my first exposure to the Tao Te Ching was listening to the audiobook 'the tao of pooh', which I was listening to on an airplane and found myself doubled-over gobsmacked with the simple complexity it was exposing to me, and how I had already absent mindedly followed a few of their principles, and nowadays it's all I see, is don't think, just do; go back to the beginning; become an uncarved block. it's all so great.
author here.. our Vidalia season usually starts in late April - FYI. If you visit our website, submit your email there and I'll drop you a note when our order lines are open.
author here... you're correct - it's highly unlikely I would have built anything unless I had this unique, exact-match domain. I needed that unfair advantage to start, as the name sortof branded the project for me in the early days and helped drive new customers.
I was also quite chocked that you did this ^^ I'm not sure who is the naive one, either you or me, but I would never have assumed that such a name would sell for more than 2k (but at least it was worth it for you here).
I'm really wondering how important the domain was here. I feel it's more just what got you the motivation to do something rather than anything else then your hard work and the quality of the product made the rest (that makes me think of Dumbo's magic feather) but I read in another comment and your bio that you seem to feel strongly about domain names and how much they impact the success of a business (you probably know better)
The domain is the main driver for success in early days. It provides a tailwind to help the project get off the ground. After that, the product & service we provide helps it grow. I have another friend who runs Bobbleheads.com and he had the same experience as me (starting from scratch). I mention him in this essay I wrote: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/
I have a quick question if I may ask but your whole journey and even the article starts with the "I’M ADDICTED TO DOMAIN NAMES" / Addiction to domain names.
So I am wondering was there anything specific that caused this "addiction" (in a good way?) perhaps and has the addiction stopped after www.vidaliaonions.com/ or is it still continuing?
What mainly caused it: I kept getting laid off, and that nonsense infuriated me. So I was actively trying to find ways to save myself. Great domains, via the expiry marketplace, slowly became an unfair advantage I could lean into and compete with larger companies, just because I owned this unique .com domain. Hope that makes sense. I've written a few essays on my experience being laid off, if you're bored and wanna read: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/how-on-earth/ ; https://www.deepsouthventures.com/on-being-laid-off-unplanne...
oop, didn't see your 2nd question... yes, I still monitor expiring domain names... it's a very sticky habit, and ruthlessly fun... it's sortof like my morning paper.
Oh at this point I am trying to stop myself from getting into it since I know that I would get sucked into it like you too :) since I wouldn't have the funds to buy websites anyway and with things like PPP (Power purchasing parity) working against my favour it would be hard.
I did buy fossbox.cloud for less than a $ per year (81 cents iirc) when I wanted to build my own cloud with its own nice-ities.
Currently its just hosting some simple python servers and nothing much because I feel extremely lazy to host anything there because of lack of time mostly due to the fear of studies or similar but yea (read my another comment here for more context, sorry if it got long)
Let me know if you want the domain xD, I will transfer it to ya for free so that people like you can work in cloud industry too perhaps xD. We need people like you working in vps/cloud industry and maybe I can try to better explain some other things too!
Imagine if this domain of fossbox.cloud supercharges your journey into vps provider/cloud provider xD (let me know what you think, maybe we can collaborate which can be insane haha, 100% tell me more about your thoughts on the whole thing please!)
Also another question but how much do you think a domain like fossbox.cloud is worth? Not that I am selling it to someone to be honest but Did I make a profit xD?
I had seen your comment 5 minutes after you sent it but decided to read both of the articles and think about it
You are one of the few people who can say that they declined the offer at google and I am sad that you didn't get the bean bag :<
Now on a serious note, I feel like there are some immense similarities between your story which happened 20 years ago and what's happening now with the AI hype
> It was a gut punch face slap. My replacement, who’d only been there a few months, avoided the hatchet (cheaper salary, I presume). I would have stayed and worked for free if they would have asked. They didn’t.
I am also like you, perhaps the thing which interests me is that for me coding/tinkering with homelabs/servers are just things which I want to do even as independence or even for free :)
Shame that the company didn't work out. In retrospect, its all good now but that does feel like an action of mismanagement from the company's part because you clearly loved the company and who knows what might happen with the person you trained for months and how much they loved the company or benefitted the company ykwim
You write really clearly and I really appreciate it a lot and I feel like this sense of flow guiding us to where we are is definitely true :)
I recently spent a quick chunk of my month or two thinking about a problem that I solved for myself but it felt like that it could have abuses to the point that maybe most large cloud providers/providers might shut things down or would be an hassle. So I thought of an cloud provider which can understand the idea of things similar to the fact that there are different instances and dont shut down the servers due to complaints or anything
I wanted to build a cloud where saas providers wouldn't have to worry about servers. The servers can be deployed for the people themselves and have hourly pricing for what they use instead of how most saas stuff work nowadays of fixed pricing.
