome! Thank you for that feedback - I was concerned that it'd come across as a humblebrag.. I just like sharing neat things people can do on great domain names.
docuru 7y ago
Feel sorry for the writer that Google Map folks some in and smash the whole onion field (last photo) :D
- eightturn 7y ago
  I took that photo : ) and then uploaded to Google Maps...
brainpool 7y ago
Wonderful! This quote sums it all up for me: ”I didn’t have other projects that were this front-facing, customer wise. And I discovered I immensely enjoyed it”. Wow, does it show :) By the way, the quote was not a TL;DR - it was an invitation to read a great story. I am glad I did.
air7 7y ago
> universally, the domain name always comes first, the business idea comes second. I wonder what others think about this quote. Could he not have started the same exact business with another domain? Is owning the "right" domain that important that is should "come first" and be forgotten without it? naively I'd think Google@2019 gives more importance to content then to the domain name. No?
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  Yeah, my first thought was, "why would you spend that much on a domain name?" Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, all could have done just as well with different domain names. However, I guess it did function as a sort of method of brainstorming business ideas.
- bytemut 7y ago
  Feels like that's just his way of brainstorming ideas for side gig. Some of us get inspiration from problems we run int ourselves, some actively read blogs, blogs, trends, etc and try to find opportunities, while this man gets his from finding descriptive domain names.
- MrStonedOne 7y ago
  It means he picks up random domain names, and then tries to find an idea that matches/fits the domain name.
lorenzorhoades 7y ago
This was an amazing read. Not only do you sell onions on the internet but you are an amazing writer! I had to stop and comment before I dived into what else you've written. I copied the quote “take the path to Nothing, and go Nowhere until you reach it.” and got it turned into a canvas to hang above my desk.
- eightturn 7y ago
  if you like that quote, I highly suggest reading (or listening to) the book: The Tao of Pooh ... sooooo good.
IAmGraydon 7y ago
Bravo. I love his approach and his analogy with fictional characters. Such a wonderful way to view your work - stop trying to force it and let it tell you what it wants to be.
dustinkirkland 7y ago
Am I the only person who saw the headline and assumed this was about onion routing?
joshdance 7y ago
Love this.
_tb1_ 7y ago
It's absurd and preposterous. I love it! Late April: Season Begins.
eruci 7y ago
As Simple as peeling an onion.
m52go 7y ago
Okay since no one has asked this yet, I will...does this man have an onion site? Because I'm a big fan of onions, but an even bigger fan of onion sites...
renegadesensei 7y ago
I love this and can relate to it so much. This is very similar to how I ended up in the Japanese matchmaking industry. Noticed a good domain was available and ended up going on an odyssey of sorts.
StopHammoTime 7y ago
What a wild ride. Can you give us more information about the boxes? I feel like I need to know more about the boxes.
- eightturn 7y ago
  The box integrity entirely failed in-transit. Rips, tears, bottoms falling out, tops crushed, everything. I had to refund and re-send orders as make-goods, in better boxes. When my customers showed me pics of the box conditions after delivery, it made my heart hurt (no lie). I thought it was all over. These days, we send all orders in a double-walled cardboard box, with a locking bottom, and aeration holes throughout. It's a tank of a box.
jboggan 7y ago
As a Georgian transplanted into California, I miss these onions so much. Great read as well.
jrochkind1 7y ago
I want someone to write some analysis of this particular... voice, or style of writing, being used here. "I'm a web guy. I’m not a farmer." I already knew that, because in just a couple paragraphs, I was already recognizing the style of writing as... SEO, "influencer", I don't know what to call it? It's a personal first-person voice, which right off the start tries to establish that the author is a human being writing about their life -- but also that they are an expert in what they are going to tell you about, and very successful too. The text includes many one or two sentence paragraphs, and has aggressively styled pull quotes and/or callouts. Short sentences too. Not entirely complete sentences. Interspersed. It makes sure to open up with some kind of very short story that is only tangentially related to the content but is folksy and cute. (Smuggled vidalia's onto cruise ship). The information is very cleverly structured to keep you reading, by dropping just enough of the actual info, page to page, to pique your attention and make you think there's an interesting story here, but not enough that you can leave having actually learned anything before you've read a pretty big chunk. And is written artfully for this purpose, it works, and keeps you reading. Sometimes at the end you feel rewarded, other times you feel like it was a shaggy dog story. The best authors leave you happy, of course. It's got information to convey, but the goal is not to convey the information as effectively as possible, but to keep you reading as long as possible -- and, usually, to sell you something. I don't know if I have a value judgement on it exactly -- okay, I'll admit it annoys me, perhaps because it all sounds the same while trying to convince you it's a folksy authentic voice. But either way, it's a thing, a genre even, that I'm not sure I've seen anyone comment on. It's: "Content Marketing Voice". (Also selling people onions on the internet is "purpose over profit", really? What the world needs now is frictionless access to vidalia onions shipped directly to your home?)
- santoshalper 7y ago
  While I enjoyed the article, I agree it was a very modern web marketing voice. This is a guy who makes marketing websites for a living and it shows. Still, more interesting than most...
- boyobo 7y ago
  Yes. I see a lot of this on Quora as well.
retreatguru 7y ago
Thanks for such a great read. I have a somewhat similar story. My brother and I started our company the moment after we bought our domain name: retreat.guru. We actually wanted a different domain but didn’t get it; retreat.guru was the runner up. Then we had a spontaneous 3 hour call where we mapped out the entire global wellness retreat marketplace we would build - all based off the domain name! 5 years later we are still going strong. We are based out of a small mountain town in B.C. Nowhere near the buzz of Silicon Valley. We gradually took investment and grew from revenue as well. We are very vision driven. ‘I sell ayahuasca retreats on the internet’ :D
d--b 7y ago
Awesome post. I am dying to try these onions now! Who would have thought that content marketing would work to sell onions through hacker news!!
anonytrary 7y ago
I buy domain names for weird and random ideas that come to me. I really like the reverse concept of buying interesting domain names and then letting them turn into something that you never anticipated. That sounds like a really fun and potentially highly rewarding hobby. It also seems to break every Startup book's rules, since you're looking for a problem to a solution, but who cares? This guy is having tons of fun and learning a lot, so good for him. Edit: Looks like they have some competition: https://www.vidaliaonion.org https://www.vidaliaonion.org
- shanecleveland 7y ago
  That looks like more of a marketing arm of the state of Georgia or some regional agricultural or co-op entity. Not selling onions directly.
jeandejean 7y ago
That's a great story... And a perfect timing for an amazing marketing campaign with seasonal shipping starting next week.
jve 7y ago
2396 upvotes and counting. How much more onions do you sell now? :)
zaphirplane 7y ago
You just have to post here on the affect of a having this STORY on HN
peteforde 7y ago
I loved this story, and you all clearly did, too. How can I possibly be the first person to get stuck on the fact that this fellow dropped $2200 on a niche domain without a business plan in mind? Most people don't have that kind of whimsy cash, sadly.
otikik 7y ago
> I’ve been buying expired or abandoned domain names for a while, and enjoy developing them into niche businesses. Am I the only one here who has a problem with this kind of "business"? I see it as a very asshole thing to dedicate oneself to.
jamisteven 7y ago
Reading his article I cant help but wonder why he isnt scaling his entire setup to help ALL farmers, regardless of what they are farming, to sell online. Cant he create an online marketplace and onboard basically every portable vegetable? He should be able to replicate this same model with every veggie we got.
apercu 7y ago
This is posted in so many subs on reddit in the last 24 hours. Including unrelated subs. Please don't encourage spammers.
machz 7y ago
"I'm addicted to Domain Names... but for kicks & giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200". Not trying to be a killjoy, but everytime I hear about people reserving domains for fun or future, it just tells of so much privilege. Americans and other Westerners people have already reserved so many domains. Domain name squatting always is a rich-get-richer story.
giabao148 7y ago
i like QA so much but i am a girl person . it is difficult for me and english is not good .what should I do?
RandomBacon 7y ago
I'm not sure I've ever seen such a highly-voted post. I checked using the search box, and it appears this the 12th most voted post of all time (so far!).
rick22 7y ago
Seriously can't understand why this post is getting upvoted so much(2896) as of now. Is there something i am missing.
bbryant 7y ago
How was organic traffic in the early days? You're now ranked #1 for "vidalia onions" in Google -- but, I'm really curious what the evolution was after buying the domain?

