A Profitable E-commerce Brand Built for Acquisition

All right, I'm here with Charles who recently got acquired on acquire.com. We can't mention the company due to confidentiality, but Charles, how you doing today?

Yeah, very good. Excited to be on here with you, Andrew.

Me too. I'm excited to hear your story and dive into it. But before we do that, do you want to just give a brief introduction of yourself for those that may not know you? Yeah.

So my name is Charles. I'm from Ireland and currently living in Barcelona, and I have a a bit of a sports background, so I started an e-com brand around my problem that I had through a rugby injury, and I played around with it for a year or two, and then I exited on Acquire.

Nice. Tell me more about the product or the business, whatever you're comfortable sharing. What did it do? Who was the customer? What problem did it solve?

Yeah, so essentially the— I'm sure you've heard of the TENS devices.

I haven't, no.

Yeah, so I actually copied a big competitor. It's the market leader. It's a company called BlueTents. And I had to get this product once I got ACL surgery on my knee. So I played rugby back in the day and my knee went the other way, so I had to get a new ligament in place.

Oh.

Yeah, yeah. And basically what they had to do with the surgery was they had to like, take out some strains of muscle from my thigh and tie it back up. So, I needed a TENS device to basically grow the muscle back properly. But, the issue with the TENS device that I used from BlueTENS, the company, was there were so many wires everywhere and it was really clunky. So, I came up with a concept. I just wanted to use a product without loads of wires that weren't getting tangled up all the time. So, I eventually found a product that was already out in the market. I started selling it directly towards athletes that maybe had a similar issue to me.

Oh, wow. What a story. I love that. You had an experience you went through and it sounds like it might have been a little painful or inconvenient and you made the best of it, built a business out of it. How did you— I don't know much about e-commerce like you do given you've been in the space and you've been successful with it, but you have this idea, where do you go from there? Do you start emailing manufacturers in China? What's step 1 when you build something like this? Yeah.

Actually, so I've been in e-commerce for a couple of years now, and I got the idea because I was working at a fintech company previously, a company called Clearco. I'm not too sure if you know it. It's revenue-based.

Yeah, very familiar with them. Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah. So I was actually the first of 5 hires at Clearco in Europe.

Oh damn.

And I loved it. It was unbelievable. So essentially my job is just funding e-com brands and It was like you're selling money, you know? So yeah, no, it was amazing. It really opened my eyes to what was actually possible with e-com. I remember one of the earlier calls, it was two younger lads from Ireland, an 18 and 19-year-old. They started a brand 8 months previous and they were doing like €2 million a month. And I was on call with them and their fractional CFO. And I just remember seeing all this and They were looking for like over 600K for an inventory loan. It's just these two young lads on the call, and I was like, "What? How is this possible?" So anyway, after that, I got speaking with the Fractional CFO. I told him that I wanted to start my own brand in the future, and Clearco actually fell through in Europe. And then he actually, he reached out to me, and he saw, I saw Clearco collapsed, I just acquired a brand, do you want to come on board to be an e-com manager? So yeah, so it was deadly. So I got to start off by actually managing a brand that was already doing well. It was a sports brand called Toik Sports. It was good, it was a great experience, but the brand's no longer active right now. But yeah, anyway, so back to your question, I would, because of all that experience, I was, so I tried dropshipping and I was speaking to a lot of suppliers all the time, so I've got a couple of, suppliers that sometimes call me their best friend on WhatsApp. And yeah, so I just, what I would do is actually send them an idea and they'd be like, yeah, we have this product. So that's what I do. Private suppliers, essentially.

Nice. So you get the product. What was the part after that? Do you set up a Shopify store? You start marketing it?

Yeah. So straight to Shopify, create a brand on Instagram and Facebook. So, you know, have an actual brand voice and then really important to actually, you know, lock in on a customer avatar as well because there's massive competitors everywhere. And if you're a new brand, you need to be selling to one specific customer avatar, a specific person. So I pretty much was selling to myself. So that was an easy one with this brand. What would you say?

Like recently injured? Does your knee hurt? Try this product, like, literally. Nice.

Yeah, literally straight, like, have you got ACL, like, athletes ACL surgery? I also tried different angles, like recovery after gym sessions. I know that there's loads of other brands that use it as a— or use similar products as a type of, like, it'll give you a six-pack. Because I see electrotherapy. So yeah, it's interesting how you angle it. I also actually saw a— anyway, I saw another brand angled towards horse owners. So they were putting the product on horses as therapy. Yeah.

Nice. I mean, markets are big. There's use cases all over the place. But it sounds like, you know, you had happy customers, the brand was doing well. What made you ultimately decide to sell the business?

Yeah, so I actually, so I was selling that for a while and the thing, I've had a couple of different stores over the years and I've learned a lot from each store. And with this one, I found out that I was getting no repeat customers. So I'm selling one product and they don't need, like the product's really good quality, they don't need it again, there's nothing to upsell. So that was a big issue because like it was the cost of acquiring a customer It was good. I scaled up and then I was like, okay, I want repeat customers. So that's why I actually decided to sell it on. So I know loads of brands do really well with just one product and being able to sell it. But in this case, it's a bit more of a higher ticket item. And yeah, I kind of had my eyes set on a couple of different brands. So I'm building a few things out now at the moment.

