The Secret of Amazon Success: Aunt Fannie’s on Building a Multi-Million-Dollar Brand with Brandwoven

Aunt Fannie’s is an all-natural cleaning products brand. With a focus on clean and cruelty-free formulas, the company knew a platform like Amazon could propel them to rank above top competitors in their space. Learn how a small, focused start-up was able to compete against and win vs brands from P&G, SC Johnson, and Clorox.

Aunt Fannie’s was an emerging brand with exceptional products that was seeing early success on Amazon, but to scale they needed a strategy to penetrate and grow amongst large and established competitors. Aunt Fannie’s partnered with Brandwoven to build and execute a plan to grow the business that included everything from digital merchandising to product assortment, marketing and logistics.

Now, after a four-year partnership, Aunt Fannie’s has grown into a multi-million-dollar Amazon seller with many top-ranking cleaning products on Amazon, cementing the brand not only as a leader in natural cleaning products but outselling blue chip SKUs from brands like Clorox, Swiffer and Mrs. Meyers. Below, we walk through 5 strategic focus areas that helped Aunt Fannie’s reach Amazon FBA success.

Before driving increased traffic through advertising and other means, scaling a business against powerful incumbent brands requires a higher-than-average conversion rate and continually increasing organic ranking. A huge driver of both is digital merchandising, a point of focus for Brandwoven in growing Aunt Fannie’s business. This had to happen by simultaneously driving consumer purchases while accurately representing Aunt Fannie’s brand tone, voice and messages.

The result of Brandwoven’s effort in digital merchandising combined with awesome products from Aunt Fannie’s was a conversion rate 2x the industry average, averaging over 22%.

Since Aunt Fannie’s was in the competitive House Supplies category on Amazon, Brandwoven knew that their brand story had to be represented in their Amazon content to successfully differentiate from other name-brand competitors on the platform. The company needed to clearly communicate who they were and why potential customers should care in order to boost their sales and turn Amazon shoppers into loyal repeat buyers.

Brandwoven created new listing images for all of Aunt Fannie’s Amazon ASINs. Previously, the brand had as little as 1 image per product (i.e., the minimum Amazon photo requirements). But, using asset availability and product demand, Brandwoven recommended 4-8 new images per product in the brand’s catalog – including videos. The goal was to better display each product accurately and clearly communicate features and benefits to consumers. Brandwoven even created some digital 3D models of Aunt Fannie’s products as a work-around for SKUs that did not have creative assets available. Lastly, it was crucial to add data points into the visual assets, such as product dimensions, to help customers understand how the products would look and feel once delivered.

The last part of Brandwoven’s digital merchandising solutions for Aunt Fannie’s was the seller storefront. This is a hub where shoppers can find all of a seller’s products along with brand information. It’s key for a seller’s storefront to:

• Represent the brand’s style guide
• Organize with visual elements
• Promote shopability through product education

Aunt Fannie’s also utilized their Amazon storefront as a landing page for advertising. This was a key component in attracting and retaining new customers because the storefront allowed shoppers to browse the brand’s products without any interference from competitor products or advertising (unlike on an Amazon detail page, where competitors are present).

For Aunt Fannie’s storefront, Brandwoven completed the following:

1. Designed the Amazon storefront
2. Implemented the approved creative
3. Maintained the storefront (eg. added new products as they launched)

Brandwoven utilized machine learning software to decrease Aunt Fannie’s ACoS and maximize the effectiveness of their ad spend. Brandwoven targeted the brand’s marketing according to campaign parameters ranging between 5-40%. The campaigns were easily scaled up based on Aunt Fannie’s ongoing input, product margins, and competitiveness of their category. After this shift, sales began to grow significantly faster than before and eventually Aunt Fannie’s TACoS declined.

To improve marketing spend efficiency and ensure a healthy and sustainable budget, Brandwoven completed an audit to calculate return on ad spend compared to revenue. Brandwoven wanted to clarify how many sales were needed in order for Aunt Fannie’s to make a profit. Taking it a step further, Brandwoven broke down the percentage of overall sales for each product, looking at the targets versus actuals of each campaign.

