In 2015, a 22-year-old Australian made $105,000 in 10 days from a $9.99 glitter envelope. He spent most of those 10 days publicly begging people to stop giving him money.
Mathew Carpenter built Ship Your Enemies Glitter as a side project and expected to maybe cover the domain cost. Within four days the site had 2.5 million visits and more than $20,000 in orders, and he was drowning in fulfillment.
So he posted on Product Hunt. "Please stop buying this horrible glitter product. I'm sick of dealing with it."
The plea became the best ad he never meant to run. Tech press piled onto the founder who hated his own customers, and orders accelerated. He killed the checkout entirely, which stacked up a 10,000-order backlog and added a scarcity story on top of the revenge story.
Then he tried to escape the whole thing by auctioning it on Flippa, and the escape attempt turned into a bidding war. 345 bids. The listing itself pulled hundreds of thousands of views. An entrepreneur named Peter Boychuk paid $85,000 for a website that was 10 days old.
Every move Carpenter made to kill the business raised its price. The complaint worked as marketing. The shutdown worked as scarcity.
And the detail nobody remembers, an Australian newspaper asked at the time whether a single glitter envelope had actually been mailed yet. He may have sold an $85,000 company before shipping the product once.
雑学をまとめる犬 (@zatsugakuinu)
・嫌いな相手へラメ入りの封筒を送るサービス
2015年、マシュー・カーペンターは「Ship Your Enemies Glitter」を公開しました。嫌いな相手へ1件あたりラメ入りの封筒とメッセージを送ることができ、開封すると細かな粒が散らばって片付けが面倒になるだけ、という単純なサービスでした。（続く）
— https://nitter.net/zatsugakuinu/status/2085702020527432177#m