#697 - He Has Doubled His Amazon Sales Every Year!

#697 - He Has Doubled His Amazon Sales Every Year! Speaker 2: Today, we talked to a seller who was killing it in print-on-demand but then got shut down for trademark infringement. But then he pivoted to private label, Amazon, and for the last four years, he has doubled his revenue every single year and is now projected to do $3 million of revenue this year. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we are going on the other side of the world, probably 10 hours difference, 11 hours difference from us here in Estonia with Ranno. How's it going, man? Speaker 1: Hey Bradley, thanks for having me. Speaker 2: Is it still bright over there at 11 p.m.? Is the sun still out or is it not that time of year yet? Speaker 1: Not anymore. It was like that in June. Now we're declining again so it's getting darker and darker every day unfortunately. Speaker 2: That still just boggles my mind, living in a place where it's going to be all dark at some times of the year and then other times it's like 11 p.m. at night and it's still bright. That's right. I was there in Estonia for the first time a couple months ago and it was like 10, 11 at night and I'm like, I can still see the sun. What's going on here? It's crazy. Speaker 1: June is the brightest month when you visit Estonia as well. It's basically like 22 hours of daylight almost. So yeah, it's awesome. Speaker 2: I told you this story, but the audience doesn't know, but a funny Estonian story. I mean, Estonia has a strong solar community, first of all. When you think of countries that don't have big populations, the amount of Good sellers in Estonia is kind of like disproportionate. I think to the population if you if you were to consider it, but you know, like I've obviously You know the first Estonian seller I knows Is Annika who I still I'm still trying to bring on the podcast, but but she hasn't come yet And then we had Nemeh come on the podcast and it was so funny I told the story that I met Ranno at a billion-dollar seller summit in person where we hung out a little bit It was like two three years ago and then I knew he was from Estonia then. Annika would always talk about Estonian sellers and she would tell me, oh yeah, you should have Nama on the podcast. Also, and I was like, okay, yeah, yeah. And so for like a year, we would talk about that off and on. And eventually I did. But every time she would mention him, because I guess he was at that or one of the either that one or another billion dollar seller summit. Speaker 1: Yeah, he was there. Speaker 2: She would mention he was there. She would mention him a lot. And in my head, whenever she mentions his name, and now he's been on the podcast, I said like a few months ago, but whenever he met she mentions His name, your picture of you was who I thought he was. For like literally, this wasn't like, oh, a couple of months. For two years, she would talk about him and then I would be thinking of you. And then so finally, we scheduled the podcast and then as soon as he comes on the podcast, I'm like, what the heck? This guy really aged in the last couple of years. I was like, no, I must have the wrong person and I realized you are two different people. It was so funny. I was so confused when he first came on the podcast because that was the first time we talked one-on-one on the podcast. But finally, I have who I thought I was having on the podcast. I just had the names mixed up. Speaker 1: I had a good laugh as well about that. I told it to my friends and I was like, That's funny. Speaker 2: So hilarious. Yeah, I think both of you guys were not being too offended about that. But anyways, this is your first time on the podcast. And so what I like to do is I like to get some backstory. And so I assume you were born and raised in Estonia. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm born and raised in Estonia. 31 years old. Speaker 2: Did you go to university also in Estonia? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And what was your major for studies? Speaker 1: Finance. So I did my bachelor's and then also master's in finance. Speaker 2: And when you graduated, did you start working in that field at all? Speaker 1: No, not really. Speaker 2: That's kind of like what a lot of people say the same thing. Speaker 1: What actually happened was that after I got my bachelor's degree, then I went to Australia for a year just to explore the world. I hadn't traveled too much back then. I always had this thing in the back of my head to start my own business because my father has always been very entrepreneurial. Instead of going to some corporate work, I wanted to do something myself, but I didn't know back then what it was going to be. And then when I got back from Australia, then it kind of naturally went that I had a friend that didn't have any money and I had saved like 10,000 euros, you know. And he had discovered, you know, Amazon and then that's kind of how I... Speaker 2: What year about are we talking about? Speaker 1: 2017. 