#697 – He Has Doubled His Amazon Sales Every Year!

E-commerce seller Ranno Tasane from Estonia joins the Serious Sellers Podcast to share his fascinating journey from print-on-demand to skyrocketing private label Amazon sales. Imagine doubling your revenue every year for four consecutive years and reaching a projected $3 million! Despite Estonia’s modest population, Ranno is part of a vibrant e-commerce community that thrives on innovation and tenacity. This episode also includes a chuckle-worthy tale from the host about a prolonged identity mix-up between Ranno and another Estonian seller, Neeme.

Ranno’s story is packed with entrepreneurial wisdom as he recounts the challenges of managing multiple brands and the strategic pivots that led to his current success. During the pandemic, Ranno made bold decisions that involved phasing out brands and selling others, propelling him to concentrate on a flourishing fruit powder business. Listen as he details an unexpected move to Kenya and the intricacies of building a sustainable business model between Estonia and Poland, all while keeping a sharp eye on inventory management.

The episode also uncovers Ranno’s aggressive marketing techniques and niche strategies that make his Amazon ventures stand out. From the Subscribe and Save program to sourcing rare ingredients like the wild blueberry, Ranno’s focus on market dominance is unwavering. With a customer-first approach, Ranno emphasizes the importance of turning potential negative experiences into positive ones, maintaining a robust brand reputation. As the conversation wraps up, the Bradley shares his admiration for Estonia, considering it one of their top 10 favorite countries, and looks forward to seeing if Ranno’s impressive growth trend will continue.

In episode 697 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Ranno discuss:

• 01:41 – Estonian Seller Community Growth 
• 04:24 – Ranno’s Backstory
• 07:46 – Copyright Infringement and Revenue Growth
• 12:46 – Struggles of Launching Multiple Brands in Amazon
• 16:28 – Brand Phasing and Selling Success
• 20:40 – Steps to Scale a Brand
• 26:06 – Optimizing Subscribe and Save Discounts
• 28:39 – Aggressive Marketing Strategies for Unique Products
• 30:59 – Customer-Centric Amazon Success Strategy
• 32:06 – The Jungle Powders Brand
• 34:32 – Future Growth and International Success

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we talked to a seller who was killing it in print on demand but then got shut down for trademark infringement. But then he pivoted to private label Amazon and for the last four years he has doubled his revenue every single year and is now projected to do $3 million of revenue this year. 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. And we are going on the other side of the world, probably 10 hours difference, 11 hours difference from us here in Estonia with Ranno. How’s it going, man?

Ranno:

Hey Bradley, Thanks for having me.

Bradley Sutton:

Is it still bright over there, like at 11 pm? Is the sun still out? Or is it not that time of year yet?

Ranno:

Not anymore. It was like that in June. Now we’re declining again. So it’s getting darker and darker every day, unfortunately.

Bradley Sutton:

That still just boggles my mind, like living in a place where it’s going to be all dark at some times of the year and then other times it’s like 11 pm at night and it’s still bright. It was like that’s right. I was there in Estonia for the first time a couple months ago and it was it was 10, 11 at night and I’m like I can still see the sun. What’s going on here? It’s crazy.

Ranno:

June is the brightest month when you visit Estonia as well. It’s basically like 22 hours of daylight, almost, so it’s awesome.

Bradley Sutton:

I told you this story but the audience doesn’t know. But a funny Estonian story. I mean Estonia has a strong seller community, first of all, like there’s, when you think of countries that don’t have big populations, like the amount of good sellers in Estonia is kind of like disproportionate, I think, to the population, if you were to consider it. But you know, like obviously you know the first Estonian seller I know is Annika, who I still I’m still trying to bring on the podcast but she hasn’t come yet. And then we had Neme come on the podcast and it was so funny I told the story that I met Ranno at a Billion Dollar Seller Summit someone in person where we hung out a little bit. It was like two, three years ago.

Bradley Sutton:

And then um, you know, you know I knew he was from Estonia then, and then Annika would always talk about Estonian sellers and she would tell me oh yeah, you know you should have uh name on the podcast, uh also. And I was like, okay, yeah, yeah. And so, for like a year we would talk about that off and on, and eventually I did, but every time she would mention him because I guess he was at that or one of the, either that one or another Billion Dollar Seller Summit.

