Queen of Amazon Melisa Vong On Making $20M on Amazon, Exiting Her Company & China | DSH #179

Hey, I'd like you to pass the phone to someone with a wrench.

Like they wanted to talk to a guy and they didn't realize that I actually knew my So you've done over 20 million dollars in product?

Yeah, in revenue actually over 25 million on Amazon.

Over 25.

Sorry, who's counting, right?

Who's counting after a million?

I don't know.

The money's just there.

Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Melissa Vong.

How's it going?

Good, it's good to be here.

Good to see you.

It's been a hot minute.

Been a while.

Like, what, three years or so?

No, actually, we saw each other back in, I think it was November

when we were in town for Sell and Scale.

Yeah, that Amazon conference.

And you guys came to the Nelly concert nelly not to see nelly bro terrible you don't like him

no i have no problem with nelly i'm just not paying to go see him i didn't pay yeah if it's free i'll go like go network and talk to people i'm not yeah it was more of a just do he was there kind of thing i think yeah i mean we hooked you up with some platinum tickets so she did she saved me three thousand dollars So yeah.

Oh, for real?

Well, it was a networking event.

So it was for Sell and Scale.

It was a conference with Helium 10.

It was was their first ever Amazon seller-focused event.

And I actually spoke on a panel just before Gary Vaynerchuk.

So we have to open up the stage for him.

Where was this at?

It was this in Vegas.

Oh, it was this in last year, yeah.

I forgot about it.

What was it like meeting Gary?

It was cool because I was actually backstage after my talk.

So I went back and he was waiting there.

So he had watched the whole segment.

And then he actually pulled me aside and he just basically complimented what I was saying and said, hey, like that TikTok thing you said was really great.

It was really raw.

And like, it was, yeah, it was very surreal.

It was almost like a full circle moment because he was one of the, you know, biggest people in the marketing space I've been following for over 10 years.

And I saw him speak 10 years prior to that for the first time in Vegas at the Mirage Hotel.

And just to, you know, cross paths with him and be able to open up a stage for him, it was just surreal.

Yeah, that is surreal.

So you've done over $20 million

in product?

Yeah, in revenue.

Actually, over $25 million on Amazon.

Over $25 million.

Sorry, who's counting, right?

Who's counting after a million?

I don't know.

The money's just there.

So, like,

what does that feel like?

It

almost feels unreal.

Now, was that 25 in one year or was that over the course of

the course of like four or five years?

That's still good.

It's still insane.

Yeah, yeah.

Five a year.

Yeah.

So basically just selling on Amazon, it almost feels like a game at this point.

Like you see the score kind of going up, like the sales going up, and you wake up and you wake up to sales and it's like this crazy experience just making that residual income.

How does that feel?

Because do you feel like there's a lot of women in that space that's like dominating the space, or do you feel like there's a lack there when it comes to Amazon?

There's definitely been a lot more women in selling on Amazon.

And I think that small business owners who work from home, it's actually, I believe the study is like over 70%

of six-figure at-home businesses are made by women or run by women.

And you can do this from the comfort of your own home.

So I think that there's maybe a lack of representation.

Yeah, there is because it's more so.

I feel like the

Only Hams is like the, that's where, that's what's being recommended for women.

Yeah, versus like, you know, Amazon.

I mean, you're living walking proof that, you know, you can make $25 million and technically not say you don't need a man because I don't like saying that but you can have the same success you know as you know certain men or you know whoever you're going after and it's very well possible for you you know so I think that you kind of breaks that I would say that whatever stigma around that that you know women aren't getting their just due.

They just have to hustle harder, right?

Absolutely.

I mean, that's with anything.

I won't sit here and pretend that, you know, it's harder being a woman because it's harder in some areas, but oftentimes there's a lot of doors open because I'm a woman.

Like I get the opportunity to speak on stages because they need to fill, you know, the slots and they need to have more representation, whether it's someone who's a minority or a woman or whatever it is.

I do get a lot more opportunities because of it.

And I'm going to take advantage of it.

Yeah.

One of the women.

See, so there's always a conversation of lack, right?

Of lack.

This is what we don't have.

This is what we don't make.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

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probably the first woman i've heard in a while that talks about the perks of it 100 i think people also maybe don't think that you have what it takes as a woman in certain industries so i actually used to work in the car industry which was heavily dominated by men

and you know when i would pick up the phone make sales calls people would literally tell tell me they'd say hey i'd like you to pass the phone to someone with a wrench like they wanted to talk to a guy and they didn't realize that I actually knew my.

