Luke All always wanted to travel the world, having grown up in a small Pennsylvania town. It was a full-time passion he’d hoped to enjoy. There was just one problem, he didn’t have any money. That’s where a pivot forever changed his life. He discovered dropshipping after dropping out of school. To his surprise and amazement, it took off and he did quite well. Today, he runs 16 online stores at the age of 22. He plans to eventually sell the white-labeled, branded stores. He says, “I have a long term goal of selling every store for 4x-5x YoY revenue.”
Can you tell us more about yourself?
I dropped out of school at 19 with plans to travel full-time, but ran into a snag when I didn’t have the money to live the lifestyle I’d hoped for. Thankfully, I discovered dropshipping which allowed me freedom or time while growing my income. Today, with over 15 online stores, I see the future based on selling these stores at a profit.
How did you create your brand? What inspired you?
I haven’t come public about any of my brands yet, although I will soon. 2020 thus far, our holdings company has done 4 million in revenue. Our concept for our holdings company is simple: be a launchpad (financially, and with sweat equity), for young jumpstart ecommerce brands, all crafted in house. We identify viral products (originally drop shipped from china) with large market cap potential. We then utilize unique marketing strategies to get a leg up on our competition.
How does your brand work?
Simple. A customer comes to one of our websites (all hosted on shopify) via a viral facebook ad, and places an order. They then receive the product in 7-10 days. We never hold inventory of the product at first, when we are feeling out a niche. Instead, we ship products from China to limit our risk.
Do you have a tip or giveaway idea to offer our readers?
Build systems! Anyone can stumble across a viral product and push a few 100k in revenue. Sustaining that is the tricky part. It is something our team has done a great job with.
What challenges did you go through while building your brand? What are the challenges you go through on an everyday basis?
Brand creation challenges: separating ourselves from our competitors. The easy way that we did this was through custom influencer UGC or user-generated content. We’re a VERY marketing-heavy business. We would have no company if it wasn’t for our unique scaling of FB ads.
Everyday challenges: Managing our cash flow, finances, and keeping the team productive and accountable. Even though we are approaching 10 full-time employees, being that we are a 100% remote business, only a few of us have met in person. It is hard to be human, and build that rapport through zoom calls. On the cash side of things, we are growing so rapidly that we have run into plenty of roadblocks that require cash infusion. I was never a finance guy so this has been a huge learning curve for me.
How do you handle your business finances or funding?
We are self-funded. As of November 2020, I own 100% of the company but plan on giving out equity stakes to hard-working and loyal employees as we grow.
What’s your future vision? How far do you want to take it? What is your next level goal?
We are getting eerily close to being able to sell our two largest brands. One is valued at around $5million, the other, $1million. Our goal is to continue to scale start-up e-commerce brands from the ground up (using our product identifier triggers), while also acquiring other baby e-commerce brands that show potential.
The vision wasn’t always this though, I was just a kid who wanted to make money online. The craziest thing about dropshipping is that anyone can do it, all it takes is a gander at AliExpress.
What message would you like to give to anybody who has a plan of creating something of their own and making a living through it?
I was just a broke college student who wanted to make money online and travel the world. The craziest thing about dropshipping is that anyone can do it, all it takes is a gander at AliExpress (and some confidence/execution of course). People think dropshipping is dead, yeesh, it’s just getting started!
Watch as Luke speaks about Prestige Ecommerce and how dropshipping offered him the opportunity of a lifetime–building a business in a smart, affordable fashion. He discusses scaling a business, product research, marketing, and more.