[fxtentacle]

Money. Social media is 90% people lying to make more money.

I mean all those #girlboss and #babeswhohustle motivationaly posts are also just to get new subordinates for your MLM marketing scam. And then there's people congratulating themselves on pumping and dumping SafeMoon crypto coins ...

I don't know who started the "fake it till you make it" advice, but it's certainly how most Instagram accounts operate. This guy perfected that: https://medium.com/@chrisbuetti/how-i-eat-for-free-in-nyc-us...

(I used to run a bikini company, so I have practical experience working with Instagram influencers)

[sizzle]

Wow why did you stop running that company?? Over saturated market? Where did you source your material? Who did designs? Any funny stories? Super unique, thanks!

[fxtentacle]

> why did you stop running that company

I ran out of bikinis to sell. And since the novelty was wearing off anyway, I decided not to order a 3rd round of inventory. You have to buy this stuff in bulk to get a good price.

> Where did you source your material

Dongguan Humen Yihao Clothing Co., Ltd. (not sure, I believe they were called differently back then)

But MOQ was 1000+ pieces each for 5+ designs, so 5000 bikinis in total.

> Who did designs?

An Italian guy "designed" the bikinis, took some of the photos, setup Instagram, Shopify, etc, and started selling. He then sold the company to me when he got bored with it. "designed" because he actually booked a Vietnamese illustration team on UpWork to do the design sketches and then sent those sketches to a Chinese company for manufacturing.

> Any funny stories?

This is a semi-public forum, so no. You can probably imagine which topics feature heavily when young guys running a startup hire models to sell partially see-through bikinis. And I'm guessing you can also imagine how publicly reciting these stories could get me into trouble in today's political correctness culture.

But maybe some interesting facts:

Renting space in a fulfillment warehouse is surprisingly cheap. Like $100 monthly + $1 per order.

With the correct business contract, DHL will express-ship your parcel from HK to the US for $9. As a regular consumer, it's $140 in shipping fees. That means returns would cost more in shipping fees than the value of the goods, so we usually redirected them to red cross or other clothing donation drop-offs.

Each year, more than 250 self-proclaimed Instagram models sent us unsolicited underwear (and/or nude) photos to ask for free merchandise.

The bikini equivalent of 2x $2.5 in manufacturing + $9 shipping will buy you a 1-week promotion where an Instagram yoga girl will wear your stuff for her retreat and tag you on selfies 3x daily.

About 1 out of 10 of our collaboration partners asked for permission to sell the used bikinis to their fans after the promotion was over.

Roughly half of the Influencers that contacted us pretended to have worked for international fashion brands. None of them (sample size ~ 400) managed to provide any proof when I asked.

Also roughly half of the Influencers that contacted us were participating in one or more MLM schemes and offered to recruit us. That's why almost every yoga instructor is also giving nutrition and makeup advice and links to their "favorite" mat on Amazon.

[beepbooptheory]

This is really interesting overall, but I gotta say, just saying this:

> And I'm guessing you can also imagine how publicly reciting these stories could get me into trouble in today's political correctness culture.

Is far more creepy than whatever fraught power dynamics you were probably a part of! Not a big deal, but it made me laugh.

[fxtentacle]

I'm not concerned about people reading the whole story and having a bad impression. I'm concerned about people deliberately cherry-picking a part of the sentence to quote out of context just to stir up outrage. Outrage can be monetized extremely well on social media and, sadly, some people will follow this financial incentive no matter how unethical.

I've already seen an unflattering partial quote of one of my HN comments end up in a newspaper once, so I'm a bit careful about that. But it would be very difficult to write a funny and juicy story in such a way that it is "evil quote safe", which is why I decided against it.

[sizzle]

Wow thank you for taking the time for such a detailed, thought out response. I really enjoyed hearing your story, which ran through my mind like a documentary on this seedy underworld you are shining a light on.

What are you up to after this learning experience? Working in e-commerce? Tech?