#741 – Building Amazon Brands And Buying More Of Them

In this episode, Bradley Sutton sits down in Long Island City with Shaff Qureshi, a New York-born entrepreneur who built a mid-seven-figure Amazon business after launching with something as simple as painter’s tape. What started as a side hustle during law school quickly became a serious business, even though his immigrant parents initially hoped he would follow a more traditional career path. Shaff shares how he discovered Amazon through a friend connected to a retail business, saw the opportunity early, and jumped in while still in school.

The conversation follows his progression from that first painter’s tape launch in 2019 to building multiple brands, including his planner and journal brand, Insight. He explains why he stayed focused on growing in the U.S. instead of expanding internationally too soon, and how that discipline helped him keep scaling year after year. Shaff also talks about recently acquiring part of a larger educational poster brand, revealing that his long-term vision is not just to sell products, but to build a portfolio of household brands.

A major highlight of the episode is Shaff’s detailed breakdown of how he launches and grows products. He discusses using auto campaigns aggressively at launch, driving outside traffic from Google, Meta, and email, and relying on keyword rankings as the core success metric for his team. He also explains how Helium 10 tools like Search Query Analyzer, Keyword Tracker, and Helium 10 Ads help his business track market size, measure ranking retention, and identify which ad types are actually driving efficient results.

Shaff also shares lessons from both painful losses and unexpected wins. He talks about taking on a large loan for a product expansion that underperformed, and how that failure forced him to improve his systems and decision-making. On the other hand, one supplier mistake accidentally created a product variation customers loved, which became a breakout success. The episode also touches on his TikTok Shop expansion plans, including how Helium 10 Diamond saved him from adding more software subscriptions by already including influencer outreach tools he was about to pay extra for.

In episode 741 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Shaff discuss:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 01:05 – Shaff’s New York And Pakistan Background
• 02:30 – Law School, Family Influence, And Starting A Business
• 04:05 – Why His Parents Doubted Amazon At First
• 05:17 – How He First Discovered The Amazon Opportunity
• 06:45 – Launching Painter’s Tape In 2019
• 08:28 – Building Insight And Growing Multiple Brands
• 10:06 – Revenue Breakdown, TikTok Shop, And U.S. Marketplace Focus
• 11:32 – Buying Another Brand And Building A Portfolio
• 12:28 – How He Uses Helium 10 For Growth And KPIs
• 15:19 – His Product Launch Strategy And Off-Amazon Traffic
• 24:18 – Biggest Losses, Surprise Wins, And TikTok Shop Software Savings

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

From selling painter’s tape on Amazon to mid seven figures worth of sales and the ability to buy even other Amazon brands. That’s just part of the story of today’s guest. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

Bradley Sutton:

And continuing my tour of the e-commerce world, I’m here in one of my old stomping grounds that I barely recognize, Long Island City, which when I was here 30 years ago, you know, it was like Queensbridge projects and you have to be careful walking around. And I got off the Uber. I wasn’t paying attention. I got off the Uber. I’m like, am I in like the west side of Manhattan or something? I’m like, what is going on here? But Shaf, am I pronouncing that right? That’s correct, yeah. Invited me here to his home here in Long Island City. Now, you told me you are actually from born and raised here in New York.

Shaff:

Yeah, born and raised Queens, New York, fresh meadows, but moved to Long Island City. Love it here.

Bradley Sutton:

How long have you been here in Long Island City?

Shaff:

Long Island City, I would say it’s been about three years.

Bradley Sutton:

Were your parents born in Pakistan or also here in the United States?

Shaff:

They were born in Pakistan. And my father actually came here when he was 16 in like, I think it was like the late 70s or early 80s or something like that.

Bradley Sutton:

From where in Pakistan?

Shaff:

Lahore.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, Lahore. I had some good biryani when I went to Lahore, but Karachi, like I still think Karachi might have a little bit better spice. I don’t know where it is.

Shaff:

I don’t know. I think Lahore is better. We got it, man. No, you got to try other stuff. Okay, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

I’ll have to go back. I’ll have to go back. Do you go back there often?