Ranno:

Yeah, he was there.

Bradley Sutton:

She would mention he was there. Yeah, she would mention him a lot and, in my head, whenever she mentions his name and now he’s been on the podcast guys like a few months ago, but whenever he met she mentions his name. Your picture of you was who I thought he was. We’re like literally two. This wasn’t like, oh, a couple of months for two years. She would talk about him and then I would be thinking of you and then so finally we scheduled the podcast and then, as soon as he comes on the podcast, I’m like what the heck? This guy really aged in the last couple of years. I was like no, I must have the wrong person and I realized you are two different people. And, uh, it was so funny. I was like so confused when he first came on the podcast because that was the first time, we talked one-on-one on the podcast. But finally, I have who I thought I was having on the podcast. I just had the names, uh, mixed up.

Ranno:

So I had a good laugh as well about that. I told it to my friends and I was like that’s, that’s that’s funny.

Bradley Sutton:

So hilarious yeah I thank both of you guys for not being too offended, uh, about that, but anyways, um, this is this is your first time, uh, on the podcast, and so what I’d like to do is I like to get some backstory, and so, uh, I assume you were born and raised in Estonia

Ranno:

Yeah, yeah, I’m. I’m born and raised in Estonia, 31 years old.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you go to university also in Estonia?

Ranno:

Yeah, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

and what was your major for studies?

Ranno:

Finance. Yeah, I did my bachelor’s and then also master’s in finance.

Bradley Sutton:

And when you graduated, did you start working in that field at all?

Ranno:

No, not really.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s kind of like what a lot of people say the same thing.

Ranno:

Yeah, what actually happened was that after I got my bachelor’s degree, then I went to Australia for a year just to, you know, explore the world I hadn’t traveled too much back then and then save some money, you know, and I always had this thing at the back of my head to start my own business, because my father has always been very entrepreneurial. So, I was like you know, instead of going to some corporate work, I want to do something myself. But I didn’t know back then when what’s going to be. Um, and then when I got back from Australia, uh, then it kind of naturally went and I had a friend that didn’t have any money and I had saved like 10,000 euros, you know, and he had discovered, you know, amazon. And then that’s kind of how I

Bradley Sutton:

What year about? Are we talking about?

Ranno:

2017.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so then.

Ranno:

Eight years ago.

Bradley Sutton:

So then you two partnered up to like launch an Amazon business, or what do you do?

Ranno:

Basically. So how it started was that he already had started a business like Amazon business with another guy, but both of them didn’t have any money and they you know, they were just doing it for beer money, basically like print on demand. And then, like we were all friends from the same, same small town and then I partnered up with one of the guys and I was like okay, I mean, I have 10,000 euros, we can try something. We started doing print-on-demand, like we just did everything like copyrighted designs, whatever we saw

Bradley Sutton:

Was that like merch by Amazon or what kind of print-on-demand?

Ranno:

It was print-on-demand, so we had, like, we put up a Shopify store and then we had an Amazon store and then whenever an order came in from Amazon, it directed it to Shopify and then to the vendor that printed.

Bradley Sutton:

So, you didn’t use Amazon print-on-demand, you were using an outside vendor but just putting the listing kind of like on Amazon.

Ranno:

We didn’t get access to the merch by Amazon at first. I think we did around like a year later. But you know, back then you could only do like T-shirts and I think maybe hoodies as well, and you couldn’t really do anything. Like you just uploaded the design and that was it.

Bradley Sutton:

But with and what were you guys doing? What were you doing with the other vendor? Like not just T-shirts.

Ranno:

We started with t-shirts and then hoodies and then doormats mugs, keychains.

Bradley Sutton:

How would you come up with designs? Was it text or drawings, or what?

Ranno:

Both we started with text I had no Photoshop skills at all and then we started with just random text designs. We did a lot of keyword research, like every day, like we had a task for both of us that we have to come up with 10 different like slogans or ideas, basically. And then we then we just like Photoshop them. Like I learned Photoshop in a month just to do some basic designs and then we just upload it. Like at one point I think we had like thousand, over a thousand different products uploaded to Amazon. So, we built like a small system so it would be like faster and easier to upload all those designs that we’re doing, because you know

Bradley Sutton:

I bet you wish AI was around back then. I probably could have.

