Unless you live in the Greater Philadelphia area and needed some landscaping work done, you probably never heard about Four Seasons Total Landscaping until Rudy Giuliani’s press conference in its parking lot.
That little turn of events, whose story remains a bit of a mystery to this day, put the small business on the map and boosted it to Meme Du Jour status on social media.
Wisely, the company’s owners took that opportunity and ran with it, immediately creating branded merchandise that played off the parking lot politics. A few weeks later, Four Seasons Total Landscaping merch is flying off (digital) shelves.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Four Seasons Total Landscaping has fulfilled more than 35,000 orders for T-shirts, sweaters and face masks totaling more than $1 million in sales. Staff have had to take turns packing up the orders in the company’s conference room to keep up with the demand.
It was such a bizarre event during an already action-packed campaign cycle, that it almost feels normal that the president’s lawyer should host a rally at an otherwise unknown landscaping company’s parking lot on the outskirts of Philadelphia. At this point, why not? It doesn’t need to make sense. It just happened. And now, according to the business owners, people are showing up at their facility to take pictures of the now famous back wall and using the backdrop Giuliani put up for the conference as Zoom backgrounds.
After that initial merchandise push, the FSTL website has gotten a lot more advanced, with artistic video backgrounds of the Philadelphia skyline and street life. Also, the merchandise store has gotten more robust beyond the initial designs, with holiday-themed products on the Ragstock platform.
Also, as with most memes, there are plenty of knock-offs on Etsy and similar sites, where designers are looking to get in on the action, too.
Hard thanks to whoever sent me a Four Seasons Total Landscaping shirt. I plan to be buried in this. pic.twitter.com/kJNCQpmiAV
— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) November 26, 2020
How long will Four Seasons Total Landscaping’s total social media domination last? Probably not forever. Something else silly will happen and we’ll all move on. Such is the nature of trends and memes in the Internet age.
But, right now, the company’s owners can rest assured that they did everything right to capitalize on their moment in the spotlight, even if people who have no interest in their landscaping capabilities no longer pay attention to them.
People in the Philly area might need some hedges trimmed or something, though, and you can pretty much guarantee that one name is going to pop into their brains first.
