AS 55: How Kai Klement grew to 4 Million Yearly Revenue with his brand Kavaj, on Amazon

Amazon Private Label Podcast for FBA Sellers - Sell more on Amazon FBA, e-Commerce Podcast - AmzSecrets

Today Kai Klement came on the show, and he shared a ton of golden nuggets! Kai Klement is the co-founder of KAVAJ. They are making $4 million a year selling genuine leather products on Amazon worldwide. Last year he also co-founded the KAVAJ Academy, where he and his partner Joerg help other Amazon sellers sell more on Amazon.

In today’s podcast we covered:

• How Kai grew his brand to 4 Million yearly revenue
• When to add people to your company
• How to leverage maximum efficiency in production
• How to choose a product
• How to build a business with a family
• When to quit your job
• How to do test runs
• How to plan a trip to China for business
• How to strategically source at a fair including Kai’s checklist
• What kind of due dilligence Kai and his co-founder do.
• Product design strategies and execution
• Product trip ups, and how Kai pivoted to building his 4M yearly revenue biz
• Best social networks for growing brand
• How to leverage social networks to grow brand, the way Kai does
• Favorite books Kai like
• Monetizing social media
• Monetizing SEO on his blog
• Building products based on SEO

Kai’s favorite book:
The Art of the Start

How to contact Kai:
Kavaj | Kavajacademy.com

Get his book,free: kavajacademy.com/amzsecrets

David Aladdin: Great to have you on the show Kai, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Kai Klement: Yeah, thanks David. Thanks for having me and yes of course I can tell you a little bit more. Just a quick background from my person, I’m based in Germany so you see the city behind here and we founded KAVAJ in 2011 Joerg and me. We’re both married and have two kids and basically working from home. This is a peek in my home office here. All our employees are working from home this is one of the main benefits selling on Amazon. We’re 10 people right now in our company and as I said we are all working from home selling genuine leather cases worldwide through FBA.

David Aladdin: What did you do before you got into, before 2011 what were you doing then?

Kai Klement: Joerg and me we both started working for Amazon actually, after graduation and we worked there for three years. I was responsible for on boarding new really big sellers on Amazon and helping them sell more on Amazon already during my three years and I was building up the Fulfillment By Amazon program in Germany to in my role in Germany. This means we have eight years working for Amazon and now selling on Amazon.

David Aladdin: If you don’t mind me asking how much were you making at Amazon at the time?

Kai Klement: In my last year I was making almost 100K.

David Aladdin: You significantly alleviated the bar up to $4 million.

Kai Klement: Yes, but-

David Aladdin: We’ll get into that pretty soon.

Kai Klement: It wasn’t that way at the beginning. It’s still a tough decision leaving your well paid job and jump into the water of being a seller.

David Aladdin: What type of things were going through your mind, did you have a family and a kid at the time?

Kai Klement: No, no we hadn’t but of course we had plans to definitely. Also, we knew from the beginning Joerg and me we founded our company in Munich, South Germany where we used to live and work for Amazon, by the time. Then we knew once we will start a family we will both move back to our home town. This meant our business had to be flexible and location and time independent. First, if you’re separated you cannot share an office, it must be we’re working all remotely and second we have kids. Two kids right now you also need to be flexible in terms of time, when you work and where you work also of course.

David Aladdin: Very cool, how much did you have saved up when you jumped into the Amazon KAVAJ business?

Kai Klement: Not very much basically we did a test run before we started KAVAJ; we did a test run in the mornings and in the afternoons while we were working for Amazon. We both put in two and half K, for our first test run with one product once we knew okay, this can work. Now we have to take the hard decision, do we leave our job at Amazon and jump into the water selling our own products. We need to make a hard-cut and then we were lucky that Joerg had a couple of savings, he had like 40K and put the money into the business and we took the money basically for buying products and our first trip to China. This was basically our first big-money so to speak.

David Aladdin: What was the year that you guys went to China?

Kai Klement: It was 2011.

David Aladdin: You went right to China right when you guys started?

