#727 – She Went from $0 to $3 Million On Amazon & TikTok Shop

In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley sits down with Kseniia, a Project X success story who went from knowing nothing about Amazon to building a multi-platform brand doing millions in revenue. Born in Russia, she later moved to the US and now lives in Panama. She shares how discovering Project X on YouTube provided her with a clear, step-by-step roadmap to launch her first successful product and ultimately build a real business. Today, her brand sells hosting and event accessories across Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, Walmart, and more.

Kseniia opens up about early missteps, including a “bad” reusable paper towel product and a nightmare 3PL situation that forced her to remove her main seller from FBA. She breaks down how she used the original Project X process: Black Box research, competitive analysis, and design differentiation to find her first true winner, and then leveled up by validating every new idea with Helium 10 Audience. She also explains how tools like Keyword Tracker and Cerebro help her repeatedly mine new keywords and refine listings. A unique champagne tower product she launched in 2025 alone has already generated over half a million dollars in revenue.

From there, the conversation shifts to multi-channel strategy and defending margins in a world of fast Chinese copycats. Kseniia shares how she combats low-price clones with better images, real lifestyle photo shoots, constant product improvements, and external traffic from Meta ads and TikTok content that send warmed-up shoppers straight to Amazon and Shopify. She details her TikTok Shop approach, starting with high affiliate commissions, utilizing GMV Max ads, and allowing creators to drive momentum. And explains why she’s intentionally shifting more volume to her own site for long-term resilience. She closes with encouragement for newer sellers: it’s absolutely not too late to start on Amazon in 2026, as long as you’re willing to differentiate, build a real brand, and eventually expand beyond a single marketplace.

In episode 727 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Kseniia discuss:

• 00:00 – Intro
• 02:45 – Russia to Panama: Kseniia’s backstory
• 04:03 – eBay Flips and First Failed Product
• 05:32 – Using Project X Steps to Find the Winner
• 07:31 – Hosting and Event Products
• 10:14 – 3PL Disaster and Wrong FBA Inventory
• 11:36 – Favorite Helium 10 Tools and Workflows
• 16:50 – Beating Chinese Copycats with Better Branding
• 17:20 – TikTok Shop playbook: Commissions and Creators
• 23:50 – Driving External Traffic with Meta ads
• 33:00 – Shifting Sales to Shopify for Resilience
• 36:51 – Why It’s Still Not Too Late

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’ve got one of my all-time favorite seller stories. Ksenniia was somebody who learned how to sell on Amazon from the original Project X series and now has scaled up in a few years to almost $2 million of sales for 2025 on multiple platforms. And for those of you who think it’s too late to get started online, she found a product just this year in 2025 inside of Helium 10, launched it, and did over half a million dollars in its first year. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Not sure on what main image you should choose from, or maybe you don’t know whether buyers would be interested in your product at a certain price point. Perhaps you want feedback on your new brand or company logo. Get instant and detailed market feedback from actual Amazon Prime members by using Helium 10 Audience. Just enter in your poll or questions and within a short period of time, 50 to 100 or even more Amazon buyers will give you detailed feedback on what resonates with them the most.

Bradley Sutton:

For more information, go to h10.me/audience. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

Bradley Sutton:

We have got somebody who’s been on the podcast before but we’re going to act like even now that we have this new format here, we’re going to pretend kind of like this is the first time we’re going to meet her, even though we’ve had her before here on the show. Plus for me, it’s almost the same because my memory is so bad. I’ve forgotten 95% of what we talked about in the old podcast, so for me, it is going to be almost like listening to it for the first time, but Kseniia, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back to the show.

Kseniia:

Hi, Bradley. Thank you for inviting me again.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, one thing I did remember was the day I met you, actually, I don’t remember the full details. It might have been Accelerate or Prosper Show or something, and you were like, hey, I learned how to sell on Amazon because of Project X and things, and that’s why I’m wearing one of my newer Project X hats here to kind of do a homage to that time of you learning how to sell on Project X. Have you seen that we have a new series similar to Project X, the scale stories?

