May 10, 2024
040: Deana Karim On The Art of Stock Management & Online Retail
Venture into the world of e-commerce and healthy living as Deana Karim, the brilliant mind behind Good Deeds, joins us on the Brand Fortress HQ podcast to share how her quest for healthier options as a new mom led to the creation of a keto-friendly baking mix empire. Prepare to be inspired by her journey from product development woes to triumph on the Amazon bestseller lists. Deana's entrepreneurial spirit and ingenuity shine through as she recounts the adrenaline-fueled moments where risk met reward, painting a vivid picture for anyone intrigued by the potential of turning a personal passion into a prosperous business venture.
As we navigate the treacherous waters of inventory management on Amazon, Deana offers up her playbook on tackling stockouts, the art of shelf life extension, and finding equilibrium in Amazon's ever-changing inventory landscape. Imagine the finesse required to manage perishable goods in an online marketplace while maintaining your sanity—and rankings! Deana's insights into the dance of stocking the right amount and mitigating the frustrations of Amazon's logistical quirks are invaluable for those wrestling with the balance between too much and too little.
Strap in for a real talk on the trials and tribulations of outsourcing, from the frontline of customer service to the warehouses of fulfillment centers. Deana lays bare the lessons learned from relinquishing control of social media, the indispensable nature of a good bookkeeper, and the tough decisions made when economic winds shift. As we close the chapter on this insightful dialogue, we also look to the horizons of e-commerce growth, debating the merits of retail distribution, navigating Target Plus, and why every platform from Amazon to Walmart requires a tailored strategy. Deana's narrative is a masterclass for burgeoning entrepreneurs aiming to carve out their slice of the online marketplace.
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Chapters
00:00 - Building a Successful E-Commerce Brand
08:20 - Managing Stockouts and Shelf Life Extension
16:25 - Outsourcing and Building a Business
22:13 - Lessons on E-Commerce Distribution Growth
27:32 - Navigating Target Plus Seller Challenges
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome everybody to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast.
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I'm your host, jon Stojan.
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I've got my co-hosts, matt Atkins and Mike Kaufman, here today and we have another Brand Builder episode.
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If you're an Amazon seller or a D2C brand, you want to share your story on one of our Brand Builder episodes?
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You can apply at brandfortresshqcom backslash brand builder.
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Today our guest is Dina Karim, the founder of Good Deeds.
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D the founder of Good Deeds.
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Dina, welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you for having me, so I'm excited to talk to you.
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I've seen a little bit, you know, of the work that you've done, but I'm curious, just for folks that haven't heard your brand or you before, can you tell them a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got into e-commerce and how do you got into your brand specifically?
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Yeah for sure.
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So I had my first son in 2012.
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And about six or seven months after he was born, I just I was only 27.
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And I was like I just didn't feel healthy and I feel like I was too young to not feel that way and I went, I started cutting sugar out of my diet.
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I did very low carb, atkins, ish and then I delved in and found keto and I realized that I still miss having kind of like my treats.
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So I thought let me make it myself, because back then this was 2013, no one had anything.
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So I started doing research I'm a big researcher and I just made them myself and at 2014, my sister's like I would just make them for people.
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I was like what do you think?
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What do you think?
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And she made this very offhand comment.
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She goes these are so good, you should sell them.
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And the joke in my family is don't tell me anything because I'll already have it done by like yesterday.
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So I go okay.
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And she was like okay, I did some research and I realized doing ready to eat was going to well.
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I was I'm a perfectionist when it comes to this and I was agonizing should I use grass fed butter in the cookies or should I use coconut oil?
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And I was like you know what?
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I want them to make the decision and at that moment I said, let me do a mix.
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So I did a chocolate chip cookie mix as my as my first one.
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I couldn't find anyone who would be my co-packer because they wanted such large runs and I'm in New York so I can't actually do it in my apartment.
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I found one that was willing to do it, but I had to change the recipe to sunflower seed flour and it worked out because my son was two at the time and I was able to let the other moms try it because it was nut free, so I took it.
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Then I launched in 2015 of October.
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Two months later, I launched on Amazon, which at the time felt very scary because it's like you know, you think Amazon, this is like such a big thing and it kind of just took off from there.
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I reinvested in my company multiple times and every time I put the money back in I would just launch a new mix, and all the mixes are my formula.
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So it was very easy to kind of make new ones, because I was making them myself and I'd send it to my co-packer, who I've now been with for almost nine years.
