You probably haven’t heard of Gary Dahl, but you might have heard of his invention- the Pet Rock. When he passed away in 2015, he had amassed a fortune of $2 million based solely on the Pet Rock. Quite impressive!
Gary Dahl was a freelance writer before one day, an idea that would change his life struck him. The Pet Rock, that turned him from scraping by each month, into a multimillionaire!
The Pet Rock
One night, whilst talking with his friends, the idea struck him. His friends had been sat talking about the one thing that nagged them in their life. Their kids, more so, the fact that they wanted a pet.
Jokingly, he replied that they should get their children pet rocks. Soon, this half-drunken joke turned into a business idea. Soon, he began to research the idea further, looking into how he could make his idea into a business.
And yes, his “Pet Rock” as they became to be known, wasn’t some special sentient rock or something special like that. No, they were regular, plain-old rocks!
Instead of him just trying to sell them as any other joke or humor item, he marketed them masterfully.
Whilst yes, these were the same type of rocks you could get at the beach, he took a far more… masterful approach. He marketed them as the cheaper alternative to parents getting their child a puppy or a kitten!
After all, the rock was hours of fun and best of all? There is zero poop to clean up at the end of things!
The rock came completely sealed in a brown box with an ‘instruction manual’. The instruction manual was meant to be a cheeky way to add some of Dahl’s humor into the pet… for the parent’s sake.
Naturally, with an increase in kids asking for pets, came an increase in demand for Gary Dahl’s pet rocks! With the Pet Rock craze lasting around six months!
After all, not only was there the appeal of practicality, but also that of price. For less than $4, you could get a fully outfitted pet that you could present your kid. Finally, they’d stop nagging you for a pet rock now!
Retailing at $3.95, one million parents saw the allure of the pet and bought it. Turning Gary Dahl from a struggling copy editor, into a millionaire, almost over night!
Well… not really ‘over night’… more over six months of nights!
But seriously, this man made $15 million (yes, $15 million good old American dollars!) From selling rocks he marketed as pets! Absolutely crazy!
And this wasn’t recently either… it was in 1975!
And the best part about that? It was almost all profit!
Thanks to Dahl’s job, he had access to the printing machines needed for the manual and the machinery for making the box. Dahl could also create all of the marketing material himself too!
Lastly, the individual rocks would cost him next to nothing (a measly 1 cent!) and the straw (used for the rock’s ‘bed’ inside the box) was almost as expensive too!
There are currently several retailing on eBay for between $10 and $14!
The man behind everything
Before all of this, Gary Dahl had been a somewhat struggling freelance copy editor in California.
Gary Dahl had been born in North Dakota, but raised in Washington state. Neither of his parents were particularly well off, having his mother working as a waitress and his father as a lumber-mill worker.
When he was 18, he enrolled in Washington State University, studying advertising. After graduating WSU, he turned to freelance work to pay the bills, being a freelance copy editor in California.
Whilst living in Los Gatos (California), he overheard some friends complaining about their kids wanting pets. But more so the responsibilities that would come with it.
This then caused him to come up with the pet rock, which made him insanely rich!
After the fad had passed, he took the money he’d made to open up a bar. This was a cover for Dahl to go by unnoticed as many “Wackos” had tried to sue him and had sent death threats to him.
This also prevented him from doing many interviews in the preceding years, although he did eventually do interviews with journalists. He was interviewed by the like of NBC News, People Magazine and the Oakland Tribune!
In his later life, he also tried to capture much of the same spirit with his other toys:
- Sand Breeding Kits- a kit designed to entertain young children by allowing them to multiply sand.
- Red China Dirt- dirt taken from communist China to ‘invade the US, one cubic centimeter at a time’ as the packaging read.
Both were commercial failures, and didn’t see even a fraction of fame that the Pet Rock saw!
In 2015, Gary Dahl passed away from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease whilst in Jacksonville, Oregon.
His death as mourned by millions across the world, with obituaries for him appearing in several major newspapers, such as the Telegraph and NY Times!
What can we learn from all of this?
As with other surprising wealth stories, we can learn a fair bit from Gary Dahl.
First of all, there is a mindset difference. And it’s something we’ve seen before with people like Earl Crawley, Ronald Read and Ray Kroc.
As with Dahl, they all came from humble origins to then do something different. They didn’t follow the norm, they chose to go against that. And ultimately, they were the ones who came off better out of it!
Then there’s also the business lesson that we can learn. It’s not just about having a revolutionary product, but the emotions that customers need to feel when they have that product.
Gary Dahl created a way for kids to get the pet that they always dreamed of. He also created a pet that parents could have a piece of mind when their children had a pet!
And you need both! You can have a revolutionary product, but fail to play on people’s emotions, and your product will fail! (Or vice versa!) I’m sorry to say that…
Have you been inspired by Gary Dahl’s story? Will you create the next fad and become a millionaire? Tell me in the comments!
