Volume 1 - The Sun is Rising on Sunset Lamps
Taking a look at a new hot product, Sunset Lamps, and the opportunity to become a frontrunner in the novelty home lighting space.
Here’s a blazing hot item, the Sunset Lamp.
What is a Sunset Lamp?
Let’s have these trendy TikTokers show us the vibes:
Technically it’s a bulb projector light, culturally it’s a cheap knockoff of Kendall Jenner’s James Turrell art piece.
Architectural Digest’s Tour of Kendall Jenner’s Home
Why?
The GOATMOAT team has been eyeing the sunset lamp for a few weeks now and has traced the genesis of its growth to around February 2021. We’re still in fresh territory folks. Here are some trending signals:
As of April 6th, 2021, the hashtag for #sunsetlamp has accumulated 12.7M views on TikTok.
Interest growing for general sunset lamp searches on Google.
Interest relative to an established product in the light space, LED strip lights.
A massive surge in Amazon searches.*
High estimated monthly keyword search volume on Amazon. *Viral Launch Data
Marinating on the charts and graphs above, we see that the overall interest on Google is oscillating while Amazon is doing the hockey stick climb. Our take on these results shows that the interest in sunset lamps as a whole hasn’t boomed completely yet, but the consumer behavior to search with the intent to buy is growing at a rapid pace based on the number of Amazon searches. We’ll call this the Amazon to Google search ratio, the higher this is, the better. So far, this is good but keep in mind, we’re still early to the game.
Competition
Shopify
If you dropship, speed is the name of the game, and these brands have pitched their tent overnight:
No one seems to be dominating the space at the moment. We ran a quick trademark check and the mark SUNSET LAMP was filed in 2020 but seems to be abandoned by the applicant—this could be an opportunity to lock down the name as well.
Amazon
At the time of writing, here are the significant stats of the top 10 search results for the keyword “sunset lamp”:
~250k monthly searches
$25k average monthly revenue
2.1 average review count (number of reviews)
3.77 average rating (out of 5)
$30 average sale price
Every listing on the first page was listed in March 2021.
The biggest listing has projected monthly revenues of $75k and only has 16 reviews.
The most recently launched listing that has made it to the first page was on March 17 and is projecting around $16.5k in revenue with 0 reviews.
All of the top-earning listings use the same photos and low effort infographic images. All of the sellers are located in China, and usually, when we see explosive trending products (especially through TikTok) we find that Chinese sellers with existing manufacturing relationships are able to go to market immediately.
Alternative Platform
Here’s an area the GOATMOAT team is going to go deeper and deeper into in every product opportunity breakdown. Social selling has some incredible upsides and cool tools such as CommentSold and Livestream e-commerce could really be activated with such a visual product like the sunset lamp.
Opportunities
We see the greatest opportunity to launch a sunset lamp product in the Amazon and alternative platform space, so we’ll focus there.
The 2-Minute SWOT of Competitors:
Strengths - They’ve already launched and have the supply chain down.
Weakness - Unlikely apt for quality control or brand awareness
Opportunity - Quick capitalization on a trend that may or may not last.
Threats - Because they haven’t put effort into their listing and product quality, their low review ratings leave a hole for higher quality listings to come in.
Let’s see what some unhappy customers are saying:
You won’t win on speed, and you won’t win on price, so where you’d have to focus is putting together a better offer while manufacturing at a higher level of quality. Your brand will be the place to go for higher-quality sunset lamps that are different from the sea of knockoffs. Some new sellers, maybe even some experienced sellers think all that a brand is, is a nice name and logo, but I’d like to challenge you to think of your brand as what it imputes. It’s a fancy way of saying how a customer associates their experience with your brand. This product falls under a few categories such as Home & Kitchen, Furniture, Tools & Home Improvement, & Electronics. We tend to side with the latter, which is why we understand that some HDMI cables sell for $29.99 and some for $2.99.
Game Plan
Here’s how we’d go to market through Amazon FBA
Validate the numbers yourself. (This was written in early April - go fact check!)
Connect with suppliers.
We distributed 15-20 RFQs and got 12 EXW quotes back from suppliers.
Initial quotes ranged from $6 - $9.15 for an order of 1000 units.
If we were launching this product our target price would be $4/unit
Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll be able to send you the name of the companies and their initial quotes.
Order samples.
Not all sunset lamps are made equally, take the time to consider what colors you think will reach the most customers and which materials are most durable.
After some inquiry of the product, one supplier was eager to share that their sunset lamps were superior to competitors due to their larger heat sink that dissipates any overheating problems, along with a sturdier base.
This is a good reminder to take some time and learn about the product and where the technical advantages can be found—this goes for every opportunity.
Negotiate and place an order.
Ship the first batch of 200 units to Amazon.
Use our restock hack to get the rest of your first run of inventory (up to 3000 units) into Amazon. No 3rd party software needed. Check out this hack once you subscribe:
After the deposit is placed with the supplier, start building marketing assets: product images, website, branding, reach out to influencers.
Best Case Forecast
Sale Price: $29.99
Landed Cost: ~$8
Amazon Referral Fee: $4.5
Amazon Fulfilment Fee: $5.42
Gross Margin: ~$12 (40%)
ACOS: ~25%
TACOS: ~10%
Sales Potential: 600-2000 units/month
Revenue Potential: $18K - $60K/month
Net Profit Potential: $5.4K - $18K/month (30%)
Final Thoughts
We like this one, we were close to doing this one ourselves! If you’re interested in pursuing this opportunity, take a look at how people are adorning their bedrooms with lighting on Pinterest. There’s a whole category of lighting novelty and sellers are making a killing off of it.
The search term Galaxy Projector gets a whopping 150K monthly searches and the king of the hill, BlissLights makes $4M/month in revenue on just 2 of their top SKUs.
The search term LED Lights hits 500k monthly searches and the reigning champ here is DAYBETTER, selling $1.5M/month for just 1 SKU among multiple in their brand.
We’re bullish on Sunset Lamps and more funky home lighting products. Let us know if you end up entering this space!
Make sure you subscribe if you want in on these product opportunity breakdowns and more. We’ll be releasing weekly deep dives and longer lists of other product ideas that have legs.
“Think like a goat, create a moat”,
GOATMOAT