Kai Klement: No, what we did, we did the test run in 2010.

David Aladdin: I got you.

Kai Klement: We used Alibaba for a start, but we experience if you want to really be serious you have to build that relations. You have to find your supplier. You only can do when it’s really if you go and take the plane, board the plane and go there and try to find a supplier and do the work to find the right supplier and build up relations. This is what we did in 2011, we took two weeks vacations and then went to two fairs, to Hong Kong and Sangeng in China. Did our due diligence and talked a lot of people and found our first supplier basically. During our time in Amazon, during our vacations it wasn’t really vacations but a start of a business.

David Aladdin: In the U.S. they call when you’re working outside of your main job they call it moonlighting because you’re working under the moon.

Kai Klement: Yes, exactly this was.

David Aladdin: You guys were sun setting or no, sun rising.

Kai Klement: This is how we do it.

David Aladdin: Okay, around 2011 it seems like it started to pickup you guys visited China. From Germany to China how much does that cost?

Kai Klement: In 2011 it was $900.

David Aladdin: About the same cost for Americans to go there to. What did the China experience tell you?

Kai Klement: Basically it was an unbelievable experience. The first trip we’ve never been to China obviously and we have never been to such huge fairs. When we landed there the first day we went to China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong and there were hundreds of booths and thousands of people walking around and we had no idea where to go first. It was very overwhelming for the first days. The first night we thought what was going on? How can we manage this we need help or a kind of system or something and then we made a small plan and the next day we went to the fair again the whole day and talked to everyone on the fair and graded them. Graded the booths or the supplier using very simple methods, first we needed language. We needed to speak English and to write English. Second we graded them by quality because everyone has samples of their work there so you can watch it. Third one of course is price, what they offered us. We made a grading system.

After the second day we had a couple of business cards with grades on it and on the third day we only talked to A+ or A and B candidates in all three areas like language, price and quality. On the third day we talked to them again and asked if we can visit their factory. In order to find out is this really a supplier, is this really a factory or is this just a middle man. This is how we got our head around all this overwhelming booths and stuff. The same day we met or the second day we met also our first middle man from our test run and we only communicated via email so far with him. On this evening we met Susan was her name and we found out she couldn’t talk at all.

David Aladdin: That’s not good.

Kai Klement: We went to dinner, it was really hand and foot and all this communication but didn’t work at all. This is why we found out communication is key really. Even if they can write something once you get on the phone with them or meet them in person.

David Aladdin: It’s funny you work with these manufacturers and you’re hoping they produce great sample but it always goes back to the beginning can they even speak English well or communicate in the language that you’re speaking well so that you can tell them what you want to do and make that relationship move further.

Kai Klement: Exactly. This was our experience from the fair. Of course China is completely different from what you probably know in the States and also in Germany. It’s a bit of the areas of where you’re going where factories are. Our first day we thought we are old, because you get into China and all people around you, we have the impression we are 22, 25 all the young people in the subway and in the trains around you … we are 30 by the way right now, in 2011 now we are 34 and 35.

David Aladdin: Are you saying 35 SKU’s.

Kai Klement: No, 35 years old. In 2011-

David Aladdin: I’m slightly younger than you but … do a quick run through for the audience tuning in. Some of the things you checked in was the language of the manufacturer they need to speak good English or whatever language that you speak. The quality of their products have to be on point. He had this entire grading system which included both of those. He made sure that they weren’t going through a middle man factory. He made emphasized that communication is key. Lastly he brought business cards to each event. I think one thing he missed out was that he didn’t know which manufacturers to check-out before he arrived and I think in the future is that something that you’re go have it pre-setup?

Kai Klement: Definitely, definitely in future we would watch out for what people are there, who is there and do a bit more work in advance. That should not get overwhelmed by the complexity or the number of sellers or the number of booths which are there. The grading system is simply a grading system and really talk to them is the best way you can do in order to source your first supplier I would suggest.

