#194: Is E-Commerce The New Real Estate?
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Welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast! Today, we are joined by Will Basta, an entrepreneur and co-founder of ACV Partners. He shares his background, insights into building e-commerce brands, and the secrets behind sustainable investment models. Discover how ACV Partners supports clients in creating profitable, multi-channel e-commerce businesses and the cutting-edge strategies that make them successful in today’s competitive digital marketplace.
In this episode, we're discussing...
Is E-commerce really the new real estate? We'll explore the potential for building a passive income stream through online businesses.
The Genesis of ACV Partners – Spotting the need for reliable infrastructure in e-commerce investments, Will and his co-founder launched ACV Partners to offer hands-off, sustainable investment opportunities for clients.Platforms and The The power of social commerce: Learn how leveraging influencers and micro-influencers can skyrocket your sales.
Building a brand for an exit strategy: We'll discuss how to create a valuable E-commerce business that you can eventually sell.
From office worker to digital nomad: Will shares his insights on achieving location independence through E-commerce.
Even if you already have a small E-commerce shop, this episode is for you! We'll discuss how ACV Partners can help you take your existing business to the next level.
Resources from Will
LinkedIn | ACV Partners | Email
Resources from Mike and Nichole
+ Read the transcript
Mike Stohler
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today, we will have Basta. He's an LA native that's moved Miami, maybe permanently, maybe casually, but he's coming live from Miami. He's a forward thinking entrepreneur. He brings a wealth of experience in e-commerce. And for all you techies out there, you know what that is, venture capital. I know a little bit about that digital innovation. I know nothing about that, but he's the co-founder of ACV partners and e-commerce management, logistics and marketing firm. He contributes strategic insight leadership to build brands, grow online businesses for savvy investors. He's got over a decade of success in leading startups and driving growth. How are you doing, Will?
Will Basta
I'm good, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mike Stohler
Absolutely. So I always start the episodes this way, give us a little bit about your background and how in the world you got to co-found ACV Partners?
Will Basta
My background goes all the way back. I actually did start in the tech industry. I worked in healthtech a long time, about almost a decade. I was primarily on consulting and sales side in that industry. I started a little bit more on the corporate side for about four years, and then went into more innovative startups like Silicon Valley-sized, sub-50 employees, etc. I really enjoyed that work style, because I was able to essentially get a feel for what it's even like to be an entrepreneur too, because you're reporting a lot of times to a CEO or to a founder when it's that small, and there's a lot of curveballs that almost every single day, and it's an unpredictable environment, right when you work in the startup industry. During that period of time, I was getting involved on the side in some e-commerce ventures myself, got involved in Amazon early on. Around 2014 wasn't the craziest success revenue wise, but it was definitely impactful in terms of me getting my foot in the door in the industry and really learning the ins and outs, especially at a time then when not everyone was on Amazon at that point. Fast forward a few years from there, my business partner and I around 2019 we're noticing organizations were sort of popping up for people who don't have experience in e-commerce, or essentially just financially qualified people from all different industries. Could be tech, could be real estate, etc, but they want to tap into e-commerce as an investment vehicle. Because I know, obviously there's a lot of money to be made in this industry, and sort of a done for you type of manner. We saw that was populating with a few different organizations, but we noticed that most of them didn't really have, I would say, the true infrastructure to make it successful and sustainable for investors. That's where the light bulb turned on. We said, "Hey, we can do this better with our experience. We can really bring in and legitimize this industry and turn it into a sustainable asset for people to actually invest in, essentially as hands off as possible." I don't think any of this world, anything in this world, is fully passive, but we like to make these opportunities as passive as possible for our clients. Cut two: we are in 2024, close to five years into this organization, we've built over 1,000 digital assets, aka e-commerce businesses for clients. Over the years, we have over 500 active clients right now, and primarily what our business model is, it's evolved, obviously a lot over the years, we started with just selling on Amazon for clients. The clients pay a startup cost, they own the asset, and then we do literally all of the work for them, and then operate off a profit split. So when they get returns and earnings, we invoice them for a small percentage of that. And now where we are today is we work through multi channel portfolios.
So we do Amazon, Walmart, TikTok, Etsy. We also are in Amazon, in Amazon UAE, which is Dubai, a TikTok shop in the UK. So we're global at this point and essentially still sort of pioneering this industry. Because even though people have heard of e-commerce for a while, it's still fairly new, to be honest with you. And you know, there's a lot of evolution constantly, and a lot of exciting things that are always happening in industry.
