Student's business bonanza

Naglis Stankaitis, in his final year of his Business Management BSc(Hons) course at the University of Brighton, has discovered a business payload after years of trial and error.

He was halfway through his studies and was “fed up” with part-time casual jobs when he came across a business idea that has since grown “much bigger than I ever thought possible”.

Naglis discovered the concept of selling private label products on Amazon and has since seen his annual turnover climb to over £500,000. Naglis now works closely with beepurple, the university’s careers service which offers students, graduates and staff support to become more entrepreneurial and enterprising.

Naglis explained: “In essence, the business is very simple. I use software to analyse demand for different products on marketplaces like Amazon. I source these products and find factories in China and other countries to manufacture them under my own unique private label brand.

“I sell through a third party so everything from start to finish can be outsourced and automated. All of this can be done using just a laptop, anywhere, although I do have help from one full-time employee in China and one part-timer employee here in the UK.”

Naglis Stankaitis, photo by Philip Bedford

Naglis sells around the world and has been so successful that he is now counselling others interested in the line of business, and writing a book.

His road to success started from a young age: “I was always curious about how different businesses operated and how they create wealth and money, seemingly out of nothing, and greatly benefit their owners and shareholders. The question remained on my mind: how can I create something successful?”

He took on a variety of jobs including shop work, leaflet distribution and deliveries, joining apprenticeship schemes, and even commuting to London to work for large companies, but he found all were unfulfilling.

That’s when he decided to study at the University of Brighton: “I thought why not give university a go as at the current record breaking yearly rates surely it must provide its students with huge value in form of learning and progress in life.”

Alongside his studies Naglis continued searching for the right business – and found it when he attended a conference on selling products on Amazon. At first, he suffered from returns and poor quality products but after improving standards, profits started trickling in.

“At last I wasn’t losing money on sales. Refund rates were all good and customers seem to be satisfied as I started to acquire reviews. As reviews improved, I started making a very modest product for each unit sold, about 80p per unit.”

Naglis launched more products and saw his revenue steadily increase and sales spreading throughout Europe, the USA and Australia – with one month’s revenue now reaching £60,000.

He is now giving talks to others interested in starting their own private label selling businesses, including to students and post graduates receiving guidance from beepurple. “I always want to keep up to date and learn more from professionals and that’s how I found out about beepurple”,” they have also encouraged me to teach others how to start their own Amazon business I have done a few presentations with beepurple now and the results have been great.”