Hi fellow fastlaners,
for those who want to read my introduction to have little background of who I am and what I am planning to do you can find it here.
So it's been quite some time since I actively took part in this forum. But since I am actively working on a business now I thought I might share my experience and insights. If it helps at least one person on the forum it would already be a success.
I am doing this while having a fulltime job. So I always work on this business after my regular job in the evening and on weekends.
So let's get right into it...
On September 1st I officially started the company by registering it in my home country of germany. I decided to start the business as a sole proprietor because setting up the german equivalent of an LLC comes with a lot of cost and taxation also becomes very complicated. As soon as I have enough capital I will switch to an LLC though.
Straight after that I took care of the other formalities such as getting the tax ID, opening a bank account for the business and getting the EORI number needed for commerical import in germany.
From there it was all about finding the first product. I didn't just want to find a product where I still see space for another player since I am really about creating a brand. I needed to find a whole niche or category where I could launch multiple other correlating products in the future. This wasn't easy at all and I would sit in front of my laptop till late at night scrolling through Amazon. All ideas and possible products were noted to further investigate them.
After about two to three weeks I had analyzed a couple of products with potential and had a clear winner. From there I ordered the top five best selling products of my future competitors. I went trough all the reviews to see what the competitors were lacking. After reviewing all this and testing the products myself I knew which points had to be improved.
On October 2nd I started contacting various suppliers on the platform Alibaba. My product can mainly be sourced either in China or Pakistan. I didn't exclude any country and had contact with multiple suppliers of each country.
In the meantime I had my brand logo done on Fiverr. I didn't have any specifics in mind and left the outcome pretty much open to the designer. I only gave a very loose framework. After the first designs came in I didn't like them at all and thought I might have to rethink the whole process. But since I had unlimited revisions I gave a more clear direction and after the third revsision I had a logo I was happy with.
After going through a lot of supplier contact I narrowed it down to two suppliers. One from China and one from Pakistan. I ordered samples from both but had this gut feeling I would go with the supplier from China since the contact was really good. But then this slowly shifted. It took the supplier from China ages to get the samples done and ship them to germany. In the meantime it took the supplier from Pakistan a week to produce the samples with my branding and send them to me.
When I received the samples from Pakistan I was very happy with them. They were clearly superior in quality than my competitors products. Only problem was pricing. So I waited for the samples from China which eventually also arrived. To keep it short. The samples sucked and they didn't follow my instructions which made the decision easy for me.
I tried to negotiate the price with my supplier and since I only wanted to order 500pcs in my first order there was basically no room for negotiation at all. So I had to make a choice. The price I would have to pay for the superior quality product which would stand out from my competitors products would impact my desired margin. I would still be profitable but just not as much. I decided to go for it anyway since I really wanted to add value and not just sell the same crap just with my logo on it.
On November 7th, after finalizing the design I placed the order of 500pcs with my supplier. I transferred the first 50% of the payment and then it was time to get to work on Amazon.
I opened my seller account and created the listing. I also got in touch with a product photographer and briefed him on the pictures I needed.
On December 2nd, after paying the remaining 50% of my order I got the confimation of my supplier that the order has been handed over to DHL and is beeing shipped to me. I tracked the shipment nervously multiple times each day. After only three days the shipment arrived in germany. I had to sort out all the documents for customs with DHL and sent them all they needed. From there nothing happened. First I thought this was due to the busy christmas season but then I called up DHL to see what was going on. They assured me everything is fine and it would be proceseed by customs the same day. Another two days passed and nothing happened. I called them again to find out someone forgot to pass on my EORI number to the customs department which was why my shipment was on hold. They sorted it out and the next day the shipment was about to arrive.
So on December 13th I finally received my first batch. My girlfriend and I opened every box to check each single unit. Overall I was very happy with the order. There were only a few minor missprinted labels which weren't really an issue. The supplier assured me he would make it up to me with my next order. I sent two units to my product photographer (multiple colors) and sent the rest off to Amazon.
From there there wasn't much I could do. I wouldn't get my product pictures until the next year because of the christmas holidays and needed to wait. This was very painful because I had product in stock and everything was set up. I was only lacking the pictures to start selling.
