Podcast appearances and mentions of charles palleschi

Jeff OxfordFounder and CEO of 180 Marketing Show Notes eCommerce SEO is a different scale and sizeLink build strategiesProduct ReviewsHARO - Help a reporterGuest PostsReach out, send your bioTop blog listsBudget< $100 per link - Bad$200-300 - More common whitehat linksSend examples of past linksAsk if they own the blogs Sponsors: PrisyncSpark Shipping Links: https://www.180marketing.com/https://linkhunter.com/ Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business eCommerce I talk with Jeff Oxford about whitehat link building for e-commerce. This is a business of eCommerce episode 156. Charles (00:20): Welcome to the business of e-commerce the show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow their e-commerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi with Jeff Oxford. Jeff is the CEO and founder of one 80 marketing and SEO company focused exclusively on SEO and content marketing for e-commerce businesses. As Jeff on the show today, talk about link building specifically for e-commerce businesses. There's definitely some nuances that make link building different when it comes to e-commerce. So I think he really digs into that and this is his focus. So he brings some great tips that I think really everyone should listen to. It's something that link building isn't talked about that often it's something that I think a lot of folks kind of focus more on the on-page more and some, some other factors when it comes to SEO. But I think link building really is one of the keys to making your SEO strategy work. Charles (01:14): And Jeff really goes deep and specific when it comes to e-commerce link building. So I think you should watch the entire show. He gives three strategies on how to build links and some concepts on budget. And we should be looking at if you're thinking of getting into us. So let's get into the show and listen right to the end. He also talks about his product which I think is actually great. You should check out I'll link to in the show notes. So let's get into the show. Hey Jeff, how are you doing today? I Jeff (01:42): Am doing great. Charles, how about yourself? Charles (01:45): Doing good. Thanks for coming on the show. I've had a few guests there in the past. Talk about SEO, but kind of more of a focus on link building. I feel like that's not something I've touched upon at least here in the past. So I'm kind of excited to get into that aspect of it real quick. First one, any marketing you're the founder, how you've been doing SEO for, for how long Jeff (02:07): I would do an SEO for about a decade now, mainly on e-commerce sites. So I'm little side stories. I've built my own in the past, back in like 2012, built my own e-commerce sites, drop shipping sites had success there and then decided just to kind of pursue the e-commerce marketing side of it and focus less on the operations. Charles (02:27): How would you say? So when you say you focus on e-commerce, how is e-commerce SEO different than, you know, if I'm a SAS or whatever any other sort of company, how has e-commerce SEO different? Jeff (02:40): I'd say the bit, one of the biggest differences is just the scale and size. I mean, of course you can have a small e-commerce site. That's just selling a few products. Maybe they have like a small catalog under 10 products. In which case that's going to be pretty similar to how you'd approach SEO for a SAS or your typical brochure website. We, when you start having a website with, you know, hundreds of thousands of products and dozens or hundreds of categories, it's a whole nother, separate set of challenges. And the biggest difference is just prioritization. Prioritization is super critical. You know, you don't have all the resources in the world to make, you know, optimize every change perfectly. So you have to prioritize, you know, apply the 80 20 rule, which products and categories can bring the most results and traffic.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/z4z8RbHnUUA Chloe ThomasAuthor & Host of eCommerce MasterPlan Show Notes: Think in quartersFocus on 3 thingsTraction - https://amzn.to/3tJZ1Y1The 12 Week - Year https://amzn.to/373dIvkeCommerce Marketing: How to Get Traffic That BUYS to your Website - https://amzn.to/3a8Hy3BProductive Planner - https://amzn.to/2Z4XDRAThe Customer Master Plan ModelCustomer JourneyThemesTrafficConversion RateAOV Sponsors: PrisyncSpark Shipping Links: https://www.brandox.com/ecommerce-masterplan Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the business. E-Commerce I talk with Chloe Thomas about choosing where to focus your time and attention. This is a business e-commerce episode, 158. Welcome to the business of eCommerce the show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow your eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with Chloe Thomas. Chloe is an author and the host of the eCommerce Masterplan Podcast, where they provide online training, advice and information for growing e-commerce businesses on the show. Me and Chloe go really deep into the topic of mindset and specifically choosing where to focus your time and attention and how to focus that attention. I think this is super helpful for anyone, and this is a big topic that I think this is often overlooked and it's really one of those things. If you get this right, it doesn't just have linear effects, but it also kind of multiplies and it, it can really move the needle. So super interesting interview is a bunch of book recommendations that I definitely think you should check out and I'll drop those all in the show notes. So let's get right into the interview. So, Hey Chloe, how are you doing today? Chloe (01:14): I'm good. Charles, so it was great to be here getting to talk to you about all things e-com Charles (01:19): Yeah. I love having also another podcast or on the show. You are the whole, you're an author, right? But also the host of the e-commerce master plan. Chloe (01:29): I am, yeah, yeah. Hosted the e-commerce most fun podcast, which is a we're in a few retailers and of the keep optimizing podcast where we focus on a different marketing method each month with mainly supplier side guests and experts. So, so yeah. Podcasting seems to take up a huge amount of my time these days. Charles (01:47): Yep. Nice. I like, yes. Well kind of we were talking earlier before the show two ideas and I mentioned kind of the whole going into the mindset and every once in a while, I, I love talking to someone about this exact topic just on, I feel like it's, it's like a force multiplier, right? Like you can talk all you want about like Facebook ads and like that works. But like, if you want to make any sort of large shift, it always comes to changing just like a complete mindset change, a direction change. And the easiest way to do that is changing your mindset about what direction you should be moving. Do you agree? Or, Chloe (02:22): Yeah, I think it it's. I mean, I've been been helping people solve their marketing problems in e-commerce and their e-commerce problems in general for about 15, 16, 17 years now. And there's kind of two questions that everything I ever get asked, get boils down to, and one is Chloe, what should I be doing? And the other one is glowy is what I'm doing, what I should be doing, because I think it's, there's so much we could be doing success comes from focusing in on the right things. And unless you've got your head in the right space, you know, you know what you're trying to achieve in your life for your business, you know what your strengths are, your weaknesses on you, what your head in the right place, unless you've got all those things in place, you can't make good decisions about what you should be focusing your time and effort on. Chloe (03:09): And it's, it's very easy to spend, you know, an I,

https://www.youtube.com/embed/GyD6cHnjfdA Dr. James RichardsonFounder of Premium Growth Solutions Sponsors: PrisyncSpark Shipping Links: Ramping Your BrandPremium Growth Solutions Bio: Dr. Richardson is the founder of Premium Growth Solutions,a strategic planning consultancy for early-stage consumer- packaged goods brands. As a professionally trained cultural anthropologist turned business strategist, he has helped more than 75 CPG brands with their strategic planning, including brands owned by Coca-Cola Venturing and Emerging Brands, The Hershey Company, General Mills, Kraft Foods, ConAgra Brands, and Frito-Lay as well as emerging brands such as Once Upon a Farm, Peatos, Ithaca Hummus, Mother Kombucha, Rebel Creamery, zaca recovery, and others. James is the author of Ramping Your Brand: How to Ride the Killer CPG Growth Curve, the #1 Best-seller in Business Consulting on Amazon. He also hosts his own podcast—Startup Confidential, and his thoughts appear regularly in industry publications such as Foodnavigator. Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talk with Dr. James Richardson about what causes exponential growth. This is a business of eCommerce episode, 157. Charles (00:20): Welcome to the business. E-Commerce the show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow the e-commerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. And I'm here today with Dr. James Richardson. James is the founder of premium growth solutions, a strategic planning consultancy for early stage consumer packaged good brands as a professionally trained cultural anthropologist turned business strategist. He has helped wasn't 75 CPG brands with the strategic plans. Some of those brands include read them off air Hershey's general mills, Kraft food. Frito-Lay a list goes on how he's helped a lot of brands. And he's super interesting take on growing the business and what to really focus your time and attention on. And I think that's the big thing here on. If you really want to double down, he kind of talks about here's the exact segment and here's how you should find that segment and who should be focusing on. So I think that part's super helpful on really kind of nailing who to focus on if you want to be able to really scale your business and see that year over year exponential growth. So let's get into the show and I think he has some great tips. Also, he links to his book at the end that we'll link in the show notes. So let's check that out. So, Hey James, how you doing today? James (01:32): I'm good. How are you doing Charles? Charles (01:34): I'm good. Awesome. To have you on the show to dig into this topic a bit, we're talking earlier about exponential growth and how there's some DCC brands that seem to get it and others wish they got it and others never do. And it seems to be this like magic formula people think, but you've kind of talked about this a bit. So curious to kinda get your thoughts on that. James (01:59): Yeah, so I I do work with a mix Adidas C and retail only brands, but I think what I, what we were just chatting about, I think before we hit record, was that I meet a lot of DTC folks who thanks to the internet itself are well-versed in all the KPIs of D to C business management. And they're, they're drowning in data and lifetime value and average order value and all this stuff. They try to measure the health of their business purely within the context of those data points, which are coming in through Shopify essentially. But they're not necessarily asking at any point, even if they're doing well, which is actually just as important. And in my view asking why, why are people repeating what behavioral is attracting them to like constant purchase on a monthly basis or weekly basis, if you're really lucky and you're able to sell like drinks to people or stuff. James (03:00): But I mean, if you're not asking the question,