Shaff:

I go there every year. I was there actually three months ago. So our office, our back office for our Amazon business is all in Lahore in a town called Gulberg, which is like the city center. And so we’re in like a workspace cabin and the entire team basically sits there and we run business from over there.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. How many employees you have over there?

Shaff:

We have seven employees.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Born and raised here in New York. Where do you go to university?

Shaff:

So for undergrad, I went to University of Miami, did my bachelor’s over there.

Bradley Sutton:

Hurricane.

Shaff:

Hurricane. Exactly. All right. So, you know, and then for so I went to law school as well. So for law school, I went to Hofstra University right here on the mile.

Bradley Sutton:

They have a good basketball team, Hofstra sometimes. What’s the mascot?

Shaff:

I am horrible. I don’t even know. Dude, I was.

Bradley Sutton:

What school spirit he had.

Shaff:

I was running. You know what it is? I was trying to build a business at the time. And so I wasn’t even on campus and paying attention to that. I was just so involved in the brand building and learning finance, supply chain and marketing that just like I don’t even remember anything about law or anything.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, he was being like, we good Asians are and focus on school and not the aspect of a thing. And I remember how that went. And did you get into law upon graduation?

Shaff:

OK, so as Asians, right, like you don’t have much options. So my parents pretty much were like, OK, you have a few options, right? You could be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. There’s no way I was going to get into med school because you need phenomenal grades. And law school is the other option. I didn’t really plan to even become a lawyer. The plan was, OK, I’ll basically buy time. And while I buy time, I’ll be able to maybe start a business or look at other ventures in the three years of law school.

Bradley Sutton:

And so you did actually start practicing law?

Shaff:

No. So I started law school in 2017. I started a business in 2018.

Bradley Sutton:

And the business is in your e-commerce business?

Shaff:

The e-commerce business, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

What did your parents think of that? I’m assuming your parents were supporting you throughout college and paying thousands of dollars. And then all of a sudden it’s like, oh, let me go ahead and sell stuff on Amazon. How did that conversation go?

Shaff:

Immigrant parents that have used a computer maybe once in their life to talk to their family back home, they just thought it was a crazy idea. They thought anyone can do this. And it’s not of something value. And they didn’t realize the scale that you could get it to. And so when you come over here from third world countries like Pakistan, you want security, you want steady paychecks. And so they just didn’t believe in the dream of especially being in e-commerce and not being brick and mortar, where traditionally you see that way more.

Shaff:

And so, yeah, they were opposed to it. But upon graduation, kind of like shared a bunch of information with them about how we were doing as a business. And they were like, OK, like maybe this is sustainable. Maybe we’ll let him do, you know, pursue this business.

Bradley Sutton:

OK, OK. How did selling online get on your rear? Just because just because, you know, you were born here does not mean that it’s still not exactly a normal thing. Like, oh, let me sell products online. So how did you find out about this opportunity?

Shaff:

So I had an undergrad. I had a friend and he pretty much was a manager at this one guy’s business. And this guy who owned the business, he had 47 shoe stores all over America. Right. And so his business was like seriously declining. This is back in 2016. And so his business was declining. And so the manager, my friend, he told me that, oh, like we just started selling on Amazon and we’re crushing it. And they basically were using the FBM model, right, where they’re pretty much shipping the product from all 47 stores.

Shaff:

And so if you’ve got an order in Chicago, the Milwaukee store would fulfill that order. Right. And so like the first year they did like two million dollars in sales. The owner of the company was like buying warehouses and turning them into like charter schools. And he was just in those two years. Yeah. He was like just crushing it. And I was like, is it like is it that easy? Like my friend, he wasn’t he didn’t really he wasn’t that tech savvy.

Shaff:

And the owner of the business, like he was just a brown Pakistani uncle that, you know, wasn’t like a traditional computer user software guy. And so I was like and so I was like, OK, like I think there’s an arbitrage here and I think there’s an opportunity. I haven’t heard of this opportunity elsewhere. And so let me just sort of like learn more about it, get more knowledge about it.

