#445 - From $1.5M to $5M in 5 Months: Palak Raniwala’s Amazon Breakthrough Strategy

#445 - From $1.5M to $5M in 5 Months: Palak Raniwala’s Amazon Breakthrough Strategy Kevin King: What's up everybody? Welcome to episode 445 of the AM-PM Podcast. It's May 1st, 2025 and we've got an awesome episode for you today with Palak Raniwala. She's someone who went from 1.5 million in sales on Amazon to 5 million in sales on Amazon in just five months. We talk about how she did that, some strategies and a lot more in this episode. Enjoy. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Kevin King: Let's do this. Unknown Speaker: Here's your host, Kevin King. Thank you for watching. Kevin King: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, Palak Raniwala. Did I get that right? Palak Raniwala: Yes, absolutely. In fact, one of the very few people who can, so thank you. Kevin King: I try. I'm really bad with names, but sometimes I can actually get it close, so I'm glad I got that right. You're just up the road from me in Austin, right? You're in the Austin area, right? Palak Raniwala: No, I'm in Round Rock. Kevin King: Well, that's the Austin area, yeah. Palak Raniwala: Yeah, like greater, but yeah. Kevin King: Yeah, there you go, the greater Austin area. Palak Raniwala: Greater Austin, so kind of in the same vicinity, but yes. Kevin King: Now remember when I first met you, I think you had just moved to this area. You were like I think you came to the very first Market Masters event and I remember you messaged me like the moving trucks are at my house, my husband's taking care of it, but I'm coming to the event. We just arrived yesterday or something like that, but I'm coming to the event. I don't care. Was that the case? Palak Raniwala: Yes, we just moved a day before. We didn't have any furniture. We were sleeping on the literally floor and I came directly. I came from the airport. I came and set up the A little bit of food and stuff at the home and I just came in next day to your event and I stayed there for three days because I was like, this is not worth missing. So I wanted to be there. Kevin King: That was awesome. So where did you come from before that? Where were you? Palak Raniwala: London. Kevin King: London. Palak Raniwala: Oh yeah. So I was in Austin for five years and then we moved to UK for about five years and then we came back just because we had the freedom to be anywhere. So we came to Austin just because we love it so much. Kevin King: You were in Austin for a while and then was it your husband or your job or something that transferred you over to London? Palak Raniwala: My husband. It's been my husband. He had to move to London for a very good job opportunity. He was the managing director at a TV channel over there. And then because of that, we moved. Again, even at that point of time, I had the freedom to work from here or there, so I didn't mind. Kevin King: So what do you mean when you had the freedom? Because you haven't been doing Amazon for five years, have you? Palak Raniwala: No, I haven't been doing Amazon for five years. I was trying I've had multiple businesses, not just this one. I've tried Amazon in the past. I've tried Shopify in the past. I've had a couple of unsuccessful stints in the past, but it helped to know what to do, what not to do. Market Masters helped in helping what to do, what not to do, mostly what not to do. That's why I was able to do better at this business. Kevin King: These other businesses were e-commerce businesses or is it different types? Palak Raniwala: Everything has been e-commerce. I've tried Amazon as well in the past, not really focusing on Amazon as such. I was trying different platforms like eBay and Shopify mostly. I was trying to do Shopify in the past in the UK. Kevin King: Was this your own products or were you drop shipping or what were you doing? Palak Raniwala: That was my own product. Everything was manufactured by myself, by my family, my parents. They were dropshipping from India to the end consumer. I was selling it through Shopify. I don't know if the market was smaller or it was just probably not the right fit. I didn't know any better. I hadn't attended any seminars or any groups or I wasn't part of any group. So it was just me and using my little brain to kind of figure this out, which is why this Any sort of connections and all of this helps because it just gets you broader and a bigger picture. Kevin King: So how did you first hear about e-commerce? So you're originally from India, right? Palak Raniwala: Yes. Kevin King: And then you, you came to the States at some point. Um, was that for school or for, yeah, you got married and your husband was from here or he was also living here. Palak Raniwala: He was living before me. Like he was living here for five, six years before. So yeah, he was here. So I got married and I came to us and um, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. That was like my end goal. Kevin King: Did you ever work in any kind of corporate job or anything? Have you always been an entrepreneur doing stuff all the way back to India? Palak Raniwala: No, no, no. As soon as I came in, I was setting up my store. I did a retail store in Austin at the Lakeland Mall. Yeah. Kevin King: Oh, really? Palak Raniwala: Yeah. I had a retail store. Kevin King: In the mall? Palak Raniwala: In the mall, yeah. Kevin King: Okay. Selling what kind of stuff? Palak Raniwala: It was mostly fashion and home decor, again, home linen, the kind I'm doing right now. Kevin King: Coming from stuff made in India, primarily. Yes, stuff made in India. Palak Raniwala: It was just way too long hours for me. It didn't work that well, probably not the best location for my kind of stuff, Lakeland Mall. I realized that later when I did it. Probably not the best where, when and how is happening. So I closed that and I realized that I do need some experience of what my customer is. I need to understand how selling works in the US. In India, it's very different. In US, it was very different. So then I did a corporate job. It was in jewelry and I started selling to these big stores like Macy's and all these big TV channels all across the US. This is where I started understanding how the consumer works. What do they think? What do they really need? So basically just a better understanding of U.S. customer. Kevin King: And always bringing stuff from India or did you branch out on this jewelry to like Turkey and Israel and other places too? Palak Raniwala: India and China. Kevin King: India and China. Palak Raniwala: Yeah. I was working in a corporate job so their manufacturing was in India and they were sourcing from China. They started also doing a little bit of Bali. But it was mostly concentrated India and China. Kevin King: That was here