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I know this is not the norm for projects here on Hacker News and I realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive, so here's a very very brief background and
by guynamedloren 16y ago
I know this is not the norm for projects here on Hacker News and I realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive, so here's a very very brief background and my thought process:
- Idea was conceived around 2am this morning. Saw a few events on facebook picking up speed (hundreds of thousands of attendees) so decided to leverage that instant-market
- Wasn't sure whether or not it would work, but I didn't have too much to lose ($8 url and a few hours) so I went for it and started hacking away
- Around 10am the project was launched, complete with a website, domain name, and orignal t-shirt design, all done by me
- 4 minutes later the first orders came in, thus paying for the domain name and becoming profitable (minus my time value)
- Since then the site has gone slightly viral, with several thousand hits, hundreds of "likes" and a bunch of tweets (not to mention t-shirt sales)
- Became the "official t-shirt" and event photo for the Snowpocalypse 2011 facebook event with 300,000 attendees. That's a nice little market to advertise to, no?
This is really just a social + eCommerce experiment with a taste of vitality. While I have designed t-shirts and sold them online before, I have never done anything quite like this, ie "hopping on the bandwagon" and riding out a live-fast-die-fast trend. I have also never experimented with any sort of viral platforms. I hope to implement some potentially viral features in my current startup/project, so I figured it would be worth it to test the waters with this mini-project. It was indeed. I learned a lot, and hope to do a case study with detailed steps and statistics in the near future.
- dacort 16y agoAs an aside, selling t-shirts is how Peter Shankman (creator of Help-A-Report-Out) got started with his own advertising agency. He saw an opportunity (Titanic) and capitalized on it by selling t-shirts that said "It sank. Get Over It." Brief story here: http://www.collective-e.com/how-tos-and-advice/how-did-you/advertising/peter-shankman-starting-his-first-advertising-agency http://www.collective-e.com/how-tos-and-advice/how-did-you/a...
- Mz 16y agoHow did you get your first order in 4min? I mean, how were you promoting it? I have decided I would like to leave my current job and town (as in "post haste" instead of "someday") and I need funds to do so. A quick influx of money would do wonders for moving that goal forward. Would love to learn anything you can share.
- guynamedloren 16y agoRight now I can tell you I didn't do much to market except designed a good product, a good presentation, and took advantage of the ridiculous amounts of traffic going through the Facebook events mentioned in OP. No magic or silver bullet here. Will go into more detail with a blog post soon. Madebyloren.com
- Mz 16y agoI really love the landing page and envy you your skills in that regard. Also, some of your remarks suggest that you have substantial background with some aspects of this, like shipping t-shirts. So it sounds like you capitalized on an area that came fairly easily to you due to experience, positioning, and other factors. Looking forward to your blog post. I very much want to work a few miracles and leave my current situation. Thank you for sharing. For me, as a non-programmer, this is really much more inspiring (as in something I could aspire to) than the posts about some program someone wrote in x amount of time.
- Jem 16y agoYou should link madebyloren.com from the footer of your t-shirt page - the benefit to your blog because of a link from a viral page will outlast the t-shirt sales. :)
- guynamedloren 16y agoThought about it, but decided against it. First, there is absolutely no content on my blog as of right now, so no reason to return ever. Second, I don't think general demographic that visits snowday2011.com would necessarily benefit or appreciate the content that will eventually be on my blog (startups, programming, design, hacking). Third, I've planned on posting a detailed account of the project (including hits, rough financials, etc) since inception, and I don't know if I want this information to be readily available to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who happens to stroll through the site.
- Jem 16y ago
- unshift 16y agoi wouldn't call it exploitive, rather i would say it's very savvy. even if it's a one-time shot, it's real money and you're not doing anything shady to earn it. that's how people build wealth -- seizing opportunity. congrats on the success.
- guynamedloren 16y agoThanks for the kind words. I'm glad the Hacker News community is so understanding and supportive, even with silly little projects like this!
- warrenwilkinson 16y agoIts a very nice site. Nicely designed and you know exactly what you're getting and what it's about when you look at it. I wish my site was so intuitive =(.
- patio11 16y agoTotal agreement. There is no rule, law, or moral stricture against earning money efficiently. (Some people seem to accept that a lawyer can bill $4,000 in a day of work but an engineer who does the same thing must be cheating somehow. I've never understood this.)
