Product Research for Your eCommerce Business

What's the difference between stock gathering dust on warehouse shelves and over £100,000 in sales from a single product? The answer isn't better suppliers, flashier websites, or bigger marketing budgets. It's something far simpler—and far more powerful.

Matt Edmundson discovered this lesson the expensive way. After spending several thousand dollars on sunglasses stock that never sold, he changed his approach entirely. The result? One beauty product generated over £100,000 in sales. The key difference wasn't the product category, the niche, or even the supplier relationship. It was the research process—or rather, the complete lack of it in the first scenario.

The Sunglasses That Wouldn't Shift

Picture this: You're on the paradise island of Mauritius, and everywhere you look, people are wearing a particular brand of sunglasses. They're good quality, reasonably priced, and clearly popular. The brand is doing well in the United States too, but nobody's really tackled the European market yet.

Sounds like opportunity knocking, doesn't it?

That's exactly what Matt thought. Within weeks of spotting the sunglasses, he'd contacted the US-based supplier, hit it off with the owner, and purchased several thousand dollars worth of stock. A quick Shopify website later, combined with some AdWords spend and email marketing, and the business was live.

The sunglasses? They never really sold. Years later, that stock still sits on warehouse shelves. If you've ever watched Matt's Instagram vlogs or YouTube videos and noticed him wearing sunglasses, there's a strong chance they're from that excess stock—a constant reminder of what happens when enthusiasm replaces research.

The product was great. The supplier was excellent. The company was reputable. But none of that mattered because Matt knew absolutely nothing about the market. He'd chosen a niche, certainly, but he'd done zero research into whether anyone actually wanted to buy those sunglasses from him.

Research Isn't Optional

The sunglasses failure taught Matt something crucial: you can't just sell any old products without proper research and hope for the best. Yet that's precisely how most people approach eCommerce—and it's how Matt had approached it too.

The difference between guessing and researching isn't subtle. It's the difference between thousands of pounds sitting idle and six-figure sales from a single product line. Research transforms product selection from hopeful gambling into strategic decision-making.

But what does proper research actually look like? Matt's experience with a beauty brand provides the blueprint.

The Beauty Brand That Generated Six Figures

When Matt considered adding a skincare brand to his existing beauty eCommerce site, he took a completely different approach. This time, research came before purchase decisions. This time, he invested hours into understanding the market before investing thousands in stock.

The brand he was considering already had established distribution in several countries. Products were available through various retailers and online stores. Rather than seeing this as competition to avoid, Matt saw it as validation to investigate.

His research process followed four distinct steps, each building on the previous one to create a comprehensive picture of whether this product deserved shelf space—digital or physical.

The Four-Step Product Research Framework

Step One: Examine Your Competitors' Websites

Matt's first move was studying how competitors presented these products. Not just one or two sites, but every retailer he could find selling the brand. He looked at product descriptions, pricing strategies, promotional offers, bundling approaches, and customer reviews.

This competitive analysis revealed several things. First, it showed him who was already in the market and how they were positioning themselves. Second, it demonstrated different approaches to selling the same products, highlighting what worked and what didn't. Third, it gave him benchmark pricing and helped him understand the competitive landscape.

But most importantly, it showed him gaps—opportunities where competitors were falling short, questions customers were asking that weren't being answered, and ways he could differentiate his offering.

Step Two: Research the Numbers

With the sunglasses, Matt understood the profit margins but never properly estimated potential sales volume. With the beauty products, he flipped that approach entirely.

He wanted to know if this was genuinely a high-demand product. Not just popular in theory, but actually selling in meaningful volumes. This meant digging into search volumes, analysing trends, studying seasonal patterns, and estimating realistic sales projections.

Understanding the numbers isn't just about revenue projections—though that's certainly important. It's about comprehending the entire financial picture: inventory investment required, storage costs, marketing spend needed to compete, and ultimately whether the numbers justify the effort.

Too many eCommerce entrepreneurs fall in love with products without understanding the mathematics behind them. A product might have brilliant margins but terrible volume. Or it might have huge demand but razor-thin profitability. The numbers tell you which battles are worth fighting.

Step Three: Qualify the Product for Your Niche

Just because a product sells well doesn't mean it deserves a place on your website. Matt's third research step focused on a crucial question: Would this product match his desire to curate the best products in his niche?

This qualification process involved multiple angles of investigation:

Reputation Analysis: What were customers actually saying about this product? Not just the star ratings, but the detailed reviews. What problems did it solve? What complaints did it generate? Were customers genuinely satisfied or merely content?

