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From Flipping Shoes to Scaling on Amazon: Abdurahim Shadmanov’s $40M E-commerce Playbook
131 Plays1 month ago
I recently sat down with Abdurahim Shadmanov, founder of Primal Queen, to discuss how he built a women’s supplement brand that grew 4x faster than his previous business, hitting $40M in just 10 months. This is a deep dive into Abdurahim’s Amazon-first strategy and the exact steps he took to drive rapid growth, including:
🚀 How to drive Amazon sales without losing customers from Shopify.
🚀 Why dropshipping is the perfect test before launching a full brand.
🚀 The timing and strategies behind scaling a product on Amazon.
🚀 How to manage cash flow and inventory challenges while scaling quickly.
If you're looking to master Amazon, test products with low risk, or overcome scaling challenges, this episode is for you!
Do you need help scaling your Amazon brand? Get a FREE account audit by my team to see how we can help: https://hubs.la/Q02PxrkY0
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Transcript
From Uzbekistan to the US
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Amazon blueprint podcast.
00:00:06
Speaker
let's go back like right let's go way back because you had the cmoss company but i want to know like how how did you get into all this shit like where did you come from like you're not from america like when did you come like so ah so I'm from Uzbekistan. as It's a country in Central Asia. I come from Uzbekistan. I moved to US when I was 13 with a green card with my whole family. It's a kind of funny stories like my uncle was here before us. He came through a student visa and he stayed um through a student visa. And then so my dad, he would go to Russia to work and because economy of Uzbekistan is very like poor, right? but And people don't make a lot of money. So they're always trying to go to foreign countries to make money because ah the the value of the money obviously is high over there.
00:00:47
Speaker
So I mean, America is like a dream of everybody and around the areas that we live in. yeah I'm sure the same thing with you guys. So, and you know, like you say America, you're like, that's the dream land. That's heaven. That's what everybody thinks. So it's always in the back of your mind. But then, you know, in realistically, if you if you have if you ask an average person, they will never even think of going to America because it's almost impossible. So one day my uncle was like, calls my dad and he's like, hey, send me your passport, send me your pictures of all ah both your kids and your wife and everything.
00:01:16
Speaker
and I'm gonna do a lottery registry and a lottery for the green card. And my dad is like, what are you talking about? I'm like, that's a lottery. Like, who the fuck
Early Entrepreneurship Ventures
00:01:23
Speaker
is gonna win? I don't have time for that shit. So I'm like, he just like goes on with it. And he's like, no, just send stuff. All you gotta to do is just take a picture and send your copy of it. It's not much. He plays it the first time we won the green card. It's insane. Wow, bro. Wow. And my dad has never even believed in lotteries or nothing like that. And everybody's in shock. And they're like, what the hell? Like, this just happened.
00:01:42
Speaker
So pretty much we were in shock and and we come over. My uncle's already here in Baltimore, Maryland, and that's where I stayed since then. And yeah, I wasn't out. So when we moved here, it was December of 2013. And I was in middle of eighth grade back home. So when I moved here, because they were like, hey, you don't know any English. We're going to put your grade back because you need to catch up on to learn English before you go into high school because you're going to struggle in high school. I'm like, OK, fine. I mean, I don't have a choice anyway. So when I transfer here, I'm going middle of seventh grade. And then pretty much when the high school came around, but I also skipped a grade.
00:02:19
Speaker
So I graduated high school in three years instead of four years anyway. So just to catch up with my classmates back home. But that's like the short story. So obviously, I mean, we met Powerhouse Brands, right? How many businesses do you have at that point? This was before Primal Queen.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, before Prime Queen, ah well, before even organic nature in in high school, I started selling shoes. I started reselling shoes. That's how I got into the business of online money. And so I started flipping shoes and then eventually I started doing retail arbitrage. So I would just go on Walmart, go onto like whatever in retail, ah what big website companies, I would take their listings, let's say like a couch, a chair or a dresser. I would re-list it on eBay.
00:03:03
Speaker
And all I do is relist. All day long I just relist the items. But for $300, I'm relisting it for $500 on eBay. And I'm doing this like all day long in a spreadsheet and I'm keeping track of what I'm relisting in high school. And I'm like, then I started making a couple of sales. I'm like, holy shit. Like I just made $100 and I didn't
Transition to Sustainable Business
00:03:22
Speaker
have to do a thing.
00:03:23
Speaker
I got the $500, I'm paying $300 to Walmart, $50 shipping, whatever. I put the address of the customer, it should have directed there. I'm like, hell yeah, this is good, easy money. So then I started understanding what I was doing was called dropshipping. So I'm like, oh, interesting concept, dropshipping, where you don't have anything product inventory, nothing, and all you do is just ship it from A to B by somebody else. But what I kind of quickly came to realization is,
00:03:49
Speaker
I couldn't scale it. I'm like, okay, I'm making like four or 500 bucks a week and I'm waiting to sell products because like, I don't have any control of the traffic or nothing on eBay, right? Like if they're looking for it, they'll find it. And then I have to get lucky between all the other listings for them to purchase mine. So the first realization was like, Oh no, this is not scalable. Like I'm not going anywhere. I'm like probably max at five, $600 a week. But even in high school, that was good money for me. That's crazy money in high school, bro. Crazy.
