California

Craig Leslie had no e-commerce experience when he took over The Bean Coffee Company in 2012, inheriting a small organic coffee brand doing $650,000 in Amazon’s store. Fourteen years later, his seven-person team in South Oceanside, California roasts certified organic coffees and Swiss water-processed decaf coffees, lists 330+ products in the Amazon store, and expects nearly $3 million in revenue this year. Without a warehouse, marketing department, or data team, Leslie relies on Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), Seller Assistant’s AI-powered insights, and Subscribe & Save’s 3,000 subscriptions to compete nationally.

Sarah Fox grew Rip Tie Hair from a side hustle at San Diego State University into a $5 million brand, using Amazon’s Creative Studio, Seller Assistant, and Vine to scale faster than she could alone.

Tiffany Gil won $20,000 on Prime Video’s “Buy It Now” show and launched her padded sock company Shezza in the Amazon store that same year. Now AI tools and Fulfillment by Amazon help drive 40 percent of her nearly $1 million in annual sales.

With Amazon powering fulfillment, logistics, and product discovery for 600+ SKUs, Totally Bamboo’s founders turned a furniture scrap into a thriving business employing 40.

Amazon’s selling tools handle the logistics, ads, and product launches so Cristóbal Murillo’s team can focus on growing Selk’bag and mentoring local founders. 

In 2014, Paul and Pamela Mott lost their rescue dog Buffy to a coyote attack that happened in seconds. Driven by grief and his engineering expertise, Paul invented CoyoteVest: Pet body armor now manufactured in San Diego. Through Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), they deliver protection overnight to panicked pet owners who can’t afford to wait. The APEX program has removed over 4,000 copycat listings protecting their patents, while Amazon Ads connects them with customers actively searching for solutions. Today, CoyoteVest is a multimillion-dollar brand with 18 local employees and 30–40% annual growth.

As an outdoor enthusiast, David Phan was disheartened by the amount of waste polluting the planet. After learning that more than one billion toothpaste tubes end up in landfills every year, he quit his job and launched Huppy, a sustainable oral care brand that makes toothpaste tablets with clean ingredients and refillable, plastic-free packaging.

Amazon seller tools like A+ Content helped Phan educate customers unfamiliar with toothpaste tablets, while Amazon sales data later helped Huppy expand into national retailers, including Whole Foods and Erewhon.

“Amazon gave us national distribution before we had the retail relationships to support it,” he said.

Spread The Love co-founder Val Fishbain turned a kitchen obsession with clean ingredients into an internationally distributed brand. The business is still self-funded after 13 years, with Amazon fueling its growth.

Christine Khan couldn’t turn her mind off at bedtime,so she created Som Sleep, a powdered sleep aid mixed with water and taken 30 minutes before bed. Available in four flavors, the Los Angeles–based product is now used by over 100 professional sports teams. With Fulfillment by Amazon, Brand Tailored Promotions, and customer reviews driving growth, Som Sleep has reached millions of customers. Khan also donates the product to healthcare professionals, ensuring nurses and doctors get the rest they need. Her mission is simple: help people sleep better so they can show up for work, family, and life.

After a near-fatal car accidentin 2016left him bedridden, MOCO Games founder Eric Chen resolved to live life to the fullest and prioritize joy. During the 2020 pandemic,hemissed humanconnectionandhis favorite tea drink,boba.Sohe blended his product development background with his Taiwanese American heritage to create MOCO Games. Its flagship product,Sabobatage: The Boba Card Game, is a family-friendly game for ages 7 and up, with an expansion pack,Legends of Matcha. Chen sells in the Amazon store, using Fulfillment by Amazon to handlelogisticsand Amazon Ads to reach new customers.

People’s Choice Beef Jerky has been a fixture in Los Angeles since 1929, when Mark Bianchetti’s grandfather John first started the company selling sausages and chorizo. Now in its fourth generation of family leadership, the business has evolved into one of the premier beef jerky producers in the country, leveraging Amazon to drive its business.

“We started with just putting a few products on there as a test, and within the first year our Amazon sales had doubled,” said Brian Bianchetti, now CEO of the family business. “It’s been incredible to see the growth.”

