A Daily Curation of the Web's Best Content for Startups
Interview with Cathryn Lavery of BestSelf
“Cathryn Lavery is the Founder & CEO of BestSelf. Since 2013 she’s designed, launched and sold over $32 Million in consumer products.”
The interview covers:
► Designing and selling print posters as a side hustle.
► Crowdfunding on Kickstarter to presell products.
► The importance of choosing a product with repeat purchases.
► The difficulties of selling products from China.
► Opportunities for selling locally made products.
The Hustle created a Google spreadsheet of the top 1000 Shopify stores analyzing them by industry, tools they use, and SEO stats (referring domains, backlinks, and domain authority). There is some valuable information here if you are interested in creating an online store and what SEO effort would be required to compete against the established companies. Browse through the descriptions to see what is selling well online. Maybe you’ll discover a new opportunity.
The NotBoring newsletter has a comprehensive analysis of online retail. It’s easier than ever to sell online, but more competitive to attract customers. While DTC (Direct to Consumer) companies battle it out online, companies like Shopify and Amazon are the big winners. “Now that nearly every piece of the value chain has become modularized, the battle has concentrated in one place: marketing, via paid acquisition and brand, the only moat for the vast majority of brands.”
Mattress company, Casper is losing $349 for every mattress they sell. They have no choice to spend money to acquire customers. “Ultimately, when everyone is armed with the same tools, differentiation, brand, and audience/community matter for DTC brands more than ever.”
Business Opportunity: In highly competitive, oversaturated markets, curation becomes more important. Chase Reeves bag reviews from yesterday’s newsletter is a great example.