Beauty executive Gerrard Larriett started to lose sleep over his adopted poodle, Dada—literally. Every time there was a thunderstorm, Dada would whimper throughout the night. As a puppy, the pooch was already prescribed lots of medications, and Larriett was reluctant to force any more on him. Instead, he brought home an aromatherapy candle to soothe the anxious canine.
“It was the first night he went to sleep without crying,” marveled Larriett.
The experience immediately sparked an idea for a line of aromatherapy products aimed at soothing distraught dogs. As Director of Forecasting at leading beauty brands, Larriett leveraged his industry contacts to connect with cosmetics labs. What followed was a line of sprays, shampoos and conditioners geared towards pets’ advanced sense of smell.
In 2012, Larriett launched Gerrard Larriett Aromatherapy Pet Care as a side hustle. When not working his full-time job, he would pack up his car and drive around Houston in search of pet stores willing to sell his products on consignment. As sales grew, Larriett knew he needed to adopt a strategy that would increase exposure to his brand.
“During my research, I said, ‘well of course I need to launch on Amazon.’ And almost immediately, we started to see growth,” he said.
Soon, the volume of orders started to bleed into his working day. Every night, Larriett would leave his full-time job and rush to his 400-square-foot storage facility to mount pallets of inventory to pack and ship to customers. This, all while attending business school.
“One day, I was packing an order at midnight and I just thought, I can’t do this anymore,” he said.
That’s when he decided to leverage Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which enables sellers to outsource their order fulfillment and provide Prime customers with free, two-day shipping. In just a few months, he was making over $1 million dollars in sales across all his sales channels.
Today, Gerrard Larriett Aromatherapy Pet Care is worth over $5 million and employs over 20 part-time employees. Of the many Amazon tools that Larriett uses, his favorite is the Amazon Seller App, which he values for providing continuous, on-the-go access to all of his business’ data, from sales figures to advertising metrics, as well as allowing him to respond instantly to customer queries.
“Being able to look at what’s happening in my business at any given time is pretty awesome, particularly if there’s a product concern, because you want to stay on top of those,” he said.
Larriett recently expanded his pet care line into international markets, namely Europe and Japan, by leveraging Amazon Global Selling, an initiative that simplifies global expansion for independent sellers. In time, he hopes to expand to even more markets, including Mexico. His growth, he said, was made possible by selling on Amazon.
“We’re online, we’re in stores, and we’re constantly expanding,” he said. “From the day I launched my products on Amazon, it’s just been phenomenal.”
Larriett attributes this success to Amazon’s innovative resources. As his business is one of the longer-running Amazon stores, he says he’s had a unique vantage point to see how Amazon’s grown the resources available to help small businesses like his thrive.
“I’ve had my Amazon store for over a decade, and there’s been this real evolution of the tools available to grow your business economically,” he said.