Let's talk about what it's actually like. selling products into large retailers. And the first thing that I want to say is that I wasn't ready. I didn't have the supply chain. I wasn't organized enough. I didn't, have enough attention to detail. I didn't speak the language, I didn't have the money, there were so many things working against me. As a result of that, I no longer have a relationship with Home Shopping Network and Joann's. I messed it up. Why though?
Well, There's a couple weird things with retailers that I didn't expect. Mainly the payment terms, the supply chain requirements, the manpower, and the new skills that I needed to learn. Let me give you an example. When we send product to Michaels, we have to invoice them using an EDI. Which is, I think, an electronic data interchange. I'm not sure. Don't quote me on that abbreviation. It's basically a software that communicates with them. And after we ship to them, we have to invoice.
And then after we invoice them, we don't get paid for a hundred and twenty days. We have net 120 terms. That's a long time. I'm literally giving them a loan for 120 days. And then, they won't pay us the full amount. They never do. No one ever does. Because of chargebacks. Which is actually how they make a majority of their profit. Chargebacks add directly to their bottom line. Oh. And they are brutal. That's pretty cool. And we'll talk about those in a minute.
So let's talk about some of the things that I did right and some of the things that I did wrong. So you can learn from my mistakes. Just so we're clear, there's different tiers of retailers, tier one, tier two, tier three, et cetera. And I don't know the exact breakdown for each or the criteria. I just know that your largest stores are tier one , Walmart, Target. Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Costco, like these are all tier one retailers.
Obviously they're going to do things differently than the mom and pop shop down the street who orders products from you 10 at a time. I just want to make that distinction really quick. So as we're talking about this, you can understand what tier I'm referencing. Okay. I just threw a lot of words at you. Chargebacks, Net 120, EDI. These are all things that I had to learn. Because I didn't speak the language when I first started working with retailers.
Let's walk it backwards now so that I can give you the full scope of what I went through and what I've experienced and how I got into retail stores and how I managed it. And most importantly, how I messed up some of those relationships. Hopefully by the end of this podcast, you'll have an idea of what's required of you to sell into retail stores. In 2019, I got a Facebook message from somebody and they said, Hey Evan, I've been seeing your ads. Are you in Michaels? I was like, No, I'm not.
Do you want to be? And I'm like, Oh my gosh, yes, I would love that. Retail's like the holy grail of, of product selling. Like, yes, of course. I mean, just so you're aware, only 30 percent of all transactions happen on the internet. The rest happen in stores. Retail stores. Mom and pop shops, physical locations. That's where most transactions still happen. So if you think about us selling products on the internet online, we're only tapping into about 30 percent of the available pool of people.
When you add retail into the mix, you increase that number significantly. You really do. I didn't know this at the time, but I'm like, I just wanted the clout. I just wanted to say I was in retail stores. I'm like, it's like a badge of honor. It's a stamp of approval. It's social proof. And I'm like, yes, that sounds amazing. So she set up a call with the buyer and they got the paperwork filled out. And that's when the rubber really met the road.
I'm filling out this paperwork, these spreadsheets and punching in MOQs and weights and dimensions, and, then I have to go get, like, testing done, and, get compliant and change the words on my packaging to be both French and English translations, and I have to follow this right directions in here, and I have to do this, like, there's This It was so much. I was so confused. So I filled out the spreadsheet and got it done.
The person who introduced me to the Michaels buyer got 5 percent of the net sales that we brought in from the retailer. And I just kind of was thrown into it. So the first retailer I ever really worked with was Michaels. Michaels. And I'm lucky we still get to work with them because I made so many mistakes. I mean, just in 2020 alone, I shipped so many orders late. And I'm lucky they didn't, uh, pull us off the shelves. Learning. Learning, right?
, that's when I learned how important it is to follow the rules and do things by the book according to their guidelines. Because of chargebacks. But don't worry, we'll get into that in a moment. We'll So I fill out all this paperwork, I get set up, get the items set up for Michaels and they start sending in POs. And I'm like, okay, well, how do I get these purchase orders? Like, what needs to be true? And they're like, oh, just connect it to your EDI. And I'm like, what does that mean?
