#414 – Amazon FBA Success to Chaos: How Brian & Janine Navigated a Nightmare Business Exit
Picture this: Two pharmacists trading their lab coats for entrepreneurial hats, diving headfirst into the world of Amazon FBA. Janine and Brian’s journey from selling closeout tanning lotion and books on eBay to becoming successful Amazon sellers is nothing short of inspiring. This episode captures their transition, highlighting how their complementary skills—Brian’s keen analytical mind and Janine’s marketing flair—propelled them to success. You’ll hear about their experiences at a brainstorming event with Perry Belcher in Las Vegas, where open and honest discussions led to breakthrough business insights.
We also explore their story as Amazon entrepreneurs who scaled their business to an impressive $5 million in annual revenue through strategy and grit. The path wasn’t always smooth; from facing major safety complaints and grueling IP disputes to navigating a nightmare Amazon business exit, every challenge presented a learning opportunity. This journey emphasizes the importance of resilience and problem-solving in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.
Beyond Amazon, we dive into the diverse world of entrepreneurship. Janine and Brian share their adventures in turning around a struggling Amazon brand that they acquired after their exit and managing multiple Airbnb properties. They reveal their plans to leverage their pharmacy backgrounds by starting IV hydration clinics, illustrating their knack for balancing multiple ventures while maintaining steady income streams. This episode is packed with practical advice and motivational stories, underscoring the power of partnership, resilience, and the human connections that drive business success. Don’t miss out on this episode full of entrepreneurial wisdom!
In episode 414 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin, Brian, and Janine discuss:
- 00:00 – Brian and Janine’s Amazon FBA Business Success
- 03:24 – Amazon Sellers Share Insights at Event
- 06:01 – From Pharmacists to Amazon Entrepreneurs
- 10:33 – Success Story of Taking Action
- 14:20 – Immediate Business Success Stories
- 15:25 – Navigating Amazon Growth and Selling Journey
- 20:14 – Advice to Sell Brand and Grow
- 22:31 – Amazon Brand Suspension and Patent Dispute
- 31:02 – Negotiation for Brand Acquisition
- 32:20 – Resolving IP Dispute With Faithful Conversation
- 35:58 – Business Dispute Resolution Conversations
- 40:42 – Turning Around a Nightmare Amazon Business Exit
- 40:46 – A New Brand Acquisition for $40,000
- 45:53 – Airbnb, Amazon, and New Entrepreneurial Ventures
- 49:37 – Damage Control Strategies
- 52:07 – Business Networking and Persistence in Amazon
- 53:11 – Maximizing Amazon-Selling Success
- 53:40 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
This is episode 414 of the AM/PM Podcast. Today, I’ve got a fascinating story for you about selling your Amazon business. Janine and Brian are the guests today. They’re a couple that were former pharmacists. They started their own Amazon businesses, independent of each other. Then they joined together and had a product that took off. It took off so well they decided to sell it. They were in contracts with Thrasio to sell the business and then all bloody hell broke loose, and it’s an amazing story about actually what happened while they’re in due diligence. So you’re going to hear that story today. Learn some lessons from it, as well as what they’re doing now. So enjoy this episode with Brian and Janine. Look who’s here right now. I’ve got two lovely people, Brian and Janine. How are you guys doing?
Brian:
We’re doing awesome
Janine:
Good.
Kevin King:
Good, just good. I just heard you just came back from a really awesome experience.
Brian:
Yeah, we did. We just spent 3 full days in Vegas with Perry Belcher, with some other Driven members and Ignite members, just kind of brainstorming business.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome. What is that exactly? Is that where he brings people to his house and you sit around just brainstorming your business and come up with ideas? Or is it like structured type of thing?
Brian:
It’s a little bit structured. He calls it breaking point and it’s basically going in and kind of breaking down your business and building it back up the way he would. But it’s honestly just a lot of sitting around and brainstorming, everyone coming up with ideas, sharing stories. It’s a lot of fun.
Kevin King:
Are people willing to share? I find sometimes people are a little nervous to share what they’re doing or what they’re especially in the Amazon space, what they’re doing or what. Or is it because it’s such a small group everybody just trusts and it’s just very open, vulnerable type of thing?
Brian:
Honestly, I, the biggest thing that we learned by getting outside the Amazon world in terms of masterminds and stuff is that people share, unless it’s an Amazon business. Yeah, it’s true, like we’ve been in blue ribbon, we’re in driven now and everybody’s sharing what they’re doing, what’s working, what’s not. Nobody seems be worried about copycats and stuff like that. And then every Amazon event mastermind, it’s like yeah, I’m in this category, that’s about the best you get.
Janine:
Yeah, I mean, even Perry had a guy there that’s in the exact same space he is, and that’s literally the guy admitted. That’s why I’m here, because we’re in the exact same space and you, you know, there’s no animosity whatsoever, they both just brainstorming. Perry’s teaching the other guy what he’s doing, that’s working, and teaching literally his competitor what to do, because that works. So you know, it’s different than the Amazon world. It’s nice.
Kevin King:
I agree with you. I mean it’s been interesting. I mean, I totally forgot about that. You know that’s been the case since like 2015. Since I started selling FBAs. Nobody ever wants to tell what they do. They’ll say what category are you in? You know I’m in pets and that’s about the extent that you usually get. But I just did my think tank last week here in September last week. This think tank is where 12 people came out and they sit in the hot seat. It’s exactly what you said, Janine is. They’re like I got a pain point, I got a problem. Let’s say, I’m in supplements, I’m trying to sell supplements, I’m trying to do X, Y and Z. Well, who’s best to actually tell you what to do is another supplement seller, like you just said with Perry. But so many people were afraid to actually come to this event. The people that did got massive, massive, massive value, but so many people were like, no, I’m not going to sit down and reveal my brand and my stuff to these other Amazon people. And I totally. When I started to sell this event and put it together, I totally forgot about that because I’ve been at so many events. Like you said, we’re both members of Driven, which is a $30,000 a year mastermind not Amazon based, but there’s a few Amazon people in it and some other stuff and it’s not an issue, and I think that’s a problem that a lot of Amazon sellers need to get out of their head. I think maybe in 2015, 2016, maybe there’s some credibility to it, because that was back in the days of just find a product on Alibaba, stick your logo on it and sell it. But today it’s so much about branding and so much about a whole lot of other things that I think that’s something that I don’t quite understand why it still is pervasive.
