422: This Student Makes $2M Selling Womens Clothing Online With Ming Wang

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. And today I have Ming Wang on the show, a student in my Create a Profitable Online Store course, and Ming is the founder of Alina Mae Maternity, which is a store that she’s grown to over two million in revenue. And in this episode, we’re going to learn exactly how she did it. But before we begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce, and it’s crushing it from

00:29
I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce, and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank CleoBeau for sponsoring this episode.

00:56
Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I use for my e-commerce store and it depended on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who is shopping in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought.

01:25
Piece of cake and there’s full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used. You can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. And then finally, I want to mention my other podcasts that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience.

01:52
No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a run entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

02:08
Welcome to the My Wife, Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have a student in my course, Ming Wang, on the show. Now, Ming’s husband actually purchased my class for her back in, I think, 2018, and she’s on track to make over $2 million this year with her maternity wear store over at Alina Mae Maternity. Now, I’ve only heard from Ming maybe a handful of times in these past several years. She’s basically taken a class and silent been cranking in the background to make money in one of the

02:37
hardest niches to sell into, is women’s apparel. In any case, I’m very eager to delve deeper into her business and learn more about her experience starting a successful apparel company. And with that, welcome to show Ming. How are you doing today? I’m good, how are you? I’m good. I know we chatted a lot before I hit the record button here, but just please tell the audience about your store, what you sell and why you even started an apparel store, of all things.

03:06
So I think that my experience might be a little bit different than a lot of other students that might be in your course. Cause I didn’t really like a start Amazon business trying to say like, Oh, I want to make a lot of money. Like for me, like when I started Alina Mei is because I felt the pain point for the pregnancy people and trying to find a professional clothing. And so I was pregnant at the time and I was managing like a 70 people team at a really large company.

03:35
And it’s really hard to be comfortable looking professional and while you’re raising a baby in your belly. that’s the reason why I started Alina May at the time is trying to just like helping this group of people. And I wasn’t like a lot of, let’s say like, you know, very money oriented at the time, because I know there will be like a height, like a better, like profitable and easier to get in, like an anxious than the women apparel. Cause this is a very competitive field.

04:04
But with Steve’s course, you know how people say, oh, you’re trying to find people’s pain point. And I think we find a really good pain point at the time. And I sincerely want to help these group of people. And that’s the reason why it went in there. And there was a lot of capital investment, but at the same time, it passed all the criteria that you mentioned. It was still profitable. It did require a lot of capital, but at the time, I did have the capital already. much did you invest? curious. I would say, think about it.

04:33
Like I don’t really have a legit number, but like I think about it, like for each of the orders that you place, would at least for like a 500 units. Sometimes it’s up to like a thousand units across. It’s just, it crossed different sizes, but one color. Right. Right. And if you want to start, you would need to have, I don’t know, like a two or three, like a colors and each of the product will cost at least like a nine or 10 bucks. So you can do the calculation. like, so actually that doesn’t sound that bad.

05:03
It’s actually, like, compared to like, if you want to start with a whole fashion brand, right? So like, we actually did that probably about like a two to two years in, I would say. It’s like when I quit my corporate job, actually focusing on Lena May at the time, we have to really expand it and trying to build a website off of it, right? It’s not just like Amazon one listing.

05:25
And that was the time that we actually invest a lot. Cause now you’re not talking about just like a one or two, like a style. And it’s a wonder it’s probably under say pens, you will have like a couple of styles and under shirt, you’ll have a couple of and under dress, you’ll have a couple of styles and each style will have a couple of colors. And then you’ll get like, you’ve got huge like investment at that time. then each one of them you’re spending about like 10 grand. Right. And that’s like a pretty big investment. So how many pieces did you start with or designs?

05:56
At the beginning, there was just a one listing of pants. Okay. Yes. So if you think about professional clothing, and especially for like a maternity wear, right? And you just have black dress pants. And then so you could start with that. then quickly we realized that, you’re not really getting a lot of the market because your brand was not that aware, like by your customers. So we start like a different couple of different pants. And then like we started shirts and we started like also like the stats and stuff like that.

06:24
So walk me through that. you bought one set of pants, I guess 500 units or whatever it was. How did that one set of pants sell when you listed them on Amazon? Yeah, so I didn’t buy the pants. I actually designed it. They’re like a specific thing, so that’s not on the market. And I would like to see as the pregnant person, like myself, as also like a professional worker, like women myself, right? So I designed the pants and I talked to the suppliers.

06:53
So when it was launched, it was unique to us essentially. And right now, of course, there’s a lot of competitors and they’re doing like very similar things. So I designed that and then the minimum, I think back then probably like a 1200 or so. And as we started that listing, it didn’t really go that well, but like I already kind of know about like how Amazon works and everything. And I don’t really need to set up a warehouse system or fulfillment system, all that kind of stuff. So like that was pretty convenient. So I added that and they start really like,

07:23
going add a volume when we try to add a little bit different colors to it. So when you only have that one listing, like a one color, you don’t get a lot. It’s just because, know, and it’s the one we added, besides the black, we added like a navy, we added like a gray and then added some other colors, but different, the same style, but different colors. And that’s when the traffic start growing. I think it was, I probably added online in like,

07:52
the end of the summer in one year and then by the winter time, it was really start growing. And I remember that because I was a Chinese New Year time. So my factory in China, they stopped working. then, so we just posted up the rank and they tanked it because we’re all the stock. And then so the next year you start like ordering more and it just kind of start growing from there. How many sizes did you carry of your pants? At the beginning, I only carry three sizes.