in Austin? Because there's a big jewelry, TV jewelry store. Palak Raniwala: Yes, ShopLC. I don't know if you know about that. Kevin King: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's all right. I know exactly who that is. Yeah, it's a big, it's a big company. They do some, they're kind of like an online, live shopping, basically. Palak Raniwala: Yeah, live shopping, yeah. Kevin King: For jewelry on cable channels. Palak Raniwala: Now they're doing everything under the sun, not just jewelry. But at that point of time, the company that I was part of, that was a sister, I'm the CEO of the company of the channel. So we were supplying bulk jewelry to Macy's, QVC, all of these big channels and big stores. I don't know if you know Zales. Kevin King: Yeah, uh-huh. Palak Raniwala: All of those. So yeah, we used to have meetings with all of these buyers and kind of understood what they were thinking, kind of realized the value of storytelling from there. Kevin King: Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say because I just, Learn the lesson the hard way. I always thought diamonds, you know, because they cost so much, you buy a nice diamond engagement ring for when you get engaged or you buy nice jewelry. My ex-wife used to be into really nice jewelry. And so my engagement ring was like $13,000, $14,000. And I bought it from this guy called the Iceman. You know, he had a house up in West Austin. He like, I go direct and, you know, save from all the market from the jewelry stores. And I think I got a better deal. But when we got divorced a couple of years ago, I went to sell it and I was shocked at how little this stuff is actually worth. My ex-wife had always been like, we had over $100,000 worth of jewelry, probably $200,000 that we spent. And she was like, that's our rainy day fund. If we ever get business goes bad or something, we can always sell the jewelry and have some money. And I thought it held its value. But come to find out, it holds very little value. Unless it's got some sentimental thing or it's a Super Bowl ring or something like that, it holds almost no value. And the ring that I looked at all these places, like these resale places online, some places locally, maybe if I would have put it in a consignment shop in Austin and waited a year or two years or three years, I probably could have got more money. I just wanted to be done with it. I didn't want the memories. I didn't want to be hanging on to that stuff. Palak Raniwala: I know. Kevin King: bucks from an online auction I'm drawing a complete blank on the name. It's a company out of California. They used to have a store in the domain here in Austin that sells luxury stuff like Louis Vuitton. I'm trying to complete blank on the name right now. No, it's a Resell shop, but for only luxury goods. They authenticate it. They had a storefront in the domain. They closed it last year, but you can still send in a California, the real real. That's it. I think it's the real real. You send in to them and then they check it, authenticate it. And then they put up on their website and you can get some decent value there, but that's because it has a brand name on it because it's a Louis Vuitton watch or it's a Versace necklace or something. And then you can get about half or more, sometimes more of the value of it, especially if it's an out of print popular item. But like for a diamond ring, engagement ring, that has not branded, it was a nice stone, it's just zero value. And resale value, not zero, that's the wrong thing to say, a small fraction like 10% is all it's worth. And then some of the stuff they wouldn't take, odds and end, little pieces here, there. I took them to a store in Lake Line Mall. It's like a watch repair store there. And I'd taken stuff before to have like necklaces fixed. I took all the little remnant parts in there and said what can we just sell this for just for meltdown for you know what's nickel and what's platinum and what's this and she bought it all off me. She was the owner and she was like she knew I did Amazon stuff because I've been there several times before. She's like so you're the Amazon guy right? You do all this Amazon stuff. She's like I need to start doing Amazon. I need to take your course and I need to learn. So we start talking. I was like, so how much, you just gave me $900 for these odds and ends pieces, random, you know, it's like one earring, it's missing the other earring and stuff you couldn't really sell. I was like, what are you going to sell this for, for Meltdown? She said, I'll probably double my money. And I was like, yeah. And I told her the story about this ring. And she's like, yep, the market is ridiculous. It's like, you know, look at why they always have 40, 60% off sales and they're still making 10, 20 X on their investment. Even at that I'm like, yeah, I learned that the hard way. If I get married again, she's not getting nice jewelry. Palak Raniwala: Two things. If you're getting married again, please don't buy retail. Tell me. I'm going to hook you up with a really good value diamond ring. So tell me if you ever need something. Kevin King: I will do that. I will do that. Palak Raniwala: I sold a ring at Macy's. I shouldn't be telling all these secrets. I sold a ring at Macy's for $100 and they sold it for like $900. So this is the kind of markup retail stores do. So you can imagine if you're trying to sell that ring at $1,000, the cost is about $100. Well, that's about right because I got $1,000 for the diamond and I paid $13,000 for it. Kevin King: So that's similar. I had no idea of the extreme markups and I thought it held its value because it's a precious metal and all this and I learned my lesson. Palak Raniwala: Value is only gonna be holding in for gold. If you're buying gold and selling gold, that's when it's gonna just go up. If you're doing diamond, you're probably gonna just, if you're not doing retail and if you're doing closeout, like I buy closeout, which is really the value of the actual diamond and the gold and just a little bit of flavor. Normally they don't charge labor Inclosure stuff. So that's when you're gonna make money selling those kind of stuff. Kevin King: What's like you just said earlier though, it's the story and you know diamonds a hundred and something years ago were not popular. Nobody bought diamond engagement rings or bought, that wasn't the thing to do and De Beers, the big diamond company is the one that started, if you look at the history of it, I think in the late 1800s, maybe early 1900s, late 1800s, somewhere around in there, they actually came up with this marketing campaign that made diamonds popular. They weren't popular before and they added this inherent value to it where every woman expects a diamond ring for engagement or for