Brian:
Yeah, I don’t know if it’ll change, but it does feel that it needs to. You know because you go to events and you hear a story, or you sit next to somebody and you’re talking to them about their Amazon business. There’s such differences between categories and products and everything that, without really knowing the full story, it’s hard to learn certain things. You can get concepts, but we’re all a little bit too tight-lipped on it.
Kevin King:
When did you guys start selling on Amazon? Did you start together, or were you doing something independently and then you came together, or did you start the whole journey as a couple?
Brian:
No, we started independently, but we didn’t. Neither one of us had any great success until we were together. Yeah
Kevin King:
They always say a partner makes you better, right?
Brian:
No.
Janine:
He’s good with numbers and analytics. He’s like a numbers guy. I do the fun stuff. That’s what I always tell people. I do the marketing, the email and the ads, all the fun stuff. But those two components are so important and you can’t have one without the other. So I mean, thank God, I found him because you know, my numbers were all a mess. I was doing things that doesn’t even make sense on number, but it was marketing, it was advertising, it was fun, so I just did it without even thinking about the numbers. Does this number really work? You know, and that’s what he’s good.
Kevin King:
So is your background in finance or in science or something?
Brian:
We’re both pharmacists by trade.
Kevin King:
Okay.
Brian:
Yeah, and when I keep thinking, like when we tell the story, we’re like when did you start? I thought it was amazing selling machine. And I was thinking about this before coming on the podcast, and I think my first book was Arbitrage by Chris Green and it was just about buying things at Clarence and putting them up there. So retail arbitrage. And then another one, Silent Selling Machine, by Jim Cockrum. I was pharmacist also I owned a tanning salon and some juice bars and I was buying like closeout tanning lotion and having the girls that work for me just bundle them together, sending them to Amazon and I was selling them that way. Never a big success, but it was so intriguing that you could literally send Amazon a box of stuff and you’d start getting sales. And I was like, wow, and this was probably 2013 to 2015. Somewhere around there. And then we met 2016.
Janine:
You were ASM3.
Brian:
Yeah, that sounds right.
Kevin King:
Did y’all meet in the pharmacy business? Did y’all work at the same pharmacy?
Brian:
Yeah, I think we were both entrepreneurial, both doing little things on the side. We had a job, I had businesses, and one day I just was sharing like hey, check out this Amazon FBA thing, because she was selling, she was doing some YouTube stuff I mean you can probably tell better but some stuff on eBay and she was like what do you mean? Like they’re shipping it for you? And it was kind of just that kind of just started the whole.
Janine:
I had never heard of Amazon FBA before I met Brian, you know, and this was like 2016. You know, I sold stuff on eBay, especially when I was selling all kinds of books, DVDs, clothing, all kinds of stuff and when I was selling shoes which I did for like almost two years on eBay I was going to the post office every day. I was boxing them up in my house. It was a lot of work, you know. So when he told me, no, you just send it to Amazon and they ship it for you, I’m like what, what do you mean? Like they ship it for you? Cause I knew how much time that took me the packaging, the labeling, going to the name office, I know how much time that took. So when he told me, Amazon does all that for you, that was super intriguing for me. So within two weeks I had already launched a new product on Amazon. Maybe three weeks, I don’t know. I took action and I was fast.
Kevin King:
So how were you sourcing Janine? Were you going to garage sales and buying CDs and reselling them, or
Janine:
I was buying all kinds of things. I was buying wholesale lots from other eBay power sellers and resell them as individuals. I found a website that would sell me shoes like a box of 20 pairs at a time for various styles. So I would look up to see, like, what celebrities are wearing, what style is popular, and just kind of like do that. And I was chasing trends and I wasn’t always right. Shipping really killed I’m in Massachusetts and a lot of California people buy them. Every time I got a California sale, shipping just really killed all the profit. But you know, I was making a little money, nothing that would replace what I make as a pharmacist so I was just kind of doing things but nothing was really working until I met Brian. He told me about FBA. I did ASM, went through the course.
Kevin King:
Pharmacists make pretty good money, though. So were you all. Just, you just had an entrepreneurial. Both of you had just had a little entrepreneurial bug on the side, or you were just like kind of burned out. This pharmacy thing’s kind of cool, but it’s just I don’t see myself doing this for the next 30 years. Or was it you just wanted to just have a little side hustle and you just love the challenge? Or what drove you to that? Because pharmacy you know pharmacists can make nice six figures a lot of times.
Brian:
Yeah, so I know for me. So I graduated as a pharmacist. I was always entrepreneurial, so whether it was multi-level marketing or I did so much stuff when I was young, but from the day I graduated and got a job as a pharmacist, every shift in my head was what am I going to do next to get out of pharmacy? It was that quick that I wanted to leave and I bought a local tanning salon, I think after being a pharmacist for like maybe a year, never tanned. It wasn’t something that I liked. I was just literally looking for a business to buy. It was seller financing. I bought it, built that up to. I was just literally looking for a business to buy. It was seller financing. I bought it, built that up to where I was able to leave pharmacy, started opening other salons juice bars, small gym. Then I kind of went seven, eight years in that kind of had a downturn, went back to working pharmacy, did that for another five, six years and then completely have been out since 2018 and I don’t plan on going back.
Kevin King:
This is a good thing. I guess it’s a good thing those things didn’t work out. You wouldn’t have met Janine.
Brian:
Right, no, for real, yes, and it did like she’s the, she can tell you, but she’s you know you sell courses, and you sell information and stuff like that. You know there’s a, you know she’s the 2% that takes action on things, and she literally takes action on things and doesn’t understand people that buy courses, and don’t you know.
Janine:
It doesn’t make sense to me.
Brian:
Yeah. So and that’s kind of all I had to do was kind of just show her a little success, and it wasn’t like I was making money, but I was making sales, and that was it for her to believe and just jump more than you know. She just jumped into it. Like she quit the job before she was successful. So, she left pharmacy before I did.
Janine:
But this is not advice for anyone who’s listening. Do not quit your six-figure job before making money. It’s just what I did.
