Product Profile #1 – Dog Harness
This article is not considered an update in my Amazon FBA case study, instead I wanted to talk about the #1 thing that I get questions about.
Each day I routinely get emails/comments asking questions about potential products, if I think their product is good or if I could give them any suggested products for them to sell.
Don’t get me wrong, I love getting emails/comments from you all of you and I have no problem answering all of the questions I can.
However, if I am getting a lot of questions about the same topic I think it would be smart to address this question in a post.
What I will be doing in this post is picking a product and putting it through a bunch of tests to try and determine if it is a good product. I will be using the requirements that I laid out in the 3rd update and determining if I think the product is good or not.
Going through an actual product and explaining my thoughts on it will be very helpful to people struggling in this area. You will see firsthand how I determine a good product vs. a bad one.
Not only will I be seeing if the product meets the requirements, but I will also be explaining how I would market the product. Including how I would separate myself from the rest of the competition.
I never got to do this kind of thing in my case study because I kept my product private, but now I will be able to explain the strategies I used but for a different product.
I hope you all enjoy and let’s get started!
Product Requirements
I am not going to go in depth on the different requirements for a good product because I already covered that in the 3rd update. What I am going to do is list all of the requirements so that you can easily refer to them in this post.
Some of the requirements are more important to your products success than others. For that reason I have broken down each requirement into separate categories based on their importance.
Very Important
- Product price between $10-$50
- Lightweight and Small(under 2lbs and could fit into a shoebox)
- At least 2-3 similar products with a BSR of 5,000 or below
- Brand names are NOT dominating the niche
- Simple and durable item
- Multiple products on the first page have less than 50 reviews
- There is a supplier that will make the product
Important
- Room for improvement over current listings
- Top 3 keywords have over 100,000 monthly searches in merchantwords.com
- Can expand into selling related products within the same niche
- Can make superior product over competition
Somewhat Important
- Year-round seller(not seasonal)
- Similar products being sold elsewhere(ebay, etsy, etc)
- Product encourages recurring purchases
- Multiple product keywords
I have already explained in detail each one of the requirements above so I won’t be doing it again here. I just wanted to give you all a quick breakdown of each one.
Now that we have the product requirements set, we can now begin to see if the product passes them.
Product #1 – Dog Harness
Product Info: A dog harness is used as a walking aid for the owner. Instead of hooking up the leash to the dog’s collar it connects to the harness. Which I imagine is more comfortable for the dog.
Product Sale Price Between $10-$50: After looking at the prices of all of the products on the first page of Amazon, I noticed there were some for sale for as low as $8 but then some as high as $40. However, most of them were in the $10-$20 price range, which fits this requirement.
Using Jungle Scout, you can see that the average price of all of the items on the first page is around $18. Using the average sale price is a quick and easy to way to determine if the products are being sold between $10-$50.
Conclusion: PASS
Lightweight and Small(under 2lbs and can fit into a shoebox): Right off the bat we can tell that the dog harness will easily fit into a shoebox, the weight might need some further research.
By looking at similar products on Amazon, it seems like the average weight of the products is around 6-10 ounces which is well below 2lbs.
Looks the the dog harness passes this requirement. A nice thing about this product is that it would be very cheap to ship 1000 of them from China, which will help the profit margins.
Conclusion: PASS
Similar Products Have a 5,000 Best Seller Rank or Lower: The quickest way to determine the BSR is to use Jungle Scout. Let’s see what it tells us.
From looking at the list of best seller rankings, we can see that there are more than enough similar products that have a BSR lower than 5,000. I would prefer to see one or two products have a very high BSR ranking(around 100-200) but the dog harnesses passes the BSR requirement.
Conclusion: PASS
No Brand Names within Product Category/Niche: Once again, Jungle Scout makes this very easy for us.
From looking at those brands, there aren’t any that stand out. This means that the brands selling dog harnesses are not very big and we can beat them if we decided to pursue this product.
This also tells us that the brand name does not influence the customer.
Conclusion: PASS
Simple Item that is not Easily Broken: A dog harness is an item that is very durable and has a straightforward use. Most of the harnesses are made of mesh or rope like material which means it would be VERY hard to damage while shipping.