Well, apparently there's companies out there that build software so that your software can talk to their software. Pretty much what an EDI is. The EDI that I use is SPS Commerce. I'm not a big fan of them. Um, I, it's a necessary evil. I have to use them. If I didn't have to use them, I wouldn't. But, they just, yeah, they just didn't treat me very well in the past. there was a lot of opportunity for them to just kind of like, you know, Hook me up. Help me out a little bit on this.
Like I legitimately made a mistake. I checked the wrong box and I got charged an extra 600 bucks and, , they wouldn't work with me at all on it. And they were frankly, um, kind of douchey about it. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to pay you, but never again am I going to try and build on this relationship and do more with you. So anyways, and you know, I'm at fault there too, but I just didn't like how they handled it and how they go about doing business.
God, they're just in that nickel and dime game, you know what I mean? Enough about that. So they're like, okay, you got to send us the POs, get connected to , an EDI. And then before things ship out, you'll send an advanced ship notice. But after things have been received, you can send us an invoice through the EDI system. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like, uh, I gotta figure that out. Much more challenging than I thought, much more challenging. So much more challenging.
I had to spend so much time on the phone with people getting all this data set up. And I'm somebody who's like built hundreds of computers. I built Ethereum mining rigs. I've built my own gaming PCs. Like, I understand hardware and software. And for some reason, this shit was just so hard. And a big part of that was because I didn't speak the language. I didn't know the words that they were using.
So I get the EDI set up and we're getting ready to ship our first order and I'm getting everything packed up and I'm like, Oh my gosh, we need to get testing completed. They won't accept any of our items unless we've gone through testing process. And I'm like, what does that mean? Well, apparently there are third party laboratories that you have to pay to look at your product and make sure it's compliant with Michael's standards. Right?
They'll check the translations of French and English, they'll check the placements, the font sizes, they want to make sure everything's exact and you're not favoring one language over another. They also want to check for any Prop 65 chemicals, any cancer causing stuff. They want to go through your recipes, your formula, they want to know what's in it, and everything. And you have to provide all this stuff to a laboratory, and then that laboratory has to certify you.
And then you have to redo that certification every single year for every product that you sell. It was a thousand dollars to get this done. And it took a really long time, and it was really difficult. Really difficult because the systems that they use are archaic. They're like dinosaur 1990. Logins and systems. It's weird. They barely work. And I had to like basically stumble through this. But eventually we got it done. I got my testing certificate.
I uploaded it and then I was able to ship to Michael's. So I did, we put everything together, we shipped to them and then I got hit with a bunch of chargebacks. What's a chargeback? It's when Michael's pays you, but they keep some of it. Yeah, they just keep some of the money that they owe you because you quote unquote made a mistake. What's a mistake?
Anything, you could ship late, your sticker font size could be wrong, you could have the shipment arrive on a different day than when you stated, you could not invoice in the right amount of time, you could have missing items, you could have too many items, you could ship to the wrong location, there's so many things. In fact, there is a 272 page manual that I had to learn and follow so I could understand all the rules and regulations.
In dealing with these retailers so I could avoid chargebacks. You see, they want you to make mistakes. It's part of their business model. They want the people that sell them products to make mistakes so they can charge them back and get an extra 10 percent for the bottom line, because that's really what it comes down to. Of the people that I've talked to my colleagues and other people that sell into retailers. I found that chargebacks are around 10%. So they're going to find something.
And if they don't find something, they're going to dig and they're going to look for it. And yeah, you can fight the chargebacks and you can show them proof and all that stuff. It just takes time and energy and effort. so there have been some times where there's been no chargebacks and we've been paid the full amount, but it's taken a lot of effort to get the existing chargebacks off our, our invoices. that's how chargebacks work.
If you don't follow the rules, they're going to take more money, your money. Even after you've loaned it to him for 120 days. It's crazy. And that's probably one of the hardest parts of retail is following all these little tiny rules because you've got to have your stickers, you know, an inch and a quarter away from the edge of the box on two sides and they can exceed these dimensions and the inner packs and the warehouse packs, they all have to have enough space in them.
Like they can't have extra space if there's more than a half an inch charge back. If the boxes aren't the right strength and you know, stress tests and crush tests, charge back. There's so many things. And so I had to comb through this manual and I just had to read it and read it. And it was so boring and it was so dry. And I'm just like, this is the worst, but I learned. And piece by piece, I slowly put things together, got the right boxes. And then I had to learn how to pack them out.
