Hour Loop (HOUR) S-1/AIPO registration (amended)

As filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on January 3, 2022

Registration No. 333-260540

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

PRE-EFFECTIVE AMENDMENT NO. 2 TO

Form S-1

REGISTRATION STATEMENT

UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933

HOUR LOOP, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

8201 164th Ave NE #200

Redmond, WA 98052-7615

Telephone: (206) 385-0488

(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrant’s principal executive offices)

Sam Lai

Chief Executive Officer

8201 164th Ave NE #200

Redmond, WA 98052-7615

Telephone: (206) 385-0488 ext. 100

(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of agent for service)

Copies to:

Approximate date of commencement of proposed sale to the public: As soon as practicable after the effective date of this registration statement.

If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act of 1933 check the following box. [X]

If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, please check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. [  ]

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. [  ]

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. [  ]

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check market if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act. [  ]

CALCULATION OF REGISTRATION FEE

The registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the registrant shall file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement shall thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 or until the registration statement shall become effective on such date as the Commission, acting pursuant to Section 8(a) may determine.

The information in this preliminary prospectus is not complete and may be changed. These securities may not be sold until the registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This prospectus is not an offer to sell these securities, and it is not soliciting an offer to buy these securities, in any jurisdiction where the offer or sale is not permitted.

1,500,000 Shares

Hour Loop, Inc.

Common Stock

We are offering 1,500,000 shares of our common stock (“Common Stock”). This is our initial public offering. Prior to the offering, there has been no public market for our Common Stock. We expect the initial public offering price to be $4.00 per share.

We have applied to list our Common Stock on The Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “HOUR”. We believe that upon the completion of the offering contemplated by this prospectus, we will meet the standards for listing on The Nasdaq Capital Market. We cannot guarantee that we will be successful in listing our common stock on The Nasdaq Capital Market; however, we will not complete this offering unless we are so listed.

We are also seeking to register the issuance of warrants to purchase 75,000 shares of Common Stock (the “Representative’s Warrants”) to the underwriters as well as the 75,000 shares of Common Stock issuable upon exercise by the underwriters of the Representative’s Warrants at an exercise price of $5.00 per share (125% of public offering price).

We are an “emerging growth company” under the federal securities laws and, as such, we have elected to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for this prospectus and future filings. See “Prospectus Summary—Emerging Growth Company and a Smaller Reporting Company Status.”

Investing in our Common Stock involves a high degree of risk. Before buying any shares, you should carefully read the discussion of the material risks of investing in our Common Stock under the heading “Risk Factors” beginning on page 16 of this prospectus.

Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any state securities commission has approved or disapproved of these securities or passed on the adequacy or accuracy of this prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.

We have granted a 45-day option to the underwriters to purchase up to 225,000 additional shares of Common Stock solely to cover over-allotments, if any. If the underwriters exercise the option in full, the total underwriting discounts and commissions payable by us will be $[●], and the total proceeds to us, before expenses, will be $[●].

Delivery of the shares of Common Stock is expected to be made on or about [●], 2022.

EF HUTTON

division of Benchmark Investments, LLC

The date of this prospectus is [●], 2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS

No dealer, salesperson or other individual has been authorized to give any information or to make any representation other than those contained in this prospectus in connection with the offer made by this prospectus and, if given or made, such information or representations must not be relied upon as having been authorized by us. This prospectus does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities in any jurisdiction in which such an offer or solicitation is not authorized or in which the person making such offer or solicitation is not qualified to do so, or to any person to whom it is unlawful to make such offer or solicitation. Neither the delivery of this prospectus nor any sale made hereunder shall, under any circumstances, create any implication that there has been no change in our affairs or that information contained herein is correct as of any time subsequent to the date hereof.

For investors outside the United States: We have not done anything that would permit this offering or possession or distribution of this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. Persons outside the United States who come into possession of this prospectus must inform themselves, and observe any restrictions relating to, the offering of the shares of our common stock and the distribution of this prospectus outside the United States.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This prospectus contains forward-looking statements. Specifically, forward-looking statements may include statements relating to:

These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this prospectus and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date, and we do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, our actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include:

INDUSTRY AND MARKET DATA

We are responsible for the disclosure in this prospectus. However, this prospectus includes industry data that we obtained from internal surveys, market research, publicly available information and industry publications. The market research, publicly available information and industry publications that we use generally state that the information contained therein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. The information therein represents the most recently available data from the relevant sources and publications and we believe remains reliable. We did not fund and are not otherwise affiliated with any of the sources cited in this prospectus. Forward-looking information obtained from these sources is subject to the same qualifications and additional uncertainties regarding the other forward-looking statements in this prospectus.

TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHTS

We own or have rights to trademarks or trade names that we use in connection with the operation of our business, including our corporate names, logos and website names. In addition, we own or have the rights to copyrights, trade secrets and other proprietary rights that protect the content of our products and the formulations for such products. This prospectus may also contain trademarks, service marks and trade names of other companies, which are the property of their respective owners. Our use or display of third parties’ trademarks, service marks, trade names or products in this prospectus is not intended to, and should not be read to, imply a relationship with or endorsement or sponsorship of us. Solely for convenience, some of the copyrights, trade names and trademarks referred to in this prospectus are listed without their ©, ® and ™ symbols, but we will assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights to our copyrights, trade names and trademarks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

PROSPECTUS SUMMARY

This summary highlights certain information about us, this offering, and selected information contained in this prospectus. This summary is not complete and does not contain all of the information that you should consider before deciding whether to invest in our common stock. For a more complete understanding of the Company and this offering, we encourage you to read and consider the more detailed information in this prospectus, including “Risk Factors” and the financial statements and related notes. Unless the context otherwise requires, “Hour Loop,” “we,” “us,” “our,” or “the Company” refers to “Hour Loop, Inc.,” a Delaware corporation, and its consolidated subsidiaries.

Unless otherwise noted, the share and per share information in this prospectus reflects (i) a forward stock split of the outstanding common stock of the Company at a four point four-four for one (4.44-for-1) ratio, which was effected on September 27, 2021 and (ii) a reverse stock split of the outstanding common stock of the Company at a zero point seventy-five for one (0.75-for-1) ratio, which was effected on December 3, 2021.

Overview

Our Business

We are an online retailer engaged in e-commerce retailing in the U.S. market. We have operated as a third-party seller on www.amazon.com since 2013. We have also sold merchandise on our website at www.hourloop.com since 2013. We expanded our operations to www.walmart.com in October 2020. To date, we have generated practically all of our revenue as a third-party seller on www.amazon.com and only a negligible amount of revenue from our operations on our website at www.hourloop.com and as a third-party seller on www.walmart.com. We manage more than 100,000 stock-keeping units (“SKUs”). Product categories include home/garden décor, toys, kitchenware, apparels, and electronics. Our primary strategy is to bring most of our vendors product selections to the customers. We have advanced software that assists us in identifying product gaps so we can keep such products in stock year-round including the entirety of the last quarter (holiday season) of the calendar year (“Q4”). In upcoming years, we plan to expand our business rapidly by increasing the number of business managers, vendors and SKUs.

Our Financial Position

For the fiscal years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, we generated revenues of $38,655,264 and $26,564,693, respectively, and reported net income of $3,825,389 and loss of $(424,583), respectively, and cash flow from operating activities of $3,824,729 and cash flow used by operating activities of $(517,933), respectively. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, we generated revenues of $31,391,254 and $17,466,081, respectively, and reported net income of $2,268,511 and $1,238,523, respectively, and cash flow from operating activities of $1,664,907 and $910,956, respectively. As noted in our consolidated financial statements, as of September 30, 2021, we had retained earnings of $139,434.

Business Model

There are three main types of business models on Amazon: wholesale, private label and retail arbitrage. Our business model is wholesale, also known as reselling, which refers to buying products in bulk directly from the brand or manufacturer at a wholesale price and making a profit by selling the product on Amazon. We sell merchandise on Amazon and the sales are fulfilled by Amazon. We pay Amazon fees for allowing us to sell on their platform. Our relationship with Walmart is also similar. We pay Walmart fees for allowing us to sell our merchandise on their platform. As stated above, to date, we have generated only a negligible amount of revenues as a third-party seller on www.walmart.com.

The advantages of selling via a wholesale model:

The challenges of selling via a wholesale model:

Market description/opportunities

Total retail sales increased 6.9% to $4.04 trillion in 2020 from $3.78 trillion in 2019. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, which is around 21.3% of total retail sales for 2020, compared to 15.8% for 2019.

Amazon accounted for nearly a third of all e-commerce in the United States. With a more than 5% gain in e-commerce penetration for U.S. retail sales in 2020, we anticipate a larger market in the upcoming years.

Formation and Management

We were originally incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington on January 13, 2015. However, we converted from a Washington corporation to a Delaware corporation on April 7, 2021. The company was founded in 2013 by Sam Lai and Maggie Yu. With their vision, leadership, and software development skills, the company grew rapidly. From 2013 to 2020, sales grew from $0 to $38,655,264.

Competitive advantage

Among 9.7 million sellers on Amazon, we believe we have two main competitive advantages. First, we have strong operations and sales teams experienced in listing, shipment, advertising, reconciliation and sales. By delivering high quality results and enhancing procedures through the process, our teams are competitive. Second, we believe our proprietary software system gives us an advantage over our competition. The system is highly customized to our business model; it collects and processes large amounts of data every day to optimize our operation and sales. Through advanced software, we can identify product gaps and keep them in stock all year round.

With respect to our advertising strategy, we advertise those products that we estimate will have greater demand based on our experience. This lets us allocate our advertising budget in a fashion that delivers positive value. We advertise our products on Amazon. We allocate our advertising dollars prudently. This is accomplished by advertising items that deliver the most return for our advertising spending. We monitor the items being advertised by our competitors. On the operations side, we constantly refine our processes based on learnings from historical data. The combination of managing the business operations effectively along with allocating our advertising budget to high value items allows us to grow profitably. In cases, where the advertising is fierce, we allocate the spending appropriately. Our strategy for competing with larger competitors is to monitor their pricing and not compete with them when their pricing is low or at a loss. Competitors sell at low prices or at a loss due to a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, their desire to liquidate inventory or achieve short term increase in revenue. During these times, we avoid matching their prices. This strategy allows us to stay profitable.

Historical Performance

Our year end gross revenues and net profits from 2013 through 2020 is presented in the table below:

In 2019, approximately 100% of our revenue was through or with the Amazon sales platform and in 2020, 100% of our net revenue was through or with the Amazon sales platform.

Pricing Strategy and Policies

In an ideal world, we would like to price our products at key stone pricing or double wholesale cost. However, we operate in a hyper competitive environment and we must stay competitive. Therefore, we must draw a good balance between gross margin and revenue. Our main objectives focus on increasing volume and maximizing profits, which is achieved with a customized auto pricing system we developed internally, in combination with well-trained business managers’ judgment on pricing skills as well as constant monitoring. One principal feature of the pricing system is that it automatically syncs public data of competing offers from Amazon regularly, so business managers can make price settings and adjustments based on accurate data, and thus be able to set optimal selling prices for products. In addition, the system is constantly improved with new features and optimizations.

At a high level, our automated pricing tool helps us stay competitive while our business managers mainly focus on increasing gross margins. Our proprietary repricing tool analyze sales trend, projected sales, inventory age, inventory cost, potential profits, FBA fees, competing offers, and seasonality and determines an urgency level, then depending on the level of urgency, it automatically adjusts prices accordingly.

Business managers, after establishing the bases for prices, begin to develop pricing strategies for each product while taking the current market conditions, company goals (ex: increasing short-term or long-term profits) and strategies into consideration. Furthermore, business managers consider different marketing segments such as costs and competitions in order to develop effective pricing strategies and policies.

The following subsections provide more insight into various pricing strategies we have developed over the years. Our internal training mainly focuses on competition-based pricing policy and value-based pricing policy.

Buy Box on amazon.com is the top right section on a product page where customers can directly add items to their shopping carts. Since many sellers on amazon.com can sell the same product, they must compete to “win the Buy Box” for a certain product. Winning the Amazon Buy Box simply means that you were chosen for the Buy Box placement. When you win this placement, customers have a button to directly add your product to their carts, giving you an advantage over competing sellers. For a seller to be eligible for the Buy Box, they must meet a set of performance-based requirements including order defect rate, customer shopping experience, time and experience on the Amazon selling platform, and status as a professional seller.

Overview of Market & Competition

According to Marketplace Pulse, U.S. e-commerce grew 32% in 2020 to reach $790 billion, up from $598 billion the year before. According to the Department of Commerce, e-commerce represented 14% of total retail spending, a significant increase from 11.3% in 2019.

For the past ten years, e-commerce in the U.S. grew, on average, 15% year-over-year. In 2020, the market reached a total sales figure it would have otherwise gotten to in 2021. Thus, two years of e-commerce growth in one year.

According to Marketplace Pulse, Amazon was one of the big winners in the fourth quarter, a record quarter with nearly $250 billion in e-commerce spending. While during the first two quarters boosted by the pandemic - Q2 and Q3 - it grew at or below the overall U.S. e-commerce growth rate. In the fourth quarter, Amazon grew faster than the market (based on a naive comparison of its reported North America segment growth). Its fulfillment capacity allowed the company to be more confident with deliveries than its main rivals.

Target market size

Total Addressable Market

As an e-commerce company retailing in the U.S. market, our total addressable market covers all U.S. residents with Internet access, where segmentally includes repeat customers and new customers to online shopping every year.

Growth of E-commerce vs. Total Retail Sales

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce data, the e-commerce’s share of total retail sales has steadily been on the rise, where total volume increased by an incredible 44% of year-over-year growth. The total retail sales increased by 6.9% to $4.04 trillion from 2019 to 2020, and all growths came from the e-commerce sales. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, which is around 21.3% of total retail sales for the year compared to 15.8% in 2019. The strong growth of U.S. online spending shows the future potential of our target market size. The U.S. e-commerce sales accounted for more than 20% of total retail sales in 2020, and Amazon represented one-third of the total.

Growth of Amazon Prime Members

In 2020, Amazon had over 140 million Prime Members in the U.S., and we were seeing continuous year-over-year growth over the past years. The number of Amazon Prime users in the U.S. is forecasted to reach more than 153 million by 2022, with 3% annual growth.

Operational advantages

According to Marketplace Pulse, Hour Loop is one of the top 100 third-party sellers on U.S. Amazon. In 2019 there were only 18,000 sellers, out of 2,700,000 (or 0.67%) that exceeded $1 million in annual sales. Our sales in 2019 were $26.6 million.

Automation

We developed a proprietary software that is tailor made to all our operational needs. This includes managing order review process, shipment managements, inventory management, accounting, and complete end-to-end third-party integrations. This allows us to scale, reduce cost, and improve quality.

Profitability Management

We have experienced operations managers tracking team performances with key performance indicators. We have departments specializing in logistic costs, advertising, marketing, and product management. We hold monthly process reviews to identify early red flags and look for areas to optimize. Each quarter we set increasingly difficult bars both to grow gross margin and further reduce expenses.

Continuous Process Optimization

In order to improve operating efficiencies, we have effective process optimization adapting to the changing policies of the e-commerce marketplace. We continuously analyze our performance based on data. We conduct pricing, inventory planning and profitability analysis using this data. This analysis provides us with insights on the processes that add the most value. Using these insights, we develop guidelines that help us improve our operations. These guidelines are incorporated into our operations which include (but are not limited to), identifying and ordering at optimal inventory levels, managing merchandise storage costs, optimizing transit times, and pricing at appropriate levels. Our operations staff follows these guidelines which help them perform optimally. By continuously analyzing data, we are able to find insights for improving our business. This drives continuous process optimization and its implementation into our operations. In addition, our proprietary software allows us to continually accelerate process effectiveness based on specific requirements. Over time, our system eliminates unnecessary procedures that could be replaced by an advanced algorithm. For instance, we simplify Fulfillment by Amazon (“FBA”) shipments process through application programming interface (“API”) integration. Our self-developed system also tracks insightful analysis of our profitability, clearer visualizes the drivers and optimums to better manage operational costs. We monitor operational parameters that drive our business and proactively try to optimize them. These include fine tuning our item selection, managing our inventory levels, estimating demand and pricing to maximize our profitability.

Data-Driven Approach

We make decisions based on analysis and interpretation of the data sets rather than observations over the market trend. By standardizing processes and combine data-driven management, we can ensure the organization maintains consistency that is high quality. Our business managers use historical data and sales projection provided by our proprietary software to find potential product gaps and keep products in stock all year round. This advantage enables powerful predictive insights in correlating real-time data with past sales patterns.

Training Programs

Our effective training programs accelerates employees’ professional development and enables the company to hire new graduates or people without experience. Our training programs are very task-specific and we continually improve the materials in order to fit new industry needs. Other than the training material, we assign mentors to evaluate and monitor trainees’ performance at each stage of the training program.

Task Generalization

By generalizing each task with a standard process, we are able to shift assignments at regular intervals in order to find the most suitable employee for each specific task. Moreover, business managers are also able to rotate the vendors they manage easily. This allows our organization to effectively and consistently manage a vendor when a key employee who previously managed such vendor is no longer with the company. In addition, the task generalization allows the company to hire remote teams to further reduce labor costs.

Multicultural Management

We have a multicultural management team that is linguistically and culturally diverse in order to make judgments from different perspectives. Our remote teams in Taiwan and the Philippines provide diverse professional insights on specific tasks.

Technological advantages

Our software architecture was designed from the ground up to be scalable, secured, and easily extensible. By using JRuby on Rails, we can make use the best parts of Java, Ruby, and Rails without paying for their disadvantages. For example, we can use the massive collections of Java library, portability, speed, multi-threading, and maturity, but we do not have to be tied down with verbose code and strict typing. Rails allow us to quickly build web pages and integrate both the frontend and the backend. The application runs on Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) and can be easily scaled up to as many hosts as needed. It is accessible from a browser, so there is no need to setup or install anything on the client-side.

Cost advantage

Access to Low Product Costs

We lower our product average costs by direct import items that have high volume, purchasing in bulk with better prices, and negotiating discounts or rebates over increased purchase volume every year. Our strong growth of purchase every year allows us to negotiate better discounts than the rivals. Therefore, we have the cost advantages to compete at low prices.

Efficient Processes and Technologies

Our proprietary software allows us to tailor make tools based on our specific use cases and leverage technologies to greatly reduce manual operations. We also saved the expense of using third-party software in managing inventory, orders, product listings, and especially the advertising analytic tool. In fact, our search engine optimization allows us to have Advertising Cost of Sales (“ACoS”) significantly lower than the industry average of 27.59% in 2020.

Low Distribution and Logistic costs

We saved the cost of managing the warehouse, shipping, and product distribution as we are enrolled in Amazon’s FBA program. The program allows us to reduce fixed costs of the physical assets and quickly scale up the business without thinking much about infrastructure complexity. Apart from using the FBA program, we also use FedEx, Amazon partnered carrier, Amazon Freight, and Amazon Global Logistics to reduce expense. The competitive shipping rates we secured provide us a cost-efficient way to deliver shipments from overseas and domestic to Amazon warehouse.

Efficiently Managed Operations

We have a good management structure within the firm and a data-driven system that allows employees to manage tasks quickly and cost-efficiently. According to the CSI Market, the average annual revenue per employee of the retail industry in 2020 is $429,920, whereas in our company it is $644,254. Our revenue per employee is also higher than the industry rivals, such as Amazon $483,789, Walmart $238,165, and Costco $654,308. While our employees on average brought in higher revenues, our annual labor cost per employee is relatively low at less than $30,000 per year.