3015 points by eightturn 7y ago

Thanks for sharing your story. I think there are a lot of people out there like me not looking to be a unicorn company, but would love to be the next VidaliaOnions.com

garren 7y ago

That's awesome. A couple responses to yesterday's thread regarding bookmarked hn quotes really opened up my eyes regarding building and maintaining side projects. I picked up a book, "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup" which has been informative (if a little dated). This article is a great supplement to that book, and is inspirational to a 9-5'er like me. [0]https://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/dp/0615373968 https://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching... | https://startupbook.net https://startupbook.net

tstrimple 7y ago
Rob & Mike's podcast is great on this topic as well. https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com
iscrewyou 7y ago
Can you please refer me to that thread?
rwalling 7y ago
Author of Start Small, Stay Small here. >> if a little dated Argh! I know. I literally opened the Doc this week to start to parse out sections to update. It’s overdue ;-)
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  This is one of the reasons why I love HN so much.

baldeagle 7y ago

This is an American dream-esque article about a boy and a domain name. They meet, he wins the auction, and they start spending time together. The domain name, she calls to him and eventually they hook up with an industry group and bring onions to the world. While on the face of it, this may not seem like the best business plan - I actually really like it. He found something personal (domain knowledge from his home state industry), something with a good customer need, and filled a niche of better customer service and process. Here, everyone wins... So I guess it is also an 'invisible hand of the free market' dream too.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ddtaylor 7y ago

Originally I was expecting an article about mining .onion domain names, but this is good too!

theandrewbailey 7y ago
Though vidalia.onion would be a stylish domain name. It'd be better than vidaliaonion.io. \s

jacurtis 7y ago

I just have to stop and say that this was an immensely fun and exciting post to read. So much of the business stuff we read now is bullshit. It is stupid people getting lucky and riding on VC money while making more stupid decisions but ultimately dumping enough investor money into it that it works enough to get sold. At which point, that founder then goes around and tells the same stereotypical story of dropping out of college, running out of money and getting investment on the day they were planning on giving up, etc. We have all heard the bullshit before. So I was genuinely grateful to read a real business story. The owner saw an opportunity, took it when other people probably wouldn't have, and just genuinely worked hard to get where he is. This is inspiring because anyone here could do it too if they wanted to. I don't mean selling onions specifically, but I mean they could just go out there find a product, work hard towards selling it, team up with manufacturers/producers, etc and make the dream come to life.

blantonl 7y ago
Not to mention he's actually having a lot of fun doing this, and he specifically throws shade at what you've described above (and what we typically read about here on Hacker News) Them: We leverage automated machine learning to enhance your existing BI visualizations with more proactive insights Me: I sell onions on the internet So good.
noxToken 7y ago
Yes! This was an odd read (in a good way), and I definitely enjoyed. No cruft. No BS. No "one weird trick" hooks. Just a person stumbling into a business opportunity and taking a shot in the dark. Kudos.
duxup 7y ago
This doesn't seem unlike super cool hip startups where the key to success is clearly hip company onion culture that could be better expressed with professional photos of the onions working in various locations / having a good time.
- vram22 7y ago
  Or like the startup team page where they have, say, Vidalia (an onion, in a cool red-and-white gown of sheaths) instead of the obligatory human-named dog :)

Aromasin 7y ago

I've been umming-and-ahhing over an entrepreneurial endeavour for a while now. I'm very tempted now to just go out there now and see if I can get a good domain name. Letting the domain make the business decision for me seems fun.

jermaustin1 7y ago
This is a potentially addictive and risky venture. I've personally bought hundreds of domains over the years, and professionally in the thousands. I've probably broken even or profited a little. Most of the domains I buy for the name just sit there unused for 5+ years.
- Aromasin 7y ago
  I don't necessarily mean as a career path. More-so as an out-of-work hobby to keep me occupied. By buying a good domain name, that would probably give me the kick I need to do something with it!
detritus 7y ago
My personal advice would be: Get the rest of the pieces in place before buying the domain name. I've probably bought dozens of domains over the years with an eye to a specific Great Business Idea underpinning them, but for some reason the act of buying the domain seems to stall my interest. They were all good ideas, not duffers, evidenced by subsequent pick up years after. I just never bothered. Bother first, domain second! :)

mywittyname 7y ago

This is really inspirational: who knew that such a rudimentary site could be a viable business?

nickjj 7y ago
You don't need a fancy site to have a viable business. You just need customers. Sounds like they have their 1,000 true fans[0]. [0]: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
sethhochberg 7y ago
Craigslist, or perhaps Tarsnap, or many others providing services to people who know exactly what they're looking for. Being flashy helps sometimes if your customers are fickle and you need to sell them on something they didn't know they wanted, but if you've got an enthusiast audience or specialized product, substance is all that is required - at least at a fundamental level.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Every junkyard website is basically just a business card with the ability to search their inventory (or the fraction of it they choose to list) on car-part iframed in.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  Craigslist provides a very common, broad service to a broad demographic of people. Almost everyone will want to sell something or buy a used product once in their life. This site provides one very specific thing to a niche market. It's the difference between opening an office supply store vs a site selling one specific type of rubberband.
bob_theslob646 7y ago
It is not that viable to be fair. The costs of shipping is killer.
- 7y ago

njepa 7y ago

It was a fun read. But also a bit sad that it takes thousands of dollars and a lot of available time (which many people don't have) to do something as fundamental as this.