The PPC campaigns Brandwoven launched for Aunt Fannie’s targeted relevant keywords. These keyword targets were based on research of which campaigns would be best utilized according to the product type. Although Brandwoven was responsible for the campaigns’ structure and implementation, the agency made sure to check them daily as CPCs (cost-per-click) can vary greatly from one day to the next. Brandwoven strived for continuous improvement through active bid and keyword management to ensure traffic and conversions were a result of the brand’s investment.

Brandwoven’s logistics services supported Aunt Fannie’s through the growth to not only keep them in stock, but to share the burden of Amazon FBA management with their small but mighty team. Brandwoven followed an extremely in-depth logistics process to cover all facets of the department, including:

• Shipment creation
• Inventory reconciliation
• Returns processing
• Bi-weekly reporting
• Monthly forecasting
• Go-to-market strategies for new products

Brandwoven helped Aunt Fannie’s identify and manage shipping and packing of their products. Starting with shipment creation, Brandwoven suggested and created all shipments for the brand’s FBA warehouse. The agency also created shipping and product labels, ensuring everything was up to date according to Amazon label requirements. Brandwoven also scheduled pickups on behalf of the brand.

Because of Scout by Brandwoven, the agency’s proprietary data tracking software, Aunt Fannie’s had access to a plethora of data beyond their Amazon backend. The brand could use Scout to see which Amazon ASINs were bought most often and their corresponding revenue. Aunt Fannie’s could even use Scout to see a daily breakdown of which products generated the most sales on a given date – which was most helpful during events like Prime Week.

Aside from the Aunt Fannie’s team having access to all of their sales data in Scout at any time, Brandwoven also provided the team with monthly reports. These reports showed the brand’s starting and ending inventory levels, inventory movement, and any open discrepancies. Brandwoven included monthly forecasting by ASIN into the reports so that Aunt Fannie’s team could not only review their previous period, but also begin to prepare for the upcoming one. Going through this exercise and providing forecasting data to Aunt Fannie’s team allowed them to better prepare for production planning and address any potential gaps in inventory in advance.

Aside from inventory and forecasting reports, Brandwoven provided a “bottom line” report that showed the brand’s net sales dollars after associated fees. This bi-weekly financial report broke down sales per product and all fees incurred during the period’s transactions, comparing expenses to the Amazon selling price of the products. Although this data was available to the brand’s team in Scout, Brandwoven made sure to schedule monthly logistics conversations with the Aunt Fannie’s team to continuously ensure the brand was on-track with their revenue targets and that everything was clear to the brand’s top stakeholders. Furthermore, having this general understanding of Aunt Fannie’s profit was helpful for planning promotions and allowed the brand to comfortably test different pricing levels for various products.

Once Aunt Fannie’s Amazon business was thriving, it was time to decide what the next step should be to propel the brand to even higher sales. Brandwoven determined that the next step forward should be focusing on improving and increasing the brand’s catalog and product assortment.

Brandwoven worked with Aunt Fannie’s to research and discover new products that could be sold through their Amazon storefront. There were 2 new assortment options that Brandwoven recommended:

1. Multi-packs and Variety packs
2. New products

Multi-packs and Variety packs

Adding multi-packs and variety packs to Aunt Fannie’s catalog allowed them to be more profitable. Consumers noticed they would be saving money by purchasing multiple items in one order, which led to a higher AOV (average order value). Additionally, since the brand’s products were mainly at a low price point (under $10), it had previously been challenging for them to maintain profitability due to the increases in Amazon fees. By adding multi and variety packs, it became easier for the brand to afford to stock and ship more items through Amazon’s platform, thus further increasing their profitability.

Brandwoven started with a catalog audit to address any inefficiencies. Brandwoven determined the best product alignments and implemented an optimized listing strategy using Amazon best practices to determine the proper alignments. The agency then relisted the variations to capitalize on consumer behavior, improve shopability, and increase reviews resulting in higher conversions.

Next, Brandwoven assisted with Aunt Fannie’s customer service on Amazon. Brandwoven took ownership of the brand’s review management process, monitoring reviews and feedback to address areas of concern from customers. They also responded to general buyer questions that came in through the brand’s Seller Central account.

Overall, Brandwoven managed Aunt Fannie’s Seller Central portal on a day-to-day basis to ensure their account remained in good health. Brandwoven troubleshooted all problems that arose and made sure they were addressed promptly according to Amazon regulations.