Hacker News Reader

Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

This guy isn’t hustling as hard as he should be. If you can’t get deals because of the old boys club of buyers and suppliers you gotta do some guerrilla marketing.

Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555”

Pretty soon you’ll be selling every mask you make.

Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.

View on HN

> you gotta do some guerrilla marketing

Like getting a piece in the nytimes?

> Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.

Per the article, most consumer destinations ban any mask advertising because of scalping.

> Like getting a piece in the nytimes?

Back in my day we called that a slashvertisement.

Yeah after this article they'll be fine.

> Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555”

This is glorious.

Hell, maybe start naming and shaming hospitals that are too stingy to buy the masks that are actually domestically available. I'd personally be interested in knowing which hospitals in my town put saving a couple cents on Chinese masks over the safety of their employees and patients.

"Hustling" tends to get viewed as "price gouging". Reminds me of a story from 2006 during Katrina.

https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954352

Shepperson thought he could help and make some money, too, so he bought 19 generators. He and his family then rented a U-Haul and drove 600 miles to an area of Mississippi that was left without power in the wake of the hurricane.

He offered to sell his generators for twice what he had paid for them, and people were eager to buy. Police confiscated his generators, though, and Shepperson was jailed for four days for price-gouging. His generators are still in police custody.

His crime was obvious: sidestepping Amazon and eBay.

He got a NYT article. That takes some hustle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com