https://www.youtube.com/embed/6JKRRdXpX9s Jim ColemanCo-Founder of xFusion Sponsors: PrisyncSpark Shipping Links: https://www.xfusion.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-coleman/https://www.linkedin.com/company/xfusion-support/https://twitter.com/jim_coleman1https://twitter.com/Groove_Jar Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the business. E-Commerce I talk with Jim Coleman about how to get started outsourcing customer support. This is the business of e-commerce episode, 155. Charles (00:18): Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps e-commerce retailers to start, launch and grow their e-commerce business. I'm your host Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with Jim Coleman. Jim is a co-founder of X fusion where they provide outsourced customer support for e-commerce businesses. I asked him on the show today to talk about if you're a founder and you're thinking of hiring your first support person or outsourcing support, what are some of the do's and don'ts and what are some things you should absolutely do to make your first support hire or outsource successful? You works with a lot of e-commerce retailers. So I think he brings some great advice to the table and has some great tips out. So let's get into the show and if you have any questions, leave in the show notes and I can forward them over to Jim. So let's get into this. So Hey Jim, how you doing today? Good, Charles, how are you? Good. Awesome. I have you on the show. I'm excited to dig into the topic of customer support and outsourcing. It's very near and dear to my heart. So, so real quick, what do you, so you run an agency. Oh, so I was saying support essentially, right? Jim (01:31): We do. Yeah, it's called X fusion.io. And we, we provide customer support customer success to founders. We started kind of scratching our own itch. My, my co-founder David and I are both business owners and we built out a team internally on, on each of our companies. And then wanted to bring that to the broader market so that we kicked off mid 2019. And it's been growing since then. Charles (01:54): Okay. Yeah. So I feel like support is one of those things where everyone just want to, like the, it's usually one of the first things you see, like you're trying to word this correctly, the biggest time sink at the beginning, where you're just spending a ton of back and forth. And a lot of founders want to kind of get it off their plate early, but I don't think a lot know how or know the right way. Maybe they're like running out of their inbox or just as no docs, just kind of doing everything out of their own head. What do you kind of see that? Do you folks usually come to you at the beginning when, Hey, you know, I'm a founder, I'm doing a hundred percent of support and I want to get this moving somewhere else. So [inaudible], Jim (02:35): Well, we have a really nice mix of both. So we have, we have solo founders that come to us and they're just overwhelmed and swallowed up in support requests and other responsibilities. And then we also work with the existing teams to help them scale. I enjoy both, but I particularly enjoy working with, with founders because of the, the wins that we can help them achieve at the earlier level. And, and what I mean is just that we, we like to focus on helping founders get back to the highest and best use of their time. And I recognize that like everybody has to make the decision on like when is the right time to pull the trigger for them. And I recognize that, you know, we have to build up revenue before we have the, the, the bandwidth to be able to hire a team to handle support. Jim (03:12): But one thing I'd like to consider is like, if, if you're at that place where you can afford to do so, and you don't, then you're spending a good chunk of time working on tasks that are not the highest and best use of your time. In other words, things that other people can effectively handle ...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UbnQrRDTuZQ Jeremy BodenhamerCo-founder & CEO of ShipHawk Show Notes: 5 API of the ApocalypseAmazonWalmartAlibabaJDShopifyThe Power of HabitGrove CollaborativeParker Clay - Leather ProductsAll BirdsBoneless Knee Pads Sponsors: PriceSyncSpark Shipping Links: Jeremy BodenhamerShip HawkAdapt or Die: Your Survival Guide to Modern Warehouse AutomationJeremy Bodenhamer LinkedInJeremy Bodenhamer Twitter Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce I talk with Jeremy Bodenhamer, about about how independent retailers can compete with the giants. This is the business of eCommerce episode 154. Charles (00:20): Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow their e-commerce business. I'm your host Charles Palleschi. And I'm here today with Jeremy Bodenhamer. Jeremy is the co-founder and CEO of Ship Hawk, and also the bestselling author of adapt or die, a leading expert at the intersection of shipping. And e-commerce I asked Jeremy on the show today, talk about how in 2021, an independent retailer can compete with some of the largest e-commerce companies out there like Walmart, Amazon, and how you can not just compete, but also win. Jeremy has a lot of insights on both the logistics side, but also how you can attract more customers by talking about your brand. And I think it's super interesting. So let's get into the show and I think you're going to enjoy this. Hey Jeremy, how are you doing today? Doing well. Charles (01:09): How are you doing Charles? Doing good. Awesome. To have you on the show. I love the topic and want to kind of get into us. I've been seeing, kind of been following the the Shopify guys for a while, and I love the whole concept of, you know, arming the rebels, right? Where, how can you know, how can the smaller retailers compete against some of the big guys? And it's something where I think the world is going to very different ways, right? Where you have these like marketplaces kind of Amazon, like the big ones everyone knows about, but then you have these new brands that are kind of just popping up and becoming almost household names. In some cases you see this with, you know, some of like the big companies, like some of the, some of these, there's just so many retailers now that all of a sudden you, they can just build a brand name. So you're are okay. So you've been around with ship for, you said about seven, eight years now, you guys started that for about eight years. Okay. And you recently came out with a book on also basically competing with the giants, right? Adapt to die. Jeremy (02:11): Yeah. Adapter die came out a few weeks ago and is a survival guide for the independent merchants and how to compete against the giants. Charles (02:21): I love the cover also with the, the dinosaur on there. Very cool. Yeah. It's sorta my voice. Speaker 2 (02:30): So Charles (02:30): If you're talking to a small retailer, if someone's starting, you know, 20, 21, right. And they're, I want to get into e-commerce, you know, I have some products, but they're looking at all the expectations of what you need to do nowadays. How would you start kind of guiding someone to say, okay, you have to compete. You want to come up with a product X also sold on Amazon and tons of other marketplaces. How would you start kind of guiding someone through that process of competing? Jeremy (02:57): Yeah, good question. I would start by challenging them to understand the state of the current marketplace. The fact that these marketplaces by and larger, not friends but competitors. In the book, I talk about the five APIs of the apocalypse. Those five API APIs are Amazon Walmart Alibaba, jd.com and Shopify. And I predict a, a future that I think is a very real scenario where those five companies own global commerce, every transaction, every dollar spent,

Jennifer GlassCEO of Business Growth Strategies International Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Show Notes: eCommerce vs mCommerceCustomer AvatarBuyer JournalTractionIt's the Bottom Line That Matters: Quick Tips & Strategies You Can Use Right Now to Grow Your Business in the Next 12-Months Strategies How are you driving traffic?Look at shipping - Increase AOV - Average order valueLook at costsAre you using Level 2 or Level 3 data?Hotspot VideosKiosks and AppsEmail MarketingLead magnetAbandon Carts -Omni-Channel MarketingThe Journey from $0 to $200k per Year Selling on Amazon Hot items Shopify - 12 Trending Products to Sell in 2020 Spark Shipping - Best 50 Dropshipping Products Of 2020 Transcript Charles (00:00): In this episode of the business. E-Commerce I talk with Jennifer Glass about the seven strategies to grow your e-commerce business. This is the business to be commerce episode 152. Charles (00:19): Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow the e-commerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. And I'm here today with Jennifer Glass. Jennifer is a CEO of business growth strategies, international. She is a business growth expert who works with small to medium-sized businesses to help them find the money that they are leaving on the table. On this show today, she maps out seven strategies that you can use to grow your e-commerce business. I love the kind of list format, which kind of has different bullet points and kind of, we go from really different parts of the business anywhere from growth to saving money, but basically ways to just increase the business and not leave money on the table. So think it's a great episode to check out all seven and I'll also link to them in the show notes. She goes a lot of good links. So we'll put all that there. So check that out if you can too, and let's go onto the show. Hey Jennifer, how are you today? Jennifer (01:13): I'm doing great, Charles. Thank you so much for having me. I hope all is well with you as well. Yeah. Charles (01:17): Have you on the show, definitely excited to dig into this. I love having a list of things in particular, so seven strategies to grow your e-commerce business. So we were talking about this earlier. You kind of mapped out just seven things. Is this generally for e-commerce or you've worked with, and you work with small business owners in general, right? Jennifer (01:39): Worked with, I work with small business owners and general but it really is, you know, a lot of the strategies that we're going to be focusing on are focused for the e-commerce folks. Yep. A lot of strategies without a question are work both ways, whether you're online or offline, but there are certain strategies that are going to be focused specifically to the online businesses and how they can take that and really convert even more clients into people wanting to buy. So if you're an e-com client econ business, you're definitely going to want to pay close attention. If you are in an old world you know, one of those professional brick and mortar or whatever kinds of businesses, this is totally going to be up your alley as well. Cause a lot of the strategies are really working both ways in terms of what you need to be paying attention to and why, why not? Okay. All right. Let's get into it. Absolutely. Charles (02:43): Where would Jennifer (02:43): You start? Well, the first thing that I just want to kind of start with is the difference between e-commerce and M commerce. For those of you that are listening, that may not really have a definitive knowledge, but e-commerce is commerce via the internet and commerce is business done on a mobile device. And there is a difference in terms of the way that people are looking at things, the way that they're shopping,

Adam PearceCo-founder and CEO of Blend Commerce Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Notes: Ask how they want to engage.Benchmark - Open Rate 30-40%Shop Quiz Links: https://blendcommerce.com/https://www.facebook.com/BlendCommercehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/adampearceblendcommerce/ Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce I talked with Adam Pearce about proven strategies to increase revenue using email. This is a business e-commerce episode, 149. Welcome to the business. E-Commerce the show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow their e-commerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with Adam Pearce. Adam is a co-founder and CEO of blend commerce, a Shopify agency, specializing in growth of six figure brands. Adam is a passionate advocate of email marketing and aims to make blend commerce. The world's most supportive agency, and this interview had him give some very interesting strategies on what's working with email marketing today. He helps talk about how to blend some of these strategies that, you know, it's been around for a while with some new tactics and build something that's kind of best of both worlds, right? Where you're not just emailing the same old five five sequence emails until you get a response. Charles (01:08): He saw my blending SMS messenger, a lot of new, a lot of new technologies with email to get the best results. And I think that's really powerful. One of the things that I haven't gets into is quizzes, and how to use that, to get to know your customer, to collect more data and how to offer them products that really fit their needs. This is a great strategy that I see retailers using now. I think it's super powerful. So let's get on the show and let's see what Adam has to say. So head on how are you doing today? Yeah, really good. Yeah. Awesome. To have you on the show, email marketing, just kind of grow through email. I think I've done SU I do similar episodes like this, like once a quarter and you keep seeing it come back up on like email's dead and this isn't working anymore. And then you do an episode and you dig into it and it's, it's almost like we've been talking about the same thing for years on like emails, definitely dead this, this quarter of this year. And it turns out it might not be happening. So is it dead this quarter? Adam (02:09): Good question. Well, look, the answer for me 100% is no, it's not dead, nothing, you know, for me, if anything, it's just evolving. And I think one, the important things that the email is that especially the past 12 months with obviously what's been happening in the world the way the email's been used with other channels as become a lot more important. So the likes of SMS, the likes of messenger using things like quizzes to pull any email addresses. So, you know, for me, and, and kind of looking around at the people that I work with, the clients I worked with, you know, clients are generating 30, 40, 50% of the revenue from email. So yeah, 100% email is not dead. Charles (02:47): Yeah. I think that's how it's changing as the interesting part. Right. Because we all still get email, it must be working. There's something going on here. And I know from lists, we have like, that's still one of our channels. And I'm curious though, so you say SMS messenger, like how are those things kind of plugging into it now? Yeah. Adam (03:08): So, I mean, with, with email, I think, you know, the great thing is that you've got, you know, you've got people like Play-Doh, for example, who now have email and SMS in one platform and equally you've got other people are SMS, but you can equally, you know, kind of use SMS and email very easily together. And I think what's definitely changed with those is that rather than kind of looking at them as distinct different channels now people l...