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Okay, and what year did you say you launched on Amazon?
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December of 2015.
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Wow.
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So at that time, I mean, Amazon was not nearly as well known as it is today.
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What kind of inspired you to sell on Amazon in 2015?
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Because I used it so much I've always been, I mean as a precursor.
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It was very hard to even connect to the podcast because I can't connect my headphones to my computer, but I can be tech savvy at times.
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I used it all the time, and before that I was in digital marketing, so it felt like just something I wanted to try.
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It seemed overwhelming at first.
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I was like, let me try it.
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And I actually I launched in October.
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So I launched it there in December, which is when I found out I was pregnant with my second son and I was still working at my job.
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I was still doing digital marketing as a project manager and during this time I would just use the money I made to funnel into the company.
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I had no one giving me anything and at that time I was working on a brownie mix.
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And in May, a couple of months before my due date, they let me go a brownie mix.
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And in May, a couple months before my due date, they let me go.
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And so I was like, oh my god.
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So I was like, well, I have this brownie mix.
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Let me just put the last amount of like money I made put into this mix.
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I went in August 2nd to do my c-section August 3rd.
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I was in the hospital and my husband's like oh, here's your phone.
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And I looked and the brownie mix had hit number one for brownie mixes on Amazon.
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And I was like, ah, and he goes.
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You just had surgery.
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Like relax, like calm down, because the plan was, after I had my second, that I would try to find another marketing job just to fund good deeds until I could keep it going.
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But at that point he looked at me he goes, I will help you Because New York's expensive.
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He goes, I will help you, but let's give it a like this is your moment, give it everything you have.
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And then I never looked back from there.
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So that was August 2016.
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And it just it grew from there.
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So it was really very exciting.
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When you see like number one, like bestseller for Amazon, there's like no feeling like it.
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I have to be honest.
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No, that's amazing.
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Congratulations.
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Thank you.
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So I do have a question.
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You know, based on the notes that you said here and you kind of mentioned it a little bit there which was, you know, starting with, I think you mentioned like around $5,000, which you know, all three of us have.
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You know, either either have our own brands or have run our own brands before, especially when you're talking about e-commerce.
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$5,000 doesn't go a long ways, whether it's launch, and then even you know it's almost harder ones if you're successful in order to buy inventory and all that type of stuff.
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So I'm just curious, what sort of challenges did you face kind of in those early days as growing your business, when it came to the capital portion of it?
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You know I just bootstrapped a lot.
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I didn't pay myself in my companies.
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I started in 2015.
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I didn't pay myself for almost over two years I'd say two, two and a half years because I was just like, so focused on this, and I think that.
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But again, I'm lucky like I have to in the, in the sense that, no, I didn't get financing and no one was investing, but I had a supportive partner my husband, that you know and I had the two kids and all.
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Don't get me wrong, it was very hard having two kids in New York city, putting the I for about.
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For about two years, I was the one doing all the fulfillment as well, and it's sending the boxes to Amazon, which was, you know, apartment buildings do not like it when you have pallets coming in right now.
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They are not happy about it.
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I had some people in the building who were complaining and I was like, oh my God, but it was able that's what really.
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I was able to keep my costs down so low because fulfillment is so expensive.
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So what I would do is I would pack everything my son would like.
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He was a newborn, he was a baby, so I would like breastfeed him while I'm printing out the labels and he's asleep, and I would pack everything, I put it under the stroller, drop it off at the mail and then go pick up my four-year-old at the time, and I think that's really how I was able to do it.
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Not everyone has that luxury, but I also did have a cushion.
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I saved as much as I could when I was working because my digital marketing job was good.
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I was a contractor for them, so I had no like package or anything.
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It was like, okay, see you later, because everyone's like, oh, but you were pregnant, did you get?
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I was like, doesn't matter, when you're a contractor maybe you get paid really well per hour, but you get nothing if they let you go.
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So it was just kind of like what do I do with this?
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So it was hard, but I think the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway from it, was I was able to learn how to do everything and I realized what I was good at.
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So I kept those.
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And what I wasn't good at is what I learned eventually to outsource, because in the beginning you're very controlling.
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Because it's like it was my third kid.
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I was like no one knows how to do this like me, I think I didn't let anyone help me with my Instagram for almost five years and then my grandma passed away God rest her soul and I needed the person I had at the time had hired to help me a contractor and I very begrudgingly gave her the login.