David Aladdin: Let’s talk about KAVAJ and the creation of that brand because it’s starting to be pretty big, especially it’s only been five years since that time. What happened there between 2010, and why did you guys choose to sell this specific product? Go into that.

Kai Klement: Something like Joerg and me as I said, we were working for Amazon and all the time we were discussing how can we benefit of this huge marketplace? How can we? We need a product basically because one of the main employees who was working for the fulfillment center by that time said to me; “Amazon has such a huge advantage in term of marketplace and fulfillment you just need the right product and then you’re fine.” What we were looking for by the time the iPad I was just releasing. In 2010 Apple started selling the iPad 1 or just started promoting and Joerg and me we were always talking about tech and watching all this stuff. We were talking will this be a hit, like all people were talking.

What we were also were wondering, Joerg he wanted an iPad 1 and he was looking for a case by that time on Amazon in US and in Germany and he couldn’t find a really nice elegant genuine leather case. By that time the first cases were all really bulky new leather and very expensive. These three things together got us thinking and then we said; “okay, this is our product we will do genuine leather very thin, iPad leather case. This is our dream product and now let’s go.” This was the idea behind starting KAVAJ. As I said we made a test run, we did a cheaper case, classic case in order to test the whole process how it works with selling on Amazon and all the importing stuff. How does this work and set up the tech system and the backend systems so that the invoices get sent automatically? This is a requirement which is necessary in Germany. This is why we did the test run.

David Aladdin: I’m looking at your KAVAJ website; you guys have very awesome product photos, who is doing all those photos?

Kai Klement: Yes, this is also a very awesome story. Right now the pictures are taken from a studio in China directly. We sourced a photo-studio, I think we were sourcing we were testing almost 30 different studios right now in China directly.

David Aladdin: I’ve never heard someone actually do the photo outsource them over to China.

Kai Klement: This is huge because before we did this, we did the photography before. Our first product we got a really high-end photographer in Germany because we played the startup card. We need pictures, we’re a very new company and of course we don’t have money. We contacted almost 20 companies in Germany and they quote us very high prices. Then one guy who was usually shooting pictures for BMW and all these big companies, he replied and said I can offer you for five bucks a picture I can offer you in making the first pictures. The reason was, we replied that sounds great.

The reason was he was also starting a company when he was young and wanted to support us. We found this guy he took awesome product picture and ever since these pictures are the basic we are using to educate our photo-studio in China to do the pictures. We made the transition from Germany to China because they are much faster. Once we have samples we can do pictures and videos now much faster because right now we have one guy working for us in China directly and she is taking care of making the pictures, making the new videos and stuff like this.

David Aladdin: What’s the cost if I wanted 20 photos in China done of a product?

Kai Klement: Twenty photos we pay around 250 per photo.

David Aladdin: Awesome, that’s very cool. That’s definitely an awesome secret that you shared with us.

Kai Klement: Two reasons its way cheaper and also way faster. We made the investment first, we went with our guy who went to four photo shootings and video shootings ourselves and made the whole briefing because this is also one advice. You have to do the briefing very carefully because usually they only do what you say. In Germany we were used to; we have their idea, they are professionals they can do this all better, but in China which is our experience, they really do it how you say it, but not more or not less. If you show them what you want exactly you really get good results. You have to make the investment up front.

David Aladdin: You mentioned they do videos as well in terms of marketing. What kind of videos have you guys gone and done?

Kai Klement: We have done the small 30 seconds up to one minute Apple like small product shows. We show basically every angle of our cases and we have stand functionality in our cases. We show how to use the stand functionality. We show how to insert the case but very briefly so it’s a really 30 seconds up to one minute product presentation so to speak. With white background, like you know Apple. This is one kind of video we’re doing and the second kind of video we are doing is with big reviewer or a very famous German You Tuber he is getting all our cases and then he is doing a complex five minute review of how everything is working and describing everything the kind of product we use.

David Aladdin: I was thinking about going that influencer route, I haven’t done it yet but I think the strategy is finding influences that don’t have or they’re just emerging and they’re very young because they’re not used to the sponsorship yet and you don’t have to pay the huge dollar.

