Meet Max Fontaine, a driven and ambitious entrepreneur who turned his passion for dropshipping and Ecommerce into a successful full-time business.
After graduating from college in Nashville, Max decided to stick around and kick-start his professional career. His first job landed him in the finance industry, working as a stock analyst at a small financial firm. Max quickly realized that the role didn’t offer the excitement and challenges he sought. That’s when he decided to explore the world of Ecommerce.
The Beginning of It All
Max began creating a few dropshipping websites in various niches. He single-handedly managed every aspect of his business, from product design to marketing and customer service. His hard work and dedication paid off, as some of these sites achieved remarkable success and were sold back in the day. The income generated allowed Max to quit his finance job and pursue Ecommerce full-time.
While growing his expertise in the Ecommerce industry, Max recognized the importance of advertising and marketing in driving sales. Motivated to further enhance his skills, he took on a role as a Senior Paid Search analyst at a local advertising agency.
The job gave him the opportunity to master the secrets of effective advertising and elevated his marketing expertise. After a year of valuable industry knowledge, Max decided to quit the job and launch two, brand-new Ecommerce stores.
The Launch of Two Successful Ecommerce Stores
The first store, which has been in operation for three years, is a jewelry dropshipping store boasting an impressive $1 million in sales. The second store, specializing in unique watch bands for Fitbit and Apple Watch, has already made 10,000 orders in just under two years.
To maximize the reach of his stores, Max has been using various advertising channels strategically. Smartly executed ads on Google play a significant role, targeting diverse objectives specific to each store. He leverages Facebook ads for remarketing purposes, and utilizes SMS and email channels to ensure efficient customer acquisition.
Planning an Exit with Flippa
As Max’s businesses thrived, he made the decision to sell both of the stores, and he turned to Flippa to do so. The experience on Flippa proved to be exceptional, as Max found the platform easy to use and secure.
‘Flippa makes it easy to list a website, step by step, verifying everything.’
Max confirmed Flippa creates a trustworthy environment by verifying individuals, both buyers and sellers, and by making non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) available to sellers.
‘I like that you can verify everyone on Flippa, both buyers and sellers’ , said Max.
Within days after his businesses were listed on the marketplace, Max started receiving offers. Although the first buyer failed to complete the due diligence process within the agreed timeframe, Max quickly found another buyer and successfully sold his businesses in just over two weeks.
The Experience with Flippa
Throughout the selling process, Max was assisted by Flippa certified M&A Advisor Nick Carlucci: his support and guidance proved instrumental in the sale process.
While Max doesn’t have any concrete plans for the immediate future, he intends to focus on new projects involving his recently acquired house. Max’s passion for Ecommerce remains strong, and with his knowledge and experience, he plans to venture back into the industry soon.
The Flippa sale also opened new doors for Max: his expertise and experience as a one-man company, juggling all the aspects of his businesses, led to him being hired as a consultant for other ecommerce business owners, providing assistance with coding, search ads and website building.
Watch more Humans of Flippa stories here.
Read the full transcript of the conversation below.
Max’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Blake Hutchison: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Humans of Flippa. It’s a series of videos with some of our favorite customers from around the world. Today we’re joined by Max Fontaine, who’s been with Flippa for some time, has had some success selling his businesses on Flippa, and so we’re going to get to get to know Max today as part of another episode of Humans of Flippa. Thanks for joining us, Max. How are you today?
Max Fontaine: Hey, I’m doing pretty good, Blake. Glad to be here.
Blake Hutchison: Thanks very much for joining us. For everyone’s benefit and setting the context, where are you in the world right now?
Max Fontaine: I’m in Knoxville, Tennessee. Went to college down there at University of Tennessee and just stuck around afterwards.
Blake Hutchison: Fantastic. Stuck around afterwards. For the benefit of all of the listeners and watches out there, your main play right now is Ecommerce. Is that something that you got into straight after college? Can you tell us the story and how you got to be an Ecommerce entrepreneur or the Ecommerce entrepreneur you are today?
Max Fontaine: Sure. The first job I had out of college, I was actually very interested in finance and started working at this small financial firm as a stock analyst. Believe it or not, I had a lot of free time, which you don’t hear that often in the industry, but our boss just didn’t really give us enough to do. So I was like, “How can I maximize my time here?” I remember a friend in college talking about Ecommerce and dropshipping and all of that, and so I looked into it, watched countless videos and read books and stuff like that, and ended up creating a few sites. Of course, the first couple ones were duds because I didn’t really know what I was doing, but eventually I created some that were successful enough to be able to quit the job.
Blake Hutchison: Tell us about the duds quickly. What were some of the categories that you had the duds in?
