New Niche, New Brand - Amazon > eCommerce > Retail

[DrkSide]

A little over a year ago I started my fastlane journey. It has had its ups and downs but nonetheless I was able to exit the rat race with some savings that I had and given myself a 9-12 month launchpad to grow my current Amazon business to support myself. I was having problems adding value beyond a good product to the niche that I started in so I decided to pivot.

I found a new niche that ticked off 3 of my necessities: I could add value, not saturated, provide for an easier transition to off of Amazon. I started selling one product with this brand about 6 months ago but had horrible supplier problems with inferior product and shipping delays. After quite a bit of searching I was able to track down a different supplier with much better product quality.

I am now going to be launching an entire line under this brand name on Amazon with different products. I have one selling now and I will be launching 2 more within the next month. I have 6 product samples arriving tomorrow to test and evaluate and will be picking the strongest two to launch.

One product will receive a full launch via a review service where I am going to give 50 units out for reviews. The second due to budget constraints will be launched using free review methods that I have used in the past. This will be my first foray into the paid review service but it should accelerate the product launch and sales.

This week I secured 8k in capital via a loan to purchase the first round of inventory and finance the initial round of advertising. After that I will dedicate 5-10% of inventory for review samples if needed.

Amazon will be the initial launchpad because I am familiar with it and it will get product in front of the most people to start with. I am beginning to brainstorm and research setting up an ecommerce platform as well to diversify income to bring control back to myself. I will also be exploring wholesale options to small retailers and shops. I have already had a few reach out to me via Amazon for bulk orders.

This thread will serve as a play by play on what I do as well as a method to keep myself accountable to keep moving forward.

tl;dr - Launching new brand on Amazon and ecommerce and keeping myself accountable to progress.

ETA: For anyone that wants to see the original journey see this thread https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/put-up-or-shut-up-progress-thread.50591/

 

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[DrkSide]

Overdue Update:

Last month was the best month of sales to date. I was mostly in stock for the entire month but ran out early of product B which sold more than I had projected. It probably would have added another 5-7k on top of the sales.

February: $55,344.02
Amazon: $54,188.52
Website: $658.62
Ebay: $496.88

Challenges: I have had quality issues with one of my products. Just when I thought we had gotten them all fixed the last order (before CNY) was horrible. My supplier said this was due to trying to rush the order to get it out before the holiday. We have since had a nice chat about quality control and it seems they are on board. I have more on the way right now so we will see. Until I am 100% sure that the products are good they will be checked before they are shipped out to Amazon. I am also looking for backup manufactures for this product in case my current one can't get it right.

Keeping inventory has been a hurdle. I have gotten a line of credit for inventory purchases so that should be fixed with the next order. I also have 2 skus on the launch pad now that are ready to launch when I get the loc done (should be this week).

Total skus are up to 5 now and will be at 7 within a month. Also have 5-10 other products that I am doing research on. All will be viable but I want to launch what I believe are the best performers first.

Still working on our first retail placement. It looks like as soon as I have inventory for that product I will have an order and now they are interested in another product that just launched.

It has been a month of ups and downs so far. The quality issues and resulting returns had me at some very low points over the past couple of weeks. Offset that with going to Scottsdale for the Summit also gave me some great motivation.

Roll with the punches and improve everyday and I will reach my goal.

 

[DrkSide]

Small update while I take a break from the grind this morning.

Set 2 daily records this week. The first was Thursday with $759 in sales and the second was yesterday with $1029! My first over 1k day.

Went from about 12k rank this week to high 2k. Not sure if I can keep this sales volume up or not but time will tell.

Specifications have been sent for the next product and I have 2 samples coming with the next resupply to test out.

 

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[DrkSide]

Long overdue update:

March: $49K
April: $19.5k
May: $55k
June: $72.5k

YTD: $283k

So, from the numbers you can see that sales have fluctuated a bit. April had inventory issues and I was able to place a very large order which resulted in the numbers for May and June. I was out of stock on one of my better sellers even in June so it could have been better. Last year was a total of $160k in sales so I have already blown past that.

Struggles:

Capital - This is the largest issue I have right now. I have been bootstrapping this from day 1 and while I have made a lot of headway with just using cash on hand every time I think I am caught up I get more sales. Sales get sales, so the more I have in stock the more I sell. I have not had a full month of inventory on all products at once to know what the true numbers should be. I have chatted with a few people about this and am working on getting it resolved at least partially.

