Featured Listing: 2 Shopify Sites Selling Cannabis Accessories

About the business

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

Software and marketing background. Started the sites as an experiment to see what online demand looked like in the cannabis industry. Was blown away by how much demand there was and the growth opportunities. Thought about leaving my 9-5 for this side hustle because of how much it has grown but decided to sell and pursue my software business instead.

As an eCommerce business, where are your products made?

Made all over the world but shipped from the USA.

What can you tell us about your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CLV has been steadily increasing as we began email marketing to bring more customers back for repeat purchases. For paid ads, our CAC runs sub $10.

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

Paid Google Ads, Affiliate marketing, SEO. We have a good mix with over 20% of traffic coming from Organic search.

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?

Yes, owner-operated with a support team overseas. Most everything is automated from product and inventory updates to order processing and fulfilment which is done via our drop ship partners through a direct Shopify integration.

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

The business can run on autopilot. To continue growth I’d recommend doing marketing such as email, social, paid, and SEO.

Growing the business

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

Time

• This was a side project that grew and grew for us. Dedicating time to further optimizing product listings will have a big impact on SEO
• The time commitment to articles such as gift lists, 10 bests, and product reviews receive great traffic Organically and via social
• Product expertise: I am not a product expert nor a cannabis user, if you are a user you will have a much more authentic brand voice and can share your product experience with the audience.
• Contests: I would have loved to run contests to further engagement via social and email.
• Subscriptions: As we increased sales of consumables there is a natural subscription play. I set up subscriptions but never pulled the trigger on promoting them to new and existing users.

Capital

• Expand paid advertising efforts by putting more products into Google Shopping and trying new ad networks.
• Content Creation: Pay for content creation regarding the cannabis industry as a whole and these products in particular. There is a ton of SEO opportunity in this space.
• Social – Take your time or pay someone to build out the social presence for these brands. I did not take the time to do so but still enjoyed some amount of success just having a presence. Leverage the existing presence and take it to the next level. Community is big in this industry.

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

Business went from an experiment with one site to two sites generating income through different marketing channels.

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

Product sales.

What marketing channels are most profitable for the business?

Email, Paid Ads, SEO, and Affiliate marketing.

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

Email, Paid Ads, SEO, and Affiliate marketing.

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

The two-person team running 7-day customer support overseas and one person working part-time on the business from the states.

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

Need to focus my efforts on the software business, and will use the proceeds to fund my software company.