What is the most important thing when growing a successful eCommerce business? Is there a model for a successful eCommerce business? What you should pay attention to avoid falling into the rabbit hole. What are the challenges eCommerce businesses face today, and how can you overcome them? Brothers Michael & Eugene Ravitsky, founders of Factory Pure, a company constantly on the list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US, share their success stories.
About
FactoryPure is a small family eCommerce business specializing in power equipment, HVAC, and home appliances, with an extensive assortment of other product categories. They are an authorized dealer of every brand they carry. They’ve been present on the market for more than 10 years, with a headcount of 15 and 100%+ CAGR since 2015. They have no debt or outside equity and are consistently on Inc5000 and Financial Times lists of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.
Michael Ravitsky is one of the founders of FactoryPure, the eCommerce company in 104th place on the list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States in 2022. He’s in charge of handling some of the back-office stuff regarding the company, such as accounting and invoicing.
Eugene Ravitsky, the founder of FactoryPure, specializes in marketing, researching relevant search keywords, and managing AdWords campaigns, resulting in 300% year-over-year growth. He’s in charge of communication with customers and suppliers, website content management for SEO and marketing purposes, interviews, hiring and training employees, and coordinating migration between web store platforms and integration of various applications.
Key Takeaways
[ 00:00:00 ] Introducing Michael & Eugene Ravitsky, Founders of Factory Pure
[ 00:01:00 ] How do two brothers handle the business? Are they in charge of different departments?
[ 00:01:08] Eugene is mainly in charge of web development, while Michael is more in charge of the back-office stuff.
[ 00:02:02 ] What’s Factory Pure and why eCommerce?
[ 00:02:05] Starting more than 10 years ago as eBay sellers but soon realized it was not the business model they wanted to pursue. They built an essential website.
[ 00:03:05] “We realized at some point, early on, that we learned a lot in the other business, and in some ways, eCommerce is just eCommerce, and the products that you sell don’t really matter as much.”
[ 00:03:15] What shopping cart solution do they use?
[ 00:03:25 ] How’s the experience working with Shopify?
[ 00:03:39 ] “But when you’re starting out, it’s a very easy-to-use platform and fairly inexpensive. You don’t need a developer. You can start very quickly and easily. You can make your website in a couple of hours a very basic website.”
[ 00:04:45 ] Shopify limitations they experienced
[ 00:06:15] “our site is very customized, and we work with a lot of different brand vendors. They all have different shipping options.”
[ 00:07:30 ] Using apps within the website challenges.
[ 00:07:51 ] “When it came time to develop some of this automation, using apps, every business has a choice to make about how much the owners want to spend learning these tools and setting them up altogether or on their own..”
[ 00:08:50 ] How important is automation in the business?
[ 00:09:30 ] “And for us, automation doesn’t mean taking humans out of the process. It just means enabling humans to deal with more volume in the same amount of time.”
[ 00:10:19 ] To use various marketplaces or not?
[ 00:10:56 ] “I think Amazon, eBay, they’re okay for smaller, lighter items where you know, if you don’t like it, go ahead and send it back.”
[ 00:11:48 ] The results in 2022
[ 00:13:07 ] What is eCommerce businesses’ most common mistake?
[ 00:15:30 ] What helped their business to grow?
[ 00:17:15 ] What are the biggest mistakes eCommerce business owners make?
[ 00:17:40 ] “We’ve really tried to use that automation in every facet of what we do.”
[ 00:18:25 ] One of the challenges eCommerce businesses face today is just unit economics.
[ 00:19:04 ] “Every business has this mix of margin versus volume, and it’s hard to actually set up a profitable eCommerce business these days probably because the market is so saturated. Price comparison is really easy. And in the United States, the other big challenge is going to be sales tax.”
[ 00:20:05 ] Who has taught Michael & Eugene the most about eCommerce?
Michael’s & Eugene’s No.1 eCom Operations hack
“An app is not necessarily a substitute for paying somebody to do something.”
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