latexr 7y ago
I have available time. Get me someone with thousands of dollars (and willing to risk them) and let’s collaborate!
- hopler 7y ago
  Drop in on your local bank and SBA. They are looking for people like you.
  - latexr 7y ago
    A loan has to be repaid. Since most projects fail, odds are not on my side. I have no desire to dig myself into a hole. This is why it’s more common for people that are already well off to be entrepreneurs[1] — they have a safety net. [1]: https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene-for-risk-they-come-from-families-with-money/ https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene...
    - freeone3000 7y ago
      A business loan is issued to the business, not to you as an individual. Failing to repay the loan means your business goes into collections (and possible bankruptcy), not that you as an individual suffer for it.
      - cm2012 7y ago
        No one gives out unsecured business loans to start-ups.
      - deadmetheny 7y ago
        Please don't speak of things you know nothing about. No brand-new business would ever get a loan issued without a signature from some person or established entity who can be held liable if the business defaults. Source: I have owned multiple small businesses.

rhacker 7y ago

Buy buy buy, they are shipping soon: (I'm not affiliated in any way) https://www.vidaliaonions.com/ https://www.vidaliaonions.com/

nkrisc 7y ago

Thoroughly enjoyed this. I'd love to read a bit more detail on his process of spinning up the customer relations sides of the business that he mentioned. What was the hardest thing to get right? What were the unexpected pitfalls?

eightturn 7y ago
Peter here (author).. happy to share a little more. I oddly enjoy the customer relations side the most. It's so old school - alot of my customers are surprised when a real human picks up the phone to take their order. The hardest thing to get right (and we continue to refine) is the logistics part. The pitfalls I encounter are the very tight margins. If I take my eyes off of operations, I could quickly go under water.

swalsh 7y ago

I would say this is crazy, but truth be told... if I saw someone selling like super high quality heirloom tomatoes online... I'd probably buy some. But what I've actively searched out, and have yet to find is someone selling lobster stock. Sometimes if i'm lucky, I can pick up some from my local fish monger... but it's uncommon.

technofiend 7y ago
Probably what's holding that back is shipping cost since stock is mostly water, quite heavy and needs to be sent frozen or at least cooled with freezer packs, further adding to weight. My favorite place for andouille sausage [1] will ship cooled packages but the shipping costs are roughly equal to the product cost. So whenever I drive to New Orleans I take an ice chest with me netting twice the product for the same price. [1] https://www.cajunsausage.com/ https://www.cajunsausage.com/
- swalsh 7y ago
  There's a way to make it by reducing most of the water away so you get a 20x concentrate that's quite shelf stable... and probably cheap to ship. Here's an example (https://www.morethangourmet.com/ https://www.morethangourmet.com/) these stocks are quite good.
  - technofiend 7y ago
    I shall bookmark that. Thank you.
tmountain 7y ago
Amateur tomato grower here. One key difference between the flavorless tomatoes you typically find at the grocery and heirloom varieties is that the non-heirloom tomatoes are genetically optimized for shipping durability while the heirloom varieties are optimized for flavor. I'm not saying you can't ship heirloom tomatoes, but they're definitely more prone to bruising, so this is likely an obstacle in shipping them over longer distances.

Panino 7y ago

> I backordered the domain as a spectator, but for kicks & giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid. It's funny and beautiful how a moment of whimsy ends up being a fulcrum point in his life. It seems there's a lot of interest in gardening / food production among tech people. For me, one of the reasons I love gardening is because in many ways it's totally different from working inside with machines, but there are important and unexpected overlaps. For example if you have a solid understanding of the OSI model which informs your method of system design, you can easily move into gardening where knowledge of the layers of a forest plays a similar role. Having this experience in tech makes it easy to zero in on similar structural principles in gardening, learn about them, and apply that knowledge whereas many others clearly don't. Just like a person who doesn't understand the value of a proper foundation in tech (hardware, lower protocols like DNS, etc.), a similar gardener won't first seek to build strong healthy soil, and they will constantly fight against nature rather than work with it, doing more work while getting fewer results. As an aside, regarding onions: last year I cut off some green onion bottoms from the store and put them in the ground (including the little roots). They grew back and gave several more green onion harvests before winter set in, and now they're back on their own! Permanent green onion. You can do this with a number of plants, btw. Try it!

tvanantwerp 7y ago
Moments of whimsy are some of the most important. It was a moment of whimsy that led to me studying abroad in college, and another moment of whimsy that led me to meet my wife while I was there. Couldn't have been more than 5 total minutes of thoughts no more complicated than "yeah, I guess I'll give it a go" that shaped my entire life. And yet, I can spend another 5 minutes in the grocery store agonizing over which of two near-identical bags of chips to buy. Funny how that goes.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  I ultimately owe my software engineering career to wasting time posting on a phpBB for a webcomic.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y ago

stephen82 7y ago

This reminded me of an old friend from school. He finished high school and decided to work any type of job would land in front of him. Meanwhile, his closest friends would finish school, go to colleges and universities and they would come back really proud for having a bachelor or masters degree. One day they met at a crepe shop. He was making his orders along with the other folks that were behind their crepe pans. "So...you work here mate?" "Yep." "Ah...shame. We make very good money, thanks to our degrees. Isn't a sad thing that you are forced to work in this shitty job?" "First of all, I enjoy doing this job; and second of all, how much are you earning annually, if I may?" "Around 35K euros". He burst to hysterical laughter. "I happen to make the least 1000 euros daily and this 'shitty job' happens to be mine; yep, I own the place. At my highest peak I earned 1 million euros and these guys you see working next to me are my employees which are getting paid more or less the same amount as you." I happened to be there when this incident took place; it was the best day of my life! ^_^

draw_down 7y ago
It turns out money is a good way to measure a person’s value! Oh, hang on a second...
floatingatoll 7y ago
(FYI, using code indents for non-code here mostly prevents reading your story on mobile.)
- stephen82 7y ago
  Thank you for letting me know. I fixed it. +1
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    Thank you and OMG that story
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
7y ago

yowlingcat 7y ago

Agree with the other comment saying this was fun and exciting to read -- very well written and makes a strong point. I fully hope, when I am able to get off my lazy ass and do something, to sell a simple physical product that people already want. Food's a great example of this.

