Justin Harris·April 28, 2021

Doubling Revenue 6 Months after Acquisition

Justin Harris, a former minority partner in a recruiting firm and a SaaS company who later ran a fractional COO consulting practice, acquired two Disney-inspired candle and fragrance e-commerce brands in 2020: Walter & Rosie ($160k purchase price, closed July 2020) and Stack (seller-financed for a ~$20k cap, acquired pre-Q4 2020). Both businesses were run by individual sellers who had stepped back — Walter & Rosie's founders due to young kids and day jobs, Stack's founder due to health issues and COVID-driven retail collapse — leaving large gaps in digital marketing, Amazon presence, and paid advertising that Justin planned to exploit. In the first six months after acquiring Walter & Rosie, he doubled its revenue from ~$120k annualized to $200k by turning on paid social ads, growing the email list, optimizing the Shopify site, and launching a basic Amazon presence. Justin finances acquisitions partly through the Infinite Banking Concept — borrowing against whole-life insurance policy cash value to deploy capital while the policy continues compounding — and his three-to-five year target is to 10x the purchase price of each brand, projecting Walter & Rosie to a $1M+ run rate by year-end 2021 and Stack back to $300k and growing.

Deal facts

purchase price: $160k (Walter & Rosie) + seller-finance cap of $20k (Stack) = ~$180k combined
multiple: ~2x 2018 revenue / ~4x 2019 revenue (Walter & Rosie); not stated for Stack
sde ebitda: Walter & Rosie: ~$80-100k net 2018; ~$35-40k net 2019. Stack: ~30% margin on ~$300k peak revenue
revenue: Walter & Rosie: $280k (2018), $120k (2019). Stack: ~$300k at peak, ~$30-40k in 2020 at acquisition
financing structure: Walter & Rosie: $50k SBA microloan + own cash (via IBC whole-life policy loans) + one partner. Stack: seller financing — 10% of gross revenue up to $20k cap, plus retail-distribution performance incentives; additional partners brought in for inventory/growth capital
notes: Walter & Rosie closed July 8, 2020. Stack acquired a few months later, pre-Q4 2020. SBA did not qualify Walter & Rosie for standard 7(a) loan due to 2018-to-2019 revenue decline; only microloan approved. SBA paid first 6 months of microloan under COVID relief. Stack seller negotiated non-cash incentives including product access and retail distribution performance pay in addition to the $20k seller-finance cap.

Why this business

Justin had already built and exited two companies and spent years as a fractional COO for small businesses. He wanted to own his own portfolio and saw e-commerce as highly scalable — one operational system could run one brand or fifteen. He was drawn to Walter & Rosie because the seller had already done the hard work: identified a passionate niche (Disney-inspired fragrance), built a loyal organic social following of 41,000 Instagram followers, and proven product-market fit. The 2019 revenue decline was a feature, not a bug — he could see what 2018 demonstrated and buy at a discount. Stack was similarly attractive: a luxury brand with proven retail distribution, quality product he personally owned as a customer, and a seller who had stepped back due to health issues, leaving obvious upside from simply turning on e-commerce.

What's working

Doubling Walter & Rosie revenue in the first six months (from ~$120k annualized to $200k in just July-December 2020) by launching paid social ads, growing the email list, optimizing the website, and opening an Amazon channel
Strong organic Instagram following (41,000 followers) built by the original founder provided immediate marketing leverage
Identifying underdeveloped channels — Amazon, Walmart.com, Etsy, paid ads, SEO — that prior owners had never used, giving clear upside with low execution risk
Expanding the laundry detergent line as a standalone high-growth vector within the fragrance brand portfolio
Using the Infinite Banking Concept (whole-life insurance policy loans) to deploy capital into acquisitions while keeping the underlying cash value compounding — leveraging each dollar in two places simultaneously
Acquiring Stack through the manufacturer relationship — off-market, no competition, at a steep discount due to COVID retail collapse and seller health issues
Stack's existing 30-40 boutique retail accounts in the Southeast provide a distribution channel that can be reactivated alongside new e-commerce buildout

What's hard

Nine-month search process with hundreds of listings reviewed and 40-50 serious financial reviews before finding the first acquisition
SBA rejected Walter & Rosie for a standard loan because of the 2018-to-2019 revenue decline, requiring a workaround with a small microloan plus personal capital
Taking very little personal income in the first year — only ~$15-20k distributed from Walter & Rosie — while reinvesting all other cash flow into growth
Amazon launch was limited to Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) rather than FBA in the first months, constraining Amazon scale
Stack was essentially dormant at $30-40k revenue in 2020, requiring a capital injection for inventory and overseas packaging before revenue could ramp
Managing two simultaneous brand buildouts with limited bandwidth as owner-operator

Notable quotes

What they had already done was identified the avatar and in terms of who the customer is, and had already established that avatar was gonna buy the product. So at that point it's just kind of looking at all the variables around that and going okay well can we grow it — what are they not taking advantage of.

There was no SEO optimization for the site, there had been no — never any Instagram or Facebook ads run for the business — and this is like the perfect thing for Facebook and Instagram ads. I looked at that and thought we can crush this.

We did 200 grand in six months, whereas they'd done a little over 100 all of 2019.

My goal is how can I leverage a dollar to use it multiple times — that's where infinite banking came in. I've taken the same dollar and leveraged it to do two things, to grow in two places for me, because the policy isn't going to stop compounding because I haven't taken money out of it — I've borrowed against it.