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Congrats to Elon Musk, selling perfume for 1 in 40,000 Twitter acquisitions.
In Musk’s world, it seems that nothing is insurmountable. Just as the world was watching the buzz about the Twitter acquisition, Musk made a joke about it.
“Please buy my fragrance so I can buy twitter.”
The perfume Musk mentioned is a product launched by his Boring Company (the Boring Compamy, hereinafter referred to as TBC), called “hair burnt” and priced at $100.
His sales pitch is serious, and if you never knew Musk, just looking at his Twitter page, you might really think he is a mediocre salesman – he even changed his Twitter bio to “perfume” Salesman,” and added: “With a name like Musk, entering the perfume industry is inevitable.”
This is actually a homophonic stalk. Musk’s English Musk also means “Musk”.
Of course, if you look closely at the product page, you’ll know that this guy isn’t really in the fragrance business, after all, the fragrance is not only named “hair burnt” but also described as a “disgusting desire” smell, as for you What happens after you spray it on, Musk describes it this way: “Makes you stand out from the crowd and draws attention when you walk through the airport.”
It might even be the sound of the fire truck’s whistle.
The fragrance, which will ship in 2023, has sold 10,000 copies soon after, Musk announced the good news on Twitter. This shows that in just a few hours, Musk has already made $1 million and more than 7 million yuan in revenue through this sale.
It is obviously a joke to say crowdfunding for the acquisition of Twitter, after all, the purchase price is 44 billion US dollars, so the perfume only contributed 1/40,000 of the power. And now Musk’s situation in the Twitter case is that the lawsuit is suspended, but the acquisition must be completed at a price of $44 billion before October 28, otherwise the lawsuit will still be fought in November.
But no one will take the joke of crowdfunding buying Twitter seriously. Musk’s mouth is a liar, everyone understands this truth. The Twitter “influencer” with more than 100 million followers launched a quirky product, and the comments section joined him in “hi”.
Not only did good-hearted people offer Musk a picture of a perfume advertisement made by himself, but Musk’s head was placed on the body of a model with broad shoulders and eye-catching biceps, which made people seem to hear the kind of TV commercials. Mysterious whisper: “burnt hair…”.
There are also black-bellied audiences who don’t forget to hack Musk’s old enemy, Amazon founder Jack Bezos, who lost his hair in the middle of the picture. “Before use”, on the right is the original photo of Bezos’ bare head.
It’s not the first time Musk has sold groceries, dating back to the hats launched by TBC in 2017. In the past 5 years, Musk has sold “useless is a cool” flamethrower, sold “Cyber whistle” around the Cybertruck, sold Tesla surfboards, and sold limited edition dragons Tongue, the bottle is a Tesla lightning bolt…
Getting a wave of public attention is the most basic gain for Musk to sell groceries. Sometimes, Musk can respond to disputes with his own products by the way, and even if the groceries sell well enough, he can obtain funds that cannot be underestimated for the company. . On top of that, Musk’s groceries are weird every time, and he himself seems to be enjoying it.
Traffic, money, happiness… Everyone is doing a side business, the side business of the world’s richest man, with one sword and several carvings.
A
The groceries that Musk personally went to sell were easily sold out, and the place where the dream began was the TBC black cap.
Seeing that Musk has now changed his Twitter profile to “Perfume Salesman”, some netizens posted a picture in the comment area and asked, “Remember when you changed your profile to ‘Hat Salesman’?”
This is a screenshot. Musk’s Twitter profile reads “Hat Salesman”. This netizen is probably an “old fan”. At that time, Musk had only 16 million followers on Twitter.
It was October 2017, and Musk’s TBC launched a black peaked cap. Now it seems that this product is indeed a bit boring. It has the full English name of TBC written on it. It is simple and simple, and the price is $20.
However, this TBC boring cap sold 30,000 in less than 2 months, and Musk earned $600,000. Then Musk let it go. He promised: If we sell 50,000 units, we will start selling flamethrowers.
Few people took this seriously, and it turned out that the peaked caps did sell 50,000, and the flamethrower actually launched in January of the following year.
This time, it’s no longer a small thing that costs only $20. Musk’s flamethrower costs $500. It can really and only breathe fire, and the flame spray distance is about 3 meters.
As a result, this flame launcher sold much faster than the peaked cap. In just 4 days, all 20,000 in stock were sold out. Musk sent a tweet to tell everyone that it was sold out.
Musk had a lot of fun. He shared a video of himself playing with a flamethrower on instagram, and suddenly turned the “gun head” and ran towards the photographer. The picture was obviously shaking. It is estimated that the poor guy was very scared.
On social media, people who bought the flamethrower are also sharing all kinds of bizarre videos: blowing rice with fire to see if you can make popcorn (really successful), or trying to see if the iPhone X can stand the test.
A spokesperson for TBC told the media that TBC’s injectors are safer than “anything people buy on Amazon” right now, and they’re absolutely thrilling to use. However, such a flamethrower has attracted dissatisfaction from many people, including some officials.
California Congressman Miguel Santiago called the behavior “conceited, dangerous, and not funny,” and introduced a bill to reduce the flamethrower’s range from 3 meters to 1.2 meters.
Anyway, until it was sold out, Musk’s flamethrower could still spray 3 meters of fire. He just discussed with netizens on Twitter to change its name, otherwise it would be difficult to pass through customs. He came up with two options, a “temperature booster” and “not a flamethrower” (quite perfunctory).
The money has also been made. According to the two sales figures announced by Musk: 50,000 caps and 20,000 flame guns, its sales have already reached 11 million US dollars.
