Vince Wang is an ecommerce entrepreneur who owns multiple online brands and businesses in various industries. He began his entrepreneurial journey when he was 15 and has focused on building ecommerce brands throughout his entire adult life. Currently, Vince is working on growing a customizable gifts company that helps customers create special moments with their loved ones.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Vince Wang talks about starting his entrepreneurial journey at age 15 and shares the lessons he’s learned since then
- How Vince transitioned from running multiple dropshipping stores to building a successful brand
- The challenges of running a business that offers customizable and made-to-order products
- Vince explains his business strategies and how he stands out from the competition
- What’s next for Vince and his ecommerce brand?
- Vince discusses his process for building a B2B division at his company
- Vince’s recommended business books
In this episode…
When Vince Wang was 15, he knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. Now, seven years later, Vince has built and grown multiple ecommerce brands in various industries. So, what are the secrets to his success?
According to Vince, building a successful ecommerce brand comes with its fair share of challenges, including human error, warehouse space, and logistics. However, Vince saw every bump in the road as a valuable learning opportunity. By reading expert books, implementing critical strategies, and taking risks, Vince has effectively expanded his business and boosted his profits.
On this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, Joshua Chin sits down with ecommerce entrepreneur Vince Wang to discuss his journey from running dropshipping stores to building a successful ecommerce brand. Vince shares the strategies behind his business model, his plans for the future of his company, and how he overcame challenges to grow a profitable brand. Stay tuned!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Special Mentions:
- BYLT Basics
- Secretlab
- Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
- The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
- Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
- Mastery by Robert Greene
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
- How to be a Great Boss by Gino Wickman and René Boer
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.
If you are a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that wants to unlock the optimum customer lifetime value through email marketing, then look no further than Chronos Agency!
Our team of passionate email marketing experts have helped hundreds of brands generate over $70 million in return from email alone, and our clients receive an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts.
Chronos Agency has worked with a variety of brands, including Truly Beauty, Alya Skin, and many more. Our mission is to help real businesses achieve real results.
If you want to take your revenue to the next level using email marketing, be sure to email our team at sales@chronos.agency or visit chronos.agency to learn more.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top founders and experts in the e-commerce industry and take an in-depth look at the struggles and successes in growing e-commerce brands profitably.
Joshua Chin 0:21
Josh Chin here, I’m the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top experts in the ecommerce industry. And we go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes in growing a brand. Now this episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency. If you’re a direct to consumer ecom brand that’s ready for next level growth and to unlock the optimal customer lifetime value through email, Chronos is your company. We’ve helped brands like Truly Beauty, Alive Skin, The Udi, and many more generate over $17 million in revenue from email alone, and our clients get an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts. Now the next step is to email us at sales@chronos.agency to learn more, or you can go to Chronos.agency to check out our website. Today’s guest is Vince Wang, the CEO and Co-founder of a customizable gifts company focused on helping your customers create special moments with your loved ones. Now Vince has been an ecommerce entrepreneur for most of his adult life. He lives out in California with his girlfriend and business partner Amy and Rory their corgi. Vince, welcome to the show.
Vince Wang 1:29
Um, thank you so much for having me, man.
Joshua Chin 1:32
Let’s start with your background and how you ended up in ecommerce. Specifically ecommerce entrepreneurship. I think a lot of people interested in how you at the age of 18 bought an Audi R8.
Vince Wang 1:49
Yeah, um, long story dude. Um, I guess I got started back when I was really looking for a lot of things to do while I was in high school. So backstory a little bit. Our family never really had any money growing up. You know, Dad had a long head force. And basically, we ended up in a very hard financial state. So I had to kind of figure out how to make things work. And I was playing a lot of different things back then it was like, the first thing I tried was like, I think it was SEO, and website building. No, it was real, it was real estate investing back then it was, I was so lost back then back in the day, I was 15 years old. And I was trying to co sign our, I guess you can say real estate wholesaling. So basically contracting properties at a lower rate, and then sell it to investors, and then make the difference. I was trying to do that at 15. And I really quickly realized that I wasn’t able to do it because I’m really young. So kind of like, dabbled in a couple things and started going into the online world started doing like thoughts and SEO website building, and then started doing like, website building for like, hair salons and stuff like that. And then it kind of getting into the marketing realm just somehow because I was, you know, I had clients that were paying me for website building, and also, you know, managing social media. And then I started venturing towards a paid media side of things, which is more kind of the whole ecommerce side blew up. I met a couple people that were doing it. And through YouTube, and Google and I reached out and started following people who were doing it. And eventually, I started getting pretty good at figuring out how to do Media Buy and dropship and find my suppliers, build my own store. Like I already had experience building my own stores before. Um, so yeah, I mean, by the time it was like still in high school, like 17 years old. Yeah, just really took off for us. Like I honestly didn’t even know how they all happened. It happened so quickly, like back in the day like I was like, like, not good looking. I didn’t have that many friends like people didn’t really like me. Yeah, and then all sudden end up making enough money to buy a supercar at 18, things change really quickly. But yeah, that’s basically how I originally got into e-commerce. And yeah, I’ve been here since, man 2014, 2015 that’s when I kind of started so it’s been like, six, seven years now. So a long time.
Joshua Chin 4:43
Definitely been a long time. I mean, six, seven years is definitely a long time and even a longer time considering how old you are. You’re 23, 22?
