[hambos22]

I don't know if that counts, but I see it as a tech side project.

Last year I've built for my gf, a custom D2C (direct to client) ecommerce webapp [0] for her handmade products.

Then I started looking into PPC, tracking, social advertisement & marketing etc.. Now we are profitable avg ~8k / month only on retail.

[0] https://yuma.gr

[shrimpx]

This is great. Curious, have you scaled the "making" operation, as in have you hired people to make products, or does your gf still make all the products?

[hambos22]

Thank you!

Yes she still makes all the products (with help though now) as she finds a lot of enjoyment doing it and as we're trying to find shortcuts for our work, she found her ways on becoming more productive on the making process. At some point this whole thing became unmanageable, especially on Christmas.

Now the business operates with 3 people on board, me for the digital part, she for the art behind the brand and another one person full time for order management, client support, helping on the making etc..

And very soon we'll hire one more and move out of the house to a bigger space because we'll enable B2B as there is demand on these kind of products.

[shrimpx]

Sounds really cool. Best of luck moving forward and scaling out.

[pcthrowaway]

I always wonder who "owns" the property such as this in the event of a breakup

[csomar]

This is not a large company or a fully established business. The value could be derived from both, or only from one side. If the value is derived from the metrics setup that OP has implemented, he can re-produce this with another creator. Think about it as two partners (one developer and one designer) starting a freelancing business. There is no "business" to own.

[hambos22]

This.

I'm already doing kinda the same work with 2 established ecommerce B2B industry businesses, one in US and one in my country, and I'm getting payed a percentage of the gross profit from online sales & leads.

We have a competitive advantage because no competitor on these sectors has an "in-house" dev for ecommerce ops.

[hambos22]

She. I don't keep all the eggs in the same basket.

*edit typos

[xcubic]

Why not use something like shopify?

[hambos22]

Because I want 100% control and flexibility. It would take me more time to do this in shopify as it holds a lot of custom behavior and it has many automations on the backend.

Also with a custom admin dashboard we were able to scale a lot in our & employee's productivity

[edit]

I would use shopify for bootstraping temporary viral campaigns for niche products.

[xcubic]

Tbh, it makes complete sense.