Whether you’re new to selling on Amazon or a seasoned veteran, this saying from Wes Grudzien rings true: “Amazon in a sense is like a no limit hold in poker… it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.” Wes Grudzien has grown his co-founded business, LullabyLane to a 7 million dollar business in just three years. After this great achievement, Wes Grudzien actively consults and shares his knowledge as to how he had optimized his business with other sellers.
In the Seventeenth episode of Skubana’s E-Commerce Mastery Series where we invite experts of their respected fields to share their best practices for success, our host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz of InspiredInsider.com interviews Wes Grudzien of LullabyLane and Ezonomy.
What this interview covers:
Resources and metrics to pay attention to to further optimize your business
While private labeling seems to be a growing trend, there are several common mistakes to avoid
Focusing on your niche and establishing your focused consumer base
Finding inspiration and strife in your work to further both your personal life and your business
The importance of efficiently testing your products before shipping directly to Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
Raw Transcript: Wes Grudzien of LullabyLane and Ezonomy
Dr. Weisz: [00:00:15] Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. I’m founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders like the founders of P90X, Baby Einstein, Atari, many more. How they overcome big challenges in life and business. This is part of the Skubana eCommerce mastery series where top sellers and experts teach you what really works to boost your eCommerce business.[00:00:35] Wes is nodding because he is one of these experts. He’s going to talk to us today and founder of Ezonomy.
[00:00:42] Skubana is a software platform to manage your entire eCommerce operation.
[00:00:45] Today we have Wes Grudzien. I’ve been practicing your name for a few days now. He’s co-founder of Lullaby Lane. Wes helped grow the company’s Amazon sales to over $7 million annually in less than three years. That’s amazing, Wes. He’s also founder of Ezonomy where he teaches exact methods used to grow the seven figure business and consult with large scale sellers. Wes, thanks for joining me.
Wes: [00:01:11] My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Weisz: [00:01:12] I’m excited to chat, and you’re like the most lovable person, and we’ll get into some of your fun facts. You have some crazy fun facts about you which we’ll talk about. But I want to get into a few of the…I just said some mind blowing things for some people, for myself, growing this to $7 million annually in less than three years. So I have to start with that. So what do you think has created some of the biggest leaps in the huge jump in revenue in just three years?
Wes: [00:01:44] Sure. Sure. That’s a great question. I think our ability to grow was directly impacted by our access to inventory. And so with Amazon, a lot of times you have three major ways you can basically sell on Amazon. Retail arbitrage, which is literally going out to a store, buying something on clearance and selling it. You have private labeling which is contracting with companies in China to design products for yourself. And then you have companies like us that contract directly with brands, branded manufacturers, and sell those products.
[00:02:25] And so the beautiful part about that is that the products that we sell we don’t really have to create too much of a demand for them because the demand is already there. All we have to do is be very good at putting those products in front of the customer’s eyes because that’s what they want. That’s what they’re searching for. That is definitely the number one reason why we’ve been able to scale to the size that we have in the time that we have.
Dr. Weisz: [00:02:50] With the branded components, there are people out there who are also selling these brands and they’re not as successful as you. So what separates what you’re doing from them?
Wes: [00:03:02] Sure. Sure. That’s a great question. Interestingly enough I would say one of the major reasons is we actually just put traditional business practices in place. I know it sounds maybe simple, but a lot of times you can get lost in the volume and the hype and the excitement that maybe you don’t put those traditional practices in place.
[00:03:27] So we have budgets that we work from. We have buying cycles. We have inventory reconciliation. It’s all the parts of a traditional business, maybe not through Amazon, that I think make a great difference.
Dr. Weisz: [00:03:42] Yeah, that’s some non-sexy stuff that actually works.
Wes: [00:03:46] Exactly, it’s the foundational principles on which any business is based. You can’t get away from those pretty much no matter where you are or whatever you do.
Dr. Weisz: [00:03:56] Yeah. So Wes, speak to one of those. What’s one of those foundational principles that most people get wrong or they aren’t doing?
Wes: [00:04:05] That’s a great point. Probably our number one I would say is creating an area of focus. And this is particularly for Amazon in that if you sell everything on Amazon that’s fine. And there’s some people who do that and have that business model. But we believe that if you sell everything, you’re not really an expert at anything.
[00:04:28] So by focusing in the category that we did, which is baby, we build relationships with manufacturers. We build relationships with our distributors, with our transportation companies. We’re able to understand the market and not just go on Amazon and see what’s a good selling product and sell that. We’re able to look at that and create an opportunity that is not currently on Amazon by having that information. And we do that because we know the market. We know what people are looking for. It’s proactive instead of reactive basically.
Dr. Weisz: [00:05:00] We’re going to go into more detail later, but I have to ask, how did you even get into babies?
Wes: [00:05:08] We have a prior…There’s four partners in our company, and we have another small business that we originally started which was direct eCommerce. Only eCommerce, basically drop shipping. And we we’re pretty successful at that. But the problem is there was a real market cap. It was mostly small niche medical supplies.
[00:05:27] Right around that same time we were looking for new avenues, new areas of growth, and it’s a classic story in our industry, but my partner, him and his wife got pregnant. So they started looking at strollers and realized she wanted this $700 stroller that they had to drive an hour and a half to even just go look at. So we were like, “Huh.” Did a little research on the market and realized there was a nice opportunity there for that niche. That’s definitely how we got into it.
Dr. Weisz: [00:05:56] Was the foundation early on working in your dad’s business, too? We won’t talk about that now, but was that…Okay, so we’ll talk about what your dad’s business was and some of the things you did with that.
[00:06:09] So we talked about some of the big leaps. It’s putting those foundational principles. What’s another one? You mentioned a bunch. What’s another important one that most people miss or don’t do?
Wes: [00:06:21] Sure. Sure. I say planning out, not only financially, so looking at your cash flow, looking at profitability, but also planning new products. Because the other thing about Amazon is that it’s almost like the stock market in that there’s ups and downs, dramatic shifts. You gain new products. You lose products. So you always have to have products waiting in the wings and manufacturers waiting in the wings that you might not be actively pursuing. But building that foundational relationship so when the time comes, when maybe you lose the ability to sell a certain brand or line for whatever reason, that new company is there and you just start selling that. So you always have products waiting in the wings for yourself.
Dr. Weisz: [00:07:09] So you always have a pipeline of new things that you’re looking at? What’s your method for…Like you said, they’re very capital intensive especially looking on your site, Lullaby Lane. Strollers are not a $30 product. They’re hundreds of dollars. So what’s your method for deciding okay, this deserves to be in my pipeline for a new product and then getting to that point where you decide to release it?
