Podcasts about lightning deals

Dynamic UP & DOWN bidding on Amazon PPC can be the difference between bleeding cash and printing profit.In this centennial episode of That Amazon Ads Podcast, Brett Messieh shows exactly when to flip Dynamic UP & DOWN bidding on Amazon PPC to crush ACoS and explode sales velocity.

Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Operations. It's time for another episode of the Retail Round-Up, March edition! From a new fee structure on promotions to a longer Prime Day event and expanded advertising capabilities, these updates could reshape how brands approach pricing, marketing, and overall strategy. Joining us today are resident experts Ross Walker, Director of Retail Media at Acadia, and Armin Alipahic, Operations Team Lead. Make sure you tune in to find out more!   KEY TAKEAWAYS In this episode, Julie, Jordan, Ross, and Armin discuss: Amazon's New Fee Structure for Deals & Coupons – Amazon is introducing performance-based fees for Lightning Deals, Best Deals, Coupons, and Prime Exclusive Discounts starting June 2nd. These changes could significantly impact brands' profitability, particularly ahead of Prime Day. Prime Day Extended to Four Days – Amazon quietly announced that Prime Day 2025 will be a four-day event, giving brands more time to compete but also raising concerns about increased promotional spending. Amazon's Push Into TV Advertising – The launch of Complete TV aims to streamline TV ad buying, including both linear and streaming placements. This move aligns with Amazon's broader strategy to dominate the traditional TV advertising space. Search Query Performance (SQP) API Launch – Amazon is making SQP reports available via API, allowing brands and tech providers to automate and integrate search data more efficiently. This could be a game-changer for search optimization and ad performance tracking. Steeper Discounts for Better Visibility – Amazon is incentivizing brands to offer discounts of 40% or more by promising additional deal placements, though the specifics remain unclear. However, higher promotional costs may make deep discounting unsustainable for many brands.

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup In this episode of the All Killer No Filler DTC Podcast, host Eric Dyck sits down with Rob and Clifford from Pilothouse Amazon, to unpack key learnings from a record-breaking holiday season on Amazon. From Black Friday to Q1, they dive deep into the strategies that propelled brands to double or even triple revenue during critical sales periods. Key insights include: The importance of deal badges: Why Black Friday and Cyber Monday badges can drastically increase visibility and sales. Discounting strategies: Prime Exclusive Discounts vs. Lightning Deals—what works best? Post-Christmas adjustments: How to navigate shifts in ad performance as shopping behaviors change. Capitalizing on Q1 trends: Aligning content and campaigns with the “New Year, New You” mindset. Whether you're a seasoned Amazon seller or just getting started, this episode offers actionable advice to ensure your brand is ready to win on Amazon during the busiest times of the year. Timestamps: 00:00 - Black Friday and Cyber Monday insights 02:00 - Amazon deal badges and their impact 04:00 - Strategies for maximizing Q5 sales 06:00 - New Year marketing strategies on Amazon 08:00 - Amazon Vendor Program explained Hashtags: #DTCpodcast #AmazonStrategy #BlackFridaySales #EcommerceTips #NewYearMarketing #AmazonAdvertising #VendorProgram #EcommerceGrowth #MarketingInsights #AmazonDeals Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Are you ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? In this episode, we've compiled strategies from 13 sellers to get their top tips for getting the most sales possible during Q4. ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Join us in this episode, as we unpack actionable strategies to amplify your sales during Black Friday, Cyber Week, and throughout the bustling Q4. Listen in as we glean insights from over 13 seasoned e-commerce sellers who share their top tactics for success during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Discover quick-hitting tips like incorporating festive elements into product images and crafting high-quality videos to boost conversion rates. We'll also explore creative promotional events such as a five-day Black Friday series with unique daily offers and the significance of leveraging various holidays for marketing opportunities. These actionable strategies aim to help you transform every day of Q4 into a sales triumph. The episode further explores methods for Amazon ranking success, where we highlight the importance of coupon codes and strategic advertising budget adjustments to optimize visibility and conversions. With insights into Amazon's Lightning Deals and seven-day deals, we dive into the power of long-tail keywords and the impact of Amazon Marketing Cloud on customer journey tracking. Additionally, learn about the efficacy of sponsored display ads and retargeting strategies, emphasizing the importance of building audiences of high-intent shoppers. We'll also discuss how to optimize search query strategies using brand analytics and past performance data for a successful Black Friday. Tune in to equip yourself with a comprehensive toolkit for boosting your sales performance during the holiday season. In episode 616 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, we talk about: 00:00 - Amazon Strategies for Black Friday & Cyber Week Success 01:58 - Maximizing Conversion Rate With Sponsored Videos 04:48 - Holiday Marketing Opportunities 10:42 - Optimizing Listings for Black Friday 12:17 - Strategies for Amazon Ranking Success 18:01 - Effectiveness of Sponsored Brand Ads 18:29 - Effective Strategies for Black Friday Success 23:11 - Strategic Brand Analytics for Black Friday 25:34 - Profitable Marketing Strategies for Excessive Inventory    

In this episode of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast, we dive deep into the results of Amazon's Fall Prime Day 2024. Amazon experts Christine Shiloni and Jonathan Finkes unpack valuable insights, compare performance to previous events, and provide a strategic outlook for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Whether you're an established Amazon seller or just getting started, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you maximize your Q4 sales.Key topics discussed:Fall Prime Day performance: A 57% average increase in sales compared to last year, with some brands seeing up to 300% growth.The impact of inflation on consumer behavior and pricing strategiesHow to leverage different types of Amazon deals (Lightning Deals, Prime Exclusives and coupons) for maximum visibility and sales.Strategies for navigating the condensed holiday shopping season, with five fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.Critical dates and preparation tips for inventory management, including considerations for Chinese New Year's impact on supply chains.

Hour 4 Tabloid Trash, Lightning Deals Are Dumb full 1284 Tue, 08 Oct 2024 16:56:04 +0000 uW6XS7LOwbp1GZFFe5GFDWjf9Y48xzq1 society & culture BJ & Jamie society & culture Hour 4 Tabloid Trash, Lightning Deals Are Dumb Irreverent, funny, and real-life radio, BJ & Jamie kick off the day with topical, trending stories and relationship topics that often cross the line of dysfunctional and unbelievable, yet they’re always hilarious. Hear BJ & Jamie weekday mornings from 5:30-10a on Alice 105.9 | KALC-FM! 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Society & Culture False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-li

