E-Commerce Brand Kick-Started By The Pandemic

[AdamB]

Okay, so I deliberated over creating this thread for a few minutes. Then, I thought - just do it. Everyone needs accountability, right?

I'm a 25 year old social media and marketing freelancer and long time entrepreneur/business enthusiast. I've tried my hand at many things including selling t-shirts from my bedroom at 16 to owning a pizza restaurant in my home city. I now earn a comfortable living having built up a pool of good clients who trust and rely on me to help them grow their businesses - especially online, but I feel my enthusiasm for business, in general, helps build good relationships with people.

Obviously though, despite the freedom of having complete control over my day, this isn't very fast lane and I'll never lose that burning fire in my belly to grow a much bigger business - heck, why would I want to lose it?

And so, I'm always on the lookout. You may have read my other thread on potentially buying a business - Getting My Hands On a Baby Boomer's Business. This is still something I'm very much interested in and I highly recommend reading Buy Then Build - Walker Deibel if you've ever considered buying a business.

In the meantime, I've decided to launch a brand on Amazon as I've spied an opportunity as people start to return to work after the pandemic.

Now, this is something I have tried (and failed) at before. So this time, I wanted to be held accountable. I haven't decided how much detail I'll go into on the actual product itself, but I will try to give as much information as possible. As I said, I have experience selling on Amazon - but no more than anyone else could learn after a few months of selling.

So - here is an overview of how it has gone in the first few days.

I came up with a general brand idea (I'm a marketer, remember?) and went looking for an existing product that I could buy and modify. I remembered that I was buying a product that could work when I owned the pizza place, so I went straight to my old supplier's website. I did a bit of digging and managed to find where they were buying the product from and it turned out it was a manufacturing plant not too far from me. I ordered a sample to my house immediately.

While I was waiting on the sample being delivered (2 Days), I got to work on the branch. If all went well with the sample, I knew all I would have to do is create my own brand and I could sell the product completely unmodified. Straight over to Fiverr.com and set out a job specification for a reputable seller who had good reviews for product label design. I was a very difficult buyer on Fiverr as I requested about 8 modifications to the label. However, this was so important because it was the branding that was going to make or break this product. I knew if I could get that right, people would buy. As I said, the product is relevant to people going back to work whilst still dealing with Covid.

I want to highlight this though, as some people may not know how easy it is. I spent a couple of hours and £28.72 getting a fantastic label designed that will be the basis of my entire brand.

It's amazing what can be done on Fiverr.

Anyway, after I was happy with the label, I just had to wait on the sample. When it arrived, there were a few niggling issues that I would have to sort out with the supplier. However, on the most part, it was a good product and I knew I could use it. The lid didn't look like it was properly sealed and the liquid had dripped down the bottle a little (more clues). I certainly couldn't have the product arriving to customers like this. These problems can be fixed though - the main thing is that the quality of the product is good.

I sent about 50 emails back and forward with the supplier, thrashing out the details. I got a good price and I found out about accompanying products that could also be bought from them. They let me know that if I spent just over £1,000 in stock (not much), then they would actually put my label on the bottle for me.

This was interesting. I have fulfilled orders myself whilst selling on Amazon. I recently sold over 1,000 units of a particular product and the process of fulfilling the orders from home was a nightmare. Packing, labelling, sending - it's not fun. And then the problems with delivery. I'd love to just send it into Amazon FBA and let them deal with it all, especially as it works out more profitably. So it was great that the manufacturer would label the product for me. This gives me the option of getting it sent directly to an Amazon warehouse.

However, could I trust that the bottles would be clean? Would the labels be on straight? Am I prepared to just blindly let the supplier send products into Amazon? Not yet.

So, I decided to order 10 units to my house and I ordered labels from an online printer. Let's see how this goes first. I'd rather get a feel for handing and sending out the product and then decide whether to go down the route of FBA.

I'm writing this a few days in. The 10 units arrived yesterday and they all needed a little clean up. Good decision as I wouldn't have wanted them arriving to customers like that. The lids were also blue, despite the lid on the sample being white. Just small issues.

In the meantime, I had already created product images (Fiverr again) for less than £20, created my Amazon listing, researched all my keywords and completed the description etc.

Once I knew the 10 units and the labels were en route to me, I listed it for sale. I set quite a long delivery time (3-5 days) to give me time to receive the product, clean it up, re-label the product and arrange collection with a courier for next day delivery.

10 sales on day 1 - total of 5 orders with one customer ordering 5 units.

Day 1 Sales - £249.90
Day 1 Ad spend - £10
ACOS (advertising cost of sales) - 4%

Wow. My product was still in the depths of Amazon's catalogue and I had already sold my entire first order from the supplier. As soon as the 10 units arrived, I tried to sort out some issues with the supplier and then ordered 60 more.

Day 1 was Thursday 14th May. On Day 2, I sold 12 units with ACOS still around 4%.

This morning (Day 3), I have already sold 6 units and I need to start preparing the shipments to be collected by DHL on Monday.



Very small numbers, but a great start. I've sold other products on Amazon - some at much higher volumes than this. However, I have a good feeling about this one. Customers are ordering multiple units and I can see that they are business accounts. That is exactly who I had in mind when I came up with the brand.

