184: How My Student Ron Makes 7 Figures Selling Childrens Wall Decals Online

Podcast: Download (Duration: 47:00 — 64.8MB)

Accepting an invitation to Amazon Vendor Central cost Ron Eiger about 75% of his traffic, and years later it still has not fully recovered. Moving his listings to the vendor side reset every product’s sales history, best seller rank, and organic ranking to zero.

Ron runs Sunny Decals, selling nontoxic fabric children’s wall decals, alongside a separate private label business. Together they are on track for seven figures.

He has been in my Create A Profitable Online Store course since 2012, which makes him one of the longest-running students I keep in touch with. This conversation is deliberately candid about the failures rather than only the wins.

This episode covers what Vendor Central actually costs you, why he bought his own printers, how a print-on-demand model handles 1,000-plus SKUs, and why his own website generates only 5% of sales.

A note on timing: this is a 2017 conversation. Amazon’s review policies and vendor programs have changed since, and review groups referenced here are no longer permitted.

Key takeaways

• Switching to Vendor Central reset all listing history and dropped traffic roughly 75%.
• Vendor Central removes phone support, locks your listings, and can change your titles without your input.
• Amazon accounts for about 70% of sales, Etsy 15%, Wayfair 10%, his own site 5%.
• Owning printers enables print-on-demand across 1,000-plus SKUs with no inventory risk.
• Net margins run about 50% despite material costing roughly five times standard vinyl.
• Google Shopping and text ads never turned profitable, costing thousands over six months with an agency.
• Running out of stock now means relaunching from scratch rather than bouncing back.
• He refuses to compete on price, holding a premium position while ranking on page one.

What happens when you switch to Amazon Vendor Central?

Your listings get recreated on the vendor side, which wipes your entire sales history. Traffic dropped about 75% for Ron, and best seller rank, ranking, and history all reset to day one.

The pitch was flattering and the rep was aggressive. Amazon approached him, praised his performance, and offered tools including A-plus content and AMS that were genuinely hard to access at the time.

Almost no information existed publicly about the program. Nobody was discussing what the transition actually involved, so there was no way to check the rep’s claims.

The inventory consequences compounded the ranking loss. FBA stock had been positioned around proven bestsellers, and after the reset those products no longer sold, leaving stranded inventory to recall.

The bestseller list inverted entirely. Products that had never performed became the top sellers, and the previous winners collapsed.

Why Vendor Central is a bad fit for most sellers

Vendor Central means wholesaling to Amazon rather than selling yourself. That works for manufacturers who want to ship product and skip the selling, and it is wrong for anyone who wants control.

Support quality drops sharply. There is no seller support line to call, every issue becomes a ticket, and the responses were unhelpful enough that Ron describes the experience as terrible.

Listing control disappears. Amazon changed his titles, and years later he still cannot edit many of his products because they remain locked on the vendor side.

Recovery came from new listings rather than repair. His best selling products today are all ones created after the transition, because those are the listings he actually controls.

Traffic never came back to previous levels. Conversion rate is higher now, and the raw traffic volume is gone and cannot be bought back.

How do you find a product idea from a bad customer experience?

Notice what you personally could not buy. Ron and his wife were decorating a nursery with low-VOC paint and organic cotton, and the custom decals they ordered smelled so strongly of plastic that they aired the room out for five or six days.

The gap was real once they searched for it. No nontoxic decal existed on the market.

His wife’s graphic design background made the idea actionable. Neither of them had sold anything online before.

Validation came from studying adjacent competitors. Enough of a market existed that capturing a slice of it would support a business, with room to differentiate on materials.

How do you justify a premium price against cheap competitors?

Compete on materials and let reviews carry the message. Most decals are vinyl made from PVC, largely mass produced in China, while Ron’s use a fabric material with water-based adhesive and no smell.

Volume is permanently lower as a result. Most shoppers will not pay the difference.

Repeat customers are what validates the position. Buyers who try the product understand the gap, and the reviews reflect it.

The hard part is conveying it before purchase. A photograph cannot communicate material quality, so the product has to sell through reviews until reputation builds.

Building that reputation took time with no shortcuts. Starting with no reviews and no feedback meant a long stretch of slow sales.

Should you manufacture products yourself?

Ron would not do it again. Manufacturing is physically demanding, labor intensive, and caps your output at your machine and staffing capacity.

He is currently limited by both. Keeping up with top sellers now requires either a second shift or another machine.

Overseas production moves more volume with less strain. Margins may be slightly lower, and someone else does the physical work.

The advantage he did gain was print-on-demand. Owning printers means no inventory commitment, since orders get made when they arrive.

The approach was deliberately cautious. He started buying wholesale from a nearby printer for under $10,000, and only bought machines at $20,000 to $30,000 each once sales proved the model.

How do you sell 1,000 SKUs without holding inventory?

Print on demand for the long tail and stock only proven winners in FBA. Ron carries more than 1,000 SKUs across variations and could theoretically list far more.

About 100 top sellers go into FBA for Prime eligibility. Those generate the majority of unit volume.

Everything else is merchant fulfilled and made when ordered. Orders come in daily and get produced the same way.

Tooling stays minimal. ShipStation consolidates label printing and pushes tracking back to each marketplace, and inventory tracking is unnecessary outside of FBA.

