Featured Listing: CONFIDENTIAL

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Tell us a little about yourself. What’s your background? How did you start the business?

A few months prior to starting the business, I picked up a new hobby – horse riding. While trying to find riding inventory online, I was surprised to find that the product selection was quite limited, prices were high and websites were poorly designed and outdated. I always wanted to have my own business, so I spotted an opportunity. My background was in digital marketing and I knew that with the right products and right prices – I could make sales.

I was also growing tired of working for someone else, so I decided to give it my best shot – I left my full-time employment to focus on my new idea.

The beginning wasn’t easy – I didn’t wait for the business to start generating profit, I’ve jumped straight into it – I believed in the idea that this will be a great business one day.

I’ve spent the next few months finding suppliers, expanding inventory and negotiating prices. As the years went by, I’ve worked on optimizing the processes to make it easier to run, testing out new traffic acquisition channels in order to diversify, etc.

My goal was to make it a bomb-proof, profitable business that could be operated from anywhere in the world. I also wanted to spend as little time running it as possible.

I’ve achieved this goal a few years ago, today – the business is profitable, well-diversified and almost fully automated.

As an e-Commerce business, where are your products made?

As we’re running a drop-shopping business, it’s up to our suppliers to select optimal locations for manufacturing. All of our suppliers are based in the United Kingdom, with the exception of one supplier that is based in the Netherlands. The majority of our orders reach customers in 1 – 3 business days.

How have you marketed the product and where are your customers originating from?

We have multiple customer acquisition channels, the largest being Google – both organic and paid, and our affiliate network (we have over 40 active affiliates that promote our products).

Is the asset on your listing owner-operated, how much time does it take to run the business, who else is needed on the team, and what is automated?

Personally, as an owner, I only spend 10 – 15 minutes per month paying invoices. Additionally, there’s a team member that dedicates about 45 minutes per day for customer support and supplier enquiries. The vast majority of processes are fully automated. Payments are captured automatically, orders are automatically sent to suppliers for the fulfilment, orders are shipped directly from our suppliers to our customers, we’re usually invoiced once per month for the orders of a previous month (we might generate 100 orders, but we only pay once per month). A large part of customer support is also automated, we have an automated telephone line, a ticketing system that looks for certain keywords in customer’s queries and then automatically sends them an answer which we later review, etc.

Customers are acquired through paid and organic search. Customer acquisition is automated with the use of Google Shopping Ads and Dynamic Search Ads.

Google’s algorithms optimize our campaigns based on Return on Ad Spend. The business has a strong organic presence as well.

The customer acquisition process is fully automated.

The business has been running passively for the past 2 years.

What does someone need to do to continue operating the business in its current form?

There are only two essential parts of running this – paying invoices to suppliers and doing customer support (answering enquires, issuing refunds, etc.).

Can you list a few opportunities for a potential new owner to continue growing the business?

The business has been operating passively during the last few years. Any growth that has occurred is organic, so there are a lot of opportunities if the new owner decides to grow it:

Product Selection:
– 100s of new products can be added from existing suppliers
– Products from new suppliers can be added (a list of potential suppliers will be passed to the new buyer)
– Find new suppliers

Traffic Acquisition
– Over 15,000 social media followers, almost 10,000 email subscribers and over 20,000 push notification subscribers are not currently monetized
– Find new traffic acquisition sources, e.g. Facebook Ads, Influencers, etc.
– Prepare new blog posts for additional organic traffic
– Take advantage of our list of affiliates, although there are 40 active affiliates, our total number of affiliates is 459.

Retention
– We haven’t done anything with customer retention, promotions could be run for existing customers, etc.

These are some of the ideas, however, the business can be run passively.

What has been the evolution of this asset since its launch?

New partnerships with suppliers, new products, new traffic acquisition sources. Our aim was to diversify the business, we now have 9 active suppliers and over 500 SKUs.

How does this business make money? What are the current revenue streams?

The business makes money by selling various equestrian and agricultural supplies. The products are drop-shipped from our suppliers directly to our customers. Our profit is the difference between COGs and Retail Price.

What marketing channels are most profitable for the business?

The most profitable marketing channel is Google Organic, however, the largest marketing channel is Google Shopping Ads.

How does the business currently acquire customers and what is your breakdown for marketing costs?

We acquire customers through Google Ads, Google Organic and our list of affiliates that promote our products. Generally, our marketing costs are approx. 1000% ROAS, for every $1 that we spend on advertising, we expect $10 in revenue.

How big is your current team? How many people does it take to run this business?

The team consists of 2 people. I, as the owner, pay supplier invoices 1 – 2 times per month. Another person does customer service and spends approx. 45 minutes per day.

What’s the reason for selling your business on Flippa?

A couple of years ago I bought an affiliate content website on Flippa, the whole experience was great. It’s also probably the largest marketplace for online businesses.

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