A Chat with 7 Figure Amazon Seller Michele Venton

Richard Morgan
June 7, 2019

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Michele Venton running her business from Home with the family and now a 7 figure Amazon seller talks through her journey and how she’s gone from 1m to 5m and the path to 10m, the move from a team of VAs to recruit herself in the shape of other Mums around the world and how processes and unified communications and tools helped.

Had a previous retail business with 30 staff and large overheads – while just having a baby
Sold that business breaking even and learning so much
Loved running own business but did not fancy retail or dealing with so many staff all the time
Decided to start selling on-line
Dream of manufacturing and selling women’s dresses
Manufactured in East London and fabric from all over the world
Big challenge in getting traffic to own website and challenges on traffic to website

Moved into Amazon

Moved to Amazon and was on page 200 – why no sales?
Bumped into ASM course and threw herself into it
Saw huge opportunity in Amazon
Learned not to do clothing on Amazon quickly – returns, refunds, sizes, variations – as a new person
Stopped doing the dresses and moved into other products

ASM 2015 – Number 5

Did the course, visited Vegas and got fully motivated
Not looked back since

Children’s Market

Now in toys and games with a little in beauty and clothing
Focus is on children as a target market
After ASM tried loads of products – some flew, others flopped
Learnt what worked on Amazon and what doesn’t
Got fed up of selling random stuff on Amazon and wanted to build a brand
Trial and error it organically came to Michele
Two years ago launched the new brand
Cleared the decks and dropped profitable ASINs
Grown organically and successful ever since two years ago

Chatbots Success

Once brand was created
Strong view on target market, vision and core concept
Had a good following on Facebook – tripped over manychat over 2 years ago
Learnt it in a week and really quickly appreciated how fundamental it was to have own following off Amazon
Knew instantly this was a key thing to bring on
Realised after 6 months that had to outsource and met Michele Barnum-Smith and worked closely together on flows

Childrens Niche Sessions

Strong product keywords
Lots of browsing in this market
Conversions average 20%
Gets easier the more brand presence you have on browsing keywords
Conversion increase in more confidence and visibility in the brand

Hitting One Million mark

How tough was it
Never been focussed on the money
The first two years the accountants did it all and not focused on that at all
Just growing the brand, images, social following
Achieving 1st Million was no party and didn’t celebrate it
Biggest benchmarks are how many SKUs, ranking, conversion rates
Of course, been great to have security of going from 1M to 5M and now a 7 figure Amazon seller due to hit 8-figures by end of 2019

Scaling Up

Having access to Capital is the biggest hurdle
You need to have access to outside capital from some source
Having the processes nad procedures in place to get from 1m to 5m
To be able to put processes in place takes a lot of time out of your day
Have to become a HR manager to make it happen
Access to capital and building the team around you

Building the Team

Not using a traditional VA team
Using more local Mums in the team
When didn’t have the money used lower cost VAs to deliver
Believe you get what you pay for and as a 7 figure Amazon Seller I need this model
Having a team as close as you can – on-line conf calls is great but face to face is something else and needed at the level we’re at
Needed people who we can rely on to stay as a 7 figure Amazon Seller
Been a Mum at Home and with young kids – needed flexible hours and a job to do from Home
So wanted to recruit myself as I understand what’s needed and how I want to work
Put out an ad for Marketing Managers to cover the various market places in UK, Spain and Italy
Way of finding them was via a post on Facebook that gets shared by other Mums
So many skilled Mum’s that just want 4-5 hours a day to work and happy to compromise
They love the work and want it and do a great job

Meetings Structure

Two Managers live in south of Spain
Go over and travel to meet them face to face
Use Slack for internal
Use Clickup used to be on Trello
All work on-line on the same platform
Weekly meetings as a whole and daily meetings with the individuals

Goals as a 7 Figure Amazon Seller

Certainly selling and exit is on the radar
Got Q4 coming around and deposits going down next month
Reason would sell is the capital need growing and risk increasing the bigger you get
Taking it as far as you can and then selling it