- noonespecial 16y agoA great many people also think that what the lawyer does is exploitative. It has just become an accepted social fiction that law is an exploitative profession and its to be expected of them. "Well sure lawyers do it, but engineers?! Come on, they're supposed to be the good guys!"
- gilaniali 16y agoWhere are you getting the shirts printed from? Whats the total cost for printing and shipping?
- guynamedloren 16y agoWholesale screenprinter. No on demand or drop shipping. Printing + shipping is approx $8 or less per shirt.
- hsmyers 16y agoA non-relevant question, which one? St. Louis, Tulsa, Chicago, New York, etc... Since the shirt doesn't say, it won't make a difference from the sales point of view, just wondering which one was your inspiration?
- guynamedloren 16y agoChicago and central il (home and college home). Of course the shirt applies to pretty much the whole Midwest right now, so that helps from a market segment perspective.
- makmanalp 16y agoGreat landing page. I instantly get what's being sold and for how much, and the sale is a click away.
- guynamedloren 16y agoThanks, that was the goal.
- endlessvoid94 16y agoThis IS awesome. Could you please provide details about the logistics behind the tshirts? Are you using Zazzle/CafePress? Do you have a contact in the industry that allowed you to very quickly start printing and shipping them? I think that's the part most hackers will be interested in. Congrats on your success!
- madridorama 16y agoagreed, I am curious about the logistics. I'd guess that he has a wholesale contact, but the margins after shipping would still be very small. assume $8 for a t-shirt, $5 average for shipping, leaves $3 profit per sale.
- guynamedloren 16y agoMargins are much higher than you'd expect. I've worked in the indie t-shirt game before and scrupulously figured out how to squeeze out ea much profit as possible while maintaining good quality. Profits are at least $7/shirt, will increase with decrease in unit cost from larger wholesale quantity.
- endlessvoid94 16y agoThat's pretty impressive. I understand keep your tips to yourself, but is there anything you can share about how you managed to get $7 profit / shirt? That's unheard of.
- guynamedloren 16y ago@endlessvoid - see my other responses here. There's no magic going on, just streamlining and being very efficient.
- gnosis 16y ago"Profits are at least $7/shirt" Did you factor in the cost of your time? It sounds like you're going to be doing your own packing and shipping. How long does that take?
- 16y ago
- Geoooorge 16y agoThis is a fantastic example of identifying a bubbling market and supplying it with a desirable product. Great work!
- deepGem 16y agoPretty cool. Really liked the emphasis on the inclusion of shipping costs in the price. The design is perfect in my opinion and no wonder the sales are going viral. Congratulations and keep up the good work.
- SkyMarshal 16y agoQuick, write a book before Tim Ferris steals your idea: The Four Hour Startup
- guynamedloren 16y agoI like that - maybe a good title for the upcoming detailed blog post!
- tectonic 16y agoI'm very curious to know how much you made off of this (ballpark).
- ck2 16y agoI think there is absolutely nothing wrong with what you did. On the other hand however, I also think that some people have way too much money on their hands or a lack of intelligent spending habits if they are buying stuff like this. We are a very strange country indeed. Have you ever seen the packets of clothing that are sold to vendors in third-world countries by the likes of Goodwill and such? They are full of t-shirts like this from 10, even 20 years ago and kids running around wearing them, barefoot and starving, while they put the hope for any local clothing industry out of business. Very strange stuff. aha, found the link: T-SHIRT TRAVELS http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tshirttravels/film.html http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tshirttravels/film.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeCIlgUeYlM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeCIlgUeYlM
- rmc 16y agoThat's an complicated ethical decision. On one hand some local clothing manufacteurers are out of buisiness. On the other hand a whole pile of people have cheap, high quality clothing.
- rapind 16y agoOff-topic now for sure, but IMO the investment / charity is always better spent on local businesses to produce goods rather than donating goods. Donating goods just makes us feel better about our excesses (the fact that we by new clothing based on style instead of wear / utility).
- checker 16y agoIt's a complicated issue. I think the reason people donate is based on this logic: An old t-shirt here is essentially worthless. We see somewhere that a demand exists for a worthless item (to us), so we give it to them because they are much poorer than us (rather than sell it to them). We think we save them the work for the t-shirt assuming they will be able to concentrate on something else productive rather than acquiring clothing. Everyone wins (although not necessarily the case). In addition to making us feel better about our excesses, it makes logical sense, although the logic is based upon possibly inaccurate assumptions.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- kenjackson 16y agoI realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive Dude, this is HACKER News. It's all about exploiting opportunities in the system. My only complaint is that 2am I was sleeping rather than hacking.
