New Niche, New Brand - Amazon > eCommerce > Retail

[DrkSide]

With your sales increasing what do you find you are shifting your time more towards? (customer retention, fulfillment, anything)

Right now my focus is completely on adding more products and skus. I have a couple in the works and am doing research on a few more. Financing the new inventory has been an issue. While I am selling quite a bit and investing almost 100% back into the business it really takes a lot of money to get a new product off the ground. I did not have enough inventory of my main product to make it past Dec 1st.

Amazing, I kind of wish I lived in the US to get into Amazon it seems really interesting.
Will be keeping up with this thread and congratulations of your hard work payoff!

Question: You mentioned you started with $380 for your first product 1 order. However how much money did it actually require to start what you are doing, business wise and not living? For example if I wanted to start tomorrow, what kind of cash would you recommend a good starting point?

Look around the forum. There are quite a few that are doing FBA from Canada. Not sure on the details but some are having their products shipped to them and then shipping to the US and some are using QC centers in the US to ship to then to Amazon. I would not ship product directly to Amazon.

As far as cash I don't have a particular amount that I would recommend. It really depends on your product price and estimated sales. If I had to do it over again I would start the same way. The cash won't make up for the lessons I learned in between a $400 inventory order and a $15000 one.

Let amazon take care of your shipping for you..i have been reading about that somewhere on here...amazon fba

Amazon FBA is all that I use. I do not fulfill any of my products at the moment. I sometimes do ship items from my website sales and sometimes use multi-channel orders from Amazon to fulfill them.

How is going all ? That is the result of my first promotion and 500 inventory ... What do you think ? Can one product make 3000 or 5000 sales per month ?

My goal is hit 30-50 sales per day as soon as possible ... After my promotion My product was in top1 in her category and much of my keyword was page 20 to 4

In this moment 1500 units will go to Amazon ... I hope before of day 25 and I will put 300 units in freeaway and put money in PPC ... My reviews at this moment are 20

It looks like you are off to a good start. Is all of those sales giveaway items?

As for 3000 or 5000 do you mean units or dollars? That will depend on the product that you choose.

 

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[Nrr]

Right now my focus is completely on adding more products and skus. I have a couple in the works and am doing research on a few more. Financing the new inventory has been an issue. While I am selling quite a bit and investing almost 100% back into the business it really takes a lot of money to get a new product off the ground. I did not have enough inventory of my main product to make it past Dec 1st.



Look around the forum. There are quite a few that are doing FBA from Canada. Not sure on the details but some are having their products shipped to them and then shipping to the US and some are using QC centers in the US to ship to then to Amazon. I would not ship product directly to Amazon.

As far as cash I don't have a particular amount that I would recommend. It really depends on your product price and estimated sales. If I had to do it over again I would start the same way. The cash won't make up for the lessons I learned in between a $400 inventory order and a $15000 one.



Amazon FBA is all that I use. I do not fulfill any of my products at the moment. I sometimes do ship items from my website sales and sometimes use multi-channel orders from Amazon to fulfill them.



It looks like you are off to a good start. Is all of those sales giveaway items?

As for 3000 or 5000 do you mean units or dollars? That will depend on the product that you choose.

3000 - 5000 units yes of one product .... And yes 100 % giveaway ..In this moment ( I was of page 20 to 4.... and I hope can make a giveaway similar and be in the page 1 in my keywords) I have 30 reviews like seller and 20 in my product I hope can get more


Do you use multi-channel? I want connect my magento site to Amazon FB ( Do you save the cost of amazon referral sales right? )

 

[DrkSide]

3000 - 5000 units yes of one product

Yes it is possible to do 3000-5000+ units if the product is good and the niche support that.

I don't work in areas that see those kind of numbers so I am not really qualified to answer. I would be careful giving away that many units though. I haven't seen any get banned yet but with the most recent Amazon TOS change excessive giveaways are agains the TOS and can get your account banned. I try not to make waves though since I am in this for the long haul.

Yes, I use multi-channel fulfillment to ship some orders from my website when I don't have stock locally. The fees are less but I don't know exactly what is/is not included.

 

[DrkSide]

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

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

 

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[ddall]

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

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

This is my businesses greatest challenge: accessing additional capital ($100K plus min).

 

[DrkSide]

This is my businesses greatest challenge: accessing additional capital ($100K plus min).

Same here. Can't use credit cards because my supplier doesn't take them and the paypal fees would eat me alive. So getting cash is hard. Especially since I only have financials back to April to show banks. I actually met with a commercial lender before I went to the private lender and he wanted at least 2 years financials.

There are a few other avenues that I looked at but this was the quickest way so I could get my order in time to get the inventory.

 

[DrkSide]

Another issue that I am dealing with that some here may benefit from.

As we know Amazon damages quite a bit of product in the warehouse. They reimburse me for it and I move on. However, they can (and have) been selling some of my "damaged" products via the Amazon Warehouse Deals account. The problem lies is that they don't even have the knowledge of what should be in the box or to test my products to see if they are working.