I have built a very basic Shopify account and I'm going to see if I can start selling directly to customers without Amazon. That's something I haven't done before.

I will update this thread as often as I can. I have 60 units arriving on Tuesday. DHL will be coming to get the 10 units I already have and send them out to my first customers on Monday. The product is quite heavy (around 6kg each) and I'm used to shipping smaller items, so I will keep everyone up to date with teething problems (they always occur).

One of the main reasons I thought to start this thread is to get insight from everyone. Sometimes a new set of eyes can come up with a simple, but great idea that I didn't think of. So, all feedback is welcome.

Hopefully, this thread will help me stay laser focussed on progress.

Apologies for the length of the first post. Thoughts welcome!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamB]

I thought I had better update the thread as it's been a while. Things have been crazy recently. I'm in the middle of a huge house refurbishment, I'm working full time from the new house (which is a building site) and I'm also working on this business.

Thank god I have the freedom to work from home with my social media marketing.

I decided to take a screen shot tonight inside my Amazon account specifically to post in this thread as I've just crossed a nice milestone. Since launching this business on June 1st 2020, I have crossed £50,000 in sales. Nice! I've also done over £2,500 today which is insane! I have made over £1,000 in profit in one day whilst project managing my house refurb. I can't get enough of this.



I was discussing my branding conundrum with my wife and she has sparked a lightbulb for me. She casually suggested an idea that would allow me to brand the products, but actually get the customers to apply the branding on their own. So simple but great - I think. Sometimes it just takes a new set of eyes.

The plan is to start working on this right away to get it implemented. I will keep everyone up to date.

 

[AdamB]

I have to apologise as I have neglected to update this thread - there's so much to tell. Reading through this thread actually made me remember everything that went into getting this set up. It's easy to fall into the habit of thinking the way things are right now are the way they've always been. I really enjoyed reading this - especially today.

Let me summarise, if I can remember correctly.

Not long after my last update, it became very difficult to source what had now become my main product (the supplementary product sold so well it quickly became my main product).

I believe I ran out of stock and stopped selling across Europe in order to focus on the sales in the UK. My thinking was that if I'm struggling to get stock, I may as well focus on my main marketplace that has the highest margins. Sales in the UK were growing and growing. Not long after that (1st January 2021) the UK officially left the EU and it became too costly for me to send stock to Europe anyway. I haven't sold in any European countries since.

Aside from a few problems mainly involving stock (either not being able to get enough or not ordering in time to keep up with sales causing me to run out), things went very well. I've just taken a screenshot of my year to date sales on Amazon, see below.



I faced different challenges every month and achieved new things every month, but time has gone on a little so it's hard for me to recall the ins and outs. I regret not updating this thread more as I'm now missing a lot of detail.

Mostly though, things were good. The FBA product just got hotter and hotter. It broke into the top 100 in home and kitchen and became the number 1 bestseller for a very high volume search term on Amazon.co.uk. The potential of the product was maxed out in this particular marketplace and it was selling 30k per month (8-10k profit). I must add that it had now changed from a 5-pack to a 2-pack (I'm remembering more as I write). I was always around number 5 or 6 in this category back when I was updating this thread and I could never quite compete with the top sellers. However, reducing the pack size allowed me to reduce my price and it just propelled me to the top. The others sellers were from China and I know they must have been paying high transportation costs to get their products into Amazon. I was sourcing my product in the UK. This allowed me to beat them on price as well as quality.

My main concern was that it was a generic, unbranded product and anyone could have sourced it, jumped on my listing and disrupted my rhythm. But they didn't. It just went on and on, month after month without any major issues.

Because I'm interested in acquiring businesses, I'm always on Flippa and other sites like it.

I decided to speak to someone from Flippa and see if I had something to sell in this Amazon business. At this point, it was only 8/9 months old. I presumed it was far too young to sell and so I thought I would list it, see what happens and increase the price of the business month after month as it got older and the numbers stayed strong. It's an unbranded product on Amazon that has been selling for less than a year, so it may be hard to sell - I thought to myself. Naturally, the guy from Flippa was convinced I had a great asset and should list it for sale, but I knew he just wanted the sign up fee and so may have been exaggerating a little. I went with it anyway.

However, I was blown away with interest. A lot of tyre kickers, but also companies across the world who are aggregating small FBA businesses.

So, here's why I am updating the thread today - and here's why I've enjoyed reading through my experiences from a year ago back when I started the business...

A fantastic 6 figure sum landed in my bank account this morning after 3 months of negotiation to sell the business.

I sold it!

I could write another thread on that experience. It's been an absolute rollercoaster journey. Selling the business ended up being harder than building the business (or maybe all the initial problems are just too distant a memory), but I'm sitting here with a big smile on my face and a big bank balance today.

My average bank balance throughout my adult life (I'm 26 now) has been 1-5k. Right now I can open up my mobile banking app and see a number I could never have imagined, after just 12 months work. And it's barely even been 12 months of work as the business has been on autopilot for the majority of the last 6 months.

I'm excited to get going investing the money and continuing my business journey.

This will be a foundation upon which I build F U money.

Thanks for reading!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamB]

UPDATE

So after 4 or 5 appeals and hours and hours of writing POAs (plans of action), my account was finally reinstated and I was immediately able to withdraw my account balance of around £2,000.

