How Ecommerce Brand Findlay Hats Made $28,000 Overnight From One Emotional Reddit Post

Jimmy Hickey, the founder of Findlay Hats, wasn’t trying to market anything.

He wasn’t promoting a launch, doing an AMA, or even linking to his website. He simply ran into someone wearing one of his hats in public—a surreal experience for any founder—and snapped a photo. That moment became a post on r/pics, a subreddit with over 33 million members dedicated to visually compelling or emotionally resonant content.

The post title was casual: “I own a small hat company based out of my garage in Oregon...and I just ran into someone wearing one of our hats on the other side of the planet in Rome Italy! Surreal experience to say the least” No hard sell. No link. Just a genuine moment of personal pride.

The post hit Reddit’s front page within hours. From there, the numbers were staggering:

• 60,000+ website visits overnight

• Approximately $28,000 in eCommerce sales in less than 24 hours

All this from a single image and a two-line caption. Currently, it sits at 33k+ upvotes and 1.9k comments.

The Anatomy of a Reddit Post with No CTA

Findlay’s viral moment wasn’t lucky—it was structurally sound:

• Human story over product pitch: The emotional payoff wasn’t “look at this hat,” it was “look at this moment.”

• The right subreddit fit: r/pics isn’t a marketplace—it’s about visual storytelling and emotion. A product photo would’ve bombed. A real story didn’t.

• No links, no agenda: Ironically, not trying to sell made people dig for the brand. They found Findlay on their own, which made the discovery feel earned.

• Low friction: Redditors didn’t feel like they were being sold to. That made them more curious.

• Built-in curiosity: Once people saw the photo, they wanted to know more. Reddit loves a good rabbit hole.

It wasn’t a growth hack. It was a moment that respected the platform’s tone. And Reddit rewarded that.

Steph Smith did a similar thing with the data found from the curse words used in Taylor Swift's music on a /r/dataisbeautiful.

The Unwritten Playbook for Going Viral on Reddit (Without Paying for Ads)

When you compare Findlay Hats, a few patterns emerge that explain why it took off—even though the founder wasn’t aiming for virality:

• It never led with a link: The audience chose to click, and that choice created buy-in.

• They chose the right subreddit for the content: Not just the topic—the tone and expectation of the subreddit aligned with the story being told.

• They didn’t try to extract something: It was an honest story that felt like it belonged to that particular subreddit.

Reddit punishes marketers who market too hard. But it rewards founders who share their story like real people.

This is a perfect example of an emotional playbook that works—if you’re willing to play by Reddit’s rules.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Copy strategies of startups that are GOAT at marketing right now. If it worked for them, it just might work for you.

Cursor did copy one where it offered the product to USA students for free which is their ideal audience. Hook them in their teenage years and they'll pay for it for life. Microsoft got kids hooked the same way with its products. Its mostly why Microsoft doesn't worry too much about piracy unless it is at company level.

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People who pay for expensive stuff love to pay for other expensive stuff. Apple is an expensive product so it makes sense they'd pay more.

At one point in time, iOS apps had very few apps compared to Android apps but the revenue was the same. Not sure if its changed now but that's one of the reasons why most apps launch iOS first.

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Asking good questions is a skill to be learned so you can get good advice.

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