marriage or whatever and diamonds are a girl's best friend and all these campaigns that they did, they actually made diamonds what they are and so it's the story when you're selling this kind of stuff and that's what you said that you've really done well with what you learned from doing that corporate gig for a little while. How are you implementing that into what you do now like on Amazon and stuff? Palak Raniwala: So that's one very important key area for us is been influencer marketing. We work with a lot of Amazon affiliates. And the way I've realized, I mean, it's not inauthentic, but we've always placed, kind of reached out to them with our story first, saying that, you know, we are not a corporate and we are a very small company and it's just me. And we're trying to make this into something that can sustain us since we're in the US. So kind of putting our story out there and then connecting with them. Because what I've realized is in the past that people do connect on a people basis and a lot of them even though they've had, you know, normally they would not work on a product basis, product collabs. They normally do knowing that it's just one person and it's not a corporate. So I've never done a paid collab. I've only done product-based collabs and it's been kind of a journey because it's very hard to convince anyone to do just a product collab, especially now. In a day and age where corporates are ready to shell out so much money to influencers, big influencers. Kevin King: When you say product collateral, that means just give them the product in exchange for the video. No commissions. Palak Raniwala: No commissions from Amazon, but no extra commissions. Nowadays they're all asking for money paid up front. So it's like $1,500, $2,000 just to even take the product and put it on their feed. Like a straight upfront cost. Kevin King: But you're not paying that? Palak Raniwala: I'm not doing any of that and I realize that's mostly because we're kind of trying to connect with them in terms of Like a story or just on people-to-people basis, having more of an emotional connect. Kevin King: So is your jewelry aimed at the Indian market or is it aimed at anybody and it just happens to be from India or are you playing up the story of an immigrant that came to America, I'm a small businesswoman, help me out, help me grow the company or what's your angle, what's your avatar that you go after? Palak Raniwala: So jewelry was what I was doing back then. Now I'm doing home linen. Kevin King: Okay. Palak Raniwala: And my story is more of that, you know, I'm a, I'm a mother of two kids and this is something that I'm juggling while being a mother and I'm being entrepreneur. So it's, it's hard for me and just, I'm, I've just recently started. So it's hard for me to shell out multiple dollars, like big bucks for advertising on Amazon. So I do need a lot of support from like-minded women to help me out here and to support the kind of product we're doing because it's niche, it's one-off, it's not mass-produced. So all my products are handmade. So my biggest thing is that I don't want to do a lot of mass products which are made like thousands, two thousands together. So I can only do smaller quantities, but it's also very niche. It's also very special because each item is different. Because it's handmade, each item is different. So we kind of want to appreciate And we're here to talk to you about how you can create uniqueness in each of us by giving them product which is unique to them. Kevin King: So when you're listing, are you doing handmade on Amazon or are you doing regular listing? Palak Raniwala: No, no, regular, but I'm selling handmade product on Amazon, but regular on Amazon. Kevin King: In the listing, it says something like each product slightly varies. So it's maybe the same color pattern, but two of the color strings are in a different place because it was handmade, but it's going to look very similar, but not exactly to the tee like this. Palak Raniwala: We have that on our marketing material in our product because we don't do any marketing material wherein we'll add barcodes or anything, just our story, just a photo of us, our family, you know, me and our products. So just kind of trying to give them a more emotional story about us and our brand. Kevin King: You said when you started doing this Amazon stuff, it was just you. You weren't part of any communities or you weren't on any online stuff. Did you watch a few YouTube videos or you just like kind of figure it out on your own or how did you actually get that initial ball rolling? Palak Raniwala: So it was just me when I started. I actually started in Amazon UK and that was like super tough. I was back in the UK back then. I tried to do Amazon UK and Shopify. I was not part of any community back then. It was just me trying to figure out and trying to just, it was mostly like just putting listings out there and seeing what sticks. Kevin King: Do you know anything about keyword research? Do you know anything about any of that stuff? Palak Raniwala: Just doing some random YouTube videos and just literally just listing whatever I find and putting it out there. No detailed PPC analysis, nothing at all. Then I realized that it didn't... Obviously it didn't work. Like I didn't put in any work in there. So like, obviously I didn't, I shouldn't have expected also to work. Then I pivoted to US and then I did a course. I thought, you know, it's better to do kind of a course and learn the basics first, getting into Amazon. Probably anything, if you're getting into Shopify, Amazon, whatever it is, it's better to learn the basics. So I did a basic Amazon course and then from there it helped me because I also started building contacts. I started going to, even when I probably didn't even make so much money, I started going to events. Kevin King: Have you been to a few in the States besides Market Masters? Palak Raniwala: No, nothing yet. I haven't been to any. Any other, I don't think I do want to as well because I feel like- You're spoiled now. Yeah, I've got a good community here. I know people, like really good, helpful people because whenever I have issues and I know I can message so many people in the community and just be like, I can count on them to help me out or just even guide me. Like even for Shopify, when I messaged you that I needed some help, you just Out of the bag, just message me with names and help me out with contacts. Just stuff like that. I don't think I need more community as of now. I think I'm quite content. Kevin King: I think you did it the right way because the thing is with conferences and Danny, the one that you went to, Seller Sessions, he's making change this year and doing it differently and you're starting to see a few more people do