Unveiling Winning E-Commerce Trends: A Founder's Journey with Product Research

TL;DR

The secret to finding winning products isn't just data—it's training social media algorithms to show you what your customers see before anyone else. #VentureStep #Ecommerce #ProductResearch

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wanted to peek behind the curtain of a brand new e-commerce company? ¹ Finding a winning product in a crowded market is one of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face. It’s a process fraught with data analysis, gut feelings, and the constant threat of competition. The journey often involves navigating complex platforms, understanding customer acquisition costs, and trying to spot a trend before it becomes saturated.

In this episode, Venture Step host Dalton pulls back the curtain on his own e-commerce brand, Vibition. ²He shares the candid story of its founding with his partner Lisa, the hard lessons learned from their first product launch which was derailed by COVID, and his current mission to revive the company. ³³³ Drawing from firsthand experience, Dalton provides a transparent look at the struggles and strategies involved in building a business from the ground up.

Dalton breaks down the essential mechanics of e-commerce, from the intricacies of Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to the art of keyword bidding. He contrasts paid research tools with the powerful, albeit time-consuming, method of organic product discovery through social media. Ultimately, he argues that the key to long-term success isn't just finding a product, but asking the most important question: can this be turned into a sustainable brand? 444

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Organic product research is a powerful strategy that involves creating dedicated social media accounts to train algorithms to show you what potential customers are seeing.
• Understanding the mechanics of Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and keyword bidding is critical for accurately calculating your margins and customer acquisition costs.
• While tools like Jungle Scout and Helium 8 can save significant time, remember that you are seeing the same data as countless other entrepreneurs. ⁵
• Long-term success in e-commerce depends on building a brand, not just selling a single product. ⁶
• The most important question to ask before investing in a product is, "Can I build a sustainable brand around this?" ⁷⁷

FULL CONVERSATION

The Story of Vibition: A Founder's Comeback

Dalton: Today, we'll be discussing Vibition, where the company is, and how you go about organic product research and maybe some tools that might help with the discovery process. First, let's talk about Vibition. Vibition is a company that was co-founded by myself and my partner Lisa a couple of years ago. ⁸I had to bow out unfortunately when I was admitted into my master's program, and it was too much for Lisa to do by herself. ⁹So we put it on pause, but we always had the ambitions of starting things back up after school ended for myself. ¹⁰I am trying to do the grunt work on the front end to help out. ¹¹

Dalton: Vibition was an e-commerce company using FBA, which is Fulfillment by Amazon. ¹²We sold one product on Amazon and we had some struggles, but it was honestly so fun. ¹³It was a lovely learning experience. ¹⁴

It was great. It was a lovely learning experience to be honest. Love the battle, love the fight of it all. We lost, long story short, we lost the battle, but what about the war? So we're coming back for more. ¹⁵

Dalton: We had a product that we discovered using a tool, and we thought, "Oh, this is our winning product," but really we're not the only geniuses out there paying for the service. ¹⁶We ran into the issue of COVID when we were placing our order. ¹⁷Everything got shut down, money was already sent, and things got delayed. ¹⁸Our product was delayed quite a bit and other brands were able to get a head start on us. ¹⁹Our estimations for our keywords were out of whack because we didn't expect that many people to recognize the product and have something already up and listed in such a short amount of time. ²⁰Our pricing didn't line up because of our keyword issues, our customer acquisitions were high, and that ate into our margins. ²¹

Vibition's Mission: Sustainability and Home Goods

Dalton: Vibition's goal would be to be a sustainable e-commerce brand. ²²

I would like to have the products not use plastics or anything like that. And if we do need to use things that aren't sustainable, try to have it be from recycled goods. Why do I want to do that? Well, I grew up and live in Florida and taking care of your beaches and your environment is something that is implanted in you as a kid. ²³

Dalton: I think with sustainability, you kind of put out a niche where your products might be more expensive than a product that isn't sustainable. ²⁴ But the customer that you do get, I feel like would be a little bit more sticky. They have a tight-knit group with their other friends and they'll tell their friends and their friends will tell other friends, and then hopefully it snowballs. ²⁵Our first product was related to sustainability; it was a fishing magnet, all about taking waste out of the oceans and rivers. ²⁶We thought it was a great start, but it was a faulty start. ²⁷

What Is Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)?

Dalton: I'll talk about Fulfillment by Amazon, FBA, first. So Fulfillment by Amazon is basically all those products on Amazon, a majority of the ones that say Prime, especially the one-day shipping items, those products are FBA. ²⁸ So Amazon fulfills that from their warehouse. And their employees, their robots, they fulfill those orders. They have an algorithm that, depending on your shopping purchase history, they predict whether you're going to purchase an item. ²⁹

They might know that you purchase paper towels every month and a half. They'll ship paper towels to a warehouse nearby. It's just so that product is ready for you, curated just for you, personalized without you even knowing. ³⁰

Dalton: Back to the main topic. Fulfillment by Amazon is when a third-party company ships their products to Amazon. 31Amazon then distributes their products to various warehouses across the country to allow them to do these one-day shippings. 32 With those fulfillments, there are fees. You'll have fees for the weight of the product, size of the product, how heavy it is, if it's electronic or if it's got liquid or cosmetic, and there are all these parameters that determine the price. 33There are a lot of variables that you have to manage with FBA, but it makes it easy because then you're baked into this platform that has millions of daily users that are spending money. 34

How Do Keywords Work in E-Commerce?