Mike Stohler
As far as the product goes, let's say that it's kind of funny, like way back in the early days, I sold high-end automotive parts on Amazon, because I love fast cars. I love things like that. And it's like, going, "Hey, let's take these." And I was kind of like a third party type of person, yeah, but I was the middle man paying another middle man. It was like, Okay, I got two cents out of the...
Will Basta
It gets watered down.
Mike Stohler
It gets watered down as you go, yeah, but let's say that I'm interested in this, and there's a lot of people that are thinking about doing e-commerce. Do they already have the product? Or do you try to create a product that gets them on that first page? How does that work in creating a product or creating something? Because I don't care if it's fun, I don't care if I like the product. I just want to be on the first page. I want to make money.
Will Basta
Of course, yeah. So there's a few different types of sourcing and fulfillment models. I mean, we're looking at the, I'm assuming you're referring to the major platform of Amazon, right? You have Amazon, which has FBA, which is when you're buying prime products that's Fulfillment by Amazon,meaning it's coming out of their facility, and then you have to fill it in by the merchant, meaning we're fulfilling it directly to the consumer. Those two types are pretty much also on most of the other platforms as well. Those are the fulfillment sides that you can choose from. We tend to do both of them depending on the product that we're selling, and then the type of sourcing is another thing in the model that you're running.
Another thing that we do with that is we don't really put our eggs in one basket for our clients, we do a mix of wholesale, which is reselling brands that already have established presence and getting access to them where other people or sellers may not have access to them, meaning there's less competition on the platform, and you're running off the foot traffic on Amazon and the actual foot traffic that that brand already gets, and you're just sourcing at a very good price, therefore, you know those sales are going to come regardless. And then there's product development, which generally isn't just a product that we make up out of the blue. It's normally a category of products that are doing really well. And then we manufacture a version of it for the client. The client never has to come with any ideas or anything. We've got at this point, 10 years of data on this. There's also multiple softwares we use, and a lot of different manufacturing, sourcing and distributor partnerships and brand partnerships that we leverage for our clients. So depending on the platform, they're on the kind of capital they could deploy into purchasing product that will depend on the model that we run for them. But essentially, the client comes in, and what they have to worry about is really just this initial startup cost, which is a one time fee to us and after that, they are still the owner of the business, so they're driving the product purchasing, meaning we handle the purchasing, but it's with their capital, just as you can sort of relate it to like a franchise model, in a way, if you're to franchise McDonald's and pay a couple million dollars to do that, it doesn't come with the food, right? It comes with the infrastructure, the model, the data, everything that they know exactly, strategically, locating and all of that. And so that's what we bring to the table for that startup cost, as well as the entire team. And then we essentially are working off of profits. But so we're going to source products that we are incentivized to make that are going to do well on our client store, because we take a percentage of that net earning, right? And so that's important to note, because brand development can take a little bit of time. So a lot of times while we run both models, it is because we also have facilities across the US where we hold products that we sell to clients' businesses when they first start, just to get the wheels turning. And essentially, that can generate revenue sooner, and then wholesale, we can get products in the store sooner as well.
And in the back end, we're developing more of a branded presence, which really leads to the asset appreciation and higher margins the three four months in. If we're developing a product that does well, which essentially when that happens in your time with revenue driving from the wholesale, you're getting more margin because you're controlling the manufacturing of it. And then if you ever wanted to exit your business, it's actually appreciating value, like real estate, because you have your own brand attached to it. And that's where an exit value really come into place. 3, 4, 5, years down the road.
Mike Stohler
With that exit strategy, who is buying that? Are you selling it to another e-commerce person that wants to get involved instead of doing something on their own, just like, hey, I just want to buy an established product?
Will Basta
It depends, we have a lot of the clients that we are with that have not exited yet, or they don't want to yet, just because it's good cash flow, right? And if they have just one store, they're selling their cash flow. If they get a portfolio, they have the flexibility of maybe the people that purchase them like we don't just like we have clients who we can facilitate. You can sell it on a platform like flippa.com, people buy e-commerce assets, VC groups buy it. Other people who come in, like you just mentioned, who just want something that's actively selling it'll really just depend or you'll have a larger brand in the same category, absorb the brand and purchase it that way. So there's a lot of different avenues that I've seen historically, but for our clients, traditionally, we actually haven't had anyone who had because again, it takes time for it to develop. A lot of our clients are, we've been doing this for four and a half years. They're three, four years in. And yes, you can exit at that time potentially. But just like most things, the longer you sort of wait, and the more value when it starts to gain and appreciate, and when it's time and you really feel like it's necessary, we can help facilitate it, or they can do it themselves, and we can guide them on, on an exit strategy on that.
