Business Opportunities Weblog

$120k in Two Days Selling Dead Osama T-Shirts

By on May 8, 2011 in Ideas

Sometimes you just have to be the fastest to profit from a trend. One young entrepreneur grossed $120k in two days selling t-shirts celebrating the assassination of Osama Bin Laden:

Maurice Harary, 23, set up his T-shirt website Osamadeadtees.com as soon as he heard that the former Al Qaeda leader had been shot by U.S. Navy Seals on Sunday night.
The New Yorker raced home to his apartment to work on building the website on Sunday night and it was ready to go live at 3.30am on Monday morning.

By Tuesday evening he had already sold more than 10,000 items at $12 a time.

clothing

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,203 posts to the site.

Another Idea: How to Start a Website Design Business

  • Ric.

    How he did advertise it?

  • http://www.business-opportunities.biz Dane Carlson

    I’m guessing Facebook, but the article didn’t say.

  • http://careerbuildersite.com/ Jim Rosenau

    Well I knew someone would profit from this. I wonder if he made all those shirts?

  • woogie

    first commer’s advantage personified. Quite a smart move and right on time too.

  • http://www.business-opportunities.biz Dane Carlson

    I wonder if he used a service like CafePress to generate the shirts for him as they were ordered.

  • Harry Stoddart

    http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2011/05/09/sternie-returning-300000-made-from-bin-laden-shirts/

    is reporting that Harary is planning to refund all the cash. He’s had a change of heart about profiting from the death of someone.

  • http://n.a. Cindy Hawkins

    Ghoulish, and in real bad taste, I agree. But proves a point: literally anything, if timed right can be a ‘profitable venture’, albeit questionable, in terms of ethics. But I hope the follow up report’s correct: that our tee shirt guy decided to nix lining his pockets behind the icing of a Taliban biggie, whatever bin Laden’s heinous crimes obviously were.

  • http://www.mindofmichael.com Michael

    That’s messed up! The things you can profit with nowadays! Geez.

  • Ernandes

    I dont know if i would have a change of heart. Would have used that money to pay of my house my moms house and go to school full time. Thanks to OSama

  • http://www.serialstartups.com Naomi

    Maybe he could’ve donated the money to a 9/11 scholarship fund…

    But it was an interesting example of how a trend spotter can have a lot of success if they act quickly (and first!)

Today's Posts