Dalton: The next thing I talked about was keywords. ³⁵Keywords are words that are associated with an item on Amazon. ³⁶ Let's do an analogy of a recipe. A recipe might have tomatoes, onions, lettuce, maybe some raisins—a salad. ³⁷All of those things associated with that item, say we call it Dalton salad, those ingredients would be the keywords. ³⁸The words that are associated with the parent item is how you could think about it. ³⁹You would use keywords to run ads and you would have different prices for each keyword. ⁴⁰ For example, maybe I'm looking for a pot for my aloe plant. There might be a keyword called "aloe plant pot." ⁴¹And then there might be one for "succulents pot" or a "teal pot." ⁴²If millions of people are typing in "aloe plant pot," that keyword would cost more than others. ⁴³ So that's how Google works, Amazon, any of these search engine-type platforms. They use keywords, you bid on the keyword, and if a keyword has a lot of bidders, then the price goes up. ⁴⁴

Finding a Niche in the Modern Home

Dalton: So where is Vibition now? ⁴⁵We aim to live in the home space. ⁴⁶People are spending more time in their home, working from home, being at home. ⁴⁷There's an emphasis on being outside, being in nature, and living healthy, but also making the most of your space that you have at home. ⁴⁸Things are becoming more expensive at a fast pace. ⁴⁹There is always going to be this downward pressure for people having to make the most of their space. ⁵⁰As an example of making the most of your space, I built a Murphy bed. ^51515151There's got to be something there that allows people to live a better or more comfortable life with less space. ⁵²

An Unfortunate Case of Mistaken Identity

Dalton: One side note I thought was kind of funny. When we first founded Vibition, we were unaware that there was another company similarly named called Viration, I think. ⁵³When we started selling on Amazon, when you typed in Vibition, Viration was the one coming up because they were more established as a brand. ⁵⁴And our page when you typed in Vibition was just flooded with sex toys. ⁵⁵So I thought that was hilarious because unbeknownst to ourselves, we were positioned with a similar name of a sex company. ⁵⁶

The "Peel the Onion" Approach to Product Research

Dalton: Product hunting is a complicated process, and I would describe it as being like buying a house. ⁵⁷Just because something looks good on the surface doesn't necessarily mean it is a good idea. ⁵⁸There's all these things that you have to do and peel back the onion before you can decide whether it's good or not. ⁵⁹You have to look through all these factors. ⁶⁰ You can look at the search volume, your competitors, whether it makes sense to source the product, how expensive are the keywords, how much will it cost to ship? Is this a seasonal product? Do people need to do repeat purchases? ^61616161 It is difficult because it's time-consuming. There really is no substitute other than just getting down in there and ripping through, looking at ads, looking at products, looking at competitors' websites, their ads, their creatives, and seeing what the customer sees. ⁶²

Are Product Research Tools Like Jungle Scout Worth It?

Dalton: There are some products that help out. I mentioned earlier there's a product called Jungle Scout and I think Helium 8. ⁶³ Those services help you research products. They'll help you manage your inventory, forecasting, keyword research, product trends, and related products. ⁶⁴They are a full suite for product research and they do save a lot of time, but the only issue is that you're not the only one seeing that same data. ⁶⁵

The users see the same thing you're seeing. So you're not some kind of genius that discovered this unknown element that is gonna change the world. You're seeing the same thing as others are seeing. ⁶⁶

Dalton: You must be aware of that and take precautions when you are researching products on those kinds of services. ⁶⁷ But they're definitely worth it if you already have an idea and you want to look a little deeper. That would save lots of time. ⁶⁸

The Secret to Organic Product Research

Dalton: I've mentioned organic product research. What is organic product research? It is seeing what the customer sees. ^69696969You would create an account on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. ^70707070Then you would just like ads, but you'd have to like ads that you want to target. ⁷¹So if I wanted to look at things related to home, sustainability, home storage, and nature, I would like ads that related to all those topics from small businesses. ⁷²You don't want to like any posts from big companies like North Face or Home Depot because you're not going to compete with them. ⁷³ What you want to do is you want to like, you want to share, and you want to copy the link.

It tells the algorithm that you like this post so much, you shared it with your friends on the platform... You copy the link. That's important too, because you tell the algorithm you like the post, you like it so much you can share it with someone else on the platform and you liked it so much that you shared it with someone else that doesn't even have the app. ^74747474

Dalton: That really boosts those types of posts to you as a user. Those things are being curated to you where it allows you to find products right there. 75 You're able to check out what company is offering these products, how their website is, how they're running, and what is doing well and what's not. It sounds like a lot of work and doesn't sound that interesting or fun. 76767676 I can agree with you there. It is not easy to do that and sit on this mind-numbing scroll doom of just scrolling through these ads. 77It's just mind-numbing, but it is an important work that I am willing to do. 78

Why Building a Brand Is More Important Than Selling a Product

Dalton: You can find a winning product with a somewhat winning formula for ads that people resonate with and go from there. ⁷⁹I think organic ad research is a great way to go about figuring out what you want to do. ⁸⁰ But it's not just a great product. It's having great ideas, great marketing, knowing the numbers, and making sure the prices make sense, and then building a brand. ⁸¹ Because you don't want to just offer a product. Products aren't sustainable. ⁸²Products could be replaced by new technology or become obsolete by a big business coming in and offering the same product at a substantially lower price, and you're gone. ⁸³The only thing that is sustainable is building a brand. ⁸⁴

The idea is long-term, you find a product that's not only winning, not only can you have a great call to action, the numbers make sense, but can you turn this product into a brand? And that right there is the key question... The last question that's most important is can I turn this product into a brand? Can I make a brand out of this product? If the answer is no, then you know your answer. ^85858585

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Jungle Scout
• Helium 8
• Amazon FBA
• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok

INDEX OF CONCEPTS

Dalton, Lisa, Vibition, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), COVID, Amazon, Jungle Scout, Helium 8, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Mexico City, La Condesa