8. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Cover Art
The Beatles’ 8th album cover was designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth — a collage of colourful historical figures hanging out with the Beatles.
Blake and Haworth were paid £100 each for the cover, but received no royalties when the album went on to sell 32 MILLION COPIES. If only they’d negotiated a little better, Blake and Haworth would have been positively rolling in it.
7. Jell-O
In 1895, cough syrup manufacturers Pearl and May Wait created tasty powdered gelatin out of sugar and fruit-based syrups.
Their Jell-O was delicious, but Pearl and May had no clue about marketing and failed to commercialise the business to its full potential. Giving up, they sold the rights to their neighbour Frank Woodward for $450 in 1899.
Woodward managed to think up an advertising campaign that saw Jell-O’s annual sales reach $1 million by 1906. In 2013, Jello-O sales amounted to $500 million. Holy Christ.