Max Fontaine: Yeah, everything you can imagine. It was different games that were popular at the time. A good lesson to learn, I was young right out of college. I probably didn’t think this all the way through. My first two successful sites were one was selling PlayersUnknown’s Battleground merchandise and the other one was Roblox. Don’t do that because you will get cease and desist, eventually. That lasted for a while and it was great and all until I got cease and desist and I was like, “Okay, so I’ve going to have to create websites that are my own brand, obviously.” To anyone that’s thinking about being an entrepreneur and selling any kind of merchandise, it’s got to be your own and you can’t do anything like that or you will get cease and desist.
But what was good about the whole thing is that I actually got a ton of experience in advertising during that time because as learning and watching videos, I have to do Google Ads, Microsoft ads, Facebook ads, all that. After those websites were gone, I ended up getting a job as a senior paid search analyst at an advertising firm. That was even great because it was like a free education except I was obviously getting paid for it too. I did that for about a year, and I built the websites that I have now that I’m selling, which is the Moissanite store and the Apple Watch band store.
Max’s Two Big Projects
Blake Hutchison: That’s awesome. From finance to a couple of duds, as you put it, some learning around not necessarily taking over or launching brands that have clear copyright, as you said. The cease and desist letters would’ve been quite nerve-wracking for a young guy, I would imagine. Now you’ve got these successful sites and you’re currently going through the sales process on Flippa. Let’s set the scene a little bit though. How old are those sites? Give us some sense of the financial performance of those sites. Set the scene before we get to telling people how the sales process is actually going.
Max Fontaine: The Moissanite store, which is a popular diamond alternative by the way, sells Moissanite jewelry. That store is around three years old, almost three years exactly. I remember the first sale was on January 1st and I was like, “Oh, that’s great for tax reasons, especially.” It’s about three years old exactly. It’s done about 1.7 million in sales, almost 4,000 some orders. Then the watch band store, which sells Fitbit bands and Apple Watch bands, that’s about two years old. It’s done a little over 10,000 orders and probably around 400 some thousand dollars in sales. I can’t remember the exact number, but somewhere.
Blake Hutchison: Max, how do you pick those two categories? How do you suddenly land on those two? The success is there for everyone to see. You’ve got a two-year-old site, a three-year-old site. Both are doing very, very well. But what was it about those categories that drew you to them?
Max Fontaine: With the bands, both are dropshipping stores and Fitbit has been around obviously for a long time, and so has Apple Watches. When those have been around for a long time, you have a very wide selection to choose from, unlike AliExpress, for instance. And not just that, but when it’s that old and that long and been around, like that store, for instance, it dropships, but only from within the United States. Everything’s actually USPS shipping. A lot of people don’t even know they can do that on AliExpress. You don’t have to ship it from China. It can be from… You can select ship from the US. And so the fact that I was able to ship those from within the US and have a huge selection, that was part of it. What I liked about jewelry and bands is that you can have unique designs to where if I was selling something incredibly basic, I remember when the pandemic happened, people kept wanting to sell masks and create stores for sanitizer and stuff like that.
I’m like, “You’re not going to be able to compete. You’re just not.” But if people see a specific, unique piece of jewelry that they like or a specific band that they like, they’re not necessarily going to be like, “I can re-look up this exact band with this colorful design on Amazon.” If they see it and they happen to really like it, they’re going to buy it right then because they don’t know where else they’re going to see it per se. That’s what I really like about fashion and that kind of industry. It all just ties together. When it comes to the Moissanite, I liked that it was a higher margin asset. So even though there’s not so many options to ship from within the United States because the margins are so high with the average order value of 400 some dollars, you’re able to select FedEx IP or DHL shipping because that extra $20 isn’t a big deal. Even though both stores are AliExpress dropshipping stores, it’s not your typical, somebody bought some $14 piece of garbage and then has to wait three weeks for it to arrive. Both of them have their own unique way of working out well.
Max’s Customer Acquisition Strategies
Blake Hutchison: Super good learnings there, I think. I mean product range is a really good point from which to consider dropshipping. I think you’ve pointed that out really well. Love businesses that have high average order value, as you just said. It’s a function of margins, but it’s also a function of you being able to get the product to the customer and them willing to pay a premium price to get it to themselves is a really key piece. I often find that really good operators, like yourself, tend to make this sound a lot easier than it really is. Let’s talk a little bit about customer acquisition a little bit. How do you acquire the customer? What platforms have you used, if you don’t mind getting into some details around how much it costs you would acquire the customer and even the creative process you’ve gone through to refine and get good bang for buck or good ROAS, return on ad spend?