My listing went live again and I sold a further 10 units.

My advertising cost of sales remained at around 6% for the whole of the day and things were looking good. I put some time into other keywords that I can target with advertising and ordered another 60 units from my supplier.

Just after I placed the order and sent the payment, I got an email from Amazon notifying me that my listing had been removed due to a trademark infringement.

WHAT??

I created a brand from scratch and it turns out there's a company with a presence in Germany, UK and US with the same name as my brand that sells very distantly related products online. They noticed my product and filed a complaint about my brand new.

The logo, colour scheme, and look/feel of the brand was completely different, but unfortunately, I used the exact same word as them when choosing a name for my brand.

I should have researched more and made sure the name I was picking didn't already exist in the marketplace. No one's fault but mine.

So, for the past 2 days I have been working with designers on Fiverr to edit the brand, then subsequently order new labels and get the main product image changed.

I am now waiting on approval from Amazon to sell under the new brand name that I have chosen. Don't worry, this time I made extra sure that it doesn't already exist.

I have been waiting 2 days now and this is a process that doesn't normally take this long, so hopefully I will get an update soon and I will be back online selling the product.

I just keep telling myself - If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

 

[AdamB]

So today started quite slow. I had only sold one unit by around 11am. I had been thinking that maybe once the working week began (bank holiday Monday here) that sales would have picked up slightly due to it being primarily a business focussed product. So I was quite disheartened at 11am, thinking it was going to be another slow day of 2-5 units sold.

I got my complimentary product up and running and worked on the ad campaign.

Fast forward to right now 22.12 my time and I am sitting at almost £1,000 sales for the day with 42 units sold between my existing product and newly launched product. I actually had to pause the campaign for the new product as I sold all of my stock in one day.



It’s funny how your outlook can change within a few hours.

Someone ordered 15 units today - spending almost £400 on my product. That was some good validation that the message I’m trying to get across on the packaging.

I’ve created a variation on my existing product which now offers the product and the complimentary product together. I just need to get some more stock of the complimentary product before I put it live as I sold out of my entire order today.

On another note - I paused my Facebook ad campaign driving leads to my website again as I just can’t seem to get any customers to buy on there. I feel like I’m just throwing money out the window. Not sure if I need to spend more to properly test it or whether I need to reassess my target audience with the ads.

Hoping for another successful day of sales tomorrow. Will keep everyone up to date.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamB]

So this happened today...



Refreshed the app and it jumped up by 90 units! Someone purchased 90 of my 5 packs at a total price of £1799. Crazy! Who buys 450 units at full price from a random seller on Amazon?

I increased the price on my main product last night from £24.99 to £29.99 after consistently selling around 20 units per day. I was spending a lot of time in the warehouse prepping orders and I felt that I should be making more profit. I was worried that it had been too much of a jump after a slow start this morning. I've ended up selling around 16 units even with the price increase though.

Today's big order really got me thinking - "You need to be in the game".

The product that they ordered is one I only recently bought from the supplier. I wasn't going to list a seller fulfilled offer. I sent 100 units into FBA (got picked up this afternoon) and I was just going to wait until they went live. But I just quickly listed a seller fulfilled offer and decided to test demand while I was waiting on the shipment being processed into FBA. If I hadn't taken action, I would have missed out on this order.

I just made over £1200 from one order placed by a customer I have never met and may never speak to. I suppose these are the things that can happen when you just take some action.

You need to be on the pitch playing the game, not watching from the stands. No matter what level you're playing at.

Take action. Make a move.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamB]

Time for an update.

I'm currently in Turkey sitting by the pool.

I knew I had a holiday coming up, and I thought I would have to switch off my self-sulfilled product whilst I was away.

However, a couple of weeks before leaving, I decided to have a search for third party fulfilment centres in Glasgow.

What do you know?...

There was one literally a stone's throw from the warehouse I was using.

I contacted them and met with the managing director. I liked him and he seemed to like me. He came round to the warehouse and I showed him everything I do to prepare and send out orders. I also showed him the prep that goes into my FBA product before sending it into Amazon.

He basically said, 'We can do all of that - no problem."

So I drafted up some documents containing all the steps involved in preparing and sending out orders and stock to customers and Amazon (for FBA products). They came back with some pricing - an absolute bargain - and I began moving all of my stock from my shipping container to the 3PL.

I was worried about this, because I've never done it before. However, being able to go and walk through their (huge) warehouse, speak regularly with the managing director, have an account manager to deal with on a daily basis, and be able to pop into the warehouse whenever I want, all put my mind at ease.

I let it run for a week or so before I left to come on holiday and it was all absolutely fine. I'm sure they deal with a lot more complicated fulfilment than my products.

The long and short of it is - I have been relaxing in Turkey for 10 days now and all I've had to do is send customer invoices which takes around 15 mins per day. As soon as I register for VAT, this will also become automated through Amazon's VAT service.

When I get home, I will no longer have to spend hours and hours at the warehouse every day. In fact, I don't think I will have any use for the warehouse any longer. I have given my month's notice on my shipping container as I no longer have to store any pallets. Everything gets delivered direct from supplier to 3PL.