krisrm 7y ago

This is awesome. Always great to read about someone's hard work and dedication paying off. I love a good onion, but am not within the 48 lower states, so unfortunately I'll have to wait for the international delivery option :(

overcast 7y ago

This story brings a tear to my eye. I'll see myself out. But seriously, this is the type of side projects I dream of. Not the next soul sucking social network, but rather something meaningful and real.

rorykoehler 7y ago
Your comment resonated with me. I'm just about the launch the a social network. Our whole goal was to design around authenticity, something that is severely lacking in other offerings.
- overcast 7y ago
  Interesting, could you elaborate on the authenticity bit? How will it differentiate from current offerings?
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    I don't want to spend too much time talking about it as I'd rather show it. I can say that we designed to focus on quality rather than getting drunk off the of the crowd as practically all other social apps do. Edit: Send me an email and I will be happy to let you know when we launch.
- ehnto 7y ago
  If I were to offer some unsolicited advice. Authenticity arises out of real communities, and that is something social networks are quite bad at. They often focus on the self much more than communitiy participation. I think that's why old chat networks and forums were so good at building communities, as you had to truly contribute to be part of them. You didn't even have an identity until you contributed to the community and revealed it while doing so. Current social networks allow you to hit "join" or "like" and that's all the participation you need to get your validation. You're part of the group just by signing up, rather than because you helped make it a community by contributing. That's probably why this story resonates with people here so much. It's not just a tech business, it's an attempt to contribute and be an integral part of the local community. Not something every startup gets to do.

michaelbuckbee 7y ago

This was really fun, so I checked out the site - Least expensive order is a 5-pound box for $34.95 - Runs on Shopify - As they're seasonal, there are some built-in scarcity aspects I hadn't thought of (which is kind of neat business wise). Two aspects I might try if this was my business: 1. Some kind of "Chef/Restaurant" option 2. An option to send 1 beautiful onion (ala the referenced Harry and David's)

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Seconded: I would totally pay for 'ship this person an onion'
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Grade your onions and sell the top 10% at a premium! I sincerely believe that our society would be much happier and healthier if top-shelf/"celebrity" vegetables existed that could cost $XX, sort of like in Japan. Someone would probably pay $1000+ for "The best dozen onions of the season"
  - sorenjan 7y ago
    It's the opposite that's a bigger problem, a lot of all fruit and vegetables are thrown away because they're not perfect looking. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/us-food-waste-ugly-fruit-vegetables-perfect https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/us-food-...
    - cwkoss 7y ago
      I think that increasing the unit price of produce would reduce pressure on farmers to optimize for volume. A lot of the waste is a result farmers optimizing volume over nutritional quality because the market doesn't really have a place for "top-shelf" produce currently. Vegetables can vary by an order of magnitude in nutritional density based on growing and harvest conditions. I wish there was a way to pay 10x for vegetables that are reliably 10x more nutritionally dense (as verified by laboratory analysis of random samples from every harvest).

Diederich 7y ago

My wife is from Georgia, and I've visited many times. I don't really like onions. But real Georgia Vidalias are something special.

fma 7y ago

I actually had this exact same idea in like...2011. So, ideas are worthless without execution. I used to work in Middle Georgia where Vidalia Onions are plentiful. I went to visit a friend in NYC, where Vidalia Onions are scarce. I brought some with me on the plane... The plan was I'd just run to the local grocery store and just fulfill online orders and if demand was there, purchase from local farmers. I didn't get any further than than just mentioning the business idea. Kudos to Peter for executing and meeting a need. Looks like he also owns onions.com, so they are making enough money to acquire that domain name.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
Sometimes even execution is worthless. It doesn't sound like this guy is making a ton of money and he says he's doing it for fun, not because it's profitable. Though I'm sure it turns a profit in general.
hopler 7y ago
I've never known NYC, the sitting famous for a bodega on almost every block, and street vendors with cars of produce, to be short on any produce available in USA. https://www.myfreshgrocer.com/nkz/exec/Phone/Product/Display?productId=260093330 https://www.myfreshgrocer.com/nkz/exec/Phone/Product/Display...
- lloyddobbler 7y ago
  Case in point - they appear to be short. https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7q4injeb2w8du8/Screenshot%202019-04-23%2010.57.28.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7q4injeb2w8du8/Screenshot%202019-...
hinkley 7y ago
I looked this up one time, why this was such a big deal. Vidalia's are finicky like wine grapes. You need the right microbiome, you can't just plant them everywhere because demand is high. They might grow but don't taste right. I suspect that, like vinyards, if demand stays up long enough we'll find all sorts of weird little spots all over the world with nearly the right kind of soil and moisture and heat. [edit] Rereading: It's a regional appellation but the taste has much to do with low sulfur content in the soil.

barillax 7y ago

Great story. One quick bug report: your Bulk & Wholesale page has a broken contact form: https://www.vidaliaonions.com/bulk-wholesale/ https://www.vidaliaonions.com/bulk-wholesale/

eightturn 7y ago
darnit.. thank you.. now fixed.

iheartpotatoes 7y ago

It sounds like he created a co-operative. This is the case in Oregon where lots of milk growers...er...dairy farmers pool their resources into a funnel organization, Tillamook Farmer's Co-op, that handles packaging, distribution and marketing. This is such a wild story tho, I loved reading it.

moate 7y ago
Not really a co-op. Unless I misunderstood something, he contacted a single farm and is basically acting as their digital marketing side. They got so good at this that the other farms in the area decided to stop competing on this front(DTC online sales) and focus on other segments of their business. That's what I assumed he meant when he said "other farms started sending people our way". I believe M&T is a single farm/growing operation.
- brodouevencode 7y ago
  There are very few co-ops in the South as compared to other parts of the world. There is a lot more direct-to-mass production/buyers farms here as well as a lot of "factory" farming. That being said what he's doing is something that is hard to reproduce simply because Vidalia onions cannot be grown except in a certain geographic area. You can take the same onion and grow it elsewhere, it will taste exactly or very close to the same, you just cannot sell it as a Vidalia. I'm surprised that there aren't more of the boutique style shops for things like Vidalia onions, Georgia peaches, etc. Source: born, raised, lived whole life in Ga within a farming family.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    It's weird that this was done with special legislation. I see that the US does not have any general mechanism for such situations, although it has done this for these onions and for Tennessee whiskey specifically. The EU has a system-wide concept of products (mostly but not exclusively foods) that are by definition produced in a set region, by a particular method etcetera called the Protected Designation of Origin. This is inspired by laws in some of its member states (most famously France's AOC laws which protect Champagne) but because it's a system rather than being stapled into the law for one specific product it makes it practical to use for less famous things where the heavy lifting of actual legislation would be too much to ask. If your town produces a peculiar furry hat, and then one day sales of the furry hats begin to drop off because it turns out somebody is making replicas in China and selling them under your town's name, applying for PDO is a relatively straight forwad way to fix that across the entire EU without trying to attract attention from legislators in two dozen countries. Of course PDOs can be abused (e.g. arguably protection of Newcastle Brown Ale was pointless, its only producers were indeed in Newcastle, but when they decided to move they simply applied to discontinue the PDO status...) but overall it seems like having a framework makes more sense than only doing this as actual national legislation (a rule saying Vidalia onions are from Georgia only works because the US government enforces it, the part in Georgia state law has very little effect)

diNgUrAndI 7y ago

I wonder about the domain name snapping business. Are there people doing this full-time, buying expired domains in bulk?

