Justin Winter is a big shot in the world of ecommerce. He managed to build an ecommerce business that made more than $1 million in just 12 months and did it, not by selling the latest gadgets but going old-school and selling candles instead.
Winter’s success has gained him significant notoriety in the startup community. His brand was recognized as one of the Internet E-Retailer’s “hot 100” after he managed to bootstrap his way to the top, reinvesting all his spare cash into his business.
With such success, people want to know how he did it. Here’s what he had to say.
Fight Downhill Battles
Winter realized early on that he wasn’t going to be able to compete in spaces that were crammed with incredible entrepreneurs. So he decided to look for untapped potential in other sectors not yet transformed by technology. As a result, he settled on the scented candle market, realizing that the incumbents hadn’t taken full advantage of all the new technology available to them.
He avoided the big industries with lots of talented people and instead looked for ways to disrupt an industry that everybody had forgotten about. Statistically, he knew he had a better chance of success, and so he doubled down, focusing on that one industry and make a killing.
Get Somebody Else To Do Your Packing
Many startup entrepreneurs, Winter says, try to manage their entire ecommerce process. But after their business expands past the $100,000 a year mark, this becomes impossible. He recommends that they use ecommerce fulfillment to make sure that customers get their orders on time. External companies, he says, are usually a lot cheaper than doing it yourself in-house.
Growth Hack Your Way To The Top
Sean Ellis originally came up with the term “growth hack.” It’s the idea that you can embed growth into your product by incentivising others to sign up.
So far, these methods have seen most of their success online. Facebook, for instance, was a tool whose utility grew the more people who signed up. Farmville, another popular game a few years back, offered players rewards based on how many of their friends they could get to sign up. And Hotmail, an email service that should have died years ago, remains stronger than ever, thanks to the fact that every email its users send comes with a footer that provides a link for other users to sign up.
But what if you’ve got a physical product? How do you “growth hack” under those circumstances? Winter came up with a solution. The first thing he did was turn his candles into an event that could be shared. His candles are ring pull to open, meaning that they are far from normal. Second, candles, he noticed, were often burned around other people, opening up the possibility of spreading the word about the brand. Finally, the perfumes he used in the candles were similar to the fragrances people wear around the workplace. This similarly again helped to fire up conversations and meant that his candles fit into existing social norms.