Chase is the Co-founder at Electric Eye where he and his team create Shopify-powered sales machines from strategic design and development decisions. He is also the host of Honest Ecommerce, a weekly podcast where he provides online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business.Highlight Bullets> Here's a glimpse of what you would learn…. Challenges faced by Amazon brand owners transitioning to ShopifyMisconceptions about the ease of moving from Amazon to ShopifyImportance of maximizing existing sales channels before diversifyingDistinct skill sets required for success on Amazon versus ShopifyBuilding customer trust and a strong online presence on ShopifyNecessity of a robust marketing strategy for driving traffic to Shopify storesUtilizing existing sales data and customer feedback for effective transitionsFinancial considerations and budgeting for launching a Shopify storeInnovative marketing strategies, including influencer seedingContinuous learning and adaptation in the evolving e-commerce landscapeIn this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Chase Clymer, co-founder of Electric Eye and host of the Honest Ecommerce podcast. They explore the challenges Amazon brand owners face when transitioning to Shopify. Key insights include understanding the distinct skill sets required for each platform, the importance of a cohesive brand strategy, and leveraging influencer marketing. Chase emphasizes the need for a robust marketing plan, a solid business operating system, and the effective use of AI tools like ChatGPT. The episode provides actionable advice for scaling e-commerce businesses from seven to eight figures.Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:1. Assess and Build Your Team's Shopify Skills - Evaluate Skills: Review your team's current skills and identify gaps related to creative marketing, customer engagement, and website management.  - Invest in Training: Consider training programs or hiring experts to ensure your team is equipped to handle Shopify's requirements.2. Optimize Your Amazon Performance Before Transitioning- Enhance Listings: Conduct a thorough review of your Amazon listings, ensuring they are optimized with high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and relevant keywords.  - Leverage Promotional Tools: Make full use of Amazon's promotional tools, such as Sponsored Products and Lightning Deals, to boost visibility and sales before making the transition.3. Develop a Robust Shopify Marketing Strategy- Create Effective Ads: Develop targeted ad campaigns to drive traffic to your Shopify store.- Leverage Content and Influencers: Regularly generate fresh content to engage customers and consider influencer marketing to build brand credibility and attract new customers.Resources mentioned in this episode:Josh Hadley on LinkedIneComm Breakthrough ConsultingeComm Breakthrough PodcastEmail Josh Hadley: Josh@eCommBreakthrough.comShopifyWooCommerceWixSquarespaceMeta AdsAmazonTikTok ShopStoreTester.comElectric EyeSpecial Mention(s):Adam “Heist” Runquist on LinkedInKevin King on LinkedInMichael E. Gerber on LinkedInRelated Episode(s):“Cracking the Amazon Code: Learn From Adam Heist's Brand Scaling Secrets” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast“Kevin King's Wicked-Smart Tips for Building an Audience of Raving Fans” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast“Unlocking Entrepreneurial Greatness | Insider Secrets With E-myth Author Michael Gerber” on the eComm Breakthrough PodcastEpisode SponsorThis episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures. I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survi...

In this episode, Joie Roberts and Jamie Davidson discuss strategies for preparing for Prime Day on Amazon. They provide tips on inventory management, scheduling lightning deals, utilizing coupons, and leveraging advertising and social media to maximize visibility and sales. They also emphasize the importance of building an email list and communicating directly with customers. After Prime Day, they recommend analyzing data, retargeting customers, and conducting a post-Prime Day follow-up. Overall, the conversation provides valuable insights and actionable advice for sellers looking to make the most of Prime Day.   Takeaways Prepare ahead of time by increasing inventory for your top products. Schedule lightning deals and promote coupons to create a sense of urgency and attract price-sensitive shoppers. Utilize social media, influencers, and off-Amazon marketing to reach potential customers. Increase advertising budgets and leverage sponsored brands and retargeting. Build an email list and communicate directly with customers. Conduct a post-Prime Day follow-up to analyze data, retarget customers, and make improvements for future events. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Importance of Prime Day Prep 02:07 Strategies for Inventory Management 04:13 Creating Urgency with Lightning Deals and Coupons 06:57 Utilizing Social Media and Influencers 11:55 Maximizing Advertising Opportunities 15:53 Building an Email List and Direct Communication   This episode is sponsored by Clarity6.ai, a one-stop place for all your marketing needs. Instagram: @JoieRoberts.Official                    @JamieDavidson.Official   Want our PPC help? Email: Joie@AMZInsiders.com  Book a free coaching session: www.callamz.com 

