Starting a Biz in a 7,000 Year Old Industry From Nothing
Level 2- Value Investor
As usual, we like to highlight new sustainable businesses launched in the jungle. Sometimes we see them immediately sometimes it takes a few months or even a year. Doesn’t matter.
The part that does matter is creating a sustainable income for yourself based on what talents/skills/knowledge. After that, the sky is the limit since the only objective is scale, scale and scale.
On that note, this is a guest post *written entirely by BowTiedOlive*
No fluff, a straight zero to hero on how to enter into an industry that has been around for thousands of years. With no prior experience.
How I Started an Olive Oil Brand from Scratch
I want to begin by thanking BowTiedBull for the opportunity to come on the Substack and talk about my journey starting an olive oil brand. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.
I am @BowTiedOlive, the Founder of Oliva Dorado, an organic extra virgin olive oil brand.
I’m not going to go through the ins and outs of starting an eCommerce business, since that’s already been covered extremely well here. If you’re at that stage, study the articles by Thomas_Salamus_ (TJ), BowTiedGator, BowTiedFawn, BowTiedVampDeer, and BowTiedStealth. Read them closely, follow the step-by-step guides, and understand each of their journeys.
I’m going to tell the story of launching Oliva Dorado and share a stream of consciousness about my journey, from day one of deciding to start a business to one year post-launch, including all the things you’d never expect to happen but inevitably do. In total, it took me 16 months from idea to launch, and I’m now one year post-launch.
February 2023: Idea and Action
I was about six months into a new job that I had originally been excited about. But I already knew it wasn’t going to work out for me long term. I had gotten more into health and wellness, wanted to travel more, and was working 60+ hours a week while having to go into an office.
I looked around at the senior members of my firm and saw them spending all their time in Excel, stuck in unproductive meetings, and constantly traveling to random places, away from their families all week. I knew I didn’t want my life to look like that for the next 40 years. What I didn’t know was that there was a way out, outside of just finding a new job and trying again.
I had been lurking crypto and fitness Twitter for a while, and one day I stumbled upon BowTiedBull through BowTiedOx and AJAC, who I had both been following for a while. I was intrigued, and despite having a preconceived notion that I had absolutely no time to start a business, I subscribed to Bull’s Substack. I read Efficiency and every eCommerce article on that Substack that night.
It had always been in the back of my mind that running a business would be cool one day, but it never even remotely crossed my mind that I could do it on the side while working a job. However, after reading through other people’s journeys and reading everything on Bull’s Substack, I started to reconsider.
I had a busy W2. I was in the office all the time. When could I find time to do this? I thought maybe I could muster up some time before work, at night, and on weekends. I decided that if I could dedicate at least one hour every single day, I knew over the next few years that would add up and I could build something. It always ended up being way more than 1 hour anyway.
I wasn’t in a rush. No kids. A high-paying W2. Good savings. I realized this was the perfect time to start a business.
I started to envision what my life could look like with my own business. Having location independence, not having to ask “permission” to travel, and working on what I wanted, when I wanted, from wherever I wanted. Most importantly, I would be working for myself. This was a vision of a life where I could pursue what I truly wanted, instead of sitting in an office every week working for others.
I decided the next day that I was going to start an anonymous business on the side.
I decided 3 days later it was going to be an olive oil business.
A month later, I was on an olive farm in Spain.
I know that this is a place where a lot of people get stuck: “I don’t have an idea so I can’t start a business.” Personally, I have a tendency to fixate on things, go down rabbit holes, and make it my complete focus. This helped me make this decision quickly and not second guess it. What I tell people who are stuck in that phase: I literally chose a product that has been around for 7,000 years. You can come up with anything.