Focus - I have stopped launching new products right now to put money into growing inventory levels. This has made me realize that I really love to work on growing the business but hate working in it day after day without being able to grow. Without being able to launch new products my focus has dwindled somewhat.

Quality Issues: I am still struggling to reign in my manufactures to keep with the quality of product that I need. I am refining my order process and detail instructions to head this off as well as looking at a 3rd party inspection service to do onsite quality control. Also I am finding backup suppliers that can manufacture my products and possibly move into the main spot depending on quality.

The Good:

Wholesale: The one retail store that has been buying from me recently placed their largest order to date. This is their 3rd and each one has grown. I also have another interested party that I have to go see that could prove to be very lucrative and high volume.

PPC: After having a consulting session with a fellow fastlaner I was able to get a better grasp on optimizing my PPC campaigns in Amazon.

Growth: While I haven't been able to launch new products I have seen good growth. Sales are trending up even with the same sku count and I have not hit the ceiling yet. The website redesign still has not been done. This is 100% my fault as it took a backburner due to the inventory issues.

New Goal: I have set a goal for myself that by the first of October I will have this business automated completely to where I do not have to do anything for it to keep running. Our original plan was for my wife and I to run this but upon further discussion that won't get us to where we want to be. Most of the daily stuff that needs to be done is customer service and shipping out/receiving inventory. I can either find a prep company/fulfillment center to ship and a VA for customer service or I can hire someone to do both for me. At this time I am leaning towards hiring someone since from the initial numbers it will be cheaper and will keep more control in house.

 

[DrkSide]

Neglected this thread for awhile so I figured it was time for an update. Not much new in the way of strategies but some great growth.

Ended 2016 with a 550% growth over 2015 just missing the $1m mark.

Sales are at a consistent high 5 figures or low 6 figures a month. The end of last year was spent keeping current skus in stock vs expanding sku count but the first half of this year has been focused on expanding skus. I will double the sku count within a couple of months. Some I am going deep on and some I am not just to see what the sales volume is. Also, some will be used for cross sells for website purchases now that I am getting some volume on the site. Nothing like Amazon but it is constantly growing and I am running PPC traffic now. It is almost breakeven but I am still letting it run to get the data to be able to make decisions on it.

I have seen some new competition enter that are doing well. It has kicked me off my butt to optimize and grow vs just get complacent with where I was at.

 

[DrkSide]

Time for an update.

The customs issue was sorted out and the shipments are now flowing through again. This is a huge relief since it would be like starting over from 0 if I had lost that product. Resupply hit Amazon the end of last week and another is en route now. Orders have already been placed for next months inventory as well as some extra to start building up for the holiday season.

Product 2 is en route to Amazon as well. After a quality check, labeling, and finally getting the Hazmat status cleared I was able to send it in. Photos were done yesterday (I do all my own with some post processing done by a guy on fiverr) and the first draft of copy was done yesterday. I have a landing page for this product set up and I will be running facebook ads to get the reviews started. I only had 100 of these made so I will probably only do ~25 for review samples so I can get most in the hands of customers. My end goal price is $39.99-$49.99 but I will be starting at 29.99 to get sales rolling in. Once that is done I will see how sales start to pick up and go from there.

Product 3 arrived yesterday and today I have the product page setup, photos done, and labeling done. I still need to write the copy but I will still have time once I get the shipment to UPS. I am also going to setup a landing page for this to get reviews just like the others. End price on this will be $23-$30 depending on what sales & pricing tells me. Just like the others I am going to start out at a lower price and work my way up. That way I can find the best medium between sales & price. I have only 1 competitor on this product and they are averaging around 550 sales a month from my research.


The graph above shows current sales figures for product 1 and conservative estimates for 2 & 3.

As of right now I am 1 sale away from reaching $50k in sales this year. I would have liked to see this sooner but sales have been growing each month as long as I kept inventory to supply. I am still not sure if I will be able to purchase enough inventory to make it through the holiday season with stock. I still have taken no money out of this venture but I will have to start paying myself by the end of the year.

Product 4 and 5 are on the drawing board. I will be looking at a timeline on when I can release them once I get the launches for 2 & 3 done.

 

[DrkSide]

Time for an update and it is official. I have hit my first goal that I set a couple of months ago when I quit my job and started full time into this.

