Show notes
Ever wonder how an Amazon seller jumps from zero to hero with a product that defies the odds? In our first-ever Seller’s Edge Series episode, let’s explore success stories, product journeys, and every tactic that will help you find your first or next E-commerce product. Special guest Shivali Patel, brand evangelist at Helium 10, joins us bringing the heat with a story of how a $45,000 revenue bomb was dropped in just two weeks after launching in Q4, proving that with the right strategies, such as leveraging BlackBox for product research and adding unique value, anyone can stand out in the crowded Amazon marketplace. Finally, for those ready to expand their horizons, our brand, Manny’s Mysterious Oddities, is branching out into the bat niche, where opportunities lurk in the shadows. Using Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer and Helium 10’s BlackBox, we dissect how to scout and validate new product extensions for your Amazon brand. This episode isn’t just about telling you what worked; it's about showing you how to pivot and roll with the punches, finding those hidden gems in the market, such as bat-shaped bath mats, that could become your next big win. And for the cherry on top, resources and podcast episodes are flagged to help you turn these insights into action. Join us to learn about these actionable strategies, and let's raise the stakes in your Amazon selling game. In episode 533 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Shivali discuss: 00:00 - Sellers Edge Monthly 00:31 - Strategies for Finding Profitable Amazon Products 04:50 - Discover New Business Opportunities at Trade Shows 15:55 - Profit Margin and Sales Success 19:16 - Discovering Product Opportunities on Amazon 24:16 - Bat Niche Product Opportunities Exploration 30:47 - Launch New Product At A Higher Price 31:29 - Advanced Keyword Research and Product Opportunities 37:27 - Combining Amazon Brand Analytics and Helium 10 BlackBox Data 42:36 - Brand Analytics and Launch Strategies 43:38 - Accessing and Listening to Podcast Episodes Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today is our first ever Sellers Edge Monthly Training. In this episode we're going to go over how I found a brand new product that I can come in at a price point twice as much as the competition, and how Shivali was able to sell $45,000 on her brand new product in only two weeks. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. One, two, three, four. 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, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And, as mentioned, this is the first in a new series that we're going to do monthly where we go over a different topic in our sellers edge training webinar. I actually recorded this in front of a live audience, so this episode might have a little bit different sound than normally and there's definitely some interactions there, but we have here cut up the highlights from that training and basically I'm going to show you how Shivali took some steps to have a product that nobody can compete with her in and it was over $100 and she was able to get 40% profit and sell $45,000, even though she launched right after Black Friday Kind of crazy. And then how I am launching a product like in the next couple of weeks and I'm going through all the steps on exactly how I found it and how I can have a higher price point as well, and we go over some other product research strategies that I think will definitely be able to help you guys. So this is a new series. Hope you enjoy it. Bradley Sutton: This is 100% based on value that can help you find your first or next product to sell on Amazon. Here we go, welcome to our new monthly workshop. We call it Sellers Edge Monthly Series, and this one is entitled how to Find your First or Next Product to Sell in 2024. So we are going to start off with a real life experience. I'm going to interview somebody right now who launched a product and had a lot of success on Amazon, especially in Q4, which is kind of like when people say, oh, you should never launch a product during that time. So we're going to ask Shivali to come on the show right now. Shivali, you there? Shivali Patel: Yes, I am Awesome. Bradley Sutton: I want to talk to you about your product launch. We had you on the podcast a few months ago and you were talking about this long journey of getting it ready, but then you actually launched in December. But for those who maybe didn't hear that podcast, let's start on this. You were selling on Amazon years ago and then you've always been selling for years, like books, but you really wanted to have a physical product to sell. A lot of people here they're looking for their first product, so they might have been kind of like in a it wasn't your first product but you were restarting it, so there might be a similar situation to you. So how do you tackle it? First, like, were you like hey, I want to try to find a product that just there's a lot of demand for it. Or you like hey, I want to find a lot of demand, but it's got to be something that maybe I'm passionate about. What was your thought process when you first started? Shivali