Listen in as Grace Kopplin, a seasoned e-commerce expert with a marketing background and former Helium 10 blog writer, shares her journey from a Midwest upbringing to managing an Amazon team for a nine-figure e-commerce business. Grace's initial forays into retail buying and planning led to her pivotal shift to the e-commerce arena. As she recounts her experience honing analytical skills as a business analyst, we get an inside look at the strategies driving profitability and sales growth on the ever-evolving Amazon platform. During our conversation, we tackled the significant changes that Amazon sellers are facing, especially with the latest coupon and sales strategies in Q1 2024. Grace reveals how the new minimum discount requirements for coupons have transformed selling approaches, impacting product badging and organic ranking. We also talk about the intricacies of Amazon PPC advertising, including the exciting new video campaign options and store spotlight formats. Additionally, Grace provides insight into how resellers can navigate sponsored brand ads amidst fierce buy box competition and the potential for platforms like TikTok Shop to skyrocket brand awareness. To wrap up this episode, Grace and Bradley explore the implementation of AI in Amazon-selling strategies, noting the platform's dominance and the emerging significance of marketplaces like TikTok. We delve into how new Amazon data points and tools, like the Product Opportunity Explorer and Helium 10's Cerebro, are essential for content strategy and maintaining a competitive edge. Plus, don't miss our discussion on the unique challenges of managing large assortments in categories like apparel, footwear, and jewelry. Whether you're a seasoned seller or new to the e-commerce game, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and expert insights you won't want to miss. In episode 560 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Grace discuss: 00:00 - E-Commerce Strategies for Serious Sellers 01:21 - Grace's Backstory 06:11 - Managing Brand Registry and Fees Strategy 13:24 - Amazon Advertising and Selling Strategies 14:45 - New Amazon PPC Strategies and Challenges 20:02 - Amazon Launch Strategy Evolution 23:01 - Amazon Strategy and AI Implementation 25:12 - Leveraging Amazon Data for Strategic Advantage 32:22 - PowerPlay Hockey Jerseys and Conferences ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today, we've got a seller who used to write blogs for Helium 10 but now works at a company that's a nine-figure seller online with Amazon, obviously, being their number one moneymaker. But you might be shocked when you find out which marketplaces brings in the second most amount of sales. Find out what that is plus get her Amazon strategies in today's episode. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And just wanted to throw a quick shout out here, we have a new TikTok channel at Helium 10. It's helium10_software. So if you want some unserious strategies you know sometimes we got some serious strategies on there too. Make sure to give us a follow. All right, go. You can even see me singing in Chinese on one of these videos here but go to h10.me/tiktok or just type in Helium 10, one zero underscore software and follow us on TikTok. We're going to have somebody who I don't think I'm not going to ask her to do a TikTok dance for us here. But Grace, first time, I believe first time on the podcast, right, for you. Grace: Yes, yes, first time. Bradley Sutton: Awesome, well, welcome. Like you, actually, you know, we met years ago at different conferences and stuff but also for a while when I was running the content team, you were one of our actually contract workers where you would, you know, write some Amazon related blogs. But it could be that I know some of your backstory, but since I'm like 10-second Tom from 50 First Dates, I just forget everything. So, regardless if I remember or not, let's go into your backstory because nobody else on the show might know who you are. You just told me that you're in Minnesota, but it sounds like you're not from there. Where are you from? Grace: Yes, I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so I'm still a Midwest gal, but I made my way to Minneapolis about six years ago now. Bradley Sutton: Well, how can you be a Twins fan? Shouldn't you still be a Brewers fan then? Grace: Fair Weather fan, I suppose. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. So Milwaukee, the Frozen Tundra of Milwaukee, and then going into college. Where did you go to college at? Grace: Yes, I went to University of Wisconsin in Madison, so very big party school had a great time. Bradley Sutton: What is the mascot? Why can't it? It's not the Grace: The Badgers. Bradley Sutton: See? I was going to say I knew it started with a B. I was like no Beavers is Oregon State. What B is it the Badgers? Yes, all right. Grace: Bucky Badger. Bradley Sutton: Well, what did you? What did you major in over there? Grace: Yeah, I got my BBA in marketing. I've always been just like super business oriented and I wanted to do something that was pretty broad, so I did what anyone would do and got a degree in business, and I've done a lot of different things since then. Bradley Sutton: Okay, and what like. Well, as soon as you got out of university, you know, got your degree. What was your first gainful employment that you did? Grace: I feel like in business school they always teach you. It's like you can either go into finance and be a consultant or if you want to work in retail and you like business, let's go be a buyer. Those are like the two things they tell you that are options. I was like I need to be a buyer so I started my career in retail in a buying office doing buying and planning. So that gave me a pretty good basis of just how retail works. So I focused a lot on brick and mortar retail, buying products for stores, allocating the inventory and doing the forecasting for that. Bradley Sutton: And what was your first exposure to e-commerce? Grace: Yeah, it was actually my first job out of college. We actually slated all of our ads by writing it down in a journal and submitting it through marketing, and our e-com business was super small back then. It wasn't that long ago but that was my first exposure to e-comm and it was always really interesting to me. And as the retail atmosphere changed in the early 2010s, I knew that's where I wanted to be for longevity, for my career. Bradley Sutton: Now, was it at the same company that you're working at today? Grace: No, I've bounced around a lot and my career has led me in a lot of different ways. Unfortunately, a lot of the large big box retailers I worked for all had their demise for any reason or another. So I kind of bounced around until I found an e-commerce centric company, which is where I'm at right now. Bradley Sutton: What did you start doing at this company and then? What have you been doing over the years and not now? What is your main role? Grace: Yeah, so I started as an e-commerce business analyst, which is pretty much jack of all trades when it comes to anything analytical. So I was kind of the person who would be pulling all of the reporting from Amazon, creating forecasts, pitching to our executive team. This is why we need to buy this inventory for Amazon. This is how it all works. So I was really in the weeds and I feel like that gave me such good experience in what I'm doing now, which is kind of managing the full Amazon team really a strong focus on profitability, but also sales growth, which has been such a hot topic recently. So I've done a lot of different things. Bradley Sutton: Is this like a company that has its own brand and manufacturers own products? Grace: So the company is called Powerplay Retail. We started as a manufacturer's rep group, so working with brands, helping them get into retailers. It was really focused on brick and mortar retailers. Obviously, we have Target and Best Buy here in Minneapolis, so companies like us exist to help brands who don't know how to get into retail do just that. And then we kind of morphed into a distributor, as brands needed help actually shipping into retailers. And then when brands were like, hey, can you help us sell online, we were like yes, 100%. So then that's why our e-commerce arm exists. Grace: So we're a third-party reseller that partners with brands that don't want to bring Amazon in-house. So we buy and sell inventory out of our own large 3P account. We're also an Amazon agency, so I manage brands in their own 3P accounts. So I manage brands in their own 3P accounts. So I kind of do it both ways and it kind of just depends on what brands need. And over the years we've also dabbled in private label. We've created our own products and sold those in our accounts as well. So it's been a really cool experience being able to try it just every different way of selling on Amazon. Bradley Sutton: How many seller accounts do you guys have? Grace: Yeah, right now from an owned perspective we have three or four, but just from our full partnership perspective, I'm probably in maybe 20 different accounts on a daily basis. Bradley Sutton: So how does it work for when you're managing somebody else's stuff, like for brand registry? Like do some of these brands already have their own brand registry and then you somehow just get authorized or are you the one who is actually registering their brand because they never were before? How does that work? Grace: Both. So some companies are more Amazon savvy and right from the beginning and get go they registered with brand registry, which is great, and in that case we just become an authorized reseller and an administrator under their brand registry so we can act on their behalf. And in some cases they don't know, so either I'm kind of coaching them through that setup process or actually registering it on their behalf and managing everything. So it kind of just depends on how hands-on they want to be or how hands-off I want to be. So whatever works best for the brand, always the brand in mind for us. Bradley Sutton: Let's just skip ahead. We're going to talk a lot of strategy, but I think the thing top of mind for so many Amazon sellers and I think you have a unique perspective because you're dealing with so many different accounts I'm assuming you've got customers in many different categories, many different size of products, different, you know, types of products. The fees, you know, there's low inventory fees, that's coming. You know, there's low inventory fees. That's coming, you know, depending on when people are listening to this episode, maybe it's already there. There's the inventory placement fees, so that's been out for a little bit longer. How has this affected the brands that you're working with and what are the different strategies that? Like how you guys have pivoted? Like, are you doing your shipments any different or are you just like taking in the chin and it's costing us 20% more? Like, talk a little bit about some different experiences with different brands. Grace: Yeah. So these fees have been a huge topic of conversation for us in my operations team on how we can best handle these. Obviously they're real and we have to figure out a way to respond to them and maintain profitability above all else. So in terms of the shipment processes, we've been kind of going back and forth between the Amazon optimized shipments and just kind of eating the cost, depending on what our profitability looks like. So when these fees were introduced, our first step was like recreating our Amazon profitability model. I know there's a good Helium 10 one out there. Amazon kind of has its own Revenue Calculator tool. Grace: But what we did internally is create a very, very extensive profit and loss model outlining all of those different new fees and how they could impact us, so estimating at like a per pound dollar amount what this inventory placement fee would be an impact for us by SKU. So we can just first see how much can we afford to spend on advertising now that we have to spend more on logistics and operations costs, because that's kind of our flexible cost. And then, two, how is that going to impact our sales if we're investing less on some of the advertising side of things and then when it comes to the low inventory fee side, I was actually surprised that the fee even rolled out when it did. I know there's some concessions that Amazon is making right now and I think they're going to probably continue to make more concessions as some of the loopholes are found. But the fact that it's getting charged at the parent level is a huge problem, especially for a lot of brand partners that we have in the clothing and apparel and footwear side of things. Bradley Sutton: Wait, hold on, hold on. I've just been so busy with stuff I haven't even been checking