So, I actually had to work harder and study the stats a lot more than maybe, you know, the next guy, but at least I can blow them away with my knowledge.

And that's what I had to keep me, you know, competitive in the space and make it happen for me as a female in cars.

So, how did you get into Amazon?

Were you profiting from the first year or did it take some time to build up?

So, it was just right out of university.

I basically was already in the car industry, came out of university with, you know, a bunch of student debt, moved to the big city and thought that there was more opportunity working for a higher level prestigious luxury car brand.

I started with Nissan and then I got a job in Toronto and I was like, okay, the clientele has deeper pockets.

Maybe I'll make more money working at a luxury dealership.

And basically,

My living expenses dramatically increased because you're living in the core city.

For those of you you who don't know, like Toronto is the most expensive city to live in Canada, or one of the most expensive, next to like Vancouver.

So basically, had to find a way to supplement my income because I was barely able to pay my rent.

And I have expensive taste.

Like, I love food.

Like, that's what I mean when I like expensive things is I like to spend on food.

Like, literally.

I can live with that.

Yeah, I don't usually spend a whole lot of money on like, you know, shoes and like purses or heels or anything like that.

I like to spend it on experiences and food.

So for me, I had to find a way to make extra money.

Otherwise, I wasn't going to be able to stay in the city.

So I was looking at different options to make money online because I had experienced, I made my first dollar in affiliate marketing online.

I was like, you know, this is so cool.

I got hooked and I just...

tried to find different ways that I could make money using the internet with the tools that we have available to us.

And what was that first product that sort of started everything for you?

So we sold an organic castor oil, and it's basically

an oil that's sourced from castor beans, and it's cold pressed.

So we actually sourced it from overseas.

We would buy the oil.

Private label?

It was private label, yeah.

Yeah, private label is a fantastic model because you don't have to purchase machinery, manufacture your own products, or print your own labels.

Usually you work with a contract manufacturer who's able to put your branding on the product.

And they can even pass down organic certification as well, which is nice.

So, we did

say because Amazon is going to require you to submit some kind of proof that everything is everything.

So, do they submit that too?

Yeah, so certificates of analysis is usually what they ask for.

Anything that goes on your body or in your body, because we also sell supplements as well, they've actually gotten a lot more strict with those regulations.

So, you now need what's called an ISO-certified certificate of analysis, so that way they know that everything matches the supplement panel.

People are faking it.

Well, no, it's too much of a risk.

I mean, you got lawsuits.

So if she's selling something and I break out, that falls on her.

Yeah, so Amazon is even requiring insurance now, too.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah, if you make over $10,000 a month consecutively for three months, they'll ask you to provide proof of insurance.

So you want to open up your store with that because it's kind of a plus.

Right.

Yeah, and you need liability insurance either way.

Yeah, it's not that much.

Yeah, I made sure I got it on the pod.

We say some pretty crazy stuff.

Don't want anyone suing us for it.

That's hilarious.

So, after the first year, like, what were the numbers like?

Were you doing a million the first year, or did that take some time?

Yeah, so I actually cracked a million in my first year.

And then by the second year, I'd made a million dollars in profit.

I know a lot of people talk about revenue numbers, but literally castor oil alone made me a million dollars in profit.

Wow.

But then we expanded the catalog.

So we went into natural skincare products like serums.

We did moisturizers, body oils, that type of thing.

Nice.

And you eventually sold one of the brands, right?

We actually sold two of our brands to date.

So the first one was the Botanical Skincare Company.

And then we started a supplement brand called Orpic Nutrition.

I co-founded it with my partner, Bryce Alderson, who used to play soccer for the Vancouver White Caps.

So with his knowledge in sports nutrition and then my Amazon knowledge, we had like pro like basically a business baby.

And yeah, so then we sold that company.

It got acquired two years ago by an aggregator in this space.

And it was, yeah, it was a wild journey.

Yeah, I went to an Amazon conference a few months ago.

They were basically saying there's aggregators that just buy up successful Amazon stores doing like one to five million, right?

And they just combine them all.

Yeah, exactly.

They're picking up.

They get so much funding.

So they now have all this excess money where they want to put it into acquiring brands and then being able to scale them up and basically become a digital proctor and gamble right like the e-commerce giant of all these different like a jp morgan yeah yeah there's cash flow every month yeah yeah so they're just stacking it that's a dope business model though it is it is saying that a lot of them are failing now too so a lot of them are actually getting acquired by some of the bigger aggregators so the ones that got a lot of funding they just all they knew how to do was buy businesses but they didn't know how to scale them they didn't have the infrastructure They didn't have the money, not the business acumen.