Max Fontaine: For the band store for instance, it’s almost entirely Microsoft Ads and Google Ads. By that, it’s just mainly search, not even display or anything like that, just search ads, which of course, historically, have the highest return on ad spend, the most valuable clicks. I think maybe in the past, in earlier days, you might have been able to be really profitable on Facebook and stuff like that, but recently, or not even that recently, maybe the last two, three years, Facebook has become very expensive advertising wise to where it would be very difficult to become very profitable selling such an item on Facebook, especially when the item’s only $24 and it costs you $8. You would have to have a really low cost per sale. For that, I just do the Microsoft and the Google, which of course of all advertising mediums as far as I know, have the highest return on ad spend.
With the Moissanite store, it’s a little more difficult because of just the way advertising works. When you’re doing less expensive items like bands, it’s able to easily get all that conversion data really quickly and within a 30 day period. Those advertising platforms are able to really become efficient on their own without you having to do much, as long as you set the campaign up correctly in the first place. Whereas with Moissanite and these higher cost of sale items, you need to have, and of course Google will even say, and it goes to stand for Microsoft, at least 30 sales within the last 30-day period because they only take that last 30 day period. When all of these sales are split across Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, that’s not enough conversion data and it’ll start very skewing things right after 30 days because one ad group just happened to get four sales, something like that. And so for those, I actually pitted two different types of advertising against each other.
One was return on ad spend, the classic what you’re supposed to do on Google. And then a different type was essentially, Google Analytics made a couple custom conversions. So whether it was one was giving an email, one was staying on the website for two minutes, four minutes, and then 10 minutes. I said for each one to count as a conversion. And then I put that into Google Ads and I let it… Because at that rate, it’s now getting hundreds of conversions a day. So if somebody stays the two, then the six, then the 10, it gives that more importance and et cetera, et cetera. After that, I got to see my bounce rate drop exponentially. The time on the website became almost four minutes per visitor. You were actually making more money not setting your Google Ads on target ROAS, but on these custom conversion events. For the Moissanite it was a bit more complicated. Facebook is still good to use. I do use the Facebook for the Moissanite store, but for remarketing purposes. It’s great for remarketing.
Then I also have a kind of cold campaign on Facebook where it counts every cart and person that gets to check out as a conversion. Then it’s able to get a lot more conversion data than a sale per se. That’s really good for getting people into the advertising funnel and remarketing because that’s down to a $2.50 cents person that gets the cart or checkout. And then when you get them in that, they’re getting hit with the display remarketing, they’re getting hit with the Facebook remarketing and then of course, I have a pretty extensive SMS and email remarketing campaigns that are automated and set up. So it’s really just about finding the most efficient ways to spend your ad money. Of course, that takes so much time to do. Anyone can set up ads, but to set them up correctly is a whole different deal.
A One-Man Show
Blake Hutchison: Often people misunderstand the importance of having data to feed the engine right. I think you’ve pointed that out so well. You can have few conversions and the data engine or the algorithm’s not going to be as helpful to you, or you can change up the way you think about your conversion data. In your case, time on site, that’s a fantastic way to think about it from an Ecommerce optimization standpoint. Sounds like that proved to be very meritorious for you. Do you do that yourself, Max, or do you have somebody else helping you with that?
Max Fontaine: I just do it all myself.
Blake Hutchison: Just so everyone understands, you’ve got these two awesome businesses. Is it literally just you? What does the structure of the organization look like?
Max Fontaine: It’s just me. I did the websites. I created all the content. I did all the SEO optimization. I did all the ads, which of course I have a lot of experience at the ads, specifically. I’ve done all of it from vetting the suppliers, which was really important, to uploading all the products, which took forever and I definitely should have outsourced in retrospect, to a lot of other things. Actually when selling the sites, I got a lot of interesting conversations from buyers because they were like, “Wait, you’re doing this all yourself? You don’t have this or that?” I’m like, “Well, I’ve thought about it, but it just sounds like a lot of work, for instance, to hire somebody to do customer service.”
I was like, because in my mind, I’d have to literally interview somebody at my house, do all this kind of stuff. Then little did I know, it’s incredibly easy to even hire people in some of these other countries. The largest businesses growing in those countries, or the largest industries, I’d say, is customer service. That’s outsourced from here. And so in retrospect, after talking to so many people, even on Flippa, I was like, I can’t believe I’ve been doing my own customer service this whole time, stuff like that. The opportunity cost is insane, but whatever. Lesson learned.