Notes: Marketplace ExamplesAmazon https://sellercentral.amazon.com/eBay https://ebay.comWalmart https://supplier.walmart.com/Category SpecificGunBroker - https://www.gunbroker.com/Weapon Depot - https://www.weapondepot.com/ Marketplaces can be jet fuel, a fast way to scale or burn your business if you're not ready. Optimize the Product ListingToday quality wins over quantityNo more 'spray and pray'Spend time researching competitive pricingFactor in all the costsMonitor where you rank in the listingAmazon - Search results then Buy BoxeBay - Search resultsOver-invest in Customer ServiceSeller reviews are prominently displayedOn Amazon, slow customer service response times are used against youNail FulfillmentUse a 3PLNever ship late (closely monitored on Amazon)Follow the rules of the marketplace Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of The Businesso eCommerce I talk about tips for selling on marketplaces. This is the Business eCommerce Episode 145. Charles (00:18): Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow the eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. And I'm here today to talk about some of my tips for selling on marketplaces. So to start off marketplaces, I kind of think of them as jet fuel for any commerce seller, right? A lot of folks are selling on their own Shopify site, their own big commerce, their own Magento site somewhere. And at some point they decide to move their operations over to a marketplace to kind of add that as a way to enhance our augment, the current offering. And this can be done in many different ways. And I see a lot of sellers do this and the ones that do it right, can drastically increase the sales and the ones that kind of aren't ready for it have issues right out of the gate and can really cause actual problems for their business. Charles (01:11): So I want to outline a few tips on some do's and don'ts and just things that I've kind of found over time. So, first few marketplace examples. When we're saying marketplaces, we're talking some of the big ones, obviously Amazon, eBay, Walmart, that sort of thing. Also there's some specific marketplaces you'll find for different niches. So clothing has theirs, for instance, firearms, aren't allowed to be sold on some of the larger marketplaces, but there's folks like gun broker weapons, Depot, they have marketplaces just went bash. So even if you're selling a product that maybe can't be sold on Amazon, there usually are other places where it can be sold or just places, for instance, like clothing there's places where community sold better, right. Where folks are actually looking for that sort of product. So I'd always say first, do your research on what marketplaces are available. Charles (02:06): And don't just jump right to Amazon eBay, the big ones, because there are some specific ones that might actually get, you might be smaller, but might get better sales. So we'll sit out six steps here to kind of reveal things that I've just kind of found from talking to different sellers, different retailers that would be better off knowing from the beginning. So tip number one is be sure to optimize your product listings. The sound may sound obvious, but at the same time, what, I just hear a lot of new sellers saying first time they get on the platform, they always have these aspirations that they want to have 10,000 listing, a hundred thousand, these big 500,000, these big numbers, right? And this actually used to work this back in the day was actually a strategy that did work, right? You just went on Amazon. You just listed as much as you could. Charles (02:58): You did the spray and pray. And it worked actually just because there weren't that many of our listings and you go on eBay,

Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce I talk about mixed vendor drop shipping. This is a business of eCommerce episode, 142. Charles (00:17): Welcome to the business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow a eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. And I'm going to tell you about mixed vendor drop shipping. What we'll cover in this episode is how to use Mixpanel drop shipping, to beat out your competition in both product, selection and price at the same time. So let's get into us. Today's episode is sponsored by drip, drip. It's a world's first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you are running an eCommerce store, you need to have drip a try. And here's why drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There's robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. Charles (01:05): It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation world visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation roles. It's powerful, but also to learn, unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe that's drift.com/b O E. Now onto the show. Often when I'm talking to retailers, they kind of go one of two ways when it comes to drop shipping, they're either working with very large established distributors that have a large breadth of products, or they're working with smaller mom and pop type manufacturers, even just very, very small run tech manufacturers. And that's kind of their decision on how to source products, right? And often it's, you know, one of the other AOV mixed vendor drop shipping is where you take the best of both worlds and combine them. Charles (02:06): So you have hair and I've seen some retailers do is very successfully. They work with large distributors. They're able to get a large breadth of products, right? So some of these largest submariners can have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of products. So it allows them to scale up very horizontally and everything in their niche. They can go very wide, have a lot of auxiliary type products, right? So ways to kind of mock up their products cross sells upsells, that sort of thing. So it looks very well at the larger distributors. But when you start combining that with smaller manufacturers, this is kind of the Trek. You could find very rare products that maybe distributors don't yet carry don't yet know about not everyone has on their sites. And also sometimes you're able to then negotiate better on price with larger distributor. There's good chance unless you're doing any sort of real large volume, you really can't go in and negotiate that with them. Charles (03:05): But if you go some real small manufacturers, you might be able to get a lot better price. And even if you have a distributor kind of in the mix, you can cut out the middlemen on some of these products and go right to the manufacturer, talk to them. So you can get your breadth of products from the distributor, but then go deep on a very small subset of those products. So on those you can get better prices and also products that just maybe a half made to distributor when you're a retailer and you blend both of these on your site, what that gives you is these unique products you can kind of hook in uses with, right? You can put them in your ads, not everyone has seen them. So if you're targeting Facebook ads, for example, social ads, someone's going to see a product in your niche that has never been,

Show Notes: Seth GodinWhat are you really selling?Tires = safetyWho is the spokesperson for your brandAnswer as that characterSpoke at ECF LiveIssuesTell too many storiesTell 1 storeFind out who your customer issue Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Bio: For the past 25 years, Michael has been a professional TV writer/showrunner. His many writing credits include King of the Hill, Maron, Wilfred, Just Shoot Me, Rules of Engagement, Beavis & Butthead, Tacoma FD, and more. By applying his knowledge of storytelling to his wife's clothing brand, he helped grow TwirlyGirl into a multi-million dollar brand. Links: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelJaminWriter/http://www.cardboardrocketships.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-jamin-01233621/https://michaeljamin.com/video/ Transcript : Charles (00:00): In this episode of a business e-commerce I talked with Michael Jamin about how to tell your brand's story. This is a Business e-commerce Episode, 137. Charles (00:17): Welcome to the Business or eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi and I'm here with Michael Jamin. Michael is a director of communications and marketing at twirly girl. We're using his knowledge of storytelling to his wife's clothing brand. He helped grow trolley, grow into a multimillion dollar brand. I asked Michael on the show today to talk about how to tell your brand story. So, Hey, Michael, how are you doing today? So, Hey, Michael, how are you doing today? I'm good. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Awesome. To have you on the show. I love talking about brand and kind of, this is a little more like higher level with some of the topics I feel like sometimes folks are very, you know, tactical in the weeds, like SEO content, like that sort of thing, but it's always nice to kind of zoom up a little bit and think kind of a little bit higher level from a strategy perspective. Charles (01:09): That's the difference between selling a product and selling your brand, the product at first, you know, you style it, you have to sell a product, right. To get something off the ground. But at some point you might have competitors come into the space you might have, you know, and even if you don't have a direct competitor, you're always competing against something else. Right. They could always just go and spend their money on another type of product. Right. So it might not be exactly your product, but it could be something in that space. So first actually real quick about your product. So you guys it's twirly girl it's, is it dresses themselves or kind of, could you describe the product for people kind of listening? Yeah. They're they're poorly dresses for girls. So there are, many of them are reversible. They're very high quality they're made in America. Michael (01:55): So our price point is a little higher and we focus on quality, not we're gonna talk cheap kind of disposable clothing. So that was kind of the obstacle we had to get over. When we first got into the business, how do we, how do we show people that these dresses, because they cost more and why, why they're worth more, what's the price point that you guys sell at? Our lowest dress is non-reversible and it's it's actually usually around $48, but our reversible dresses can be 80 or $85. It depends on the dress, but there, cause they're twice as many choices. So 80, 85. And this is before what age? They started 12 months. And they go up to a six, you know, young teenagers this 12 months, year old twirling around swirling at that age. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so I mean, that's definitely a high price point, right? If you are. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking of, I have a two and a half year old at home and she goes through clothes, like, you know, rips falls down that sort of thing. So these are like older.

Notes: Startups for the Rest of Us - E500 Stair StepThe Business of eCommerce - E5Startups for the Rest of Us - E222 Atomic HabitsJames Clear Pit traps Waiting to get startedComing out of the gate too hot Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Transcript : Charles (00:00): In this episode of the business of eCommerce, I talk about consistency. This is a business of eCommerce Episode, 130. Charles (00:14): Welcome to the business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host Charles Palleschi, and I'm here today. Talk about Consistency. This is something that this week or last week time of this recording, I listened to an episode. It's a podcast I've been following for hundreds of episodes. Now they do one a week. It's called startups for the rest of us. It's by this guy named Rob, another guy named Mike. They talk about SAS. Businesses have been following for many, many, many years. And recently this week, they just hit that 500th episode. And this is making me think about consistency and just how these guys have showed up every week for 500 weeks and recorded. And even top of the episode, some episodes are better, some, a little misses, but they do it every week. I think that consistency speaks a lot. Charles (01:07): And I think that's something that a lot of folks underestimates today's episode is sponsored by drip, drip it's of world's first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you're ever running an eCommerce store, you need to have drip to try. And here's why drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There's robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation rules visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation roles. It's powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe. Charles (01:55): That's drip.com/b O E. Now under the show. And I've cited them before. On an early episode mentioned that stair step approach. That's actually originally by Rob look guys on the podcast and it just talks about building businesses kind of in this more incremental way. And I'll link to that in the show notes. But I think everyone's checked that out, but the concept of consistency I feel like is very underrated. I've read the book atomic habits by James, Claire. I think you should all read that or at least check out James's Twitter account. He posts very insightful little pieces every few days. And it just talks about over time slowly having these habits that build on top of one another and great example of something like podcasting blogging, any sort of content where the very first time you publish a podcast, publish a blog post. Charles (02:50): It doesn't really do anything, right? Like episode one, not many people, no one followed me. We've had the blog first post. No one really checks it out, but if you're consistent over time, that's what you start to actually get the wins. Same thing going into the gym. You can go to the gym or run and just going and lifting a waist. Doesn't actually do anything for you lifting at once. But that building reps, which build sets that build workouts that continue each day, that's where you start to get that impact. And I think entrepreneurship is very, very, very similar, which this to come pick traps. I see a lot of folks fall into what they don't do this. And this is total out for the first is people that don't ever start. They kind of, they wait to stash,