Kevin King:
So the two of you teamed up then, so you’re both selling whatever you could find shoes, CDs, random stuff, arbitraging and then did you just come together and say, hey, we just took this ASM course, why don’t we do a private label? Is that kind of how it evolved, and you came up with. You did some research and came up with a product line, right?
Brian:
Sort of, but still independently. So I was selling ski masks and they were you know, I think I had like 500 that I was kind of selling through and then when she started getting interested, I don’t know how many products you can, how much you launched-
Janine:
yeah, I sold like a dock leash, like the one where you put around your waist.
I tried to sell bike headlights. I tried to sell.
Kevin King:
That was you that was competing. I sold a leash that you put around your waist too.
Janine:
Yeah, you too. That’s funny. What a small world. But I’ve done all that before. I went through the ASM course. I just because you know, talking about doer and not thinking very much I heard about the FBA. I’m like, okay, I’m gonna go on Amazon and see what’s selling and then just go sell that. I literally picked on the product with the most reviews that sold like a ton and that’s how I was doing my quote-unquote product research and of course, that’s like complete idiocy. You know after realizing, but that’s the power of learning and networking and taking a course and following it. So I did that and then, and then I realized, wait, that was kind of stupid. I literally went after the hardest thing, like things that you’re not supposed to do when you’re starting out. I picked on a product that had like 25,000 reviews to compete against, but then, going through ASM, I followed like what they told you to do almost to a T, and then I came up with several different ideas. I picked out one. I did like a worst-case scenario, best case scenario, pros and cons, and I just went with it and it worked out.
Kevin King:
So this is 2018, right?
Brian:
No, So this would have been-
Janine:
2017.
Brian:
So, after both of us having a bunch of successes, only in that the stuff was selling, but never profitably. So we both had products that were just kind of moving and we’re spending way too much on ads and they just weren’t good products. She hit one so it was a multi-unit charging station for cell phones and it was an electronic category. It seemed competitive. I told her it wasn’t a great product, so that shows you how much I know. But it got traction really fast compared to the other ones where it was like you had to really work to get these things sold. This thing went off really quickly. I think she started with a thousand units, and she was I think we’re talking to you about this at Driven. She was trying to devise a plan on how to buy the next thousand and I’m going to borrow from here and I’m going to do this and she’s putting a schedule together of. OK, I’ll get $1,000. And then after we sell those and we’re literally sitting eating ice cream one day and I said, everything good comes from ice cream. I said you can’t buy. I said you need $100,000 right now because this thing’s going to scale. And she’s like what you’re crazy and I’m like no, like you can just tell certain things just go quick and this was going to go. That was actually one thing we learned this weekend with Perry. He said every success he’s ever had with his businesses they’re immediate successes and that’s something like to really think about, because I think a lot of us have businesses and we keep trying, we keep trying, we’re going to hit a breakthrough, it’s going to get there. But he said you know every single thing that I look back that really really worked, worked immediately.
Janine:
Within 90 days.
Brian:
Yeah, and that was this, and so she’s borrowing from her sister and from cabbage loans and from credit cards and for everything. And then that was the brand that we were able to grow to almost 5 million in revenue.
Janine:
And then we exit in 2020 to Thrasio,
Brian:
And so, to Thrasio. Yeah.
Kevin King:
So it was yours, and then you came on as a partner or you just came on to help her.
Brian:
Yeah, she keeps saying I stole half her business.
Janine:
He came out of nowhere.
Brian:
So we were together as a couple then and we were just both working on it and it kind of just we grew that thing.
Janine:
He’s always way in by proving how much he was worth. That story like literally without him telling me you need a hundred thousand dollars. I don’t. I’m not sure I would have made it the same way. You know, on Amazon sales velocity means everything and my plan was literally all up by a thousand this week, the next thousand in three weeks and I had this whole thing mapped out and that one little thing that he told me to do I actually managed. I looked at him and he was crazy. I’m like a hundred grand. I just quit my job. I’m barely making any money. I spent my last $10,000 on the first thousand inventory. Where am I going to get a hundred grand? But I managed to get it.
Kevin King:
How did you raise it? I mean, he said you borrowed from your sister and Cabbage, but you just had to string it together and 10 grand here, 5 grand there, 20 grand here.
Janine:
Credit cards. I was pulling from every source that I had. I was doing some sketchy things. This is not advice, by the way. I would use my PayPal account to pay my other PayPal account with a credit card. So I didn’t have like a cash advance fee. I was pulling and, yeah, I’m pushing. I borrowed 50 from my sister, 36 from Cabbage and the rest was like through credit cards and whatever I can pull.
Kevin King:
Did you have to go back for more after that hundred or you’re able to cash flow it from that, or did you have to take like one more round of like funding as it scaled up?
Janine:
It was Amazon lending. Yeah, Amazon lending. The first loan was like 10 grand, the second loan was like 70 grand and then the third loan was like $500,000.
Kevin King:
Wow. So this one product sold $5 million a year. So you’re selling. So it sounds like your landing cost was somewhere around $10. So you sold 50,000, no 500,000 of these. No, that’s gross revenue. No, sorry, that’s gross revenue.
Brian:
Yeah, so we’re selling them for. Yeah, so we’re selling them between $40 and $50. So retail.
Kevin King:
So you saw over a hundred thousand in the year. Yeah, that’s awesome. And that? When was it? You came to the Billion Dollar Seller Summit at some point. What was that? Around the time when everything was just like rocking and rolling, Was that 2019, 2020?
Brian:
That would have been 2019 I believe.
Janine:
Yeah, I think so.
Brian:
I think it was one of you. I don’t know if it was your first one but it was one of your early ones.
Janine:
Yeah, we were shooting and throwing axes in Texas.
Kevin King:
Oh yeah, that was the second one. That was the one in November of 2019. And that’s where you met Thrasio.
Brian:
Yep, that’s where we met Ken from Thrasio, and that was just pure luck. We had listed the business for sale with Quiet Light with Joe Valley.
Kevin King:
In 2019, you’d already listed, like a year and a half after going.
Brian:
I think it was started in 2017 and it just kept growing from there. So towards the.
Kevin King:
A couple of years you listed it basically.
