The Office Tex, a certified woman-owned business, became an Amazon Business seller in February of 2018.  Randy shares how they found out about Amazon Business and their experiences selling on Amazon Business during the Amazon Business Small Business Summit. Watch now or read their story.

Seller Spotlight: The Office Tex Highlights  

Read highlights from the Seller Spotlight: The Office Tex video transcript below. Randy Pfeiffer shares  background on The Office Tex and their experience selling on Amazon Business. 

Background on The Office Tex 

I joined The Office Tex in 2003 when our founder, Rita Bonarrigo, brought me on board to diversify her IT business by adding office products. By that time, she had already been certified as a “WBE”(Women’s Business Enterprise) by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. So, one of my first tasks was to market that certification to businesses where her WBE mattered, corporations and government. And as a result, our business grew and we were doing quite well.

The Email from Amazon Business  

Everything changed in February of 2018 when Rita gets this email from Amazon Business about selling on Amazon. She thought it was spam, so she deleted it. Then she gets another one, deletes that one too. I think she got a third email before she sent it over to me. She asked, "Do you think this is legit? Do you think we should respond?" I told her, "It wouldn't hurt."

The Onboarding as an Amazon Business Seller  

I think it was within a week or two that we onboarded. We have an internal software system for processing orders and we needed to ensure that our settings and everything flowed just perfectly to accept the orders from Amazon. Once that was complete, we uploaded our WBE certification   and entered our pertinent business information into Seller Central. And while there, we downloaded a product template spreadsheet specific for our products, which made it easy to upload our catalog content into Amazon.

A Successful and Slow Start  

Now, it was our idea that when we launch, [in order to] make sure that our products were in stock and ready to ship, to start slow with a limited offering and limited stock amount. We didn't want to be overwhelmed or unable to fulfill orders, we didn't want any issues whatsoever. So, February 26th, 2018, launch day, I believe it was about three o'clock in the afternoon when we went live. It didn't take long before we got our first email that said that we sold an item on Amazon, then another and another. When I got in the very next day, I was blown away by the number of orders we received, it was crazy. I was so glad that we started small, but just like that, off we went, we started adding more items weekly to our catalog, which led to more sales. We were hitting sales numbers in a day that would normally take us weeks to hit.

The New Normal   

I still remember the day we hit $10,000 in sales, I remember the day we hit $20,000, then came our first Prime Day. Simply amazing. We knew that we would reach new customers, but not to the extent that we did. Prior to onboarding with Amazon, we might sell $30,000 in products in a month. Today, that's a normal day. It's just mind blowing. To say that working with Amazon Business is an amazing experience will be an understatement. It's been fantastic, and we can't thank them enough.

Ready to Become an Amazon Business Seller?  

Learn How to Sell on Amazon Business or How to Become a Certified Small or Diverse Seller or Business.