00:04:17
Speaker
So I'm like, I'm ballin', but not a ballin' ballin', but I'm ballin' high school. And then the next concept is like, okay, I start learning about drug tripping. Now the key thing I'd have unlocked was like, okay, I have to control my traffic.
00:04:29
Speaker
Okay, so then I started learning about actual Shopify dropshipping. That's when you actually start, ah you know, getting the products listed on your website, sell it for 10 times higher price. And then you can now, obviously it's higher risk because now you have to put money on ads, but you can actually control the traffic and control a lot of the variables around the business. And eBay, i had I had no control except just listing the product and waiting to be lucky to get it. Wow, man. And so you went to dropshipping and then what was the next step after to that? Like when did the dropshipping end? The dropshipping started and like, I started this 2017, closer to 2019, I came to realization I needed a sustainable business model. So I was doing dropshipping stores, like I would create a store, make a few thousand dollars and then close it. And I, or listen, repeat. And I actually made my first exit in 2018 and it was one of the dropshipping stores so and I sold it for $22,000 on flippa.com.
00:05:22
Speaker
Wow, that's good. It was a burrito blanket. If you remember the the memes that used to pop like a few years back, it was a burrito, like a blanket. If you remember that, i the whole strategy was I would pay the meme pages on Instagram to post and then I just sold that for $22,000 and I was like the happiest day of my life.
00:05:41
Speaker
Wow, man. So that's, bro, that's crazy that you just naturally knew how to do this shit. Like from the eBay flipping, like that's not, I mean, I remember like my roommate used to flip some shit and I'm, and I never understood it, but then you're like, Oh, eBay flipping. And then you understood traffic. Then you're like drop shipping. And then you sold, you fucking sold the business. Like, how did you even know about selling businesses?
00:06:01
Speaker
Well, so it was, um, I wasn't a lot of the dropshipping communities and all they would talk about is like, Oh, like you can sell the business. And I'm like, how the fuck can you sell a business? Like, I didn't even know that concept, but I'm the type of guy is like, I'm always in the communities and I'm always listening. Right. And then like, not as much talking. So I'm like, I'm picking up one thing here, one thing here, then just doing an analysis and kind of figuring out like, what's the bigger picture here? So that's how I came about selling the business on flip up.
00:06:27
Speaker
And in 2019, I made a YouTube video on my channel. I still have it up. And I said, I am now changing my business model to a sustainable business. Because after I sold that company, I had a realization. I was like, if I can sell a dropshipping company that barely doing shit or revenue on day in and day off based on how I'm at spend, what if I would do if I built a legitimate business?
00:06:49
Speaker
a private label at at the time that was my idea of like selling a business was private would labeling a product and selling it for way more multiples. So in 2019, I made a YouTube video saying but from beyond this, I only want to focus on building brand like a real brand that I can sell at the end of the day. And that that YouTube video I made since then, I tried four products before coming into CMOS.
Market Trends and New Brands
00:07:12
Speaker
So the first of the three products I tried private labeling them, ordering a bunch of inventory, and it all failed. One of them was massage guns, another one was a bidet. So the bidet idea came in COVID, when everybody was fighting over a toilet paper. I was like, why the fuck these stupid motherfuckers fighting over a toilet paper? And, you know, we're in Middle Eastern, back home, everybody uses a bidet. And I'm like, okay, is there a way to get a portable one? Of course there is. I looked in Al-Baba, there's a portable one.
00:07:40
Speaker
And then I instantly first open up a store overnight. You know how easy it is with driving stores start doing Google ads instantly getting sales because it was right at the at the trend. It was like a hot topic. And I'm like, oh, shit, it's working. So I immediately go on Alibaba.
00:07:55
Speaker
get a couple of samples from a bunch of um suppliers and I ordered four different bidets from four different suppliers because I have four bathrooms in my house and I installed four different bidets in all of my bathrooms and I would test it for a week which one had the best like which one would not leak which one had actually the proper working things the warm the hot and the cold water and I actually flooded my ah my parents bathroom because I couldn't install the first one ba And then basically that business went to shit because right when I was getting heated up and I ordered thousand units from Alibaba, that was my biggest purchase order. It was like 20 something thousand for thousand units. 90% of the planes, 90% of the ships are down. They cannot deliver it. And then the supplier is telling me that in order to deliver my product, the cost is going to be double of what I'm already agreed to in the beginning.
00:08:46
Speaker
and I'm like four thousand yes like shipping is insane because only 10% of the actual um you know shipments and everything is coming to the u.s so I'm like fuck dude and I have already pre-orders because I was selling them so hot I had pre-orders so I'm like I can't risk it so it looks it's looking good for now I order it it comes in four months with fucking sea ship And pretty much by that time, the business is dead. I turned on the Facebook ads again. It went from $10 CPA to like $60 CPA after four months. then So that business shut down. And then right after in May, 2020, I started CMOS. So that's how the story came about.
