As the industry leader in helping e-commerce companies with fulfillment, Disk.com is always seeking to learn more about both the keys and barriers to success that e-commerce owners and founders face.
We met with 20 people who offer services and sell goods online, ranging from coconut oils to supplements to protein bars. Each person shared unique tips for establishing and running a successful e-commerce business and talked about the challenges they’ve had to overcome. Some obstacles are mildly frustrating; others are particularly daunting, but each of them presses on with a passion for their product and a belief in what they’re doing. Here’s what they said:
Jon Atilgan, Yoursy
Increasing customer acquisition costs have proven to be the biggest challenge facing Jon Atilgan, whose e-commerce business, Yoursy, sells therapeutic essential oil blends. To mitigate the pain of those expenses, Jon says Yoursy has learned over time that its value proposition, messaging, website, and images must all be congruent and work toward the desired goal.
Yoursy produces and sells effective, simple, ready-to-use essential oil blends that meet the needs of its customers, with the firm knowledge that aromatherapy is about much more than just pleasant scents. The brand’s products offer benefits that include better sleep, better focus, and more energy. Jon says Yoursy’s grounding blend is its best-selling product; people love the smell, and it tends to calm pets.
Learn more: Yoursy, Jon Atilgan on LinkedIn
Neal Thakkar, Evolvere
When you have a high-growth CPG business, cash flow management or having the cash for inventory is a huge challenge, according to Evolvere founder Neal Thakkar. But it doesn’t stop there — rising ad costs are another one, especially if you’re using direct response marketing, considering the increasing number of competing advertisers on TikTok, Facebook, and Google. Building a team, as Neal notes, can also be challenging but particularly gratifying.
Since 2016, Evolvere has been enhancing the well-being of its customers by offering world-leading functional foods, supplements, and personal coaching for their brains, bodies, and minds. Its best-selling product is QUANTUMiND, a nootropic that can be used to improve focus, memory, mood, resilience, and brain health without side effects. Neal is determined to create the best possible experience for the customer, making sure they feel cared for when they unbox their order.
Learn more: Evolvere, Neal Thakkar
Felipe Vasconcelos, Kapuluan Coconut
Felipe Vasconcelos highly recommends the use of data to improve any e-commerce company’s product mix. He says his business, Kapuluan Coconut, communicates with current and potential customers to understand their opinions on the brand’s offerings. They use this feedback to identify the most frequently used items and popular ingredients. This feedback helps them make new products they are confident their customers will like. Meanwhile, Felipe has to continuously overcome the logistical challenge of getting quality ingredients from reliable sources.
Kapuluan Coconut is a brand of coconut oil products within the portfolio of Coda Brands. The coconut oil is raw, organic, and cold-pressed. Felipe describes it as top-shelf coconut oil, which is most often preferred by women who care about the environment and look for eco-friendly products. Kapuluan Coconut also produces different kinds of body butter, which are popular because of their high-quality ingredients.
Learn more: Kapuluan Coconut, Felipe Vasconcelos on LinkedIn
Chuck Blumenthal, Bean Products
Chuck Blumenthal, owner of Bean Products, draws on his 35-year career in e-commerce to discuss the challenges posed by the industry’s evolution. One thing of note to Chuck was that despite Amazon’s initial success, its fast and free shipping raised customer expectations and posed difficulties for smaller businesses. Despite these challenges, Chuck emphasizes the importance of determination and perseverance for success in the e-commerce world. Specifically, Chuck advises balancing healthy profit margins and advertising expenses to ensure long-term financial stability and success for your business.
Bean Products is an eco-friendly company dedicated to crafting sustainable home essentials since 1987. Their products, made with organic and recycled materials such as cotton, hemp, and natural latex, prioritize comfort and environmental consciousness. Notably, their Original Sleeping Bean body pillow was the first in the industry to be certified as sustainable. In addition to body pillows, Bean Products offers a comprehensive Health and Wellness Line with yoga mats, meditation tools, and fitness accessories. Their Bean Home Line features organic upholstered furniture, shower curtains, bean bag chairs, and pet beds, all made with FSC-certified wood and environmentally friendly materials.
