Madeline Pendleton's Equal-Pay Model at Tunnel Vision Explained

Originally published 2021-09-16.

Madeline Pendleton, owner of the Los Angeles clothing and vintage company Tunnel Vision, went viral in 2021 for explaining on TikTok that she pays herself exactly the same as her full-time staff: about $70,200 a year. Rather than keeping the profit, she spends it on wages and on extras for the team, such as cars. By her own calculation, if she paid everyone the local minimum wage instead, she could take home roughly $420,000 a year for herself.

Her videos struck a nerve at a time when many workers were rethinking pay and working conditions. Here is how her model works, how it compares with the better-known Gravity Payments experiment, and what it can and cannot tell us about fair pay.

How the Tunnel Vision pay model works

Tunnel Vision is a small business with a focus on size-inclusive, sustainable clothing. At the time of the videos it had seven full-time and four part-time employees, and a total payroll of close to $600,000 a year. Full-time staff, including Pendleton, earned the same salary; she said her wage is her only compensation from the company. Early coverage also reported that the team worked a four-day week.

When the business has a good year, the extra money is shared out rather than banked as owner profit. After one particularly strong sale, she said, the company bought a new car for every employee who needed one and paid off the remaining car loans for those who already had one. Staff who did not drive were told the offer would stand if that changed. Her stated goal is to bring the leftover profit as close to zero as possible by distributing it throughout the year.

The $420,000 comparison

To show what she meant by labour exploitation, Pendleton ran the numbers on the alternative. In 2021, the Los Angeles minimum wage for employers with 25 or fewer workers was $14.25 an hour. Paying her team at that rate would have cost about $177,000 a year in wages, leaving her with roughly $420,000 for herself.

Her point was not that every small business has that kind of margin, but that the gap between minimum-wage pay and what a business can afford is often a choice. On her account, that choice is what separates a comfortable owner from a struggling workforce. Reflecting on the shared salary, she said it "still feels very rich to us because we are used to being poor."

Why her videos struck a chord

The clips spread widely beyond TikTok, where she had close to 800,000 followers at the time. One Twitter user who shared a follow-up video said it had made her cry and wondered how much happier people would be if all businesses worked this way.

Here’s a follow up video that I think is really interesting and actually made me cry a little - imagine how much happier and well off we would be if all businesses were run like this pic.twitter.com/L1fjDILIZE

— cheri (@gnomecrossing) September 9, 2021

(This post is no longer available on X.)

The timing mattered. In 2021, the pandemic had exposed how much essential work was low paid, and conversations about burnout and four-day weeks were spreading. A business owner openly saying that she could pay herself far more, but chose not to, offered a simple, concrete example in a debate that is usually conducted in abstractions. Pendleton also talks about economics and socialism on her podcast, "Pick Me Up, I'm Scared".

Gravity Payments: the earlier $70,000 experiment

Pendleton was not the first to make headlines with a $70,000 figure. On 13 April 2015, Dan Price, then chief executive of the Seattle card-payments company Gravity Payments, announced that the company's minimum salary would rise to $70,000 and that he would cut his own pay from about $1.1 million to the same amount.

The announcement drew praise from politicians and economists, criticism from conservative commentators, and resignations from two employees who felt it was unfair. Price later acknowledged that some details he gave about how he funded the raise were not accurate. Six years on, he marked the anniversary on Twitter, saying the company's revenue had tripled since then.

6 years ago today I raised my company's min wage to $70k. Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines.

Since then our revenue tripled, we're a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought.

Always invest in people. pic.twitter.com/o7Ca7I4b7e

— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) April 13, 2021

Price's own story later became more complicated. He stepped down as CEO in August 2022 while contesting allegations against him, and the criminal charges brought in two separate cases were later dismissed or dropped. He returned to the company in an advisory role in 2024. The Gravity experiment is still widely studied, but readers should treat the revenue and success figures in his posts as his own claims rather than independently audited results.

What equal pay can and cannot fix

Examples like these show that a business can choose to share more of what it earns with its workers and still survive. But there are limits to what they prove:

• Scale. A company with a dozen staff can agree on a single salary far more easily than one with thousands of roles requiring very different skills.
• Bad years. A model that distributes all profit leaves little cushion. How such firms handle a downturn, or fund future investment, matters as much as how they share good years.
• Dependence on goodwill. Critics point out that these are voluntary choices by individual owners. Wages across the economy still depend on whether those in charge decide to act generously, which is why many argue for stronger minimum wages, unions or employee ownership instead.
• Self-reported numbers. Most of what is known about Tunnel Vision's finances comes from Pendleton's own videos.

Lessons for owners and workers

For small-business owners, the practical takeaway is to look honestly at where the money goes: what share goes to wages, to the owner, to reinvestment and to reserves. Even modest changes, such as sharing a set percentage of profit with staff, can make a real difference to people's lives and loyalty.

For workers, stories like this are a useful benchmark when weighing a job offer. It is reasonable to ask how a company shares its success, whether it offers profit-sharing or bonuses, and how pay is decided. Pendleton's example is unusual, but it shows that the answer to those questions is often a matter of choice rather than necessity.

Sources: Upworthy: Madeline Pendleton on pay at Tunnel Vision; Wikipedia: Dan Price. Embedded posts: cheri (@gnomecrossing) and Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) on X/Twitter.