Reduced Labor Costs

Our labor cost is below 5% of our revenue. We leverage third-party logistic companies to forward or prep our shipments to Amazon, which reduces our logistic operation labor costs. We also worked with labor outsourcing partner located in Philippines. They provide virtual assistants to help us with data entries and repetitive work, which is a very cost-effective way to do a lot of grunt work.

List of key competitors by market size/share

Our key competitor is Amazon Retail. Amazon Retail frequently buys from the same brands we sell and sells them at a loss. Amazon Retails offers can be identified by the “Sold by Amazon” tag on Amazon’s site, and they are formed by the two components: 1) Amazon Vendor Central and 2) Sold by Amazon program. We do not consider other third-party sellers as key competitors, because none of them represent enough market share to influence sales outcome. The addressable market is incredibly vast, thus we believe there are plenty of opportunities for everyone.

Amazon Vendor Central

Amazon Vendor Central allows manufacturers and brand owners to sell directly to Amazon as a first-party seller. This is one of the key competitive factors as Amazon usually buys bulk from the brands and sells at a very low price, which leads to hyper-competitive pricing. On pricing control, Amazon does not always follow the Minimum Advertised Pricing guidelines from manufacturers, which also puts us at a disadvantage when selling the same products.

Sold by Amazon Program

With the rise of e-commerce platforms, Amazon is looking for opportunities to attract customers away from its retail store rivals. In 2019, they rolled out a new program entitled Sold by Amazon (“SBA”) to help sellers grow their business. This program gives brand owners the control of inventory management and listings with Amazon having the authority to constantly monitor and change the price to make sure customers are getting the best deals. Once the products are enrolled in the SBA program, Amazon will set the Minimum Gross Proceeds (“MGP”) to pay sellers the lowest possible amount on each unit sold. This new program is another threat to our company as Amazon is the one taking control of pricing, and they set the price very low in order to compete with competitors’ low price strategy.

Strengths and weaknesses of each competitor

Strengths of Sold by Amazon

First, ship from and Sold by Amazon creates competition for potential customers who prefer to buy products from Amazon rather than a third-party seller. Secondly, Amazon monitors and manages pricing which makes the product price range at a highly competitive level. In fact, the chance of Amazon winning buy box is even higher as they have the best deal for customers. Finally, Amazon is not restricted by its policy to third-party sellers. One of the critical policies is the restock limit. Amazon limits certain items restock quantities based on recent sales activity, and this affects the in-stock rate of popular items that needs a greater volume.

Weaknesses of Sold by Amazon

As Amazon focuses on sales more than relationships with vendors, they do not follow vendors’ Minimum Advertised Pricing (“MAP”) strictly. We believe this has led to the devaluation of brands and will have a negative impact on building a long-term relationship with the vendors. Once the vendor hands over their price control to Amazon, we believe it is unlikely for them to sell at their original target price further, and it influences their offline sales. And in fact, it makes a huge difference in profitability to both Amazon and the vendor when reacts to the competitive pricing changes.

Apart from the weaknesses of business relationships, we believe Amazon also has disadvantages in the niche marketplaces, where product offerings are narrower and more personalized. As a third-party seller, we cooperate with vendors in developing custom projects that bring product differentiation and scarcity effect. However, we believe Amazon only concentrates on the masses, which gives them the deficiency of having products that are targeted in certain market segments.

List potential substitute products that pose a credible threat to Company’s product

No potential substitute products would pose a credible threat to our company as we have developed a wide product diversification.

As a company that focus on reselling wholesale products, we have the resilience to find substitution of products or brands. We established product diversification by managing wide range of SKUs and continually expand our product categories. Our business strategy allows us to mitigate risk and generate significant profit by selling low volumes items diversified across a large variety of products.

In contrast, private labels sellers manage small number of SKUs that have large volumes in return with higher profit per unit. However, private labels have much higher risk when experiencing stagnant or declining sales as they would have lower capability to find sales replacements that are already established.

Strength of barriers to entry – risk of entry by additional competitors or alliances

Strength of Barriers to Entry

Higher Capital, Low Margin: Selling online is general low margin, but it requires high capital investment in order to purchase goods and run advertising.

Product Differentiation: Our proprietary software allows us to manage a huge number of SKUs. This allows us to participate in profitable long-tail products in addition to well-known popular ones. The turnover rate for long-tail products is slow, so newcomers are not likely to enter. It also requires a sophisticated system to manage. Furthermore, vendor relationships do not happen overnight.

Advanced System: We have already developed a highly sophisticated system which has been refined over time to become highly effective. Even if a new entrant has a team of the best software engineers in the world, it will still take them many years to refine their system. There is a myriad of intricacies as to the effectiveness of a system. Even if the new entrants have the system built, it will still take them years to collect historical sales data. By the time new entrants have done all that, our system would have continued to mature. This means we would be able to manage more SKUs more profitably with lower costs.

Risk of Entry- Potential Entrants

Vendor Vertical Integration: A vendor may forward integrate into the e-commerce marketplace in order to directly engage with their online customers.

Multichannel E-commerce: There is a chance of established online retail firms such as sellers on eBay, Walmart, and Etsy expanding their business to the Amazon marketplace.

Brick-and-Mortar: As the online retail is growing and offline retail is contracting, there are more brick-and-mortar stores migrating from offline to online.

Improving Sales of Popular Items and Securing the Inventories Without Paying Higher Storage Fees By Engaging the Services of Third Party Warehouses

As a retailer our success is heavily influenced by the inventory control of our suppliers (vendors). However, many of our suppliers are having difficulties to maintain their stock level due to various reasons, such as the shortage of shipping containers, lack of labor, or disruption in manufacturing. The situation exacerbates during the pandemic and in peak season. In order to secure the inventories, we start to order large quantities of popular items or buying them out to store in the Amazon fulfillment center (“FC”). However, the monthly storage fee of Amazon FC in peak season (Q4) is 3.5 times higher than normal season, which puts pressure on our profits. To maintain the balance of inventory level and margins, we are currently contracting the warehousing services of third-party warehouses, including, Rahl Distribution, Inc., Rite Prep Shipping, 3Plzen, Carolina Prep & Ship, and West FBA to support our overall stock planning process. By doing this, we can improve sales by preventing popular items from going out of stock, since we had secured adequate inventories ahead of time. Furthermore, we can also avoid paying higher Amazon storage fees in Q4.

Growth Objectives Outline

In 2021, we plan to grow the number of suppliers from 226 to 300, the number of business managers from 20 to 50, the number of active SKUs from 42k to 60k, and the number of total employees from 60 to 120. In 2022, we plan to grow the number of suppliers to 650, the number of business managers to 200, the number of active SKUs to130k, and the number of total employees to 250. In 2023, we plan to grow the number of suppliers to 1,200, the number of business managers to 350, the number of active SKUs to 200k, and the number of total employees to 500. In 2024, we plan to grow the number of suppliers to 2000, the number of business managers to 600, the number of active SKUs to 300k, and the number of total employees to 900. We believe in order to be successful in the long-term, we must invest in talents.

New business managers are the key to growth, they are analogous to new stores in a traditional brick and mortar retail business. Although the return on investment is extremely high over the long-term when investing in people, initially the return is very low or even negative. Therefore, as we continue to fuel the rapid growth, we will need to increase the number of people faster than the growth. We anticipate that ratio to improve when we reached critical mass of highly proficient business managers from the new hires.

Market and Supplier Development - Establishing a Vendor Acquisition Team

In order to continue growing at a rapid pace, we must onboard new vendors at scale. We anticipate establishing a vendor acquisition team dedicated to onboarding new vendors would drastically improve our vendor acquisition success rate. This team would specialize in the skills required to convince vendors to sell us their goods. Currently, this is being done by individual business managers with varying skill levels. The success rate by the individual business managers varies. Establishing this new team should ensure more consistency, so we can better plan for the future. The team would consist of three to five executive managers who are responsible for researching and contacting potential vendors. Furthermore, on a monthly basis, the team would be reviewing the lists of potential vendors who are not yet collaborating with us and reach out to them to reconnect. The objective of the vendor and supplier team is to on board 150 vendors per year and increasing our product range as well as diversifying our product categories.

COVID-19

Our business, results of operations, and financial condition may be materially adversely impacted if a public health outbreak, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, interferes with our ability, or the ability of our employees, contractors, suppliers, and other business partners to perform our and their respective responsibilities and obligations relative to the conduct of our business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect the economies and financial markets worldwide, resulting in an economic downturn that could impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. As a result, our ability to fund through public or private equity offerings, debt financings, and through other means at acceptable terms, if at all, may be disrupted, in the event our financing needs for the foreseeable future are not able to be met by our balances of cash, cash equivalents and cash generated from operations.

In addition, the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and various governmental responses in the United States has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect our business operations, including our ability to carry on business development activities, restrictions in business-related travel, delays or disruptions in our on-going projects, and unavailability of the employees of the Company or third parties with whom we conduct business, due to illness or quarantines, among others. Our business was negatively impacted by disruptions in our supply chain, which limited our ability to source merchandise, and limits on products fulfillment placed by Amazon. For example, we may be unable to launch new products, replenish inventory for existing products, ship into or receive inventory in our third-party warehouses in each case on a timely basis or at all. The extent to which COVID-19 could impact our business will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, and will depend on many factors, including the duration of the outbreak, the effect of travel restrictions and social distancing efforts in the United States and other countries, the scope and length of business closures or business disruptions, and the actions taken by governments to contain and treat the disease. As such, we cannot presently predict the scope and extent of any potential business shutdowns or disruptions. Possible effects may include, but are not limited to, disruption to our customers and revenue, absenteeism in our labor workforce, unavailability of products and supplies used in our operations, shutdowns that may be mandated or requested by governmental authorities, and a decline in the value of our assets, including various long-lived assets.

Bank of America Loan

On June 18, 2019, the Company issued a Promissory Note (the “BofA Note”) in the amount of $785,000 to Bank of America (the “Lender”) for a loan in the amount of $785,000. The BofA Note matures on June 18, 2024 and bears interest at a rate of 8.11% per annum. The monthly payment is $15,963, consisting of $11,398 of principal and $4,565 of interest. As of July 23, 2021, the aggregate principal amount of the BofA Note outstanding is $0. As of January 3, 2022, there is an outstanding balance of deferred interest of $27,996.

PPP Loan

On April 7, 2020, the Company issued a Promissory Note (the “Note”) in the amount of $27,012 under the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) to JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. (the “Lender”). The PPP, established as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”), which was enacted March 27, 2020, provides for loans to qualifying businesses for amounts up to 2.5 times of the average monthly payroll expenses of the qualifying business. The Note matures on April 7, 2022 and bears interest at a rate of 0.98% per annum, payable monthly commencing October 5, 2020, following an initial deferral period as specified under the PPP loan. The Note may be prepaid at any time prior to maturity with no prepayment penalties. The Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act (the “Flexibility Act”), signed on June 5, 2020, amended certain provisions of the PPP, including the deferral period and repayment terms. The Flexibility Act extends the deferral period of payments of PPP loan principal, interest, and fees to the date when the SBA makes a final decision on the borrower’s application for forgiveness, or 10 months after the last day of the covered period if a borrower has not applied for forgiveness (whichever is earlier). This extension applies regardless of the terms of the PPP and does not require an amendment of the PPP. As such, the Company has not made any payments on the Note during 2020.

Under the terms of the PPP loan, up to the entire amount of principal and accrued interest may be forgiven to the extent PPP loan proceeds are used for qualifying expenses as described in the CARES Act and applicable implementing guidance issued by the U.S. Small Business Administration under the PPP loan. On May 6, 2021, the entire amount of principal and accrued interest on the Note was forgiven.

Conversion of S Corporation to C Corporation

On June 30, 2021, the Company completed a corporate reorganization to convert its status from a S corporation to a C corporation with an effective date of July 27, 2021. Retained earnings in the amount of $4,170,418 were distributed by the Company to the S corporation stockholders ($2,085,209 to each of Mr. Lai and Ms. Yu) on July 27, 2021.

Affiliated Loans

December 2020 Loan

On December 31, 2020, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, made a loan (“December 2020 Loan”) to us of $1,041,353 in a single payment ($520,676 attributable to each of Mr. Lai and Mrs. Yu). The loan is memorialized in a Loan Agreement dated December 31, 2020. Pursuant to the terms of the Loan Agreement, the loan bore no interest and was payable on demand.

On September 16, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, and the Company amended and restated the Loan Agreement to modify the terms of the December 2020 Loan, whereby the interest rate became 2% per annum (applied retroactively) rather than non-interest bearing and maturity date became December 31, 2021 rather than payable on demand.

On December 31, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, and the Company amended and restated the Loan Agreement to modify the term of the December 2020 Loan, whereby the maturity date was extended from December 31, 2021 to January 31, 2022. 

As of January 3, 2022, the outstanding principal balance was $987,868 and accrued interest was $20,664 on the December 2020 Loan.

July 2021 Loan

On July 27, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, made a loan (“July 2021 Loan”) to us of the outstanding retained earnings of approximately $4,170,418 in a single payment ($2,085,209 attributable to each of Mr. Lai and Mrs. Yu). The loan is memorialized in a Loan Agreement dated October 15, 2021. Pursuant to the terms of the Loan Agreement, the loan bears interest of 2% per annum and the principal of the loan ($4,170,418) and accrued interest becomes due and payable on December 31, 2022.

As of January 3, 2022, the outstanding principal balance was approximately $4,170,418 and accrued interest was $36,325 on the July 2021 Loan.

Stock Splits

On September 22, 2021, our board of directors and shareholders approved a forward stock split in a ratio of 4.44-for-1 (“Forward Stock Split”) and on September 27, 2021, we filed a certificate of amendment to our Certificate of Incorporation implementing the Forward Stock Split in a ratio of 4.44-for-1, effective September 27, 2021. Therefore, on September 27, 2021, following the Forward Stock Split, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, each held 22,200,000 shares of common stock (for an aggregate of 44,400,000 shares of common stock).

On November 29, 2021, our board of directors and shareholders approved a reverse stock split in a ratio of 0.75-for-1 (“Reverse Stock Split”) and on December 1, 2021, we filed a certificate of amendment to our Certificate of Incorporation implementing the Reverse Stock Split in a ratio of 0.75-for-1, effective December 3, 2021. Therefore, on December 3, 2021, following the Reverse Stock Split, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, each held 16,650,000 shares of common stock (for an aggregate of 33,300,000 shares of common stock).

Except as otherwise indicated, all references to our common stock, share data, per share data and related information has been adjusted for the Forward Stock Split ratio of 4.44-for-1 and Reverser Stock Split ratio of 0.75-for-1 as if they had occurred at the beginning of the earliest period presented. The Forward Stock Split, divided each share of our outstanding common stock into 4.44 shares of common stock, and the Reverse Stock Split, divided each share of our outstanding common stock into 0.75 shares of common stock, without any change in the par value per share, and the Forward Stock Split and the Reverse Stock Split correspondingly adjusted, among other things, the exercise rate of our warrants into our common stock. No fractional shares were issued in connection with the Forward Stock Split and the Reverse Stock Split, and any fractional shares resulting from the Forward Stock Split and Reverse Stock Split were rounded up to the nearest whole share.

Approval of the Hour Loop, Inc. 2021 Equity Incentive Plan

On June 27, 2021, our Board of Directors and shareholders holding a majority of our outstanding shares of common stock approved the Hour Loop, Inc. 2021 Equity Incentive Plan (the “2021 Plan”). Under the 2021 Plan, a total of 4,995,000 (1,500,000 pre-stock splits) shares of common stock are authorized for issuance pursuant to the grant of stock options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock, restricted stock units, performance units, performance shares or other cash- or stock-based awards to officers, directors, employees and eligible consultants to the Company or its subsidiaries. Subject to adjustment as provided in the 2021 Plan, the maximum aggregate number of shares that may be issued under the 2021 Plan will be cumulatively increased on January 1, 2022 and on each subsequent January 1, by a number of shares equal to the smaller of (i) 3% of the number of shares of common stock issued and outstanding on the immediately preceding December 31, or (ii) an amount determined by our Board of Directors.

Summary Risk Factors

Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. These risks include, but are not limited to, the following:

Emerging Growth Company and Smaller Reporting Company Status

As a public reporting company with less than $1,070,000,000 in revenue during our last fiscal year, we qualify as an “emerging growth company” under the Jumpstart our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the “JOBS Act”). An emerging growth company may take advantage of certain reduced reporting requirements and is relieved of certain other significant requirements that are otherwise generally applicable to public companies. In particular, as an emerging growth company we:

We intend to take advantage of all of these reduced reporting requirements and exemptions, including the longer phase-in periods for the adoption of new or revised financial accounting standards under §107 of the JOBS Act. Our election to use the phase-in periods may make it difficult to compare our financial statements to those of non-emerging growth companies and other emerging growth companies that have opted out of the phase-in periods under §107 of the JOBS Act.

Certain of these reduced reporting requirements and exemptions were already available to us due to the fact that we also qualify as a “smaller reporting company” under SEC rules. For instance, smaller reporting companies are not required to obtain an auditor attestation and report regarding management’s assessment of internal control over financial reporting; are not required to provide a compensation discussion and analysis; are not required to provide a pay-for-performance graph or Chief Executive Officer pay ratio disclosure; and may present only two years of audited financial statements and related MD&A disclosure.

Under the JOBS Act, we may take advantage of the above-described reduced reporting requirements and exemptions for up to five years after our initial sale of common equity pursuant to a registration statement declared effective under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), or such earlier time that we no longer meet the definition of an emerging growth company. In this regard, the JOBS Act provides that we would cease to be an “emerging growth company” if we have more than $1,070,000,000 in annual revenues, have more than $700 million in market value of our Common stock held by non-affiliates, or issue more than $1.0 billion in principal amount of non-convertible debt over a three-year period. We would cease to be an emerging growth company on the last day of the fiscal year following the date of the fifth anniversary of our first sale of common equity securities under an effective registration statement or a fiscal year in which we have $1 billion in gross revenues. Further, under current SEC rules we will continue to qualify as a “smaller reporting company” for so long as we have a public float (i.e., the market value of common equity held by non-affiliates) of less than $250 million as of the last business day of our most recently completed second fiscal quarter.

Corporate Information

We were originally incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington on January 13, 2015. However, we converted from a Washington corporation to a Delaware corporation on April 7, 2021. Our principal executive offices are located at 8201 164th Ave NE #200, Redmond, WA 98052-7615 and our telephone number at that location is (206) 385-0488. Our wholly owned subsidiary Flywheel Consulting Limited also has an office in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. The address of our website is www.hourloop.com. The inclusion of our website address in this prospectus does not include or incorporate by reference the information on our website into this prospectus.

The name of the Company, the logos of the Company, and other trade names, trademarks or service marks of the Company appearing in this prospectus are the property of the Company. Trade names, trademarks and service marks of other organizations appearing in this prospectus are the property of their respective holders.

Nasdaq Capital Market Listing

We have applied to list of our common stock and warrants on the Nasdaq Capital Market. There is no assurance that our listing application will be approved by the Nasdaq Capital Market. The approval of our listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market is a condition of closing. If our application to the Nasdaq Capital Market is not approved or we otherwise determine that we will not be able to secure the listing of the common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market, we will not complete the offering.

