#728 – Scaling to 9 Figures on Amazon

In this episode, Bradley sits down with Brian Jines, an eight-figure Amazon seller on a clear path to nine figures. Brian breaks down the “boring” reality behind big growth: consistent execution, understanding your numbers, and building systems that scale without relying on hacks. His story starts as a side hustle, but quickly becomes a real operation built on repeatable processes.

A big focus is on underused Amazon levers most sellers don’t talk about enough: Amazon Business (B2B), Remote Fulfillment, and AWD. Brian explains how Amazon Business isn’t just for giant companies, and how simple moves, such as enabling business pricing (even small discounts) and offering case-pack options, can unlock larger orders, better margins, and fewer returns. He also shares how his team now uses PPC adjustments to lean further into B2B performance.

Finally, Brian gets tactical on fulfillment and scaling operations. Why AWD requires patience, why timelines matter as much as cost, and how a hybrid model (AWD + your own warehouse) can reduce workload while keeping control. The takeaway is clear: the sellers who win in the long term aren’t chasing quick wins, they’re building unsexy systems that compound.

In episode 728 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Brian discuss:

• 00:00 – Introduction and Backstory
• 05:40 – Why switching to FBA mattered
• 06:30 – Parent-child Listings and Ranking
• 08:00 – Omnichannel Growth Beyond Amazon
• 10:10 – Canada Remote Fulfillment “bulk NARF”
• 14:40 – Amazon Business (B2B) Explained Simply
• 19:20 – Why B2B is 30% Sales
• 21:00 – Amazon PPC Tweaks to boost B2B
• 24:30 – When AWD is Worth It
• 27:40 – Hybrid Warehouse + AWD Workflow
• 30:20 – The Boring Blueprint That Wins

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we talked to an eight-figure seller who’s on his way to nine figures, and we discussed the things that maybe not a lot of sellers know too much about, like remote fulfillment program, Amazon business, AWD, and more. 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. And we’ve got a first-time seller, first-time brand, on the podcast at least, coming on, Brian from the snowy regions of, where are you at again?

Brian:

We’re out of Pennsylvania.

Bradley Sutton:

In Pennsylvania. We don’t know nothing about snow out here in Southern California, near the beaches here, but hey, we had to postpone the podcast a little bit this morning due to snow. I have never had that before for me, because we don’t know anything about snow here.

But hey, different strokes for different folks. Now, Brian, were you born and raised there in Pennsylvania?

Brian:

No, I’m actually from Chicago originally.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Did you go to college?

Brian:

No, I was in the Navy right out of high school.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Same as me. I just got into something after high school, didn’t go to college. I actually went to college later in life, just because one of the companies paid me to do it. When you got out of the Navy, what was your first gainful employment?

Brian:

My first? Oh, geez. I believe, if I remember correctly, I worked at HVAC for a company when I got out of the Navy.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Now, how over time did you discover e-commerce?

Brian:

E-commerce, I discovered, I mean, probably started with eBay a little bit, just, I mean, I was doing stuff with eBay back when, going back to the times when you used to actually send checks to people hoping they were going to send you your stuff before the platform had payment terms and all this other kind of stuff. I used to buy a lot of I used to buy like gold and silver. I like coins and stuff. And I remember buying lots and I was getting up for such a good deal, not even thinking of the fact that I’m literally sending a check, hoping that they’re going to send me my stuff. And they always did. I didn’t have a problem, but that’s kind of where I started. As far as this e-commerce journey, I got into, because I was actually buying paint brushes online and I ended up buying, I hate, I hate washing brushes and that’s kind of how I got into this, but I, I was buying, I bought a bunch of these sets. So there’s some guy from China in California was selling on eBay, these three pack brush sets. And they were ended up being like maybe a buck a brush, something like that.

