I feel the same way about personal projects and blogs. A good idea tends to be self-reinforcing. It just needs someone to uncover it. Selling onions on the internet seems unusual but to the right person that idea is gold.
Its kinda like seeing my family at Christmas once a year.
The restaurants I go to still generally do phone ordering because they care about the quality of their ingredients. They want to discuss and talk about it with someone before placing an order.
The engineering and consulting firms I work with are the same. The engineers I enjoy working with are all phone based, not a lot of emails unless there are details involved.
I'm a bit of the same way. There is a lot of peripheral information that we miss out on when everything is done via automation/email. Those dead moments when our brains wander, then we ask a silly question, tend to bear fruit.
It's gotten to the point where I generally don't order anything online anymore because I can't trust I'll get what I ordered. When I have to deal with support it's an automated system that only gives me 1 or 2 options, neither of which satisfy my needs so I have to make a compromise. I'm not interested.
Businesses really underestimate how much having a human representative helps customers feel connected to a business. I see it in corporate sales (B2B) where accounts are pretty much tied to the account manager. When the manager leaves, the companies refuse to renew because the account was only good because of the manager.
I think of my favorite businesses I regularly visit and they all have a memorable face to them. I feel more than a consumer. They help me understand the product and guide my decision making. They tell me when my order doesn’t make sense. And they refer me to other places they recommend. Or they tell me my problem is real and a mess, but assure me they’ll fix it.
You don’t get that with AI chat bots.
At the same time the price of orange juice (elsewhere) has skyrocketed [1], yet this rural community seems unable to take advantage.
What would you do?
[0] https://ruralhotelsmallorca.com/guides/The-History-of-Soller... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c397n3jl3z8o
They stopped production in 2019, citing a “lack of investors.” During their operation, they were involved in a legal dispute with PepsiCo over the use of the name Pep. I’m not sure whether this was because of their cola product, Pep Cola, or simply due to the similarity of the brand names. Pep is a diminutive of Josep in Catalan and is very common, so it may have been just a coincidence. They tried to export their products, but this turned out to be expensive, so they instead hoped for strong local support within Mallorca (see point 1 below). In that article they say that they produced 1000 bottles a year in their factory. That sounds very little; I wonder if that is correct?
1) News that they are on the verge of closing: https://ib3.org/pep-lemon-liquidara-lempresa-a-final-dany-si...
2) YouTube video attached to the news article, see 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXEsIbSkWQU
3) News that they are closing: https://ib3.org/pep-lemon-tanca-les-portes-definitivament
So once a year at harvest, the relative has someone drives a truck full of olive oil 2000 kilometers north, and dozens of Swedes turn up at an appointed time on a Tuesday afternoon in a parking lot to pick up their order of six bottles of oil. The prices are no better than in the supermarket, but ostensibly you’d get a high quality product.
It’s a funny way to do business in 2025, completely without Internet infrastructure. Somehow, I don’t think it would work as a web shop.
Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?
Seems kinda weird they have a government granted monopoly on them.
But even then, this isn't uncommon for food and beverages. You can't call it "whisky" unless you follow certain requirements about the mash bill, barrel, etc.
(My dad, before his death, had started growing "Pennsylvania Simply Sweet" onions. Because you can't call them Vidalia.)
You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety. So if someone made a sparkling wine in a different region and sold it as champagne then they would be committing fraud.
> Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?
At your farmer’s market? Probably nothing. But if you came across a particularly grumpy person with time and money to burn on lawyers they would have a case against you. Not actually going to happen at that scale. But if you owned vidaliaonions.com and started selling fraudulent vidalia onions at scale, the farmers would likely get together and pursue legal action to protect their prices.
It’s almost like a brand. You can sell LEGO-style bricks but you can’t call them LEGO because they didn’t come from the LEGO company.
It started as a bit of a joke on the "That's a good band name" line. It became "That's a good domain name". Yes, I went to a stem college.