On January 2nd I finally received the product pictures and I wasn't happy. I used the pictures to launch anyway while the photographer was making the needed revisions. My launch strategy was to give away 70 units for 1€ over a course of 14 days to spike the algorithm and start ranking. This worked very well but then another problem came up. Amazon changed the rules once again (This is what happens when you violate the commandmend of control) and only customers that bought the product for the full price could actually leave a review. While it was never my strategy to gain reviews from the giveaway it was also impossible to do so from people who didn't buy the product from Amazon in the first place.
Shortly before the giveaway ended I started PPC. Again expectation and reality didn't match. I thought once I would be visible on page 1 through my PPC ads I would sell immeaditly. I didn't. I had to realize that for most keywords I was bidding on I didn't even get any page views. So for 99% of the keywords I wasn't showing up at all. There was basically one keyword I was showing up for. This is the main keyword for my product. Clicks are expensive but I just waited it out. There were a few sales here and there but nothing consistend and it looked far from good.
Two weeks after running PPC I evaluated what was going wrong:
1. Not showing up for most of the keywords
2. Not enough reviews
3. Price was set too high for the launch
I attacked 2 and 3 since it was something i could immediately take action on. I contacted a few friends and asked them to buy the product and leave a review. I also lowered the price.
Reviews came in and funnily enough after having a few verified reviews other people were able to leave a review as well again. So some reviews from the product testers of the giveaway also came through.
As of today Februrary 3rd, things are actually looking pretty decent. This week went good for the first time since I started selling. On tuesday I had 8 sales. Every day after that I had 3 sales each day until today. I left PPC running the whole time and will continue to do so. I am also starting to be visible for more keywords now on my PPC campagne and I am ranking on 1st page organically for most of the major keywords which is a huge success. I am really happy with how things are going at the moment and hope that this trend continues.
That's it for my first post in this new progress thread. I will try to keep this updated as much as possible. Of course I am open to answer any questions you might have or give more details in specific areas that interest you.
Thanks if you read this far!
Marco
for those who want to read my introduction to have little background of who I am and what I am planning to do you can find it here.
So it's been quite some time since I actively took part in this forum. But since I am actively working on a business now I thought I might share my experience and insights. If it helps at least one person on the forum it would already be a success.
I am doing this while having a fulltime job. So I always work on this business after my regular job in the evening and on weekends.
So let's get right into it...
On September 1st I officially started the company by registering it in my home country of germany. I decided to start the business as a sole proprietor because setting up the german equivalent of an LLC comes with a lot of cost and taxation also becomes very complicated. As soon as I have enough capital I will switch to an LLC though.
Straight after that I took care of the other formalities such as getting the tax ID, opening a bank account for the business and getting the EORI number needed for commerical import in germany.
From there it was all about finding the first product. I didn't just want to find a product where I still see space for another player since I am really about creating a brand. I needed to find a whole niche or category where I could launch multiple other correlating products in the future. This wasn't easy at all and I would sit in front of my laptop till late at night scrolling through Amazon. All ideas and possible products were noted to further investigate them.
After about two to three weeks I had analyzed a couple of products with potential and had a clear winner. From there I ordered the top five best selling products of my future competitors. I went trough all the reviews to see what the competitors were lacking. After reviewing all this and testing the products myself I knew which points had to be improved.
On October 2nd I started contacting various suppliers on the platform Alibaba. My product can mainly be sourced either in China or Pakistan. I didn't exclude any country and had contact with multiple suppliers of each country.
In the meantime I had my brand logo done on Fiverr. I didn't have any specifics in mind and left the outcome pretty much open to the designer. I only gave a very loose framework. After the first designs came in I didn't like them at all and thought I might have to rethink the whole process. But since I had unlimited revisions I gave a more clear direction and after the third revsision I had a logo I was happy with.
After going through a lot of supplier contact I narrowed it down to two suppliers. One from China and one from Pakistan. I ordered samples from both but had this gut feeling I would go with the supplier from China since the contact was really good. But then this slowly shifted. It took the supplier from China ages to get the samples done and ship them to germany. In the meantime it took the supplier from Pakistan a week to produce the samples with my branding and send them to me.