Notes: Start off the day with water1 literChill the night before5 minutes of silencePray, meditate, or just breathInsight TimerCalmJournal5 Minute Journal5 Minute Journal QuestionsMorningI am grateful for…What would make today great?Daily affirmation. I am…Evening3 Amazing things that happened today…How could I have made today even better?Leave it on your nightstandLeave the pen insideReadJust a few pagesKindle is greatLeave it on top of your journalDo not consumeNo emailNo newsNo social mediaPlanTake time to plan your dayProductivity PlannerMost Important Task of the dayImportant Tasks of the WeekKeep the pen insideKeep it next to the journalI prefer pen/paper, less distraction Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Transcript : Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce, I talk about 6 tips for entrepreneurs to supercharge their morning. This is a business of eCommerce episode 128. Charles (00:16): Welcome to the Business of eCommerce the show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow the eCommerce business. I mean, it was Charles Palleschi and I've had today had talked about six tips to help entrepreneurs supercharge their morning. So I'm a big fan of frameworks and routine and having a certain way of kind of going about your day, where you kind of know this works for me, here's a pattern and his kind of a way of doing something to know to start the day on the right foot. So I've kind of lined up six steps and this is stuff that I personally do. And I think it's super helpful for entrepreneurs in general, but also anyone that just wants to start off the morning in the right direction. And this kind of just built up a time. So let's get into us. So tip one, always start your day, drinking water. Charles (01:07): I know this sounds ridiculous, but I always start my day by drinking a liter of water. Very first thing, some things to make this easier is a night before I have a very specific water bottles. I put them in the fridge, chill, the water they're actually I use the soda stream. So my whole family knows these are my water bottles. It's two of them kind of my thing. And that makes it, so I know in the morning they're in the refrigerator. I like cold water. They're ready for me. So there's no thinking involved. And that's kind of one of the big things with this. There's no kind of decision making. I know I'm going to wake up. Very first thing I do is go grab one of these bottles, put it in the soda stream. I like the bubbles of carbonation or just have regular cold water, but just do the same thing I found before most folks. Charles (01:57): And I was doing this for a long time. Starting my day off with coffee. You're already dehydrated from sleeping the night before. And when you have coffee, you kind of further your dehydration. So you starting your day off this very dehydrated state going deeper into dehydration. The coffee gives you a quick little boost, but very quickly you start to crash because you're dehydrated and then you usually compensate by coffee. So by the time you start working at this point, you're starting your day off this at this extreme, low, this kind of dehydrated. And you're trying to dig out of this like dehydrated whole how else to explain it, but you're already like in, in a very bad place. And then you're trying to play catch up the whole day. And a lot of times what happens is just so tired and you work at, you know, eight, 9:00 AM that you drink more coffee and it just starts this downward spiral. Charles (02:48): So I've kind of found by starting your day off. Very first thing, basically just chucking a liter of water. All of a sudden you have all that water back that you've kind of lost overnight and you start your day off this much better place. And when you do drink coffee, you'll find that you don't drink as much because a stomach full of water.

Brian MillerFounder of Easy China Warehouse Notes: Air shipping50% Shipped in passenger flightsOver 30 day shipping timesDirect LineLabel with USPS label in ChinaUsing DHL Express shippingWait and ship by seaOpportunitiesSmaller factoriesLower quantitiesImprove the supply chainMore people are buying online Bio: Brian Miller has been living in China for the past 10 years. He previously worked for one of the largest Chinese government owned manufacturers managing their North American Export operations. He now runs a 3rd party logistics warehouse in Shenzhen China called EasyChinaWarehouse.com. The company provides 3rd party logistics and shipping for Amazon FBA sellers and any ecommerce company creating products in China. Previous to Easy China Warehouse he founded and an E-commerce company which sells Bluetooth speakers. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://www.easychinawarehouse.com/ Transcript : Charles (00:00): In this episode of The Business eCommerce I talk with Brian Miller about how COVID 19 has affected shipping and supply chain from China. This is the Business of eCommerce, episode 127. New Speaker (00:18): Welcome to the business of eCommerce to show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with Brian Miller. Brian is the founder of Easy China Warehouse, a third party logistics company in Shenzhen. I asked Brian on the show today to talk about how COVID 19 has affected shipping and supply chain from China. So Hey Brian, how are you doing today? Brian (00:40): Great. Thanks for having me. Charles (00:41): Yeah, awesome to have you on the show. I'm super interested in this topic. I feel like obviously kind of covert right now, everyone's going to talk to you about it, but seeing that from the eyes of how it affects e-commerce, I think we've all kind of felt it, but so you're on the ground right now in China, right? And you've been there for, Brian (01:00): Yeah. So yeah, so our company is located in Shenzhen, China, which is the S in the South of China. If people are familiar with Hong Kong, we actually bought Hong Kong. So a lot of people probably know Hong Kong over Shenzhen and that's where we are right now. Charles (01:14): And Shenzhen is basically the shipping capital of the the world at this point. Right? I know that one of the big, Brian (01:20): Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the shipping capitals. It's also one of the hardware capitals of the world. So most of the hardware in the world is actually manufactured at a Schengen. And most of the big companies that we know that make hardware like Apple any of the Bluetooth speaker companies computer manufacturers are all here. So it's an important supply base for that type of manufacturing as well. Charles (01:44): Okay. So this episode will come out next week, but we're talking right here on probably good to know. May 12th 2020. Right. In case someone looks back at us. So cause, cause just topics moving quick, right? Like everything we say this week is very different than last week and last month. Right. But you've been on, you've kind of been seen this since the very beginning, since what, January, right. Chinese new year. Brian (02:09): Yeah. So around that time, basically in December when I was in China in, in 19 we kinda heard a little bit about a virus that was around and people didn't know much about it and that we shouldn't be that concerned. And at that time, no one really knew what it was about. And actually at the end of January, it was when the Chinese government made a formal announcement that there was this virus, the Krone virus that we know today. And so in January is when kind of the ramp up of everyone starting to try to protect themselves with masks and kind of stay inside started in China.

Christina ScaleraFounder of The Contract Shop Show Notes: Reach out to someone who markets to the same demographic to offer contentNeil PatelPunchline CopyKurt ElsterTeam Structure- Marketing- Operations- Support- Graphic DesignerFunnels- Checklists- Example: http://www.lawlesstoflawless.com/Ways get traffic- Collative Content- Paid- Newsletter- Main blog- Affiliates Bio: Christina Scalera is the attorney and founder of the seven-figure, award-winning legal template store for creative entrepreneurs called The Contract Shop®. She lives in the middle of nowhere, Colorado, surrounded by a fortress of 14,000 ft. mountains in every direction that is not only beautiful but fun to hike after big eCommerce shop sales days. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: http://thecontractshop.comhttp://christinascalera.comhttp://instagram.com/thecontractshophttp://instagram.com/christinascalerahttps://www.facebook.com/TheContractShophttps://www.facebook.com/christinascalerallc/ Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talk with Christina Scalera about driving traffic through content. This is a business e-commerce episode 126 Charles (00:16): Today's episode is sponsored by drip, drip. It's of world's first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you're running an eCommerce store, you need to have drip a try and here's why. Drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There's robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing, one of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation rules visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation rules. It's powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation. To get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe that's drift.com/b O E now onto the show. Charles (01:06): Welcome to the Business eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi, and I'm here today with Christina Scalera. Christina is the founder of the contract shop, a legal template store for busy entrepreneurs by building content. Christina has grown the contract shop to over seven figures in revenue. I started the show today talking about you can drive traffic to your eCommerce store by using content. I urge you to listen to the very end of the episode because she gives some very good hints on how you can build funnels to your eCommerce store. So let's go into the show. Hey Christina, how are you doing today? Christina (01:41): Great. Thanks for having me, Charles. Charles (01:43): Yeah, awesome to chat. I love I love the topic of kind of using content. I know this is kind of the tried and true, but I feel like it, like if he goes out of fashion every couple of years and then comes back in. How long have you been doing it for first all Christina (02:02): So I started my, I guess you can call it e-commerce. You know, the shippers might have a little bit of qualms with that, but my, I started my store on Shopify. Well it, it didn't start out on Shopify, but it started in November of 2015 so almost five years now. And we moved to Shopify in October of 2017. So I've been on Shopify for almost three years. So I've been doing this for a decent amount of time. I feel like in internet land, that's a long time. Charles (02:32): That's a very long time in internet land. It so it's all digital products, right? You guys sell and promote, so it's all there's a digital contracts, like it must have been like a download sort of thing.

Hey Guys, I wanted to share a recent interview I did on another great podcast called The Business of ECommerce. Charles Palleschi, the host of this podcast, asked me some really insightful questions that really drill down into the day to day specifics of Sourcing Products from China. We covered MANY different topics, including : How being on the ground in China creates opportunities How having “trusted” third parties is essential How to protect your IP in China by registering your trademark How and when to negotiate on price with the factory How “What you don’t say” could be your biggest problem How to build your team in China? Link to Original Podcast Episode - http://businessofecommerce.fm/2019/12/what-are-the-hidden-risks-importing-products-from-china-e107/ If you’re short on time, you can read about it on our blog here. Need help sourcing products or developing products in China? Schedule your FREE Call! See David featured in... USA TODAY Featured with Mark Cuban, billionaire, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and Shark on “Shark Tank” and Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group, podcast host of “Business Unusual,” CNBC Made it, alongside titans like Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran and Serial Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk Business Insiders David Hoffmann with Gary Vaynerchuk and other successful leaders on how to respond when employees royally mess up Helpful Resources For a full transcript of this interview, visit our blog. Get a free copy of our book, China Sourcing For Startups. Book A free 15-minute consultation with our team. Subscribe To The Show On Your Favorite Podcast App Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Breaker Castbox Overcast

Andrew HendersonManaging Partner of Nomad Capitalist Bio: Andrew Henderson is the managing partner of Nomad Capitalist and the most sought-after expert on global citizenship. Andrew Henderson lives by five magic words: "go where you're treated best". Nomad Capitalist helps people to find the best places to live, bank, invest, incorporate, start a business, hire, date, and more. After nearly a dozen years visiting and living in 100+ countries, Mr. Henderson has become an expert on the growing field of global citizenship. He is the author of "Nomad Capitalist", a book discussing the concepts of global citizenship that anyone can apply. Mr. Henderson is unique in that unlike other consultants who merely sell products, he lives the lifestyle he preaches, having multiple passports, homes on three continents, and international business. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: Nomad CapitalistNomad Capitalist InstagramNomad Capitalist FacebookNomad Capitalist Twitter Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talk with Andrew Henderson about how to move to a tax Haven and pay zero taxes. This is the Business of eCommerce, episode 122. Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. They show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with Andrew Henderson. Andrew is the managing partner at nomad capitalist where he helps people find the best places to live, bank invest, incorporate, start a business higher and days. I asked Andrew on the show today to chat about how you can move to a tax Haven and pay zero taxes. Charles (00:43): Hey Andrew, how are you doing today? Andrew (00:44): Great. Great to be with you. Charles (00:46): Yeah. Awesome. I have you on, I'm super interested in the topic on kind of moving to a tax Haven. There's somebody I have not actually talked to someone about before and it's one of those things you hear but you don't even know or at least I don't know sometimes what it means. You hear of tax havens and you hear, you know, large companies doing this thing where they just move somewhere and pay less taxes. But I never really know, like, is that something we can do as, you know, smaller businesses or like how does this even work? So this is something you, so we're not actually offering tax advice here. [inaudible] State that, but so what exactly, when you start talking about moving a business to a tax Haven, what does that mean? Andrew (01:35): Well, there's actually four parts to it. I call it the, the tax friendly quadrant, right? So what people think is, Oh, you just put your company somewhere else. And you can pay less tax by just moving your company that the Cayman islands did. You sit around in Boston or Los Angeles or Sydney or whatever. It's not quite that easy if you're not Google or Amazon or Starbucks. But the reality is, I mean, what they, those companies have done is they have basically planted a flag of convenience in places around the world that allow them to keep more of their own money. And so what my five magic words are, are go where you're treated best. You know, in the United States I paid North of 40% in taxes as an entrepreneur. I ran several businesses there before selling a couple and, and letting a couple go and moving overseas full time. And so now, you know, I'm able to establish my company in a place that charges basically zero tax or, or very close to it. I'm able to live overseas personally in places that don't demand tax from me personally. And so by matching those two things up, I'm able to pay a very, very low rate of tax. And you know, people can do this, including Americans. Charles (02:52): So the two parts are you can put the business in one country and you physically live in another country, right?