08:22
So small, medium, large? Yes. And like the sizes actually doesn’t really matter that much. It’s actually the color or the material of pens. Sure. Well, like one thing I actually learned more recently, the reason why they gave you a minimum order quantity is not because of like, oh, like they cannot go onto a product line or whatsoever. It’s because they are supplier for the clothing, right? The cloth to make the fabric. They do it.

08:48
per time. Does it make sense? Like they are per order is at least a minimum quantity of like a one. I don’t know how to say that. So for our, for our company, we have to, they like buy a roll of fabric. Yes, the roll. Yes. And then they have to use it. Yeah. They have to use up the whole roll. Right. So if you’re thinking about like a smaller, like shorts, a whole roll, it could cost say like a thousand pieces, like, you know, make a one-year-old pants or like a larger dresses. They can probably only produce like a 200 or something.

09:17
And so like the way how I did it, and it takes a lot of communication and trust from your supplier. I didn’t do it at the beginning. It’s really hard to do that with a new supplier you didn’t know about. But like nowadays, because like, know, the supplier has been working with us for quite a while. If you look at like our store, it’s the same fabric used for different products. So like the same fabric that used for dress can also be the same fabric used for pants. So for example, currently I’m launching like a two new product.

09:44
And in each of the minimum quantity order I got for her size per product, you’re talking about like a 10, 15 pieces that could easily sold out. Right. And it’s because it’s like they purchased two roll of the product and it’s used by like four and five different styles. And each styles only get like a very minimum, like a quantity. guess what I’m asking you is you have to decide how many of each size to make and how many of each color to make. How did you determine?

10:15
At the very beginning, it was not much a strategy. It was just like a small, medium, large, that’s a look at like what other competitors are offering and let’s try to offer the same. And you can kind of see it with like the ASINs, like a ranking a little bit, right? With all the different tools. I don’t remember exactly, cause this is a couple of years ago already, but like you can kind of see like, what’s the ratios. And even with that, it was not that very accurate.

10:38
So at the beginning, think what we decided is basically, small, medium, large, they’re all about the same. And then all the XL, like XS, it’s probably not going to be like even worth it. And it’s like one to one to one ratio for small, medium, large. And then that’s exactly what we ordered. Say like, you know, the minimum order is like a 300, we just order 101 or 100. But then we tried to, for the next order, try to make it up, right? So if you see the small is like a selling really fast. And then you, if you see the ratio is like a two to one to one.

11:08
And then the next order of like a 300, just use 300 divided by four, and so whatever the ratio. And then that was not very right either. Like it was just like, and what we even figured out is some products. So for example, like when people start working from home, we do like a work from home, like work, like zoom appropriate, like a working clothes, right? That is very different than like a professional working clothes. Cause they have like a, it’s like a lot of people buy the large sizes versus like the smaller, more fit sizes.

11:37
Right. And then so we started with a three and then we started adding more. And before that I did socks, like the non-skate socks. And that market is totally saturated. We used to be like the number one on Amazon, all that kind of stuff, because the timing was good. And we didn’t really take care of the listing and now we’re like nowhere to be find basically. But that one is a one size. And then a lot of times, yes, when people with like a bigger foot or smaller foot, didn’t fit. And the return.

12:04
like afford to handle, it’s not wear clothes. So like before with the socks, I literally just told Amazon like, oh, whatever the customer returned, just throw it away. Like they started. And I quickly discovered for clothing, you can’t do that. Like the amount of return that we get, like it’s a pretty decent. What is the percentage? I’m very curious. I would say, let me actually double check on this. I mean, my friends say 20 to 30%. I’m just curious what yours is. We are actually lower than that.

12:33
Yes, I think we are about like a 15, but definitely less than 20. Okay. So how do you deal with those? It’s actually deal with, think it’s a product type because when you deal with a maternity, like you’re dealing with a woman that their body is constantly growing. So from your materials, from your design, from your cut, everything needs to be like a pretty perfect in order to fit this group of people. And these group of people are, they have like a certain needs and not a lot of people could understand.

13:00
And I think that’s what we did really well. It’s like a really understand their need and design something that actually fits their need, right? So that kind of like helps a lot with the other stuff, like returns, for example, like our return rate. I know the industry standard is about like the 20, 30%. If we would have the 30 % return rate, we would not be surviving at this rate. Okay. Yeah. Are you a clothing designer? I am actually not. how did you design your pieces?

13:30
So sorry, like one thing, I just checked our return rate this year is about like 11%. Okay, which is very good. Yeah. Yeah. I, my background is actually engineering, but I was always working on the business side of engineering. Yeah. Last year return rate is 10.8%. So it’s like right around that 10, 11%.

13:51
My background is in engineering, but I was always on the business side of engineering doing product management, right? And then product management, like what you get is basically the courses where I actually really did dive into your courses is that value propositions and trying to understand the customer pain. So I think I have a skill set, but I don’t really have the fashion design, like the more hardcore like in fashion, but product design is product design. Like understand your customers, understand your customer, right? So it takes a lot of communications with the supplier itself.

14:20
So like I would, like, I don’t know like how many prototypes like people do with their suppliers. Like because I design my own things, it would take like at the beginning, at least a five to six iterations until I have a product out. So like that’s where I save a lot of like my time and energy, like going into there and then save the headaches later. Makes sense. Did you ever go there or were they shipping it back and forth? Cause I know for us it takes at least a week to get some.

14:49
Yes. So I actually find this supplier right in 2018. And that’s like about the time when I purchased the course. And I think there was like a video about you going to the Canton Fair. So I went to the Canton Fair. And then if you know, like there was like a break between the kind of fairs, the two phases. And I went to like the Shanghai area of China. So, and I literally stumbled upon like this little supplier and I actually never met her like until today. I never met her.