Nice. What were your expectations with Acquire? You listed your brand. What did you expect in the first week and what did it actually look like?

Yeah, so I actually sold on Acquire before a couple of years ago. So I sold my first brand on Acquire. And it's funny because when I did, I tested Acquire and Flippa and I much preferred Acquire, just the whole user face. And yeah, I think it's just super easy to communicate with the buyers. So I found that really helpful because you've got like the pipeline, the buyer pipeline that you can throw everyone into. And I've definitely found out that, you know, a big part of all of this is like, I definitely wouldn't have sold any of the brands if I wasn't gone sales mode, you know, like chasing up on all the buyers because it takes a while. So yeah.

100%. I think a lot of founders are surprised when we tell them that, like, you need to reach out to buyers, you need to follow follow up with them, you need to update them on new things that are happening within the business or new materials that are available. Was there anything specific you did during the sales process that was super helpful, like a specific reach out or just following up with everybody?

[Speaker:JOHN_DODSON] Yeah, I was constantly following up. I had, so there was a buyer before the buyer that actually purchased. And she was like, yeah, no, we're, I'm 100% going for this. "Let's do it." And then she just ghosted me. She was just gone. And then this new buyer came in and he said it in word early days. He was just like, "Yeah, let's do this. I want to get you paid, get this sorted." And yeah, then I just had to kind of keep chasing up on LinkedIn and on WhatsApp. So there was a lot going on over the past couple of months. But no, it went through, which is great. That's what it takes.

Yeah, that's what it takes. You got to follow up. You got to reach out to buyers. You have to be active.

100%.

How long did the whole process take from start to finish?

I think I listed in December and then properly sold it in February.

Nice. That's amazing.

Yeah.

What was the hardest part during the whole process? Was it due diligence? Was it just securing that initial buyer?

I suppose because I'm doing it all myself right now, it was just kind of gathering all of the financials and everything, and just getting all the information nice and clear for them. But then once I did that, I actually set up like a nice handover doc because I just wanted it to be seamless for them. So I had like everything perfectly for them. And it was a nice seamless process because the one that I sold a couple of years ago, I remember I just kind of handed over keys and I was like customer support. They kept on asking me. They actually didn't know, the first one didn't know how to run an e-com brand. So I felt like I was kind of coaching them at that stage as well. Yeah.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] The transition doc is huge. That can be a good way to secure buyers as well, because you're specifically outlining like what they're buying, what's going to happen when they transfer over the funds, step by step, so they can easily wrap their head around everything. Because there's so many moving parts to every business. So I think that was super smart.

Yeah. Yeah. Cheers.

What about the buyer that you sold to stood out? Was it just the overall offer? Was it their demeanor? Was it anything in particular?

It's actually funny because I got on a call with the buyer pretty early, and it was like he was an older American version of me. He had a sports background as well. So we had a good chat. No, he's a lovely lad. And he's got like a big company that helps loads of e-com brands and it's like infused with AI. So yeah, no, I just actually just got on with the buyer. He's a nice lad with a sports background. So it was easy to get on with him. Nice.

If you were talking to another founder and they were looking for advice to sell, what do you think a few pieces of advice you'd give them?

I would say you definitely need to kind of treat it like a bit of a sales cycle. Once you've listed it, reach out to all the interested buyers because there's going to be a lot of people that come in and express interest, but you just need to kind of follow up on them. And yeah, just keep the communication open and then you'll get the deal over the line.

Nice. I completely agree with that. You got to run a sales process, you got to follow up, you got to reach out to buyers. All that is super important. Did you do anything to celebrate when the deal closed? Did you go out to a nice dinner? Did you do anything at all?

Yeah, well, I'm actually going on a big van trip with my girlfriend tomorrow. So we rented a van, we're going up the coast of Spain and we're going to dip into France as well.

All right on.

Yeah, so that's going to be exciting.

Right on, that's awesome. What's next for you? What are you doing next?

Yeah, so I actually have a couple of partners at the moment. So I'm like an e-com growth partner. A couple of supplement brands that we have brought over from old WordPress websites and we're getting them scaled up on Shopify with Meta ads speaking directly to the specific customer avatar. But other than that, I want to continue building out e-com brands because I've seen what can happen and I want to just kind of level up each time with each brand. But I actually have decided that the brands that I build from here on out, I'm going to hold onto them for a little bit longer and try to scale them up a bit higher before exiting because I feel like I might have exited a little bit early on some of them, but at the same time, I learned so much through all of it.

Right on. Well, Charles, hopefully I'll have you back on here with another acquisition. Maybe it'll even be bigger next time. Yeah, right on. And people want to follow you online and hear more about your story, where can they find you?

You can probably get me on LinkedIn, or I'm maybe booting up a bit of a YouTube channel, Kenny Ecom. That's about it. Not too much, not too visible online.

All right. I'll put that in the show notes. Charles, congrats again on the acquisition. And again, hope I see you on here again.

Appreciate it, Andrew. Cheers.