Jsharm 7y ago

My understanding was that the actual domain name doesn't make much difference? I setup http://www.drivinglessonslimerick.com http://www.drivinglessonslimerick.com for a friend (I'm not a web dev) and it is on the second page of results when I search for Driving Lessons in Limerick. $2200 seems way too much, the value here is in this Onion business not the domain.

xeromal 7y ago
It's definitely the domain if you understand the clientele. I'm also from GA and old southerners are pretty particular which can be both good and bad. They only will search Vidalia Onions in google so having that domain + some good SEO definitely delivers them to you. I bet repeat customers still search that term instead of going directly to the domain. Their benefit is that they love local things such as vidalia onions or boiled peanuts that they know are grown locally. I'd wager most of this guy's sales come from the south.
- rpeden 7y ago
  I don't think it's just old southerners. I know quite of young people for whom Google basically is the internet. They never enter addresses in the address bar, and always do a Google search for the site they're trying to get to. These aren't dullards, either. They're smart people who are talented in their own fields. They're just not techies and the Googling-for-everything workflow works well for them.

achenatx 7y ago

Funny article. Like a lot of people I also collect domain names, some day hoping to make a business out of them. :) My current business and startup take too much time, but some day..

someguy1010 7y ago

This post makes good use of one of the 48 laws of power. Law 30: Make your accomplishments seem effortless

war1025 7y ago
What is your opinion of that book? I just looked up the summary of the 48 rules [1] and it seems pretty morally questionable. Maybe that's the point? [1] http://the48lawsofpower.com/summary http://the48lawsofpower.com/summary

everdev 7y ago

> I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid. 5 minutes later, I was the proud owner of VidaliaOnions.com For those that are looking to replicate the success of this Vidalia Onion business only have a $10 budget for a domain here are some other options: onlyvidalias.com vidalias.net tryvidalias.com yummyonions.com ordervidalias.com buyvidalias.com organicvidalias.com vidaliafarm.com allvidalias.com simplyvidalias.com

dmix 7y ago
SEO is more than just keywords in domain names, you're buying into a long-term investment. His domain cost $2200 because it likely had lots of backlinks and page rank in Google, which is how he was able to get 600 orders (about $30k in revenue if my math is right) in the first year. It's also the perfect combination of the two keywords with nothing else. You'll automatically be at a disadvantage. But every large market typically has 1 leader and 1-3 other smaller companies who can survive. I doubt this is a large enough market where being #2 or #3 is going to be lucrative. You might as well find other niche premium vegetables. Like 1-800-Flowers and Harry & David (which the author mentioned) does... https://www.wolfermans.com https://www.wolfermans.com made a decent-sized business selling premium english muffins.
- everdev 7y ago
  It was a joke :)
  - dmix 7y ago
    Oh true. The author was also promoting domain name driven businesses [1] so I was mostly replying to that idea and other thoughts I had to sound off on the topic :p https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/ https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/
- shanecleveland 7y ago
  History back to 1996: https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.com https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.co... And someone was running the same business on it just before him: https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.com https://web.archive.org/web/19961215000000*/VidaliaOnions.co... Good strategy. I've seen it suggested to check the wayback machine archive before buying a domain name to make sure you can recreate the same content and backlinks that already exist to take full advantage of any existing SEO.

dchuk 7y ago

So, only slightly related to this article, but I’ll say it anyway: I’ve bought domains for years. Through that process, I’ve developed a specific routine to evaluate a name prior to purchasing. I’ve been sketching out a plan to build a web app that largely automates this evaluation process, that I would hope to release as a small side project SaaS in the future. Anyone here interested in such a thing?

stanleydrew 7y ago
Yes.
RussianCow 7y ago
Can you share the "specific routine" you developed? I understand if it's your secret sauce and you want to keep it to yourself, but I also would never use this if I didn't know how it worked.
- dchuk 7y ago
  It's actually not that crazy/secret, it's simply compressing a many-step process down into a single, flat step. Whenever I'm looking for a good domain name, I'm trying to consider things like searchability, is the .com available, are there no shorter .com's taken, are there already projects/apps/sites with very similar names out there, do the Google SERPs come back with off-putting results, etc. I have done this by hand for a long time, but it's error prone and time consuming. Very straightforward to automate down into a one step process.
RyanDagg 7y ago
I've been interested in doing something like this. My email is in my profile.

dwighttk 7y ago

I’m a sweet onion fan. I didn’t realize that Texas sweet onions were a different variety: https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/the-texas-sweet-onion/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/the-texas-sweet-onion/ (They’re real good)

paulcole 7y ago

Reminds me of the accidental tumbleweed magnate: https://www.business-opportunities.biz/2013/04/10/the-worlds-most-successful-accidental-tumbleweed-saleswoman/?amp https://www.business-opportunities.biz/2013/04/10/the-worlds...

all2 7y ago
Is that a business opportunity? Something like "develop my domain"? Like a land-owner who lets tenants develop? So, you pay for the domain name, list it on the development site, and a developer (say me) can pick and choose from what you have and build a product on your property. There's a contract, you get x% of proceeds from my endeavor, I get a domain name specific to my needs, and we all benefit. The contract would also specify a dwell-time. I get 12 months, or 2 years, or whatever on the property. Then the contract comes back up for negotiation. Maybe a sale is negotiated (you want my development, or I want your domain name).
- cure 7y ago
  A little bit like having a lease on your business address, yeah, I could see this work. It may be a lot better for the person owning the domain than for the person developing the property, though. You'd need good contracts - you'd need clauses around trademarks, etc.
  - all2 7y ago
    > It may be a lot better for the person owning the domain than for the person developing the property, though. This is why I specified renting a redirect, so the developer maintains their IP. I suppose if I (the developer) were to build branding specifically around a domain name (which seems common) then renting could become more of an issue, especially if a new rental agreement cannot be negotiated. > You'd need good contracts - you'd need clauses around trademarks, etc. This is the other thing I was pondering. At the start it would essentially be a Craigslist sort of match-making service, and so solid contracts would have to be between individuals without guidance from the service. Eventually, though, the goal could be to have the company be a registrar in order to control domain names under contract and payment processing (to make sure everyone gets what they agreed to). I'm not sure the second point above is where a service like this should go, though.

