My Journey Selling $3.5M in Wooden Sunglasses Over One Year
Graduated in 2009, never worked a job, went straight into entrepreneurship. On Amazon, he sold walnut wood sunglasses for $20 each, raking in $3.5 million in revenue that first year—but after costs, his actual profit margin was just 10%. Then again, he only had one employee.
What matters isn’t the money. It’s the journey:
1. He started by flipping tickets to soccer games near campus. Good weather, a bit of luck, and he could turn a $500 investment into $5,000 in a single day.
2. During those ticket-flipping days, he met a classmate studying international economics. The guy brought back a batch of watches from China, and they handed one out to every bartender at a local pub. In exchange, they got free drinks and venue access all day. Lots of people showed interest in buying the watches—though they were giving them away for free. That validated the product, so he priced them at $65 (cost: $3 each). They didn’t sell. He slashed the price to $32. Bought 800 units, finally cracked sales, but the Chinese supplier—likely a middleman—couldn’t keep up with demand. Return rates hit around 30%, and he called it quits. (Those watches are insanely competitive now; you can get one for under $4.)
3. Next, he traveled to China himself to source products. He found a walnut wood sunglasses manufacturer, had already shortlisted three factories on Alibaba (probably 1688), and visited them in person. His key vetting criteria: ask if he could use their bathroom—if it was dirty or disorganized, that signaled a lack of care and poor product quality; and check whether anyone there could hold a fluent English conversation, since communication was essential. He brought in a friend as an investor and partner.
The sunglasses that hit $3.5 million in sales
4. He bought a branded domain for $4,000 and spent $600 on influencer outreach. A blogger with 100,000 followers (though the audience might’ve been inflated) agreed to collaborate, spending an entire day shooting videos and photos. Sales weren’t huge, but it kept him afloat—he made $4,000 that month.
5. At that point, he had only $140,000 left. He partnered with another promotional agency, negotiated their $100,000 quote down to $25,000. Actual costs—gear, staff, production—came to about $70,000, and he made $30,000 back. But the agency posted a follow-up tweet as compensation and granted him perpetual rights to the collaboration photos. The campaign yielded 20,000 email subscribers, which became the foundation for future growth.
6. Wooden frames had a high breakage rate, which led to a flood of negative reviews. With no choice, he slashed his profit margin from 20% down to 5%. The policy was simple: if a customer reported any issue, he shipped a replacement immediately. Every affected customer upgraded their review to five stars, and sales took off.
He shared the tools he used to launch—and which ones he no longer uses
He shared how he used to handle things
Read his early posts
The book that had the biggest impact: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss