Today we’d like to introduce you to John Burger and Adrienne Burger.
Back in 2012, John was working as the Ecommerce Manager for a national watch company and traveling 5-6 days a month and looking for a change. Meanwhile, his wife, Adrienne, taught piano lessons on the side and stayed at home with their four children (they have five now). When an opportunity arose to buy an online retail business from a family member, John and Adrienne decided to take the plunge. After a few months of working both jobs, John quit his position at the watch company and he and Adrienne went to work full-time taking care of their kids while running the new family business.
As the business grew, John found time to go after his true passion — writing and audiobook narration. In 2015, he released his first novel, I Am Sleepless: Sim 299, under his pen name Johan Twiss. He has five books published, including his bestseller 4 Years Trapped in My Mind Palace, which he also narrated, and his next book comes out in August 2018. They’ve employed dozens of friends and family members over the years in both full-time and seasonal positions, selling tens-of-thousands of roleplay costumes for kids, toys, games, craft supplies, and upcycled canvas bags made from old military tents.
In 2016, they developed their own line of felt craft supplies, Playfully Ever Crafts. This new addition, along with their staple lines of Little Adventures dressups and upcycled bags by Myra, they’ve grown their business to over $1 million in annual sales.
“While owning our own business has been a roller-coaster of a ride at times, the freedom it’s given us to pursue our passions, to travel and to spend more time with our family has been priceless. We love it!” – John Burger
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
When we first purchased Playfully Ever After, the sales were strong in the mid $400,000 range, but the actual profit wasn’t quite enough for us to live off of. Retail sales deal with tight margins to be competitive, espicially in online sales, which means managing cashflow and stock levels is critical.
The first two years were phenomenal and sales more than doubled from that first year. But then in 2014, we had the rug pulled out from under us and nearly went out of business. The vast majority of our sales come through Amazon.com and we use Amazon warehouses with the Fulfilled by Amazon program (FBA) to store, pack, and ship all of our orders across Amazon and our website. Not only was this business model cost-effective, but it allowed us to sell our products as Prime items on Amazon.
But competition was fierce on Amazon, and it only grew more crowded, especially in the toy and game market. New sellers popped up every day, slashing prices to wholesale cost levels and sometimes less than wholesale. No one was making a profit, and the brands were not happy to see their products selling at such cheap prices since it hurt their brand image. These super low prices also caused an uproar among brick and mortar stores and the brands took swift actions to try and reverse this trend.
We ourselves had to drop numerous lines that were no longer profitable because so many other sellers were clearance items lower than we could buy them directly from the brands. Many of the brands went to the extreme and decided to block any and all online retailers from selling on Amazon.com, period.
Even though we worked hard to keep our listings unique and offered special bundles on our listings so we could keep the retial prices at the minimum adverttised prices (MAP) that the brands wanted, we were cut off by these brands along with every other online retailer. Despite our efforts, we lost 80% of the brands we carried over the next two years as they worked to block all Amazon sellers.
This caused our sales to tumble as we srcammbled to find new lines to replace the ones we were losing at an alarming rate. It seemed like every week we received a new call or message from a brand who was closing the door on Amazon seller.
The loss in sales crippled our cashflow and sent us into deeper debt as we struggled to keep our business afloat.
But some amazing things happened during this process. In the midst of cutting our small workforce, our payroll, and our expenses, we discovered our own line of craft items. Our private label, Playfully Ever Crafts, took off in a way that surprised even us. Having our own private label allowed us to maintain strong retail prices online while protecting our profit margin. We were also able to partner with some of our bestselling brands like Little Adventures and Myra Bag to become their exclusive sellers on Amazon.com.
Not only did we learn how to better manage our cashflow as we tightened our belts, but the addition of Playfully Ever After Crafts and the strengthened partnerships with our other lines kept us in business and paved the road to our future success.
Please tell us about Playfully Ever After.
We’re best known for our Little Adventures roleplay dress-ups, our Playfully Ever After craft felt, and for the upcycled Myra Bags.
We’ve sold Little Adventures dress-ups since the beginning of our business. They are amazing! Seriously, they are the best kids dress up costumes around. They’re not like the cheap Halloween costumes that fall apart after a night of trick-or-treating. These princess dresses, boys costumes, cloaks, and capes are all machine washable. They’re designed by moms who understand how kids play. Each dress up is made so kids can easily take the costumes on and off themselves, and they’re made to last. We’ve owned dozens of Little Adventure outfits, and our kids have been playing with the same costumes for years.
Playfully Ever After Crafts offers pre-cut felt shapes in dozens of colors, shapes, and sizes. Our goal is to save crafters time and headache, by cutting the felt shapes you need for your projects. We do lots of business with schools, museums, other craft businesses, and everyday people looking for pre-cut felt so they don’t have to attempt to cut hundreds of perfect circles by hand. We do all of the cutting in-house, which allows us to be nimble and keep our stock levels lean. It also allows us to fulfill custom orders on our website playfullyeverafter.com and on Etsy.com.
Myra Bags was a line we came across at the Dallas Market Hall and we fell in love with not only the concept, but with the designs of these amazing handbags, totes, shoulder bags, crossbody, duffles, and purses. Myra takes old military canvas tents and tarps and upcycles the canvas material to turn them into amazing designer bags. The quality is fantastic, and each bag is slightly unique since it’s being made from an upcycled material while maintaining the amazing designs.
Being an author and audiobook narrator is an essentially a full-time second business. It’s also a team effort that gives both us a creative outlet that also makes money. While I love writing fiction, narrating books, school visits, and both the creative process and the business side of being an author, Adrienne is the solid rock behind each book. She not only acts as a sounding board for ideas, but she’s the alpha reader (first reader), and her critiques and feedback help polish the story and take it to a new level before it goes to the editor and then on to proofreaders. She’s also a talented artist and did all of the internal sketches seen in the I Am Sleepless series. Each book really becomes a tag-team effort as we match-up our individual talents to create a great product.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
We would have managed cash flow better and reacted quickly to the downturn we saw as brands started cutting off Amazon FBA retailers. If we could go back, we would have pursued private label options earlier, along with partnerships with brands to be their exclusive sellers online.
The key to online sales is a good product, good advertising, customer service, and a good profit margin. Having a private label and good partnerships with brands allows us to better control all of these aspects of online retail.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://playfullyeverafter.com/
- Email: info@playfullyeverafter.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johantwiss/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PlayfullyEverAfter/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohanTwiss
- Other: https://www.johantwiss.com/
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