Mike Stohler
I know business websites and things like that, and SEO work that goes into it. And working with e-commerce sites, is there a type of SEO? I know you can sponsor and get up top, how much of a kind of a mix ratio is, especially getting started that you pay for the sponsorship to get on the first page of some Yeah, so and then working in the SEO. How does that work?
Will Basta
For sure, it depends. So Amazon is obviously a platform. There's a lot of sellers. Anyone can open up an Amazon seller. That's not what they're paying us to do, because anyone can do that for anyone can do that for free, right? What does it really comes down to with the algorithm on Amazon? It's a lot of factors. Obviously, there's PPC if you're trying to get presents in the beginning, there's strategies like giving away items. There's obviously the health of the store, if you're doing wholesale. Are you keeping constant inventory? Are you not running out of inventory that works against your algorithm? Are you priced competitively? Is your store as a seller healthy? These things also play into you getting a buy box or a premier product when someone's searching for something specific, and also just the competitive landscape and knowing what to actually try to sell, or you might be just spending way too much money on ads, and it's never going to go anywhere, right? That's for Amazon. If you look at other platforms that can tie into that too, like TikTok, which we're a corporate partner at TikTok.
Now, the TikTok shop is blowing up in the US right now, and it's got the most unique algorithm anyone's ever seen. And what that really falls under is social commerce, which is a subset of e-commerce, meaning people aren't going to TikTok with the intent to buy something. They're going to TikTok with the intent to scroll, and the scroll time is insane. On TikTok, they impulsively purchase. And so you can, you're not worried about getting on the first page, even though there is a shop feature where people can sort of stumble upon products. It's really about hitting the algorithm the right way and leveraging micro influencers, or the right content that can drive traffic to your store on TikTok. Or now that TikTok has officially started with Amazon in the last couple of weeks, which is new news, you can actually shop directly with your Amazon account, Amazon Prime account through your TikTok account too. And so there's a few different factors that play into it on that end. Traditionally it's then PPC on Amazon, so you're paying for clicks and all of that kind of stuff.
But I'm a really big believer in obviously running the algorithms on these social media platforms and leveraging people to sell your products, as opposed to just driving a lot of money on ad spend, like you'd be doing if you had a Shopify account, or if you just were doing Amazon, and you develop a product and you want to just get it out there, because we don't want most of our clients are just running off. We're running off to put traffic that's already coming and just hitting the algorithm the right way, because we know how to approach it based on the products that we're selling. And so it's a fully loaded answer I can get. I'm giving you sure, but honestly, the strategy will vary, but we're really big on what's working now and where we see trends going and the best way to reduce costs for the client. A lot of our clients never spend money on ads ever. I'd say 80% of them don't. Yeah, so that is we're big on not using money for ads unless, obviously, if you're spending money on ads to establish a store, and every $10,000 you spend, you're getting X amount of return, return on ad spend. It's obviously worth it until that,you don't want to plateau on that. But there's a point where that will stop, right?
Mike Stohler
Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Will basta with ACV Partners. So, we talk about TikTok. It was new to me. So that is kind of like the future of e-commerce. Everyone knows the Walmarts, all the dot coms and all the shopping. I think my wife's birthday cake next year is going to be an Amazon box, because that's her, it seems like that's her favorite thing in the world. So might as well, right? Ever cake as a box, Amazon box. So we're very familiar with e-commerce. What do you see as the future? The different trends. Where's it going? It's always going to be an Amazon thing. Or
Will Basta
There's a lot of growth in the US with Amazon, and you could still become extremely successful on it, not taking anything away from that. But Amazon is also fairly new in a lot of markets, and so at this point, we're a global company, so we are looking at the Amazon piece of emerging markets, the EU, Germany, UK, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Dubai, like we're in Dubai right now. So Amazon has a lot more to grow, if you look at just trends and overall, social commerce is growing four to 5x faster than traditional commerce. And e-commerce is growing extremely fast. And that's stuff like Instagram shop, TikTok shop, going into a social media app and ending up with a purchase, right? What we're seeing and what I think, is just inevitable, it's already happening through some platforms. A lot in China, et cetera, is live shopping too, where you have a person who's presenting a product, and you can buy it on the spot, through Instagram, live through TikTok Live, all that kind of stuff. Because that, I think has a big future over the next 6-12, 18-24, months, also just leveraging micro-influencers and affiliates as much as possible in the e-commerce space. And this doesn't mean they have to have a million followers. When I say micro, I really mean that they can have under 50,000 under 5,000 sometimes, and still get hundreds of 1,000s of views if the right content is put out on TikTok specifically because of the algorithm. But people like to buy from people, and depending on the product that you're selling, that's an important factor.