Kai Klement: Exactly, this is what we did. We started very early with this guy because we saw one video. Basically how it all started was in 2011 people came to us and asking for free product for a review. We gave them the products of course and then we watched the reviews and then we saw this guy is doing this very well. We would like every product reviewed like this. We contacted him in his early days and he said; “yes why not, I love your products let’s work together.” Until today she is doing the reviews, the product review even if she’s now the biggest tech You Tuber. He got really famous because you see the quality if you look at the YouTube reviews of course you can see who’s doing a good job.

David Aladdin: I actually pulled it up on YouTube, you went all out … Awesome. Let’s talk about the strategy. Did you start off in Germany and moved over to America.

Kai Klement: As we are Germans we started in our home country and then we moved to U.K. and then the year after that we started in the U.S.

David Aladdin: How is the European market versus the American market?

Kai Klement: Of the U.S. market is the biggest market for Amazon, but after the U.S. Germany is second biggest market, then U.K. and then Japan. In terms of numbers in the EU you also have three hundred million potential customers because Amazon is shipping their products over the EU. In all European companies it’s well worth to sell in the U.K. and in Germany.

David Aladdin: I feel like you guys jumped into a, I’m in a very competitive market but you guys are in an even a more competitive market than I am. Cellphone cases; there’s so much competition around that. How are you guys getting past the all the noise in that industry?

Kai Klement: You’re completely right. It was in 2011 it was already like this and it’s getting fierce I would say. The point is I would say you need to think about or you need to build a strategy beyond Amazon. In particular traffic on Amazon meaning; what we were doing from day-one was building our audience on all social media channels which we thought are relevant to our brand. Basically as we have products with very, very professional or nice looking digitals this was Instagram of course and Facebook and Twitter is also important for us in terms of customer service. This is something we did from day-one and I think this will get even more important. This is one thing; social media channels.

The second thing external you have to do or we would recommend to do is like building your own emails list as fast as possible to have your own list basically to promote your products to your own lists. I think this will go on and we are working on this every day and thinking about how can we drive or how can we create traffic from external sources. We are directing directly to Amazon. This is what do, I didn’t say this, we are selling exclusively on Amazon everything we do on our website is really promoting and showing our products then we always send them to Amazon.

We try to do this with as less links as possible, meaning from Facebook we love to send them directly to Amazon not even to our website but directly to Amazon. Also from all our emails we send the traffic directly to Amazon. Sorry go ahead.

David Aladdin: I mentioned in a previous episode, I said; “website sales do hurt Amazon sales.” I got a bunch of blow-back. I agree with you and I think you notice it whenever you sell on your website it’s actually one less sale for your Amazon channel.

Kai Klement: Exactly it’s one less sale on Amazon and this is the whole idea of selling on Amazon is generating as many sales as possible in order to benefit from the organics which happen from the existing more than three hundred million.

David Aladdin: That’s what I say. I was trying to get that point across maybe I said it in the wrong way. I totally agree. I’m not saying to only sell on Amazon I’m saying if you have the ability to move your traffic around the way you’re doing it. If you can move people from your website to Amazon listing or from your Facebook pages to your Amazon listing then I think you should do so because those are metric points that you can increase your rank on Amazon.

Kai Klement: Definitely, it will always be sales, sales will always be the magic metrics on Amazon and you don’t get sales if you don’t have traffic on Amazon. You have to imagine how powerful Amazon is. The latest numbers from last year Q4 I think in the U.S. was more than 50% of sales of online was on Amazon, more than 50% and the next ten after Amazon didn’t have the revenue which Amazon had. The customers are all there, they’re all waiting that your product gets listed on the first page in the best case in the search. Your goal should always be to get your products ranked as high as possible in order to benefit from the existing customer basis. We are searching there, Amazon is doing so much to get customers and we have such a high reputation.

David Aladdin: I agree, I agree completely. You mentioned email list and you’re trying to build that up. I’m trying to build mine up to. What kind of strategies are you doing to build your email list up? I know you mentioned a lot of sources that you’re sending traffic to but let’s go into detail about that.