Kseniia:

Yeah, yeah. I saw it recently. I think it’s pretty cool to actually watch the people doing the thing, you know, kind of online.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, yep, yep. So let’s just go back to even before, you know, again, since we’re meeting you for the first time, many of our listeners, let’s go back to before you discovered Project X. Where were you born and raised?

Kseniia:

So I was born in Russia, but I moved to the U.S. when I was like 21, I think, and I lived there for seven years, and now I live in Panama.

Bradley Sutton:

You’re living in Panama now, okay. Have you been learning Spanish since you’ve been living there?

Kseniia:

Yeah, yeah, for like three or four years. I’m still not too familiar with it.

Bradley Sutton:

I didn’t know you were there for so long. You might have said that, but I forgot about that. Okay. Did you go to university at all while you were here in the U.S., or you just started working, or what were you doing in the early days in the U.S.?

Kseniia:

No, so I finished university in Russia, and then I moved after that. I moved because I got like internship kind of visa to go work at the hotel. That’s what I’ve been doing for years in Russia, and that’s how I got there.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. Cool. How did you discover e-commerce? I mean, was it Project X, or were you already like looking into, you know, like looking up how to make money online, or how did that journey happen for you?

Kseniia:

I’m just, I think like a lot of people did, just looking online, how to make money online. Just put it on YouTube and try to see different options. I think most of the people did it that way.

Bradley Sutton:

So was it around that time when you started, or was that what, 2020 or something?

Kseniia:

Yeah, like 2019, 2020. I did eBay for a bit, then I kind of looked at Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you do on eBay? Was it reselling, or what?

Kseniia:

Yeah, yeah. I was reselling like memorabilia from Olympic games.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, interesting. Okay. We’re going to have Olympics soon, so that we can maybe get some more memorabilia there. And then what was your first ever product that you sold on Amazon?

Kseniia:

Oh, wow. That was bad. That was really bad. The first private label, if you could call it that way, product was like a washable, reusable paper towel. I think that was kind of new back then. So you can, so you save the planet and don’t use as many paper towels. So you can, they kind of look and feel like paper towels, but you can wash them.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And why did you have that reaction? Oh my goodness, this was bad. This was really bad.

Kseniia:

Because it was bad. It was a bad idea from the beginning. It didn’t, I mean, surprisingly, I didn’t even lose money on it.

Bradley Sutton:

So it was bad, but you still didn’t even lose money, but it wasn’t a good idea to launch. And then, and then you ended up just discontinuing it.

Kseniia:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And I remember you had some unique ways of finding your first successful product, and how you were validating the idea and stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Kseniia:

Yeah. Well, the finding the idea, I did exactly the Project X thought, literally step by step. I was watching every video and repeating what you guys did in every episode. So that’s how I found the first product that actually took off, that did, I can’t remember. I think it started the first month, it did like 20 or 25,000 and then it kept going up and up every month. I think it got to like 80 or 90,000 a month from one product.

Kseniia:

And then because it was an accessory to another product that was growing at that time a lot. I just went on a Facebook group where people were, because that brand created the community. Basically that what happened. So there were a lot of people there that were discussing how to use a product, what accessories are available for that product. So I would just go there and ask the people in that group, or just post on a message asking them what kind of accessory would you like to see, or what do you think about that accessory? So that way I had access to, I think it was 10,000 people at that moment of my customers, so that brand customer, but also my customers where I could get the instant response or idea to my idea.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. And is that the same brand that you’re selling even to this day?

Kseniia:

I have some products from that, yes, that I’m still selling, but I kind of went away from that because I realized that selling accessories to another brand, I will be totally dependent on how much that brand sells. Which would happen in one moment.

Bradley Sutton:

And then something happens to them for whatever reason, and then you would go to zero almost.

Kseniia:

It didn’t go to zero, but I was really dependent on their sales plus at one moment they decided to launch their own accessories line, which it doesn’t matter which product is better buying or theirs, they have a brand, which is like a branded product, which I can’t compete with. So people would still prefer buying their products.

Bradley Sutton:

What is your main brand today and kind of products that you sell?

Kseniia:

Yes. So the brand name is KSESTOR and we sell hosting accessories for events like weddings or home hosting.

