I saw the “Horny Manatee” site, an entertaining (work safe) website devoted to raising funds and awareness for the endangered Manatee, and for some reason it got me thinking about my digg meets youtube meets the infomercial idea I wrote about back in June. I think a site that featured a series of 15 second infomercials of really ugly junk hosted by a theatrical host dressed in an ugly monster costume (the costume is key) would be huge! There is a market for obscure, ugly junk (junk that is hilarious, because it’s so ugly), but the real opportunity is creating a community of visitors who go to the site for its entertainment value. It wouldn’t be hard to initially find and arbitrage ugly junk from eBay and garage sales etc., but the site could easily design its own completely ugly junk too, which is more scalable!
[UPDATE 12-26-06: NY Times article on Horny Manatee here.]
December 26th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
It’s the “Ugly” bandwagon! Get on board with a Hinesburg, VT, company that has been marketing high end upland bird hunting apparel with an ugly mascot! “Want Birds? Hunt with an Ugly Dog.” www.uglydoghunting.com. Service was great and shipping was prompt!