Shortcuts for Building an E- Commerce Startup to $1. M in 1. 2 Months. If you had 1. 8 months to make a million dollars, what would you do? One entrepreneur, Justin Winter, is deciding to sell candles with a twist. And he’s projected to hit that milestone of making those millions. Justin Winter is one of our hottest experts in e- commerce marketing on Clarity. Why? Winter built a $1.

M run rate in 1. 8 months for his startup. He is the co- founder and CEO of Diamond Candles, a bootstrapped, vertically integrated online home fragrance brand. Diamond Candles has been recognized as an Internet E- Retailers 2. Hot 1. 00” e- commerce sites alongside Warby Parker, Bonobos and Sneakpeeq. This isn’t any of that wishy- washy BS. Winter shows you 7 crucial shortcuts for building an e- commerce site that made $1. M in revenue in a cool 1.

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Without further ado, let’s look at Justin’s secrets for building a million dollar e- commerce startup. A little over two years ago on Valentines Day my co- founders and I sold our very first Diamond Candle. A minimum viable product launch to test our concept, we sold about a dozen in the first 2.

Each candle has a ring inside worth at least $1. Given the understanding that 9. A new element of excitement to a product category where $1. US monthly. I wish someone would have told us these shortcuts that first day. Some shortcuts we stumbled into by accident, some we learned from the wisdom of those that had gone before us, and some we learned the hard way. Fight A Downhill Battle.

No one brand has really attempted ‘cracking’ our industry using best of breed tech and experimenting with different models. Innovation is rampant in verticals like menswear for example. Bonobos. Indochino. Flint and Tinder. Me. Undies. Beltcraft. Watch G.I. Joe: Valor Vs. Venom HD 1080P. Ledbury. Den. m Bar.

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Vastrm. Frank and Oak. You get the point: big industry, lots of innovative players trying new things. What are other smaller but still large billion dollar industries with little innovation at all? Playing the game in the home fragrance sandbox compared to menswear just statistically means we are up against a smaller number of tech savvy innovators trying to do things different in a big way.#winning. Don’t Become A Product Expert. How many years did my partners and I spend working in the home fragrance and candle industries before we sold our first candle? Hint: it was less than 3 months.

How many combined years of experience did we have at our disposal when we were rapidly getting up to speed on the entire industry in that less than 3 month period? While we do manufacture the majority of our product line ourselves in Durham, NC currently where we are located, I would submit that we are the exception and not the rule.

Making candles doesn’t require a multi million dollar automated line. We made our first candles using a 5 qt stock pot and a used electric kitchen stove purchased off of craigslist. Contract manufacturers, even ones in the North America, are increasingly interested in working on new product ideas in relatively small initial order quantities for new brands. Use them and leverage their industry expertise to learn about their capabilities and challenger their sometimes tunnel vision of their industry with new ways to experiment with things. Boom, that’s how the magic happens. Growth Hack your Consumer Packaged Good.

The father of the term Sean Ellis details several different elements of the term but at it’s core it is: “…. Examples like Facebook where utility of the tool grows as you have more of your personal network on platform, Farmville by Zynga where users are incentivized to invite friends to play with them to earn certain rewards, and Hotmail adding a ‘Sign up for Hotmal’ link in the signature of each and every email all point towards building in ‘viral’ in the native product experience. What if you product is a physical product and not a web app or mobile game? People tend to burn candles around other people.

The ‘Ring Reveal’ experience of pulling a ring out of a candle is not normal and invokes curiosity and anticipation. Complementing friends, coworkers, and even strangers on their jewelry is a cultural norm and occurs more often than your average ‘guy’ might notice. Ladies you know what I am talking about.

Think viral coefficients for offline product experience. I know how many people our average customer tells about our brand that had not been exposed to us before who from having heard from our customer end up making a purchasing decision. Product growth hacked. Done. What physical product leans social in it’s experience that you can expound or build upon?

Be Different. Really, Really Different. When evaluating an industry vertical or product category look at doing things different in that industry that haven’t been done before. Manufacturing. Supply Chain. Cash Flow and Financial Management.

Customer Service. Social Media. Paid Scalable Acquisition Channels. Mobile. Content Marketing. Communication of Brand Story.

Copywriting. Business Model. Shortcut? Look at other industries and verticals with lots of innovation. Look to the outliers who are the poster boys for Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Content Marketing, etc. Don’t learn from the averages, even of more innovative industries and verticals.

Copy. Adapt. Paste. Innovate. 5. Focus on One. Choose one channel that is both ‘free’ and ‘paid’. Diamond Candles grew so quickly because in the early months I literally spent several hours a day on facebook engaging and growing.

Facebook was a better social channel for us compared to twitter because our unique selling position and brand story is best communicated through photos. Twitter is not as photo friendly and more of our target market exists on Facebook. As of date of writing here Diamond Candles has 2. Scaling paid facebook advertising to drive new revenue is something that we have not fully exploited to date.

Didn’t I tell you learn from my mistakes 🙂With the advances in the ads api partners who work with direct response focused advertisers and the interest graph targeting capabilities, if you are say a speciaity rabbit feed brand you are in a great place. Targeting fans of rabbits, bunnies, etc. CPA) is going to hit the floor. Throw in facebook login to gather insight and lifetime customer value (LFCV) data on existing customers to further hone your targeting and you are golden. You only need $2,9.

M run rate between your unpaid activity on facebook and your paid acquisition activity. Assuming your market isn’t super huge but still sizable then facebook can scale to driving that amount of revenue or at least half where the other half is made up by ‘free’ or ‘earned’ social or word of mouth. Not taking into account any follow up orders from customers who have already made their first purchase.

For arguments sake if your average order value is $1. COGS) and fixed is let’s say $4.

You only have to be able to acquire that customer for an average for a comfortable $5. ROAS). Essentially would you give me $1. I would hand you back $1.

What if I told you I would loan you $3. Since you are making $1. I gave you and on day 3. I have already put $3.

It is called net 3. Don’t want to mislead and say that you can get that going day one if you are spending $1. Channel options/recommendations? Facebook + Facebook Ads (ie. Alpha. Boost, Nanigans and Curebit)Content/Blog Marketing + Paid Advertising Options for Publishers (ie. Outbrain)Video Content on Youtube + Youtube Ads.

Find a Big Brother or Sister. You need someone that has made lots of really dumb mistakes before so you don’t have too this time around. Someone who is as excited if not more about the challenge you are undertaking than you are. I have had the priveledge of meeting other founders via Clarity. I am very excitd about. I get the humbling priveldge to let them know some of the bumbling mistakes I have made so far, what I have learned, and my recommendation as to how they can avoid those similar mistakes. How do you find them?

Be helpful more than you look to be helped.