Real-revenue cases
A first-time inventor with no apparel background turned a plastic stay into a permanent, sew-in placket insert for dress shirts, selling direct-to-consumer via Shopify and YouTube fashion influencers to reach $40K/month.
01
It replaces a concrete annoyance — a dress shirt collar and placket that goes limp and looks sloppy — plus the old fix of removable collar stays that get lost or warp in dry cleaning. The founder was himself the customer, triggered by sloppy shirts in his wedding photos, and the product has spread to 100 countries and 200,000 upgraded shirts, suggesting repeat demand rather than a one-off gimmick.
End consumers buy the stay as a low-priced accessory on the brand's own Shopify store, paying through PayPal, Stripe, Shopify Payments, Amazon Payments, Square and Apple Pay; revenue comes from volume on a cheap add-on item.
Removable collar stays and the default look of a limp, sloppy dress shirt
02
The source does not specify the first customers; it mentions an early Kickstarter for shirts that missed its goal but sold $16,000, and a later sales jump after hiring a YouTube fashion influencer.
03
Not an AI business itself, but the pattern transfers: if an AI tool's output is visually obvious, get niche creators to demo it, and design it to slot into the user's existing workflow rather than forcing a full replacement.
04
Revenue basis · Founder self-reported, unaudited (see source page)
The $40K/month figure is founder self-reported and unaudited, and the source page is from 2019; later updates (e.g. $180K ARR in 2022, 600K units in 2025) are not detailed in the body.
No CAC, conversion rate or repeat-purchase data is given.
The cost and ROI of the YouTube influencer partnership are not disclosed.