Bradley Sutton:

How do you spell that?

Kseniia:

K-S-E-S-T-O-R.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So it’s just like a lot of products for, oh, you know what, I was going to make one of these products.

Kseniia:

Really?

Bradley Sutton:

You had the idea already. Yeah. I even bought samples of this. This is a great product to do. Like two or three years ago, I was going to do one for like tequila, that’s a good product. Wow. You have a really good variety. I really love your images here. So I see a number of different SKUs. How many SKUs do you have on this brand here?

Kseniia:

12 or 13 right now, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And we’re at the end of, you know, we’re already starting 2026. How, what did you end approximately 2025 sales?

Kseniia:

So from all the channels, I think by the, by the end of the month, it should be like 1.7 million.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. What are the, all the channels, like what Amazons are you selling on and what other non-Amazon marketplaces are you selling on?

Kseniia:

So Amazon US, Amazon Canada, then TikTok shop, Walmart, and Shopify, Welfare also, which is a wholesale.

Bradley Sutton:

How would you rank them as far as like a rough, I obviously you don’t have this handy, but 70% Amazon USA, 10% Amazon Canada, 5% TikTok, you know, like what would you say it would be?

Kseniia:

Yeah. You’re pretty close. It’s like 70%, 70% Amazon US, around 10% Canada. Then I would say probably 10% TikTok, 10% Shopify and whatever the rest is Walmart, which is Shopify is more than TikTok and Walmart is the least.

Bradley Sutton:

Which fulfillment are you doing? Obviously, you’re doing fulfillment by Amazon. Are you doing fulfillment by Walmart and fulfillment by TikTok at all? Or is everything coming from your Amazon or using 3PLs?

Kseniia:

So we try to do the TikTok fulfillment, but we had so many issues with it where they would ship a wrong product or just, it just didn’t work out. I just didn’t see the point of doing that because of the returns and the returns would come in with the products that weren’t even mine and it’s just a constant, you know, customer support because something went wrong and no. And with Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

And now I just remembered something. The very first time you met me, you told me about like a nightmare story with like a third party warehouse. What, what, what happened there? I just remember there was some nightmare that happened.

Kseniia:

Yeah, I think it was a second time when we met at the other conference. Yes. I was using a very small 3PL and they shipped the wrong boxes. They shipped the whole, so they marked the boxes as it was one SKU, but actually it was another SKU.

Bradley Sutton:

Also when they sent it to Amazon?

Kseniia:

Yes. When they sent it to Amazon and we didn’t know if the Amazon is going to read the labels the right way and put the right product on the right shelf, or if they’re going to, you know, mess it up, which happened both, both happened. So I had to remove the whole inventory back from that product, which was the main seller, basically.

Bradley Sutton:

How long have you been using Helium 10? Is it pretty much from day one of your Amazon journey?

Kseniia:

Yeah, from 2020, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

How big is your team? Is it just you, you and your husband? Do you guys have employees?

Kseniia:

No, just me. My husband has his own business, so it’s me. I have a VA in Philippines and I have two people. So one is a social media manager and one is a content creator because we try to do a lot of content on TikTok right now and Instagram, so.

Bradley Sutton:

And just among you, running full $1.7 million business.

Kseniia:

Well, yeah, with the VA and the content creator.

Bradley Sutton:

For you and your team, which are the top three like Helium 10 tools that you think you’re using the most often?

Kseniia:

I would say I use a lot from what I do. I use the Keyword Tracker a lot. I mean, I’m still going to go back to Audiences. I just love Audiences so much. I talked about it last time, but that’s like one, still one of my favorite tools because it’s just so easy to get the information that I need. Cerebro, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

For Keyword Tracker, let’s talk about each of those tools that you just mentioned. Keyword tracker, it was the first one you mentioned. You mainly just like worried about your own keyword ranks, like where you’re showing up organically and sponsored. Or are you also tracking your competitors? What’s the main purpose?

Kseniia:

No, I’m not tracking the competitors at this point. I’m tracking my own because I’m always trying to research for new keywords that sometimes maybe not directly to the product, but, you know, and the different niches that might fit our products in. So I’m tracking how it’s going, even if it’s ranking, if we need to change the back end of the listing to make sure we would even show up on those keywords because they’re not the main keywords for that product.

