In the digital market there are gifts for all tastes, now at Christmas and the Three Kings, and throughout the rest of the year. What never ceases to amaze is that it can also be given as a gift wrapped in a bow shit, in the real horse version (at 13.90 euros) or in the fake human, made of cardboard (at 10.90 euros). It takes a sense of humor and a business acumen to have turned selling and giving poop gifts into a business.
They do it from the page Mandalamierda.eswhere its mysterious promoters specify to recommend, to avoid conflicts, that the recipient of the eschatological gift be a friend of the buyer who wishes tease him. They ensure that the sender’s name is kept safe, unless he wants to show his identity in the note accompanying the package with the jar of feces.
Who is behind the nascent business of sending anonymous excrement? EL ESPAÑOL has contacted the two masterminds of this initiative, who agree to answer questions and explain how it works, but without revealing their full names or providing data on their still very modest sales figures. They are Alvaro and Lucia, two partners and friends from Granada who are in their 30s and they started this project in 2018 as a hands-on learning case after coinciding in a course for digital marketers.
Now they combine this source of income – they make it clear that they earn little and reinvest it to improve their page – with their serious work in digital services and business development for other companies. Álvaro also studied Philosophy and Lucía, Tourism.
How did you come up with the idea of Mandalamierda? Álvaro, after speaking with Lucía, replies in writing: “My brother, older than me, and my father, who have been entrepreneurs for a lifetime, always told me: ‘Everything can be sold, it’s a question of the value that people give it, even shit, if it’s gold’. I took it literally, I wanted to try it and I did. On the other hand, I’ve always been interested in the topic of activism and fighting for a better world. I wanted to blend the humor with the critical, the mundane with the intellectual (something people normally see as “contrary” and dissociated things), so throwing together something that was funny as well as critical felt cool, even if it remained in a three day project.
Home of the website of Álvaro and Lucía from Granada, ‘Mandalamierda.es’.
Once he decided on the product, he touched define the brandshe continues: “From there, thinking about the names… ‘Send shit’, ‘send shit’… My brother came up with ‘Send shit’, which seemed perfect to me, because we could use it as a social critique (in this world, on certain occasions, there are so many problems, so many evils, and sometimes they have a lot of weight, for this we could say that shit commands, that shit commands, ‘shit commands’, and in turn, that you send ‘merda’ as a joke and critique.The name stood for that mix, so we don’t doubt it.
Horse feces is real; the “human” ones are made from the cardboard of a toilet paper roll, which they wet and shape
He says they “fight for the podium” of their best-selling products “the 100% artisan joke poop and horse poop”, in this second case, authentic, which are supplied in stables of acquaintances. False human excrement is made, as Lucía would later explain, with the cardboard from toilet paper rolls, which they cut, wet and shape until they are plausible.
“Cacas” humanas de broma, hechas de trozos de cartón, en el muestrario de ‘Mandalamierda.es’.
“También disponemos de mierda de unicornio (igual que la humana de broma, pero con purpurina) y nuestra maravillosa piedra del tiempo”, agrega Álvaro, que precisa que las simbólicas ventas aumentan ahora. “La gente quiere quedarse con sus amigos durante todo el año, pero si tuviésemos que decir una fecha de mayor auge, diríamos que diciembre por el día de los Inocentes y Navidad, pero la verdad es que es algo irregular”. Hay meses buenos en que han vendido diez como mucho, y otros, ninguna. Más que compradores, lo que tienen sobre todo son lectores, que encuentran diversión en su página, con visitas de “1.500 usuarios por mes”. Guardan el material en casa y desde allí hacen los envíos. Reciben pedidos “de toda España” y los principales destinos son Madrid y Barcelona. Aún no envían al extranjero.
P.−¿Qué tipo de comprador predomina?
R.−Normalmente son personas que quieren gastar una broma a un amigo/a y casi siempre se identifican a través del mensaje personalizado que añadimos (que también escribimos a mano). También nos preguntan mucho por el anonimato del remitente, ya que no siempre quieren que se sepa quién la envía de primeras, para que sea sorpresa y chinchar a su amigos.
[La familia Sirvent, los alicantinos que facturan 34 millones con el turrón más antiguo de España]
Q. − How is the process and who gives the gift?
R.−We do it ourselves. The first thing we do is see the personalized message. If we find that it may be offensive or the purpose is not purely humorous, we will not send the package and will issue a refund. At Mandalamierda we want to promote humor and social criticism from a thoughtful and constructive attitude, not from hate. If the order is accepted, we put the product in a glass jar with our sticker or other funny sticker, attach the message to it and then put it all in a box with the straw so it will be a surprise and have that “touch” ” country “. Normally we also put a discount coupon for the recipient, so that they can continue the game. After that, we take a picture of it and send it to the buyer to keep as a keepsake, and send it with the sender “Mandalamierda”.
