First True Venture into Importing & Growing a Business

[Denim Chicken]

Orders have landed!

Waiting all day for the carriers. If I hadn't they would've left 6 boxes on my lawn or driveway.

3/5 of the boxes were ripped on the side with the product sticking out. So counting all 500 units to make sure everything is there. Its also heavy so moving and counting 500 units into another box in 90degree heat sucks. The 2 worst boxes all have 100 units each, I'm hoping the last box will be whole. I'll finish inventory later when its less hot.

Still waiting on UPS for my last and final order sometime today. Usually he shows up around this time.

Stuff I've done while waiting:
- Redesigned the packaging insert/instructional sheet thru Illustrator. Also the FNSKU is printed on it directly. Redesigned the size of the insert so it does not shift in the polybag so it is always scannable by Amazon. Saves me labor of printing labels and applying myself or $.20/each for Amazon to do it.
- Ordered the prints, should be here by Thursday
- Ordered shipping supplies to send into Amazon, poly bags, etc.
- Ordered a tool to make assembly easier
- Finished listing on Amazon
- Reshot product photos and edited in Photoshop

To Do:
- Take inventory of all units for each piece and check quality
- Move to bigger boxes
- Set up Shipping/Assembly station
- Assemble 75-100 units, box it up and send it into Amazon
- Ask some friends to purchase when it goes live, start running PPC once I have a few reviews

 

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[Denim Chicken]

You can see the rip in the boxes. It was one more stop away from ripping apart

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Moved outside per request.

 

[Denim Chicken]

In my experience, ads work much better with at least some reviews. Especially if it's competitive. If it's not competitive and the clicks are cheap, then go for it.

On products that have gone down to 2-3 stars, I've found that ads that were once profitable, became unprofitable to run.

Reviews make a difference.

Thanks, I'm still learning the platform. Currently selling at a loss and hopefully will have about 3-5 reviews from friends posted.

It's a competitive niche but it's a subniche or a variation in that niche.
So if I'm selling in for example, the kids toys niche, I would be selling in the teddy bear section or something. So while I get customers who are searching directly for teddy bears, the search volume isn't a lot there. I get cross ASIN ad promotion for other related toys, like people looking at legos or something.

I guess reviews do help a lot, my 2 main competitors have between 500 to 1000 reviews.

 

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[amp0193]

What's your take on review facebook groups?

Facebook review groups hardly exist anymore. That was a great strategy in 2016.

Reviewers can no longer be obligated or incentivized to leave a review. So, if you're cool with giving away a bunch of product for hardly any reviews (but getting a temporary boost in the search results) then go for it.

Best strategy I know of now is to run Facebook ads to a landing page that gives an Amazon coupon code in exchange for email. Then you follow up with them and try to get reviews.

 

[amp0193]

The facebook groups posts I'm seeing after the 2016 shutdown of incentivized reviews, is for someone to post their product and if someone wants it, they PM the person directly their paypal address for the rebate.

So once the review is up, the seller sends the person money back after the person orders for full price. People do it who want free stuff just like before, but I haven't explored this yet. Might be a good way to get in trouble with amazon if you're being reviewed by someone who does this a lot.

Ok, I haven't seen these groups, and yes... a good way to get a banhammer. Amazon drew their line in the sand earlier this year about reviews, and I am no longer toeing that line.

Gotcha, interesting. Without review service, reviews are so slow to come by.

Exactly, and that's kind of the point. Great for guys like me that heavily leveraged incentivized reviews 2 years ago... because now I'm untouchable. Makes it tough for new guys to compete in competitive spaces.

Overall, I think it's a great move by Amazon, and will make for an excellent change in the landscape in the few years.

I downloaded my PPC reports. My manual keyword campaign has hardly any impressions or clicks, I'm not sure why almost all keywords are 0.
The Auto campaign is generating sales but at a very high ACOS. Started removing some bad keywords so we'll see.

