#713 – Doubling Amazon Sales: A Live Case Study

What happens when you mix culinary creativity with entrepreneurial spirit? Meet Dean and Tracy Ernst, the masterminds behind Essential Candy, who turned a heartfelt gesture into a thriving e-commerce success story. Tracy’s culinary background and a personal mission to aid a friend battling cancer gave birth to Essential Candy’s unique botanical lozenges. Through strategic e-commerce maneuvers, they’ve doubled their sales and significantly expanded their customer base with a mere $400 investment over a weekend. Their innovative thinking doesn’t just stop there. With the help of the Scale Stories by Helium 10 mentors, will they crack the code to thriving on Amazon? Let’s follow their journey in this e-commerce venture.

Craft shows and farmers’ markets might seem like an unexpected venue for a booming online business, but Dean and Tracy have found gold where others haven’t looked. By setting up booths at these local events, they engage directly with customers, test new products, and foster relationships that drive recurring revenue, often surpassing their online sales. Listen as they reveal the logistics behind this strategy, including the use of technology to capture customer data through SMS, which leads to an ever-growing marketing database and long-term sales growth.

As we dive further into Essential Candy’s journey, you’ll learn about their eye-opening experiences with Amazon FBA optimization and the potential of local retail opportunities, including sharing tales of pitching their products to Walmart. Their story is not just one of immediate success but of ongoing growth, with plans to multiply their achievements by 2025. This episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiration for anyone looking to elevate their e-commerce game. Don’t miss out on the chance to learn from a brand that’s reshaping the industry landscape, one lozenge at a time.

In episode 713 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Dean, and Tracy discuss:

• 00:00 – Scaling E-Commerce Business From Scratch
• 01:50 – Transitioning and Succeeding in E-Commerce
• 12:51 – Benefits of Selling at Craft Shows
• 19:17 – The Perfect Circle of Customer Transactions
• 21:21 – Exploring Local Markets and Retail Opportunities
• 23:54 – Selling Products in Walmart Retail Stores
• 28:57 – Meeting Buyers With Unexpected Recognition
• 32:38 – Amazon FBA Optimization Strategies
• 34:34 – Exploring TikTok for Revenue Growth
• 37:13 – Future Growth and Collaboration

Transcript:

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’re talking to a brand who’s doing a live case study on how they’re trying to double their Amazon sales. But they are also crushing it off of Amazon, including doing some things that almost no Amazon sellers are doing. They’ve got a way where they’re doing $10,000 of sales over a weekend with only a $400 investment and adding 500 to 1,000 new customers to their mailing list every weekend. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We’ve got a couple of serious sellers here today who have pretty much opened their lives and their livelihood, their business, to the world to kind of like get a peek into how they’re going to double their sales on this series that we have called scale stories. But this is the first time they’ve been on the podcast, so we’re just going to go through them as if they’re a regular guest and not celebrities on a reality show anymore. But Dean and Tracy, welcome to the show.

Tracy:

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you what a great opportunity.

Bradley Sutton:

Where are you guys located again?

Tracy:

So we live just outside of Greenville South Carolina and our factory is not too far from there.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, South Carolina, where were you guys born to race?

Tracy:

I was born in Toronto and

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, oh those are fighting words, because you know like Toronto was going against, uh, my Dodgers in the world series uh, right now, but uh okay, um, I didn’t wear my Dodgers in the World Series right now, but, okay, I didn’t wear my Dodgers hat, so we’ll stay away from the baseball references. So, Toronto, and then, at what point did you move down south?

Tracy:

And then I moved to Calgary, met Dean there we have and I birthed both the kids there. And then we moved to Florida in 2012.

Bradley Sutton:

Calgary to Florida is a big climate change.

Tracy:

 It sure is.

Dean:

That’s the reason.

Bradley Sutton:

There you go.

Tracy:

Yeah, the weather was just yeah, it’s just too much in Calgary for me anyways, and so

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, did you guys go to university up there or in the United States at all?

Tracy:

I didn’t do any university in the States at all. All my schooling was all done in Canada.

Dean:

And I just went through the School of Hard Knocks up in Canada.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s what I like. I actually didn’t get a college degree until I was like 30 or something, and it was just because one of my companies I was working for at the time was paying for it. I just went right into working after high school myself, and then most of the people I ask about that they’re obviously not doing what they went to college or university for, because they’re in e-commerce. For anybody who’s a listener out there is, you don’t need a certain educational background or even any education. Especially higher education is not necessary to succeed in e-commerce. What about the birth of your brand? In the episode of Scale Stories, we talk a little bit about it, but some people who are listening here might not have seen that episode yet. So can you talk about when it started and how?

