Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - How Ghost Gear Tech Built a Paranormal Equipment Empire

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

In this Halloween-ready episode, a ghost-hunting equipment business with sky-high margins and questionable ethics gets the full deep dive.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/profitable-ghost-hunting-equipment-brand-original-designs-growing/2383182/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.💰 Sponsored by:Main Street Summit – Join 1,000+ business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs for three days of actionable content, intimate peer connections, and specialized tracks led by real-world practitioners. Bill is speaking this year, and he describes it as one of the highlights of his year. Don’t miss it—secure your spot now at https://www.mainstreetsummit.com/Acquisition Lab – Your fast-track to business ownership. Get hands-on support, world-class resources, and join a top-tier community of acquisition entrepreneurs. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.acquisitionlab.com and mention Acquisitions Anonymous!A ghost-themed ecommerce business is up for grabs, offering EMF detectors and “spirit boxes” for paranormal investigators and enthusiasts. Listed at $65,000, the business claims $48K in annual revenue and $40K in cash flow, with nearly no marketing spend and simple direct-to-consumer distribution via Shopify and Amazon.Key Highlights:- Asking Price: $65,000 | Revenue: $48,000 | Profit: $40,000- 200+ units sold per year, mostly around Halloween- No ad spend—organic traffic and word of mouth- Potential to scale with YouTube content, Shopify rebuild, influencer deals- Major ethical concerns with marketing pseudo-scientific productsSubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Today's episode was a spooky one. And hopefully this will come out around Halloween time because Heather and I did a very fun deal that was a side hustle in Iowa that made almost 90% profit margin and we both hated it. So stick around and see what we learned and what we found out. Here's the episode. Hey everyone, it's Bill. And I want to tell you about an event that's honestly become one of the highlights in my year. And that's Main Street Summit in Columbia, Missouri. I've been a speaker and an attendee at Main Street Summit for a couple of years now. And I'm going to tell you firsthand, it's really not your typical conference at all. It's more like a thousand business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs all gathering in Columbia, Missouri for three days of practical and actionable business content. It totally takes over downtown Columbia.

and they have probably 20 different venues. It's very cool. One of the things it really sets Main Street Summit apart for me is their relationships. I wrote on X after last year's event that it was great talking about business in life with people who really have become a much more than just conference buddies. You know, business really can be a great vehicle towards deep friendship if you're willing to go there with people, and that's exactly what happens at Main Street Summit. You're really not sitting in massive auditoriums.

You're in intimate settings, art galleries, small classrooms, et cetera, with world-class business owners and operators who have lived the challenges that are keeping you up at night. So really no matter what industry you're in, from plumbing to e-commerce, there are specialized tracks designed for real practitioners like you. Main Street Summit is coming up. It is November 4th through 6th, 2025. It is in Columbia, Missouri. Do not miss this chance to connect with people who really get what you're building. You can visit Mainstreet Summit.com to grab a ticket, and I will see you there.

I'm speaking again this year. So if you find me, come up and say hi. See you at Main Street Summit. Heather, it's you and me again. Here we are, the senior state people. Well, Mills is on a roof and Bill is at a birthday party. But I was like, who has a birthday party on a Tuesday? What's on with that?

See, but it's a kid's birthday party, to be clear. So I guess they can have their parties anytime. It must be a little, little kid. No, it's 4.30, East Coast time. So that kind of makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. He's raging with the kids. I guess so in a bouncing house or whatever. All right, so I brought you a deal. And I want to pitch you on this deal because it is a phantasma. It is a ghostly good deal. So that's how good? You're trying to scare me. You're trying to scare me. Well, this may come out around Halloween. So definitely not recording it during Halloween. which is always one of those things that I think is hilarious.

Every time I watch like a Christmas special, you realize Christmas specials are all recorded like in August. So that's why it's always like fake snow, like everybody's sunburned. Like, how are you guys sunburned? It's Christmas. Well, that's because they recorded it right after they got back from vacation and August.

And they have to wear turtlenecks and everything. Like it's cold outside. It is kind of funny. Crazy. Yeah, I don't know how they do it. All right. So let me pitch you this deal.

It's on BizPy. by sell, it is a profitable ghost hunting equipment brand. They have original designs and they are growing, and it's located in Polk County, Iowa, Ann Kenney, Iowa. And they have a picture here of the device. It is called the Epic Box, which is sold by ghost togearotech.com. If you are evidently trying to hunt ghosts, you can buy this business. So the asking price is $65,000. The cash flow is $40,000. It does $48,000 in gross revenue and makes 44,000 in Iuda. It is established in 2020. So they are asking one and a half times cash flow. Great margins. I'm trying to be nice. Yeah, good margins. So Ghost Gear is a profitable product-based business specializing the design and sale of original ghost hunting equipment.