You know, when you send stuff into Amazon, you just send them the products. When you get stuff from the manufacturer, it just shows up. But when you're selling into retailers. You have to have inner packs, outer packs and master cases. So you have to pack and orient your product in a different way. And this is because when you ship to a retailer, you don't ship to each store.
You ship to a distribution center and then that distribution center will internally split up your product just like Amazon will, but in order for them to. split up your product, it all needs to be packed correctly so they can break it apart and not have just individual items floating around, but actual smaller boxes. This is how it works for Hobby Lobby. This is how it works for Walmart. This is how it works for Michaels. They're all the same in this, you know, inner, outer, master case.
Then I had to put together standard packouts. So whenever I got things from the supplier or we got our markers, I needed to set up certain case sizes. Then I needed to add labels on there too. So, each inner pack is two markers like put together and that's got to go inside a cardboard box that won't get crushed. And then I have to put a sticker on that. And then I had to take six of those inner packs and put them together in our warehouse pack or our outer. And each one of those needs a sticker.
And then that whole box needs a sticker. And then that gets packed onto a pallet with everything else and all bundled together in the entire shipment. And so it's like this whole thing. I'm not going to lie to you. I spend almost just as much on cardboard to pack all these things together that I do on the product itself. Such a waste. Such a waste. But this is how it has to be done. Otherwise you can't sell to them. You can't take advantage of a retail relationship and you'll get charged back.
So I have to play the game. So I'm like, okay, I'll learn the game. Not only did I need to change my labels and add French and English translations for the French and Canada Wal Mart stores, but I needed to get thorough testing done. I needed to repack things. I needed to work with the manufacturer to have new inner and outer packs completed as well as our master cases.
But I also had to like stay compliant and follow all these rules and stay on top of them, etc. If they don't pay you, like, they're not going to remind you. You've got to get in there. You got to own the relationship and drive it forward and drive the bus. They don't care. They just want the product. You see, the buyers are the people that choose what to sell in the store and they have assistant buyers and then there's associate buyers and then they have their bosses, et cetera.
Their job is to grow their category. Each buyer has a specific category. So our buyer at Walmart has wood burning and craft glues. Which is so perfect for us and so that's what she's in charge of.
She's constantly looking for the best products So they can get more people to come in the store make more money and grow the category and grow the business That's how they do it on an individual level on a product level like that And so the buyers are the people that meet with people like me to figure out if the item's viable And so when you have these meetings with buyers They want to know things like What's your supply chain look like? They want to make sure you can actually ship.
Can you get the testing? Are you smart enough to handle all this stuff? And most importantly, how much are you going to sell it to them for? It's a big thing. The margin. So let's touch on that real quick, because I'm sure you're curious how much money we make from selling these products into places like Michael's 50%. That's the margin. And I found that that's pretty standard across. Just about every retailer. I sell a scorch marker for 15, I'm going to sell it to Michael's for 7 and 50 cents.
Super simple. Just cut everything in half. They want to be able to double the price and sell it and make enough money that way. So if you don't have enough profit margin built in to your products, You're not going to make any money selling to retailers. I mean, the same goes for Amazon too, but it's an important factor. However, even though we're selling it to them at a 50 percent discount, 50 percent off our list price or MSRP, which is manufactured suggested retail price, we still make money.
In fact, it's one of our most profitable channels. Can you guess why? I don't have to pay for shipping, and I don't have to pay for marketing or customer acquisition costs. Every single customer that buys from me on Amazon and Facebook has a cost to acquire, whether it's a time cost from organic content or whether it's an advertising cost from, you know, serving them a video that peaks their interest enough for them to make a purchase.
Every single person has a shipping cost associated to, and that's built into your Amazon fees or you pay for it when you ship from Shopify. That's literally 40 percent of our budget at Scorch. Shipping and marketing. So if you remove that from the equation, there's actually more profit selling to retail than there is selling on Amazon and Shopify, which I thought was really interesting.
And I didn't realize this until I looked at the numbers after the end of the year and, and it was like, Oh, we make money. More money selling at half off to retailers than we do to the customer at full price. Wow. Okay I open her and that's when I think really started to sink in in terms of like, oh retail is really truly viable Oh my gosh, like this could grow And that leads me to my next point It's slow moving Slow moving. I mean, in July of 2024, we're doing our planning for 2025.