(1) Unless we indicate otherwise, all information in this prospectus:

SELECTED HISTORICAL CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA

The following table presents our selected historical consolidated financial data for the periods indicated. The selected historical consolidated financial data for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019 and the balance sheet data as of December 31, 2020 and 2019 are derived from the audited financial statements. The summary historical financial data for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020 and the balance sheet data as of September 30, 2021 and 2020 are derived from our unaudited financial statements.

Historical results are included for illustrative and informational purposes only and are not necessarily indicative of results we expect in future periods, and results of interim periods are not necessarily indicative of results for the entire year. The data presented below should be read in conjunction with, and are qualified in their entirety by reference to, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto included elsewhere in this prospectus.

RISK FACTORS

An investment in our securities carries a significant degree of risk. You should carefully consider the following risks, as well as the other information contained in this prospectus, including our historical financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus, before you decide to purchase our securities. Any one of these risks and uncertainties has the potential to cause material adverse effects on our business, prospects, financial condition and operating results which could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements expressed by us and a significant decrease in the value of our common shares and warrants. Refer to “Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.”

We may not be successful in preventing the material adverse effects that any of the following risks and uncertainties may cause. These potential risks and uncertainties may not be a complete list of the risks and uncertainties facing us. There may be additional risks and uncertainties that we are presently unaware of, or presently consider immaterial, that may become material in the future and have a material adverse effect on us. You could lose all or a significant portion of your investment due to any of these risks and uncertainties.

Below is a summary of material risks, uncertainties and other factors that could have a material effect on the Company and its operations:

Risks Related to Our Business

We face intense competition.

The online retail business is rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. Some of our current and potential competitors have greater resources, longer histories, and/or more customers. They may secure better terms from vendors, adopt more aggressive pricing, and devote more resources to technology, infrastructure, fulfillment, and marketing.

Competition continues to intensify, including with the development of new business models and the entry of new and well-funded competitors, and as our competitors enter into business combinations or alliances and established companies in other market segments expand to become competitive with our business. In addition, new and enhanced technologies, including search, web and infrastructure computing services, digital content, and electronic devices continue to increase our competition. The Internet facilitates competitive entry and comparison shopping, which enhances the ability of new, smaller, or lesser-known businesses to compete against us. As a result of competition, our product offerings may not be successful, we may fail to gain or may lose business, and we may be required to increase our spending or lower prices, any of which could materially reduce our sales and profits.

Our business depends on our ability to build and maintain strong product listings on e-commerce platforms. We may not be able to maintain and enhance our product listings if we receive unfavorable customer complaints, negative publicity or otherwise fail to live up to consumers’ expectations, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations and growth prospects.

Maintaining and enhancing our product listings is critical in expanding and growing our business. However, a significant portion of our perceived performance to the customer depends on third parties outside of our control, including suppliers and third-party delivery agents as well as online retailers such as Amazon and Walmart. Because our agreements with our online retail partners are generally terminable at will, we may be unable to maintain these relationships, and our results of operations could fluctuate significantly from period to period. Because we rely on third parties to deliver our products, we are subject to shipping delays or disruptions caused by inclement weather, natural disasters, labor activism, health epidemics or bioterrorism. We may also experience shipping delays or disruptions due to other carrier-related issues relating to their own internal operational capabilities. Further, we rely on the business continuity plans of these third parties to operate during pandemics, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have limited ability to influence their plans, prevent delays, and/or cost increases due to reduced availability and capacity and increased required safety measures.

Customer complaints or negative publicity about our products, delivery times, or marketing strategies, even if not accurate, especially on blogs, social media websites and third-party market sites, could rapidly and severely diminish consumer view of our product listings and result in harm to our brands. Customers may also make safety-related claims regarding products sold through our online retail partners, such as Amazon, which may result in an online retail partner removing the product from its marketplace. We have from time to time experienced such removals and such removals may materially impact our financial results depending on the product that is removed and length of time that it is removed. We also use and rely on other services from third parties, such as our telecommunications services, and those services may be subject to outages and interruptions that are not within our control.

We experience significant fluctuations in our operating results and growth rate.

We are not always able to accurately forecast our growth rate. We base our expense levels and investment plans on sales estimates. A significant portion of our expenses and investments is fixed, and we are not always able to adjust our spending quickly enough if our sales are less than expected.

Our revenue growth may not be sustainable, and our percentage growth rates may decrease. Our revenue and operating profit growth depend on the continued growth of demand for the products offered by us, and our business is affected by general economic and business conditions. A softening of demand, whether caused by changes in customer preferences or a weakening of the U.S. economy, may result in decreased revenue or growth.

Our sales and operating results will also fluctuate for many other reasons, including due to factors described elsewhere in this section and the following:

We face risks related to successfully optimizing and operating our fulfillment and customer service operations.

Failures to adequately predict customer demand or otherwise optimize and operate our fulfillment and customer service operations successfully from time to time result in excess or insufficient fulfillment or customer service capacity, increased costs, and impairment charges, any of which could materially harm our business. As we continue to add fulfillment and customer service capability or add new businesses with different requirements, our fulfillment and customer service operations become increasingly complex and operating them becomes more challenging. There can be no assurance that we will be able to operate our operations effectively.

In addition, failure to optimize inventory in our fulfillment operations increases our net shipping cost by requiring long-zone or partial shipments. We may be unable to adequately staff our fulfillment and customer service operations. Our failure to properly handle such inventory or to accurately forecast product demand may result in us being unable to secure sufficient storage space or to optimize our fulfillment operations or cause other unexpected costs and other harm to our business and reputation.

We rely on a limited number of shipping companies to deliver inventory to us and completed orders to our customers. The inability to negotiate acceptable terms with these companies or performance problems or other difficulties experienced by these companies or by our own transportation systems could negatively impact our operating results and customer experience. In addition, our ability to receive inbound inventory efficiently and ship completed orders to customers also may be negatively affected by natural or man-made disasters, extreme weather, geopolitical events and security issues, labor or trade disputes, and similar events.

The variability in our retail business places increased strain on our operations.

Demand for our retail products can fluctuate significantly for many reasons, including as a result of seasonality, promotions, product launches, or unforeseeable events, such as in response to natural or man-made disasters, extreme weather, or geopolitical events. For example, we expect a disproportionate amount of our retail sales to occur during our fourth quarter. Our failure to stock or restock popular products in sufficient amounts such that we fail to meet customer demand could significantly affect our revenue and our future growth. When we overstock products, we may be required to take significant inventory markdowns or write-offs and incur commitment costs, which could materially reduce profitability. We regularly experience increases in our net shipping cost due to FBA fee increases, split-shipments, and additional long-zone shipments necessary to ensure timely delivery for the holiday season. If too many customers access the websites on which we engage in online retailing within a short period of time due to increased demand, we may experience system interruptions that make the websites unavailable or prevent us from efficiently fulfilling orders, which may reduce the volume of goods we offer or sell and the attractiveness of our products. In addition, we may be unable to adequately staff for fulfillment of orders and customer service during these peak periods and delivery and other fulfillment companies and customer service co-sourcers may be unable to meet the seasonal demand.

As a result of holiday sales, as of December 31 of each year, our cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities balances typically reach their highest level (other than as a result of cash flows provided by or used in investing and financing activities). This operating cycle results in a corresponding increase in accounts payable as of December 31. Our accounts payable balance generally declines during the first three months of the year, resulting in a corresponding decline in our cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities balances.

Continued increases in Amazon Marketplace fulfillment and storage fees could have an adverse impact on our profit margin and results of operations.

The Company utilizes Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (“FBA”) platform to store their products at the Amazon fulfillment center and to pack and distribute these products to customers. If Amazon continues to increase its FBA fees, our profit margin could be adversely affected.

A change in one or more of the Company’s vendors’ policies or the Company’s relationship with those vendors could adversely affect the Company’s results of operations.

The Company is dependent on its vendors to supply merchandise in a timely and efficient manner. If a vendor fails to deliver on its commitments, whether due to financial difficulties or other reasons, the Company could experience merchandise shortages that could lead to lost sales.

Historically, the Company has not experienced difficulty in obtaining satisfactory sources of supply and management believes that it will continue to have access to adequate sources of supply. No individual vendor exceeded 15% of purchases in fiscal 2020.

Our revenue is dependent upon maintaining our relationship with Amazon and failure to do so, or any restrictions on our ability to offer products on the Amazon Marketplace, could have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

To date, we have generated practically all of our revenue as a third-party seller on Amazon Marketplace. In 2019, approximately 100% of our revenue was through or with the Amazon sales platform and in 2020, 100% of our net revenue was through or with the Amazon sales platform. Therefore, we depend almost entirely on our relationship with Amazon for growth. In particular, we depend on our ability to offer products on the Amazon Marketplace. We also depend on Amazon for the timely delivery of products to customers. Any adverse change in our relationship with Amazon, including restrictions on the ability to offer products or termination of the relationship, could adversely affect our continued growth and financial condition and results of operations.

Our profit is dependent reimbursements from Amazon and any change in Amazon’s policy regarding reimbursement could adversely impact our ability to generate profits

Amazon reimburses us for any lost and damaged merchandise. These reimbursements form a substantial portion of our profits. Any change in Amazon policy regarding these reimbursements could impact our profit adversely. Additionally, we are dependent on Amazon’s ability to track and process these reimbursements. Any deficiencies in Amazon’s ability to process these reimbursements could impact our profits.

Loss of key personnel or the inability to attract, train and retain qualified employees could adversely affect the Company’s results of operations.

The Company believes that its future prospects depend, to a significant extent, on the services of its executive officers. Our future success will also depend on our ability to attract and retain qualified key personnel. The loss of the services of certain of the Company’s executive officers and other key management personnel could adversely affect the Company’s results of operations.

In addition to our executive officers, the Company’s business is dependent on our ability to attract, train and retain qualified team members. Our ability to meet our labor needs while controlling our costs is subject to external factors such as unemployment levels, health care costs and changing demographics. If we are unable to attract and retain adequate numbers of qualified team members, our operations and support functions could suffer. Those factors, together with increased wage and benefit costs, could adversely affect our results of operations.

We may face difficulties in meeting our labor needs to effectively operate our business.

We are heavily dependent upon our labor workforce. Our compensation packages are designed to provide benefits commensurate with our level of expected service. However, we face the challenge of filling many positions at wage scales that are appropriate to the industry and competitive factors. We also face other risks in meeting our labor needs, including competition for qualified personnel, overall unemployment levels, and increased costs associated with complying with regulations relating to COVID-19. Changes in any of these factors, including a shortage of available workforce, could interfere with our ability to adequately service our customers and could result in increasing labor costs.

Our business could be adversely affected by increased labor costs, including costs related to an increase in minimum wage and health care.

Labor is one of the primary components in the cost of operating our business. Increased labor costs, whether due to competition, unionization, increased minimum wage, state unemployment rates, health care, or other employee benefits costs may adversely impact our operating expenses. Additionally, there is no assurance that future health care legislation will not adversely impact our results or operations.

Breach of data security could harm our business and standing with our customers.

The protection of our supplier (vendor), employee and business data is critical to us. Our business, like that of most companies, involves confidential information about our employees, our suppliers and our Company. We rely on commercially available systems, software, tools and monitoring to provide security for processing, transmission and storage of all such data, including confidential information. Despite the security measures we have in place, our facilities and systems, and those of our third-party service providers, may be vulnerable to security breaches, acts of vandalism, computer viruses, misplaced or lost data, programming or human errors, or other similar events. Unauthorized parties may attempt to gain access to our systems or information through fraud or other means, including deceiving our employees or third-party service providers. The methods used to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems are also constantly changing and evolving, and may be difficult to anticipate or detect. We have implemented and regularly review and update our control systems, processes and procedures to protect against unauthorized access to or use of secured data and to prevent data loss. However, the ever-evolving threats mean we must continually evaluate and adapt our systems and processes, and there is no guarantee that they will be adequate to safeguard against all data security breaches or misuses of data. Any security breach involving the misappropriation, loss or other unauthorized disclosure of customer payment card or personal information or employee personal or confidential information, whether by us or our vendors, could damage our reputation, expose us to risk of litigation and liability, disrupt our operations, harm our business and have an adverse impact upon our net sales and profitability. As the regulatory environment related to information security, data collection and use, and privacy becomes increasingly rigorous, with new and changing requirements applicable to our business, compliance with those requirements could also result in additional costs. Further, if we are unable to comply with the security standards established by banks and the credit card industry, we may be subject to fines, restrictions and expulsion from card acceptance programs, which could adversely affect our retail operations.

We face risks related to system interruption and lack of redundancy

We experience occasional system interruptions and delays that make the websites on which we engage in online retailing unavailable or slow to respond and prevent us from efficiently accepting or fulfilling orders or providing services to third parties, which may reduce our net sales and the attractiveness of our products and services. Steps we take to add software and hardware, upgrade our systems and network infrastructure, and improve the stability and efficiency of our systems may not be sufficient to avoid system interruptions or delays that could adversely affect our operating results.

Our computer and communications systems and operations in the past have been, or in the future could be, damaged or interrupted due to events such as natural or man-made disasters, extreme weather, geopolitical events and security issues (including terrorist attacks and armed hostilities), computer viruses, physical or electronic break-ins, and similar events or disruptions. Any of these events could cause system interruption, delays, and loss of critical data, and could prevent us from accepting and fulfilling customer orders and providing services, which could make our product offerings less attractive and subject us to liability. Our systems are not fully redundant and our disaster recovery planning may not be sufficient. In addition, our insurance may not provide sufficient coverage to compensate for related losses. Any of these events could damage our reputation and be expensive to remedy.

Our hardware and software systems are vulnerable to damage, theft or intrusion that could harm our business.

Any failure of our computer hardware or software systems that causes an interruption in our operations or a decrease in inventory tracking could result in reduced net sales and profitability. Additionally, if any data intrusion, security breach, misappropriation or theft were to occur, we could incur significant costs in responding to such event, including responding to any resulting claims, litigation or investigations, which could harm our operating results.

Our inability or failure to protect our intellectual property rights, or any claimed infringement by us of third-party intellectual rights, could have a negative impact on our operating results.

Our trademark, trade secrets and other intellectual property, including proprietary software, are valuable assets that are critical to our success. The unauthorized reproduction or other misappropriation of our intellectual property could cause a decline in our revenue. In addition, any infringement or other intellectual property claim made against us could be time-consuming to address, result in costly litigation, cause product delays, require us to enter into royalty or licensing agreements or result in our loss of ownership or use of the intellectual property.

The Company’s business is influenced by general economic conditions.

The Company’s performance is subject to general economic conditions and their impact on levels of discretionary consumer spending. General economic conditions impacting discretionary consumer spending include, among others, wages and employment, consumer debt, reductions in net worth, residential real estate and mortgage markets, taxation, fuel and energy prices, interest rates, consumer confidence and other macroeconomic factors.

Consumer purchases of discretionary items generally decline during recessionary periods and other periods where disposable income is adversely affected. A downturn in the economy affects retailers disproportionately, as consumers may prioritize reductions in discretionary spending, which could have a direct impact on purchases of our products and services and adversely impact our results of operations. In addition, reduced consumer spending may drive us and our competitors to offer additional products at promotional prices, which would have a negative impact on gross profit.

Disruption of global capital and credit markets may have a material adverse effect on the Company’s liquidity and capital resources.

Distress in the financial markets has in the past and can in the future result in extreme volatility in security prices, diminished liquidity and credit availability. There can be no assurance that our liquidity will not be affected by changes in the financial markets and the global economy or that our capital resources will at all times be sufficient to satisfy our liquidity needs.

The Company is dependent upon access to capital for its liquidity needs.

The Company must have sufficient sources of liquidity to fund its working capital requirements and indebtedness. The future availability of financing will depend on a variety of factors, such as economic and market conditions, the availability of credit and the Company’s credit rating, as well as the Company’s reputation with potential lenders. These factors could materially adversely affect the Company’s ability to fund its working capital requirements, costs of borrowing, and the Company’s financial position and results of operations would be adversely impacted.

We may complete a future significant strategic transaction that may not achieve intended results or could increase the number of our outstanding shares or amount of outstanding debt or result in a change of control.

We will evaluate and may in the future enter into strategic transactions. Any such transaction could happen at any time following the closing of the merger, could be material to our business and could take any number of forms, including, for example, an acquisition, merger or a sale of all or substantially all of our assets.

Evaluating potential transactions and integrating completed ones may divert the attention of our management from ordinary operating matters. The success of these potential transactions will depend, in part, on our ability to realize the anticipated growth opportunities and cost synergies through the successful integration of the businesses we acquire with our existing business. Even if we are successful in integrating the acquired businesses, we cannot assure you that these integrations will result in the realization of the full benefit of any anticipated growth opportunities or cost synergies or that these benefits will be realized within the expected time frames. In addition, acquired businesses may have unanticipated liabilities or contingencies.

If we complete an acquisition, investment or other strategic transaction, we may require additional financing that could result in an increase in the number of our outstanding shares or the aggregate principal amount of our debt. A strategic transaction may result in a change in control of our company or otherwise materially and adversely affect our business.

Historically, we have experienced declines, and we may continue to experience fluctuation in our level of sales and results from operations.

A variety of factors has historically affected, and will continue to affect, our sales results and profit margins. These factors include general economic conditions; competition; actions taken by our competitors; consumer trends and preferences; access to third party marketplaces; and new product introductions and changes in our product mix.

There is no assurance that we will achieve positive levels of sales and earnings growth, and any decline in our future growth or performance could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

The ability of the Company to satisfy its liabilities and to continue as a going concern will continue to be dependent on the implementation of several items, the success of which is not certain.

The Company’s primary source of liquidity is available cash and cash equivalents, which is limited. Therefore, the ability of the Company to meet its liabilities and to continue as a going concern is dependent on, among other things, improved profitability, the continued implementation of its business strategy, the availability of future funding, implementation of one or more corporate initiatives to reduce costs at the parent company level and other strategic alternatives, including selling all or part of the remaining business or assets of the Company, and overcoming the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There can be no assurance that we will be successful in further implementing our business strategy or that the strategy, including the completed initiatives, will be successful in sustaining acceptable levels of sales growth and profitability.

Parties with whom the Company does business may be subject to insolvency risks or may otherwise become unable or unwilling to perform their obligations to the Company.

The Company is a party to contracts, transactions and business relationships with various third parties, including partners, vendors, suppliers, service providers and lenders, pursuant to which such third parties have performance, payment and other obligations to the Company. In some cases, the Company depends upon such third parties to provide essential products, services or other benefits, including with respect to merchandise, advertising, software development and support, logistics, other agreements for goods and services in order to operate the Company’s business in the ordinary course, extensions of credit, credit card accounts and related receivables, and other vital matters. Economic, industry and market conditions, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, could result in increased risks to the Company associated with the potential financial distress or insolvency of such third parties. The Company is not currently able to accurately determine the extent and scope of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on such third parties. If any of these third parties were to become subject to bankruptcy, receivership or similar proceedings, the rights and benefits of the Company in relation to its contracts, transactions and business relationships with such third parties could be terminated, modified in a manner adverse to the Company, or otherwise impaired. The Company cannot make any assurances that it would be able to arrange for alternate or replacement contracts, transactions or business relationships on terms as favorable as the Company’s existing contracts, transactions or business relationships, if at all. Any inability on the part of the Company to do so could negatively affect the Company’s cash flows, financial condition and results of operations.

Failure to comply with legal and regulatory requirements could adversely affect the Company’s results of operations.