Bradley Sutton:

So what year was your first product, your first private label product on Amazon a year or so?

Shaff:

So 2019, 2019, July 19th, actually, I remember exactly because it was my sister’s wedding that day was when I launched my first product.

Bradley Sutton:

What was it?

Shaff:

Painters tapes.

Bradley Sutton:

So like when you’re painting a wall and you put tape so you don’t get paint on the floor and on the corner or something like that.

Shaff:

Yeah, exactly.

Bradley Sutton:

How did you find that?

Shaff:

I mean, I was using tools. I was using Helium 10 was a great tool. So we were using tools. Well, me, I was using tools like that and pretty much finding gaps, learning how to use these tools. Right. Because I didn’t know how to use softwares. So Helium 10 actually was like the easiest one to use. And so found this opportunity.

Bradley Sutton:

How did it do?

Shaff:

Honestly, he did pretty good for like two years until the overseas competition just came and sort of like wipe us out. But it did well, actually, I made a bunch of money from that.

Bradley Sutton:

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Bradley Sutton:

All right. Fast forward. You have multiple brands, I believe. What’s your main brand called?

Shaff:

Yeah. So the main brand that we have right now is called Ensight.

Bradley Sutton:

Ensight. Ensight into something.

Shaff:

Yeah. E-N-S-I-G-H-T. It’s a planners and journal brand.

Bradley Sutton:

OK. And when did you start that brand?

Shaff:

So before I dove into Amazon, I was kind of like, like I was very like risk averse. I was like, hey, like, I don’t want to start one brand. I want to start two brands. Right. So one of them was a painter’s tape brand called Plex and the second brand was Ensight. And so the idea was like, OK, I’m going to launch these two brands and the second brand, Ensight, I wanted to be custom because I know that competition was arising.

Shaff:

And so the Ensight planner product, I launched in September. So a couple of months after the first launch that I did in July, I launched that.

Bradley Sutton:

OK. Between all of your brands that you now sell, including Ensight and others, which year was your best year of sales? Was it last year? Have you been increasing, you know, year over year or was it?

Shaff:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, pretty much increasing year over year, which is why, you know, we’re still continuing to be on the platform and take more opportunity for it from it until we sort of see that there’s, you know, not the growth. But yeah, like, you know, mid 70 figures is probably like our best year so far.

Bradley Sutton:

OK. And of that mid seven figures, how would you break down marketplaces as far as like Amazon USA, another Amazon, you know, for how much percent on Shopify, if you have Shopify, you know, are you doing TikTok shop or how would you break that revenue down?

Shaff:

Yeah. So we’re 90 percent Amazon. And then I would say like we’re 5 percent Shopify and we’re 5 percent Walmart. And right now we’re engaging with TikTok.

Bradley Sutton:

The 90 percent Amazon, is it all Amazon USA or any other countries?

Shaff:

It’s all Amazon USA.

Bradley Sutton:

Is there anything stopping you from expanding some of your brands to other like Canada, Mexico, Europe?

Shaff:

So, yeah. So the reason why I didn’t expand into different marketplaces was because the growth in the U.S. was still so great. But I was like, OK, like before I expanded to other countries and sort of, you know, create more work in the supply chain side, I want to maximize the current opportunity in this market. And so until we stop seeing double digit growth, I don’t want to involve myself in another market just yet, because I think focus is like super key on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

OK, cool. What is your goal for this like long term, if any? Like are you building it up to eventually exit? Is this a legacy thing you could pass on to your kids? I’m like, what’s what have you thought, you know, five years in the future?

Shaff:

Yeah, it’s a good question. So recently we did an acquisition. I purchased a 50 percent interest in another brand, which is, I would say, like three to four X the size of the current brand that I have. And so it’s in the same category. And essentially, like the goal is to turn it into or have at least like a portfolio of household brands. Right. The brand that I purchased, it’s in the educational poster category. It’s one of the top on Amazon. I think we have the most reviews in the category for that brand.