And so, things don't move quickly. You don't get paid quickly. Decisions aren't made quickly. And you don't get the deals done quickly. It will take a year for one of these deals to come to fruition. However, once the deal does go through, it tends to just keep going, it's just on repeat. You sell through, they order more, you sell through, they order more, it grows. It just, it works. It's really cool. Now, before we go further, I want to talk about what happens if they don't sell.
Because there are people that will get into relationships with retailers and their products won't sell. They just won't. So what happens? Is the retailer out the money? No, they're not. What they're going to do is they're going to discount it. Just like you'd see in Walmart, the clearance section. They're going to sell it for half off. Put it on clearance. They're not going to pay for that difference. They're going to charge you for it.
So if your products don't sell, And they have to discount them just to get them out of their store. They're going to send you an invoice and make you pay the difference. Just let that sink in for a second. If they aren't able to sell your product and they have to discount it, they charge you to make up the difference, which is really hard to stomach.
And that's one of the reasons why I pumped the brakes on Walmart a bit when they reached out and they were like, Hey, we want to start, let's just put you in all 4, 000 stores. We'll do all your scorch marks. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on just a second. I was like, you think we could do a test set? And we do 500 stores just to start out and make sure things are going well, you know, work out the kinks in the system.
And then if it all works and we start selling through well enough, we can grow and you know, they respected that decision actually. So that was a good move on my part, but. Also, like, I don't know if our business could have supported it. You know, just dealing with 500 stores was tough, but if I was to multiply that by, like, eight? Ugh, I don't know if I could have gotten it done. I wouldn't have been able to handle all 4, 000 stores.
So, that was one of the better decisions that we made in working with retailers, was to pump the brakes a little bit. It earned us a bit of respect and also, you know, gave us a chance to make sure that we didn't mess it up. You really only get one shot. If you mess this up with retailers, you don't get another shot. And I'll tell you about how I destroyed those relationships with home shopping network and Joanne's here in a few moments. Because remember, I don't get paid for 120 days.
That means I need to order the product, pack out the product. I need to pay for all the labor. I need to get everything put together, all the logistics. I need to basically front this entire cost of this giant order and then I need to ship it out and then I won't see a dime for another 120 days. So I basically have to take a big chunk of my cash and then I have to commit it to something and invest it and not see a return on that for half a year.
If these are big orders, like it could be tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a lot of money. That's tough to stomach sometimes. Not to mention all the compliance issues and God forbid they didn't sell through and I'd have to be on the hook for all that. It can literally break a business. And I know this for a fact because I know people who have had their businesses broken by retailers. And it's these little unforeseen things that we don't think about.
Everyone thinks, Oh, how, how hard could it be? You know, I put my product in some packaging, I ship it to them and it's in the stores. Dude, that is like 5 percent of what needs to be done. There are so many little details behind the scene. All the communications, the emails, the systems, the getting set up, just invoicing them. What took me like months to learn how to do it properly just because of the systems are so complicated.
I've got like eight different logins and all these people to call and talk to. It is a beast. It's a beast. I had no idea what I was in for. It is by far the hardest part of the business that we operate. Retail is by far the hardest. Here's what's interesting though, because, you know. Direct to consumer is hard, and selling to retailers is hard, and Amazon's hard, and Shopify's hard, and making content, running ads, it's all hard.
But when you think about it, working with retailers, all the hard is front loaded. It all comes in the beginning of the relationship. Once you get things sorted out and they're just moving along, it's kind of on autopilot. You don't really have to do anything else. Once you have the systems and the process and you know what to do and how to pack out these orders and how to ship them and invoice, just, they just keep coming in.
You don't really have to send emails to anyone or communicate with anyone. You just got to make sure you get everything done on time. Okay. So the most difficult part of retail is in the beginning. Now Shopify on the other hand, the most difficult part is down the road, right? Building a website. Easy. But where are you going to get the attention? How are people going to find out about you? How are you going to get them to go to your website?
You got to ship to them and manage the customer support and then grow the ads and the team and everything to support that engine. It gets harder as time goes on. So it's really a, just a matter of where the difficulty is in the process. Retail it's in the beginning and then DTC it's later on down the road. And all of these things I just didn't know. I just wasn't aware of. I had no one to teach me or talk to me about this stuff. And so I just kind of like struggled through it.
