Achieving success in an e-commerce business takes a lot of hard work, patience and skill. Without these values, people like Candace Nelson would not have been able to rise to the top.
Also, not everyone can become rich right away. Time is a major factor. Competition is stiff. Technological mishaps and difficulties have a way of occurring far too often at the worst possible moments. Success, for many entrepreneurs, follows years of trial and error across a range of fronts.
Yet for Kevin Zhang, a serial entrepreneur and self-made millionaire, the multi-million-dollar success came within the first year of operation.
Who is Kevin Zhang?
Kevin Zhang is a Chinese-American entrepreneur, investor and e-commerce advocate who achieved critical acclaim in the digital strategy and e-commerce community for generating an astounding $20 million in sales during his first year as an entrepreneur. Kevin’s estimated net worth is approximately $4 million, which is nothing to sneeze at.
On top of managing his business, Kevin is a passionate advocate for e-commerce education. He has offered mentorship to thousands of students across the globe.
A Look at the Businesses of Kevin Zhang
Kevin Zhang owns multiple successful businesses. We’ll look at two of them: Kreator eCommerce and Inteluck Corporation.
About Kreator eCommerce
According to Kevin Zhang’s LinkedIn profile, Kreator eCommerce is a global e-commerce organization focused on maximizing its impact in the field of digital and e-commerce strategy.
Kreator eCommerce started out as a dorm room hustle between college friends Kevin Zhang and Raoul Benjamin. Today, it employs more than 60 team members across three global locations.
The organization owns and runs several subsidiary seven-figure men’s accessory and apparel e-commerce brands. Kreator eCommerce has sold its products to more than 300,000 consumers across 20 different countries.
The company also provides strategic advice and core service through its consulting arm to individuals and businesses serious about venturing into e-commerce. Those who need business advice on e-commerce can turn to Kreator eCommerce for help.
Previous and current clients include:
- A custom jersey business that wants to turn organic growth into profitable paid traffic
- A gaming company centered on promoting a specialty collection
- A high-end designer fashion brand with the goal of boosting sales
- A-list celebrities interested in producing their clothing brand
Kreator eCommerce also offers high-quality content in the area of entrepreneurship education and e-Commerce through Generation E, a movement that aims to empower and inspire new e-Commerce entrepreneurs.
About Inteluck Corporation
Another company founded by Kevin Zhang is Inteluck Corporation, a company that offers SaaS and IoT solutions to solve logistics problems. This business aims to help small and medium businesses that have the same logistics issues as bigger companies, but at a price that won’t break the bank.
Inteluck Corporation has developed a platform that enables users to check where their trucks are in real-time. The platform can even recall the locations of the truck through a replay. Users can convert the data gathered into an intelligence report.
Other features that users with the platform include the following:
- Monitor the amount of overtime and overstay incurred by truck drivers
- Check a driver’s speed, as well as signs of harsh acceleration and hard brakes
- See drivers from an installed camera
The company, as of this writing, has more than 300 clients operating 2,000 vehicles. Inteluck Corporation has plans to include school buses in their services. Given this setup, parents would be able to check the amount of time taken for kids to get from home to school, and vice versa.
How Kevin Zhang Became Successful
Inspired and motivated by the success stories of brands, such as the Dollar Shave Club, Bonobos and Warby Parker, Kevin Zhang recognized e-commerce as the future of business and became determined to take advantage of the opportunities present in e-commerce.
One of the unique things about his success story is how fast he was able to grow with the meager amount of money he had when he started. Kevin Zhang only had $3,000 in his bank account. He was also living in his parents’ basement trying to learn digital strategy and e-commerce.
He was learning the right lessons. Kevin Zhang’s first venture didn’t turn out well, but this gave him valuable insights during his postmortem examination.
He learned the following from his failures:
- Providing good customer service is important for entrepreneurs
- Entrepreneurs should put themselves in the shoes of a potential customer
- A business should not scale quickly if it doesn’t have a proper infrastructure in place
While he was learning, he never gave into drowning in the misery of his failures. He focused and persisted until everything completely changed. Eventually, he was able to scale a new e-commerce website to a whopping $20,000 a day in sales within just 11 days in operation.
He continued to grow his business, focusing on improving his ad strategy even further and assembling a talented team around him.
Kevin Zhang is a guy who was on a track to nowhere to a successful e-commerce businessman. If you want to do a career shift to e-commerce or plan to start an e-commerce business, take note of the lessons that Kevin Zhang learned and try applying them to your situation.
