• Matt Rollens is an e-commerce entrepreneur based in Sacramento, California. 
  • Rollens sells glassware on Amazon, a Shopify store, Walmart, and more.
  • Rollens shares how he got started on Amazon and the advice he would give to others.  

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Matt Rollens, an entrepreneur based in Sacramento, California. Insider has verified revenue with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Before I started my own glassware company, I helped other companies build up their brand as a marketing and advertising professional. But I always knew that I wanted to run my own business. E-commerce seemed like a good place to start, and after reading blogs and watching YouTube videos about Amazon’s fulfillment operations, I decided to focus my efforts there.

First, I had to decide on a product. In 2016, I landed on glassware. I got the idea because I was using a tea infuser bottle and realized that though I liked the bottle, it could be better if it had even more features. I then went down a path of finding a manufacturer to make my own prototype that would be an improvement on the bottles I had used before.

Once I had found a manufacturer, I started looking at other products in the glassware category and noticed that there hadn’t been much innovation there. It’s a very commoditized product category, and I saw an opportunity to create glasses for all different types of drinks, like craft beer, bourbon, and whiskey. At the time, interest was growing in those drinks, so it made sense to try to make a glass that could also be innovative and cool.

I decided to call my brand Dragon Glassware. In the years since I got started, I've learned a lot about design. I don't make the tea bottle anymore, but I now hold five patents for drinking glasses, and a few more are pending, too.

Leaning on Amazon for fulfillment and logistics

Getting our supply chain in order was definitely the biggest learning curve in the whole process. Our manufacturers are based in China, and I had to learn all about importing products and getting them ready for customers.

Foto: Dragon Glassware

Selling a physical product on Amazon is very cash-intensive. I started small, with pallets that would get delivered to my garage, where I would label the cartons and send them in to an Amazon fulfillment center. As the business grew, the demand for inventory grew to a point where I was having full containers delivered to my house, which got a little crazy. For a bit, I was also renting a warehouse space, but now I have my inventory delivered directly into an Amazon fulfillment center. While in the early days the job required a lot of manual labor on my part, now the process is completely streamlined and digital, and I don't really touch the products at all on my side.

My business makes full use of Amazon's fulfillment and logistics services. I was an early tester of the new Supply Chain by Amazon product suite. I use Amazon's Multichannel Fulfillment program, or MCF, which means that all of Dragon Glassware's orders — whether they came from the Amazon marketplace, our Shopify store, Walmart, or Etsy — are fulfilled from an Amazon warehouse. I also moved away from using a third-party logistics service and use Amazon for that, too.

I was also a very early user of Buy with Prime, including the new Shopify app. I started my Shopify store a couple of years after initially launching on Amazon. We still get the majority of our sales from Amazon, but I've put a bit more effort into building up the DTC site more lately. Having your own Shopify store gives you more data to remarket to existing customers than you would be able to do on Amazon, for example.

Buy with Prime has been helpful for the brand. It gives shoppers access to two-day shipping, while our standard shipping is more like five days. I also think it brings in shoppers who might not be willing to take a chance on a new brand but are familiar with Prime and comfortable making a purchase once they see the logo. Plus, I was already using MCF, so it made sense to turn on Buy with Prime as a channel.

I work with an agency on Amazon ads. It's a huge component of being successful on Amazon, but it's easy to blow your budget on ads if you don't know what you're doing. I've always been focused on profitability, so it helps to work with an agency to make sure my ad spending is going to the right place.

It's not a get-rich-quick scheme

Foto: Dragon Glassware

I now have a team of three working on Dragon Glassware with me full-time, and we've been profitable every year we've been in business. I also sell my products at Barnes & Noble, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods stores.

Dragon Glassware has generated more than $2.1 million in sales so far this year, and we're projecting an additional $2-3 million before the end of the year. We typically get around 50-60% of our sales in the fourth quarter due to the holiday season.

The business has done especially well this year thanks to a partnership I made with Mattel in 2021. The deal was to make a set of pink, Barbie-branded glasses and coasters, which have been extremely popular thanks to all of the Barbie madness this summer. A couple of our glasses are actually in the movie, too. It was a bit of good luck because we didn't know the movie would be coming out when we originally talked about a deal.

Foto: Dragon Glassware

Overall, my advice to new Amazon sellers is to make sure you do your research first.

It helps to have a solid business foundation before you get into it. Make sure to take it slow and be patient. If you're starting an e-commerce business with no outside funding, like I did, you have to be very deliberate with your spending.

I see a lot of content about getting rich quickly on Amazon. You see the guys with the Lamborghinis on LinkedIn, and that's just not realistic. It's going to be a slog, and you just don't know what's going to happen.