Kyle GoguenFounder of Paw Struck Bio: Kyle Goguen will always be an entrepreneur at heart. Kyle founded his first eBay store at 16 when local restaurants refused to hire him—apparently having zero work experience isn't a desirable attribute! From electronics to designer women's clothing, Kyle sold anything and everything he could get my hands on. He spent most of the profits purchasing inventory, which filled my parents' garage. Every other cent went straight into his savings account. At 18, Kyle put his eBay business on hold and headed off to USC—majoring in Industrial & Systems Engineering. Rather than jump back into eBay, he scooped up a few part-time jobs—one on campus as a Video Technician and the rest as a College Ambassador for brands like PlayStation, Monster Energy, and Ubisoft. Kyle rode that wave until he finished his Bachelor's and eventually my Master's in Engineering Management. With his degrees in hand, he made an illogical decision (in the eyes of many) and chose to avoid a career as an engineer—the thing he had been training to do for over 5.5 years. Instead, Kyle returned to his passion: eCommerce entrepreneurship. Pawstruck.com was born in January of 2014. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://www.pawstruck.com/https://www.thedapperdogbox.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylemgoguen/ Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talk with Kyle Goguen about starting the an eCommerce business in 2020. This is the Business of eCommerce episode 121. Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi, and I'm here today with Kyle Goguen. Kyle is the founder of PawStruck, a e-commerce dog treats company, Kyle side of the company in 2014 and has since grown to 12 13 million, I assume on the show today. Tad about if you're starting an eCommerce business now in 2020, what are some of the best things you should be doing? So, Hey Kyle, how are you doing today? Kyle (00:43): I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Charles (00:45): Yeah. Awesome to have you on the show. Love the new thing. Kind of focus in more towards retailers, just starting off on kind of what they can do, kind of getting into 20, 20 to kinda just help wherever they are today. Get to that next level. You see kind of a lot where they don't really know, kind of, everyone's kind of trying a lot of different things. What I've noticed. So it's kind of always interested in saying what's the one thing you should actually be focusing on? Cause I feel like that's of the, the big thing right on. You could do a little PPC, a little social ads, you know, do some Instagram, do some random blogging, but that's usually not the right thing to do. So I guess to fit, to start, what would you, if you're talking to a new retailer today, they're just starting off, or at least I have something going, what would you say they should be focusing on in this upcoming year to help kind of grow their business? Kyle (01:39): Sure. So something that we've found to be extremely effective is email marketing. I think it's something that, especially new eCommerce stores hesitate to jump into and really focus on. It's something that I personally failed to do for the first couple of years of my business as well. At least for me, like I, I didn't see email is it's kind of the future of marketing. I thought it was kind of old school cause it didn't really work on, on me personally as a consumer. It wasn't something like I keep my inbox pretty clean. I feel like those email campaigns don't work on me. I just get annoyed if retailers are emailing me. But frankly, in, in most most categories of products and almost every e-commerce owner I've talked to, email marketing is like the number one most successful and profitable m...

Arlen RobinsonCo-Founder of Omnistar Interactive Bio: Arlen Robinson is a seasoned business owner and co-founder of Omnistar Affiliate Software which gives businesses the opportunity to set up and manage their own affiliate and customer referral programs. With over 20 years of experience managing and running various aspects of the company, Arlen has a wealth of information that he can share. His current responsibilities involve leading all business development activities for the company as well as hosting a weekly podcast known as the eCommerce Marketing Podcast in which he interviews various marketing experts about successful eCommerce marketing strategies. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://www.osiaffiliate.comhttps://www.ecommercemarketingpodcast.comhttps://arlenrobinson.com Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talked with Arlen Robinson about how to set up a successful affiliate program. This is a business of e-commerce, episode one 19. Welcome to the Business of eCommerce, the show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow the eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with Arlen Robinson. Arlen is the co founder of Omnistar Interactive software. I'm going to star helps businesses set up and manage their affiliate and customer referral programs. I asked Ireland on the show today to chat about how you can create your own affiliate program. So Arlen, how are you doing today? Arlen (00:41): Great. Great. How's it going, Charles? Good. Awesome to have you on the show. Charles (00:45): It say to talk about the whole affiliate program. It's something we've been doing a bit hair [inaudible] and it's kind of top of mind, so pretty exciting topic. So just to kind of get everyone into it, when you say an affiliate program, which is for us to find it real quick it's basically, how would you define it? What's that off there? Arlen (01:05): It's a great question and I'm, I'm glad to define it. A lot of times when people say affiliate program, a lot of times the term referral program gets tossed around as well. But there they're actually two distinct programs actually. So first off with an affiliate program and if the [inaudible] program is actually when you get any outside person, whether they're an actual affiliate and that's what they do for a living or they're an influencer. When you get these outside people to promote your product or services to an audience of people that they typically don't know. So these are, you know, affiliates or influencers, they have a audience of followers and these followers are usually people that they don't know, people that are just following, you know what it is that they do and these affiliates with the affiliate program, they're doing this in exchange for some type of commission or you know, or offering whether it's cash commission per referred sale or whether it is a in exchange for like maybe product free product or things like that. Arlen (02:04): So that's what an affiliate program is. Now the referral program on the other side is when you actually get your customers to refer you other customers and you incentivize your customers. So your customers are going to be, you know, people who of course that are using your products or services. And they're reaching out to typically people that they do know, people that are in their ecosystem, friends and family, colleagues, anyone in their, in their kind of a sphere of influence. And so that's what an F referral program is. And with the referral program, the incentive can be the same as well. It could be a percentage of our order total. It can be a fixed amount, it could be free product, it could be bonus items, a gift or whatever you decide they commission it is up to you. And so that's, that's really the difference.

Zee AliFounder of Z-SWAG Bio: Zee Ali is the founder of Z-SWAG, full-service custom apparel, promotional merchandising, and fulfillment company. Zee has worked with brands including Chik-fil-a, Sony, Cricket Wireless, General Mills, and LinkedIn. Zee graduated from Triton College with a Culinary Arts and Restaurant Management degree, in addition to studying graphic design and web development. While attending school, Zee discovered an opportunity to sell chef coats to his classmates by sourcing chef coats from the local flea market, filling his duffle bag and going classroom to classroom at Triton. His side-hustle transformed into a chef uniform and equipment company which later morphed into what it is today. A true renaissance man at heart, Zee has many passions. His various talents place further emphasis on his versatility, which compliments his knowledge in business. To follow his journey, learn about what he is working on, and from his successes and failures, you can follow him on IG at @ZeeAli and ZSWAG.com. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://www.zswag.com/https://thezeeali.com/who-is-zee-ali/https://www.facebook.com/theZeeAli/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zeeali/https://www.instagram.com/ZeeAli/ Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talked with Zee Ali about running a remote team. This is the business of e-commerce. Episode one 18. Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi , and I'm here today with Zee Ali. Zee is the founder of Z swag, a full service custom apparel, promotional merchandising and fulfillment company Z works with brands including Chick-fil-A, Sony cricket, wireless, general mills, and LinkedIn. I assume on the show today to chat about how he runs a remote team. So hazy. How are you doing today? Zee (00:42): I'm fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on. Charles (00:45): Yeah, it's awesome to have you. I love kind of talking about other folks who have kind of done the whole remote thing. I feel like that's, that's one of those reasons fundamentally why a lot of people get into this business because it's something that you can run remotely, right? Not like there's a lot of businesses, it's just not possible. But e-commerce is one of the few things that it truly is like completely. Location independent. So how long have you been running this particular company for? Zee (01:13): Almost 10 years and years. Okay. And remote the whole time. So, so our team isn't enormous. We certainly have, we have two offices currently. People go if they want to go, if they don't, they, they can work from home. That's up to them. For me remote is just easier. We accomplish this by providing clear outcomes of each job role. Here's what we're looking to achieve. So you don't measure success by the time that they're clocking in, clocking out. It's by the results themselves. So if you provide clear KPIs and clear outcomes, it makes things a bit easier. Charles (01:54): [Inaudible] Are, so where are, where are you located for our stuff right now? Physically? Zee (01:59): Right now I'm sitting in Louisville, Kentucky, and tomorrow morning I will be in Chicago where our HQ is. Charles (02:05): Okay. What does office number two Zee (02:08): That's in Chicago? That's, that's our flagship Porter's that's, yeah. Where the company all started Charles (02:14): And then it was the second office Zee (02:16): That is in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm in one of the conference rooms. Charles (02:19): Yeah. Okay. Very cool. Okay. And about how many employees? Zee (02:21): You're both ten-ish. Say we have like seven full-timers and we've got like three to five kind of floating around here and there as, as