SonicSoul 7y ago

sorry about a tangent, but that Indian Jones scene bothers me so much. i mean... there are so many safer ways to validate you can take that first step. i'll name a few 1. crouch down and reach out your leg gently tapping the "invisible ground" 2. throw a pebble. 3. throw a bunch of sand to see exact available surface area. i mean.. he's a scientist.

smogcutter 7y ago
Sure, but the point of the trial is that he needs to take a leap of faith. Within the world of the movie, I bet those tests would have failed. Plus if there's "really" an invisible bridge you could throw a pebble at, it should already be covered in dust anyway. Unless the guy who lives in the grail room comes out and sweeps it or something.
overcast 7y ago
It's a leap of faith, you're not supposed to cheat it. However after crossing the bridge, he DOES scatter sand over the surface area revealing the bridge (which was really just a camouflaged stone illusion shown by an alternate viewpoint)
- SonicSoul 7y ago
  he DOES scatter sand over the surface area revealing the bridge (which was really just a camouflaged stone illusion shown by an alternate viewpoint) that's the point of my rant! :)
  - marc_io 7y ago
    Yeah, but he did it AFTER the leap of faith. It makes all the difference. This is all about letting go of your ego.
acheron 7y ago
While we're at it, "IEHOVAH" begins with an I because there was no J in the alphabet then. So why is there a J carved into the floor?

rmellow 7y ago

Why didn't the farmers just independently open an Amazon shop before he came along? Is it just the case that they're not tech savvy enough? I'm not downplaying what he did - it's really cool - what I'm trying is to get a better sense of the business dynamics here.

stanleydrew 7y ago
I think it's less about tech-savvy and more about deciding to go larger-scale and adopt all the problems that come with that. Handling order fulfillment and customer service isn't something most farmers probably want to do.
grecy 7y ago
Like the other reply says, it's probably just the farmers don't have time or don't want to. I expect you could make the same comment about just about everything on the planet that is grown or made, but then sold by someone else. The original person could try to sell it to consumers, but that would take so much time and effort they wouldn't have time to grow/make the thing in the first place!
eightturn 7y ago
Peter here (author).. They didn't have a need, desire, or employee to run that type of operation. The farm didn't have a website when we started, so my sales pitch to them at the start was 'Even if we miserably fail in this project, at least you'll get a free website out of it'..

ai_ia 7y ago

This is by far my favorite post on Hacker News. :D

gottebp 7y ago

Just look at the dignity here in this humble creation he has made! > [...] she interrupted me mid-sentence and hollered in exaltation to her husband: ” THE VIDALIA MAN! THE VIDALIA MAN! PICK UP THE PHONE!” The happiness I feel reading that is so sublime. His work is needed and appreciated -- and what a humble trade with a beautiful simplicity to it. It is repeatable; others could do this too! Imagine what our communities would be like if most families had a little something like this. It reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's "Three Acres and a Cow" [1] slogan (implying that can be enough). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Economic_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Economic_theory

mathewsanders 7y ago
I hope I wasn’t the only person here who thought of the egg man scene in Pink Flamingos when they read this :)
- beat 7y ago
  You weren't.
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elzEOs2pY38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elzEOs2pY38

_i____ii_______ 7y ago

Who... buys onions on the internet?

padobson 7y ago

I spent a minute thinking about a product local to me that had the same appeal. I typed http://michiganlamb.com http://michiganlamb.com into the browser and discovered the concept is not uncommon.

mooreds 7y ago
Yes, I think it's pretty common (here's one around me: https://locavoredelivery.com/ https://locavoredelivery.com/ ), but still delivers value and can be a good business. Reminds me that middlemen provide value in a lot of ways, even though they are hated and everyone thought the internet would disintermediate them all.
- Simple_Guy 7y ago
  the only people who hate middlemen are people who cannot into economics.
- jeromegv 7y ago
  Yep. Even if it has never been easier for the maker/producer to setup their own Shopify store, it's still not enough. Sure a decent website on shopify is better than nothing, but most likely only your current customers will go. You need extra skills to bring NEW customers: marketing, SEO, social media, etc.. and chances are that it's someone else that will have those skills.
gadders 7y ago
I typed in "Kentlamb.com" and found out Kent Lamb is the name of an attorney.
- pcnix 7y ago
  I remembered this comment when I noticed that the person that wrote the Dockerhub breach blog post [0] was a Mr. Kent Lamb. Baader-Meinhof? [0] - https://success.docker.com/article/docker-hub-user-notification https://success.docker.com/article/docker-hub-user-notificat...

eightturn 7y ago

Peter here (author) - happy to answer any questions..

ztoben 7y ago
You mention putting purpose over profit, but I assume you still make a reasonable living doing this from the sounds of things. Is this your only job currently? What's the tech stack like? Thanks for a great article :)
- eightturn 7y ago
  It makes enough to make me happy. And yes, I have other projects (jobs) that bring in revenue.
7373737373 7y ago
Great post! How do you decide which tasks to do yourself and which to outsource? Also, at what point do you consider incorporation?
- eightturn 7y ago
  We're an LLC. Regarding tasks -- there really wasn't any deciding. We just starting doing stuff. The farmer grew the Onion, and I built out all the online stuff and logistics. When pain points arose, I tried my best to find software to shoulder those loads. But I made sure to never outsource my phone calls. I answer those. I wanna talk to my customers.
  - giarc 7y ago
    How does the farmer get the orders?
    - eightturn 7y ago
      Our online orders come through me. The transaction is made online, or over the phone.