And that's one of the main reasons why I lost those relationships. So let's talk about those now, because if you go to scorchmarker. com and look at our homepage, you'll see a video where we were on home shopping network.
This was in 2018, or 2019. Yeah, we got into Home Shopping Network as well, same type of deal, they did a whole spot for us, like, you know, a whole demo spot, and it was so cool, I paid an actor to go out there and demonstrate our product, we put these kits together, we shipped everything from the house, it was this whole crazy production. We had basically two earrings and you know, this lady was out there demonstrating the scorch marker and they were doing their whole thing.
They had all the products displayed. It was pretty cool to see to be honest with you, but my product wasn't good enough. My packaging wasn't good enough. My presentation wasn't good enough. All of it just wasn't good enough. And that's ultimately why that relationship failed because we got a bunch of returns. And so I, I'll never forget it. We had to request an empty UPS truck to come to our house to pick up all the boxes. We have thousands of boxes we had packed.
We had the neighbors, my kids, my family, we're all helping to pack up these orders, two scorch markers, couple of pieces of wood, a little infographic in this little cardboard box. And looking back on it, I'm like, that looks like shit, dude. What were you thinking? And our customers didn't have a good experience because I didn't put the effort and energy, or didn't even know how to put the effort and energy into making it a great product to create a great customer experience.
And I fucked it up. And that relationship is over because I failed and I didn't do right by the customer and I didn't do right by the retailer. I made them look bad because I sold a subpar product. And I'll never forget that. When I started getting the returns and they were shown up at the house and then we started to have to like, Oh, It's like a sinking feeling in my stomach. Now, Joanne's wasn't as bad. Joanne's was working just fine. They just happened to go out of business.
And so we were kind of thrown out with everything else. And so, um, any new subsequent orders, they just, yeah, I just basically got ghosted. Um, and they didn't care because we didn't do that well anyway. Our product wasn't packaged properly for retail. We didn't have the right blister cards. We didn't have the right hang tags. It was, you know, it just, Wasn't good. So I took those lessons and I improved our product.
Better labels, better packaging, better translations, more testing, more work on the formula, and slowly we've been able to improve over time and luckily maintain those relationships with Michaels and Hobby Lobby and now recently Walmart. So, that's how I lost those relationships. I fucked it up. So, those are, those are the consequences. There's financial consequences and then there's the consequences of not having the ability to do any of that again. Really only get one chance.
So, I'm glad I was able to take the learnings from Home shopping network and apply them to the other retailers. So I didn't mess things up again. So what's it like now? Because we talked about how I first got into retail and we talked about what my experience was like working with their team and getting prepped and all the testing and whatnot, we talk about what it's like sending data back and forth, invoicing, getting paid and all the challenges associated with it.
I want to talk about what it's like now. And before I do that, let me just quickly touch on how I got into the other retailers. Because I told you how we got into Michael's. It's a Facebook ad of all things. Somebody that had worked for them previously saw our Facebook ad and was like, Oh my gosh, that needs to be in Michaels. And they reached out to me. So lucky, so lucky. And that's the power of attention right there. That's the power of content. That's the power of video.
You never know who's going to see your stuff. And that video didn't get a ton of views. Wasn't anything crazy, but it was enough to peek her interest. if you're on the fence at all about content, there's all these. unknowable, unseen, unpredictable, Benefits and outcomes. So how did we get into Hobby Lobby and Walmart? Well, their buyer saw us in Michael's. It's really that simple.
Once you get into one, it gives you enough social capital, enough social proof that other buyers are like, Oh, if they're selling into that one, then they could sell into us too. Wow, they're an American company? Right here? They're not violating any intellectual property patents. Okay, great. Let's talk to them. And that's literally it. I got reached out to by Hobby Lobby. I got reached out to by Michaels.
They literally sent me emails and I honestly thought they were scams and I almost didn't reply. But I was like, let's just double check just in case. We can suss this out when we talk. Sure enough. Just a random email. Hey, we'd love to sell your products in our retail store. Like, wanna have a conversation? Crazy, crazy. And now, it's a good chunk of our business. You know, it's growing. It used to be like 5 10%, but now it's slowly becoming 20, 30, 40 percent of our sales.