After deciding on olive oil in Spain, I immediately spent multiple hours every single day scouring the web for olive farms in Spain. Google. ChatGPT. Reading the exhibitor list for every single olive oil tradeshow. You name it, I looked at it. I probably sent a few hundred emails and another hundred contact forms. After a week or so of this, I received one legitimate, promising, and exciting email from a woman living in Madrid who was working for a farm in Jaén. I have talked to this woman, who I will refer to as Amanda for purposes of this post, every single day since then on WhatsApp.
The reason I only got one real reply is because most of the global olive oil market runs through distributors and middlemen. They work with tons of farms in every region, so they can guarantee a consistent supply every single year to end brands and stores. It diversifies against the risk of droughts or bad harvests in certain regions, or a certain farm having a bad harvest. The problem with this approach is you have no visibility into the actual farms that that olive oil is coming from if you’re buying from those distributors. A lot of these olive oils end up being neutral-tasting blends that don’t have the health benefits that early-harvest, single-estate olive oil does. I was determined to find a farm I could work directly with so I could guarantee it was of the quality that nature intended.
March 2023: Spain Trip #1
One month after deciding I was starting an olive oil business, I jumped on a plane to Spain to tour this farm and meet Amanda. We met at a hole-in-the-wall tapas bar in the middle of Madrid. Amanda and I got to know each other, talked olive oil, and drafted a plan for my not-yet-named business over a pitcher of sangria. The next morning, I drove to Jaén, the olive oil capital of the world. This tiny region in Spain is the size of Connecticut but supplies about half of all the olive oil in the world. I’ll never forget that drive or that day. As you enter the region, it is the most beautiful landscape of mountains with millions of olive trees as far as the eye can see.
I toured the olive farm, tasted their oils, met with some of the workers, mustered as much Spanish as I could, and left that day with what I thought would be the supplier to my brand. It was a very good olive oil and, at the time, one of the best ones I had ever tried.
They were a seventh-generation family-owned farm, focused on single-estate (olive oil from one farm), early-harvest (highest-quality), and organic olive oil, never blending it. It was exactly what I was looking for. I was so excited.
April 2023 – November 2023: Actually Starting the Business
I now had a supplier, but nothing else I needed to start a business. I needed to create a website, LLC, an international supply chain, find a warehouse, figure out food labeling, figure out branding, packaging, and most importantly: how the hell I could market this.
I always tell people, if you're (seriously) starting a brand, you're going to figure out sourcing/manufacturing, supply chain, operations, legal, website, etc. The hard part is figuring out how you are going to market your product. You can create the best product in the world, but if no one sees it, it doesn't matter. If you’re in the early stages, your focus should be two things: 1) creating an amazing product (because if it sucks the marketing won’t matter long-term), and 2) how you are going to market it.
This is why it’s important to either test demand or have a rock-solid marketing strategy. I personally chose not to test demand, but I wouldn’t recommend others do the same. You have to decide that for yourself, and I think it’s a smart move for most people. Bull and TJ have written a lot about how to do that.
For me, I decided I was going to market this organically to start. I made the decision to stop lurking, create a BowTied account, and start tweeting. That would be my initial audience, then I would expand to Instagram and other social platforms, as well as paid media, after launch. I was extremely focused on creating relationships with affiliates before launch so that I could send them products when I did launch. The idea was to spam everyone’s timeline from several different accounts during the launch week.
This worked well and contributed to such a successful launch for me. I still have great relationships with many of these affiliates. I highly recommend doing this. Twitter and the BowTied/entrepreneurial community is a truly special place – people will literally post your product to their massive audiences if they like you and the product. Instagram and Tik Tok creators with large audiences will often charge you thousands of dollars for similar posts.
In terms of what I was working on over these few months:
Graphic design and all marketing (packaging, label, bottle choice, website, etc.)
Legal (register for trademark, food label review, etc.)
Constant communication with Amanda and the farm about everything.
