VALORANT player Tyson ‘TenZ’ Ngo and hardware company Finalmouse have revealed that the entire stock of its collaborative gaming mice product sold out in a matter of hours.
According to Finalmouse, 40,000 mice were available at a price of $189.99 (~£159). This represents a gross value of around $7.6m (£6.4m) for the company.
The company has claimed that this is the biggest sale for a collaboration between an active esports player and a hardware company. Additionally, TenZ is expected to receive a share of the revenue generated, however, exact details of the percentage has not been revealed.
TenZ is one of the most-known VALORANT players in the esports scene and currently plays for North American organisation Sentinels. The organisation came into the public eye recently by signing Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek, one of the most popular streamers and former CS:GO professional. Grzesiek is yet to play competitively with Sentinels.
As for Finalmouse, the company might best be described as ‘drop-centric’. The idea behind the brand is to create awareness, or hype, around its products and produce them in limited numbers.
The company has produced a series of drops, with the mice regularly selling out extremely fast despite the relatively high price. Finalmouse is known as one of the first companies to adopt the ultralight, honeycomb-like structure for its mice.
The deal between Finalmouse and TenZ was facilitated by Prodigy Agency, a company representing numerous esports professionals such as Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut and Jonathan ‘EliGE’ Jablonowski. The agency shared that since signing TenZ, his social media presence increased dramatically and it is one of the main reasons why the deal with Finalmouse went the way it did.
As for the mouse itself, TenZ worked with Finalmouse to design the custom Magnesium-bodied product.
The cooperation goes to show that ultra-limited ‘drops’ work really well in gaming, not just in clothing and sneakers. Esports brands like 100 Thieves have already jumped on the ‘hype bandwagon’ by acquiring keyboard brand Higround, and other brands such as Team Liquid also adopted this strategy for their own merchandise releases.