It is launched as a side hustle by a designer and enthusiast and the brand has grown into a trusted name among paranormal investigators, content creators, and ghost tour operators seeking professional grade tours in a market offered flooded with cheaply made copycats. Unlike most competition are what we refer to as garage tech, quote unquote, ghost gear products are original, built from the ground up for quality, reliability, performance, and sleep presentation. These aren't rebranded imports or generic kits. They are high-quality devices that command respect and attention in a passionate, growing niche. So what do we think the niche is, ghost hunting? Yes, but I mean, what does this machine actually do?

I'm very curious to know. Well, they have their website on it, so we may be able to look at a moment. Oh, oh, to answer your question, the products include response devices, EMF distections devices, and proximity detection devices. All items are manufactured in-house or were trusted partners with attention to function, durability, and aesthetic apparel. Many customers are repeat buyers and strong worded mouths fuels, steady traffic, and sales.

Revenue is approximately $48,000 per year with strong seasonal upticks during late summer and fall. Sales are handled through a well-optimized store and Amazon direct-to-consumer via standalone website and partnerships with haunted venues, paranormal investigators, and content creators. The business is highly lean with low overhead and no physical storefront. Most components are ordered just in time, and all intellectual property including product designs, build instructions, branding, and packaging are included in the sale. The new owner could step in and operate the business solo or scale with partners. part-time help or automation. It includes all designs, trademarks, and IP, branding logo, and packaging

files, product photography, and marketing assets. There's a fully operational e-commerce store with reviews in history, physical inventory, customer communications, templates, and support materials is a turnkey operation with a massive potential for growth, and the growth hunt, ghost hunting market continues to thrive thanks to social media, streaming platforms, tourism, and growing interest in the paranormal, as well as really gullible people. No, the last part is me. Fires could easily expand the business by increasing ad spend, building a direct Shopify site,

entering the content creation space, tutorials, gear reviews, are offering wholesale options to paranormal tour operators or retailers. I think it all just kind of re-re goes here again. And then they have a link to their website, Ghost Gear Tech. And I saw something that said with little regulation,

like as if ghost detection is regulated. Thank goodness it's not. You know what this reminds me of that episode from the office when they convinced Dwight that you can buy Gator on the internet? Do you remember this? No. He bought some scammy device that turned out to be a metal detector. Oh, man.

So you could rebrand this other ways, potentially. There's other sales channels. It is similarly there. All right. So for those of you on YouTube, I pulled up the website, which actually looks pretty good. It's got different, different spooky things you can click on, paranormal pros. There's like, what? Some bad animation. There's some bad animation that looks like, you know what this is? This is actually the ghosts from the Muppet show. That's the background for the Muppet show. You remember that TV show? Oh, yeah. Okay, that's going way back. Yeah, that's, well, that's where Kermit would be on the side stage. The website has a clip from the Ghostbusters. Yep, that's what I come, that's what comes to mind.

And then here it has a picture of Charlie Brown's spooky Halloween. All right, they have a website here. Okay, so here are the devices. They have an epic box that allows you to communicate with the spirit world. The intuitive yes, no device takes the guesswork out of your interaction. the orbis, this device detects movement in your vicinity, alerted you to anything or anyone trying to make contact perfect for capturing those fleeting moments with the spirits, a fan tune, which is a powerful compact tool to decide to detect even the slightest movements

in your paranormal investigation, and it detects motion up to 10 meters away using a lithium-ionion battery. And then there's an EMF music box that plays the EMF detector as music to track. even the faintest energy shifts. And then they have an online shop here, which you can buy from. The Epic Box is $240. Oh my gosh. What?

These devices are so expensive. The Piccolo, the EMF Box is $345, and the Fantoon is $125. Only the Epic Box is in stock, however. Oh. Okay. Wow. I feel like they needed a YouTube video

too to kind of show us something in action here. Like show us how you pick up on the EMF. Is that electromagnetic field? Is that what we're detecting? So these are little foxes that detect that. And I guess you presume that that is a spirit is the idea, right? Yep. Yeah, that the ghosts live in the EMF band.

I guess. Right around Rick Moranis and the other members of Ghostbusters too. So who buys this stuff? Like someone who thinks that their own dwelling is haunted or someone who's, you know, trying to be hired for their services to detect whether you have a ghost? I think both. Also gullible people who don't understand science. That could be one there.

Rich people, according to these boxes, being $350. It looks to be about $2 of plastic and electronics. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, just kind of marketed a certain way. And what did he say is the, or I say he, but he or she, what did they say? Why do I assume it's a man?