15:18
So she was not there as I just grabbed like a business card from a person who was like watching her store for her. And then when I really started this, was the summer of 2019, right? Like that’s when I got my first order. So I did it take a really long time. It’s about like, I’ll say eight months for the first shipment coming in. And then pandemic happened. And I also give birth to my son. And right after like my son was like, we booked a ticket to China in January of 2020.

15:48
and a China lockdown, January 2020. So like I’ve been doing business with this person for this long, I’ve never met her. And all this stuff is basically like a FedEx, like over, it takes about a week. And then there’s like different, like, and I would go on WeChat and start a video call with her about like, this is what’s going on, right? And then, that itself, like I did have a Chinese speaking assistant at a time.

16:16
And then, like, they were like, I do a lot of like a communications for me as well. Like, and then myself, like I do speak of like Chinese as well. So that helped a little bit about like, this is a kind of difference and stuff. And then, um, it does like for each of the item at the very beginning, it would not be very weird to say it takes about like a four to six months to try to get one product out. And, but right now, because I’ve been working with her for so long.

16:41
it get a lot easier for my new product this season. Like we’re launching a lot of new products and they’re quite unique. And they’re like something that Chinese people would not even understand that kind of uniqueness. Right. And like the whole designing process, like from the product was the idea was initiated to the shipment is sent from China, not arrived to United States, but sent from China. I’ll say about like a two to three weeks. Okay. When you’re doing iterations, like

17:10
Like I don’t really know anything about textiles, like from a design standpoint, when we do it, we say, hey, we give them like a mock-up of a drawing. say, hey, can you do this? We’re not designers. My wife and I weren’t designers. we just ask, is that how you do it with your clothing also? Like, can you cut this a little differently? Or do you have like a person making a tech pack for you? There are two things. So I’ve never made a tech pack. I actually like just learned about the word tech pack recently, even though I do like a fashion for so long. So.

17:38
There are two side of things. One is the material, right? Kind of like the fabric, the pattern on the fabric and then things like that. And then the other thing is the style of it, right? The cut, like do you have a pocket? Do you have like, is it like a zipper or something like that, right? And then so for that side of things, it’s like, always just try to do incremental improvements on the current marketing, like what’s on the market, right? So like you can do that. And then the fabric side of things, I’m not a designer either.

18:04
So I like, you can search and you can just be like a clothing fabric or like, you know, like a floral, like a patterns. And I actually bought like some, I think it was called like a free pick.com or something. And one of those, like a picture website, or you can subscribe so you can actually own, you can buy the picture from them. So you can use for commercial uses. So I bought like the membership, something like that. And I will be like, oh, I really like this fabric, but I don’t like the bird on it. Get rid of a bird and add this flower.

18:34
You know, that’s kind of, don’t even do drawings. So like, can’t even do drawings. And then most like, or just to be like, this is like a blue, but this blue is more like the navy bright blue. That’s still like a little baby blue, right? You know, like, yeah.

18:51
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in eCommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

19:20
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:31
Okay, well that’s good to know. Because anyone listening here is going to be like, hey, I’m not a designer, how am going to do clothing? Can we talk about Amazon real quick? Like, Amazon’s flooded with apparel. Yes. How did you get your first sales with the pants? I mean, I can imagine PPC is really expensive. You have a reasonably high return rate compared to other products. Yes. How did you launch?

19:54
I actually, remember when I was in your course, the first thing you mentioned is that I’ve never get into apparel or electronics, basically. And then I’m like, shoot, this is actually the part I really want to get into because then, know, clothing for myself and also trying to make some money out of it. And just a little bit background about me, I started selling on Amazon, not for money, just to get rid of my old stuff, like back in 2010. I never thought it would be a business to do.

20:23
And then about like 2014, 2015, my boyfriend, now husband, like moved in with me. And of course he has a lot of trash, but it was actually his treasure. And I just kind of like sold all his stuff. So you know what that feels like. Yeah. Yeah. This is like all the electronics and games and stuff he collected for years and I sold all of it. And we were like making a lot of money. And I was like, everything.

20:47
We listed and in one second it sold and we didn’t know what we don’t know at the time. And then what else can we sell? And so we tried to get game controllers, we even sold shampoos, kids’ toys, whatever, just kind of dropshipping from offline stuff. And back then there was not many courses and there’s not resources at all. And we’re making a really good money. You’re talking about a couple of thousands per day when you’re working on it, but you have to constantly work on it.

21:15
And at the time we didn’t have kids and both of us have like a whole time job. then like we just, after work, we go to like outlet stores, we go to Walmart and we’re trying to grab whatever we grab. And then just like start listing online. And then we’re like, this is really tiring. What can we do? And at the time I was doing some bar classes, know those, know, yeah. And I’m like, oh, the freaking pair of socks is like $20 back then. Okay. Not now. Cause now I think Amazon really drove the price down already.

21:43
But back then it was like a $20. I’m like, there’s no way this is like a $20 to buy this. And so we started like designing our own socks and socks design really easy, especially the bar socks. It’s just to be like, change the color and change like the sticky dots on the bottom. Right. Whatever. Yeah. So that’s how we get into Amazon. So like, we’ve learned all our stuff at a really good timing when the market is not as competitive as today. So our account has really good ratings and stuff to begin with. Right. So I have to admit that like, it’s like,

22:11
Right now, like for a newcomer to sell on Amazon, think it’s like considerably harder than what we used to back then. And then even back in like 2017, 2018, that’s when I signed up for the courses is because our stock business is tanking with all the competitors. Right. And when I get into the clothing stuff, I was just like, I think the main thing I’ve learned from a lot of Amazon sellers is like, you can have all these like great marketing, great like.

22:40
strategy, whatever the fundamental is your product is actually needed. Right. And then so that’s where I felt like I started with as a product manager background and especially kind of like enlightened by your very first couple of courses, how do you find your product? Even though I’ve heard about like, things like keep your product costs only 30 % and the state this much for marketing whatsoever. It’s like, you actually need to find a product actually customer needs.

