Australian Matthew Carpenter sells ShipYourEnemiesGlitter for US$85,000 – How the Trend of Glitter Bombing started before Valentine’s Day

The San Francisco Zoo has sprung up with their own special version of Hate Mail dedicated to your ex-lover this Valentine's Day.

Want to start a business this February 2015 just in time for Valentine’s Day that already research and has a built in market as specified in my blog article entitled “20% of Jamaican MSME's Fail to get Bank Loans - Why MSME's need Business Plans, Marketing Plans and Market Research”.

Why not start a Glitter Bomb delivery service to anonymously deliver the hate straight to your enemies! Or better yet, a cockroach and scorpion Delivery service this Valentine’s Day to show your ex-lover how much you really dislike them?

San Francisco Zoo’s idea this Valentine's Day is for you to anonymously send your ex-lover a stuffed Scorpio or Cockroach, the least liked of creatures on the zoo, to your ex-lover as explained in the article “San Francisco Zoo offers way to get even with exes, Monday”, January 26, 2015 9:15 AM, The Jamaica Observer. Really, this is their idea and for a price too; it’s all in a bid to raise funds to take care of the other animals.

Their prices seem a bit reasonable to express you loathing of your ex-lover:

1. US$20 to send a stuffed Scorpion native to the Southwest US
2. US$50 to send a stuffed Madagascar Cockroach 

Seem like the thing to start doing, after 22 year old Australian Mathew Carpenter, was forced to sell his highly successful website business ShipYourEnemiesGlitter for US$85,000 as reported in the article “Ship Your Enemies Glitter site sells for $85,000”, published Thursday 22 January 2015 10.11 GMT by Alex Hern, The UK Guardian.

Why exactly did he do such a thing?

Matthew Carpenter and ShipYourEnemiesGlitter – How the trend of Glitter bombing started before Valentine’s Day

Apparently his website, ShipYourEnemiesGlitter, which he launched on Tuesday January 13^th 2015 as a joke, became so popular that within 24 hours he had to be begging people on Facebook to stop using his website as reported in the article “The Founder Of 'Ship Your Enemies Glitter' Is Begging People To Stop Using His Service”, published JAN. 14, 2015, 2:34 PM by TAYLOR LORENZ, BusinessInsider.

What exactly was the business that this website promised?

As the name says, you can ship a spring-loaded tube full of Glitter, described on his website as the “herpes of the craft world” to your enemies.

Note here “enemy” means anyone you really dislike i.e. ex-husband, ex-girlfriend or annoying sister anonymously for a mere US$9.99, similar to the one show below. Something tell me this is going to become the trend for Valentine’s Day 2015 and the rest of 2015!

His website description even indicated that a note would be added to increase the spillage of the stuff. From my own experience as a Part-time Evening Professional Studies student here at MICO University College, Glitter is nearly impossible to clean off any surface…..unless you have a small pressure hose handy. By the way, if you’re interested, here’s how to build a Glitter bomb!

Apparently a lot of persons found this idea so enticing that they flooded him with some requests, resulting in the website receiving some 1,000,000 hits in the space of 24 hours.

All told, by the time he figured out how to suspend orders on his website, he had amassed some US$20,000 or orders for roughly about 2000 Glitter bombs during the four (4) days after launch that he ran his website up to Sunday January 18^th 2015.

He needed to start hiring people to makes them and apparently being as he probably has a day job or worse lived with his parents, this was not a good look. Not to mention the global media attention!

The man who purchased ShipYourEnemiesGlitter from him was apparently a customer that had shelled out some US$83,000 in Glitter bombs. Apparently he had so many enemies or he was just simply trying to swamp him with so many orders, that he eventually called it quits. Well it worked; this anonymous owner now owns the ShipYourEnemiesGlitter domain name.

His is an example of a business so successful that he had to abandon it, as he couldn’t stand dealing with the Glitter. Now his accidental success has inspired a few copycats, including the San Francisco Zoo, who are more than willing to step up to the plate to take the orders of his hands in their respective countries, namely:

1.      Glitterbombs in Britain

2.      Mat Won’t But We Will in the US of A

Now two weeks later and US$85,000 richer, his overnight success has inspired copycats. By doing the research via experimentation, any Jamaican who want to make a Glitter bomb business or any delivery business that involves delivering outrageous and unpleasant gift to the ex-lover you hate this Valentine’s day can do so. Scorpions and Cockroaches and any other insect you can think of included!

Adjusting for cultural differences of course, being as glitter is essential for any Carnival costume or women’s nail polish…….delivery of Goat Dung would seem an appropriate alternative to Glitter here in Jamaica, once you can kill the smell.