Start, Scale, Learn Ecom

It's always fun looking at the best sellers on Amazon. One of the things that I discovered surfing the best sellers is:

• spring product/decor is doing very well because everyone is going to want to remodel or make their outdoor space cute. Who doesn't want their lawn and patio looking good for the spring/summer right?
• There is definitely a trend going on when fidget or stress reliever toys. When I go on the Toys & Games Best Sellers on Amazon, somewhere in the top 20 there are at least 2 or more toys that relieve some sort of stress (at least it's marketed that way)

I wanted to check out the best-selling products on Etsy around Mother's Day and came across this brand called Sweet Water Decor. This store has over 80,000 sales on Etsy and was trying to find a reason as to why or how that is.

Turns out that the brand was founded by Melissa Horvath in 2014. The execution and branding of the motivational business are spot on. The social media content is very aesthetically pleasing on both Instagram and Pinterest not to mention the Facebook ads as well.

Sweet Water Decor is actually in popular retail stores like Hobby Lobby,  HomeGoods, TJMaxx, Staples, and in over 4,000 boutique stores. This brand sells mugs, candles, and other home products. It's fun exploring brands and the execution across its social channels.

Physical retail is not dead especially if you're a bigger brand that can afford to have a brick & mortar in an active region where people can interact with your store. It won't just be about more foot traffic to buy products on the spot, but rather to engage and experience the brand to potentially share or buy later.

The metaverse is still in its infancy but there are already cases where brands have used it to increase their brand awareness. Look at the example of Nike and Roblox. You can even take a look at the example of Forever 21 and Roblox where the retailer launched an exclusive partnership with Virtual Brand Group, a metaverse creation company, that allows users to buy and sell Forever 21 merchandise and customize their own stores on the Roblox video game platform.

To get the full read on the article that was covered for this podcast episode you can check it out here!

I love hearing about dropshipping and how entrepreneurs are making nice profits every month. But what if you as a dropshipper or new eCommerce entrepreneur can realize better gains and a potential supreme exit strategy.

This can be done by creating a brand. By implementing digital assets such as data, an email list, a 3PL, etc.

We have George Molous today, who is an e-commerce broker. He has experience in selling established brands to buyers.

George will provide insights on what buyers look for when buying brands so you can know what to expect and what to do for your business.

Welcome to a throwback episode we had back with Rondel Roach in December of last year. This story is pretty lit and the game that supplies for us today is very insightful for anyone trying to create a brand from a-z on their own.

Rondel is the co-founder of the soap brand Bombd Aesthetics alongside his business partner and wife back around 2018. The origin story of the soaps was to help their daughters who were born with sensitive skin. 

However, there was a demand for the soap Rondel and his wife was making. They eventually go to making 5-6 figures, hiring multiple employees, and getting a warehouse to supply and distribute the soap.

To get more insights into the stories, read these articles which is where we got the sources from:

1. Scotch & Soda expanding globally but mainly in North America
2. Fabletic's using major influencers (in this case the actress Vanessa Hudgens) to create a clothing line. Instead of getting one-off influencers to promote a piece of clothing for your brand, you can probably sponsor one bigger influencer for a clothing collection instead.
3. More e-commerce demand but a low supply of truck drivers. The work is hard but the pay is surprisingly pretty high. 
4. Etsy increases transaction fees to 6.5% from the 5% angering many Etsy sellers
5. Walgreens turning to robots. Not focusing on redundant tasks and focusing on more important matters will only increase productivity. Robots will make that happen and is currently in many industries including big pharma.

Check out the sources where I got the articles:

• Shein to be valued at $1B
• AR and social commerce are on the rise!
• Macy's to open a $584M fulfillment center

The market for the pet niche is massive and when you combine that with the idea of personalized products it should be an instant hint, right?

This is the story of how Alex Djordjevic, the co-founder of Pup Ring, went from company debt to generating 5-6 figure months selling personalized pet rings. Alex has had e-commerce experience before Pup Ring but what gravitated him into creating a brand was the idea of a long-term project that also meant something to him on a passionate and sentimental level when his dog passed away.

The primary method of selling the personalized rings was through a vendor in China but as they started to progress in the business they moved operations to the US. Things were not sunshine in rainbows as Facebook was not generating a healthy amount of revenue.

As a matter of fact, Alex and his co-founder found themselves in debt and were close to shutting the store down until he dabbled with TikTok. After about a few videos, he eventually went viral and was able to smash over $20,000 in sales from that one video.

Ever since then his marketing strategies and PupRing outlook as never looked so good!

Take a look at PupRing here:

• Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• TikTok

Who knew Kohl's started as a grocery business before becoming a department store? Today we break down the story of their latest pivot.

Here are stories where we got this info:

• Kohl's to pivot into a lifestyle concept 
• Twitter is testing its shopping feature to compete in the world of social commerce
• Walmart+ to offer free Spotify memberships for 6 months to its members!
• Lululemon enter the footwear industry

We have Matias Myhrberg, who is the founder of Leadon, a digital marketing agency that helps e-commerce brands grow through platforms such as TikTok ads, Google ads, Email marketing, Facebook, and essentially everything in between.

When a brand is making 5-6 figure months, it is time to start branching out to various platforms to maximize reach. This is a must when trying to reach out to new customers are in other words get more top-of-the-funnel awareness.

In this episode, we also dive into more specific with TikTok marketing considering the fact that it is the most cost-efficient platform in terms of getting reach with little to no marketing dollars. 

A unique selling proposition is simply the one thing that makes your product better than the competition. You can be a pioneer or an innovator like Steve Jobs disrupting the mobile market with the iPhone. He made the latest phone model (at the time BlackBerry phones) and improved it by like a factor of 50x.

This innovation is a different level of thinking but one can still make major contributions to the market you're in by selling something that is entirely different (but functional of course) or by improving upon another design.

A way you can check for faults in a product is by buying it yourself and testing it. Or you can check out what the consumers are saying by checking reviews on Amazon for example.

Use this as ammo to load up your ideas to make your product idea much better and use this difference in your marketing material as well.