Yeah, I was just going to say, it seems risky if you don't know the marketing side.

Well, you're supposed to buy it, but then I feel like you're supposed to put her on some kind of

payroll to run it for a couple years.

Did they do that to you?

I'm keeping her on board.

I'm buying from her.

I'm keeping her on payroll.

She means she's the business.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so with the second exit, we actually did have to stay on for two years.

So we structured it as an earn out.

So we got a percentage of the revenue and it's based on the performance and the growth of the business.

Smart, I like that, because the incentives are aligned there for every party.

Do you make more on an earn out?

Would you feel or would you think a buyout you actually make or make more?

It depends.

So my first company was straight cash buyout and it was nice because then I didn't really have to stick around and I was maybe only helping with the due diligence and the transfer of all the assets and maybe just showing them how to do a couple things.

But we had all of the SOPs, so standard operating procedures in place, so it made it very easy to hand off the business.

And basically,

within maybe two to four weeks, I was basically done with the business, and they took it over and didn't have to think about it.

So, just that mentally, like that little mental, you know, back in the head, hey, like, I have to focus on this, it's no longer there.

But with the second company, we basically stayed on for two years afterwards.

And it depends.

It can be a good thing or a bad thing.

It just depends how it performs over the next two years because if it's the bed because they don't have the operations to be able to continue growing the company you're not going to see as much of a an earn out or payout over those next two years makes sense how do you find trending products are you going to the canton fair and other conferences pre

we did go to the canton fair and it was second person or what bro i still haven't went i'm jealous i want to go it sounds fun bro it's big it's china's fun i mean like there's so many cool things it's like walking through alibaba in person.

Yeah, like everything is everything.

Even the new stuff is like, yo, this is going to be a hit.

Yeah.

They'll tell you, like, yo, this, this is going to be a hit right now.

You found some cool stuff there.

Well, we even saw things before they came to North America.

It's almost like seeing into the future when you go to Canton Fair.

Because, you know, before the Theragun was big, we saw all of these massage guns and was like, that would be a really cool product.

And then someone obviously saw it and they ran with it and they brought it over and made it a multi-million dollar business.

Yeah, that company blew up.

Theragun?

Theragun Theragun blew up.

The hoverboards blew up from China.

Of course, we gave it a lot.

Yeah, didn't Dan Fleshman do something with hoverboards and brought it over?

Yeah, there's a lot of products.

I feel like China just has so many winning products for some reason.

Well, they're forward.

They're the innovators.

Yeah.

That's where everything's made.

You go straight to the source.

You go straight to the source and then you set up shop out there.

Yeah.

Having that streamline that those relationships out there are way more powerful, especially when you're talking about products and selling reefs and retail.

So do you speak mandarin i don't see that's one thing i wish that my parents had taught me because it would you know be so much more helpful oh yeah they would fall in love with you because then you're both best of both worlds so how did you communicate when you went there So you speak in English and most of them actually do speak decent English.

So

yeah, as long as you speak clearly and slowly and you don't overcomplicate everything and usually if you have a spec sheet, if you know exactly what you want, you can communicate pictures.

They're very, you know, they want to see the product.

You can also bring a translator with you if you want to take it to the next level.

Like if you're doing factory tours, sometimes like the owner of the manufacturing plant doesn't speak English, but it's all the salespeople that you're usually talking to and they do speak English.

But if you bring a translator with you when you're viewing the facilities, they're gonna take you a little bit more seriously too because you're willing to spend money to have a proper conversation with them.

Have you ever gone on a factory tour and it was just really weird?

Like you didn't like it?

I've been on not like like a really bad factory tour.

We've actually been on some really interesting factory tours, but it was more in a group setting.

So it wasn't like it was awkward or anything.

We actually went to a packaging facility in China, in Guangzhou, and basically they took us around, showed us the, you know, the printing press and all the machinery, and they actually print for Walmart.

Oh, wow.

So to be able to see like all of Walmart's packaging literally being printed in front of you, you know that they're obviously a reliable manufacturer because you're seeing some of the biggest names working on it.

I've seen some weird ones, I just asked because of sweatshops.

No, I've seen some bad ones, bro.

We went into it, we thought it was a warehouse, it was in like an apartment complex.