I was also offered the opportunity to take 40,000 units of my best selling product - which I jumped at. It felt a little scary spending 20k on inventory, but the sales are still holding att between 1k-1.5k per day.

UK and France are currently my biggest markets, but I can see Italy and Spain building now too.

To top it all off, the new house will finally be finished when we arrive back home in Glasgow and we can move in. The house has also turned into a fantastic investment as it required so much work but was in such a fantastic area. I'm trying to buy another one!

My major focus when I return home is to build a brand around the FBA product as it is still bog standard, white label. This is number 1 on the priority list now. I have already spoken to the 3PL about adding branding into the product when packaging up for Amazon and there doesn't seem to be a problem.

I will update on the pricing of the 3PL once I receive my first bill. There are a few different charges which is slightly complicated but it is negligible compared to time I am saving (both mine and my wife's).

I hope this update adds value for someone reading this thread.

 

[AdamB]

I am now fully up and running with my product and it's slightly different branding.

I sold 5 units yesterday and have just had my first sale of the day today. My advertising cost of sales has crept up slightly to around 8.5%. I believe this is still pretty low. I have profitability of just under 20% on a single product sale, so with an average of 8.5% advertising cost, I still have a margin of around 11%.

The interesting part is that it costs the same for me to ship 1 unit as it does to ship 4 together. So, I have a promotion running to encourage the purchase of 4 units. It's quite common that customers purchase 2 or more at a time because it's a product primarily targeting businesses. The profit margin gets very high when multiple units are purchased together due to the fact that shipping is my biggest cost.

1 unit - 19% profit
2 units - 37% profit
3 units - 43% profit
4 units - 27% profit (promotion on 4 units eats into the profit - just testing it)

I feel like I am sitting watching my Amazon account and pressing the refresh button all day long and 5 units per day doesn't feel like much when you're staring at it all day. It can get quite frustrating and it's probably a bad habit.

I want to work on my Shopify store which is okay at the moment but it's pretty basic. I don't know whether to invest time and money in it yet or wait a while to see how the sales progress on Amazon.

Today, I listed a product that compliments my main product and is something I can easily buy from the supplier at quite low cost. It'll be interesting to see how that sells.

I am also in the process of designing a label for a smaller version of my main product which may be more appealing to household customers.

I think we all strive for massive action and feel guilty or lacking when we are not taking huge steps. I'm reading a great book just now, Atomic Habits, and it really makes you realise that very small steps, taken consistently, have a far greater effect than always striving for big results and feeling disappointed.

If you can do something every day to improve by 1%, imagine how far you'll have come a year from now.

Such a simple but impactful concept.

Small, consistent steps in the right direction.

 

[AdamB]

I've been meaning to update the thread for days, but I just haven't been able to find the time.

Buying a house that needs a full refurb, starting a new business and trying to do your existing day to day work all at the same time is not recommended. However, I am drunk on life at the moment.

We could not be happier with our new house and it's going to be fantastic when it is finished. Work is going well. Being able to work 100% from my laptop gives me the freedom to be at the house with the guy who is doing most of the work for us. I'm lucky in that sense.

The Amazon business is doing well too. Here's a look at today's sales.



I make £10 profit per unit - so, I made over £700 today. That may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but it's a game-changer for me. I can't get enough of it!

Something has happened over the past week or two. You have probably read me talking about my main product (which I self-fulfil) and my supporting products (which are related to my main product and are FBA). What has happened is that my supporting products have turned out to sell WAY more than my main product. So much so that I am considering creating a new brand and focusing on what I refer to as the 'supporting products'.

It turns out there is a worldwide shortage of one of the components of this product and they are very high demand. I managed to build a good relationship with a supplier in my city just in time and they are helping me out with some stock.

The funny thing is, the only reason he replied to my very first email is because I was honest. I sent an email to the company explaining that I was local and just getting started in the business, looking to buy some stock. The Managing Director of the company told me he was having a glass of wine in the garden with his wife when he read my email and felt like he wanted to help.

I've kept in regular contact with the Managing Director over the past few weeks, asking for as much stock as possible and making it as easy as possible for them to sell to me. I've been paying upfront and taking whatever stock I can get. I've had to create a few different listings on Amazon to cater for the slight product differences. I've been buying a pallet at a time which contains around 1,100 units. I then sell them in 5 packs.

I was asking for more stock a few days ago and he said there may be an opportunity of 15,000 units, but I'd need to take them straight away as they are desperate for the space. 15,000 units is 16 pallets.

From this thread, you'll know that a friend is (very kindly) allowing me to use some warehouse space. I try to not have any more than 3 pallets in the go at any given time as I feel like I'd be taking advantage of him if I were to take up any more space. But I couldn't pass this up.

I explained the situation to the supplier and said I'd try to sort something out. That same day, I rented a shipping container in my town for £130/month. I immediately emailed them to let them know that I could take the 15,000 units whenever they wanted.

The Managing Director's business partner read my email and then intended to reply to the MD, but accidentally sent the email to me. It read - "I like this boy". That put a smile on my face. I don't know if he's realised his mistake yet - I didn't tell him.

Anyway - I am now eagerly awaiting the stock arriving as I sold almost all of my current stock today. Once I have created the 5 packs, I will have just under 3,000 units. I plan to build a big FBA stock in the UK and start sending stock out the fulfilment centres across Europe.