Ranno:

It was like pure manual work.

Bradley Sutton:

And what did you scale that up to then, like monthly or yearly? What would you say your revenue was?

Ranno:

We started in July and I think we made in October or November. We already made like 50,000 a month. But we had designs, copyrighted designs, that you, you’re not allowed to sell, like we had some like Disney stuff, we had like different tv shows, movies, like everything that basically had you know friends like what, what would sell, basically uh, and we got away with it for a year, almost not for a year.

Bradley Sutton:

How blatant? Was it like you say you were violating some copyrights? But when you say tv shows, where was it like you were showing the likeness of the person, or you were actually saying friends or something, or was it just a phrase or from like a line from the show or what?

Ranno:

Yeah, like lines from the show. Uh, then also like comedy versions of the show. Uh, like you know, you had the like the friends font, basically, but we had something like we had some other word in there, but it looked exactly like um came of thrones was a big thing back then. Uh made all the money with this um. And then actually the craziest story is that we there were like the mumble rap started going big in the states, um, like there was the triple extendation and then there was a little beep and we, like the third guy that eventually joined the business as well was a big fan of this rap music and he had those ideas that yeah, let’s, let’s do like rap designs. I was like, yeah, why not? I mean, we can see that there’s some traffic upload, and that was like blatantly like. And that was like blatantly like. We put basically their face on the on the shirt. Uh started selling it like immediately 10 units a day, 15 units a day. And then the craziest story happened. Like unfortunately, um, uh, one, one of the rappers, uh, I think, died in 2017, November.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, that’s a XXXTentacion probably. Yeah, yeah, yep.

Ranno:

So RIP, rip to him. But I woke up in the morning and Amazon has completely blew up. We sold 500 or 600 shirts in a day and that happened for a week in a row. So basically, the money I had immediately we ran out. So, I had to borrow another 10 10 000 from my parents, just to

Bradley Sutton:

It ran out because you have to pay to the vendor to print before you get the money from Amazon. Is that what happened?

Ranno:

yeah. So, you know, if you like, they’re charging per order. So if your, you know, order comes in, the vendor is charging you like ten dollars or whatever the shirt was or something like that, and then amazon pays you, obviously like two weeks later. So we, we, you know, we wanted to get all of those shirts out immediately, but then, you know, the shop was blocked because we didn’t have any money on the card. Then I had to borrow that from my parents and, yeah, that was very successful month, but that’s also from where the troubles started, I think, like a month later, uh, their team like uh, messaged us and we, like we didn’t argue or anything, we just took the designs down. That was it.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, through Amazon or through Shopify, or how did they contact you?

Ranno:

Directly to our email, like, uh, we, uh, I think they got this from Amazon, um. And but yeah, they, they contacted us directly through the email. And then, a few months later, Disney contacted us I think it was in 2018, February uh, basically, um, I don’t know how it’s called like season disease letter or something, uh. So, basically, if we don’t take everything down immediately, then they’re gonna you know, they’re gonna charge us uh like a ten thousand dollars or something, and obviously we got very scared, so we just took everything down. But by that time, with those six months, we had already made in profit I’d say probably like 25,000, 30,000 euros. So, we were now like, okay, now we’re going to start again. And by that time, we had already heard about the FBA model as well. We just didn’t have any good ideas how to do it or how to start with it, and yeah, and then I started actually learning about the FBA through Helium 10. Which is crazy

Bradley Sutton:

Freedom Ticket and our videos, project X, things like that.

Ranno:

Yeah 2018, I probably listened to at least 50 to 100 episodes. Whenever I went to an evening walk, evening run, I always put the podcast into my ear just to know what’s going on into a year, just to you know and what’s going on, yeah. And then we in 2018, summer, basically a year later, we started with FBA. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you want to watch the Serious Sellers podcast in video form? Make sure to go to YouTube and check out our brand-new YouTube channel. Just type in the search bar Helium 10 Serious Sellers podcast, and you’ll see our S logo come up. Make sure to hit that subscribe button. Go to the channel and binge watch any of our episodes that we have done lately. We’ll see you there, Okay, and then how did you do with your first private label products?