That was when Musk’s TBC needed publicity and funding. In 2016, Musk created TBC, which in a nutshell is to dig tunnels underground to solve the problem of traffic congestion.
From 2017 to 2018, Musk released two products to create momentum for TBC, which also made the new company already known before actual action.
According to 36氪, from 2018 to 2019, TBC raised $233 million through private investors and Musk out of his own pocket, and distributed some equity to early employees and SpaceX, with a valuation of nearly $920 million.
By mid-2019, TBC had also won a $48.6 million contract for the Las Vegas Convention Center passenger system.
Five years later, so far, TBC still has only one tunnel in use, that is, the double tunnel LVCC Loop built under the Las Vegas Convention Center, with a total length of 1.37 kilometers and a cost of 52.5 million yuan. If you have to say it, you can also count the test tunnel built in Hawthorne, near Los Angeles, at the end of 2018. It is 3.2 kilometers long and starts at the SpaceX headquarters and ends at a section of Route 45 in California.
Apart from that, there is nothing else, and there are several other projects that are “throwing the street”, including the Washington-Baltimore tunnel, which was launched in 2017, and the Dodger Stadium tunnel in Los Angeles, which was first announced in 2018. Both projects are It was discovered by the media in April 2021 that it has stalled. Not only has the government’s EIA results not been publicly reported, but even the TBC official website has deleted the content of these two projects.
But Musk isn’t just talking about deliverables, the process is also important. Even if TBC isn’t doing as well as expected, you’d be hard-pressed to say it’s a failed company. Just in April of this year, TBC announced that it had raised a $675 million Series C round, valuing the company at $5.7 billion.
When it comes to dreaming and telling stories, Musk has never lost, even if a company that relies on tunnels to subvert traffic, the most dazzling and most promising product is a flame gun that can breathe fire 3 meters.
B
Probably inspired by the TBC peripherals, Musk also sells groceries at other companies.
Tesla’s peripheral products are very rich. There are still 16 peripheral products on sale in the Tesla Tmall flagship store, including whistle, umbrella, power bank, cup, car model, children’s toy car, etc.
Among them, the “Cyber Whistle” is a gadget released in December last year. As the name suggests, it is really a small whistle, but the price has reached 50 US dollars. In January this year, it was also put on the shelves in China for 350 yuan.
As long as it is the groceries that are personally recommended on Musk’s Twitter, there are strange appearances.
At that time, when Musk was promoting this whistle similar in shape to the Cybertruck, he pulled Apple to joke: “Don’t buy apple polishing cloth, come and buy our whistle!”
Apple has previously launched a polishing cloth, priced at $19, 146 yuan in China, and it was sold out as soon as it was released. The Cyber Whistle also lived up to expectations under Musk’s shouting. It was snapped up as soon as it was put on the shelves, and it was the same when it was put on the shelves in China. At that time, it was still possible to see someone changing hands on the second-hand platform with a price of thousands of yuan.
On September 14 this year, when Musk’s lawsuit with Twitter was in full swing, Musk once again sent the content of the cyber whistle to ridicule Twitter.
Those two days came as Twitter “whistleblower” Peiter Zatko testified before the U.S. Congress, accusing Twitter of a series of security problems and trying to mislead regulators in a previous whistleblower letter.
Using his own products to launch the taunting skills, the skin is both happy and sold, which Musk is very skilled at.
On April Fool’s Day in 2018, Musk tweeted a photo of him leaning on a Model 3 “in a coma” and holding a cardboard with the words “Bankrupt” on it. Musk’s tweet read: Around him, there are bottles of “Tesla Tequila”, and the tears on his face are faintly visible.
At that time, all parties criticized Tesla. At the Reuters Global Investment Summit in 2018, Jim Chanos, president of the Knicks Joint Fund, the world’s largest short-term fund, reiterated that Tesla is an ultra-leveraged company with problematic financial audits. of cyclical startups, shorting it is a matter of course.
And this April Fool’s joke is Musk’s response.
In 2020, Tesla has launched two products full of ridicule: one is the “short shorts” launched in July, with a gold-edged red satin finish, priced at $69. Its English name is short shorts. The word short in English also means “short”, and the adverb shorts just means shorts. Musk really loves the homophonic stalk.
Another product is to make the “Tesla Tequila” in the April Fool’s joke 4 years ago into reality. It has a lightning-shaped bottle with a capacity of 750 ml and a price of 250 US dollars, or about 1,600 yuan, which is more expensive. Maotai.
The year after the launch of Tesla Tequila, during the pre-sale of Double Eleven in 2021, Tesla launched a limited glass wine bottle, only the bottle without wine, the price is 779 yuan, although netizens expressed “do not understand”, but The limited edition of 1,500 bottles sold out quickly.
Before publishing, we checked a second-hand trading platform, and we can still find this wine bottle, which is priced at more than 1,000 yuan.
Gags seem to have become a coping mechanism for Musk, and Musk’s grocery store opens whenever a tough big deal arises. When TBC was first established, it was a peaked cap and a flamethrower. After being short-selling and counterattacking, it was short-selling shorts and agave.
Now that Musk has two weeks to close the deal with Twitter, millions of dollars in “hair burnt” perfume that smells of “sick lust” obviously won’t help much, but it seems Great diversion of people’s attention.
“I’m looking forward to how the media will write about this.” Musk joked when he announced on Twitter that he had sold $1 million of perfume. It’s true that no one wants to worry about Twitter today, including us.
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