The Company’s business is subject to a wide array of laws and regulations. Significant legislative changes that impact our relationship with our workforce (none of which is represented by unions) could increase our expenses and adversely affect our operations. Examples of possible legislative changes impacting our relationship with our workforce include changes to an employer’s obligation to recognize collective bargaining units, the process by which collective bargaining units are negotiated or imposed, minimum wage requirements, health care mandates, and changes in overtime regulations.

Our policies, procedures and internal controls are designed to comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including those imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Nasdaq Capital Market, as well as applicable employment laws. Additional legal and regulatory requirements increase the complexity of the regulatory environment in which we operate and the related cost of compliance. Failure to comply with such laws and regulations may result in damage to our reputation, financial condition and market price of our stock.

The certificate of incorporation and bylaws provides that state or federal court located within the state of Delaware will be the sole and exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our shareholders, which could limit its stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees.

Section 21 of our certificate of incorporation and Section 7.4 of our bylaws provides that “[u]nless the corporation consents in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the sole and exclusive forum for (i) any derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of the Corporation, (ii) any action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any director, officer or other employee of the Corporation to the Corporation or the Corporation’s stockholders, (iii) any action asserting a claim arising pursuant to any provision of the DGCL, or (iv) any action asserting a claim governed by the internal affairs doctrine shall be a state or federal court located in the county in which the principal office of the corporation in the State of Delaware is established, in all cases subject to the court’s having personal jurisdiction over the indispensable parties named as defendants. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the exclusive forum provision will not apply to suits brought to enforce any liability or duty created by the Exchange of 1934, as amended, the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or any claim for which the federal courts have exclusive or concurrent jurisdiction.” Therefore, the exclusive forum provision in our certificate of incorporation and our bylaws will not relieve us of our duty to comply with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder, and shareholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with these laws, rules and regulations.

This exclusive forum provision may limit a shareholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum of its choosing for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us or our directors, officers or other employees. In addition, shareholders who do bring a claim in the state or federal court in the State of Delaware could face additional litigation costs in pursuing any such claim, particularly if they do not reside in or near Delaware. The state or federal court of the State of Delaware may also reach different judgments or results than would other courts, including courts where a shareholder would otherwise choose to bring the action, and such judgments or results may be more favorable to us than to our shareholders. However, the enforceability of similar exclusive forum provisions in other companies’ certificates of incorporation have been challenged in legal proceedings, and it is possible that a court could find this type of provision to be inapplicable to, or unenforceable in respect of, one or more of the specified types of actions or proceedings. If a court were to find the exclusive forum provision contained in our certificate of incorporation and our bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we might incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions.

By purchasing common stock in this offering, you are bound by the fee-shifting provision contained in our bylaws, which may discourage you to pursue actions against us and could discourage shareholder lawsuits that might otherwise benefit the Company and its shareholders.

Section 7.4 of our bylaws provides that “[i]f any action is brought by any party against another party, relating to or arising out of these Bylaws, or the enforcement hereof, the prevailing party shall be entitled to recover from the other party reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses incurred in connection with the prosecution or defense of such action, provided that the provisions of this sentence shall not apply with respect to “internal corporate claims” as defined in Section 109(b) of the DGCL.”

Our bylaws provide that for this section, the term “attorneys’ fees” or “attorneys’ fees and costs” means the fees and expenses of counsel to the Company and any other parties asserting a claim subject to Section 7.4 of the bylaws, which may include printing, photocopying, duplicating and other expenses, air freight charges, and fees billed for law clerks, paralegals and other persons not admitted to the bar but performing services under the supervision of an attorney, and the costs and fees incurred in connection with the enforcement or collection of any judgment obtained in any such proceeding.

We adopted the fee-shifting provision to eliminate or decrease nuisance and frivolous litigation. We intend to apply the fee-shifting provision broadly to all actions except for claims brought under the Exchange Act and Securities Act.

There is no set level of recovery required to be met by a plaintiff to avoid payment under this provision. Instead, whoever is the prevailing party is entitled to recover the reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses incurred in connection with the prosecution or defense of such action. Any party who brings an action, and the party against whom such action is brought under Section 7.4 of our bylaws, which could include, but is not limited to former and current shareholders, Company directors, officers, affiliates, legal counsel, expert witnesses and other parties, are subject to this provision. Additionally, any party who brings an action, and the party against whom such action is brought under Section 7.4 of our bylaws, which could include, but is not limited to former and current shareholders, Company directors, officers, affiliates, legal counsel, expert witnesses and other parties, would be able to recover fees under this provision.

In the event you initiate or assert a claim against us, in accordance with the dispute resolution provisions contained in our Bylaws, and you do not, in a judgment prevail, you will be obligated to reimburse us for all reasonable costs and expenses incurred in connection with such claim, including, but not limited to, reasonable attorney’s fees and expenses and costs of appeal, if any. Additionally, this provision in Section 7.4 of our bylaws could discourage shareholder lawsuits that might otherwise benefit the Company and its shareholders.

THE FEE SHIFTING PROVISION CONTAINED IN THE BYLAWS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE DEEMED A WAIVER BY ANY HOLDER OF COMMON STOCK OF THE COMPANY’S COMPLIANCE WITH THE U.S. FEDERAL SECURITIES LAWS AND THE RULES AND REGULATIONS PROMULGATED THEREUNDER. THE FEE SHIFTING PROVISION CONTAINED IN THE BYLAWS DO NOT APPLY TO CLAIMS BROUGHT UNDER THE EXCHANGE ACT AND SECURITIES ACT.

Litigation may adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our business is subject to the risk of litigation by employees, consumers, partners, suppliers, competitors, stockholders, government agencies or others through private actions, class actions, administrative proceedings, regulatory actions or other litigation. The outcome of litigation, particularly class action lawsuits and regulatory actions, is difficult to assess or quantify. We may incur losses relating to these claims, and in addition, these proceedings could cause us to incur costs and may require us to devote resources to defend against these claims that could adversely affect our results of operations.

The effects of natural disasters, terrorism, acts of war, and public health issues may adversely affect our business.

Natural disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes may affect store and distribution center operations. In addition, acts of terrorism, acts of war, and military action both in the United States and abroad can have a significant effect on economic conditions and may negatively affect our ability to purchase merchandise from suppliers for sale to our customers. Public health issues, such as flu or other pandemics, whether occurring in the United States or abroad, could disrupt our operations and result in a significant part of our workforce being unable to operate or maintain our infrastructure or perform other tasks necessary to conduct our business. Additionally, public health issues may disrupt, or have an adverse effect on, our suppliers’ operations, our operations, our customers, or customer demand. Our ability to mitigate the adverse effect of these events depends, in part, upon the effectiveness of our disaster preparedness and response planning as well as business continuity planning. However, we cannot be certain that our plans will be adequate or implemented properly in the event of an actual disaster. We may be required to suspend operations in some or all our locations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Any significant declines in public safety or uncertainties regarding future economic prospects that affect customer spending habits could have a material adverse effect on customer purchases of our products.

A pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of an infectious disease, such as COVID-19, may materially and adversely affect our business.

Our business, results of operations, and financial condition may be materially adversely impacted if a public health outbreak, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, interferes with our ability, or the ability of our employees, contractors, suppliers, and other business partners to perform our and their respective responsibilities and obligations relative to the conduct of our business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect the economies and financial markets worldwide, resulting in an economic downturn that could impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. As a result, our ability to fund through public or private equity offerings, debt financings, and through other means at acceptable terms, if at all, may be disrupted, in the event our financing needs for the foreseeable future are not able to be met by our balances of cash, cash equivalents and cash generated from operations.

In addition, the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and various governmental responses in the United States has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect our business operations, including our ability to carry on business development activities, restrictions in business-related travel, delays or disruptions in our on-going projects, and unavailability of the employees of the Company or third parties with whom we conduct business, due to illness or quarantines, among others. Our business was negatively impacted by disruptions in our supply chain, which limited our ability to source merchandise, and limits on products fulfillment placed by Amazon. For example, we may be unable to launch new products, replenish inventory for existing products, ship into or receive inventory in our third-party warehouses in each case on a timely basis or at all. The extent to which COVID-19 could impact our business will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, and will depend on many factors, including the duration of the outbreak, the effect of travel restrictions and social distancing efforts in the United States and other countries, the scope and length of business closures or business disruptions, and the actions taken by governments to contain and treat the disease. As such, we cannot presently predict the scope and extent of any potential business shutdowns or disruptions. Possible effects may include, but are not limited to, disruption to our customers and revenue, absenteeism in our labor workforce, unavailability of products and supplies used in our operations, shutdowns that may be mandated or requested by governmental authorities, and a decline in the value of our assets, including various long-lived assets.

The loss of key senior management personnel or the failure to hire and retain highly skilled and other key personnel could negatively affect our business.

We depend on our senior management and other key personnel, particularly Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer. We do not have “key person” life insurance policies. We also rely on other highly skilled personnel. Competition for qualified personnel in the technology industry has historically been intense, particularly for software engineers, computer scientists, and other technical staff. The loss of any of our executive officers or other key employees or the inability to hire, train, retain, and manage qualified personnel, could harm our business.

The ability of Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, who are husband and wife, to control our business may limit or eliminate minority stockholders’ ability to influence corporate affairs.

As of the date of this prospectus, Mr. Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, who are husband and wife, beneficially owned an aggregate of 10,000,000 shares of our common stock, which represents 100% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock. Following this offering, Mr. Lai and Ms. Yu will control approximately 95.7% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock if all the common stock being offered are sold. Because of this voting control through the shares of the common stock they beneficially own, they are able to significantly influence membership of our Board of Directors, as well as all other matters requiring stockholder approval. The interests of our Chief Executive Officer and Senior Vice President may differ from the interests of other stockholders with respect to the issuance of shares, business transactions with or sales to other companies, selection of other officers and directors and other business decisions. The minority stockholders will have no way of overriding decisions made by our Chief Executive Officer and our Senior Vice President.

As a controlled company, we are not subject to all of the corporate governance rules of Nasdaq Capital Market.

The “controlled company” exception to the Nasdaq Capital Market rules provides that a company of which more than 50% of the voting power is held by an individual, group or another company, a “controlled company,” need not comply with certain requirements of the Nasdaq Capital Market corporate governance rules. As of the date of this prospectus, Mr. Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, who are husband and wife, beneficially owned an aggregate of 10,000,000 shares of our common stock, which represents 100% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock. Following this offering, Mr. Lai and Ms. Yu will control approximately 95.7% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock if all the common stock being offered are sold. If we obtain listing on Nasdaq Capital Market, we will be a “controlled company” within the meaning of the corporate governance rules of the Nasdaq Capital Market. Controlled companies are exempt from the Nasdaq Capital Market’s corporate governance rules requiring that listed companies have (i) a majority of the board of directors consist of “independent” directors under the listing standards of the Nasdaq Capital Market, (ii) a nominating/corporate governance committee composed entirely of independent directors and a written nominating/corporate governance committee charter meeting the requirements of Nasdaq Capital Market, and (iii) a compensation committee composed entirely of independent directors and a written compensation committee charter meeting the requirements of the Nasdaq Capital Market. We currently utilize and presently intend to continue to utilize these exemptions. As a result, we may not have a majority of independent directors, our nomination and corporate governance committee and compensation committee may not consist entirely of independent directors and such committees may not be subject to annual performance evaluations. Accordingly, you may not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the corporate governance requirements of the Nasdaq Capital Market. See “Management – Board Committees and Director Independence - Controlled Company and Director Independence”.

Government regulation is evolving and unfavorable changes could harm our business.

We are subject to general business regulations and laws, as well as regulations and laws specifically governing the Internet and e-commerce. These regulations and laws cover taxation, privacy, data protection, data security, network security, consumer protection, pricing, content, copyrights, distribution, transportation, mobile communications, electronic device certification, electronic waste, energy consumption, environmental regulation, electronic contracts and other communications, competition, employment, trade and protectionist measures, web services, the provision of online payment services, registration, licensing, and information reporting requirements, unencumbered Internet access to our services or access to our facilities, the design and operation of websites, health, safety, and sanitation standards, the characteristics, legality, and quality of products and services, product labeling, the commercial operation of unmanned aircraft systems, and other matters. It is not clear how existing laws governing issues such as property ownership, libel, privacy, data protection, data security, network security, and consumer protection apply to aspects of our operations such as the Internet, e-commerce, digital content, web services, electronic devices, advertising, and artificial intelligence technologies and services. A large number of jurisdictions regulate our operations, and the extent, nature, and scope of such regulations is evolving and expanding as the scope of our businesses expand. Unfavorable regulations, laws, decisions, or interpretations by government or regulatory authorities applying those laws and regulations, or inquiries, investigations, or enforcement actions threatened or initiated by them, could cause us to incur substantial costs, expose us to unanticipated civil and criminal liability or penalties (including substantial monetary fines), diminish the demand for, or availability of, our products, increase our cost of doing business, require us to change our business practices in a manner materially adverse to our business, damage our reputation, impede our growth, or otherwise have a material effect on our operations.

We are subject to product liability claims when people or property are harmed by the products we sell

Some of the products we sell expose us to product liability claims relating to personal injury, illness, death, or environmental or property damage, and can require product recalls or other actions. Although we maintain liability insurance, we cannot be certain that our coverage will be adequate for liabilities actually incurred or that insurance will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms, or at all. Some of our agreements with our vendors do not indemnify us from product liability.

We could face prior period sales tax and corporate tax liabilities, penalties and collection obligations

We make an assessment of sales tax payable including any related interest and penalties and accrues these estimates on the financial statements. Pursuant to the Wayfair decision, each state enforced sales tax collection at different dates. We collect and remit sales tax in accordance with the state regulations. We estimate that as of September 30, 2021, we owe $615,832 in sales taxes along with penalties and interest. However, we are currently engaged in the process of negotiating and remediating the amount of sales tax with the states in which we owe sales tax and anticipate becoming compliant in tax payments in such states in nine months from the date of this prospectus.

We are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the U.S. (federal and state). We may recognize additional tax expense and be subject to additional tax liabilities, including other liabilities for tax collection obligations due to changes in laws, regulations, administrative practices, principles, and interpretations related to tax, including changes to the global tax framework, competition, and other laws and accounting rules in various jurisdictions. Such changes could come about as a result of economic, political, and other conditions. An increasing number of jurisdictions are considering or have adopted laws or administrative practices that impose new tax measures, including revenue-based taxes, targeting online commerce and the remote selling of goods and services. These include new obligations to collect sales, consumption, value added, or other taxes on online marketplaces and remote sellers, or other requirements that may result in liability for third party obligations. Our results of operations and cash flows could be adversely effected by additional taxes of this nature imposed on us prospectively or retroactively or additional taxes or penalties resulting from the failure to comply with any collection obligations or failure to provide information about our customers, suppliers, and other third parties for tax reporting purposes to various government agencies. In some cases we also may not have sufficient notice to enable us to build systems and adopt processes to properly comply with new reporting or collection obligations by the effective date.

Our tax expense and liabilities are also affected by other factors, such as changes in our business operations, acquisitions, investments, entry into new businesses and geographies, intercompany transactions, losses incurred in jurisdictions for which we are not able to realize related tax benefits, the applicability of special or extraterritorial tax regimes, changes in foreign currency exchange rates, changes in our stock price, changes to our forecasts of income and loss and the mix of jurisdictions to which they relate, and changes in our tax assets and liabilities and their valuation. In the ordinary course of our business, there are many transactions and calculations for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. Significant judgment is required in evaluating and estimating our tax expense, assets, and liabilities.

We are also subject to tax controversies in various jurisdictions that can result in tax assessments against us. Developments in an audit, investigation, or other tax controversy can have a material effect on our operating results or cash flows in the period or periods for which that development occurs, as well as for prior and subsequent periods. We regularly assess the likelihood of an adverse outcome resulting from these proceedings to determine the adequacy of our tax accruals. Although we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, the final outcome of audits, investigations, and any other tax controversies could be materially different from our historical tax accruals.

Our current accounting and inventory tracking systems could impair our ability to file accurate and timely financial statements

The capabilities of our inventory systems to track prior period costs at an item level have not been operationalized for the purposes of calculating inventory value. This could hinder our ability to accurately track inventory value and could impact our ability to provide accurate financials in a timely manner. The company uses Quickbooks Online as both its accounting system and inventory tracking system. The company currently doesn’t conduct the period end review and accounting month end close using this accounting system. These procedures are done outside of the accounting system using spreadsheets. The manual nature of these procedures could lead to delay as well as errors in our financial reporting. These errors could include incorrect unit cost data for FIFO inventory valuation.

The company currently values inventory by using estimates of the number of units and cost per unit. Our ability to accurately estimate unit costs in a timely manner is dependent on our inventory tracking systems. The company plans on operationalizing an inventory tracking system in the next 9 months. The company plans to start conducting the period end review and accounting month end close using the accounting system over the next 9 months.

Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock, the Offering and Lack of Liquidity

Once our common stock is listed on Nasdaq Capital Market, there can be no assurance that we will be able to comply with Nasdaq Capital Market’s continued listing standards.

Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for shares of our common stock. As a condition to consummating this offering, our common stock offered in this prospectus must be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market or another national securities exchange. Accordingly, in connection with the filing of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, we have applied to list our common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbols “HOUR.” Assuming that our common stock is listed and after the consummation of this offering, there can be no assurance any broker will be interested in trading our stock. Therefore, it may be difficult to sell your shares of common stock if you desire or need to sell them. Our underwriters are not obligated to make a market in our common stock, and even if it makes a market, it can discontinue market making at any time without notice. Neither we nor the underwriters can provide any assurance that an active and liquid trading market in our common stock will develop or, if developed, that such market will continue.

Once our common stock is approved for listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market, there is no guarantee that we will be able to maintain such listing for any period of time by perpetually satisfying Nasdaq Capital Market’s continued listing requirements. Our failure to continue to meet these requirements may result in our common stock being delisted from Nasdaq Capital Market.

The market price of our common stock may be volatile, and you could lose all or part of your investment.

We cannot predict the prices at which our common stock will trade. The initial public offering price of our common stock will be determined by negotiations between us and the underwriters and may not bear any relationship to the market price at which our common stock will trade after this offering or to any other established criteria of the value of our business and prospects, and the market price of our common stock following this offering may fluctuate substantially and may be lower than the initial public offering price. The market price of our common stock following this offering will depend on a number of factors, including those described in this “Risk Factors” section, many of which are beyond our control and may not be related to our operating performance. In addition, the limited public float of our common stock following this offering will tend to increase the volatility of the trading price of our common stock. These fluctuations could cause you to lose all or part of your investment in our common stock, since you might not be able to sell your shares at or above the price you paid in this offering. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the market price of our common stock include, but are not limited to, the following:

In addition, the stock market in general has experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of companies. Broad market and industry factors may seriously affect the market price of our common stock, regardless of our actual operating performance. In addition, in the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market prices of a particular company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against that company. Securities litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and resources from our business. This could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

Our common stock may be subject to the “penny stock” rules in the future. It may be more difficult to resell securities classified as “penny stock.”

