Hmm, curious to know your thoughts: Is his experience common or easy to replicate in 2025? Are you recommending starting on Amazon, or somewhere else? How representative of most New Sellers’ experiences and success is this?
The e-commerce veteran admits that selling on Amazon in 2025 is more complex and expensive [than in 2010], but he still believes it’s the best place to start a business.
“The beautiful thing about Amazon and why it allowed us to succeed is that it really lowers the barrier to entry and reduces overall risk,” he said. “If I were to set up a traditional retail store distribution channel, there are tremendous costs that come with building all that infrastructure out and hiring. Those costs are reduced 90%, if not more, by starting on Amazon.”
Business Insider constantly posts articles like this behind their paywall. There’s probably 1 or 2 a week. If they’re not building a million dollar business in 6 months and $3, they are retiring at 29 after paying off $300k in student loans, or showing how 1 Great Gamechanging Idea lead to a Lemonade Stand franchise at age 7.
I have no idea what this means. We are on Amazon, Walmart, and Retail. I run it all myself. No employees. Just my partner, that’s nowhere near as involved as me because he has his own business to run, and me….
Yes we have a retail broker and an advertising manager, but the broker only makes $ when we make $ and the ads manager is slightly more expensive than our Amazon SAS manager…
This is very true. We would be nowhere without Amazon as a starting point.
Also very true. There are no guarantees in retail and if your stuff doesn’t sell, it’s coming back to you and there are lots of expenses in terms of co-ops and discounts you must participate in.
The reality is margins, at least for us, are very low on Amazon / Walmart. Retail is where the $ is but it’s not easy to get in, and you’re getting the fast if you don’t meet their turn expectations.
I assume they have a huge profit margin on their products to pay for all of the online advertising they are using. Search on Bing results in an enormous number of Ebay ads for their products.
The beauty of providing sales figures like 8 digits is you are not sharing what you are making.
In my businesses which mattered to me I would always be willing to provide gross sales numbers, but never shared any data on profitability with other than an accountant or the IRS,
In any case, there is not doubt that one can launch a brand on Amazon for a small sum, but without enough working capital, no one will ever notice when your cease to exist.
fast if you don’t meet their turn expectations.