Inventing dog gnomes
After a few years of marketing other peoples' products & services, I set out to create my own.
Through SEO research, I discovered an intersection of demand for 'Garden Gnome' and "Dog Statue" keywords, then designed the first ever dog gnome: Doodle Gnome.
The first year earned $100,000 in gross sales on amazon.com, then year two earning ~$112,000. In year 3, I have completed my vision of one gnome for each color of the rainbow
🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪
I grew up with golden doodles and designed the products using pictures of my old dogs and my siblings' dogs.
As of 2025, it looks like tariffs and its fallout may cause the end of this business. We'll see!
Design
I designed the gnomes in photoshop, then would hire illustrators to clean my designs. Then, a Chinese firm would somehow turn them into real products for next to nothing. I would then edit those images in Photoshop to show what I wanted to change. See below:
I had no professional design or engineering background before, so I am very grateful I was able to do this. The company was very generous with revisions and patient with my obsessive attention to detail.
PHOTOGRAPHY
For photography, I used my older brother's DSLR and ordered some equipment from amazon.
Surprisingly, the photos I took myself did just as well as those from the expensive photographer I hired early on. Learning basic photography saved me $1000's of dollars.
It also goes to show—expensive marketing does not mean more ROI.
Marketing and Advertising
Building a Shopify site, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Amazon Ads didn't take me long, as I've been a full-time marketer for years.
My best results came from Amazon SEO with Meta Ads
Most customers preferred to purchase from Amazon bc of Prime 1 or 2-day delivery and free shipping. I could not possibly achieve that myself, so I was at the mercy of Amazon at all times.
ABSURDISM
I am aware the product is kind of ridiculous and I leaned it to that with my copywriting. I found that the more ridiculous copy I wrote it, the more engagement I received, like
"smash it into a million pieces & buy a new one that doesn't remind you of when you were in love." I had a couple people email me, using a similar tone of absurdism and stupid-elevated language.
SOCIAL MEDIA
I hired a small team through my marketing business and had them design an Instagram grid and other content for me.
My best engagement came from low-effort Tik Toks, and I didn't find ongoing content marketing through social media to be profitable for the business.
The Forth Worth designer I hired for the grid did great, but still, most of our customers were likely Amazon impulse buyers in the middle of the night.
📦 AMAZON CONTROL & TARIFF DISASTER 📦
Amazon can take up to 50% of revenue from a brand for fulfillment, advertising, and other fees. I was forced to use their fulfillment and had irrationally low prices to maintain search rankings and get sales at all. This caused serious issues, unsurprisingly.
Doodle Gnome just needed one shock to be destabilized, which came in the form of Trump reciprocal tariffs.
Following the policy announcement, the shipment for our biggest season arrived late, which lost probably 40-50k in revenue. Then, I raised prices because I wasn't sure I would ever have another shipment, which ended up hurting our rankings more. Because of that loss of sales and my higher prices, Amazon cut my inventory allowance to 1/2 what I sold at the same time last year, essentially halving my sales potential.
I had invested in a few new SKUs that year and then couldn't send them in. Worse, I couldn't send in 1/2 of what I expected as a baseline to make the business worth running.
This also threatened the relationship with my U.S. warehouse partner who now had over 2x excess inventory. To help soften the impact, I rented a 20-ft U-Haul, drove 100 miles to the warehouse, then drove back to unload over 1000 gnomes in a storage unit by myself.
I fulfilled during the 2025 holiday season myself and was able to meet the previous year's sales record, but at the expense of my time, and of course shipping costs in general.
A.I. Impact
A.I.
Since launching, Gen-AI allows anyone to make a new gnome design instantly with so-called prompt engineering.
Since launching, Gen-AI allows anyone to make a new gnome design instantly with so-called prompt engineering.
This means people don't need my obsessive attention to detail or a Chinese firm's patience to develop these product designs.
Profitability
Even when the business grossed $100,000/year, the work was not even a suitable replacement for a job as a bartender.
It was a valuable side-hustle when I could rely on Amazon fulfillment and low foreign costs, but now I cannot.
U.S. MANUFACTURING
Maybe one day.
Maybe one day.
Solo Trip to China
I planned to visit the Chinese engineering company before tariffs were introduced, and decided to travel anyways, much to the discomfort of my parents.
It was pretty scary and intimidating to go during the heat of tariffs, and to be honest, I would not do again or recommend it.
China is very advanced in their infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities. The hotels were cheap and nice. The food was great. It's just not comfortable being in an adversarial nation during tense conflict.
When arriving to the firm's small, humble office, they handed me a tea from Starbucks, a sandwich, and a bottle of water. They were nice.
It felt a bit awkward given the extremely high political tensions, and we did not talk about it thankfully. But we did agree and laugh about how the gnomes were an equally smart and stupid product.
Their work culture was very hands-on and creative. We discussed future products, and they showed me materials, explaining how it might look, with the whole office brainstorming together.
It made me want to spend more time at Makerspaces where people still make things for the love of making things, and not just for the possibility of getting rich quick.
IS THIS THE END?
Yea, probably. But at least you can still buy a gnome! For now...
Yea, probably. But at least you can still buy a gnome! For now...