This was due to finally getting ahead of my inventory issues and having enough stock to keep selling. You can see from last month on the 24th that I ran out of stock and just had a few sales from product that was in transit during that time. The end of the month was when I got back in stock and started selling again. This is just with 1 product as I have not launched the next two yet.

I am waiting on my stock of the next product to be fully checked in before launching. Since I realized with the landing page system that I have right now does not give me multiple email lists to add users to I can only do one launch at a time. I am looking for another plugin that offers the same functionality that my current one does but offers multiple lists.

I did get some bad news that the mold for my product broke on the last production batch. They are getting it fixed but said that it would be a week delay. That will once again probably put me out of stock but it is out of my control. Had the mold not had issues I would have had more stock in time. Currently have 95 units in stock and 600 in production.

This has been an incredible journey and the fact is it is just beginning. I have completely replaced the money that I was making from my last job. In fact this month I will make more than I ever have in a month. I am still not taking any money out of this until I get enough stock to make it through Q4.

 

[DrkSide]

Hit my goal that I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Still a month and a half to go.

 

[DrkSide]

Persistence + Knowledge = Results


We are 3 days into February and I have surpassed my sales for the same month last year. Add to the screenshot a couple of website sales and eBay sales.

 

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[DrkSide]

Small update.

My shipment was delayed a week so it will be early next week before I am able to get more to Amazon. Kept the best seller badge all weekend until I eventually sold out on Sunday.

A couple of takeaways:

1. I should have ran the promo earlier. Even if I don't see any reviews from it the best seller badge that I got more than made up for the lost profit from the items. I only had 8 people claim the discount after giving 22 codes away.

2. I should have had more cover on inventory instead of cutting the order time so close to stock out. I would have had to "finance" the order with some savings but it would have paid back by keeping the best seller position.

Both of these things I knew but just didn't do.

May numbers are below. I was just shy of hitting my goal and may not be able to this month either with the delay in stock. $7300 of that number is the new product line with 1 products. I am hoping to launch the next product in July. Going to reassess my goal of $100k by the end of the year and bump it up.

The same time last year I had one product in another line and I was doing some retail arbitrage that I don't do anymore. Not as much growth as I would like but that is only due to my own fault.

 

[DrkSide]

Just dropping this off....


Technically I hit my first goal of 10k in a month (although not a calendar month) but I'll take it and also another over 1k day. I am not completely out of stock but only have a couple of units left so I will be shortly. My last order was placed when I was averaging about 10 sales a day and I had a couple where I did 25. I am reordering as soon as this shipment gets to me so I have some overlap and can hold my positioning.

New product has been ordered. Started with just 100 units to test in the market.

2 new samples inbound for testing as well.

4 new product quotes came in today.

Time to reinvest the profits.

 

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[DrkSide]

Jurffy the only steps I took are to find a manufacture and get samples. Request changes that need to be made (if any) and get another sample. Then do a small test order and see if it sells. Repeat.

Don't worry about anything except for the next step that you need to take.

Start off by taking a look at the threads in HERE specifically THIS one and THIS one. Read first, digest what you read, and then put it into action.

 

[DrkSide]

New product launch is going well. Gave away 10 units for review and have 2 in so far. My review solicitation emails are just starting to go out tomorrow for the rest.

4-5 sales a day so far sitting at #13 for the subcategory and #1 new release. Should be a slow climb to the top but I will get there.

Either I underestimated the size of the market or people looking for this product are click happy on ads. With my first product I would never reach my budget of $20 a day even when I was at the top of the category. Now I am out of budget by 5pm or so with the same $20 budget on this one. If conversions and cost look good I will raise the budget after the first week. However, I know with more reviews come more conversions.

Changed all of my follow up emails over to Feedbackz from feedback genius. I like the look of the emails from Feedbackz better, however the emails from FG were just plain text and looked a little more like personalized emails than automatically generated ones. Wondering what, if any conversion change there will be.

Shopify store is in the process of being configured. I already have one customer that is hounding me to let him know when it is setup as he wants to leave a review (product of awesome customer service, he broke a part on his product that he purchased 8 months ago and I sent him the replacement parts no questions asked)

Just looking into running a giveaway contest for the store launch with gleam io or another service. So far they seem very expensive with a monthly fee and I only want to do one giveaway right now.

Also working on a few tips and tricks that I have used. Will be making a post on the inside to detail some of these and offer a little payback to the forum members.

 

[DrkSide]

Time for an update.

