“Amazon gave us what we needed to build a business without getting buried by one.” That’s how Kyle Yamamoto describes what selling with Amazon has meant for Vital Pet Life, the top selling pet supplement company he and his wife Donie run out of their Los Angeles home. They spend their days on product development, sourcing, and earning product certifications that nobody else in their industry has. Amazon’s seller tools, streamline everything else, from warehousing and shipping to building product pages, identifying new opportunities and expanding into new countries.
Vital Pet Life started when the Yamamotos discovered that salmon oil cleared up their rescue dog Tuxedo’s skin condition, but the only options on shelves were either overpriced or oversized, and quality couldn’t be guaranteed. Donie saw the opportunity. With a no-interest credit card and a mission to bring high-quality pet supplements to families at a price they could actually afford, Vital Pet Life was born. Within a few months, they had a bestseller badge. Within a year, they realized they had a business that could pay their bills.
With Amazon, we get to enjoy the happy part of running a business, like research, discovery, innovation. The seller tools free us up to focus on building the business of our dreams.
The Yamamotos put their trust in Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to handle Vital Pet Life’s day-to-day order fulfillment, freeing them to focus on the parts of the business that they said, “drive real value.” At up to 70% less than comparable premium shipping options, FBA stores their inventory, handles packing and shipping, and manages customer service and returns. Donie and Kyle spend the time and money saved on developing better products, building relations with suppliers, and raising the bar on quality.
In those first three or four years, when the business was growing faster than cash flow could keep up, Amazon Lending solutions gave them the capital to keep funding inventory orders and stay in stock. Together, they removed the ceiling on what Donie and Kyle could build.
Vital Pet Life is the first pet brand in North America to verify every batch of fish oil against the exact species and geographic origin on the label.
The clearest proof of what that time made possible is their ORIVO origin certification. Vital Pet Life is the first pet brand in North America to verify every batch of fish oil against the exact species and geographic origin on the label. The process is expensive and time-consuming. Their products also carry ASC and MSC certifications for responsibly sourced seafood. Donie said FBA gave them the bandwidth to commit to it because they weren’t spending that time on warehousing and shipping.
Amazon’s gen AI-powered A+ Content tools gave them a way to make sure every customer who finds them in Amazon’s store understands what those certifications mean and why they matter. They built rich product detail pages that tell the full story of their sourcing, testing, and origin verification, giving customers the same clarity Donie and Kyle expect when they shop for their own dog, Tuxedo.
I am a consumer myself. When I buy something for our dogs, I want to know exactly what’s in it and why it works. A+ Content lets us give every customer that same answer. That’s how you build trust at scale.
Building at scale, said Kyle, is something that Amazon continues to reimagine. Kyle described the new AI-powered Seller Assistant like a business partner “who already knows the numbers.” Kyle uses the tool to research subscription performance while flagging long-term storage fees, and surface data he’d previously only reviewed at a glance. The answers that used to require manual digging to find now come in seconds. It’s also how he gets up to speed on tools and features he hasn’t fully explored yet. “Seller Assistant is very helpful. It’s my first resource for data analysis and knowledge on tools and features available to us,” he said.
Amazon’s AI-powered Product Opportunity Explorer gave the Yamamotos a way to make strategic decisions about their product line without months of manual research.
Amazon’s AI-powered Product Opportunity Explorer gave the Yamamotos a way to make strategic decisions about their product line without months of manual research. Kyle used it to size up categories and gauge where demand was going unmet. “We’re trying to add another million dollars, not ten thousand,” he said. The tool surfaced probiotic supplements as an opportunity, and when they came back from VMX, the biggest vet trade show in the country, they were hearing the same thing from veterinarians about hip and joint. They launched both probiotic and hip and joint supplements in Amazon’s store, using AI-powered listing tools to build out new product pages in a fraction of the time it would have taken to create them from scratch.
With Amazon handling the logistics and operations, my only worry is keeping up with demand. The business side is like pushing a button.
Expanding into Canada turned out to be simpler than the Yamamotos expected, they said. Amazon’s Build International Listings tool transferred their entire catalog over. With FBA fulfillment already in place, the only real change, as Kyle put it, was swapping product photos to show French-English labels.
The Yamamotos are projecting to double revenue in Canada this year. This spring, Vital Pet Life launches in Big Box retail in the US. Amazon’s seller tools keep building, and so does what Donie and Kyle can do with them. When Kyle is asked to sum it all up, he doesn’t talk about revenue or growth. He calls it, “life-changing.”