Father + Son + Personalized Gifts = ​​$100K/Month

Taha Yavuz is the co-founder of Luca’s Gift, a site which makes and sells personalized gifts like wallets and pens ✍️

Per a recent interview, the business does $100,00 in monthly revenue.

It all began when Taha’s father migrated to the US from Turkey 🇹🇷

He couldn’t find a job so he started making personalized keychains and selling them on Etsy.

💬 Taha says…

We first started selling using marketplaces such as Etsy and Amazon. It is easier to take a place on a saturated marketplace rather than opening a website. So, we have chosen that way. It took about 2 weeks to get orders.

They finally set up their own website in 2020, after Taha joined his father in the US…

we joined forces and started selling online more seriously. I have added more items like leather wallets, wooden pen & pen sets, jewelry…

Sounds like Poppa Yavuz was doing everything by hand at first.

But as a trained mechanical engineer, Taha was able to set up machines that improved their production process 💪

Then…

​​we connected with manufacturers abroad to bring finished products and only do the personalization here… manufacturing is a painful process but after a couple of samples and feedback, we were able to bring quality items to our shop.

Marketing…

To attract traffic, we used Instagram ads, Youtube ads, Google ads, you name it, we tried all. It was a painful and costly lesson for us and [it didn’t work out]…

Currently, almost 95% of our business is running through Etsy and Amazon.

🧐 From what I can tell, they operate one store on Amazon and two on Etsy…

• TAMEDUS (55,000+ sales)
• LucasEngravingStore (24,000+ sales)

Profits…

I believe we are still in the standard profit margins like 15%… we make personalized items and competition is considerably low, but the profit margins are not huge.

So out of that $100,000 monthly revenue, they’re profiting $15,000.

Which is still pretty good 👍

However, Taha also notes that their growth on Amazon and Etsy has stagnated…

We are… decreasing efforts on marketplaces and waiting to attract more customers to our website. Because marketplaces have not grown much for the last 2 years…

Two ideas from this story 👇

First, it’s clear there’s still a big demand for handmade and personalized gifts.

Do you know any craftspeople who are already creating these kinds of products? 

Could you help them scale their operation, similar to how Taha helped his father? 🤔

Second, I suspect someone could find success here by going more niche.

How about personalized gifts for golfers, pet owners, etc?

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