Our common stock may be subject to “penny stock” rules (generally defined as non-exchange traded stock with a per-share price below $5.00) in the future. While our common stock will not be considered “penny stock” following this offering since they will be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market, if we are unable to maintain that listing and our common stock is no longer listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market, unless we maintain a per-share price above $5.00, our common stock will become “penny stock.” These rules impose additional sales practice requirements on broker-dealers that recommend the purchase or sale of penny stocks to persons other than those who qualify as “established customers” or “accredited investors.” For example, broker-dealers must determine the appropriateness for non-qualifying persons of investments in penny stocks. Broker-dealers must also provide, prior to a transaction in a penny stock not otherwise exempt from the rules, a standardized risk disclosure document that provides information about penny stocks and the risks in the penny stock market. The broker-dealer also must provide the customer with current bid and offer quotations for the penny stock, disclose the compensation of the broker-dealer and its salesperson in the transaction, furnish monthly account statements showing the market value of each penny stock held in the customer’s account, provide a special written determination that the penny stock is a suitable investment for the purchaser, and receive the purchaser’s written agreement to the transaction.

Legal remedies available to an investor in “penny stocks” may include the following:

● If a “penny stock” is sold to the investor in violation of the requirements listed above, or other federal or states securities laws, the investor may be able to cancel the purchase and receive a refund of the investment.

● If a “penny stock” is sold to the investor in a fraudulent manner, the investor may be able to sue the persons and firms that committed the fraud for damages.

These requirements may have the effect of reducing the level of trading activity, if any, in the secondary market for a security that becomes subject to the penny stock rules. The additional burdens imposed upon broker-dealers by such requirements may discourage broker-dealers from effecting transactions in our securities, which could severely limit the market price and liquidity of our securities. These requirements may restrict the ability of broker-dealers to sell our common stock or our warrants and may affect your ability to resell our common stock and our warrants.

Many brokerage firms will discourage or refrain from recommending investments in penny stocks. Most institutional investors will not invest in penny stocks. In addition, many individual investors will not invest in penny stocks due, among other reasons, to the increased financial risk generally associated with these investments.

For these reasons, penny stocks may have a limited market and, consequently, limited liquidity. We can give no assurance at what time, if ever, our common stock or our warrants will not be classified as a “penny stock” in the future.

If the benefits of any proposed acquisition do not meet the expectations of investors, stockholders or financial analysts, the market price of our common stock may decline.

If the benefits of any proposed acquisition do not meet the expectations of investors or securities analysts, the market price of our common stock prior to the closing of the proposed acquisition may decline. The market values of our common stock at the time of the proposed acquisition may vary significantly from their prices on the date the acquisition target was identified.

In addition, broad market and industry factors may materially harm the market price of our common stock irrespective of our operating performance. The stock market in general has experienced price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of the particular companies affected. The trading prices and valuations of these stocks, and of our securities, may not be predictable. A loss of investor confidence in the market for retail stocks or the stocks of other companies which investors perceive to be similar to us could depress our stock price regardless of our business, prospects, financial conditions or results of operations. A decline in the market price of our securities also could adversely affect our ability to issue additional securities and our ability to obtain additional financing in the future.

Changes in accounting principles and guidance, or their interpretation, could result in unfavorable accounting charges or effects, including changes to our previously filed financial statements, which could cause our stock price to decline.

We prepare our consolidated financial statements in accordance with GAAP. These principles are subject to interpretation by the SEC and various bodies formed to interpret and create appropriate accounting principles and guidance. A change in these principles or guidance, or in their interpretations, may have a significant effect on our reported results and retroactively affect previously reported results.

As an “emerging growth company” under the JOBS Act, we are permitted to rely on exemptions from certain disclosure requirements.

We qualify as an “emerging growth company” under the JOBS Act. As a result, we are permitted to, and intend to, rely on exemptions from certain disclosure requirements. For so long as we are an emerging growth company, we will not be required to:

In addition, Section 102 of the JOBS Act also provides that an emerging growth company can take advantage of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act for complying with new or revised accounting standards. In other words, an emerging growth company can delay the adoption of certain accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. We have elected to take advantage of the benefits of this extended transition period. Our consolidated financial statements may therefore not be comparable to those of companies that comply with such new or revised accounting standards.

We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest to occur of: (i) the end of the first fiscal year in which our annual gross revenue is $1.07 billion or more; (ii) the end of the fiscal year in which the market value of our common shares that are held by non-affiliates is at least $700.0 million as of the last business day of our most recently completed second fiscal quarter; (iii) the date on which we have, during the previous three-year period, issued more than $1.0 billion in non-convertible debt; and (iv) the end of the fiscal year during which the fifth anniversary of this offering occurs.

Until such time, however, we cannot predict if investors will find our securities less attractive because we may rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our securities less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our securities and the price of our securities may be more volatile.

If we are unable to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting in the future, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and have an adverse effect on the value of our securities.

As a public company, we would be required to maintain internal control over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal control. Further, we will be required to report any changes in internal controls on a quarterly basis. In addition, we would be required to furnish a report by management on the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We will design, implement, and test the internal controls over financial reporting required to comply with these obligations. If we identify material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, if we are unable to comply with the requirements of Section 404 in a timely manner or assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting when required, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the value of our securities could be negatively affected. We also could become subject to investigations by the Commission or other regulatory authorities, which could require additional financial and management resources.

As an emerging growth company, our auditor will not be required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal controls.

Our independent registered public accounting firm will not be required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting while we are an emerging growth company. This means that the effectiveness of our financial operations may differ from our peer companies in that they may be required to obtain independent registered public accounting firm attestations as to the effectiveness of their internal controls over financial reporting and we are not. While our management will be required to attest to internal control over financial reporting and we will be required to detail changes to our internal controls on a quarterly basis, we cannot provide assurance that the independent registered public accounting firm’s review process in assessing the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting, if obtained, would not find one or more material weaknesses or significant deficiencies. Further, once we cease to be an emerging growth company and cease to be a smaller reporting company (as described below), we will be subject to independent registered public accounting firm attestation regarding the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting. Even if management finds such controls to be effective, our independent registered public accounting firm may decline to attest to the effectiveness of such internal controls and issue a qualified report.

We believe we will be considered a smaller reporting company and will be exempt from certain disclosure requirements, which could make our common stock less attractive to potential investors.

Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act defines a “smaller reporting company” as an issuer that is not an investment company, an asset-backed issuer, or a majority-owned subsidiary of a parent that is not a smaller reporting company and that:

As a smaller reporting company, we will not be required and may not include a Compensation Discussion and Analysis section in our proxy statements; we will provide only two years of financial statements; and we need not provide the table of selected financial data. We also will have other “scaled” disclosure requirements that are less comprehensive than issuers that are not smaller reporting companies which could make our common stock less attractive to potential investors, which could make it more difficult for our stockholders to sell their shares.

Upon becoming a public company, we will incur significant increased costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management will be required to devote substantial time to new compliance initiatives.

Upon becoming a public company, we will incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company. In addition, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has imposed various requirements on public companies including requiring establishment and maintenance of effective disclosure and financial controls. Our management and other personnel will need to devote a substantial amount of time to these compliance initiatives. Moreover, these rules and regulations have increased and will continue to increase our legal and financial compliance costs and will make some activities more time-consuming and costly. For example, we expect that these rules and regulations may make it more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain directors’ and officers’ liability insurance, which could make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified members of our board of directors. We cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we will incur as a public company or the timing of such costs.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective internal control over financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures. In particular, we must perform system and process evaluation and testing of our internal control over financial reporting to allow management to report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, as required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In addition, we will be required to have our independent registered public accounting firm attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting the later of our second annual report on Form 10-K or the first annual report on Form 10-K following the date on which we are no longer an emerging growth company or a smaller reporting company. Our compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act will require that we incur substantial accounting expense and expend significant management efforts. We currently do not have an internal audit group, and we will need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge. If we are not able to comply with the requirements of Section 404 in a timely manner, or if we or our independent registered public accounting firm identify deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting that are deemed to be material weaknesses, the value of our securities could decline and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the SEC or other regulatory authorities, which would require additional financial and management resources.

Our ability to successfully implement our business plan and comply with Section 404 requires us to be able to prepare timely and accurate financial statements. We expect that we will need to continue to improve existing, and implement new operational and financial systems, procedures and controls to manage our business effectively. Any delay in the implementation of, or disruption in the transition to, new or enhanced systems, procedures or controls, may cause our operations to suffer and we may be unable to conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is effective and to obtain an unqualified report on internal controls from our auditors as required under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This, in turn, could have an adverse impact on value of our securities, and could adversely affect our ability to access the capital markets.

Our management team will have immediate and broad discretion over the use of the net proceeds from this offering and we may use the net proceeds in ways with which you disagree.

The net proceeds from this offering will be immediately available to our management to use at their discretion. We currently intend to use the net proceeds from this offering to fund the purchase of inventory, expansion of our labor force, acquisition of other companies, working capital and general corporate purposes. See “Use of Proceeds.”

We intend to use no more than $1,008,532 of the net proceeds of this offering to repay the December 2020 Loan to us from Mr. Lai and Ms. Yu. As of January 3, 2022, $1,008,532 in principal and interest is outstanding on the December 2020 Loan. The December 2020 Loan bears interest at 2.00% per annum and has a maturity date of January 31, 2022.

We intend to use the balance of the net proceeds of this offering as follows: (i) $3,000,000 to fund the purchase of inventory and (ii) $715,202 to fund the expansion of our labor force.

The amounts that we actually spend for any specific purpose may vary significantly, and will depend on a number of factors including, but not limited to, the pace of progress of our research and development, market conditions, and our ability to qualify vendors. The “pace of progress of our research and development” refers to the speed in which we intend to advance our research and development efforts which would entail hiring additional software and analysis professionals as well as acquire computing hardware and software for their use. We believe that this investment will allow us to improve our processes further. These skilled professionals will conduct analysis to find insights to further improve our processes. We will implement those processes into the operations and expand our business.

You will be relying on the judgment of our management with regard to the use of these net proceeds, and you will not have the opportunity, as part of your investment decision, to assess whether the proceeds are being used appropriately. It is possible that the net proceeds will be invested in a way that does not yield a favorable, or any, return for us or our stockholders. The failure of our management to use such funds effectively could have a material adverse effect on our business, prospects, financial condition, and results of operation.

You will experience immediate and substantial dilution as a result of this offering and may experience additional dilution in the future.

You will incur immediate and substantial dilution as a result of this offering. After giving effect to the sale by us of up to $6,000,000 in common stock offered in this offering, at an assumed initial public offering price of $4.00 per common stock, and after deducting the underwriters’ discounts and commissions and other estimated offering expenses payable by us, investors in this offering can expect an immediate dilution of $3.89 per share, or 97.25%, at the assumed initial public offering price.

Anti-takeover provisions contained in our certificate of incorporation and bylaws, as well as provisions of Delaware law, could impair a takeover attempt.

The Company’s certificate of incorporation and bylaws contain provisions that could have the effect of delaying or preventing changes in control or changes in our management without the consent of our board of directors. These provisions include:

These provisions, alone or together, could delay hostile takeovers and changes in control of the Company or changes in our board of directors and management.

Any provision of our certificate of incorporation or bylaws or Delaware law that has the effect of delaying or deterring a change in control could limit the opportunity for our security holders to receive a premium for their securities and could also affect the price that some investors are willing to pay for our securities.

We have never paid dividends on our common stock and have no plans to do so in the future.

Holders of shares of our common stock are entitled to receive such dividends as may be declared by our board of directors. To date, we have paid no cash dividends on our shares of common stock and we do not expect to pay cash dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future. We intend to retain future earnings, if any, to provide funds for operations of our business. Therefore, any return investors in our common stock may have will be in the form of appreciation, if any, in the market value of their shares of common stock. See “Dividend Policy.”

We will indemnify and hold harmless our officers and directors to the maximum extent permitted by Delaware law.

Our certificate of incorporation provide that we will indemnify and hold harmless our officers and directors against claims arising from our activities, to the maximum extent permitted by Delaware law. If we were called upon to perform under our indemnification obligations, then the portion of our assets expended for such purpose would reduce the amount otherwise available for our business.

USE OF PROCEEDS

We estimate that the net proceeds from the sale of the common stock we are offering will be approximately $4,723,734 (based upon an assumed initial public offering price of $4.00 per share). If the Representative fully exercises the over-allotment option, the net proceeds of the common stock we sell will be $5,551,734. “Net proceeds” is what we expect to receive after deducting the underwriting discount and commission and estimated offering expenses payable by us.

We intend to use no more than $1,008,532 of the net proceeds of this offering to repay the December 2020 Loan to us from Mr. Lai and Ms. Yu. There was no use of the proceeds of such indebtedness other than short-term borrowings used for working capital. As of January 3, 2022, $1,008,532 in principal and interest is outstanding on the December 2020 Loan. The December 2020 Loan bears interest at 2.00% per annum and has a maturity date of January 3, 2022.

We intend to use the balance of the net proceeds of this offering as follows: (i) $3,000,000 to fund the purchase of inventory and (ii) $715,202 to fund the expansion of our labor force.

The amounts that we actually spend for any specific purpose may vary significantly, and will depend on a number of factors including, but not limited to, the pace of progress of our research and development, market conditions, and our ability to qualify vendors. The “pace of progress of our research and development” refers to the speed in which we intend to advance our research and development efforts which would entail hiring additional software and analysis professionals as well as acquire computing hardware and software for their use. We believe that this investment will allow us to improve our processes further. These skilled professionals will conduct analysis to find insights to further improve our processes. We will implement those processes into the operations and expand our business.

This expected use of net proceeds from this offering represents our intentions based upon our current plans and business conditions. The amounts and timing of our actual expenditures may vary significantly depending on numerous factors. As a result, our management will retain broad discretion over the allocation of the net proceeds from this offering. We may find it necessary or advisable to use the net proceeds from this offering for other purposes, and we will have broad discretion in the application of net proceeds from this offering.

Pending our use of the net proceeds from this offering, we intend to invest the net proceeds in a variety of capital preservation investments, including short-term, investment-grade, interest-bearing instruments and U.S. government securities.

DIVIDEND POLICY

We have not paid any cash dividends on our common stock and do not currently anticipate paying cash dividends in the foreseeable future. The agreements into which we may enter in the future, including indebtedness, may impose limitations on our ability to pay dividends or make other distributions on our capital stock. Payment of future dividends on our common stock, if any, will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on, among other things, our results of operations, cash requirements and surplus, financial condition, contractual restrictions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. We intend to retain future earnings, if any, for reinvestment in the development and expansion of our business.

CAPITALIZATION

The following table shows:

We derived this table from, and it should be read in conjunction with and is qualified in its entirety by reference to, our historical and unaudited pro forma consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes included elsewhere in this prospectus. You should also read this table in conjunction with “Selected Historical Consolidated Financial and Operating Data” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”

MARKET PRICE FOR COMMON EQUITY AND RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS

Market Information

Our common stock is not currently listed on any national securities exchange market or quoted on the OTC Markets. We have applied to list our common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “HOUR.” There is no assurance that our listing application will be approved by the Nasdaq Capital Market. The approval of our listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market is a condition of closing this offering.

Holders of Common Stock

As of January 3, 2022, there were approximately 5 record holders of our common stock. The number of record holders does not include beneficial owners of common stock whose shares are held in the names of banks, brokers, nominees or other fiduciaries.

We have not paid any cash dividends on our common stock and do not currently anticipate paying cash dividends in the foreseeable future. We intend to retain future earnings, if any, for reinvestment in the development and expansion of our business.

Historical Common Equity Transactions

In connection with our original formation as a Washington corporation on January 13, 2015, we issued 500 shares of common stock, no par value per share, to each of Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President (for an aggregate of 1,000 shares of common stock) for services rendered.

In connection with our conversion from a Washington corporation to a Delaware corporation on April 7, 2021, we issued 5,000,000 (pre-stock splits) shares of common stock, par value $0.0001 per share, to each of Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President (for an aggregate of 10,000,000 (pre-stock splits) shares of common stock).

On September 22, 2021, our board of directors and shareholders approved a forward stock split in a ratio of 4.44-for-1 (“Forward Stock Split”) and on September 27, 2021, we filed a certificate of amendment to our Certificate of Incorporation implementing the Forward Stock Split in a ratio of 4.44-for-1, effective September 27, 2021. Therefore, on September 27, 2021, following the Forward Stock Split, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, each held 22,200,000 shares of common stock (for an aggregate of 44,400,000 shares of common stock).

On November 29, 2021, our board of directors and shareholders approved a reverse stock split in a ratio of 0.75-for-1 (“Reverse Stock Split”) and on December 1, 2021, we filed a certificate of amendment to our Certificate of Incorporation implementing the Reverse Stock Split in a ratio of 0.75-for-1, effective December 3, 2021. Therefore, on December 3, 2021, following the Reverse Stock Split, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, each held 16,650,000 shares of common stock (for an aggregate of 33,300,000 shares of common stock).

On January 3, 2022, the Company issued 1,772 shares of Company common stock to each of Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, with a fair market value of $4.00 per share as compensation for services to the Company pursuant to the terms of their Executive Employment Agreements with the Company.

On January 3, 2022, the Company issued 1,750, 1,750, and 709 shares of Company common stock to Michael Lenner, Douglas Branch, and Alan Gao, respectively, with a fair market value of $4.00 per share as compensation for services as directors to the Company pursuant to the terms of their Director Agreements with the Company.

The above issuances/sales were made pursuant to an exemption from registration as set forth in Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act and/or Rule 506 of Regulation D promulgated under the Securities Act.

DILUTION

If you invest in our common stock in this offering, your interest will be diluted to the extent of the difference between the assumed initial public offering price per share of common stock and the pro forma net tangible book value per share of our common stock immediately after this offering.

The net tangible book value of our common stock as of September 30, 2021 was $137,573 or approximately $0.004 per share. Net tangible book value per share represents our total tangible assets less our total liabilities, divided by the number of shares of common stock.

Net tangible book value dilution per share to new investors represents the difference between the amount per share paid by purchasers in this offering and the pro forma net tangible book value per share of our common stock immediately after the completion of this offering. After giving effect to our issuance and sale of the common stock in this offering at the assumed initial public offering price of $4.00 per share, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, our pro forma net tangible book value as of September 30, 2021 would have been $3,852,775 or approximately $0.11 per share. This represents an immediate increase in net tangible book value of $0.136 per share to existing stockholders and an immediate dilution in net tangible book value of $3.89 per share to purchasers of common stock in this offering, as illustrated in the following table:

The following table sets forth, as of September 30, 2021, the assumed number of shares of common stock purchased from us, the total consideration paid to us and the average price per share paid by existing stockholders and to be paid by new investors purchasing common stock in this offering, after giving pro forma effect to the new investors in this offering at the initial public offering price of $4.00 per share, together with the total consideration paid an average price per share paid by each of these groups, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.

If the Representative’s over-allotment option is exercised in full for shares of common stock at the assumed offering price, the number of shares held by new investors will increase to 1,725,000, or approximately 4.93% of the total number of shares of common stock outstanding after this offering and the shares held by existing stockholders will be 33,300,000 shares of common stock but the percentage of shares held by existing stockholders will decrease to 95.07% of the total shares outstanding.

The foregoing discussion and tables above do not give effect to the dilution that would result from 75,000 shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of the Representative’s Warrant granted to the Underwriter upon completion of this offering, including the exercise of any over-allotment in full.

DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

This Description of Business section, along with other sections of this prospectus, includes statistical and other industry and market data that we obtained from industry publications and research, surveys and studies conducted by third parties. Industry publications and third-party research, surveys and studies generally indicate that their information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, although they do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of such information. While we believe that these industry publications and third-party research, surveys and studies are reliable, we have not independently verified such data and we do not make any representation as to the accuracy of the information. Unless the context otherwise requires, “Hour Loop,” “we,” “us,” “our,” or the “Company” refers to Hour Loop, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.