Learn more: Bean Products, Chuck Blumenthal on LinkedIn
Sharon Colona, Avocado Tea Co.
Among the struggles Sharon Colona faces as an e-commerce business owner is maintaining a sufficient quantity that meets the demand for her product when customers request it and then having to deal with surprisingly angry emails from disappointed consumers of Avocado Tea Co. products when that quantity doesn’t exist. There are worse problems for a business owner to have than an outsized desire for their product – beats the opposite – but Sharon says logistics present a new challenge daily. “If you call me tomorrow,” Sharon offered, “I’ll give you my daily mistake of what has happened.”
Sharon founded Avocado Tea Co. in 2019, having stumbled across it without knowing anything about the tea industry. She and her husband purchased a house with a view that included 550 avocado trees that required regular trimming of their leaves. Sharon conducted some Google searches and learned of all the medicinal properties and antioxidants inside the avocado tree leaf. She tried making tea out of it and immediately fell in love with its taste and health benefits. After some further research, Sharon started Avocado Tea Co. from scratch.
Learn more: Avocado Tea Co., Sharon Colona on LinkedIn
Matt Amsden, Rawvolution
Matt Amsden, the food-focused founder behind Rawvolution, insists there is one crucial element to ensuring your e-commerce business’ success: consistency. According to Amsden, unwaveringly providing exceptional service that simplifies customers’ lives is the key to building loyalty and ensuring sustained growth. Your customers come to you because they want to streamline some part of their lives, and if you can provide that simplification day after day, week after week, you’ll find yourself with a strong customer base year after year. If your personal touch and passion are apparent, you’ll attain the dedication needed for long-term success in the digital realm.
Founded in 2001 by Matt Amsden, Rawvolution began with the mission of bringing the finest and most vibrant living foods to the homes of Los Angelenos. Over the years, this commitment to excellence has expanded to offer these delectable meals nationwide. Unwavering in our dedication to plant-based foods and organics, we take pride in sourcing only the freshest and highest-quality ingredients. Our ultimate goal is to provide delicious and healthy meals that not only tantalize your taste buds but also leave you looking and feeling your absolute best. With Rawvolution, nourishment, and culinary delight go hand in hand.
Learn more: Rawvolution, Matt Amsden on LinkedIn
Doug Schneider, Heart & Soil
To Doug Schneider’s mild surprise, the best-selling product from his e-commerce business contains bull testicles. It’s a male-centric product called Warrior, which boosts testosterone and energy. Doug points out that Warrior hasn’t always been a top seller but has steadily gained popularity for one simple reason: it works. There is a micronutrient deficiency problem, and Doug is confident this will help solve it. When people use these products to fix their nutrient problems, Doug says they can feel the difference and enjoy the positive effects.
Heart & Soil Supplements is not a typical supplement company, Doug says. The supplement takes organs from cattle, such as livers, hearts, and kidneys, freeze-dries them, mills them into a powder, and puts them into capsules. Consumers get micronutrients from cattle organs by taking supplements. Those organs are potentially the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, and Doug emphasizes that no food comes close; unfortunately, it’s been taken out of the modern diet.
Learn More: Doug Schneider on LinkedIn, Heart & Soil
Doniphan Stone, Corefirst
For any e-commerce business, Doniphan Stone, President of Corefirst, emphasizes the importance of narrowing down your market as the first step in creating a lift-off. Otherwise, you’re trying to be all things about people, and nobody knows what your business or product is about. The second step is to find the right people who make up the right team. Doniphan said once the crew is assembled, as a founder, it’s essential to communicate your vision and believe in achieving scaling as fast as possible.
Corefirst is the world’s first and only hands-free, all-in-one portable training system. It’s a pilates brand that offers wraps designed to be attached to the ends of resistance bands. The wrap, which is attached to the user rather than the user trying to hold onto it, allows people to move around in a 360-year range of motion and have one device that can go everywhere, creating a better environment that’s more comfortable and enhancing mental muscle engagement. It substitutes for the reformer in Pilates, which allows people to do resistance Pilates and experience the benefits of that.