2017. Okay. Speaker 2: So then... Speaker 1: Eight years ago. Speaker 2: So then you two partnered up to like launch an Amazon business or what do you do? Speaker 1: Basically, so how it started was that he already had started a business like Amazon business with another guy, but both of them didn't have any money and they, you know, they were just doing it for beer money basically, like print on demand. We were all friends from the same small town and then I partnered up with one of the guys and I was like, okay, I have 10,000 euros. We can try something. We started doing print on demand. We just did everything, like copyrighted designs, whatever we saw. Speaker 2: Was that like merch by Amazon or what kind of print on demand? Speaker 1: It was print on demand. We put up a Shopify store and then we had an Amazon store and then whenever order came in from Amazon, it directed it to Shopify and then to the vendor that printed. Speaker 2: So you didn't use Amazon Print On Demand, you were using an outside vendor, but just putting the listing kind of like on Amazon. Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't get access to the Merch by Amazon at first. I think we did around like a year later, but back then you could only do like t-shirts and I think maybe hoodies as well. And you couldn't really do anything. It just uploaded the design and that was it. Speaker 2: What were you guys doing? What were you doing with the other vendor? Not just t-shirts? Speaker 1: We started with t-shirts, and then hoodies, and then doormats, mugs, keychains. Speaker 2: How would you call them for designs? Was it like text or drawings or what? Speaker 1: Both. We started with text. I have no Photoshop skills at all. And then we started with just random text designs. We We did a lot of keyword research every day. We had a task for both of us that we have to come up with 10 different slogans or ideas basically. And then we just photoshopped them. I learned Photoshop in a month just to do some basic designs. And then we just uploaded. At one point, I think we had over a thousand different products uploaded to Amazon. We built a small system so it would be faster and easier to upload all those lines that we're doing. Speaker 2: I bet you wish AI was around back then. Speaker 1: It was pure manual work. Speaker 2: What did you scale that up to then? Monthly or yearly? Speaker 1: We started in July and I think we made In October or November, we already made like 50,000 a month. We had designs like copyrighted designs that you're not allowed to sell. We had some Disney stuff. We had different TV shows, movies, everything that basically had friends. What would sell basically? And we got away with it for a year almost, not for a year. Speaker 2: How blatant was it? You say you were violating some copyrights, but when you say TV shows, was it like you were showing the likeness of the person or you were actually saying friends or something, or was it just a phrase or a line from the show or what? Speaker 1: Yeah, like lines from the show, then also like comedy versions of the show. Like you had the friends font basically, but we had something We had some other word in there, but it looked exactly the same. Game of Thrones was a big thing back then. We made a lot of money with this. And then actually the craziest story is that the mumble rap started going big in the States. There was the triple extension and then there was a little beep. The third guy that eventually joined the business as well was a big fan of this rap music and he had the ideas that, yeah, let's do like rap designs. I was like, yeah, why not? I mean, we can see that there's some traffic. That was like blatantly like we put basically their face on the shirt, started selling it, like immediately 10 units a day, 15 units a day. And then the craziest story happened. Unfortunately, one of the rappers, I think, died in 2017, November. Speaker 2: Well, that's XXXTentacion probably talking about. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the RIP to him. But I woke up in the morning and Amazon has completely blew up. We sold 500 or 600 shirts in a day. And that happened for a week in a row. So basically, the money I had like, immediately we ran out. So I had to borrow another 10,000 from my parents just to... Speaker 2: It ran out because you have to pay to the vendor to print before you get the money from Amazon. Is that what happened? Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, They're charging per order. So if your order comes in, the vendor is charging you like $10 or whatever the shirt was or something like that. And then Amazon pays you obviously like two weeks later. We wanted to get all of those shirts out immediately, but then the shop was blocked because we didn't have any money on the card. Then I had to borrow that from my parents. And yeah, that was a very successful month. But that's also from where the troubles started. I think a month later, their team messaged us and we didn't argue or anything. We just took the designs down. That was it. Speaker 2: Through Amazon or through Shopify or how did they contact you? Speaker 1: Directly to our email. I think they got this from Amazon. But yeah, they contacted us directly through the email. And then a few months later, Disney contacted us. I think it was in 2018, February. Basically, I don't know how it's called like season to season letter or something. So basically, if we don't take everything down immediately, then they're gonna, you know, they're gonna charge us like $10,000 or something. And obviously, we got very scared. So we just took everything down. But by that time, with those six months, we had already made in profit, I'd say, probably like 25-30,000 euros. So we were now like, okay, now we're gonna start again. And by that time, we had already heard about the FBA model as well. We just didn't have any good ideas how to do it or how to start with it. And yeah, and then I started actually learning about the FBA through Helium 10, which is great. 