Rational Products - Sell Project

Rational Products is a brand focused on unique custom items designed by the owner. Products are geared to men, there are only 3 products in the product line at this point. I was working on a new product, but I don't have time to finalize all the design and marketing materials.

What do you do?

Design custom products for men, once design is finalized I find a suppler can make the product at a reasonable price, then market to prospective and current customers (social media accounts and email list totaling more than 7k people). 

When was your business started?

Summer 2018 is when we first took sales. It wasn't until mid 2019 that we were profitable. If you're looking for a company that is currently operating, this isn't it. But if you are looking for a good base and to build upon past work, we are the ideal company to purchase.

What industry do you operate in?

Men's apparel and items. Things like wallets, knives, belts, and bags.

How do you make money?

This is a physical products brand. E-commerce and FBA.

Where are the products made?

China, I had started to look for manufacturing in the US.

What is the avg unit cost?

$5-12 USD per leather product, we were working on a knife which would be higher end and ~$20USD

How does fulfillment work?

When inventory is low order from manufacturer and have them ship directly to Amazon FBA facility. Orders from Amazon are fulfilled automatically. Orders from Shopify are linked to FBA account and are also fulfilled automatically.

Where are your customers based?

US

How do you handle returns?

Typically give a refund and have the item shipped back to FBA facility. Good customer service was always a point of pride. I never tried to nickle and dime the customer who wasn't satisfied, give refund send instructions on how to return (and company pays for the shipping). My intent was to make it so that even the customers who didn't like the product say that the service was good. 

What is your current feedback rating (TrustPilot / Amazon / other)?

We sell on Amazon, so that is the feedback for those products. I installed a Shopify plugin for feedback 

Where do you currently advertise?

I've stopped advertising because I don't have time to do the campaign building and is part of the reason I am selling. Facebook and Instagram were my primary modes of advertising. Several types of campaigns were run with varying degrees of success. 

Prospecting - Cold advertising was run to start to gather data on Shopify pixel, the point wasn't to sell it was start understanding my customer more allow the FB algorithm to start to do its "magic".

Lead Generation - advertising to a look alike audience of people who visited the store using lead generation and a zapier zap to automatically add to email service and audience seed. Auto send an email with a discount.

Purchase - using email leads and previous purchases as audience seed for the lookalike, focus on selling products.

Using various marketing materials, through A/B testing and trial and error, a good marketer can turn the brand into something to be proud of.

How much do you spend on each channel?

Depending on the month anywhere from $500 - $2500, the more I spent the more I made early on.

Which channel performs the best?

Facebook and Instagram (the same thing really) worked well. Reaching out to small influencers in the genre/niche would probably garner good relationships and generate more revenue in the long run.

What is your ROAS (return on ad spend)?

When we did advertise we got an ROAS of 2.3:1, we haven't been advertising since the pandemic happened.

How profitable are you?

At the peak of marketing and sales efforts I was profiting around $1500 a month. This store is ideal for a person or company that knows how to social media market and email market. The original plan was to continually release new products every 2 months, build the hype around the release and create sales funnels around all the products.

How has the business been performing over the past 12 months?

Early last year the company was running well. Ads were converting and email list was a gold mine at times. I was spending most of my day working on new ads, and COVID/New Day-job made it really hard to keep up on the day-to-day activities of the business. Classic example of creating another job and not a business, really.

Could this business be run by one person, or are multiple people needed?

I've been running it with one person, someone with more time and marketing experience would do really well. In the end you are always able to hire more and do more work, lots of potential.