23:09
And each product may have their quirkiness. you know, like why like a handkerchief? right. Like why, why you guys’ stuff? Yes, I understand. I can be customized. I can do whatever. in order to find a product that fits everything with this competitive market, it’s almost not possible. Right. And then for us, that’s like, we have limited resources on our time and we have limited resources on like our design capabilities.

23:39
But like the money itself is actually not that limited for us because we have built a business for a couple of years and we have the money to actually do an order that equal to like a 20 grand, a 30 grand at the time. then like afford it returns that you mentioned that we do have the person that could be able to do the packing and then trying to like even like wash them and refold them, repackage them and send it right back.

24:08
Is that in the US then? That was in the US. Okay, got it. Yeah. So that was not too big of a deal for us. like, you know, judging that it’s like, in the end, the fundamental is like a good product will always sell. It doesn’t really like your marketing will be a little bit less. So our PPC actually didn’t really spend as much as I’ve seen for others. I don’t know, like what’s the normal PPC? There’s no normal. mean, it depends on the product, right? But I would imagine maternity

24:38
pants or whatever you were bidding on. Pretty competitive, I would imagine, but I don’t know. Because I remember like you mentioned about like, bid at like a $1 consider like the very high end. Well, that was way back then. Now it’s starting bid. Yeah. Oh, really? Oh, I didn’t know because when I started this Fox business back in 2014, like, oh, 10 cents was a lot. yeah, I mean, things have changed. Yeah. Yeah. Are you still doing PPC?

25:04
You are still on Amazon. Yes, yes, we do. it’s like we like I don’t think we bid anything over one dollar. OK. Yeah. And a lot of our customers are return customers at this point already. And it’s a lot of like the word of mouth and type of things. It’s not a lot of like and I know this is very rare on Amazon. I don’t I know this is not something like where everyone could just like a copy at the same time. And I do admit like we did catch like a pretty

25:32
early, like we stumble Amazon pretty early and we stumble your course actually pretty early as well. So we start initiating, like doing a lot of things to add up good timing. Right. And then like, I don’t know if you feel the same. It’s like the business is a longer, it’s in the business, the more competitive it gets. Like if you want to start like tomorrow will be worse than today. That’s all. I mean, that’s not always the case. I mean, it just really depends on your product actually. Yeah, that’s true too. But yes, in terms of marketplaces like Amazon, I agree with you because everyone just floods in.

26:02
But when you have your own site and that sort of thing, don’t really think that there is, because you’re not, you’re not, don’t have your products against a whole bunch of on your site, right? Yes. That’s kind of like what we feel about like our own site. Cause like our business, like in 2017, we got like a some, just like a hostile, like a competitors and blocked our listing. And suddenly you just, you’re gone from, you’re making a couple of thousand dollars a day to like a zero dollars a day.

26:30
all at once. And as long as you do feel that thing. And then the same thing, like I’m going to get better about protecting the brand and protecting the integrity of the listing and all that kind of stuff, right? But at same time, you have a lot of competitors. So when I designed my first listing, I was one and unique in the market. And right now there’s at least, at least like a 30, 50 people and they have way, way, way more competitive prize and everything. Like they’re marketing, probably throwing a lot of money on it.

26:57
And we’re more chill, like, cause right now, like our focus is on our Shopify store, not really on. I looked at your competitors actually before this interview. I think you did a much better job with your brand page and the copy than, I mean, I only looked at a couple of competitors, but. Yes. And so like, think like right now, like even during the pandemic and the whole thing, like we never really lowered our price and a lot of people, they did lower their price. they.

27:23
You’re supposed to sell in that like a $35 range and if you were selling for like 9.99, like they’re not making any money, you know that, and they’re just trying to take it over. And it wouldn’t be like, they will take over to like the number one spot. And then for a couple of days, as soon as they raise their price, they’re gone. then, but we just like maintain steady. then my philosophy is to always keep the prices high. mean, like it’s much easier to target the high end, the higher end. Yeah. Than the lower end. Can we talk about your website real quick?

27:52
I looked and you’re running Facebook ads driving traffic to your Instagram account in your Facebook page. Can we talk about what your social strategy is? I don’t have one. would say that. Yeah. So my social strategy is a little bit different. So like I kind of like to talk to you a little bit about this. Like I don’t see myself more like a Amazon seller because

28:15
Originally, when I started the company, really want to help the people who are pregnant, right? Who are in my shoes. You’re pregnant, you’re still trying to maintain your career. And it’s really hard to juggle everything and clothing shouldn’t step into the way. Right. And so my vision for the company is really trying to help the people who are pregnant or they have like a very younger kids and then help them to able still like maintain their life and balance their work and life. So for my Alina Mei, like a Facebook page or my Instagram.

28:43
I want to just try to get like a social presence and I’m not really focusing on monetization of it at this stage. So like in the future, what I want to do is like, I had like a couple of ideas and I’m meeting with a lot of like the incubators and trying to see like where I can lead as ideas to like when my first pregnancy I have really severe postpartum depression. So there was no help. Like, and a lot of people are like me because you moved away from your home. So, so you don’t have like your

29:10
women’s network to try and raise your, have your village to raise the kid. Right. And then my second pregnancy, it was very different. I actually hired a person and she’s like a specialized in taking care of like the, like the postpartum women as well as a kid. And a lot of focus for these kinds of services that focuses on the baby, but not on the mom. And then, I find that this person that she focused on me, right. So she could be very like a nutritious, like a meals. And then she actually helped me clean the house and do all those kinds of stuff.

