When Goods Go Viral and Supply Chains Go Belly Up (And How We Quietly Help)

By Steve Hatajlo

Every generation has its “it” product—the one trending item that kids, teens, and adults alike can’t stop chasing. The 1980s had Cabbage Patch Kids. The 1990s gave us Tickle Me Elmo and stampedes for Air Jordans. The 2000s saw Nintendo consoles evaporate from shelves faster than factories could replenish. Even A Christmas Story made light of the craze with its Red Ryder BB gun.

What’s different today is speed and scale. Social media and e-commerce turbocharge demand overnight. A TikTok clip or celebrity post can turn a niche collectible into a global obsession before supply planners even update their spreadsheets. The result? Supply chains crack in real time, and the entire world sees it happen.

Labubu: The Collectible Nobody Saw Coming

In 2019, a member of BLACKPINK, a Korean pop-group whose popularity today rivals that of the Beatles, casually posted her Labubu figurine. Within weeks, the “ugly-cute” character went from an underground toy to an international must-have. Pop Mart, Labubu’s retailer, suddenly had lines stretching across Asia, resale prices in the thousands, and counterfeits flooding marketplaces.

The blind-box sales model—where nobody knows which figure they’ll get—was already tough to predict. Add viral demand, and warehouses emptied before planners could react. Pop Mart eventually capped production at 10 million units a month, but the lesson was clear: without real-time visibility and forecasting, a brand risks losing control of its own success.

Stanley Quencher: When Hydration Became Fashion

Founded in 1931, the Stanley brand had been around for nearly a century, known for rugged thermoses and camping mugs. Then came the Quencher, a 40-oz tumbler that turned drinking water into a lifestyle. By 2023, Stanley was partnering with Starbucks on limited-edition releases. Target stores sold out in hours, resale prices soared, and the internet couldn’t stop talking about a cup.

The demand was a dream, but the distribution nightmare was real. Production could scale, but the supply chain couldn’t match the social media surge. Stanley turned to Amazon’s fulfillment network and AI-driven forecasting to catch up, modernizing not just how products shipped, but how information flowed.

Air Jordans: Scarcity Meets Chaos
Nike’s 2011 re-release of the Air Jordan XI “Concord” leaned into scarcity as a strategy. Collectors and teens alike camped out overnight. When the doors opened, chaos followed: stampedes, arrests, even pepper spray in the air. The bottleneck wasn’t manufacturing—Nike had product—it was the distribution model. “First come, first served” simply couldn’t handle global hype.

Nike’s fix wasn’t to flood the market with more shoes. It was to modernize how demand was managed. The SNKRS app introduced raffles and digital drops, bringing order to what had once been mayhem. Information, once again, proved just as critical as physical stock.

The Lesson: Timing and Poor Information Flow Breaks Supply Chains

These stories are fun to retell, but they highlight a serious truth: virality punishes businesses that don’t have flexible supply chains or proper information flow in place. Whether it’s blind-box toys, trendy tumblers, or sneakers, the breaking point is rarely just at the factory or port. It’s in the data flows that were too slow, too manual, or too siloed to keep up.
Research underscores this:

• 90% of companies in one survey reported supply chain disruptions that directly caused major revenue loss.
•  40% of businesses lack visibility beyond their immediate suppliers, meaning they can’t spot trouble until it’s already a crisis.
•  It can take a  medium-size business several minutes up to a half an hour just to process one invoice manually, so lack of automation means the death of revenue if you’re unautomated and your product goes viral.

Where FSI Quietly Fits In
At FSI, we don’t make sneakers or tumblers. But we do solve the same problem those brands face: the timing of information flow. Viral demand exposes weak links not only in factories and shipping lanes, but in inboxes, spreadsheets, and outdated processes.

Whether you’re making the latest sunglasses or the viral new surfboard, if you’re still stuck manually processing PDFs, email, and faxes you’re missing the real “IT” factor, revenue.

That’s where we step in. By automating the messy middle, we help businesses gain the speed they need before “the next big thing” hits. It’s not about hype; it’s about resilience. Because when products go viral, the winners aren’t the ones with the loudest marketing. They’re the ones whose supply chain doesn’t blink.