I am not sure but this idea required me to build my own cloud of sorts or build on another and I am just a 17 year old guy so I thought that most major cloud providers are really kind of no go so I looked at more hidden cloud providers like upcloud and scaleway and so so many others and I think OVH could be good for that idea or upcloud is good too but the thing is that upcloud has some nicer features like auto-scaling in vps's/a really good support system that I liked.
Well I still didn't have a credit card but since I wanted to buy vps's or similar. I started looking at lowendtalk and black friday and started talking to vps providers on lowendtalk and here and I think that its a very resource/cost intensive process and I just didn't feel right about reselling
Then I started feeling like how to build my own cloud. I found WHMCS + virtualizor and they were paid and so I started tinkering even more and just today found incus and started to self host incus and I bought myself some domain name and some cheap netcup server to play with things.
All while I was preparing for one of the toughest exams (JEE) so that definitely took a hit but talking to vps providers about finances and etc. makes me feel like right now is just not the time about it and the best thing I can do is to familiarize myself more with hardware stuff and buy cheap laptops and create homelabs with incus and play with hardwares too and get a job at IT/any related perhaps. Lets hope that any company looking to hire can take hackernews points into account too :)
I am still in school and I feel like coding is something that I can do too (Although vibe-coding hell is real so I am probably gonna learn it and give it time) and then contribute to real projects along the way
Honestly I still don't know what I want to do with my life but I feel like working at such providers or any similar things where I can do things like this, maybe perhaps even working at any massive hyperscaler perhaps if I "grind" extremely hard from here on out for career opportunities.
This is also the reason why I got interested in your story of domains because the vps providers usually provide domains too and I wanted to know the finances of it and why you got addicted and other things so once again thanks for telling me about it
Its funny but I used to be a coding -> finance -> started using linux ..... -> extremely coding oriented (both software and even appreciation of hardware nowadays)
I find your story really inspiring because one of the issues I felt is that I will always be judged by the degree I have and things like these don't really matter but your story is something that I resonate with a lot in my own way and I am super happy that you are now doing things which you are satisfied with. I wish to do something like this in my own way. I just want "enough" and I don't know if it would be jobs/business which would be the key to that (I hope jobs personally) but I am keeping an open mind on the whole situation and sorry for the long message
But your articles are something which have just resonated with me unlike none other right now. I am going to join the newsletter and have a merry christmas and a new year from here on out. Wishing the best for you, your family and your business and have a nice day Peter!!
I think I might take a drop year perhaps just to study JEE again to focus to get into a good college since the competition here is immense if things don't work out but from here on out, I do wish to keep these ambitions in check as they impact my studies but I study so that one day these ambitions/hobbies can be my job :)
Although I love the idea of a business and I might start one from my extra funds of jobs perhaps but the thing is I just want a job one day of things which I enjoy doing because I thought about it from sides of finance in the sense that retirement/financial independence would just mean doing things I like and I can have something like this in the IT/CS industry and I am young enough that I am still in school and even right now I can spend 1 year again to just prepare to get a good college which can play a massive role in my country atleast to get a job.
I wish the job market was less of a fear mongering pester right now where I feel like I need a degree for which I need to study things like chemistry (No offense chem, but you just don't tinkle me the same way containers do) and the immense competition and everything makes me feel like odds are definitely stacked against me but we don't know how it pans out but hopefully I can carve a niche for doing the things I enjoy as a job one day and get highlighted from this "passion" that other people name so. My mother says that I should stop doing these things and focus on my studies and she's probably right but man oh man I can't really explain it to anybody how I feel sometimes but its something that I am gonna have to figure out I suppose. Probably gonna go back to studying. Took a one hour long break :) writing it and thinking about it but well worth it.
author here : ) happy to answer questions if you have any. We also have a twitter account here if you want to follow along: https://x.com/vidaliaonions
I live in a mountain valley in Mallorca where hundreds of tons of perfect Canoneta oranges fall to the floor and rot each year because the cost of picking them outweighs their market value. The valley became wealthy from this fruit in the 19th century but the economics no longer add up. [0]
At the same time the price of orange juice (elsewhere) has skyrocketed [1], yet this rural community seems unable to take advantage.
I tend to avoid projects where the economics are challenging, or where the demand has fallen off. Vidalia is unique because it's a boutique item, not a commodity. Because of it's unique nature, we're able to charge premium pricing, allowing us to stay in business (& even at our premium prices, the margins are razor thin, so we're constantly watching bottom line). While I tremendously enjoy this project, this is not an easy business to operate.
There was a company in Mallorca that tried something similar with lemons about 12 years ago: Pep Lemon. I remember hearing that they noticed huge amounts of lemons lying unused all over the island and wanted to do something worthwhile with them.
