The Garlic Press, Issue 09 - gochugaru, braiding gel, 3D resin
and more...
Well, Ibiza was fun. I needed an extra week of vacation to recover from it, which is a reliable sign of time well spent.
Today, refreshed and refocused, I present to you five new quality product leads.
Before we proceed, a quick announcement - in this issue I add another tool to my product analysis - DataDive. For those of you who are not familiar with it, DataDive can be very useful for Amazon product research. In a nutshell, it helps you retrieve sales/competitors/keywords data of a given niche and analyse it in a variety of ways.
1. Gochugaru
Gochugaru is an essential part of Korean cuisine.
It is a spice made of sun-dried peppers without the seeds, which are ground to either flakes or powder.
Apparently it is unlike other chilli powders as it has its own distinct taste. And gochugaru is growing in popularity in the USA.
On the graph below (taken from DataDive), you can see Google Trends and Amazon search volume, and there is an upward trend in both cases, which is what we want to see.
The downside of this niche is low median price of $9.72, which could mean tight profit margins.
The upside is weak competition. Most of the listings either lack EBC content, or use terrible photos, or have non-optimised bullet points. Here is one example, and they still manage to do 20 sales a day.
This is a niche which can be easily disrupted by a more professional approach.
More data (there are new metrics which are taken from DataDive, such as top 10 competitors’ monthly unit sales range):
Top search term: gochugaru
Last month Brand Analytics search frequency rank: 32,823
Search volume growth past 360 days: 63%
Average sale price: $9.72 🆘
Top 10 competitors’ monthly unit sales range: 339 - 1,494
Number of competing brands: 15
Top 3 Brand Analytics products click share: 63% 🆘
2. Pokemon card binder
I used to collect stamps when I was a kid, and my initial thought was - Pokémon cards are something similar. You buy Pokémon cards, maybe trade a couple of them with your classmates and then forget about the whole thing. Your mother will quietly throw them away some time around your 35th birthday and you won’t know and won’t care.
Well, I was wrong. Pokémon cards are a big deal.
Yes, there is an element of collecting, and people trade cards, but you can also play games with other people, and the Pokémon cards community is HUGE.
You start off by assembling an initial deck of 60 cards. Each card depicts a Pokémon character, with crucial info, such as name, type of the creature, health points and attack type:
Then you put your cards in a binder and go to play with other people:
Game idea in a nutshell: you compare Pokémons with your opponent, and, if your Pokémon characters have stronger parameters, you win.
Cards get expensive with time and can be an investment. One card named Pikachu Illustrator was recently sold for $5.275 million.
Also, card price depends on how well-preserved the card is. This is another reason why any self-respecting Pokémon card collector needs a binder.
The product is quite new. Amazon search volume was non-existent in 2019, and is growing rapidly. Google Trends interest is also going up:
Another thing to note here is seasonality. This is a giftable item, and demand will be at its highest in Q4, peaking at Christmas:
There is a lot of competition (34 sellers), and most of them are from China, which is usually a sign of low margins.
One way to enter this already crowded market could be offering premium binders to people who want a respectable home for their Pokémon team.
More data:
Top search term: pokemon card binder
Last month Brand Analytics search frequency rank: 2,099
Search volume growth past 360 days: 96% ✅
Average sale price: $16.99
Average listing age: 8 months
Top 10 competitors’ monthly revenue range: $20,514 - $30,736
Number of competing brands: 34 🆘
Top 3 Brand Analytics products click share: 23% ✅
3. Braiding gel
Braiding gel is exactly what it sounds like - it is used when making braids to prevent frizz or, in man-speak, hair sticking out in the wrong places.
This is a relatively new product, there was no interest in “braiding gel” just two years ago, but now it is growing rapidly both on Google and Amazon:
What I like about this niche is poor competition. There are many hair gel products on Amazon, and some of them might actually be suitable for braiding, but just 12 of them mention “braids” on the packaging or in the title, and the quality of competition is low. Second-best seller in the niche, with 2700 units per month, has no EBC content, which is a crime. It should be easy for any professional Amazon seller to beat most of the competition.
More data:
Top search term: braiding gel
Last month Brand Analytics search frequency rank: 39,360
Search volume growth past 360 days: 62% ✅
Average sale price: $9.45
Top 10 competitors’ monthly revenue range: $26,206 - $61,104
Number of competing brands: 12
Top 3 Brand Analytics products click share: 34%
4. Nespresso descaling kit
Descaling, in case you didn’t know, means removing bits of calcium and lime that build up inside appliances like kettles or coffee machines.
Nespresso recommends to descale their coffee machines every 600 coffees. They also sell their own descaling kits to do that.
You do not have to buy an original to descale your Nespresso machine, pretty much any descaling liquid will do. Not everybody, however, seems to know that, and interest in Nespresso descaling kits is growing on Google and Amazon:
There are several things that I like about this product.
First of all, competition is very weak. There are just a handful of professionally made listings, and the total number of competitors is low.
Second, you can target a wide variety of appliances besides Nespresso, such as Keurig etc.
More data:
Top search term: nespresso descaling kit
Last month Brand Analytics search frequency rank: 49,654
Search volume growth past 360 days: 53% ✅
Average sale price: $17.39
Top 10 competitors’ monthly revenue range: $26,206 - $61,104
Number of competing brands: 8
Top 3 Brand Analytics products click share: 68% 🆘
5. 3D printer resin
3D Printing is a fast-changing niche. Just a couple of years ago the mainstream thing was to use rolls of plastic string (also called filament) as a source material. Now, you can also use liquid resin.
Resin allows you to print stuff with a much better resolution:
People seem to use resin for 3d printing more and more. Here is Google Trends comparison, with resin overtaking filament in popularity this year:
This is not the easiest of products, as 3D printing resins have lots of variables:
Smoothness. There are resins that specialise in a particularly smooth surface.
Color. Most resins are grey, but sometimes a specific color is needed.
Transparency. There are resins that are transparent.
Flexibility: By adding rubber, some resins can be made flexible.
Durability: Most resins become brittle over time, due to sun exposure. But there are resins that are designed for mechanical stability.
Toxicity. There are plant-based resins which do not harm the environment.
All that variety creates a market for different resins that you as a seller can exploit by finding a unique combination.
At the moment there are just 6 3D resin brands on Amazon USA. The quality of competition is quite high, but still, 6 brands is a low number for such a fast-growing niche.
More data:
Top search term: 3d printer resin
Last month Brand Analytics search frequency rank: 26,065
Average sale price: $25.99
Top 6 competitors’ monthly revenue range: $25,297 - $127,090
Number of competing brands: 6 ✅
Top 3 Brand Analytics products click share: 31%
This is it for today, as usual let me know which product opportunity you liked more:
P.S.: The winner of the last issue poll is Montessori toys.