Dog Ramp Sales Scale

A story about how Shaan was inspired to start an e-commerce business after witnessing Ramon's success with his dog ramp business.

"We were hanging out in Ramon's backyard and while we're talking, his phone kept going 'cha-ching, cha-ching' - it was the Shopify notification sound. His phone was sitting on the table and I asked, 'Do you need to get that?' He just said 'Oh sorry, that's like sales.'

People love this idea of making money while you sleep, but this was even better. He was just chilling and having fun, and money was being made for him on the side - just a little cha-ching every 5 minutes. It was literally in that moment I thought, 'I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna start an ecommerce business because I can't sit here and just let Ramon have all the fun.'"

Ramon had bought the dog ramp business for $300,000 from a broker. The business had strong fundamentals but the previous owners weren't doing any marketing - no Facebook ads, no email marketing, not even cart abandonment emails. The website was very basic, and Ramon saw clear opportunities: switch to Shopify, improve the copy and pictures, and implement proper marketing. The product solved a real problem for a specific niche audience that could be targeted well on Facebook, and there wasn't much competition at the time.