They stopped production in 2019, citing a “lack of investors.” During their operation, they were involved in a legal dispute with PepsiCo over the use of the name Pep. I’m not sure whether this was because of their cola product, Pep Cola, or simply due to the similarity of the brand names. Pep is a diminutive of Josep in Catalan and is very common, so it may have been just a coincidence.
They tried to export their products, but this turned out to be expensive, so they instead hoped for strong local support within Mallorca (see point 1 below). In that article they say that they produced 1000 bottles a year in their factory. That sounds very little; I wonder if that is correct?
The story of soft drinks on the island is astonishing. 130 drinks companies at one point. My understanding is that Coca Cola took over distribution for the countless small companies and - once embedded - said we don't need your product any more, adios. Don't know if true but a tale often told here.
I'm sure I've seen video of oranges being harvested mechanically. I'm sure it can be done but probably not economically everywhere especially if the terrain is difficult. For mechanical olive harvesting see: https://ilcircolo.eu/olive-harvesting-by-hand-or-with-machin...
That may be true of modern farms elsewhere but is not the case for historical groves here. They are sometimes spaced appropriately but that's about it. Usually on vehicular-inaccessible mountainside terraces.
You have Mr. Kraus making sorbet and selling that on the internet, don’t you? Though I guess he doesn’t come close to using up all of the supply… and his domain name is a bit more complicated than what Peter usually goes for. I can’t, to this day, remember how to pronounce Sòller. We keep asking the locals every time we visit. Do you own a grove yourself?
Not familiar with Mr Kraus. Shortcut to remembering how to pronounce Sòller is to say 'So yeah'. We're surrounded by scarcely-maintained groves with owners pleading to do something with the fruit and there's only so many marmalades (wrong kind of oranges) or Aperol copycats one can make. Orange blossom ice cream a big success this year.
Fet a Sòller. The guy is a German who noticed the same problem in the 90s and figured to use the surplus for making ice cream & marketing it to the Vitamin C starved people in Germany.
Perhaps an artisanal single-origin soda could work? Use the pulp and the oil from the peels to make some form of syrup or concentrate locally. Mix it with water and label it in Hamburg, London, Stockholm.
Can you ask your neighbors if they’ll sell an all you-can-pick pass in Febrary? I know two families who would buy it in an instant. There's an email address in my bio here.
In fact, I think I haven't met a tourist on the island who wasn't interested when I told them that we visited a grove and picked some oranges. Especially those with kids! Someone could set up a website that allows you to buy such a pass that directly routes you to the appropriate grove. You can spread the word about that website by collaborating with small local businesses like car rentals, hotels, Airbnbs, etc.. I’m sure many of them would be delighted to put such a flyer into their welcome kit.
How tough is it juice them and make orange juice that can be sold (to Spanish or EU standards)? I would think you could start small and grow over time.
Mallorca is a mountainous island in the middle of the med.
Exporting something from Mallorca seems like a logistical challenge to me.
Exporting something refrigerated or frozen, even more so...
Maybe store-shelf product such as gummies or something?
Fresh juice takes 2kg of oranges per ~1l/~1kg. Plus electricity and handling costs...
Still, you'll need a large multiplier on the transformation process: organic EU orange are 1.7€/kg, standard are 1€ wholesale market price (meaning its origin is continental spain or italy I guess).
Frozen orange juice is 3.93€ (Brazil)
I think the best bet for juice would be to export frozen concentrate.
And despite the logistical challenges you cite, lemons imported from places like Argentina are now cheaper to buy at Palma's wholesale market than the average wholesale price paid for local fruit, which has subsequently plummeted even further.
Except that lemons are picked for "cheap" in Argentina (and oranges in Morrocco or Valencia), industrially packaged to ports (most likely to BCN or VLC ports) and then shipped in containers to Palma.
Pick the oranges in the middle of the island: not cheap, as stated. Squeeze & freeze the juice (likely around Palma): not cheap, not even including transportation. Ship them back to the continent: probably not cheap either.
Transshipment is extremely costly and even more so at a smaller scale, and that's what we're comtemplating here.
How would you market such a business in 2026? I am from an Italian region where farmer grow many special coltures, and I was always a bit surprised why they don’t try selling on the internet. I ended up convincing myself it is not a viable business model.
I live in Sweden, and almost every year I discover someone I work with or have friends in common with, who has a friend or relative in Italy, or Greece who farms oranges/olives/cheese or what have you. And this friend in Sweden is selling their produce by word of mouth.
So once a year at harvest, the relative has someone drives a truck full of olive oil 2000 kilometers north, and dozens of Swedes turn up at an appointed time on a Tuesday afternoon in a parking lot to pick up their order of six bottles of oil. The prices are no better than in the supermarket, but ostensibly you’d get a high quality product.