Bradley Sutton:

I assume that also, you know, Cerebro using that to check the competitors not just for new products and finding the new keywords, but keeping track of, Hey, are there new even an existing listing? Are there new keywords that maybe competitors are, are advertising for? Is that how you Cerebro or what are your use cases for Cerebro?

Kseniia:

Yeah, we do. I would say every three to four months we revise the keywords. So we check our keywords and we do the competitors to see if, because a lot of the times there are new keywords every three to four, six months. So yeah, we do that all the time.

Bradley Sutton:

And now Helium 10 Audience, you know, for those who don’t know, that’s like our kind of like crowdsourcing kind of like split testing tool where you can get people to vote on certain creatives or, you know, certain price points or how a listing looks. Are you only using that when you initially create a new listing to kind of like see which images are going to work the best? Or do you find yourself using Helium 10 Audience even with a mature listing to kind of like test different creatives?

Kseniia:

No, I actually mostly use it for the product idea or a design idea or so I started before that. Yes. That’s how much I love Audiences. Well, because sometimes, or even I can compare the competitors product with how easy you can generate images right now, even using ChatGPT without going any further. So I would generate an image of the idea of the product idea that I would like to create, which most of our products right now, they’re either using molds or so it’s a unique design. So I would generate an image and I would input that image and compare it to the image of my main competitor on Amazon right now.

Kseniia:

And I would ask people if they would have an option to buy a product, which one would they choose and why? And so that way I see that idea even valid that there is a point of launching this product. If yes, why, if no, why? So I get a lot of feedback even before I got the first sample, basically just with the AI generated image.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. Interesting. That’s a great idea. You know, like getting, you know, it’s kind of like part of your validation, you know, almost, you know, I’m sure probably it’s maybe stopped you from going a certain direction for a certain product.

Kseniia:

Yeah. Because sometimes you can, you can trust yourself. Sometimes you think it’s like the greatest idea in the world and you feel like you would use this product. Your friends will use this product, but then you go there and ask the real people, you know, and they will sell you, no, we’re not going to use this. But the best part is that they give you ideas how to improve and you know what to do. So they would buy this product.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk general strategies. Doesn’t have to be Helium 10 related? What are some things that are not just like vanilla that everybody else is doing out there?

Kseniia:

I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s unique. I see people doing that all the time, but I think right now, it’s not a good idea to focus solely on Amazon just because of what’s happening with all the Chinese sellers copying your products, which would happen with mine. We launched a new product in January and we paid a mold fee. We paid, I think, seven or $8,000 for the mold to actually make this product. How many months, five or six months later? Now they’re like 10, maybe 15 people that sell an exactly, well, they changed it slightly.

Kseniia:

So I know they’re not using my mold, but they copied the unique design that we created. So if you’re

Bradley Sutton:

Trying to get a patent. Kseniia, you got to get a patent.

Kseniia:

Oh yeah. I did a couple, it takes two years to get it. In those two years, I know, but not going to stop the, the Chinese sellers to copy at that point. Already tried that. Doesn’t work. I already tried that. So, but if you launch your own website, which we did this year, I think in February and started running meta ads, we noticed that we kind of even created demand for that product from outside of Amazon.

Kseniia:

And we’re bringing people to Amazon, which Amazon really likes but we still have more sales on Amazon than on Shopify, but what happened on some products, especially is we even turn off the BBC. So, so some products, we just lowered the TACOS in general, but some were even able to turn it off just because how much traffic we get from outside from mid-day and how much Amazon loves it.

Bradley Sutton:

What is your TikTok shop sales, 2025, would you say, or monthly, maybe monthly, like, like what do you average on TikTok shop?

Kseniia:

We didn’t, we weren’t really doing too much on TikTok shop, but I’d say probably 10 to 15,000 a month.

Bradley Sutton:

How did you get to that point? You know, you don’t just put up your listings and then get to 10 to $15,000. So how much of that is through like, you know, affiliates and, and creators, as opposed to your own content, getting a lot of traction.