Brian:

So I just chuck them, which I always did. And they were good enough for my use. And I started buying, next thing you know, he started doing these auctions, these 99 cents auctions. Well, nobody would buy these bulk auctions. Once it got up to a certain level except me, I ended up having like three or 4,000 of these sets sitting in a basement. You know, my now wife, then girlfriend, you know, my dad’s laughing, like, what are you going to do with them? I’m like, Oh, I’ll sell them eventually if I don’t, you know, needless to say about a year later, I’m still using them, but have probably 1,500 units left and the guy’s not on there anymore. I’m like, Oh, I’ll try to sell them. Ended up doubling up my money on what I paid for them without even trying. And then from there I went online and started, uh, started resourcing again.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what year are we talking about? More or less?

Brian:

Uh, my first order that I placed, uh, would have been actually, uh, nine years ago, last month. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Were you a painter? Did you have that as a business or why were you still

Brian:

Yeah. I was, uh, I owned a, I owned the, uh, uh, construction company doing residential rehab at the time.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So, so then you kind of just like backed your way into, into e-commerce, like, wait a minute, this guy’s selling this stuff for cheap. I can resell it. You know?

Brian:

Yeah. I’ve owned a couple other businesses. I’ve, I’ve actually imported from Taiwan before China was the big importer back in the day. Um, with my woodworking supply company, but, um, but I had long been out of it. I was heavy in the construction and, um, you know, it started as a pure side hustle. I mean, I, we don’t think about it anymore. And my wife since has, has quit her job and worked for the company for, uh, almost, it’ll be four years in March now, but, um, now it’s, it’s like, I sit here and think about the first order, which was like $3,800, you know, from China. And I remember telling my, you know, then girlfriend now wife that, you know, Jen, that if we lose it, it’s going to stink, but you know, I can, I can take the hit, you know, now, you know, we send, you know, hundreds of thousands. I don’t even think twice about it. It’s just part of doing business.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So, in those early days, were you reselling it on eBay or on Amazon?

Brian:

I started on eBay. I got, I got on Amazon by accident.

Bradley Sutton:

When was this?

Brian:

2017, maybe. Don’t know. No. 2018 probably. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Right about when Helium 10 was getting started.

Brian:

Yeah. Yeah. A guy, a guy that, um, a guy that I knew that I was friends with that had a comic book shop, he was on Amazon. So he was on eBay. He was on Amazon. He was, you know, all over the place and he’s like, oh, you gotta be on Amazon, you know? And so he actually started putting my stuff on his account on Amazon and selling it. And then I saw that it started selling. I’m like, well, I got to figure out how to do this.

Brian:

And, um, you know, then went from there and then it just, you know, then, then it was, you know, it was first it was seller fulfilled that I, you know, then I remember reading the, uh, the concept of, oh, you know, you’re going to get 60% more traction if it’s FBA. And I remember honestly looking at that stat thinking that’s complete. You know, like there’s no way. And then you do it. And it’s honestly absolutely true. You’re, you’re traction completely trucks down. For so many reasons, not just because, you know, there’s a lot of reasons for that, but, but it’s interesting, you know, when you read this stuff and, but then when you actually see it, um, you know, you go about it and you learn all the details. I mean, I remember, I remember two of my products were a one still my, one of my biggest hero products, but they were one number one and number two for paint brushes. But they were, um, they were a child parent listing and he used to drive me nuts because at the time I’m like, how come I don’t see him organically?

Brian:

I see him advertised. I’ve got them there, you know, they’re ranked, but I don’t see him. Well, I didn’t realize that Amazon won’t let two child listings on the first page, even though, they’re, they’re changing that a little bit.

Now we’re actually testing it more than change. I don’t know if they’ll ever keep it that way, but they’re testing it. Um, but I remember when I split that, as soon as I split it five minutes later, there it is one and two, it was, it was kind of crazy. You know, all the little, you know, the little learning processes.

Bradley Sutton:

At what point, if it has, did Amazon become your full-time thing? And then you left the construction and paint business.

