“I want you to guess: what’s the most valuable thing in this video?” asks Kevin Zhang as the butterfly door goes up on his BMW i8 and he hops out, awkwardly leaving it running in the middle of the street.
“No, it’s not this dream car that I just bought myself. It’s actually this hoodie I’m wearing right now. Why don’t you take a closer look,” he continues, as the camera pans in on it.
“You see, I think this hoodie is worth over $5 million dollars. And it’s not because I’m crazy. I’m gonna explain why: you see, it’s by selling this very hoodie that I was able to successfully generate over $5 million dollars in online sales.”
“And it’s by selling products like this hoodie—with no inventory risk, without the need for fancy investors, with only a laptop and some bold dreams—that I was able to completely change my life.”
“And it’s not just me who loves this hoodie; so does Bruce Buffer,” he says, as the ad cuts to a clip of Bruce introducing Kevin as the “e-commerce rookie of the year” at some event Kevin definitely paid to be at.
“The e-commerce revolution is changing the world. All you have to do is go on any street corner and you’ll see the biggest retail brands dropping like flies.”
“And it’s not just big companies that are putting them out of business. It’s everyday entrepreneurs like myself and my students.”
“But there’s a good way of doing e-commerce and also there’s the bad way. These ‘gurus,’ these ‘YouTube experts,’ they want you to build single product stores. Stores that say, ‘Hey, you’re just one product away from fame and fortune.'”
“That sounds like a get rich quick scheme to me. Or they want you to build general stores where you’re selling nonsense and garbage like fidget spinners and moon lamps—stuff that customers just simply don’t want.”
“Or, even worse? They want you to use tactics like ‘free plus shipping.’ No one believes any of that nonsense. So when everyone else is chasing these schemes and these gimmicks, what are my students and I doing?”
“Well, I’ll show you the website that I used to sell this hoodie,” he says, as the video briefly flashes up a site called Ajax Tactical.
Is Kevin Zhang’s store legit though?
I Googled and Googled and the only thing I could find was a site located at TacticalGrizzly.co that had a “coming soon” headline on the homepage. Kev, where’s all the “essential survival gear” you’re allegedly selling millions of dollars of?
But Kevin doesn’t want you doing any due diligence, does he? And so the ad continues: “When everyone else is focused on fast cash that doesn’t exist, we focus on brand execution.”
“And if you wanna learn how to build your own brand from the ground up; no inventory risk; no investors; just your laptop and the comfort of your own home?”
“I wanna invite you to a free training that I’m hosting where I break down my exact strategies to a T, and at the end of it you’ll be able to ask me any question on your mind.”
“I want to see you win, this year, and moving forward. So I’ll see you there,” he says, as the ad finally comes in an end.
It’s funny, there was another store he accidentally leaked, called Fight Cartel. I found that one too, at Fight-Cartel.com, and whaddya know? It was also “coming soon.”
Another suspect Kevin Zhang eCom brand
Anyone else think it’s weird that these Shopify stores have made this kid millions, but they’re not even live? Or, if they were live, why pause them?
I mean, this dude’s story’s got more twists than a pretzel factory.
He says he’s the youngest member of this Forbes council thing, but if you look it up, anyone can apply; and if accepted, you have to pay $1,200 per year to be included. So it’s all smoke and mirrors. Just like the Bruce Buffer bit.
Oh, and let’s not forget he’s been sued for false advertising, as he was apparently selling cheap made-in-China knockoff leather jackets. Kevin Zhang must’ve leveraged lawyers to get the lawsuit documents off the internet, but it definitely happened.
Despite all of this, he’s still running ads aggressively and he wouldn’t be doing that if he wasn’t making sales. It’s sad how gullible some people are.
But also, YouTube is the one letting these frauds run their ads. And companies like Forbes are happy to sell out and make them look legitimate. Are they not accomplices?