December was good but not near as good as November due to inventory issues. I had expected that but not quite to the level that it was. Products were selling faster than Amazon could get them checked in. I was sending in 50-100 at a time (as soon as they hit my doorstep) and before they were fully checked in they were sold.

December Sales Breakdown:
Amazon - $26,455.34
Website - $954.39

Total: $27,409.73

2015 Sales - Hit my goal in November and blew it out of the water.
Amazon - $160,492.75 (Goal: $100k)
Website - ~$1,700 (I don't have the pro shopify so I can't pull exact numbers)

Placed my largest order to date the middle of December in order to have more products mid January. The order is big enough that I hope it will last me through the Chinese New year. Since the order was so large I got improved pricing. I am going to have to take more money from an investor to complete the order. After my next payment I will have enough to cover the cost but it will put me too close to broke for my comfort.

I am very close to completing my goal when I started this thread. I have my first potential wholesale contract to a retailer. I am working on the details now and hope to have it buttoned up by the time my shipment hits. I have no product to ship them right now.

2016 Goal: ??? - Not sure at this point. Going to come down to how much funding I can get and how much turnover I can accomplish. It will be high 6 figures.

Edit: Also, I had been looking for an office and unable to find something suitable with part office part warehouse. I found a temporary solution right down the road and contracted to lease it. Now the landlords have not completed their part of the repairs and looks like there may be a lawsuit. YAY!

 

[DrkSide]

Needed a little motivation this morning and I got it when I opened my Amazon page. Got the #1 Best Seller badge in my subcategory. Now lets see how long I can keep it.

It looks like the hours put in this week with keyword and copy optimization along with the little giveaway (only 5 units claimed so far out of the 22 codes that I gave out) I did are paying divedends. Unfortunately my new shipment of product was delayed and wasn't shipped out when it was supposed to be. I was hoping to be able to send it out to Amazon on Monday after quality checks this weekend but looks like it is going to be after the weekend before I get it.

Normally I would increase the price to slow sales and stay in stock but with coupon codes out I can't do that at the moment.

 

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[DrkSide]

End of month update. Surpassed my 10k goal by quite a bit and would have been even more but I am out of stock on my best seller due to the mold problems. The issues have been resolved and I now have more product due the middle of the week and more the week after.

$100 of that is product giveaways for the new product launch but I was still over $15k with that factored in.

New product launch is on track and I have 1 review from the samples that I sent out already. I am expecting to get around 6-7 by the end of the week. I have not changed the way I am doing this with the Amazon TOS update. I can't see a reason that what I am doing will be labeled excessive. The reception from the reviewers that I have talked to via email has been unanimously great.

Product launch 3 is on the burner for the end of this week. They are taking quite some time to get the inventory checked in.

 

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[DrkSide]

Well, thanks to Prime Day I hit a record for sales yesterday at $1400 for the day. I did not do any special promotions or make any changes specifically for the day. Thanks to the boost in sales I also regained the #1 best seller in my category organically. I will be doing some more promotions but will hold off until I have more stock and to when/if I lose the best seller in the near future.

I have also burned through almost half of my inventory that I sent in last week. I already ordered the next shipment and it is due to ship on Monday. After the last delay I had a talk with my supplier about production times and hopefully they will accurately quote the time. I think is was more that they wanted me to think they were quick but I let them know I just need an accurate timeline so I know what to expect.

I approved the packaging for Product 2 today so that should be shipping next week as well.

Order for product 3 will be the following week after I see my payout from Amazon.

I did manage to get some more capital that will be used to build inventory for current selling products for the holidays. However, at this point I am probably not going to use it to finance new products until I know how much I will need for inventory.

 

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[DrkSide]

November ended up being the best month so far which I had suspected would be the case. Cyber Monday was actually a bigger day for me than Black Friday. Note: I ran no specials, no sales for either day. I did not have enough inventory to run any sales.

Amazon: $39,733.70
Website: $719.68

Total: $40,453.38

Product 1 was a good seller and I managed to keep inventory all month and finally ran out on Dec. 2nd. Product 2 and 3 were in stock most of the month and actually went out of stock on Thanksgiving day. Product 1 restocks are en route to me, product 2 restocks are in production (changed a few small things that extended production times but increased quality), product 3 restock is being checked into Amazon right now.

Product 4 launch is in process. They are checking in the inventory right now. Plan for this one is to price at break even and sell through 400 or so units like that. Depending on sales I may/may not solicit some reviews. It will really just depend on how it progresses. I did do some advertising for pre-orders for this product. I lost money but got some good data I hope to turn around and use for other ads.