that. So at the parent level means like you could have 10 variations and nine of them are cool, but then what? Don't tell me. You're saying that if one of them is low inventory, everything gets charged. Grace: No, it's not one of them, it's the sum of all of the children up to the parent. So no, it's not one of them, it's the sum of all of the children up to the parent. So they take like the average part of the supply chain, like it's not under my control if there's an issue with the supply of the raw materials needed to create my product and I can't ship it into FBA. So we're definitely looking at those, estimating them and seeing how we can respond, and there's definitely been some strongly worded emails to my Amazon Account Manager about just how these are impacting us and how critical it is to our business, as profitability right now is, it's hard for all third party resellers. Bradley Sutton: So your team is not the one controlling the inbound? I mean, obviously you're not controlling the manufacturing. But what about from, like you know, some of these brands have 3PL, are you the one who created the transfer shipments? Grace: Yes. Bradley Sutton: Okay. So how are you doing those differently, if at all? Grace: Yeah. So we have decided because Amazon is encouraging us to send in more units at once to decrease our frequency of shipments into Amazon. So in efforts to maintain a very lean weeks of supply, we've implemented a process to send in weekly replenishment orders based on the last week sales which makes a lot of sense, right. But now as Amazon is encouraging us to send in more and more and charging us more to send in less, we've had to weigh those costs and benefits of sending in shipments weekly. So now, depending on the size of the product, it might even be monthly that we're sending into Amazon, and we've been relying a lot on LTL shipments to save on prices. But now it seems like small parcel might be a little bit more cost effective for us in some cases. So it's definitely changed how we've managed this and I'm really interested to see how these fees potentially change moving into Q4, as we're sending in a ton of inventory into FBA and shipments just become so much more regular. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, okay, interesting. We've got Prime Day coming up in July and what you know. You've got a number of Prime Days under your belt. What are some things that you're planning on doing the same or and or differently as far as what kinds of deals, if any, you're doing, like how you tackle your PPC? Let's just have a quick Grace's Prime Day Playbook 2024. Grace: You know what I was thinking about this today, because Lightning Deals and Prime Exclusive Discounts are due by midnight and with all of these changes, and also I don't know if you've heard about the new return fee assessment happening on June 1st but this, I think, is going to have a huge impact on us and just our profitability and how much we're going to be able to afford on markdowns and promotions. Grace: So my theory, at least for Prime Day this year, is people are going to be a little bit less promotional just because of how hard it's been to be profitable with these new fees. But then again, there are those discount minimums that we need to meet in order to get that prime day badging which means so much to your sales. So for our top moving, best products, I'm still going to be at least 20% off, like I need the badging if I don't get the sales. It doesn't matter if I'm profitable or not, so I'm definitely be. I'm definitely going to be pulling back on some of the costs, like PPC, in order to fund my promotions. So I think, to answer your question succinctly, I will be definitely promoting steeply on my best products, but maybe my middle tier and my lower selling products. I might just keep those at full price because of profitability reasons. Bradley Sutton: Speaking of discounts and things like that. You know another thing that kind of rolled man 2024, when I think about it, the Q1 was just like a doozy for a few things. So the restrictions on, like coupons and discounts and, like you know, the sales history yeah, minimum discounts for coupons. Bradley Sutton: Yeah. So like, how has that effect? Like I mean, for me it didn't affect me too much on the coupon side, because I don't always use coupons. But what about you? Were you guys using coupons? And if so, has your strategy had to shift now? Grace: Yeah. So I wasn't even aware of the new discount minimums for coupons until I was looking at one of my listings and I was like why is my coupon not on? We used to really heavily do that like 5% coupon on one week, off the next week, five on the next week, just to keep some like badging on our listings Because we believe that has a really significant impact in like bestseller ranking and organic ranking and keywords. So we used to do that quite a lot. We're not doing that anymore just because we can't afford to be that steep of a discount on coupons. So we haven't actually come up with what our strategy is going to look like since that is so new. In the last like month-ish, we've kind of just been keeping our normal like promotion strategy and hopefully it doesn't impact sales too much. But that's something I can't answer right now. Bradley Sutton: Okay, yeah, a lot of this stuff is so new that it's going to take us all a little bit to try and figure out what. What we're going general PPC strategy you know PPC is they're doing more adding, as opposed to like taking stuff away or changing big rules. Like I hadn't added new video campaigns in a while like could have been maybe a year even and then I noticed, like a couple months ago, now all of a sudden I can do ASIN targeting video campaigns and keyword targeting video because I'm like, oh, that's new, that's pretty cool. But, like you know, Amazon's always launching new kinds of targeting and new kinds of, you know, what is it called for the sponsor brand? Is it like the vertical ads and things like that? What new-ish things are you doing, if any, on the advertising side? Grace: Yeah. So I agree with you. I think if you're not in Amazon every day, you're missing something. So that's something that I try to do. I'm not like actively in charge of PPC or managing campaigns, but I always like to stay abreast of like all the new different techniques and see how it works with the team. One thing that I'm really excited to try is the new store spotlight format, where you can actually click to different store pages in the sponsor brand placement, which I think looks really cool. If anything else, definitely, want to test to see if it drives extra sales. Grace: One thing for us that's challenging with sponsored brand ads, though, is as a reseller, and a lot of times we're not the exclusive reseller. Spending on sponsored ads for sponsored brands leads to sales for the brand but not necessarily sales for us. So if you're rotating in the buy box spend on sponsor brand, you're driving sales for the brand. It's not necessarily just for us. So how do we manage that? That's been a hot topic for us. Bradley Sutton: Are you personally doing anything on other platforms, be it Walmart, TikTok shop, or if so, or if not, is there anybody at your company who is focused on those channels? Grace: Yes, we are. We are really focused on TikTok shop right now. We've been using it more so as like an awareness driving tactic, more so than a sales driving tactic right now is a lot of the brands that we work with are more in a premium price point, so we've found that the TikTok items that work the best are really kind of almost that impulse item. So we've been using it to drive awareness, drive conversations around the products that we sell and the brands that we work with. And we've seen great halo effects on Amazon with branded search going up as engagement and content goes up for the brand on TikTok. So we've been using TikTok shop in that way. Grace: In terms of Walmart, that's always been a strategy for us. Transparently, Walmart just hasn't been a volume driver for us. It's been a steady but it hasn't really been a place that's warranted a ton of focus for us. But another marketplace that has been great for us is actually Target's marketplace, Target Plus, and that's been a key piece of our success, especially with working with brands who are looking for store placement at Target. For example, we've had a few items that we've listed on Target's marketplace that have done really well that have gotten the attention of a buyer and actually got store placement, which is really exciting. And at the end of the day, getting an item placed on shelves most of the time can drive more volume than a mid-tier listing on Amazon, so we tend to try to use that strategy. Bradley Sutton: How do you get on target these days, like wasn't it invite only back in the day or now that Target is adding that 360 or some kind of like? Grace: Yeah, I think it might still be invite only, but I know they've been actively adding a lot of sellers. I know that their back end is still quite archaic compared to what Amazon is. It's probably what Walmart was like four years ago. But I think it is still invite only but definitely something to reach out to your connections and see if you can get a connect with a Walmart e-comm buyer. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, I mean, that's what I've been saying about Walmart for years is the end game and the reason for Walmart.com. You know there's people who say, oh, you know, like you know a lot of the SKUs, I'll just have like 10% of my Amazon sales. No, you're not trying to. I mean sure, if it's profitable, why not increase your sales by 10%? But the main end game is you could get on the radar of Walmart buyers potentially and go 1P which increases. And then the next step is getting into 4,000 Walmart stores, which is like yes, is now going to dwarf your Amazon sales even. But on the target side totally makes sense. That you know there's not that many people buying. You know consumers buying stuff on Target compared to Walmart or Amazon's even less than Walmart. But then that's not the end game. The end game is if you can get well like, give me an example, some of those that you said you've been able to get them in Target stores, like those POs are for what? Like how many units? Like thousands, right? Grace: Yes, tens of thousands. Bradley Sutton: Tens of thousands, wow. Grace: And what's also really cool about Target's marketplace is that it's gated from a seller perspective. So once you list a product on Target, it is gated for you to sell it, which I know has become more and more an issue on Amazon, with unauthorized resellers and different brand protection strategies that are maybe a little bit gray market. So I think that's something that is really interesting to sellers who fight for the Buy Box on Amazon, and it's a little bit of a relief to be able to list it and not have to check it or wait for the Helium 10 notification to come up that the Buy Box has changed and also your advertising spend, as you can continue to advertise when you have a Buy Box. It's something that we love about Target. Bradley Sutton: Going back to Amazon, now. Let's say you've got a brand who's launching a new product, what is your go-to launch strategy these days? Obviously gone are the days of things like two-step URLs and search, find, buys and giveaways and things like that. So for your launch, are you just doing PPC and maybe having a lower price, or you're only launching stuff where there's already some kind of brand recognition, where you don't have to do too much special? Grace: We do both. So we've worked with brands who have sold on Amazon for a long time and already have hundreds of thousands of monthly searches for their brand on Amazon and we've also worked with brands that are brand new and maybe are selling a new product that doesn't quite fit into a category that exists yet on Amazon. From a review perspective, we definitely lean on Amazon Vine. I think it has been getting better - the quality of reviews and just the ease of use of that tool, just to ensure that we're adhering to Amazon's policies. But just from an overall launch strategy, we've been thinking about top of funnel marketing a lot more. It's easiest to win when you have branded search on Amazon already, just so you're showing up on that first page of search results. But we've been using we talked about TikTok shop. Using TikTok is a really important part of our launch strategy and also just advertising outside of Amazon. So working with content creators to introduce a brand or introduce a product, if it's like a new product line under a brand that maybe people are already familiar about, using promotion codes that type of thing, as well. Are you then those influencers sending people