Kai Klement: We have one basic strategy is we have a website. We’ve redesigned our website and what we do is we offer first as many places as possible we offer five Euro, or five dollar or five pound whatever the currency is from the country is discount for all our products if you sign up for our newsletter. This is the first thing we do. Second thing we do is if we launch a product or if we do a special promotion we set up separate funnel or setup a separate site where we collect email addresses and offer a special deal only for people who are signing up for this deal.

We are in the middle of the iPhone 7 launch and if you sign-up for a iPhone 7 launch deal you will be on our list and you will get 50% discount on one of our item cases currently. This was huge and obviously what we’re doing is we’re promoting these separate landing pages on our social media channels mainly. We tell our people and our fans on Facebook; “sign up for this special deal you only get this discount if you sign to this email list.

David Aladdin: That’s awesome. I like how you’re actually segregating the lists per social channel so people that are in your mail channels aren’t getting these kinds of deals.

Kai Klement: Exactly so what we’re doing is we always do 15% launch discount for everyone but then we do really a special launch deal and we are building our email lists in this way.

David Aladdin: Out of curiosity how big is your email list at this point?

Kai Klement: We have currently 9,000 in Germany and in the U.S. we already have 25K.

David Aladdin: Wow, you guys are killing it 25,000 is a lot when you send out one blast if you get 5% of the people to buy it, what is that? Its 1,250 purchases, right? Did I do that right, yeah that could equal a substantial amount of cash just from clicking a mouse.

Kai Klement: I think this will be even more important during the next year.

David Aladdin: I notice you guys don’t sell the; I don’t want to sell that brand. You guys don’t sell you know the auto box but yes don’t sell like the armored typed of casing.

Kai Klement: No, no what we do or we are very specialized basically. A really strong focus on genuine leather cases which are very thin and we have two colors basically. This is our complete portfolio but we do this for all devices and we are building up a set because we see a lot of people who have an iPad case, they also have an iPhone and then they also have a Mac. Once you are in Apple you very likely that you have more Apple devices. Obviously we’re expanding this system now to wallets, we have passport cases but we only do one or two designs and two colors which are always matching, you can see this on our website. We’re really starting to building these kind of sets which are matching their style.

David Aladdin: The iPhone 7 came out on September 7th I think and you guys already have a case for that. You guys are on point, working hard over there.

Kai Klement: Exactly this is also important. You have to be fast if you want to sell volume.

David Aladdin: I think you mentioned an awesome secret without noticing or you probably did notice, about 10 seconds ago you said you had a very strong focus on very thin cases, works on all devices or products for each device and they’re genuine leather. It’s that focus that you have which creates the brand and that’s a brand type of model that you’re following.

Kai Klement: Exactly.

David Aladdin: When people create brands sometimes they don’t recognize the things that they’re doing but you guys are actually that’s part of the brand strategy.

Kai Klement: We also learn the hard way.

David Aladdin: What do you mean by that, let’s talk about what hardships have you had so far?

Kai Klement: On our first trip like I said we had 40K to spend on product on our first trip to China and we were pretty confident, we knew we had to focus but once you are there and is overwhelming and you talk to all these people and see all this thousands of products. Thousands of design, different you really don’t know which will be successful. We also made the mistake that we had too many designs and different materials when we first started KAVAJ we were selling also plastic cases and a couple of other materials. Then we saw we have 11 designs and only three are really working. We basically had to destroy all our excess inventory from the designs which were not working and we really focused on maximum three designs per device and two colors.

David Aladdin: Have you ever seen the Profits, it reminds me of the guy on the Profit, you guys have way too many SKU’s you’ve got to stick to five SKU top and you’ve got target each SKU toward a demographic, the westerner, the easterner, the southerner and the northerner and another one like the water person or something. You guys have done very similar strategy you’ve focused on three units.

Kai Klement: Three designs, you can name it three designs per search term. If people are looking for iPad case there’s only one page one and if you have hundreds of designs you cannot be on page one with one hundred different designs.