DomainerDrew 7y ago

Turning a domain name into a business. Even more simple than that really, taking an existing industry and using a domain name to create a front end to that industry. There is opportunity everywhere. Especially if you don't require creating a billion dollar company. Thanks for sharing Vidalia Man.

sanjayts 7y ago

Great read! The blog has another post which I found personally interesting -- Slow Down & Wander [1] [1] https://www.deepsouthventures.com/slow-down-wander/ https://www.deepsouthventures.com/slow-down-wander/

sametmax 7y ago

This is what a marketing piece should be. This is an ad I'm happy to read. Were I in the US, I would totally order onions from this guy.

bikamonki 7y ago

Wow! What an inspiring reading :)

guest2143 7y ago

I thought this was going to be a new version of the onion router.....

fataliss 7y ago

That's the kind of lifestyle business I dream of finding myself into. Except maybe I'd want it less involved with customer service, but roughly similar. Somehow that's much more appealing to me than heading the next big buck hot startup out of my SF penthouse office. Guess there has to be some for everybody :) That was a good read and I bet that to the core more people resonate with this than most startup jobs!

h4t 7y ago

Boy did this article surprise me. Glad I clicked on this!

ycombonator 7y ago

What an incredible story. Encapsulates American entrepreneurial excellence !

coderintherye 7y ago

Sort of ended up in a similar boat: I sell hemp on the internet at https://www.cascadiablooms.com/direct https://www.cascadiablooms.com/direct These stories are good to tell, sometimes what can help a farmer the most is just someone who can help market and sell their crop.

jamiegreen 7y ago

As of 5 minutes ago I am now the proud owner of VidaliaOnions.co.uk..... UK vidalia market here I come!

echelon 7y ago
Vidalia onions come from Georgia, in the agricultural belt south of Atlanta. I know you're probably joking, but you should order some. They're delicious.
- jamiegreen 7y ago
  I actually wasn't joking, I did buy it (it was unregistered so it was only 6 quid), but now perhaps it was rather pointless if Vidalia onions only come from around Georgia. I just read the article and then googled to see if the uk domain was free.

rdiddly 7y ago

What I liked most about this story was the fact that he went into it kind of ass-backwards - domain name first (almost by accident too), then the business.

bduerst 7y ago
That's what makes this story unique. The domain speculation industry thrives almost entirely on the opposite.

adriansky 7y ago

> I got along quite well with the 3rd farmer I met, so we decided to partner & give this a shot. Just curious, how were the first two farmers you met?

eightturn 7y ago
They were all great, honestly. The first 2 had different operations. Farmer #1 would have worked, but they didn't have a packing shed. Farm #2 seemed ambivalent, so I was concerned whether my orders would go out on time.

joshfraser 7y ago

Had no idea when I clicked on that link that I'd be contemplating buying a box of onions. I've never tried a Vidalia but now I'm intrigued.

beering 7y ago
This is part of the marketing too, right? Reach more potential customers by writing an article and getting it to the top of a popular news aggregator. Especially with an audience that 1) will find it genuine, and 2) is likely to try out an interesting online product.

IgorPartola 7y ago

It seems like operating an online business is 5% software hackery and 95% finding a cool thing to sell, finding a supplier, building a supply chain and fulfillment system, and customer support. Think about it like this: if you can find a thing to sell on a street corner, you can sell it online. Seriously. Say you found these awesome fucking USB-C cables for about $1/each from a Chinese supplier. You think people will pay about $15/each for them, so you set up `awesome-fucking-cables.com` and start selling them. Registering a domain and setting up a web shop is the easy part, but it tends to be what people focus on. Some ideas of the stuff you could sell: - Kombucha - Specialty sodas - Heirloom seeds - Specialty light bulbs and/or batteries - Spice packets - Carpet cleaning powder - Dice - Specialty candles - Prepared origami paper - Specialty pens/pencils/crayons - Funky hair accessories (someone recently asked me why there aren't many superhero themed ones because it would be a huge market)

bduerst 7y ago
My wife paid for her grad school entirely by selling direct-from-manufacturer fashion goods, from China, to middle-aged upper/middle-class women in central Europe. The crazy thing that made it all work, IMO, was that the website was invite only. The women used the exclusivity as a status in their social circles, and invites as favors. It's fascinating how these small market niches exist but it really is the other 95% that makes them take off.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

I loved this piece. I'm from Florida and Vidalias are a staple. Whole wheat bread, lightly toasted with a smear of mayo and a thick slice of Vidalia. Mmmm... So good.

eightturn 7y ago
add cracked pepper and a squeeze of lime.. mamma-mia!

Marazan 7y ago

The most impressive thing was the bit where he spent 2 grand on a domain name he didn't want and didn't think "Oh shit, I've just blown 2 grand I needed to..."

bduerst 7y ago
I've worked in the domain space. Two grand is not that bad of a deal for a semi-common object, especially if there is an industry behind it.

ggm 7y ago

More detail on the cardboard shipping box debacle needed!

eightturn 7y ago
see above : )

vram22 7y ago

Cool image. Can drag / rotate it, etc., along at least 2 axes.

laurex 7y ago

Couldn't help but think of this [Planet Money episode](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episode-657-the-tale-of-the-onion-king https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/epis...) about a man who cornered the onion market with some repercussions.

magoon 7y ago

Unintentional ad, in a way —- one that caused me to visit, delighted me, and makes me delighted with HN.

zeckalpha 7y ago

Just be careful of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

phyzome 7y ago
Oh wow, that's wild.

WMCRUN 7y ago

The title alone makes this worth reading.

Not_anchovie 7y ago

While unique and somewhat gratifying that you can build a business with just a chance at a good domain and some internal motivations, do you find yourself adding value over other means of onion sales? Oh, and please downvote. Thank you.

jbotz 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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allnacho 7y ago

Lots of posts nowadays are just people humble bragging. This was read as an honest account of an enjoyable business ride. Thanks for sharing this!

eightturn 7y ago
you're welcome! Thank you for that feedback - I was concerned that it'd come across as a humblebrag.. I just like sharing neat things people can do on great domain names.

docuru 7y ago

Feel sorry for the writer that Google Map folks some in and smash the whole onion field (last photo) :D

eightturn 7y ago
I took that photo : ) and then uploaded to Google Maps...

brainpool 7y ago

Wonderful! This quote sums it all up for me: ”I didn’t have other projects that were this front-facing, customer wise. And I discovered I immensely enjoyed it”. Wow, does it show :) By the way, the quote was not a TL;DR - it was an invitation to read a great story. I am glad I did.

air7 7y ago

> universally, the domain name always comes first, the business idea comes second. I wonder what others think about this quote. Could he not have started the same exact business with another domain? Is owning the "right" domain that important that is should "come first" and be forgotten without it? naively I'd think Google@2019 gives more importance to content then to the domain name. No?

rossdavidh 7y ago
Yeah, my first thought was, "why would you spend that much on a domain name?" Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, all could have done just as well with different domain names. However, I guess it did function as a sort of method of brainstorming business ideas.
bytemut 7y ago
Feels like that's just his way of brainstorming ideas for side gig. Some of us get inspiration from problems we run int ourselves, some actively read blogs, blogs, trends, etc and try to find opportunities, while this man gets his from finding descriptive domain names.
MrStonedOne 7y ago
It means he picks up random domain names, and then tries to find an idea that matches/fits the domain name.

lorenzorhoades 7y ago

This was an amazing read. Not only do you sell onions on the internet but you are an amazing writer! I had to stop and comment before I dived into what else you've written. I copied the quote “take the path to Nothing, and go Nowhere until you reach it.” and got it turned into a canvas to hang above my desk.

eightturn 7y ago
if you like that quote, I highly suggest reading (or listening to) the book: The Tao of Pooh ... sooooo good.