Conclusion: PASS
2-3 Products with Less Than 50 Reviews on First Page:
I extracted the above info from Jungle Scout into an excel document so that you could see ALL of the reviews on the first page. I highlighted in yellow the listings on the first page with under 50 reviews. You can see that there were 2 listings with under 50 reviews.
This also included one listing with only 2 reviews! We could easily beat this listing if we went after this product. Even though this listing is near the bottom of the first page it is still a sign of weak competition.
I also highlighted in green the listings that have a relatively low amount of reviews that I think could be beaten but were above 50 reviews.
Conclusion: PASS
Multiple Suppliers able to make the Product: The easiest way to detrmine this is to go over to Alibaba and search for your product. In this case we would search for “dog harness”. Let’s see what comes up for suppliers.
I checked the “Gold Supplier” filter to make sure only reputable suppliers were shown and there were still a ton of different suppliers able to make a dog harness.
Conclusion: PASS
Room for Improvement and Optimization of Current Listings: We are looking for poorly optimized listings that have things such as low quality images, no product description or crappy bullet points.
There are a good amount of listings with low quality images or images that don’t show the dog harness actually on a dog, which would be important to me if I was going to buy.
There are also a lot of listings that either have no product description or very weak ones. This could be an area where we could improve.
One thing that would worry me is the fact that some listings have a fully optimized product description full of images, charts and other things that we can’t currently use as new sellers on Amazon. For an example of what I am talking check it out below:
If a listing has a description like the one above then they will always have an advantage over us because we cannot utilize html markup like this. This is a bummer and for that reason I am going to have to say that this product fails this requirement.
Conclusion: FAIL
Top 3 keywords have over 100,000 monthly searches in Merchantwords.com: Well let’s see how many people are searching dog harnesses each month!
Right off the bat we can see that the keyword “dog harness” alone as 242,000 monthly searches, which well over 100,000 minimum.
The thing that catches my eye is the top keyword, which is “webmaster dog harness” which is getting over 400,000 monthly searches on Amazon! After a quick search I was able to determine that Webmaster dog harness is a name of a certain dog harness.
This is bad news if we were going to sell dog harnesses because there is almost 2x the amount searches for a certain dog harness sold by one brand. This goes to show is that this niche is dominated by that brand, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t enough demand to go around for the rest of the competitors.
The good news is that this “webmaster dog harness” is not currently on the first page of Amazon, which is a VERY good thing.
The main keyword does get over 100,000 monthly searches so it meets this requirement.
Conclusion: PASS
Can Create a Brand around this Niche by Selling Similar Products: Yes. The dog niche is perfect for you to carve out your own little space within this niche. There are countless other products that you could private label within this niche and be successful.
Conclusion: PASS
Can you Create a Superior Product: We have to go diggin’ through the reviews of the dog harnesses to determine if there are any weaknesses or shortcoming in the current products that we can improve upon.
After some research, this is what I found!
I took a look at the most helpful critical review for some of the more popular dog harnesses on Amazon and I found some very helpful information from a 5 minute search.
Just from reading these reviews I know a couple of things that I could add to my dog harness if I was to get it made. These are the changes I would try and add to my dog harness:
- Make the neck portion of the harness adjustable so that it will easily fit any dog’s head without any problems
- Make sure to have a correct sizing chart so customers know what size they need depending on the size of their dog
- Ensure that my harness will fit large dogs with long spines
- Add a swivel connector to the safety belt
I could probably even find more things to improve upon if I were to research each product on Amazon. By making these simple changes I could make the best dog harness on the market and that is HUGE when it comes to separating yourself from the competitors.
Conclusion: PASS
Year Round Seller:
It looks like searches for ‘Dog harness” see a small dip in the winter but the overall trend is increasing year after year. This means that even though it is slightly seasonal it won’t really affect sales in the long run.
Even though the trend continues to rise, the product is still slightly seasonal.
Conclusion: UNDECIDED
Products Being Sold Elsewhere: Without even having to do outside research I can assume that dog harnesses are being sold all over the internet and in retail. Just for the case of doing the research on the product, let’s see if the item is selling on Ebay.
The above image from a cool tool called WatchCount, which shows the most popular items for a specific search term or category. You can see that there are plenty of sales for dog harnesses on Ebay, even if two of the results shown in the image are for gopro’s.