Brian:

I mean, it was a side hustle for years. So I probably, well, my wife, my wife used to be the director of chop ophthalmology. She quit her job four years ago. It’ll be. And then before that, I mean, I slowly started getting out of it probably. I mean, it’s been almost six or seven years probably, you know, and it’s not, it’s, it’s mostly Amazon, our major amount of gross volume comes from Amazon, but we also do, you know, we’re more omni-channel. I mean, we’re on Walmart where, you know, we’re on different things. I I’ve had, uh, I even had a talks with Linzer who, uh, has, has shown interest in potentially buying me out. Um, you know, and we’re actually talking right now with, uh, trying to talk to one of the Walmart omni-channel buyers because, uh, my brands on their radar too.

Bradley Sutton:

Fast forward to 2025 across all the platforms. What do you estimate gross sales mean?

Brian:

This year, probably close to 20 million.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s a congrats on that. Now you mentioned Walmart mentioned Amazon, um, still selling on eBay. You’re doing TikTok shop at all. Uh, what are their

Brian:

eBay actually growing this year? Believe it or not. We, it, the, the thing is it’s, it’s really hard because when you’re, when you’re smaller, you go where the money is. And obviously anybody who knows, they know Amazon is going to give you the most gross, whether it’s the most profitable is another thing, but it’s going to give you the most gross. It just, you know, Amazon compared to Walmart, eBay, whatever they’re, you know, I can put all my other channels together. It’s not going to get close to what I do on volume on Amazon. But on the same token, you know, as you get, as you get a little more grown into the business, as you get more mature and really, you know, either have VAs or in-house employees, whatever direction you go, then you start learning like eBay. We never changed our eBay listings and items for years, never even did marketing. You know, it was just, it was just there. Um, you know, this year we actually adjusted that and it’s already, you know, with just little, like not even, I wouldn’t say 5%, you know, help. It’s already probably doubled, almost tripled what we were doing just by some incremental numbers. Um, and that’ll grow from there.

Brian:

Wholesale is our next big push. Um, but I mean, but Amazon, you know, wholesale is the only thing for us that I believe has the chance to, um, to get close to the Amazon numbers and only because, only because we’re talking large buyers, so average order value is much higher, you’re talking hundreds of dollars. So, you know, when you’re talking on Amazon, my average order value is maybe, you know, 12 to $15, you know, our average order value on our website is between 125 to $200 because of the buyers we’re going and that’ll only grow. So when you look at it from that perspective, well, two, 3,000 orders on Amazon’s a lot, but if it’s only $15, that means I only have to do, you know, three, 400 is what I need to gain on a website of the same caliber to, um, you know, to match those kinds of numbers.

Bradley Sutton:

For Amazon, are you only in Amazon USA or are you doing any other countries?

Brian:

We are doing, um, Canada. So, we’ve always done NARF, which gave me an idea. We’re getting ready to send stuff in. Now, actually we’re in the beta program. Canada is doing a new program, Amazon Canada, where they’re actually taking your Amazon US inventory and they’re importing it in for you and putting it in Amazon, Canada, FBA, so that your prices could be lower. So, it’s not just an individual product. So the fees actually go down greatly.

Bradley Sutton:

And that’s going to be part of the remote fulfillment program.

Brian:

Yes. It’s so it’s, so it’s basically like NARF on speed. So it’s like a bulk NARF. So instead of bringing in, you know, one unit at a time, if somebody buys, they’re going to bring in 50 units of that one product, put it in my FBA, my Canada FBA inventory. And that it’ll just go out just like regular Canada FBA will. And then

Bradley Sutton:

Is this like for people who have a, uh, a track record of the regular, you know, NARF or remote fulfillment doing well, or, or, or do you think people from day one are going to be able to do this?