29:39
And it may sounds really trivial, but it’s actually really important for a lot of women in their postpartum age. So in the future, I may try to see, there were a lot of recipes that women did for me, and they were really nutritious and not just healthy in terms of low sugar, low carb, whatever. There’s actually nutritious for the women’s body’s need at the time. And I was wondering if this could be…

30:06
given to a lot of other women to help them. literally for the six weeks after postpartum, I came out with better skin, better self. And you know how in America, they kick you out of the hospital after 48 hours, and you’re supposed to go back to work after six weeks. And then people associate a newborn baby’s mom with dark circles, like really bad hair.

30:31
It was a completely different experience for me. I had a better skin. I actually slept really well because she actually taught me how to comfort a baby and then taught me how to nurse the baby better so I can sleep through the night. And then she cooked a meal that’s specific targeting for me, a lot of Chinese herb medicine, that type of stuff. that’s the stuff I want people to understand. A lot of people, want this. They don’t know. This is one part I want to do it. And then the other part I was actually partnered up with the OB.

31:00
There’s a, because of the postpartum care is still lacking in the United States, even compared to some European countries, even compared to like China, Japan, right? And then a lot of women in their late to like 30s, 40s, they start having health issues, right? It’s not like immediately, but you will see it like in their like late 30s and 40s, 50s, like you will see these issues. And so like, we want to bring a lot of awareness to that, right? So I kind of want to use Alina Mei, like,

31:25
this current Amazon business because we do get a lot of orders because we reach out a lot of the people who are professional women in their pregnancy stage for the future business to bring people’s awareness for this postpartum women care, like this topic. So I think it’s a little bit different. I’m not trying to build a social presence to monetize. It’s more like a build a social presence to wait for the future to happen. So you mentioned all this traffic from Amazon and sales.

31:55
I mean, how do you get those people? Because Amazon hides everything now, the name, the address, everything. So how are you getting, how are you leveraging that traffic? We don’t even do a lot. Like, I don’t know if this is normal or not. Like we print our website on the packaging and it’s always there. And then we always tell them like, oh, if you want to have like say like a free birth plan, you can go to here to get it.

32:19
Or if you want to know about like these like postpartum tips, whatever, you can go to here to get it. And it’s very organic. Like there’s a sale, they will see this and the conversion rate is pretty low. But each day, if you think about it, we have like hundreds of orders. So these information is sent to a couple of hundreds of like people, right? If they want to come over, they will come over. So it’s like, I honestly don’t really have a concrete like a strategy. I don’t know if this is working or not. Like my Shopify order doesn’t really have

32:49
a lot of like we didn’t do like the SEO. So we didn’t do anything essentially. Our website is not optimized to be searched on Google at all. These are something on my to-do list, but not yet. Right. We’re still getting orders pretty consistently. And then they are from our old like customers because they, they bought our product and then if they bought one and they really liked it and then people don’t just use one pair of pants or one pair of clothing, they always want to buy like a multiple.

33:17
and then we’ll go to our website to buy the multiple. What’s the incentive to buy from your website? There is a coupon. If you return the customer and you will receive a coupon and that was basically printed on the packaging. you need to be aware of the Amazon restrictions. You can’t really direct the market to them being whatsoever. I think that you’re still okay to say this is my website on the packaging. You’re allowed to say it’s your website.

33:46
I mean, giving out a coupon to your website is, I think, against TOS. But I mean, in small quantities, if you’re subtle about it, it’s probably OK. Yeah. We just say, oh, you can get a free birth plan here. then for a few orders, if you That’s fine. Yeah, that kind of thing. And then it’s a couple layers away from a more direct selling and trying to lead a traffic to your own website.

34:11
I don’t know, like in the future, like I probably going to do a little bit more of a push and trying to push more like, um, traffic to the website and also to the social media account. think clothing is if you want to serve this whole maternity group of people, felt like a clothing could potentially be the, like, even though clothing is not good in the whole e-commerce marketplace, right.

34:37
In order to serve this group of people, clothing probably the easiest and lowest barrier to entry already. If you think about all the other things you probably need like FDA, like approval, like if they’re medical related, you need like all kinds of approval and trying to compete with a big brand that that’s already pretty well known or teach people a new almost like mindset, right? And then they don’t have, so like we’re literally using the clothing as an entrance and trying to grab this group of people and trying to sell it future.

35:08
Yeah, no, I think that’s a good strategy. And then once you build that audience, you’ll have an audience of, I guess the only problem with it is people only stay pregnant for so long, right? So you have like this window. It’s kind of like weddings. Yes, yes. That’s why it’s like the from where we focus is from pregnancy to three years old. And that’s one thing. And it’s like, we’re not only just in the pregnancy, it’s also postpartum.

35:32
And then like after that, you really think about it, usually people don’t just have one kid, they’ll have multiple kids. Right. And I don’t know if you felt the same way, like your dad as well, like the, when your kid is here, like the first three years you spend the most.

35:49
That’s not true. mean, now that they’re teens, they spend a lot of money. Money or time? Money. Money. Oh, no, no, no. It’s much more expensive now. Way more. I don’t have the teenagers. Yeah, I don’t have teenagers. I never experienced that. But I know like from when I was like just married without kids to like kids, preschool kids, like it was like a lot of money. All their toys are neat. Like all their like furniture is like everything is it’s just a money, money, money, money, money. Right.

36:19
But I felt like once they go to school, like my kid is only five years old. So like when he started going to school, like now it’s like a settled down a little bit. Like I don’t buy everything all new. Like I don’t have to get diapers or wipes and all that kind stuff. yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I don’t know about the teenage years. Can we talk about your photography? Did you like hire models and everything? At the beginning? No. Right now, do.