When I received the samples from Pakistan I was very happy with them. They were clearly superior in quality than my competitors products. Only problem was pricing. So I waited for the samples from China which eventually also arrived. To keep it short. The samples sucked and they didn't follow my instructions which made the decision easy for me.
I tried to negotiate the price with my supplier and since I only wanted to order 500pcs in my first order there was basically no room for negotiation at all. So I had to make a choice. The price I would have to pay for the superior quality product which would stand out from my competitors products would impact my desired margin. I would still be profitable but just not as much. I decided to go for it anyway since I really wanted to add value and not just sell the same crap just with my logo on it.
On November 7th, after finalizing the design I placed the order of 500pcs with my supplier. I transferred the first 50% of the payment and then it was time to get to work on Amazon.
I opened my seller account and created the listing. I also got in touch with a product photographer and briefed him on the pictures I needed.
On December 2nd, after paying the remaining 50% of my order I got the confimation of my supplier that the order has been handed over to DHL and is beeing shipped to me. I tracked the shipment nervously multiple times each day. After only three days the shipment arrived in germany. I had to sort out all the documents for customs with DHL and sent them all they needed. From there nothing happened. First I thought this was due to the busy christmas season but then I called up DHL to see what was going on. They assured me everything is fine and it would be proceseed by customs the same day. Another two days passed and nothing happened. I called them again to find out someone forgot to pass on my EORI number to the customs department which was why my shipment was on hold. They sorted it out and the next day the shipment was about to arrive.
So on December 13th I finally received my first batch. My girlfriend and I opened every box to check each single unit. Overall I was very happy with the order. There were only a few minor missprinted labels which weren't really an issue. The supplier assured me he would make it up to me with my next order. I sent two units to my product photographer (multiple colors) and sent the rest off to Amazon.
From there there wasn't much I could do. I wouldn't get my product pictures until the next year because of the christmas holidays and needed to wait. This was very painful because I had product in stock and everything was set up. I was only lacking the pictures to start selling.
On January 2nd I finally received the product pictures and I wasn't happy. I used the pictures to launch anyway while the photographer was making the needed revisions. My launch strategy was to give away 70 units for 1€ over a course of 14 days to spike the algorithm and start ranking. This worked very well but then another problem came up. Amazon changed the rules once again (This is what happens when you violate the commandmend of control) and only customers that bought the product for the full price could actually leave a review. While it was never my strategy to gain reviews from the giveaway it was also impossible to do so from people who didn't buy the product from Amazon in the first place.
Shortly before the giveaway ended I started PPC. Again expectation and reality didn't match. I thought once I would be visible on page 1 through my PPC ads I would sell immeaditly. I didn't. I had to realize that for most keywords I was bidding on I didn't even get any page views. So for 99% of the keywords I wasn't showing up at all. There was basically one keyword I was showing up for. This is the main keyword for my product. Clicks are expensive but I just waited it out. There were a few sales here and there but nothing consistend and it looked far from good.
Two weeks after running PPC I evaluated what was going wrong:
1. Not showing up for most of the keywords
2. Not enough reviews
3. Price was set too high for the launch
I attacked 2 and 3 since it was something i could immediately take action on. I contacted a few friends and asked them to buy the product and leave a review. I also lowered the price.
Reviews came in and funnily enough after having a few verified reviews other people were able to leave a review as well again. So some reviews from the product testers of the giveaway also came through.
As of today Februrary 3rd, things are actually looking pretty decent. This week went good for the first time since I started selling. On tuesday I had 8 sales. Every day after that I had 3 sales each day until today. I left PPC running the whole time and will continue to do so. I am also starting to be visible for more keywords now on my PPC campagne and I am ranking on 1st page organically for most of the major keywords which is a huge success. I am really happy with how things are going at the moment and hope that this trend continues.
That's it for my first post in this new progress thread. I will try to keep this updated as much as possible. Of course I am open to answer any questions you might have or give more details in specific areas that interest you.
Thanks if you read this far!
Marco
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