2018, I probably listened to at least like 50 to 100 episodes. Like whenever I went to like evening walk, evening run, I always, you know, put the podcast into a year just to, you know, and what's going on. In 2018, a year later, we started with FBA. Speaker 2: If you want to watch the Serious Sellers Podcast in video form, make sure to go to YouTube and check out our brand new YouTube channel. Just type in the search bar, Helium 10 Serious Sellers Podcast, and you'll see our S logo come up. Make sure to hit that subscribe button, go to the channel, and binge watch any of our episodes that we have done lately. We'll see you there. Okay, and then how did you do with your first private label products? Speaker 1: So we started, so now there was three of us. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: And like our first plan was that, you know, brainstorm products. We were really good at keyword research. So we kind of understood, you know, what's going on. And basically, every one of us came up with a brand. We started all three of them, which probably was a big mistake, but we didn't have any experience and we were like, let's try all of them and let's try all of them on all markets. So basically, we started selling something in the EU and then also something in the US. We learned a lot. I'm an expert in selling in every marketplace, but that also was a big issue when we wanted to start to scale the brands. So yeah, that got really hard really fast. And nothing really took off that fast. So yeah, I think that half of 2018 and then 2019, these were the most miserable years of my life. Speaker 2: Because you had sunk a whole bunch of money in and you weren't getting too much back yet? Speaker 1: Yeah. All three of us, we were putting eight hours, 10 hours every day trying to figure out how to get this thing working. We made, I don't know, $5,000, $10,000 a month in revenue, but it wasn't profitable. We didn't know how to do ads properly. We didn't have branding. We had three brands, which was a huge mistake. In 2020, the COVID started and I moved to Kenya for exactly half a year at that time with one of my business partners. Speaker 2: I hear of people moving to Bali. Let me move to Portugal. I have never heard one person say, I decided to move to Kenya. How in the world did that happen? Speaker 1: One of my business partners is a professional long-distance runner or used to be. In Kenya, there are people that are running long distances. They train there in the mountains. We were in a small village called Itten. All the world record holders basically are from that small village. I love the people like they are very friendly. Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's a great country. Speaker 2: So then around that time, did one of the brands start doing well during COVID while you were over there? Speaker 1: Yeah. So 2020, we had this kitchen brand basically that took off. But the issue with the brand was that the lead times were very long at that time and also the production time. Basically, Both of these together was like 120 days to get the product to Amazon, which is ridiculous. We had huge cash flow issues because by 2020, we had run through most of our saved money, let's say, and also needed to start doing some side hustles just to get money for living. And then, but then the brand took off. And then again, we loaned like 25,000 from one of my friends just to buy more inventory and keep the products in stock. And then we had And like the second brand, which we are still doing today, didn't really take off and it was just existing. And then the third brand we had then in 2020, we decided to phase this one out because you know, we just couldn't handle three brands and start to focus together. And yeah, thanks to my friend, we managed to buy more inventory. We managed to stay in stock for one year in a row. And then 2021, somehow we understood that we can't sustain two brands. We need money and we don't have enough for both of them. And the brand that took off We had better chances with this one to sell. The other one that we're doing right now, we're sourcing everything from Estonia. It was a very hard brand to sell at that time and didn't really have good numbers either. So we managed to basically sell the brand in 2021 for We had just one SKU for nearly 200,000 USD, which was a lot of money for us at that time. Some Swedish aggregator bought us, and a year later, they didn't sell the product anymore, which was also an interesting investment from their side. Speaker 2: Yeah. But yeah, we were very, did you try and take it back or start it again or something like that? Speaker 1: We didn't, we don't really care about it anymore. Like right now. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: We got the money, we were happy. And, you know, we started really focusing on the business we have today. Like the fruit powders. I'm not sure if I told you about that at the conference as well. Speaker 2: But yeah, powder. So yeah, is that like what you mix for drinks? Or what is it? Speaker 1: It's for for baking mostly, I'd say, like middle aged woman are our main customers or like buyer persona. But I mean, we now we have like 35 different products like we have all types of fruit powders, peri powders that you can imagine like starting from like passion fruit or blueberry or you know, and these are single ingredient products. Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's really nice. And made in Estonia or produced from Estonia? Speaker 1: Yeah, so we have factories in Estonia and in Poland. Estonian factory is our main factory. We try to source everything locally, but obviously like most products come from our region, but obviously like the exotic fruits, like passion fruit, it's coming from like Uganda, for example. And I don't know, mango is coming from Vietnam. Exotic stuff we obviously buy from other regions, but like the main best sellers we have are all from our region. So from Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Ukraine. And yeah, we buy the like we right now it's just you know, the harvesting season. So right now we are like, there's a lot of work we're buying blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and then just keeping them basically at the big freezer. And, and yeah, and then making them into like freeze drying them and making them into a powder. Speaker 2: So what kind of annual revenue does this brand do for you guys? Speaker 1: So 2021, I think we did 100k a year. That's when we had those cash flow issues and all that. 2022, I think we did 250,000. Okay. Unknown Speaker: Doubled. Speaker 1: 2023, 400,000. Another double almost. Yeah. 2024, I think 1.2 million. Speaker 2: Another like doubling every year. Speaker 1: Yeah, and now 2025 probably around two and a half I'd say. Speaker 2: So talk to me about that. How in the world do you for four years straight pretty much double every year? I'm assuming it's not just adding more SKUs. I'm sure that's part of it, but you're actually increasing revenue on your existing ones as well. So how have you had that kind of success? What do you think has been working for you? Speaker 1: Obviously, I have a lot more experience now. By the time when we sold the brand, I was already consulting some other Estonian brands and also learning at the same time from them. So I already knew. I had a blueprint already for myself that when eventually we get the money, I exactly know what steps I have to take to scale my own brand. And the only thing missing at that time was money. Because first thing was, you know, I need to keep all of my products in stock, like I need to have three months of stock, I need to have two months on Amazon, I need to have one month, you know, in my Estonian warehouse. That was the first thing. And that already, you know, for that, I already needed quite a lot of capital. Second thing, branding, like we needed to have We started with professional branding, which before we had our own, we did the best we could. But now we were able to hire a designer that basically helped us out, improved our branding. I gave input, but he made it reality. That was probably the second big thing after that conversions just blew up. Third thing, we got a lot of certifications for our products, which are also very expensive to get for food products. We have the USD organic certification. Now basically somebody, not from the States, but somebody was hired by the certifier that flew into Estonia, and obviously we have to pay for it to get certified organic. So now we got our products certified organic, which also means the conversions blew up. So yeah, these have been I'd say the main steps. And then yeah, we also add some some new SKUs as well. But I'd say that most growth has come from the from the products that we already had. But now we just were able to, you know, make them a lot better for the customer. Speaker 2: Huh, interesting, interesting. Now, um, I'm looking at one of your listings right now and I see a few unique things I want to talk about. First of all, I see you're relying heavily on virtual bundles, which I have been telling people for years. I think this is a good idea. But it actually pushed it to the top of it's almost level with your buy box. Do you do that mainly to just take away that sponsored display ad to push the other ads down? Or do you actually see some conversions on your virtual bundles as well? Speaker 1: I'm mostly like one big reason is obviously to push everything, everybody out from our listings and you know, keep all the possible spots occupied offered by Amazon. Also, to promote new products. Like always, when I launch something, then we do bundles, you know, with the best sellers, just to get some extra traffic. But we don't really, specifically, we don't really push the bundles. Okay, we just make sure that they're done. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. Again, like I said, I don't think it should be necessarily for conversions. Maybe some niches it actually works really well, but it pays for itself almost just to be able to cross-promote your own products and push ads down. Speaker 1: Yeah, it also increases the average order value because people usually, when they buy the bundle, they buy two or three products at a time. Speaker 2: Now, you have a very aggressive discounting, at least on this one listing I see. I see here a 20% coupon for subscribe and save. I'm assuming that's for the first order. I see here a buy 10, get one free. And then I see a separate coupon to redeem up to 21% off. So I'm assuming that you've been, you know, experimenting with different discounts and stuff and over the months and this is what you came up with. Talk a little bit about this strategy. Somebody looking at this might be like, what in the world? Like somebody could just stack these up and just really, you know, kill you on your profit margins. But how did you land on this strategy? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you can do coupons and people can stack them up. You can exclude stacking, basically. Speaker 2: Okay, good. Speaker 1: So yeah, if you buy any 10, get one free. We have huge margins on our products as well. We do everything in-house. We basically resource the raw material. I know exactly from the top of my head How much the raw material costs. I know where to buy blueberries directly from the pickers. We have a very close relationship with our factory in Estonia. Yeah, we do everything ourselves. So that's how we've been able to maintain very high margins on the product. And that's how I can have a very good offers basically for customers. Most important discount on the product pages is the 20% coupon for subscribe and save. That's what we're trying to push the most. I've experimented 30%, 35%. What I've seen is that 20% is kind of the sweet spot that If people see a 20% subscribe and save coupon, they're going to use it as much as they would use the 25 or 30%. If it's 15 or 10%, then the conversion drops. So for us right now, the 20% has been the sweet spot where we don't give up too much margin, but at the same time, we get people to subscribe and save. Speaker 2: Have you, on your own or using the Helium 10 tool, analyzed your lifetime value for customers and seen the repeat orders? Because that also will help other people out there to decide, hey, maybe I need to go more aggressive on the subscribe and save because, oh my goodness, if I get them on subscribe and save, I keep them for one year every month or something. Have you looked at that at all? Speaker 1: I haven't looked at the Helium 10 one, but I'm constantly looking at it from Amazon's side to understand how much people are dropping off after using that one-time coupon. What's basically the drop-off rate? Then also, I'm always trying to make sure that month by month, the number of subscribers we have is increasing basically. And, you know, we started the brand, Amazon, I think didn't even have a subscribe and save in 2018, or at least we weren't part of it. And at one point, I think that was also actually one of the big reasons why the brand has, you know, has been like blowing up, basically, is that the subscribe and save has like a huge, like, what's the word in English, but you know, like, the effect. That's, yeah. I see with all the new launches as well because we have a lot of products that don't have a lot of search volume. But we're still testing the market and seeing if our own customers are interested in the flavors. And what happens is that we start... Basically, there's no search volume. We sell five units maybe a day, three units a day, or maybe even one unit a day. But three, four months later, we consistently sell five to 10 units a day. And then a year later, we're consistently selling 15 to 20 units a day. And that's good for us, for the product. And that happens because more and more people subscribe and save and they kind of keep the PSR up for the product and then new people find it. Speaker 2: What other unique things are you doing, like either on the keyword side or how you're doing advertising, any secret sauce you can share that you think is setting you apart from some of your competitors? Speaker 1: First of all, we have a pretty difficult niche in a way to get your hands on the products that we have. For example, the blueberry powder. If you're even looking at the sellers that are selling the specific berry that we are selling, because there's different blueberries, there's people that I grow with cultural or cultivated blueberries, but then there are the ones that are grown in the forest, like wild blueberries. The specific blueberry is Vaccinium myrtillus, which is you can only get it from Finland, Sweden, Estonia, basically. It's already very hard for other people to get their hands on the raw material and there's like three Estonian sellers. So, but to get to my point is that we are very aggressive. Like we have the product, it's hard to enter the market. But at the same time, we are also like on the