Some of my sales are from related ASIN, which you cannot target in manual campaign mode, so I'm now targeting keywords of that product directly.

For keywords that aren't getting impressions, try putting those specific keywords in the title of your listing (if they aren't already). Sometimes, with newer listings, having a keyword in the bullet points or the backend isn't good enough, you need to temporarily have it in the title.

It could also be an issue with the category your product is in, and you might need to play around with it.

Or, you just need to bid way higher.

 

[amp0193]

Thanks, yeah I increased the bids and I'm playing around with different keywords now. Definitely need an advertising budget in the beginning to collect some data.

Yeah, it takes some spend in the beginning.

Run a search term report once a week, and add a bunch of negative keywords to the campaigns.

After 4-6 weeks the campaign should be pretty dialed in.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Ended the day yesterday with 7 sales. Record high so far.

I'm selling more and have overtaken the #3 competitor, who wasnt very competitive to begin with.
Competitor #1 and #2 are still holding strong but we are all on the same page. They have hundred of reviews and have been around much longer.

I am estimating Competitor #1 to be averaging about 15-17 units a day, and Competitor #2 to be about 12-14.

I am aiming to hit double digits in units/sold a day because that signals to me that I am hitting sales velocity that is acceptable of a top position and taking market share. However, due to ad cost and losses at this price point, I am strategizing on gaining as many reviews as organically possible to transfer my sales from PPC to Organic. Due to the low competition nature of this niche, 20 units/day seems to be upper limit in sales and demand. I knew this going in.

Feedback Genius is in place with a custom email but only a few have been sent out since I just launched earlier this month people are starting to just get their product. It will take time to get organic reviews.

Things I'm working on:
- I'm scheduling a 2nd more personal and simpler email that follows up a week after delivery to encourage engagement.
- Hit double digit reviews by end of the month.
- Track analytics, reduce ACOS as much as possible. Track % of sales from Organic Vs PPC.
- Raise prices slowly approaching breakeven point to see if sales velocity changes.

Ultimate Goal is to match competitor #2 as they are in the price point I am aiming at. If i were to charge the premium price now without reviews, I feel like I would burn through my budget with no conversions. Also if you change the price drastically, you can lose the buy box to yourself.

- Contact manufacturer about one of my parts to see if I can get a different one made that's easier to assemble. Assembly time by hand is 4 minutes per unit.
- At some point when I have more units sold, reviews and data, I will decide if this product is profitable enough to justify the assembly. I have already figured out multiple solutions to reducing the assembly process. It will take time so I estimate by the end of the entire 500 units, I will know whether I want to reorder.

- Packaging and insert is professional looking and the product is fully assembled. But I think I can package it in a way that 1-2 parts can be packaged neatly in a bag and the customer can be given a nice looking instructional card so they can assemble it themselves along with spare parts.

This is highlight the fact that my part is replaceable (advantage over competitor) by having the customer do it themselves, and offering them spare parts.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Today for the first time I hit double digit # of orders/day. Looks like my price increase had no bearing on sales.. if anything it has increased.

Closing in on my competitors.. I sent in another box assembled and I'm hoping I won't run out of stock. I only have 2-3 days left at this rate. It might be updated via FBA until mid or later this week. Worst case Ill raise it by another few dollars and actually turn a profit

Also rebuilt my website today. The other site was getting no conversions, I just decided to do everything from scratch. New color and branding, better layouts and got rid of all the GIFs and focused on making it load super quick. Still not finished but should be done by Monday and will try running Google Shopping and Adwords again.

Need to:
- contact other manufacturers about parts
- redesign product insert to change the packaging so I can assemble much faster
- waiting on Amazon to hear back if i can put my website URL on package
- need to assemble 50-100 units this week

I realized I have less than 20 units left, I won't make it at this rate until my inventory is updated. I'm going to raise the price. We'll see what happens to sales.

 

[amp0193]

- waiting on Amazon to hear back if i can put my website URL on package

Put the website on your packaging.

