Howdy, my friend.
Today I’m going to show you brands that made it big. Like big-time big.
But I don’t want you to focus on where they are now and what they do now. I want to travel back in time with you and take a look at their humble beginnings.
If you want to understand what it takes to go from nothing to something, you gotta look at what they did when they had nothing.
The brands I’m going to show you aren't dropshipping. But they all sell dropshippable products. No food and beverages, no luxury, no big brands resale.
You’ll notice one thing they all have one thing in common:
They start small and ugly.
The early stores are just built for proof of concept. None of the big brands you know started out as they look like now. In early days, where there’s no money and no team, no one can afford an expensive designer or conversion rate optimization agency. You’ll have to go with what you think is enough. (And trust me, enough is less than you might think).
So yes, this email is your permission to start small and ugly.
Personal Note
I don’t want to overload this email. But I prepared a little free bonus for you; if you liked this topic and want to see full-page before/after screenshots of the mentioned ecommerce brands, you can click here. You’ll also get 2 more brands.
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Here we go:
Brand: Blendjet
$31 million in annual revenue is only from their US online store.
Additionally they have region-based stores in Australia, Europe, and Asia. Add another few million from offline sales and you’ll have a gigantic blender brand.
First website design:
Stock images, very different positioning (busy moms), cheap product images and copy that’s far from great. The early Blendjet website was a lot, but not perfect.
Even the product itself was only available in five different colors. Not even fancy ones.
Current website design:
After years of development, the website turned into an amazing piece of conversion-focused art.
The product is now in its second iteration and is available in hundreds of variations. They even collaborated with Disney, Venus Williams, and Nickelodeon.
But, as you now know… they didn’t start that way. They built their way up.
Brand: Unique Vintage
$4.5 million in monthly revenue. Multiplying by 12 (months) and you’ll have an annual revenue of $50+ million. That’s not too shabby.
You’ll be surprised how it all started.
First website design:
Ok, wow.
I think we can all agree that this isn’t the website of a fashion brand making more than $50,000,000 in annual revenue. It was their first version. Something to begin with. And that was the most important part.
Current website design:
What a glow up!
They went from “I don’t even know how to describe this” to a modern, sales focused store design. They went through hundreds of design iterations throughout the years and continue to do so. All because they understand the power of change.
Brand: Diff Eyewear
$6 million in monthly sales in a so-called saturated market is crazy.
Hint: there are no saturated markets.
First website design:
This website design could be the design of a dropshipper. I bet you can even see yourself creating this store.
The difference to dropshippers? How they treat their business. They knew the first website was nothing more than a necessary step. You just have to go through it.
Current website design:
Years of continuous change and iteration turned them into the ecommerce giant they are today.
Their brand is now much more mature and confident. But, again, that’s not how you start.
Multi-million dollar brands aren't perfect. You've seen this now.
They all started small and ugly.
Can you start small and ugly?