Ranno:

So we started. So now there was three of us, okay, and, like, our first plan was that, you know, brainstorm products. We were really good at keyword research, so we kind of understood you know what’s going on and basically every one of us came up with a brand all three of them which probably was a big mistake, but you know, we didn’t have any experience and we were like, you know, let’s try all of them and let’s try all of them on all markets. So basically, we, we tried to like we started selling something in the EU and then also something in the in the US, and, uh, like we learned a lot. Uh, I’m like expert in selling every in every marketplace, but that also was like a big issue when we wanted to start to like scale the brands. Um, so yeah, that that got really hard, really fast, um, and nothing really took off that fast. So uh, so yeah, I think that 2018, half of 2018 and then 2019, these were like the most miserable years of my life

Bradley Sutton:

Because you had sunk a whole bunch of money in and you weren’t getting too much back yet.

Ranno:

Yeah, we were putting, like all three of us we were putting eight hours, ten hours every day, uh, trying to figure out, like how to get this thing working. And like we made I don’t know five thousand ten thousand a month in revenue, but you know it wasn’t profitable. We don’t know 5,000, 10,000 a month in revenue, but you know it wasn’t profitable. We didn’t know how to do ads properly. You know we didn’t have branding and we had three brands, which was a huge mistake. So 2020, uh, the COVID started, um, and I was actually living, uh like I moved to Kenya for, uh, for half a year exactly at that time and with and with one of my business partners, he was also

Bradley Sutton:

What in the world? I hear of people moving to Bali. Let me move to Portugal, Costa Rica. I have never, ever heard one person say I decided to move to Kenya. How in the world did that happen?

Ranno:

There was. So, one of my business partners is professional, like long distance runner or used to be, and in Kenya there’s people long distance runner or used to be. Um and uh in in Kenya there’s, yeah, people that are doing long running, long distances. They train there like in the mountains, uh, near, like we were in a in a small village called it then. So, like all the record holders basically are from that small village. Um, yeah, I love the people, like they are very friendly, absolutely. It’s a great country.

Bradley Sutton:

So then around that time did one of the brands start doing well during COVID, while you were over there.

Ranno:

Yeah, so 2020, we had this kitchen brand. Basically, that took off, but the issue with the brand was that the lead times were very long at that time and also the production time Basically both of these together was like 120 days to get the product to Amazon, which is ridiculous. And we had huge like cashflow issues because by 2020, we had ran through most of our saved money, let’s say, and also needed to start doing some side hustles just to, you know, get money for living. And then uh, but yeah, then the brand took off. And then again, we, we loaned like 25 000 from one of my friends just to buy more inventory and keep the products in stock. And then we had, like the second brand, which we are still doing to do today, uh is uh didn’t really take off and it was just existing. And then the third brand we had. Then, in 2020, we decided to phase this one out because, you know, we just couldn’t handle three brands and start to focus together.

Ranno:

Um, and yeah, thanks to my friend, uh, we managed to buy more inventory, we managed to stay in stock for one year in a row and then 2021, somehow, we were able to uh, like we, we understood that we can’t sustain two brands. Uh, we need money and we don’t have enough for both of them and the brand that took off had better. We had better chances with this one, uh, to sell the other one that we’re doing right now we’re sourcing everything from Estonia. It was very hard brand to sell at that time and didn’t really have good numbers either, so we we managed to, you know, basically sell the brand in 2021 for 200 like we had just one SKU uh for like nearly like 200 000 USD. Oh yes, which was a lot of money for us at that time. Yeah, yeah, um, and uh, yeah, some Swedish uh aggregator bought us and, uh, a year later, they didn’t sell the product anymore, which is which, which was also interesting, interesting investment from their side.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, uh but yeah, we were very. Did you try and take it back or start it again, or something like that?

Ranno:

We, yeah, we didn’t. We don’t really like care about it anymore, like right now. Okay, we got the money, we were happy, um, and uh, you know, we started really focusing on the business we have today, uh, like the, the fruit powders I I’m not sure if I told you about that, uh, at the conference as well, but

Bradley Sutton:

Fruit powder. So yeah, is that like what you uh mix for drinks, or what is that?

Ranno:

It’s for baking mostly. I’d say Like middle-aged women are our main customers or like buyer persona. But I mean now we have like 35 different products, like we have all types of fruit powders, peri powders that you can imagine like starting from, like passion fruit or blueberry or you know, and these are single ingredient products. uh, so you know,

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, that’s really nice and made in Estonia or produced from Estonia?

