The fewer the employees, the better the sales/employee. So if the revenue number is correct …
I had a two person company with $1 million per employee and was the envy of my competition. Many of my competitors in the 80s were running under 50k per the employee,
It’s almost certainly part time hourly workers. For one, you generally want to avoid giving benefits for that type of job since benefits cost a lot of money, which also goes along with the fact that people don’t sign up for a dead end job packing snack boxes as a career. $15 / hour is more appealing to that type of worker than $12 / hour + benefits (which’ll actually cost the company $20 / hour).
So basically you have a bunch of minimally trained workers with high turnover who are going through the motions and have little prospect for any kind of advancement and likely don’t care much about quality. This is all reflected in their high problem rate.
I say it’s a poor business model because selling short dated items through Amazon FBA is a nightmare, and if you have an issue that takes several months to resolve with Amazon, and Amazon is 100% of your sales (which seems to be the case here, they don’t even have a walmart storefront, just some dropshippers listing their products there), all your inventory becomes worthless. Also with Amazon being their only sales channel, any kind of interruption with their account means they need to completely stop production, and stopping/restarting production with that many employees isn’t that easy of a task.
Also seems like the only reason their business is successful is because of the laziness/stupidity of Amazon buyers who don’t realize that snack manufacturers package up their own variety packs, and if you order those you don’t have to worry about getting expired products or having some random 3rd party handle them. (Also, it seems like they spent a bunch of money on marketing given that they have fake article sponsored content)
Almost every snack manufacturer has a ton of those offerings available, and none of them are excessively priced because they have packaging machinery pack them all up instead of hiring a bunch of people ripping open costco bundles to repack them.
Their address is 5-10 minutes from a Costco. That is exactly what they are doing.
The giveaway to me is the fact that they’re including kirkland signature stuff. You don’t get that anywhere except costco and if they’re getting that there they’re probably getting everything else there as well.
Buying retail at Costco, paying employees to un-package and repack, shipping the stuff to FBA–where’s the profit in that?
Sorta like the gift-basket model. A person with whom I do business sent me a gift basket last year–two cheap awful bottles of wine and some other “gourmet” snacks, when unpacked were hiding far smaller containers of supermarket-level stuff. UGH! I looked up what she paid online, and it was ridiculous. She could have had delivered a couple of bottles of Grey Goose from the local dram shop for what she paid for the “gift basket.”
That outfit had the nerve to add my name to their catalogue mailing list this year.
Not “sorta,” they advertise their crap as a gift box..
Maybe frito lays should print “GIFT BOX” on their variety pack. Would probably get an untick in sales from that around the holidays.
Online, various places say total yearly revenue is $5-7M (yes I know OP claimed the suspended ASIN alone is $7M/yr on Amazon)…but revenue ain’t profit, baby.
I suspect they have very thin margins, after costs of the snacks, the repackaging supplies, shipping costs, and labor–though tbf they might actually get a better deal at Costco than the average member.
So many companies look good on paper…but then suspend a single ASIN and they are stymied.
Margins must be nice enough for a PHD drop out to live in NYC while having his business 3+ hours away
Margins don’t seem too bad actually. I’m estimating that a $30 box has about $8 (costco price) worth of snacks in it.
Plus internal packaging, plus reboxing, plus shipping, plus labor…but maybe 
After all costs (incl advertising) there’s probably a couple bucks per unit of profit, which given the volumes, if there’s no serious issues isn’t bad. It’s $30 for a very small box of junk food (detail page says shipping weight is 2 lbs), it’d be hard not to make money on that on a per unit basis.
The problem for them now is it seems like the problems are catching up to them.
Another possible issue is if the brand owners catch on they’re selling expired crap they’re going to get a C&D from selling their products.
But if they are buying from Costco, don’t many of the Costco packs have expiration info only on the case pack? Individual bars (boxes, bags) not being marked?
“This product not labeled for individual sale” comes to mind. I don’t know about the Costco packs.
Every snack item we have from Costco has individual scan UPC codes, date codes and nutrient labels. Even the Kirkland microwave popcorn is label to sell individual.
Normally, a manufacturer will have the different styles of bulk product. One for retailers to buy and sell as individual units and one that leans towards either personal consumption or for like restaurant use. Since Sam’s Club and Costco both try to sell to small retailers and restaurants, both will have bulk product which appeal to both groups.
We tend to see the “This product not labeled for individual sale” on the non food products like bulk toilet paper, napkins, styrofoam cups, etc.
That’s more or less meaningless as they’re not selling them individually, which means they don’t need a UPC.
All “not labeled for individual sale” means is there’s no UPC printed or assigned to that unit. There’s nothing wrong with reselling that product other than the fact there’s no barcode to scan, which obviously is a problem for any chain store. If you go to any bodega a ton of stuff there is from multipacks the owner got on sale at the supermarket, which often times is cheaper than buying it from the distributor. There’s a reason it says “not labeled for individual sale” and not “not for individual sale.”
That said, almost everything at costco has UPCs on the individual units as they cater to resellers.
Except when required nutritional information is only on the master pack and not on the individual items.
This could be a calamitous issue for CraveBox related to allergens and food sensitivities 
Given that they’re selling all well known brand name items, and the number of units they’ve sold so far without that issue coming up, it’s unlikely that’s a problem.
Seems like all their problems are coming from improperly handling expiration dates.
Until it is.
Florida woman sues Hershey for $5B because holiday chocolates don’t have designs and bites out of them as shown on the package.
Just sayin
Eh, that’s a 5M, not B lawsuit, and it’s class action (lol), which means individual plaintiffs are gonna get like a $3 settlement each.
It’s not a bad racket for the lead plaintiff and the attorney’s office though. It’s likely going to be settled because the suit does have merit, and is a stupid situation hershey’s got themselves into because they should’ve just molded the design in as advertised