Amazon side, we are very aggressive with marketing, like we're doing a lot of ads, I make sure that you know, we are, we're trying to have like all the keyword spots for us. Like I've tested different things out that were, you know, if we achieve rank one somewhere, then you know, I shut, I turn PPC off, and then we have the organic rank up there. But what I've noticed is that that way I give the I give the PPC spot to a competitor and then the sales immediately, you know, they get hit. And so far, I've decided that I'll be aggressive. I'll get the PPC rank for myself and then also organic. And even though I have a bit smaller margin, the velocity is much higher. So yeah, if you look some of like I'm also sometimes surprised like if I if I look some of our products, then like there's a lot of Other flavors you can see there that are pretty irrelevant. Like, I don't know if you look at maybe like raspberry powder, then you can see that if you scroll down, there's like a lot of other our products. And that's how we try to cross sell and people see our different flavors and then basically bundle them up as well. Speaker 2: Okay, before we get to your final like 30 or 60 seconds strategy, how can people find you out there on there on the interwebs? I know you do some side consulting too, or you have anything you want to promote at all? Speaker 1: I mean, I don't really do. I mean, people who know me, you know, And if they need consultation, then obviously I'm helping them. And you know, if it's a very good deal, that's that's hard to say no to, then I'm also always considering but I don't really, I'm not really, you know, doing brand management for 10 different brands. I have plenty of work with my own and usually right now what I've done is that I have one one other brand that I'm helping and then my own brand. Speaker 2: You want to mention your actual product that people can go buy at least? Hey, I want to promote you somehow. I might actually buy some of this for my smoothie. Right now I'm doing carnivore diet so I can't eat any of this smoothies or any fruit or anything but I'm gonna be your customer soon once I finish this diet. Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't mind. I mean, I'm not afraid of competition. I think it's healthy. Speaker 2: Yeah, you have and that's me. You have a moat like, hey, unless you're in Estonia and you have direct connection with these farmers and stuff like you can't just like copy this like a like a product from China or something. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm always like making fun that, you know, basically Chinese if China, you know, wants to bring the product on the market, they're buying the berries or the powder from us. Jungle Powders is the brand. I think you'll like it. Make sure to look into the product and learn how to use it because some people, you can't just directly eat it. It's dry fruit. Speaker 2: Let me get a spoonful and put it in my mouth. No, that's not the way. I can already tell that's not the way to do it. Speaker 1: Put it in a smoothie, put it in a yogurt. Some people even drink it with water but it's whole fruit powder so it doesn't dissolve. I'd recommend yogurt is the best or into a pancake mix or something like this. Speaker 2: I love it. Love it. All right. Last 30-second tip or 60-second tip. Could be about anything. Could be about going to Euro basketball games. Could be about picking blueberries in Estonia. Could be about PPC. Anything you want. Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll give you an Amazon-related tip. And I feel like I realized it too late. I wish I had realized it much earlier, but really focus on customers. We sell food products and sometimes our powders are clumping up. People get it there rock hard. Have solutions for every issue your product has and send the explanation to the customer. But what we also do on top of that is no questions asked, we refund, if it's possible. We refund the customer, we send a free replacement to them. We don't want to risk them leaving a bad review and that way we usually get actually a five-star review even though they weren't satisfied with the product. We refunded them, sent them a replacement and they were amazed by the brand. And I also, you know, combat this with the negative reviews, like whenever we get one, two or three star review, I immediately refund. And then I follow up, like I have a VA now who's doing that, but he immediately follows up with them, offers a replacement. And, you know, I think right now, that's the, that's the best and probably the probably the best way how to get rid of or get the review changed, pretty much. Speaker 2: Awesome, awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I'd love to reach out to you in a year or so and let's see if you doubled again. I don't know how many years in a row you can keep doubling. It's kind of amazing, but congrats on all your success and look forward to seeing you hopefully in Estonia again. It already became easily top 10 country I've ever been to out of the 70 countries I've been to. So look forward to visiting there and maybe I'll see you at a conference soon. Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Bradley. Yeah.