How Should You Do Product Research?

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this new series watch, CapForge’s owner reacts to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

CapForge Founder and Owner Matt Remuzzi reacts to the idea of selling products with a $3,000 price tag with 30,000 searches per month.    

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video: 

I turned $0 into over 2 million by selling one single product. And here’s exactly how you can steal my winning product research process. Step No. 1, don’t even think about selling Aliexpress items for $20. We want to find products that cost over $3,000 so we can take home over $1,000 to take home profit for every item we sell. And the best way to verify the price point of a product

is by using this brand-new software called SupplierHQ.io. Step No. 2, don’t chase demand. We want to find products to have over 30,000 searches per month. And the best way to check demand of a product is by using a keyword tool like Ahrefs or Semrush. Step No. 3, we want to sell non-seasonal products so our store doesn’t have any huge swings in sales.

Matt’s Review: 

Okay well, I’m not sure how he turned $0 into that unless he was dropshipping. Because you normally have to buy the inventory before you can sell it. And the margin of 33% is pretty good for products, even with high price point. But let’s follow this logic further and see if it makes sense, right? Okay, products that cost at least $3,000. I can’t think of too many categories that fits that, right? There’s jewelry, maybe some furniture products. Higher-end furniture products even, not everything you get at IKEA is three grand. But there’s higher-end furniture products. Maybe some high-end electronics possibly, gosh I’m kind of already out of ideas. I’m not sure how many product categories even you can come up with that people – maybe appliances, high-end appliances. But you’re not gonna be competing with LG and Maytag just supply people with washing machines and dryers that are $3,000 or more anyway. So I’m not sure that there’s a ton of products out there with a 3,000-dollar or more price point with also 30,000 searches a month that aren’t already gonna be saturated with suppliers, right? 

So let’s say just jewelry. Okay, I wanna sell engagement rings that cost at least 3,000 bucks. Cool, I’m competing with Blue Nile and all the other online jewelry people and then I’m competing with all the local jewelry stores, right? Because of somebody’s looking for an engagement ring maybe they don’t feel comfortable buying it online or they wanna go see it in person, they wanna try it on. They’re searching “jewelry near me” so my online store is not gonna be something they go with. Or if they are gonna buy online and okay here’s Blue Nile. I’ve heard of them. They’ve been around for years, they’ve got a million reviews. Or here’s you know my shady jewelry.com store that I just opened, with no reviews and no credibility. Now I’m gonna have to be back to competing on price cause what else do I have to offer to convince somebody to buy from me instead of somebody more reputable? 

So I mean, yes this – you don’t have to make as many sales if you’re selling stuff that’s $3,000 or more in price point but it doesn’t necessarily make the sales any easier. It doesn’t really mean there’s less competition, it doesn’t mean that the margins are necessarily better. Because whatever you make in margin on the product you’re probably spending an advertising to get the customers there in the first place and build trust and get enough of them seeing it that one of them buys. So I’m not sure I believe that selling high-price products is any more of a surefire route to ecommerce success than selling low-price products. The only difference is how many sales you have to make but the sales aren’t necessarily easier to make and this competition isn’t necessarily less. So I would go back to focusing more on who are my customers gonna be. Determining who your customers are gonna be and what you can offer them that’s different or better than what they’re currently getting and use that as the deciding point on what products I wanna sell, rather than starting with here’s the product I wanna sell, now can I find some customers to buy it from me so this isn’t the approach I would take if I was dreaming up an ecommerce business. And I would be curious to know what his top hundred products are that are all over $3,000 that all have more than 30,000 searches a month that don’t have already an existing embedded level of competition. That’s gonna be very hard to beat. I’m not sure I believe that list is really as good as he might think it is.