00:09:25
Speaker
I like the idea that you basically drop ship to test the market because if your ads work and if your cost per acquisition is there, then the business is going to work, right? And and so you you first you do, okay, I'm going to set up the website, start driving traffic, drop ship. If it works and I can validate it, then I'm just going to, at the same time, you're also already working on like, you know, samples and stuff because it doesn't cost you money. But if that shit works, then okay, let's actually scale it and let's build the brand around it. But until then,
00:09:54
Speaker
you know let's just test it with ah drum jack like in 2019 that's what i started doing like the first three products i was like okay my only idea is like okay let me just do a little bit of a testing and then as soon as i'm done testing if i see that there's a the scale or the traction i see that i'm looking for certain numbers and certain kpis then i'm like okay i can take the risk of the next step you know the initial purchase order and then once that goes through successfully the next one that's how would I would just keep rolling it and then the first three products like that I wanted to legitimately build a brand out of failed then the CMOS happened and that just took off so dude I love it man I love it I think that's very smart so CMOS took off like walk us through the brand like how did you choose CMOS what made you successful because I know the brand is still around right now and it's successful right
00:10:41
Speaker
Yeah, the same idea came, right? I saw a trend again after the bidet, I saw the trend, but things out of my control fucked up the whole thing and it just was fucked up. The difference with CMOS was the fact that I had a supplier that I had a direct contact with that I could get the raw CMOS and make the product myself. That's where the biggest positive was. But the how it came about is again, the same thing. I saw a trend that everybody was like, okay, now It was May 2020. The code is getting like fucking peak in in the eu United States. Everybody's like tripping about zinc. You need vitamin C, you need this, you need that to keep your immune system strong. And I'm like, okay, now is probably the time to like to research if I can sell any like
00:11:22
Speaker
consumer products because at the time my idea of consumer was like damn like I can't sell this to somebody what if they sue me what if they get sick and I of course I had no idea then I started doing research on supplements and how easy it was to create a supplement all you had to do is contact manufacturers and they make anything that you want so I'm like okay this sounds interesting so then I'm but I'm like thinking I can't sell vitamin C zinc they're selling it for five dollars on on Walgreens I'm like how the hell am I gonna compete ten dollars on Amazon there's no way So then I'm like, OK, I probably need a specific type of like product that I can maybe like get catch a train. And that's what happened. I was just researching on TikTok, on YouTube, like COVID symptoms, products to take. Like I would just be watching videos to see what people are talking about. What's the hot topic? Then I watched a video about CMOS.
00:12:11
Speaker
And then and like it was not a popular video, but the comments were like so positive. They were like, nobody knows, but you have to take CMOS. It's the best thing. It has 90 minerals and minerals. I'm like, oh shit, it's interesting. What is this? So then i i order I ordered the product from Etsy. It was not even selling a lot on Amazon or anywhere else. It was only on Etsy. Local people were local sellers, small sellers were selling on Etsy. So I'm like, oh, interesting. I ordered it from Etsy.
00:12:38
Speaker
I take it, I'm like, what the fuck is this shit? It tastes like nasty as fuck. But then it's selling on Etsy. It has a lot of orders. And so I contact that seller first. And then I say, hey, like, I want to sell this product. Can you give me a wholesale? She's like, yeah, we can do a wholesale. So we figure out the numbers. Then again, the same concept. I opened up a store. I did it start Google ads right away in Facebook ads with just an image, just a random image of the Etsy seller and instantly $510 CPAs. And again, I'm dropshipping it from her.
00:13:07
Speaker
at that time, in the beginning. My first hundred of orders, I'm just like taking, I'm selling a jar for $40 and she's selling me for $15 plus shipping. So, and I'm just dropshipping to her. The moment I saw this has a different type of scalability with the CPAs and the numbers, I was like, oh, I got to make this shit on my own and and and actually make my brand and everything else. So that's how it came about.
00:13:29
Speaker
Wow, man. Wow. You know, I love when you were talking about research because I don't think most people understand, like I think most people are looking at like trends, like numbers, they especially like the Amazon community, right? They're like going looking at like, what are my competitors selling and what's their numbers? But like, no one actually sits down and says, okay, there's something happening. Let me research the ICP trend. Like, let me see what people are looking forward there in COVID. And then,
00:13:57
Speaker
You're like, okay, what are people looking for? They're looking for immunity. They're looking for this. They're
Scaling Operations and Logistics
00:14:01
Speaker
looking. And so then you start researching the market and you see where there is a gap in the solution. And and I think that's like a way that I don't really hear many people talk about it. And I feel like, honestly, it's it's ah it's a very advanced way of doing things, but it's it's simple. It's because it's like,
00:14:16
Speaker
you just need to pick like okay there's a topic i'm gonna go research it and i'm gonna figure out okay what's the gap in the market like you know we were talking before this about like the tea and so maybe you start researching tea and you're like you know everyone is looking for non-caffeinated tea or something more more non-caffeinated teas and all the teas have like black and green and all have caffeine And then boom, now you have you like, hey, you're going to do a line of non-caffeinated tea. You can drop ship it initially to just see that some traction. If the numbers work, you build a brand around it. And this way you almost just because you're good at advertising, you have no risk. That's it.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, I 100% agree because there's so many unconventional ways of doing a product research that people are like overlooked because it's the small things that makes a big difference sometimes and you know, like subreddits, there's a group of people like you you will find some weird subreddits that has 100,000 followers and you would never even heard of the product or whatever they think that they follow or religiously do.
00:15:12
Speaker
And then that's a community to start with because that's such an under-tapped thing where it's like, okay, maybe they have something, maybe it has a potential. Maybe it's just a dead end, but the fact that you're looking into those things and seeing an unconventional way of doing it, because the way you're saying is like how everybody does the research is if they're advertising a ah software that's going to do the best product research, just know that 10,000 other people doing the same thing as you are.