Learn more: Doniphan Stone on LinkedIn, Corefirst
Rita Ho-Bezzola, Piper + Enza
Know your audience. That’s the primary advice from Rita Ho-Bezzola, the Founder and CEO of Piper + Enza, a media publishing company focused on topics around children’s health and medical experiences. As Rita sees it, her business serves two sets of customers. Its ultimate customer is children, but parents will be making the purchase. In terms of language and packaging, Rita and her team need to understand what is both child-friendly and appealing to parents.
Piper + Enza publishes fun stories about not-so-fun topics such as vaccinations or pokes, broken bones, and urgent care. The idea is that parents and families can talk about these topics at bedtime or the dinner table rather than when an incident happens because usually that means it’s already too late. Rita says her company’s most popular products are toys that support children when they’re under the weather. One of the most popular is called the Magical Mending Stick, a highly moisturizing stick that is child-friendly. Its whole point is to empower children to take care of themselves so they know when they have a cut or chapped lips, they will instinctively use the product to apply it. Those have been super popular among parents, according to Rita.
Learn more: Rita Ho-Bezzola on LinkedIn, Piper + Enza
Danielle Richardson, Fierce Clarity
Danielle Richardson’s top tip is to gain an understanding of e-commerce trends and what tools to utilize to follow them. Her e-commerce business, Fierce Clarity, built its site on Shopify, which she says is great because so many tools and programs facilitate success as an e-commerce brand. For example, bundling during the holidays, offering special promotions, or opportunities to upsell customers. She also emphasizes the importance of following up with abandoned carts and mastering the strategic pricing of your products.
Fierce Clarity is a lifestyle company that empowers busy professionals with sustainable tools for holistic wellness. It offers feeling-focused online yoga classes, wellness retreats, workshops, and activewear. Danielle says its most popular activewear product is the hooded sweatshirt, which she developed in 2020 during the heart of the pandemic. Her goal at the time was to make a comfortable hoodie “that actually looks nice because we were all in our coziest sweatshirts” on Zoom calls. She said it was really important to focus on creating a hero product that people would wear and let that speak for itself.
Learn more: Danielle Richardson on LinkedIn, Fierce Clarity
Brian Tweer, AstroFlav
Since founding AstroFlav in 2019, with every last penny of the $15K Brian Tweer had to his name, the brand has grown to an eight-figure business. Brian attributes a large part of that success to AstroFlav’s willingness to take extra steps to maintain a highly personalized relationship with each customer. He says the company has decided to take all shipping and logistics in-house primarily because it allows his team to personalize each package with handwritten thank-you notes and potentially other customized items. While logistical challenges have existed, Brian says personalization is what keeps customers loyal and coming back.
AstroFlav goes beyond selling a product and offers an experience by providing customers with premium supplements that help them achieve their best selves. According to Brian, the company’s top seller is a male testosterone product, but he says the company is known for its protein supplements characterized by out-of-this-world flavors. AstroFlav, as Brian mentioned, is moving towards broader longevity and well-being categories beyond just sports supplements.
Learn more: Brian Tweer on LinkedIn, AstroFlav
Felipe Vasconcelos, Koda Brands
Felipe Vasconcelos, Founder of Koda Brands, emphasizes the importance of maximizing average order value, particularly highlighting the significance of upsells, cross-sells, and bundles in enhancing customer transactions. He suggests entrepreneurs invest in plugins and add-ons to help them implement these strategies on their e-commerce platforms. However, he also notes the challenges of driving organic traffic, citing it as a critical hurdle for business growth. Innovative content creation that engages customers and simultaneously boosts search engine rankings is critical, and striking a balance between organic traffic and paid advertisements can be key to long-term stability.
Koda Brands is a group of businesses in beauty and fashion. They’re driven by a love for beauty and a desire to change the industry. Their goal is to make vegan, cruelty-free products that help people feel happy and beautiful. Koda believes in celebrating individuality and doesn’t want to harm animals or people. They create their products with honesty and a vision for a better world. Across their brands, they offer innovative and clean options that challenge the norm. Whether you’re looking for something specific or just exploring, Koda has products for everyone. They also teach aspiring beauty entrepreneurs about the industry to support their business journey.