Amazon can't tell a manufacturer what to put on, or in, their package. Amazon doesn't deal with manufacturers.

As far as Amazon is concerned, you are just the seller of this product.

This would be identical to Nike, asking Amazon if was ok to put nike.com on their box, or asking if was ok to put a coupon/warranty insert in their shoebox.


The Terms of Service that relate to marketing to the customer, only applies to the SELLER and their contact to customers through email or other methods.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Made a decent jump in price to keep from going out of stock. Still selling. I guess that answers the previous doubts whether or not I can charge a premium for my product when others are charging 1/2 that.

Once I figure out just how high I can go with steady sales, if it's the premium price that I had been targeting in line with my competitor, I will be making major changes to the assembly process, ordering a larger shipment in time for the holiday season.

PPC ACos is good. Time to figure out Shopping Ads

 

[Denim Chicken]

I have a question for any ecommerce guys reading, I'm crossing bridges as I get to them.
Today I hit $1300 in sales revenue at the 2 week mark. Problem: Inventory management, margins.

I'm selling about 5/day at the $25 price point. I sell 10/day at the $19.99 price point. This is with less than a handful of reviews.
COGS is around $7 and this leaves my margin thin after FBA fees.

The main issue I have is at the rate I'm selling, I will be out of stock for the holiday season. I've never dealt with those months.
Actually I will have to order now if I want to be in stock before my initial 500 units run out since I estimate about 6-8 weeks by sea.

My supplier has been firm in saying the next order MOQ is 3000, which was his initial MOQ I talked down (for a higher unit price).
He said they don't make money on anything smaller and the wastage from the production wouldn't be worth it for them.

PROS:
- At this quantity, the price/unit by sea freight decreases the landed COGS substantially, essentially bringing my COGS landed to about $4.
- At that price point, I can afford to sell at $19.99 and still make a 25-30% margin. If I gain reviews and bump up to $25, it'll be more like 40% margins. My competitor with 700 reviews sells for $30, which I hope to hit with enough reviews.

CONS:
- 3000 units is a lot given the rate of sale. In terms of turnover, it is an entire year's worth of inventory selling at 10 units/day. Or if I only sell 5 a day, it will take me 2 years to move that product, PLUS the 400 I have now.
- I haven't received feedback or reviews from customers yet but have sent out review emails thru feedbackz. I've only been live 2 weeks.


My gut is telling me to deal with going out of stock during the holidays and reorder after I have more feedback.
The other side of me thinks if I order 3000, I'll be in stock for the holidays, I can reduce to even 17.99 and still make a profit and gain market share, get reviews, move more than 10 units/day, slowly raise the prices as reviews trickle in. And maybe at the 1 year mark, Ill hit the $30 price point.

Best case scenario, the inventory is sold out way before the 1 year mark.
Worst case scenario, I sit on inventory and it moves too slow, I'm chained to a product that is eating up my capital and moving at at trickle, or even worse, there are changes I'd like to make or improvements and I cannot until the inventory is all cleared out.

I'm leaning one way but I'd like input here on the margins and scenario?

@amp0193 @biophase @AllenCrawley @Vigilante @Ecom man

 

[amp0193]

Thanks. Asking you the same question, based on your experience, how many months of inventory is appropriate? 6 months?

As little as possible. I don't think of it as "months of inventory" but as "how long is my does it take for a dollar to return to my pocket". So, cash flow.

When I compare new products, cash flow is the most important determining factor. How long is my cash outlayed, and how fast can I turnover inventory.

In my business, it take 6-8 weeks to get my dollar back. I turnover inventory every 2-3 months. This is because, lead times are fast: 7 days production, 3 days ship. I have product in my hands 3 days after payment.

If it's not workable, your suggestion is to find another supplier? They're pretty good, have always been up front with me, and currently my product is custom it would mean starting over with everything for that part.

Or figure out a way to sell more product.

There is risk it won't get here in time for the holidays. So earlier the better I make an order if I'm going to do it.