00:15:35
Speaker
You're not the the the the real research. I feel like product research has come comes in a ways where unexpectedly or or not a conventional like regular way of like you doing a product research just looking into numbers and the trends, you know, it's not just that. So yeah, 100%. So let's go into the CMOS brand. ah Like tell me a little bit more about like building it. So you want to go from dropshipper to legitimate brand. What were some of the things that you needed to hit to get back to a legitimate brand?
00:16:02
Speaker
Okay, so the first step obviously was the dropshipping concept of it. I was dropshipping it from Etsy seller and from that lady. And then I get the recipe, how to make it. I figured it out. I started doing it at home. And then I start shipping and it was COVID lockdown. my Nobody's working. My parents are not working. Everybody's home.
00:16:20
Speaker
So we start making and making the CMOS gel at my house, literally in my kitchen. And like um we will be blending it. I bought a couple of fridges like a free refrigerators, freezers. We throw them the jars into the freezer overnight, freezing it the next morning.
00:16:37
Speaker
In my basement, I would have the boxes and everything, and we just wait me and my dad would pack the orders and ship it. to um And the USPS later would come, and I'd just take it up there. And every day, that's how it started. But quickly, I realized, holy shit, I have something, like a golden goose, that I don't want to let go. And this is the time to step and and take the biggest risk.
00:16:56
Speaker
so the next biggest well The next thing at that time was, okay, I need to get a warehouse and and a legitimately big place because me and my dad couldn't fall fulfill enough orders. like We were working all fucking day. So I'm like, okay, we got to upgrade. So then I find a warehouse. It was like 2,500 square feet, not that big. and But it has a like a proper kitchen for us to make the product.
00:17:17
Speaker
and then We pretty much moved and then we employed my other relatives. So it's like almost like 80% family members, my aunts working there with with us. Um, so that's how it started. Then I had that warehouse for two years. Then we upgraded again to 4,000 square feet. Then before I left to get to get, uh, to Uzbekistan for marriage, my lease was up. So instead of keep doing the full fulfillment ourselves, I just transferred it to 3PL. Um, so let's headache. Why didn't you do a 3PL from the beginning? Well, first of all, from the beginning, our My Hero product, it was a perishable product. So it would go bad in about a month or two. So which means it would have to be freshly made and shipped as the orders come in. So like like I would have to kind of like forecast the next week's order so we can make that amount of jars for the next week. Because it was not not like our CMOS capsules now or the BlackSeedle now that we use co-manufactures where they just do it in two years expiration. I didn't have any other product except one product at that time, the first year.
00:18:13
Speaker
The first year, I only had one school, which was the jar. And that's why I was stuck. And then since then, I was like, even after the jar, since we started expanding with more schools and actually getting products, like diluting the revenue numbers between more products, I had a lot of employees were just my family members. My dad is like my aunt's. Everybody else was working. I was providing a job. So I'm like, if I kind of move it to three PL.
00:18:35
Speaker
I'm still paying the same amount of money to to repeal if not more instead of my family to work so like they're gonna be unemployed. So that was like the two things that was keeping me from not doing it from the beginning. Yeah. And and then um I want to ask you about scaling. So, you know, obviously like you you needed to fix your logistics so you can scale. So you you move to a 3PL, you created a process where you do have fresh product that gets made given to, you know, a 3PL, 3PL processes, all the the fulfillment and all that kind of stuff. How did you scale that brand? Like I assume you were a hundred percent direct to consumer. How were you driving traffic? How are you acquiring customers so well? What made the business like make a lot of money?
00:19:14
Speaker
I mean, in all honesty, I always give it ah some aspect of my success to like luck, just like I feel like everybody does. Like I never feel like ah it's all the credit to me. um You know, Facebook ads, like I think it's the fact that I was prepared, right? Like before the CMOS brand, I've done multiple projects, multiple products, multiple product labeling, drop-stream stores for two, three years way before the CMOS.
00:19:40
Speaker
I had enough experience. So the way I look at is like timing, luck and experience equals the success that I had with that brand is because if I didn't have the experience, even if I was lucky enough to see the CMOS product popping, if I didn't have the experience, I would have not created the brand and actually be able to sell the product.
00:19:57
Speaker
Or if I created that product maybe like a year earlier in 2019 where the everybody was not hot about product or maybe COVID was not around, maybe that would not have worked out. and So that's how I kind of look at it. It's like everything just came in perfect timing. And the Facebook ads, the golden time, you know, and everything was perfect. Like do just throwing a simple image on Facebook ads where we're like spending five, ten thousand dollars a day on the image and it was working. It was insane.
00:20:23
Speaker
This was because CMOS was super desirable. and And this was before the iOS update, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah. yeah and And I think i mean that speaks volumes on like choosing the right product at the right time. And and um'm we're going to get into this right now, right which is which is the big the the big one, Primal Queen. um and and so yeah But I think choosing the right product at the right time. And and we were just talking about this in the group chat, right? like It wasn't that you guys got lucky. You guys had the skill set built. You had like a really good engine. And so when you found the right opportunity, like the, we were talking about the difference between early bird, which is your partner's other brand versus primal queen is the same execution.
