"In 2024, inspired by the successful e-commerce entrepreneurs and Amazon sellers I write about, I decided to start my own business. I convinced a friend to join me, and we each put in $5,000 from our own savings to launch a pickleball paddle company. We hired my high school English teacher to design our logo, we worked with a sourcing company to find a manufacturer, and we spent about a year developing our paddle before placing our first inventory order in early 2025."
"The plan was to run a hybrid Shopify-Amazon model while we figured out who our typical customer was. That was advice from an e-commerce industry veteran. He told us that, on Shopify, we'd earn better margins because there are fewer platform fees, but we'd have to generate our own traffic through social media, ads, and word of mouth. On Amazon, we'd sacrifice margin, but gain visibility."
A pickleball paddle company launched in early 2025 with about $10,000 in seed capital and a 500-unit minimum order split between Los Angeles and Amazon. The founders planned a hybrid Shopify-Amazon model to balance margins and visibility. Amazon inventory fees, especially long-term storage and aged-inventory surcharges, accumulated and became costly. The sellers removed inventory after incurring hundreds of dollars in storage fees. An attempted Amazon charge of $288.56 failed due to insufficient funds, and by February 2026 the business bank account balance sat just above $6, threatening the venture's survival.
Read at Business Insider
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