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I was like, if anything doesn't look good.
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So I was like like this you know all this before iOS changes.
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I don't want to get into that, but yeah, so I went off on a tangent, but that's how I did it.
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That's great.
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Well, and I think the question Dina.
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So today I mean we all know this, as Amazon sellers, like in the current state, running into low inventory or stockouts is obviously a really huge deal.
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Back in the day, though, I started on Amazon in 2014.
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So I know that space and how it's changed since then till now, but back then it wasn't as huge, fortunately.
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I'm curious what your experience was in the category that you're in.
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How regularly did you experience stockouts because of you know, cash flow or whatever the reasons might have been, and how did you?
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How did that affect you in terms of, say, rankings and things like that, as compared to how it would affect you now?
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I'm just yeah, no, that's a good question.
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So back then, because I was just like it was such and I know you'll agree it's such a learning curve when you're doing this Because at first this is great, I'm making sales and you just don't know how to gauge.
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And again, buyers are also super fickle, so like I'll have amazing months and the next month I'm like, am I going to go out of business?
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Like I'm so confused, do you not like me anymore?
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It's like a lot.
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Back then it really was.
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I was just winging it as I was going on and whenever I had to buy.
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Sometimes I would then have to just take from my savings, because I initiated with the 5,000 and then I would sometimes just have to take from my savings just to keep it going.
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But I got lucky that because I didn't touch my money for any reason, I was able to just keep using the money that was coming in to buy the new stocks.
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Now the issue is back then when we would send inventory, it would get there fairly quickly and check in fairly quickly.
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Now it's taken sometimes up to six weeks and it can be literally in the same state and from where I'm shipping it from.
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So it makes me super anxious.
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So now and again I also launched a bakeware line to kind of complement the mixes and the sprinkles and the frosting and everything and that's added a whole new level of stockouts because I'm now shipping it from overseas and that's a whole new ballgame.
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And you have Amazon Global Logistics, which is its own kind of thing.
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So I'm still learning.
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It has hurt me because one of my products I have a brownie pan with dividers and it does very well and I love it, it's a great product.
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But it stocked out and then it finally came in.
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It was there, just it wasn't checked in.
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And when that happened the BSR went down.
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And not only that, because because with ads I was looking at it, I was like why are my a costs?
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Why is my a cost so high?
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I didn't even have stock for two, three weeks and you don't want to turn anything off, right, because then you're, it's just, it's a nightmare, so you pay for it and I think like I think that's the biggest thing that I'm learning and you're getting.
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I know we're all getting those emails now about you know you need to make sure you don't have low inventory levels like very, very stressful.
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Back then I remember the trick was just kind of closing a listing if you didn't have it.
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That's not really what's happening anymore, but that was a fun trick.
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For a while we enjoyed it.
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But right now it's just me now having to put in more money to make sure that I have so much stock just in case, especially for because I some of my items can be very seasonal.
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So it's just, it's like a sometimes.
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Here's the problem with Amazon you either have too much and then you pay storage and you don't want to do that, or you have too little and now you're going to get penalized.
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So it's it's.
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It's a very weird spot to be in right now.
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What I've done recently and I think this is what's helping is that I already have a separate warehouse for my inventory, because I also sell direct to consumer on my website.
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I think because I have that, I'm in a good spot that if I ever need to send something, I can send something.
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If I need to send anything back, then we're good.
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But if I'm ordering things from overseas, I don't have that.
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So it's now learning it all over again.
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But it's a nightmare.
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I'm not gonna lie to you.
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I really hate it.
00:11:52.227 --> 00:11:55.861
Well, I'm curious because I feel like you have an extra dimension there.
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One of the brands I used to have was in the CPG category, and when you're talking about, you know, food and beverage products, you also have an expiration date on it that you don't have with other products, and so I know.
00:12:07.803 --> 00:12:15.831
The challenge that we ran into and I'm curious if you have the same issue is that it seems that Amazon has not discovered first in, first out, or at least how to execute.
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I know, I know that was a huge frustration.
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I.
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I hate it.
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I've what I was able to do because this was a problem and you lose money Like I'm losing all the money you could have sold it.
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It was there.
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I would get messages like you have expired inventory.
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I was like that's impossible.
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I was low inventory.
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I sent new inventory.
00:12:34.985 --> 00:12:36.105
Why didn't you use it?