This is true. If you're going to order, do it soon. Preferably 2 weeks ago.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Things are steady. Beauty of low competition niche or product means you can go out of stock whenever you want and still come back and make the same amount of sales despite having been out for a week.

The only downside to that is I wouldn't make a habit of going out of stock or low because that is how hijackers use software to find listings to leech onto.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Nice thread brother!

I was thinking of using splitly just to test pricing or using the Profit Peak. How's that going for you?

Hey, Thanks. Hmm for Splitly I only did it for a short period of time. A lot of people recommended it and I can see the value of it if you have quite a few products but for me, I only have the 1 product so it was actually better for me to just go in and change the price manually.

I settled at price of around $23 or so versus the initial $20 or $25. $25 has more profit but I didn't notice at first that my ACos is higher due to selling less units/lower sales velocity.

Anyway, I'm sure Splitly is good but I've had my share of bugs with it. It wasn't changing the prices it was supposed to, and after a while I just asked for a refund.

 

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[Denim Chicken]

I'll be closing out this product and will do a final review of my experience.

One downside to ecommerce is that the # of people who help by leaving positive but honest reviews are much fewer than those that leave bad reviews because they have no idea how ratings affect your listing.

Since the launch (maybe 6 mo now), I've gotten maybe 4 organic real reviews? Most of them are 5 stars but you cannot underestimate the stupidity of some people.

One person complained that the item was too short. Nothing about the quality. Well, the length is RIGHT THERE in the title and description. And the length is a standard size.

They left the first 2 star rating for a mistake they made. Annoys the shit out of me. Due to the lack of total # of review, this review hurts the listing.

I have approx 40-50 more units, I will do my best to just maximize the profits per unit during the next 2 weeks and hopefully it'll sell out and this review won't affect too much.

 

[Andy Black]

I'm a private person, I don't like posting things too much online. But reading some of the threads like @Vick @biophase @Ecom man @Walter Hay, it's very cool to see development and growth in hindsight (and real-time). So I'm deciding to log my steps.

Things I have accomplished so far:
- Read a lot of materials and threads on here, particularly related to ecommerce, Amazon, product development over the course of few years. Never had the capital, time, or balls to drop a large amount of money (and risk) into importing something until now.
My justification for this is comes from being presented with an unexpected turn of events in life, and also having faith in my product that at the very least I'll break even or lose only a little bit of money.

- Developed a working prototype of my product. Started out with sketches, brainstorming, ordering raw parts online to assemble it myself, involved drilling and cutting. This gave me the personal hands-on experience to know the materials and dimensions needed, how it looks, how long it takes to assemble.

- Created a good name for my company. Spent a few weeks creating a logo in Illustrator in vector format. Also spent those weeks using Photoshop to create blown up diagrams of the product with dimensions to send to my supplier.

- Brainstormed and chose appropriate colors based on the vision of my product and company, tweaked the color palette. I had to make a lot of adjustments not just based on looks but also what is possible thru suppliers, which is something you can't account for without having the experience or working with the suppliers and asking questions. Planning can only get you so far.

- Tested the product everyday for the past few weeks, taking notes on potential changes required.

- Packaging and shipping design and layout for the maximum efficiency. Least weight, space and cost.. while a) looking great and no compromise to appeal b) Amazon ready even though I'm planning on selling from my own website as well. Needs to compatible universally with FBA. c) Sturdy, doesn't destroy product.

- Today, paid over $400+ on samples of 5 units each of few parts. A bit of risk here, it's really expensive for samples because my product is custom, it requires set up fees, etc. The risk here is that the quality will be shit. The shipping, fees, printing set up, etc. are all wasted on if the product is bad.
I thought about the option to ask for non-custom sample first, and then if it's OK to proceed with a custom sample order again. But that'll take too long, I want to get to market. So this is the ante for testing this supplier with the final product in mind.

And that is where I am today. Sent over payment today for the samples with an estimated delivery time of 2 weeks from now.. which is May 2.


