Discovered a wonderful next secretlab trajectory business called Keababies. 100m Sgd business with gross profit of 30% and 10-11 net profit within 8 years. Key points: 1) great digital marketeers. Only 10% of revenue is on marketing. 2) focus on efficiency. The net profit of 10-11m on 30m GP is very solid. Could also be a reflection of their product innovativeness and hence good price points. 3) No external funding. Looks like husband and wife own 100%. Over the years retained earnings 25-30m sgd. all theirs. The trajectory is like secretlab. Just 3 years slower as secretlab founded 3 years earlier. This one worth watching to see how they play this out. Empire builder to grow even more into real big leagues or content to stay and just be 8-9 digits rich but not billionaire rich. It’s a solid success story to me! Probably hire 100+ staff, pay 1+m in taxes. So good for sg. Best of all don’t need all the vc drama and alignment issues as founders find themselves diluted. Nb: why didn’t any of our e-commerce roll ups find them. Or at least learn from them on how to be so profitable?
Ivan Ong is a solid entrepreneur & operator that is smart enough not to sell and not to dilute by fundraising =) We learn what we can, but have to execute. Playbook for getting to a sub 3hr marathon for example, is relatively known, but not everyone can execute it. Some other brands that have grown with good operating cashflows, at similar scale : Beyond The Vines, PRISM+, Maneuver Marketing
So much to learn from them!
it's surprising to see a company not rely on heavy spend on operations, product and ads to scale. but not surprising if the fundamentals were efficient operations, strong product positioning and sharp digital marketing because they didn't have that excess capital. thanks for sharing, it's great to see stories like this being shared and celebrated.
What do you feel are their key success factors?
Amazon is a very tough business model. If you are a newcomer, just listing your product on Amazon is not going to move your inventory. You need to burn alot of cash on Amazon Ads to create sales momentum (assuming your product even sells) and move up the organic ranking on Amazon marketplace for "free" visibility, that's how you become profitable spending only 10% on marketing.
are any of the e-commerce rollups rolling anything up in the regional markets - always seems to be brands outside of the region unless I missed it. Ran across this site when I was looking for something when my youngest was a baby - I think these sites do well given how people will spend on kids. ;)
Der Shing Lim fascinating find. With your immense experience in local startup ecosystem, You should consider releasing a booklet bro with such homegrown singapore business 🙂. It will inspire a lot of able founders (or aspiring founders) to focus on what really matters in building a good business - “Founder-owned bootstrap business with zero VC noise — strong marketing efficiency, product innovation, and discipline in execution.”
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2moBeen covering them since 2021. One rollup I spoke to was indeed aware of them. They were already too successful to need rollups.