The central gag of Comedy Central’s Nathan For You is that, despite graduating from one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades, host Nathan Fielder’s suggestions for how to help struggling businesses are usually terrible. Well, not terrible in the sense that they’re bad, just that they’re impractical or a bit too outlandish. A prime example of this is the jacket that Fielder tried to sell in this season’s “Horseback Riding/Man Zone” episode. The basic premise was simple: Fielder realized that the company that made his favorite jacket supported a Holocaust denier, so in order to right that wrong he started a clothing brand that would explicitly educate people about the Holocaust.
The problem was that his brand, Summit Ice, leaned on that angle a little too hard (see above), but its message is apparently still resonating with people. According to Entertainment Weekly, sales of Summit Ice jackets has already exceeded $45,000, and all of those proceeds are going directly to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. That means Nathan For You—the show behind stunts like Dumb Starbucks and poop-flavored ice cream—is actually doing a positive thing for the world. This whole thing gets even more surprising, though, thanks to the “Celeb Gallery” section on the Summit Ice website. It features photos of celebrities wearing Summit Ice apparel that may or may not be photoshopped, alongside captions like “Knocked Up star Seth Rogen agrees that the systematic extermination of Jews in Europe was ‘superbad’” and “Alexandra Daddario leaving Whole Foods with a healthy drink and a healthy awareness of one of history’s worst genocides.”
You wouldn’t think something like that would make you want to buy a jacket, but you totally want to buy a jacket, right? Also, this comes only a few days after we reported that The Movement, a self-help book from a different episode of Nathan For You, was climbing to the top of Amazon’s sales charts. What if it turns out that Fielder was actually a business genius this whole time?
UPDATE: A little over a month later, Entertainment Weekly is now reporting that Summit Ice sales have exceeded $300,000, with all profits still going to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. If he really wants sales to skyrocket, though, he should get one of these Summit Ice jackets in the hands of tightrope-walking hero Corey Calderwood. That guy’s a superstar.