- guynamedloren 16y ago> Dude, this is HACKER News. It's all about exploiting opportunities in the system.\ Ha, you do have a point here my friend. Re: sleeping - I haven't slept in like 2 days =]
- Shooter 16y agoI don't think the idea is exploitive...just opportunistic, which is an awesome mindset to have in business if you stay on the right side of things. So, kudos on the idea. That said, I do have a problem with the execution: The section "Please don't buy this shirt if you died. That's just lying, and nobody likes a liar..." is obviously intended just for laughs, but it's not really that funny and you run the risk of offending someone that, say, knows someone who actually died in the "Snowpacalypse." My wife, for example, knew one of the seven people that are known to have died in Chicago as a result of the blizzard. I'm one of the least sensitive or "PC" people on earth, but I think you might rethink what you gain vs. what you lose with that particular sentence. Offending people can be fine (and inevitable), but there should usually be a reason for it. [BTW, "I survived X" is a common T-shirt meme and Snowpacalypse is a recent meme, so I didn't think anything of it until the one sentence made a more concrete connection between 'death' and the blizzard...which made me think of the news reports etc. - which might tip the creepy scale for some potential buyers. Maybe A/B test it?]
- aruban 16y agoAnything you'd do will offend at least one person on earth. This time is you, next time will be somebody else. Get over it.
- Shooter 16y agoIt didn't offend me, dickhead. I was just offering my opinion about something that might lower sales conversions. Why piss off a potential customer just for a weak joke...?
- aruban 16y agoThanks for the D, no need to be aggressive, my point is just that if you offend a very few and get attention of the mass, somewhere, you win. Piss off a potential client isn't a big deal when you got hundred other to laugh! I also think that making fun of dramatical situation might help to get over the trauma. But I guess you are to sensitive to follow this.
- fduffner 16y agoI tried a similar thing about a fad in Germany during the soccer WC but it didn't go anywhere as I sucked at marketing it. Can you tell how you did marketing and especially how did you became the official T-Shirt for that facebook event?
- eru 16y agoWhich fad?
- DeusExMachina 16y agoIt was a great way to seize an opportunity and I think you should reiterate it. Next time you see a huge trend like this, design another t-shirt and create another website. You have already all you need: code for the website/order infrastructure and contacts with some t-shirt maker. It will require even less than 4 hours ;)
- KedarMhaswade 16y agoCan't believe it. When I was getting bored of discussions like "trying to hire an igloo", "move to California" over the snow-storm, this HN came along and made my day/night. Hacker of the year award! Maybe YC should start such an award if it doesn't already exist.
- guynamedloren 16y agoMaybe they could just accept me into Y-Combinator instead of sending that nasty rejection e-mail again* =] * As an aside, I did apply to Y-Combinator in the previous application batch, with Pocket (http://letspocket.com http://letspocket.com) when it was barely more than an idea. As crazy as it sounds, I really didn't even know how to program at that point, which is a bit of an issue for a one-man tech startup. I didn't except to be accepted and I'm not bitter about being rejected. That rejection e-mail came and went, and I kept hacking away. Two weeks ago I shared Pocket with HN and it was received ridiculously well. And yesterday this. I honestly don't even know what I'll be doing in another few weeks, but I can tell you that my head is down and I'm still hacking away (Pocket Premium!). So anyway, YC: please be aware that I am not stopping. - From Loren
- lionhearted 16y agoHey Loren, this really got the gears turning in my head. It covers two things I've been thinking about a lot lately: 1. Low downside, high upside: You got in for $8 and a few hours, and it had a shot to do some great things... I think taking these low-investment shots at doing things can add up really fast. 2. Getting in front of trends/timely marketing - I think there's a ton of potential in this, and I've been thinking on it a lot lately. Thanks for sharing this - very cool stuff here.
- antihero 16y agoThanks for inspiring me to put money into a "pot" for small, act-fast business ideas like this. Could I ask some details: * Where did you get the T-Shirt made? * How exactly did you go from nobody knowing about it to 1000s of hits?
- guynamedloren 16y agoThere's no silver bullet - my four hours of hacking were backed by a lifetime of work, learning, and experience. I'll be running a series of blog posts detailing the entire project, from start to finish. Be on the lookout http://madebyloren.com http://madebyloren.com
- LiveTheDream 16y agoHave you had any trouble with PayPal flagging your account yet?
- guynamedloren 16y agoNot yet - fingers crossed!