00:21:07
Speaker
one does like you know what three times more than the other one the main reason behind it is because it's just it's the product and so you know for anyone listening it's like it makes sense that hey do your best because i always tell this to people like when they're starting out their brand on amazon i'm like bro listen If you want to do wholesale, do wholesale. If you want to do whatever, but like you need to learn ads, you need to learn up image optimization. You need to learn how to you know optimize your SEO. You need to learn all of these things so you can have the skill because then when you choose a good product, it's going to scale. you know and and this you You guys are like the perfect example of that. So you were pretty successful with your CMOS brand. How much bigger is Primal Queen? and like Let's say revenue in terms of revenue. like How many times bigger? the potential of it or just currently? Just currently. I mean currently we're doing like maybe like three, four times the revenue a month for Primoquine than Organics Nature. Yeah, yeah. so but So much bigger, much bigger brand. Much bigger brand and then if you look at the timeline that's where it actually the context lays behind because Primoquine is only 10 months old while Organics Nature been around for four years.
00:22:10
Speaker
and and And so the potential of skill of compared to Promo Queen and organic nature is like, is almost incomparable. And then to your point where you said like, you have to be ready when the opportunity comes, right? Like maybe like we saw before against pop-in and the trend we see. But again, if I was not ready for that moment to come in and capture it and i'm be able to execute on it, and then but most most most importantly,
00:22:35
Speaker
know what not to do. Organic Central was a piggy pack for me. like It was my experiment thing. like That's a legitimate brand that I ran for four years, which I'm still actively running. But what I learned was most likely, most of the things I learned, most important ones, are the ones with not to do. Because then your your options are so much narrowed down that you have clear pathways. Instead of eight options, now you have two clear options. And it's easier to execute and do A-B testing on the two rather than eight other things.
00:23:04
Speaker
to avoid. We were saving money, time, experience, everything else. But when the idea of beef organs came around, it was just a perfect storm for us.
The Birth and Success of Primal Queen
00:23:12
Speaker
Because me and Chucky were friends like since 2021, since that mastermind. And we were just for two years, we would we would be like every day.
00:23:20
Speaker
calling each other and texting each other, know me talking about my brand and he's doing his own brand. And we were just exchanging information because we were at the same level. Like we were doing the almost similar numbers. We're in the supplement space. We were like the perfect, like we just clicked on so many levels and every day we would chat. What are you doing? What's the Facebook ads doing? What's this? What's the newest thing? What's the new agency that you're hired? And I'm like, yeah, I hired this industry. They're doing good. Oh shit. Let me get that number. Let me hit him.
00:23:45
Speaker
So we were sharing resources, we were sharing information, and at one point we were like, dude, why don't we just work on something on the side? Like you have your thing, I have my thing, but we have the time to do to work on something else. So that's when where we started looking into different products. And then first initial product Chucky brought on to me was Anteaters that was uh, that was the brand that he wanted took to to launch and then I was like what the fuck is that? And he's like it's basically a bunch of little ants and we can make turn them into protein powder And then at the time we were both high on that idea. We were like, oh shit, actually that's not bad Nobody's doing it and that's exactly where we were wrong. No one was doing it. That's bad that reason
00:24:25
Speaker
for a reason there is no market for that shit maybe in fucking indonesia or somewhere like a middle of you know uh because we saw a little bit we did a little bit of research that like you know in asia they they consumed that that that those type of protein so i'm like okay that sounds good like that's something that's a story that we can go off with like hey There's a reason why Chinese medicine is so advanced because they eat these things and it's more beneficial than we kind of realized. We sat on the idea for a little bit. We had a realization, hell no, this is the dumbest idea ever because this one fucking sell. Nobody's selling it because we're not fucking Mark Zuckerberg. We're not going to come up with the first idea that no one ever has came up with. So.
00:25:05
Speaker
Then we were just like bouncing off ideas. It was never forced. That's the the key thing about Primal Queen. From the the the creation of the idea to the brand to everything, nothing was forced because we were working on the brand for two plus years now, but we only launched it 10 months ago.
00:25:22
Speaker
So everything we were doing was slow. We set on the idea. We thought about it or like, do we want to change it? Do we not? That's how it all came about. So I don't know. I i just rent it for like five. No, no, it's all good, bro. So for context, ah tell us what Primal Queen is like. What's the hero product? Primal Queen is basically beef ah six beef organs turned into a capsule form for designed and formulated for women and marketed for women. So amazing. ah Essentially, it helps with energy, hormone balance. It's basically just a lot of macular nutrients that the beef organs provide that you're taking in a simple capsule form rather than in in ah in a powder form or just eating it itself.
00:26:01
Speaker
Amazing. Amazing. And then, um, basically I think liver King blew up the market for going primal eating meat. Now I know there was a huge trend for going plant-based. And I believe that trend lasted close to eight years, something like that. Right. I think it was started around 2016 and, or maybe 2015, 14. And it ended.