Blake Hutchison: Lesson learned. Fantastic learning. I’m glad you have come to that realization. Certainly you can get some good, low cost resource to assist you with customer service and do a really good job. You’ve mentioned they’re two and three years old and it sounds like you are essentially selling them as a bundle. Just talk us through the exit process. Why have you decided to sell in the first place?
Max Fontaine: Well, at this point, the websites were largely a means to an end, a.k.a. to not have to work at my corporate job that I was working at to be able, to have enough money to not worry about money. So they pretty much fulfilled that process. They’ve done their job. I really do like websites. I wanted to make sure they’re going to a good buyer. If you look at the stats of the websites, everything’s only continued upwards. I mean, yeah, especially with the jewelry site, just even returning customer rate and all of that makes it just easier to be profitable every month and year. But they did their job. I’ve saved up quite a lot of money from running the sites. Then after I sell them, just that influx of cash as well will be enough money to not have to worry about working and I can focus more on little things that I’m interested in, stuff like that.
Delving Deeper into the Exit Process
Blake Hutchison: Fantastic. You decide to sell, you’ve listed them on Flippa. Tell us about that sales process. How has that been and what learnings have you got for our audience out there?
Max Fontaine: The sale process is fairly easy. Flippa makes it easy to list the website. They go step by step, and I like that you guys verify everything. It makes it easier for the customer too, so I don’t have to constantly prove to them everything. I really like the fact that you have to verify your identity on Flippa. I remember I used to sell some very low level random, like I’d just make a site, dropshipping site, run it for a month or two and then sell it on Shopify Exchange, which is no longer around, I believe, but sites like that. Half the inquiries were just scams.
There was no verification process for the buyers or anything like that. It would just be like, “Hey, we’ll send you a check for this much money. Just give us the assets and everything.” It was always a scam. The checks would always bounce and stuff like that. So I like that you can verify everybody on Flippa, both the buyers and the sellers. I also like the fact that you could do the NDA. That just made me feel a bit more secure. But yeah, it’s been a nice process. Everyone’s been friendly. It didn’t really take that long to sell the websites at all.
Blake Hutchison: How long, Max, are we talking?
Max Fontaine: The first buyer that ended up not buying it because they didn’t finish within the 45 day process, but had they bought it, it would’ve been from the time the websites were posted, it was probably two weeks till I had a buyer and actually had plenty of buyers before them, so it probably could have been sold within a week. But the most of them were wanting to do financing or something like that over time. I would be open to financing, but you’d have to put a very large percentage down, otherwise I was just like, “I don’t know you. I don’t know if you’re going to run the business into the ground.”
So I was really just looking for a cash offer. Also, because like I said, I want time to do my own stuff now. I know if I’m involved at all with the website, I’m going to care too much to not be involved and so I was looking for cash offers. So the first person that was willing to pay cash only took two weeks. They didn’t finish in the 45 day process, which is fine. And so essentially immediately after that was over, I already had another buyer.
Max Fontaine: I just sold it to them and they’re doing cash as well, so it worked out really well.
The Timeline of an Exit
Blake Hutchison: That’s good. You mentioned that you’d had a few buyers come in before that initial cash buyer. That cash buyer didn’t get the job done within the 45 day period. Just explain that, for all of the listeners out there, was a LOI, was it a letter of intent with a 45 day due diligence window?
Max Fontaine: Exactly. We did LOI, 45 day due diligence. The 45 days came to an end. Of course, people at Flippa were really helpful. I was working with a guy named Nick, and he was contacting them as well, “All right, it’s time to do this,” blah, blah. They just didn’t… They weren’t ready. They didn’t have it all together. They were like, “We just need more time. We still fully intend to buy.” They were saying, “We intend to buy still, we just need more time.” But I felt like they were just keeping me around to eventually buy… Maybe they didn’t have the cash on hand and they just didn’t want to lose the sites to somebody else, so maybe they were just trying to get me around, but they just couldn’t finish it in time.
So after the 45 day thing was up, the websites technically went back for sale because the LOI was over. Then I just got a different cash buyer from somebody that was honestly nicer and cooler anyways, in my opinion, willing to pay cash. So I was just like, “Okay, these guys couldn’t pay me on time, so it’ll go to you.”
Blake Hutchison: Fantastic to hear. And as much as you’re willing to share, obviously we spoke just before our session here, but am I right in saying that it’s one buyer buying both sites?
Max Fontaine: Right. They were for up for sale separately, but if somebody was interested in one side, I wouldn’t mention that I also had the other one for sale. If they’re willing to buy both, of course I’d offer some kind of deal. They were initially only looking at the Moissanite store, but then the more they looked at the other store, they really liked it too. They ended up just making an offer on both, which makes it easier for me and it actually makes it easier for them too because you only have to go through the process once instead of twice.