00:12:36.679 --> 00:12:47.812
What I did is I went and I lengthened my shelf life, so meaning that I went and you can do testing and like food testing and stuff, to be able to lengthen it.
00:12:47.812 --> 00:12:54.011
And that's what helped me, because before that my shelf life was only a year and it was very, very like so stressful.
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Now we're at 18 months and it gives me that cushion Especially.
00:12:58.123 --> 00:13:03.403
And then I've learned with my slower sellers where they sell, but not as much as like my top five.
00:13:03.403 --> 00:13:15.101
I really do let them get kind of low and I don't send anything new until I'm like I really have to and I'm usually sending it from my warehouse, so I know what the shelf life is.
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And then I try not to send newly made items, meaning like ones with different expiration dates, because I think that's where the problem was happening, like I would have two, three hundred units left and then I'm sending another five thousand and then they're.
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Just then they forgot about those three hundred.
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I'm like they still count, they're still good, and then later it's like we're gonna have to remove these.
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They're destroyed, they're this, they're that.
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I'm oh my God, just take it, I don't even care at this point, but lengthening my shelf life.
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It is very nice, though, having now the kind of baker items, pans and stuff where I don't have to worry about that.
00:13:50.645 --> 00:13:52.230
That's been nice.
00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:54.527
Can I dig in Dina?
00:13:54.527 --> 00:14:00.686
So I don't sell food items, and certainly not consumable food items.
00:14:00.686 --> 00:14:01.626
So this is a new.
00:14:01.626 --> 00:14:08.153
It's a new area for me, For other sellers who are in that category, listening to the podcast.
00:14:08.153 --> 00:14:10.096
What is that process?
00:14:10.096 --> 00:14:11.700
What does that process look like?
00:14:11.700 --> 00:14:13.924
To get that extended?
00:14:13.924 --> 00:14:19.466
In case they don't know that it's even possible or maybe don't know how to do it, I could see how it would be very useful.
00:14:19.466 --> 00:14:20.741
What was that process like?
00:14:21.143 --> 00:14:27.422
Oh, so there's like there are food labs and you can send them and you send them all the ingredients that are used.
00:14:27.422 --> 00:14:37.952
You'd have to work with your co-packer, I guess, because I the items that I sell, they're not white labeled, like they're my intellectual property, they're my formulas.
00:14:37.952 --> 00:14:40.073
So I work very closely with my co-packer.
00:14:40.073 --> 00:14:41.774
So it's a little bit different in that sense.
00:14:41.774 --> 00:14:49.118
But if someone was working with maybe like a white label food company and they're putting their name on it, they always those what those companies have.
00:14:49.118 --> 00:14:51.846
They reached out to me before because I was so curious about it.
00:14:51.846 --> 00:14:55.764
I didn't use it because I thought my mixes were better, my formulas were better.
00:14:55.764 --> 00:15:13.912
But you know I digress, they have internal labs in those and they will do it for a cost, but they will do it and so it's basically just called shelf life extension and it's almost like an experiment and then they can tell you and then what they do is they'll go based on the ingredients.
00:15:13.912 --> 00:15:28.462
So some ingredients obviously will become rancid faster and you have to be careful, like some, like a couple of my mixes, have coconut flour, which is fine, but when I was shipping to like the caribbean, the bags would inflate with the coconut because of the humidity.
00:15:28.965 --> 00:15:56.083
So it's just I implore people who have food items, if they didn't make them themselves, like they didn't actually create it and know because I know how every ingredient works, I implore them to actually research how it does, because it will save you a lot of money in the long run, because I've I've seen people especially competitors that I know are some of them have like very, very closely copied me and then they'll have issues.
00:15:56.083 --> 00:16:02.808
Maybe something leaks, maybe this that you have to know what you're trying, because there's just like every ingredient is so different.
00:16:02.808 --> 00:16:03.765
If you just trust.
00:16:03.765 --> 00:16:07.806
It's kind of like what I said in the beginning when I first started you want to know how to do everything.
00:16:07.806 --> 00:16:13.071
You don't have to do it well, just know how to do everything so that you know which questions to ask.
00:16:13.071 --> 00:16:14.643
I think that's the biggest thing.
00:16:16.568 --> 00:16:23.572
So it sounds like oh, I'm sorry, you know, one of the things that you mentioned was outsourcing.
00:16:23.572 --> 00:16:25.741
We've talked about a lot of that.
