Featured Listing: 5 Star Shopify App

About the business

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

I’m a 40-year-old man and live in Raleigh, NC. I have been a full-stack engineer since 2004 and have worked on several SaaS applications. In my main startup, I was the first full-time dev and grew up with the company to be VP of Engineering of a 25 member team.

I purchased this app in 2017 from the founder. My goal was just to have some passive income from it. As I got to know the business I realized there’s a lot of potentials and was planning on trying to grow the app significantly.

I’ve had success on some other ventures so never was able to give this the attention it needs.

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

CLV = $406 and CAC = $0 so far 🙂

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

No marketing, customers come in through the Shopify app store listing.

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?

Owner operated and very little time spent on customer requests and support. You will need to be a full-stack engineer or have access to a team with these skills.

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

You’ll need to be able to write code and respond to customer questions via email.

Growing the business

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

Launch the rebrand and new marketing site. Advertise. Create 3 pricing tiers and increase the monthly subscription rate. Default all new customers to the full-service plan which allows you to make arbitrage when selling prepaid labels.

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

I purchased the app on Empire Flippers from the founder in 2017. He had developed it with an offshore dev team with node on backend and angular on front-end.

When I took over and dug into the code I realized it was pretty poor quality. Being a software dev I realized I didn’t want to build any new features on top of the old codebase. So I began rewriting the app using the technology I preferred.

Unfortunately, right after purchasing the app, I decided to start a new company with some cofounders so this project was put on the back burner. I have intended to work on it full-time since I see a lot of potential with it but unfortunately, I’ve never been able to make that happen.

Over the years I was able to rewrite and launch the customer portal widget. I’m also 90% done rewriting the admin and have just released it as a beta option for all customers.

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

Monthly subscription fees and arbitrage between discounted labels and the retail price of labels.

What marketing channels are most profitable for the business?

Not sure, haven’t tried any.

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

Customers come through the Shopify app store. 0 marketing costs to date.

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

Just me.

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

Too busy with other ventures to give this one the attention it deserves.