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Some random ecom ball knowledge that will help you scale faster and make your business more durable:
1. If you produce products in China and don't know what Sinosure is, you're at a massive disadvantage.
Sinosure is a state-backed insurer that allows your chinese suppliers to give you net terms without taking all the credit risk themselves.
My brand gets net 120 day terms with $0 down because of this. Gives us an insane cash flow advantage that allowed us to scale extremely quickly
The crazy thing is a lot of factories don't even know what it is. Ask your factory about it and about getting terms. If they don't know what it is, tell them to apply for it and then look for another factory that does.
2. If you're getting ripped off by Chinese counterfeits, there's a way to fight back that's way better than just doing DMCA takedowns.
You can sue them in federal court, get a temporary restraining order, take that TRO to Amazon or any of the other marketplaces (Alibaba, Aliexpress, TT shop, Temu, etc.) and they'll take down the listings and freeze their payouts. Then settle with them or collect their abandoned funds via something called a default judgement. Ask Claude about it.
We did this and collected multiple 6 figures from the bad guys. Bonus is they're way less likely to spin up a new listing and knock you off again because you hurt them financially. They'll move on to something easier.
Btw there are firms that will do this for you on contingency and split the payouts with you.
3. You should have a 3PL in China, even if you already have a US 3PL
It let's you sell worldwide overnight and can also fill the gap shipping to the US if you ever stock out in your US warehouse. You never want to have to turn off your ads and lose momentum.
US orders get shipped by our US 3PL, everywhere else gets shipped by China 3PL. Congrats you're now a global enterprise.
Stack all of these and thank me later
Great podcast from my favorite italian-american powder / RTD slinging founder @TJ_Bongiorno
If you have been wanting an episode on raising capital …
THIS IS THE EPISODE 🤑
@TJ_Bongiorno The Outgoing Co
Built to ~$3M Annual Revenue
Targeting $1M+/mo in <12mo
Inventory + Growth Need Cash
How Much Should He Raise?
Where Can He Find Investors?
What is an Accurate Valuation?
Can a “Better” Deal Backfire?
@mikebeckhamsm @mbertulli reveal his best next steps.
It’s weird when people ask you for advice, so you give them advice, and then they tell you all the reasons why your advice won’t work…
HQ is good and you should use it
I'm incredibly excited to officially launch HQ.
HQ is the shared AI context layer for your Humans, Agents, Dots, Bots and everything in between.
Almost 1000 business run on HQ, including our own. The feedback has been phenomenal.
Sign up now: hqforwork.com
Build in public but make it look like it’s a super unprofitable category with impossibly high cacs to discourage people from ripping
200 IQ move by the operators
“A 4× ROAS can still lose money”
*LOL marketers hate this advice... because marketers make money when you do paid ads, and marketers like to tell people how much they spend as a point of pride, and agencies only make money when you spend. It's a giant circle jerk.
BUT *The key is PROFITABLE spend. Which marketers are not paid on nor do they track 9 times out of 10. They track ROAS.
problem w/ ROAS: it measures revenue, not whether you made money.
A 4× ROAS can still lose money after:
Cost of goods
Fulfillment
Sales commissions
Discounts and refunds
Payment fees
Repeat customers you would have captured anyway
Overstated platform attribution
float - time between paying for ads/collecting cash
Example: Spend $100k to generate $400k. Great... 4× ROAS. But if delivering that revenue costs $330,000, you lost $30,000 before overhead.
Better metrics few track...
Contribution profit after advertising
Marginal ROAS on the next dollar spent
CAC by customer segment
Cash-payback period
90-day contribution LTV
Blended marketing efficiency
TLDR -> do not get caught in the ad trap. Don't just use ROAS or LTV terrible way for 90% of businesses to make $$.
I watch one video of an airplane near miss and the twitter algorithm starts feeding me every aviation related piece of content like I’m a plane obsessed turbo autist
Have seen people saying you can't do anything about this because they're Chinese sellers...
You can
Sue them in federal court, get a TRO, Amazon takes listings down and freezes their payouts. Then settle or collect their abandoned funds via default judgement
Ask me how I know
Investing now at 178 followers @Eddy_Pour
Just back from vacation and have seen a lot of discussion around IM8’s Q2 earning. Several people asked for my read, so here are my key takeaways with broader context from an operator’s perspective.
Disclosure: I used to advise IM8 and now work at @grunsdaily. Everything below is based solely on Prenetics’ public disclosures. 🧵⬇️
I’d drink 5 white monsters a day if they made a non-caffeinated version
I’m telling you. Ghost, Alani, Celsius will all make non-caffeinated versions for people who want the taste experience but not the caffeine. Same way pre-workout has non-stim versions.
Wrote about my thoughts on The Fall of Caffeine here: cpgspn.substack.com/p/fast-b…
Wish I’d documented my learnings and journey the way @conortrains has
The lad shares real-time insights and sauce as he’s building. Gonna smash it in ecom guaranteed
He also inhaled a California burrito on my couch in an impressive amount of time. Important skill to have
$0 - $1M in eCommerce Episode 14: Lessons From $500k in Revenue
youtu.be/e7QwsEKDTj4