this. Kind of like the Market Masters format, they can't copy that because it's gonna be pretty hard for them to replicate that. But I think you're gonna see more people trying to do that because it's so powerful because you go to most conferences and the networking can be great and that's where I get most of the value. It's going to dinner with people and sitting next to someone, you know, talking shop and they might say some sort of cool tip or hack or technique that they're doing. I go, wow, that was better than anything I heard on the stage today. But you're listening to presentations and those are people are talking At you from stage and you listen to those and you might sit there for all day and listen to seven or eight presentations And maybe two of them are stuff that you can use and the others are like, you know, that sounds cool But that's not really where I'm at right now versus you come to market masters like what you did And everything is about you. We're talking to you, not at you. And so, you've answered some questions beforehand. Most of the people, the experts are curated to help you. Seven or eight experts are curated based on what problems you're having. So, if you're like, I need to blow up my TikTok, you're going to have a TikTok expert on there. If you're like, I want to sell my business, you're going to have someone that helps people sell businesses. The way that works is they're asking you specific questions just for the audience that hasn't been to one. They're asking you specific questions for about an hour. No solutions, just questions that are brilliant. Some of those are uncomfortable questions and if you don't answer them properly, you're not going to get the help that you might need. And a lot of times that opens up blind spots that you didn't even realize you had in your business. You thought you were trucking along doing well and you're like, actually, you got this problem over here that you didn't even realize. And then the next hour, hour and a half is all solutions. We just did a demo of this at BDSS in Iceland a couple of weeks ago. And people were like, holy cow, because they didn't understand what it was. And that was like crazy. We did a demo on stage with seven people and someone in the hot seat. And that I think is, Much more valuable, and I think in your case, didn't you say when you came to the first one in September, you're doing about a million and a half in gross sales? Palak Raniwala: Yes. Kevin King: And then you came, you sat in the hot, you paid the money to sit in the hot seat. It's not cheap. You know, this is an investment, but, and that scares a lot of people like, ah, I can't, I can't, I can't pay that kind of money. That's like crazy. But the value that you get, if you just take yours as an example, you were doing about a million and a half. You came in there, you opened yourself up, you got grilled by seven experts. And then they made a bunch of suggestions. You went back and took action. Some people like just it goes in one ear and out the other or they do a couple of things. Well, you basically took it at heart, went back and implemented almost everything I think you said that they said to do. And now five months later, we did a second Market Masters in February of this year. And you messaged me like, Kevin, I got to come. Is there a special price for alumni? I'm like, yeah, come on. Palak Raniwala: I wanted to be there, irrespective of if I'm part of the market ministers, sit down, hot seat or not. But I was like, yeah, I want to be there. Kevin King: Yeah. So you came back as what I call an audience member. So you're not in the hot seat, but you get to watch other ones and you get to network with the people. And through that, at the end of it, I sat in a hot seat. Me and Mark sat in a hot seat and we said, what can we do better to market this? And someone said, You need a case study. You need to show, and it's like, I don't know, I don't really like case studies so much, but you need a case study to show what an impact this made. And then later that night, I'm having a cigar with Norm, and Norm's like, ah, did you hear what Palak's doing? I was like, no, what? Well, she was doing 1.5 million, and I just did an interview with her on the camera, and now she's doing 5 million. I'm like, what? In five months, you've basically more than tripled your revenue. I was like, okay, where are you at? I tracked you down. I'm like, all right, we got to show this. And I asked you, remember when I called you, I said, is this legit? Or did you get featured on Oprah? Or did some video go viral somewhere? And you're like, no, I just did what you guys, what the panel said to do. I think that's the massive value and where a lot of people, when you look at the price to do it, I don't make money on this event. I lose. The first one you came to, I lost $70,000 even though the price is not cheap, but it costs a lot to put this on, to bring all these experts, 26 experts together in a mansion and the chef and the massages and everything. It costs a lot, but the impact it makes if you're open and you do what they suggest is huge. Palak Raniwala: Also, Kevin, I want to just add to that is that if someone is thinking and if someone wants to come in and do it and they're more like concerned about the grilling aspect of it, I just want to add that that was one of the things I was so nervous about. It's not that they're out there to kind of put you down. You know, it's kind of all the experts are just there to help you. So it's grilling, but it's like in a positive way where they're just trying to get the right information out of you and help you out. As scary as it sounds, it may sound to some people because I met a couple of people in the second one where I was just audience member. And they were telling me that, you know, we were a bit nervous about being in the hot seat because it sounds like so scary. It's a hot seat. And I'm like, no, honestly, it's not as scary as it sounds. It's it's just getting it's like more of conversational, getting to know you, getting to know your business. Obviously, that's the only way you can get good advice and good information. Without asking one of those tough questions, there's no way they can help you out. Kevin King: You said the value, too, is not only from sitting in that chair for two and a half hours, but you got to spend the rest of the weekend interacting with these people. Someone said something in your session, and you're like, You corner them at lunch or say, hey, can I talk to you a little bit more about this? And the people were so helpful that yeah, let's sit down and chat. That's the value too. And it's not just maybe there's someone there because there's the one you did. There's 26 experts, I think, and there's only seven, I think, maybe eight on your panel. But that means there's 18 other ones there that were not on your panel and they might know something too. And you're able to go and meet them and pick their brain. In a comfortable, safe environment. And it's just, that event went so well. The first one went so well. Afterwards, it wasn't just you. I mean, there's another guy who was from the UK. You remember? And he had his brand had been suspended for eight months, millions of dollars. And someone tell him, well, you need to get on a plane and go to Seattle because next week accelerate. And you need to talk to this person to go bang on this door and go here and here. And he changed his plans and went. I remember he put a video into the WhatsApp group. He was crying. He's like, I'm here in Seattle. I just want to say thanks to everybody. I've only cried twice in my life when my daughter was born and today because my account is back up now. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't come there. So that's the impact and that's why I do these. So the next Market Masters is in November of this year. We'll be announcing where it may be in Austin. It might be in another city. We're announcing It'll be in the U.S., but we're announcing where that's going to be soon. We're cutting it from 12 people in the hot seat to nine. Oh, even less? Yeah, there are going to be less hot seats and a little bit longer. I'm changing it up a little bit, but then when we came back and we did the second one that you came to as an audience member, people said that we're at both, said that one was even better than the first. So we have our challenges ahead of us. It's a tough world out there. I know you haven't been selling on Amazon for five, six years or less, but I've been doing it since 2001, doing the FBA model for 10 years. It's changed a lot and it's a real business now. There's a lot of tariff stuff that people are dealing with right now. The competition, it's a tough, tough business and margins are getting squeezed. And the only ones making money are Amazon and Amazon shareholders right now. Palak Raniwala: I know. But even if someone wants to jump in and Amazon and even wants to start now or has started, I think now the mindset is shifting more towards that people are focusing on building brands even on Amazon and not just... I think initially it was a lot about like putting a product in and just making that product go viral. And that's the end of it. You make that money and you sell your business and that's it. But now it's more about building the entire brand holistically, having a story in place, giving value to the end customers and not just selling one single product or two products. So I think that's where I feel that normally going forward, that shift is going to happen more extensively, that even Amazon will start wanting People to kind of add more value and story and product and variety in terms of because for us I think our biggest boost of sales also comes in when we launch new products. We can't just Focus on one single or two single products. We have about 19 SKUs and we have to keep launching new stuff, new innovative stuff to be able to get incremental sales, which is one of the things that has kind of differentiated us that we don't just stick with one SKU or two SKU or three SKU. Inventory management is a bit tough but then there are good tools to do that but it's just that's the way to do incremental, to get incremental sales right now because you're building your brand, you're bringing, building your portfolio and you're getting in new and interesting stuff on there and then obviously you connect with all the affiliates that you work with and hit them up the product. And that's how we've been focusing on our launch strategy going since last five months now. Kevin King: How do you choose a new product? You got 19. How do you choose a new one? Is it something that complements something you have? Is it feedback from your customers? Do you use tools to look for opportunities? How are you deciding? Is it your parents back in India saying, hey, we just got this cool Seamstress that can make this kind of cool stuff. How do you decide what to do? Palak Raniwala: So a lot of it comes from our customers as well because sometimes our product, our customers are looking for matching products. So because it's a typical home linen kind of product. So they'll need, they'll want, they'll ask us, oh could you also make something like this? It'll go well in my home with the product that you already have. And from there, you know, that idea clicks. Why not? Yes, let's try that. We'll make for you as well and then we'll also send it to Amazon. So sometimes it's that. It's sometimes also looking around, keeping my eyes open. I like creating new stuff. I love creating new and innovative stuff. So just kind of looking around and seeing, oh, this sells well. And also just selling what category sells the best on Amazon. So I'll kind of look at the categories. So if cotton is a big category, Then I'll get into that. I'll create my niche within that big category and then I'll make a product. Kevin King: What price point are most of your products? My price point is upwards of $39. Okay, so that's a good price point. Since these are handmade, do you have really good margins and are you having to do much PPC to support this or is it a lot of just organic growth? Palak Raniwala: We do do a lot of PPC but we try to stay within 13% tacos. Kevin King: 13? 1-3? Yeah. Okay. Palak Raniwala: Yeah. Because we do have a decent amount of margin selling our products. That's 13% but we're still mostly focusing on affiliate marketing and organic. Because of that, we get a lot of flywheel organic traffic that Amazon pushes towards us because we are getting a lot of outside traffic for Amazon. Kevin King: When there's growth, where you went from on pace to do a million and a half and then five months later, you're on pace to do five million, that's a big inventory. That means you're having to buy more, get more stuff shipped in and pay more. How did you, did you have that, were you able to do that from cash flow or did you work out terms with your parents or whoever was supplying you or did you have to go out and get one of these Amazon type of loans or how did you handle that, that massive growth? Palak Raniwala: No, it was all through our own cash flow. We put in a little bit of our own money as well, our personal savings. But it was mostly cash flow, just better cash management because we started putting PPC funds on our credit cards. So that's when we started saving a lot of money for giving it to the vendor. We also had two months of pay period. I set up with my parents that I will pay after two months. So we had that wiggle room in terms of paying