And it's because it just keeps steadily growing. Regardless of what the online stuff is doing on Shopify or Amazon, like, retail just keeps steadily growing. We make great margin, and it's a lot easier now that things have been set up. We're in the, uh, the sweet spot right now with retail, because we just have to keep it going. And so, it takes very little effort on the daily to make that happen, now that the processes are set up. Remember, all the hard work was in the beginning.
So that's literally how we got into other retailers, by just getting into one. But, if you're not ready, don't do it. Don't do it. So when are we ready for retailers? In my opinion, after 10 million a year in sales, because once you get to that level, you have enough of a team, you have enough of a supply chain, you have enough cashflow that you can, you can stomach the ups and downs of it and you can figure it out and you'll be able to hire top talent to help you manage it.
And then you'll also have just enough experience to be able to deal with it. If You're in low seven figures, retail will break you. It just damn near just about broke us. I got lucky with a couple of things. So man, if I go back in time, I would've said no. I would've said no. I would've pumped the brakes significantly because it distracted us a lot and it was for not a lot of money compared to all the other sales that we were doing.
And I think that we could have made way more money if we just focused, just focused on United States, Amazon, and Shopify. But, I split my attention. Now, in hindsight, now that it's all done, like I'm glad we have that relationships and it's all set up. I just know that I could have done way better and made way more money, been way more successful, more profitable if I just focused and not distracted myself.
So that's when I feel that you're ready when you can manage the supply chain and you can afford to hire top talent. You can afford to not get paid for a year and a half. Um, and you can, you know, You know, speak that language and you're willing to go down that rabbit hole. So what's it look like now? So we have an EDI set up, as I mentioned, with SPS commerce. And every time we get purchase orders from Hobby Lobby, Michael's or Walmart, we get notified through our EDI system.
We open up the software and it shows the purchase order. And it It tells us how many units are going to which distribution center. And then it's our job to get all of it packed up and send an advanced ship notice prior to shipping everything out, saying like, Hey, this is coming. And then we ship it. And then once we get notified that the shipment has arrived, we send an invoice. And that's it. We just have to make sure everything is packed out properly.
We have to make sure everything is relabeled properly. We have different SKUs and like different products for retailers because they're different than the ones, well, slightly different than the ones that we sell on the internet. And we cannot mess up the shipping stuff. It's like the fastest way to destroy a relationship with your retailer is to stock out and not ship to them or mess it up. Because if there's an empty shelf, they will get rid of you. They'll get rid of you.
So that's like one of the big ones. Really is probably the biggest actually. So there's two ways that you can execute on this. You can do it all yourself. Which I'm going to take over because, uh, we're getting a warehouse here soon. Or you can work with a consolidator and a consolidator is a term that, we don't hear a lot or talk about a lot in the DTC space because it's not very common. It's a, it's a retail term. A consolidator is like a retail specific 3PL.
They will store all of your retail inventory, and whenever a retail order comes in, they will pack it out and ship it directly to that retailer. And the reason these consolidators are so good at it is because that's all they do. They only work with retailers like Walmart. And so they're shipping containers to Walmart every single day. And by me working with them, I'm like, Hey dude, I just have like half a pallet, you know? So they take my half a pallet and put it in this container.
And then they charged me for the amount of space that I take up in that container. So I get container rates. Even though I'm shipping pallets. It can be expensive, but also it can be affordable if, depending on how you look at it. And so if you need them to like repack, relabel, um, redo things on your products, they totally can do that, but it's going to be more expensive than if you were to kit them yourselves. And that's the last piece is the kitting.
and that's where the warehouse that we're getting is really going to help out because I'm going to be able to pre kit our inner and outer packs and all of our master cases. And I can make sure that all of our retail inventory is dialed in and I don't have to pay them to do it because they charged me an arm and a leg to repack all this stuff. Not to mention the cardboard costs. It's, I spent more on cardboard than I did on the product.
Which is crazy, and yeah, we needed to have them do it in the beginning for speed. But now that, you know, things are set up, I can get my own stuff, and I can do it myself, and I can remove them from the equation there, and then it will become a very affordable, very streamlined process. So what are the big takeaways here from this conversation? Because I kind of wove you through a bunch of different retail experiences to give you a holistic picture. So I'd love to sum it all up.