to a TikTok shop product, or sending people to go search on Amazon, or a mixture of both? Grace: We'll mostly send to TikTok shop, but we do see just like an organic halo effect and someone sees it on Amazon. They maybe have more trust for the marketplace and they go and try to find the product on Amazon. So we've got a couple of cool case studies on that. Bradley Sutton: I probably should have asked this at the beginning. But, just like you know, I know you don't have the numbers in front of you, but if you were to talk about last year's sales or projected 2024 over all the stuff that your company manages, what do you think it's going to be on Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and Target rough? You know I don't need exactly. Yeah. Grace: So our goal is always double every year and we have in the last two, three years, as we've expanded marketplaces, our brand partnerships and ASIN count. I think the ASIN count that I manage right now on Amazon is upwards of 50,000 ASINs, so we're always adding more products. It's so many. Grace: That's a topic for a different time of how frustrating that can be at some time. But I mean we're in the triple digit millions going into 2024, at least for the e-commerce side of things. So it's really exciting and there's a lot of growth ahead of us and I think the biggest challenge for us as a three-piece seller and a distributor is managing the profitability and the agency side of our house is looking a lot in terms of outlook is looking a lot more profitable for us. Bradley Sutton: Nice, nice. What about what's this number two thing, so the nine figures? Is Amazon only or everything together? I mean, obviously it's going to be everything, but does Amazon by itself hit that? Grace: Or not everything together? I mean yes, Amazon by itself hits that. Bradley Sutton: Okay, so what's number two then marketplace? Grace: Target. Bradley Sutton: Target over Walmart, what in the world? Grace: It is. It is. Bradley Sutton: What? That's a shocker. Grace: It is. But again, like I said, that we work with a lot more premium products and premium brands tend to lean more towards the Target customer rather than the Walmart customer. So it's probably Amazon, Target, Walmart, TikTok, right now, but that will probably change pretty rapidly. Bradley Sutton: For TikTok, where is the inventory coming from for the orders. Are you doing fulfilled by TikTok or is it coming from Amazon? Grace: No, we're doing MCF from Amazon FBA centers. We can also drop ship from our own 3PLs as well, but we like MCF cause it's easier on us. Bradley Sutton: Amazon strategies. You know like things are changing on Amazon. New data points you know come out like search query performance and new things in product opportunity. Explore just in the day, today, things of Amazon. What new things is part of your SOPs now. That maybe wasn't there two years ago. Or maybe you just think you've got some unique strategies even on something that's been around for a while because you know you can't get to nine figures without having some cool unique strategies. That's setting you apart from the competition. Grace: Yeah, I love using the Product Opportunity Explorer. It's now a daily part of what I do. I also use it to do competitive research, which might be a little bit different. So grabbing an ASIN that I'm interested in learning more about and looking at the customer insights, specifically around returns, which is a hot button topic, obviously, with this new fee coming into place with if your return rate is higher than what the threshold of the category is, there's new fees that come into play. So, just understanding what those negative insights are about your competing products and taking advantage of those in your content and I mean in your second image or in your first bullet point has been something that's worked really well for us. And as I'm going and I'm potentially auditing a new brand partner or I'm doing a pitch for new business, I'm always looking at that. I think the data that Amazon's been able to provide there is really useful and we've never had that access before. It's always been like here's how much they sell directionally. Here's what their seller ranking is. Here's the keywords that they rank on. Grace: Here's what the keyword sales are but, like, the actual sentiment from the customers is really interesting. And something that we like to use in our content Bradley Sutton: Favorite Helium 10 tool and why? Grace: I like the Cerebro. I love doing keyword research, as we just talked about and I think, finding those niche keywords and using those in your PPC. Even though it's an old strategy, it works and it's always changing and not everyone has auto campaigns anymore, so it's something that's really important to do and I still like to do it because I love to know, like, what's changing. And another, really important, like leading or trailing indicator either one would be like branded search around your competitors branded search, so just understanding how many people less are searching for your competitors versus you. I think that provides a really unique opportunity to win. Bradley Sutton: Okay. If I were to give you the keys to the Helium 10 Product Roadmap. Something you know like hey, you're in charge of all of our product team a tool or a feature or a function that we don't have that you need, what would it be? Grace: I have two, okay, I think I asked about this already but Target Plus. I'd love to get a plugin, cause I love your dashboard, where I can see, like all my different marketplaces US, Canada, Mexico, Walmart all of that rolled up into one. I know it's probably still far out, but that would be really cool to be able to see that. Maybe TikTok shop I don't know if that's coming or maybe Bradley Sutton: What would help on TikTok shop specifically? Grace: I really like the sales product performance. That's like when I come in the morning I'm like what sold yesterday. That's where I'm looking okay and that's probably my favorite part about selling on Amazon is just seeing what's selling and how I can sell more of it. And then the second piece of it would be a Walmart ask. I know there's a tool where we're able to see kind of what the sales are on the listings for Walmart. I think there's probably opportunity to get that tool just sharpened a little bit so we really can see where the opportunity is on Walmart. I think there's still a lot of questions from everyone on like who's winning on Walmart? Like we know like CPGs are winning, but what brands are winning? There's a lot of information about amazon brands who are winning, but I think Walmart's still a little bit of a Black Box. So any tools that are available from an Amazon perspective, rolling those out and sharpening them for Walmart, would be great too. Bradley Sutton: Cool, cool, all right. So, what other strategies can you help people with out there who you know like, obviously it. You know somebody might be listening to this and like, well, what does this apply to me? I'm not a nine figure, I'm not even an eight figure or even seven figure seller, but some strategies that you're doing that, hey, even if somebody's new on Amazon or maybe you know six figure seller, they could. They could definitely be doing something you haven't mentioned yet today. Grace: Yeah, I think I'm going to speak to specifically the apparel and footwear and jewelry sellers out there. It's really hard to manage the assortment and I know I manage the 50,000 ASIN count, but we've developed processes internally to make that a lot easier. And I know catalog management is probably a hot button topic for all those apparel sellers out there. Managing sizes, colors, widths, all of that, tracking the variations that's something we can help with. So, whether it's managing variations, bringing them into one listing, separating them out, testing variation strategy, that's something that's kind of niche that we do all the time with our footwear brands to see how we can gain more share of shelf or share of click on different keywords, mostly branded. And then there's also way different style guidelines for apparel and footwear and we've learned how to harness those and utilize those to the best of our abilities. So just know that you don't have to do that on your own. There's agencies and sellers out there that specialize in just that and can help you free up your time to work on the strategic stuff and we can handle the catalog management side of it. Bradley Sutton: Last question I guess would be you know, I'm assuming maybe you might use some AI things, especially having to manage so many listings like have you leverage AI in your amazon management business and, if so, how? Grace: Yes, we've definitely started utilizing it from a copy perspective. We use a bunch of different AI tools, but one thing that's worked for us is taking our keyword research, plugging it into pick the engine that you want to use, give them your product description and have them help at least get a starting point for what your bullet points and your title should be. It just saves so much time instead of sitting there and being like okay, here are my keywords, here's what I want to say, but I don't need to type all of it out on my own. So, yes, it's not going to be perfect, but it's a great place to start and, honestly, a great place to start with really anything, whether it's Amazon copy images or even just writing an email to a brand partner or a proposal to leadership it. Leadership Like it's just a super helpful tool that'll save time across the board. Bradley Sutton: Cool. Cool. All right. Last non-Amazon question. I see your Instagram. You're traveling a lot, favorite travel spots and what's on the bucket list for you that you haven't been to? Grace: Oh, my gosh. Okay. So recently my friends and I rented a beach house in Oak Island, North Carolina. It's like a tiny little town on the coast, but it was so beautiful and so fun and it was like a great way to disconnect. We literally saw dolphins from our balcony. It's like so cool. Bradley Sutton: Wow. Grace: So that was really fun. I was just kind of wholesome and nice to be able to unplug a little bit, although I never truly unplugged because slightly addicted to selling on amazon. Um, that's why we're here, right. And then, in terms of bucket list, I've never been to Europe, which is crazy. I need to get to Italy. I'm such a wine person, I'm such a like I love food. So that is on my bucket list. I hope I can get out in the next few years. Bradley Sutton: Maybe get your boss to send you to. We're doing a it's not Italy, but nearby to Madrid. End of May we are doing a workshop, high-end workshop, in Madrid. So, that could be an opportunity to business expense for your company and learn some new strategies. And you get to, you know, maybe make a side trip to Italy on your own dime. So if anybody else is interested, I'll know. I going to try and get Grace to go. h10.me/elitespain. It's open to everybody to join. All right, well, Grace, thank you so much for coming on here. It's been great to see all that you've accomplished on Amazon. I wish you the best of success in the future and maybe we'll bring you back on and let's see how you know how deep into the hundreds of millions that your company has been able to sell next year. Grace: I want to plug. I have an amazing team. This is not just me. I just happen to be the voice of them so I want to make sure I give them a shout out too. Bradley Sutton: If somebody wants to like maybe find you on the interwebs. I mean you can be incognito if you want, you don't have to answer this. But how can they find you out there? Grace: Yeah, so if you're interested in services from PowerPlay, powerplayretail.com, find us on LinkedIn. Otherwise, you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I'm also like a LinkedIn crazy person, so I will respond probably in the first one minute but that's the easiest way to reach me. Bradley Sutton: Is the founder of your company, like a hockey fan or something. Is that the name? Is that where PowerPlay comes from? Grace: I get that question a lot. No, but we always like use that as kind of like a hook, and we're also in Minnesota so hockey and Minnesota. Bradley Sutton: So that's what I was about to say. Minnesota is a hockey. Yeah, okay, all right, well, Grace. Grace: PowerPlay Hockey Jerseys, so I will say. Bradley Sutton: Hey, you know me about my Helium 10 jersey, so I'm all about those jerseys. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us and I hope to see you at maybe what Amazon Accelerate in Seattle, where's the next one. Grace: Yeah, I'll be at Accelerate. I'll be bopping around to different conferences but maybe I'll see you in Spain. Bradley Sutton: Hey, let's do it. Let's do it, all right, we'll see you later, Grace.