Brian:

It’s a, it’s a beta program. So I don’t know when I know the beta program is literally just going to start in about a week. Um, it’s very limited. Um, I was, I was told, you know, because of who I am and, and my company and all that, obviously all that he haul BS that they tell you, um, that we were part of it. Um, which is fine. Um, and we’re, we’re getting ready. It’s you know, there’s some hoops to do, you know, you got to get a Canadian import of stuff that I would need anyway, but I didn’t need for. For NARF, but, um, and then I guess, you know, it’s like beta anything they’re doing this. And then I think it’ll, you know, once it, once they see if it’s good or successful from there, they’ll probably, I’m sure like Amazon always does. They’ll roll it out across the board because, because it makes sense. Because if you do NARF right now, you know, everybody, you don’t see it because you’re still making the same amount of profits, but they’re factoring in how much it’s going to cost to send that one unit from USA warehouse to Canada and then send it to that person where now they’re taking 10, 20, you know, and then obviously they’ll consolidate all those eventually, which would be my guess from all the sellers that they’re doing this for whatever the program is, you know, imported in from the US to Canada, but for a guy like me who I can send it right in from Vietnam or China or Indonesia, wherever, you know, whichever country I’m bringing stuff in from, I can easily, you know, bring it right in from there to Canada. Um, which is, which is my goal, but I can use this as a tester just to kind of get a feel for what products, how many, you know, and then I think Canada to me will be the, uh, the first layer before I go like EU and UK, because that’ll be the first test, you know, of an easy test for me to figure out how, how much more I need to increase my margin in order to pay for disposal fees and other things out there to make sure I’m still making the same amount of margin and then I can start, you know, start pushing the other cross border places.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. I think that’s going to be, um, a cool thing, especially for some of the other remote fulfillments, like even Brazil, you know, opened up, but then it’ll have the prime badge and for Canada, the same thing, but it’ll still say seven days shipping or something like that, even though it has prime just, or for Brazil, it’s kind of crazy. It’s like 14 days shipping. So sure there’s a prime badge, but then the customer’s like, well, I’m not going to wait two weeks for this. But then I would imagine under this new program that they’ll probably see like, you know, two days shipping.

Brian:

That’s exactly right. It’s going, it’s going to get people plus it’s going to, um, I believe it’s going to also deteriorate a lot of, because there’s a lot of people that sell on my brain on Canada, um, that, you know, that they’re trying to sell. And obviously they’re probably buying it from us in the US or whatever, and stocking it and then selling it self-fulfilled right there, which I really don’t care, but it’ll, it’ll deplete that stuff too, because they have to raise their price so high, but it’s still in a lot of cases, lower than a NARF price because the NARF price is really high. I mean, when you’re talking a per unit price to go cross border, especially now with all the chaos going on, it’s, it’s crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

I want to talk about some unique strategies that you guys are doing that are different than most. And one of them, I know, you know, talking to you before is, is you, you’re really into the, the Amazon business program and, and you get a lot of sales from there, but I don’t, I don’t think we’ve talked too much about it on this show before, so can you first explain to the listeners out there, what is the Amazon business, you know, the B2B stuff and like, how does it show up, uh, you know, for customers, how do businesses get in there? Like, what does it mean on fulfillment? So just give an overview of the program.

Brian:

Well, I mean, anybody can be so, so Amazon business, anybody that’s been, you know, on, that has, you know, a business account, you can sign up for an Amazon business account. So it’s an Amazon account, but for businesses. So in a lot of people, I think initially they think business buyers, but it’s just for anybody, whether it’s a, a one- or two-man operation, it could be a little construction company. It could be a huge corporation, which they have too. Um, and then they have a whole division, you know, we have our own B2B rep that through Amazon that helps us out that obviously wants us to grow and there’s lots of programs within there, depending on, and then there’s metrics. Um, now, you know, I believe like even us, we probably get more B2B sales than even what that shows, just because I think a lot of people, I can tell you right now, I don’t, I have a business account and I use my business account, maybe 10% of the time I usually buy off Amazon right off my personal account because most of the time I rather get, I don’t, I don’t care about the quick shipping, so I’d rather get the extra dollar credit on free, you know, videos that I buy or whatever, whatever, you know, those, you know, little digital credits are that they give me all the time, but that’s just me. A lot of, a lot of business buyers, especially for bigger companies are buying off of there.