Distribution Research: Who else was selling it? Were these retailers he respected, or was the product associated with questionable sellers? Distribution partners say a lot about a brand's standards and positioning.

Brand Alignment: Did this product's values, quality standards, and positioning match what Matt's customers expected from his website? Would adding it enhance his site's reputation or dilute it?

The goal wasn't finding adequate products to fill catalogue space. It was identifying exceptional products that genuinely deserved the "best in niche" designation. This selectivity makes all the difference between a product website and a trusted destination.

Step Four: Plan Your Presentation

Having established that the product was worth selling, Matt's final research step focused on how to sell it effectively. This meant understanding presentation requirements before making purchase commitments.

He investigated what assets he'd need: Were quality product images available, or would he need to create them? Would video demonstrations add value? What about lifestyle photography showing the product in context?

Then came the copy considerations. He examined existing product descriptions—could they be improved? Were they optimised for search engines? Did they address customer concerns and objections? Who would write better copy if needed?

Finally, he considered promotional strategy. What offers would resonate with his audience? How could he bundle products effectively? What messaging would differentiate his offering from competitors selling the identical product?

This presentation planning ensured that when stock arrived, everything was ready to launch properly rather than scrambling to create assets after the fact.

The Results Don't Lie

The contrast between these approaches speaks volumes. The sunglasses, purchased with minimal research, generated a few thousand pounds in sales before the website closed. That beauty product, researched thoroughly before purchase, has generated over £100,000 in sales.

Same entrepreneur. Same business model. Same basic eCommerce principles. The difference was entirely in the research process—or lack thereof.

This isn't about Matt being unlucky with sunglasses and lucky with beauty products. Luck had nothing to do with it. One approach was based on hope and enthusiasm. The other was based on data and strategic thinking.

Research as Curation

Understanding your niche is critical—that's the foundation of successful eCommerce. But once you've identified your niche, the real work begins. Curating the best products for that niche isn't a guessing process. It's not about hunches, gut feelings, or what seems like a good idea at the time.

Curation requires research. Proper, thorough, time-intensive research.

This research process isn't glamorous. Nobody posts Instagram stories about the hours spent analysing competitor websites or crunching sales projections. There are no viral moments in reviewing customer complaints or planning product photography.

But this unglamorous work makes the difference between warehouses full of unsold stock and six-figure product lines. It separates eCommerce hobbyists from eCommerce professionals.

Your Research Action Plan

If you're considering adding products to your eCommerce website, apply Matt's four-step framework before committing to purchases:

First: Examine your competitors' websites thoroughly. Look at everything—pricing, descriptions, imagery, offers, reviews. Identify what works, what doesn't, and where gaps exist.

Second: Research the numbers comprehensively. Estimate realistic sales volumes, understand profit margins, calculate inventory requirements, and project marketing costs. Make sure the mathematics actually work.

Third: Qualify whether this product truly represents the best option for your niche. Research its reputation, understand customer experiences, and ensure it aligns with your brand standards.

Fourth: Plan your presentation strategy before purchasing stock. Determine what assets you'll need, how you'll create compelling copy, and how you'll differentiate your offering from competitors.

This process takes time. It requires effort. It's not as exciting as clicking "purchase" on a large stock order. But it's what separates successful eCommerce businesses from expensive lessons gathering dust on warehouse shelves.

The Real Cost of Skipping Research

When Matt looks at those sunglasses still sitting in his warehouse, he doesn't just see unsold inventory. He sees capital tied up unnecessarily, warehouse space wasted, opportunity cost from pursuing the wrong products, and perhaps most expensively, time invested in a venture that was doomed from the start.

The sunglasses didn't fail because they were poor quality or overpriced. They didn't fail because the website was inadequate or the marketing insufficient. They failed because the research phase was essentially skipped entirely.

No amount of marketing genius can overcome fundamental misalignment between what you're selling and what your market actually wants. No website design can compensate for products that don't belong in your niche. No advertising budget can force success when the foundational research is missing.

Research Enables Everything Else

Here's what proper research actually provides: It gives you confidence in your product selection. It enables effective marketing because you understand your competitive position. It allows accurate financial planning because you know realistic sales projections. It facilitates better supplier negotiations because you comprehend market dynamics.

Perhaps most importantly, it lets you sleep at night knowing your business decisions are based on data rather than hope.

The beauty product generating six-figure sales didn't succeed by accident. It succeeded because every aspect of its selection and presentation was informed by thorough research. Matt knew before purchasing a single unit that demand existed, that the product aligned with his niche, that he could present it effectively, and that the numbers justified the investment.

That certainty—that confidence based on research rather than guesswork—changes everything about how you operate your eCommerce business.