And again, this isn't going to apply to all products, but leveraging that kind of approach, when I say that, the social approach, with influencers, affiliates, that kind of pieces and live shopping that is something that's interactive, and obviously, as tech advances and advances interactive shopping is going to be more and more of a thing, right? It's just the way that things trend, and people get used to more technology and the ability to virtually, maybe put on, try on a shirt or something like that, right? And then buy it. I see those trends really growing over the next few years a lot. And then, again, obviously incorporating AI into what's happening, at least on our side, is really, really big when it comes down to product research and aggregating data and then bringing out results on where you know product trends are going, and all that kind of stuff and all of that. There's a lot of different things. And again, no one has a crystal ball, but number one is just emerging marketplaces, because it's not just about the US and our us and our US clients can make money globally. And then number two is the growth of social commerce and how that's integrated into e-commerce overall.
Mike Stohler
You know, old people like me don't know some of the stuff, but I see the trends, but the importance of influencer marketing just having that one person, I go to the gym and I see all these 20 somethings with the Stanley cup, these Stanley thermoses, and they're like, "Look, there's this brand new it's called Stanley. And I'm like, "My great grandparents had Stanley." It's like, what are you talking about? It's been around for 100 years. But also, everyone's having, and I'm like, there has to be some influence marketing that someone did. It amazes me. It's like $80-$60 you know?
Will Basta
For $5 to manufacture.
Mike Stohler
Right? So talk to us a little bit about harnessing that. And how do you harness influencer marketing?
Will Basta
Yeah, it's important. There's two different levels of it. If your budget's a little bit lower, some influencers will, if that's a big part of their business, they're going to charge per post, right? And some will charge based on performance. You can have the ability to get a bunch of different micro influencers promoting your products that are incentivized, or do larger followings and do marketing pushes with that, but it's really an ecosystem, because not everyone's going to impulsively purchase on that initial time they see it, but essentially, having the right social channels presenting the products, the right mix of a few different ambassadors or micro-influencers that are weekly posting about the product and their experience with it, that combined in one little ecosystem, really leads to the lifetime value of a customer actually eventually purchasing. Even if they're not someone who impulsively does it, they might eventually say, "F*ck it, I want to buy this." The third time they see it, right? Excuse me for my French, it's really a mix of all of that. And again, it's obvious you want influencers that, for example, we have a strong history in the supplement space, health and wellness, that, for example, a lot of influencers like to partner with skincare or stuff that's for anti aging, things that are trending, right? But you also want to make sure, depending on what the actual niche is, that it's relative to what the influencer generally posts about. If they're an influencer that's always with their dog and all that kind of stuff, and you're selling a pet product, it's perfect, right? That's pretty simple 101, but you want to make sure it lines up, because it's going to resonate more with the demographic that is initially following them. If it's a follower base that's actually going to purchase from you, and it also shows it has more weight to it, because they're actually obviously someone who would be using this product. It's not just a paid advertising situation. And so there's little nuances there that come together that really can help derive a product. But then obviously, when something hits the right algorithm and it starts to trend, that's when you start to see things everywhere, like that, like the Stanley cup, right? I don't know the exact history behind how that got to where it is, the Stanley cup piece, but it obviously is something that trends, and then people see other people buying it, and then they purchase it, and then that's just a domino effect, essentially.
Mike Stohler
Yeah and then fights happen at Target. Because the Valentine's Day pink one, I'm like, "It's a Stanley thermos, people." It's like, "Come on, it's not even..."
Will Basta
Even on Alibaba. And buy the same one for $8 of exactly the same quality.
Mike Stohler
Yeah. Another important thing that we're not hitting on before we get into the website. And you know about your company is what I love about eventually becoming, in my business, is the, what you're calling the nomad lifestyle. And you know, there's probably a lot of people right now on their commute home in LA, right? They just work 9 to 5. They got an hour and a half before they went home. They go and do this, get up and do it over again, over and over and over again. And they dream about this remote work. They can travel. I can be anywhere in the world and do my business. Talk a little bit about how you can basically be anywhere and be a digital nomad.
Will Basta
Yeah. I mean, if you haven't when it comes down to income that's produced digitally, it's like you're not location independent. That's also not just for yourself, but for who you're selling to. So the beauty of e-commerce is you're not a store that's on the corner where you're only selling to the community that you're in. You can pretty much sell to the entire country and then across the borders at this point, right? And so your consumer net is way larger, and the ability to do that is the amount of money and transactions that are happening on a regular basis daily is insane. There's definitely a piece for a lot of people to get a piece of that pie.
