Motive Sport e-commerce Brand
The Opportunity
As an engineer working full-time at GE, I was looking to generate some side income to help pay off student debt and I started a side hustle with two friends that leveraged a private labeling model and Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA).
This was more of a blue ocean approach that started with market research to identify a good product opportunity within a private labeling business model rather than starting with a specific customer and problem in mind.
The Role
Co-founder
I led market research of top selling products on Amazon by Department Categories looking for sub categories of products that were selling well without a clear market leader or name brand dominating the category.
Applied a product scoring framework to quantify the best 3 opportunities spaces.
Performed supplier and product research via Alibaba to learn vet the operational costs, lead times and help narrow down to the “foam roller” as our first product for MVP.
Collaborated with our supplier in Taiwan and product design to customize our product, packaging and branding.
Collaborated on our GTM launch, organic marketing via social channels (Instagram) and review strategy.
Led an emergency product redesign effort after being targeted by the market leader, TriggerPoint Therapy LLC, with a cease and desist letter for infringement of a new patent they filed. Worked around IP constraints to get our product back to market within 4 months (3 month lead time) with minimal impact to unit cost and quality.
Performed some low lift partnership testing at Equinox, by leaving 10 units on the gym floor next our biggest competitor, TriggerPoint Therapy.
Key Performance Indicators
Amazon Keyword Search Ranking for “foam roller”
Monthly Unit Sales
Profit Margins
The Outcome
Amazon Keyword Search Ranking for “foam roller” = #3 ranking!!!
Avg Monthly Unit Sales = ~500 units
Profit Margins = ~40%
In our partnership experiment, our Motive Sport foam roller was so much more popular than the market leader at Equinox that members were making requests for purchase in the Equinox Retail Shops and even resorted to stealing all 10 units from Equinox when we ran out of inventory.
Lessons Learned
Forecasting is hard! And with a 3 month lead time, we didn’t have the capital to fund a smooth operation which led to running out of inventory. We remained self-funded, but a 0% interest credit card would have allowed us to kick start initial orders with minimal risk.
Running out of stock on Amazon, lost us the #3 ranking and we had to start all over again to climb the rankings with the next shipment.
Keep tabs on your competitors! That patent didn’t exist when we did the initial market research, but it ended up decimated the entire foam roller industry taking over 50% of products off the market.
Lack of focus! The three of us who started this side hustle as friends were all busy with our own full-time engineering jobs as well as other life obligations. Each of us faced big life changes that led us to deprioritizing the business and eventually shutting it down. In hindsight I would have hired someone to take over the day to day operations or sold the business.
Key Skills
Market Research
Product Development
Product Strategy
Supplier Quality
Partnerships