And before we sum it all up, I just want to talk about today's sponsor, which is Relay. Relay is a business banking platform that I use, both for vanader and for Scorch. You've heard me say this before, but I have literally opened over 11 different business bank accounts. I searched for the best one. Because, I don't know if you know this, but you can have multiple accounts. In fact, it's a good thing. Because you never know what's going to happen, and different banks do different things.
Credit unions, the big banks, the private banks, I tried them all and there was something to be desired with each one. Each one, you know, had a thing, a feature that I really liked, but none of them had it all together. Especially profit first. You see, when money comes into our business, I split it up into five different accounts. It's like the envelope method of accounting for your business. So that way I can budget properly. I don't overspend.
I And make sure that I have enough to pay myself, et cetera. And the profit first method is something that you can only set up if you have multiple checking accounts open. And all these other banks will charge you an arm and a leg to open them up. So it's virtually impossible to do this. Anywhere else other than relay. And I'm passionate about this because the profit first accounting system saved my business.
I was literally about to lose all my money and go bankrupt and throw in the towel until I read the book profit first by Mike Michalowicz and it flipped my mindset and it helped me understand what What I needed to put in place to save the company. So I'm a big fan of profit first. And when I found out that relay was the official profit first bank and they were set up to help facilitate this type of work, I was like, Oh dude, I got to check this out.
And so I started using them and I really enjoyed them. And then I reached out to them and I was like, more people need to know about you. Like I don't have a good banking sponsor. Like let's do some work together. And that's why they're sponsoring this video because I use them. I like them. I want you to know about them and they're helping make all of this a reality. So shout out to Relay Bank for sponsoring this podcast. Mad respect.
if you'd like to apply for a free business checking account with Relay, there's a link in the description. Using that link will support me and the channel and everything that we do here. So if you don't want to support me, Don't use that link. Just Google them and stuff. Okay. So let's sum things up here. I got into retail too early. I wasn't ready.
I believe that we are ready for retail relationships after 10 million a year in sales, because we need a solid supply chain, free cashflow, a team, and we need to have the experience to be able to do it. Well, third, You've got to have a great product because if it doesn't sell, you're going to be responsible for all of the discounts that the retailers have to give. You'll have to reimburse them the difference and it can break your business four, you've got to learn the new systems.
You've got to learn their language. You've got to learn EDIs. You've got to learn all of their different logins and systems. You've got to stay super organized and you've got to communicate and make sure that every single thing is checked. Five, you've got to really pay attention to the shipping manuals and the requirements And all of the red tape, all of the regulations, all the testing, all of this stuff has to be dialed in to the letter. Otherwise, you're going to lose money.
Six, you've got to have a great supply chain and you've got to know how to ship this stuff on time. And lastly, you've got to be prepared to get paid late. You've got to be prepared to just float it and wait for a while to get your money. Not everybody can do that. And those are the big things. If you can figure all that stuff out, you can unlock retail and unlocking retail can be a huge value add for your business because most transactions still happen in person.
Only 30 percent of transactions happen online. Just want to reiterate that. So retail can be a great way to go, but not for everybody. Only if you are committed, because you only get one chance. And if you mess it up, it's gone forever. And hopefully some of the things that I've shared with you will help, uh, prevent some of those mistakes in the future, when the retailers inevitably come knocking on your door. It's time to talk about money.
As you know, I share our sales and conversion rates with you at the end of every episode. And today, we're going back about 30 days. So, the time frame here is November 22nd to October 22nd. Over the last 30 days, most of our sales came from three places, Amazon, Shopify, and retailers. On Amazon, we brought in a total of $55,852 in sales. And that's at a 15% conversion rate or unit session percentage. On Shopify, we brought in $31,008 and 96 cents. Our conversion rate was 1.73.
Retail money hit our account over the last 30 days as well. And we got a total of $30, 246. That brings our total for the last 30 days to $117, 106. Of course, there's some little things mixed in there like TikTok shop and, you know, some smaller mom and pop orders, but the bulk of our income is from those three sources.
Hopefully next week I'll be able to share another increase because we're getting into the busiest time of year for us, including our Black Friday Cyber Monday sale, which should really move the needle. Like I said, it's called Black Friday for a reason. So on the next episode, make sure you stick around to the end so you can hear the final numbers. Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the next one.