George Lawrence Founder & CEO, MerchantWords Bio: Bold, dynamic, and innovative are just a few of the words that come to mind when describing MerchantWords founder George Lawrence. Overcoming personal obstacles to build a multi-million dollar technology company, George has used his remarkable ability to creatively solve problems to help over 100,000 entrepreneurs achieve e-commerce success. A software developer by trade, George got his professional start at the beginning of the internet with the Peter Norton Consulting Group, where he worked on Norton Utilities. He was a founding member of the Citysearch team; and helped create the software that launched the world’s first online automobile shopping platform at CarsDirect. At TigerConnect, George developed the web and mobile platforms for their clinical communications software. Discovering a gap in the data-driven e-commerce market, George derived an innovative way to collect shopper keyword phrases, so Amazon sellers could find unique opportunities to bring new products to market – thus, MerchantWords was born. Since 2012, MerchantWords has helped entrepreneurs, brands, and agencies discover new opportunities, achieve successful product launches, and run profitable advertising campaigns online – on Amazon and beyond. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: http://merchantwords.com/bizofecomhttp://youtube.com/MerchantWordsOfficialhttp://facebook.com/MerchantWordsOfficialhttp://instagram.com/MerchantWordshttp://twitter.com/MerchantWords Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talk with George Lawrence about how to get into the minds of your customers. This is a business of e-commerce. Episode one 17. Welcome to the business of eCommerce. The show that helps e-commerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I mean host Charles Palleschi and I talk today with George Lawrence. George is the founder and CEO of merchant words or the merchant words. He helps entrepreneurs, brands and agencies discover new opportunities that chiefs discussion with product launches, run profitable advertising campaigns online, Amazon and beyond. I asked George and the show today chat about some ways you can get into the minds of your customers. So, Hey George, how are you doing today? George (00:46): Fantastic. Thanks for having me on. Charles (00:48): Yeah. Awesome to have you on. Definitely love the concept kind of getting into the mind of your customers. Um, I like from a high level and then kind of talk about, I love talking about kinda how you actually do that tactically. Like, what are some ways, um, you know, as an eCommerce retailer, everyone says that everyone says you need to get in the mind of your customer is, it's kind of something we've heard again and again, but I love talking about some ways on how to do that as a retailer. I like, and you know, I've heard before like reach out to them and talk to them, that sort of thing. But you specialize in this. What are some things you would recommend as far a retailer out there? George (01:25): Great question. You'll, you know, let me tell you first. What I see people do and when I see people do is they chat with their friends. First of all, I was like, Hey, if I built this, would you buy it? I'm like, Oh brother, you know, you gotta you gotta get some real opinions. Uh, but you know, the interesting thing is it's so easy to do this, but so few people really kind of make it a priority and that, that astounds me. So one of the things that I like to tell folks is, look, you got to remember that people don't search using the physical aspects of the product. People don't search for, you know, I need something that's so many inches tall and so many inches wide, et cetera. People search for the need that they have or the problem they're trying to solve.

John GhiorsoCEO of Orca Pacific Bio: John Ghiorso is the founder and CEO of Orca Pacific, a Seattle-based agency focused exclusively on helping brands sell on Amazon. He started the agency about 12 years ago and now manages over 100 top brands in a variety of product categories. After 10 years of studying Amazon, Mr. Ghiorso has earned a reputation for approximating industry reaction and forecasting shifts within the Amazon marketplace. His insights have been featured in prestigious publications like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Vox, Modern Retail, and Digiday. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://www.orcapac.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/johnlouisghiorso/https://www.linkedin.com/company/orcapacific/ Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of The Business of eCommerce. I talk with John [Ghiorso] about how to grow your Amazon business in 2020 this is the business of e-commerce, episode one 16. Welcome to the business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I mean host Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with John Ghiorso. John is the founder of Orca Pacific. A Seattle based agency focuses exclusively on helping brands sell on Amazon. You started the agency 12 years ago and is now managing over a hundred top brands and a variety of product categories. I asked John on the show today to chat about how you can optimize your Amazon listings in 2020 so, Hey John, how are you doing today? John (00:48): Good, good. How are you Charles (00:49): Doing well, thanks for coming on the show. I love the topic. Kind of the all Amazon stuff right now. Lot of retailers are either on Amazon or moving to Amazon, thinking about selling Amazon. So everyone's, everyone's kind of somewhere touching on Amazon right now. So I love the kind of top, Whoa, just how to grow that. So do you guys normally work with, so you work with brands, but is this just brand selling their own products or what kind of retail is typically do work most with, John (01:22): Yeah, sure. So you know, our, our, our primary client archetype is a branded manufacturer, but we also work with distributors, retailers, direct to consumer brands. So it, it kind of runs the gambit. In terms of folks reselling other brands, products, reselling white label, private label products or you know, sort of traditional national brands. So really, you know, our clients are essentially entities that are trying to increase their sales top line growth on the Amazon platform. And kind of the, the simplest way of saying it. Charles (01:56): Okay. So if you're a white label brand [inaudible] white label retailer you could still get some value out of, basically you should have stopped listening at this point. They can get some value out of these types of things. Yeah. Hopefully. All right. So are we talking when you typically kind of start working with someone, are they already on Amazon? Are they competing for the buy box or are they competing to shop at a search or where's a good place to focus? John (02:21): Yeah, so primarily they're, they're going to be competing in, in search. I mean competing to win the buy box is it's certainly a game that we play, but our primary goal is to drive more demand for a given product. So, you know, then there's kind of the secondary consideration. Is that demand going to you? Are you the, the seller that winning the buy box? I guess the way we look at the platform primarily is our sort of assumption is that you will be winning the buy box. And then you know, we're really trying to drive demand for the product. Overall if there's, if there's lost by box issues or competitive by box issues, we see that as a problem that needs to be solved, but more of kind of a shorter term consideration. And then longer term macro is, is really how to,

John DohertyFounder of Credo Bio: John Doherty is the founder of Credo, where they connect businesses with the right marketing provider from Credo's exclusive network. Since 2015 they've helped over 3,000 brands, including some of the world's most well known, work with great marketing firms. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://www.getcredo.comhttps://twitter.com/dohertyjfhttps://twitter.com/getcredo Transcript: Charles:                        00:00                In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talked with John Doherty about how to hire an SEO agency. This is a business of eCommerce, episode one 11 welcome to the business of eCommerce to show the helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi, and I'm here today with John Doherty. John is the founder of Creo where they connect businesses with the right marketing provider from cruise exclusive network. Since 2015 they've helped over 3000 brands work with great marketing firms. I asked John on the show today talk about what you should look for when you're hiring an SEO agency, so Hey John, how are you doing today? John:                            00:44                Good, Charles, how are you? Thanks for having me on. Charles:                        00:46                Yeah, great to have you on. Super interesting to talk about this side of SEO, right on working with a consultant and how to actually kind of do like the high level of when you should be doing it, if she should be doing it, and kind of all the strategy around that. I've talked to a bunch of guests in the show on kind of the tactical SEO, but this is kind of a different level, right? You kind of focus more on when to work with a consultant, how to work with them. Is that kind of what you guys focus on at credo? John:                            01:14                Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I actually come from the SEO world. I've been in SEO doing SEO for about a decade now for the last four years has been helping companies basically find the right firm to work with through credo. And so really I've kind of more from like being in the trenches, tactical, that sort of stuff. I can still do SEO quite well, but I find a lot more interesting on the business side. How do people do a good job of hiring for for SEO, for digital marketing? Really? you know, I've learned a lot of lessons over the years. You know, my background is I worked, I worked agency side couple agencies. I worked in house for a couple of years with Zillow and then I've also been a solo consultant and then seem 3,500 plus companies come through creative looking to hire. So I've talked to a lot of companies. John:                            01:53                I've seen a lot of companies sign with firms and in a lot of companies not signed with firms. I've seen companies signed with the wrong firms. And so it's a, you know, I've seen people hire the wrong type of, of firms so it consultants have an agency or vice versa. And so yeah, I learned, I learned a lot of lessons and it's something not a lot of people talk about. And I think it's something that we should be talking about more, especially in the digital space as we're growing companies. Because once you get beyond just you and you found product market fit or you're starting to get some traction with your eCommerce company then it's a, you know, basically the question becomes how do I scale it more? And doing that well is really, really hard. And as we were talking about offline, that like, you know, this stuff is really hard and so whatever I can do to help people do it better and give them kind of more signal in a very noisy world I love to do that. Charles:                        02:36                Yeah. Sq is one of those things too where if you're hiring some external, they don't really,

Marketing Strategies Revealed in this Episode: What is hybrid dropshipping How hybrid dropshipping can work for any ecommerce business The financial costs to Hybrid dropshipping Managing inventory across multiple locations Keeping up with the ever changing Google Algorithm

Derek O'CarrollCEO at Brightpearl Bio: Derek O’Carroll has had an eye for business since he turned his school’s unused tennis courts into a paid tennis club as a 15-year-old. As CEO of Brightpearl, a cloud-based ERP for retailers and wholesalers, he has refined go-to-market strategies and led innovations that have increased deal size of nearly 500 percent and yielded 75% growth year-on-year. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: BrightpearlLinkedIn TwitterFacebook Derek LinkedInDerek TwitterDerek Facebook Transcript: Charles:                        00:00                In this episode of The Business of eCommerce. I talk with Derek O'Carroll about how to create a customer focused omnichannel experience. This is a business of e-commerce. Episode 106 to The Business of eCommerce to show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. I'm here today with Derek O'Carroll. Derek is a CEO of BrightPearl, a cloud based ERP are retailers and wholesalers at bright Pearl. He has redefined the go to market strategy and led innovations that have increased the deal size. We 500% in yield at a 75% growth year over year. I've asked Eric on the show today to chat about how you create a customer focused Omni channel experience. So Hey Derek, how you doing today? Derek:                          00:50                I'm excellent. Charles. Delighted to be with you. Yeah, Charles:                        00:52                To have you on the show. I'd love the topic, kind of the whole omnichannel and kind of bringing it all together first real quick, bright Pearl. You've been there. How long? Derek:                          01:01                A three and a half years. Just over. I joined in May, 2016 Charles:                        01:05                Gotcha. Okay. And cloud based ERP. So for those who don't know, I feel like years ago I feel like this, the term ERP was just this thing that like other people had. But then as you kind of grow and you don't really know what it is, you know, like I don't need one of those. But as you grow, you start to realize maybe you know, you start to learn what it is and kind of realize who needs it and why. Can you explain real quick, who needs an ERP? What is it and kind of generally like how does it work? Derek:                          01:34                Well, I think to be successful, any merchant needs to provide a very high level of personalized service irrespective of the channel that they are using to engage with a client. That's, that's where everything starts. And in order to be able to do that, you have to orchestrate all of the operational tasks that come about when an, when an order hits your store through a point of sale, hits your marketplace through maybe an Amazon store, you're running our hits your website through your own website. And so retail ERP our cloud based ERP as you called it, essentially the way I would ask your listeners think about it is it's essential point to orchestrate all of your orders and all of the following on actions that you need to bring to bear upon those orders to get to the bottom line where you can see the Holy grail of what's my margin, what's my fully landed cost on each channel. And you need to know that because then you can decide how much do I order for the next season or the next phase. And also what's my pricing strategy in that particular channel? Cause as we know, every single channel has a different cost of doing business on it. And that's essentially what an ERP does. So it covers where people order from, how you handle that order it overs, fulfillment, logistics, payments, all the way through. So just think of the life cycle of a customer and then think of all the tasks needed to serve that. Charles:                        03:00                Yeah,

Charles Palleschi always knew he wanted to start his own SaaS business but his route to founding Spark Shipping, an e-commerce automation software solution, was anything but straightforward. In this episode Charles explains the problem his software solves and provides insights into the respective pros and cons of marketing a business in ecommerce or SaaS.