Tracy:

Essential Candy came about from a bike ride that I was on and I had a divine inspiration to help a friend of ours at the time, our son’s baseball coach go through cancer treatments. And so, after sort of playing in our home kitchen, creating a couple of blends, it sort of all melted together into one particular piece and we became that story where he told someone, they told someone else, and I just freely made candy to help with the nausea that was relating to the chemo treatments that he was undergoing. And so, within his, his world of of, um, cancer treatments and traveling, and all of that, the? Um, the digestive blend was born and um, it wasn’t too far after that that Dean

Bradley Sutton:

How did that happen, though? Like did you have a background in formulation of candy? I mean like that’s not um that that did. I’m missing the segue here.

Tracy:

Fair enough. Um, so I have a culinary background for first and foremost, so I cook for our family. I bake also. I’m a fifth-generation pie baker.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow!

Dean:

Oh yeah, you got to taste those.

Bradley Sutton:

I do make an incredible I’m not going to be on my carnivore diet when you guys are in town next.

Tracy:

Right, I do make a pretty amazing fruit pie, as well as meat dishes and things like that. But, um, so I understand flavor, I understand how to make something taste like it should. And then it became how do I elevate a simple, you know, straight up apple pie as an example? So it became this do we want to start a pie business or do we want to start a candy business? And so it was really an interesting point there. But I basically turned the idea of making a botanical lozenge from just trying to make candy one day. So the divine inspiration happened. Then it became well, I have no idea even how to make candy, so I’m just going to research, and that’s what I’m really good at. I love researching something, figuring out where it started, how it began, and figure out how to do it. And so several attempts, and I’m talking over months, where I had many failed batches and I practiced my son and I in the kitchen, we practiced many times throughout many batches, and then something just seemed to click where I figured it out.

Bradley Sutton:

How can you get more buyers to leave you Amazon product reviews? By following up with them in a way that’s compliant with Amazon terms of service. You can use Helium 10 follow-up in order to automatically send out Amazon’s request a review emails to any customers you want. Not just that, but you can specify when they get the message and even filter out people that you don’t want to get that message, such as people who have asked for refunds or maybe ones that you gave discounts to. For more information, visit h10.me/followup. You can sign up for a free account or you can sign up for a platinum plan and get 10% off for life by using the discount code SSP10. Life by using the discount code SSP10.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, at what point tough cause it wasn’t, you know, you didn’t go into this with the intension of starting a business. You said what the motivation was. So very similar with what actually Helium 10. You guys may have notice started was actually a podcast. You know the founder of Helium 10, he did this podcast which we still have to this day. It’s called the AMPM podcast. And then he’s like hey, I have a little bit of software background. I need to develop a couple of things for my own Amazon business. Let me go ahead and make it free and then that’ll help. You know, maybe give me more downloads to the podcast, you know. And then it just completely took off. He’s like wait a minute download to the podcast, you know, and then it just completely took off. He’s like wait a minute, I’m onto something. I’m focusing on the wrong thing here. Let me focus on Helium 10. So, the podcast, so? So there’s, there’s a lot of you know cases where you might, you know, start with, um, you know something in mind and then you’re like wait a minute, you know I can help more people or I can, you know, actually make this could be something that could be a business.

Tracy:

Yes, well, I think initially it was let’s test the market first, let’s just see how this fares at a green market. So this was back when I was also hand pouring every single piece and then we were hand wrapping them in paper wrappers.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow.

Tracy:

And so there was a lot of manual. But I, you know that was just to see, do we have something? Does it taste good? Do people want to buy it? So, Dean suggested hey, why don’t we just sign up for our local farmer’s market? It went from I don’t know, we just sign up for our local Farmer’s Market. It went from I don’t know nine in the morning to 1 PM, and I remember we set up and we sold out within a few hours, and so we decided, well, let’s try, we’ll go back again. Maybe that was just a one-off. So, we went the following Saturday and did it again. I made a little bit more because it was what I could handle at the time, and we sold out of that too.