00:26:25
Speaker
you know, I would say one or two years ago, and keto was even before that keto started like maybe in 2010 and like peaking 2013 1415 and then started dying down. And then there was another comeback, which is um eating ah carnivore style, right? And so eating carnivore and people are literally eating only meat, no veggies, nothing. And they're reporting like all of these things happening to their blood work, and they feel healthier, stronger, and you know, I am seeing results like yeah obviously I'm not advocating for any specific diet, but um liver King came about and he was this Jack primal guy, right? Like he was making like a hundred million dollars off of his liver, you know, and and kidney and whatever ah supplements, but he was very obviously targeted towards men. And so the fact that you guys saw that success and you're like, let me make one gear towards women, I think is probably one of the most genius things because
00:27:18
Speaker
You found something that's very successful and and the gap in the market, and this time wasn't that the product is bad, like liver king's products, i I don't know if they're good or bad, but like the type of product is selling on the market, liver and organ, all this stuff is perfect, but no one is marketing towards women. And you know, you do a little bit of research, you realize there are, and there's at least you know, out of all the carnivore market, 30 or 40% are women at least, you know what I mean? So, it is almost an equal market to men, except one has 100 competitors and one has zero competitors. And so, that was that was genius. and And I think for context also, like, just so people fathom, it's in 10 months, it reached almost 40 million, I think, a year in revenue or some crazy number like that. So, how are you guys
00:28:03
Speaker
able to handle that. Like how are like for me, when I scaled from zero to like with MMA nutrition, my my i peak was like 94, $95,000 a month. I had a lot of issues with Po's, Po's, Po's, Po's and like all of my profit was being drained and and you know I had to put more and more into inventory. How did you guys scale your business. your business like Were you paying manufacturers on terms? Were you collecting money and then you had net 30? So but by the time you had to pay your manufacturer, you'd already collected from your customers. like What's the deal there?
00:28:37
Speaker
Yeah. That's a good question. And that was one of our biggest challenges was cashflow and the money turnover. Right. Because when I started my brand, the cash turnover was never a problem to me. I never knew net 30 net 60 until later on when I started having bigger purchase orders. And I'm like, wait, hold on. Like, why am I paying 300,000 for this purchase order right now when I don't even have the product yet? Then I started learning about net 30. So.
00:29:02
Speaker
what When the context behind the important is that me and Chucky had such a good experience on or individually. like He had a bunch of issues with different manufacturers, different brokers. I had so much fallouts with different manufacturers and the experience of managing you know, seven, eight figure brand individually and, you know, managing so many agencies, working with so many manufacturers helped us dumb down the business model. That's the first thing that we had, we worked on was like, okay, how do we dumb it down the business model where we have as many less variables. We have one full employee. That's it.
00:29:42
Speaker
and but so and and the goal was like how do we work it where it's like we are completely hands-off we systemize everything and and the and that thing just runs on its own and that's when well to answer answer your question how do how do we scale first we started with just 10 000 units so i mean obviously it's not just 10 000 units that was a big ass you know you buy you guys both have money you both have almost eight figure brands like you can afford 10 000 in the beginning yeah so ten thousand was like was not a big risk for us because we're like okay we want to throw a couple hundred thousand each that's how it started we were like let's just couple throw a couple hundred thousand let's just give it a go if this fails no problem because we have our own brands running that we can rely on that was the first realization is like that's why
00:30:30
Speaker
because we don't take any money out of the business. When it's your first brand, you have to make different type of decisions than is when it's your other brands that you don't have to rely on money for it. Because when I'm making decisions, when I used to make decision for organics issue, year I'm thinking how can I maximize every single dollar in my pocket? Not the how do I build a corporate business that I can sell at the end of the day.
00:30:50
Speaker
You know, that was like a big because I will have to put food on the table first before I prioritize the business. But with Primal Queen, we prioritize the business, then our own money, our own pockets. So we start with the 10,000 units. We put in a couple hundred thousand dollars.
00:31:06
Speaker
we we start rolling and we we find a good partner ah for our manufacturer and a broker in the middle and there were such a good people we still work with them to this day and they're they're once able to provide us with net 30 net 60 terms and we we made such a good um ah deals in the front because we had a trustable relationship already with the with that company, with that person. And that's again comes from the previous history of us working with them before. So we come in with this new project, they trust in us and we trust in them. So the money is not going to be an issue because they they know we pay out of pocket, even if it shit fails. So they support us with financing and then helping us with the runway.
00:31:48
Speaker
Because by the time we sell the product, we get the money back from Shopify, holds everything. Amazon holding the money. We need more money for the next order. All this type of things. We only took money outside of money only once in the beginning.
00:32:00
Speaker
So we did have a little investor, which was my uncle, actually, he invested into the company that's the same uncle that that he he register played the green card for me because he has a construction business. So we brought him on as an investor in the beginning because we were like, OK, this is going well. Well, we don't want to put more of our money.
00:32:18
Speaker
weird I was like, i was like then because my uncle always wanted to work with us. So I i pitched the idea to Chuck. I was like, hey, we could look for an outside investor. And then we were like, yeah, that's a good idea. We were looking. But I'm like, i'm like um my uncle actually always wanted to work. So we just invited him over. He wired the money the next day. No question asks. and He doesn't even care because he just has a trust in me. So he just wires the money the next day. And we're just happy. We don't have somebody that's like, we have to report to us some bullshit like that. you know yeah yeah Yeah, that's the best dude. That's the best one. You can get like an almost like not a silent investor But like someone who believes in you who's cutting you a check. He's like listen, man I don't care like this is for you I know you're gonna do good like I believe in you and like I look at what you did man You you scale the company like I've never seen before to be honest and considering that you guys really are Mainly bootstrapped, you know, you had like a little bit of money from outside friends and family I think
00:33:11
Speaker
you know You guys are one of probably the biggest success stories in e-commerce I've ever heard. um So I want to talk just a a few other things. Tell me about... the relationship between you and Chucky at work. Like what's what is he good at? What are you good at? And and how did that like, were you, cause it seems like you guys both were doing the same thing, right? You both both are bosses of your own e-commerce stores. Did he have certain strengths that that was better for this business? Cause I know like his upsell game is amazing. His email game is amazing. ah Is your media buying game amazing? CRO amazing. And that's why it was an amazing mesh. Yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
Chucky was like a perfect partner. At the beginning, if you look on paper, most people would be like, you know how they always say partner with somebody who has your weaknesses and who has your like you opposite opposites, right? That's when you kind of click. But if you if you look at our resume of like, OK, he was building his brand and I was building my brand, we were hands on.
