Viral Minion-Shaped Routers Are Suddenly Selling on eBay

Davolink is a South Korean networking company that mostly sells business-grade access points, the unglamorous kind that IT departments buy in bulk and expect to use for years.

In 2023 the company signed a licensing deal with Universal to bring Despicable Me characters to consumer routers, and the result was the Minions Kevin Wi-Fi router, alongside a smaller dual-band sibling styled after Bob.

Both debuted at CES 2024, where they mostly generated headlines for looking absurd sitting on a trade show table next to actual serious hardware. Underneath the costume, it’s a legitimate tri-band Wi-Fi 6E device: three internal antennas covering 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz, a 2.5Gbps WAN port, support for up to seven SSIDs per band, and the option to pair it with the Bob model for a basic mesh setup.

Last night, a Xitter user introduced an entire new audience to Davolink’s Minions router. After praising the device’s remarkable performance and relatively low price, the post exploded with over 4 million impressions in under 24 hours.

And at least a few of the people that came across this tweet decided to pull the trigger and upgrade their home network with one of these routers. In fact, Amazon completely sold out of their stock earlier today, and no other retailers have any to sell.

In the last 12 hours, there have been more eBay sales for these routers than over the last 12 weeks, and several of these sales came in at $100 or more.

That’s not especially profitable by any stretch of the world, but routers are generally not a category most resellers are keeping an eye on (but maybe they should).

Consider it a timely reminder that sometimes supply and demand can be affected in unusual and completely unpredictable ways, and being in the right place at the right time can translate to profits for resellers that move quickly.

We tracked a somewhat similar story last year. Haribo (the gummy bear company) was selling a branded ultralight power bank that somehow was both the lightest product on the market and also the most efficient.

These power banks blew up within the ultralight hiking community and quickly sold out online, with resellers able to turn a brief profit while demand outstripped supply. And then Amazon pulled them from a sale after CT scans revealed they were built like shit and at risk for short circuits and bursting into flames.

We all know what kinds of items usually resell, and consequently those kinds of items have the most competition, the most saturated markets, and are generally the most difficult to actually flip.

But the weird stuff, like a Minion-shaped router? That’s a lot easier, and sometimes all it takes is a viral tweet to push demand beyond what the current supply can manage, and that’s the situation that opens the door for resellers.

Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for new opportunities as they arise. You never know where your next flip might come from.