Overview

Our Business

We are an online retailer engaged in e-commerce retailing in the U.S. market. We have operated as a third-party seller on www.amazon.com since 2013. We have also sold merchandise on our website at www.hourloop.com since 2013. We expanded our operations to www.walmart.com in October 2020. To date, we have generated practically all of our revenue as a third-party seller on www.amazon.com and only a negligible amount of revenue from our operations on our website at www.hourloop.com and as a third-party seller on www.walmart.com. We manage more than 100,000 stock-keeping units (“SKUs”). Product categories include home/garden décor, toys, kitchenware, apparels, and electronics. Our primary strategy is to bring most of our vendors product selections to the customers. We have advanced software that assists us in identifying product gaps so we can keep such products in stock year-round including the entirety of the last quarter (holiday season) of the calendar year (“Q4”). In upcoming years, we plan to expand our business rapidly by increasing the number of business managers, vendors and SKUs.

Business Model

There are three main types of business models on Amazon: wholesale, private label and retail arbitrage. Our business model is wholesale, also known as reselling, which refers to buying products in bulk directly from the brand or manufacturer at a wholesale price and making a profit by selling the product on Amazon. We sell merchandise on Amazon and the sales are fulfilled by Amazon. We pay Amazon fees for allowing us to sell on their platform. Our relationship with Walmart is also similar. We pay Walmart fees for allowing us to sell our merchandise on their platform. As stated above, to date, we have generated only a negligible amount of revenues as a third-party seller on www.walmart.com.

The advantages of selling via a wholesale model:

The challenges of selling via a wholesale model:

Market description/opportunities

Total retail sales increased 6.9% to $4.04 trillion in 2020 from $3.78 trillion in 2019. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, which is around 21.3% of total retail sales for 2020, compared to 15.8% for 2019.

Amazon accounted for nearly a third of all e-commerce in the United States. With a more than 5% gain in e-commerce penetration for U.S. retail sales in 2020, we anticipate a larger market in the upcoming years.

Formation and Management We were originally incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington on January 13, 2015. However, we converted from a Washington corporation to a Delaware corporation on April 7, 2021. The company was founded in 2013 by Sam Lai and Maggie Yu. With their vision, leadership, and software development skills, the company grew rapidly. From 2013 to 2020, sales grew from $0 to $38,655,264.

Competitive advantage

Among 9.7 million sellers on Amazon, we believe we have two main competitive advantages. First, we have strong operations and sales teams experienced in listing, shipment, advertising, reconciliation and sales. By delivering high quality results and enhancing procedures through the process, our teams are competitive. Second, we believe our proprietary software system gives us an advantage over our competition. The system is highly customized to our business model; it collects and processes large amounts of data every day to optimize our operation and sales. Through advanced software, we can identify product gaps and keep them in stock all year round.

With respect to our advertising strategy, we advertise those products that we estimate will have greater demand based on our experience. This lets us allocate our advertising budget in a fashion that delivers positive value. We advertise our products on Amazon. We allocate our advertising dollars prudently. This is accomplished by advertising items that deliver the most return for our advertising spending. We monitor the items being advertised by our competitors. On the operations side, we constantly refine our processes based on learnings from historical data. The combination of managing the business operations effectively along with allocating our advertising budget to high value items allows us to grow profitably. In cases, where the advertising is fierce, we allocate the spending appropriately. Our strategy for competing with larger competitors is to monitor their pricing and not compete with them when their pricing is low or at a loss. Competitors sell at low prices or at a loss due to a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, their desire to liquidate inventory or achieve short term increase in revenue. During these times, we avoid matching their prices. This strategy allows us to stay profitable.

Historical Performance

Our year end gross revenues and net profits from 2013 through 2020 is presented in the table below:

In 2019, approximately 100% of our revenue was through or with the Amazon sales platform and in 2020, 100% of our net revenue was through or with the Amazon sales platform.

Pricing Strategy and Policies

In an ideal world, we would like to price our products at key stone pricing or double wholesale cost. However, we operate in a hyper competitive environment and we must stay competitive. Therefore, we must draw a good balance between gross margin and revenue. Our main objectives focus on increasing volume and maximizing profits, which is achieved with a customized auto pricing system we developed internally, in combination with well-trained business managers’ judgment on pricing skills as well as constant monitoring. One principal feature of the pricing system is that it automatically syncs public data of competing offers from Amazon regularly, so business managers can make price settings and adjustments based on accurate data, and thus be able to set optimal selling prices for products. In addition, the system is constantly improved with new features and optimizations.

At a high level, our automated pricing tool helps us stay competitive while our business managers mainly focus on increasing gross margins. Our proprietary repricing tool analyze sales trend, projected sales, inventory age, inventory cost, potential profits, FBA fees, competing offers, and seasonality and determines an urgency level, then depending on the level of urgency, it automatically adjusts prices accordingly.

Business managers, after establishing the bases for prices, begin to develop pricing strategies for each product while taking the current market conditions, company goals (ex: increasing short-term or long-term profits) and strategies into consideration. Furthermore, business managers consider different marketing segments such as costs and competitions in order to develop effective pricing strategies and policies.

The following subsections provide more insight into various pricing strategies we have developed over the years. Our internal training mainly focuses on competition-based pricing policy and value-based pricing policy.

Buy Box on amazon.com is the top right section on a product page where customers can directly add items to their shopping carts. Since many sellers on amazon.com can sell the same product, they must compete to “win the Buy Box” for a certain product. Winning the Amazon Buy Box simply means that you were chosen for the Buy Box placement. When you win this placement, customers have a button to directly add your product to their carts, giving you an advantage over competing sellers. For a seller to be eligible for the Buy Box, they must meet a set of performance-based requirements including order defect rate, customer shopping experience, time and experience on the Amazon selling platform, and status as a professional seller.

Overview of Market & Competition

According to Marketplace Pulse, U.S. e-commerce grew 32% in 2020 to reach $790 billion, up from $598 billion the year before. According to the Department of Commerce, e-commerce represented 14% of total retail spending, a significant increase from 11.3% in 2019.

For the past ten years, e-commerce in the U.S. grew, on average, 15% year-over-year. In 2020, the market reached a total sales figure it would have otherwise gotten to in 2021. Thus, two years of e-commerce growth in one year.

According to Marketplace Pulse, Amazon was one of the big winners in the fourth quarter, a record quarter with nearly $250 billion in e-commerce spending. While during the first two quarters boosted by the pandemic - Q2 and Q3 - it grew at or below the overall U.S. e-commerce growth rate. In the fourth quarter, Amazon grew faster than the market (based on a naive comparison of its reported North America segment growth). Its fulfillment capacity allowed the company to be more confident with deliveries than its main rivals.

Target market size

Total Addressable Market

As an e-commerce company retailing in the U.S. market, our total addressable market covers all U.S. residents with Internet access, where segmentally includes repeat customers and new customers to online shopping every year.

Growth of E-commerce vs. Total Retail Sales

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce data, the e-commerce’s share of total retail sales has steadily been on the rise, where total volume increased by an incredible 44% of year-over-year growth. The total retail sales increased by 6.9% to $4.04 trillion from 2019 to 2020, and all growths came from the e-commerce sales. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, which is around 21.3% of total retail sales for the year compared to 15.8% in 2019. The strong growth of U.S. online spending shows the future potential of our target market size. The U.S. e-commerce sales accounted for more than 20% of total retail sales in 2020, and Amazon represented one-third of the total.

Growth of Amazon Prime Members

In 2020, Amazon had over 140 million Prime Members in the U.S., and we were seeing continuous year-over-year growth over the past years. The number of Amazon Prime users in the U.S. is forecasted to reach more than 153 million by 2022, with 3% annual growth.

Operational advantages

According to Marketplace Pulse, Hour Loop is one of the top 100 third-party sellers on U.S. Amazon. In 2019 there were only 18,000 sellers, out of 2,700,000 (or 0.67%) that exceeded $1 million in annual sales. Our sales in 2019 were $26.6 million.

Automation

We developed a proprietary software that is tailor made to all our operational needs. This includes managing order review process, shipment managements, inventory management, accounting, and complete end-to-end third-party integrations. This allows us to scale, reduce cost, and improve quality.

Profitability Management

We have experienced operations managers tracking team performances with key performance indicators. We have departments specializing in logistic costs, advertising, marketing, and product management. We hold monthly process reviews to identify early red flags and look for areas to optimize. Each quarter we set increasingly difficult bars both to grow gross margin and further reduce expenses.

Continuous Process Optimization

In order to improve operating efficiencies, we have effective process optimization adapting to the changing policies of the e-commerce marketplace. We continuously analyze our performance based on data. We conduct pricing, inventory planning and profitability analysis using this data. This analysis provides us with insights on the processes that add the most value. Using these insights, we develop guidelines that help us improve our operations. These guidelines are incorporated into our operations which include (but are not limited to), identifying and ordering at optimal inventory levels, managing merchandise storage costs, optimizing transit times, and pricing at appropriate levels. Our operations staff follows these guidelines which help them perform optimally. By continuously analyzing data, we are able to find insights for improving our business. This drives continuous process optimization and its implementation into our operations. In addition, our proprietary software allows us to continually accelerate process effectiveness based on specific requirements. Over time, our system eliminates unnecessary procedures that could be replaced by an advanced algorithm. For instance, we simplify Fulfillment by Amazon (“FBA”) shipments process through application programming interface (“API”) integration. Our self-developed system also tracks insightful analysis of our profitability, clearer visualizes the drivers and optimums to better manage operational costs. We monitor operational parameters that drive our business and proactively try to optimize them. These include fine tuning our item selection, managing our inventory levels, estimating demand and pricing to maximize our profitability.

Data-Driven Approach

We make decisions based on analysis and interpretation of the data sets rather than observations over the market trend. By standardizing processes and combine data-driven management, we can ensure the organization maintains consistency that is high quality. Our business managers use historical data and sales projection provided by our proprietary software to find potential product gaps and keep products in stock all year round. This advantage enables powerful predictive insights in correlating real-time data with past sales patterns.

Training Programs

Our effective training programs accelerates employees’ professional development and enables the company to hire new graduates or people without experience. Our training programs are very task-specific and we continually improve the materials in order to fit new industry needs. Other than the training material, we assign mentors to evaluate and monitor trainees’ performance at each stage of the training program.

Task Generalization

By generalizing each task with a standard process, we are able to shift assignments at regular intervals in order to find the most suitable employee for each specific task. Moreover, business managers are also able to rotate the vendors they manage easily. This allows our organization to effectively and consistently manage a vendor when a key employee who previously managed such vendor is no longer with the company. In addition, the task generalization allows the company to hire remote teams to further reduce labor costs.

Multicultural Management

We have a multicultural management team that is linguistically and culturally diverse in order to make judgments from different perspectives. Our remote teams in Taiwan and the Philippines provide diverse professional insights on specific tasks.

Technological advantages

Our software architecture was designed from the ground up to be scalable, secured, and easily extensible. By using JRuby on Rails, we can make use the best parts of Java, Ruby, and Rails without paying for their disadvantages. For example, we can use the massive collections of Java library, portability, speed, multi-threading, and maturity, but we do not have to be tied down with verbose code and strict typing. Rails allow us to quickly build web pages and integrate both the frontend and the backend. The application runs on Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) and can be easily scaled up to as many hosts as needed. It is accessible from a browser, so there is no need to setup or install anything on the client-side.

Cost advantage

Access to Low Product Costs

We lower our product average costs by direct import items that have high volume, purchasing in bulk with better prices, and negotiating discounts or rebates over increased purchase volume every year. Our strong growth of purchase every year allows us to negotiate better discounts than the rivals. Therefore, we have the cost advantages to compete at low prices.

Efficient Processes and Technologies

Our proprietary software allows us to tailor make tools based on our specific use cases and leverage technologies to greatly reduce manual operations. We also saved the expense of using third-party software in managing inventory, orders, product listings, and especially the advertising analytic tool. In fact, our search engine optimization allows us to have Advertising Cost of Sales (“ACoS”) significantly lower than the industry average of 27.59% in 2020.

Low Distribution and Logistic costs

We saved the cost of managing the warehouse, shipping, and product distribution as we are enrolled in Amazon’s FBA program. The program allows us to reduce fixed costs of the physical assets and quickly scale up the business without thinking much about infrastructure complexity. Apart from using the FBA program, we also use FedEx, Amazon partnered carrier, Amazon Freight, and Amazon Global Logistics to reduce expense. The competitive shipping rates we secured provide us a cost-efficient way to deliver shipments from overseas and domestic to Amazon warehouse.

Efficiently Managed Operations

We have a good management structure within the firm and a data-driven system that allows employees to manage tasks quickly and cost-efficiently. According to the CSI Market, the average annual revenue per employee of the retail industry in 2020 is $429,920, whereas in our company it is $644,254. Our revenue per employee is also higher than the industry rivals, such as Amazon $483,789, Walmart $238,165, and Costco $654,308. While our employees on average brought in higher revenues, our annual labor cost per employee is relatively low at less than $30,000 per year.

Reduced Labor Costs

Our labor cost is below 5% of our revenue. We leverage third-party logistic companies to forward or prep our shipments to Amazon, which reduces our logistic operation labor costs. We also worked with labor outsourcing partner located in Philippines. They provide virtual assistants to help us with data entries and repetitive work, which is a very cost-effective way to do a lot of grunt work.

List of key competitors by market size/share

Our key competitor is Amazon Retail. Amazon Retail frequently buys from the same brands we sell and sells them at a loss. Amazon Retails offers can be identified by the “Sold by Amazon” tag on Amazon’s site, and they are formed by the two components: 1) Amazon Vendor Central and 2) Sold by Amazon program. We do not consider other third-party sellers as key competitors, because none of them represent enough market share to influence sales outcome. The addressable market is incredibly vast, thus we believe there are plenty of opportunities for everyone.

Amazon Vendor Central

Amazon Vendor Central allows manufacturers and brand owners to sell directly to Amazon as a first-party seller. This is one of the key competitive factors as Amazon usually buys bulk from the brands and sells at a very low price, which leads to hyper-competitive pricing. On pricing control, Amazon does not always follow the Minimum Advertised Pricing guidelines from manufacturers, which also puts us at a disadvantage when selling the same products.

Sold by Amazon Program

With the rise of e-commerce platforms, Amazon is looking for opportunities to attract customers away from its retail store rivals. In 2019, they rolled out a new program entitled Sold by Amazon (“SBA”) to help sellers grow their business. This program gives brand owners the control of inventory management and listings with Amazon having the authority to constantly monitor and change the price to make sure customers are getting the best deals. Once the products are enrolled in the SBA program, Amazon will set the Minimum Gross Proceeds (“MGP”) to pay sellers the lowest possible amount on each unit sold. This new program is another threat to our company as Amazon is the one taking control of pricing, and they set the price very low in order to compete with competitors’ low price strategy.

Strengths and weaknesses of each competitor

Strengths of Sold by Amazon

First, ship from and Sold by Amazon creates competition for potential customers who prefer to buy products from Amazon rather than a third-party seller. Secondly, Amazon monitors and manages pricing which makes the product price range at a highly competitive level. In fact, the chance of Amazon winning buy box is even higher as they have the best deal for customers. Finally, Amazon is not restricted by its policy to third-party sellers. One of the critical policies is the restock limit. Amazon limits certain items restock quantities based on recent sales activity, and this affects the in-stock rate of popular items that needs a greater volume.

Weaknesses of Sold by Amazon

As Amazon focuses on sales more than relationships with vendors, they do not follow vendors’ Minimum Advertised Pricing (“MAP”) strictly. We believe this has led to the devaluation of brands and will have a negative impact on building a long-term relationship with the vendors. Once the vendor hands over their price control to Amazon, we believe it is unlikely for them to sell at their original target price further, and it influences their offline sales. And in fact, it makes a huge difference in profitability to both Amazon and the vendor when reacts to the competitive pricing changes.

Apart from the weaknesses of business relationships, we believe Amazon also has disadvantages in the niche marketplaces, where product offerings are narrower and more personalized. As a third-party seller, we cooperate with vendors in developing custom projects that bring product differentiation and scarcity effect. However, we believe Amazon only concentrates on the masses, which gives them the deficiency of having products that are targeted in certain market segments.

List potential substitute products that pose a credible threat to Company’s product

No potential substitute products would pose a credible threat to our company as we have developed a wide product diversification.

As a company that focus on reselling wholesale products, we have the resilience to find substitution of products or brands. We established product diversification by managing wide range of SKUs and continually expand our product categories. Our business strategy allows us to mitigate risk and generate significant profit by selling low volumes items diversified across a large variety of products.

In contrast, private labels sellers manage small number of SKUs that have large volumes in return with higher profit per unit. However, private labels have much higher risk when experiencing stagnant or declining sales as they would have lower capability to find sales replacements that are already established.

Strength of barriers to entry – risk of entry by additional competitors or alliances

Strength of Barriers to Entry

Higher Capital, Low Margin: Selling online is general low margin, but it requires high capital investment in order to purchase goods and run advertising.

Product Differentiation: Our proprietary software allows us to manage a huge number of SKUs. This allows us to participate in profitable long-tail products in addition to well-known popular ones. The turnover rate for long-tail products is slow, so newcomers are not likely to enter. It also requires a sophisticated system to manage. Furthermore, vendor relationships do not happen overnight.

Advanced System: We have already developed a highly sophisticated system which has been refined over time to become highly effective. Even if a new entrant has a team of the best software engineers in the world, it will still take them many years to refine their system. There is a myriad of intricacies as to the effectiveness of a system. Even if the new entrants have the system built, it will still take them years to collect historical sales data. By the time new entrants have done all that, our system would have continued to mature. This means we would be able to manage more SKUs more profitably with lower costs.

Risk of Entry- Potential Entrants

Vendor Vertical Integration: A vendor may forward integrate into the e-commerce marketplace in order to directly engage with their online customers.

Multichannel E-commerce: There is a chance of established online retail firms such as sellers on eBay, Walmart, and Etsy expanding their business to the Amazon marketplace.

Brick-and-Mortar: As the online retail is growing and offline retail is contracting, there are more brick-and-mortar stores migrating from offline to online.

Improving Sales of Popular Items and Securing the Inventories Without Paying Higher Storage Fees By Engaging the Services of Third Party Warehouses

As a retailer our success is heavily influenced by the inventory control of our suppliers (vendors). However, many of our suppliers are having difficulties to maintain their stock level due to various reasons, such as the shortage of shipping containers, lack of labor, or disruption in manufacturing. The situation exacerbates during the pandemic and in peak season. In order to secure the inventories, we start to order large quantities of popular items or buying them out to store in the Amazon fulfillment center (“FC”). However, the monthly storage fee of Amazon FC in peak season (Q4) is 3.5 times higher than normal season, which puts pressure on our profits. To maintain the balance of inventory level and margins, we are currently contracting the warehousing services of third-party warehouses, including, Rahl Distribution, Inc., Rite Prep Shipping, 3Plzen, Carolina Prep & Ship, and West FBA to support our overall stock planning process. By doing this, we can improve sales by preventing popular items from going out of stock, since we had secured adequate inventories ahead of time. Furthermore, we can also avoid paying higher Amazon storage fees in Q4.

