One of the greatest things about building your own Amazon FBA business is that, in addition to making money every month from your sales, if you get bored or want to do something else, you can sell your Amazon brand it to an investor for up to 7, 8, or even 9 figures.
Over the past few years, there have been numerous articles written on people that started an Amazon FBA business and then sold it a few years later for millions. Whenever I see these success stories being published, I always try to research them as much as I can so I can learn what they did to achieve such a big valuation. Recently, I read about the story of the founder of Hero Cosmetics, an Amazon FBA business that just got bought for $630m!
If you think that’s amazing, wait till you hear this – the brand launched its first product on Amazon in 2017, and in less than 5 years, it has grown to sell a bunch of products that now generate more than $115m in sales and $45m in profit every year. How incredible is that? All is possible with Amazon FBA!
What did I learn about the story of Hero Cosmetics and the success factors that helped it to achieve that huge valuation in under 5 years? Well, as I just mentioned, the brand was created back in 2017 and started selling just 1 pimple patch product on Amazon. The launch was more or less an immediate hit with customers who liked the brand, Mighty Patch, and the product, which was differentiated from its competitors through the ingredients that it was made of.
Expand Your Product Line
After achieving some success with the first product, the founder, Ju Rhyu, decided to continue launching more products under the same Mighty Patch brand, and this decision was key in helping her to achieve that meteoric growth. Instead of starting again and maybe launching irrelevant products with the same or even a different brand, Ju looked at what other products her current customer base might be also interested in purchasing, which really would have taken the difficulty out of product research and finding new products.
She started with a private label product idea, saw that it worked, and then just started to launch new products that fit with her existing brand and would allow her to cross-sell, up-sell and start dominating her niche entirely.
The tactic of launching new Amazon products in the same niche as your first product and under your existing brand is something that I highly recommend you do if your first product is a success. If you do that, it’s going to be far easier to get your brand noticed by customers because hopefully all of your different products will appear in Amazon’s search results, and it’s therefore more likely that you’ll get clicks and purchases and you’ll be able to cross-sell, up-sell, and get repeat business from the same customers in the future.
This strategy is something that I’ve had a lot of success with on Amazon. So, when you’re doing your product research, rather than focusing solely on how much a single product that you come across can make you, think broader and longer term. Consider the opportunities that any niche that you find offers in terms of launching more products and building a brand that is respected and likely to be desirable by an investor.
Following the strategy of launching new products under the existing Mighty Patch brand, Hero Cosmetics grew to offering 12 products on Amazon, which all served the same type of customer – those that suffered from pimples or wanted skincare to prevent them. In fact, the owner describes her range of products as catering to the entire life of a pimple, which is not something that I’ve thought about much, but have to admit it is a genius move because it means that once a customer decides that they like the Mighty Patch product that they’ve bought, it’s likely that they’ll return to buy all of the others in the future.
Sell Outside Of Amazon
The next move that really helped with Hero Cosmetics growth was appearing on other sales channels that weren’t Amazon. The founder launched her own Shopify webstore and managed to get her products into stores such as Target and CVS pharmacy, both of which are helpful moves when it comes to diversifying and reaching a group of customers that may not shop that much on Amazon. In addition to that, she made sure that she had a social media presence and encouraged customers to leave reviews on TikTok and Instagram, which again helped to spread the word about the Mighty Patch brand.
While getting your Amazon FBA product into shops might sound like a difficult task, all it takes is an afternoon of writing emails to as many buyers as you can find on sites such as LinkedIn and a little bit of luck. If you write to 50 people and only 1 replies and says yes, that’s all you need in order to start getting noticed and eventually traction with others. If shops notice that their competitors are making lots of money from selling a new product that they don’t currently stock, they’ll likely start getting pressure from customers and their bosses to change that as quickly as possible.
As for me, my advice in order to really supercharge your Amazon FBA product’s growth is to write to blogs, magazines, and buyers and tell them how amazing your product is, why it’s unique and differentiated, and explain to them how selling or promoting your offering will benefit them.
Create Great Branding
Another big move that made the Might Patch brand so successful was with its branding, which when browsing on Amazon you can see is very clean, modern and loud. This type of branding works well in saturated niches and on the Amazon’s search result page, as it makes products stand out and attract more attention and clicks than its competitors. So, when you’re thinking of your branding and logo, do what Might Patch have done – don’t overcomplicate things, choose a memorable brand name that sounds English, and try to pick a modern design that stands out versus the existing choices on Amazon.
The final ‘success’ factor that I noted is how Mighty Patch chooses its products to launch. Essentially, they look at the existing offering on the market, read through reviews and customers feedback, and look where there’s an unmet need or gap in the market that they can fill. Differentiation and finding a way to improve upon the existing customer offer is incredibly important when it comes to Amazon FBA.
Unfortunately copying someone’s idea and not changing anything the product offer at all is unlikely to give you any success. Instead, research the niche, the customer base, and the product that you want to sell and find out what’s missing or can be improved and then take action. This is exactly what Hero Cosmetics did, and they’ve just sold for over half a billion, so it’s something that works.
Ultimately, Ju Rhyu, the founder, did a lot of things right in getting her Amazon FBA brand to be worth $630m in 5 years. First, she launched a product with demand that that was differentiated to others, created a modern brand that only sells products within her specific niche, started to build that brand off of Amazon in order to reach a bigger customer base, and continues to launch new products that are differentiated versus her competitors.
That’s all there is to it in building a half a billion dollar company. Easy, right? Just kidding. Obviously, a ton of work went into building this business, and I’m sure there’s a lot more behind how this brand achieved such success, but ultimately the points that I’ve raised in this video are the foundations of building a successful Amazon FBA business, so take note and implement them where you see fit.
If you want to learn how you can create an Amazon FBA business yourself, then check out my free training where I’ll teach you everything you need to launch your first product on Amazon and scale to $5,000+ in monthly profit.
Or if you’re ready to begin your journey and want to start with the best chances of success, apply to become a member of HonestFBA’s training programme where you’ll receive guidance & support from our team of 7-figure Amazon FBA seller experts whenever you need it.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this article, see you next time.