Conclusion: PASS
Product Encourages Recurring Purchases: If you are selling a high quality dog harness then there would be no reason for recurring purchases of this item.
Conclusion: FAIL
Multiple Product Keywords: Before we start going through Google keyword planner, let’s recall some of the keywords that merchant words gave us earlier.
- Service dog harness – 245,000 monthly searches
- Dog seat belt harness – 128,500 monthly searches
- Dog rescue harness – 114,00 monthly searches
Aside from the seatbelt harness, the other two keywords could be keywords we could target. Also, a dog seat belt could be your second or third product on Amazon after you see some success.
Let’s see what the Google keyword planner tells us:
All of these are good keywords OR different product ideas we could pursue later down the road. One idea that I had not thought of before seeing the related keywords was “leather dog harness”. This could be a product you roll out after you start selling your first dog harness.
I also like to see keywords such as “best harness for dogs” and “best dog harness” because we can rank for these types of keywords in google with a website where we could funnel traffic to our Amazon listing.
Overall, there are a lot of similar keywords for our product which means it meets this requirement.
Conclusion: PASS
Final Verdict
Out of the 15 requirements, the dog harness passes 12 of them. It also passes all of the VERY IMPORTANT requirements which means this would probably be a good product to sell according to those requirements.
The Things That I Like About Selling Dog Harnesses
There are a couple of things that I really like about this product such as the size/weight, product demand, the niche and the amount of suppliers available to make this product on Alibaba.
All of those are all great things for the product to have, but there are 2 things that make me really like this product.
The first thing that I really like is that there is room for us to easily improve our dog harness over the competition with just a couple changes.
This is very important because it will allow us to differentiate ourselves from the competition and establish us as the best dog harness on the market.
I feel confident with some more digging and research I could find more things to improve upon over the competitors.
The second thing I really like about dog harnesses as a product is the amount of related products we could sell down the road. We could become the go to dog harness sellers and sell all types of different dog harnesses such as search rescue harness, leather harness, seat belt harness and others.
OR we could start out with only selling dog harnesses and then expand into other products within the dog niche. Choosing this route provides more earning potential but it might be harder to get established in the dog niche compared to being established selling different types of dog harnesses.
The fact that I could improve upon the competitors as well as being in a really good niche that I could dominate makes this product really appealing to me. For that reason I would seriously consider selling dog harnesses on Amazon because I really like this product from the research I have done so far.
The Things That I DON’T Like About Selling Dog Harnesses
There are some things that I don’t like about this product, let’s take a look at them.
One of the biggest things that worry me is the fact that in merchant words ‘Webmaster dog harness” is searched for twice as much as the generic search term of just “dog harness”.
This scares me because that means there is twice as many people searching for one type/brand of dog harnesses than dog harnesses in general.
The weird thing about this webmaster harness is that when you search for dog harnesses on Amazon it is no where to be found?
Nonetheless, this is still a worry for me and if I was seriously considering selling dog harnesses I would have to do some further market research to get to the bottom of this.
The only other thing that would have me worried about selling dog harnesses would be that multiple listings on the first page have images, charts and graphs within the product description.
This is something that we cannot compete with and instantly gives them an advantage over us that we can’t do anything about.
Conclusion
Even with those cons I just listed, I still really like the idea of selling dog harnesses. There is a lot of good things about this product and I think it lends itself well to expand into other related products within the dog niche.
I think this is a perfect first product that will get your foot in the door and then you can leverage that to sell other items. From what I could tell, there are plenty of suppliers willing to make dog harnesses and they seem cheap too!
Also, the shipping would cheap as they are small and lightweight. With low shipping costs and cheap manufacturing costs the profit margins on this product would be very good.
We wouldn’t know the exact profit margins on the product until we got quotes from the supplier and freight forwarder but I’m guesstimating it would be cheap.
I really like this product and if I hadn’t already spent the past 6 months trying to get my product on Amazon I might think about selling these. So if you are still looking for a product to sell then this might be a good product to pursue.
The Angle I Would Take
We have already established that selling dog harnesses would be a good product but I wanted to take this a step further by explaining the angle that I would take to sell this product.
I think that having a strategy to sell your product is important so that you can follow it throughout the whole process.
The Top 3 Sellers
Let’s take a look at the 3 best selling dog harnesses on Amazon right now.