Kseniia:

So what happened in the beginning is we tried to reach out to a lot of the creators, but because we were just new on a TikTok shop. And of course, nobody wanted to try to promote the product because they didn’t know if it’s a good product. They didn’t know if they’re going to get any. So we had to put a high commission at first to be able to even interest anyone into making videos.

Bradley Sutton:

How much?

Kseniia:

I think we started from like 30%, maybe.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow.

Kseniia:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

That is a high commission.

Kseniia:

But you just have to do that because you can’t get the, what I noticed with a TikTok shop is you just need to get the first traction when the first sales going to go. And that’s also, that’s only going to work for one product. So you can, if one product goes, it doesn’t mean that your other products are gonna go as well.

Kseniia:

Because for a while, what happened, we had not our best seller on Amazon perform a lot better on TikTok shop. And we couldn’t get the main seller on Amazon to like get that traction on TikTok shop. But then we did it.

Kseniia:

And one moment where one of the influencers actually reached out to us and asked if she can make a video and get the, both the TikTok shop commission and also the Amazon influencer commission. And her video went to, I think, 500 and 600,000 views. And after those sales, yes, we got the traction. Now we have like sales every day on that product.

Bradley Sutton:

But let me ask you though, like at 30%, are you losing money at 30% commission?

Kseniia:

No, we were not losing money at 30. But that was, I think at the end of last year when the structure was different, where we used the TikTok fulfillment, which they were given a lot of free stuff, you know, when they launched that. So of course, this year we haven’t done that. I think we’re down to like 5% right now in commission.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So yeah. Cause my question was like, let’s say you, you know, you’re trying, I know how important it is to get that initial traction, but if you choose a commission where you actually lose money, but then all of a sudden that video goes viral, like what do you do? Like you don’t, you don’t want to lose money on 2000 orders, but you, I guess you kind of pick numbers that at the time, you know, like made sure you still at least broke even, or made a little bit of money.

Kseniia:

Yeah. At the time it was more important to get it started. So we get some sales for the first three to four months and then yeah, this year, of course, but also you can lower the commission. They don’t lower it immediately. I think they lowered over 30 days. If you start lowering the commission.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay. So even though somebody locked in at a certain percentage with a creator, you can actually lower that later.

Kseniia:

Yeah. But they don’t, yeah, but they don’t lower it immediately. They tell that for the creators that’s already have the videos and they already earning the commission. They’re not going to just remove it the same day. They’re going to do it by the slowly over 30 days. I think if I’m not mistaken.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you running GMV max ads at all for your TikTok?

Kseniia:

That’s what worked the best.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you have any kind of like special strategy there or you just like turn it on where it goes for all of, all of it? Or are you trying to reach out to the creators to get their spark codes and things who don’t have it? Well, what’s some of your advertising strategy on TikTok?

Kseniia:

Like for us, it works so well that I don’t even do anything. Like I don’t, I just run it on all the products and it picks the best videos. It picks the best products. So it just works well on its own.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s one of the biggest losses or mistakes other than that first product that you did like, and other than what you mentioned about what happened with the 3PL, what’s one of the worst thing that’s happened to one of your platforms that you learned a lot from?

Kseniia:

In years, I would say probably that moment when I launched the product that the first product, when you know you work for maybe for a year, a year and a half, and you don’t see any success. And then you get the first product that actually starts making money and the money you’ve never seen before, because when the one product started doing like 80 or 90,000 a month, that was, the profit was a lot higher than right now too. So that was like 30,000 a month and profit.

Kseniia:

And I’ve never seen that money before, right? I’ve never earned that much. So, and then because it was tied to another brand and another product and one moment, it just all goes to not zero, but pretty close to zero. So that was probably the hardest. And you already bought all the inventory. You have all your money invested into the inventory because you think that if it’s going like this, at least it’s going to go the same. You don’t expect that it’s going to drop all to zero.

Bradley Sutton:

So what’s the learning experience from there is be very careful when you have a product that is tied to another, like maybe don’t go so deep into inventory or what would you say the learning experience was there?