Finding a warehouse, 3PL, and importer, since I wasn’t going to put a pallet of olive oil in my apartment and ship each bottle out myself. I have the belief that you can’t scale a business if you’re picking and packing orders yourself. I understand saving money and doing it yourself to start, which makes sense if you’re starting on a small budget, but every day you sit there printing labels and driving to the post office is time you could be creating meta ads, finding new affiliates, optimizing your website, or doing activities that actually help you scale. It’s also a major headache to move or start 3PL’s when you are already live.
I tried hundreds of olive oils to learn more about the market, my competition, different taste profiles, etc. (most fun part).
I read every article on BowTiedOpossum’s Substack and followed BowTiedFawn, BowTiedGator, and TJ very closely. I still annoy all of them with questions to this day and take their advice as if Jeff Bezos were giving me business advice.
I started the way most do, with a cheap logo from Fiverr. I did a few other marketing things this way, but then I decided to take a step back and reevaluate. I wanted to create the most premium and high-quality olive oil on the market. I wanted people to be excited about unpacking this and want to gift it to others. I couldn’t launch with cheap marketing and then rebrand later. I needed amazing marketing and packaging from day 1 to establish my brand identity. I hired 2 marketing guys with experience in this and we worked together to take my vision for the brand and showcase it in a highly aesthetic way.
I had finished most of this in December and was gearing to place my first inventory order after the new year, when I got that first gut punch everyone talks about.
December 26, 2023: The First Gut Punch
A week before I was getting ready to place that inventory order, I got a call from Amanda and she laid it all out. The farm I was planning to buy from had a really bad harvest, so they would be buying olive oil from a bunch of farms in the region and blending it together and selling that for this year. She disagreed with what they were doing, so she was leaving the company as well. Damn.
She said she would connect me with a new person to speak to at the farm, but she wanted to let me know since she knew how focused I was on quality and didn’t think I would want to buy from that farm. She was right.
My first thought was that this woman had been working in the olive oil industry for the last 20 years in Spain, and if anyone knew other farms I could work with, it would be her. So, I asked her on that call if there were other farms that she could connect me with. Her mind immediately went to this one farm, and she said to give her a few weeks, and she’ll introduce us.
January 2024: Waiting
While waiting for the introduction, I found a few more farms in Spain and ordered more samples. They were all good, but not great.
It was a very long month.
February 2024: Still Waiting, But Some Progress
I finally got introduced to the farm and learned more about them. They were family-owned and checked all the boxes I was looking for. Everything had even sounded better than the previous farm. Plus, Amanda vouched very heavily for them. They were in Zaragoza instead of Jaén, which was more unique. They have never sold their olive oil in the U.S. It was all almost too good to be true. They decided to send me a sample as a first step.
March 2024: Sample Arrives and Spain Trip #2
I’ll never forget the day the sample arrived. I got home from work and had the sample waiting. I took a spoonful and was instantly blown away. I had never tasted olive oil like this before. I actually couldn’t believe the taste. I had my girlfriend and a few others try it too and they couldn’t believe how good it was either. Most high-quality olive oils have a strong, bold flavor. Some people enjoy that, but most don’t love it for everyday use. This was different – it was fruity, light, buttery, and extremely smooth. Despite all the olive oil brands out there, very few are high quality with mass-market appeal when it comes to taste. My goal from day one has been to combine that with top-notch branding and full supply chain transparency.
That night, I booked a flight to Spain to visit the farm the following week. I won’t sell an olive oil unless I’ve been to the farm and met the family that produces it.
Once I got off the plane in Madrid, I met Amanda for lunch, which in Spain usually means several glasses of wine. I then worked the rest of the day, got a few hours of sleep, and woke up the next morning to drive to Zaragoza with Amanda to visit the farm. What was supposed to be a two-hour meeting turned into over six hours on the farm, where I met the family, toured the grove, tasted lots of olive oil, and learned more about their process.
April 2024: More Good News
I updated all of my marketing for the new farm while they began preparing my order. I spoke with the farm every day through Amanda. She had decided to start working with them, and I would be her first customer. Incredible news.