Brian:
Yeah, because I know we got the LOI in December of 2019. So we probably listed it a few months before there and, to be honest, to give networking credit and to give you credit, we were not getting people knocking down the door to buy this brand. It was in the category that was. It was electronic. So there was that I don’t know the technology risk and stuff like that. No one wanted to touch it. The aggregators didn’t want electronic products. We got a few tire kickers, you know interviews looking at people that weren’t getting any offers and it wasn’t on the market for that long. But we came to your event at the beginning, when you have everyone introduce themselves and I think you were kind of separating. Like you know, here’s the one-to-ten-million-dollar sellers, the ten to twenty or whatever, and this guy stands up and it’s a seventy-five million-dollar seller. And we heard of Thrasio at the time, but I don’t think it was as well known and we thought he was just an individual seller. So when Ken stood up and he said he was from Boston and Thrasio, so it was like wow. So I just literally caught him in the hallway and said, hey, we have a brand for sale. We live 20 minutes away from you. Can we get together and talk about this? He’s like yeah, of course you know, and so we just hooked up from there and they gave us an LOI a few weeks later.
Janine:
Yeah, the power of networking and going to events Kevin talks about that?
Brian:
Yeah, I don’t think they would have reached out to us. You know they had already seen the deal. Joe had put it by him. It was literally just talking to the guy.
Kevin King:
Personal face-to-face relationship.
Janine:
Yes, I think that made a huge difference.
Brian:
Oh, big time, yep.
Janine:
When he called us to go meet them at their headquarter, I thought he wanted to ask about numbers and this and that. Well, the business, it was zero of that. Literally, he was just asking us about our lives and who we are. That was the only questions that he was asking. So I’m like, oh so it really matters. You know who’s behind the brand. It’s not just what’s on paper, and I think that was what helped with the deal. So meeting him in person at your event was key.
Kevin King:
Why did you decide to sell? Was it just you’re like, was that because that was becoming the cool thing to do? Or was it like you know what, let’s get out while this, let’s make some money while this is hot, Before I’m scared there’s going to be a downturn. Let’s get out while we can. Or you’re like oh, we want to go buy some real estate, let’s leverage this. What was the reason for selling?
Brian:
So what triggered it was because we were not in the selling mindset at all. We’re growing this thing. Things are going great. It was a tough brand to run. It had suspensions all the time. It had bad competitors yeah, so a lot of safety complaints. Because it’s electronic, it would melt somebody’s iPhone. It would, you know all kinds of stuff so constant suspensions on the harrow SKU’s. So, it was very stressful, but we still. We’re gonna grow this thing. It’s growing like crazy. We joined Blue Ribbon and we had a 30-minute phone call with Ezra and we’re kind of asking him advice on how to scale this thing, how to put it on Shopify, yada, yada, yada. And about 15 minutes into the call he goes I’d sell it. That wasn’t what we’re expecting from him. He goes you’re in a tough category. It’s a search-based query product so if they’re not searching for it, it’s going to be hard to advertise this thing like Facebook traditionally. And he said it looks like things are rocking for you. I would sell the brand. And he said I have a great broker. I’m friends with Joe Valley. One of you guys at least talk, and that’s kind of what started it. And I had businesses in the past that I should have sold, that I never did and just kind of rode them to the bottom. So I saw them peak and I saw them kind of go away and just kind of close them. So I kind of learned over the years like you sell when things are good and it’s hard to do. So I think, having those times in the past and then having someone who were respected, you know, when Ezra told us just sell like huh, but then that’s that was it. So we started getting the brand ready for sale and I mean thank God it was timing was really really good and it was it was luck, you know it was. It was sitting down with him and him kind of saying it and things just kind of working out. So
Kevin King:
So then you get an LOI at the end of 2019 going through due diligence covet hits and something else happened. I think you told me it driven right around the time where, just before there’s supposed to be a wire transfer with a seven figure a nice seven figure wire transfer something happened. What happened?
Brian:
We had a bunch of things happen, believe it or not. So I was going through some past notes because I wanted to get some of the wording right on this, because part of the story we haven’t really told many people. We told you part of it, but that was the last hurdle that we had to get over. So during due diligence we had a safety complaint. This is exactly what the risk of this brand always was. So our listing got taken down and it was. I don’t even think it was a week or two after LOI and I called Joe Valley and I said, Joe, we have a problem Like our listing’s down, Hero Sku. You know we’re losing $5,000 to $7,000 a day and we had gotten suspensions lifted before, but every single time it was more and more paperwork, and the delays were longer. And he’s like, well, let’s just be honest with Thrasio, call him up, tell him you’re working through it, you’re going to get it taken care of. And let’s not hide it. Let’s bring it out right now. And we did. So we talked to Thrasio and they said, okay, just let us know how it goes. And they were pretty cool with it. So we got that settled. Then we had –
Kevin King:
Was it a legitimate complaint or was it someone just saying my house burned down?
Brian:
Yeah, it was never clear. That was what was frustrating about the brand. So, Amazon, they take you down. You don’t know why.
Janine:
They don’t always tell you why. they don’t tell you what message from the customer triggered it. They just say they got a complaint. They don’t tell us who. They don’t give us the details.
Brian:
They don’t give us anything. They don’t tell us who, they don’t give us the details. They don’t give us anything, no, and no way to contact the customer, no way to know if they’re lying or exaggerating. It’s just take it down. And then we had to show all the safety certifications and everything. Then we had an inventory mix up where we had sent in directly from China, 4,000 units of a different color and it got mixed up with our Hero SKU and so this is still during due diligence. We recalled 4,000 units to a storage unit 10 minutes from our house in the middle of the winter, when it’s 10 to 15 degrees out and we went through it.
Kevin King:
They’re sending those back like one or two in a box at a time. There’s several pallets of units. It’s like you get 300 boxes.
Brian:
Yes, and it was a little better than one or two in a box, but it wasn’t much better than that and we did it at a storage unit. So we’re meeting them there every day and we went through 4000 units by hand, sorted them, relabeled them and got them back in by hand, sorted them, relabeled them and got them back in. So that was also during due diligence. Thrasio objected to the lawyer that we were using because she had worked on helping them when they got started as a company, build their APA, like templates and stuff like that. So we had been working with her for a few weeks and they said we don’t want to work with her anymore so we had to find a new lawyer. So we’re going through all this stuff and we’re like, oh my God.
Janine:
We can’t make this stuff up.