Brian:

So, you know, with our products, we have a good, you know, it’s, it’s a disposable.

It’s a lot of more consumable. So, you know, a lot of people are using them. So it’s great for B2B, you know, depending on what you get, you know, another good example, products like that as school supplies and stuff like that. There’s always teachers and stuff that are buying B2B and they have certain programs during that time that if you have a B2B rep, they’ll talk about it and they’ll say, oh, we’re doing this program, you know, you can do this. Um, and then it shows right on there and then there’s different strategies from there, like they have their, um, they have their case pack quantities, you know, where you can do, you know, instead of like one unit, you can then do a 48 pack count, you can then do a whole pallet, which is, you know, in this case, like from that product that I’m talking about, it’s 24 cases, each case has 48 counts and then you can have in most of those you’ll actually, you can actually get a discount on seller fees by selling it.

Brian:

And then usually you can get better shipping because you’re shipping it right from your warehouse and that’s where it gets, you know, for stuff like that, that’s where it gets, depending on what you do and how big it is. Um, you can still do an FBA with some, but the hard part is it’s just like when it’s anything else, it’s like doing to me, it’s like doing the virtual, uh, bundles, virtual bundles is a great tester to me, but it’s not the way I want to do things long-term because unfortunately you’re still paying the same FBA fee for the two products. So it’s the same thing. Like, it’s hard to keep on giving discount upon discount upon discount, you know, so, but like what we do for the B2B pricing is we make sure it’s at least like 5 cents down just so it shows a discount.

Bradley Sutton:

So there’s not like a minimum where it’s like, Oh, you got to have at least 10% off,

Brian:

You don’t have to go as low as you can get better traction maybe because of certain things, the fact is if you don’t have the margin, you know, it’s, it’s like, it’s like when you’re talking about like now the deals and the seven day deals and the price, you know, all these other prime day, you know, it’s really hard sometimes because Amazon wants a certain level, but with them doing reference prices and changing, you know, kind of taking away some of the loopholes, some of us knew about to keep reference pricing, you know, higher. It’s really hard to do that. Now, for me being, being USA based, I do a lot of self-fulfilled too.

Brian:

So some of my reference prices are easier because I have a self-fulfilled listing and I have an FBA listing for everything. So, so it’s easy for me to get a strikethrough price sometimes than it is for other people. But, but it’s, you know, but, but yeah, I mean, you don’t have to, for the B2B, you don’t have to give a huge discount, but it’s, they also say that like, even if you want to give a 1% discount, if you can afford that, business buyers are normally not going to have as many returns as regular buyers. So, and that’s part of their, that’s part of their stick that, that like the rep will say, they’ll be like, Oh, well, business buyers are, I forget what the numbers are, but they’ll say they’re, you know, 30% better chance of not returning it, which if you look at the numbers and you add it up, that does add to margin so you can, you know, possibly, you know, try to give them that, but we’ve grown over the year. I mean, we’ve grown at least, you know, 20, 30% with B2B sales every year, the last three or four years.

Bradley Sutton:

What percentage of your overall Amazon USA sales is business? Uh, B2B business.

Brian:

I want to say roughly, maybe it’s roughly 30% now, somewhere in that. Wow.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s a big, that’s a big percentage.

