We Got Suspended On Amazon!
Here's how we're navigating it...
Deacon here with a story that perfectly captures the entrepreneurial rollercoaster we're on with Dr. Barry's.
Picture this…
Last Wednesday, we hit our biggest sales day yet - $1,320. Travis had just cracked the code on our Google Ads strategy, and everything was clicking. We were honestly on track for a $1M annual run rate.
Then Thursday happened…
Amazon suspended our best-selling product. Just... completely shut it down. “Permanent Suspension” was the words they used. The reason? Two words on our label: "stomach" and "digestive support."
That's it.
I'll be honest - I was pretty down about it. We had just come out of that cash-crunch period I told you about (where we were scraping together money for note payments), and finally had some breathing room. Then boom - back to square one.
But here's where it gets interesting...
While I was doom-scrolling through worst-case scenarios, Travis was already plotting our comeback. By Friday, we had:
Set up subscriptions on our Shopify store
Landed our first subscription sale that same day
Started selling 1-2 subscription orders daily (at 25% off)
Even better?
Last week, despite the Amazon shutdown, we actually had higher profit than most previous weeks. Turns out when you're not spending $600-700 daily on ads, your margins look pretty good!
The new game plan:
1. Relabeling everything (my kids are about to learn the family business 😅)
2. Rebuilding our Amazon presence from scratch
3. Launching a new "Eliminate Your PPIs Challenge" funnel that's already converting at 2.24%
Travis called one of our customers this weekend to better understand their journey, and it sparked this whole new approach to helping people get off their prescription medications (with their doctor's supervision, of course). The ideas and emails were flowing by Sunday night, and it's already live with 10 signups.
Want to hear us work through this stuff in real-time? Check out the latest episode of our "We Bought A Brand" podcast.
You'll hear the actual conversations as we figure this stuff out - including that moment Travis had to tell me Amazon was shipping our 300 stranded inventory units to my house... in individual packages!
(Seriously, my wife is thrilled about the fort we're building with all these boxes.)
Until next time,
Deacon
P.S. If you know anyone sitting on a health and wellness brand with great products but messy operations... this latest adventure hasn't scared us off. We're still looking! 😉