Shaff:

And, you know, the goal with that brand is like maximize the U.S. market and try to get into, you know, retail brick and mortar because, you know, we figured out the e-commerce side of things. But I think to diversify risk and sort of mitigate loss from overseas competition and rising Amazon ad fees and things like that, you know, we need more security. And so the acquisition I did is so we can have more security and be in stores and sort of have these other places where we are, you know, not exclusively, but having a serious sales volume.

Bradley Sutton:

: Now, one question I asked about Helium 10 for some people is those who weren’t using Healing 10, they started, but you were kind of using it almost from day one and looking for your first products on there. So I guess I would phrase it this way, then, like, I’m sure you’ve started using tools at different times, like you weren’t using every single tool from day one when you’re doing your painter’s tape. So what have been some of the big impacts over time as you started adopting more use of Helium 10 tools? Do you have any anecdotes like that?

Shaff:

Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. There’s a lot of that. So Brand Analytics, right. Like when you go into Brand Analytics, you know, when you are in the search query performance, it’s very difficult to look at the data and then, you know, sort of like export sheets and then compare sort of like timelines week over week, month over month. And so one big advantage of using Helium 10 on the Diamond was that we have this Search Query Analyzer.

Shaff:

And one amazing thing that I like about that specific tool is that there’s a funnel. Right. And so when you open up the funnel for your specific product, I’m able to tell market size impressions, conversions at the cards and clicks. Right. And so why is that important? Right. So we are trying to grow double digit year over year. Right. So we need to know how large is the market size. Right. So if we are able to see that, okay, like for this specific product, the market has a million clicks and we’re getting only 10,000 clicks. Now I know that the ceiling is a million clicks. Right. And so I’m able to grow into that. Right. And so the funnel helps a lot with that, which you can also see on Amazon. But the issue is that like it’s not as easily digestible. I know I wouldn’t use it because it’s just so hard to read.

Bradley Sutton:

Download all those, of course.

Shaff:

Exactly. Exactly. So just by looking at that at the product level where we’re able to set KPIs for our employees and just sort of say like, you know, if we want to increase 10 percent, you know, year over year, then, hey, like I know that it’s possible because this is how large the market is. Right. And so, you know, it’s just like easier to illustrate sort of like the goals.

Bradley Sutton:

Talk to me about your launch process. First of all, around how many products are you launching per month?

Shaff:

We launch, I would say, about six products a month.

Bradley Sutton:

Talk about the Helium 10 aspect of what role Helium 10 plays in your launches and the non-Helium 10 aspect, like how, you know, you were around in 2019 towards the end of the like, you know, search find. Two step parallelism and stuff.

Shaff:

I got in maybe like six months before everything just went haywire. Like I came in 2019. I think 2020 is when things just went cake busters pretty much.

Bradley Sutton:

So all of us had to change our launch strategy. So what is like walk me through your launch process for a new product?

Shaff:

Yeah. So I think every brand is different and the reason is because like, obviously, like different categories racked in different ways, like, right. And so like our category, we have a lot of loyal customers. And because we have so many SKUs, it’s not that hard launching products because like, you know, like we’re able to like run targeted ads on our own PDPs for the new launches. And then we’re able to launch.

Shaff:

So for example, right. Like we have one listing that has 9,700 reviews. Right. So what we do is that like if I’m launching a new product, I’m going to run an ad of our new launch product on that existing 9,700 review product because it’s bringing in so much traffic. Right. Like what will end up happening is that like someone may convert on that specific product. And so where Helium 10 would come into this is like, you know, figuring out like, OK, like not only at the PDP level, like what keywords and what search volume do they have?