Plans while waiting for sample order #1 to arrive:
- Create a beautiful, customized product insert/packaging design using Illustrator to reflect my brand and things I want to include.

- Use my web design skills to create and launch my Ecommerce website.

- Contact more suppliers and order samples for other parts required in the assembly of the final product. Probably will take another 2 weeks minimum and cost another $100 each for the samples.
I'm looking into domestic sourcing for parts. The margins may still work and shipping time/cost may be a wash.

- Register for Amazon FBA and figure out all the details required for this. Handle any of the verification process, set up, etc. File for LLC once I see traction in sales.

After all necessary samples arrive:
- Place orders from all necessary suppliers.
- Assemble each unit from first batch by hand. Ship out to FBA
- Promote and run ads


My main concern at the moment is the quality of the parts produced and the ability to produce the color I requested. I am hoping they get it right. My contact has been good so far.

Good for you.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Heard back from Manufacturer #1 about Sample #1. Days to be completed was about 15 days but with the holidays might be slower. Emailed very brief wishing them good holidays and for an update and clarified I didn't mean to rush them.

Said part 1 is done, part 2 should be done today. Printing should be done next week. Shooting to have samples shipped next week. I should receive them sometime mid-May. He's going to send me pictures and if the pictures look OK enough, I'm going to start building my next steps out which is:

- Build a photobooth
- Acquire a camera. Rent or buy used
- Finish the copy on my websites and packaging
- File for LLC. It seems unnecessary so I was originally going to wait until the product showed sales. But...
A) Amazon requires you to give them EIN, legal name, etc. and I don't wish to do business under my name.
B) Brother's a lawyer, can do it for free in about 20 mins
C) When I started this venture, I promised myself I'm not going to throw the towel in after a failure. I figured my chances at finding a dud were there and so I'm resolved to launch at least 3 products, learning from the previous one whether win or fail.
- Register for seller central. get FNSKU printed, finish out the product copy and images
- Shoot video content

I imagine realistically if all these samples turn out great (which is best case scenario), it wouldn't be until July or Aug until I can even sell them what with shipping, production, assembly, sending to FBA, etc.

The biggest difficulty here is time. It's taking so long to get things done, I work pretty fast so the biggest sap on time is due to production. I wouldn't mind the losses so much after 7 mo but the 7 mo of wasted time if the product is a dud would be annoying and frustrating.

Sometimes I want to get a second product started but I dont want to tie up capital and spread my focus too thin. Maybe something that isn't as complicated. My first product has 4+ parts that also requires assembly, a lot of them from different manufacturers so, essentially equiv to importing 4 different products. (and assembly on top)

Still looking for assembly solutions. Assembly companies I reached out to have really shitty websites and never get back to me with a quote.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Sample #3 - Have my doubts

Talked to my supplier and asked for paypal for the sample payment. He wanted to talk on whatsapp and gave me the paypal through that, which was a little weird. He also gave me his personal payment (I said I wanted his company paypal). He said the paypal was his financial directors but it has his name on it. His claim is they do not use paypal as it is risky for them.

Sent payment May 1 as he said he won't be back until after May 1 due to holidays. Didn't hear back even after I sent payment other than confirmation, so I emailed him and he gave me tracking # yesterday.

The tracking # doesn't show anything in Google, I asked him to double check.

He sends me the actual UPS waybill slip with the tracking # which is great. He also sent me a picture of the samples I wanted so it really seems like a lot of effort to scam me out of $60.

I contacted UPS, they verified it is indeed a real tracking # but electronic info has not been uploaded. Which means it hasn't been scanned/shipped yet. It's a fairly large supplier so I'm hoping it is in the process of being sent.

The products are better than the others I've found with a lot of variety. But I have my doubts about communication and sending a full order amount via bank transfer after this.

Sample #2 supplier gave me their paypal, they're very small and a trader. Sent the sample the next day and I got it in a week.