David Aladdin: It’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone say that. Three designs per search term. It’s a different type of SEO, Search Engine optimization because there’s only a maximum amount of spots on the search engine you literally are optimizing for that in your product line.

KAI KLEMENT: Exactly you expand your selection for the next search term.

David Aladdin: You’re absolutely right, I agree.

Kai Klement: Now we have passport case, we have business card case. This goes on but you need a new search term where you can put in your three designs or two colors.

David Aladdin: It’s a different way of looking at the entire industry of creating a brand.

Kai Klement: Definitely but this is our strategy and it works and works worldwide. What we did is we first had the iPad cases then we did the three search terms and then we took U.K. and U.S. because it’s the same search term there and we had distributed our selection worldwide very easily. Search term. We don’t speak in search terms though.

David Aladdin: Let’s talk about ah, ha! Moments, you reached four million a year in revenue in under five years you must have had a product or a few products that literally skyrocketed and that’s what allowed you to buy a lot more inventory. You don’t have to mention those products but what led to the success of those particular products?

Kai Klement: It’s really the story what we experienced after we first sourced our iPad cases because as I said we sourced 11 different designs and we learned a lot from this and we had an Ah, Ha moments from these designs. It all came down that our dream case this very thin genuine leather case in black with very elegant and simple design became our top seller. We added a second design which also had functionality in it which was also very good working. Or was working also very well and then we had a fourth design which had a different color and we saw in the numbers people are looking at this product. We had a lot of traffic to this product but they were not buying. We were wondering what’s wrong with this product and then we realized that people were not only looking for really nice design but also for functionality but basic functionality.

What we did is, we still have the fourth design because it’s one of our, we love this case so much but we still keep it but we took the color and made the second color for our three main designs. Then we saw this color now works well. Now we’re selling three different designs and two colors which are both working very well. Two ah, ha in summary. First genuine leather, thin genuine leather cases versus what people want and second there are two colors black and our iconic brown which are working very well, but only if you combine design and functionality. Two main ah, ha moment from our time we’re using iPad cases.

David Aladdin: I hate to say colors are an important aspect, let’s change colors and sell a lot but within my product line as well certain colors do way better than other colors and you’ll get feedback from those people that don’t like the other colors that you chose. What color was bad that you launched?

Kai Klement: It was our idea, first idea was we used a very bright green in order to start, in order to have a visual on our products which people can recognize. We tried to include it also in the materials but it wasn’t, at first the visual wasn’t working. The website wasn’t working and the material we used the color with was also not working, bad idea. Learning!

David Aladdin: In terms of all the different social media channels, videos, Instagram, Facebook which one do you find most effective for your brand?

Kai Klement: I would say, I would name three which we are really focused but our most effort on, first is Facebook, second is Instagram and third is really Twitter. We have high traffic and high rates of engagement on all three channels for our product lines and for our work. These three channels are currently the most important. We are currently experimenting with Pinterest because this is also very…

David Aladdin: You guys have lots of photos.

Kai Klement: This is also a very visual social media channel but currently we focus on these three main channels and put our most effort into it.

David Aladdin: I noticed on your website blog you guys have a lot of activity, sometimes there’s two posts a day on the blog. Have you seen the benefits of creating a lot of articles for Google to recognize your brand presence and send visitors in?

Kai Klement: Yeah what we have seen is, one step back we are doing the blog already for three years or four years. We started very early with the blog so what we’re seeing is we really get traffic now from the blog and high engagement from fans who are active or engaging on all channels. On Facebook, Instagram and they are also reading our blog posts.

David Aladdin: I noticed that you guys actually give a discount in one of your blog posts. I haven’t deployed that technique but I remember when I purchase a product from a brand sometimes that shows up, looking for a discount, let’s say I’m trying to buy an anchor battery. You land on Google for a discount and you’re more enticed to buy that to. That’s a cool strategy to.