Moving Forward

Whether you're just starting your eCommerce journey or you've been running an online store for years, the research principle remains the same. Spend time understanding products before committing to them. Investigate thoroughly before investing financially.

Yes, research takes time. Yes, it requires effort. Yes, it might feel like it's slowing down your entrepreneurial momentum. But that time investment pays dividends that make the initial effort seem trivial in comparison.

The difference between products that sell and products that sit is rarely about the products themselves. It's about whether you did the research to understand if they belonged on your website in the first place.

Matt's sunglasses are still sitting on those warehouse shelves, a constant reminder that enthusiasm without research leads to expensive lessons. His beauty products, meanwhile, continue generating six-figure sales—proof that proper research transforms product selection from gambling into strategy.

Which outcome would you prefer for your eCommerce business?

Speaker A
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Foreign.

Speaker B
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Welcome to the Curiosity Podcast, a show about everything e commerce and digital business. The aim is simple, to help you thrive online. And now your host, Matt Edmondson.

Speaker A
00:00:21.680 - 00:17:39.230
Hello my fellow e commerce entrepreneurs, my name is Matt Edmondson and this is is my e commerce podcast. A show dedicated for those of us who are curious about e commerce and want to know how to get better at doing digital business.

Now today's show I am very, very excited about because I'm going to share with you a couple of stories. One where I totally failed, one where I totally succeeded and explain to you what the difference was between the two.

Now this particular show is the second part of our little mini three part all about curating great products to sell on your e commerce website. I am going to of course have show notes and transcripts on my website because that's what you're supposed to do with podcasts now, right?

Everything goes onto your website mattedmondson.com make sure you check it out and you can download the show notes and whilst you're there make sure you check out the Colab project.

Now if you haven't heard about this particular project year and you are in, you know, the idea of building an e commerce business, you know, maybe, maybe your business is not quite growing as fast as you'd like it to be or you coming up with some problems principally because E commerce is not your area of expertise and you want to learn about it and it would be great to partner with somebody. Well, I am looking for some partners.

I'm looking for people who want to work with me to build an e commerce business because I have this crazy challenge which has been set up for me. The whole thing is like I have to set up 100 new E commerce websites, right? And that is a lot, let me tell you.

I'm definitely setting up my own e commerce websites.

We have got a bunch in the pipeline that I'll be telling you about but I'm predominantly looking to partner with people, to help them and to work with you and to, you know, together build an online business.

So if that's of interest, if that's something you want to know more about, check out the Colab project on my website mattedmondson.com and this show is sponsored by the amazing Curious Digital. It's always good to thank your sponsors, right? This is the guys that make this possible for me to do this show.

Curious Digital is an experience based e commerce platform that I personally use to run and grow my own e commerce businesses. It is insane how good this platform is. So if you're looking for a new e commerce platform, definitely check it out at Curious Digital.

And that's qrius with a K, not with a C. Curious Digital, a bit like this podcast is called the Curiosity Podcast, but it's spelled with a K and not a C because you know, why be normal, right? That would just be too easy. Anyway, let's jump in.

Like I said earlier, this is the second part in a three part series about how to find great products to sell your e commerce website. So last week we looked at part one which was all about the power of choosing a niche. Okay?

Now if you haven't heard this show, make sure you check it out. You can find all the links to subscribe to your podcast in all the locations where you'd like to subscribe to it.

@mattedmondson.com you can play previous episodes on that. You can download the transcripts and the notes, no problem. And if you haven't yet, make sure you do subscribe.

So you get the next episode in this little miniseries number three, just automatically download into your phone because you know, that is just super, super helpful.

So make sure you subscribe to the show and if you like I say you've not heard the previous one where we talk about the benefits of choosing a niche, head on over to the site and do check it out because it is super important to get a great niche, right? We talk about how to find a great niche and why and how you should want to curate the best products for your niche market, right?

But if that's the aim, which is where we left it last week, you want to create a curate, not create, curate the best products for your niche, how do you do that? Right? How do you find them? And that's what we want to answer in this week's show. Okay, how do you find those products?

Now you could of course just sell any old products without any kind of research on those products and just hope for the best. And this is, I have to be honest, the way most people do it and it's the way that I have definitely done it in the past.

Now, I promised you a story where it didn't work out. So a few years ago we were thinking, well, what other websites could we do? And we understand e commerce pretty well.

Let's start to knock out some websites and we came across a particular brand of sunglasses, okay, Sunglasses or sunnies as they say in Liverpool, sunglasses. And we found them bizarrely on the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is a beautiful island. I mean, it's paradise, if you've not been.

