Bin Laden T-shirt seller, 23, makes $120k in two days
The announcement had barely finished when the merchandise began.
On Sunday night, May 1, 2011, 23-year-old New Yorker Maurice Harary heard President Obama's news that Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden. He raced home to his apartment, built a T-shirt store from scratch, and had Osamadeadtees.com taking orders by 3:30 Monday morning.
By Tuesday evening he had sold more than 10,000 items at $12 each — roughly $120,000 in gross sales in under two days. The designs ran the full spectrum of the moment's triumphalism: "Obama killed Osama," "Osama's back — not!" and "Just dead it." Harary soon expanded the line to stickers and posters.
The episode was pure American opportunism, and Harary never pretended otherwise. What it really showed was the speed of internet commerce: one guy with a laptop, a domain name, and a news hook went from zero to a six-figure gross before the morning shows had finished their second-day coverage.
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