Anyway, i've started 4 pretty decent businesses based entirely off that bit. My friends and I would be riffing out behind the pizza place/bar we frequented, someone would say something and then "That's a good domain name" comes out. I'd make a quick note and think about it for a few days. I found that if I come back to it after a week or so then it's maybe worth something.
Business and domain names can make or break a company.
On top of all that, i've also bought and then sold hundreds of domains for a profit based off this bit. I use various registars when they have sales, buy em up cheap for a few years, then park em.
After reading the OP, it's kinda funny. I did something similar with a garlic grower back in the early 00's. I had a domain, my brother worked for a garlic farmer, the farmer wanted to export to asia. It worked out well for a few years.
I found websites/newsletters like https://ungrabbed.com/
Personally It would be interesting to see some domain names for cheap and if I have an idea, I can perhaps have domain name for cheap or something similar to it but I don't really know if I should go into this hobby perhaps and no guarantees that I would but I am curious about resources basically and I wish if you can tell me more about it
I feel like the issue I feel as if is that most domains would just be parked in there or would be sold for losses perhaps.
To me it makes sense. Without a domain name, it’s just an idea. The domain name makes it real, and it’s a foundation the biz can stand on. Too many people try to start a biz without a foundation.
The name still makes me giggle. I'd love to build something relevant and silly enough to put there, but I haven't found it yet.
Suggestions are welcome! :)
I'm really wondering how important the domain was here. I feel it's more just what got you the motivation to do something rather than anything else then your hard work and the quality of the product made the rest (that makes me think of Dumbo's magic feather) but I read in another comment and your bio that you seem to feel strongly about domain names and how much they impact the success of a business (you probably know better)
This I think is the reason why javascript conferences are instead called ecmascript conferences
And of course, this helps me continue, like many others, to go domain-first on ideas that sound good at interesting times. I have enough domains to be ashamed of in numbers, but I will continue to register more, as more ideas hit me in the shower and on my walks. My wife has seen me walk out of the shower halfway more often than not to check availability and register domains. I’ve also had my share of well-sold domain names, so I don’t regret my hobby/obsession.
Boy do I wish I could just drop 2k on a whim for a vanity project
[1] https://xcancel.com/searchbound/status/1996247844080996549#m
I have a quick question if I may ask but your whole journey and even the article starts with the "I’M ADDICTED TO DOMAIN NAMES" / Addiction to domain names.
So I am wondering was there anything specific that caused this "addiction" (in a good way?) perhaps and has the addiction stopped after www.vidaliaonions.com/ or is it still continuing?
My grandfather and my cousin, who he pretty much raised were eating regular red or yellow onions like apples like that. I had never seen anyone else do that. They would make an onion "salad" which was just cut up onion with olive oil and salt.
Sometimes the right business just finds you and you’re at the right place at the right time to see it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=false&qu...
I checked and its the 47th most upvoted post in all of hackernews. (Btw each algolia page gives 30 articles so it could've been simpler for me if I didn't manually read till 30 :) but yea, hope it gives some context)
47th most upvoted story is wild but so true. I feel like although we might upvote AI and what not posts in HN which can casually reach 1000+ at times. Deep down what really sells us more isn't AI but rather a fever dream of sorts that one sells onions and maybe the freedom we attach to it
I Sell Onions on the Internet (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053044 - July 2022 (89 comments)
I Sell Onions on the Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132 - April 2019 (435 comments)
How much money does it take to start something like this?
> Me: I sell onions on the internet
That's exactly how I feel about AI! Instead of all that useless nonsense, just keeping it real, doing something that's actually useful for individuals and for society.
During a phone order one season – 2018 I believe – a customer shared this story where he smuggled some Vidalias onto his vacation cruise ship, and during each meal, would instruct the server to ‘take this onion to the back, chop it up, and add it onto my salad ‘.
There’s nothing particularly special about the onion variety - it’s just a mild yellow onion. It’s the soil.
I am also curious to know wether a domain name still confers a solid advantage. Now that so many people use social networks like Instagram, does (the SEO or domain name, etc. of) your website remain a critical part of the process?
Actually the SEO plays an important role in some areas, for sure.
It's not onions. It's lead generation.
