Hey all, I goofed up pretty big. I have a semi-successful app, and got it into my head that I could expand the business by building a brand of physical products for my customers. I ordered 4,000 collapsing silicone food storage containers (think foldable Tupperware) through Alibaba. Long story short, I realized that isn’t the kind of work I want to be doing. My expertise is in software, not in selling physical products or managing logistics. It also ties me down to one location and makes it impossible to travel for long periods of time, which is a freedom granted to me by my software business.

To add to the complication, I didn’t test the sample product as thoroughly as I should have before placing the order, and the lids are pretty tricky to snap on and off. I don’t want to sell them to my customers because it might hurt my brand’s reputation.

I’m at the point where I just want to get rid of them and move on, ideally recovering what I spent (about $5,000 including the shipping from China). I tried listing the product on Amazon, but no luck there either – the product isn’t even showing up in search results. I’d prefer to sell them in bulk so I don’t have to package and ship them in small sets. Worst case, I’d even consider donating them, but where do you even donate that many containers?

Any ideas on how to ditch these things, ideally without it being a very expensive mistake?