Shirley, founder of Bliss n’ Baby

How did you start your Amazon FBA business?

I was stuck at home and had to give up working in my corporate job due to the difficult pregnancy. I was overjoyed with the baby but also very worried at the same time as I lost a stable monthly income and needed to provide for the baby. In fact, I had always wanted to start my own business but lacked the courage to take the plunge and give up a good job to start from ground zero, and the fear of failure also kept me from taking real actions. The dream of being my own boss had remained a dream for quite a long time. But since I already quit my job, I had nothing to lose! The real necessity to make money to provide for my baby had overcome any fear of failure, and I became very determined to turn the difficulty I was going through into an opportunity to finally launch a business that would give me the geographical and time freedom I needed for care for my daughter, and had a somewhat passive business model that would bring me money even when I was sleeping or away from the business for days. After studying many different online business models, I decided that Amazon FBA was the way to go.

I studied design in the first half of my pregnancy online and I designed my own brand logo and products from scratch in the second half of my pregnancy. I was looking at a lot of baby stuff online to prepare for the arrival of my baby, and I spotted opportunities there as some of the niche products in the market were not of great quality and had unappealing designs. I needed those products for my daughter and decided that I would design the best ones for her. A head-shaping pillow was my first product. It’s a niche product where there was little competition but a rising trend. I needed one myself and noticed many parents needed that too but there wasn’t much online so I first focused on that. Later on, I found milestone blankets and thought they would be a lovely addition to my brand, so I created one under my brand too.

Where did you sell your products?

I just focused on the US market. Expanding to other markets would take more time, more resources. Also, because I was selling baby milestone blankets with days, weeks, months on them, they would have to be translated. It might be tricky to expand into the Japanese or European markets. I did think about the UK, Australian and Canadian though. That’s something I wanted to do, but didn’t have the time.

How many hours a week did you work on your Amazon FBA business?

The most labour-intensive and time-consuming work was in the product research phase. Also the listing creation, listing optimization, image creation. I took the pictures myself using my friend’s baby as a model. I was doing everything by myself. I also had to do a lot of research to make sure I was launching things the right way. So, in the preparation to launch there were weeks where I spent 40 hours on the business. It was like a full-time job, basically. But after the launch, since things were going well, I didn’t have to work much. Then, I spent from two to 10 hours a week on it. Some weeks, when family life was demanding, I didn’t spend any time at all on my business, but that wasn’t typical.

What were the biggest challenges as an Amazon FBA seller?

There were a lot of legal issues as the milestone blanket became a top seller quickly. There were copycat products and malicious attacks, such as fake reviews posted by competitors. Also, my previous supplier was reopening packages and putting ink inside. I got a lot of complaints. I gave a lot of refunds. Of course, customers reported to Amazon that I was selling used products as new. All the pictures I received from customers had red ink, almost always, in the same place. My listing got suspended and it was very stressful. Looking back, there was a silver lining because I got a new, better supplier and came up with a good plan of action. That is when I got IP protection. I applied for design patents and copyrights for my products. Now, every time someone tries to copy Bliss n’ Baby products, they can be removed from Amazon in a few clicks.