IAmGraydon 7y ago

Bravo. I love his approach and his analogy with fictional characters. Such a wonderful way to view your work - stop trying to force it and let it tell you what it wants to be.

dustinkirkland 7y ago

Am I the only person who saw the headline and assumed this was about onion routing?

joshdance 7y ago

Love this.

_tb1_ 7y ago

It's absurd and preposterous. I love it! Late April: Season Begins.

eruci 7y ago

As Simple as peeling an onion.

m52go 7y ago

Okay since no one has asked this yet, I will...does this man have an onion site? Because I'm a big fan of onions, but an even bigger fan of onion sites...

renegadesensei 7y ago

I love this and can relate to it so much. This is very similar to how I ended up in the Japanese matchmaking industry. Noticed a good domain was available and ended up going on an odyssey of sorts.

StopHammoTime 7y ago

What a wild ride. Can you give us more information about the boxes? I feel like I need to know more about the boxes.

eightturn 7y ago
The box integrity entirely failed in-transit. Rips, tears, bottoms falling out, tops crushed, everything. I had to refund and re-send orders as make-goods, in better boxes. When my customers showed me pics of the box conditions after delivery, it made my heart hurt (no lie). I thought it was all over. These days, we send all orders in a double-walled cardboard box, with a locking bottom, and aeration holes throughout. It's a tank of a box.

jboggan 7y ago

As a Georgian transplanted into California, I miss these onions so much. Great read as well.

jrochkind1 7y ago

I want someone to write some analysis of this particular... voice, or style of writing, being used here. "I'm a web guy. I’m not a farmer." I already knew that, because in just a couple paragraphs, I was already recognizing the style of writing as... SEO, "influencer", I don't know what to call it? It's a personal first-person voice, which right off the start tries to establish that the author is a human being writing about their life -- but also that they are an expert in what they are going to tell you about, and very successful too. The text includes many one or two sentence paragraphs, and has aggressively styled pull quotes and/or callouts. Short sentences too. Not entirely complete sentences. Interspersed. It makes sure to open up with some kind of very short story that is only tangentially related to the content but is folksy and cute. (Smuggled vidalia's onto cruise ship). The information is very cleverly structured to keep you reading, by dropping just enough of the actual info, page to page, to pique your attention and make you think there's an interesting story here, but not enough that you can leave having actually learned anything before you've read a pretty big chunk. And is written artfully for this purpose, it works, and keeps you reading. Sometimes at the end you feel rewarded, other times you feel like it was a shaggy dog story. The best authors leave you happy, of course. It's got information to convey, but the goal is not to convey the information as effectively as possible, but to keep you reading as long as possible -- and, usually, to sell you something. I don't know if I have a value judgement on it exactly -- okay, I'll admit it annoys me, perhaps because it all sounds the same while trying to convince you it's a folksy authentic voice. But either way, it's a thing, a genre even, that I'm not sure I've seen anyone comment on. It's: "Content Marketing Voice". (Also selling people onions on the internet is "purpose over profit", really? What the world needs now is frictionless access to vidalia onions shipped directly to your home?)

santoshalper 7y ago
While I enjoyed the article, I agree it was a very modern web marketing voice. This is a guy who makes marketing websites for a living and it shows. Still, more interesting than most...
boyobo 7y ago
Yes. I see a lot of this on Quora as well.

retreatguru 7y ago

Thanks for such a great read. I have a somewhat similar story. My brother and I started our company the moment after we bought our domain name: retreat.guru. We actually wanted a different domain but didn’t get it; retreat.guru was the runner up. Then we had a spontaneous 3 hour call where we mapped out the entire global wellness retreat marketplace we would build - all based off the domain name! 5 years later we are still going strong. We are based out of a small mountain town in B.C. Nowhere near the buzz of Silicon Valley. We gradually took investment and grew from revenue as well. We are very vision driven. ‘I sell ayahuasca retreats on the internet’ :D

d--b 7y ago

Awesome post. I am dying to try these onions now! Who would have thought that content marketing would work to sell onions through hacker news!!

anonytrary 7y ago

I buy domain names for weird and random ideas that come to me. I really like the reverse concept of buying interesting domain names and then letting them turn into something that you never anticipated. That sounds like a really fun and potentially highly rewarding hobby. It also seems to break every Startup book's rules, since you're looking for a problem to a solution, but who cares? This guy is having tons of fun and learning a lot, so good for him. Edit: Looks like they have some competition: https://www.vidaliaonion.org https://www.vidaliaonion.org

shanecleveland 7y ago
That looks like more of a marketing arm of the state of Georgia or some regional agricultural or co-op entity. Not selling onions directly.

jeandejean 7y ago

That's a great story... And a perfect timing for an amazing marketing campaign with seasonal shipping starting next week.

jve 7y ago

2396 upvotes and counting. How much more onions do you sell now? :)

zaphirplane 7y ago

You just have to post here on the affect of a having this STORY on HN

peteforde 7y ago

I loved this story, and you all clearly did, too. How can I possibly be the first person to get stuck on the fact that this fellow dropped $2200 on a niche domain without a business plan in mind? Most people don't have that kind of whimsy cash, sadly.

otikik 7y ago

> I’ve been buying expired or abandoned domain names for a while, and enjoy developing them into niche businesses. Am I the only one here who has a problem with this kind of "business"? I see it as a very asshole thing to dedicate oneself to.

jamisteven 7y ago

Reading his article I cant help but wonder why he isnt scaling his entire setup to help ALL farmers, regardless of what they are farming, to sell online. Cant he create an online marketplace and onboard basically every portable vegetable? He should be able to replicate this same model with every veggie we got.

apercu 7y ago

This is posted in so many subs on reddit in the last 24 hours. Including unrelated subs. Please don't encourage spammers.

machz 7y ago

"I'm addicted to Domain Names... but for kicks & giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200". Not trying to be a killjoy, but everytime I hear about people reserving domains for fun or future, it just tells of so much privilege. Americans and other Westerners people have already reserved so many domains. Domain name squatting always is a rich-get-richer story.

giabao148 7y ago

i like QA so much but i am a girl person . it is difficult for me and english is not good .what should I do?

RandomBacon 7y ago

I'm not sure I've ever seen such a highly-voted post. I checked using the search box, and it appears this the 12th most voted post of all time (so far!).

rick22 7y ago

Seriously can't understand why this post is getting upvoted so much(2896) as of now. Is there something i am missing.

bbryant 7y ago

How was organic traffic in the early days? You're now ranked #1 for "vidalia onions" in Google -- but, I'm really curious what the evolution was after buying the domain?