The Exit Process with Flippa
Blake Hutchison: That’s fantastic. And has there been anything about the exit process which has caught you by surprise?
Max Fontaine: I don’t think so, no. I mean, it’s all reasonable. The due diligence is completely reasonable, and especially as long as both parties are really open with everything and set actual dates and this and that. It’s a pretty smooth process.
Blake Hutchison: Fantastic. For those who have never thought about listing a business on Flippa, once you are into that deal room experience where all the buyers are then coming in and having a chat and talking to you, is there, I guess, some wisdom around how you work through the buyer base? Did you have assistance from a Flippa staff member? How did that process play out for you?
Max Fontaine: There was quite a lot of chat. There was a lot of different buyers or people that are, even if they’re not buyers, interested at the very least, hitting you up all the time. It’s honestly a little overwhelming because you have so many different types of offers and you’re writing them all down, which of course is a good problem to have. Don’t get me wrong. But yeah, I did have Nick, again, and I believe he is in Austin, Texas. Nice guy. He was helping me through the whole thing. Especially with those last buyers that ended up pulling out, Nick was really helpful in calling them and getting answers out to them. When they weren’t interested, helping me be like, “Okay, let’s move on,” stuff like that, so it was helpful.
Max’s Future Plans
Blake Hutchison: Fantastic. You’re in the process of that exit right now. You’re about to have your hands on, I guess, a good amount of money, which is fantastic. Congratulations. So what does that mean now for Max? What do you do? Do you take some time off? Do you continue the entrepreneurial journey? Do you go and take a corporate job as an Ecommerce exec? What does it look like?
Max Fontaine: Well, I might. You would think I would have a much more concrete plan. However, I’m probably going to get into a couple things. I just bought a house. Me and my wife live here now and there’s a lot of things I want to do. I want to build a deck out back. I want to do a lot of landscaping. So I’ll probably do stuff that I didn’t quite have time for beforehand. I’m going to do some projects. I’m going to get into some kind of hobbies like Unreal Engine 5, some game making engines, stuff like that. I probably, I might get back into Ecommerce. Honestly, I probably will eventually, especially now that I have so much more knowledge.
Even now looking back on the website’s already made, I mean, they’re phenomenal websites, but if I were to go back into it, I probably would’ve done things slightly differently. It would almost be kind of a waste of everything I’ve learned if I didn’t go back into Ecommerce because I’ve put so much time and mental energy into it. If I did go back into it, I would definitely do things like outsource the uploading of products and customer service and just worry more about the complicated aspects of the website and business and ads. I very well might go back into Ecommerce. I would go into different businesses. I probably wouldn’t do a band store or Moissanite again. I would do something else. Also just for the fact that I feel like that’d be kind of scummy to do to my current buyer, so I would do something else.
I’ll probably eventually do that. One cool thing that’s come out of the Flippa selling process is I did get some consulting gigs, which I’m not even a consultant, but people, after talking to them for an hour on Moissanite store and an hour on Axios Bands and just being like, “You did the entire thing?” A lot of people are hiring me on, whether it’s to help them with their ads or how the drop shipping business works as a whole, because it’s easy to get somebody that only knows ads or only knows SEO or only knows how to do coding stuff in Shopify or this or that, but I think I can at least bring to these people a whole, how it all fits together real properly aspect and suppliers and what I look for on AliExpress, et cetera, et cetera. So I’ve gotten some consulting gigs that it’s great because they pay phenomenally and all you have to do is talk to them for an hour here and there and help them with this and that. So maybe I’ll keep going into consulting or something like that. Who knows?
Blake Hutchison: Well look, Max, I mean, as you’ve just figured out, I mean, Flippa’s a huge network of buyers, huge network of entrepreneurs and owners, and you each have such extraordinary skill that you bring to the table. Some of that you don’t even realize how rare it is and how sought after it is. I guess you’ve discovered that now through the Flippa platform. So both the combination of an exit and a consultancy gig, that’s a pretty good story, I think.
Max Fontaine: Yes. I’m happy with it. A lot of things I could do now, so we’ll see.
Blake Hutchison: Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was another episode of Humans of Flippa. We had Max Fontaine with us today, and he has just exited both a, I hope I get this right, Max, a wristbands Fitbit and Apple Watch band Store, as well as a… How do I pronounce this? Moissanite Ecommerce dropshipping store. Had some success with the Flippa platform and also was able to pick up a consulting gig in the journey as well. Max, thank you so much for joining us on another episode of Humans of Flippa.
Max Fontaine: Thanks, Blake. It’s been a pleasure.
