American Pickers Store Revenue
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Sam Parr shares his experience working at American Pickers and how the show's success led to a lucrative merchandise business.
"I used to work for the show American Pickers. The main guy, Mike Wolf, owned a store called Pickin'. He started by filming himself for 5 years pre-YouTube, pitching to the History Channel year after year until they finally picked it up.
He wasn't rich from picking itself, but he got wealthy because he licensed the show and owned the producer rights. I worked at the store where we sold his picks. So many people would come that we were selling $30,000 a day just in t-shirts and shot glasses.
Eventually, he stopped selling the actual picks because he needed stuff for people to look at in the store. His whole business was probably doing $30-40 million a year. When the show was live, we were the second or third most popular show on all of TV. People would fly in from all over the world just to look at the stuff.
Half the time, my job was just holding the door making sure we weren't at capacity. The show made him way more money from merchandise and licensing than from the actual picking business."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.