What do you notice about the top 3 items?
The first thing that I see is that the 3rd best selling dog harness is the most expensive at $40, while the rest are in the $10-$20 range.
Why?
Well let’s do some further research to find out why this dog harness is double/triple the other prices.
Just from reading the product description and some reviews I was easily able to find what is separating this harness from the rest of the competition.
The biggest reason has to be the dual point attachment, meaning there is a place to attach a leash on the top or the bottom of the harness. From reading the reviews, this seems like a very popular feature and is something I would make sure to have on my dog harness.
Some other features of this harness include a padded chest, four points of adjustment, ID pocket and that it is easy to wash/clean.
All of those things can EASILY be put into my harness if I was going to have it produced.
Another thing that I think puts a large separation between this harness and the competition is the quality of the harness. Look at this harness compared to the #1 selling harness on Amazon:
Look how cheap the harness on the right looks, especially compared to the one on the left. From this comparison you can see why it is priced at $40 while the other one is $10.
Price Point
From doing the above research, I think that I could get a similar harness made to the $40 one. I would want to sell at around the same price point or possibly even more if I am able to improve upon the weaknesses of the harness.
Overall, I would want to market my harness as the top of the line model with everything you would ever want. In doing this, I allow myself to price my harness at a higher point than the competition.
I would probably price my harness at $49.99 and try to establish myself as the best harness on the market. This price point will also benefit me when we look at the profit margins.
Possible Improvements
Earlier in this post I talked about some of the areas where we could improve upon the competition. I am going to list those again below:
- Make the neck portion of the harness adjustable so that it will easily fit any dog’s head without any problems
- Make sure to have a correct sizing chart so customers know what size they need depending on the size of their dog
- Ensure that my harness will fit large dogs with long spines
- Add a swivel connector to the safety belt
I can make those improvements as well as adding new features that I found on the higher priced harness such as:
- Dual point attachment
- Padded chest
- Four points of adjustment(or more)
- ID pocket
- Easy to wash and clean
If I can incorporate all of the features into one harness as well as make the harness look/feel high quality then I would have the best dog harness on the market, hands down.
The hard part would be finding a supplier that would be willing to add all of these features while keeping the costs low. I am sure it could be done but it would take some time to find the right supplier.
UPDATE:
With a quick search on Alibaba I was actually able to find the EXACT dog harness as the $40 model on Amazon. See below:
We could ask this supplier to make the changes we want to this harness and we would be set. The price per unit is higher than the other models on Alibaba but if we ended up selling at $49.99 it wouldn’t be a problem.
Conclusion
Overall, the angle that I would take to sell dog harnesses in this market would be to establish myself as the brand with the BEST dog harnesses with the most features. This way the people will like my product AND I will be able to sell at a higher price point.
That is how I would tackle this product and the angle that I would take to separate it from the rest of the competition.
Wrapping Things Up
That brings us to the end of this article! I had a lot of fun doing research on this product and I seriously would consider selling dog harnesses if I hadn’t already picked my product. I think if you apply the improvements I talked about in this post and you had a supplier willing to apply these changes you could have a winner.
If you all enjoyed this type of post and found it useful then I would be happy to do more product profiles for you all. Let me know in the comments below if you would like me to do this with other products.
Thank you all for reading 🙂
Comments
33 Comments
Awesome post. One thing to cover since you seemed to struggle on the web cast, how did you find this product? Did you start from the best sellers or just browse around until you saw the stars align?
Regarding the modifications, is this something that you think a person new to PL can do? What kind of costs and lag time can you expect to make those modifications? Would you jump straight into it or start moving the product as is and aim to modify going forward? I’m also confused about how to actually develop the new features. Changing color is one thing but adding new features like making it fit dogs with longer spins and new points of attachments sound more complicated. Do you just mention it like that to the manufacturer and let them essentially invent how they’re going to solve these problems? I assume a few rounds of samples will be needed until they come up with something you like?
Hi Uri,
Ill try and answer all of your questions!
1. I found this product going through amazon from product to product until I found it. There really is no special way to do this, you gotta have a good eye and know what makes a good product vs. a product
2. I think someone new to PL could do it BUT it would be a smoother process if they had some experience.
3. There would probably be a couple month lag time due to having to test multiple samples and finding a supplier that could make these changes.