Shaff:

And then like, you know, like it’s very strategic. My team has very sort of like they have very like precise metrics. So like what we need to follow, what metrics are being pulled, like what search volume every keyword needs to have before we go and tackle it, like what should be an average CPC, what CTR we sort of, you know, trying to derive from that launch. And then the Search Query Analyzer, it provides that data as well. I was looking at it today earlier today. I forgot what I was looking at. It’ll come to me. I’ll bring it. I’ll talk about it later.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Cool. So how do you other than doing product tarping on your existing products that have so much traffic already, what else are you doing? Are you like launching with a lower price or a coupon or sending any off Amazon traffic like mailing lists that you’re letting customers know? Talk a little bit more about that.

Shaff:

OK, I’ll give you my launch strategy. Right. So the way that we launch is we create the listing. Right. I’ll tell you from the way back. We create the listing and I set the launch date to maybe like six months in the future. And the reason why I do that is because as soon as the inventory hits the warehouse, your listing becomes active. But if a launch date is set in the future, it turns into a 404 error. And so the honeymoon phase doesn’t start. Right. The honeymoon phase actually does exist. It’s not that long, but it does exist.

Shaff:

So that’s number one. Right. So as soon as it gets launched, we actually launch a lot of auto campaigns. And the reason why we launch a lot of auto campaigns and not exact match campaigns, like I would say it’s a split, it’s like 70 to 80 percent auto campaigns. It’s going to be like maybe 20 to 30 percent exact match campaigns. And the reason is because the algorithm is always changing. Like Rufus is always identifying like in a semantic way on how to describe the product. What is a product? And so we’re trying to learn how it’s how, you know, Amazon is going to index our product.

Shaff:

And so we figure that out. We, you know, aggregate those keywords. And then…

Bradley Sutton:

What kind of budget on those campaigns, daily budget?

Shaff:

Honestly, we don’t really set budgets. We just try to get ranked like it’s not going to be like, thousands of dollars a day, but it’s just enough what we need to get ranked because, you know, my philosophy is that we don’t want to rank keywords. We want to get ranked for them. So we’re going to spend money and we’re going to be pretty aggressive with spending money. In conjunction with that, we drive Google traffic to our PDPs. We have list goals, editorials on Google that we run. We have a meta funnel that we run for our new launches. And we also have an email list on Shopify, where as soon as we launch a new product, we have a bunch of emails where we’ll sort of like blast and be like, hey, you can purchase this. And then the email links, actually, they won’t go to Shopify. They’ll go to Amazon. So we get, you know, the ranking boost.

Bradley Sutton:

How do you decide what’s the target on Google for your new launches?

Shaff:

So we take the keyword. That’s a good question. We take the keywords that we got from Amazon and we basically use them on Google. And I would say like Google and Amazon’s keywords are like 90 to 95 percent synonymous in terms of search volume. And so it’s like way more than likely that the keywords that are successful on Amazon are also going to be successful on Google.

Bradley Sutton:

What are some other kind of like Helium 10 cadences for your team? I know it’s your employees who are mainly in it, probably even more than, you know, what do you require them to do? Like either, you know, do you have some things that they need to be looking at on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly audits? What’s your what’s your SOP?

Shaff:

Yeah. So like I was saying before, like our North Star is keyword ranking. Like we like I said, we do not rent keywords. We buy them. We own them and we pay tax to be on them. Right. And so like one of the most important metrics for like the Amazon team is like retention. Like, are you guys retaining the positions that we need? And so we’re in the Keyword Tracker like I’m in the Keyword Tracker, they’re in the Keyword Tracker.

Shaff:

We use that tool like just every day, every hour. Like it’s the main thing that I look at, because otherwise it’s like, you know, our catalog is so large that like you’re going to be going to Amazon and typing in keywords and checking positions manually, whereas just like you can open up the Keyword Tracker and check that way. But I don’t actually do that. I have, you know, the automatic emails. So I just get the emails. Email basically tells us that, hey, like, you know, we’re ranking for this, ranking for that. And then, you know, the profit revenue email, which is also pretty cool to wake up in the morning and check that, see how we did yesterday. Are we flat? Are we up? Like does someone need to get yelled at? Like what’s going on?

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to a Keyword Tracker, let’s say your rank is down. What actions do you guys take?