Are you ready to make this year's Prime Day your biggest and most profitable yet on Amazon? In this episode, Amazon experts Christine Shiloni and Jonathan Finkes join the podcast to share insider strategies and actionable tips to help you crush your Prime Day sales goals. From deal strategies to advertising tactics and inventory planning to post-Prime Day momentum, this episode covers everything you need to know to come out on top during Amazon's massive annual event.Key topics and lessons include:-Understanding the different Prime Day deal types (Lightning Deals, Best Deals, Prime Exclusive Discounts, Coupons) and how to select the right ones for your products.-Aligning your discount strategy with your margins and inventory levels to maximize profitability.-Crafting an aggressive but targeted advertising approach for Prime Day, including budget pacing, placement focus, and bid adjustments.-Leveraging increased traffic post-Prime Day to gain new-to-brand customers and drive long-term growth.-Preparing for a successful Q4 by capitalizing on learnings from Prime Day and gearing up for October Prime Day and holiday sales.

Are you eager to harness the sales power of Amazon’s Lightning Deals and supercharge your conversions? Ever wondered how behemoths like Amazon whip up buying frenzies with promotions that vanish in the blink of an eye? If you’ve been pondering how to wield that same lightning-fast power for your own business, regardless of what you’re […] The post MBA2460 Why Amazon’s Lightning Deals Work & How to Do the Same in Your Business appeared first on The $100 MBA.

