Has anyone (other than Ron Popiel) ever gotten rich selling one of those “as seen on tv” gadgets?
[ul]
[li]Kevin Harrington, founder of As Seen On TV.[/li][li] Kevin Trudeau, currently in federal prison for scamming consumers.[/li][/ul]
But wait, there’s more!
William J. McCorkle and wife Chantal.
Lots of people have gotten rich from tv products. Billy Mays is also another one. His business partner Anthony Sullivan is also doing quite well. Probably a lot of the wealth goes to people who are in the production side rather than the people who actually create the inventions. If you create a widget and want to sell it through infomercials, I suspect chances are you’ll lose a lot of money, but the people who produce and sell your infomercial will make a lot of money.
But sometimes the inventor can make a lot of money if the product takes off. I remember reading an article about the inventor of the Bacon Bowl and he was making a lot of money because the product was selling very well. He got a royalty on every item sold of about 7.5% (I think).
George Foreman made rather a lot of money selling his eponymous grill. (Hulk Hogan apparently having turned them down.)
Laurie Greiner (now known mostly for being on Shark Tank) has made a ton of money pitching products on QVC. She has also invented a few of her own products and sold them on TV.
I have one of those! It was a gag gift from my wife. It does what it’s supposed to do, but it’s nothing you couldn’t accomplish by wrapping bacon around the outside of a condiment bowl then putting another bowl on top of it and microwaving the whole thing. But hey, my wife paid money for it, and good for him if it’s profitable.
Joy Mangano made her fortune selling the Miracle Mop on the Home Shopping Network, and has since invented and sold numerous other products. Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper are starring in a movie about her life, Joy, which will open in December 2015.
According to Wikipedia, at one point he was receiving over a million dollars a week in royalties.
according to my copy of As Seen On TV (by Lou Harry and Sam Stall) yes, plenty of people have gotten rich that way.
From that books interview with Ron Popeil we learn “Ninety-five percent of people who come into the informercial business lose their shirts . . .”
95% of people who go into any business lose their shirts.
It’s not as bad as that. I would suspect Ron made that statement to dissuade people from trying to compete with him.