How to Find Your Best Seller Before You Waste Time on the Wrong Product
Updated: Oct 13
Oded has been the one who's closely observed the the commercial scenes of Cubee sellers. He is close friends with some of the sellers, and even regularly visits one at their shop.
Overtime, he's picked up a thing or two about Product Curation from his observations and talks with these sellers. This Sunday session was a small, small excerpt of his observations over the hear.
Here's a short recap for you.
Don't Dial-in on a Single Product. Start Wide.
Most people join Hive, land on a category they like — lamps, home decor, fidgets — and commit to it early. They print a batch, build a shop, spend time on photos, marketing, etc.
Then it doesn't move. It gets stuck. You're questioning your efforts.
Oded's take: you can't pick your winner before the market tells you what it wants. Start with as broad a catalog as you can, use tools like E-Rank, EverBee, and Google Trends to see what's actually selling, and treat your early listings as experiments rather than a business plan.
Early on, you're not building a brand. You're running experiments. The goal is to find something people actually pay for, as quickly as possible.
The Mom Test
Oded referenced a book called The Mom Test. The idea is straightforward; you don't ask your mom if your product is good. She'll always say yes.
Same with anyone who's rooting for you. The only signal that counts is whether a stranger pulls out their card. Get something listed fast, see what happens, and take that as your real answer. Not the encouraging messages from people who want you to succeed.
The Pareto Rule
Realize this one thing - 80% of your sales/success will come from 20% of the products you sell.
In most cases, one product — or at most a handful — ends up driving the bulk of what you make. The rest fills the catalog but doesn't carry much weight.
Oded used Clara from Lunfardo as the example. A simple, clean lamp. Doesn't look special on paper. But it accounts for roughly 80% of what that catalog sells on the platform.
Remember, you're not trying to balance everything and build a portfolio. You're hunting for that one thing. And when you find it, you'll know.
Roomberry's Benjamin
Benjamin from Roomberry joined the session and shared what happened with his shop.
He started selling Kowafat vases in Germany. Three to six months. Almost zero sales.
It wasn't about the product; the market just wasn't there for plastic vases in that region.
He pivoted to mushroom wall shelves. First Etsy sale within a week. It's been growing since.
Oded had actually pushed him to make the move earlier, pointing him toward Gazaladra's fungus designs. The attachment to the original product was preventing Benjamin from exploring his full potential. Once he dropped it, things moved.
Small Products, Better Margins? Think Again.
Fidgets came up more than once. Oded was direct about it: small items priced between $10–20 are selling extremely well right now. The margins look thin on paper, but the volume and the repeat buys make it work.
One seller Oded mentioned started with lamps, moved to fidgets, and now places them right at the cashier in their physical shop. People pick them up, kids want them, parents buy them on the way out. The lamp they came in to look at stays on the shelf.
Have a brand vision if you want. It's good. But early on in your journey, don't let it stop you from listening to what's actually selling.
Once You're Selling, Make Each Order Worth More
After you find something that moves, the next question is how to get more out of each transaction.
Oded kept it simple: bundles and point-of-sale add-ons. Package a few items together at a slightly better price. Put a low-cost item somewhere the customer is already paying attention. Nothing complicated, but it adds up. And your revenue figure starts to climb.
On Ads
The session touched on Meta, Google, and Etsy ads. Oded's honest read: all of them take budget and time to figure out, and if you don't know what you're selling yet, you're spending money to promote the wrong thing.
Etsy is the best place to validate because the buyers are already there looking. Build your own shop once you know what works. Then explore paid ads when you have something worth scaling.
The Sales Data Story
Oded mentioned this a few times throughout the session. Cubee is working on giving members better trend data. What's selling across the platform, what's picking up, what's fading, etc.
In the meantime, every time you make a sale and share that back with us, the data goes directly to the designers. They use it to decide what to build next. The more data in the loop, the better the product drops get for everyone.
The Quick Recap
Start wide. Use the data tools. List before you're ready.
Treat everything in the first few months as a signal, not a verdict. One product will eventually pull ahead and you'll see it in the numbers before you feel it in your gut.
When that happens, go deeper there, not on the thing you were attached to at the start.
Here's the full recording if you want to watch it back and catch everything Oded walked through.
Drop any questions in the comments below or in the Cubee Discord. Oded is around and happy to keep the conversation going.
See you in the next one 👋
P.S. Please comment below with your words or thoughts on the topic. Reading your comments gives me joy in writing this, and helps me better understand your needs.
-Pranav
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