The only problem is... I'm not sure if my shipping container is big enough! I might have to rent the one next to it as well.

Sorry for the long post - I'm just very excited about the business at the moment.

I intended to take a picture of the shipment I have waiting to go to FBA as I have made good progress when it comes to packaging up the units. I started off sending small boxes which contained 1 unit (you'll see a picture in an earlier post). I sent in 50 units at a cost of around £80.

I now package 20 units in clear cellophane bags, into one large cardboard box. It costs me £4 to send each box. So, before I'd send in 50 units at a cost of £80. I now send in 100 units at a cost of £20. Nuts.

You don't know what you don't know...

 

[AdamB]

UPDATE

Okay so after selling a further 11 units yesterday before 3pm (Day 3), I ran into a major problem. At this point, I'd like to add that I'm sure this will be the first of many problems.

I received a notification from Amazon yesterday around 3pm to tell me that my account has been deactivated.

Oh dear...

This has happened because I had access to a large stock of hand sanitiser when the lockdown measures were first put into place and I managed to sell quite a lot of it on Amazon (at a fair price, might I add). However, Amazon started to really crack the whip with sellers of Covid sensitive equipment. So, we you combine this with multiple delivery problems caused by using the low cost courier mentioned in my reply above - it lead to account health issues. This was around 3 weeks ago, but it seems they are just getting round to punishing me for it.

So, huge hurdle number 1 - work with Amazon to get my account reinstated.

I'm currently on the Amazon seller support forums getting help from people with more experience than me in submitting what Amazon call a 'Plan of Action' to prove to them that you have resolved issues and they won't happen again. They won't let you sell until they are happy with your Plan of Action. I have already submitted one which has been rejected this morning.

On top of this, they also hold any funds that you have in your account until they are satisfied with your Plan of Action. I have around £2,000 in my account at the moment. I can see form the forums that it's not uncommon for this process to take quite a while.

I better get to it.

 

[AdamB]

Really sad you're experiencing this many roadblocks. With so many success stories (especially on YT) one could assume this endeavour is easy. Just don't stop pushing, there is a speedway behind the tunnel. Keep us updated.

Have you any sales through Shopify yet? If so, how do you gain trust, so that the buyer actually buys on your platform? I'm in a somewhat similar boat. Just started selling on eBay and AMZ and will open up shop with my own store based on WooCommerce in the future. Don't know when to go ahead whit this plan, since AMZ has the sales volume already built in and can be a great kick starter.

And what do you do for marketing? Only PPC or also SEO and other organic stuff?

Thanks! As of last night, I am now back up and running with the product under my new brand. I received an order for two units this morning. I'm sure there will be many more difficulties to come, but hopefully my listing is in place permanently now.

When I set up my Shopify store, it was all done under the previous brand that I have now changed.

I designed the store etc myself and it looked pretty basic. I ran an ad campaign on Facebook and tried to get set up on Google shopping but I found that quite difficult.

I spent £70 on Facebook ads and generated one sale. I then discovered the sale was from a customer in Nothern Ireland so I had to cancel the order due to the extremely high shipping fees due to it not being on mainland UK.

I have to rebrand the Shopify store now and organise a new domain etc to match the new brand. I think I will spend a few weeks building sales on Amazon and getting brand registered etc before I start setting up my own site again.

I got some good feedback from an amazon customer yesterday who suggested an accompanying product I could bundle with my existing one, so I'm going to work on that over the next few days.

Once I get going with my own site again, I'm going to spend a lot more time on it. I rushed it this time around and if things are 100% right, I can image you could just end up throwing money away on ads that won't convert.

 

[AdamB]

If I understand the above thread correctly, you're not FBA at all?

I'd get some product into FBA ASAP. Way more likely to get the buy box at that point, with Amazon fulfilling it.

That’s correct.

I’m working on that now. I have one product under hazmat review which takes 4 days (not even remotely hazmat). My other product is hazmat and I’m having problems with my Safety Data Sheet. They won’t accept it even though it seems to meet all of their criteria.

However, fulfilling orders myself does have a big benefit at the moment. It costs me the same amount to ship 4 units as it does to ship one. This makes a huge difference to margin. Whereas Amazon will charge me the same per unit price whether someone orders 1,2,3,4.

A friend has also kindly let me operate out of his warehouse so I would like to fulfil the orders myself for the time being.

 

[amp0193]

So send in the 1-packs, make them FBA, and leave the 2 3 and 4 pack options merchant fulfilled.

FBA should give you the buy box.

It’s interesting that you worry about running out of inventory on an FBA sku because you would sell too much, and instead are choosing to sell almost nothing, without a buy box.. but at least you don’t go out of stock.

Here’s the other thing... you will sell more with FBA. Many Amazon shoppers won’t touch anything that’s not prime (myself included).

PM sent about weight and shipping info

 

[AdamB]

UPDATE

So, on Sunday I awoke to find my account was buy box eligible again. Great news!

Then, on Monday my 50 units arrived at Amazon FBA. So things have been good.

I have 2 solid days of sales under my belt now and I have sold 20 units both days. I now have 4 SKUs listed, one of which is FBA. I'm going to have to send more stock in immediately to make sure I don't run out.