Tracy:

And so then we decided, well, I think I need some help. So, Dean, this is where his expertise in everything relating to business and the you know, marketing, sales, the well, all of it. I’ll let you take it away, because I just knew that it wasn’t in my wheelhouse and I knew that if it wasn’t in my wheelhouse, and it was absolutely in Dean’s, then I need to lean on my husband a little more, and I need to lean on, you know, the best partner in the world here to help me figure this out, and it was jaw-dropping, truly, when he said oh yeah, this is something I could totally help you with. This is something that inspires me too. At the time, his parents were aging and you know there’s things about what we were doing we’re helping people and ultimately, you know, he was on side right from the beginning. Right from the very first day that the idea came to me of helping our friend, he was like I can get behind this, and he was working full time at the time, and so it was Dean’s spare time where he automatically just well, we got to see if there’s a website available, and he goes on, you know whatever it was, and searched it. And next thing, you know, we were picking a name and he was figuring out the website part, and I’m just watching in awe of how quick and natural he was, just typing away and clicking and it was. It was really, um, an amazing part to watch. And then and I don’t get a chance to watch the maneuvering that you do with, uh, with all of the behind the scenes and operational stuff that

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, I think that’s important especially when you have partner. Whether you know married couples are into a business together or there’s two business partners, it’s usually best to have the lanes like hey, you got somebody who’s the formulator, we got. You know married couples are into a business together or there’s two business partners. It’s usually best to have the lanes like hey, you got somebody who’s the formulator, we got somebody who’s doing marketing. You know like. You know, if you’re just everybody’s trying to, all their hands are in the pot, it’s hard to really specialize in something. So I think the way you guys have it set up is good. How long did it take to become like the main source of income for your family, this business? Like you said, when you started you were working full time.

Tracy:

Long time.

Dean:

Yeah, I would say I was working for someone else as Tracy mentioned, my previous selves have always been serial entrepreneur, and so I’ve had several businesses along the way, and so I’ve had several businesses along the way, and it came to a point where we made a decision together to go okay, it feels like this is the time where I can leave my business or the company I was working for and really apply my skill, set my talents and focus on this, where it really is something that not only pulls at my heartstrings by helping people, but I truly believe in. So the passion’s right there and those individuals that are entrepreneurs. You got to have that passion. You got to have that drive that sends you through those days where nothing else is around you to push you, so it just really was a conversation we had where it felt like it was the right time. We had a little, you know, we had some savings left over and such and so we really went all in, though, and we went all in in a very unique way, which also included purchasing manufacturing equipment.

Bradley Sutton:

Now you have. You guys have probably one of the more unique cash flow source breakdowns of any e-commerce entrepreneur. Because like first of all the very first thing is you do something that almost nobody does, which is actually doing more money than your Amazon side of things, which is like going to like I don’t know if you like call it like trade shows, farmers markets, type things, or, or you know, exhibitions, whatever but is that the biggest chunk of your income? Or your revenue from essential candy? Is that kind of like taking the show on the road, as it were? And then, if so, how did you get into that? And, and, like you know, give us you and give us some numbers. It doesn’t have to be revenue numbers, but how many bags you actually can sell in one of these events.

Tracy:

So, jumping from the Farmer’s Market with 4 hours in one day, Dean ended up finding crafts and arts kind of shows that were usually two days and they go from, you know, 10 in the morning till five in the afternoon, and so we tried one and we sold incredibly well at that particular event. But what ended up happening was at the very beginning I couldn’t make enough of it to do two of these weekends in a row. So our growth eventually, when Dean was talking about getting into manufacturing, we are now at a point where we can go to a show that’s four plus days. Have we done more than five days?

Dean:

No,

Tracy:

I think five was the limit. And just this past week weekend, pardon me I was in Arkansas at War Eagle and we sold a thousand bags, if that’s the number.

Dean:

It’s more than that. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

So just first of all, to paint the picture on these shows, it’s not like we’re talking about candy shows or you know like, for example, maybe I’m in the pet niche and there’s something called Pet Expo, or while I was in the car parts niche and I would always go to this show called the SEMA show in Vegas where it’s all exhibitors these are unrelated to your niche. Events that you’re just like hey, let me get a kind of like, let me just be a food vendor kind of thing. Am I understanding it correctly?