I don't know. Well, I love the implicit thing. Something this scamy and stupid has to be done by a man, which is one of the things I appreciate you bring it on the podcast. Sorry, I brought that bias with me today. But, okay, so gross revenue, $48,000. So divide that by what I guess the average is $200, $200, I guess. I mean, they're selling a lot of units. Yeah, so $40,000 divided by $200 would be, is my math right, that that's 200 units a year.

Okay, that seems like more than I would think. I mean, the reason is there are a lot more than 200 stupid people in this country. Right, so you could add some marketing to this and find the other stupid people. The thing that they could have done to make these better is the razor razor blades aspect. What they needed to do was have special kind of chemical inserts to accelerate the capture of the EMF band. I'm making this all up. But you have to buy these reloadable kits to put in for each ghost hunt

and be able to do this. I think that's the problem with this business is once you own an epic box, like you're going to use it forever. And this thing just don't look like it's complicated technology. No. There's a little switch in the middle.

I think they need imaging too. I mean, they've got one that sort of turns it into music or sound, but people want to see the ghost, right? So they need to, they need to, another one that sort of turns it into an image on your phone or something like that. Yeah, a sick one would be like an attachment for your phone. I could sell that for a thousand bucks pretty easily like a piece of electronics. Right. Look at this ghost I saw, you know,

in the, in the, on the jack or whatever. I mean, clearly if they're doing $40,000 in profit on $48,000 in revenue, they are not spending much money on advertising. That is one of the things I think Bill would tell us about this businesses. They should be spending 20 to 30% of revenue on advertising to get customers via Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff, meta ads, but they are not, which makes me wonder why. Side hustle. They sort of said it's a side hustle and whoever's doing it probably doesn't want to invest and just wants the cash flow that they're getting, I would suppose. But yeah, I would think there's a little bit more of a market than $40,000 worth. I would be shocked if there is not a whole like subculture of ghost hunters on YouTube.

Yeah. And if, if not, somebody should start doing that because I think you would totally kill it. You do them like kind of Blair Witch Project style, just you and your camera and like a pin light and nothing else. But yeah, it's more of a content. You feel like the content would be more where the cash flow comes from and maybe not so much the equipment. But they could do more with this equipment and probably expand the market quite a bit.

some marketing and maybe reposition some of the equipment and maybe get something that hooks up to your phone. I mean, if you documented, I mean, if you documented these ghost hunting stories, I think that would be really compelling. And then show yourself using these devices, I think you would sell the hell out of them. I'm surprised they're not doing that. Right. Surprised. Yeah. And then hire some of your friends to be fake ghosts in the videos. I mean, and then it could turn out that like there really is a ghost and it kills everybody. I mean, oh, wait, that's a horror movie that I saw last week. Yeah, you could have a lot of fun with this.

And, you know, there are some people who really love Halloween and everything that goes along with it. I think that that kind of person could, you know, who maybe knows where some of those online channels are, where people who are into this kind of stuff congregate, someone like that could buy this and do pretty well, I think. They're not asking much of a multiple. Yeah, I mean, I think this would be really. really good for somebody that had an audience or could figure out their distribution. Because the fact they're only selling 200 units a year, to me, is a real sign there's opportunity with this thing.

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They're passionate about helping entrepreneurs like you take the next big step. So don't wait to make your business ownership dream or reality. Visit AcquisitionLab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you. It does make me wonder if they should be spending advertising money like on native ads with some of these ghostly kind of creators and stuff like that. That's where I would, that's where my head goes immediately. Like I would go start sponsoring videos, doing paid placement, all that kind of stuff in, because I'm sure there's a subgenre of YouTube that is just 100% this type of stuff. There's a subgenre of YouTube for everything.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, my friend's wife is a YouTube creator, and I just broke 100,000 subscribers, which I'm really proud of. But she just broke a million. And I was like, what the heck? I didn't even know. She does, like, toy videos, but she's, like, famous in the toy community. Like, these are the new toys that your kids might like kind of thing?

Oh, very smart. And then I haven't seen any lately, but for a while, there were huge niche content channels that were just, like, a kid. getting a new toy and unboxing it and then saying what he thought about it. Like millions of people watching these videos. Yeah, I can see that. When parents are trying to figure out what to buy. Sure.

Yeah. Well, it works really well because the thing I've learned about being on YouTube, you have to tell a story. Like, there has to be a narrative arc about like, okay, here's the call to action, you go, you explore it. There's the trial and the test, and then the point of truth,

and then you have a challenge. I'm just kind of simplifying and exaggerating the narrative arc that you see in everything. But everything has to have that to do well in video or audio. And if you go look at everything from Star Wars to even our episodes, each one of our episodes actually follows a narrative arc. Like we just kind of hang out. There's a call to action. Somebody brings a deal. There's complication.

