Business Description

The business was started in May 2013, about a year after, its founder went on ABC’s Shark Tank for a different supplement he had created (unrelated to this business). In the founder’s words: “I got torn apart on Shark Tank for not having sufficient evidence to substantiate my claims about the product. After that experience, I decided to create a company that was 100% transparent with its supplement formulas, and more importantly, match ingredients and dosages to clinical studies so the products would be backed by 100% substantiated claims.”

And that’s exactly what he did. They launched one of the very first supplement companies (especially within the sports nutrition niche) that is 1) fully transparent with its formulas and 2) substantiates its claims with actual clinical studies.

Due to our transparency and science-backed ingredients/formulas, the brand has recently been featured on several major blogs and is now quickly achieving £100,000 in monthly revenue. Over the next three years, we expect to simultaneously:

expanded their product line (which now consists of 30 supplement SKUs plus 14 additional products),
built up a large network of bloggers and other affiliates who drive targeted traffic and generate sales, and
launched major YouTube and Facebook ad campaigns around an extremely effective video (10MM+ Facebook views and 10MM+ YouTube views).
With this three-pronged approach, revenues grew from just under $1MM in 2015… to ~$3.6MM in 2016… to ~$6.0MM in 2017. And the business is on pace to do around $8.0MM in revenue in 2018, without even accounting for the following exciting developments coming down the pipe soon…

First, they just completed the production and editing of a new video, which they just launched in October 2018. They expect the YouTube and Facebook ad campaigns featuring this new-and-improved video to do even better than their current video (which has performed extremely well over the past couple years).

Second, they just barely (about a week before this listing was created) received their first Purchase Order (PO) from GNC, one of the world’s premier brick-and-mortar supplement companies. They’ve been working on getting products into GNC (which is quite difficult to do) for several months now, and their efforts have finally paid off. This first PO (which is a consignment deal) is just for one SKU and is expected to generate up to $272,000 in revenue. If things go well with this first “test” SKU, GNC will likely start carrying several more of the company’s products. Wholesale revenue through GNC could end up outpacing retail revenue sooner rather than later!

Bottom line: This business has experienced tremendous and consistent growth over the past 3.5 years, and it is poised to continue that upward trend over the coming years!

Business Strengths

  • Key Words Ranking
  • Brand and Community Loyalty
  • High Profit Margins
  • Lots of Repeat Customers
  • The Business Is Currently Growing

Opportunities for a new owner

  • Start Selling into New Markets
  • Advance or Explore Retail / Distribution Partnerships
  • Increase Basket Size Per Customer

Operations

The current owners only spend 15-20 hours per week on the business, primarily on strategy and growth tasks. How can you run a $8.5MM revenue business on 15-20 hours per week? Here’s how…

Their primary supplier is both the manufacturer of the supplements and the fulfillment center. So aside from periodically placing orders, the supplier handles virtually everything with regard to the products: manufacturing, quality testing, warehousing and shipping.
They outsource virtually all paid advertising tasks to a professional ad management company. (Note: The ad management service costs are of course included in the P&L. So if you were to take over ad management yourself or have your own staff do it, you would realize substantial monthly savings.)
They’ve invested heavily into developing systems that simultaneously boost sales and automate the business. For example, they spent ~$30,000 a couple years ago developing a custom Shopify theme that allows customers to create custom “order stacks” when they place their order online. All orders are automatically sent (via API) to the supplier, who then fulfills the order, and the system is then automatically updated to show that the order has been fulfilled.
As part of the sale, the current owners will train the buyer on all aspects of running the business. This will include up to 100 hours of “live” training (via web meeting, webinar, Skype, phone, etc.) as well as 90 days of email support.

Inventory

Units-

Value-

Highlights

  1. The business has ITS OWN BRAND of supplements, so you’re not just selling the same products dozens/hundreds of other retailers are selling.
  2. Revenues and profits are both TRENDING UPWARD, and there are several exciting things in the works that to ensure that growth trend will continue.
  3. The site also has an ARMY OF AFFILIATES sending targeted traffic to the site. Referral traffic is the site’s #3 traffic source, accounting for 15.1% of visitors.
  4. After accounting for product costs, shipping/packaging costs and credit card processing fees, the business has an extremely healthy GROSS PROFIT MARGIN OF 45.4%.
  5. 100% of sales are generated on the stand-alone website. The owners HAVEN’T EVEN BEGUN selling on Amazon, Jet.com or other online marketplaces.
  6. The sale includes a 153K+ person mailing list, comprised primarily of PAST CUSTOMERS. Significant improvements could be made in the realm of email marketing.

Seller Notes

The sale includes all of the following…

  • The domain name and website (including all textual and graphical content)
  • All videos, ads, artwork and marketing materials
  • All supplier accounts
  • All social profile accounts, including Facebook (27,600+ likes),
  • Instagram (22,300+ followers), YouTube and Twitter
  • Mailing list (containing over 153,000 emails, comprised of 102k+ past customers and 50k+ opted-in subscribers)
  • 90 days of support to train you/your employee on how to run the business (including up to 100 hours of “live” support via phone or live webinar/screen share)
  • Please note that inventory, which fluctuates from ~$400,000 to ~$1,000,000 at any given time, is NOT included in the $7.9 million asking price and will be addressed separately, given the high level of variability.

This listing offers a unique opportunity to acquire future powerhouse in the lucrative fitness market and is an ideal acquisition target for strategic buyers in this space that have the existing infrastructure in place and marketing skills to readily scale the brand to its full potential.

The initial structure of the business was established in order to build brand recognition and amass leads: customers, traffic, social media network, etc.. Having accomplished these goals, the next step is for the company to monetize its massive network by having a deeper product line to promote to its existing and future audience. With a deeper product line and the same previous $100k marketing spend, this business has the potential to go from a $1.75 million business with 50% profit margin to a $5 million business with similar overhead.

With an abundance of leads and without yet a sufficient quantity of products/services currently in place to effectively grow the business to its next level, we made a strategic decision to reduce marketing spend which has resulted in lower revenues, but higher margins. We have streamlined the business maintaining it at a stable level until the product line can be sufficiently expanded to provide a purpose to and warrant to an increase in marketing spend for overall expansion of the company.

Assets

  • All Site Content and file
  • Customer Database

Post sale support

This is support provided by the seller when transitioning the business to a buyer.

Included