Are you eager to harness the sales power of Amazon's Lightning Deals and supercharge your conversions? Ever wondered how behemoths like Amazon whip up buying frenzies with promotions that vanish in the blink of an eye? If you've been pondering how to wield that same lightning-fast power for your own business, regardless of what you're peddling, you're in for a treat.Join Omar as he discusses why Amazon Lightning Deals are effective – its scarcity, time-limited offers, and the irresistible allure that compels customers to hit 'buy' pronto. Whether you're selling products, services, or digital goodies, this lesson is tailor-made to zap some life into your sales approach and transform idle browsers into eager buyers.Don't let this episode slip through your fingers like a deal that's here one moment and gone the next. Tune in now and let's ignite some serious success in your sales strategy. Tap play on your favorite podcast app!SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTSSpotify| Podcast Feed| How To SubscribeGive us a Rating & ReviewShow LinksShopifyWebkulWooCommerceWP Venus

Are you eager to harness the sales power of Amazon’s Lightning Deals and supercharge your conversions? Ever wondered how behemoths like Amazon whip up buying frenzies with promotions that vanish in the blink of an eye? If you’ve been pondering how to wield that same lightning-fast power for your own business, regardless of what you’re […] The post MBA2460 Why Amazon’s Lightning Deals Work & How to Do the Same in Your Business appeared first on The $100 MBA.

We clipped this segment from our weekly Friday Live Amazon Q&A with Faith Denniston and Thomas Fitzgibbons to share the BEST ways to increase sales for Black Friday. We break down key strategies including Prime exclusive discounts, Lightning Deals, coupons & more. Learn directly from our experts how to attract more customers and which tactics work best based on your specific product - from reviews and listing optimization to product type and age on Amazon. Discover the incentivization options that convert browsers into BUYERS this holiday shopping season!---Get a NEW Main Image for 50% off at MyAmazonGuy.com/IMG with promo code: CTR

Deals, Deals, & more Deals! Sean Stone of Stone's Goods sits down with Michael as they discuss 4 different approaches to maximize your Black Friday and Cyber Monday selling. They give advice on how to tailor each strategy, and help you find which would work best for your selling goals. This episode is a must see before the holiday season.  We'll see you in The PPC Den!

Sean Stone of Stone's Goods sits down with Michael to discuss 7 ways to grow organic ranking in your Amazon PPC Campaigns. They discuss discounts and deals, organic sales percentages, how to utilize Google ads, and more.  We'll see you in The PPC Den!

Getting your products on the Deals page will help spike sales for your brand. In this episode, I talk about how you can run lightning deals.   ⬇️ Click to view my available resources! https://andyisom.com/   Some products and resources mentioned in this episode may no longer be offered. Please visit my website or DM me on social media for currently available downloads, resources, and coaching programs!

The guest on today's episode is Vincent Montero. He works as a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Helium10.  He worked throughout his career in digital marketing as a consultant, salesperson, business development director, and marketing manager. His Amazon Specialties:- PPC Campaigns (including Sponsored Product Ads, Sponsored Brand Ads, Product Targeting Ads and Product Display Ads)- Competitive Keyword & ASIN Research (utilizing latest 3rd party tools)- Product Listing Optimization (including back-end Keyword page)- Promotions (including Coupons, Lightning Deals, Promo Codes, etc.)- Brand Registry Consultation- Enhanced Brand Content Creation & Consultation- Storefront Creation & Consultation In today's episode, he discusses leveraging dayparting with helium 10 adtomic.Takeaways:Optimizing companies using dayparting.To make a decision about dayparting you need to collect data for at least 30 days.Dayparting is not for good-performing campaigns, It is for bad-performing campaigns.When you are running PPC your goal is not PPC sales, your goal is to increase the total sales.All PPC is to make sure that your product is seen as many times as needed during the shopper's consideration cycle.Quote of the Show:It is not just pause and unpause but also increase/decrease the budget, or even get a layer deeper and adjust the bids up and down during less than peak performance times.Links:Personal – Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vmontero/   Helium 10 – Website: https://www.helium10.com/Helium 10 – Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/helium10/Helium 10 – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Helium10Software/Helium 10 – Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpBvckYg2UXArcfzRcjpPjw/?sub_confirmation=1Helium 10 – Twitter: https://twitter.com/helium_10/Ways to tune in:Apple PodcastiHeart RadioSpotifyGoogle PodcastStitcherYouTubeAmazon Legends is sponsored by Argometrix, the authority on, and a leading supplier of, competitive intelligence for online retail. To learn more, head over to https://argometrix.com/

