Editor’s note: This story is part of Cleveland Inno’s debut Under 25 program, a platform to recognize rising innovators under the age of 25 who are making big moves with their companies across Northeast Ohio.
David Davis II has a vision for making Cleveland the Silicon Valley of the Midwest — only better.
Davis, 21, started selling sneakers in online stores on Instagram, eBay and Amazon when he was 13 years old.
"As time went on, I began using data/analytics to test and optimize a range of physical products that could sell on standalone websites," Davis said.
Soon Davis was building and hosting e-commerce sites on platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce.
"I found great success as an online seller around 2016," said Davis, who left University School in Hunting Valley, Ohio, in his senior year.
These sites have generated "a couple of million" dollars from 2017 through early 2020, Davis said.
In 2019, Davis founded Shadowbox Media Co. in Cleveland "to establish and manage a more structured digital ecosystem" in which to run e-commerce websites.
At Shadowbox Media, Davis and his best friend and former University School classmate, Tim DiStefano, market online businesses that fulfill orders for Amazon, the e-commerce giant. Davis is president and CEO; DiStefano is chief operating officer.
Shadowbox also brokers so-called Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) stores to investors or acquirers.
Sometimes the company buys the online stores, builds them and sells them for a profit.
The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated many people's adoption and use of the digital ecosystem, especially for e-commerce, Davis said.
The pandemic also has accelerated private equity investors' interest in buying, capitalizing and putting together individual Amazon FBA stores into "large consumer goods companies," he said.
Private equity firms, which tend to represent traditional mergers and acquisitions investors, are beginning to use "Amazon aggregators" such as Thrasio to find and buy Amazon FBA stores.
So Davis already is on to his next venture, something he's calling FBA Flip.
Expected to launch early next year, FBA Flip will be a "seller-friendly platform" with a straightforward fee structure that can connect sellers of Amazon FBA stores with traditional investors who don't feel they have the expertise to acquire digital assets, Davis said.
"We can help you acquire that asset, but also help you mature and scale it as well," he said.
Davis hopes his company's combination of technology and relationships with private equity will help Cleveland leaders explore new models for doing business that have the potential to transform the city's economy.
"We talk all the time about purposeful restructuring with startups," Davis said. But many of us are a little afraid of technology because we view it as disruptive rather than transformation, he said. "Our mentality tends to be, if it's not broken, don't fix it. But Covid broke everything."