Vince Wang 4:52
22 right now, Yes.
Joshua Chin 4:54
22 this year. What has been different. If I spoke to Vince when he was 18 versus right now speaking to you, what would be different?
Vince Wang 5:10
When I was 18, I thought I knew at all, that’s probably the biggest difference. Now, if you asked me about anything, I’m like, dude, I don’t really I don’t really know that much. Because I truly experience being around people who really know their shit very well. And then realizing how big the industry is. And it’s really been humbling for the last couple of years realizing that like, you know, there’s a lot more they’re to learn. And I think, when I was 18, I was really plucky. Super know-it-all. And, yeah, I thought I was on top of the world, because like, I was driving like, a super car in high school. And I thought, like, No, I was, I was going to be a millionaire in a couple weeks, you know, and just like stupid shit like that. But yeah, eventually, things dawned on me, and I realized that, yeah, there’s a huge game of business out there. And I was just like, barely scratching the surface. So yeah, I think that that’s probably the biggest difference. And I feel like I’ve adopted more of a student mindset since then, really just learning.
Joshua Chin 6:17
Interesting. And you transitioned from running multiple dropshipping stores, back in the day to today, building an incredible brand. Tell me about the struggle in making that transition from just selling cool, interesting gadgets online to building an actual brand.
Vince Wang 6:42
Yeah, so um, like a lot of people right now, you know, when I was when I was in 2017, I realized that it dropshipping was getting pretty competitive. And quite challenging to consistently make money through it. You know, I was still doing pretty good, but I was realizing it was gonna get harder. And generic products are very easily easily copied and resold at a lower price. Amazon was playing a huge role in undercutting some of our biggest winners. So yeah, I just, I was trying to figure out the next biggest move for us. And at that time, I was already running a, I started a another, like, I had multiple stores at the same time, but one of the stores was specifically geared towards gifting, and especially customized gifting. So I had this brand that was already poised to a certain niche. And I just took it and pretty much built like an entire brand around it, sounds like a story but it’s true. Like, there’s a lot of like brands that started out there that like aren’t really like the most truthful, but like, yeah, we really, really went direct to the truth for the brand. And we kind of built an entire supply chain specifically dedicated towards the deposit we’re selling. Like, the products that we sell, we complete, we spent like 50 grand on r&d for six months of time, like building these products. And we really went hard on creating something that people didn’t have, and, you know, was very difficult to replicate. Like, like, we were assigned a warehouse, we bought like a quarter million dollars in equipment. We spent like 50k on r&d, and six months of time, and like, before, we sold a single unit of our product. So it was a very, like a huge split. Like it was before it was like you know, dropped up to kind of like a cash cow. And then it went to the reverse, like the ultimate reverse. Like we put in like, almost like, you know, three, $400,000 into building the foundation for a brand. And yeah, I mean, as soon as we launched we did our first six months, the first month we launched, we did six figures. And it’s been consistently going up from there, and especially because COVID it’s been really helpful actually helped a lot of ecommerce business owners and we definitely felt that as well. But yeah, man, it was just, it was just a weird transition. I thought dropshipping was gonna be for everything. And then when it wasn’t, then I kind of realized that I needed to create something that was more sustainable and something that I think that is truly a lot more fun, because dropshipping I feel like is low. It’s very robotic. So yeah, I mean, that’s kind of basically the story of that one.
Joshua Chin 9:35
Talking about fun, what do you find most fun and enjoyable about building your brand?
Vince Wang 9:43
Um, it’s really hard man. It’s actually very difficult because as a drop shipper, I think there’s so many things that drop shippers don’t touch on a day to day basis like supply chain, logistics, production like we are a combo manufacturer/co-packer/fulfillment center. And, you know, the whole online store, like the marketing and sales for everything as well. So like, like dropshippers, you don’t really see that more of it. But when you strive to overclock this around, I mean, we really, we really went hard on it, like we really made it hard on ourselves, we could have just sold like, like a toothpaste or whatever. Like yeah, but we really went out of our way to make everything customized. So like every order for us plus is different. So we really, are we really built a business model that was really challenging. So going from drop shipping to like, literally building the most difficult production chain, like out of, at least my peer group of brand owners. Yeah, it was very challenging, but I wouldn’t have it any other way I think it would be I think that’s the reason why we’re hedging against the risk of other people coming in and doing the same thing, because it is just that difficult. Like if a big company wanted to basically do what we’re doing right now, they would spend probably at least a million dollars in like, at least six months of time refining the design before they would be even a competitor in the market. Just because it’s that difficult to produce the product. So yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s pretty much the biggest struggle with at least from transitioning. And also building a team, it’s been incredibly, incredibly difficult for me recently. I think, as a solo dropshippers, like you just like scale ads, and that’s it, like, you know, like no other, like, you don’t really have like that much need to like build a huge team. But like, we’ve really need, we really have needed to build a very strong team. And so my job recently has just been trying to figure out how to manage our team. This is one of the books that I’ve been reading on my desk right here, Traction, very good book. And so I’m just trying to, like optimize a lot of things. And I have like, a bunch of these books just sitting on my desk like this one. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive Patrick Lencioni, just like suddenly, I’m just reading, trying to educate myself on how to truly build a good team. Yeah, that’s that’s kind of the two biggest struggles that we’ve dealt with so far. Yeah, I mean, like three years since we started.
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