I am dealing with two customers right now that have had issues with this. One received a package that had some accessories but did not have the main product. One received one that did not work at all. I gave the customers brand new items at the same or less cost than they purchased the used ones at to keep the bad reviews away and help the brand.

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

 

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[DrkSide]

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

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

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

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

 

[Nrr]

DrKside

Can you solve my question ? I have set up shopify with Amazon FBA , I want know what option must selec :
-Automatically fulfill the order's line items. ?
-Do not automatically fulfill any of the order's line items.?

 

[DrkSide]

DrKside

Can you solve my question ? I have set up shopify with Amazon FBA , I want know what option must selec :
-Automatically fulfill the order's line items. ?
-Do not automatically fulfill any of the order's line items.?

That is a decision that you have to make based on how you want to run your business.

 

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[ddall]

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

So, what happens when you have slow shipping times, lost inventory at Amazon, and long receiving times?
View attachment 11287
Now, this isn't exactly correct and I have probably only lost around $20k in sales. But that means I left $6,000 of profit on the table in the last 30 days. A note to myself and new seller. Front load your inventory as much as possible for Christmas next year.

Where in Seller Central do you find that estimate? I would love/hate to look at it.

 

[Tim Mitchell]

I was wondering about shipping to Amazon from Australia for FBA. Is it worth it or am i better off trying to sell on Ebay in Australia? I have vinyl records and second hand books that are ranked well on amazon.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

 

[DrkSide]

Where in Seller Central do you find that estimate? I would love/hate to look at it.

Under Inventory and then Inventory Planning. It says I have $42,000 in lost sales in the past 30 days right now. I am OOS on all products except for product 1 and only have ~20 left of those. My large order won't be in until mid January.

I was wondering about shipping to Amazon from Australia for FBA. Is it worth it or am i better off trying to sell on Ebay in Australia? I have vinyl records and second hand books that are ranked well on amazon.

You need to look at the cost of selling vs the profit for each venue to make that decision. Also make sure to look at the expected turnaround time.

 

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[DrkSide]

Time for an update.

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

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

Total: $27,409.73

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

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

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

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

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

 

[relentlessaction]

Well done DrkSide!

How many products are you selling?

 

[Dicky Dee]

Behave! Time to start looking in to this then, there's so many valuable posts on this forum about Amazon.

Im from Canada and I sell in US and Canada through FBA. You only get the cheap UPS rates for within US shipping and Canada you have to pay the high shipping fees to get it there. I send most of my products directly by air or sea to US but for the first shipments i send to myself here in Canada and then i use a shipping company that brings it to the border for me then i use UPS rates for shipping in the US which is unbeatable.

 

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[DrkSide]

Well done DrkSide!

How many products are you selling?

Currently I have 4 skus. Just launched my newest one the middle of November and it sold out within 30 days of 200 units.


Right now I am battling the hijackers. I have had two this week so far since I am out of stock. They see my better reviews, ranking, and pictures and hop on it. So far a C&D letter has made the first one go away and I have sent one to the second one. I also ordered each sellers product so that I can open an A-Z against them.

This is where Amazon is falling flat for me. I get they are helping the Chinese get their products here and listed. However, the system right now is innocent until proven guilty which can take quite some time for a package to arrive here from China and by which point the damage can be done. I wish I could send in registration paperwork that would make it a guilty until being proven innocent.

I know it is fruitless but I am going to contact Amazon about this today to see if it is possible to do anything.

 

[kwodzilla]

Currently I have 4 skus. Just launched my newest one the middle of November and it sold out within 30 days of 200 units.


Right now I am battling the hijackers. I have had two this week so far since I am out of stock. They see my better reviews, ranking, and pictures and hop on it. So far a C&D letter has made the first one go away and I have sent one to the second one. I also ordered each sellers product so that I can open an A-Z against them.

This is where Amazon is falling flat for me. I get they are helping the Chinese get their products here and listed. However, the system right now is innocent until proven guilty which can take quite some time for a package to arrive here from China and by which point the damage can be done. I wish I could send in registration paperwork that would make it a guilty until being proven innocent.

I know it is fruitless but I am going to contact Amazon about this today to see if it is possible to do anything.

I posted this in biophases' thread but I'll paste it here in case you don't see it, it might help you out.

If they don't respond to your polite C&D email, have a friend buy the product and have it shipped to them. Once your friend receives it, have them take pictures and alert Amazon that it is COUNTERFEIT. Wait a day then open an A-Z claiming that the person that has hopped on your listing is selling a fake, counterfeit, not authentic product since you are the manufacturer and tightly control distribution. Apparently they act faster and take it more seriously when a customer (your friend) complains about counterfeit since they obviously don't want have counterfeit products being sold on their platform.

 

[DrkSide]

I posted this in biophases' thread but I'll paste it here in case you don't see it, it might help you out.