Tracy:

Yes, correct, we have a tent. It’s a 10 by 10 booth typically, and you bring everything that you want to present your product. So we have tables and tablecloths and display racks and such, and it’s, if you picture, like a pop-up store and these arts and craft fairs, um, these organizers have, you know, jewelry exhibitors, or you know oil painters or sculpture, um, artists, ceramics, painters or sculpture artists, ceramics? Yeah, people that sell headbands and just these other things that are not necessarily art and not necessarily what you could go and pick up your produce for the week. That’s a completely other thing. But, yeah, so we’re considered a crafter. Yeah, so we’re considered a crafter because of what we do, and so you just pay your booth fee for the weekend and you show up and you sell.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s the average price for, like, let’s say, it’s a two-day or three-day thing? How much does the booth space cost for something like that?

Dean:

Yeah, I mean we’ve gotten really good at finding the shows now. We’ve been doing it so long that we know which ones are the right ones to kind of go and do. We have a network of people. We also bounce ideas and shows off. But typically if you’re dealing with like a two-day show on a weekend, you might be in the neighborhoods about a fee of, say, 400 ish dollars for. Both days, plus, you would have an application fee, and that application fee could be anywhere between 30 and $50 in addition.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, my goodness, that’s a great ROI. I mean, obviously, if you’re having it you said this one you had to drive 16 hours. Your time is also money, but the actual event is not as expensive as I thought, especially if you’re can sell upwards of a thousand you know units in one weekend. You know you’re not going to sell a thousand in one weekend on Amazon. Um, yet until we, we really.

Dean:

It’s interesting too. There’s some shows that may be three or four days and you know, those might be 600. You might even have some like there’s one, a couple of shows that are very large, with like three to five hundred thousand in attendance, and you’ll find that that will be somewhere of a thousand dollars for three days. Yeah, you know. So it just depends on kind of.

Bradley Sutton:

Still, that’s pretty good to reach that number of people. I’ll definitely pay, oh yeah oh yeah.

Dean:

Well, you know it’ll be well worth our time to do these shows, but here. But here’s the key thing that I don’t think people connect when it comes to e-commerce and these kinds of events. They are an incredible organic growth of customers. We sell fun, we’re bootstrapped, finances are always tight. We keep things really tight because we have to, but in addition, um, we’re able to immediately generate that revenue and as well, create reoccurring revenue, with basically no marketing dollars thrown at it, and I think that that is a very, very unique play, that um

Bradley Sutton:

Are you signing people up to like a list or something like that?

Dean:

Absolutely yes, yeah, when, when they check out, like we have, we have an app that we use to obviously conduct the transaction and, in addition, it will capture their uh either a it’ll be already in their email address and example, but we’re actually doing a lot more SMS text message, so we’ll capture their phone numbers. So now we know who they are, right, so we have them, and so we’re building our customer database right at the same time to not only market to them but as well we also incentivize our customers to come back through discounts with those transactions. Hey, next time you, if you want to sign up, we’re going to give you a discount right now. So you know and use that code online to purchase. So we’re creating kind of the. I would call it the perfect circle of the transaction, right, we meet the customer, they love the product, they buy it. Now we know who they are, we can market to them, and it creates a reoccurring buying structure. So we get testimonials as well from these customers, which builds our reviews as well from them. So you know, this is how we’ve gotten such a great review of our products as well, because it’s through a lot of these initial purchases right. So it’s a great revenue source, but really it’s a great source for customers.

Tracy:

And it’s also really great from production standpoint that we can test a new blend without really having to do much in the way of organizing a focus group or anything like that. We literally especially we have some customers that come back to the show if we do this same location several years. And you know our fans are loyal and our customers are always interested in trying something new, and so I’ll just, you know, make a new product and we test it right there.

Bradley Sutton:

Side note, I was sick for the first time in like a year. A couple of weeks ago I was even doing some live broadcasts where you can even recognize my voice, and you guys had sent me some samples and I was coughing and that, um, um, breathing yeah, I forgot what it’s called.

Dean:

Breathing One. Better.

Bradley Sutton:

That was a lifesaver. I was. I was struggling that first night, just coughing, I couldn’t get to sleep and I was like you know, I want to go to the kitchen get a glass of water. I was like, oh, I had these samples on. They sent me a breathing one. I put that in and worked better than cough candy and didn’t taste as bad as, like, uh, cough candy. So you got some good stuff there. But anyways, back to this um, uh, back to kind of like these shows. Obviously it’s not. This is not going to apply to every single person out there. Like you know, I’m not going to take my coffin shelf brand and, you know, have success at a farmer’s market. Arts and crafts, I mean, maybe if it’s a gothic themed one, yeah, but there’s a lot of people out there with, you know, certain kinds of products, obviously anything consumable and something that might have some kind of success. So how do you go about, in you know, our listeners locales, to start searching for these type of things, to at least give it a try?