We start arguing about it. Then there's a resolution. And then there's a release at the end and like a day new ma. And like our podcast actually works because it's a story in itself. and people follow that narrative. That's what works on YouTube and any audio type thing in general. So that's where my head goes on this.

It's like, how do you tie into somebody do? But it would be pretty seasonal. Like this would be something where you're really busy, you know, right around, you know, leading up to Halloween and then that's it for a while. Ain't nobody hunting ghosts in June. Yeah. And I'm not doing it at Christmas either, you know.

So, yeah, there's just a couple months of the year where people might kind of be, drawn to this kind of content and maybe get into it enough to even want to buy the epic box. I think it needs a better brand name too. Yeah, what does it mean? I know. It doesn't, it needs a better brand name that is closer to what it does. Yeah, it looks like an electronic Ouija board.

Yeah, that's kind of what it is. Yeah. So, quick question, and then we start with the downsides of this. Obviously, this is not SBA loanable. Can you get an SBA loan on this? Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with the brand and, you know, what it does. You could, there's nothing ineligible about it, but it's too small and probably too seasonal. Like, even if it was bigger, I would then guess your next problem would be that the cash flow is so seasonal that no bank wants to lend when all the cash, you know, let's just say 50% of the cash flow is coming in in two months.

You know, bank would not lend on that either. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about the downside of this. I think there's a big obvious downside. Maybe you and I are thinking the same thing, is like, this is just Hocom. These are scummy toys that they're selling. Yeah, there's that.

So how do we feel about that? I don't like it. I can't stand anything where you just have to, you have to feel like you're halfway scamming people to sell whatever it is you're selling. I don't like that at all. I wouldn't want to be part of that. you know, if you're really clear that this is just EMF and why some people think the EMF is actually a spirit, I guess. There's kind of a line you can walk there where you're honest, but still selling kind of the excitement around it. But I think it's very easy to fall into lying about the product and what it really does. Yeah. I mean, I think it could be one thing if these guys were advertising, hey, this is an entertainment device. You know, this is a Ouija board type thing. You know, I don't even know if kids still play with it. Bugi boards anymore, but if you advertise that and you weren't misrepresenting, but their website

basically says, like, use this to find ghosts. Yeah. But then they're not that serious about it because they have, like, stolen images from Ghostbusters. Oh, and there was the yes, no, talk to the afterlife. I don't like that either. Like, you know, talk to your dead relative and you're going to get a yes, no answer. Oh, don't do that to people. Because some people, you know, if people are grieving, that's a terrible thing to pray on them. with stuff like that.

So I really don't like that. I forgot, yeah, that's that part. With like every medium and seance, you just like put that there. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, besides the size, I think that's the yuckiness factor. It doesn't pass it.

Now, if you were to angle it as like, hey, we're going to sell this to people doing ghost hunting tours and it's part of the thing and everybody knows his tongue and cheek and it's about bored. It's kind of like going to a magic show. Magic is fine. if you are, if people know it's fake, but they just don't know how it's fake, but then when you start telling people, you can read people's minds and stuff like that,

that's when it crosses the line. Yeah, I agree. So you're going to, you're going to acquire this one or what? No. No, I am not. I don't want to be stuck with all these epic box in inventory in my garage or wherever it will be. But now I think this is a a tough one. But I think an honest person who takes the content creation side and is honest about what the product is, but also can have kind of fun with it, I think somebody could buy this and do okay. I would pair this with somebody who wants to create a YouTube channel and like content create around paranormal investigations. I think you could totally kill it here. I'm, I am shocked with how little they're actually selling the Grants of giving things. I think I'd come back to that.

But yeah, I'm a yes for a lot of reasons except for the size and then the scumbiness factor. Like I'm just out because of scumbiness. Yeah, same here. Same here. All right. Well, happy Halloween, everybody. Happy Halloween. Trick or treat.

I guess it was a trick. But man, you know, just I think in closing, this goes to show you, there are so many ways to make a living. Like, it is just like there are so many. All at once, like finding a side hustle. in a way to go start a business, feels so daunting and difficult because there's just so many options out there and so many ways to screw it up.

But then you see stuff like this, and the person is basically for a side hustle of a Shopify store where they're not doing a very good job executing. The person is basically making what you would make a year by working a few hours a month and making the salary you would make if you worked and managed to Starbucks.

Yeah. And you don't have to get up before in the morning. Like, that's just, that's cool. It is. That part is cool. I agree. Bless America. All right. Cool.

Everybody, thanks for being here. This is fun. Happy Halloween, depending on point of this episode comes out. And Heather, great job today. Thank you. All right. Catch you next time.