Before I post, I just wanted to take a second to say Thank You for the thread! I went through the entire thread and there's some real golden nuggets in there!
So I saw a thread here the other day where a dude went from $0 to 30K monthly selling his own home made Tea. So it got me thinking... why can't I do that? (I've been wanting to do e-commerce since I was in my teens but was not able to figure it out in the earlier years, and didn't want to "drop ship" someone else's product.) I'm in my mid-20s now.
Now I'm not looking at tea, but I have been mixing and making my own product (for personal use) for the last couple years. I've given it to my cousins and they also take it regularly.
(During a really bad time in my life, where I suffered a bad back injury I spent many, many, many hours laying in bed figuring out this recipe and why each ingredient in this recipe is used.)
...The bad - It's in the Supplement Industry. Amazon is crazy competitive.. like 100review products, even on page 2..3... And I do not have a very large budget. (I'll get into numbers soon.)
The differentiator, most of these products only incorporate two of the ingredients from my mix, and they add maybe one other generic ingredient that I'd argue isn't the best (So a 3-4 ingredient product). There are maybe two or three other products that actually are sort of similar - however they're extremely niche and not on Amazon. They also do not do any budgeted ads.. My product is 10 ingredients and every ingredient has beneficially points. It can also replace multiple different cheaper products, so you just need my one product.(Plus it's gluten free, vegan/keto friendly, all natural, etc.)
I would like to Drive traffic through Organic Social at first, and instagram/fb ads. (And when budget allows to scale up, YouTube ads) My main focus would be direct sales through Shopify, and then FBA as a secondary (as FBA is much more competitive).
Eventually as I scale, I'd like to wholesale to specialty shops as well (shoppers drug mart, gnc, holistic stores, etc).
I'm looking at around $1580 for my first lot of 80units. Where $550 would go to marketing and $1030 product cost (where half is the actual raw materials, and the other half is product packaging/labels/etc.)
- I believe there would be room in the future to reduce product packaging costs with larger MOQ or Off-Shore production. (Same with raw materials for my actual product).
- at least 50 units of the first lot would be at a loss to help drive awareness / traffic.
I would retail at $60 which seems to be the upper price point of quality supplements in this area. Most of the quality products seem to be at that price point. (A lot of cheaper products in the $20-30 range, and few are also listed above $60.)
...so basically I'm looking at $13 (Without marketing costs)/ $20 including marketing costs per unit, that would then retail at $60. (And eventually also wholesale at $30.)
- The cost numbers are all with the lowest possible MOQ so there may be room to improve in the future.
So I guess my question would be...
Do I sound crazy for attempting to step into the supplement market despite multiple warning not to? Or is there potential to make this work?
I believe that once a customer tries the product they will feel the benefits. Like no mid-day burn out... but even more energy than they had! (just one of the many benefits of the product.)
Sorry if that's long, but I've been turning this over in my mind for a little while now, and I'd really love some advice from those who actually have their feet in the mud.
So I saw a thread here the other day where a dude went from $0 to 30K monthly selling his own home made Tea. So it got me thinking... why can't I do that? (I've been wanting to do e-commerce since I was in my teens but was not able to figure it out in the earlier years, and didn't want to "drop ship" someone else's product.) I'm in my mid-20s now.
Now I'm not looking at tea, but I have been mixing and making my own product (for personal use) for the last couple years. I've given it to my cousins and they also take it regularly.
(During a really bad time in my life, where I suffered a bad back injury I spent many, many, many hours laying in bed figuring out this recipe and why each ingredient in this recipe is used.)
...The bad - It's in the Supplement Industry. Amazon is crazy competitive.. like 100review products, even on page 2..3... And I do not have a very large budget. (I'll get into numbers soon.)
The differentiator, most of these products only incorporate two of the ingredients from my mix, and they add maybe one other generic ingredient that I'd argue isn't the best (So a 3-4 ingredient product). There are maybe two or three other products that actually are sort of similar - however they're extremely niche and not on Amazon. They also do not do any budgeted ads.. My product is 10 ingredients and every ingredient has beneficially points. It can also replace multiple different cheaper products, so you just need my one product.(Plus it's gluten free, vegan/keto friendly, all natural, etc.)
I would like to Drive traffic through Organic Social at first, and instagram/fb ads. (And when budget allows to scale up, YouTube ads) My main focus would be direct sales through Shopify, and then FBA as a secondary (as FBA is much more competitive).
Eventually as I scale, I'd like to wholesale to specialty shops as well (shoppers drug mart, gnc, holistic stores, etc).
I'm looking at around $1580 for my first lot of 80units. Where $550 would go to marketing and $1030 product cost (where half is the actual raw materials, and the other half is product packaging/labels/etc.)
- I believe there would be room in the future to reduce product packaging costs with larger MOQ or Off-Shore production. (Same with raw materials for my actual product).
- at least 50 units of the first lot would be at a loss to help drive awareness / traffic.
I would retail at $60 which seems to be the upper price point of quality supplements in this area. Most of the quality products seem to be at that price point. (A lot of cheaper products in the $20-30 range, and few are also listed above $60.)
...so basically I'm looking at $13 (Without marketing costs)/ $20 including marketing costs per unit, that would then retail at $60. (And eventually also wholesale at $30.)
- The cost numbers are all with the lowest possible MOQ so there may be room to improve in the future.
So I guess my question would be...
Do I sound crazy for attempting to step into the supplement market despite multiple warning not to? Or is there potential to make this work?
I believe that once a customer tries the product they will feel the benefits. Like no mid-day burn out... but even more energy than they had! (just one of the many benefits of the product.)
Sorry if that's long, but I've been turning this over in my mind for a little while now, and I'd really love some advice from those who actually have their feet in the mud.
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