Growth Objectives Outline

In 2021, we plan to grow the number of suppliers from 226 to 300, the number of business managers from 20 to 50, the number of active SKUs from 42k to 60k, and the number of total employees from 60 to 120. In 2022, we plan to grow the number of suppliers to 650, the number of business managers to 200, the number of active SKUs to130k, and the number of total employees to 250. In 2023, we plan to grow the number of suppliers to 1,200, the number of business managers to 350, the number of active SKUs to 200k, and the number of total employees to 500. In 2024, we plan to grow the number of suppliers to 2000, the number of business managers to 600, the number of active SKUs to 300k, and the number of total employees to 900. We believe in order to be successful in the long-term, we must invest in talents.

New business managers are the key to growth, they are analogous to new stores in a traditional brick and mortar retail business. Although the return on investment is extremely high over the long-term when investing in people, initially the return is very low or even negative. Therefore, as we continue to fuel the rapid growth, we will need to increase the number of people faster than the growth. We anticipate that ratio to improve when we reached critical mass of highly proficient business managers from the new hires.

Market and Supplier Development - Establishing a Vendor Acquisition Team

In order to continue growing at a rapid pace, we must onboard new vendors at scale. We anticipate establishing a vendor acquisition team dedicated to onboarding new vendors would drastically improve our vendor acquisition success rate. This team would specialize in the skills required to convince vendors to sell us their goods. Currently, this is being done by individual business managers with varying skill levels. The success rate by the individual business managers varies. Establishing this new team should ensure more consistency, so we can better plan for the future. The team would consist of three to five executive managers who are responsible for researching and contacting potential vendors. Furthermore, on a monthly basis, the team would be reviewing the lists of potential vendors who are not yet collaborating with us and reach out to them to reconnect. The objective of the vendor and supplier team is to on board 150 vendors per year and increasing our product range as well as diversifying our product categories.

COVID-19

Our business, results of operations, and financial condition may be materially adversely impacted if a public health outbreak, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, interferes with our ability, or the ability of our employees, contractors, suppliers, and other business partners to perform our and their respective responsibilities and obligations relative to the conduct of our business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect the economies and financial markets worldwide, resulting in an economic downturn that could impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. As a result, our ability to fund through public or private equity offerings, debt financings, and through other means at acceptable terms, if at all, may be disrupted, in the event our financing needs for the foreseeable future are not able to be met by our balances of cash, cash equivalents and cash generated from operations.

In addition, the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and various governmental responses in the United States has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect our business operations, including our ability to carry on business development activities, restrictions in business-related travel, delays or disruptions in our on-going projects, and unavailability of the employees of the Company or third parties with whom we conduct business, due to illness or quarantines, among others. Our business was negatively impacted by disruptions in our supply chain, which limited our ability to source merchandise, and limits on products fulfillment placed by Amazon. For example, we may be unable to launch new products, replenish inventory for existing products, ship into or receive inventory in our third-party warehouses in each case on a timely basis or at all. The extent to which COVID-19 could impact our business will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, and will depend on many factors, including the duration of the outbreak, the effect of travel restrictions and social distancing efforts in the United States and other countries, the scope and length of business closures or business disruptions, and the actions taken by governments to contain and treat the disease. As such, we cannot presently predict the scope and extent of any potential business shutdowns or disruptions. Possible effects may include, but are not limited to, disruption to our customers and revenue, absenteeism in our labor workforce, unavailability of products and supplies used in our operations, shutdowns that may be mandated or requested by governmental authorities, and a decline in the value of our assets, including various long-lived assets.

Bank of America Loan

On June 18, 2019, the Company issued a Promissory Note (the “BofA Note”) in the amount of $785,000 to Bank of America (the “Lender”) for a loan in the amount of $785,000. The BofA Note matures on June 18, 2024 and bears interest at a rate of 8.11% per annum. The monthly payment is $15,963, consisting of $11,398 of principal and $4,565 of interest. As of July 23, 2021, the aggregate principal amount of the BofA Note outstanding is $0. As of January 3, 2022, there is an outstanding balance of deferred interest of $27,996.

PPP Loan

On April 7, 2020, the Company issued a Promissory Note (the “Note”) in the amount of $27,012 under the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) to JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. (the “Lender”). The PPP, established as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”), which was enacted March 27, 2020, provides for loans to qualifying businesses for amounts up to 2.5 times of the average monthly payroll expenses of the qualifying business. The Note matures on April 7, 2022 and bears interest at a rate of 0.98% per annum, payable monthly commencing October 5, 2020, following an initial deferral period as specified under the PPP loan. The Note may be prepaid at any time prior to maturity with no prepayment penalties. The Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act (the “Flexibility Act”), signed on June 5, 2020, amended certain provisions of the PPP, including the deferral period and repayment terms. The Flexibility Act extends the deferral period of payments of PPP loan principal, interest, and fees to the date when the SBA makes a final decision on the borrower’s application for forgiveness, or 10 months after the last day of the covered period if a borrower has not applied for forgiveness (whichever is earlier). This extension applies regardless of the terms of the PPP and does not require an amendment of the PPP. As such, the Company has not made any payments on the Note during 2020.

Under the terms of the PPP loan, up to the entire amount of principal and accrued interest may be forgiven to the extent PPP loan proceeds are used for qualifying expenses as described in the CARES Act and applicable implementing guidance issued by the U.S. Small Business Administration under the PPP loan. On May 6, 2021, the entire amount of principal and accrued interest on the Note was forgiven.

Conversion of S Corporation to C Corporation

On June 30, 2021, the Company completed a corporate reorganization to convert its status from a S corporation to a C corporation with an effective date of July 27, 2021. Retained earnings in the amount of $4,170,418 were distributed by the Company to the S corporation stockholders ($2,085,209 to each of Mr. Lai and Ms. Yu) on July 27, 2021.

Affiliated Loans

December 2020 Loan

On December 31, 2020, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, made a loan (“December 2020 Loan”) to us of $1,041,353 in a single payment ($520,676 attributable to each of Mr. Lai and Mrs. Yu). The loan is memorialized in a Loan Agreement dated December 31, 2020. Pursuant to the terms of the Loan Agreement, the loan bore no interest and was payable on demand.

On September 16, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, and the Company amended and restated the Loan Agreement to modify the terms of the December 2020 Loan, whereby the interest rate became 2% per annum (applied retroactively) rather than non-interest bearing and maturity date became December 31, 2021 rather than payable on demand.

On December 31, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, and the Company amended and restated the Loan Agreement to modify the term of the December 2020 Loan, whereby the maturity date was extended from December 31, 2021 to January 31, 2022.

As of January 3, 2022, the outstanding principal balance was $987,868 and accrued interest was $20,664 on the December 2020 Loan.

July 2021 Loan

On July 27, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, made a loan (“July 2021 Loan”) to us of the outstanding retained earnings of approximately $4,170,418 in a single payment ($2,085,209 attributable to each of Mr. Lai and Mrs. Yu). The loan is memorialized in a Loan Agreement dated October 15, 2021. Pursuant to the terms of the Loan Agreement, the loan bears interest of 2% per annum and the principal of the loan ($4,170,418) and accrued interest becomes due and payable on December 31, 2022.

As of January 3, 2022, the outstanding principal balance was approximately $4,170,418 and accrued interest was $36,325 on the July 2021 Loan. 

Stock Splits

On September 22, 2021, our board of directors and shareholders approved a forward stock split in a ratio of 4.44-for-1 (“Forward Stock Split”) and on September 27, 2021, we filed a certificate of amendment to our Certificate of Incorporation implementing the Forward Stock Split in a ratio of 4.44-for-1, effective September 27, 2021. Therefore, on September 27, 2021, following the Forward Stock Split, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, each held 22,200,000 shares of common stock (for an aggregate of 44,400,000 shares of common stock).

On November 29, 2021, our board of directors and shareholders approved a reverse stock split in a ratio of 0.75-for-1 (“Reverse Stock Split”) and on December 1, 2021, we filed a certificate of amendment to our Certificate of Incorporation implementing the Reverse Stock Split in a ratio of 0.75-for-1, effective December 3, 2021. Therefore, on December 3, 2021, following the Reverse Stock Split, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, each held 16,650,000 shares of common stock (for an aggregate of 33,300,000 shares of common stock).

Except as otherwise indicated, all references to our common stock, share data, per share data and related information has been adjusted for the Forward Stock Split ratio of 4.44-for-1 and Reverser Stock Split ratio of 0.75-for-1 as if they had occurred at the beginning of the earliest period presented. The Forward Stock Split, divided each share of our outstanding common stock into 4.44 shares of common stock, and the Reverse Stock Split, divided each share of our outstanding common stock into 0.75 shares of common stock, without any change in the par value per share, and the Forward Stock Split and the Reverse Stock Split correspondingly adjusted, among other things, the exercise rate of our warrants into our common stock. No fractional shares were issued in connection with the Forward Stock Split and the Reverse Stock Split, and any fractional shares resulting from the Forward Stock Split and Reverse Stock Split were rounded up to the nearest whole share.

Approval of the Hour Loop, Inc. 2021 Equity Incentive Plan

On June 27, 2021, our Board of Directors and shareholders holding a majority of our outstanding shares of common stock approved the Hour Loop, Inc. 2021 Equity Incentive Plan (the “2021 Plan”). Under the 2021 Plan, a total of 4,995,000 (1,500,000 pre-stock splits) shares of common stock are authorized for issuance pursuant to the grant of stock options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock, restricted stock units, performance units, performance shares or other cash- or stock-based awards to officers, directors, employees and eligible consultants to the Company or its subsidiaries. Subject to adjustment as provided in the 2021 Plan, the maximum aggregate number of shares that may be issued under the 2021 Plan will be cumulatively increased on January 1, 2022 and on each subsequent January 1, by a number of shares equal to the smaller of (i) 3% of the number of shares of common stock issued and outstanding on the immediately preceding December 31, or (ii) an amount determined by our Board of Directors.

Employees

As of January 3, 2022, we had three full-time employees. As of January 3, 2022, our subsidiary, Flywheel Consulting Limited had 60 full time employees. None of our employees or Flywheel Consulting Limited’s employees is represented by a union. Flywheel Consulting Limited and us consider our relations with our employees to be good.

Legal Proceedings

From time to time, we are involved in various claims and legal actions arising in the ordinary course of business. To the knowledge of our management, there are no legal proceedings currently pending against us which we believe would have a material effect on our business, financial position or results of operations and, to the best of our knowledge, there are no such legal proceedings contemplated or threatened.

Properties

Our corporate headquarters are located at 8201 164th Ave NE #200, Redmond, WA 98052-7615, where we rent a virtual office from an unaffiliated third party under a virtual office/meeting room agreement. This agreement provides for daily telephone answering, messaging and fax services, and paid access to conference rooms on an as-needed basis. The virtual office arrangement expires on August 31, 2021. Terms of the virtual office arrangement provide for a rent payment of $29.50 per month. We also lease a warehouse located at Floor 35, No. 1123-1139, Fangshan Beier Road, Xiangbei Industry District, Xiamin, China, where we lease approximately 1680 square feet from an unaffiliated third party. This lease expires on January 1, 2022. Terms of this lease provides for a base rent payment of RMB$21,840 (US$3,116) per month. Our wholly owned subsidiary, Flywheel Consulting Limited also has an office at 27F. No.251, Mingquan 1^st Rd., Xinxing Dist., Kaohsiungcity, Taiwan, where we lease approximately 2,230 rentable square feet of office space from an unaffiliated third party. This lease expires on August 31, 2022. Terms of the Taiwan office lease provide for a base rent payment of NTD$94,500 (US$3,400) per month. We believe that these facilities are adequate for our current and near-term future needs.

MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF
FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

References in this prospectus to “we,” “us” or the “Company” refer to Hour Loop, Inc. The following discussion and analysis of the Company’s financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with the financial statements and the notes thereto contained elsewhere in this prospectus.

Overview

Our Business

We are an online retailer engaged in e-commerce retailing in the U.S. market. We have operated as a third-party seller on www.amazon.com since 2013. We have also sold merchandise on our website at www.hourloop.com since 2013. We expanded our operations to www.walmart.com in October 2020. To date, we have generated practically all of our revenue as a third-party seller on www.amazon.com and only a negligible amount of revenue from our operations on our website at www.hourloop.com and as a third-party seller on www.walmart.com. We manage more than 100,000 stock-keeping units (“SKUs”). Product categories include home/garden décor, toys, kitchenware, apparels, and electronics. Our primary strategy is to bring most of our vendors product selections to the customers. We have advanced software that assists us in identifying product gaps so we can keep such products in stock year-round including the entirety of the last quarter (holiday season) of the calendar year (“Q4”). In upcoming years, we plan to expand our business rapidly by increasing the number of business managers, vendors and SKUs.

Business Model

There are three main types of business models on Amazon: wholesale, private label and retail arbitrage. Our business model is wholesale, also known as reselling, which refers to buying products in bulk directly from the brand or manufacturer at a wholesale price and making a profit by selling the product on Amazon. We sell merchandise on Amazon and the sales are fulfilled by Amazon. We pay Amazon fees for allowing us to sell on their platform. Our relationship with Walmart is also similar. We pay Walmart fees for allowing us to sell our merchandise on their platform. As stated above, to date, we have generated only a negligible amount of revenues as a third-party seller on www.walmart.com.

The advantages of selling via a wholesale model:

The challenges of selling via a wholesale model:

Market description/opportunities

Total retail sales increased 6.9% to $4.04 trillion in 2020 from $3.78 trillion in 2019. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, which is around 21.3% of total retail sales for 2020, compared to 15.8% for 2019.

Amazon accounted for nearly a third of all e-commerce in the United States. With a more than 5% gain in e-commerce penetration for U.S. retail sales in 2020, we anticipate a larger market in the upcoming years.

Formation and Management

We were originally incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington on January 13, 2015. However, we converted from a Washington corporation to a Delaware corporation on April 7, 2021. The company was founded in 2013 by Sam Lai and Maggie Yu. With their vision, leadership, and software development skills, the company grew rapidly. From 2013 to 2020, sales grew from $0 to $38,655,264.

Competitive advantage

Among 9.7 million sellers on Amazon, we believe we have two main competitive advantages. First, we have strong operations and sales teams experienced in listing, shipment, advertising, reconciliation and sales. By delivering high quality results and enhancing procedures through the process, our teams are competitive. Second, we believe our proprietary software system gives us an advantage over our competition. The system is highly customized to our business model; it collects and processes large amounts of data every day to optimize our operation and sales. Through advanced software, we can identify product gaps and keep them in stock all year round.

With respect to our advertising strategy, we advertise those products that we estimate will have greater demand based on our experience. This lets us allocate our advertising budget in a fashion that delivers positive value. We advertise our products on Amazon. We allocate our advertising dollars prudently. This is accomplished by advertising items that deliver the most return for our advertising spending. We monitor the items being advertised by our competitors. On the operations side, we constantly refine our processes based on learnings from historical data. The combination of managing the business operations effectively along with allocating our advertising budget to high value items allows us to grow profitably. In cases, where the advertising is fierce, we allocate the spending appropriately. Our strategy for competing with larger competitors is to monitor their pricing and not compete with them when their pricing is low or at a loss. Competitors sell at low prices or at a loss due to a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, their desire to liquidate inventory or achieve short term increase in revenue. During these times, we avoid matching their prices. This strategy allows us to stay profitable.

Our Financial Position

For the fiscal years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, we generated revenues of $38,655,264 and $26,564,693, respectively, and reported net income of $3,825,389 and $(424,583), respectively, and cash flow from operating activities of $3,824,729 and cash flow used by operating activities of $(517,933), respectively. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, we generated revenues of $31,391,254 and $17,466,081, respectively, and reported net income of $2,268,511 and $1,238,523, respectively, and cash flow from operating activities of $1,664,907 and $910,956, respectively. As noted in our consolidated financial statements, as of September 30, 2021, we had retained earnings of $139,434.

Results of Operations

Nine Months Ended September 30, 2021 Compared to Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020

Revenue

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, our revenues increased by $13,925,173, or 80%, as compared to the nine months ended September 30, 2020. The increase was primarily due to organic growth in our business. Our total orders in the first nine months of 2021 were 1,220,801 as compared with 656,020 orders in the first nine months of 2020. This represented an increase of 86% over the same period last year. However, our revenue per item dropped by 4% to $27.25 in the first nine months of 2021 from $28.60 in the first nine months of 2020. We attribute our growth in revenue to the growth in the e-commerce market as well as ability of our team to successfully target the customer base.

Cost of Goods Sold

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, our cost of goods sold increased by $6,000,824 or 76% as compared to the nine months ended June 30, 2020. The growth in cost of goods sold was primarily due to larger number of orders. The percentage increase in cost of goods sales was lower than the percentage increase in revenue reflecting improved profitability.

Operating Expenses

Operating expenses for the nine months ended September 30,2021 were $15,418,066 as compared to $8,373,538 for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, an increase of $7,044,528 or 84%. The increase is primarily related to an increase in platform fees paid to Amazon due to greater revenue in this period. The platform fees paid to Amazon are proportional to the revenue generated.

Other Income

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, other income amounted to $125,661 as compared to $265 for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, a change of $125,396. The increase in other income was primarily due credit card rewards received due to the timely payments made by the company.

Total Comprehensive Income

Total comprehensive income for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was $2,262,210 as compared to a net income of $1,237,947 for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, an increase of $1,024,263.

Impacts to Results of Operations from COVID-19

The Company’s business operations were negatively impacted by disruptions in our supply chain, which limited our ability to source merchandise, and limits on products fulfillment placed by Amazon. More specifically, COVID-19 limited our ability to stock items because there was not enough inventory available. Additionally, the cost of these items increased

Year Ended December 31, 2020 Compared to Year Ended December 31, 2019

The following table shows a comparison of our 2020 and 2019 income statements.

Revenue

We generated $38,655,264 in revenue in 2020 as compared to $26,564,693 in 2019. The growth in revenue was 12,090,571 or 45.5%. We attribute this growth to our continued growth and maturity in our operating model which was enhanced by a favorable e-commerce environment. Our total orders in 2020 were approximately 1,364,557 as compared with approximately 1,019,922 orders in 2019. This represented an increase of 30%. Additionally, the revenue per order in 2020 was higher than that in 2019.

Cost of Goods Sold

Cost of goods sold during the year ended December 31,2020 totaled $16,639,491 as compared to 14,135,029 during the year ended December 31, 2019. Cost of goods sold include the cost of the merchandise sold, shipping costs as well as estimated losses due to damage to goods. The increase in cost of goods sold is due to a greater number of items sold as a result of greater number of orders in 2020.

Operating Expense

Operating Expenses for the year ended December 31,2020 totaled $18,328,925, a $5,507,520 increase from the $12,821,405 of operating expenses in the year ended December 31, 2019. This change was caused by an increase in platform fees paid to Amazon. These fees are proportional to the revenue. The increase in revenue in 2020 over 2019 drove this increase in platform fees.

Other (Expense) Income

Other income increased to $138,541 for the year ended December 31,2020 from a loss of $32,842 for the year ended December 31, 2019. This was due to $153,721 in credit card rewards received in 2020 that were not present in 2019. Additionally, the interest expense was $43,269 in 2020 as opposed to interest expense of 51,794 in 2019. The lower interest expense in 2020 was due to our paying off our Bank of America loan.

Total Comprehensive Income

Total Comprehensive Income for the year ended December 31,2020 was $3,820,698 while the net loss for the year ended December 31, 2019 was $423,073. The change in Total Comprehensive Income was $4,243,771. This change was driven by an improvement in both our revenue as well as our costs in the year ended December 31, 2020 over the year ended December 31, 2019.

