The Covid-19 pandemic and the pandemic-induced lockdowns gave many businesses and entrepreneurs a hard time. Marshall Haas, an American man best known for founding a recruitment platform called somewhere.com and exiting the business profitably, would have been one among them, but his swift thinking and timely action helped him make over a million dollars then.
In a series of X posts, Haas shared his journey of creating a physical product he called the “Touch Tool” that sold like pancakes during the pandemic. “While most people were watching Netflix in their PJs, I was working more than I ever had before. I look back on that time as the most creative period of my career,” he wrote on X.
Haas began his series of posts saying, “This is the wild story of how I made $1,036,175 during the COVID lockdowns by rapidly creating a new physical product in 7 days.” The post has garnered over 5.5 million views already.
The product idea was simple. The Touch Tool is “a brass keychain hook” that allowed users to pull open doors and press buttons without touching using their hands “to avoid germs”. In the “new world” cautious about contracting the deadly virus, Haas’s product was an instant hit.
The Product
During COVID lockdowns I had an idea for a product that I named The Touch Tool — it was a brass keychain hook, specifically for the new COVID world we lived in.
It allowed you to pull open doors, press buttons at the gas station, etc without touching those things… pic.twitter.com/oWfbBYvv55
— Marshall Haas 🏎 (@marshal) August 15, 2024
According to his posts, he got orders worth $50 by the end of the first week and by day 67, he “sold 27,227 units generating $1,036,175” in sales. That is approximately Rs 8,69,09,955.
Haas also detailed the timeline in a few posts and shared images showing the initial design he sketched, how he worked with an industrial designer and how he got a factory in China to take up the production of the item.
The Crazy 7 Day Timeline
Day 1:
On the morning of April 3rd, 2020 I had the idea for it. Here’s the first rough sketch in my notebook from that morning.
I immediately texted an industrial designer I knew named Jordan Westerberg.
He confirmed he was available and could help… pic.twitter.com/OVpJ5FulW1
— Marshall Haas 🏎 (@marshal) August 15, 2024
In another X post, he also shared how he used his e-commerce website to list this particular product, get pre-orders for it, and how he went about the packaging design.
Given the high demand, I went back to the factory that night and increased our initial order.
Before it shipped I also had to quickly develop the packaging design. We created a simple pull out box design where the touch tool was set into foam. pic.twitter.com/G5YkdR4Kmw
— Marshall Haas 🏎 (@marshal) August 15, 2024
While the post garnered millions of views, some X users didn’t believe Haas’s story and some criticised him. One user said, “Neat, but this is actually a story of profiteering off of a public health crisis by offering a product that looks cool but is ultimately unhelpful to scared consumers.”
Another user commented, “then people realised they could just use a key instead?” A third user said, “I remember these things coming up in ads online during COVID, recognizing the novelty of it, and saying to myself, “yep – some dude just made a lot of money.” Great thread!”
