Lisa Blaurock had no background in e‑commerce. For years, she helped run her husband’s construction firm in Lawrenceville, GA. But at 50, she stumbled on a low‑cost food intolerance testing kit in Europe and saw her life change overnight.
“I had a lot of health issues. I had a lap band put in, then taken out—$13,000 out of pocket,” she said. “Then my doctor told me about intolerance testing. I discovered gluten and dairy were the culprits. I cut those cold turkey and my health improved immediately.”
When her daughters wanted to get tested too, the high price of traditional kits pushed Blaurock to find an alternative. She began importing the European version, handing them out to family and colleagues. Two college students working for her husband, Austin Collins and Ethan Steed, quickly spotted the business potential.
“Austin came up to me and said, ‘This is a business, and you would be the biggest idiot in the world if you don’t do something with this.’ So I said, ‘OK, let’s give it a shot.’”
In 2017, the trio launched 5Strands in the Amazon store. The sales started pouring in almost immediately.
“We went from everyone working for free to a profitable business within months,” Blaurock recalled. Within four months, the company had moved into larger office space and doubled its staff. Today, 5Strands employs 18 people, including a partnership with Creative Enterprises, which provides jobs for adults with special needs who help assemble kits.
The company’s next big break came thanks to Daisy, Blaurock’s rescue dog with severe skin issues. “She had so many intolerances—from chicken to alcohol—that she’d sneeze every time I opened hand sanitizer,” Blaurock said. Daisy’s struggles inspired 5Strands to create pet testing kits, which now account for half of sales.
Blaurock credits her rapid growth to a simple strategy: be first. “Anytime Amazon beta tests something, we sign up,” she said. The company was among the earliest to adopt tools like Amazon Transparency—protected the brand from counterfeiters by giving each kit a unique scannable code—and Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which handled storage, packing, and shipping to 5Strand customers.
“I don’t even know what life would be like if we didn’t do FBA,” Blaurock said. “It let us scale almost overnight.”
The latest feature 5Strands has embraced is Amazon Live, a live shoppable experience that allows Blaurock to connect directly with shoppers in real time.
“In June, we generated $8,000 in sales in just 30 days—and it doesn’t cost us a dime,” Blaurock said. Her team joins in the streams to share their own test results and give customers a behind‑the‑scenes look.
“It shows we’re real people, not just a brand.”
Now an $11 million‑a‑year business growing 20% annually, 5Strands continues to bet on Amazon’s latest innovations, and has started experimenting with Amazon’s AI tools to enhance product listings.
“I don’t know how a small business could grow as quickly as we did without Amazon,” Blaurock said. “We’d probably still just be a website, lost on the internet somewhere. Instead, Amazon gave us a place to keep growing—and to keep innovating.”