Dean:

Well, I think in one way to start is definitely like we did in some ways, those Farmers Markets, right, like test your product. What better way to see if you got something that resonates with people? And there’s so many local little farmers markets that are on a Saturday or Sunday in a local town or city and you can find them. You can even go into some local grocers that maybe do more organic products and things like that, and typically they’ll post something up on their boards or talk about it. So those are very easy to find. Obviously, doing Google searches, you know, going in and just trying to find what kind of farmers market, craft shows or art fairs are available this week or this month. You know there are a couple websites that are pretty good, some of them you have to pay membership fees for to get that kind of information as well. But they’re out there and you know, I think, also go to these shows yourself and talk to some of the vendors that are there. I mean, that’s you’re getting firsthand knowledge. If somebody’s new, well they don’t have that information. But if somebody’s there and they’ve created their craft and are out there, you know doing it weekend after weekend talk to them first and say, hey, I’m thinking of doing this. Do you have any insight or any kind of feedback? That might be good. Where do I find these things? Is this a good show? You know how much does this cost? We have people come up to us all the time at different shows and ask us that exact same questions and we’ll point them in the right direction. Um, but, if you do these shows, get to know your other vendor. We call them vendor mates. You know the ones right beside us or across from you. Get to know them and start picking their brain while you’re at the show you know, just for future information, where you can sign up and things like that. So, um, but yeah, anything consumable, anything that you know is made by that individual, I think has a place both, not only at online, but it does have a place at these kind of shows and they can be great revenue generators, for sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I think you know seller. You know existing Amazon sellers out there are very envious when you guys were talking about your list. Because when you start, you guys know you’ve been selling on Amazon for a while, you don’t own your customer, you can’t market to them, you don’t get their email address, you don’t get their phone number, you can’t add them to a list. So Amazon sellers do all kinds of things just to get some people like. They’ll be like, hey, let me put a card in here for a lifetime warranty and scan it and give us your email. And you know, obviously that’s not going to have a big opt-in, you know rate. But they’re like hey, I’m, I’m willing to spend this extra money for make this QR code, make this, you know, insert, just to be able to get one out of 20 of my customers to join this list so I can start building a list I can market to.

You guys are adding hundreds of people every weekend, you know, for free. You know pretty much, pretty much. Uh, so, so you guys really have it. Uh, well, it’s, it’s actually, this is actually going to help you. Um, like, like you know that that that product you said you’re working on, if you do launch it for amazon to be able to leverage your existing audience to actually help boost your. Your amazon launch is going to be very critical, so that’s awesome. Now, another unique thing that you guys um do or have done that I didn’t have too much background information on. I know some of your product is in some Amazon or Amazon Walmart stores. How did that come about? Because that’s another thing that I think most Amazon sellers would love to be in Walmart stores but very few can actually achieve.

Dean:

Well, Walmart is kind of an interesting animal. There’s I would say we didn’t kind of go, maybe traditionally how people think they have to apply to Walmart. There’s kind of like a twofold story here. So the story of how we got it, how things started, at least initially. Walmart every year has something called an open call I think it’s every year and an open call you can apply to and if they select, they select a certain number of brands that come in and then at that point you have to fly out and you basically pitch the buyers at Walmart and if they like your products they invite you in for a test or things like that, depending on what that relationship looks like. So I applied us at an open call. So that was the first thing.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay.

Dean:

So just to see if we have something and I do this periodically with different things and different retailers and sometimes, just as an example, even with Helium 10, you know the whole scale stories thing it was a email shows up. Oh hey, let’s see if that even is something that, why not, let’s just do it. Same kind of thing happened with Walmart. We found out about this, I sent in an application, but here’s where the story kind of started to change. I got a phone call from actually somebody in the executive kind of area of Walmart, the executive team, and at first I thought it was a prank call and I literally didn’t answer it. But she called back again and left a message. And I remember going to Tracy, going, I think Walmart’s calling us. I don’t even know why, I’m not sure if it’s real, but she’s called back now twice and left a message. I feel like I got to call this person. It just feels like it’s real. And she left her name and she said got to call this person. It just feels like it’s real. And she left her name and she said yes, I’m real, you can look me up on LinkedIn and please call me back. And I was like, well, that’s an interesting voicemail. That’s not kind of your typical one, and so I called her back.

