Crazy Million Dollar Idea : Pet Rocks

Warren Buffet made his fortunes from stock trading and Bill Gates from Microsoft but what about the man who became a millionaire simply by selling rocks. This is the story of a copywriter called Gary Dahl and his stormy journey from rags to riches and his eventual death. This tale will make you understand the sheer power of marketing and why it’s so important to you as a graphics designer with the way the design industry is going, learning how to prototype is a no-brainer instead of putting the flat files in front of your team, manager or client. So, this story starts in a bar after numerous drinks have been consumed. The location was Los Gatos in California and it was the mid 1970s. Gary Dahl was listening to a conversation his friends were having at the bar. They were complaining about their pets and how they would make such a mess, chew their furniture and drain their bank accounts due to veterinary fees. In a mildly drunken manner Gary joked that the perfect pet is obviously a rock. Pet rocks were the way to go.

This somewhat jokingly and random remark would put into motion the journey to millions of dollars for Gary but of course that wasn’t obvious to him at that moment. Gary’s random comments gave him a light bulb moment, a million dollar light bulb moment. What if he could sell pet rocks to people equipped with instructions not to look after and take care of those rocks. Maybe the novelty could really take off. He mused over this while counting his drinks and for most of us that is where things would have been stopped. We'd go home to sleep and then just wake up and without ever pursuing this  any further but that’s what Gary differs from most people. Marketing by and large is just the art or the skill of selling something to somebody, something they don’t actually need in their life. You don’t need those expensive trainers or anything else but you are persuaded and almost tricked into buying it for whatever reason or reasons. You might need some shoes or a bag but why do you need the expensive brand trainers?

 This is how Gary managed to push deadweight rocks onto people. He purchased them for around one each penny in Mexico in large quantities and then set about working on the most crucial aspect of the operation, “the marketing”. Now he wanted to convey a cute and rustic approach where buyers would have a notion that the rocks were actually living beings. A neat cardboard home was fashioned with air holes and that was coupled with straw linings on the floor to kind of cushion the rock in its home. Every single rock was delivered with a manual on how to take care of it and also found in the manual with jokes and kind of witty and cute affections linked to that rock. The buyer of course knew these rocks were completely useless and it served no purpose. It was just simply a gimmick and yet it surely gave way to smiles and conversations among groups of friends. In the words of Gary himself, “you might say we've packaged a sense of humor and that is what you're doing here you're essentially buying emotion wrapped up in a novelty gimmick.” So considering each rock cost Gary one penny and the cost of packaging wasn’t that either. He sold the pet rocks at 3.95 cents each. 

Back in the mid 70s would have been around 18 dollars in today’s money factoring in inflation. Gary sold a staggering 1.5 million rocks just in the first few months. After the conception of this idea and this brought on a sudden  wealth that made Gary Dahl a millionaire. Now it would be lovely if this was the end of the story and where things just finished and concluded. But that’s not the case and things did take a turn for the worse. To ensure Gary’s idea and operation did get into full swing. Early on he managed to bring on board two main investors. Now it was that even though Gary had trademarked his product name. Numerous people saw the success of selling literal rocks to people and then subsequent copycats started to appear all over the place. These two investors felt like they were not compensated enough and had lost capital in this situation. So, they filed  a lawsuit against Gary which netted them a six-figure amount of money. This was a huge setback to Gary  but he wasn’t down yet. He still had things to come. That brain of his was overdrive and he attempted some additional ideas for projects. These included, mail-order college degrees for the pet rocks, a sand breeding kit and even the sale of red China dirt. He planned to smuggle it from mainland China and then sell it to Americans back home. Every project and idea he attempted and put into motion failed. 

These new novelties failed to take a hold like their initial pet rock idea and considering the number of copycat products out there. It was no viable way to make more millions but Gary was still not finished. He didn’t lose all of that money in the lawsuit with his  investors. He still had a sizable amount of capital at his disposal. Instead of trying to push something onto someone that was essentially useless, he decided to open up his very own bar in Los Gatos and it was called Carry Nations but this wasn’t his crowning achievement. He went on to create an advertising and writing agency that created, produced and wrote commercials for TV and radio. His agency garnered thousands of projects and it became a very lucrative thing indeed. Gary’s know-how of advertising and marketing was obviously way up there. He was able to make millions by selling useless rocks  to people and then went on to create a successful advertising agency. On the 23rd of March 2015, Gary Dahl died in Jacksonville Oregon from a major pulmonary disease. He owned two homes and did well for himself in the end and when he did die he was the ripe old age of 75.

So, that’s how powerful marketing can be. You can literally sell rocks that serve no purpose to people at all and make a sweet  profit on the side. Sometimes in life it does take these out of the box methods where you simply put something like a rock into a box.