The target is a fully established, innovative eCommerce agriculture business that provides products and services associated with the keeping of Backyard Chickens. Selling everything from the Chicken Feed, Chicken Coops, Coop Accessories and Live Chickens, this extremely profitable Internet Company is smack dab in the middle of a high growth phenomena that has only accelerated during the Pandemic. This company is entirely virtual with remote staffing, digital management systems, multiple eCommerce selling platforms and hybrid shipping practices.
The company currently sells primarily via their branded Website with very minimal Amazon sales – a huge growth opportunity that represents near term, low hanging fruit. With a unique shipping process, this business leverages 71% drop shipping, 29% inventory and about .3% digital downloads to fulfill their high volume of orders. Their AOV is exceedingly high at $130 spent per order and 52% of orders come from repeat customers. This lucrative opportunity delivers consistent profits and a growing consumer base of consumers that are super sticky to the brand.
In fact, 95,000 followers have actively clicked through their newsletter in the past 12 months alone! This company has strong ties with its suppliers allowing for amazing deals, high margins and a regularly increasing number of exclusive SKUs. This well-established company has left immense room for growth with only a moderate amount of paid social media and little to no SEO. Employing both initiatives will skyrocket this business as social media is exceedingly valuable within the pet, sustainable living and lifestyle verticals. This is one investment an entrepreneur should not pass up.
A few other exciting growth opportunities for this brand include SEO development, extended pet offerings, extended sales channels and additional partnership negotiations. People love animals, some lucrative consumer outreach efforts include leveraging images of new products and of pets enjoying those products. This will pique interest and digital shareability, extending the reach of this company’s messaging.
This promising business offers 3 main categories of products: pet poultry, supplies and gifts, and chicken coops. Each of these verticals have a varied sourcing and shipping pipeline. When sending pets to customers, the live poultry is sent directly to the consumer from one of their partner hatcheries or breeders.
Supplies and gifts are stored and shipped from a company owned warehouse on the East Coast, however, this facility could be easily moved to fit the needs of a new owner. These products are stocked from a multitude of wholesale distributers and manufacturers. Finally, the in-house branded chicken coops sold by this offering are all exclusive designs developed in-house and then created and shipped by a manufacturing partner. Additionally, the non-exclusive chicken coop SKUs are drop shipped by US based partners.
This company does have some seasonality with a strong high-volume season and a section of the year with consistent yet moderate selling volume. More specifically, over the last 10 years it has been observed that January through May have a higher selling volume, this is most significant for the months of March and April. Meanwhile, June through September has shown profitable purchasing habits on a lower scale. Some of this seasonality can be further diluted over time through product mix development.
There is a Director of Operations in place to continue to properly run and care for this business after closing. Knowledge of chickens and other fowl species is a plus for a new owner, but not a requirement, as the current owners will train, and the seasoned team will remain. Additionally, being business-minded and well-versed in common eCommerce practices, basic customer service and how to properly develop lucrative business relationships will be a great advantage. Much of the scale opportunity open to this business relies on modern marketing techniques and partnership development so skills in these areas will be indispensable for continued, profitable growth.
There are currently 31 people working at this company. With 17 customer service representatives, 3 customer service managers, 1 director of operations, 1 fulfillment manager, 3 fulfillment staff, 1 designated buyer, 1 director of marketing, 1 director of business development, and 2 bookkeepers on staff; the two current owners are able to spend minimal time tending to this business each week. In fact, they only spend a cumulative number of 20 hours per week on tending to company concerns. Their responsibilities include supporting the staff, providing high level direction, overseeing ad spend and new product development. Though remote, this team is incredibly engaged with a passion for both the products and the brand allowing for a low turnover rate and great long-term employee retention.
There is an incredible competitive advantage to this acquisition in the form of its hatchery and breeding partners. As the demand for pets like chicken and other fowl, chicken hatcheries have stopped taking on new wholesale accounts. Because this company has coevolved, hand-in-hand with a key partner hatchery over the last 14 years, it is an integral part of their business. In other words, this business has exclusive partnerships with key industry providers that other companies simply cannot achieve.
This brand is growing effectively due to their strategic marketing initiatives and standing loyal consumer base. Currently running in multiple ad categories, this company has PPC campaigns with dynamic ads on Google Shopping which have a proven track record of profits with an 89% margin over the last 12 months. Additionally, they are leveraging retargeting and remarketing which holds an 81% margin over the last two months. Alongside these lucrative efforts, this company utilizes weekly promotional emails to more than 95,000 opt-in contacts as well as social media marketing with daily posts across many channels, an estimated $75,000 in revenue has been generated from their social media pages with their highest engagement ratings being found on Facebook. This company also spends a cumulative $28,000 annually to place ads on their selling platforms, eBay and Amazon.com, which has led to an 87% profit margin on amazon and a 95% margin on eBay.
There is also a small but effective affiliate marketing effort running. All that being said, there is plenty of room for growth here such as Facebook advertising and a more active use of SEO practices. This extremely profitable, 14-year-old company has both an established industry standing and a loyal and engaged consumer base across many channels. With a multitude of growth opportunities and an incredible brand awareness, this business is well positioned to scale rapidly and seamlessly through additional efforts by a strategically capable buyer.