I spent probably a good half hour 45 minutes on the phone with her and she became a significant champion of us within Walmart and we later found out there was kind of a story behind the scenes that was, which we were not truly aware of that. Basically they had already had our products and I guess it might’ve helped someone or something, but they knew about us. So there was something that happened. We still don’t know like the real full story, but I’ll tell you, not only did we get this call from her, and she asked to send some samples directly to their team like the top team. This was not a norm. Like this just kind of isn’t the process If you want to apply to these things, you don’t hear from them. You, they don’t ask for these kinds of things.

Tracy:

And this was in advance of our pitch by like a couple of weeks or something.

Dean:

Oh yeah. Probably.

Bradley Sutton:

Or even before the open call pitch

Tracy:

It was all happening beforehand.

Dean:

Yeah, this was. This was probably at least a couple of weeks, maybe even a month, that we had sent it before. Um and I had these calls and then uh, and then we basically fly out and we show up and right away when we’re walking into the, you know the auditorium, and then they got all these pitch rooms and no one’s been into Bentonville. Bentonville is Walmart central. It’s like it is Walmart, the city is Walmart and when you go to Walmart’s offices it’s not like super, like glamorous and all this kind of thing. But it’s a purpose, right. They have a very key purpose with their executive team. They have a nice auditorium that they present stuff in, but then they have all these pitch rooms and these rooms. I mean there’s probably like 40 or 60 or 80 of them. It’s insane and they’re very tiny, like I’m talking, it’s probably maybe eight by eight feet and you can fit four people in here at most.

Tracy:

And a very skinny desk and your knees are nearly touching.

Dean:

Yeah, and you’re right across from like one or two buyers and there’s two of you and you’re; you can like. If you ate something bad, they’ll smell it. You know it’s so close, um, but it was uh. So we went in there and it was so interesting because we met the lady that talked to us and she was just like such a champion for us right away when we were in there, and then then we went into our buyer, we met the buyer and then there was all these people, as we were walking the hallway that knew us. We don’t know any of these people. And oh, you’re those guys. You’re the essential candy people. Oh, you’re the. Oh, I had your stuff. Really, what’s going on here? Why do all these people know about us? It’s so weird. And so obviously we had a lot of champions there, which I think was great, and so obviously we had a lot of champions there, which I think was great, and uh, and in addition, we did the pitch, but it was you’re only supposed to do 20 minutes and ours was an hour and a bit. Yeah. So, it went very well, needless to say. And then it you know, then everything becomes very surreal. You get the woo-hoos, you got a deal, you get a card, you have to go get pictures taken with all the team, and then you get rushed into the video room to do interviews and it’s like, oh my gosh, what’s going on here? But we didn’t actually get into stores. It almost took a year, right, I think it was November, maybe it was less than a year. Yeah, I think it was around, it was November, maybe it was less than a year.

Tracy:

I think it was about six months.

Dean:

Yeah, well, and so. So we eventually worked through all the insider stuff. You know, all the logistics, all that fun stuff, which is not easy, you know you. You definitely have to be technical to understand it if you’re going to do it, but thankfully, you know, we were able to make all that and do all that internally. And then, you know, we started shipping Walmart stores. We don’t our relationship with Walmart, we’re very blessed with it, but it’s an interesting one. Pos just show up, they just show up, you know, every week, and we just ship and it’s a pretty straightforward, you know, turnkey thing right now. So we’re very grateful for that. We’re not selling in every store nationwide, but we’re selling in select stores that they decide that they’re pushing our products and we ship to distribution centers. So it’s just another kind of piece of the pie, another distribution area for us and creates more awareness for our products area for us and creates more awareness for our products.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the reason you came and did our casting call, you know, like you had, you had kind of figured out that, hey, we are not really doing all we can on Amazon. You know, I think at the time you had said it was around like 10% of your of your revenue, um, and so you’re like, hey, we think we’re leaving money in the table. And so you’re like, hey, we think we’re leaving money on the table. So you came in, our mentors went over some things with you. Since then, we’ve been in contact almost every other week, or sometimes more than once in a week, doing different things. I think right now, the big project we’re working on now is your images on some. But for either of you, what were some of the eye-opening things where, once the mentors or maybe it was something I brought up did bring it up, you’re like, oh, wow, this is definitely going to make an impact once we actually implement this. I wish we would have known about this earlier. What were some of those top learning moments for you guys?