Brian:

I mean, it’s, we have a lot, I mean, and, and that’s gross because like, if you look at just, if you look at orders, I’m sure it’s a lot less, like if you look at actual orders, but the thing is most of the business buyers, you know, I’ve got, I mean, I’ve got some repeat customers that buy, you know, every single month, you know, so, I mean, there’s, there’s times we look at, we look at customer orders and it’s something, you know, we’re doing it now because some we’re trying to track into our software and figure out how we can. You know how to, how we can really get, really hone it down, which is nearly impossible the way Amazon blocks certain information, but, um, but it’s interesting sometimes when you go into, you know, to Amazon seller central, and then you look at an account and you see somebody that’s bought, you know, literally 30 times and you’re like, oh, wow, they must’ve been buying from us for years, but it’s 30 times. They’ve literally only been buying for us for two years. So when you look at that and you’re like, wow, that’s in there, but it’s just consistent and it’s, and it’s not even subscribe and save that I’m talking about, like just recently we started getting the subscribe and save, but I don’t think subscribe and save is, you know, I’d be surprised if it ever, like we will never do subscribe and save like supplements do subscribe and save.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian:

Just, just a different product.

Bradley Sutton:

So, um, how do you bring visibility to these? Like, like, are you doing the, the, the special modifiers in your advertising to, to like, you know, like a bid modifiers for, for business customers, or it’s just a matter of turning it on and setting the price for your listings and just wait for the sales.

Brian:

At first it was just turning it on. Didn’t have any time. I mean, now that they’ve changed the rules and allowed us to do different, um, different things with that. Um, my, my PPC team has done, you know, started doing different modifiers and adjusting, you know, our internal algorithm that we use for pay-per-click advertising. And they, you know, and they try to, they try to increase B2B because again, the margin is a little bit better and we know the conversion is a little bit better, but I mean, our conversion rates pretty, pretty high in general as it is compared to most right now. So, um, but we’re always looking to figure out how to do even, even more.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you have skews? You mentioned some bulk skews that you’re fulfilling by merchant. Do you have skews that are only available to business or everything is, is duly listed as you have a regular price and a B2B price?

Brian:

Everything’s available to everybody. And we always have a B2B price just so it shows up there a little bit better. If we had now they do say that it would show up more or would show up in different placements if it’s a certain percent, so like when you talk about that 10%, there’s certain rules that they have with that. Now, does that matter in my niche? I don’t know. It’s, you know, it doesn’t affect us.

Um, you know, that I can see, you know, and, but I can also tell you that I’ll never go, I’ll never be able to do 10% lower either, like we can do 10% lower. When we’re doing a pallet or maybe, you know, multiple cases of something because we’re fulfilling it internally. So that changes the dynamics of the shipping.

Brian:

So even us being on the East coast, even if we sell a case of 48, shipping it to the East coast, from the West coast to the East coast to the West coast, I can still save 10%, give the customer a 10% discount and make maybe an extra two or 3% just because of the shipping, shipping differential, you know, but, but that’s the, that’s the difference, but again, that’s, that’s where it gets harder. The difference between me with a warehouse in the US or US base compared to a person using a third party warehouse. You know, cause third-party where it’s a, it’s a different dynamic, even though, even though I think AWD actually, if I remember correctly, if it’s going to a business address, AWD now has new pricing to do, to do discounts to business addresses in bulk cases,

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. Which would make sense. Cause you know, fulfillment is cheaper, you know

Brian:

And that’s, that’s why I said, I know, I know they have it. I haven’t looked at it in a while, but I know, and the last time I talked to my AWD rep a few months ago, we talked about that and it was something that it wouldn’t work for me because of cause we use AWD, we do like a hybrid model with our warehouse and we use AWD along with our internal warehouse, but it really wouldn’t work with all my other stuff because when they do that, it’s gotta be per case. So however you send it in a bulk case, that’s how you would have send it. But that’s one way, if you’re like a third-party seller, say in, you know, in Africa and China, wherever, if you send in full case, the AWD, you can actually make your bulk buying. You can have your single unit. And then if you don’t have the margin, they’ll lower, you know, for multiple other, you could just do a case price just to see if it happens and then figure out what that, what that fulfillment would be for AWD if you use AWD and that would be one way to, uh, to actually save money and potentially give a discount to see if you can get some traction.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. AWD is something that a lot of Amazon sellers aren’t sure if they should get into. Um, you obviously have found something that I guess works for you, but, but like how should somebody, a brand out there kind of like, you know, what should their thought process be on if they should get into it or not, depending on their circumstances, like what they should, what should they be considering?