them money and also putting a lot of PPC costs on our cards, which is where we got a really good wiggle room for managing our cash. And which is why we've been mostly, mostly it's been through our own cash. We've not taken any loan. We've not taken any money from outside any of these lenders, et cetera. We are now trying to get a line of credit with our bank just because we'd rather get it when we're in positive cash flow. So that we can use it when we do need it. It's something that we just want to do it now. Whenever we're struggling, then it's hard to get a line of credit. Kevin King: Yeah, you always want to get money when you're in the best place. You always want to apply for a new credit card when you got all your other credit cards paid off. Even though you know that next week I'm going to spend $50,000 on this credit card because I got to buy it. But apply now, so it's zero. Palak Raniwala: That's what my banker said. He said, you know what? Before you're paying your vendor and you have this good chunk in your bank, that's when you apply for a line of credit so you get a bigger line of credit. When applying for it. So yeah, so that's what we're doing now. We're in the process, even though we don't need it, we're just going to apply for it. So that's one thing I would suggest anyone who has, who does not need it right now, get it. Kevin King: Josh Hadley just did a presentation or a hack, a smart showdown presentation at BDSS about using Plastique and Melio to pay your suppliers by credit card. And then he showed a way to actually get basically up to 180 day terms without paying any interest. Like by, Timing the exact payment dates and timing the exact statement dates and all this kind of stuff to actually really extend, get really creative with extending your cash flow cycles and not having to pay a lot of interest on it. It's pretty cool, pretty cool stuff. Palak Raniwala: All of that, I know, for me, it's one of the boring things to look into the finances and to do all of that, but yeah, it's necessary. Kevin King: Do you use a 3PL or does everything come to your garage or what do you, how do you? Palak Raniwala: All in Amazon Warehouse right now. Kevin King: So you ship straight to Amazon? Palak Raniwala: To Amazon, yes. Everything is just there. We do get returns here, so we try to just reuse our returns and we ship them back to Amazon itself. So we're not wasting literally any inventory now. Kevin King: So this is mostly like table setting type of stuff or stuff for like around the house? Palak Raniwala: All like cushions and tablecloths, etc. That kind of stuff. Home linen. Kevin King: Okay, all right. So it's like it might be if it's a Cushion, it's just the case. It's not they got to go down the Fabric store or go down a Hobby Lobby or whatever and buy the insert to put inside it for example Yeah, so all your stuff ships flat and it doesn't take a lot of space Yes, but I was talking about incremental adding incremental products. Palak Raniwala: So That's what we're going to launch now just because we've been doing cases till now we are going to launch insert just because people buy a lot of inserts when they're buying cushion covers. So we saw that in our brand analytics all of that and then we saw that our biggest bundling was with inserts. So now we're going to launch inserts just so that we can do a lot of we can do virtual bundling on our on our listings high high traffic listings. And we can add that as one of our, you know, it just helps in incremental sales. I would rather have buy our inserts other than Utopia's. Kevin King: You're going to do that with that special vacuum sealing where you can take a big insert that's 12 by 12 and it's really small and it's a really tight bag. And when you open the bag, it like explodes. Palak Raniwala: In India, it's like this big. And then after vacuuming, it becomes so tiny. I sell everything now, everything that people want. Kevin King: So your parents, your main supplier, do you have other suppliers too? Or is it everything pretty much goes through your parents? Palak Raniwala: No, no, we have other suppliers now. We're not just doing this. We're also doing different products. We're doing jute products and, you know, different categories as well. Kevin King: Okay. Palak Raniwala: So we have three brands right now. Oh, okay. Yeah. So we are doing, we have about four vendors as of now. Kevin King: What would you say was the biggest thing that moved the needle after Market Master? What's someone that's listening to this like something you were doing or maybe weren't doing it quite right or that you changed after Market Masters that's made this big difference? Something you did with the story, something you did with the images, something you did with keywords. I know you did a lot of different little things and they all add up but if you had to pick a couple of the bigger needle movers, what would you say those were? Palak Raniwala: A couple of things that I do remember was first of all was outsourcing. I was trying to do everything myself. I got myself stretched too thin and I couldn't do like multiple things that really needed my attention because I was stuck doing PPC and like the smaller things. So one thing that I love the advice of people saying that try to start outsourcing. Don't try to do everything yourself. And I started doing that. I gave out my PPC. I gave out influencer outreach. I outsourced all of that and I realized I started having more time to figure out the strategy of What we need to do going forward. So that was one thing. The other thing was brand building, which a lot of amazing people said that I needed to work on my brand a bit more, make it more high-end because my product is high-end and it's a bit high price point. So my images on my listings needed to show that the product was expensive. And kind of also needed to show why the product was expensive. So, I did change all of my images after that. I kind of revamped the images. I revamped the A-plus content, especially the premium A-plus content with the branding details. Again, I outsourced that to someone as well because I realized that if I knew that, I would have done that already. But I realized that I did not. I needed help. So I outsourced that as well and got that rebranded. And that was one of the biggest needle movers as well. Conversions got way better after I revamped the branding and the images. So I think these two things were very helpful in trying to move that needle in like In a faster way, I would say in a faster. I mean, I know growth would happen but it would be a slower growth compared to just listening to all the good feedback and implementing that. Kevin King: Do you hope to sell this business one day or do you want to keep running it for a while