News of protests against Tesla showrooms in different parts of the country is no new. The fact that people associated with Tesla are not being happy with Elon Musk’s extreme involvement with the Donald Trump led government has also made headlines. What has now appeared as an interesting trend is how anti-Musk merch sales have been going up for a while following all the fiasco that Musk is causing in the government.
Matthew Hiller, a designer who was selling his stickers on Amazon, Etsy and EBAY is making the best out of this situation as he noticed that the sales of his anti-Musk stickers have shot up. Selling stickers online, which remains Hiller’s side hustle, is helping him earn around $100,000 a month.
For customers who do not want to part with their Teslas but do not like what Musk is currently doing are going for these stickers to make their stance clear. Stickers saying, “I bought this before Elon went crazy” are selling like hotcakes and on some days Hiller is selling $4,500 worth of the anti-Musk merch.
While Hiller has been selling Tesla themed stickers since 2023, the surge is only happening recently and especially with slogans that are anti-Musk. Hiller’s idea of making such stickers came from his own conflicting feelings about the Tesla CEO as he had thought of getting himself a Tesla back in 2023. However, all the buzz that Musk buying Twitter created, made him rethink his decision. As reported by Market Watch, Hiller said, “I made the decision to not support this guy.”
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That is when the idea of these stickers struck him as he “thought there had to be more people watching this unfold like me who had already bought a Tesla and wanted to distance themselves from him.” So Hiller decided to add one anti-Musk sticker to his sticker collection on Etsy where he mainly sold stickers of pufferfish and blobfish with funny messages.
The sale took off steadily and it was completely organic. Hiller said, “I’m gonna make this sticker, I didn’t see it on the market, I didn’t know how people would ever find it on a fish-sticker Etsy store. A few months in, I started getting found on the search engines, some social media posts, [and] it just took off.”
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Hiller also mentioned that his income is going six figures from the sales of these stickers, as he added, in “the last 30 days, just Amazon was $89,000. And then add Etsy and eBay on top, it’s considerable.” On days news around Musk and Trump’s new antics go viral are the days when the sticker sales go even higher up.
Regarding this trend in sales, Hiller said, “The moment [Musk] went on stage with Trump for the first time, that was a big moment. Interest picked up there. “And the day after Trump won [the election], another huge chunk of sales. And then [Musk’s controversial ] salute around the inauguration. That is what changed it from 300 [sticker sales] a day to 500 a day, overnight.”
While he is seeing a great boost to his side business, Hiller confirmed that he has no desire to leave his job at an aquarium in Honolulu. He does not plan on expanding his business immediately either and he is just happy with how things are going as of now.