Customization becomes free capability. Nothing prevents adding more designs, which is the growth strategy.

How do you launch a new product design on Amazon?

List everywhere simultaneously, send promising designs into FBA, and turn on advertising. Ron lists new designs on Amazon, Etsy, and his own site at the same time.

Advertising does the testing. Sponsored ads plus AMS headline ads reveal whether a design has demand.

Prediction is unreliable even after years. Designs he loves frequently fail and ones he dislikes become hits, with no pattern he can identify.

Review groups were part of the old launch process and are gone. He stopped giveaways entirely, since Amazon may treat those reviews as incentivized.

Where do wall decal sales actually come from?

Amazon dominates at roughly 70%, followed by Etsy at 15%, Wayfair at 10%, his own website at 5%, and Houzz at under 1%. Etsy produced the first consistent sales before Amazon overtook it.

The sequence matters for anyone starting. His own website produced almost nothing at first, Etsy converted immediately, and Amazon then scaled far faster than Etsy.

Marketplace traffic is why. More shoppers arrive ready to buy.

Why paid ads fail for design-driven products

Shoppers browsing designs rarely buy the first one they see, which destroys conversion rates. Ron compares it to buying art, where someone wanting a tree decal wants to compare many trees first.

He lost thousands proving this. Self-managed Google campaigns failed, then a Google partner agency took a couple of thousand dollars and six months without producing a profitable campaign.

Text ads failed outright. Shopping ads converted at rates too low to cover their cost.

Most site sales come from organic traffic instead. Shoppers often arrive from marketplaces looking for more options or better prices.

Social has not worked either. Instagram ads did not generate revenue, and he has no email list despite knowing he should.

How do you handle Amazon hijackers and counterfeiters?

Aggressive, continuous reporting, and accept that it never fully stops. For nearly a year, batches of six or seven new accounts at a time listed his entire catalog at a fraction of the price.

Those sellers never shipped anything. They collected payments, closed the accounts within a month, and moved on.

Removal is a treadmill. Getting three kicked out brings three more.

The newest version is more brazen. A seller printed his product photo from the Amazon listing onto a clear decal, copied his title, images, and bullet points, created a separate listing, and sent it into Prime.

Should you cut prices to compete on Amazon?

Ron refuses, and his sales have not suffered. He set his private label price and declined to participate in price cutting.

The bet is on quality and service instead. He is among the most expensive in his category while still ranking on page one at his target volume.

Listing quality supports the premium. He is likely the only seller in his category with enhanced brand content and professional photography.

He is candid that this may not last forever. It has held so far.

How much money do you need to start a private label product?

Ron started with $10,000, which covered a single SKU’s first purchase order. Smaller starts are possible through validating with small orders before committing.

Liquidity is the part nobody warns you about. Success means reinvesting progressively more into inventory, and the capital requirement escalates quickly at volume.

Paying yourself gets deferred. He went over a year putting everything back into inventory before taking a salary.

He orders 1,000 units for any new product. Research gives him enough confidence that the units will sell eventually, even if margins end up thinner than hoped.

Why running out of stock is worse than it used to be

Losing your inventory now means relaunching rather than resuming. Restocking used to return him almost immediately to his previous position.

Recent stockouts behaved differently. Each one felt like launching a new product, requiring a real fight back to his former ranking.

That is why he overbuys deliberately. Being terrified of running out is a rational response to how the ranking penalty now works.

How do you find a product to private label?

Read the reviews on existing products and fix what people complain about. Ron found his winner by identifying specific complaints, improving on them, and adding packaging nobody else offered.

The research tools available now did not exist earlier. Validating that an item sells before investing is a genuine advantage.

He now worries that popular research tools expose his picks. Adding a product to a shared tracker may signal it to everyone else using the same tool.

Product selection remains his hardest problem. He is currently stuck looking for the next private label product.

His advice is to accept an imperfect first attempt. The first product may not be a home run, and the learning only happens by doing it.

Frequently asked questions

Should you accept an invitation to Amazon Vendor Central?

Be extremely cautious. Ron’s transition reset all listing history and dropped traffic roughly 75%, and the program suits manufacturers who want to wholesale rather than sellers who want control.

What is the difference between Vendor Central and Seller Central?

Vendor Central means selling wholesale to Amazon, who then controls pricing and listings. Seller Central means selling directly to customers with control over your own listings.

Does switching to Vendor Central reset your rankings?

It did for Ron. Listings had to be recreated on the vendor side, which wiped sales history and best seller rank and left previously stocked FBA inventory stranded.

How much of ecommerce revenue comes from Amazon?

For Sunny Decals, roughly 70%, with Etsy at 15%, Wayfair at 10%, and their own website at 5%.

Is print on demand profitable?

Net margins run about 50% for Ron, even though his fabric material costs roughly five times standard vinyl. Owning the manufacturing removes the margin paid to an outside producer.

Why do Google ads fail for design products?

Shoppers comparing designs rarely buy the first one they see, so conversion rates stay too low to cover click costs. Text ads failed entirely and Shopping ads never became profitable.

How many units should you order for a first private label product?

Ron orders 1,000 consistently. Sufficient upfront research means the units will sell even if it takes longer than expected.

How much does it cost to start private label?

He started with $10,000 for one SKU. Smaller starts are possible, and the ongoing capital requirement grows quickly as volume increases.