Wes: [00:07:34] Sure. Sure. Well like you mentioned, with our direct website Lullaby Lane one of our philosophies is we only sell really high quality baby products, and so we identify that. And the other part of it is that buying directly from the manufacturers and being of value to them within the industry allows you to have terms. So you can negotiate credit terms and you really leverage those credit terms to build the business.
[00:08:05] That’s one of the other areas we really focus on is increasing our credit terms with our manufacturers because that directly correlates. The more credit you have, the more products you can buy, the more products you can sell, the more money and it’s just a virtuous cycle.
Dr. Weisz: [00:08:18] Yeah, that’s a really important point. So what about new products? When you vet new products…Because I’m thinking there’s only so many strollers out there, or baby bottles, or whatever, but you’re constantly coming up with new products. Where do you start in your thought process of coming up with those new product ideas?
Wes: [00:08:38] Sure. Well, being in one category, in the baby category, we have two major trade shows a year. So we spend a lot of time at the trade shows talking to people and working with our manufacturer’s representatives. Identifying upcoming brands, upcoming products, and we try to get it in here and really use it. We have moms in the store that work in the store. We have moms that work in the office and the warehouses here. Personally vetting the product and trying to also look at that product’s placement within the market. So is it a niche? Is it a me, too? Really just trying to understand not just on Amazon, but what’s the dynamic of that specific product?
Dr. Weisz: [00:09:21] I like when you mentioned about the trade shows because you probably get a lot of different ideas. Can you tell me about the last trade show or one of the trade shows that you were like, “Wow.” You saw something that just stuck out to you that you probably would have never figured out if you hadn’t gone to a trade show.
Wes: [00:09:36] Sure. Sure. Well I can tell you that with the baby show, which ABC Baby is Baby and Kids Show, it’s in Las Vegas, the fall show every year. It was a couple years ago, but there was a company called Four Moms and they are a newer company. They have a stroller that you push a button and it automatically folds for you. Then you press the button and it automatically unfolds. I was like, “Man, that’s just crazy.” So it’s Bluetooth enabled. It’s an iPhone hookup. Has lights on it. Has everything.
Dr. Weisz: [00:10:19] All the bells and whistles.
Wes: You got it.
Dr. Weisz: Wow, that’s cool. What other mistakes do you see? Obviously with Ezonomy, you’re doing a lot of consulting. What are other people doing that is working really well when you’re talking to them? And then on the flip side, what do you tell them as far as directing them away from certain mistakes that they may be making?
Wes: [00:10:41] Sure. Sure. Well it’s very popular right now, particularly through the Amazon to create private label products. And so with Alibaba coming up it’s very, very simple relatively speaking process of identifying a product, buying it from China, listing it and putting it on Amazon. The upside is that there are so many niches that there’s still a market out there to be pretty successful.
[00:11:10] One of the things that I’ve seen that folks have been doing that may not be the best is they are shipping the product directly to Amazon’s fulfillment centers without testing it and without getting their hands on it. And it sounds good, and in practice it saves you in shipping costs and what not. But again, going back to those traditional business principles and practices, you want to make sure you put quality assurance checks in place. And if you don’t and the manufacturer sends a poorly produced product and you get a ton of negative reviews on these products, you’re really going to be risking the health of your account.
Dr. Weisz: [00:11:49] Yeah, that’s a great point. So do you suggest people send small sample size at first and then Amazon? Or should they send the whole shipment to themselves? What do you suggest?
Wes: [00:11:59] Sure, there’s a couple different ways you can do it depending on your business. The simplest way probably is to work with your manufacturer and have them send a sample of that exact lot of product that’s been produced to you first. And then when you green light it, then they send directly to Amazon’s fulfillment centers. The safest way, which is what we would do, we don’t do private label, but if we did, we would have it shipped all directly to our warehouse. Because even if they put just the wrong sticker, all of a sudden the product’s listed under the wrong listing, you have dozens if not hundreds of returns, it just turns into a giant mess.
[00:12:34] So yes, on the front end it may cost you a little more in shipping, but on the back end it’s a piece of mind and a sense of security that you’re not risking something major with your business.
Dr. Weisz: [00:12:44] Yeah, that’s a good point. Quality control is huge.
So Wes, you bring up a really good point. I like how you separate the arbitrage to the private label to the branded to the manufacturer. Talk about that because people have very different opinions on…Some people are like, “No, I don’t want to compete with everyone else.” But it’s not even the same product, they want to do private label. And then the brand is like, “This is quality stuff. It’s already trusted. It’s already selling.”
[00:13:13] So talk to me about the private label side, when people bring up that about, “Okay, it’s my brand so I’m not competing with other people selling the exact same thing.”
Wes: [00:13:26] Sure. That’s a good point. There’s positives and there’s negatives in each of the styles right? So with retail arbitrage, your profitability is higher than any other area.
Dr. Weisz: Really? Oh wow.
Wes: [00:13:41] Yeah but you have a…Depending on how deeply you search and dig for product, your per unit profitability is significantly higher. However, you have time cost associated [inaudible 00:13:54]. Do you want to spend seven days a week, five, six hours a day hunting for product? If you do, great, that’s not my avenue. But it’s difficult.
[00:14:07] The private labelers, that is true that you are your own brand and you’re your own product. There’s two issues that you run into with that. One is that you have people that jump onto your listings that are maybe even the exact manufacturer in China that is producing your product because there are programs and there are folks that do that. They literally contact these manufacturers in China and they say, “Hey we can help you sell direct on Amazon for products that are already being sold.”
Dr. Weisz: Got you.
Wes: There’s ways around that as well.
[00:14:38] The second issue is that there are courses out there which are great and they help folks, but they teach you the exact step by step process for private labeling. And so that’s great for the first group and maybe the second, and the third, and the forth, but you have waves of folks coming and doing this identifying the same products.
[00:14:57] So yes, you may be the only person that has a wide handled spatula under your brand, but there are possibly 8, 10 other listings of wide handled spatulas that are the exact same product, they’re just a different brand. So in a sense, that’s going more to that EBay model than it is to the Amazon model of all sellers on one listing.
Dr. Weisz: [00:15:21] So the positive side of the branded, you going direct to the manufacturers, obviously there’s a credibility. You know there’s a demand there. Any disadvantages?
Wes: [00:15:32] Absolutely. The disadvantage is that you have less control over your pricing. And so if you’re buying from a manufacturer they, a lot of times particularly for well sought after items, there is a minimum price that you’re able to sell the product for.