00:16:25.741 --> 00:16:29.152
We actually had a full episode on what it was like to start outsourcing.
00:16:29.152 --> 00:16:35.628
The other thing that I saw was the difficulty that you had in outsourcing, and that was part of the discussion that we've had.
00:16:35.628 --> 00:16:39.230
We all had a hard time letting go of certain things in our business.
00:16:39.230 --> 00:16:46.336
What kind of walk me through.
00:16:46.336 --> 00:16:48.268
What were the first things that you just decided to outsource in your business and did that change, kind of, over time?
00:16:48.268 --> 00:16:49.905
You realize that maybe you outsource something that you didn't want to outsource, that you do internally.
00:16:49.905 --> 00:16:51.650
Now what is what did outsourcing look like for you?
00:16:51.679 --> 00:17:00.246
Yeah, in the beginning it was customer service because I was just I, just you know, I mean I love my customers and I became friends with so much like so many of them.
00:17:00.246 --> 00:17:01.288
I keep in touch.
00:17:01.288 --> 00:17:04.509
Some of them send me like holiday cards, I mean, like it's really nice.
00:17:04.509 --> 00:17:06.392
So I'm very close to my community.
00:17:06.392 --> 00:17:15.903
But I needed to give that one away because it was just that's when things started to pick up and I had two kids under four and I was just like I can't, I did that I.
00:17:16.335 --> 00:17:20.426
And then I outsourced, eventually, fulfillment to like actually having a fulfillment center.
00:17:20.426 --> 00:17:26.675
And that was the biggest blessing and curse, because from then I had to figure out.
00:17:26.675 --> 00:17:29.682
I'm now on my like sixth fulfillment center.
00:17:29.682 --> 00:17:34.219
It's just it's a and you know right, like they give you something.
00:17:34.219 --> 00:17:37.644
And then you get there and they're like well, there's this fee and this fee and this fee and this fee.
00:17:37.644 --> 00:17:47.465
And then you know you, you try to work around it, like there's the time we're putting on the asin labels for amazon, the amazon is only charging 30 cents and I was like, okay, so what's more?
00:17:47.465 --> 00:17:49.114
Like I would just do kind of a cost.
00:17:49.114 --> 00:17:50.876
Like okay, should I just let the warehouse do it?
00:17:50.876 --> 00:17:53.200
Should I send it from the co-packer.
00:17:53.200 --> 00:17:54.041
Let me figure this out.
00:17:54.041 --> 00:18:06.895
Then they increased it to it was, I think, january of 2023, to 55 cents an item, and I was like that's a huge chunk when I'm selling something for $14 and you're taking 55 cents and it hasn't even landed yet.
00:18:06.895 --> 00:18:08.359
And so I was like no, no, no.
00:18:08.359 --> 00:18:17.145
So I need to move, and I think the biggest advice for fulfillment centers is finding someone who does know how to do Amazon and making sure they're not actually charging you more than Amazon would charge you.
00:18:17.145 --> 00:18:20.157
That's I just feel like people don't look at the fees.
00:18:20.157 --> 00:18:21.161
They're just trying to send stuff.
00:18:21.161 --> 00:18:22.285
I'm like, please look at the fees.
00:18:22.285 --> 00:18:23.596
It adds up so fast.
00:18:23.596 --> 00:18:25.720
So I outsourced that and it was.
00:18:25.720 --> 00:18:26.180
It was good.
00:18:26.180 --> 00:18:29.325
I mean that one yeah, you have to, but it took a long time to find it.
00:18:29.325 --> 00:18:42.887
I have a good place now who's very familiar with Amazon, which is great and with Walmart, because I have started selling on Walmart fulfillment services, which is almost identical FBA.
00:18:42.887 --> 00:18:44.479
They don't have such a great built-out system.
00:18:44.479 --> 00:18:45.865
So I outsourced that.
00:18:45.945 --> 00:18:50.843
I outsourced social media when things were getting really big, and I think that's the one I would regret.
00:18:50.843 --> 00:18:58.505
It was overpriced for what it was, to be honest, and I was doing it myself and I was editing and I was like correcting and they would send me what they're going to post.
00:18:58.505 --> 00:18:59.817
I'm like I just should do it myself.
00:18:59.817 --> 00:19:06.857
I think I was anyway and I think that's one thing I would take back and I did, but that's one thing that I thought was not worth it at all.
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