The way they were making this stuff, it was kids running around.

I'm like, no, this is in the U.S.

or China?

No, this is China.

I'm like, it's not it.

I don't want to, I don't want to do business with them.

Yeah, definitely.

Well, that's a good thing that you went so you can see the conditions that they're working in.

Yeah, it was just and choose to work with the partners that obviously don't rely on sweatshops.

Well, a lot of don't a lot of the big brands use sweatshops or is that a myth?

Some of them do.

I feel like some of them maybe they're not aware or they are aware and they're kind of just brushing it under the carpet because obviously

the margins are.

China has grown so much.

It's kind of hard to find.

Well, what we perceive as a sweatshop over there is basically legal.

Well, it's not.

It's actually really nice.

Some of those warehouses are really nice and we will sell this a sweatshop, but bro, everything's efficient.

Yeah.

Most people are happy.

It's music playing, like, but it's a little ton of people in here working

getting the task done.

Like, they're being done.

Like, it's getting done.

The workforce over there is like, to me, amazing.

And, you know, Chinese people are some of the hardest working people I know.

For sure.

I'm half Chinese and, you know, my mom's half Chinese.

And she's the hardest working person in my life.

And she's basically what inspired me to go out there and do better for our family.

And she gave us the opportunity by coming all the way from Vietnam.

Actually, because she's half Viet, half Chinese

during the Vietnam War, our family had to leave and came to Canada to seek refuge.

So, what's next for you?

You know, granted, you've had a ton of success on Amazon.

Is your

plan to just keep scaling up?

Like, was a hundred million the next goal?

Yeah, over the next five years?

Absolutely.

I mean, we're still very much actively selling on Amazon, also also on our own websites.

So we've launched a couple of new brands.

Actually, just launched a new pet brand.

I brought you some products so you can give it to your dog because he's the cutest.

I'm all about my dog's health, man.

That's a good niche for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Especially like everyone got a pandemic pup.

Yeah, I got two.

I got one, too.

Yeah.

Yo, dog.

You got lonely?

Yeah.

I didn't get lonely.

I just, I wanted to have a kid.

Yeah.

At that point, and obviously I didn't have one.

I just wanted to call Craig's with us and was like, oh, go find a dog.

Dogs are pretty much kids.

I mean,

you know?

Yeah.

How do you do quality control?

Because I've heard nightmare stories about this.

And at your volume, like one bad order could, like, be a six-figure loss.

Yeah, I mean, she's doing skincare, too.

That QC has to be crazy.

So, with skincare, we actually source most of our products and ingredients and work with manufacturers in the U.S.

We don't typically go overseas unless it's for packaging because obviously it's a lot easier to scale packaging orders overseas.

It's just, it was cheaper.

Now it is a lot more expensive with shipping container prices that have gone up.

So we work with both US and

overseas suppliers.

But with quality control, you always want to do like a pre-delivery inspection with anything you buy.

Like it's very similar to when you buy a pre-construction home or you buy a car.

You always want to do a pre-delivery inspection to make sure there's nothing wrong with it.

So you can actually outsource and hire companies like Kima to do those pre-delivery inspections for you.

And they'll send you a full report.

It'll literally test, you know, the viscosity, the color, the they'll do drop tests, they'll, you know, they'll test basically everything that needs to be tested under the sun.

And actually, we ran into a really huge problem with one of our shipments, and we had been working with this supplier for years.

So, obviously, you gain that trust, and you think, oh, like they're going to take care of me, they're not going to.

But unfortunately, there was this one order where the droppers were slightly too long, where when you screwed it into the glass bottle

it like basically was it was just touching the bottom of the bottle so when you're shipping it and you know amazon delivery people they don't care they're like checking in

plain frizzy with your packages and then basically it would shatter the glass dropper and that was a huge liability right so we're getting people calling us emailing us saying hey like this is broken um we want to refund or we're going to take action or whatever so we had to recall a lot all of those bottles that were made of

funds or charge.

No, so they were refunds.

So, anyone, yeah.

Because Amazon deals with all the processing, so they basically do the refunds.

Amazon probably was like, All right, cool.

Yeah, but thankfully, we didn't sell too, too many of those so they weren't in the stream of commerce.

Like, as soon as we got our first complaint, we're like, Okay, we got to pull this.

Um, and I remember we had all these extra droppers that we had ordered because we ordered like maybe 10,000 of them and for for that specific shipment.