00:34:06
Speaker
because he was hands-on fully with every department that had to do with the company and I was hands-on and I came in with the from the media background like media buying, content creation, all these type of things and we almost had similar skill sets. What kind of click was reassurance of each other because sometimes when you're just alone involved When you're making a decision, you're not sure. You want that. You want to throw the ball at a wall and get a feedback. And that was one thing we was missing. One thing clicked for us on a bigger perspective was if we had an idea and if other person confirmed, we knew it was a good idea.
00:34:42
Speaker
because but we never like kind of like you know be like oh just because he said it i should agree we completely say it's our own opinion but some things we throw them in the middle and we just click on the same page and that's when we know one hundred percent this is a good idea to do and this is the next decision in our brand now we're very hands on with everything but we do have our own litter um like on our slack channels we have like We have CRO. We have Amazon channel. We have, ah you know, media buying. We have the content strategy. We have all these different channels. We we are our own engine owners. That's what we call them. Like he's half engine owner and I'm half and Shelby is like other stuff. Right. And so we kind of split up those. But overall.
00:35:21
Speaker
It's hard to say it. He's really good at, for example, micromanaging a lot of the people like me. I hate micromanaging and stuff like that, but he's good at that. He can kind of give you a detailed instruction of what needs to be done. The way I like to do is like, let me give me the give me the phone call. Let me explain to him what needs to be done. And I want it done. You know what I'm saying? He's the way is like he can just write it out all in details and give it to that person.
Expanding Sales Channels
00:35:45
Speaker
So, wow. So there that's the that's pretty much the relationship we have.
00:35:50
Speaker
Amazing. I love that because it's, it's good that you guys are able to like break each other's ties. Uh, you know, it's like, Hey, like I'm thinking about something. And then if that other person confirms it amazing, if they don't confirm it, then. You know, at least you're like, okay, you know what? I had my doubts and, and you know, I trust it's nice that you guys have like that trusting relationship of each other. Now I want to ask you, man, you've experienced now.
00:36:11
Speaker
Like, we've worked together twice, right? We worked together on Organics Nature, CMOS, and then we worked together on, on um like, ah Primal Queen, Amazon, right? Yeah. Tell me what your perception is of Amazon. So, like, ah you're seeing, I mean, we're seeing the numbers that you guys are producing right now on Amazon. it's It's crazy. How do you feel about Amazon as a channel for your business? I mean, before we even even started Primal Queen,
00:36:37
Speaker
the the But Organics Central, for example, I never started Amazon until like two years later, right? And and and I was like Amazon, why would I split my revenue bill with Amazon when they take 10%, 15% cut and and I don't have much control of the customer information?
00:36:52
Speaker
then of course with with the experience of organic nature then later on turning on amazon and seeing that revenue boost numbers and i'm like holy shit this ah this was a no-fucking-brainer i just missed out on the last two years of extra revenue not split revenue it was extra revenue so before we start primal queen We 100% started with Amazon. We were like, that's the thing. Like, we're going to list it on Shopify. the All the overflow of Facebook ads, all all of them are going to Amazon. So it would be done for us not to exist on Amazon and and be available to purchase on Amazon. So that's another thing I didn't fuck up.
00:37:25
Speaker
was, you know, our Amazon, I don't know if you remember, our Amazon store was kind of fucked up because I created a half ass because I don't understand how to step by step create the Amazon store. Primal Queen Amazon store, I created it myself and it was perfectly done. Trademarked at the beginning, everything is set up the correct way, no bans, no violations, no nothing. I had never had an issue knock on wood with Primal Queen.
00:37:47
Speaker
But Organics Nature, remember how many times we had to reach out like couple of other friends and everybody like fucking back and forth bullshit. But it all comes down to like foundationally, how you set it up. And Organics Nature was kind of set up the wrong way. So I kind of, we fixed it on the way there. But with Primal Koon, we had everything straight, straight away fixed from the beginning. So there was no issues, no complications when we started scaling from $1,000 to $5,000 to $10,000 a day without any, you know, restrictions pretty much.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah, and and and I think, yeah I mean, you guys did an amazing job. Like when we started Primal Queen, like right off the bat, bro, it was like, you know, 10k a week, 20k a week, 30k a week, 40k. It just grew so fast. And I love, I'm going to take that clip and I'm going to send it to like all the clients or and that are hesitant or leads that are hesitant because I have all these conversations and they're like, what happens when I get my brand on Amazon? Like, am I going to lose the the customers that are on Shopify? And, but I'm also going to lose the customer data. I'm like, dude, it's it's not like the people who are going to buy on Shopify are going to buy on Shopify. People who are not going to buy on Shopify are going to buy on Amazon. And then some people are just not going to buy at all, but you're never getting less. You're only getting more. And even if you lose some customer data, you're adding like.
