What's the deal with Sugar and Cotton? (8)

Hey guys!

I've been researching some of the large Shopify stores out there, and the numbers and traffic some of these stores are doing is incredible and unexpected.

For example, sugarandcotton.com receives over 1 million visitors per month and does high 6 figures (and maybe 7 figures) in revenue.

However, the site itself does not seem like the money-making machine it is! It's running a standard Brooklyn theme with an assortment of AliExpress products. Ok, I think, then this is just a matter of putting the right product in front of the right audience. But look at the items! A lot of them look cheap. Ok, so the wine socks I understand, and the art model is understandable (why it went viral doesn't make any sense to me, though).*

*On another note, I can't believe the octopus ring (F+S offer) from saveouroceansnow.com also went viral.

Other big sites like phonebibi.com, familyfervor.com, and ramadeals.com have many more products and sell generic items that are not easy to target on FB, but it makes more sense since their production selection is significantly larger, and they have large budgets for FB ads.

I'm not criticizing anything here. Just trying to figure out what these big guys are doing so well that I'm not seeing. I can understand why a generic product like the charcoal creams and strapless bras would be much harder to sell for a store with a smaller budget. However, I lost money trying to sell the baking shape thing and Russian piping tips the last three weeks even though my ads were very precisely targeted. On the other hand, these big sites launched these products in the last month or so and made a killing.

Any thoughts, guys?

Just as a first thought - I'm pretty sure it's a case of "the rich get richer". These already big stores have a clearer process for finding the audience and more importantly, they already have plenty of data from previous sales.

They can create lookalike audiences from their previous successful campaigns.

They have emails to do email marketing very well.

They could be running search ads too.

They have the workforce to test countless products all the time. You see the product making a killing but you don't see all the failed products from before.

To summarize - they can test many things and you only see it when it succeeds. You cannot see all the failures they went through and what they learned til then.

wow, does that site look like boffnboop.

Not in terms of design, but look at the categories: https://www.boffnboop.com/collections/mermaid-lovers
and https://sugarandcotton.com/collectio...aid-collection

My thoughts:

They follow a template that works well and is based on being able to run Facebook campaigns really well.
Why - it can't be from SEO nor content, because the sites just suck on that aspect.

Apart from that, I have to agrea with @manu_adefy - once you have traction ie a list of customers, you have a definite advantage (in all aspects manu mentioned).

So the question now becomes, can you replicate this?

And I would say that it's not easy. I have not seen any one who's successful with this approach apart from @sapven on the forum.
Others have tried but failed to make it work, which is not criticism, but an observation.

But there are people doing this, like the guy from LDSman.com, which we discussed here: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ipping-shopify

I think the succes lies not in chasing exactly what they've done, but learning the approach and finding a new niche.

So don't start selling mermaid stuff. But look into horses for example. Big market of girls that love anything related, like this best-selling bracelets: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Anti...82219969.html?

In addition to this, go back to this thread: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ghlight=flippa and scroll down to where @vortex kindly provided links to the financials of boffandboop

Again, short summary:

- research
- make sure you know what you are doing on Facebook (didn't I hear about something in Berlin??)
- don't just copy

Great stuff, guys. Totally agree with both comments. Either you target new niches or you sell products in these same niches that are completely novel. I've had some success with both approaches.

I just think it's incredible that a lot of these stores started as recently as last summer.

I know the owners of the Sugar and Cotton and Phonebibi stores. The S&C owner also owns wwww.faradayscienceshop.com. Another cool store to check out: https://mysticalmagik.com/

How are they doing this and how can you replicate it?

In short - you have to be VERY early to the party and go at it with a fearless budget. If you go after mass appeal products, you have to be one of the first 3 people to sell it or you are already behind.

As manu and pekadis said, you can't straight up copy these guys because they already have the workforce/team, data (lookalikes, custom audiences from past camps), and budget to give them a 80-90% success rate whenever they launch future products.

I can't share with you who the owners are or their exact strategy, but generally it looks like this:
1. Their team researches 'hot/viral' potential products (can either be niche specific, or mass appeal)
2. They run PPE ads to T2 and T3 countries to get massive engagement
3. They piggyback off the social proof from their PPE ads and switch to WC-Purchase ads at huge budgets

Naturally from doing this over and over, they get a crap ton of data and their fanpage grows like crazy. So whenever they launch future products it makes it significantly easy to get traction and figure out what will do well or what will fail.

Again, like I've stated in many of my previous posts - it is NOT RECOMMENDED that you attempt this method unless you have a lot of exp on FB, a big budget, and a team.

Originally Posted by sapven

I know the owners of the Sugar and Cotton and Phonebibi stores. The S&C owner also owns wwww.faradayscienceshop.com. Another cool store to check out: https://mysticalmagik.com/

How are they doing this and how can you replicate it?

In short - you have to be VERY early to the party and go at it with a fearless budget. If you go after mass appeal products, you have to be one of the first 3 people to sell it or you are already behind.

As manu and pekadis said, you can't straight up copy these guys because they already have the workforce/team, data (lookalikes, custom audiences from past camps), and budget to give them a 80-90% success rate whenever they launch future products.

I can't share with you who the owners are or their exact strategy, but generally it looks like this:
1. Their team researches 'hot/viral' potential products (can either be niche specific, or mass appeal)
2. They run PPE ads to T2 and T3 countries to get massive engagement
3. They piggyback off the social proof from their PPE ads and switch to WC-Purchase ads at huge budgets

Naturally from doing this over and over, they get a crap ton of data and their fanpage grows like crazy. So whenever they launch future products it makes it significantly easy to get traction and figure out what will do well or what will fail.

Again, like I've stated in many of my previous posts - it is NOT RECOMMENDED that you attempt this method unless you have a lot of exp on FB, a big budget, and a team.

I'm about to try the PPE then WC technique. How much engagement should you have before switching to WC?

Also, you could create LLAs in the US/UK based on the data you get from the engagement.