Dr. Weisz: I got you.
Wes: [00:15:56] Your margins typically are thinner than if you’re working private label or if you’re in retail arbitrage. So you have to be of the mindset of volume. Now you still have to be profitable, but your profitability is going to be less.
[00:16:11] So that’s the negative of that is you have to do a lot more volume to be as profitable. But the volume is there.
[00:16:18] I would say the benefit of that though is that one of the things we’ve done and we’ve leveraged is that when we started off, we were a baby company. We were a small retailer. We had a 1200 square foot store. Our manufacturers labeled us as a small retailer, a mom and pop shop. And that is a label that you get in our industry. When you start buying tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars of product a month all of a sudden these manufacturers say, “Huh, they’re not really a small potato anymore.”
[00:16:51] So from that, we’ve been able to leverage better pricing, better terms, and that actually helps us on our channel outside of Amazon. So that definitely benefited our own website. When you have better terms you can get more aggressive with some of your pricing or with some of your discounts or promotions that normally you wouldn’t have if you didn’t have the sales volume that we had through Amazon.
Dr. Weisz: [00:17:14] Yeah. So talk about with the branded on Amazon, specifically about the buybacks. I don’t know how it works. Do they let only a certain number of people sell that particular baby stroller or whatever the case is? I can imagine there’s other people selling it. How do people get the buybacks so when someone’s purchasing it they’re purchasing it from you?
Wes: [00:17:39] Sure. That’s a great question. The first thing is that every person’s experience is different. But our personal experience is that we don’t sell against Amazon retail for anything. If Amazon retail sells that product, that’s great. It creates awareness. But we won’t sell that under that listing. We might create a bundle or we might do an alternate product listing or something that adds value to the customer.
Dr. Weisz: [00:18:09] So you’re saying if the manufacturer sells directly to Amazon in bulk and Amazon sells it through their own channel, then you won’t also sell it unless it’s in a bundle situation?
Wes: [00:18:22] Right, we won’t sell under that same ASIN for Amazon folks out there.
Dr. Weisz: Got it.
Wes: [00:18:26] That same listing. We’ll create a separate listing that adds value. That’s again one of the other things that we do or keys to the kingdom on how to understand how to build those bundles and what makes sense.
Dr. Weisz: [00:18:41] What other factors affect the buybacks in your opinion?
Wes: [00:18:46] Well, like I mentioned, a lot of the products we sell are MAP pricing, or minimum advertised pricing. So basically everyone is supposed to sell the product at the same price. There’s almost no competitive advantage if you don’t deal with price. All you’re dealing with are people that do fulfillment by Amazon.
[00:19:09] So it’s somewhat of a negative, but it’s also positive because if we look at a listing on Amazon and we use our software that calculates sales volume, per units per month, if we know the sales volume, and we know the price, and we know the number of FBA sellers, we can calculate how much gross sales we’re going to be doing on a monthly basis for that product without even having to sell that product.
Dr. Weisz: That’s amazing.
Wes: [00:19:38] So you can forecast what your growth is going to look like over three or six months by using that formula.
Dr. Weisz: [00:19:45] So I feel sorry for people competing with you. You have this whole formula in place.
Wes: [00:19:49] It’s software tools and we’ve been doing it for a while. I’m sure other people do it too. You kind of know the other big sellers in your area. We know there’s probably four or five other larger sellers that do similar things to what we do.
Dr. Weisz: [00:20:03] Well there’s a reason they’re larger sellers, because they’re doing these things. So I don’t know if you can share, we can have a software conversation later, but can you talk about what was that software you’re talking about that does that calculation, or reprice, or calculates it?
Wes: [00:20:17] Sure. Sure. Well there’s multiple that you can use. Everyone’s got their own brand. But basically the software goes in and looks at the sales rank of the products and they know from historical data how many units are sold because of that sales rank. And so we use Jungle Scout, there’s AMZ Tracker, there’s multiple ones out there that give you that data. That’s what’s really important is getting that data as opposed to how you get it.
[00:20:48] So on the other calculation of expected volume. If we’re to become a FBA seller of that product, it’s internal. It’s just sales volume divided by FBA sellers.
Dr. Weisz: [00:21:01] Right. You’re not even letting me get to your fun facts, Wes, because you’re bringing up some really good points. The other point you brought up was bundles. This is really intriguing and I find a lot of people aren’t doing these things. What do you find works for a good bundle?
Wes: [00:21:17] That’s a great point. It’s definitely some of the stuff that I work with my…As a consultant, when I work with some of the companies on doing this exact thing, what you want to find is…
Dr. Weisz: [00:21:30] Yeah, what would you advise someone? What do they come with? Did they have no bundles, and what did you tell them?
Wes: [00:21:35] Yeah. For a retail seller, a seller that contracts directly with brands, what you want to do is find a high ranking base product, so the main product of the listing. So for example, with us, if there’s a popular stroller, what you want to do is identify that listing, you can tell what the sales are on that, and then identify the secondary product that goes with it.
[00:22:03] So, for example, we have a stroller that is sold individually but it has a second seat.
Dr. Weisz: [00:22:10] Yeah, I saw that on your site. It’s on the homepage. It’s front and center. I didn’t even realize that was possible and it shows you how you can add another one. That’s really cool.
Wes: [00:22:23] So Amazon Retail buys that stroller and buys the second seat and sells them both, but they don’t sell them together. It’s a somewhat common sense thing.
Dr. Weisz: It makes sense, yeah.
Wes: [00:22:38] On the Amazon pages, there’s what’s called frequently bought together products. [inaudible 00:22:44] look at those. Maybe that’s something that…
Dr. Weisz: That’s a great suggestion.
Wes: [00:22:48] And again, focusing on one industry and one area allows us to do that. So we create some pretty unique bundles that aren’t frequently bought together. Or maybe intuitive that are pretty successful because of what we understand how the market works.
Dr. Weisz: [00:23:04] Yeah, and you have moms that you probably talk to and they’re like, “Oh, this makes perfect sense in your mind.”
[00:23:10] So what’s the most popular bundle that you’ve created and/or that you’ve advised someone else to create?
Wes: [00:23:19] Sure. Like I’d mentioned early on in our conversation, you always got to have products in the pipeline. So this product Amazon Retail does sell now. So we don’t really sell this one much anymore. But what I was telling you about the stroller with the second seat, and the retail on the product is about $650. At one point in our peak, we were running about $85,000 a month in sales on that one listing.
Dr. Weisz: [00:23:50] That’s amazing. So Amazon sucks? They took it over? What happened?