Kseniia:

Just do your own thing, do your own brand. That’s what we’ve been doing this year is that we’re really trying to figure out who our customers are, how to build products around those customers. And so not be dependent on any other brands or any niches that, especially the niches, I would say that go at one moment go up because after that, it’s probably going to go down in the same way.

Kseniia:

So I would look towards something more stable that’s been already existing for years before you still can make your own design. That’s going to be totally different from what’s selling right now. That’s what we did with the product that we launched this year. That’s actually to this point made like a half a million dollars in revenue. One product, but when we came in, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

One product? Which one was that?

Kseniia:

It’s a champagne tower.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Oh, I bet you is it kind of big in the end of December for new year’s for like new year’s parties and stuff like that? Or it’s mainly just like an evergreen for like, you know, weddings and anniversaries.

Kseniia:

I think in the summer, it’s probably higher, but generally it’s doing well also because it’s very good on TikTok with all the influencers. And what happened is that when we launched it, um, and we started doing the TikTok videos or Instagram videos and people started, like I would go every day on TikTok and I see a new video from creators that don’t even earn commission. Sometimes they don’t even mention us like our account, but I would just see all those videos when people would ask them, or where’d you buy it from?

Kseniia:

So it’s just created all this because when we came in initially to that niche, we saw a product that was only sold by Chinese sellers. And I think it was doing like 20 or 25,000 a month on average, or like the top seller was doing 25,000 a month.

Bradley Sutton:

On Amazon?

Kseniia:

Yeah, on Amazon.

Kseniia:

We changed the design. Like I got the idea how to change the design in a unique way. Uh, and we were the first US seller to came into this niche. So we were initially competed with all the Chinese sellers just with a unique design.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you do that with Helium 10 Audience as well? Were you putting some of the designs in there trying to see, or?

Kseniia:

I did it every single time. Yes. With all.

Bradley Sutton:

How did you find this product in the first place? Like what was it just scanning, you know, like Amazon to see what, what’s hot or how did you even get this idea for this product?

Kseniia:

So my VA was doing all the initial research, like the keyword research, we were just looking at the products that were between like 20 to $30,000 a month range. Cause that’s what we were comfortable with going in. We didn’t want to go higher than that.

And we were looking around like cocktails, drink, wear glasses, just what we are, what we were seeing.

Bradley Sutton:

Using Helium 10, like in Black Box or?

Kseniia:

Yes. Yes. So, and then she found a product, she sent me the idea and then I would go and look for like on Pinterest or any other places where I can go to see if I can improve the design. If I can improve it.

Bradley Sutton:

Just like Project X, I love it, still using those.

Kseniia:

Still using those all the time. So anywhere you can go on Pinterest or Etsy or anywhere where you can go look if you can change the design. When I got the design idea, then already I go to audiences and then I would show the people and ask them, what do you think about this product idea? Would they buy it? If they wouldn’t buy it, what would make them buy it? So that’s the questions I was asked.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m looking at, at that product on Amazon. Do you just kind of like have the main launch in January 2025? Yeah. Well, okay. So for, I just want to call this out because guys, if people say, oh, it’s too late to start selling a new product on Amazon or you can’t find profitable niches, here’s a product she literally launched 2025, half a million dollars across different platforms. It can be done.

Bradley Sutton:

I love that. I love that. After, obviously you came in with something unique, but what a lot of, you know, negative people might say is, okay, yeah, you can have a great idea and you have a nice little run, but then everybody’s going to see what you’re doing and just copy it. So, you know, it still looks like it’s selling pretty strong. What allows you to stay strong, even though I’m sure, you know, you tell me, but I’m sure like some people have maybe tried to copy you and do something similar and try and undercut you on price. But how do you stay profitable and keep your momentum even with people trying to undercut you, the copycats?

Kseniia:

Yeah, that’s after six months, I think after we launched there at this point, 10 or 15, Chinese sellers that selling the same product already, I, they changed the mold slightly but it still looks almost exactly the same as our product. Well, the first thing they, obviously they stole some of our sales just by the change in the price, just by lowering the price to the point where, I don’t know, they earn a dollar maybe from selling one product, but for them, it’s good enough. I guess.