Shaff:

Yeah, so if rank is down, figure out obviously why. And it could it could be many reasons, right? Like someone else is increasing bids, you know, getting that placement. And so what we do is that we just go into the actual Helium 10 Ad Portal, which is actually really helpful as well. And I’ll explain why after this. Yeah. So increased bids. Is there a new competition that’s playing with price? So for our new brand that we acquire and even my planner and journal brand, they’re custom products. Right. And so like if a Brit, like if if a customer like you’re not buying, you’re not you’re not buying a garlic press, right? Like it’s at the end of the day is just going to do whatever it does to the garlic.

Shaff:

You’re buying a planner journal, you’re buying educational coasters. And so it’s design. And so if your brand is the only brand that offers that design, customers are going to find you regardless of the price. Obviously, the price can’t be astronomically high, but they’ll find it because of that price. And so most of the time, it’s that someone has increased bids. And then what do we do? We just add bid modifiers, increase those and, you know, try to retain the positions again.

Bradley Sutton:

You say you use the Helium 10 Ads Portal. What do you use that for?

Shaff:

Yeah. So that’s OK. So some products like the sponsored product ads will do well or otherwise like the sponsored brand ad will do well. And so the sponsored brand video ads might do well, like the sponsored brand product carousel might do well. And so what I like about using that and I think and I’m pretty sure that Helium 10 ads is the only one that does it. You just get a breakdown of like where like which type of ad is being the most efficient in your catalog and like whether it’s sponsored product, sponsored video or whatever.

Shaff:

But like Amazon doesn’t give you that deal unless you literally manually look up all your video campaigns, manually look up all your product carousel campaigns. For example, right, like today I look at ads a lot. And the reason why is it’s because like it’s the largest amount like in your P&L, it’s like the fattest amount that’s going back to Amazon. So it’s like if these guys are going to spend money, like I want to know where it’s being spent. Right. And so like today I’m in there looking at the catalog and I noticed that like for one of the products, the sponsor display was like 13% ACoS, which is very good.

Shaff:

And I was like, wait, this is like an anomaly. Like let’s put more money behind this and figure and maybe we can scale it off. And even if the ACoS goes up a couple of points, like whatever, at least we’ll be able to scale it. But I’m able to see that information right off the bat very quickly because obviously like I’m trying to expand the business and not be too much in it. And so I always like want my team to be more involved in using the tools that they have and not be in the account as much. Like I want them to be more in the tools because the tools provide more visibility.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s the biggest L you’ve taken in your business? The biggest disaster, biggest catastrophe, biggest loss?

Shaff:

Yeah, this one time I took out like a massive loan and we were going to launch, I think it was like a hundred products. And I think only 15 of them like ended up doing pretty well, which I told other people about this, like that’s actually not that bad of a number, but invested a bunch of money, but it’s because our process wasn’t set up the way that it should have been. And so that was like probably the fattest L, but you know what, like you come back from it, you know, you understand why, what happened, what happened. And, you know, you learn more about like finance, like how money should be taken care of. And then on top of that, you know, the algorithm is always changing. And so you rather learn on how the algorithm is going to change rather than just blaming XYZ. I’ve seen a lot of sellers that, you know, launch brands in 2013, 2014. And at that time, it was like really easy. You could just launch anything.

Shaff:

And then, and now it’s like, I see a lot of those sellers, they’re like either closing their stores down or they’re just having a hard time because they weren’t able to keep up. I got in a time where it was like, I only had six months to kind of just like relax. And then after that, I was like, no, no, you’re not going to be able to relax. Like things have changed.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s on the flip side, what’s the biggest win you’ve had, or like the biggest surprise, uh, whether it was on purpose or on accident or amazing prime day or some crazy, amazing event.