Brian:
And then I think days before final close. So we had resolved all of this stuff, because one thing I mean, most business people are, but problem solving is like part of, I think, my strength, like if I have a problem I will figure it out and I don’t like to lose, I don’t like to quit and I will solve the problem. But, man, were we getting worn out because this is not going to work, it’s not going to happen, and to give Thrasio credit.
Kevin King:
You can taste it. You can taste that money it’s too close. You can smell that bread cooking in the oven.
Brian:
But like it’s too close at that point. And Thrasio’s credit, they were great to work with. I mean, they, they just kept kind of rolling with us. They never adjusted any of the offer or anything we got. You know what we had agreed to and from the start. But then, days before.
Janine:
No, it was the morning of we were supposed to sign at three o’clock. I woke up that morning, it was like six in the morning. Morning of we were supposed to sign at 3 o’clock. I woke up that morning it was like 6 in the morning. That day we were supposed to sign at 3 o’clock, like literally the final signing. I woke up it was 6:30 in the morning. I look at my phone. We always do. You wake up first and you just grab your phone. ASIN suspended, ASIN suspended, ASIN suspended. IP complaint this time. Basically, the whole brand was taken down, Almost the whole brand. Basically everything that made any money was taken down.
Kevin King:
Did you go straight to the bathroom and throw up?
Janine:
I think I was in shock.
Brian:
There were a lot of tears.
Janine:
No, I think I was in shock. I’ll let him tell the rest of the story, because I was in such shock I don’t think I remember much.
Brian:
So it happens and we’re like same thing. I called Joe and this time I’m like Joe, something’s, this is bad right. And we had our first and only to date million-dollar month in December. So we’re going through due diligence. We had a million-dollar month in December, so everything on the business side is going good and we just keep getting hammered with like these problems. And so when this one hit, we were both of us were just scared, like this is not going to work.
Janine:
Oh, I thought it was over. I thought it was over. I threw my hands up, but you know, he, he kept going.
Brian:
Yeah. So I called Thrasio again told him what happened. We told him it was a bs complaint and we’re going to fight it and we’re going to get it figured out. Just be patient with us. And man, did we try? We tried all the, all the normal stuff. You know, we were to call off the three o’clock signing that, yeah, so we just basically, you know, push that until further notice, and that happened multiple times during this deal. So now we’re in the beginning of February. We got the LOI beginning of December, so it’s now going into the third month, and so we tried the Amazon route, tried to invalidate the IP complaint, tried to do all the research that we could. We had a SAS core representative from Amazon at the time and we had her trying to help us and we’re getting nowhere.
Janine:
We had an IP lawyer write us a letter.
Brian:
Well, we reached out to Kevin. I emailed you. We had met.
Janine:
What’s that guy’s name? Rich Goldstein? Awesome guy, love him.
Brian:
Also met him at your event. So we reached out to Rich and he’s like man name oh my God, Rich Goldstein. Yep, we met Rich, awesome guy, love him. Also met him at your event. So we reached out to Rich and he’s like man. This is a tough one. So this guy that did the complaint there was, I believe, four private label sellers on Amazon, all using the same factory in China and we’re all using the same design.
Janine:
There’s nothing proprietary about it.
Kevin King:
It’s basically a different name and logo on each one. Right, and that’s it.
Brian:
And we had been selling for around the same time as this other seller. I think he predated us by months. You know a couple of months. And he filed a patent in China using the factory helped him do this and we thought this, we’re screwed.
Kevin King:
He got a US based seller, or was he a Chinese based seller?
Brian:
He was a US based seller. Yeah, okay, and so the riches letter didn’t work. Nothing, nothing’s happening.
Janine:
No, the factory helped this guy get a patent. This is how the Chinese don’t get it. You know they don’t understand that. Oh, we sell to four sellers and if we have one of them get a patent, they’re going to screw the other three sellers, the manufacturers in China. I don’t think they understand like patents the same way we do. They literally helped him get the design patent and he got it, and that’s when he took all of us down. It was me and it was us and a few other sellers that the same factory was selling to I can’t believe that.
Kevin King:
Did he get the patent in conjunction with them or they just basically gave him the idea?
Janine:
They gave him information to get the patent, because you need like certain documents or whatever.
Kevin King:
They gave him all of that to get the patent and once you have a patent in China, you can block exports. He got a US patent and it was she’s right. It was a US patent.
Brian:
It was a US patent. It was a US patent.
Janine:
He got a US design patent.
Kevin King:
Oh, okay, okay, Okay,
Brian:
Yeah, so he did have a patent .
Kevin King:
It was issued, not pending. It was issued.
Brian:
It had been issued like on Christmas Eve 2019. So he had just had it and he waited until it was almost like he knew like this whole process was going through. I’m going to scream.
Kevin King:
Was he outselling you, or was he?
Brian:
No, we were outselling him, so we were the leader in that space. And then we reached out to the other sellers, because he took everyone down and it wasn’t a lot of us, but I think it was four total and so we started talking with them and we all started doing our own research, getting our own lawyers. We’re, all you know, going crazy. We got the factory involved, the factory owner got involved yep and Amazon wasn’t lifting it, so the total time was about two weeks. It felt like a lifetime. I finally got in touch with the other brand and it was emails at first and I looked back at my emails and at first we’re offering to give them 25 grand just get us back up. You know we’ll pretty much trying to negotiate anything for us to continue to be at a sell. We’ve all been selling the same thing for years. We’re just a small business like you, we’re a family, yada, yada, yada. He was looking for. He wanted a license agreement at the time. He wanted us to pay per unit and Thrasio was not having any part of that, so that wasn’t even an option. So they wouldn’t have purchased us if that had been the case.
Kevin King:
I’m surprised Thrasio didn’t back out at this point.
Brian:
Oh, I’m very surprised. Oh, my God yes, very surprised.
Janine:
Surprised me too.
Brian:
So a lot of this was just email back and forth and then one day I said, hey, can we get on the phone, can we just talk about this? And he agreed, we got on the phone and at this point, so Janine didn’t tell me about anything anymore.
Janine:
I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, took the longest 14 days of my life. I just couldn’t.
