A lawnmower that won't start, and 11.7M views: how Knockoff turned "Amazon's gibberish brands" into 100k users

A free Chrome extension that dims or hides gibberish brands like SZHLUX and EHEYCIGA in Amazon search results. Four months after launch it has 100k users and a 4.59 rating. The same idea was built half a year earlier and only got 405 users. The most any copycat has gotten since is 42 users. This piece explains what drove its growth, where the money actually is, and what you can still take from it.

A weekend, a lawnmower

One weekend in early July 2026, Josh Pigford was doing yard work at home, and the trimmer wouldn't start. He searched Amazon for parts, scrolled a few pages, and saw nothing but names he'd never heard of. He later told 404 Media: "What are these brands? Am I going crazy? I just wanted to buy a common brand I recognized." "I had to do something."

On July 6 he posted three screenshots on X: "Built a little Chrome extension that dims (or hides!) the crappy, mass-produced knockoff brands on Amazon. Should I ship it?" The next day, July 7, he officially launched it:

Knockoff is now live! Filter out the knockoff crap brands on Amazon. Sorry to brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE……

As of today that tweet has 11.7M views (X page, 11-06). The same day, "Amazon without the knockoffs" hit 332 points and 264 comments on Hacker News.

Josh isn't new. He built Baremetrics and is a familiar face in the indie dev circles on X. That's the context for everything that follows.

What it actually does

It works as soon as it's installed, with no sign-up and no clicks. On each search, it checks every product's brand against a list of over 5,500 legitimate brands (updated daily, per the official FAQ). Brands not on the list get scored on how much they look like random keyboard mashing. Josh's words were looking at "how many consonants, how many vowels, how they cluster, whether they're all caps." Failing products are hidden, dimmed, or tagged, depending on your setting. It can also hide all Sponsored ad slots.

Why are there so many SZHLUX-style brands on Amazon? The store page explains it itself: these names are registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office just to qualify for Amazon's brand registry. There's no company behind them, no warranty, and no reputation to lose.

A few small product choices that keep people around:

• Three strictness levels (Relaxed / Standard / Strict), with your own allowlist and blocklist;
• One-click error reporting, with the list pushed from the server and taking effect within a day, so you don't wait for store review updates;
• Dimming is the default rather than deletion, so mistakes stay visible. A September review on the Chrome Web Store said: "It occasionally mislabels real brands, but I like that it dims by default instead of hiding them outright."
• It needs only the storage permission, the code isn't minified, it's open source on GitHub (2,032 stars, 11-06), and it works on 23 Amazon storefronts.

Why this one, and not the one from half a year earlier

Putting several of the same idea side by side:

Even earlier there were AmazonBrandFilter and The Markup's Amazon Brand Detector from 2021 years ago, and 404 Media's coverage mentioned them specifically. The idea isn't new and the features aren't hard. The gap comes down to one thing: whether anyone saw it.

Knockoff got seen because three things stacked up:

A person with a big audience, and a tweet that was written well. The launch tweet didn't describe features. It named a list of brands and said "sorry." Readers got it instantly, laughed, and wanted to share. The list also included TOMY and LANEIGE, real companies, and on ResetEra someone immediately pointed out "Tomy isn't a knockoff brand." The argument was itself a form of spread. Posting "should I ship it?" first to test the water, then officially launching the next day, got the same thing two rounds of exposure.

Media was already looking for this story. "Amazon slop" was already a ready-made phrase 2026 years ago. Two or three days after the tweet, Fast Company (7-09, headline "Sick of Amazon slop? This viral tool…"), Gizmodo, 404 Media, PC Gamer, Yahoo, Lifehacker, CNET, and Android Authority all wrote about it. Reddit r/technology, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts were full of reposts. This coverage brought in non-technical ordinary shoppers, the bulk of those 100k Chrome users.

The spot was empty, and Amazon wouldn't move in. Fakespot, the best-known Amazon "avoid the scam" tool (acquired by Mozilla), shut down in July 2025. It checked for fake reviews, but to ordinary users it was the same kind of thing, and the spot sat empty for a year. Amazon makes money from third-party sellers and ad slots. It would never build a toggle to "hide no-name brands and hide ads" itself.

The product format itself helped: after installing, a search makes a large share of the results turn gray in one go, and a screenshot explains it instantly. Josh said someone sent him a screenshot where the first 20 products were all gray.

Where it stands now: the spike is over

From 11-01 to 11-06, the Chrome user count has stayed at the 100k level, and the number of ratings only rose from 146 to 147. The Safari version launched on the App Store in July 13, and as of 11-06 it has 9 ratings at 3.78 stars. The Firefox version is at 3.5 stars with 61 reviews.

The review section is enthusiastic ("God-tier extension 11/10 no notes," "I've been looking for this for years"), but new additions have slowed. The latest comment, from November 4, is an Indian user asking whether it works on amazon.in. It once added Etsy support and later pulled it. Josh replied in the comments: "The Etsy feature was too expensive to run. It needed a lot of backend and a not-cheap API, and it couldn't handle hundreds of thousands of users."