Ranno:

Yeah. So, we, we have factories in Estonia and in Poland. Uh, Estonian factory is our main factory. Uh, we try to source everything locally but obviously, like, most products come from our region. But obviously, exotic fruits, like passion fruit, it’s coming from Uganda, for example, and I don’t know mango is coming from Vietnam. So exotic stuff we obviously buy from other regions, but the main bestsellers we have are all from our region, so from Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Ukraine. And yeah, we buy the like we right now it’s just you know the harvesting season, so right now we are like there’s a lot of work. We’re buying blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and then just keeping them basically at the big freezer and yeah, and then making them into like, like free stringing them and making them into a powder.

Bradley Sutton:

So, what kind of annual revenue does this brand do for you guys?

Ranno:

So 2021, I think we did 100K a year. That’s when we had those cashflow issues and all that. 2022, I think we did 250,000. Okay, 2020. Another double, almost yeah. 2024, I think 1.2 million.

Bradley Sutton:

Another like doubling every year.

Ranno:

Yeah, and now 2025, probably around two and a half, I’d say.

Bradley Sutton:

So talk to me about that. How in the world do you, for four years straight, pretty much double every year? I’m assuming it’s not just adding more SKUs I’m sure that’s part of it but you’re actually increasing revenue on your existing ones on some of them as well. So how have you had that kind of success? What do you think has been working for you?

Ranno:

Obviously, I have a lot more experience now and you know, by the time when we sold the brand, I was already consulting some other like Estonian brands and also learning at the same time from them. So, I already knew like I had a blueprint already for myself that when eventually we get the money, I exactly know what steps I have to take to scale my own brand. And the only thing missing at that time was money. Because, first thing was I need to keep all of my products in stock. I need to have three months of stock. I need to have two months of stock. I need to have two months on Amazon, I need to have one month in my stone and warehouse. That was the first thing and for that I already needed quite a lot of capital.

Ranno:

Second thing branding. We needed to have professional branding, which before we had our own, we did the best we could, but now we were able to hire a designer that basically helped us out, improved our branding. I gave input but he made it reality. That was probably the second big thing. After that, conversions just blew up. Third thing we got a lot of certifications for our products, which are also very expensive to get for food products, like, we have the USD organic certification now, basically, somebody, not from the States, but somebody was hired by the certifier that flew into Estonia and obviously we have to pay for it to get certified organic. So now we got our products certified organic, which also means, you know, the conversions blew up. So, yeah, these have been, I’d say, the main steps, and then, yeah, we’ve also had some new SKUs as well, but I’d say that most growth has come from the products that we already had, but now we just were able to make them a lot better for the customer.

Bradley Sutton:

Huh. Interesting, interesting. Now. I’m looking at one of your listings right now and I see a few unique things I want to talk about. First of all, I see you’re relying heavily on virtual bundles, which I have been telling people for years. I think this is a good idea, but it actually pushed it to the top of it’s almost like even almost level with your buy box. Do you do that mainly to just like kind of like, take away that sponsored display ad to push the other ads down, or do you actually see some conversions on your virtual bundles as well?

Ranno:

Um, I’m mostly, uh, like, one big reason is obviously to push everything everybody out from our listings and, you know, keep all the possible spots occupied offered by Amazon. Um, also, to promote new products. Like always, when I launch something, then we do bundles with the best sellers just to get some extra traffic. But we don’t really specifically, we don’t really push the bundles. Okay, we just make sure that they’re done, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I think that’s good Like again, like I said, I don um that that’s good. Like again, like I said, I don’t think it should be necessarily for conversions, maybe some niches. It actually works really well. But it pays for itself almost just by, you know, to be able to cross promote your own products and push ads down.

Ranno:

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it value, because people usually when they buy the bundle, they buy two or three products at a time. So yeah,

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, now you have a very aggressive discounting, at least on this one listing. I see, I see here a 20% coupon for subscribe and save I’m assuming that’s for the first order. I see here a buy 10, get one free, and then I see a separate coupon to redeem up to 21% off. So, I’m assuming that you’ve been, you know, experimenting with different discounts and stuff and over the months, and this is what you came up with. Talk a little bit about this, this strategy. Somebody looking at this might be like what in the world, like somebody could just stack these up and just really kill you on your profit margins. But how did you land on this strategy?