Patel: I was quite open to whatever opportunity I was finding. I was using Blackbox, which I love because I come my first brand I launched years ago. I did manually. I was inside of Amazon, going through best sellers list, looking at BSRs, trying to understand the reviews, figure out what I could do better, and that's great, it works. But it takes a long time, and so that's where software like Blackbox is really, really helpful, because the process is over 2 billion data points daily right, Something that you can't actually do. So going in I was pretty open. I did many, many searches inside of Blackbox and then from there, started narrowing things down based off of different parameters. So whether that was profitability I mean all these things are important but profitability, what I can add? Value creation, the price point, checking out the market, the competition, what sort of reviews there are yeah, and I also did go to trade shows as well, so I went. I actually flew out. At the time I was considering a cocktail smoker kit. Bradley Sutton: What is a cocktail smoker kit. Shivali Patel: It's those for anybody who drinks. I mean you don't have to necessarily have it be a cocktail but a mocktail or even smoking. Your food comes with a little blow torch and then a different oak piece. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, I see that. Shivali Patel: Yeah, it's really nice. But I was considering that and a supplier ended up saying, hey, I'm actually in the US, and so I flew out to meet that supplier in person, which is a really, really cool experience. There was many vendors there, people that have flown in from Indonesia, from China. I got to see actual products, field them, try to negotiate a price point, get a basic understanding. Cool Enough is I ended up meeting somebody who helped me design a brand new product which I'm hoping to launch eventually as well. Bradley Sutton: This was at the trade show that you went to. Shivali Patel: At the trade show. Yeah, so they designed in a completely new style of a product for me. Bradley Sutton: Okay, so that's the first thing that's probably interesting to. Maybe some of you guys haven't thought about that, but you know, maybe you think that, oh, the only place you can go to trade shows which is 100% accurate, like it's a great place to go, is like in China. But what she's always talking about, I believe, was in Chicago or somewhere in the United States. So sometimes you know a lot of Chinese factories, indian factories and other factories. They'll come to US based trade shows and it's also a place where you can go and meet a supplier. Maybe you've been talking to online, like she was doing, but also you might meet somebody else. That is completely not even why you went there. So in her situation, she met somebody who's helping her design another product. So then that original product, the Smoker Kit you went to that trade show. You kind of like I'm probably not going to do this. How did you land on this makeup bag that you ended up going with? Shivali Patel: I found it inside a black box and I saw many different keywords. Actually, I was using the keywords tab. I went through and I did a few other things. I did the regular products tab, I did the keywords tab, I went into product opportunity explorer inside of Amazon. I was looking at Etsy and Pinterest trends as well. Anytime I was scrolling on social media. I mean the list was massive. And then eventually I found, I think, five to six different keywords inside of the keywords tab that were all related to the bag, so obviously there was a growing demand for it. And then from there went into the product validation and I felt like I could actually contribute something to that space, because I grew up in fashion and in the beauty personal care sector. I guess is something that I've taken time to educate myself on and spent many hours with, and so when I started having conversations after that with you, I think we also had a very unique pitching point that I felt I could go onto the market with a premium price point, because anytime I'm selling something, the value of creation is important, but you also want to make it worth the person's while. So if I'm going in with a premium price, I want to over, deliver on it, and I think this bag really hit all those spots. Bradley Sutton: And this was a high. The current the market was kind of high, aren't most products there like 80, 100 bucks or so? Shivali Patel: Now. So when I was looking at this product, everything was 30 bucks and I wanted to sell it for 120. And I knew I wanted to sell it for somewhere between 120 and like 140. But by the time that I actually launched, there was a couple bags on the market that were selling for 160 with a lot less value. In my opinion, they're nice, but also, if you think about anything else in the world you have your cars, you have your coach bags there's always a market for something. So I suppose at that point it's just what you're planning to or who you're really getting. Bradley Sutton: So then you know a lot of people here in this room. You know they might not be able to afford a product