Brian:
She thought it was kind of done, didn’t even know what I was doing behind the scenes. I wasn’t telling her because I was afraid it wasn’t going to work and why. Why pull her through the stress? I was, I was stressed enough but got on the phone with them, had a good conversation with them and he, literally, he was a religious man and he said so you truly believe that you have right to keep selling this. You feel that I’ve harmed you. It’s not fair. You know all this stuff. And I said, yeah, you know. I said we didn’t copy your design. We bought from the same people. Nothing, you know, we’re just business people. We’re just doing this. And he said, well, if that’s how you feel you know, literally he said, you know, to the effect of, even if he holds us to this, we’re going to, you know, judge him on on judgment day and he’s not okay with that and he’s going to release us of it. And you know, we’re just going to walk away. And so he was really good to talk to. However-
Kevin King:
Would you believe that when he said that, or are you just?
Brian:
I didn’t know whether to believe it or not, but I at least knew that we’re getting there. But Thrasio wouldn’t accept that, of course because, right.
Kevin King:
He found God. It’s going to be okay.
Brian:
so yeah. So Thrasio said, okay, that’s great, but you know he’s going to need to, we’re going to need to come up with a mutual settlement agreement and that kind of releases the IP infringement upon you and basically we’re not going to sue you, you’re not going to sue us. We can both exist and this is going forward on this one design. So like it’s not preventing him from getting a patent on something else, it’s not preventing Thrasio from getting a patent on something else, but for this particular design we can both exist in the marketplace and he needs to sign off on that. And Thrasio came up with a whole lot of you know legal stuff to do it. And I was so nervous presenting it to this guy who kind of wanted to do it on a handshake, and he was good and he made us add one clause to this mutual settlement agreement and I pulled it up. I’m going to read it so I don’t get it wrong. But it basically says that Brian and his family agrees to hold no charge against him in the day of judgment, and so that clause –
Kevin King:
That’s in the clause, isn’t it?
Brian:
It is and that was important to him, and of course we’re fine with that. I mean, he saved it for us.
Janine:
No, it was his religious belief. I think his deep connection to God that like, literally like, saves our business. You know I remember him asking Brian, do you really think that I’m being unfair? And I remember it was a text and we’re staring at it. I’m like shit, what do I say? What do I say? Because we knew how we answered that is going to break or kill the deal. We stared at a text over and over again and I think finally, Brian said yes, you’re being unfair.
Kevin King:
But I think what do you think he got? So do you think he got the patent to actually knock the rest of you off? Or do you think he because it sounds like he’s like regretting it now, or it sounds almost like he’s like was naive to what the impact was, or something?
Brian:
Yeah. So, I think part of it goes back to, you know, in the online space, so I don’t brick and mortar stores. Before and when there was a problem, you know, you kind of dealt with it in person. So, whether it’s a problem with the, with the town or the health department or the you know assessor’s office, you kind of dealt with problems with people and you could work things out. In the online world, we’re all faceless. We send emails and we get mad at each other, our competitors they’re just other people.
Janine:
They’re families too. They have kids, they have moms and dads.
Brian:
And I think, literally just having a conversation with him and us both realizing, hey, we’re just both trying to make a living, we’re just running a business, we’re not out to get you, hopefully you’re not out to get us. So I think that was key, just talking to him and his reasoning, which we didn’t know at the time. So when he first started in business, a patent was filed against his original design and also started by the factory, so like he had kind of gotten screwed in the beginning of his career and I think he probably did this to protect himself and he finally had got it issued and it was. I’m going to take everybody down and again, I think it’s because we don’t think of everybody as people, we just see it as it’s a business. You know, I’m going to take them down and I think, honestly, just having a phone call with him and some emails back and forth just maybe made him realize that, huh, would I do this to my neighbor? You know, if this was a competing business in town, it would be usually handled a lot differently. And yeah, I mean, I think that’s it. I mean so two lessons from it is like we’re all people and every problem can be solved, you know, and don’t give up. I mean, we tried every route. I’m probably leaving stuff out because it was just. How are we going to fix this?
Janine:
How are you going to fix it? I didn’t do any of it. I’ll pray it goes to him.
Kevin King:
So he didn’t really steal half your business. Then he saved your business. He deserved that half. He deserved that half.
Brian:
I came through in the end.
Kevin King:
You came through in the end. So during those two weeks that you’re down, basically, how did that affect sales? I mean, two weeks of no sales is going to definitely hurt you as far as ranking and everything else. Did it recover?
Brian:
It recovered really quick. So in terms of this brand just worked through all the suspensions that we ever had because we had multiple throughout the time we never really lost ranking. It picked up really quick and when Thrasio bought it they still got a growing, good brand.
Kevin King:
What happened to the brand, was Thrasio able to grow it more or did they end up tanking it?
Brian:
In the first year, so at the beginning.
Janine:
So, we were still in touch with them so we have access to like some of their back end. Now they were I think they were doing close to the eight million that first year. Right more than that eight million. They had a deal of the day. We all know how big deal that is. They had a deal of the day completely sold out within hours. So I don’t know how many units they sold out, but I’m sure it’s a lot. They had to go to the day. They were going to do 8 million that first year.
Brian:
And they had a part of. So there was stress after the deal because of some earnouts that we had and they ran out of inventory month two or three of owning it. And that was after us having weekly meetings with them telling them you need to order more, you need to get this in stock. It’s going to take time and it was weird because those are the things that we assumed that this giant company is going to be really good at. Yeah, and they were letting things run out and we’re still in touch with joe valley at the time and we’re like this is going to really affect like things down the road. We’re not going to get paid.
Kevin King:
What percentage earned out did you have, or was it a big number?
Brian:
We had like a performance bonus and then some kind of it was maybe 10. Maybe like 15%, because there was two separate ones and we ended up getting them all. So it all worked out. They were really good to work with they were I know there’s been, you know, unfortunately, bad stories of people not getting earn outs as well. You know, unfortunately, bad stories of people not getting air notes as well. But for us, for them going through what they did with us in due diligence, and then they fulfilled on everything they did. But in the first year, yeah, I think they got over 8 million, so it was still growing like, you know, rocket fuel, and then now it’s gone, it’s gone.
Kevin King:
Yeah, it’s totally gone.
Janine:
Yeah, they killed my baby Yep.
Kevin King:
Killed your baby, oh man. So did you start another baby after that, or what did you do? Did you take that money and go on a nice trip and buy something nice for the two of you, or did you? Let’s do this again. We love fighting Amazon. Let’s do this again.
