Written in Partnership with Amir Bakian
Since 2015, the number of Venezuelan immigrants in the US has grown by 54%, according to the Migration Policy Institute. This translates to about 650,000 Venezuelans who’ve moved to the United States in search for a better life in pursuit of the American dream. Among them is Midocommerce founder Eberths Perozo. He moved to the US with a suitcase full of dreams and has since become one of America’s top e-commerce moguls.
Perozo quickly realized, however, that “making it” in the US would be easier said than done. Even with the help of Andres Corona, his long-time friend and business partner, Perozo learned the hard way that succeeding in e-commerce takes more than just guts.
“At first, we couldn’t find clients, wholesalers, or products,” says Perozo. “It was a complete struggle in the beginning. But it started working out after a while. We had some products take off and some money started rolling in.”
Eberths Perozo thought that the first stroke of success would snowball into something bigger, but more challenges were coming his way. “One day, Andres and I were scammed and we lost $10,000 in a snap,” says Perozo. “We knew losing that money wouldn’t actually kill us, but it stung enough to make us sit down and consider what we could do to prevent such things from happening again.”
Perozo and Corona then identified the main reason their store wasn’t earning as much as they wanted as quickly as they’d hoped. They realized that they already had a system, they had their stores set up, and they had some good products that were selling well, but they still couldn’t make the money they wanted due to lack of capital.
“Many brands have a minimum order, and we just didn’t have the money to buy those products at scale,” says Perozo. “This hurt our profitability, so we thought of a way to pool a bigger sum of money to help us fulfill minimum order quantities and offer a wider scale of products in our stores.”
Thus, Midocommerce was born.
For minimum purchases worth $300,000, for instance, Midocommerce would look for two clients who want to order $125,000 worth of goods apiece. Then, they would pool those clients’ funds with $50,000 of their own to purchase their own stocks.
“Boom, like that we hit the minimum order and everyone benefits,” says Perozo.
Through this model, Midocommerce has made more than $10M in gross sales for their 100+ clients.
According to Eberths Perozo, business has gotten pretty busy. They’ve expanded their business and they hired more employees to help with day-to-day operations. It’s through these employment opportunities that the two take pride in helping as many immigrants as they can to achieve their own American dreams.
While most of their wholesale products are sourced from the United States, Perozo and Corona provide jobs for both Americans and immigrants alike. “We have employees not only from Venezuela, but also from Mexico and El Salvador,” says Perozo. “We take fulfillment out of helping people who come from places like ours in pursuit of the American dream.”
Perozo vows to continue this commitment to proving that Venezuelans can make a change in the world and reach success. Midocommerce will continue to expand and pave the way for more people to work with them and find their own success, whether that’s as a client or an employee.
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