The Heart of the Sale: Why Owners Sell Their Amazon FBA Businesses

Building a thriving Amazon FBA business is an accomplishment worth celebrating. It requires great vision, determination, and hard work to reach your goals. That’s why, when the time comes to sell the business you’ve grown, you should be rewarded with a payday that reflects everything you’ve done on your entrepreneurial journey.

But the decision to sell isn’t always easy. It can be life-changing, and those moments are never straightforward. How do you know who you can trust with your brand? It’s not enough to get rewarded, you want to know that someone else isn’t going to squander your hard work. At Boosted Commerce, we pride ourselves on not just rewarding business owners for their past work, but on nurturing their brand moving forward.

If you’re still on the fence, here are several reasons our own sellers decided to exit -- and the benefits they received from exiting with us.

Selling Your Amazon Business

The decision to sell your Amazon business isn't an easy one. After all, you've poured years of hard work into your store, building it from the ground up into the brand that it is today. Yet, there are many reasons to pursue an exit for your business. After years of focus and sacrifice, it may be time for a new venture. The business might have grown beyond your expected demand. There could be unexpected challenges that require new expertise and support to continue growing. Or, after years in business, it might just be time to step away.

Whatever the case that brings you to this crossroads, if you’re considering selling your Amazon business, you'll need a partner you can trust.

Top Reasons Sellers Sell Their FBA Businesses

There are a lot of factors that lead sellers to get out of the Amazon game. Below are some of the top reasons that business owners decide to exit, including input from some of our own Boosted sellers. If any of these sound like you, it might be time to consider making an exit of your own.

1. Focus on the Family

"I'm excited about traveling with my family," Sarah McCamy, founder of Bloom Krans, said. "We just came back from Disney World and we can’t wait for our next trip!”

Running an Amazon FBA business asks a lot of you. It takes time and effort to manage inventory, organize finances, and pack up orders -- let alone make time for everything else in life. Those episodes of Ted Lasso aren’t going to watch themselves. More importantly, for many business owners, this workload takes time away from their families.

Rico Reid, former owner of a unisex health and personal care brand on Amazon, sold his business for just that reason. Now that he's out of the Amazon game, he has time to stay at home with his kids. And when Albert DiPadova, founder of Tub Cubby, decided it was time to spend more time with his children, he made the call to exit his business. "I'll be doing more surfing trips with my kids in the next few months," DiPadova said. “I can’t wait.” 

2. Financial Freedom

Having a successful business and enjoying the rewards of that business are often hard to do at the same time. The effort of maintaining scale and growth can be all-consuming. But a successful exit can change everything, rewarding you at multiple levels for your hard work. Look no further than Reid, who relieved a massive burden.

"My wife and I were able to pay off substantial student loan debt," Reid said.

The influx of capital provided an opportunity that simply running the business didn’t, opening up new avenues for Reid to enjoy the benefits of his hard work.

3. Pursuit of Passion

For many business owners, managing an Amazon store is their passion. They love waking up every day and helping customers across the world get high-quality products delivered to their door. But for others, it's a means to an end -- and that's perfectly fine. By building up an Amazon brand and then selling it, business owners can use that newfound capital to pursue something else that moves them. The next chapter of their lives is waiting to be written.

For Chris McCamy, selling allowed him to travel and explore more of the world. "Right away, my wife and I decided to take our children on vacation," McCamy said. "That vacation went so well that we went on a second vacation a couple months later. It was nice to press the refresh button after developing this brand after a number of years."

Reid, on the other hand, did some renovations around the house. "I just built a home studio," Reid said. "My first love is music."

4. Hand the Keys Off

At a certain point, it’s common for Amazon FBA businesses to reach their peak. This is especially true for new FBA owners who have never managed a growing store before. Taking the next steps to expand and maintain that growth might be more than they bargained for, and keeping up with that increasing demand could become more trouble than it’s worth.

Exciting as this growth might be, it may also signal the right time to sell. When the work becomes overwhelming for one person, or even a small team, the right move to ensure continued growth could be to hand it off to a company with a larger team, proper infrastructure, and the necessary SOPs. This is a common reason why sellers decide to exit their business. They know they've done all they can, and it's time for a more experienced Amazon seller to take the helm. That way, their products and brand can continue to thrive in a changing world.

"If you want your brand to be in good hands, Boosted knows the Amazon space and can take it to the next level," Barbra Bannon, a serial entrepreneur, said. "If you present clean financials and have some well-performing ASINs, they can grow your brand in ways that you didn’t even think of."

Reid added, "It was about giving these babies that we carried an opportunity to succeed beyond our possession.”

5. Start a New Venture

Your FBA store was your creation, but there may come a time when it must move aside for something else. You accomplished what you set out to do, and now you may be wondering what’s next. Maybe you’re a serial entrepreneur like many other Amazon FBA sellers, and while you care for your brand, it was never meant to be forever. Selling your business now provides the perfect opportunity to pursue that next great venture.

This is why many Amazon FBA business owners decide to sell once their business has reached a certain value. This gives them the capital for their next project, whether that’s another FBA business or something else entirely.

DiPadova did exactly that, moving from one product line to the next. After selling his children’s bath accessory business, he quickly launched a new one called the Riviera Towel Company, which not only sells towels, it donates part of its profits to ocean conservation.

6. Strike While the Iron Is Hot

During the COVID-19 pandemic, eCommerce saw a massive acceleration in growth. It started as early as April 2020, when online shopping in general increased by 8.4%, with Amazon accounting for 40% of U.S. gross merchandise volume. As customers have become accustomed to shopping online, many businesses saw exponential growth. This, of course, led to a significant rise in profits. Stores exploded in popularity seemingly overnight, and audiences and revenues grew.

However, as pandemic restrictions are scaled back and physical stores reopen, it threatens the sustainability of this online growth. Sellers, including Bannon, decided that the time to get out was when the market was at its peak.

"We decided to reach out and get a few valuations from brokers, and they came back higher than we thought," Bannon said. "So we said, ‘Hey, now that we know how to build Amazon FBA businesses, let’s sell this one, use it as a stepping stone, and do another one after our lives level out a bit.'"

When Is the Right Time for You to Sell?

There are far more reasons to sell than we can fit in one article, but maybe one -- or all -- of these reasons resonated with you. Perhaps you have your own motivation that we haven’t even thought about. Whatever drives you, if you’re ready to explore your exit strategy, feel free to contact us and learn more about selling to Boosted Commerce.