Wes: [00:23:55] That is the market place. That’s part of Amazon. Listen, Amazon Retail it’s their ball, it’s their court, it’s their rules. They are going to track what’s popular for their third party sellers, and they are going to try to take it. That’s the nature of the beast.
Dr. Weisz: That is cruel.
Wes: [00:24:15] If you complain about that…
Dr. Weisz: It’s part of the game.
Wes: [00:24:18] It is. That’s part of doing business. That’s part of it. So have product lined up and ready to go when you know that happens.
Dr. Weisz: [00:24:26] So then how do we get them buying more on your site? How does that work?
Wes: [00:24:31] Well Amazon pretty strictly forbids driving traffic off of their site to your own website. So we don’t do that. Outside of Amazon we do some Facebook marketing.
Dr. Weisz: [00:24:45] Right, that’s what I mean, outside of Amazon.
Wes: [00:24:47] Sure. Sure. I’m really, really blessed to have the four of us total. Three very smart partners, each has their own strength. One of my partners is very gifted in marketing, Facebook marketing, digital marketing in general. So we’ve seen some pretty nice gains from that. The other thing…
Dr. Weisz: So…Yeah, go ahead.
Wes: [00:25:14] The other thing that we’ve gotten is from our relationship with one of our manufacturers, building it through Amazon we became close. We had an opportunity when the Affordable Care Act was implemented to…What happened was the federal mandate for health care plans to provide a breast pump at no cost to moms. And so that seems kind of simple, but we actually, like you were talking about with my father’s company in the past, had the ability to bill these health care providers.
[00:25:49] And so from that relationship on Amazon, we leveraged that to create a new website and a completely new business sending out breast pumps and billing these insurances. So that in a sense is an indirect but a way to market to our own site. But in a sense it’s also direct because of that relationship.
Dr. Weisz: [00:26:08] Yeah, we’ll get into that a little bit too. What I was going to ask you is your four partners, what is the unique skill that everyone brings to the table?
Wes: [00:26:16] Sure. Sure. Well one of them is my father. And so he’s just been around a long time and he had his own business and he’s a smart guy. So intuitional things, or gut reaction things guide him.
Dr. Weisz: [00:26:31] So what’s his super power in your mind?
Wes: [00:26:34] He has the ability to look out and kind of see what’s going to happen.
Dr. Weisz: [00:26:39] Because he has so much experience that he can see trends easier than other people?
Wes: [00:26:44] Yeah, so he’s good for that.
Dr. Weisz: Got it.
Wes: [00:26:47] One of our other partners was also a very successful businessman. He bought a business, grew it from about 25 employees to 130 employees in 5 years and ended up selling it. So he actually made an investment in our company. So he’s actually an angel investor. He wasn’t one of the original investors, but he put a sizable amount of money into our company. That’s great, but I would say even more important has just been his experience and knowledge in terms of growing a business because that’s what we’re doing.
[00:27:22] Dad’s company was about the same size for quite a while. This other gentleman, Tim, he did it. He took it like I said, from small to large and sold his business. So he has an amazing wealth of knowledge that we’ve been able to tap into. And then our…
Dr. Weisz: [00:27:37] Stop on Tim for a second, Wes. Tell me, what is your favorite or best advice you’ve gotten from Tim or that you’ve heard him say?
Wes: [00:27:46] That’s a great question. So much. In terms of the Amazon piece, which I thought was very, very smart, one of the things he says is, “Control the controllables.” And that’s one of the things I use with my clients as well.
Dr. Weisz: Talk about that, yeah.
Wes: [00:28:05] There’s so much that you’re not in control of on Amazon. Amazon does the marketing, the search engine, basically everything outside of having the product. So you’re very limited in what you can control. So you have to focus on at least controlling the things that are in your power.
Dr. Weisz: [00:28:23] So what did that mean to you? What were you like okay what can you control?
Wes: [00:28:30] That’s a great question. Before he came on, how we would buy, so how we’d go about buying inventory, there’s many ways you can do it, but at first we’re buying two or three months’ worth of inventory and then basically sitting on this inventory. So you’d get this bullwhip effect of inventory levels.
Dr. Weisz: [00:28:54] I’m sure that’s very common. Most people probably do that.
Wes: [00:28:56] Absolutely, and the problem is that you can really get into cash flow issues when you do that if you time it incorrectly. You have a million dollars out in payables with your manufacturers, and some companies…
Dr. Weisz: [00:29:09] Yeah, you got to sell that stuff.
Wes: You can’t pay the taxes in strollers.
Dr. Weisz: Exactly.
Wes: [00:29:13] Or pay the bills in strollers. So going to a biweekly ordering pattern really helped solve a lot of those issues. So that’s one example…
Dr. Weisz: [00:29:22] So is that a tracking thing or what was the issue with buying in bulk, a timing thing? The new tract of okay at this point, we know the lead time when the stroller gets delivered so we know we have to order…What was the change that you had to make so it wasn’t so up and down?
Wes: [00:29:44] Weekly, just getting on a cadence of accountability. So instead of buying and then not watching it for a while and saying, “Oh crap, I need to buy it again.”
Dr. Weisz: I see.
Wes: [00:29:53] It’s, “Okay, we’re going to look every two weeks, we are going to check this every day, and then track this. Two weeks from now we’re going to create a purchase order, then we’re going to do this.” And it’s just putting again those fundamental business basics in that allow a lot of that success.
Dr. Weisz: [00:30:08] I see. So before it would be like, “Okay, I ordered this bulk amount I probably don’t have to look at it for a month.” And then now you kind of look and you kind of see, “Okay we’re selling about this number a week.” And you’re paying really close attention of how many you need to buy, that kind of thing?
Wes: [00:30:22] Absolutely. There’s other risks that are involved when you buy two or three months’ worth of inventory as well. If something happens to that product listing, you may have to pull all that inventory back and those are cash monsters. Those just eat up cash. So by ordering biweekly, you have a lot more free cash flow so you can invest in more profitable opportunities when they come down the road.
Dr. Weisz: [00:30:45] Yeah, and that, Wes, takes discipline. So what do you do to employ those routines in your daily, or someone else, as far as…Because it’s much easier to buy it, not look at it for a month and harder to, “Okay, we need to check this every week or every few days.” What systems do you put in place that make sure you actually do it, or someone does it?
