Because Vespoint, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, planned to give two ugly sweaters away as gag gifts at a New Year's Eve party, she was looking for pre-owned items, rather than new, expensive apparel available at department stores. And during a visit to the Village Discount Outlet on Waterloo Road in Akron, she found that what they had was, well, too pretty.

"They (customers) about wiped us out," said Delorse Lumley, retail manager at the store. "There was a lady in here who decided to glue cotton balls on a red shirt to make a snowman."

But did she win a prize for ugliest sweater?

"I don't know, but she should have," Lumley said, giggling. "I'm sure it was atrocious."

After days of looking, Vespoint was at her wits' end. That is, until a friend told her about a man in Akron with a warehouse stuffed with 600 sweaters.

Troy Zulich has a successful e-commerce business, so when an Akron woman, whose name escapes him, found him on the Internet, she asked if he was interested in buying her stash of sweaters. It seems she, her family and high school students she hired were in the business of embellishing dull sweaters to make them good and ugly to sell. But she was ready to liquidate and move on to something else. So Zulich, who has an MBA in finance, reasoned he could sell them on eBay.