Dean:

I think the first thing that was we always knew was part of what we needed to do, but it just reaffirmed it was we have to get product inventory in Amazon. We have to consistently have it there for prime, like it. It has to be our gold standard of what we’re doing. Um, and I think while we’ve solved that, at least right now, as part of the first step of what we did, working with you guys to fix this whole fn SKU thing, which we knew nothing about, no one, we had no insight that we had to put our own, you know, unique amazon barcode all over top of our UPC barcodes. We thought it was one and the same. Why, why did you need to do that? And it wasn’t until we had that, um, I guess it was called a mixed bin issue where the wrong product was being shipped to the wrong customers.

My eye opener with you guys was when you told us how to fix that through an fn SKU, which is the term that amazon allows you to create the unique barcode so the product stays very unique to this seller being us and properly allocates the right inventory in the right area so people get the right products. So that was my, I think my first aha moment. And then, relating to the inventory, just we really need to make sure it’s there and ensuring it’s always there. And I think there’s a second part to the inventory and FM um, FBA, where Amazon can fulfill it for our own product, like for our own online store, for TikTok and things like that, which I had no idea. I thought for sure it was just Amazon fulfills Amazon. So that was probably a major eye opener which has had a lot of conversations internally of maybe how we can leverage so many other things and save time and money and resources internally and just turn all that over to Amazon. So it’s a process obviously for us to kind of start moving in that direction, but I feel really confident that that’s one of the best things. At least initially, we got out of it, not to mention all the other things that you guys are helping us with and really fine tuning it. But I think that was the aha thing. What about you?

Tracy:

Yes, mine as well. You just mentioned about how um the FBA with Amazon, also for TikTok. You know we have strived to be on TikTok. We know that it’s the one area that you know we don’t have a lot of movement on and it just seemed for me that because there were some challenges in putting our brand on TikTok that, um, once it’s, you know, once, everything is, um, I guess, up and running, let’s call it, and things are, you know, a little bit um, seamless. That that’s another, you know revenue stream and a whole other, uh, set of people that we are totally missing out on being able to help. So, yeah, that’s the one thing that was really eye-opening to me as well.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, you guys are just scratching the surface so far of the kind of like extreme makeovers that your Amazon listings and online commerce overall is going to have. You know, you’re not really on TikTok shop now, you know, as mentioned, and so that’s something. That’s the next step of what we’re doing, but the cool thing is that everybody out there is going to be able to follow the journey. So, guys, if you haven’t seen their first episode yet, go to YouTube, type in Helium 10 Scale Stories. You should see their episode and then follow the links there, because we’ve been recording a lot of the kind of like what I like to call in the weeds episodes too, where we’re just like in Helium 10, we’re in Amazon Seller Central, we’re planning out inventory, we’re planning out advertising and different things and remaking the listing like. We actually show you this step by step of what we’re doing because we don’t know what the results are going to be. The goal is definitely to 2X or 3X your sales, but guess what, if and when that happens? Now you guys are going to be able to go back and tie it everybody out there to the exact things that we’re talking about in these episodes, and a lot of them. They’re not unique to Essential Candy. I’m sure a lot of you listeners out there are in a similar boat and might have some of the similar struggles that Dean and Tracy were having online and you’ll be able to, you know, use this playbook to hopefully 2x or 3x your sales. So, dean and Tracy, thank you so much for coming on here. Thank you so much for opening up, you know, your business and life to the world out there through this series and we’re going to be. You know I have this. You know coffin shelf series, project X. That I did six years ago and to this day, you know we’re doing like little follow-up episodes and it’s still selling. So that’s my goal with you guys. Like you know, three, four years from now, you’ll be back on this podcast. I mean obviously more times than that, but you’ll be talking how you’ve 10x’d what it was way back in 2025, you know. So I look forward to being on this journey with you guys. Thank you so much for sending me those samples. Everybody else out there you want to give it a try? Check out their products, Essential Candy, search it up on Amazon or you’re in some of the southern states, make sure to look them up at your local arts and craft show and get on their mailing list by purchasing from them. But thank you guys, so much and look forward to following your journey.

Tracy:

Appreciate it, Bradley. Thank you.

---

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Get snippets from all episodes by following us on Instagram at @SeriousSellersPodcast

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.
• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.