Featured Listing: Shopify Business in the Supplements Niche

About the business

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

My name is David. I work as a full-time Cyber Security Expert and always had a passion and interest in Side Hustles to have another source of income and gain new skills. This interest leads me to online businesses, especially eCommerce stores.
I have created some Websites and stores in the past, but they never took off how I expected. That lead to me looking at website brokers like Flippa to see, whether I can buy a working business. Things took their turn and lead to me buying Hairtru-Vitamins in 2020.
Since then I have gained a lot of experience in running a business, handling customers, and working with freelancers for marketing purposes. Besides gaining these skills, I was able to earn a decent amount of money with Hairtru.

Now other opportunities have crossed my path which require my full attention and I am happy to find a new owner for Hairtru-Vitamins.

As an eCommerce business, where are your products made?

The supplement is created and stored in the USA. We work with a supplement contract manufacturer specializing in capsule, powder, and liquid formulations. We are also working with a third-party fulfilment center that handles the inventory and shipping.

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

Hairtru-Vitamins has very loyal customers, some of which are still with us since the beginning. This is due to the advanced formula and visible results from our supplements. Besides ordering Hairtru-Vitamins in packages, we also offer a subscription model with a discount. This model makes the life of the customer easy by reordering a new badge of Hairtru-Vitamins as soon as the last order is finished. The automated tool has 135 subscribed customers for recurring orders. Further repeat customers are engaged through email broadcasts.

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

The site’s traffic comes mainly from Google and Email. With 51% direct, 23% organic, and 19% referral. The top countries the business sells to are: the USA (67.75%), Hong Kong (5.60%), and Canada (2.49%).

Hairtru-Vitamins includes an Email list with 7,065 active subscribers which is currently monetized with Email-Marketing. The total list consists of over 30’000 Emails, we slimmed down the number to focus on active subscribers. But there is potential to reach old customers.

We used to market with Facebook ads which were going very well until the Facebook policies changed. Since then, no social media marketing activities were performed which explains the slow decline in revenue.

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?

This business is owner-operated and I spend about 1 hour per week on the business by creating email broadcasts for sales and answering emails.
All inventory is held and handled by a third-party fulfilment centre. The business has no employees. The email funnels include an automated newsletter and cart abandonment follow-up.

Therefore to run the business, no more than 1 hour is required.
I used to work 1-2 additional hours per week for growing the business, by running marketing campaigns with freelancers. But this hasn’t been the case for the past 12 months.

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

To continue operating the business you need to check and answer emails once per week and create an email broadcast once per month. Here it is important to note that Hairtru-Vitamins does not get a lot of emails that require a response. Further, Email-Templates are available to create seasonal offers (for example Blackfriday offers, etc.).

Growing the business

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

No marketing activities have been performed besides Facebook ads. Therefore the business offers great opportunities in Social Media-, Influencer- and Affiliate Marketing as well as SEO which haven’t been used before.

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

The profit of Hairtru-Vitamins has been very stable over the last years. There has been a slow decline since we stopped with Facebook Marketing. But due to the loyal customer base and strong email list, we are able to keep the profits quite stable.

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

The only revenue stream of Hairtru-Vitamins is the products.
We have different offers: 1 bottle, 3 bottles, and 6 bottles.
Each bottle contains 60 capsules and lasts for a month.

We also offer a subscription model where the customer gets a new badge of Hairtru-Vitamins as soon as the old ones are empty.

What marketing channels are most profitable for the business?

Email-Marketing

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

Running Email-Marketing is quite cheap. We pay the Email-Marketing tool around $200 per month

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

The business is run by the owner only. A third-party fulfilment centre is handling the operations. No other people work in the business.

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

Other opportunities have crossed my path which require my full attention. This would lead me to slowly neglect Hairtru-Vitamins, which I really do not want to happen. Therefore I am very happy to find a new owner for Hairtru-Vitamins who can reach new heights with the business and have some fun in the process!