Dimitri Shein spends much of his week shuttling kids to appointments and after-school activities. He’s a small business owner and a working father of six children ranging from 10 to 20 years old—some of whom require special care. Four are adopted.
“My small business has allowed me to provide for my kids, even when their needs are high and the time commitment is extensive,” said Shein, an accountant by trade. “I’m able to have the freedom to bounce around and take care of things that my family needs.”
In some ways, his kids were the impetus for what has become a family business: Nice Planter.
In 2012, Shein and his wife Melissa set out to design and manufacture modular planter boxes as a fun way to take a break from Alaska’s dark, long winters and prepare for springtime, when the family could enjoy outdoor spaces together. They wanted to design a modular planter box that could ship flat across Alaska and the continental United States.
By the end of the year, Nice Planter was born and the Sheins began selling in the Amazon store.
“When you start selling with Amazon, you have a large audience with millions of people looking at your listing. It would not be possible for me to get that kind of exposure selling door to door, which I tried,” Shein said, adding that brick-and-mortar businesses in Alaska repeatedly turned him away. With Amazon, “you get customers who are actively looking [for your product] versus actively trying to find a buyer, which is definitely very challenging—especially when you’re in Alaska.”
Over the past decade, the Sheins have sold thousands of planters to plant enthusiasts in all 50 states. Today, they ship all over the world.
“When I’m in Alaska and it’s wintertime, I constantly hear from customers all over the country working in the garden. In some sense, I’m working in the garden with them and helping them create a great space that they can enjoy with their friends and family,” Shein said.
Amazon has provided the Sheins with the tools and capabilities to safeguard the brand they’ve worked so hard to build, Dimitri Shein added.
“As a creator of products, it’s very important to me to be able to say what my product is and what the features are, and to be able to control the messaging of the product,” he said. “as a seller [elsewhere] you don’t have as much control.”
In 2021, Nice Planter began leveraging Amazon Advertising to attract new customers and make their range of products more discoverable.
“Amazon has great video capabilities and video creation tools that let you make videos very fast without spending a lot of money on video editing and design,” he said. “That’s important to me as a small business owner because I like to create marketing materials at lower costs.”
Shein is constantly looking at new shapes and materials to expand his product line and said he expects sales to grow by 20% this year, with Amazon as a key partner.
“I see the relationship between the money I spend on Amazon for ads in terms of increased sales,” he added. “It’s been a good experience and a good return on investment.”