Kai Klement: The benefit really from our blog when we’re building up these emails lists we are also building up welcome funnel or a welcome sequence that people who sign up for our newsletter they get several email sequence and use a lot of blog posts so you get a lot of content we created during our time in order to give behind the scenes peek into our brand in order to build brand and we really provide background stories. How we working, how we are producing and all this kind of stuff which makes the brand and us in person front stage and you really can engage with us and see who is behind this brand. Who is doing this as opposed to if companies don’t have any website, no stories at all? We try to do a lot of storytelling, building content in order to engage with our customers.

David Aladdin: I noticed you guys have, well I think you mentioned earlier you have ten employees now.

Kai Klement: Yes.

David Aladdin: That’s awesome, congratulations.

Kai Klement: Thank you.

David Aladdin: When did you know when to bring on the first few employees?

Kai Klement: In 2011 it was getting tough in terms of keeping up the pace and going to China four times a year and doing the sourcing, marketing, customer service and managing the website all with two people. We had the advantage we were two, Joerg and me and we could do a lot of it ourselves. We had almost, in China we had 120 working hours or something because we were dealing with the supplier all the time during the day and then doing all this customer service all night long.

David Aladdin: I feel it.

Kai Klement: Listing the products on Amazon and doing customer service on the website on Amazon itself. We knew now it’s getting too much we need help in order to keep up our service level because we had a very high standard. We always wanted to reply on all emails, on all social media channels according to the time the customer expects the answer. It’s different from an email you probably can answer within one day. On the social media channels you have to be much faster. People expect a reply much faster on the social media channels and with increasing volume you cannot do it by yourself. Our first people were really in customer service and social media.

David Aladdin: We’ve got about 10 minutes left. What did I miss in this interview?

Kai Klement: A lot of stories I think to tell. I may have to get you back on. What we also do is, probably you said it in the introduction because what we got is during the time a lot of friends and really tiny brands or bigger brands came to us and asked us during the years. “Kai, Joerg how did you do this from nothing building a brand on Amazon which is successful worldwide. How did you do this?” We did a lot of one-to-one consulting during the last couple of years also and then we decided to put all our knowledge Joerg and I into one book. To start the KAVAJ Academy.

David Aladdin: What’s the book called?

Kai Klement: The book is “The Kavaj case,” very easy, “The Kavaj Case.”

David Aladdin: I have to get the book.

Kai Klement: Called The Kavaj Case. Your listeners will get this for free if they go to www.kavajacademy.com/amzsecrets they can get our book for free there. What we did there is we really put our knowledge together and really help brands who already have a great brand but are not selling very well on Amazon. We help them with our experience from working for Amazon and selling on Amazon for five years.

Helping them selling more on Amazon the book is the first place we usually recommend to start if people are coming to us and asking; “how did you do this?” We now have a reference; “we can give you a blueprint” we have put all our knowledge into this book, start from there and then what we do is we write daily on our current work what we are doing on Amazon on our blog on KAVAJ Academy. As we are still managing KAVAJ fulltime we do a lot of new things. We test a lot of new things and we do a lot of new things so we are writing on a weekly basis there.

For us for learning if you write something down and analyze what you are doing it’s really cool, but also it’s cool to give back what you were learning. There are always people who are just starting out and they can take the fast lane and benefit from people because this is exactly what we were wondering in 2011. No one could really say how should you start, where should you start first, how do you do this.

David Aladdin: Besides The KAVAJ Case what’s your favorite book that you’ve read?

Kai Klement: My favorite book in terms of-

David Aladdin: That you’d recommend for us to read.

Kai Klement: We started with “The Art of the Start” from Guy Kawasaki this is a cool book to read and get started and do your thing. This is what we recommend to start reading if you really thing about start, doing your own business and founding your own company. This is always one book we recommend, or I would recommend.

David Aladdin: Actually I don’t know if you can see the live feed but I went to the thrift store the other day and a I got a bunch of books for the background and they’re all entrepreneurial books too and National Geographic to the left those yellow ones. I’m trying to build a library over here.

Kai Klement: That’s cool.