Brian:

Cautious. I mean, everything’s cautious. Now I’ve never dealt with any other third party warehouses. I’ve only ever had my own fulfillment.

So it was always either me, whether it be, you know, in the beginning, it was my basement, you know, turned into a 12 by 40 foot shed that I built, which instantaneously turned into a storage unit to turn into my first warehouse, you know, all the way up to the warehouse that we just bought that we’re moving into. Um, you know, so we’ve always, we’ve always had that. So I’ve never dealt with that.

Brian:

Now, if you have a third party warehouse and the fees aren’t that bad, it’s, you know, okay, now a lot of people are going to AWD because Amazon is forcing you to turn that way because of all the fees, you know, the, uh, you know, all your different fees. Now they’re doing that to kind of help you. For me, it makes sense because we’re on the East coast. So like part of it for me is, you know, I go West coast, East coast. So I’m saving about $1,200 for a full 40 foot container, a 40 foot HC. I’m saving a thousand dollars, $1,200. So I’d rather send it to the West coast, but so we’re, you know, so I’m trying different models. So I send stuff, some in the, if it goes to AWD, it goes in the West coast. So I saved $1,200 instantaneously. I save on my guys warehousing. We don’t have to take a full container where it’s turns into 40 skids, put it away, you know, and then tag it all and send it to FBA. However, we’re doing it.

Brian:

It can all go there. And then I have everything on my screen through AWD. I haven’t had that much problem with lost things. I have a rep with AWD. So the couple of times that we have had, you know, minor issues. Um, but you need to do it cautiously and you can’t expect it to just happen quick, like things aren’t going to go. And people think that just because it goes AWD, it’s an Amazon FBA, but to Amazon, AWD is a completely separate entity. You know, this is AWD. This is FBA, even though their warehouses are literally probably on the same complex to them, it’s completely separate. So unfortunately people have to realize, you know, in order for it to get an AWD, it’s probably going to take a couple of weeks and then in order for it to go to FBA, it’s then going to have to get triggered in their system and then take a couple of weeks and then, and then it has to get filled in with, with FBA. So, I mean, it’s, it’s a, you know, once you start the cycle and once you get it flowing, like everything else, it can, it can flow fine, but I wouldn’t trust their numbers. And I would keep, you know, use your own data to try to figure it out. Cause you could always go into Seller Central and the AWD and automatically send in more replenishment. You know, you can do that annually too.

Bradley Sutton:

You have your, how big is your warehouse? Your new warehouse you just bought?

Brian:

The one we just bought is 25,000 square feet.

Bradley Sutton:

So you’re sending, like, let’s say you order two containers of a couple of products, you send one to AWD and one to your own warehouse for your own fulfillment or how does that work?

Brian:

So what we’re, well, we’re doing kind of a high, so what we’re doing is we’re sending in stuff to AWD that we know we’re going to run through pretty quick. And, and actually it’s going to even morph into stuff that really runs through quick. Like I’ve got a product that we, we sell a 42 different products. We sell 44 containers almost every month of each one of the products. So, we can literally fill one container of each one of these products every single month and send it in. So that’s just two items. So the idea is, you know, if I can get capacity limits up and AGL can actually stick it to their, to their timeline, which is my concern with it. It’s not about the price anymore with this. It’s about the timeline, because if they’re off by two weeks, that means I could be out if I don’t drip it in, which I keep more, more product than I should probably anyway.