Wes: [00:31:09] Sure, it’s interesting that you say that. There is an incredible book called “4DX,” or “The 4 Disciplines of Execution.” Basically it talks exactly about that. If you want to, you need to identify one or two major areas of your business that you want improvement on. You need to understand the levers that would create that improvement. And then you need to create, and again this is a very abridged version, but you need to create…
Dr. Weisz: [00:31:45] Now none of us has to read it, Wes. No, I’m just kidding.
Wes: [00:31:49] So there’s [inaudible 00:31:49] measures which are things that happen after you work, after you’ve done the work. And then there’s lead measure things that you do before the result happens. And so you have a cadence of accountability for those lead measures.
[00:32:02] So we meet once a week talking about what those lead measures are, what they’ve done, what we’re going to do next week. So it really just sets a pattern of precedence for how you go about doing your business.
Dr. Weisz: [00:32:12] Now did you discover that just randomly, or did someone say you need to read this?
Wes: [00:32:19] That was actually my partner. We’re both big, big readers. But he came up with that one and it really inspired him and implemented it within the company and I’ve seen a big change since then.
Dr. Weisz: [00:32:33] I want to talk about the other partners. Any other good resources or books that you’d be like, “If you are in eCommerce business”…Just business, but obviously eCommerce, what should people get?
[00:32:47] So we have the 4DX, what other ones are must reads? Like I said, I listen to three to six audible books a week, so I’m asking personally too, what else I should be putting in the cue.
Wes: [00:32:59] I’ve got the Audible hook up. That’s my thing there.
[00:33:04] I love Jim Collins. He did “Good to Great,” “Great by Choice.” He’s a professor that basically went in and analyzed, particularly in “Good to Great,” why these certain Fortune 500 companies were so good for that certain time period. And he identified common characteristics among each of the companies. Those were his principles of what “Good to Great” was.
[00:33:30] Peter Thiel wrote, he was one of the founders of EBay I believe, “Zero to One.”
Dr. Weisz: [00:33:34] “Zero to One,” I’m listening to that right now. Yeah.
Wes: [00:33:37] Dude that’s such a great book. That is a great book. Any of the “Lean Startup,” there’s a whole series of them.
Dr. Weisz: [00:33:45] Anything specific to eCommerce that you can think of? Obviously these are all business books. I can’t think of one any specific to eCommerce sellers.
Wes: [00:33:56] Sure. That’s a good question. I haven’t focused specifically on eCommerce just because, like I said, we did some of the foundational [inaudible 00:34:06] Your business is business is business no matter what you’re selling and where you’re selling. So you’ve got to focus on those things first.
[00:34:13] I will say though that I’ve recently been getting in to a gentleman by the name of Ryan Deiss and Digital Marketer. He has some pretty fabulous stuff going on. It’s do it yourself, so you’re not paying a consultant tens of thousands of dollars to do it. But if you can put in the time and it makes sense for you to do it, then he’s probably…
Dr. Weisz: [00:34:40] Cutting edge, leading edge of marketing. Yeah. For sure. Anyone else that you think other people should be following or looking at online?
Wes: [00:34:53] I’ve been so dug into my business that I don’t spend too much time [inaudible 00:34:59]
Dr. Weisz: [00:34:58] That’s smart. You’re disciplined. The 4DX, so I’ll stick to that. So your dad, Tim, and then next?
Wes: [00:35:07] Ryan, he is our managing partner of the Lullaby Lane side. He has the day to day responsibilities as our CEO which is beautiful for me because you have Ryan who’s about my age, a little bit younger, go getter, I’d even call him a visionary in a lot of senses. We’ve had multiple businesses that’s been created.
[00:35:29] You have him and then you have Tim, the gentleman who’s been there, done that successfully, and then I’m caught in the middle. It allows me to be a little free and creative and figure out what makes sense. And that’s what helps me and allowed me to start Ezonomy is that, having the freedom.
[00:35:49] I’ve been so caught up in my own business that it’s been great. But I also love to talk with people and educate and communicate. That’s one of my passions. And so this has given me an outlet to do that.
Dr. Weisz: [00:35:59] So what would you say Ryan’s superpower is?
Wes: [00:36:06] I don’t use this term lightly, but genius is probably a good term. And the ability to…
Dr. Weisz: [00:36:13] Give me an example of that. Where do you say normal person and then Ryan does something to the site or did something that you’re like, “This guy’s a genius”?
Wes: [00:36:22] Well he was the person I would say that came up with the, what I mentioned before, the breast pump idea and going direct, selling these to people. And it’s just being able to see how something’s going to happen and being slightly different and slightly that it makes a little more sense. I don’t know if that makes sense, what I’m trying to say, but just the ability to make connections.
Dr. Weisz: [00:36:44] Yeah, he put two things together. He saw the Affordable Care Act, he saw you were already selling breast pumps, and then instead of just doing it the same old way, put them together and maybe people would see a lot of obstacles with going direct and maybe dealing with insurances and other things. He saw an opportunity there.
Wes: [00:37:03] Yeah, like tip of the spear king of thing.
Dr. Weisz: Yeah, sure.
Wes: [00:37:06] We have a great group. I think all of us have our own strengths and weaknesses that we bring to the table.
Dr. Weisz: [00:37:12] So you, what’s your superpower? I ask you last because it’s the hardest to identify your own. And you’re a very humble person, so I’m going to ask you to just really tell me, with the business, if you think about the business, what does everyone else tell you that is your superpower?
Wes: [00:37:35] I don’t know. I don’t pay too much attention. Discernment.
Dr. Weisz: [00:37:41] What do you mean by that?
Wes: [00:37:43] In other words, I think that’s a good skill I have. Discernment would be like if two people were having a conversation, I can sit there and I can watch this conversation and I can pretty clearly understand if they’re actually communicating with each other, what one person’s trying to say, if the other person’s understanding it, what needs to be said. It’s almost a facilitation of [inaudible 00:38:00]. So that would probably be one of my…
Dr. Weisz: [00:38:08] So Wes, on that note, user feedback. It seems like you do testing. You talk to people who are moms. I don’t think you’d call it discernment, but user feedback that you were talking to some moms and how that created maybe a new product or a thought process that created new products. Because I think oftentimes we don’t ask our users enough on what they want, or what they’re not liking in certain products?
Wes: [00:38:36] Sure. Sure. It goes back to the bundles. And actually that’s what inspired some of the bundles early on is just folks would say…You have this set of baby bowls and someone would ask, “Hey are the baby spoons, or do you have something that goes with this? That would be great.” And so we’d look at that and that would be again another…
Dr. Weisz: [0039:01] It’s like hitting you up side your head. You’re like, “Okay, maybe we should order spoons.”