The product that I have in FBA is a generic, unbranded product. However, I can already tell that this is going to sell well and it is particularly necessary for businesses and homes during this time. I'm worried about the fact that it is not unique and another seller could jump on the listing. The product is plastic and I've spoken to the manufacturer about branding the plastic during manufacture. They have told me that this can be very pricey and it also means there will be a long lead time on the product rather than just being able to order it and get it immediately as they always have it in stock.

So, I'm trying to think of the best way to brand it myself once it arrives with me. I'm not sure whether I should just go with a small sticker with my brand logo on it to begin with. It means that can be used in the listing image and it's easy for me to apply.

However, I'm worried it may seem a little unprofessional if the sticker starts to wear or come off after multiple uses. If I had made this an INSIDERS thread I'd be more willing to give out information.

At the moment, I just need to focus on making sure I don't run out of stock.

All in all, it's been a good start to the week. I'd like to do £500 per day in sales as a target to begin with. So, I'll keep everyone up to date over the next couple of weeks.

 

[JasonR]

I'm running an ad on Facebook and also on Pinterest. I've had around 100 sessions on the store, so with one purchase, I have a conversion rate of around 1%. I don't think that's too bad for a brand new store when I'm still trying to figure out advertising on social media. But the cost of getting those 100 sessions seems astronomical.

You need to on just ONE channel. You don't have the marketing budget or expertise to use two.

One sale on $60.00 isn't bad. Remember, you need to buy the data before you can optimize.

We spent about $6k-7k at a loss just to start optimizing. Now we're seeing 7x-8x ROAS on $20k+ spend a month.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamB]

New problem - I can't get my products into FBA quick enough to keep up with the demand! I need to spend a lot of time in the warehouse packing up FBA shipments this weekend.

But... I get the keys to our new house today.

It's going to be a busy weekend!

Sales of my main product that I fulfil myself have slowed over the past 2 days (7-8 units per day), so I've spent some time working on the ad campaigns a little this morning to see if that helps. It's very clear from all of the previous orders I've had that it's business customers who are buying the product. I have also noticed that my best conversion rates come from other similar business-specific products on Amazon, so I have just launched a campaign aggressively targeting all of the other products that business users might bee browsing. Let's see how it goes.

As for the products I'm sending into FBA, I don't even need ad campaigns. They are just selling out as soon as they become available. I need to take advantage of this and figure out the best way to brand them without them looking tacky and it affecting sales.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to brand a basic plastic product? Would nice, permanent stickers do the trick?

Also, are you allowed to list your website on the branding directly on the product which would make it appear in the listing image? I suspect not, but hopefully I'm wrong.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

EDIT - as I was writing this, someone purchased 4 of my main product. I send these out in one box and make £65 profit on the order. This is addictive...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamB]

Something I forgot to mention in my most recent update that's been playing on my mind a lot.

As I've mentioned a few times in this thread, I do social media and other digital marketing and I have a few clients which is how I earn my main income. My biggest client offered me a full time job just before I went on holiday.

They want me to join the management team so that I can take on more responsibility and become a more significant part of the team, rather than being an 'outsider' who they pass work to when required.

This sounds great, but it's actually been getting me down.

Why?

Because I've spent all of my adult life trying to avoid a conventional full time job exactly like the one being offered to me. Having to be somewhere 9-5 and having to ask someone's permission to take a day off or go on holiday. I struggle with it and I feel it I were to take the (fantastic) opportunity, I would be giving in and settling in for 5-10 years of slowlane work.

So, what's the problem?

Because I have turned the job down, they need to hire someone else. This other person will eventually take on the work I carry out for this business and I will lose my biggest client who currently pay me more than the average monthly salary. Big problem.

This may not happen overnight, but it will happen. I feel a bit stressed and under pressure to replace the income.

I suppose this is why you shouldn't have one client making up more than 50% of your revenue.

However, part of me thinks this is the kick up the bum I need to start treating the business this thread is about more than just a side hustle. I really need to focus on building it into a sustainable, scalable business.

It's been another solid day of sales and my big shipment of stock arrived with my fulfilment company on Wednesday. They will begin sending that into Amazon this week and need to focus on adding my branding to the product now.

I'm exploring options in terms of selling in the USA and I am optimising my listings in other European marketplaces as the UK and France and making up the majority of my sales with Spain and Italy majorly lacking behind.

Today's numbers:



I haven't taken a single penny out of the business account for myself at this point as I have ambitions to get my business account to 100k and start learning to acquire other businesses. I could achieve that this year if I can sell the 40,000 units that have arrived without overspending on ads.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamB]

As I've mentioned - I've been selling a good amount of units in France. During September I did almost 11k in France.

It was annoying me that I was managing to get such good results in France, whilst struggling to get any real traction in Spain and Italy (1.8k and 1.7k sales in September, respectively) even though I didn't do anything different.

I used a freelance translator to translate my listings and do some research on main keywords in the market. It's quite difficult to verify this as I don't speak any French, Italian or Spanish. I just had to take the translation provided and add it to my listings.

I did some digging on amazon.it over the weekend to see if I could work out what was going wrong. I was looking at competitors who are selling a similar product to mine. I noticed their keywords seemed different from mine. So, armed with Google Translate, I tried to take note of all the main keywords they use on their listings and decided to add them to mine once I figure out what they mean.