Kseniia:

The first thing I noticed, they do a lot of AI images, which I’m not, I don’t like AI images. I still don’t think they’re good enough for so we invest a lot in images, initially images,

Bradley Sutton:

Like actually having photoshoots?

Kseniia:

Yes. The actual photoshoots. That’s always like, I prepare a lot of instructions on how I want to pictures to be done, what light needs to be used. So the better images, better video, they don’t pay too much attention. Also, obviously with AI, it’s a lot better writing the listings, using the right keywords.

Kseniia:

What else? Of course they would never go and do the Shopify. They would never go do their own website. They’re not on TikTok. They’re not on TikTok shop as well. So, and if people would see our product on TikTok, they might not buy it on a TikTok shop because they don’t trust it, but then they would go to Amazon and they would buy it on Amazon.

Kseniia:

So we get the external traffic to Amazon from TikTok, Instagram, from meta-ads. So they would still and then I would say maybe I’m not sure which one is the most important one, but I also noticed that the, after the initial launch, when they copy the product, they would never go and improve it. Which after six or seven months, usually you see the feedback from the customers and you see what’s working, what’s not working, what they don’t like.

Kseniia:

That’s what actually I’m doing right now, because we’ve generated enough feedback to be able to make a decision of how we’re going to change it. And so we’re working on redoing the mold right now, which I’m sure maybe if they would even do, but that would take them another six months after we change the mold. And then at the same time, we’re also planning a big shoot, the photo shoot to update the images, which also they’re not going to invest in because it’s very expensive to be able to make a massive photo shoot for, to update the images, which we also would use everywhere across the TikTok, again, the TikTok, the Instagram.

Bradley Sutton:

So now I, you know, this kind of like tied into my next question, which is about profitability, with rising costs and one way, you know, to, to kind of like cover that is always making sure you’re a unique so that you can have a prior, a higher price point. You know, you’re not trying to play the price war, but just in general, aside from doing what you just mentioned, how are you dealing with rising costs of manufacturing, Amazon fees going up, maybe rising costs in advertising and more competition? What else are you doing to make sure that, Hey, you’re still making money to support your lavish lifestyle in Panama there?

Kseniia:

So the first thing we try not to raise the prices as much as we can, just because it is very sensitive topic for a lot of people to, when we try to raise the prices. So it was not easy during doing a whole thing that it’s going on this year with the rising costs. So what we did, we negotiated a lot with the suppliers. So being able to get the prices down and also to get a new payment structure, where would we not pay at the moment where the product is finished, but we would get like 60 or 70 days after the product is finished to pay them the final payment. So that helps a lot with the cashflow. Yeah, the price is down, but also when you get, when you use this tactic of getting external traffic, you’re not really that dependent because people would go on Amazon strictly for your product.

Kseniia:

They might look around, but they would still. If they already saw your product on TikTok or Instagram or anywhere, they would go look, search specifically for your product. And they’re confident because they saw a video that convinced them that they wanted this product when they go on Amazon and they see other listings, maybe cheaper, like two, $3 cheaper, but it’s not like double the price. So that’s probably not going to convince them to go for something they haven’t seen before.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. You know, going back to something you said earlier about your staff, you know, I think somebody might think, Hey, all right, I start my business by myself and maybe my first hire might be somebody doing PPC and then maybe I’m going to have somebody handle customer service or something. But you said you actually, I believe you have a full-time like content creator or social media person, if I remember correctly. But what is a full-time person doing? Like what’s their week look like. How does a full-time person have enough to do, you know, for you know, somebody might not think like what an online brand needs like a full-time social media person when there’s only like three, four people in the whole company. So, so talk about that a little bit.

Kseniia:

Well, so for the content creator, they’re not full-time. We kind of like a project base. We have a set amount of videos that they’re filming every month and they have a budget. So they need to get in that budget. Then we do like 20 videos a month, not too many, but for Instagram, it’s more like just a visual. If people go look on Instagram for our brand name, make sure they find something and they make sure that the page is active. So we’re not trying to get sales directly from the Instagram page and the TikTok.

Bradley Sutton:

So some of these videos you’re uploading to like your brand Instagram, you’re saying is like reels or something like that.