And these particular brand of sunglasses were selling quite well on Mauritius. You saw a number of people wearing them, they were pretty good quality. And the price for, well, it wasn't bad actually for sunglasses.

They were doing well. And we thought, well, maybe we could just put up a website throwing these. I wonder if they would sell in the uk. Would they sell in Europe?

We don't know. So we went online, we found the company that made them.

They were based in the States and we called them up and you know what, they were selling pretty well in the States, they were selling pretty well in Mauritius, but no one was really doing Europe. So we thought, you know what, let's do Europe. Europe. The company, the suppliers were pretty cool.

The owner was really laid back, got on really well with him. He was a super cool guy. And we just like the brand and we like the company.

And this is all like in a matter of weeks, just literally from seeing them to contacting a company and having the phone call.

And on the basis of that one phone call, we bought several thousand dollars worth of stock from them, which we shipped in from the States and put up on the shelves of our warehouse here in Liverpool. And we thought, you know, great, we'll buy. I think we bought like four or five thousand bucks worth of stock. Great starting point.

Let's whack them on the shelves and see what happens. So we quickly threw up a website and this was pre curious digital.

So we did the website on Shopify, which is a great platform for starting websites on. I mean, it really is great. And it was quick and it was easy. And we whacked up the website and it looked okay.

We spent a little bit on AdWords, we did some email marketing and we put it out there. And do you know what? I never really sold any sunglasses. I mean, you know, if I'm honest, I've still got stock on the shelves in my warehouse. Right.

It was a great product, the company was great, the suppliers were great, but I knew nothing about that market. Yes, it was niche, but I did absolutely no research into that market. And you know what, it totally backfired.

So the site is now closed, but they're still stuck on my shelves.

And if you ever watch any of, you know, like the vlogs that I do on Instagram or some of the videos I've done on YouTube and if I'm wearing sunglasses in those videos, there is a really strong chance that it's sunglasses, which is, which are excess stock, sat there on my shelves. That I've never really done anything with. Now, does that stop me doing sunglasses in the future? Absolutely not. Of course it doesn't.

But I've got to, I've got to, I've got to change how I do it, right? So let me contrast this with a, with a success story, a story where actually things went, okay? And this relates to Jersey.

So I have a beauty company called Jersey Beauty Company. Uh, it's one of my e commerce websites and we sell beauty products on that website. So my niche is beauty, okay?

And I want to curate the best products for that niche. And so as I so often do, I sat down at my computer and I was like, right, let's do some research. Let's find some high demand products for that niche.

That is a really key statement. Okay, let me just repeat that. I wanted to find some new high demand products for their niche. That was my aim. And so here's what I did, okay?

I started to look at my competitors websites and I wanted to see what products had appeared on their site recently. I wanted to understand were there any new products coming out, what was selling, what was not hot.

And I found a particular brand on one of my competitors websites which seemed to be like an up and coming skincare brand. And I was looking at that and I thought, well that's interesting. So I did a bit more research on the numbers for those products, right?

Can I estimate sales? Can I figure out what the product margins are? The product margins, Can I figure out what the profit margin margins are on that product? Right?

So one could I estimate sales? Well, actually I totally could estimate the sales. And I started to see the numbers were starting to look a bit more interesting.

And I also got in touch with that particular brand to see one would they sell it to me, what sort of price they would sell it to me at, what kind of stock I could hold, how quickly I could get it, and so on and so forth. So I started to understand the profit margins on those products. So actually things were starting to look quite rosy. But I didn't just stop there.

I knew that this was a high demand product, right? Which is what I didn't know about the sunglasses. I didn't know if they were high demand or not. Sure, I understood the numbers, but I never really.

Well, I understood the numbers, I understood the profits on the sunglasses. I never really took the time to estimate sales. And that's what I did in this particular skincare brand.

And I wanted then to know if they would match my desire to curate the best products in my Niche and for my customers, okay, that was important. I didn't just want to put a product on my website that was a bit of a dead product. So we did some research.

Who else was selling them, what was the reputation of the brand, what were customers saying about that particular product? We wanted to understand all of that. Okay, so you can see the difference.

Again, I didn't do that with the sunglasses and I really, really should have done because it would have helped me.

It would have helped me figure out what kind of numbers I'd be looking to sell at, who the customer was, what they were saying about the product, what kind of problems they were experiencing, what problems did they want to solve which led them to that product. All kinds of interesting, which would have helped me sell them a lot quicker and definitely in much more volume. Right.

And then the fourth thing I did is I spent some time trying to figure out if I. How well, how I was going to present those products. Well, on my website, what kind of assets did I need? Were there videos? Were there images?

