This is a Quora question I was asked. My answer as follows. That depends. You really need to maximize your average order value (AOV), ideally above $75 in order to make the e-commerce operation pay for itself and earn a profit. If you can do that, then yes. Subscription orders and repeat customers will help [...]
This is a Quora question I was asked to answer. By margins I am going to assume net margin, which is net income. Think of the flow of money in a consumer goods business as a way to help you improve margins. I have a spreadsheet model accompanying this graphic here. In the [...]
This is a Quora question I was asked to answer. I don’t look at ROI in terms of consumer products or ecommerce because that number is not as meaningful due to its wide range across categories, channels and geography. EBITDA, net profit margin, payback period, and revenue-to-funding are metrics I prefer. Based on that, [...]
This was a Quora question I was asked to answer. I’ve not personally thought of or used ROI for channel sales, but I suppose you could. To be clear, when I think of channel sales in context of what I do, which is consumer products, I think of the retail channel, or a subset of [...]
This is a Quora question I was asked and my answer is as follows. My sense is that a minimum qualification for “successful” is profitable on an EBITDA basis (net profit or earnings before interest and taxes, depreciation and amortization) such that your profits will pay back your original investment in a defined time [...]
This is a Quora question I was asked and my answer is as follows. For my P&L’s, I break cost up into 3-main buckets: COGS (cost of goods sold) Marketing Operations I compute COGS based on landed costs, which includes the complete costs to produce a product so that it is sitting in your warehouse [...]
The ultimate goal in any company... ...is to acquire AND retain customers where costs to acquire and retain are less than expenses, which leads to profits. Boiled down to this single statement, then the most important variable in the finances is the marketing spend. Even if your other expenses are high or way out of [...]
This post answers this question I received on Quora: Does the manufacturer of robotic kits for kids have a potential to enter markets overseas by offering a 50% discount on MSRP to importers? Will the importer have enough space to markup the price before CE retailers markups his own purchasing price? The answer is unknown [...]
There's something called the North Star Metric, which one can also refer to as a super metric or a super KPI (key performance indicator). I found it to be best described in this one sentence, pulled from this post: The North Star Metric is the single metric that best captures the core value that your product delivers to customers. I think the [...]