If they don't respond to your polite C&D email, have a friend buy the product and have it shipped to them. Once your friend receives it, have them take pictures and alert Amazon that it is COUNTERFEIT. Wait a day then open an A-Z claiming that the person that has hopped on your listing is selling a fake, counterfeit, not authentic product since you are the manufacturer and tightly control distribution. Apparently they act faster and take it more seriously when a customer (your friend) complains about counterfeit since they obviously don't want have counterfeit products being sold on their platform.

It works the same as if I buy it and make the claim. However, if you have a friend more local to their shipping location (Normally China) you can expedite the process since they will receive it before someone in a different country.

 

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[Nrr]

That is a decision that you have to make based on how you want to run your business.

I m not sure about that.... because Amazon take some days in send the merchandise Can you give me advice about how you set up your shopify?

Can you share with me what is your HTML code in order notification ? or recommend me someone that can create a code for my shopify shop?

 

[DrkSide]

I m not sure about that.... because Amazon take some days in send the merchandise Can you give me advice about how you set up your shopify?

If you want an order to be sent to Amazon automatically choose that, if you want to have to do it manually choose that. This decision should take less than 30 seconds. I ship my website orders myself if I have stock and have Amazon ship them if I don't have stock locally.

Can you share with me what is your HTML code in order notification ? or recommend me someone that can create a code for my shopify shop?

I am not sure what you are referring to here.

 

[Nrr]

If you want an order to be sent to Amazon automatically choose that, if you want to have to do it manually choose that. This decision should take less than 30 seconds. I ship my website orders myself if I have stock and have Amazon ship them if I don't have stock locally.

oh ok so I dont ship nothing so Automatically

I am not sure what you are referring to here.

In shopify

Order confirmation
Sent automatically to the customer after they place their order. (Did you put something here ? to send automatically the UPS id to the buyer ?)

 

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[DrkSide]

Order confirmation
Sent automatically to the customer after they place their order. (Did you put something here ? to send automatically the UPS id to the buyer ?)

When you fulfill an order in shopify it sends a "shipped" email to the buyer letting them know that the item has shipped and giving them the tracking number. If you are using automatic shipments from Amazon I don't know how this works. For orders that I fulfill with stock via Amazon I wait until I get a shipped email and then I mark the items fulfilled in shopify and add the tracking number.

 

[Nrr]

When you fulfill an order in shopify it sends a "shipped" email to the buyer letting them know that the item has shipped and giving them the tracking number. If you are using automatic shipments from Amazon I don't know how this works. For orders that I fulfill with stock via Amazon I wait until I get a shipped email and then I mark the items fulfilled in shopify and add the tracking number.

Thanks for your help DrkSide,

About the payments in Shopify are process by amazon or the clients will pay you in paypal or other payment processor? Maybe you have login with amazon in your website ? I m using my shopify too for sell others type of digital products

If the clients pay to you directly, how you set up the cost of shipping that Amazon FBA have ?


PD: How you drive traffic to your shopify store ?

 

[JasonR]

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

Aim higher. Go for a million.

 

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[DrkSide]

About the payments in Shopify are process by amazon or the clients will pay you in paypal or other payment processor? Maybe you have login with amazon in your website ? I m using my shopify too for sell others type of digital products

Look here: https://docs.shopify.com/manual/settings/payments/payment-gateway

If the clients pay to you directly, how you set up the cost of shipping that Amazon FBA have ?

Look here: https://docs.shopify.com/manual/settings/shipping/fulfillment-services

PD: How you drive traffic to your shopify store ?

I don't currently run any traffic to the store. All of my visitors are organic at this point as I don't have the inventory to support running paid ads and keep enough stock at Amazon.

 

[DrkSide]

Aim higher. Go for a million.

I have no doubt that I can reach a million this year. It really comes down to two things:

1. Adding SKUs - currently have 4 and in the process of adding 1 more that designs and packaging is approved for. I want to be at 10 by the time q4 rolls around. I have 6 samples coming for new products to test.

2. Funding - This is where I have issues. Being not even a year old even with my sales history it is difficult to get the funding that I need to grow to a million this year. I am NOT giving up. Just may have to get creative.

 

[Nrr]

Look here: https://docs.shopify.com/manual/settings/payments/payment-gateway

Look here: https://docs.shopify.com/manual/settings/shipping/fulfillment-services

I don't currently run any traffic to the store. All of my visitors are organic at this point as I don't have the inventory to support running paid ads and keep enough stock at Amazon.

Oh ok so ... Your organic traffic I imagine that is people that see the url of your website in the package of your product right ? Do you give any incentive to that buyers buy in your website instead of amazon?

 

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[amp0193]

2. Funding - This is where I have issues. Being not even a year old even with my sales history it is difficult to get the funding that I need to grow to a million this year. I am NOT giving up. Just may have to get creative.

I remember there being an INSIDERS call with zen******* a while back, where the topic was finding money. He was saying that not having money is the not a valid reason for limiting business growth, as it's so easy to find.

I'm paraphrasing off my memory, but you should definitely go and check that out if you haven't heard it.

 

[DrkSide]

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

I agree completely. Let me rephrase a little.

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