Product 5, 6, and 7 are in the works. I have samples of all of them and will launch as funds allow. This has been the biggest hurdle is financing new inventory.

I have had higher than normal returns for product 1. Not exactly sure what is going on but I had additional QC done at the factory on the latest restock and will be QCing every unit when they arrive to me instead of a normal spot check.

Have some offline stuff in the works for a few retail shows and events but nothing concrete yet. I still need to have inventory to be able to show it off and get orders.

The Bad: Facebook shut my ads account down due to complaints about some of my ads. They would not give an specifics and every attempt to get them to reinstate it has failed. I have a plan to get around it for the little that I need the ads for.

 

[DrkSide]

I have now requested that my products not be eligible to be sold this way. I am awaiting a reply to see what they say about this and will report back.

Update on this. I was contacted by an Amazon rep for some information on the issue. Once I told her what had happened she understood what I was trying to do. However, you cannot remove yourself from the Amazon Warehouse Deals program. She passed on the issues of incomplete and non working items but basically said that there was nothing that either of us could do about it besides put a note on the product to check contents before they sell them.

So, what happens when you have slow shipping times, lost inventory at Amazon, and long receiving times?

Now, this isn't exactly correct and I have probably only lost around $20k in sales. But that means I left $6,000 of profit on the table in the last 30 days. A note to myself and new seller. Front load your inventory as much as possible for Christmas next year.

 

[DrkSide]

Thanks @brandonrush I like that Idea. That was sort of the way it was working in my mind but I couldn't put it as well as you did.

@Jesse Dallenbach Short answer is no. Long answer is HERE.

 

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[DrkSide]

Going over a new order it dawned on me that this is going to have to be a BIG one. With the Chinese New Year coming up the month of February will be lost and getting an order placed after that will take longer to produce than normal.

So, I managed to get an extra $23k to finance the order that I need. It cost me pretty good to get it in such a hurry but in the long run the extra interest that I am paying is better than not having any product to fulfill orders with. Total order will be just a hair under $32k with a potential profit of roughly $33k. It should be about 3.5 months worth of inventory. I don't have non holiday sales numbers for most of my products so that is a little shot in the dark but I am using a guesstimate.

 

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[Vigilante]

I know the panel of the guys at the summit seemed relatively unfazed by lack of website sales volume. It makes sense: why trust some random website when Amazon is a retail giant that has your back and is willing to refund you, take returns, deliver in 2 days, and more?

I'm not quite sure but my guess is that focusing energy on retail would probably be a better use of time. I have no idea though. @Vigilante @JonnyC @Likwid24 your thoughts?

Do both. If anything, the web site serves as social proof and more data. It will always be your most profitable sales channel, even though the volume will be less. Every legitimate business needs it's own web presence.

I am in the process of building out a shopify store for a brand that will initially only have a handful of items. However, when consumers go to do more research, I can reel them in, hopefully close them, or at least give them some additional content and start to create a relationship engagement.

 

[DrkSide]

Forgot to add this earlier. Had a customer call me as I had given him my phone number when he was asking some in depth questions. He called me today and he is with an organization that uses my product professionally. He wants to get more for others in his organization to use.

The funny thing is that I had never even considered the uses for what they are using them for and as they are going to use and abuse them. He agreed to give some reviews on the new stuff I have coming in as well.

It was really funny as he was just about an hour away from me as well. I will be hand delivering the other units for them to test.

 

[DrkSide]

Thanks @Cparsons

So I decided this morning to not go ahead with the office. I am going to work the rest of the year at the house. With the holiday season coming up I know that I am going to need all of the capital that I have to push inventory levels high enough to make it through. It just didn't make sense to go ahead with it when the money could be used to produce income.

So, I may decide to do a little traveling towards the end of the year for a week or two just to get out of my comfort zone. However, at the start of the year I fully intend to move into an office (or even possibly purchase a commercial building....gears are turning).

 

[JasonR]

2016 Goal: ??? - Not sure at this point. Going to come down to how much funding I can get and how much turnover I can accomplish. It will be high 6 figures.

Aim higher. Go for a million.

 

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[DrkSide]

So the results are in (partially)...