I changed the title of my product completely, adding words I hadn't used before.

What happened?

Well, have a look at today's sales in Italy.



I would normally sell 1-3 units per day. It's only 3.30pm (4.30pm in Italy) and I have sold 14 units. Granted, 14 units won't make me rich, but that's a record day of sales in that country and the percentage increase is huge.

Just thought I'd post this as it may be interesting for anyone who sells in a market with a language you don't speak. It can be tricky when you don't actually know exactly what you are saying about your product - it takes some more time to get right.

 

[AdamB]

Absolutely captivating story. Thank you for sharing.

Hope you're enjoying some of that well-deserved F U money.

Not FU money yet. But hopefully I can use it as a foundation to get there.

 

[biophase]

It will be hard to make money on a 6kg product with a $25 price point. Amazon FBA will be charging you $5-$8 just for fulfillment and $3.75 commission. You may be better off shipping it yourself.

 

[AdamB]

Just as it was all going so well, I ran into another hurdle.

My account lost buy box eligibility on Amazon, which means customers have to click See All Buying Options instead of Buy Now on my listings.

This may not seem like much of a big deal, but when there is no Buy Now option on a listing, it doesn't look right - making the customer wonder what is wrong with the product and consequently go elsewhere.

More importantly, it means your ad campaigns stop. This is the big issue for me. All of my sales were coming from my ad campaigns due to the fact my products are newly listed and haven't had a chance to organically rank for the most relevant keywords.

Why did this happen?

Amazon have strict performance metrics that you need to maintain in order to be allowed to sell on their platform. They are very protective over their customers and the quality they receive (a huge part of their success). One of those metrics is late dispatch rate.

I accidentally forgot to mark 2 orders as shipped, even though I had shipped them. Because I have only just recently started selling again, 2 orders was enough to put me slightly above that 4% mark. Because of this, I lost my buy box eligibility.

I only noticed this because I went 3-4 hours without a sale and I knew there must have been a problem. I checked my campaigns and noticed they were all paused due to me not having the buy box on my products.

The tricky thing is, how do you get your order dispatch rate down? Well, you ship more orders on time to decrease the percentage of orders shipped late. That's okay, but how do I get orders when my campaigns are paused due to not having the buy box?

A real chicken and egg situation.

Anyway, I managed (by hook or by crook) to get my late dispatch rate down.

I was hoping that would mean that my buy box eligibility would come straight back. Evidently not...

I've looked everywhere for information online about how long it takes to get the buy box back after bringing your account metrics back within the targets and I cannot find anything. I've contacted seller support almost 10 times over the past few days trying to get a nugget of information, but they all just keep telling me it's an automated process and they can't help.

I have looked into all the other requirements - my seller account rating, all over performance metrics. etc and they all seem to be fine. The only slight issue is my valid tracking number rate, which is slightly below the required 95%. This has never been an issue before, though.

I feel pretty helpless at the moment. This is prime example of why selling on Amazon comes with a control problem. They can switch your whole business off with the press of a button.

I'm just waiting now and researching as much as I can in case I've overlooked something.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

 

[biophase]

The 5 pack needs to be packed in 5 and have its own barcode on it. Putting them in a box should be fine. Put the barcode on the box. Amazon won’t open those.

Then send the single packs by themselves with a different barcode.

Not getting the buy box is probably not a direct penalty in Amazon’s eyes.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[amp0193]

1 pack = 1 item
2 pack = 1 item
3 pack = 1 item
4 pack = 1 item

you just put them in one box with a barcode like @biophase mentioned above

 

[AdamB]

UPDATE

My main product is selling quite well 15-20 units per day. I'm consistently beating my £500 per day sales figures target.

My first shipment of 50 units sent into Amazon sold out within 3 days. Unfortunately, I've been struggling to get more from my supplier to send more in.

I've managed to get a pallet of a smaller version of the product which I am going to package up to send into Amazon FBA this weekend. I've purchased clear, plastic FBA bags which is going to allow me to package them together in 5 packs, and then put about 20-30 units in a box. This seems to be the answer to my packaging 5 units problem.

It seems pretty simple now that I've come up with a solution - but I guess it all comes back to 'you don't know what you don't know'. I can see myself getting more comfortable with this and I'm hoping I can start sending a lot more units into FBA.

My slight concern this week has been the space I am using.

As mentioned in a previous post, a friend of mine is (very kindly) allowing me to use warehouse space free of charge. I currently have around 3 pallets in there and I think if I use up any more space, I'll start feeling like I'm taking advantage.

I guess I just need to see how it goes. I'm going to try and make sure that I get shipments out to Amazon very quickly after I take delivery of pallets to the warehouse.

It's going well so far. I'm looking forward to really getting into the swing of things with FBA as I'm just addicted to seeing those sales come in knowing that I don't have to do anything to fulfill them.

I'm self-fulfilling my main product and I'm consequently spending an hour or two at the warehouse every day and then transporting the products home where the courier collects them. So my main product is a bit more time-intensive. This is fine at the moment due to lockdown, but this will be far more difficult when I need to work it around my daily travelling for my normal work.