Learn more: Felipe Vasconcelos on LinkedIn, Koda Brands, More Naturals
Jennifer Laird, Vici Wellness
Jennifer Laird started looking into natural holistic therapies due to her 20-year struggle with migraines, expressing a desire to avoid lifelong reliance on pharmaceuticals. She, along with her business partner Kymberly Brake, had both migraines and anxiety. To combat anxiety, they developed a topical patch called Nervous Wreck, their top seller. After realizing the products worked for them, they expanded the business. Their biggest challenge, Jennifer says, is finding a good marketing team to work with, as her business went through three or four before finding one they were happy with.
Vici Wellness uses only the purest ingredients to make products that promote health and wellness. They come in topical patches and aromatherapy rollers. Depending on your choice, a Vici Wellness product can help you regain or maintain attention, curb anxiety, relieve migraines, control PMS, recharge immunity, relieve your hangover, sleep better, or give you more energy.
Learn more: Jennifer Laird on LinkedIn, Vici Wellness
Sarah Dillingham, Grace & Able
Sarah’s advice underscores the importance of groundwork. She urges any intrepid entrepreneur to establish a waiting list to gauge demand before launching a product. This strategy minimizes the risk of surplus inventory collecting dust. Sarah further cautions against a common pitfall that all too many fall into donning too many hats. While some necessities, such as packing and fulfillment, may seem more practical (and cheaper) to do in-house, they swiftly become an inefficient allocation of time as a business scales. Lastly, Sarah advises familiarizing yourself with your customer’s journey before enlisting the services of marketing agencies to avoid falling prey to overpromises. By taking these strategic approaches, entrepreneurs can navigate the dynamic landscape of e-commerce with confidence and foresight.
Grace & Able is a pioneering venture determined to transform the landscape of joint support. Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis herself, Sarah Dillingham embarked on a journey that led her to create a line of joint support products combining functionality, style, and comfort. With the expertise of Certified Hand Therapist Trevor Petrie, Grace & Able crafts meticulously designed braces and compression gloves that seamlessly integrate into daily life. Their range stabilizes and supports joints while exuding elegance, capturing compliments rather than attention. These products, thoughtfully tested by arthritis patients and designed under the expertise of hand therapists, encompass Sarah and Trevor’s shared vision to empower individuals with arthritis through functional and attractive joint support solutions.
Learn more: Grace & Able, Sarah Dillingham on LinkedIn
Sue Hitzmann, Melt Method
Sue Hitzmann’s most significant advice? Avoid reinventing the wheel. Hitzmann claims true innovation often stems from building upon what already exists, so she suggests seeking inspiration from successful companies already in the field and striving to elevate their strategies. But for success to truly take root, Hitzmann advises adhering to the triad of patience, people, and process. She reminds entrepreneurs that overnight triumphs often result from years of effort, stresses the necessity of building a competent team, and extols the benefits of having a well-defined plan. By mirroring established accomplishments and harboring a genuine desire to make a positive impact, Sue Hitzmann’s advice lays a robust foundation for burgeoning e-commerce ventures.
MELT Method is a transformative self-care solution, cultivating improved mobility, stability, and overall performance while boasting clinically established efficacy in alleviating chronic pain. Rooted in the realm of neurofascial science, MELT might sound complex, but its benefits are accessible to all. MELT’s techniques are profoundly effective yet remarkably straightforward, making wellness attainable for everyone.
Learn more: MELT Method, Sue Hitzmann on LinkedIn
Julie White, MenoWell
When it comes to running an e-commerce business, Julie White has a unique tip: don’t hesitate to establish connections with social media influencers. People are often scared to do this when they first launch their business, but Julie says they’d be surprised by the potential benefits those connections can bring. Even if you don’t believe you have anything to offer, Julie encourages every e-commerce business owner to prioritize making these connections.