It took less than 24 hours to give away all of the product that I am doing for this round which will be a total of 22 units. It was going to be 20 but I didn't turn the ad off in time and I also had someone email me about one for a friend. Spent a whopping total of $14.04 on ads to do this may with 56 clicks with about a 35% conversion rate.

Now I will be tracking to see if they are acutually redeeming the codes and to see what % are going to leave reviews. I am going to let my backend review request email follow up with them about 2 days after delivery. I am not sure how accurately I will be able to track the reviews if they don't leave their real name but time will tell.

This method so far seems much better than the normal review groups and definitely better than the paid services if they leave a review.

I will be going over this method in detail and how I did it once I have all of the data. Basically the only cost to me was the $14 in ad spend as I already had web hosting and themes purchased for wordpress that allowed me to do this.

 

[DrkSide]

Ive really enjoyed reading your thread and following along with your success. It seems you are seeing repeatable growth in a month to month basis which I think is fantastic. I have a feeling you are going to surpass your expectations for the holiday season, so congrats on your progress thus far. Can you share some info about your margins/profits without going into specific prices and why you felt that this niche looked like an opportunity with said margins. Also if its not to much detail, is this more of a one and one product for most customers or something that will need to be replaced/improved regularly. Thanks again for sharing your progress.

@phenom4hire I aim to make about 30% on margins. I do not make it with all of the products but it is my goal when I introduce a new product (however, I am looking at products now that I know will not have a 30% margin but the profit potential and other factors make these viable for the market). All of my products at this point do not need to be replaced but people still often buy more than one.

I am looking to get my product up by next month, I am still talking to manufacturers.
The manufacturer has agreed to send me 20 samples.
My question is, how would you go about testing?
I understand you have created a brand, but is that as simple as putting your brand name in the title?

Do you know how to test the products yourself? My niche is one that I am familiar with so I knew how to test my products and had some friends that were willing to test. The biggest thing is to get them in front of some ACTUAL USERS and have them test them. I find that the reviews/feedback from real customers is always leaps and bounds above others.

Awesome to see you are still going strong!

Has the thought of pushing traffic to a website of your own occurred?

To get more reviews/traffic to your own website, you could through in a small flyer in each shipment

@BlakeIC I have thought about doing paid traffic to my website as well as the brochures in products to drive people there. However, I am still having major inventory problems with Amazon. I cannot afford to keep stock there so I am reluctant to build out another channel at this point. It is in the near future but just not ready to pull the trigger. I will be sharing updates once I do.

Also, for anyone watching. I started with a purchase of about $320 almost 2 years ago (1 year, 8 months to be exact) and just in the past 30 days I have purchased $20,000 of inventory. It has been a wild ride and continues to be. At first I thought it would be a "quick" process but it has proved to be a much more methodical game of chess. This is a very, very capital intensive game that I didn't understand at all when I jumped in and still don't completely.

I have an update coming but it won't be as grand as I had hoped for certain reasons.

 

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[DrkSide]

Couple days late for EOM update but here it is.

Total Sales - $12,776.34 (one sale from website)

You can see from the graph that I was out of stock for 10 days. Had a few sales due to others cancelling but I am not counting those.

Stock issues came from both a bank error and not ordering soon enough. I know that I will not have enough inventory to make it through the holidays so I am just going to get everything that I can.

Amazon is running pretty hands-off at the point besides having to answer customer emails. Beginning to work more on the website and get it setup to push some traffic to it.

Starting my first pre-order ads for a new product today to see if I will be able to sell some before I even have them in my hands. I took pictures of my samples and added logos to them for stand ins on the product page. Since I don't have any data for the ads yet I set up a pretty general audience and will take the data from that and fine tune.

 

[DrkSide]

He was saying that not having money is the not a valid reason for limiting business growth, as it's so easy to find.

I agree completely. Let me rephrase a little.

I am sure that I can get funding for what I need. However, I am not sure if I want to assume that much risk with my primary sales channel being Amazon. I am going to work on others but at the moment that is my biggest channel. While lenders may not know the inherent risks in Amazon I am not so naive.

 

[brandonrush]

Launch one product with its sole purpose being to fund the office. Get that one product to netting $2-3k a month and you are set, just set the profits from that product aside for office related expenses instead of reinvesting into other products. If that product takes off and starts selling much more than you need to fund the office, great, now you have extra cash from that one to reinvest, but make sure you're still setting aside the office fund out of the profits. Once you've got more successful products under your belt the success of that one "fund the office" product becomes less and less important to you keeping the doors open on your office.