36:47
Okay. I actually highly recommend like whoever is listening to this, if you’re doing an own e-commerce store, try to outsource it. You don’t have to do it in the United States even ask your supplier in China. They will definitely know a photographer. That’s how I know about my photographer. It’s like, at the beginning I was setting up like a, whole, you know, like a gap, like the photo papers, like the shelves and tape it onto my wall. And then trying to like navigate with my cameras and all that kind of stuff.

37:14
And I don’t really have like a pretty like legs or whatever. Like I try, I still try to take the photos and with all the lighting. It’s really like a lot of learning, a lot of learning curves. And then, so I, I did my, I met my supplier, right? Like the supplier in China. So, and then she was, she won more businesses. So she was like, Oh, like have your product being listed? Have your product being listed? I was like, I don’t know where to find the models that’s like currently pregnant to take the, like the pictures for me.

37:44
And then I was like, this is where I’m stuck. That’s why my product is not being listed. And then she was like, well, I could just take the photos for you. And so I asked my supplier because they have a lot of resources in China. And then the cost is like a 50, 60 bucks. And it’s a set of photos. And you’re talking about like, they give you like a 30 highly professional.

38:08
And then the models that are not from the United States, they’re probably from like Russia or Brazil, you know, those kinds of countries. But there is like a whole industry in China. And then you saw those videos on TikTok. They do like, like two poses per second. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then like, and then so like, that’s what I start doing. Like I just use them to do my photos. And then it’s so much easier than trying to use the American like resources and doing your own photo. It’s much more expensive too.

38:36
It’s much more expensive. then like the only thing like I felt like right now, like I trained to shoot a lot of more lifestyle photos. And so like, that’s really hard to communicate with them about like what you want and then whatever. Yeah. But like with the, the Amazon photos where there’s just like a white background, they’re so experienced with it. And then that’s a whole, whole industry, like that you could just elaborate. I don’t know if people actually talk to their suppliers about these things.

39:04
And then like, this is how I feel. Like, I don’t know if people feel the same, like a lot of these, like a Chinese Amazon sellers, they know a lot. They actually know a lot. Like, and a lot of these suppliers, they don’t not only serve you like the American buyers, they also serve those like, like Chinese Amazon sellers, right? So like they are kind of like connected. And once you’re connected with them, you can leverage a lot of like resources of where they had and then people in the United States may not necessarily have. Yeah.

39:35
Yeah, no, I agree with that. We’ve asked sourcing agents for that. I don’t think I’ve ever asked the manufacturer for photos outside their stock photos that they have. But I want you to give advice to anyone who wants to sell apparel. Would you do it again? Or if so, if you were start all over again, would you do anything different? And what advice would you give people who want to sell clothing? Because there’s a lot of people who want to. Yeah. So I would only advise it if you have some resources already.

40:03
And I will only advise like if you have resources, things like that, you know who the suppliers and you have a trustful supplier that can work with you. Cause a lot of the suppliers that would not take very small orders. it took me a while trying to find my first supplier even with only like, you know, a couple of thousands of like a order. How did you find that first part? Was that the fair or it was at a fair. when I went to China, like the more the, uh, the Zhijiang area of China. like the mid China inside of the Canton fair.

40:32
I actually stumble upon there, like a factory. I don’t know if you’ve been to that area. It’s so different. Like the factory is here, right? Like say, and then like literally like five minutes away, you have your packaging factory and you have like, if you want to need to do the logo with like the stock cars and stuff, that’s like five minutes away. And then within a day, if you’re actually local, you could get like the packaging, the samples, like everything is done within a couple hours. You don’t have to wait for a design to get approved or all that kind of back and forth.

41:01
you’re more familiar with in the United States. That trip was definitely worth it. We spent probably a week in China. We got more than what we could got for a year in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. So I would only recommend, go back to the topic, I would only recommend to get enough capital and whatever you think you need. How much capital do you think you need? Depends on what you’re doing. Depends on what you’re doing. Well, let’s just follow your model, right?

41:28
You started with pants, maternity wear, whatever. How much capital do you need? My per product price is in like a 30 to $40 range. And if you, that’s like a work on this, like a backwards, right? 30 to $40 range. And if you go back, it’s saying 30 % on your product cost of your sales price, you’re talking about $10 per piece, right? And my product, again, if it’s a one roll of cloth, it can make about like, like 200 to 500.

41:54
So then it’s the 10 times that 200 to 500. Okay. want multiple colors. You multiply that. Right. Okay. So still like on the order of 10 to $20,000. Yes. Okay. And then with that, but then also my second thing enough capital, but also I would actually go on the higher end of clothing right away instead of like a goal from the low end.

42:19
The market is so saturated and so competitive and there’s no way you can win against the others on your design or on your pricing. Cause a lot of the Chinese like sellers, they are their competitive advantage. They could change the design within a week where you have to wait for samples for like a whole month or so, right? And then they could do really cheap because they could find like the manufacturers that not necessarily speaking English or have the export.

42:48
certificate or the rights to export. They could find whatever a very, very small factory and do things very cheap for them. And we don’t have that. But on the higher end, it’s a different story. So that’s where I would do. So that means go back. will be like more capital to start with. When you’re talking about like in the 40, $50 and then your price, your whole thing is probably going to be like 20 to 30 grand instead of a 10 to 20 grand.

43:16
And then you also need to have the resource. Like if there is a return, how do you handle the return? So like right now, like I live in Georgia. So like all the houses here have a walkout basement. So my basement is basically my warehouse and I’ll slash like a company space. So there is a room. Like the basement, have like a kitchen and stuff, like a bathroom. Yeah. I’m from Maryland originally. yeah. Yeah. So like my basement, have like all the shelvings to set up and there’s one room I set up as an office and have a station for people to like pack the orders and stuff.

