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Valentine's
Day gifts for the jilted
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AWSJ Exclusive
A
dead rose by any other name... might be the perfect Valentine's
Day gift for that special someone you can't stand.
For the cottage industry of entrepreneurs specialising in
the art of retribution, this is peak pain season. Courting
the nation's dumped and distressed, they are busy gathering
dead flowers and boxing up fish heads, melted chocolates or
stones with curses on them.
Michael
Baumgartner, a human-resource consultant from Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, operates RevengeUnlimited.com, (www.revengeunlimited.com),
a website he started in 1997. It hawks dead roses, fake parking
tickets and a variety of products that poke fun at the recipient's
sexual prowess.
In the
past week, Mr Baumgartner and his friends have spent 18-hour
days boxing up dozens of long-stemmed roses - dead, black,
wilted or lopped off - all of which cost as much as a fresh
bouquet. The most expensive arrangement is the $55 box of
long-stemmed black roses. RevengeUnlimited sold 230 dozen
last Valentine's Day, and Mr Baumgartner expects the number
to exceed 300 this year.
To achieve
the desired effect, the Revenge team hoses them down with
spray paint, leaving a nasty, powdery residue, "which
is a really nice effect", he says.
Others
in the revenge business are also gearing up for a busy day.
Carolyn Claar, owner of Drop Dead Florist in Orlando, Florida,
is a former flight attendant who runs the concern out of her
home.
Ms Claar
has four full-time employees, but she had to hire six teenagers
to help her fill the 30 per cent increase in dead-flower bouquet
orders she has received during the weeks leading up to Valentine's
Day. In a typical month, she has 2,000 roses in stock. Now
there are 6,000 piled up in her garage, all in various stages
of wilt and decay.
"About
75 per cent of my business the rest of the year is for over-the-hill
birthdays," she says. "Right now, it's the ticked-off
lover."Those who can't say it with roses do have other
options.
Payback.com
customers (www.payback.com) can send dead fish ($19.99), melted
chocolates ($24.99) or "hygiene help" gift packs
($11.99), loaded with mouthwash, deodorant and soap.
Some take
a more spiritual approach to payback. "People have a
heightened sensitivity this time of the year," says Samantha
Kaye, owner of The Voodoo Boutique, an online and mail-order
business based in Albuquerque, NM. Ms Kaye sells a variety
of magic-spell kits and voodoo dolls to customers who'd rather
not be seen going into a witchcraft store.
The Ultimate
Revenge Kit sells for $79.95 and allows customers to name
their own curse. It contains a nine-day spell that takes about
an hour each day to weave. It also comes with a "protection
ritual" for the buyer and some one-on-one counselling
from Ms Kaye.
If voodoo
just won't do, Hawaiian Hijinx.com (www.hawaiianhijinx.com)
will send out a "revenge stone" that promises to
deliver an unusual streak of bad luck to the recipient. Darryl
Goudreau, a carpenter from Pahoa, Hawaii, set up the website
last February. It's based upon local lore that says volcano
gods will wreak mischief on anyone possessing a volcanic stone
removed from the island of Hawaii. Mr Goudreau says business
got a hefty boost this year from a disgruntled former consultant
for Compaq Computer Corp. who apparently complained bitterly
that Compaq's servers kept crashing.
He began
ordering the jinx stones - including a 100-pound "revenge
boulder" - to be sent to a Compaq executive. Mr Goudreau
says he built a special crate for the 100-pound rock, and
shipped it a few weeks ago at a cost of $130. He expects it
to arrive in Houston this week, just in time for Valentine's
Day.
A Compaq
spokeswoman says the company hasn't to her knowledge received
any rocks and, if it did, probably wouldn't deliver them to
the executive.
After
Mr Goudreau sent out the volcanic boulder, the consultant,
who declined to allow his name to be used, asked what it would
cost to send an 800- to 1,000-pound rock. "At that point,
we'd be getting into trucks, forklifts and cranes," says
Mr Goudreau.
"I
told him, `You gotta know when to say when'."
Seasoned revenge merchants say it isn't always easy to turn
pain into profit. Mr Baumgartner says that revenue from Revenge
Unlimited is enough "to pay the bills and then some",
but that there's only so much money to be made from the misery
of others.
Still,
there are definite perks. Mr Baumgartner plans to spend Valentine's
Day in bed - sleeping - and he's sure, as a bulk buyer of
roses, he'll be able to get a good deal on the flowers he's
planning to buy his girlfriend.
They will
be live, but they won't be red.
"Red roses mean guilt," he says. "I go for
yellow or pink."
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