Seller Portrait Volume#4, Feat. Kim Clay & Simon Agar

 

 

 

Amazing At Home:

Hi Kim and Simon, welcome to  Seller Portrait! So good to have you guys here, how are you doing?

Kim and Simon:

Hi, thank you for having us! We’re doing great thanks?

Amazing at home:

Awesome, let’s jump right in, shall we? 

Kim and Simon:

Yeah, sounds good.

Amazing At Home:

Right, so first of all, I would love for you to tell us a bit about your background?

 

Kim and Simon:

We are originally from the UK.

We moved to Perth six years ago with nothing but a four-week apartment rental and one week’s car hire to start a new life for ourselves and we haven’t looked back since.

We now have two beautiful children; Willow, 3.5 years, and Finley 16 months. 

We are both “bean counters” by trade. Simon still works his corporate job, while I on the other hand haven’t returned to work since I had Finley. 

Amazing At Home:

That’s great! Have your travels been at the origin of you wanting to sell products on Amazon, what was that turning point for you?

 

Kim and Simon:

Back in 2018 Simon saw a Facebook video and fell in love with the business model, particularly how you could get started with very little capital as opposed to most traditional businesses.

It took him a while to convince me as I didn’t know how we would find the time to start an Amazon business with a new baby but we took a leap of faith and here we are today.

Amazing At Home:

Yeah, we know how challenging it can be at the beginning and it’s nice to see that you were able to take that first big step. 

And was it straight into Selling for you guys, or you preferred Learning First? 

Kim and Simon:

We were complete novices with no experience in this industry. We didn’t know anything about sourcing, nor selling products. So it was more logical for us to complete a course before getting to work and starting to sell. 

Let me think… When Was It? 

We started our training in early 2018 then launched our first product in August of that year. 

Amazing at Home:  

All right that’s great! And what Model Did You Choose Then & Why This One In Particular? 

Kim and Simon:

We chose the ‘private label’ model ‘cause that was all we were aware of at the time.

AAH:

Do you mind sharing what were the biggest challenges you faced before getting it? 

K & S:

Simon and I are very results-driven. The process of choosing a product was a big step for us; you know, we put in so much work and countless hours into that process and still ended up with tangible results. It was quite disheartening to be honest.

AAH:

I have to agree with you on that, it’s a steep slope for new sellers. 

Plus, there are so many fake gurus and outdated content out there… Finding your very first profitable product is often bound to fail. 

That is why Amazing at Home designed a brand new Product Research Bootcamp two weeks ago at a crazy entry price. So that new sellers don’t have to spend a fortune nor waste a ton of time catching their first profitable item to sell. 

“Our 1st product was a total failure,

… But looking back right now, I see this as a win.”-

AAH:

All right, so what was the most challenging part of the process for you after you got started, do you have a specific example?

 

K & S:

Well, our 1st product was a total failure. That even ended up getting Amazon to destroy our inventory. It was hard at the time. But looking back right now, I see this as a win.

I don’t think we would’ve gotten the margins we’re experiencing right now if it wasn’t for learning this traumatic experience. 

AAH:

Yes, many sellers do say: the 1st product is a learning investment.

 

K & S:

Right. Another challenge we faced was managing inventory. 

It was around March last year, and I remember we had just successfully completed the pre-shipment inspection for our orders. Then, India fell right in the middle of a hard lockdown for 3 whole months. This took a toll on us and delayed our growth significantly. 

But I guess everyone was in the same boat at the time, or similar. So we are very lucky to be safe and healthy in Australia, continuing to develop. 

Whilst we were out of stock and waiting for lockdown restrictions to ease, we decided to focus our attention on R&D, and patenting a truly unique product!

AAH:

Wow, that’s amazing! I love how you didn’t let that setback throw you off your track, and kept pushing.

Okay, and what was your biggest win then? What was the best satisfaction you had selling on Amazon since? 

K & S:

Thanks, we did our best. And the most satisfactory thing for us was the 1st time our sales totaled up to 10k a month. That was pretty special. 

