Products & Store Catalog

In its early years, the store sold a more broad range of products and tried to appeal to a wider audience. In 2019, John decided to narrow the product selection and focus on a very specific niche, which turned out to be a brilliant decision. Not only has it allowed the site to build greater authority within its niche and achieve better organic rankings, but it also gives customers a higher level of trust that the store specializes in the product they're looking to buy. (Once you sign the NDA, you'll be able to see the domain name of the site and the exact niche it operates in.)

The store sells 12 popular brands of products, all of which are USA brands. While there are a few favorites, sales are not overly "top heavy" with the top 5 sellers accounting for about 48% of revenue (and the top 10 accounting for 64% of revenue). The catalog is comprised of about 100 core products, with an additional 100 or so accessories. The catalog is very manageable, and the VAs take care of all updates.

All of the suppliers have a strict MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policy, which is optimal because it prevents retailers from starting "price wars" by undercutting their competitors' prices which leads to lower profit margins over time. It also eliminates the need to constantly check competitors' prices and decide whether match or beat their prices (not to mention the time it would take to update the products' prices).

With an Average Order Value (AOV) of $3,212 and a gross profit margin of 18.9%, the store has an absolutely amazing $607 average profit per order. This means it only takes about an order a day to generate serious profit. Over the past 12 months, the store has made about 320 sales (which equates to 0.88 orders per day).

Top Growth Opportunities

• Set up Pay Per Click ads - Given its average profit per order of $607, this store is a prime candidate for Pay-Per-Click ads and other forms of paid advertising. John is an "SEO guy" and isn't well-versed in PPC ad management, so he's only dabbled a little bit with paid advertising. The new owner could take this store to the next level with paid advertising.
• Use retargeting ads to bring customers back to the site - Given the fact that the site gets over 800 sessions per day, there is a lot that could be done with retargeting ads on Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other platforms. If you're not familiar, retargeting ads (sometimes called remarketing ads) show banner ads to people who have recently visited the store on popular websites throughout the web (i.e. NBA.com, Weather.com, CNN.com, etc.), which is very impressive to customers and gives them the feeling the site is well-renowned, reputable and trustworthy. You can even set up the retargeting ads to only show to people who visited the site within the last "X" days and spent at least "X" amount of time on the site. It's very powerful, but John has never taken the time to set it up.
• Add more brands and/or products - To keep the catalog manageable, John decided to only list 12 of the most popular brands. But there are many other brands and products that could be added to the store, especially since you can tell potential suppliers that the site does over $1 million per year in revenue and gets 800+ visitors per day. Those kinds of numbers have a way of opening doors!
• White label your own brand - Especially since the business already has a trademark, a new owner with some capital could contract with a manufacturer to create its own product under its own brand name. You could set your own prices and no doubt have much better profit margins.