Julie is the CEO and Founder of MenoWell (formerly Bossa Bars), which was named a “Best Menopause Product” by Oprah Daily in 2022. After struggling with her own energy level and weight gain, Julie created MenoWell Energy + Protein Bars with a menopausal female’s health, weight gain, and self-care in mind. These all-natural, nutrient-dense energy bars contain all the daily fiber and plant protein a menopausal body needs to maintain muscle and boost metabolism.
Learn more: MenoWell, Julie White on LinkedIn
Holly Haynes, Faith Based Counselor Training Institute
Holly Haynes emphasizes, without equivocation, that you have to be passionate about what you’re selling in the e-commerce world. Otherwise, you may find it difficult to sustain. She warns of the difficulty in knowing available resources, the best programs to use, and who you can trust. “This is not easy, or everybody would be doing it,” said Holly.
Holly is CEO of the Faith-Based Counselor Training Institute, founded by Dr. Michael Haynes in 1996. The school trains crisis chaplains all over the world, sets up crisis teams in churches and schools, works with first responders, nurses, firemen, and fire departments, and then trains your average person for restorative therapists. In 2020, the institute made the shift to online learning, and Holly says anybody can take courses at their own pace, and groups can take a course together and get certified.
Learn more: Faith Based Counselor Training Institute, Holly Haynes on LinkedIn
Prakash Veenam, Maternova Inc.
First and foremost, Prakash Veenam advises e-commerce company owners to come up with a very honest and true story about their organization and the kind of solutions that they’re bringing to the customer. He warns of the difficulties associated with logistics: “The biggest challenge for any small or medium company, even if it’s a large enterprise, is supply chain and logistics.” As a result, Maternova has partnered with multiple domestic and international shipping firms. According to Prakash, those partnerships have brought end-to-end supply chain and logistics reach along with lower pricing, which is then extended to customers.
Prakash is Senior Vice President at Maternova Inc., where he leads a team in performing operations and executes strategies for new market penetration and increased market share. Maternova, Inc. is a global resource for cutting-edge medical innovations, focusing on maternal, neonatal, and child health. Maternova, trusted by governments, ministries of health, NGOs, and healthcare professionals around the world, partners with all of them to procure tested, path-breaking technology.
Learn more: Maternova Inc., Prakash Veenam
Luca Barone, Fitporn
For Luca Barone, whose company is relatively new to the e-commerce world, the most troubling aspect of running a business where goods are sent out to paying customers worldwide is the lack of control over the product’s condition when the delivery arrives. He has realized that, despite the extreme care Fitporn applies to packaging and shipping, there’s still a chance customers could contact him complaining about having received damaged goods or never receiving anything at all. “When you hand your products to the courier,” Luca laments, “you never know what happens to those products.”
As a functional food expert with over a decade of experience in the healthy food market, Luca founded Fitporn in March 2023. Fitporn sells functional food that has the distinguished quality of being not only healthy but also tasty. It utilizes innovative formulas that guarantee high nutritional value and top-quality materials. Luca knows that food taste is important to everyone, and Fitporn is designed for people who want to eat healthy and stay fit without sacrificing taste.
Learn more: Fitporn, Luca Barone on LinkedIn
Neil Mehta, Royal Intimacy
If Neil Mehta could give any advice to newcomers to the e-commerce world, it would be to gain an in-depth understanding of your costs. He warns that there are a lot of things that tend to emerge unexpectedly, that are under the radar, and that are often expected. Many of those costs, he says, are incurred when a business is first getting into the e-commerce space. Other costs can come from customer acquisition and advertising. Neil advises that acquiring a customer is one thing, but understanding the lifetime value of that customer and how much that customer costs compared to the value they bring to your business.
Neil is CEO of Royal Intimacy, a high-quality vegan, all-natural sexual wellness company. He says the brand started with a line of vegan, all-natural condoms and then expanded into other complimentary products like lubricants, after-sex body wipes, lotions, and washes. The most popular among those products are tailored-fit condoms and body wipes. “If there’s a before, during, and after component of intimacy, (we’re realizing that) the after component may be even bigger than any of the precursor stuff,” said Neil.
Learn more: Neil Mehta on LinkedIn, Royal Intimacy