Scaling your ecommerce business always comes with challenges you didn't expect. It seems like there's always more work to do, especially when you're growing fast. The good news is that you can automate parts of your ecommerce business. Today on the show Charles Palleschi, founder of Spark Shipping, shares how. The 5-Minute Ecommerce Email Marketing Hack Stop leaving money on the table. Without great email marketing, you're missing out on 6-7 figures per year of revenue and profit. Download this checklist, go through it, and in less than 5 minutes you'll know exactly what you need to do to increase your email revenue. This is our secret sauce and we're giving it all away for free, no strings attached. Click here to download the checklist for free. Links: Wavebreak Dylan's Interview on Business of Ecommerce Spark Shipping Business of Ecommerce Podcast Listen on iTunes Learn more about Wavebreak This episode is sponsored by... Klaviyo — Over 10,000 innovative brands are growing their businesses by listening and understanding to cues from their customers--easily turning that information into valuable marketing messages used to build highly segmented, automated email campaigns, such as win back campaigns or abandoned cart emails and more.

GUEST BIO: Charles Palleschi is the founder and CEO of Spark Shipping, an ecommerce company that acts as a third party between vendor and manufacturer. The idea for Spark Shipping came from Charles' initial drop shipping business. After finding that there wasn't a virtual tool to organize orders and vendors, he created one to help his business. Shortly after, he discovered the business opportunity of making this tool public and shifted his focus from dropshipping to Spark Shipping. Spark Shipping works with all vendors and has partnerships with Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Woocommerce, Magento, Big Commerce and more, helping dropshipping companies to increase their volume and margins. SHOW SUMMARY: Today's guest is Charles Palleschi, founder and CEO of Spark Shipping. Spark Shipping acts a third party between vendor and manufacturer for ecommerce businesses. Born from a solution Charles created for his dropshipping business, Spark Shipping is now partnered with Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Woocommerce and more. In this episode, Charles explains how the idea of Spark Shipping was a direct result of a pain point he experienced during the early days of his dropshipping business. He shows us how to create our own solutions and then, how to make them public as a SaaS product. We also talk about how to improve your dropshipping business, how to finagle lower shipping rates, and the vendors you should prioritize. This is the Lean Commerce Podcast. TOPICS: What was the inspiration behind Spark Shipping? 0:25 I started as a freelance consultant, using my development background, but I decided totally out of the blue to buy an e-commerce website. I started with FBA, drop shipping, and worked with a lot of vendors and that's what made me think of creating a tool to organize orders and vendors. We named it Spark Shipping, made it public and about three years ago we started to fully focus on it instead of our e-commerce website. 6:05 Spark Shipping sits between the retail side and the vendor and we automate inventory quantities, take order requests and get tracking data. Essentially we automate the day to day tasks of an e-commerce business. What is a hybrid drop shipping model? 8:56 Not a lot of people talk about the boring backend of e-commerce, especially when it comes to processing data. Hybrid drop shipping involves one product being fulfilled by multiple vendors (manufacturer, distributor, internal warehouse). This creates layers of inventory and you can use the cheapest vendor for that moment. What improvement can you make on dropshipping and returns? 14:10 A lot of dropshippers are listing products even though they don't have live numbers from their vendors. I get that if you have hundreds of thousands of products you can't do it on your own, but you need to find a tool that helps you keep track of those numbers. 18:30 Once you're deep within a given niche, you can start giving value based off of that specific product and increase your volume. Do you have dropshippers on your platform doing significant volume? 22:37 We see people move from drop shipping to manufacturing and manufacturing to drop shipping. It's not very black and white, it's more of a holistic approach. If you're manufacturing a product, it doesn't make sense to manufacture all of the accessories for it. But it does make sense to stock all of them. 26:06 There's a ton of large companies doing this and customers don't realize it. If you order a product and have it delivered in one box and then have the accessory delivered in a different box, on a different day, this is a company that is executing this strategy. How can you get lower shipping rates on ecommerce products? 29:13 The normal shipping rates from UPS or FedEx aren't typically paid once you are doing volume, you can easily negotiate a better rate. Once you've done that, go to your manufacturer and try to get them to negotiate with their carrier. Then, you'll have a cheaper rate on b

GUEST BIO: Charles Palleschi is the founder and CEO of Spark Shipping, an ecommerce company that acts as a third party between vendor and manufacturer. The idea for Spark Shipping came from Charles’ initial drop shipping business. After finding that there wasn’t a virtual tool to organize orders and vendors, he created one to help his business. Shortly after, he discovered the business opportunity of making this tool public and shifted his focus from dropshipping to Spark Shipping. Spark Shipping works with all vendors and has partnerships with Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Woocommerce, Magento, Big Commerce and more, helping dropshipping companies to increase their volume and margins. SHOW SUMMARY: Today’s guest is Charles Palleschi, founder and CEO of Spark Shipping. Spark Shipping acts a third party between vendor and manufacturer for ecommerce businesses. Born from a solution Charles created for his dropshipping business, Spark Shipping is now partnered with Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Woocommerce and more. In this episode, Charles explains how the idea of Spark Shipping was a direct result of a pain point he experienced during the early days of his dropshipping business. He shows us how to create our own solutions and then, how to make them public as a SaaS product. We also talk about how to improve your dropshipping business, how to finagle lower shipping rates, and the vendors you should prioritize. This is the Lean Commerce Podcast. TOPICS: What was the inspiration behind Spark Shipping? 0:25 I started as a freelance consultant, using my development background, but I decided totally out of the blue to buy an e-commerce website. I started with FBA, drop shipping, and worked with a lot of vendors and that’s what made me think of creating a tool to organize orders and vendors. We named it Spark Shipping, made it public and about three years ago we started to fully focus on it instead of our e-commerce website. 6:05 Spark Shipping sits between the retail side and the vendor and we automate inventory quantities, take order requests and get tracking data. Essentially we automate the day to day tasks of an e-commerce business. What is a hybrid drop shipping model? 8:56 Not a lot of people talk about the boring backend of e-commerce, especially when it comes to processing data. Hybrid drop shipping involves one product being fulfilled by multiple vendors (manufacturer, distributor, internal warehouse). This creates layers of inventory and you can use the cheapest vendor for that moment. What improvement can you make on dropshipping and returns? 14:10 A lot of dropshippers are listing products even though they don’t have live numbers from their vendors. I get that if you have hundreds of thousands of products you can’t do it on your own, but you need to find a tool that helps you keep track of those numbers. 18:30 Once you’re deep within a given niche, you can start giving value based off of that specific product and increase your volume. Do you have dropshippers on your platform doing significant volume? 22:37 We see people move from drop shipping to manufacturing and manufacturing to drop shipping. It’s not very black and white, it’s more of a holistic approach. If you’re manufacturing a product, it doesn’t make sense to manufacture all of the accessories for it. But it does make sense to stock all of them. 26:06 There’s a ton of large companies doing this and customers don’t realize it. If you order a product and have it delivered in one box and then have the accessory delivered in a different box, on a different day, this is a company that is executing this strategy. How can you get lower shipping rates on ecommerce products? 29:13 The normal shipping rates from UPS or FedEx aren’t typically paid once you are doing volume, you can easily negotiate a better rate. Once you’ve done that, go to your manufacturer and try to get them to negotiate with their carrier. Then, you’ll have a cheaper rate on both vendor and manufacturer side. What other areas should we work on with our clients? 36:52 Every vendor is using a different format and this makes people hesitant to bring on different vendors, even though they may be able to upsell better or bring in more data. Overcoming this hesitation can really move the needle for your business. 38:26 Vendors in the “quirky” part of the internet usually have the best products and rates. Don’t shy away from them, chances are you should lean into them. 39:08 Once you’re in a niche, it gets easier to find these particular vendors. Another bonus of these vendors is that you can create better relationships with them which can help you in the future. Contact Chris Palleschi at: Spark Shipping | Dropship Ecommerce Automation, Inventory Management and Third Party Order Fulfillment The Business of Ecommerce Podcast Chris on LinkedIN

Transcript: Charles:            In this episode of Business of eCommerce, I talk about how to handle fraud shipping returns. This is the Business of eCommerce, episode 49. Charles:            Welcome to the Business of eCommerce, the show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. Charles:            I'm here today to talk a bit about the topic of how to handle returns for drop shipping, for drop shippers, anytime where you're as an eCommerce retailer shipping products where it's not coming directly from your warehouse. It's coming from a third party warehouse. What's the best way to handle those? Charles:            I found an blog [inaudible 00:00:46] actually that given an outline that I wanted to kind of start with, and I kind of go into each topic a little bit, give my own kind of comments on it. I thought it was a good place to start, so I'll also link to that in the show notes, that blog [inaudible 00:00:59] which was great. Charles:            First, two parts. Let's talk about what's going on, what the issue is. So, you're a drop shipper or you work with some manufacturers, that sort of thing, ship directly from their warehouse, however you want to define it. But essentially, when you're shipping product, it's from a third party. They have a return policy. It's not your return policy. What do you do? This is a totally common issue. Lot of folks have this. Charles:            What also makes this a bit more difficult that you have to always think about is you might ship from multiple suppliers, so it's not just one, one warehouse, one supplier, multiple. So, how do you handle that? Charles:            First, let's say two things. First part we'll talk about how to actually get ready for it ahead of time, how to start, and then when it actually happens, how to actually handle the returns themselves. Charles:            So, how to [inaudible 00:01:54]. First, talk to each supplier and learn their policy. Each supplier is gonna have a different policy, right? Where some might allow 90 days, others 60, others 30, some maybe not at all. Some are gonna have a restocking fee. Some of them who pay shipping costs, also that might depend on if the product was defective, if it was the wrong size, damaged, there's a lot of different things. You need to go through each one of their return policies before you even start down this road, just to get an idea of what are you working with here and what are they willing to do for your as your supplier. Charles:            Once you know that, then it's important to understand your return policy. The goal here is you're working with multiple suppliers, let's say. It could be simple. You're working with one. If you're working with one, we'll do the simple case first, you might honestly might just want to copy their return policy. That's the easiest, right? They offer 30 days, you offer 30 days. You know it's in that window, easy, right? If there's a return, can you get the return? It's the supplier's return policy, yes. Very easy answer. Charles:            But what happens when you work with multiple suppliers? The goal here is there's some wiggle room and it really depends on how you want to handle this as a retailer, where you're comfortable, but the goal here is to try to come up with your return to closely merge this and it ends up being kind of the lowest common denominator of all their return policies. For example, if one offers a 90 day window and another one offers a 30, you might only want to offer a 30, right? Cut yours down so that you know any product sold in your stores will be covered under your manufacturer return policy. Charles:            If you want to go over, now you're in the gray area. It's up to you. There might be some manufacturers that offer 15 day or shorter, so once you get below 30 it starts to get a little dicey, so you do want to think about this,

Charles Palleschi reveals how you can automate your business to generate more revenue faster. in less time, and with fewer resources!

