How they made a "Sexy Ken Bone" Halloween costume so fast
Undecided voter Ken Bone asked a question in the second presidential debate on Sunday, went full-on viral by Monday, and on Wednesday around noon, slid into lingerie/costume store Yandy.com as a “sexy” Halloween costume.
Philosophical questions about whether Ken Bone was already sexy enough aside—clearly, he was/is—this niche e-commerce site displayed an unbelievably fast reaction to the news. While people on eBay (EBAY) have put together Ken Bone costume kits, pieced together from real things, Yandy’s version is proprietary and made from scratch.
And it’s not the first time. Last October, the company moved on the New York City subway Pizza Rat video and, after rushing a costume to market, rode the viral wave to a Halloween success.
How did they do it so fast?
“The main thing that makes it possible is that we make it in Los Angeles,” Yandy CEO Chad Horstman told Yahoo Finance. “That helps a lot for all our exclusives—designed and made in the USA.”
Directly after the debate, when it was clear that Ken Bone had resonated with the American public and a star had been born, Horstman and the Yandy team went into action to create the “Sexy Undecided Voter Costume”—in this case a more skin-baring version of Bone’s now-famous red polo sweater, with a red crop top, fake mustache, glasses and microphone. “We came together as a team and figured out how to put this costume together. I think this was pretty close to our fastest.”
The pizza rat costume came out faster—but it wasn’t made from scratch. “We took a mouse costume we were already making and quickly produced pizza pockets. We didn’t even have to shoot it—we photoshopped it on.”
Yandy’s domestic manufacturing doesn’t just help catch the viral wave—it takes the pressure off estimating how viral something is going to get. That flexibility is key so that you don’t end up with a thousand unsold Ken Bone costumes.
In this case, the initial batch of a few hundred sold out instantly, even at the steep $99 price tag. But thanks to this supply chain, Horstman said it should be in stock Thursday.
Finding and deciding which things to make is pretty casual, often taken from suggestions by friends and family. “We don’t use any metrics, we see what’s trending on our Facebook feeds and YouTube,” said Horstman. “When something’s going viral, if we can make a costume that people will be able to recognize, we’ll do it.
In this case, Horstman’s logic was simple. “It’s hard to project how popular these things will be, but with this particular one, ‘The Undecided Voter,’—I think there’s a lot of undecided voters.”
While Yandy has jumped on viral events in the past two Octobers, mere weeks before Halloween, the company will veer from the traditional season if the occasion suggests itself. After BuzzFeed’s infamous “what-color-is-this-dress”, in February, Yandy took it to market anyway. But according to Horstman, “it’s definitely more exciting when it happens in the middle of Halloween [season].”
Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.
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