 

Of course, since then we’ve achieved bigger milestones, but they haven’t been quite as impactful as that first 10 grand a month you know. 

For us the $10K meant we really got serious, it was actual proof that our strategy worked. And showed us that all we needed to do to continue, was scaling up: get new products from then on, rinse, repeat…

AAH:

Congratulations on that win! You are definitely crushing it now! 

So, what does your top goal look like now your Amazon business, where do you want to take this? 

K & S:

Right now our plan is to reach $100K revenue per month by the end of the year with a minimum of 30% profit margin.

We had hoped this would be solely on Amazon, but with the ongoing pandemic in India, we have changed this to be $100K revenue per month across all sales platforms.

We’re still gunning for that goal as soon as the world, well more especially India, starts running again at full capacity.

 

“ Amy’s templates resulted in a huge increase

in conversions and sales for us.”- 

AAH:

That’s good to hear! Keep up the good work. Next question to you guys: if you were to start all over, what would you do differently?

S & K:

Let’s see… something we would change if we were to start all over… I guess we would have more confidence launching our current product range and order more stock. 

We wouldn’t outsource our listing and photos into a package, we’d rather use Amy’s templates because this resulted in a huge increase in conversions and sales for us.

AHH:

Well, thanks for mentioning that, we do love to help people succeed; and getting this kind of feedback is music to our ears.

Now please tell me, guys… How do you see Amazon FBA in the years to come? 

S & K:

The potential with FBA is huge and will continue for the foreseeable future. Although we imagine as time goes on, there will be more compliance and regulations with regards to selling on Amazon; just as much as increased competition.

AAH:

That’s likely indeed. Is there anything you would like to share with sellers coming into the FBA space?

S & K:

Yes. I urge new sellers to make sure that their numbers work! Don’t take the 3X, 4X, or even 7X that some people quote to be gospel. It is a good indicator but you need to look at the numbers in more detail.

If you 7X on a product that’s  $2, you won’t have much actual cash for absorbing any hidden costs, like tariffs or customer returns. Also, it doesn’t provide much space for advertising at all.

On the other end, if you 5X on a $100 product, you will have more margins to see what’s coming and plenty of ‘free cash to play with. 

“…Our unit session percentage from 7.25% to 20%!

How amazing is that?!”-

AAH:

Great advice! I like that, We go as far as x14 in concept to launch for exactly the same reasons.  

When did you hear about Amazing at home/Amy Wees for the 1st time? 

 

K & S:

Amy was recommended to us by a friend; so we started following her on social media and consuming her content.

After we felt comfortable, we booked a consultation call with her to see if we were a good fit. And she was Amazing!

Since then, we have booked coaching sessions on a regular basis and have done her listing optimization course, the Google ads course and now, we switched to a Lifetime Membership with the AAH Mastermind. 

We lately even subscribed to her Retail Masterclass, to expand our sales channels beyond online. 

AAH:

That is amazing guys, so proud of you! You are literally crushing it!

All right, and just for our readers here, how would you rate the impact Amazing at Home’s help had on your business?

S & K:

Outstanding! Her listing optimization class provided us with quick and durable results.

We followed her teachings, rewrote our listings, reshot our photos and that improved our unit session percentage from 7.25% to 20%! How amazing is that?

Truly speaking, Amy’s input on our unique product has been invaluable beyond measure.

The few changes she suggested have made our product much more practical and this removed some of the constraints customers would have had about our product. 

We are also in discussion with wholesalers in the US, UK, and Australia about distributing our new product. These discussions are largely on the back of the Retail Masterclass that Amy produced with Talor. So a massive amount really! 

And we would just like to express our gratitude towards Amy, she’s the best! 

AAH: Wow, so much praise that is spectacular!! Thank you guys, so happy Amy was able to bring that much to you. That is after all why she started all of this at Amazing at Home!

So on that brilliant note, we will end this interview, thank you so much for sharing your experience with us, we really appreciate it. keep crushing it, and see you on the next big Milestone!

 K & S: Thanks! It was our pleasure.