Brian:
What did you do? We closed and finally, once escrow was released, it happened on the day that the stock market crashed completely crashed because of COVID that was the day the seven figures hit my bank. Yeah and for us, oh it was like Christmas.
Janine:
Yeah, it was like Christmas to me. I was buying all kinds of stock yeah
Brian:
So that that worked out well for us because stock markets tanking and crashed and so we.
Janine:
I loved it we bought some stock.
Brian:
We eventually bought some real estate, but right back into e-com.
Janine:
April we bought a new company.
Brian:
So we told Joe, we’re still looking. And Janine emailed him and said hey, we’re still in the market, we want to buy something else, keep throwing stuff our way. And he said well, so this was a good one. So he, he sends us an email and he says I have one. It’s not launching yet, but I’m talking with them now. He said it’s got overblown ad spend bad margins and it’s on a decline and I don’t recommend it for you.
Janine:
And we’re like, hey, I looked at it, I want this.
Brian:
Um, but it besides those things it was doing, almost $2 million in revenue. It had awesome branding, everything about it looked good. But the previous owner had just scaled too fast, grew it too fast, using too many agencies, spending too much off of Amazon. He just way overspent and got himself into a hole he couldn’t get out of. But we bought a $2 million brand for under $40,000. And he was.
Kevin King:
He lived nearby too, right? He didn’t? No, no, okay, no, okay, no, so a 2 million brand. So it is a fire sale basically.
Brian:
So we purchased inventory and stuff. So the sale was about 40 grand.
Kevin King:
So the inventory purchase. Let him pay off some. Yeah, okay, all right. And then what’s happened with that brand? You still running it now?
Brian:
We are Yep. So, we cut a ton of expenses, got it profitable.
Janine:
She keeps saying six weeks he was unprofitable for five years. It only took us six weeks to make it profitable. We just cut out all the stupid stuff.
Brian:
All the fluff yeah.
Janine:
All the agencies he was in Amazon Poland, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Italy. We cut all of that. He was spending over a thousand bucks on inventory software’s that we got rid of. I mean he’s got like 10 SKUs. What do you need? Three inventory softwares to handle three SKUs, I mean 10. And we raised prices. I spent two weeks. I did nothing else except spent two weeks in his Amazon ads. It went from like a 40 something percent ACoS down to like 20 something in two weeks.
Kevin King:
An agency had been running it before.
Janine:
Yes, two agencies have been running. I can tell from the name of the convention they had been two hands in the bucket but yeah, it was uh 40, 50, 60 ACoS, so that’s not profitable at all. It took me two weeks to bring it down to about 20 something.
Brian:
And there was a lot of off Amazon. So, Google ads, Facebook ads, that weren’t they weren’t converting. So, he’s just spending, just spending and he was trying to grow and he did a lot of things right in building the brand. He just didn’t run the business right and when we cut a lot we did lose sales. So we’ve kind of we’re at that close to 2 million. It dropped in the next maybe year or so back down almost to a little over a million and now we’ve brought it back up to that 2 million at the same profit margins that we got it to. So it’s doing really well. So it’s on a slower growth but now we’re profitable and we’re profitable in a pretty good way.
Kevin King:
So are you looking to hopefully exit that one at some point, or are you just having fun with it? Something to do during the day.
Janine:
Yeah, that was something we talked to Perry about in the last three days at Breaking Point.
Brian:
We don’t know. So our goal was you know you have an exit right. And then everything was like well, our next one has to be bigger than this one. And we thought with this brand, because this brand has, I think, more potential. It’s not a scary brand where it’s getting suspended. There’s no safety complaints. I don’t think. I don’t think we’ll have IP complaints. It’s in and there’s no stress in it in terms of in terms of like the Amazon, the typical Amazon stress. I mean, there still always can be suspensions and they break up our variations and there’s still Amazon crap. But it’s much more of a brand and we felt really good about, you know, really scaling this. But it’s hard and, um, after talking to Perry, we don’t know. We may we still, we’re still always open to sell a brand. I think that’s always our goal is to kind of build it, build it and sell it. But it puts off some nice cash every month. That’s how we’re living.
Kevin King:
So do you live off the Amazon brand or do you live off the? You said you have a bunch of real estate, some Airbnb or something or that. Or is that just a pure investment? You just keep reinvesting that and you said you did well getting on the low end of the market with some stocks. Is that just all pure? Let’s just live off the Amazon business. Everything else we’re just growing for the future.
Brian:
A little of both, but the Amazon brand is most of our income. The Airbnb business is doing better and better. We just hit a number the other day that we didn’t even believe. We’re like wait, because we’re kind of just compiling all the stuff we’re doing and we’re like wait are we really making that much that. So it’s that’s grown, because we have four properties of our own and then we started managing other people’s properties in the area and we do it as like a co-host, so we’re getting percentage of their revenue and that’s turned into a great business that business has become pretty competitive, though, too.
Kevin King:
Hadn’t that was a hot thing where people were selling courses on how to get in the Airbnb business? There’s a whole like. That was the, the, the. You know, Amazon was the big thing. Everybody’s doing webinars on like from like 2014 to 2017. And then it became Airbnbs were the hot thing, but that business is still kind of like.
Janine:
depending on the product, on Amazon, Airbnb. Now it’s been in the location you know don’t try to get into. You know Orlando. Don’t try to go into Kissimmee in Florida. Certain areas don’t try to do Joshua Tree in California. Certain areas have had their time. It’s gone. It’s come and gone, but there’s still different pockets that are developing around the country that seem to be up and up. You just got to find those pockets.
Kevin King:
You basically set up a management company then to do that. Or you’re doing it yourself or you have a management company that’s like the air conditioner’s not working or I lost the key.
Janine:
You’re looking at the two managers.
Brian:
We’re doing it all and it’s pretty manageable. We have a total of 10 properties between ours and co-hosting and it’s still it’s very remote. Yeah, we’re doing it from our phone or the computer. I mean most of it’s messaging. We have contacts in the area, so we have cleaners and handymen, electricians, so it’s really just about answering messages. You don’t do a whole lot of promoting because it’s on the platforms, kind of like putting it on Amazon, we put it on Airbnb or whatever. There’s things you can do to help with rank, but there’s not um, it’s not like we’re having to drive traffic to these sites, it’s just a lot of management and it’s um, it’s pretty profitable.
