“They told me they would never sell me anymore handbags ever,” he said. But once they caught on to him, he became blacklisted. Hermès, thinking he was an excellent customer and not knowing he was reselling their most desired product, began inviting Tonello to special events and grand openings. “Who knew I would become the Houdini of Hermès handbags,” he laughed.įor the next five years, Tonello found and resold about $1.6 million worth of Hermès handbags to celebrities and women around the world. Deny wealthy women their handbag desires and they’ll pay any price to get their hands on them, upwards of $20,000 to be exact. He came to the realization that there was no waiting list, it was all a genius marketing scheme. Most stores would claim they didn’t have the bag or had a three-year waiting list or a waiting list to get on the waiting list, but when purchasing large sums of products, the Birkins suddenly became available. His personal shopper days led him to crack the Birkins code. The “losers,” turns out, were serious collectors and would message him with wish lists, the most coveted item in their lists: Hermès’ Birkins handbags. Soon, he began selling his Hermès scarves for more than double what he paid through eBay bidding wars. “I started looking at everything inside the boxes in my apartment as if they had dollar bill signs on them,” Tonello said. He bought it for $99 and sold it for $430.

The bills kept coming and in a “light bulb” moment, Tonello decided to put his cashmere Polo Ralph Lauren scarf up for sale on eBay. By the time Tonello settled in Barcelona, shipped his belongings from Cape Cod and signed a five-year lease on an apartment, his friend decided to move his manufacturing to Thailand. Destiny came knocking when a friend offered him a job in Spain as a manufacturing middleman for his jewelry company, but that didn’t last long. Tonello was looking to ditch his days of grooming celebrities for a life in Barcelona. “A door closed and a little window opened and I looked at that window as a huge opportunity rather than it being an obstacle,” he told the Daily News Wednesday. But his quick wit and entrepreneurship turned him into the “Robin Hood of desperate women,” a best-selling author and the shoe designer he is today. The Massachusetts native was once a makeup artist and hairstylist who found himself in Spain with a brand new apartment, zero income and no clue on what to do next. That’s what Michael Tonello did, well sort of. When life hands you lemons, you make $1.6 million from a lemonade stand.

Michael tonello birkin