43:46
Right. So a lot of people may not have that luxury, but like that is something to consider. Like everything that you said about apparel was true. It requires large amount of capital, a lot of returns, and it’s super competitive. Like all these things you have to kind of think it through before you step into it. Right. Yeah. OK, let me ask you this. You mentioned a lot of stuff, but what is what is your future vision for Alina Mei? Like what are you going to be working on for the next two to three years? I am thinking

44:16
I know instead of like a broaden, like my product offering, I want to go deeper into my customer’s need. So again, like the focus is from pregnancy to three years old, a very young kids moms, and then specific niche targeting is on professional working moms with younger kids. And I want to discover kind of like, what are some other pain points that they may have and how can we help with them? Right? There are a couple of ideas that’s currently in my head.

44:44
So my husband’s work with, he’s a data scientist. He works with like machine learning and stuff. One of like his friend and I was about to reach out, they do this using AI to generate recipe and then trying to see like what you have. So for example, if I have, I don’t have a lot of milk supply and where I’m nursing my baby, like there are certain food you can eat to help with that, right? Or if I have like, you know, a lot of hair loss, there are certain food you can eat, certain nutrition that you need.

45:13
to help with that. And then what they do, they use like this AI thing to generate recipe for people with like the current ingredient they have whatsoever. And so like, was like, oh, this probably could potentially be something that’s really helpful with my customer. So that might be like one idea. And there’s like a lot of other like brainstorm ideas that we actually mentioned about. then things like, could we do like a milk kit, like a specific, you know, like a HelloFresh, but specific to like the baby mommy stage, right? Or could we do like the

45:42
when the babies start to wane off of milk to actual food, could we do a subscription of a food delivery so people still get a fresh stuff and then can help with. And then could we set up a service to connect with these, the person I hire is a very small niche group and she had her own group, a Facebook or social media group where they introduce business. That’s a very, very niche, right? And it’s not available to every single.

46:11
place. And I think they are, heard her from California, fly all the way to my home to actually take care of for that six weeks of time. Could we actually expand that business? There’s something I want to do in the future specifically focusing on this customer group. Doing what? Not sure. Yeah. So this would be obviously a different brand, right? This wouldn’t fall under Alina May, but

46:34
I would say like AlinaMate, my current vision is AlinaMate as a parent company, there’s AlinaMate maternity that sells physical products where they have like apparel. And so we will see in our store, we have some like a postpartum kits where people like, you know, need to use like for the postpartum stages. And then besides the physical product, the second thing where I just founded AlinaMate Tech.

46:59
company and then where we’re going to do like a more of the technology or service oriented stuff. And my ultimate goal is for the third stage of Alina Mei, where I really want to start this like a nonprofit where we can advocate for this group of women, like provide the knowledge or whatever we do with a nonprofit to these group of people. That’s kind of my vision for Alina Mei. Alina Mei, it’s like this is a women’s second name, right? Alina and Mei are two people, like the two actual women I know.

47:29
And I want this brand to stand as like, you’re almost like your aunt or your mom, where you moved away from them or you’re very supportive, like a bigger sister or your women mentor that you face at work. The pain that you’ve been experiencing through, we experienced before. And I can hold your hand. I can support you. Like navigate your career, navigate your newly motherhood, like navigate a stage of your life.

47:55
and trying to get better because you’re supposed to enjoy your new kid and enjoy this new bond of joy, not trying to worry about all these things around you. And you know, in the United States, currently there are a lot of things going on that’s not really in the women’s favor, right? So like we don’t really have a good maternity leave. We don’t have a good about what whatsoever like the women’s may need as you know, currently in the society. And Alina May stands have this persona to be always supportive, always on your end. You can always turn to Alina May for help. And that’s kind of like the vision I see.

48:25
for this company. Nice. Let me ask you this. You have two kids yourself. How many hours do you spend on your businesses? I’m just kind of curious. I mean, this vision is grand. So I have a really crazy schedule. actually I so you know how I do the nonprofit side of things. So I started like on my own, like a little bit social media, but I was like in Chinese, like helping with the Chinese American, like a located in United States. Right. So

48:53
I actually tell like a my group of women about this and everyone think I’m crazy, but like I hear this up. So my kid used to get up at four o’clock in the morning and they try one extra feeding. then this is what I discovered. Their sleep time routine is at seven o’clock and then they get up around four o’clock for one feeding. And they go back to sleep all the way to like a seven or eight. Right. But the thing is if you put them into bed and then after the sleep routine and you sleep around like say 10 or 11 and you have to get out four.

49:23
And then you get up again at seven and you’re like asleep. It’s so disturbed. Right. So what I have been doing since my kid was really young is I sleep around that like a seven or eight time and I get up at four o’clock to work. So I work from four to seven and I spend the time with my kid at like a seven to eight. Right. And then they start their day. And then my next work chunk is from like the eight or like I go to gym and it’s like one hour. So nine to 12 and then 12 to one is another lunch break.

49:53
And I work from like a one to like a four to five and then five to eight is finally time. And that’s the end of day. So I work from four o’clock in the morning to about like a four o’clock at night. But then there’s like a breaks in between where I spend my time with my kids. then like, so I don’t think that’s unusual. I know like when, when I was waking up in the middle of the night, that’s like the best time to work. It’s completely quiet. Yeah. Exactly. And then a lot of times like people are like,

50:16
It’s really hard to have like a dinner with my kids because their sleep time is so early whatsoever. Like my suggestion always like have breakfast with your kid and have everything in the morning instead of at night at night. Like if you want to go to workout, workout like the first thing in the morning because those things are deemed as not a super priority, right? Everything with kids, they’re like important but

50:39
They’re necessary, but not important. Does that make sense? If you’re a business that throw your curve ball, have to handle that curve ball before you’d be like, Oh, I’m going to take my kid to the zoo. Right. So like, do those things first. So when the curve ball hit you, like you can still handle the curve ball. don’t just like a drop your kids off to catch a curve ball. That’s kind of my philosophy. So like that’s like my time. It’s like, if you really think about it, I actually do work a lot, but I also spend a lot of like time with my kids compared normally. Like now.