and grow it or do you have any plans along that or are you just happy with what you're doing right now and you have this freedom to take care of your children and do what you want? Palak Raniwala: I don't think we're thinking of selling at all right now. We're targeting a 20 million number by five years. So I think we should be good to reach there. No, I don't think we're planning to sell it at all. For me, doing e-com, the biggest reason is that I needed to always have the freedom to do anything, to go anywhere. Same with my husband. He left his position. He was a managing director of the TV channel that I was talking about. He quit his job because he saw the potential that there was in selling on Amazon and just e-commerce. He always saw the potential. We started working together and then kind of joined our brains together and realized like really the world is the limit here. So we just wanted to have the freedom of not having a nine to five corporate job just because we have two kids. We wanted to be there with them. We wanted to have time and have the flexibility. We have no plans to sell right now or even like five years in the future. Kevin King: How big is your team? Is it just you and your husband or do you have some other? I know you outsource like PPC and some of the design stuff, but do you have anybody else that works for you regularly? Or is it just the two of you and you just hire as needed? Palak Raniwala: No, it's two of us and we've done agencies mostly. So we've done an agency for PPC. We did an agency for image optimization. We did someone for our Shopify building website. So we have only about two more people working for us full time. Kevin King: And you'll do, so four people. Thank you for joining us today. Palak Raniwala: Just working with a lot of different good people helps us save our time. We are able to give that direction to people that are helping us out because doing everything myself or if just two of us were trying to do everything, I think we would pull each other and our own hair out. Kevin King: What's the hardest challenge you've had in growing this business? What's the biggest thing that you've got, you guys had to overcome? Palak Raniwala: I think one of the biggest things is inventory management. I always kept running out of stock. Always. You know, one good season comes and you're like back to square one because you have no inventory and my product takes about two months to make and finally come to Amazon. So good inventory management, regular I would say also like consistent numbers. I've always had like a very fluctuating number pattern throughout the months that I've done this business. It's never been very consistent and that was because my PPC was not very consistent. I used to always do PPC myself and I realized that Doing everything manual is not the way to go with so many SQs. So PPC was one of our biggest challenges, which now we've figured out how to outsource and give it out to someone who's able to do it more in an automated, statistical manner. So these are a couple of things that we really struggled with. And also, I think, brand building. How to portray your brand and have the same brand voice throughout, not just Amazon, but even Google or even Shopify, even for Instagram. It's always better to do consistent brand voice. Kevin King: That's the game for market masters, right? Someone, I think. Palak Raniwala: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You remember that, right? Kevin King: These are like two different designs. Palak Raniwala: You remember that, right? That was one of the biggest things in my market master, which I really understood and I think I implemented that. One of my coaches did compliment me recently. On my Instagram, she was like, Mary reached out and I really appreciated that. She reached out and she told me that it's looking nice now. Yay! Kevin King: That's awesome. Yeah, Mary's big on the branding stuff. Unknown Speaker: I know, I know. Kevin King: She's a really sweet lady. Unknown Speaker: Oh, she's amazing. Palak Raniwala: I've got so much help from her. That's the biggest thing that you get so many help, so much help, so many contacts, good contacts with references from people that you know. So, that really helped. Kevin King: That was good. So what's next? How many products do you plan to launch the rest of this year? Palak Raniwala: Yeah, so we're planning to do one product in each brand each month. So it's going to be... Kevin King: Oh, that's busy. Palak Raniwala: I know, I know. Kevin King: That's busy. Palak Raniwala: It is busy, but again, that's how we've seen consistent growth. Just because my time is not so big, it's such a niche product, I do hit a ceiling. With each of my listings, after a point, there's only so much I can do with it. It's not a very generic product, which is like a $20 price point. It's not that. So there is going to be some sort of ceiling for my product. So I have to add incremental listings. Kevin King: Do you see them die off? Do some of the older products die off, or are they maintaining? Palak Raniwala: They don't die off, but they do reach a plateau. Kevin King: It's hard to grow them any further unless you go to Amazon UK or Europe or Canada or something like that. Palak Raniwala: Not really. We're really focusing on single thing, right? Not single thing. We're focusing on two things only, Amazon US and Shopify. Only US market. I've realized in the past, trying to do a lot of different things is that you lose your focus because it's just, we're a very small team and as much as we try to do different things, it's very hard for us to diversify and focus on different things and still try to be good at one thing. And I think Amazon has so much potential for us. We have not even scratched the surface. There's so much potential out there on Amazon. It's just that you have to keep at it, stick to it. I've tried doing it for now so many years. It's just you have to keep at it and stick at it, just not lose hope. Kevin King: Do you see seasonality in what you do? You said you had some ups and downs. Palak Raniwala: Yes. Kevin King: Maybe when people move in the summer, they want to buy new stuff for the house or maybe holidays are entertaining people. Do you see that kind of seasonality or is it different than that? Palak Raniwala: Yes. For us, spring is bigger. Spring and summer is actually bigger than the Thanksgiving season, actually. Kevin King: That's probably because people are moving. That's when a lot of people move. Palak Raniwala: A lot of events. There's a lot of weddings. A lot of events. So there's a lot of weddings. There's a lot of events that people want to buy products for. So we do get a lot of... The reason we get good is because we get multiples in one order. We've