Wes: [00:39:06] Can’t see the trees through the forest, that’s what it is.
Dr. Weisz: [00:39:09] Right. What’s also interesting in what you guys do is you do a lot of great content marketing. I look at your blog. You have baby wearing safety tips or carriage buying guide, a lot of different things. So what’s the direction? Who sets the direction of that? I don’t know if it’s the lady Rachel Sowers is the lady doing it. So tell me her role and then how you decide what to put out as far as content.
Wes: [00:39:39] Sure. Sure. Well, from a 30,000 foot perspective, to be successful in retail, whether it’s online or in business, you have to create a following. You have to bring value to people. That’s what sets you apart. The point of the content is to connect with people, is to create a community, is to create value with folks. If you’re just trying to sell them a stroller or a breast pump, they can get that anywhere. They can get that on Amazon. They do get that on Amazon and that’s why we can sell it.
Dr. Weisz: [00:40:11] Hopefully from you.
Wes: [00:40:13] Yeah. But if you want an actual community where you can continue to offer products and services and build the lifetime value of a customer, you got to give them great content. And so that’s why we try to focus on content so they feel like we’re not just trying to sell them something.
Dr. Weisz: [00:40:33] You’re delivering value.
Wes: [00:40:34] Yeah, I’ve said this from the beginning with our staff is that when someone comes into the store and they’re having their first child, you have the ability to directly impact how well that experience, or how good that experience is by the products that you offer. If you give them something that doesn’t work for them, they know that and it could negatively affect some of that experience. And I know that sounds like grandiose but in a sense it’s pretty accurate. If you give them something that causes issues, that’s directly affecting them. So you have a lot of power in folk’s lives. You have to take that seriously.
Dr. Weisz: [00:41:12] So what has worked with building the community as far as content goes? What, for you guys, content has worked the best?
Wes: [00:41:20] Sure. Sure. Well, like you said, with blogs, that’s a great part of it. In our retail location, which we have a 7,000 square foot retail location in northwest Ohio, we offer classes.
Dr. Weisz: [00:41:32] Oh, really? Okay, cool. What kind of classes?
Wes: [00:41:35] Baby food making classes, baby yoga, baby sign language, music classes.
Dr. Weisz: [00:41:42] That’s amazing.
Wes: [00:41:44] It’s not there to retire off of early.
Dr. Weisz: [00:41:48] What’s the most popular class, or most popular two classes?
Wes: [00:41:52] That’s a great question. I’d be lying if I said I knew at the moment because my head’s been so buried in the Amazon piece. I don’t want to give you a…
Dr. Weisz: [00:42:01] Is there a best guess? I’m just curious. So you have the sign language class, the food making class, what other classes?
Wes: [00:42:08] Baby yoga, baby art. Probably the music classes would be popular, most popular.
Dr. Weisz: [00:42:18] I love that you’re talking about this, Wes, because oftentimes when people are focused online, they’re not dealing directly with real people. And so I find adding that component in there is really powerful. Do you video tape these classes or anything?
Wes: [00:42:31] Not really just because it’s such a personal and almost a one on one experience with the folks. So to go with what you’re saying, you really have to…To be successful you have to have Omni channel presence. It can’t just be your website, can’t just be your store, can’t just be Amazon. To actually build your brand, you have to really focus on all of them.
Dr. Weisz: [00:42:53] You’ve side tracked me a lot, but I’m going to get back onto from the beginning with your dad’s company. Before we talk about that and what you did for that, then we’ll get more into the story with Lullaby Lane.
[00:43:08] Your fun fact is crazy, you know? And so I wanted to mention that. So you were in body building competitions and you also are a trained opera singer. So, on the body building front, I’m not going to ask you to take off your shirt and flash me, but me about it.
Wes: [00:43:30] When I was a kid, I always was heavier and one day…I’d run marathons, I’ve done other kind of stuff like that. I really tried to push myself. And one day I said, “I want to do a body building competition.” So I took a couple months and educated myself, researched, and just understood how you really have to go about doing it. And basically I ate just chicken and rice and eggs for four months or five months straight.
Dr. Weisz: [00:44:04] So how old were you at the time when you did this?
Wes: [00:44:05] The first one, I’ve done two…They’re drug tested by the way, so it’s nice because it’s not the guys, the big, big boys, aren’t in there doing it.
Dr. Weisz: No steroids.
Wes: [00:44:16] My first one was about five years ago now I think, at this point. The last one was about three years ago. The thing about body building, not to get too deep into it, it’s an incredibly selfish sport. And it’s not even the time spent in the gym, it’s the time spent in the kitchen. It’s hours and hours.
Dr. Weisz: [00:44:34] I’ve watched video on YouTube of some of these professional body builders, and this guy, his whole morning routine. You’ve probably seen it. He talked about what Tupperware he buys because he’s packaging all this stuff up in different things for the day. So I know exactly what you mean.
Wes: [00:44:51] So if any private label is out there, there’s a niche market for you.
Dr. Weisz: [00:44:54] My eCommerce mind went to that when you talked about bodybuilding. I’m like, “He’s in the baby industry.” I would think immediately when you said that, that you…Because that’s a huge industry. With bodybuilders taking different supplements, all sorts of things, why didn’t you decide to go that route?
Wes: [00:45:13] It’s a great market. There’s a lot of it is a great market in the sense that it’s not regulated by the FDA. It’s an ingestible. You have liability issues from a business standpoint, that’s not a road that we wanted to go down.
Dr. Weisz: [00:45:25] I’m paranoid about babies.
Wes: [00:45:32] Well the nice part is you’re working with manufacturers. You’re on their insurance.
Dr. Weisz: [00:45:34] Yes, I got you.
Wes: [00:45:36] Obviously we have a million dollar policy of insurance ourselves. You also work with other folks on there.
Dr. Weisz: [00:45:43] So the trained opera side of things.
Wes: [00:45:47] Yeah, that was definitely from college. So again, following in the old man’s footsteps, he got his degree in operatic performance.
Dr. Weisz: [00:45:54] Really?
Wes: [00:45:55] Yeah, and in ballet believe it or not. So we’re kind of artists in our family.
Dr. Weisz: [00:45:59] Holy cow!
Wes: [00:56:01] So mom’s the same way. She was in music history. I went into college on a…I was kind of a slacker in high school. So really the only reason I got in to college was on a scholarship. So it was almost like an athletic scholarship because I only had a 3.6 GPA.
Dr. Weisz: [00:46:19] That’s not a slacker.
