Word about the US Army using these cards got out. The news outlets covered the story and created a massive demand for these cards. It became the hottest product.

It kind of started because I was buying Google search ads for a lot of different brands. Search ad buying was my main business. One client asked me to run ads for these cards and I noticed that there was A LOT of demand for them.

But this time around rather than marketing them for a client, I thought it would be interesting to try to sell them myself. (Sometimes my curiosity to try things gets me in trouble)

I also had a special deal with Google at the time. For the ads positioned at the top - I'd pay them $2 for every 1000 impressions. These ads get 20-30% clickthrough so I'd basically get a click for a penny or less.

I found a supplier in China, launched a rickety site called "eTrendsOutlet", and started selling these decks at $6 a pop.

I was still operating from my parent’s basement at the time and was a team of one. Had no offices, a warehouse, or means to efficiently pack and ship stuff. I never did this at any scale.

So I needed to save time and sell more per order. I noticed the USPS Priority Mail envelope fits 6 decks. Thus I offered a deal: Buy 5 Decks, Get 1 Free + Free Shipping.

It worked. Most orders started to flow in sets of 6. So I hired a bunch of neighborhood kids to stuff envelopes with 6 decks. And boxes of 12s, 18s, 24s, and 30 decks.

We went live, and I had loads of these cards shipped from China. I owned the search results at Google and saw tremendous sales!

They were so hot, that I started to get calls from national retailers like Wegmans and other shops around the country.

In one case a shop purchased 1,000 decks and was in NYC’s Chinatown. I packed my tiny Lexus SC430 with 1,000 decks and hand-delivered it in person. That was an interesting sight.

But, all of a sudden the credit card bank shut me down. I was a new merchant and the crazy volume set off red flags.

I made a number of calls to the bank pleading with them to keep processing. I even told them "you can hold the money for 12 months to make sure the orders are not fraudulent". They still said no to my zero-risk offer. I couldn't believe it.

I couldn’t get another bank. They were all scared. So here I am, with a spreadsheet of 1,000s of credit cards that I can't process. And the orders kept coming in.

To make matters worse, after shipping out the first delivery of cards, the 2nd shipment is running late. After a couple of weeks of delays, I'm informed the cards were seized by the customs at the port.

Turns out my supplier used a copyrighted joker card design of a major card brand. The brand put the US Customs on notice and seized my shipment from China. I guess they don’t play games with their joker.

Now I don't have inventory, nor a way to process credit cards. I’m in trouble but I was determined to figure it out and deliver.

I started to call all US manufacturers of playing cards. Had no time to deal with offshore vendors and wait for their delivery. Turns out their big business is printing cards for casinos. They print all kinds of cards for them.

One US manufacturer agreed to print the cards exclusively for me. Surprisingly the cost wasn’t much more than the ones I bought in China. And the quality was way better. There was a wait but inventory is solved.

I was having no luck with the credit card processor for some time. Then luck strikes in an odd form. A LA Times reporter was writing a story on sellers of these cards. So they reached out to me and I gave them a comment.

The following story gets published. 'Cards as sought after as the Iraqis on them'. https://www.latimes.com/archiv...

I take this story and show it to the credit card bank “look, this is the story of why I have so many orders!”. This article convinced the bank to approve. (They still wanted to hold the $$ for 6 months to make sure the orders weren’t fraudulent).

I finally had the pieces to get this wrapped up. By the time I solved this, 100s of credit cards expired! My parent’s basement had stacks of boxes to the ceiling. Cards and shipping material. In fact, at that point it was taking over their living and dining rooms as well.

I shipped all the orders, lost a lot of time, made very little money, and learned a valuable lesson. Never again will I sell a cheap physical product. It’s too much work for a small return. And I stuck to that.

More importantly, I started to value my time and be more careful about distractions. Those end up costing a lot more than the profits the side hustle generated.

If you enjoyed this story, please retweet the first tweet of this thread and follow me @ValKatayev for more.

If you haven’t read the story of the $30M ads business I started with, here’s the thread on that… https://x.com/ValKatayev/statu...

GIVEAWAY: I have a few decks left… Retweet or QT the main tweet below and I’ll pick 5 of you to send a deck to. (You have to be in a country where I can ship to hassle free from US).

@ValKatayev This was you?? I remember these

@ShaanVP Did you buy them? Gave @thesamparr some decks when he was over my place. Still have a few left.

@ValKatayev Your life is wild man…

@SievaKozinsky Just a little

@ValKatayev I love these wild stories. It’s like the veggie tales version of the Silk Road guy. 😂 Just as crazy but more wholesome.

@huntercdurham And the guy doesn’t go to jail 😄