I'll find a way though!

Hope everyone is well.

 

[AdamB]

Congrats! Do you start seeing an improvement in rankings / reviews ? When I sold on Amazon I saw a huge increase in sales after getting the first few reviews.

Any more sales on your website ?

I got my first review on my main product yesterday. 5 star review complimenting the delivery time and value for money. So, I believe that helped with the sales as it coincided with my price increase.

Absolutely no sales through my own website at all. Twice I’ve tried to focus on it and just haven’t been able to get any traction at all.

I considered branding the secondary products I have to try and drive people to my website. I just don’t want them to look tacky. I’m also not 100% sure if you are allowed your URL directly on your product label for everyone to see both in person and in the listing images.

 

[AdamB]

Shipment arrived this morning and it all fit into one container which was great. A little bit of stacking required, but it was painless and all went smoothly. Now time to get packing and send it into Amazon to keep up with these orders!

Apologies for having to mark out parts of the image. I should have made this thread on the inside!

 

[AdamB]

Seems like you are selling masses, why don't you just get the producer of the product to print your labels? Or maybe they don't do that? Also on the legal side, do you have a contract with the producer allowing you to place your own brand on the products? Asking because I'm starting my own eCommerce store soon and I only have "word of mouth" from the producer (alibaba producer) that I can put on my own brand myself. Really new to this.

Also are you only selling through amazon, and are you pushing out any ads whatsoever?

Extremely motivating! Thank you for sharing.

I am sourcing two different products and putting them together. So, in a sense, I am the manufacturer of my product as I am combining products from 2 suppliers to make one, which I will then brand. It's quite common to brand products bought on Alibaba, in fact, that is the whole 'Private Label' strategy in a nutshell.

I'm only selling on Amazon at the moment. I tried selling direct from my own website recently, but it demands a lot of attention. I want to stay absolutely focussed on building sales on Amazon before I start diluting my focus into other areas. Besides, I'm not even scratching the surface at the moment and I'm already struggling to keep up with demand. Sales have just started growing in France and I haven't even got going in Spain, Italy or Germany.

In fact, I've only just realised that Amazon will automatically transfer my stock to fulfilment centres throughout Europe. I thought I had to send stock to each country. It's so easy for me to sell across the whole of Europe. I used Fiverr to get my listings properly translated and Helium 10 to do keyword research. That seems to have worked in France, but Spain and Italy need a little more work. I need to be VAT registered in Germany before I can sell there. In the process of doing that now.

There are also supply issues with one part of my product due to a worldwide shortage, so I have begun contacting other supplies throughout the world. One company in the US have got back to me and can potentially supply me. This has got me thinking about sending stock from suppliers to a 3PL in the US, where they could potentially package up my products and send them into Amazon US. That would solve the problem of such high shipping costs from the UK to USA and would allow me to tap into Amazon's biggest market - Amazon.com

Can anyone recommend a company I could ship stock to directly from suppliers in order to be prepped and sent into FBA?

 

[AdamB]

Can anybody help me with a 3PL in the US? I'd like to start building a relationship with a company that can help me expand into that market. I already have a supplier in the US for my product lined up, I just need a company that can prep the products and send them into Amazon.

Any recommendations would be massively appreciated.

 

[AdamB]

Follow up from this week's update on sales in Italy. Today's sales have been great. It's amazing what a slight change in your product's title can do. I'm now thinking about all the sales I've missed out on by not having the correct title in the first place.

That's the challenge of selling in a market where you don't speak the language.



On another note - I have decided to take a generic product from the supplier that I have located and built a relationship with in the US. It's an unbranded product which comes in a ready-made three pack and I can have UPS collect it directly from the manufacturer. This removes the need for a fulfilment centre in the states at the moment and lets me dip my toes in the water on Amazon.com

Hoping to have my first shipment collected from the manufacturer and taken to Amazon next week.

Will keep everyone up to date.

I have also started advertising my own website on all of my invoices which I am having to manually issue to Amazon business customers at the moment as I am not yet VAT registered in the UK so I cannot use Amazon's automated service.

I see it as another opportunity to get my own marketing in front of my Amazon customers. As far as I can see, this isn't against any rules - but I might be wrong. My invoices point them in the direction of my own website with a discount code for their next purchase. I still make absolutely no sales through my own website and I'm looking for a marketing agency that can help me target small business owners throughout the UK who may be interested in my product.

 

[AdamB]

Wow good for you Adam, congrats! This was a great thread, thank you for creating it. So now you'll have to bring us along on the journey to that FU money.



So now that you've sold, could you let us know what the product/brand was? Totally understand if you can't with your buyer in mind though.

Cheers and good luck with your next chapter!! Hampus

Hi there!

Thanks for reading and commenting. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I'm afraid I can't divulge on further detail on the product as I am going to be working with the guys who purchased the business going forward. They are keen to make me a part of their team and have me run this and any subsequent businesses that they purchase. I'm excited to work with them.

My main focus now is going to be acquiring properties and businesses. I have a friend/mentor who has a portfolio of 50+ residential properties in the area, bringing in a great monthly payment and continual capital appreciation. I like the sound of that, and I'd like to try and emulate what he has achieved.

Hopefully I'll be able to start another thread in the not too distant future.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.