Wes: [00:46:20] Well to get into the school that I went to, it was. The average was weighted was 4.2 or something. The University of Florida is where I went to college. I got wait listed and I was lucky enough because I was on scholarship for singing they boosted me in. I’ll admit that.
Dr. Weisz: [00:46:38] I said before that I wouldn’t put you on the spot, or may not put you on the spot to sing, but if you feel inclined at any time, I’d love to clip something in at the end if you have it.
Wes: [00:46:50] I looked. Mom and dad just moved away so when I go up there…
Dr. Weisz: [00:46:54] I knew I’d get the “I looked” excuse. So the big influence for you, Wes, was obviously your dad. You started with him. He had the durable medical equipment company and you did some interesting stuff for that company. What kind of stuff were you doing?
Wes: [00:47:14] Sure. Sure. About 12 years ago when he’d been in it for 10, 12 years already, we had an opportunity to provide durable medical, like you were saying, wheelchairs, basically custom wheelchairs for folks with severe disabilities. And so I was just out of college and we started working together. So I really focused my time and energy on that. I got certified as an assistive technology professional. Basically that’s what I did for 10 years was design custom rehab wheelchairs for people with severe issues like Christopher Reeve and Stephen Hawking type wheelchairs. So that was…
Dr. Weisz: [00:47:52] We’re talking like 10 years ago, right, or more?
Wes: [00:47:57] Yeah, absolutely. It’s wonderful because of the direct impact that you have on people’s lives. So I still clearly to this day remember a lady that I built a custom wheelchair for her, and she was pretty severely obese and so it was really, really custom. And I was there and it probably took me about five hours to fit this lady, once I had built it and designed it and took it to her house to try and deliver it.
[00:48:22] But when we finally got it, she went outside. And it’s the first time she’d been out of her house in two years.
Dr. Weisz: [00:48:28] Holy cow, seriously?
Wes: [00:48:30] Yeah. So we went for a little walk together, which is obviously not part of the job description, but I just loved it. She was so appreciative of that, so it was really cool to have direct patient care basically.
Dr. Weisz: [00:48:42] That is amazing. I want to talk about one other thing on that note, but I don’t want to forget. I want to ask about when you went online with that company, when you started putting stuff online. Because I’m sure it was brick and mortar for a long time. But before, you have a really interesting fact on an experience with muscular dystrophy.
Wes: [00:49:02] A couple years into the business of doing this I heard of an opportunity for volunteering at a camp. So Muscular Dystrophy Association, Jerry’s Kids Telethon, a lot of people know about that. Well another one of their big programs is MDA Camp. And so what that is, is basically for one week a year, you go and you do 24 hour direct patient care with a child with muscular dystrophy. So kids that are, what’s the age? Six to seventeen I believe is the age of the kids. And I did it that the first year and I absolutely fell in love with it. It’s such an incredible experience. I’ve missed a couple years, but this was my tenth year that I did camp.
[00:49:52] It’s really hard to explain, because I was trying to think about this. You know when you have a really, really close friend that you can maybe not talk to them for six months, or eight months, or three months and…
Dr. Weisz: [00:50:071] You just pick up where you left off sort of thing.
Wes: [00:50:09] Exactly, you pick up right where you left off. That is what this is, but for a hundred attendants and a hundred kids. So it’s like 200 best friends meeting for a week a year, every year, picking up exactly where you left off.
Dr. Weisz: [00:50:21] I think this is powerful to talk about, not just from a personal standpoint, also partially from a business standpoint. Probably you see some amazing things of drive and determination in these kids that they are bound to a wheelchair and in horrible shape and they probably have sunny dispositions more than someone who’s so well off. Can you talk about one experience, maybe the one person that impacted you?
Wes: [00:50:48] Absolutely, you nailed it in that it’s a reality check. “Oh I didn’t get my Starbucks this morning,” or whatever. And you can think about there’s a young girl or boy that’s never walked, that’s in a wheelchair, that life expectancy is maybe 20, 21 years and they have an incredible disposition on life and just are carefree and they love it. It’s like, “Oh okay, I guess things aren’t so bad.” I’ll tell a story…I’m trying to figure out…There’s bodily humor involved in it.
Dr. Weisz: [00:41:24] Go ahead. Shoot.
Wes: I feel like you’re looking at me like…
Dr. Weisz: [00:51:29] I’m up for anything, go on.
Wes: [00:51:32] But it has a point. The first year I volunteered at MDA Camp, I had a young man who was I think nine at the time. And this is again my first experience. I’ve done wheelchairs, but I’ve never cared for someone with a disability.
[00:51:48] So the first camp, the first kid, the first night…We all stay in cabins, so I got to say that. There’s like eight or nine of us in these cabins. Some of these kids, they have to sleep in a hospital bed. They can’t sleep in bunk beds like everyone obviously because they have a sever issues.
[00:52:05] So the first night, it’s about 3:00 a.m. and I hear him and he says, “Wes? Wes?” And I’m, “What?”
Dr. Weisz: [00:52:20] You’re like, “Go back to bed.”
Wes: [00:52:22] He’s like, “Wes? Wes? I ‘blanked’ myself.” I pooped, which you know, that’s what happens. It’s part of life, it’s bodily humor.
[00:52:31] And so I get up and I go look and he absolutely had. And it was overflowing the diaper. And again, it’s not a criticism. It’s just part of life. And it took me about two and a half hours to get him all cleaned up, roll him over. This was my first time I’d ever done this. So that was like welcome to MDA Camp. That was my first experience.
[00:52:55] But I’ll tell you, I loved it. I absolutely loved the experience and there’s nothing like it. If there’s any filmmakers out there, small filmmakers, please contact me. I think it would make an incredible movie. It’s hard to explain without [inaudible 00:53:09]
Dr. Weisz: [00:53:10] An amazing documentary.
Wes: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Weisz: [00:53:13] So I’m going to go back on the eCommerce path for a second. Thanks for sharing that story. And don’t listen to this story before you eat. So the eCommerce, in your dad’s business, when did you first go online?
Wes: [00:53:29] Sure. Sure. So you remember there’s four partners, myself, Ryan…
Dr. Weisz: [00:53:34] So were they there from what point?
Wes: [00:53:37] Tim, the gentleman who invested, was after. But the three of us started it. And so Ryan worked at my father’s company.
Dr. Weisz: Oh really? Okay.
Wes: [00:53:44] Yeah. And we realized real quickly that it was really difficult to bill Medicare and Medicaid and these private insurances. So we wanted to get out of that.
Dr. Weisz: [00:53:55] I’m in the health profession. I understand completely. They control you and they can slash your prices and everything else.