May 2024: Pre-Launch
I ran a pre-launch sale. I sent out an email to people who had subscribed to my journey and made a twitter post. I didn’t know what to expect and hearing those Shopify dings coming in was one of the biggest adrenaline rushes I’ve ever had. The first taste of Wi-Fi money.
June 21, 2024: Launch
I officially launched. The Twitter post is still pinned on my timeline. It was an incredible day in terms of support and sales, and it only made me hungrier to keep building.
July 2024 – December 2024: Going 0-1 (First 6 Months Post-Launch)
During this time, I was focused on growing the brand while trying to stay in stock. Before launching, I thought it would take a long time to sell through my first inventory order. A week after launch, Gator told me to order more, and I’m glad I listened. That gave me some breathing room heading into the holidays.
I didn’t realize the sales level the brand would do in November and December between Black Friday and the Holidays. I ran the numbers in mid-November and decided I couldn’t do a big sale, or else I would sell out. I decided to run a 15% sale, exclusively to my not-so-big email list of loyal customers, and not post it on social media or make it public. The goal was to hopefully run my inventory low enough to scrape by until the new shipment arrived.
I sold out of everything in six hours. I definitely wasn’t expecting that.
I air-freighted another pallet at about five times the cost of ocean freight, because having inventory at a lower margin was still better than having none at all. The lead time was six days instead of six weeks. I sold out of that batch within a few weeks in December. December ended up being my best month ever, even though I was sold out for half of it. I air freighted another pallet in early January and placed a much larger ocean freight order at the same time so that I would have enough inventory to finally start investing in marketing.
January 2025 – Current: Spending All My Time Trying to Scale the Business
I viewed my first 6 months as going 0-1 and creating the foundation for the business. This year, I’m focused on going 1-10 and scaling the business. That first 6 months was a lot of inventory and supply chain issues. Now it’s all marketing. It’s more fun but also insanely more difficult.
Nothing will teach you more about your business than running ads and trying to convince cold traffic to buy your product. Don’t outsource that to an agency when you’re starting. I almost made that mistake. Thank you to Opossum and TJ for making sure I didn’t.
Overall Takeaways
Nothing encompasses eCommerce more than this:
This happens every day, every week, and every month in small and big cycles.
The first 12 months were nothing like I expected. The connections I’ve made, the people I’ve met (meet your mutuals), and the conversations I’ve had have all been truly life changing.
I’ve had so many people tell me this olive oil has helped them on their health journey. Celebrities and pro athletes have tried it and ordered more. I love how many guys buy it for their wives or girlfriends. I never could have guessed how often I’d hear that this is the best olive oil someone has ever had.
If you’re not looking back every single month and having reactions of “I can’t believe I did that” or “I had no idea what I was doing”, you’re not doing enough. I laugh at the stuff I did 3 months ago and crack up at the things I did a year ago.
Make sure you’re spending most of your time on revenue-generating activities. It’s easy to get bogged down on the million things that come up, but make sure you’re always spending the majority of your time on things that are actually moving the needle.
Have people in similar spots to you in terms of launch timing and revenue so you can talk things through and bounce ideas off each other. Have people who are farther ahead so you can get advice. And have people who are earlier in the journey, because it forces you to articulate your own experience and better understand what works and what doesn’t.
You also need a strong support base. For me, it’s my girlfriend, family, and close friends who are also entrepreneurial. Don’t tell too many people, but don’t be afraid to tell those close to you. They’ll root for you and help you.
Will end this with a shameless plug: check out my brand at olivadorado.com and you can follow my journey BowTiedOlive on Twitter and our brand page on Instagram. My DMs are open – feel free to reach out with any questions at any time.
And thank you again to BowTiedBull for creating this community and allowing me to come write on here.
As noted this post was entirely written by BowTiedOlive (unedited outside of formatting changes)
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