51:07
because they’re in summer camps. So their summer camp ends at three o’clock, right? So my working time is a four to seven, that’s like a three hours already. And then the night to 12, because I do go to J-Men’s now, so that’s a six hours already. And then one to three, that’s like eight hours, legit, like high quality amount of work that you can contribute into it. And then I still spend time with my kids from like a three all the way to like eight o’clock. I mean, this is stuff that you probably couldn’t do with a full-time job, right? I mean, you call your own hours, essentially.

51:37
Yeah, this is one of the biggest reasons, I think the biggest benefit why I quit my W2 job because I was making a really good like six figures. And then like I was managing like a 70 something people team when I was like a 20, 27, 28. And I quit my job when I was 29. And then I think it’s my work, my old job, W2 job, the company appraises about this work life balance. Yes, there is a work life balance.

52:06
because you’re never allowed to take your work back home, right? And then you just go in there, contribute your eight hours or nine hours and you go back home. But the thing is that eight hours is set. You’re always working on someone else’s schedule, right? So that’s what I did not like. sometimes my schedule could be like 9.30 all the way to like a 6.30, 6.45 and daycare is closed at 6.30. What you’re gonna do, right? mean, even there is like your kid is sick.

52:36
Like you have to stay at home and then you have to call off work. If you’re sick, you have to go to work anyways. Like these kind of like, you don’t have that freedom. That’s what I dislike about working for a big corporate. understand there is like, oh, you get like the benefits, you get a stability, like you are less affected by the economies and things like that. But- I disagree with that comment by the way. You do? I mean, we’ll see. There’s a huge recession coming. We’ll see. There’s already layoffs here all over Silicon Valley and a hiring freeze.

53:06
We’ll see how it goes. Yes, I lived through three downturns. I watched as my friends got laid off, like all around me. That’s true. Like for me, I felt this. It’s like when I was at my old work, I was like, I know because of when they do like a chem people, like they fire people, they always fire the bottom ones. And I always like, I’m always like a pretty good performer. So I felt like, oh, I’m pretty safe here. Like I’m not going to get canned even the economy is bad.

53:33
And I always work for a bigger company. It’s not like the company is to go like under the water, right? That’s why I felt like a safe, but like right now, like I, like you can, you can feel like the business is not going as well as before. Like you, you almost like, you know, you feel a firsthand and then you start to worry about like, am going to pay for my employee? Like I have all these stock like in my warehouse, in my basement, what happened? Like if it didn’t sell, right. Or things like.

54:00
What happens if my Amazon account is going to get banned? So like tomorrow and then what am I going to do? Right. Like you are responsible for a lot of things. like it’s like a different type of like stress. You know what I’m saying? Like you do have, you do have the freedom of like doing whatsoever, but I strongly prefer this freedom versus like a sense of like safetyness. think you feel that way because you’re mostly Amazon right now. Once you have your own site, like it will never just go off overnight.

54:30
because you have your lists of customers. And if it goes down, it goes down very gradually giving you time to adjust. Whereas Amazon, it could get shut off. So once you do your site stuff, which I’m very curious about, whenever you get to that point, let me know, let me know. And I think you’ll This is the current goal for this year. This is the current goal for this year. Because we did have like a bunch of incidents where like your listing was gone. And then like…

54:57
It took a couple of days to get it back. And then it’s always like, ramp up is really hard. So that’s the reason. If you really think of those Amazon sellers that actually at the old, you know, the anchor, like that brand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you see like their financial report, they’re trying to move away from Amazon too. that’s, I think everyone’s like, they kind of start at Amazon and then try to move away. And technically like, even though I bought the courses in 2018, I didn’t really start working on this until like the 2019-ish time, right? Like that’s when I had my first listing.

55:26
So for us, it’s only like about two years, two and a half years in. Like, wow, I’m running this business more legit like a business. So like, I felt like at this stage, it’s like, we just got kick started with Amazon. And then now we’re thinking about like, how do you expand to the next stage? Like either it’s offsite and start building your own social media presence and adding your more product and then trying to be away. I think everyone, like you had one advice was like, always start on Amazon.

55:52
Right. And then try to build your own website. I feel like we’re still on this, like, we have not done everything we could done with Amazon yet, but it’s probably at the tip end with it already. So right now the incremental, the cost is going to be very high for us to do the incremental improvements. So that’s why this year is the first, like my website is up for like a couple months only. So it looks good. I mean, I’m sure it’ll do well. I’m sure it’ll do well. I really hope so. don’t know. This part will be fun too.

56:23
Yes. For you, especially, think. Yes. Building up the audience and that sort of thing. Ming, thanks a lot for coming on. Where can people find your store? Would you mind spelling it for them? It’s Alina Mei.com. Alina spells like A-L-I-N-A. Mei is M-A-E. Mei. Cool. This was a great interview. Really good to hear your story. I know we haven’t emailed all that much, but it was great to meet you face to face via Zoom.

56:50
Yes, it also felt like, oh, this person is actually real and is right in front of me. All right, take care.

57:00
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now Ming’s story just goes to show that you can tackle even the most difficult niches online as long as you have a solid value proposition and a key point of differentiation. More information about this episode go to mywifequaterjob.com slash episode 422. And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot.

57:29
So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash div. That’s P-O-S-T-S-U-I-P-T dot I-O slash div. Now we talk about how I these tools on my blog.

57:59
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.