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Photos courtesy of Emoji Masks
St. Louis startup Need/Want was selling emoji masks. Now its selling Emoji Masks, the company.
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Poop emoji masks.
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Cool guy emoji mask.
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Do you have $75,000? Want to buy your way into a St. Louis startup that turned into a runaway hit?
Even if that means selling masks that look like a pile of poop?
St. Louis startup Need/Want is selling its side project Emoji Masks for $75,000 or best offer. The company launched Emoji Masks just before Halloween 2014 and raked in more than $51,000 in the first 60 days and generated press coverage from all over: Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, CNet, Wired, MTV, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Dailydot, Elite Daily, HypeBeast, etc. The company now sells 15 different emoji masks.
See also: Start Me Up: A Primer on St. Louis' Startup Scene
“Emoji Masks has been a great source of profit for us for the last 20+ months,” Need/Want co-founder Marshall Haas wrote on the company’s blog Thursday. “Emoji Masks has been a blast to own. It’s time for someone else to run with it and have fun!”
Need/Want is selling the Emoji Masks domain, custom Shopify store, more than 10,000 masks (valued at more than $81,000 worth of retail stock), an Instagram account with more than 13,000 followers, an email list of nearly 5,000, and 80 designs for more masks. The buyer would have a built-in relationship with the mask manufacturer, warehouse, and fulfillment center.
Need/Want says Emoji Masks has done $44,525 in business in the last year. In October 2014, the month it went viral, the company had $35,000 in sales; the following Halloween, Emoji Masks still sold $18,000 in masks with absolutely no press or advertising.
“Emojis haven’t shown any signs of slowing in popularity,” Haas wrote. “We think for years to come, each Halloween and holiday season, Emoji Masks will do well. Additionally there’s a market for parties, weddings, etc., year-round. We still do several thousand dollars each month in sales during non-peak months.”
If the company is so profitable, why sell it? Need/Want, which moved out of T-Rex and into its own office on Olive last year, says it’s focusing on its bedding and iPhone case companies instead.
“[We] haven’t touched Emoji Masks or Mod in the last year — despite them making great money,” Haas wrote. “Peel and Smart Bedding are just growing too quickly for us to focus on anything else.”
Need/Want says it’s selling its cloud syncing notebook company Mod for the same reason.
Think you’re the person to buy Emoji Masks? Email Haas at marshall@needwant.com.
Contact Lindsay Toler by email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