Kseniia:

Yes which that directly is not bringing sales, but it’s bringing also the influencers. So if they search, like they would see on TikTok and then they go on Instagram and they see that we also on Instagram and we have the videos and they just message us and direct messages asking, Oh, would you like to ask to make a video about your product? So stuff like that. But for TikTok, we do a lot more content. It’s interesting how if we post the same video on TikTok on Instagram, it’s always one or the other.

Like it’s never been that the same video performed good on both TikTok and Instagram. It’s if one video does well on TikTok, it’s never going to do well on Instagram and in the opposite way. So that was interesting.

Kseniia:

But with the social media manager, it’s the same thing. She’s not full time. She’s part time, but she also, she does like, I always give you, give her ideas or ask her to do an extra work for making the videos for basically the meta ads. Cause I always get new ideas or like new hooks we can try using. It’s always a lot of stuff that we need to do. So that’s,

Bradley Sutton:

What do you do with the meta ads? Are you sending people to your Shopify? Are you sending people to Amazon? You sending people to like a list, uh, what’s your goal of that you’re trying to achieve with meta ads?

Kseniia:

Shopify, because the goal for next year is I want to kind of shift the most of the sales. I’m sure it’s not going to be probably never going to be even 50-50, but that would be the goal because you can’t just rely on Amazon. There’s so many new things, so many new fees every, every day, every month we get to see. So, and it’s not very safe to have your inventory, which we did last year. Well, this year, I mean, where we use the Amazon multi-channel fulfillment to fulfill the orders on different platforms, just because we didn’t know demand. We didn’t know if the Shopify going to take off, if we’re going to have success on Shopify.

Kseniia:

So I didn’t feel confident into going to 3PL, you know, shipping out. Plus I didn’t even know how many sales we’re going to get, how much do I need to ship? So we were just testing it out starting from MCF, but then when we realized that it is working, the meta ads are working, we’re going to get sales. It’s not safe to use one platform to fulfill all the orders because if something goes wrong on Amazon, then all your channels disappear.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. This has been very insightful. You know, like some of the stuff I might’ve heard before, like I said, I already forgot about it, but to see your journey is really inspiring. And so like, you know, for further inspiration, what would you tell somebody out there who’s maybe either hasn’t started yet and thinking, Hey, should I get on Amazon? Or maybe they’re already selling on Amazon, but maybe they haven’t been able to scale yet or really improve. Like what would be some words of encouragement that you would say out there about what, you know, should they get into Amazon now? And for the people who already have, how can they get to that next level like you have?

Kseniia:

I’ll definitely say that it is not late to start on Amazon. Maybe it’s a little bit different. Maybe the way how it used to be before, it’s not going to work anymore in terms of the capital that you need to start, but it’s definitely not too late to start on Amazon. I would still, even exploring all the different platforms, I would still advise to start on Amazon. When you start on Amazon, it will be a lot easier for you to start on Amazon first. But when you get the initial traction, you start making money, then you can go on other platforms and explore that. But I would still tell people to start on Amazon because it’s the easiest way. Believe me, after trying all the other platforms, it’s the easiest platform to start selling online.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, Kseniia, it’s been really awesome to see, you know, how far you’ve come. You literally started from zero, which was the whole point, and gone to hero, which is the whole point of our original Project X and what we were doing with series like Scale Stories as well. And you’re continuing to use the tools and the education in order to better your brand and love to see, you know, these products just take off for you like this champagne one. I might have to go buy one soon. I’ve got a party coming up. Matter of fact, is there delivery today? I have a party on Sunday, which is in two days. 25th wedding anniversary. You know what? I am going to go ahead and buy one of these. I’ll leave you a good review, too, on this, but I’m going to buy one and say that-

Kseniia:

It’s not going to get blocked by Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, well, hopefully it doesn’t get blocked. No incentivize reviews. I’ll pay full price for the product. But congratulations on all your success. Really inspiring to see entrepreneurs who are crushing it like you are. Thank you so much for coming on here, and we definitely want to invite you back next year to see, you know, did you hit 2 million? Did you hit 3 million? Let’s see where you’re at then.

Kseniia:

Thank you.

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