Mansour, founder of GBL

Why did you decide to sell your Amazon FBA business?

Brexit had a huge impact on me. I was doing everything myself, and prior to Brexit, it was going smoothly. I was selling in Canada. I had a custom clearance agent, and 3PL there. They were handling the whole Canada side of things. I had a very good 3PL in the UK, which I’d been using for ten years. They would also handle custom clearance and everything. I used to just import the containers to the UK, ship it to the Amazon UK fulfillment center and then Amazon handled the Europe side of distribution. All very easy. No stress, no headache. Brexit changed all that. It became a huge nightmare to get products from the UK to Europe, even from China to Europe. There were different sorts of challenges with import duties within Europe, huge delays getting stock from UK to EU due to logistic chaos right after Brexit. COVID-19 had also impacted freight rates and production time from china; all these were becoming quite difficult to handle all by myself

Why did you decide to sell to SellerX over other Amazon aggregators?

In early 2020, I listed GBL on Empire Flippers and they gave me a valuation. My business was growing month-on-month, so I decided it would be wrong to sell it yet. Six months later, I approached a broker in the UK, they contacted a lot of aggregators and a lot of them put in an offer. There was an angel investor from Scotland interested too, and I actually accepted his offer. Later, my broker told me there was a mistake in the valuation, and it was considered to be worth over half a million Pounds more, which was huge. So I decided not to sell because Boris Johnson announced another lockdown on the same day. I thought if I sell it now, what am I going to do for the next two, three months in lockdown? I’ll just get bored, so might as well hold on to it for another few months. Philipp (Triebel, SellerX Co-Founder and CEO) kept in contact and emailed me on and off after that. He was interested in buying the business and showed a really genuine interest in my company and the products. I told him I wasn’t ready to sell yet because I wanted to launch in the US. I did a lot of research on what the multiples were for my company. I was confident in what would be a fair price for what I had. A month or so later, I told Philipp the price. He said, “we’ll buy it.” So, I sold to SellerX, even though I was not mentally prepared to sell, but because the offer was fair. The challenges with Brexit were becoming stressful for me too. I didn’t go to any other aggregators then because I put my price on the table and SellerX accepted it. I spoke with other members of the team and they explained how they’d been able to scale the brand. I felt SellerX were the right people to sell to and there was no point talking to anyone else.

What was your favourite part of the selling process?

The communication, to be honest. Philipp (SellerX Co-Founder), and the legal team were always in touch, updating me with what was going on. I never felt I was being left in the dark. There was constant communication. If I had any concerns, someone was reachable to advise me on what to do and how to do it. Never at any point have I thought I chose the wrong aggregator. Phillipp has been really, really helpful.

How has your life changed since selling?

The first thing is the stress that I was experiencing in the three to six months before selling. All that stress has gone. Now, I spend so much time with my family. We started traveling again, going on small trips here and there. I’m focusing on charity projects too and investing in real estate. I’m quite happy with how it’s turning out.

What will you do next?

As an Amazon FBA seller, I always feared I could wake up one day with my account suspended and I would have nothing. My goal was always to flip my business at the right time and invest in real estate, which brings a passive income. This is what I’m doing right now. I’ll probably come back to the e-commerce space later, but I don’t want to rely entirely on Amazon. I’m also doing some charity work back in Pakistan and I want to do that on a much bigger scale.

Would you recommend SellerX?

Yes, definitely. SellerX is a great aggregator.