Long-Distance Relationship Gift Brand
Ecommerce brandIt sells 22 products that help couples and families living apart feel close, through its own country sites and Amazon, and owns two phone apps.
Ask $4.85M · Profit $1.49M · 3.3x · Empire Flippers
Nov 3
- Ask
- $4.85M
- Revenue
- $6.07M
- Profit
- $1.49M
- Margin
- 25%
- Multiple
- 3.3x
- Age
- 7 yrs (Mar 2019)
- Label
- Solid Business, Fair Price
- Reason
- 7 years of sales on two channels, a 25% margin and profit up 11% in a year support the price.
Why it's interesting
- Over the last 12 months revenue rose 23% and profit 11% (Empire Flippers figures), with sales split 58% Shopify and 42% Amazon, so neither channel carries the business alone.
- Assets beyond the products: a 185,600-subscriber email list, two iOS and Android apps the seller says have hundreds of thousands of downloads, five trademarks, Brand Registry and dedicated sites for the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
- Founders work from SOPs with two part-time operators in Australia and a Philippines contractor on support and content; the seller offers at least 30 days of handover support.
What to watch
- The two founders put in about 40 hours a week between them on marketing, product development and operations; the existing team handles support, content and day-to-day tasks, so a buyer must fill the founders' roles.
- A 2022 patent-infringement claim was settled with a quarterly licence fee on products imported into the US; its rate, term and whether it passes to a buyer are not stated.
- Inventory is normally excluded from the price, adding cash on top of the ask for a range of 275 SKUs held across a 3PL, Amazon fulfilment and self-managed stock in Australia.
- Profit grew at half the pace of revenue, which suggests rising costs; the listing names dearer paid traffic and supplier price increases as risks, and ad spend is not disclosed.
- The listing flags a location lock on the Amazon Seller Central account as a point to discuss, so it is not yet clear how the channel behind 42% of sales passes to a new owner.
Who it fits
An experienced ecommerce operator, or a buyer ready to hire one, who can take over full-time marketing and product work and fund inventory on top of a multi-million-dollar price.
Ask the seller
- What does the US patent licence cost each quarter, how long does it run, and does it transfer to a new owner?
- What is the inventory worth at today's cost, and how many months of sales does it cover?
- How much is spent on paid ads each month, and how has the cost per order moved as revenue grew?
Growth plays
- Pitch the range to military family networks and base exchange stores, where deployments separate couples and parents from children for months at a time.
- Use the two apps' hundreds of thousands of downloads to sell the product range in-app, such as prompts to send a paired gift to someone living abroad.
Nov 3Added to Acumen Wire