Startup Mindset with Stephen Somers of Marketplace Superheroes - a podcast by Michael Veazey

A startup mindset sometimes does not come naturally but gets built up by learning from experience. Stephen Somers shares his journey to success.

Intro: To teach people how to build a global business using a private label on Amazon. Also provide key services for sellers like global freight, translations and photography. Only to people in-house.

Most people outsource this - they actually have it in-house. How can we help listeners
The mindset for starting a PL businessBackground
Stephen is based in Wexford, Ireland. Not a tech community!Robert Ricky is from Northern Ireland.

They have been working together for 10 years.Started on Amazon
Robert was Stephen’s mentor. Started different businesses. 

Stephen was a complete beginner - but he wanted some freedom. He was previously the data entry clerk!
Make Money Online wildernessDidn’t have experience on his own. 

Tried different models, didn’t stick to anything. He was very green, searching for “make money online”.

Finally considered affiliate marketing. Came across physical products on the internet. 

Looked for courses - not as many or as sophisticated. DropshippingConsidered drop shipping.

Looked at owning a website.Mentor
Met his business partner.Selling on Amazon, eBay.

They then had 2 warehouses, 8 staff members - all Merchant fulfilled. Stephen checked out his operation. 

He saw the warehouse in operation - and got excited about it!It looked like a legit business. 
Quit the day jobStephen quit his job, got his €3K retirement package, and worked with Robert in his warehouse:

Customer supportDe-vanning containers etc. 

Read the E-Myth Michael Gerber and saw it in actionMaking own sales - started on eBay
Began selling.Learning: copywriting, learning HTML.
Too much stress/no freedom (2010)Fulfilling themselves was stressful. 

Started considering FBA - Fulfilment by Amazon. Shipped products over to the UK

Got deals from Wholesalers - a lot of Philips lighting eg: lightbulbs.Once moved to FBA, conversions and sales were much better.
“What if we went fully FBA?”It took time - worked on it together for another year. 

Just Stephen and Robert in the warehouse - let go of all of the staff. Private Label
What if we start selling different products in different niches?They started to build a process around identifying them.

Private labelled and imported them.The company basically became a private label company. 

Kept doing some wholesale products - but they weren’t that profitable.There was a small number of products doing the pushing. 
International Expansion - into the USAThey had to find people in the USA who had companies with warehousing.

Then self-fulfilled.Then slowly moved them into FBA - even though they had competitive items. 

Now they are too competitive.Strategy: New Products, modest sales, international expansion
They saw they could sell lots of products with low sales in multiple countries.Issues with tax and bank accounts.

Doing nearly $2M in revenue then at 30% net profit before tax at that point. Robert started selling online in 1996.

He Didn’t need warehousing any more. Did this for a number of years. FBA/PL courses
About 5 years ago now, a lot of people started teaching courses. They looked at what people were teaching. 

Fortunately, they had their own way of doing things. Robert is amazing at the numbers thing!
MPSH Started teachingHe started teaching.

Then other groups.Then over 2 years shared with more.

5 years later- 6000 students.Freight
Now want to offer services - shipping from China. LCL -less than container load - freight forwarder will do this for you. 

It’s expensive and you’ll get a load of charges by the time it comes into the port. They tried partnering with Freight Forwarders. 

But now they’ve cycled the money from the course back in...

Further episodes of Amazing FBA Amazon and ECommerce Podcast, for Amazon Private Label Sellers, Shopify, Magento or Woocommerce business owners, and other e-commerce sellers and digital entrepreneurs.

Further podcasts by Michael Veazey

Website of Michael Veazey