The family credits much of that success to leveraging Amazon’s tools and programs, from Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to A+ Content and sponsored ads. With Amazon fueling their online expansion and a commitment to quality, the Bianchetti family is confident that People’s Choice Beef Jerky will be a household name for generations to come.

When their rescue dog Tuxedo’s skin condition cleared up with salmon oil, Los Angeles couple Donie and Kyle Yamamoto saw an opportunity others had missed. The only products available were overpriced, oversized, and quality couldn’t be guaranteed. Armed with a no-interest credit card and a mission to deliver affordable, high-quality pet supplements, they launched Vital Pet Life.

Within months, they earned a bestseller badge. Within a year, they had a business that could pay their bills.

“Amazon gave us what we needed to build a business without getting buried by one,” Kyle said.
Amazon’s AI-powered tools transformed how they operate, from A+ Content that builds customer trust to Product Opportunity Explorer that surfaces million-dollar opportunities without months of research.

“With Amazon, we get to enjoy the happy parts of running a business, like research, discovery, innovation,” Kyle explained.

Jordan Catapano and Jocelyn Dunn are using Amazon Ads to learn what drives sales, and Amazon’s data to guide their expansion into brick-and-mortar retail.

In her teens, Julissa Prado made the decision to embrace her natural curls rather than tame them, a personal turning point that sparked the creation of Rizos Curls. What began as a passion project quickly evolved into a breakout haircare brand, becoming a best-seller now embraced by celebrities like Chappell Roan and Jenna Ortega. When demand skyrocketed and sales topped $1 million in her first year, Prado turned to Amazon toscalefulfillment and reach new customers fast.

For Vasa Zoran Martinez, a period of sustained grief led him to adopt unhealthy habits that ultimately resulted in a pre-diabetes diagnosis. To make a change, he set out to reinvent his favorite comfort drink. The result was Perfy, a line of low-sugar, mood-boosting sodas made with real fruit juice, nootropics, and adaptogens.

Martinez launched Perfy in the Amazon store from day one, crediting tools like Subscribe & Save with helping the brand build a base of loyal, repeat customers.

“Subscribe & Save has been great for repeat purchases. Because of it, we’ve seen strong retention and customer reviews,” he said.

Carlos Torres and Jessica Rosales created Yo Sabo a bilingual game designed to help emerging Spanish speakers find their fluency in a low-pressure setting. With seller tools like Fulfilment by Amazon, the co-founders have grown their kitchen-table idea to a national bestseller.

When San Mateo dentist Chrystle Cu realized that though most of her patients brushed faithfully, many still struggled with gum disease and tooth decay, she decided to reinvent the least-loved part of dental care: flossing. Together with her sister, she created Cocofloss, a soft, woven floss infused with coconut oil and fun fragrances like Cara Cara Orange and Confetti Cake.

After launching in the Amazon store, Cocofloss became a cult favorite, and is now the top selling dental floss across Amazon. With tools like A+ Content, Cu has grown sales by 50% year over year and rebranded as COCOLAB, expanding into toothbrushes, toothpaste and oral care essentials that value style and substance.

Longtime friends and entrepreneurs David Perez and MJ Eng created Think Tank Scholar as a way to teach their children about business. But what started as a father-led project soon turned into an award-winning line of thoughtfully designed flashcards and learning games for children.

Perez and Eng say much of their growth has been fueled by Amazon events like Prime Day, which has helped them boost sales, and foster a love of learning for children across the nation.

“We want to inspire a lifetime love of creative thinking and learning through educational products that are both fun and thought-provoking,” said Eng.

When Brian Hollowaty adopted Paisley, a rescue dog with allergies and a stubborn smell, he didn’t expect her grooming needs to be so demanding. Drawing on his beauty industry experience, he created Frankie & Paisley, a line of clean, effective dog grooming products sold in the Amazon store.

To reach fellow dog lovers, Hollowaty leaned on Amazon tools like A+ Content to showcase his products’ clean ingredients, cruelty-free formulas, and story-driven brand ethos.