4. Good question, I would probably wait to sell the modified product before anything. I am not sure if that is the correct way to go about this but that is what I would do. You could start selling a similar dog harness and then sell the modified harness as a SEPARATE product to your first one. That would be a good route to take but it would involve more upfront investments
5. Chinese suppliers are willing to work with just about anybody and would be willing to help you create your product. It might take some time finding the best supplier for the job though. I would just ask them if they could make the modifications you want and the price it would cost then go from there.
6. I would ask your supplier to make these changes and then send samples. See what you like vs. dont like and get it changed. Keep doing this until you get the product you like. This will cost more time and money than doing the normal private label route but the return on investment would be worth it.
Hope this sort of answered your questions. This post wasn’t supposed to be technical or how-to, but more of the mindset you should use when looking for products.
-Josh
hii josh,
How would I appreciate your effort?..I have no words to explain..I have been working so hard finding a product ,I have not been successful.now I know how hard work pays.i have not decided if I will persue with this product or not.but I will definitely follow your way of finding a perfect product…thanks a lot God bless you .
Hey Nazma,
Best of luck with your search! Im happy to hear that you find my content useful 🙂
-Josh
Haha nice, dog harnesses also came up for me during my product research as well. Passed on it.
Hey Kyle,
Ya dog harnesses are an interesting product! Thanks for commenting and I hope you are doing well
-Josh
This is an excellent post showing how you logically picked out a product based upon the necessary criteria for Amazon PL. I will definitely apply this to my product research as I continue throughout this journey. I thought I had a product initially, and still may, but I am trying to find something that is more shipping friendly. Thanks Josh. Much appreciated!
Hi Britt,
Glad you liked it and good luck with your product Britt
Josh
Great effort brother…i cant imagine how long it might have taken you to type this post..
We salute you for your effort.
Please another report of another product
Thank you my man! I will try and write up on another product here soon,
Josh
Josh,
You are a true Champ. This post is really mind blowing and I just can’t thank you enough for
what you are doing for the newbies.
Keep up good work, and all the best for you.
cheers,
Mohammad
Hi Mohammad,
That is awesome that you liked the post! I wish you the best of luck as well and have a nice day
-Josh
Super Post .Josh …
A newbie like me need more of these posts ..so please continue …
Thanks a ton !
Hi Yousuf,
Sweet, glad you liked it 🙂
I will be doing more soon, be on the lookout my friend!
-Josh
Very nice tuto 🙂
I would improve it by adding a gps tracking system in ase of the dog was stolen/lost, an anti-barking collar, and an iphone holder 🙂
Cheers
Hi Fliss,
Those are some very good ideas! I like them. Thanks for commenting
-Josh
Great post, but dont you think a product with different sizes can be a problem when starting out?
I see the more expensive harness has 6 different sizes and ordering you need minimum 2000pcs (might get it down a bit) but this will result in 12000pcs if you want to start with all sizes.
I found a few more interesting products and this was one of the problems I got a few times, multiple sizes so need to order a lot to get it going.
What do you think about this? Noticed you never talked about this for your requirements.
You bring up a good point Bas and this was something that I meant to talk within the post but somehow forgot. I would only start with the most popular size and color and then expand from there once I started to see some success.
Jungle Scout is perfect for determining which color/size is the most popular for a specific product. Just go to the product listing and use jungle scout. It will bring up the stats for the every color and size combo and tell you which ones are selling the most. You can use this to help you make your decision on which size/color you should sell first.
So to answer your question, I would start with selling only ONE size and color of a harness and then expand down the road.
-Josh
Hello Josh,
This is really a very comprehensive post and is good enough to let anyone start selling his own product on Amazon.
The whole research process looks so fun even though i know it must have taken you lots of time but it seems to be a very lively process.
One question though, how much do you think it would have cost you to produce Dog Harness? I mean what will be the rough estimate from manufacturing to shipping and every other thing in-between? Please I’m very eager to know this.
Thanks a bunch for sharing Josh and do enjoy your weekend.
BTW: An awesome site you’ve got here, will be coming back often.
Hi Theodore,
I am very happy to hear that you liked the post!