Charles Palleschi reveals how you can automate your business to generate more revenue faster. in less time, and with fewer resources!

Charles Palleschi reveals how you can automate your business to generate more revenue faster. in less time, and with fewer resources!

What's up everyone! Today I finally have a Boston native on the show! :D Charles Palleschi is a developer turned entrepreneur who has built Spark shipping which is a solution to all of multi channel fulfillment needs! As with most people who have built tools for sellers, Charles built Spark Shipping from his own need for needing to connect manufacturers to wholesalers to ensure that the right stock levels are available in near real-time. We also talk about using a hybrid listing model to test what products work with low volume and then when a product sticks, go deeper on the next order safe in the knowledge that the product sells! If you want to find out more about what Spark Shipping could do for you, head on over to sparkshipping.com Also, here is the link to the hybrid dropshipping blog post we mentioned: https://sparkshipping.com/blog/17-how-to-grow-your-ecommerce-business-with-hybrid-dropshipping Thanks for tuning in, catch you in the next one!

The largest online retailers do not have a single method to fulfill all of their product. They use a combination of internal warehouses, 3PL's, and dropshipping direct from a manufacturer or distributor. This approach enables them to seemingly always have product in-stock, get the best prices, and have a variety of items in their catalog. We call this hybrid dropshipping, and its not just for the big guys anymore. New apps and services have made accessible to everyone. To discuss it, Charles Palleschi joins us from Spark Shipping in Boston. Spark Shipping automates the round trip of inventory, orders and tracking data between your store and any vendor, supplier, manufacturer, distributor or warehouse, no matter what format the vendor is using. You'll Learn Why invest in delegating fulfillment? What is hybrid dropshipping? What are the challenges of working with multiple vendors for fulfillment? What are the realities of custom dropshipping integration? In plain english, what's the deal with APIs? The common problems & challenges merchants face with fulfillment as they scale. Kurt's war stories from his time as an ecommerce product manager. The killer feature "multi-tiered" that only hybrid dropshippers can offer. Tune in for more details! Resources SparkShipping Shopify: Using fulfillment and dropshipping services Tw:@charlespal Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn't?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop's search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

Spark Shipping founder, podcaster, and Interview Connections client Charles Palleschi talks with Jess and Cassi about the trials and tribulations of starting a podcast, what he’s learning about eCommerce from his guests, and what he’s getting out of being a guest expert. Also, the Interview Connections team loves snacks; specifically, ants on a log. Resources Mentioned: Spark Shipping The Business of eCommerce Womensplaining We Know What You Did on Fear Street Fan of the Band

Links from the Show Trellis How To Make B2B eCommerce Work With Your Sales Reps Isaiah Bollinger Sponsored by Spark Shipping - eCommerce Automation Transcript Charles:            In this episode of The Business of eCommerce, I talk with Isaiah Bollinger the founder of Trellis. This is The Business of eCommerce, Episode 17. Welcome to The Business of eCommerce, the Podcast that helps eCommerce entrepreneurs start, launch, and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host Charles Palleschi. I'm here today with Isaiah Bollinger, one of the founders of Trellis. Trellis is one of the top full-service eCommerce development agencies right here in Boston. I recently saw a post by Isaiah, or on the Trellis blog actually, that was about the rapid growth of B2B eCommerce. That's one of those topics that you don't see many folks talking about B2B eCommerce, so I wanted to bring Isaiah on the show here today and chat a little more about it. So, hey Isaiah, how are you doing? Isaiah:              Good, good, thank you for inviting me to the show. You know, we've been connected for a while now, so it's great to be on the show and talk about eCommerce. Something that we've both been doing for a while now. Charles:            Yeah, it's great to have you, it's unusual actually to have someone from here in Boston, someone I've actually met in real life. Isaiah:              Yeah, it's funny how you mentioned we're one of the top eCommerce, we just actually got rated as the top eCommerce agency in Boston by a firm called Clutch. They organize agencies and help people find the top agencies locally for different things. Boston, surprisingly, it's not as robust for lots of eCommerce firms, compared to New York. Locally, most of our competitors are mostly in New York. There's so many of them there, but Boston's not quite as many here. Charles:            I feel like it's a big eCommerce city though. There's a lot of start ups in a small ... on the software side. A few different products went out of the city. Isaiah:              I think New York is just also an agency hub. Charles:            Yeah. Isaiah:              It's a hub for agencies and funny enough, one of our bigger eCommerce competitors moved their headquarters now to New York, and then one of the other ones, their headquarters is now in California, and they both just disappeared from Boston, so it's good for us. Charles:            That's a good thing. Isaiah:              Yeah. Charles:            Awesome, so, we were talking about the blog post on B2B eCommerce, and the rapid growth and it's not something that a lot of folks talk about so I figured you guys have, it sounds like, some significant experience with that. So, wanted to chat a little bit more you know, what is it, what are people doing, and what you kind of see now. Isaiah:              Yeah, absolutely. We started doing B2B eCommerce back when the company started in 2012. We kind of fell into it. Started with a mid-sized distributor, and it was a Magento project, and I think we quickly realized hey, there's some potential here for not only the customers but also the agency size so it felt like a good synergy of an area for us to focus. We've just kind of grown up from there. B2B eCommerce has been a pretty large industry for a while. It's just not talked about a lot because I don't think it's very sexy in the sense that it's a lot of behind the scenes. A lot of the sites are actually password protected sites, or you need to log in to see pricing, or you basically have to be a customer to get the true experience. From that sense you might not even know about these sites, or be able to get to these sites that are doing millions and millions or even billions of dollars online. I think that's kind of a big reason for why B2B eCommerce is so kind of behind the scenes even though it's actually more than double B2C eCommerce in terms of total sales volume.

I talk with Ty Crandall, CEO of Credit Suite, about how to use debt to fund your eCommerce business Links from the show: Ty Crandall Credit Suite Credit Suite LinkedIn Sponsored by Spark Shipping - Automation for eCommerce Transcription Charles:                        In this episode of the Business of eCommerce, I talk with Ty Crandall about using business lines of credit to grow eCommerce business. This is the Business of eCommerce, episode 13. Welcome to the business of eCommerce, the podcast that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch, and grow their business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. I'm here today with Ty Crandall. Ty is a business credit expert. With over 16 years of financial experience, Ty's recognized as an authority in business credit building, business credit scoring, business credit repair. So, Ty, I wanted to bring you on the show today to talk to you a little bit about using lines of credit in eCommerce. How you doing today? Ty Crandall:                  Yeah. Good man. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. Charles:                        Yeah, great to have you. Wanted to kinda jump right in and see kind of ... Talk about some ways on first, what is business credit, and second, how we can kinda use it to help grow and finance a growing eCommerce business. Ty Crandall:                  Sure, absolutely. There's a couple things. When I talk about getting financing, or I refer to it as capital, basically any kind of money you can get as a business. There's a couple different avenues you really wanna focus on. You know, one is the business credit, the corporate credit side, which really has to do with credit cards. Visa cards, Master cards, American Express, Dell, Apple, etc. A lot of these credit cards don't require manual reviews, or manual underwriting, it's just one of those, 'if you meet the requirements,' you get automated approvals for 20, 30, 40, 50 thousand dollar plus individual credit cards and lines. Then I look at the other side of it as the business financing. Every thing that's left. These are loans and these are credit lines that are through alternative lenders and SPA, etc. There's a couple different avenues you can go. The problem is that loans, and lines, and those, a lot of people know the difficulties, especially eCommerce of getting approved with a lot of those because a lot of the industries that we're in with eCommerce, even where I am, financial services, is considered to be high risk. We face more scrutiny, we have more difficulty accessing capital, etc. the first thing to know, is being a business credit, you don't have that scrutiny. There's not industry restrictions. You're not going to not be able to get approved because you're an eCommerce business. It's the same as we're not getting approved because we're in financial services. Anybody can get this, even if you're just starting the business, even if you're just gonna be starting the business after you listen to the show tomorrow. You still can get involved and access capital, you don't have to provide tax returns and bank statements so it's no doc. You don't collateral that's required for SPA loans. You don't need to have good credit that's required for a lot of term loans, etc., that's out there. With business credit, as long as you have a business, you can start obtaining credit pretty quickly and then you can use a lot of that credit to fuel and fund the business and get quite a bit of it within even the matter of a few months. Charles:                        Okay, so when you say business credit, you're talking about specifically not assigning your particular social to it, to put it under the businesses name and to make it a business ... Ty Crandall:                  Yeah. Charles, you hit the nail on the head. You're familiar with consumer credit, right. You have a social security number, you give somebody your social, they pull your credit.

The best inventions are born of necessity. When Charles Palleschi purchased a site that sold popcorn, popcorn kernels, and popcorn related accessories ecommerce business, he quickly realised that he needed to scale and parts of his business. That need inspired Charles to create Spark Shipping, the leading dropship software which automates millions upon millions of orders for eCommerce and retail entrepreneurs every month. 00:02 Salena: Hey there, and welcome to this week's episode of the bringing business to retail podcast. The best inventions are born of necessity. When Charles Palleschi purchased a store that sells popcorn, of all things, popcorn kernels and popcorn related accessories, the e-commerce business was a stepping stone for him to realize that if he wanted to grow he was going to have to scale and automate parts of his business. And that need inspired Charles to create spark shipping, the leading drop ship software which automates millions upon millions of orders for a-commerce and bricks and mortar retailers every single month. I am really excited to be talking about drop shipping because it is something that a lot of retailers may not know that they are even doing. So welcome to the show Charles. 00:53 Charles: Hey, thanks a lot for having me on. Salena: This is a New York accent am I right? Charles: Close, from Australia, it may sound like that. But Boston you are very close to that. Salena: Still getting use to my accents. Like Americans love Australian accent. We love all the individual accents.  Charles: You will hear it pretty quickly. It's very Boston. Salena: 01:19 Great, okay. So tell us what exactly is drop shipping because I have a feeling that some of the people who are listening today will know what it is, but others will actually be doing it already in some sort of informal arrangement in their store. And they don't even know that they are doing it. So what is drop shipping? For more click here