It’s a funny way to do business in 2025, completely without Internet infrastructure. Somehow, I don’t think it would work as a web shop.
I know it does for a small Dutch setup :) https://www.kalamatakarma.com/ Marketing is still completely word of mouth afaik, but the webshop makes it easier for total strangers to tag along.
I’m sure taxes are part of it, but keep in mind it’s a toll free union after all. They could easily do this above board and just declare the Italian VAT as they do selling to locals.
I'd still lean into a great .com domain, as it still gives you instant credibility. Also leverage Facebook, as my typical buyer hangs out there a good bit. YouTube has been helpful as well, as we try to share "behind the curtain" what life is like as a Vidalia farmer.
If you grow them in the Vidalia region (20 counties around Vidalia, GA), you're aok... but if you grow them outside of that area, and call them a Vidalia, you'll get into hot water. The law mainly came into existence cause Texas farmers began growing regular yellow onions and slapping the 'Vidalia' name on it, and customers would get pissed. So all the Vidalia farmers got together and got a Federal law passed that says you can only call an onion a 'Vidalia' if it's grown in our special region down here where we have sandy, loamy soil that contributes to the mild, sweet taste.
Yeah thanksfully in Europe we have AOP / AOC (protected name of origin) so that names can have a meaning. Good that Vidalia farmers seem to have managed to do the same somehow.
Regarding Champagne, the funniest part is that Russia granted exclusivity of the name to some local sparkling wine, such that actual wines from the Champagne aera need to use some alternative names there ^^
It's a brand name, like any other. Usage of it requires fulfilling the brand requirements. It's like how you can't say a burger from Burger King if it's actually from McDonalds, even if it's a very similar hamburger.
But even then, this isn't uncommon for food and beverages. You can't call it "whisky" unless you follow certain requirements about the mash bill, barrel, etc.
(My dad, before his death, had started growing "Pennsylvania Simply Sweet" onions. Because you can't call them Vidalia.)
It's similar to French wines and cheese. News to me that we have this in the US but it totally makes sense. We have a few of these in the PNW, like Hermiston melons and Walla Walla onions.
It's a broader EU thing (named AOP - protected designation of origin) rather than French only, though you are right that France has plenty of those for wines and cheese. But it's also protecting Greek Feta, Italian Parma ham, Scottish Shetland Wool, etc
There are a lot of food and drink items with official legal definitions that include the region of origin. The most famous one is champagne, which can only be called champagne if it comes from a specific region.
You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety. So if someone made a sparkling wine in a different region and sold it as champagne then they would be committing fraud.
> Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?
At your farmer’s market? Probably nothing. But if you came across a particularly grumpy person with time and money to burn on lawyers they would have a case against you. Not actually going to happen at that scale. But if you owned vidaliaonions.com and started selling fraudulent vidalia onions at scale, the farmers would likely get together and pursue legal action to protect their prices.
It’s almost like a brand. You can sell LEGO-style bricks but you can’t call them LEGO because they didn’t come from the LEGO company.
> You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety.
The term of art is terroir [1], which is the "character" of the environment the plants are grown in. It's often that a region will have some special characteristic due to geology that allows a unique flavor profile to grow so these trade names are the equivalent of a terroir brand.
Some designations are more strict than others, though. IIRC in the case of Vidalia onions the soil is low in sulfur so the biochemical pathways in onions that produce astringent compounds are nutrient starved. As far as I know most sweet onion varieties nowadays are grown in similar soil, but they're not legally allowed to call them Vidalias.
The geology-centered conception of terroir in wine that you're giving is actually rather controversial and not generally supported by any science we've done to date.
For wine, "terroir" rather encompasses things like climate, local customs and practices (viticulture and vinification), and sometimes things like local strains of grapes or of yeast.
Huge fan here! I read the article when it was new and was enamored with the story. I ordered a small box. The onions were terrific. So I order a large box every year.
I run a few projects that support me; this is one of them. This project did allow us to buy another neat domain, though: onions.com (used profit from one season to purchase)
I guess my question is: why is this better for me the customer than just buying them at my local supermarket? The shipping must make them very expensive, relative to my store. Are they that much better onions?
most grocers don't carry Vidalias. If they do, they sometimes mislabel them, so you don't know whether you're receiving an authentic Vidalia. Also, grocers often charge more than we do - we had a customer from California one year mention that they found some out there for $8-$10 a pound (our 10# box is $50, and that includes shipping to lower 48 usa).
yes! most of my customers eat Vidalias like an Apple. But they still have a touch of zing, but the fumes have never hit me before. They're very versatile to cook with. Just ensure you're buying authentic vidalias, cause nefarious sellers try to pawn regular yellow onions off as Vidalia (it's illegal and there are fines for those who are caught doing it)
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