 

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[Denim Chicken]

Supplier #1 sent me pics of the sample, unrefined. But the color is pretty close to my wanting. I have to see it in person to be 100% sure but so far looks good. Given that color was a big issue for me and I am paying extra for it, this is a huge step.

He said they should have sent it out this week, waiting on them to finish everything up.

 

[Denim Chicken]

DO SOMETHING EVERYDAY.

I try to do something everyday even if it's responding to an email or fixing a stupid banner on a website. A good habit to get into. And those little things you get out of the way on a slow day compounds and makes your life easier. A list of 30 "little" things to do is quite stressful as it's a lot for your brain to process so I try to knock those things out little bit at a time.

Today:
- Got my Amazon account reactivated. They were quick about it.
- Received my photo backdrop
- About to take some product photos, I need to figure out lighting my lamps are yellow. Might mess with the photo settings or edit afterwards.
- Send out my rebate for the DSLR camera I bought. I got burned before for forgetting about this (that's how they get ya)
- Finalize insert and get it printed
- Contact my suppliers and ask for pricing on freight, weight dimensions, etc. Place order Monday.

 

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[Denim Chicken]

Product photos.. took forever. It sucks because my product is larger than a standard photo booth so I used a white backdrop but when you do that, white isn't exactly white. There are areas that are gray and darker because the background isn't lit. I had to use photoshop and pen tool to individually outline the entire thing and put it on a white background.

Website is 80% done. Got finalized shipping costs from supplier 1 and 2. Waiting on supplier 3.



Any of you guys that want to chime in, would love a little feedback. @AllenCrawley @biophase @amp0193 @JasonR @Ecom man and anyone else that has some ecommerce experience

Now that I have exact freight pricing, I am re-running the numbers for profitability and having some doubt.

The cost of the product landed is about $7. Using amazon's fba calculator for the fees, the breakeven point is around $19-20. Before ad costs.

There are 3 main competitors I am minding:
- The top competitor is priced at $15 with around 800 reviews. The product is not better than my product. I bought it and I made my product custom because I bought 3 of them due to breakage. They have a lot of different products and are quite a decent sized company with lots of employees.
- 2nd top competitor is priced around $30. They seem to sell equally well, they have around 500-600 reviews. It's definitely a tougher built product than the top competitor. Again, my product addresses issues with their product. Theyre not a very big company and seem to be doing well still. I see them on google adwords and received 100% impression share and 2 sales at $29 when I tested few months ago.
- 3rd guy has maybe 100 reviews and priced at $12-13. Straight from china, not branded, terrible quality. I broke 2 of them using it. But cheap enough to use one time for a few weeks I guess.

Given that I took all this into consideration while I designed my product and improved it, I feel confident I can price near the upper range. But I have no real way of knowing for sure and the fear of loss is making me consider all angles.

My product objectively looks better than all 3, has features all 3 lack, and is better quality. It is also hand assembled here by me with catchier branding.

If I price around $25, my profit margin is $5 after fees and COGS, which is is 20% profit margin.
At $30, profit margin is 30%. This is probably best case scenario, I don't see myself going above this. I probably will want to stay in the 20s.
Once again, $20 is the break even point so I really can't go lower than that.

Competitors are priced anywhere from $12-29.99 so kind of worried I run the risk of not having enough margins in the case it flops. It also doesn't include ad costs. I can price it at 19.99 and run ads at a loss until I get ranked and then compete at the higher price mark.

Any thoughts on the margin I'm working with?

 

[Denim Chicken]

Placed my orders. Should be live in 2 months hopefully

Finished my website and woocommerce setup

While I wait:
- Shoot video
- Order shipping supplies
- Print inserts
- Put inserts into the polybags and stick Amazon labels on them so theyre ready to go
- Partially assemble a part sourced domestically
- Do accounting with Quickbooks
- Research 2nd product

MODS, you can move to outside. dont think i'll be disclosing anything sensitive

 

[Denim Chicken]

Not a fan of the margins at all. I regularly spend 15-20% of my sales cost in ad spend. If your margin are only 20% it will basically prevent you from using Adwords unless your cost per conversion is amazingly low. Just curious... what is the size of the item?

