The story you’re about to read is another one of thousands proving you don’t need anything special to succeed in dropshipping and e-commerce.
YOU JUST HAVE TO START!
Sometimes it’s based on luck, sometimes on finding the right moment, and sometimes on countless other external factors. But, it’s ALWAYS based on starting.
This is the story of a random kid making more money than most Americans can only dream about with his Shopify store. His name is Steven Guo. He made over $40k in his first month on Shopify selling dates. DATES! The fruit. Yes.
A Bit About The Business
The Shopify e-commerce business we’re about to dive deep into is called Medjool Days. They sell fresh dates.
They’re able to sell so many dates because they highlight the main benefit so well, which is fresh dates that are not overripe or re-packaged. Their dates are all farmed in the USA and are sold perfectly ripe.
It’s also mentioned that these dates are never preserved or hydrated. This is something people who want quality food pay a lot of attention to. Having said that, Steven found a demand and supplied it.
According to Steven, the brand did $40k in its first month. In the second month, this number grew up to $84k. That’s a lot of money just from selling dates. It’s now a 7-figure business.
Below, we’ll go into more detail regarding the entire process, including how it started, marketing strategies, branding, and everything else that the founder had to share.
How It Started
Steven says that he got the idea to sell fresh dates online after trying a tasty date for the first time.
Well, it was actually after he tried one and then wanted some more after a few days. He went to the market, bought some, and found out that those frozen dates weren’t nearly as delicious as the fresh ones.
Steven had actually sold many other products online before this, often using the dropshipping business model to make lots of money.
This idea of selling such a perishable product as dates seemed impractical when speaking from a business perspective.
However, he decided to go with his gut and try selling fresh California dates just like the ones in Becky’s yard.
They Tested the Idea on eBay and Facebook Marketplace
Before creating the Shopify store and seeing this huge success, Steven and Becky created a simple listing on eBay and Facebook marketplace and wanted to see if there would be any interest in this.
There was no fancy marketing or ads during this stage. It was only the listings and one week of waiting.
After a week, the result was they completely sold out and were $2k in profit.
This is enough proof and validation for most businesses to decide to scale. And that’s exactly what Steven did.
The Next Step – Finding a Supplier and Selling Online
Read this section carefully and try to understand the simple information as it is. There is no hidden knowledge here. Most of the time, in this business and many others, the path to success is not complicated.
Knocking on Farmers’ Doors
This entrepreneur now knew that people loved to buy fresh dates online. But, he needed to find a way to get many more dates of the same quality.
The first idea that came to Steven’s mind was to drive to Coachella Valley and knock on farmer’s doors, asking them if he could sell their dates online. He even skipped class for an entire week to do this.
As you might expect, almost everyone that Steven reached out to declined his offer. Some cases were even more dramatic where threats to call the authorities were made if he didn’t get off their property.
Before taking the NO, Steven did something very smart… He asked for referrals, somebody they might know who would be interested in this. Believe it or not, he got a few phone numbers.
One of those phone numbers belonged to someone who was very interested in this idea. This farmer was willing to work with them and accepted Steven’s offer, to supply them with dates as long as they kept selling.
Shopify to the Rescue
The next thing Steven did was build a very simple Shopify store in just one day. But to be honest, he had built other Shopify stores in the past. Even though this one was very simple, he still knew what he was doing.
In this case, you can save some time and take advantage of programs where you get an AI-built Shopify store in a day for free. Services like this really don’t charge you anything. They do everything for you and then they make money from affiliate deals with Shopify. Trust me. It’s completely free for you to get a custom-built store this way.
In any case, let’s move on.
After building the store, Becky took a really simple and clean picture of one of their dates. The date was cut open to show how a fresh date really looks. Juicy and colorful.
With just this simple Shopify store and an even simpler image, Steven made a Facebook ad and launched it.
Steven said, “The best part is that customers kept coming back for more. For every dollar I spend to acquire a customer, I get $11 back after 3 years. We grow organically through word of mouth. Tens of thousands of customers later, I am the proud owner of a 7 figure date brand.”
Their returning customer rate was 42%.
Final Thoughts
Steven’s last words and a piece of advice from this story were the following:
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