Did I need to create some images? Did I need to create some video for that product? And what was the product copy like? Could I improve it? Could I make it better? Who would do that?

Who would write that?

So I wanted to understand how they were going to appear on my site, what kind of offers I could do with them, how to promote them, how to get people to buy them from me rather than my competitors. How was that going to work? Okay, so they were the four things that I did. Number one, I looked at my competitors websites.

Number two, I did research on the numbers. Number three, I wanted to understand if this was going to actually qualify to be one of the best products in my niche.

And number four, I wanted to understand how I was going to present those products on my website. I did all of that before buying anything. Okay.

Now with the sunglasses I sold a few thousand pounds worth, which for me is not where I wanted that E commerce website to be at all. But compare that to this particular beauty product that I did some research on.

I saw I've sold so far over $100,000 worth of that product, which is a massive difference, right? I mean, massive difference in terms of sales. And the key difference for me was I spent the time doing the research.

And so I want to really encourage you when you understood your niche, you want to curate the best products for that niche. And that curation is not a guessing process, it is a time involved research process. Okay? So you've got to spend some time researching those products.

She's really, really going to help you. And you can do the four things that I've just mentioned in this podcast, right?

You can go look at your competitors sites, go and research the numbers, figure out if this is actually going to be one of the best products for your niche.

And you know, spend some time understanding how you can present that super well on your website in a way that's going to entice your customers to buy.

Okay, Now I did say in the last episode that this series is based on my new course, the Jam Jar Product Funnel, which is coming out really, really soon. At the time of recording, we're in July 2019. In the next sort of six weeks, I would imagine six to eight weeks that course will be out.

So if you're listening to this show at some point in the future, it may already be out. Check out Matt Edmondson if you want to know more about the course because it's all about finding high demand products to sell online.

Now I said to you, this is a critical part. You've got to find the high demand products. And I've given you a real quick sort of whistle stop tour on how I did some research on a beauty brand.

And in the course I'm going to walk you through that exact process point by point, step by step. Okay. Kind of hold your hand as we walk through it.

How I did that research, how I found these products, how I then figure out what the sales are, how I figure out all these amazing things that I wanted to know about that product. It is all in that course. So if that's of interest to you, definitely check it out. But use those four steps.

Use those four steps I've just gone over because they are really going to help you with your research. And if you haven't got the point yet, I'm going to say it one more time just to emphasize it because hey, it's my show. It is super important.

Important, right, that you spend time researching the best products for your niche. How are you going to curate the best products for your niche? Spend the time to research them.

Now, it is the second part, like I say, of a three part series. And in next week's show, we're going to look at part three and that's all about dealing with suppliers.

I'm going to tell you a story that cost me literally millions on dealing with supplies. Right? This is the most expensive lesson I've ever learned in my entire life and I'm going to cover that in episode number three of this mini series.

Dealing with supplies. You are definitely, definitely going to want to check that out. So make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.

It is free and I'm hoping that you agree that this show is full of good stuff about how to set up, run and grow your own e commerce business. So make sure you subscribe to keep up to date.

Like I say, next week we're going to talk about supplies and then the week after that we've got a great guest coming on the show. He's such a cool guy, Sam. And we're going to talk about selling clothing on an e commerce website. He's so cool.

You definitely going to want to check that out. So make sure you do subscribe.

Just want to say big thanks to those of you who have already reviewed the show and given us, you know, the little five star review. Really, really appreciate it. If you could do me a favor and if you're enjoying the show, just take the time to give us a review.

It really helps us get the word out there and connect with more ecommerce entrepreneurs. It'd be super cool if you could do that. I would definitely, definitely appreciate it.

And if you do write a review, make sure you connect with me on social media and let me know that you've done that. It would be great to connect with you, especially on Instagram. Loving Instagram at the moment. But I'm also on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Just search for me, Matt and Edmondson. Or you could type in Mattmont E Commerce. Hopefully we'll still be coming up. Or just head over to madmondson.com follow the social media links.

We're on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook so hit us up. It will be great to connect with you and as I've said the show notes for today's episodes link to the sponsors more about the Colab project.

If you want to know more about that are also on my website, mattedmondson.com just want to say thanks for listening my fellow e commerce entrepreneur. I hope you're having a great day where you are listening to this and I'll be back next week with some more help and advice on E commerce.

So until next time, have a great day.

Speaker B
00:17:43.150 - 00:17:52.110
You've been listening to the Curiosity Podcast with Matt Edmondson. Subscribe and join us next time as we carry on conversations about all things E commerce and digital.

Speaker A
00:17:57.560 - 00:18:04.110
Sam.