“If we find that it might be offensive or the ending is not funny, we will not send the package and will issue a refund”
Q. − Can you tell some anecdote that you have had? How do they react?
R.-Naturally, we have received emails from most random. People offering their pets’ poop to restock, asking if we could sell kilos and kilos, orders for celebrities and politicians (but we didn’t send them because they weren’t very loving), they also asked us to fill a whole car with poop , they asked us for a job and sent us a scatological Instagram profile as a portfolio… Or even many people simply congratulating us and telling us that we made their day better by finding our site and laughing so it really motivates us and also makes us happy.
[Amazon vs Alibaba: ¿auge o caída del comercio online?]
Q.-Have you ever had an incident where someone sent crap not as a joke to a friend, but rather as an attack, and the recipient protested?
R.-Never. As mentioned above, if we have any indication that the product is not intended as a joke or the message is offensive, we reserve the right not to send it, as we do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings nor are we party to promoting anger, but rather Laughter.
Q. − Have the recipients returned any of them?
R.−It hasn’t happened yet. packaging It is so beautiful that it is worth keeping as a souvenir.
Un tarro con excremento real de caballo para regalar como broma, en la página ‘Mandalamierda.es’.
P.−¿Qué habéis aprendido con este negocio?, ¿os ha servido para vuestros otros trabajos?
R.−Con este negocio hemos podido confirmar la hipótesis que nos hizo montarlo cuando éramos estudiantes, y es que… Todo es márketing, todo se vende. Hasta la mierda, si es mierda de oro, o hasta una piedra, como nuestra “piedra del tiempo” [a 9,99 euros], able to tell you what the weather is like outside simply by taking it out on the terrace and leaving it for 10 minutes. If it’s wet when you come back to get it, it means it’s raining, if it’s hot, it means the sun is out. Sounds funny, but we also sold ;). As for our work, of course. On the one hand, for the creativity of the project, it is something that attracts attention; on the other, by doing so, normally everything remains in the ideas, one must dare, execute and learn, even if they are absurd ideas like this one. We also learned a lot, since we did everything ourselves when we were learning marketing, from web to text. In fact, we could even help move it, it doesn’t give us time, literally.
“We confirm what made us set up the project as students: everything is marketing, everything is sold”
D.-Because it can be good gift de Reyes instead of coal?
R.−Coal is widely seen, and is not something intrinsic to human beings, but rather instilled. However, who has never said “I’ll give you a fuck!”? Well that.
[Los mejores roscones de Reyes del súper según las ‘doctoras’ Begoña e Irene: Mercadona, Dia, Lidl…]
Q.-What do your relatives, friends or colleagues/bosses tell you when they hear about your business? mandalierda?
R.−We have observed that there are two key responses to these moments: 1) shock: they are stunned and then they loop, perplexed, as if trying to process the information, they start stammering like…”co co what?, what? But humans? No no, who do you take us for We are serious people, horse only and also… By shit we mean “bullshit”, from joke shit to timestones (here we explain what a timestone is, and the ride starts again) 2) laugh: this is funny too, people burst out laughing and then they go into reflective mode. That’s when we explain very seriously the usefulness of, for example, the time stone. Thanks to it you don’t have to look at the time on your mobile phone (which is terrible for the eyes) and laugh again.
They offer digital services: “If we were able to sell shit, won’t we sell your products?”
Q. − Do you have another project in progress?
R.-The truth is yes. We are just offering digital transformation services, from big data research until digital marketing (SEO, SEM, etc.). Do we always say that if we were able to sell crap on the internet, we won’t be able to sell your products? Whether they are B2B or B2C. So if anyone is looking for digital services then contact us through our website.
Q.-Anything else you want to highlight.
R.-Apart from the issue of orders, what surprised us the most is what’s behind it; As we have seen on the Internet, and in a totally organic way, it was created as a sort of “crutch” or “movement” around Mandalamierda. We’ve read more than once conversations on forums where people are complaining about something and all of a sudden they’re saying…”well, you know, ‘mandalamierda'”, and a link to our website; this is what really drives us crazy, motivates and we would like to promote. So much so that if that happens and it goes super viral, we wouldn’t mind donating all profits to an NGO or good cause.
