E-commerce is a rapidly growing industry that is defining the digital era. But is it possible to become a prominent name in internet trade without having your own factory and distribution center? E-commerce professional Trevor Fey started from zero and expanded his business to multiple figures in less than a year. Here’s how.

Fey dropped out of university after only two years and set out into the world without much of a plan. But it wasn’t long before he started experimenting with e-commerce and was able to scale his business into his only source of income quickly. Fey’s central commerce platform is Amazon. When starting out, Fey says it’s essential to understand what an FBA business model is. FBA stands for fulfilled by Amazon. According to Fey, this is the best approach for quickly scaling your operation. Essentially, it means that you buy a product wholesale from a manufacturer and have them send it directly to Amazon. Then, Amazon packages and distributes the product for you. Fey says this is how he could start his enterprise and quickly build it without his own factory or warehouse.

But is that all there is to it? Fey says that after he was able to start procuring the product, he had to do a lot of work on the back end. This meant creating his seller profile on Amazon and making sure it reflected the brand that he wanted to create. He also started his own branding and label. According to Fey, another crucial step is marketing your brand outside of Amazon. But sure enough, Fey’s hard work paid off. His advice? “When you’re getting started, look for items to sell that you can build a brand around. Without your brand, you have nothing.”

As e-commerce takes over the sales world, more and more people are interested in breaking into the market. Fey says that if you do your research and put in the legwork, you may very well be able to scale your operation as quickly as he did.