Leemr
FBA fitness-band brand built during COVID. Profitable, then sold.
Leemr
A direct-to-consumer fitness-band brand built during COVID, run end-to-end through Amazon FBA. Profitable. Sold the business and walked.
Leemr was the COVID-era side venture that worked exactly the way side ventures are supposed to: small, focused, profitable, exitable. The brand was a gold lemur — playful, memorable, not another generic fitness-bro mark in a category full of them.
What it was
A consumer-fitness-accessory brand selling resistance bands and adjacent gear through Amazon FBA, with a separate Shopify storefront for direct sales. Single SKU first, then a small line.
The bet was on brand differentiation in a commodity category. Resistance bands on Amazon look identical because most of them are identical — same factories, same listings, same five-star reviews. We picked a real mascot (the gold lemur), built a brand around it, and let that do the heavy lifting on the listing page.
How it ran
| Function | How |
|---|---|
| Sourcing | Direct from Alibaba suppliers, vetted samples, locked unit cost |
| Fulfillment | Amazon FBA — they handled warehousing, shipping, returns |
| Brand | Gold lemur mascot — distinct in a sea of generic black-and-white listings |
| Marketing | Amazon PPC + organic listing optimization (Helium 10 for keyword research) |
| DTC channel | Shopify storefront for repeat customers and direct margins |
FBA is brutally operational. The interesting work was upstream of the product: deciding the brand, picking the supplier, writing the listing copy, choosing the keyword set, and pricing to a competitive but defensible margin.
Outcome
Profitable. Then sold the business — a clean exit at a moment when staying in would have required scaling the SKU line, adding fulfillment complexity, and committing to the category long-term.
The lesson was the discipline of an exit on your own terms. Most side ventures die quietly because the founder doesn't decide. Leemr ended deliberately — sold to someone who wanted to scale a fitness brand, while I went back to the work that pulled me harder.
What I kept
Operational fluency on FBA economics. A deeper feel for when a brand mark does more than three months of paid acquisition. And the confidence to start, run, and close a business inside one calendar window without dragging it past its natural end.