Working At A Juice Store And Building Side Hustle

Aaron Spivak worked in a family run juice store, initially he and his brother worked in a juice store to make ends meet. The family struggled to find a job because the Canadian economy was merciless and companies didn’t want to bother hiring anyone at the time. After getting scammed by one of the best business college in Canada, Aaron and his 4 brothers worked together to keep operations running 24 hours and cycled shift and sleep to maintain the store. In order for this to be possible some would sleep at night while others would make the product, then day time, the sleepers would wake up to sell. Aaron at the time was sleeping on a blow up mattress, and grind the same task to make the family business grow.

After establishing security for the family, he pursue a new passion, one he think sounds more reasonable for a business owner, Ecommerce retail. He wanted to get into retail, because he sees himself slaving and and working like a dog, despite being the business owner. He has the luxury to quit his work to full focus on ecommerce, but he much rather work to help his family and tack on his side hustle in addition to his workload.

Beginning

Aaron and his partner Leor wanted to start by selling weighted blankets, because at the time, weighted blankets were trending. They were quick to develop the product, every minute of waking existence was used to build the company. What’s even more impressive, they didn’t hold back on advertisements. They bought the most expensive keywords. They also took the time to choose weighted blankets because at the time, there were realistically only 2 competitors, which made the keywords cheaper than normal.

Sales immediately starts taking effect, Aaron and Leor were making thousands a day, they understood that the demand was high so they bought large inventory to ship to their customers faster.

Problems

Summer has arrived, and sales slowed down. Weighted blankets are good to use during winter, but because the blanket is so thick from the weighted material, people using it during summer were profusely sweating. This is a problem, they realize that their initial success was beginners luck, and this product was just a seasonal product. Aaron was a simple man, he made the executive decision to call every customer to figure out what they wanted.

After spending 2 months communicating with customers, Aaron made the decision to make weight blankets with holes to help with over heating. He started a Kickstarter, despite learning nothing from fundraising class at his scam of a school. He and Leor raised 1.1 million, which was more than enough to develop the new inventory for the cooling weighted blankets. He also made pillows and sheets and became the strongest brand in the bedding industry. To market the product they wiggled their way into Dragons Den, the Canadian equivalent of Shark Tank, to market their product with no intention of borrowing any money or selling any shares.

Brand > Product

After the huge success with Hush, Sleep Country, being the biggest bedding company offered them 48 million dollars for the company, and all they had to do is help open the store. During the grand opening, 1500 customers came flocking to a physical location, and instead of buying the product, they wanted autographs from the founders. People were obsessed with the brand, it became it’s own culture. This is most likely due to how involved customers were with the company, The Kickstarter and the interaction with customers was a different and effective approach to building a company. Now Aaron and Leor are worth over 50 million.

How they did it

Keep working Aaron at the time was working day and night, he slept 4-6 hours a day, and he didn’t waste a minute on hedonistic habits, he focused on being a problem solver.

Non Competitive Niche Pick a niche that is not competitive, they did ecommerce, which is to do sales online, they didn’t bother with drop shipping after a supplier broke their promise and Aaron lost 150k. The weighted blanket niche was still in it’s infant stage with only 2 competitors, which made ad keywords cheap.

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