For your question, total costs is a tough thing to determine unless you actually get a quote from your supplier and a quote from the freight forwarder/shipping company. Without a quote from them it is more guessing and estimating based upon the alibaba listed price per unit and shipping costs.
You would also have to factor the FBA fees that Amazon charge you after each unit is sold. FBA fees, shipping costs and manufacturing costs are the three big costs when sourcing a product and selling on Amazon and they are all things you will have to figure out.
I know I didn’t answer your question about the total price but I do not know it. Until I actually emailed some suppliers and shipping companies I would not know. I still hope this was helpful and I Ill see you around the site
Josh
Hey Josh, just wanted to say your site here is awesome, its refreshing to see people helping people online without asking for money in return. I’m actually in the early stages of selling online myself, currently doing some product research and wanted to ask how you like Jungle Scout? It looks like its a huge time saver when looking for new products.
Hey Matt,
Welcome to the site my man! Glad to hear you are liking it 🙂
I personally really like Jungle Scout and it helps me quickly decide if a product is worthy of pursuing or not. Best of luck looking for a product and if you ever have any questions don’t hesitate to ask me.
See ya around
Josh
Josh,
When I type in dog harness on amazon home page, many of the products that come up on that first page have hundreds and some even thousands of reviews. I don’t understand why junglescout is giving different results in terms of first page reviews than when you just go into amazon and type in dog harness.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark,
Good question and I think the reason as to why you are seeing different results is because you aren’t searching within a specific category. For example, when Jungle Scout returned those reviews I searched for dog harnesses within the “Pet Supplies” category. You may have been searching within “All Departments”.
-Josh
Thanks for the reply, Josh,
Would that alter your decision on a product like this when you see a lot of reviews when searching in general on amazon versus searching within a specific category? When I use amazon myself I usually search without a specific category and then I see results that have lots of reviews, I’m not sure if I should think differently about a product’s potential if I search under specific categories instead, because in this example it seems that there’s less competition if looking at it that way.
Mark
Hi Mark,
It may or may not affect my decision to pursue a product. If you search for a dog harness in no specific category and then only 3 actual dog harnesses show up and the rest of the products are things such as dog collars, dog treats, etc then I wouldn’t care because the people looking for dog harnesses will only be looking for dog harnesses, not that other stuff.
However, if you search for dog harness in no specific category and then the results are ALL dog harnesses and there are even dog harnesses that show up that aren’t in the “pet supplies” category then I might be worried. This would bring even more competition my own product.
Really good question and that is something that I have not put a whole lot of thought into before, so thanks for bringing this up!
Josh
You say we can’t have html markup as new sellers, can you elaborate? Thanka
When I say HTMl markup I mean that you can’t use HTML within the Amazon listing to create tables, charts, change the font color, etc. They give you a VERY basic amount of HTML markup to use. It used to be that you could all types of markup to really customize your listing but they are more restrictive nowadays.
Josh
Hey Josh,
I have been checking out your site the last few days and really appreciate all the details you provide. Here is something interesting though, the dog harness example from above seems to have changes on Alibaba. I did a search for the exact name you show in the example and there is only 1 listed on Alibaba with that exact name. But the harness is much different now. Also, the one on Amazon is sold by Amazon. So I wonder if Amazon made a deal with the manufacturer to change their harness they sell and only sell that particular style to Amazon? It seems to me that Amazon is getting more into the business of selling their own products more.
Hi Josh,
Thanks for the info. I just have a quick question for u. When searching my product in the general search, nothing of its kind comes up. When searching my product in the subcatergories in the best sellers list and off the best sellers list, brand names come up on the first page-about 3 of them. I guess its because one of the keywords is similar, yet, none of these brand names produce the product im private labeling. In your opinion, do u think its ok that I go ahead and launch my product? My catergory is dominated by brand names but my product is nothing like theirs.
Just to give a bit of insight, the product im trying to private label, when searched in merchant words, produces about 3 million results a month but it isnt attachted to any brand names.
Any insight would be helpful.
Thanks much
Hi Laura,
In my opinion, if your product is unique and not like other products you should go for it. Just make sure the brand names don’t dominate the whole market because if they do there won’t be much room for you. It is kind of hard for me to give you a good answer unless I knew the product itself, you can email me at [email protected] if you want to let me know your product and I will help you out a little more
Josh
Great article.
Thank you!
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