that requires an investment, you know pretty high, because you know if you're having a 100, $120 product, you know your costs might be like 30 bucks or 40 bucks a unit. And then, if you're, what was your MOQ, by the way? Shivali Patel: My MOQ was 500. Bradley Sutton: 500, all right. So, like, you guys can do the math, if you're buying a product that costs $30 and you have to order 500 or 1000, you know you're already talking about 15, $20, $30,000 before you even consider shipping. However, on the flip side is if you can afford that. This is just by itself a way that you can differentiate yourself from from these saturated niches, because not that many people can afford to go into a niche like that. So you're immediately kind of like disqualifying a lot of the potential people that you might that you might, you know, be going up again. So let's fast forward. You know, you took a few months. You started designing the product. You're looking at different, different needs and you actually built in like your own program. Since you're kind of like your own influencer, you're like, hey, I'm going to sell this product with also like this course, and so just, you know, briefly, like in a minute or so, can you talk about how that idea came? And then what's the deliverable? Like, like, are people getting this, this card inside the thing that says, hey, sign up for my beauty course, or how did that work? Shivali Patel: I have always sold physical and digital products separately, and I thought it would be interesting to combine the two, especially because a lot of the competitors inside of the makeup bag market were selling, essentially as the add-on, a 10x magnifier. It was like a bonus piece that people throw in for bundling options. And I know for me, while a magnifying mirror is helpful, I don't actually use one on a day-to-day basis, so it has no real value for me as a consumer, not to say that it doesn't for somebody else, but for me. Outside of that, they also had these little travel jewelry compartments, which is great, but again, what's something that would be more of an experience, right, that would justify $120 price point. And so I started looking at the intersection of a digital course or a live coaching element, which one increases your touch points with the customer you get to hopefully get with, of course, in like, I'm not saying anything, black hat, I'm just saying that you can get to know, maybe, your customer a little bit better and then you'll know their order number so you can ask them to request a review a little bit later on. But yeah, the delivery aspect of it for the actual course is the product insert, which I created a QR code using Helium 10s portals and then just put that in so they get access to exclusive course that pretty much no other competitors can replicate, right? Because it takes a significant amount of time to go through and film a bunch of videos and then also end up taking time to do live coaching as well. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, hold on. I want to pause you right there because this is important. I want to make sure people understood the main point here. We hear so much and maybe you who haven't started on Amazon yet you've probably heard oh my goodness, it's too late to sell on Amazon, or there's just too much competition, or no matter what I sell, everybody's going to copy me. And then everybody's going to do it and have a low price. And, guys, let me tell you that's, first of all, that's not true. Like in some, you know, like categories, maybe, okay, maybe that's true. Like, if you just have a generic product, could everybody copy you? There's not much room for differentiation? Sure, but there are so many opportunities out there where you as, like you know, if you're selling in Europe, you're Europe based. You're selling in America, you're US based. There's things that you can do, there's skills that you have, or maybe, utilizing the network you have, that you can kind of like competition proof what you're trying to make. So, Shivali, she was like what can I do that? You know, probably the bakeries that are trying to sell direct on Amazon can't do All right. And one of them was like, hey, she's like let me make an actual course that nobody you know no Chinese factory or Indian factory or any other country that makes this are going to take the time to find an American based influencer and film this whole course and have that be a threat. Bradley Sutton: Like literally nobody is going to do that. So this is something that she has like a 100% exclusivity on that she never has to worry about competing with other people and it's going to allow her to keep a higher price point as well, because there's this added bonus. So don't let people tell you, oh it's, it's impossible to compete on Amazon because of the competition. No, you, absolutely, you know, can do that. Now let's just fast forward. Now you launched on what doesn't have to be the exact date, but when did you actually launch your product? November 30th or right, wait, November 30th. Was that during Black Friday weekend or…
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