Where the money is: not in the extension

The extension is explicitly free. The FAQ's words are "No accounts, no premium tier, no trial countdown." In July, Josh told 404 Media: "I get nothing economically. It's just a small tool I wanted to build."

But by November, the main domain knockoff.co had been switched to a different product: a brand protection service for Shopify merchants. It scans the web daily for stores copying your product photos, fake storefronts imitating you, and new trademark filings similar to yours, then files takedowns on your behalf using your authorization. The listed price is $799/month. The extension was moved to the subdomain shop.knockoff.co.

The logic is easy to follow: the extension owns the name "Knockoff" (fight back against copycats) plus a pile of press endorsements, then sells that name to the party that actually pays, small brands being copied. Consumers won't pay, so the money comes from the other side. Whether this B2B business has paying customers or how much it earns isn't visible from outside. Unverified.

One more change: the extension now has two data-sending features on by default (checking the seller's country, and "help us pick US alternatives"). The FAQ is upfront about it and they can be turned off. In July it told the press it "sends no data to servers." Whether the "US alternatives" directory will ever take affiliate commissions isn't visible; my guess is they plan to.

Who's competing with it, and what's left for you

The consumer "Amazon gibberish-brand filter" spot is already taken: a dozen-plus outlets have covered it, and copycats are sitting at double-digit users. Building another one on Amazon US basically makes no sense.

The gaps that are visible:

• Other platforms. It only covers Amazon. Etsy was tried and pulled for being too expensive; Walmart, Temu, and TikTok Shop are equally flooded with gibberish brands, and I haven't seen a sizable equivalent there (not systematically checked).
• Other languages and storefronts. It covers 23 Amazon storefronts, but the UI is English-only and the allowlist is built around English-speaking brands. Buyers in Japan, Germany, and India recognize a different set of "legit brands," and a localized allowlist is something it doesn't do well. A review asking "does it work on amazon.in?" is the signal.
• Where it falls short. The most common complaint is false positives on legitimate brands. It judges whether a name looks like gibberish; it doesn't look at seller history, review authenticity, or price comparisons against identical products.

The catch: these gaps are not profitable, at least not through the extension itself. Its growth didn't come from them either.

If it were you

For copying: learn a lot, but following it isn't worth much. It took off because of a person with a big following, one well-written tweet, and a headline the press already wanted to write. Followers can't get any of those three. The product itself could be built in a weekend, and RealBrand, which launched half a year earlier, proves it. What's worth taking is the playbook, not the product.

Who it fits: indie developers who already have a few thousand real followers on X, Reddit, or some community and can write a launch post. They'd build a "different platform / different language" version to use the reputation and audience, or treat it as an entry point to a later business, the way Josh did.

Who it doesn't fit: anyone hoping to make money directly from a free filter extension; anyone without a distribution channel who expects organic search on the Chrome Web Store. The copycats' 30 to 42 users are the result.

How to do it: pick a place it hasn't touched (Temu, Walmart, or TikTok Shop, or a localized allowlist for Amazon Japan or Germany). Build it the same way: works on install, dims instead of deleting, one permission, and the list served from a server. Decide on day one where the money comes from: either sell back to the sellers being knocked off, as Knockoff does, or do "alternative recommendations" with affiliate commissions.

How to get users: copy the launch-post format. Skip the features, name a string of the most outrageous real brand names, and attach a before/after screenshot where the whole screen turns gray. Test the waters with a "should I ship this?" post first, then launch the next day. Post to Hacker News or the relevant language community the same day. Then send the screenshots to reporters who write "platform junk" stories.

When to move: while the "slop" topic is still hot, probably the next few months. Once someone posts a viral tweet about Temu or Walmart, that spot will be taken the way Amazon's was.

What would mean we got it wrong: ① A copycat (like Amaslop) grows past 10k users within six months with no big creator behind it—meaning the idea itself can gain traction, and this should be graded higher; ② knockoff.co publicly reports meaningful B2B revenue—meaning the "free extension → sell to the opposite side" path really works, and copying it onto other platforms becomes far more valuable; ③ Amazon changes its pages or takes down the extension after complaints—meaning the window for this whole category is closed.

---

Data and sources: Chrome Web Store page with daily users and rating counts (11-01 to 11-06); Chrome Web Store reviews (8-18 to 11-04); Josh Pigford's X posts 7-06 and 7-07 (views 11-06); Hacker News 7-07; 404 Media's 7-08 interview with Josh; coverage from Fast Company, CNET, Yahoo, ResetEra, and others; the FAQ at shop.knockoff.co and the homepage of knockoff.co (11-06); GitHub Shpigford/knockoff (11-06); Firefox add-ons page and App Store (11-06); Fakespot shutdown per Mozilla's official blog. Places marked "inferred" or "unverified" are inferences or unverified claims.