Wes: [00:54:03] And there’s nothing you can do about it, exactly. I could tell some horror stories on that. So we realized quickly that we wanted to do something more free market where you’re rewarded for the effort that you put in. So like a lot of people, we first just slapped up a website and put every product on there and figured people would just come in droves and buy our products. That didn’t happen. That never happens.
[00:54:27] So we reassessed and we looked at it and we came up with an idea of niche websites. And so we still have that business. It’s small, but websites dedicated to basically one product or a line of products where we fulfill those orders. That was really our first experience with customizing a website for search engine optimization for that one key product.
Dr. Weisz: [00:54:52] What were they? Initially it sounds like there were a lot of wheelchairs. What other durable medical equipment were popular?
Wes: [00:54:58] Sure. Sure. We have a couple websites that do wheelchair cushions. They’re not huge. Each site does maybe $250-$300,000 dollars a year. So it’s not massive.
Dr. Weisz: [00:55:10] To some people that’s really good.
Wes: [00:55:12] Yeah, that is good. So yeah, wheelchair cushions, a piece of medical equipment that allows a person to stand who can’t stand. It’s called a standing frame. We sell those. There’s four or five sites out there.
Dr. Weisz: [00:55:33] Did you put them all online at once, or did you say, “I think we’ll choose this piece of equipment and go with that first”? What was your thought process?
Wes: [00:55:42] We started with one sight as a niche site, and that was one of our wheelchair cushions. The type of cushion is called a Rojo cushion. Our website is pressuresorecushions.com, that’s a real niche. But hey, if you have a bed sore…
Dr. Weisz: [00:55:57] That’s what you want.
Wes: [00:55:59] That’s exactly what you want.
Dr. Weisz: [00:56:00] That’s huge for their quality of life.
Wes: [00:56:02] It is. And it helps that we’re not just online sellers. We have a history and a background and experience in that. So we’re able to not just sell products, but we can help out with how it needs to be worked and other questions as well that we can answer because of our history in health care.
Dr. Weisz: [00:56:20] So you went from pressure sore cushions to what was the next progression?
Wes: [00:56:25] Well actually it was originally it was the brand name Rojo Cushions. But we found quickly…
Dr. Weisz: People buy [inaudible 00:56:36]
Wes: [00:56:36] The brands didn’t like us using their names in our URLs.
Dr. Weisz: [00:56:39] I see.
Wes: [00:56:41] So trademark issues.
Dr. Weisz: I got you.
Wes: [00:56:42] We had to transition away from that which was a good experience. So it was that website and another website for wheelchair cushions, and then the easy stand standing frame website.
Dr. Weisz: [00:56:56] When did you get into the Lullaby Lane?
Wes: [00:56:59] Well we had that going, and that was around the time that we were looking for something with a larger market cap than medical equipment. And so we identified one specific type of stroller, tried to implement that model, basically the named branded for that one item…
Dr. Weisz: [00:57:18] Did you start with strollers or was there something else before that?
Wes: [00:57:23] Yeah, we started with that one stroller.
Dr. Weisz: The one where the person had to travel miles just to look at the $700 stroller, or was it a different stroller?
Wes: [00:57:30] It was a different stroller but it was very similar. Not to get too deep into it. One of the things we’d look at when choosing a product was the search volume on a monthly basis. Rojo Cushions is probably somewhere around 30,000 for all of the unit searches a month, if that, for all the keywords.
[00:57:53] This one particular stroller, baby jogger was 800,000 or 900,000 searches a month. I was like, “Huh, this is a different ballgame.”
Dr. Weisz: [00:58:04] So someone goes on Google Keywords or something and searches the volume?
Wes: [00:58:09] Yep. A slight tangent off that, the interesting thing is that some of my research I’ve been doing with consulting is that Amazon, to go back to Amazon, is now the number one place where people start their product research. In 2009, 19% of the people started product research on Amazon. In 2015 a recent survey showed 44% start that research…
Dr. Weisz: [00:58:34] Wow, that’s amazing.
Wes: It’s a game changer. It’s a complete game changer.
Dr. Weisz: [00:58:38] So is there a service that you like to use to figure out…Obviously Google Keyword tool is free. Is there a way to figure out the monthly searches on Amazon, certain tools for that?
Wes: [00:58:50] There is, there’s multiple ones. We use a service called Merchant Words.
Dr. Weisz: [00:58:58] I’ve heard of it, yeah.
Wes: [00:59:00] The thing is, is that the volume is so much more massive in terms of monthly searches than what’s on AdWords on the keyword tool that I’m having trouble believing that it’s actually that volume. It could be. I could be wrong. We don’t use it as gospel. We use it more just to trend.
Dr. Weisz: [00:59:22] So you look at Google Keywords compare with the Merchant Words and see how comparable they are and just use the highest one? Maybe the data isn’t accurate but it’s the highest search term or something like that.
Wes: [00:59:36] Correct, and it may be.
Dr. Weisz: [00:59:39] You just don’t know how accurate it is because it’s not coming directly from Amazon.
Wes: [00:59:44] You got it. It’s not published information, it’s somebody’s algorithm. We found in general it works, but again, there’s no way to track the specific volume.
Dr. Weisz: [00:59:53] So you start with the first stroller and how does that go?
Wes: [00:59:58] That went well. We created a website specifically for that stroller just like the old business model. It had a little success. It was a lot more competitive market than what we were used to with the medical supplies.
Dr. Weisz: Less niche type of thing?
Wes: [01:00:13] Yeah, so that was fine. And then we said, “All right, let’s try to get a couple more products.” But then that was when we really quickly realized that you needed a physical retail location to contract with these manufacturers.
Dr. Weisz: [01:00:29] Why is that, trust purposes?
Wes: [01:00:32] It is for use. You have to bring value to these brands. Understanding that these are sought after brands that people are knocking on their door on a daily basis to try to sell their products. These brands don’t really need a contract with anyone. They don’t care in the sense that if you say, “Hey, I can sell $100,000 of your product online, that’s all that I’m doing.” They’re like, “Well, okay, we’re not interested.”
Dr. Weisz: [01:00:58] Why is that?
Wes: [01:01:00] The channel online is already saturated in terms of where to get product.
Dr. Weisz: [01:01:07] I see.
Wes: [01:01:08] If a brand was worried about someone typing in and trying to find their product, that’s a different story. But people are searching specifically for these products, and there’s already major companies out there selling them. So there’s no value to just selling online.
[01:01:21] So we realized quickly that you have to bring some other tangible value to these companies. And you have to id