Shaff:

Yeah. So this is by total accident. When I was launching my planner, one of the planners, right. It was an appointment book. Um, we, I wanted the interior to be like this, like Navy color. Right. And so I spent like, you know, months perfecting it, got a designer and it’ll get everything done. Give them all the Pantone colors to the manufacturers or whatever. And we ordered thousands of, this is like my first product launch ever. Right. Like all the money that I had as like a second year, like law student, like no job, nothing. Right. Like, so the product comes in, right. Like, you know, whatever, like a bunch of pallets come in. And I told my supplier, I was like, Hey, like, just send me one unit. I just want to see it before it goes to Amazon. And the supplier sent it to me. I’m like, the interior is not those colors at all.

Shaff:

It’s like a light, like a total, like baby blue light color, not Navy. Like, like I was like, dude, no, like what just happened? Like, this is horrible. This is not blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, and then it’s just amazing how like, just like life works. Like as soon as I launched it, it turned out that on the first page, the color, like, because it wasn’t dark, it was light. I got way more clicks than my competitors. My conversion rate was way higher and people loved it. And their mistake actually was like, well, one of the most beautiful things that happened in the business. Otherwise I wouldn’t have survived.

Bradley Sutton:

We had one of that even before we were selling on Amazon where we were doing like 500 phone cases on eBay a day and we ordered a batch. It was supposed to be the transparent TPU plastic, you know, cases, but they glitter infused it. You know, the transparent ones is like unisex, like men like it, women like it. It’s great for everybody. It’s one, a simple, simple thing. We’re like, who the heck is going to get glitter infused, you know, translate like, who approved this? But we’re like, it’s here. Let’s just throw it up. And it became like one of our top sellers. So you never know sometimes. Now you like, like many other brands, unfortunately out there who are big and successful sometimes like to be cheap. And that there’s our Asian side.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s just definitely where I learned from my mom. And you actually were on the Platinum plan for Helium 10 for a while, even as a seven figure seller, you know, and then got on the Diamond. What was the biggest surprise for you when you finally got on Diamond or like, yeah, you already mentioned the Search Query Analyzer and you mentioned ads and stuff, but anything else where you’re like, oh my goodness, I wish I would’ve not been so cheap and got this Diamond plan earlier.

Shaff:

Yeah. So time, like when your team is spent, is like wasting time, like that’s wasted payroll. Right. And so like, you know, like the finance manager, right? Like he’s pretty much like, you know, checking subscriptions from like 10 other softwares. And it’s like, why do we have 10 different software is when we can just use one suite and then just that subscription is going to go out and we don’t have to worry about anything else. Like, you know, no, no logging in, no sub accesses, one access, one account with everything. And that’s it guys. Like I don’t want anything else.

Shaff:

And it just makes like so much easier, you know, because sometimes it’s like, you know started some, you know, subscriptions like 2019, 2020, I’m using this email, that email, I’m hiring this person, firing this person. I have to give them access over here, you know, relieve access over there. And it’s just like, that by itself is such a headache. And so now it’s like, because everything is in one place in one suite, like including ads, because we were using other softwares for that. It’s just like, it’s just so much easier. So we’re like, I think I mentioned before, we’re also trying to expand our TikTok shop business.

Shaff:

And so before I began, I was going to buy this like $150 subscription of a software company to do influencer outreach. Guess what my diamond coin has. I have influencer outreach, so I save money over there and I don’t need to sign up for another frigging subscription and, you know, use that as well.

Bradley Sutton:

There you go. To reach your level of success, it’s obviously you’re not just doing bread and butter that everybody else is doing. What’s some of the secret sauce or the stuff that you’re doing differently, you and your team that you think plays a role in some of the success you’ve achieved?

Shaff:

Yeah, that’s a good question. So I think I’ve been talking to like bigger sellers, helps a lot. And so there’s just one really large seller from Utopia Brands.

Bradley Sutton:

From Pakistan. Yeah, I’ve had him on a podcast before.

Shaff:

Oh, you have? Yeah. So he, dude, he’s…

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, he lives in New York.

Shaff:

Yeah, he lives, yeah. Gibran.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other guy, I have such a bad memory here, but I was actually hitting him up to see if he was last second, but he couldn’t make it on the podcast. I would like to have seen him. But yeah, if you guys haven’t heard their podcast, go back and look it up. They’re multi nine figure brand. Maybe, you know, eventually going to become the first 10 figure brand on.

