{"id":11595,"date":"2022-03-22T02:00:58","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/?p=11595"},"modified":"2022-03-22T02:01:00","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T16:01:00","slug":"featured-listing-a-3-year-old-ecommerce-dropshipping-store-in-art-hobbies-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/featured-listing-a-3-year-old-ecommerce-dropshipping-store-in-art-hobbies-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Featured Listing: A 3-Year Old eCommerce Dropshipping Store in Art\/Hobbies Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

About the business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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View the listing on Flippa<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Tell us a little about yourself. What\u2019s your background? How did you start the business?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been an entrepreneur for 15 years and also had drop shipping sites for about 15 years. In my time as an entrepreneur, I’ve generated close to $15 million in revenue. I started the business over 3 years ago when I was looking for a site to buy and looked at one that was recently launched in this space. Instead of paying someone $1,500, I decided to just launch one myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an eCommerce business<\/a>, where are your products made?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In China. However, we have vetted a lot of suppliers and have a couple of good ones as well as some backups. Also, the average delivery time for custom kits (including production and shipping) is around 12-20 days so it’s very reasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can you tell us about your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer Lifetime Value is about $51 and we do not really have a customer acquisition cost as over 88% of the sales come from organic or direct traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How have you marketed the product and where are your customers originating from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See the marketing answer below. The overwhelming majority of customers come from organic search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a virtual assistant that oversees all of the customer services so I probably spend 5-10 hours per week running it. Our vendor has a direct connection to our website so they fulfil all of the orders automatically. About 77% of our kits are custom kits where customers upload their photos and we convert them for them. We provide them with proof to approve. We have completely automated the proof approval process with a custom-built app using Bubble.io. That application is included in this listing price. When the customers approve their proofs and they give us permission to post on our social media page, it automatically gets posted to our Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does someone need to do to continue operating the business in its current form?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the current virtual assistant is kept on, there is very little that needs to be done as the site runs itself. As I mentioned before, the holiday season is getting to be a bit much for one virtual assistant. I have looked into adding a 24\/7 shared customer service team that is very affordable that can provide email\/chat support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing the business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Can you list a few opportunities for a potential new owner to continue growing the business?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have started to add diamond paintings to the site. Search volume for those products are very similar to the paint by number kits. Growing this product line could easily double the revenue of the site alone. Our conversion rate is a little over 2%. We have started to work on some initiatives to improve this including an automated reviews plugin, but this is also a huge area to grow the business. Related to that, we believe there are opportunities to increase the average order size. Finally, email and\/or SMS represent a very small portion of our revenue. Growing these marketing channels represents another large growth opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has been the evolution of this asset since its launch?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The site was launched in October 2018 and generated about $12,000 in revenue in the shortened first year. It generated about $11,000 in 2019. However, we were featured on the Today Show as a potential holiday gift and the majority of that was generated from that appearance. 2020 is when everything came together as we hit page 1 on Google on a large number of key terms right when the pandemic hit and we experienced 1,372% growth. We followed that up with an additional 127% growth in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does this business make money? What are the current revenue streams?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a dropshipping site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What marketing channels are most profitable for the business?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over 70% of the revenue comes from organic traffic. There are close to 600 affiliates in our database and they generate about 3% of our revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the business currently acquire customers and what is your breakdown for marketing costs?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See above. Our primary marketing costs are affiliate commissions (15%) and our SEO\/content team who we pay about $2,500 per month. We spend about $10\/day on Facebook retargeting ads as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How big is your current team? How many people does it take to run this business?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is just me and a virtual assistant who is based in Medellin, Columbia. Because of the massive spike for the holidays, I have considered adding a shared 24\/7 customer service team which are very cost-effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s the reason for selling your business on Flippa?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m a co-founder of a tech startup and we have won several grants so I would like to free up my mental capacity to focus more on that startup. I also want to take the proceeds to purchase some passive income-producing assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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View the listing on Flippa<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About the business Tell us a little about yourself. What\u2019s your background? How did you start the business? I’ve been an entrepreneur for 15 years and also had drop shipping sites for about 15 years. In my time as an entrepreneur, I’ve generated close to $15 million in revenue. I started the business over 3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":11596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[394],"tags":[],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11595"},{"taxonomy":"dipi_cpt_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dipi_cpt_category?post=11595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}