00:39:00
Speaker
20%, 30%, 40% revenue to your total revenue. Like that's not a small number, but it's like a ah ah hundred percent worth it to spend that money. So it's, you know, for a lot of people, they hesitate. They think Amazon is going to take away from me, but Amazon only adds because it's like, it's the most trusted platform. And so everyone should be on it. Now, the key here is.
00:39:21
Speaker
you guys have ah a differentiation, which is you're driving a shitload of traffic off of Amazon. So from day one, a lot of people are coming to your Amazon listing and Amazon is going to love that. So you're going to rank well and you're seeing the numbers we separate branded versus non-branded. And you can see that our non-branded is actually performing way, but like not performing better, but we have more revenue that way because you guys did it right from the beginning. Now, if you are a different type of company,
00:39:47
Speaker
and you launch from day one but you like you're like i'm only gonna collect that overflow traffic but it's not that much you're only spending you know let's say two thousand dollars a day on facebook which means you maybe are gonna make three four hundred dollars a day on amazon that's gonna be detrimental for you because in the first 30 to 60 days the honeymoon phase you have to prove to amazon like you know that the shit works so i think what you do what you did better than everyone else is if you if you're a big brand and and you're launching like you you know you guys are you understand what you're doing you're launching you're going hard going on amazon from day one is a genius move because you get all all that overflow traffic and then we come in and we can just scale it much easier versus there's other companies they start on day one but they're getting no traffic so then we come in and we're like dude it doesn't it doesn't want to move because when you launched it amazon's like this this product doesn't move you know what i mean yeah and good point because
00:40:40
Speaker
so for example you know early bird was not on amazon until it was acquired which was like last year of like i think end of the year so amazon is completely new to chucky so but then in the beginning i was like dude we have to launch on amazon and we're gonna put up the listing i'm gonna just start the listing set everything up as soon as i have everything done i'm just gonna hand it over to them that was the plan from the beginning from day one We never even interviewed or even talked with any other agencies. We have a master plan sheet on our primal queen for like the next six months. And right before we launched, we're like, OK, I just I just have to get the Amazon listing up, ah account set up, all the legal stuff, because I already knew how to do that. I'm like, as soon as I have everything ready.
00:41:22
Speaker
just hand it over to to the experts, the Trivium of course. So, and then that was the plan from the beginning. Funny part is like other day when we did like $22,000 in sales in one day, that was like our record. Chucky was like, dude, this shit is so new to me. It's blowing my mind. And I was like, this is that this is the juice. and And it didn't take a single dollar out of Shopify at all.
The Role of Ad Spend in E-commerce
00:41:41
Speaker
And actually, I think a couple of months ago, I was bored and I was like, I just wanted to do a simple math and I figured out that Because we're exponentially spending more money on Facebook every day, like right now we're spending $35,000 a day on Facebook ads alone. And what the I went back the last four or five months as we increased ah ad spend on Facebook so that the sales on on Amazon
00:42:07
Speaker
and And it's not a no, it's not a coincidence, you know, and and if we didn't have our Amazon listing, I'm sure it's not going to be drastically improvement on our Shopify numbers, because like you said, Amazon buyers are Amazon buyers at the end of the day. And what I found is that basically we're getting extra 25 percent revenue on Amazon. So every just by being on Amazon, not doing anything different, anything else. Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
If we're getting one X ROAS on Facebook ads, we are calculating that we're getting 1.25 because that extra 25% is going to Amazon. It's 100%. Like we did the math and it actually played out as as our ad spend increased so that the revenue numbers and matched based about 25% is the average.
00:42:49
Speaker
dude that's incredible man that's that's a really good benchmark I like that because I'm gonna start using that and using you guys as a case I actually just had a call with someone and he was like who's someone that's similar to us I said primal Queen because they're big they're driving a lot of traffic outside of the Amazon and you know I'm like why are you guys not on Amazon yet and it's like well we don't know this and that and I'm like I'll send you like talk to a primal Queen because you guys honestly This is like the most perfect playbook.
Final Thoughts and Contact Information
00:43:14
Speaker
Obviously you have an advantage, right? You guys ah have the ability to spend $35,000 a day, which is not a small number. What is it? How much is that? ah What the a million? How is that million? Yeah, a million a month, bro is, I mean, not, not a lot of people are spending a million a month, but I think what most people miss and what you guys are getting is that you can't become an eight figure company, right? Like you can't make 10 million a year. If you're not spending like
00:43:39
Speaker
3 million a year, you know what I mean? You you can't make 40 million a year if you're not spending 10 million a year. And I think most people want to hit those numbers, but they kind of ah like, they they just do this to like the the the elephant in the room, which is like, yeah, bro. But like, you if you want to hit 10 million a year, you got to spend like 3 million you know a year. So I think you guys are just doing all the right things, bro. Thank you so much for coming on, bro, and sharing your story. It's incredible, man.
00:44:05
Speaker
Well, I appreciate you having me. This was a fun conversation. Well, it was probably me or anything for most of the time, you know, I don't know. I wanted to have it more conversational. I don't know, but yeah this was perfect, bro. This was perfect. And if you want people to find you, I mean, feel free to shout out where they can hit you up. I'm not a, um, Alex Hermosi yet, but you know, you're getting there. You can't put my tag. It's a long of the Rahim. Okay. i I'll tag you. I'll tag you in the description, bro. Thanks, man. And I hope to see you soon.