Speaker Docks: Year One

Hard to believe it’s been just under a year since we sold our first speaker dock. It feels so. much. longer. We can hardly remember a life without the JBL OnBeat millstone around our necks, without its dopey little shadow over our world. Let’s look back at the “high” points in this tortured, abusive relationship!

July 11, 2014: Right from the get-go, we made our feelings known about speaker docks in the strongest language possible. Click that (possibly NSFW) link at your peril. We still sold 897 of them.

July 18, 2014: “Never buy speaker docks,” we begged again. “Speaker docks are what Pol Pot gives everyone on his Christmas list. Each one is a million Circuit City stores compressed into a black dwarf of pure imbecility.” This time we sold more than 1,100. What was going on? A look at our referrer logs provided a clue: the top source of traffic, by far, was from something called Ppomppu. Hmm…

July 25, 2014: We welcomed our unexpected new Korean audience of jikgujok (deal-hunters buying cheap stuff from overseas) in their own language. And set a then-record for individual sales: 2,704 units sold.

August 1, 2014: …And we promptly lost that new audience by bundling the JBL OnBeat Mini with an iPad Air. Turns out that Korean customs laws are much more lenient on purchases under $200. 45 sold. Ouch. Lesson learned.

August 8, 2014: Korean-American cheapskate friendship was mended with this examination of the jikgu revolution - and a choice of the JBL OnBeat Mini or Micro, at a much lower price. This was the first head-to-head battle between the Mini and Micro, and the Micro set the precedent for all future battles by winning in a walk. Total sales: 1,932 units.

August 15, 2014: We combined the JBL OnBeat with a Meh t-shirt in the first of many stupid bundles. It was as successful as the idea deserved (barely 200 sold), and brought the original Speaker Dock Friday run to an ignominious close.

August 24, 2014: The first animal speaker docks, the iPig and iPup, romped around in a kid-oriented adventure that set a new low for a non-bundled speaker dock with just 137 sold. But hardcore speaker dock fans consider this sale non-canonical.

September 19, 2014: We discovered that the JBL OnBeat Micro was accidentally compatible with the then-new iPhone 6. So we jumped on the bandwagon by calling it an “iPhone Charger & Sound Embiggener Stand”. Sometimes crap by any other name smells much sweeter: we sold a record 4,855 units, almost double the next-biggest sale day.

October 12, 2014: Another weird one, as the iPig returned with this not-especially-appealing spaceship-looking thing. But since these ones included a Bluetooth option, we’re not sure they even belong in this parade of shame. 410 sold, for whatever it’s worth.

October 24, 2014 and November 7, 2014: A loosely matched thematic pair of essays wondering why people prefer the Micro when the Mini is so obviously slightly less inferior. We must have made a good case: we sold 873 Minis and only 810 Micros.

December 2, 2014: An undistinguished run of holiday-season speaker dock events is interrupted by the first 2-for-Tuesday speaker dock sale, proving that crap times two is still crap. With 1,392 two-packs sold for a total of 2,784 units, a lot of people got speaker docks for Christmas. We would apologize but we wouldn’t really mean it.

December 26, 2014: On Christmas, we gave away free VMP memberships. The day after Christmas, we sold cheap JBL OnBeat Micro speaker docks, tempting those new VMPs to take their free shipping out for a spin. Almost 800 of them fell for it!

January 13, 2015: After two days of unexpected early sellouts caused some grumbling among our East Coast and/or early-to-bed customers, we stop the bleeding with speaker docks. We sell 1,400 two-packs, but it takes a lot more than that to wipe out our speaker docks. Sellout averted.

January 23, 2015: Speaker docks + sunglasses + meme = ECOMMERCE IMMORTALITY! (And almost 700 sold).

January 30, 2015: Meh proves it has its finger on the pulse with this timely sendup of that Marshall Leach guy from that football game. Our worst JBL-only day, just 182 sold.

March 6, 2015: Our attitude towards speaker docks starts to soften just a little when we try using both of them together. The truth is, we never really hated speaker docks. We just knew from the beginning that we’d have a ton of them. So we thought it would be funny and interesting to see how many we could sell by bad-mouthing them. And we had a good time. But by semi-good-mouthing them today, we sold 925, the biggest non-two-pack day in seven months. Hmmm.

May 1, 2015: We try raising prices on the JBL OnBeat Mini and Micro, hoping to hypnotize you guys (and maybe ourselves) into believing they’re valuable. If you’re one of the 786 who fell under our spell, don’t be surprised if you start howling like a wolf the next time someone says “doorknob”.

June 5, 2015: With a surprise Speaker Dock Friday ambush, we give our forum members what they’ve been whining for - and they have nobody to blame but themselves. The 604 sales for that day are only going to encourage us.

That adds up to some 25,000 speaker docks sold through Meh. But our wholesale team deserves some kind of medal for valor under extreme misery, because they’ve somehow sold a mind-boggling 40,000 in the past year. All in all, we’ve moved 64,682 speaker docks through our waste disposal system, to splatter onto an unsuspecting public.

And that’s our story thus far! What fascinating twists and turns will we see in Speaker Docks: Year Two? How will our relationship with speaker docks grow, evolve, change? Are there any companies that never, ever sell speaker docks who are looking for a copywriter? Find out over the next twelve months - if you dare!