We're not saying that someone can quit their job directly and then start an ecommerce business, and it's going to happen overnight like this. Generally, our clients are already financially comfortable. They might have an office job, but this is just something to add to the portfolio, and obviously there's different opinions on this. But ultimately you want to balance portfolio, and eventually that will pay off if you're not going to be an entrepreneur yourself, making sure you have your cash in cash flowing assets and assets that are appreciating both traditionally, like your real estate and your stocks, etc, rest in people. I like all of that, and then a little bit more on the alternative side, like e-commerce, which is alternatives, but at the same time, it's very, very sustainable on a lot of growth and other avenues, right? And making sure that you have that in a balanced manner, and that eventually will lead to the ability to be a little bit more free with your time, which then could open the doors for you to potentially doing your own venture, and then can open the doors to you being fully remote, right? There's just, everyone's got a different scenario, right? So I hate to say, "Hey, do this, and that's gonna give you complete freedom." But obviously it takes time, but if you already are financially comfortable, letting your money just sit in the bank is not doing you any good. You want to make it work for you.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, exactly. What if there are some listeners out there that already have a small shop, they're already trying to sell something on Amazon or an e-commerce, and they're listening to this, and they want to reach out to ACV Partners. It doesn't have to be just a startup, brand-new. If someone's already selling on a platform, can they reach out to you?
Will Basta
Yeah, we've taken stores that. They're just flatlined, or maybe they've really small revenue, and we expanded upon that with our traditional model. Just take that over. Again, they're not paying us to open the store, because the store is free and easy for people to open. Generally, they're paying for us with everything that we can bring to the table. And so if you have a product that's doing okay, essentially, we can help increase the sales on that, in some cases, not all, but generally, we have guarantees behind our startup costs, so people don't make that back at a minimum, we pay them the difference, so it's secured. We can't guarantee something if someone's telling us to sell something specific. So if we take over someone's business depending on the scenario. Most of the time we still have to run our traditional model on that concurrently with what they're doing. We can also help with that. There's unique scenarios like that. That's what we can secure, that we know that we're going to be able to make them enough money and then turn off enough money where they're going to make their stuff, their startup costs back. But a lot of times, with people who have failed in e-commerce and essentially, like, "I don't have time to do this or even look more into it but I know there's money to be made. Can you take my Amazon store that I've opened, it's been dormant for a year, and run with it? "And we do that all the time. The answer is yes.
Mike Stohler
Good. People are interested. It's like, "Yeah, I really want to do this." They go to your website and the website?
Will Basta
www.ecomwithacv.io. We moved domains. I got off the AI domain. It's ecomwithacv. ACV means it's an acronym for Accelerated e-Commerce with a lowercase E Ventures. So ACV, ecomwithacv.io and that's the same thing for our Instagram is @ecomwithacv, same with YouTube. A lot of educational stuff on there. You can always book a call with our team. It's always consultative. We're not here to just, it's not cheap to work with us. So we don't just tell you on these calls. We really want to learn where you're at with things, and if there's a right fit on both sides, and if it makes sense to even work together. But yeah, feel free to follow some of those channels or inquire and have a call at any time.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, so they go on. Do you have educational materials? You have just kind of the breadcrumbs before they make the decision?
Will Basta
yeah, there's the Instagrams filled with a bunch of posts that are about different things that are going on in the e-commerce industry. Same with the YouTube channel as well. I write for Forbes Council, so I write topics on e-commerce all the time. I haven't in the summer, because I've been a little busy, but generally, once every six weeks, I get something published on LinkedIn as well. I'm constantly sort of writing new, I'd say, articles that are relevant to the time, or new things that we're working on, or can educate people on the actual space itself.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, very cool, everybody. It's Will Basta at ACV Partners. If you're interested in e-commerce, if you just have some questions, I think there's some money to be made, because the future is not going to the big box. It's just clicking and buying. So that's fair. Just ask me, I'm on a first name basis with UPS and the Amazon guy, which is, it's crazy, but thank you Will for coming on The Richer Geek Podcast. Hope you have a wonderful night.
Will Basta
I appreciate it. Thank you.
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ABOUT WILL BASTA
Will Basta is a Los Angeles native and accomplished entrepreneur with a strong background in healthcare, global e-commerce, and venture capital. As the co-founder of ACV Partners, Will focuses on e-commerce management and marketing, guiding investors in brand building and scaling online businesses. With over a decade of digital expertise, he offers strategic insights and leadership that drive startup growth and enhance investment success, especially in e-commerce. Outside of his professional work, Will is passionate about philanthropy, supporting clean water initiatives and pitbull welfare. His commitment to community betterment reflects his drive to make a positive impact both in business and beyond.