Bigfoot’s Skull & More
It started with Bigfoot…but then all really cool things start with Bigfoot.
A friend sent me a link to a replica Gigantopithecus skull (the probably extinct ape many believe to be Bigfoot) and after admiring it, I found myself exploring the site for more than a half hour. Skulls Unlimited has everything in the way of bones, teeth, skulls, and casts. Want a Replica Orangutan Skeleton? They have it. Need a Replica Great White Shark Jaw? They have it. Have to have a Real Human Skeleton with Carrying Case? Yep, they have that too. I was so intrigued by the site – and the story that I knew that was behind it – that I reached out to Skulls Unlimited Senior Brand and Marketing Manager Tom Searls for some Q & A.
What’s the Skulls Unlimited Story?
Long story short, the owner, his name is Jay Villemarette. He's seven years old. He's walking through the woods with his dad and his brother, and he comes across a blanket. He opens up the blanket and uncovers what was a skeleton. And they didn't know of what. But instead of his dad saying, "That's gross. Get away from it. Don't touch it," he said, "Bring it home and let's figure out what it is." Well, he takes it home and it turns out it's a dog skeleton. And so he cleans it all up and articulates it, and then all of a sudden neighbors start bringing him stuff. And then eventually hunters started bringing him stuff and he would clean it. Well, from that, it just sparked a curiosity. And now just to fast-forward, he has the largest collection of osteological specimens in the world. He has over 7,000 different species… Skulls Unlimited is the online retail store [of that endeavor].
Who is your average customer?
I would say, it’s kind of cross-sectional. I would say, from a professional standpoint, certainly the veterinary community is the largest purchaser then the medical schools will be on the human side of things. The public side is really, it's kind of all over the board, but it is, we have just a really diverse audience.
When we do our trade shows, people will look at us and, "What the heck am I seeing here?" And by the time they meet us and they figure out what we're doing and our mission and what we've created, I think, collectors and followers of it, because I think once people, some people are just predisposed to love it and collect it, and they immerse themselves in it. Others don't really realize how much they like it until they get exposed to it. And so, all to say it's a really diverse audience. I mean, we have people that just collect for the sake of collecting. We also have a program called Bone Box, where we have a monthly subscription program. You sign up for that, and then we send you a new skull every month. It could be a rabbit skull, a squirrel, a gopher, whatever. And we typically try to mix it up every month.
You carry a lot of items from species that are no longer allowed to be hunted or never were hunted. For example, you can't go after great white shark anymore.
Yeah, I'll tell you, there's a couple of restrictions. One is marine mammals. For example, if we got a whale, we would not be able to sell that to anyone else, nor would we. There's marine mammal protection laws, there's also migratory bird laws as far as the United States is concerned. So there's just certain things. And then also endangered and extinct species. There are certain areas, while we may have them in our collection, we would never be able to, nor would we want to, resell them. Or here's a chance we could donate them to another museum.
But we certainly would wouldn't sell them [Thus the reason Skulls Unlimited sells replicas].
What’s your most unique item?
It's so hard to say. From a retail standpoint, it's kind of all over the board. We sell a lot of Longhorns, for example. But yeah, it's just kind of all over the board. We sell a lot of alligator skulls, a lot of baculums [penis bones] around Valentine’s Day. At Christmas we sell a lot of replica polar bear skulls.
I first found y'all when somebody sent me a link to your Gigantopithecus skull, which is supposedly Bigfoot. And I see you have a lot of Bigfoot casts for sale. Is Bigfoot a big seller for y'all?
Not really. It's more of a novelty.
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