Brian:

But so we’re going to a hybrid where we send in, you know, they raise the capacity limits on those products. We send those and write that BA. We still have some coming to our East coast warehouse. Cause we have regular distribution. Plus, I like to have some on hand for oopsies, which happened. And then we have a certain amount of capacity that’ll go right to AWD. That way it takes a lot of, um, it takes a lot of this burden off my shoulders in my warehouse’s shoulder. So, I don’t have to have an extra guy as we grow, you know, because internally, you know, moving out, like when we do loads, I mean, we send like right now we’re getting, they just loaded two tractor trailers. Um, we do, you know, 26, 28 skids to five locations every time we do stuff to FBA in order to maximize it because it’s five locations, you don’t pay any fees and then it’s getting distributed out, but in order to do that, I mean, that’s five 28 skid loads that somebody’s pulling from inventory, stickering each one, each box and throwing it out where if we send it right to AWD, you know, Amazon, AWD is doing all that stuff for us for, you know, but, but as we’re growing now, it makes more sense because what that means is if I keep with a hybrid method, my 25,000 square foot warehouse will last me many more years while I still grow than if I do it the other way.

Bradley Sutton:

What would you say moving into 2026 is the biggest kind of like concern you have or, or thing that keeps you up at night or thing that you’re going to have to really optimize around, you know, is it profitability? Is it, is it, you know, increasing competition? Um, what, what’s keeping you up at night?

Brian:

Well, nothing’s keeping me up at night. I sleep like a rock when I, but no, I mean, you know, there’s, I mean, there’s lots of things that always go through your head to me, you know, it’s, you know, my lofty goal is to go from, you know, within the next three years, I want to go from an eight figure seller to a nine figure seller. And the only way I see that happening is by increasing products.

So, it’s all about, you know, we talked about this before we started this, you know, we’re, we’re planning on doing a minimum of 2026, a minimum 30 new products every single month right now in my warehouse. I mean, I’m already set as far as products.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, we talked about some unique things that you’re doing that, that maybe some sellers aren’t doing, or just don’t pay much attention to like Amazon business, um, remote fulfillment, AWD. Is there another strategy, more of a quick hitting one, not something that will take about 10 minutes to talk to you, but, but some kind of a, to talk about, but some kind of like quick hitting strategy that you guys think that you are unique, um, uh, compared to the average seller that that’s, that’s allowed you to scale the way you have.

Brian:

I think what’s allowed me to, to really grow. And part of what it is, is a, I’m in a niche on something that I understand that I’ve, that I’ve been around in, in one capacity or another for a long time. Okay. And then at the same time, um, kind of, I always call myself, I’m the boring entrepreneur because I just work, it’s a business, a lot of people get into this and, and, and, and I don’t care why, I mean, I got into it as a side hustle. I never meant it, you know, we joke, I have a video, um, I should have shared it with you, but I didn’t think about it. But I have a video of, um, it’s our second order that we got in. It’s in the basement of our, our old house. And I literally, as it’s going on, you know, I say welcome to the new brush empire, because it was just a joke, but then over the years, it literally turned into a brush empire that we just kind of built, you know, off of that. So it’s one of those things where no matter what your reason is and what your why is, you know, just know that it’s, it’s a real business, it’s work, treat it like a real business, understand your numbers, you know, whether you’re talking bookkeeping or whatever, you know, everybody wants a hack, everybody wants a quick win and those are all fine and nice, but it takes work to actually, you know, work in goals and, you know, drive to get it, to get it where you want to be.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, thank you, Brian, for, for coming on here. You’ve been a Helium 10 Elite member for a long time, and we’ve always interacted and I was always wanting to interview you to get a little bit more insights into, to how you’ve scaled your business to this, uh, to this number. And it’d be nice to talk to you in a year or two, once you’ve hit that a hundred million mark, appreciate to see what, what, what brought you there.

But, uh, thanks. Thanks again, Brian. And we’ll be, uh, definitely keeping in touch.

Brian:

Thank you.

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