Kevin King:
Have you been actually to all of your units? Have you actually walked into them all or some of them? Just you just totally remote.
Brian:
Yeah, no, we’ve. We go to all of ours. We started it when we sold the brand. We bought what we bought as a vacation home and we wanted to Airbnb it just to break even. We’re like, if we can have this house, we have friends in the area.
Janine:
We were going down there a lot.
Brian:
We’re going down there a lot. And if we could have this place to go and it was going to break even and we just had a free place as equity went up, we’re cool with that. And then we started noticing like, hey, we’re blocking this thing a lot. Look at all this money we’re losing, so let’s buy another one. So we bought another one and it’s kind of just rolled from there. But we go. We still go often to all the properties.
Kevin King:
I have a nice place here in Austin. There’s times like during F1 or South by Southwest or something like that People said, Kevin, you should, I’m on Rainy Street in a very good location and then you should just rent that out for a week. You could get 20 grand or something, probably for the week for your penthouse. And I’m like I just don’t want strangers like coming in my you know, messing with my stuff. So I will always wonder you know it’s not necessarily your personal stuff in a lot of these places, but people just they don’t care, it’s, it’s not theirs. Are they trashing it, stealing the Sonos player that you left there or whatever? I mean what, what kind of, what kind of? You talk about the Amazon space or the listing suspended and the troubles you got through what? I’m just curious, what’s a common thing in the Airbnb space? That’s just not again.
Brian:
People, people definitely don’t take care of your stuff. You’re pretty well protected with Airbnb, so they have something called air cover and it’s just an insurance. So if you know if they break anything or stain something that you can’t get out, you can, you know, just file a claim and they’re pretty good about paying out. But we’ve been. It’s going to depend on the area. If you’re in Austin during an event and it’s people coming to party, that’s going to be very different than like our area tends to attract families yeah, families and couples that are in their sixties. It’s not a super touristy area.
Janine:
It’s not like a party town with all the college kids. It’s nowhere near university, you know, it just really depends on where you are. We’ve been, you know, we’ve had like what 600 bookings at this point. We’ve. We’ve had like maybe one family cost $1500 worth of damage but other than that it was just a little like oh, they break the shampoo dispenser in my bathroom. The toilet’s not working. They broke the bottle of salt and pepper shaker. They stained the sheet. They stained the blankets. I replaced those. It’s mostly just yeah, or they stained the carpet. I just buy a new one. It’s yeah it’s, I would not be scared of it, unless you’re in like party town somewhere near university. That might be a little different.
Kevin King:
So, what’s next for you guys? So it’s just keep buying more Airbnb’s and growing the Amazon business or what, what’s, what’s next? What’s the ultimate uh exit plan for you guys as a couple?
Brian:
Yeah. I don’t know if we have an ultimate one, but right now we’re looking to start some IV hydration clinics and because we’re both pharmacists.
Kevin King:
Back to your roots?
Brian:
Yeah, and we have never. Neither one of us so in any of our businesses. What you know, little side hustles, whatever. It’s never been anything to do with medical and we’re always like why? You know, I think we just got far away from it and we’re like we don’t really want to do that, but we’re users of that type of business. So, you know, we think the health care space is growing. IV hydration is growing, so we’re looking to purchase a place that’s in our town and we’d like to have multiple units.
Janine:
I want five in the next three years. Yeah, so we do that. We still do the e-com thing on Amazon. We still do Airbnb thing. I want to add one to two properties a year. Maybe add another e-com brand, I’m not sure. And then there’s that IV thing.
Kevin King:
And all this is just the two of you. You don’t have a team.
Janine:
No. You’re looking at them.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. No VA. No VA is no nothing.
Brian:
A little bit yeah.
Janine:
But it’s customer service VA you know, we might pay somebody on Fiverr to do a graphics image you know pay somebody to you know, do another graphic, a graphic like for A+ content. We might pay some photographers to take pictures for us, but just like those little things yeah, no one full-time or anything like that. You’re, you’re looking at it
Brian:
Until we open the IV hydration. Then we will have nurses, and staff.
Kevin King:
Well, awesome, well, hey, I really appreciate you guys coming on today. This has been fun. This has been great story. See, it wasn’t so bad it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad, it was fun. You got to tell a really cool story, it was, and it was really good. You know, if someone I know, you don’t have anything to sell or anything to do, but if someone do, you want to share anything, if someone wanted to follow you or to look at anything or you just wanted to stay behind the scenes and, like you know, we’re good.
Janine:
Yeah, I don’t think I have anything, I know.
Brian:
Nowhere to send anybody, but we’re happy to talk to people. I don’t know how they would.
Kevin King:
They’ve got to come out to Driven, or maybe we’ll see you at another BDSS event or something in the future,
Brian:
Yeah, we definitely will Come safe.
Janine:
Come say hi, don’t be shy.
Kevin King:
Maybe you’ll be in Iceland in April. Awesome. Well, appreciate that. Appreciate it again, Brian and Janine. Thanks. I’ll see you at the next Driven. I think Brian and Janine story is a lesson of never give up. As tough as Amazon can be at times and as frustrating as it can be, never give up. Turn overturn every rock, look under every path, go down every way you can to actually try to solve a problem when it comes to dealing with Amazon and sometimes it can mean millions of dollars, like it did in their case We’ll be back again next week with another episode of the AM PM podcast. It’s going to be another good one, so don’t miss that. Also, be sure you’re subscribing to my newsletter Billion Dollar Sellers BillionDollarSellers.com one of the top newsletters in the entire Amazon and e-commerce space. People are loving it. If you’re not a subscriber, you’re totally missing out. Billiondollarsellers.com new issue every Monday and Thursday. Also, be sure to check out the Freedom Ticket I do on Helium 10, as well as Helium 10 Elite, which I lead every month with an online training, and we do a little mastermind call with myself every single month too. You can check that out at h10.me forward slash elite. You can check that out at h10.me forward slash elite. And before I leave you today, I’ve got some words of wisdom for you. You know you can never cross the ocean unless you lose sight of the shore. You can never cross the ocean unless you lose sight of the shore. See you again next week. Take care.
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