It's not heavy but its long. Amazon deems it oversized. So for fulfillment outside of Amazon I am using shipping tubes that posters come in. Sent media mail or first class I think it can be around $5-6 for shipping coast to coast.

These are the margins for my order of 500 units. The prices are higher. At scale say at a quantity of 3000 units, I can reduce the total cost of goods by about $1 from about $7 to $6.

I dont see how you can lower the costs any lower with my design. If it was any smaller it would fall into the cheap chinese quality range which competitors are selling around $12-15. The quality one is selling around $30 which is what I am trying to price at. Mine (IMO) is better than theirs.


Actually it was your thread that got me testing on adwords. I bought a competitors product for $8-9, ran adwords and got 100% impression share and got 2 sales in about a weeks time. Sold for $32 shipped (each) and ad cost was I think around $5-6 per sale so it was profitable.

This was late 2016. The only reason I did not continue is because 2 sales in 1 week is terrible. and I had 100% impression share on adwords. So despite the profitable margin after adwords, I decided it wasn't worth my time shipping and fulfilling. Not to mention my competitors product sucked so I didnt want to sell anymore of it.

Well now I designed my variation of it that's better quality. I am seeing volume on Amazon from my competitors so I think that would be my primary source of traffic. I also havent tried google shopping yet.

Amazon fees take up a ton. Close to $12 or so.

 

[Denim Chicken]

If you can ship it yourself and save $6-7 per item I would considering doing that for sales outside of Amazon. (At least at the beginning) Using FBA and having it ship from Amazon's warehouse is a huge boost when selling on Amazon but for sales on your own site self fulfillment would double your margins. Unless the volume of sales is absolutely spectacular I don't see how you can afford to grow with margins at 20%

That's definitely the plan for anything outside of Amazon. So for anything done on my website, it'll be self fulfillment for now. Quite honestly, I was a bit torn whether or not to continue with this, I had some doubts. But the initial plan was that if I break even I will have been happy to call it a learning experience.
However, if its a small profit margin, I can scale out to other products in the niche. Or I might drop it all together.

I really dont know how much volume will be done, both top 2 competitors are doing $8k-10k/mo and have consistent reviews and sales on Amazon which is what made me think my initial adwords experience of 2 sales/week should be reconsidered.

The competitor that is of highest quality with the highest price point has been doing this for years and seems to be able to support the business.

I am going to go all in with this product as I already placed my order and call it a learning experience. In the past I never had the chance to fully test FB ads or IG influencers, adwords, etc. because I didnt' have a product I could get behind without feeling like I was wasting money testing ads.

Now, at least the product itself is my own creation and of high quality and something I am passionate about. I know the product itself isn't a problem, so if I run ads in all channels and it doesn't do well, I'll move onto something else.


Are you still only using adwords or did you move onto other forms of advertising? How did the products at the trade show go for you?

 

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[Denim Chicken]

Your product will be a tough sell. You need to be at $20 to break even and have competitors selling at $12-$15 and one at $30.

You will hopefully break even on your first run. Without reviews and just launching, it will be hard to get people to pay $20. I hope your photos and listing are top notch as you will need them to be. How well can pictures convey that your product is better than the others?

I see you pricing at $19.99 to get sales, maybe lowering to $14.99 to gain some sales velocity and ranking. Then slowly raising to $20 and to $25 if possible.

Thanks. Yeah I was either going to lower it further if 19.99 didnt work for a few days, to 14.99 or run ads after a few friends leave a review. Wouldn't get more than 2-3 reviews from friends and family though.
I am hoping to price at $29.99 or match my competitor at $27.99.

At scale pricing and at $29.99, it is 30% margin. So 30% is the best case scenario. I'm not too thrilled about that. It was more of a learning experience and a product I believe in I want people to enjoy.