Impacts to Results of Operations from COVID-19

The Company’s business operations were negatively impacted by disruptions in our supply chain, which limited our ability to source merchandise, and limits on products fulfillment placed by Amazon. More specifically, COVID-19 limited our ability to stock items because there was not enough inventory available. Additionally, the cost of these items increased.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

Cash Flows for the Years Ended December 31,2020 and 2019

Liquidity is the ability of an enterprise to generate adequate amounts of cash to meet its needs for cash requirements. We had cash of $4,968,064 and $838,963 as of December 31,2020 and December 31,2019, respectively.

Our primary uses of cash have been for inventory, payments to Amazon related to sales and shipping of products, for services provided, payments for marketing and advertising and salaries paid to our employees. We have received funds from the sales of products that we sell online. The following trends are reasonably likely to result in changes in our liquidity over the near to long term:

Since inception, we have generated liquidity from the profitability of our ongoing business and from debt to fund our operations.

The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the years ended December 31,2020 and December 31, 2019.

Net Cash From Operating Activities:

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, cash generated by operating activities amounted to $3,824,729. This was driven by our net income of $3,825,389. The increase in net income was driven by an increase in revenue from $38,655,264 in 2020 from $26,564,693 in 2019. This increase in revenue of $12,090,571 was offset by a corresponding increase in cost of goods sold of $2,504,462 and an increase in operating expenses of $5,507,520. Changes in our operating liabilities and assets used up cash by $77,086. For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019, cash used in operating activities amounted to $517,933, mainly resulting from a net loss of $424,583. Changes in our operating liabilities and assets used up cash of $185,114.

Net Cash Provided by (Used in) Investing Activities:

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, no cash was generated by or used in investing activities. For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019, no cash was generated by or used in investing activities. In both these years, the company made no investments to procure fixed assets.

Net Cash Provided by Financing Activities:

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, cash provided from financing activities amounted to $299,261, mainly resulting from $991,509 in net advances from related parties offset by payments of $718,362 towards the line of credit. For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019, cash provided from financing activities amounted to $509,013, mainly resulting from a net change in the line of credit of $455,196 and net advances from related parties of $49,996.

Cash Flows for the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2021 and 2020

The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

Net Cash From Operating Activities:

Net cash flow generated from operating activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was $1,574,465 as compared to cash generation of $910,956 for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, an increase of $663,509 or 73%. Our income for the nine months ending September 30, 2021 was $2,268,511 as compared with $1,238,523 for the nine months ending September 30,2020. The revenue was $31,391,254 during the nine months ending on September 30, 2021 as compared with $17,466,081 during the nine months ending on September 30, 2020. The corresponding increase in cost of goods sold was $6,000,824 and the increase in operating expenses was $7,044,528. However, the increase in income was offset by cash usage related to the cash used in paying down accrued expenses and other current liabilities. During the nine months ended September 30, 2021, our accrued expenses and other current liabilities declined by $598,828 as compared to an increase in accrued expenses and other current liabilities of $16,815 during the nine months ended September 30, 2020.

Net Cash Used in Investing Activities:

Net cash used in investing activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was $0. The net cash used in investing activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 was $0. During both these periods, the company made no acquisition of property, plant and equipment.

Net Cash Provided by (Used in) Financing Activities:

Net cash used by financing activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was $2,088,921 as compared to net cash used by financing activities of $538,450 for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, an increase of $1,550,471.

Off-balance sheet financing arrangements

We have no obligations, assets or liabilities which would be considered off-balance sheet arrangements. We do not participate in transactions that create relationships with unconsolidated entities or financial partnerships, often referred to as variable interest entities, which would have been established for the purpose of facilitating off-balance sheet arrangements. We have not entered into any off-balance sheet financing arrangements, established any special purpose entities, guaranteed any debt or commitments of other entities, or purchased any non-financial assets.

COVID-19

Our business, results of operations, and financial condition may be materially adversely impacted if a public health outbreak, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, interferes with our ability, or the ability of our employees, contractors, suppliers, and other business partners to perform our and their respective responsibilities and obligations relative to the conduct of our business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect the economies and financial markets worldwide, resulting in an economic downturn that could impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. As a result, our ability to fund through public or private equity offerings, debt financings, and through other means at acceptable terms, if at all, may be disrupted, in the event our financing needs for the foreseeable future are not able to be met by our balances of cash, cash equivalents and cash generated from operations.

In addition, the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and various governmental responses in the United States has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect our business operations, including our ability to carry on business development activities, restrictions in business-related travel, delays or disruptions in our on-going projects, and unavailability of the employees of the Company or third parties with whom we conduct business, due to illness or quarantines, among others. Our business was negatively impacted by disruptions in our supply chain, which limited our ability to source merchandise, and limits on products fulfillment placed by Amazon. For example, we may be unable to launch new products, replenish inventory for existing products, ship into or receive inventory in our third-party warehouses in each case on a timely basis or at all. The extent to which COVID-19 could impact our business will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, and will depend on many factors, including the duration of the outbreak, the effect of travel restrictions and social distancing efforts in the United States and other countries, the scope and length of business closures or business disruptions, and the actions taken by governments to contain and treat the disease. As such, we cannot presently predict the scope and extent of any potential business shutdowns or disruptions. Possible effects may include, but are not limited to, disruption to our customers and revenue, absenteeism in our labor workforce, unavailability of products and supplies used in our operations, shutdowns that may be mandated or requested by governmental authorities, and a decline in the value of our assets, including various long-lived assets.

Contractual obligations

We do not have any long-term capital lease obligations, operating lease obligations or long-term liabilities, except as follows:

Bank of America Loan

On June 18, 2019, the Company issued a Promissory Note (the “BofA Note”) in the amount of $785,000 to Bank of America (the “Lender”) for a loan in the amount of $785,000. The BofA Note matures on June 18, 2024 and bears interest at a rate of 8.11% per annum. The monthly payment is $15,963, consisting of $11,398 of principal and $4,565 of interest. As of July 23, 2021, the aggregate principal amount of the BofA Note outstanding is $0. As of January 3, 2022, there is an outstanding balance of deferred interest of $27,996.

PPP Loan

On April 7, 2020, the Company issued a Promissory Note (the “Note”) in the amount of $27,012 under the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) to JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. (the “Lender”). The PPP, established as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”), which was enacted March 27, 2020, provides for loans to qualifying businesses for amounts up to 2.5 times of the average monthly payroll expenses of the qualifying business. The Note matures on April 7, 2022 and bears interest at a rate of 0.98% per annum, payable monthly commencing October 5, 2020, following an initial deferral period as specified under the PPP loan. The Note may be prepaid at any time prior to maturity with no prepayment penalties. The Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act (the “Flexibility Act”), signed on June 5, 2020, amended certain provisions of the PPP, including the deferral period and repayment terms. The Flexibility Act extends the deferral period of payments of PPP loan principal, interest, and fees to the date when the SBA makes a final decision on the borrower’s application for forgiveness, or 10 months after the last day of the covered period if a borrower has not applied for forgiveness (whichever is earlier). This extension applies regardless of the terms of the PPP and does not require an amendment of the PPP. As such, the Company has not made any payments on the Note during 2020.

Under the terms of the PPP loan, up to the entire amount of principal and accrued interest may be forgiven to the extent PPP loan proceeds are used for qualifying expenses as described in the CARES Act and applicable implementing guidance issued by the U.S. Small Business Administration under the PPP loan. On May 6, 2021, the entire amount of principal and accrued interest on the Note was forgiven.

Conversion of S Corporation to C Corporation

On June 30, 2021, the Company completed a corporate reorganization to convert its status from a S corporation to a C corporation with an effective date of July 27, 2021. Retained earnings in the amount of $4,170,418 were distributed by the Company to the S corporation stockholders ($2,085,209 to each of Mr. Lai and Ms. Yu) on July 27, 2021.

Affiliated Loans

December 2020 Loan

On December 31, 2020, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, made a loan (“December 2020 Loan”) to us of $1,041,353 in a single payment ($520,676 attributable to each of Mr. Lai and Mrs. Yu). The loan is memorialized in a Loan Agreement dated December 31, 2020. Pursuant to the terms of the Loan Agreement, the loan bore no interest and was payable on demand.

On September 16, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, and the Company amended and restated the Loan Agreement to modify the terms of the December 2020 Loan, whereby the interest rate became 2% per annum (applied retroactively) rather than non-interest bearing and maturity date became December 31, 2021 rather than payable on demand.

On December 31, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, and the Company amended and restated the Loan Agreement to modify the term of the December 2020 Loan, whereby the maturity date was extended from December 31, 2021 to January 31, 2022.

As of January 3, 2022, the outstanding principal balance was $987,868 and accrued interest was $2,0664 on the December 2020 Loan.

July 2021 Loan

On July 27, 2021, Sam Lai, our Chief Executive Officer, and Maggie Yu, our Senior Vice President, made a loan (“July 2021 Loan”) to us of the outstanding retained earnings of approximately $4,170,418 in a single payment ($2,085,209 attributable to each of Mr. Lai and Mrs. Yu). The loan is memorialized in a Loan Agreement dated October 15, 2021. Pursuant to the terms of the Loan Agreement, the loan bears interest of 2% per annum and the principal of the loan ($4,170,418) and accrued interest becomes due and payable on December 31, 2022.

As of January 3, 2022, the outstanding principal balance was approximately $4,170,418 and accrued interest was $36,325 on the July 2021 Loan.

Leases

The Company has 3 operating leases (Hour Loop has Xiamen warehouse lease and Seattle warehouse lease, and Flywheel has office lease in Taiwan). The company has signed leases through 2022. The first payment was made in the amount of $. We make lease payments in advance. The table below outlines payments for non-cancelable operating leases.

Sales Taxes

We make an assessment of sales tax payable including any related interest and penalties and accrues these estimates on the financial statements. Pursuant to the Wayfair decision, each state enforced sales tax collection at different dates. We collect and remit sales tax in accordance with the state regulations. We estimate that as of June 30, 2021, we owe $634,762 in sales taxes along with penalties and interest. However, we are currently engaged in the process of negotiating and remediating the amount of sales tax with the states in which we owe sales tax and anticipate becoming compliant in tax payments in such states in nine months from the date of this prospectus.

Critical Accounting Policies

The preparation of consolidated financial statements and related disclosures in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”) requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements, and income and expenses during the periods reported. Actual results could materially differ from those estimates.

Cash and Cash Equivalents

The Company considers all highly liquid financial instruments purchased with original maturities of three months or less to be cash and cash equivalents. The carrying amount of cash and cash equivalents approximates fair value.

Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold

Inventories are stated at the lower of cost or net realizable value. Cost is principally determined on a first-in first-out basis. The Company’s costs include the amounts it pays manufacturers for product, tariffs and duties associated with transporting product across national borders, and freight costs associated with transporting the product from its manufacturers to its warehouses.

Cost of goods sold is comprised of the book value of inventory sold to customers during the reporting period.

Property and Equipment

Property, plant, and equipment are recorded at cost and depreciated or amortized over the estimated useful life of the asset using the straight-line method.

Fair Value Measurement

Fair value is defined as the exchange price that would be received for an asset or paid to transfer a liability (an exit price) in the principal or most advantageous market for the asset or liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date. The carrying amounts reported in the Consolidated Balance Sheets for cash and cash equivalents, accounts receivable, accounts payable and other current liabilities approximate fair value because of the immediate or short term maturity of these financial instruments.

Revenue Recognition

The Company accounts for revenue in accordance with Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) Accounting Standard Codification (“ASC”) Topic 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (“ASC Topic 606”). The Company adopted ASC Topic 606 as of January 1, 2019. The standard did not affect the Company’s consolidated financial position, or cash flows. There were no changes to the timing of revenue recognition as a result of the adoption.

The Company recognizes revenue in accordance with ASC Topic 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, which provided a five-step model for recognizing revenue from contracts with customers as follows:

The Company derives its revenue from the sale of consumer products. The Company sells its products directly to consumers through online retail channels. The Company considers customer order confirmations to be a contract with the customer. Customer confirmations are executed at the time an order is placed through third-party online channels. For all of the Company’s sales and distribution channels, revenue is recognized when control of the product is transferred to the customer (i.e., when the Company’s performance obligation is satisfied), which typically occurs at shipment date. As a result, the Company has a present and unconditional right to payment and record the amount due from the customer in accounts receivable.

The Company evaluated principal versus agent considerations to determine whether it is appropriate to record platform fees paid to Amazon as an expense or as a reduction of revenue. Platform fees are recorded as sales and distribution expenses and are not recorded as a reduction of revenue because the Company owns and controls all the goods before they are transferred to the customer. The Company can, at any time, direct Amazon, similarly, other third-party logistics providers (“Logistics Providers”), to return the Company’s inventories to any location specified by the Company. It is the Company’s responsibility to make any returns made by customers directly to Logistic Providers and the Company retains the back-end inventory risk. Further, the Company is subject to credit risk (i.e., credit card chargebacks), establishes prices of its products, can determine who fulfills the goods to the customer (Amazon or the Company) and can limit quantities or stop selling the goods at any time. The customer can return the products within 30 days after the products are delivered and estimated sales returns are calculated based on the expected returns. Based on these considerations, the Company is the principal in this arrangement.

Performance Obligations. A performance obligation is a promise in a contract to transfer a distinct good to the customer and is the unit of account in ASC Topic 606. A contract’s transaction price is recognized as revenue when the performance obligation is satisfied. Each of the Company’s contracts have a single distinct performance obligation, which is the promise to transfer individual goods. For consumer product sales, the Company has elected to treat shipping and handling as fulfillment activities, and not a separate performance obligation. The Company bills customers for charges for shipping and handling on certain sales and such charges are recorded as part of net revenue.

For each contract, the Company considers the promise to transfer products to be the only identified performance obligation. In determining the transaction price, the Company evaluates whether the price is subject to refund or adjustment to determine the net consideration to which the Company expects to be entitled.

Accounts Receivable and Allowance for Doubtful Accounts

Accounts receivable are stated at historical cost less allowance for doubtful accounts. On a periodic basis, management evaluates its accounts receivable and determines whether to provide an allowance or if any accounts should be written off based on a past history of write-offs, collections and current credit conditions. A receivable is considered past due if the Company has not received payments based on agreed-upon terms. The Company performs on-going evaluations of its customers and maintains an allowance for bad and doubtful receivables.

Leases

The Company has elected the adoption under ASC Topic 842, Leases, which allows the Company to apply the transition provision at the Company’s adoption date instead of at the earliest comparative period presented in the financial statements. The Company elected the optional practical expedient permitted under the transition guidance which allows the Company to carry forward the historical accounting treatment for existing leases upon adoption.

Sales Taxes

Company makes an assessment of sales tax payable including any related interest and penalties. The Company’s accounting policy is to exclude the tax collected and remitted from revenues and cost of revenues. Pursuant to the Wayfair decision, each state enforced sales tax collection at different dates. The company makes sales collects and remits sales tax in accordance with the state regulations. In the past, where the company has not collected these taxes, the company has made estimates of amounts owed and accrued these on the financial statements.

Income Taxes

Prior to 2021, the Company, with the stockholder’s consent, has elected to be taxed as an “S corporation” under the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code and comparable state income tax law. As an S corporation, the Company is generally not subject to corporate income taxes, and the Company’s net income or loss is reported on the individual tax return of the stockholder of the Company. Therefore, no provision or liability for income taxes is reflected in the financial statements.

Commitments and Contingencies

Liabilities for loss contingencies arising from claims, assessments, litigation, fines, penalties, and other sources are recorded when it is probable that a liability has been incurred and the amount can be reasonably estimated. Legal costs incurred in connection with loss contingencies are expensed as incurred.

Related Parties

The Company accounts for related party transactions in accordance with FASB Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) Topic 850 (Related Party Disclosures). A party is considered to be related to the Company if the party directly or indirectly or through one or more intermediaries, controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with the Company. Related parties also include principal owners of the Company, its management, members of the immediate families of principal owners of the Company and its management and other parties with which the Company may deal if one party controls or can significantly influence the management or operating policies of the other to an extent that one of the transacting parties might be prevented from fully pursuing its own separate interests. A party which can significantly influence the management or operating policies of the transacting parties or if it has an ownership interest in one of the transacting parties and can significantly influence the other to an extent that one or more of the transacting parties might be prevented from fully pursuing its own separate interests is also a related party.

Earnings per Share

The Company computes basic earnings per common share using the weighted-average number of shares of common stock outstanding during the period. For period in which the Company reports net losses, diluted net loss per share attributable to stockholders is the same as basic net loss per share attributable to stockholders, because potentially dilutive common shares are not assumed to have been issued if their effect is anti-dilutive.

Foreign Currency and Currency Translation

In case of a functional currency other than the U.S. dollar, the functional currency amounts are translated into U.S. dollars at exchange rates in effect at year-end, with resulting translation gains or losses included within other comprehensive income or loss.

EXPANDED PRO-FORMA IMPACT OF INCOME TAXES ON 2020 AND 2019 FINANCIALS

This section expands on the pro forma disclosure included in our 2020 and 2019 financial statements to further detail the impact of state and federal income taxes as if our company was a C-Corp. in 2020 and 2019.

Reorganization – On June 30, 2021, the Company completed a corporate reorganization to convert its status from a S corporation (10,000,000 common shares issued and outstanding) to a C corporation (10,000,000 common shares issued and outstanding) with an effective date of July 27, 2021. The reorganization did not change the ownership of the Company and the two shareholders Sam Lai and Maggie Yu each continue to own 50% of the Company. The discussion and presentation of the financial statements herein assumes the completion of the Reorganization had become effective as of the beginning of the first period presented in the accompanying consolidated financial statements.

On September 27, 2021, the Company completed a stock split such that each outstanding stock was sub-divided and converted into 4.44 shares of common stock. As result of the stock split, the total number of shares outstanding became 44,400,000.

On December 3, 2021, the company completed a reverse stock split such that each outstanding stock was sub-divided and converted into 0.75 shares of common stock. As a result of the stock split, the total number of shares outstanding became 33,300,000.

Pro forma income statement showing the pro-forma income taxes, net earnings and earnings per share for 2019 and 2020 is produced below. This information is unaudited.

Pro forma estimates above do not include accrual for state corporate income tax as sufficient information is not available to estimate these at this time. State income taxes vary from 0% to 11.5% depending on the state. This additional state tax amount at different state tax rates and its impact is produced below.

Consistent with Internal Revenue Code (IRC) 1362, the retained earnings as of July 27, 2021 were distributed to the S corporation stockholders. Stockholders and the company have entered into an agreement for this amount to be loaned to the company.

Four historical and Pro-forma balance sheets are shown below. This information is unaudited.

Balance sheet (1) - Actual balance sheet as of December31, 2020. At this time, the company was a S Corporation.

Unaudited Balance sheet (2) - Pro-forma balance sheet as of December 31, 2020 illustrating the impact of distribution of retained earnings to Shareholders and their conversion to long term debt. Pro-forma balance sheet assumes that the company was a S Corporation

Unaudited Balance sheet (3) - Pro-forma balance sheet as of December 31, 2020 illustrating the financials if the company was a C Corporation

Unaudited Balance sheet (4) - Pro-forma balance sheet as of December 31, 2020 illustrating the financials if the company was a C Corporation and the retained earnings were distributed to the hareholders and subsequently loaned back to the company as long term debt