The glitter bubble has burst. The sparkly stuff is everywhere — and the man who opened the hate-glitter marketplace just four days ago now says he wants out.
“I realized 2,000+ orders is going to take forever to process,” company founder Mathew Carpenter told The Post via e-mail on Thursday. Carpenter also posted a comment on ProductHunt.com: “Please stop buying this horrible glitter product — I’m sick of dealing with it.”
On Friday, Carpenter announced that he was putting the company up for auction. Opening bid: $1.
“Although the idea is a bit farfetched, it’s caught on in a big way,” Carpenter wrote on Flippa, where he’s attempting to sell ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com.
He added: “I launched this website as a bit of a joke not expecting this level of attention. Heck, I launched this website whilst I was on holiday! For the past few days it has been stressful dealing with all of the media attention & even more so because this was only intended to be a small side project. It’s taken on a life of its own, and I want to watch it continue to grow under a new owner.”
Indeed, Carpenter apparently ended up in some sort of shimmery nightmare in which the glitter bomber has become the glitter bombed.
The guy really, really hates glitter.
The inspiration for the business came after he sent a bunch of glitter to a family friend who regularly sent sparkly Christmas cards. Giving others the chance to exact the same revenge he enjoyed so thoroughly has left Carpenter with a house full of the very thing he despises.
“Glitter is everywhere,” he told The Post. “Send help.”
Apparently Carpenter tapped into a huge market of misanthropic glitter haters. The explosive popularity of ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com seems to have inspired a few others to offer similar services. Because all that glitters is gold.
GlitterStrike.com (a “shameless knockoff,” its Twitter account joked) is trying to take a more positive spin, declaring “that everybody knows that an envelope full of glitter is literally the best gift you can give. Just do it already.” For $7, it will send glitter on your behalf to friends, enemies — whoever, really.
Operation Glitter Bomb also just launched. It offers a standard envelope full of glitter for $9.99 and a “super deluxe” glitter bomb for $16.99. For $179, these people will mail someone you hate a 10-pound box of glitter.
The folks at Glitter Hate Mail, a site that looks like a replica of ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com, emailed The Post on Thursday morning to alert us to their existence.
“I’m not talking about that rookie kid’s website we saw crash earlier this week and is no longer accepting payments,” the e-mail pitch reads. “I’m talking about a full on service that is going to do massive damage globally with glitter.”
The Hate Mail folks will send glitter for $6.99 and promise they won’t stop taking orders. Their e-mail was signed: “Best, King of #GlitterHate.”
On Flippa, Carpenter, the ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com founder, noted that the glitter-hate marketplace has become very crowded in a very short amount of time.
“When the website was launched we had 0 competitors,” he wrote. “After a day or two the clones started to appear which I find hilarious. The majority of the clones are terribly designed, lack any sort of entertaining copy & mention my website. Simply put, we’re the leader in this space, and the media coverage of our site proves it.”
He added that he is “willing to sign a 3 year non-compete contract” if somebody takes the company off his hands.
“Serious bidders only!” he added. “Happy bidding!”
[This post, originally published at 6:24 p.m. on Thursday, has been updated.]
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