Ranno:

Yeah, I mean you can do coupons and people can stack them up. You can exclude stacking, basically,

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, good.

Ranno:

So yeah, if you buy any 10, get one free. I mean we have huge margins on our products as well. So, we do everything in-house, like we basically we source, like the raw material. I know exactly from the top of my head how much the raw material costs. Like you know, I know where to buy blueberries directly from the pickers. We have very close relationship with our factory in Estonia. We do everything ourselves. So that’s how we’ve been able to maintain very high margins on the product and that’s how I can have very, very good offers. Basically, for customers, most important discount on the product page is the 20% coupon for subscribe and save. That’s what we’re trying to push the most. I’ve experimented 30%, 35%. What I’ve seen is that 20% is kind of the sweet spot, that if people see a 20% subscribe and save coupon, they’re going to use it as much as they would use the 25 or 30%. If it’s 15 or 10%, then the conversion drops. So, for us right now the 20% has been the sweet spot where we don’t give up too much margin but at the same time, we get people to subscribe and save.

Bradley Sutton:

Have you on your own or using the Helium 10 tool, analyze your lifetime value for customers and seeing, like you know, the repeat orders, because that also will help other people out there to decide. Hey, what should I? You know, like, maybe I need to go more aggressive on the subscribe and save because, oh my goodness, if I get them on subscribe and save, I keep them for one year every month or something. Have you looked at that at all?

Ranno:

I haven’t looked at the Helium 10 one, but I’m constantly looking at that from the Amazon’s site to understand how much people are dropping off. You know, after using that one time coupon, you know how, yeah, what’s basically the drop off rate. Then also, yeah, and I’m always trying to make sure that, month by month, you know our subscribers are, the number of subscribers we have is increasing basically, and you know we started the brand. Uh, amazon, I think, didn’t even have subscribe and save in 2018, or at least we weren’t part of it. Uh, and at one point I think that was also actually one of the big reasons uh, why the brand has you, you know, has been like blowing up. Basically, is that, uh, to subscribe and say it has like a huge um, like what’s the word in English, but you know, like the effect, uh, that’s, uh, uh, that’s.

Ranno:

You know, if we, you know at first, like I see with all the new launches as well, because we have a lot of products that are not, you know, they don’t have a lot of search volume, um and uh, but we’re still testing the market and seeing, if, you know, our own customers are interested in the flavors and what happens is that, you know we start basically there’s no search volume. We sell five units maybe a day, three units a day or maybe even one unit a day. But, like three, four months later we consistently sell five to 10 units a day. And then a year later we’re consistently selling 15 to 20 units a day. And that’s good for us, for the product. And that happens because more and more people subscribe and save and they kind of keep the BSR up for the product and then new people find it.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, excellent. Okay, what other unique things are you doing, like either on the keyword side or how you’re doing advertising, any secret sauce you can share that you think is setting you apart from some of your competitors?

Ranno:

First of all, it’s like we we have pretty, um, difficult niche, in a way that to get your hands on the products that we have, uh, for example, the blueberry powder, like, if you’re even looking at the sellers that are selling the specific berry that we are selling, uh, because there’s different blueberries, there’s, you know, people that uh grow it like cultural or like cultivated blueberries, but then there are the ones that are grown in the forest, uh, like wild blueberries, and their specific blueberry is uh, vaccinium myrtillus, which is you can only get it from Finland, Sweden, Estonia, basically, um, so it’s already very hard for other people to get their hands on, on the raw material, and there’s like three Estonian sellers, um, so, um, but to get to my point is that we are very aggressive, uh, like, we have the product, it’s hard to enter the market, but at the same time, we are also like on the amazon side, we are very aggressive with marketing. Like, we have the product, it’s hard to enter the market, but at the same time, we are also like on the amazon site, we are very aggressive with marketing, like we’re doing a lot of ads. I make sure that you know we are, we’re trying to have like all the keyword spots for us, like, I’ve tested different things out that were you know, if we achieve rank one somewhere, then you know, I shut, I turn PPC off, and then we have the organic rank up there. But what I’ve noticed is that that way I give the, I give the PPC spot to a competitor and then the sales immediately you know they get hit and uh, and so far I’ve decided that I’ll be aggressive, I’ll get the PPC rank for myself, and then also organic, and even though I have a bit smaller margin, uh, the velocity is much higher.