Shaff:

I think so. I think he’s going to do like 800 million this year on Amazon. Does his own manufacturing. He’s actually the largest exporter in Pakistan in terms of containers. So he sends out the most containers in Pakistan. But like maybe his advice wasn’t directed only to me, but his advice was like, you know, follow the 80 20 rule, right? Like 80 percent of revenue is going to come from 20 percent of your catalog, right?

Shaff:

And so I was I was always like, hey, like, no, you know, every product is going to take off at one point. That’s not blah, blah, blah. But he was like, no, like, no, focus on the top products because those products are the ones that could get even more of a lift. Right. And so here’s what we did. So essentially, let me let me put it in lay terms. Right. So say you own a brick and mortar retail store. Right. And it does a million dollars a year in revenue. OK. You have five employees just for that institution.

Shaff:

I started looking my I started looking at our product display pages like that. Right. Like if one or two listings are doing a million dollars a year, then that listing should get its own brand manager. That listing should get its own PPC person. That listing should get its own designer. Right. Those three people are not going to focus on anything else. That’s the only thing that that they’re going to care about. And so I think allowing them to focus on just like that listing or those like two or three listings that has like expanded, you know, our revenue pool to where you are.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Focus is always stuff comes out when you’re focused that never would have come out if your attention is just, you know, in a million places. What about in advertising specifically? Anything that you guys do you think is different than others? You already mentioned one thing, which is like relying heavily on auto campaigns at launch. I don’t think many sellers or sellers do that. What else are you doing on the advertising side? Maybe it’s a metric that you’re looking at or maybe it’s how you run sponsor display or using AMC or anything advanced like that.

Shaff:

Yeah. So video ads, I think we’re big on video ads. One metric that I really care about in terms of ads is going to be like the CTR. And the reason why I care about CTR so much is because Amazon cares so much about CTR. You win the click, you get the conversion. Right. Like Amazon is it’s like I feel like people just try to complicate it so much, like all you need to do is just get the click when someone’s on search. How are they going to get the click? And so when you’re running, you know, sponsored brand ads like product carousel ads and, you know, video ads is just like come up with a really good hook or video and, you know, just try to win the click that way. And so I measure the success of our ads mainly by, you know, CTR.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. Interesting. I like it. All right. So again, mention what your brand is, if anybody. And who are the products for? Maybe some of our listeners can go out and support you.

Shaff:

Yeah. So we just did an acquisition of a brand. I joined one of my good friends on that brand. And it’s an educational poster brand. You can go on Walmart.com and you can type in educational posters. We’re bestsellers. We’re number one. You’ll find us like that. I won’t tell you the name. I want you to find us like that.

Bradley Sutton:

Kind of a mini search by there.

Shaff:

Exactly. Yeah. And then and then the second brand, it’s Ensight. It’s a planner brand. You know, we saw appointment books, planners for like, you know, doctor’s offices, law offices, a lot of like secretaries, I guess, like by that specific product. Those are our two main brands right now. One thing that we’re focusing on, actually, this is just like a side way over here, but we’re trying to actually manufacture in the US. My partner was actually manufacturing before, but like that’s one of the things that we want to get into is manufacturing, because I think if you can unlock supply chain and never bought a stock and just make sure that you have inventory all across the country, you always get the buy box. And as much as you don’t think, but customers actually really care about shipping speed. And so if someone is seeing like one day shipping speed over two day shipping speed, more than likely to probably click one day shipping speed.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so thank you again so much for inviting me to your to your home here in Long Island City. And maybe next year, maybe I’ll do the same ASGTG show that I’m out or conference that I’m doing tomorrow. And maybe we can have a follow up episode and see maybe you bought a couple other brands or now you’re you’ve hit that bigger mark. We’ll see.

Shaff:

Maybe Yeah, let’s see.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. All right. We’ll see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for watching.

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