got multiple items going in one order. Someone will get six tablecloth for that matter because they have an event. There are a lot of weddings in summers. There are a lot of corporate events in summer. That's when we see a huge jump in Easter. We'll see a huge jump in Valentine's. We'll see a jump in Mother's Day. We'll see a jump in these kinds of events when people are doing a lot of We do a lot of specific events as such. And then based on that, we'll see jumps in colors as well. Like Valentine's, we'll see a jump in pinks and reds. And Easter, we'll see a jump in greens. For Mother's Day as well, it's going to be, summer is going to be mostly greens and blues. So we do a lot of color analysis as well to see what color is going to really work for which season. Kevin King: Well, since people are buying multiples, do you have business pricing too? Are you set up in an Amazon business? Yeah. Palak Raniwala: We always do business pricing because we do get a lot of multiples as business orders. Kevin King: So, that's cool. So, it sounds like things are going really well for you. Palak Raniwala: Knock on wood. Kevin King: Knock on wood. Palak Raniwala: I'm Indian. I believe in all of that. Kevin King: There you go. And speaking of Indian, you said the next Market Masters, you said you're coming. That's what you just said a minute ago. You said that we have to do something at Market Masters. Yes. You told Norm that we do a party one night. And the first one we did a casino party because the mansion had like a nice casino area with tables and everything. The second one we did like more like kids games. Palak Raniwala: Oh my God, the excitement was through the roof. Everyone was screaming at the top of their voice. Kevin King: It was crazy. It was fun with gambling real money. We had a little, just for those listening, we had those little Roomba robots and we put knives on the top of it and then everybody bought a balloon. For $20, U.S. $20, you got a balloon, you blow it up and write your name on it and drop it in this dog pen. We had a big, huge dog pen and then we'd turn the Roomba on and it would just randomly go around this pen. Poppin' balloons. And the last balloon standing got the entire pot of money, which sometimes is like $300 or $400. I know, there's a lot of opportunity to earn money. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity to get some money. But you said the next one we have to do something. I forgot what that was. What was that you said? It was something like go like this and go like this and like. Palak Raniwala: I said to Norm that we need to do like a Indian Diwali party next time when we do a market message. I was trying to convince everyone. I was trying to convince you, can you please let me do like mehendi on hands and let everyone come in Indian event. I taught Norm some Indian steps as well, you know, the whole Indian steps as well. He tried. The only thing I can say is he tried. How well, I don't know. Kevin King: I wish I had video of that to see Norm doing that. That would be hilarious. Palak Raniwala: Oh yes. Oh yes. So much fun. I wish we recorded that. Kevin King: Well, next time I'll make sure we do. Palak Raniwala: It depends on you, Kevin. Unknown Speaker: I'll have to see. I'll have to see. I'll talk to Mark and say, look, we got to do this Indian Bollywood party. Make it really fun. I've been to India a couple of times and I've watched a lot of Bollywood movies in the past. I always like those musicals and stuff. I always like that Bollywood dance. It's actually really cool. Palak Raniwala: It's going to be fun. Mark looked at me like I was crazy. I don't know what she's talking about. I will try to convince you till the end of my breath. Till November comes in, I will try to convince you guys. Come on. Kevin King: All right. That's a deal. That's a deal. Well, Palak, it's really been great chatting with you today. Thanks for coming on. I guess you're not here selling anything or pitching anything, but if someone wanted to check you out, Are you on social media somewhere or are you just like want to remain private and behind the scenes? Palak Raniwala: No, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm there on Instagram. I'm there on all social medias. I just keep low key and not very active, but yeah, I'm there. Kevin King: You're in the Billion Dollar Sellers WhatsApp group. That group is very active. You're in that group. That group is actually, you know, that started after one of the events several years ago and it's just, It's grown and there's like six, seven, you have to have been to a BDSS event to get into it. But there's seven, eight hundred people in there and it's really active. There's a lot of helpful stuff going back and forth in there. Palak Raniwala: I don't think anyone has that but it helps out because it helps out with real life problems. Anytime I'm stuck with something, I will. Message on there and I'm 100% I will get some response. So it's really helpful. And even if it's not in the group, a lot of people who know the solution will message me directly and say that, you know what, do this, do this, do this. Recently, I just got help with creator connections on there and it just helped me out a lot. So yeah, that's so much value. I just come to an event just to get part of the group. There you go. Kevin King: I like that. Thanks again for taking some time today and chatting. This has been great. Palak Raniwala: Thank you so much for having me. It was so fun to chat with you as always. Kevin King: Always fun speaking with Palak. That was a great little episode about how she's actually changed her business to grow it to more than 3X in a short amount of time and what she's doing now focusing on the branding side of things. That she really wasn't focusing on before and that's really helping her grow. We'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll have Danny McMillan on from Seller Sessions. Danny's got an event coming up and he's also been diving deep into the A9 algorithm and all the latest changes with Rufus and Cosmo and all the stuff that Amazon's doing. He's on top of that game. We'll be talking some cool stuff about what's going on there to help you out so that you can rank better and sell more on Amazon. So until next week, I hope you have a great rest of this week. And just to leave you with some parting shots, remember branding is not about a logo or a name or necessarily even just a design. It's about a feeling. A brand is how you make someone feel about your product or service that you sell. And that's what Palak has doubled down on and you've seen what it's done for her, more than three extra sales. Take care. We'll see you again next week. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for watching.