I was also hoping to address the assembly problem at some point and make it hands-off entirely and scale out to more products in the niche, having multiple low volume lower competition SKUs to diversify my risk but with the assembly issue and the margins, I'm not sure if it'll make sense to continue this product. I wont know for sure until I get it though.

To answer your question, the pictures and the description bullet points can outline my improvements over the competitors. I am thinking there are a good amount of repeat customers of my competitors priced at $15 (because its a good product but requires constant replacing) and they might see my new one and decide to try it out.
My product looks better, it addresses a particular safety concern and saves them money by addressing another longevity issue.


Product should be here in about 2 months or less hoping nothing goes wrong. It's door-to-door shipping.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Still using mainly Adwords and Bing a little. (Bing doesn't get near the search volume of Google) Products from the trade show are getting there. Have one new website up and running and bringing in about $100 a day in sales so far. Second site is in the works but I'm taking a vacation for the rest of June so won't get much done on it until July.

Do you use facebook for retargeting? I know generics are not popular on fb, disruptive marketing is better with 1 hit wonder, popular products but retargeting basically just follows your users who have been to your website already around, maybe something good to try if you haven't yet.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Assembled products this weekend with family help. 70 units assembled, packaged, and boxed up ready to go.

First time dealing with Amazon Seller inventory interface, was fairly easy to use.

Based on the weight and dimensions, the Inbound Shipment Cost to Amazon is a lot less than I estimated.
In my spreadsheet, I estimated about $1.3/unit to send it into Amazon. It cost me closer to $.30/unit to send it into the fulfillment warehouse, saving me about $1/unit.

Also, when I go to "Manage Inventory", there's a column with the listing and the "FEE PREVIEW". The Amazon referral fee of 15% is unchanged.
But the estimated FBA fulfillment fee is about $1.50 less than what I estimated using the FBA fee estimator. This is good news but I'm not sure if this is an error and the system does not know to add the oversize fee or if it truly all inclusive.

If it's the final fee, then I am thrilled as I save another $1.50/unit.

All in all, if all these numbers turn out to be accurate, the BE point is around $17 instead of the previous $20, which is a big difference.
It also means at the price mark I am looking at, the profit margin well exceeds 30%.

Sending units to Amazon now. I plan to focus on Amazon first before I move to other avenues.

 

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[Denim Chicken]

Assembled and packed more units this weekend.

Redid the website, there was a bug that was messing up the product listings. Cleaned it up and ads are live on adwords. Also sent in my product feed for google shopping and amazon will be live soon hopefully, tracking is showing the warehouse delivery tomorrow.

Also devised some ways to cut down on assembly if this first shipment does well. If not, then I'll ditch it.

Wasted $5 on ad spend because I forgot to turn off check out test mode..

 

[Denim Chicken]

Quick update:

- F*ck google shopping. So many stupid rules and no customer support. I'm putting that on hold.
- Adwords not doing great, need to figure out what's wrong. Might manually pull keywords, automatic isn't doing much. Lots of impressions some clicks, but CTR is terrible, less than 1%. Analytics with woocommerce isn't working properly need to figure that out. Heatmaps is OK but not great. All text ads.

Ad paused, going to focus solely on Amazon for now.

- Product is live on Amazon, spent few hours mapping out and finding out the keywords and which ones are indexed. Product is able to be found now.
- Started an IG account and one of my photos got 100+ likes in a day thru organic hashtags. Not using any bots or actively doing much other than following maybe 10-20 related accounts /day. Trying to keep the posting to about 2-3 posts/day. All my own photos and captions.
- Debating if I should start an Amazon PPC campaign before I have a few reviews. Will figure this out and decide by the end of the day.
@biophase : You mention to get a few reviews, which I'm in the process of but most likely will take another 1-2 weeks for it from family and friends for them to get the product delivered and write the review. My product photos are great, I temporarily lowered my price to $17.99 which is breakeven without ad spend. Any thoughts on if I should wait or run a test campaign now?