So we had thousands of these droppers that we couldn't use.

That's you know a waste of money.

And then I reached out to my manufacturer and they wouldn't send us new ones.

They just sent us new stems.

They didn't send like the dropper part of it.

So I'm literally sitting in my living room with my fiancé and we're manually replacing all of the pipettes ourselves.

So it was a bit of a sweatshop in our living room.

So did you guys get it done?

We got it done and then we were, yeah.

So you guys pulled them them off with the news

How many I don't know it was I blacked out

Yeah, it's tough when it comes from China.

I mean you're kind of hoping well, it's it's I mean, I think they pretty much do their best, but I mean it happens.

You got to pivot.

You got to be an entrepreneur at that point.

Like, you got to think like one.

So what's the next one?

You got to get the work.

The most successful people, I think, are the ones that are able to pivot.

They're flexible and they're resourceful.

You know, whenever I've talked to people, or when I hire people, even, the people that do the best are usually the most resourceful, and they're not going to ask me questions for every single little thing.

They're going to go and find the answer, but if, you know, they can't, then they're going to come to me.

Yeah, I love that.

Do you see Amazon getting saturated?

I think there's always going to be competition no matter what niche you're in, what space you sell in, or what marketplace you sell on.

You could sell on your own website, Shopify, but the traffic's not going to be there.

you have to pay to send traffic to your own website with Amazon they provide the traffic for you so obviously there is an appeal to that there's going to be competitors I specifically sell in the consumable space so it is filled with a lot more experienced sellers but I wouldn't say that it's like hyper saturated certain products sure like there's products like the garlic press for example that's over saturated avocado one yeah the avocado smasher thing like there's so many oversaturated products.

But if you can find a way to differentiate your products, market it a little bit different, maybe you have different causes that you, you know, that your customers are going to

resonate with.

For us,

we find different ways we can make our products either more potent, we're going to be very competitive with our pricing.

So we work with manufacturers that can accommodate that.

And, you know, we're going to provide, since we are cutting out the middleman, we can remain very competitive.

Now, I've heard the margins are slim on e-commerce.

Is that true with Amazon products?

Compared to maybe some other industries, I'd say our average margins were about 30 to 35 percent.

Some products had way higher margins, some of them even had less, but we were basically banking on margin for Amazon, yeah, for Amazon, yeah, because the Amazon takes a fee too, right?

They do, that's after Amazon takes their fees and everything.

So,

30% was our average after our cost of goods, after Amazon fees, and shipping costs.

It's pretty good, Not bad at all.

For everyone.

I'm going to sell volume, obviously, but her volume is good.

35% is not bad at all.

Yeah.

I mean, that's 6 mil profit off 25, right?

Easy.

Nice.

All right.

Well, what's

that's the Asian in me?

What's next for you?

I am diversifying a little bit.

So Amazon's great, obviously.

It's what I know.

So it's hard to get out of this space when that's basically where all of my expertise lies.

But I've diversified into real estate, so bought some rental properties.

Most recently, actually, opening up a escape room.

So, I don't know if you guys ever been to one

in Canada.

You guys got to come on visit once for opening up.

I do those monthly.

I'm not even kidding.

I love escape rooms.

I feel like entrepreneurs love escape rooms because it's just the problem-solving,

you know.

Okay, escape rooms.

Love it.

So, yeah, you want to open up your first, so you plan on opening up a lot of those.

We have exclusivity for, so we're doing a franchise, which is nice because you're buying the rights to the branding already.

Exactly, the processes already in place.

They actually will build out the games for us.

We just have to pay for the construction.

So it's basically you pay

X amount of dollars to make the room

and it cash flows really, really well.

So it's just another way to diversify.

Is this escapology or a different one?

No, it's actually called Trapped.

So they're mainly in Canada, but they are also expanding to the U.S.

So if you guys want to open one in Vegas, let me know.

Is this the one with live actors?

You can have live actors, but you don't always have to because then it's just another person you have to staff.

And some people

don't like live actors.

I haven't done an escape room yet.

You would like it for real.

You got to think outside the box.

We should go do one later.

Yeah, I might be down after dinner.

After dinner, yeah.

All right, Wayne, you got anything?

No,

I definitely

appreciate you for coming on.

I definitely like your drive.

I think there

you guys, more women need that spotlight on on them because we need more, we need better role models.

Well, thanks for coming on, Melissa.

Thanks for watching, guys, and I'll see you next time.

Peace.

Yeah, because it does.