The idea for Diaspora Spice Co. started with a golden milk latte. In 2016, turmeric was everywhere—but to founder Sana Javeri Kadri, who grew up in Mumbai, it tasted flat and lifeless. Determined to find better, she flew to India and met a farmer cultivating brilliantly aromatic turmeric. That one trip sparked what would grow into a multi-million-dollar business offering more than 30 single-origin spices and freshly milled blends.

With help from Amazon’s seller tools, Kadri has been able to share her mission: building a radically transparent supply chain centered on equity, sustainability, and bold flavors.

Chris and Faye Breedlove met in law school and founded a legal practice after getting married. The couple worked remotely while traveling the world for weeks at a time. During COVID, when travel was restricted, the couple turned to their past experiences as inspiration for a new endeavor, TERMINAL B, a luxury candle line that connects travel with fragrance.

The Breedloves credit Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator (BBA) with giving them support to open their store, improving accessibility to their product and creating opportunities to meet new customers and share their story.

As a small business starting out, Faye Breedlove calls the brand exposure TERMINAL B has received from Amazon as the best gift.

The wildfires in Southern California have destroyed over 14,000 homes, and displaced thousands of people, leaving communities in urgent need of support. Answering the call are many small businesses with deep ties to the Los Angeles area. In addition to the LA-based retailers that have rallied to provide support during this time of crisis, it’s also the less visible small businesses—many of which sell in Amazon’s store—that are stepping up in remarkable ways during this crisis.

From a pet care company using its Amazon warehouse to ferry donations to wildfire victims, to an outdoor shower brand donating kits to disaster relief organizations, local independent sellers are pitching in to help those most affected.

In the rugged terrain of Afghanistan, leading a platoon of snipers, Deed Ziegler, a former Marine Corps officer, conceived the idea for RecPak, an ultralight complete meal solution designed specifically for adventurers who love the outdoors.

Years of research and development culminated in his solution: a powdered meal in a flexible pouch that transforms into a 700-calorie liquid meal, packed with nutrients, that can be consumed on the move.

Launched in late 2022 amid lingering supply chain disruptions, the company initially struggled to gain traction with their own website. Ziegler said that everything changed the following year, when RecPak launched in the Amazon store.

“Amazon is foundational to our business,” Ziegler explained. “Our Amazon sales are paying the bills, which means I can now focus on building my business across other sales channels on and off-line.”

From a single pillow product launched in 2013 to over 50 items and 1 million pillows sold, Coop Sleep Goods has scaled exponentially by listening to their Amazon customers reviews and using Amazon’s logistics network and seller services to handle the heavy lifting.

“Without Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), we wouldn’t have been able to scale our business as quickly as we did,” said Jin. “It takes care of the hardest part of having an ecommerce business, which is the picking, packing and shipping the product out. Not having to worry about the fulfillment aspect of the business really frees up your time to be working on your product, on your branding, on your marketing.”

When Sacha Hason’s father asked him to help sell in the Amazon store in 2019, it launched him into the world of leather crafting. Within a few months of leveraging Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Amazon Advertising, sales doubled for what has since become the Hason family business. Today, European Leather Works supplies leather goods in different sizes, shapes, colors—including finished goods and scraps—to retailers and individual leather crafters, helping to keep leather out of landfills. The company has ambitious plans to expand globally with Amazon Global Stores.

When a heat wave hurt crops in the Midwest, causing the price per pound of oats to skyrocket 400%, Michelle Pusateri had to relook at her margins on Nana Joes Granola to stay profitable. Instead of passing the cost on to her customers, Pusateri looked internally and, with the help of Amazon, retooled where she could to save the 10 jobs she created.

Fellow is a lifelong dream of Jake Miller, founder and CEO, who wanted to build a business that would combine his love of coffee with product design while also creating jobs for his community. Ten years later, he’s crushed his goal of employing 10 people 10 fold and is about to go global with his products in a success story fueled by grit, grounds and Amazon.

San Francisco-based Alfred and Sarah Mai were disappointed in the lack of fun and meaningful party games out there, so in 2017, they decided to create their own.

“We didn’t know anything about game design or manufacturing or importing,” said Alfred. But that didn’t stop them. The next step was getting their products to customers. The problem? Big-box stores weren’t interested.

That’s when they tried selling in Amazon’s store.