Ranno:

Uh, so, uh, yeah, because, yeah, if you, if you look some of like, I’m also sometimes surprised, like, if I, if I look some, some of our products, uh, then uh, like, there’s a lot of other flavors you can see there that are pretty irrelevant. I don’t know. If you look at, maybe, raspberry powder, then you can see that if you scroll down, there’s a lot of other products. And that’s how we try to cross-sell and people see our different flavors and then basically bundle them up as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, before we get to your final, like 30 or 60 second strategy, how can people find you out there on the on the interwebs? I know you do some side consulting too or do you have anything you want to promote at all?

Ranno:

I mean, I don’t really do I, I don’t. I mean people who know me, you know, and if they need consultation, then obviously I’m helping them. Uh, you know, um, and if they need consultation, then obviously I’m helping them. Um, and you know, if it’s a very good deal, that’s, that’s hard to say no to, then I’m also always considering. But I don’t really, I’m not really, like you know, doing brand management for 10 different brands. Um, I have plenty of work with my own and usually, right now, what I’ve done is that I have one, one other brand that I’m helping and then my own brand.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you want to mention your actual product that people can go buy at least? Hey, I want to promote you somehow. I might actually buy some of this for my smoothie. Right now I’m doing carnivore diet so I can’t eat any of these smoothies or any fruit or anything. But I’m going to be your customer soon, once I finish this diet.

Ranno:

Yeah. I don’t mind that we I mean, I’m not afraid of competition, I think it’s healthy.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah you have, and that’s me, you have a moat like hey, unless you’re in Estonia and you have direct connection with these farmers and stuff like you can’t just like copy this like a like a product from China, or something.

Ranno:

Yeah, I’m always like making fun that you know, basically Chinese, if, if China, you know, wants to bring the product on the market, they’re buying the berries or the powder from us, basically. But yeah, Jungle Powders is the brand, I think you’ll like it. But, yeah, make sure to look into the product and learn how to use it, because some people you can’t just directly eat it. It’s dry fruit.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Let me get a spoonful and put it in my mouth. That’s not the way. I can already tell that’s not the way to do it.

Ranno:

Put it in a smoothie within a yogurt. You know, some people even drink it with water, but it’s, you know, it’s whole fruit powder, so it doesn’t. It doesn’t dissolve, so you have to. Yeah, I’d recommend like yogurt is the best, or like into a pancake mix or something like this.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, I love it, love it all. Right, last uh 30 second tip or 60 second tip. Uh could be about anything. Could be about uh going to euro basketball games. Could be about picking blueberries in Estonia. Could be about PPC anything you want.

Ranno:

Yeah, um I’ll give you an Amazon-related tip and I feel like I realized it too late. I wish I had realized it much earlier. But really focus on customers. We sell food products and sometimes our powders are clumping up. People get it there rock hard, have solutions for every issue your product has, and even you know and send the explanation to the customer. But what we also do on top of that is, like no questions asked, we refund. If it’s possible, you know, refund the customer. We send the free replacement to them. We don’t want to risk them leaving a bad review and that way we usually get actually a five-star review, even though they weren’t satisfied with the product. You know, we refunded them, sent them, sent them a replacement, and they were like amazed by the brand. And I also, you know, uh, combat this with the negative reviews, like whenever we get one, two or three star review, I immediately refund and then I follow up, like I have a VA now who’s doing that, but she immediately follows up with them, offers a replacement and you know, I think right now that’s the best and probably the best way how to get rid of or get the review changed. Pretty much.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. yeah, all right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I’d love to reach out to you in a year or so and see, let’s see, if you doubled again. I don’t know how you can. How many years in a row you can keep doubling. It’s kind of amazing. But congrats on all your success and look forward to seeing you, hopefully in Estonia again. It already became easily top 10 country I’ve ever been to out of the 70 countries I’ve been to. So look forward to visiting there, and maybe I’ll see you at a conference soon.

Ranno:

Yeah, thank you for having me, Bradley.

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