For the Prime Fall Event we would recommend the following promotions: - Lightning Deals and 7 Day Deals - Should have been submitted a month ago, need to monitor what date and time you are given - Coupon Clippings - Should have been submitted last week - Prime Exclusive Discounts - Can we be submitted two weeks prior to the event Additional Exposure: - Customer Engagements - Amazon Posts - Amazon Storefront Deals Tab - A/B Experiments

For the Prime Fall Event we would recommend the following promotions: - Lightning Deals and 7 Day Deals - Should have been submitted a month ago, need to monitor what date and time you are given - Coupon Clippings - Should have been submitted last week - Prime Exclusive Discounts - Can we be submitted two weeks prior to the event Additional Exposure: - Customer Engagements - Amazon Posts - Amazon Storefront Deals Tab - A/B Experiments

EP293 - E-commerce leadership changes and news Episode 293 previews Amazon no good, dirty, rotten, Q2. Including why Amazon's much hailed SCOT software may have led them astray (not a surprise given the name). We also discuss the recent leadership changes at Amazon, Google, Pinterest, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Episode 293 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday June 30, 2022. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 293 being recorded on Thursday June 30th 2022 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason this is a start-up land it's like a triple witching we have the end of the month the end of the quarter and the end of the first half so too it's a big day to be making sure you're hitting your opening so that's what I've been doing today how is your summer been. Jason: [0:59] Less XLE than yours it sounds like. Scot: [1:02] Oh I've seen you in that department of Commerce data comes out so. Jason: [1:13] I don't know maybe I feel like we should move it to like python or are something more more hip for the geeky kids. But I am I'm having a great summer there's been plenty of New Avengers and Star Wars content on in it's fun to see some people in person there have been a few more in person events, I'm a little stressed tonight though there's a big day for listeners is being recorded on on June 30th, and Twitter is sun setting my Twitter clients that I use numerous times a day tonight so it's, it's possible that a lot of people that are used to getting spammed all day by me on Twitter are going to go into withdrawal tomorrow. Scot: [1:56] No you're gonna have to use the app like the rest of us mere citizens. Jason: [2:01] Yeah yeah the neophytes I have to jump in with the unwashed masses and the vanilla Twitter client or some other third-party client if any listeners have a personal favorite I'm open to suggestions. Scot: [2:15] Yeah they're not a lot of good ones whatever you do don't sign up for that paid service because it just makes your tweets take 10 times longer to go out it's like the opposite of a feature. Jason: [2:25] Yeah doesn't sound that appealing. Scot: [2:27] It's supposed to keep you from drunk Tweeting or something but then like you just kind of forget that they're all cued up out there waiting. Jason: [2:34] My best Tweets are the advised ones. Scot: [2:37] Yeah yeah your best ones are grumpy grumpy old Jason once where you're like all right digital on the get the most interaction. Cool well we wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show without some Amazon news. Jason: [3:00] News new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [3:07] Yeah there's a lot going on at Amazon one of the. If you kind of remember back in our queue to 2022 recap from their earnings they talked a lot about how they had over built their capacity for warehouses so that's the first time they've done that since, oh I don't know 1995 and that was just like a line in an earnings call well now we're starting to see that they're closing warehouses there's been reports of them closing between five and ten warehouses I've heard they're closing delivery stations and figuring all that out one of the funny topics is a lot of folks started contacting me and realize said things like hey did you know your mention and this Amazon article is like what, what turns out they have this technology they've developed called the supply chain optimization Technologies, abbreviated sco T which happens to be my name. Jason: [4:04] And for newest nur's that's actually the correct way to spell Scott is it not. Scot: [4:08] It is yeah it was the 60s and my dad thought it would be fun to have a unique name and it's he was right it's made me infinitely google-able so I have a lot of very easy to find on the Google. I'm very envious of my friend Michael Jones who is impossible to find on Google so so no anonymity for me, but anyway you know what's interesting is and I want to read this little excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article a thousand or something, you and I both know at Amazon because they have this engineering culture they try to take people out of most decision-making process sometimes they call it hands off the wheel so they have all these AI like one time we had a guest on that told us how you know frequently a vendor will be negotiating with an Amazon buyer through a chat and it's a bot on the other side of the the chat not a human. So they have this technology called Scott and what it does is it makes three different projections for basically the orders for looking out into the future it does a high medium and low and during the pandemic. [5:12] The high wasn't high enough so they were kind of taking the high and adding some percentage to it and building out the Fulfillment infrastructure and everything based on what this a I did well because the a I had never seen a pandemic and it obviously it couldn't keep up with the upside of the pandemics demand curve it didn't see the downside of the demand curve coming either, and then I think the humans you know when you when you have your, pilot like six to eight quarters into adding 10% to what this thing does and nailing it. You know they also didn't anticipate this in the bottom fell out and that's one of the reasons why you know they just kind of too, kept taking the Scott forecast adding 10 to 20% and then suddenly they found themselves kind of with their skis out over a cliff. This is really interesting that kind of in a way that the an AI gone wrong kind of caused some of the problems here so I thought that was kind of funny. Jason: [6:09] Yeah I mean like the synopsis here is that Scott is the biggest money sink in Amazon. Scot: [6:18] It's true yep I like to think because they listened to the podcast they named it in honor of me and somewhere in there is a robot named Jason I'm sure. Jason: [6:26] Because you are their Nemesis yeah. Scot: [6:28] Yeah retailgeek it's hard to do an acronym for retailgeek but I'm sure someone there is is working on. Also you know as listeners know there's a new CEO and the jassy and there have been a lot of high-profile departures and it's not clear if he's cleaning house or. Um you know these these issues stocks down a lot of the compensation that Amazon is from stock-based compensation and then, you know someone has to be accountable for these problems so they had there was kind of this domino effect so there was right one Jesse took over there was two other people that were are parents Bell and Wilkie and they left, and then just recently this year a 23 year old veteran Named Dave Clark left and he ran the whole consumer business. Interestingly he went to a company that's been in the news a lot called Flex Port their CEO has been on CNBC and the all in podcast talking about how to fix the supply chain problems. So that's that's interesting that he was able to see your Flex Port was able to lure away a 23 year old Amazon bet. So there was some Sour Apples on the way out Dave Clark told someone that Jesse's just a, terrible micromanager and yeah he'd been there 23 years and shouldn't have to be micromanage and that kind of thing. [7:51] And then they announced that this the guy that ran North America consumer who previously had reported to Dave Clark his name is Doug Harrington he was moving up into that role, what caused a further chain reaction for those people that didn't get the Dave Clark opening one of those was Alicia bowler Davis she was SVP of global consumer, and she went to this online pharmacy called Alto Pharmacy and then Dave Bozeman he went to he was the VP of Amazon transportation services kind of the middle mile so she was if I understand she was Last Mile and he was middle mile, so they both left so that's interesting that the Fulfillment center they've been building out and to the key Executives for the last five years or so left those not clear if that was because of this build out and someone had to be accountable or if they got picked away or what's going on there, so a lot of changes in Amazon at the upper echelons and yeah some chaos here as they re adjust for the new post covid normal. Jason: [8:54] Yeah and I mean almost feels like there's a little bit of a perfect storm of reasons for that senior leadership to start to turn right which historically they have had very little turn by the way right through most of their history but you know the the founder departs as you point out there's a ton of the overwhelming majority of compensation is, stock equity and is that becomes less valuable like those jobs are. Are less sticky you know and there's just the rates of growth at Amazon are are naturally slowing down and it's, you know for a lot of people that you know are used to being the Rockstar that's you know constantly doubling your business and growing really fast it's not as much fun to. To manage their downturns and you know at best slower rates of growth. Scot: [9:45] Yeah and then you notice some changes coming in the grocery side. Jason: [9:50] Yeah so grocery ends up being kind of a really interesting part of this whole Amazon churn so the first thing to know is the new head of consumer that did win Doug Harrington, had previously started Amazon Fresh at Amazon so so, he is a grocery guy and his pre Amazon experience is with webvan which is sort of the original digital grocer. So he is a pure digital grocery guy obviously he's had brought more recently he's had broader roles it. It Amazon. Then then just grocery but you know one would assume that Amazon Fresh is near and dear to his heart that's the only brick-and-mortar concept that still. Sort of in play and growing at an Amazon so that's kind of interesting and historically there's been kind of a tension between Amazon Fresh which is. The grocery business Amazon built organically and Whole Foods, the grocery business that Amazon bought right and there have been times when they seemed like they were smashing them together and then there are times when they're pulling them apart and at the moment they're opening a chain of Amazon Fresh doors that compete with Whole Food. [11:02] You would assume Whole Foods is kind of upmarket expensive grocery and Amazon Fresh is meant to be well Market but like when it washed Amazon Fresh was a little more mid-priced, then we expected and Whole Foods is kind of moving down price a little bit more than you might expect so it's all, it's all been interesting they fight a lot over over Revenue recognition for online grocery orders and it's I would argue it's a confusing customer experience right now because you can order a. Assortment of items with different prices and different service levels from Amazon Fresh and from Whole Foods. So it'll be interesting does Amazon fresh wind because that's Doug Harrington's baby or you know does he at least. [11:44] Put more more stock in solving that problem you know I would argue digital grocery is the biggest white space in the kind of digital retail thing and so it. It's not bad for Amazon that they have a senior leader that understands that space so it's that's going to be interesting, and then on the whole food side the you know the founder of Whole Foods has remained in places the CEO which is kind of surprising given that when was the acquisition 2017. [12:12] Five years ago so five years sounds like a suspicious number for an urn out but. The you know he stuck he was the founder he stuck with a company for a long time like culturally he's, kind of different than Amazonian so when one might not have expected him to last that long but now there's a new CEO which is a long time Lieutenant of his Jason Bushnell boo shell rather and, whether this is the first initiative from Jason or it's a coincidence like Whole Foods has kind of announced that they are pivoting their pricing strategy in really focusing on, improving their value prop and reducing their prices and obviously there's a lot of Economic headwinds and there's kind of a. You know a big big segment of consumers that are concerned about the economy so superficial you go oh yeah it's obvious. That Whole Foods would want to get cheaper but I would actually argue. That we've really seen and shout-out to our friend Steven Dennis we've really seen like this very overt bifurcation of the consumer and there's a bunch of consumers that like do not appear to be changing their shopping Behavior based on inflation and, economic concerns and then there's a bunch of value-oriented consumers that are very overtly changing their shopping behaviors and you would. [13:33] You know a lot of luxury brands are actually raising their prices right now and doing quite well and so you'd almost expect to see Whole Foods lean into that affluent consumer, and Amazon Fresh you know try to try to Target that that value went into consumer but it appears they both have decided to go after value. Scot: [13:51] Yeah it's super confusing as a consumer to figure out and sometimes what I want I want for things and it'll split the cart between the Whole Foods in the prime and like then then it's a hot mess at that point. Jason: [14:04] Yeah I can't get my weekly shop from either one like I like some of the items and my weekly shop are not available from Whole Foods and some are not available from Amazon Fresh it's annoying. Scot: [14:14] Yeah. Jason: [14:14] To add further customer confusion so Amazon Fresh is Amazon's grocery store concept what you might have thought that there'd be a bunch of benefits to being a Prime member and shopping in Amazon Fresh. But you'd be wrong until recently like there were no special Prime benefits for Amazon Fresh Shoppers and so they just launched last week a new program which is kind of a. It's I would almost call it like a traditional retail grocery Affinity program you basically get 20% off on a lot of. On an undisclosed random list of thousands of items where they call everyday essentials if you're a Prime member shopping at Amazon Fresh So this is you know I mentioned that Amazon Fresh didn't come out. Quite as good a value as I was expecting well this is the big move to maybe make them you know compete more directly with with Aldi and. Scot: [15:08] Caught another thing I wanted to pick your brain on is a couple folks have tagged us on social media because they have seen the prime pay badging and new payment mechanism out in the wild have you had a chance to play with that. Jason: [15:22] I have and I confess I'm I'm a little more perplexed than I was when it first launched so maybe like the 30-second recap, um you know Amazon announced this new beta pilot called Prime pay and it's essentially letting third-party sellers that are not selling on Amazon. [15:46] Accept Amazon pay and. Offer Prime benefits and have your orders fulfilled from fulfillment by Amazon. [15:59] Like if their Prime members right so if your Shopify Merchant in you're selling cat litter, you know you can have a bad you know and someone's a Prime member and they're on your Shopify site you can say hey check out with your Amazon pay and and you know get your goods in one day or even same day, if our cat litter is in the Amazon Fulfillment Network and that's that was when they announced this beta and they didn't provide a lot of the details. You know my first reaction was that's a shot directly across the bow of Shopify. Who had been making a lot of traction with shop pay and was making a lot of noise if not traction with their fulfillment systems and now you know Amazon swooped in and said hey don't screw around with these, you know barely scaled fulfillment things just put all your goods in the Amazon's fulfillment and when you sell it from Shopify will ship the order or when you sell it on Amazon will ship the order, and will give you access to the. The biggest bet best digital wallet in the US market which is Amazon pay right and I thought that was super interesting and I was frankly really curious. If Shopify was even going to allow its Merchants to use it which. It would have been way off brand for Shopify to not allow that but you have to imagine they didn't want to vote. Scot: [17:18] Yeah. Jason: [17:20] And so now fast forward a few months and we've seen the first betas in the live in in, live in the world and they are all Shopify Merchants so first question answered at least for now Shopify is allowing its merchants, to use prime pay but there's a huge Nuance in Prime pay that I kind of missed when the beta was first announced but now it's glaring at me, um Prime pay will only fulfill your goods if you're already a Prime member. So when they first saw this I thought oh my gosh they just captured the whole 3pl market and no other 3pl is going to have any room because you're not going to be able to compete with the service level of Amazon and the convenience of the aggregated inventory and then the bonus of. Of the Amazon digital wallet on top of all that that it was just going to be too compelling a value prop and so everybody every small seller in the world is just going to rely on Amazon for all those Services game over. But. There's about 100 million Prime members and there's about 240 million households in the US so there's still an awful lot of households that do not have Prime. And if you're a Shopify Merchant and you want to sell something to any of those households that don't have Prime. You can offer Prime pay for the Prime members but you have to have an alternative 3pl to fulfill for the non Prime members. So they really haven't put any of the other 3pls out of business at all they've just stolen some of their volume. Scot: [18:49] Yeah yeah Anderson more more complexity. Jason: [18:53] Yeah yeah so it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out, but it yeah shout out to our friend Joe a Marketplace poles they always have great content and, he was the first one in the made me aware of some of these betas in the wild and he found the cat lady's.com and I'm not going to ask how he he. Scot: [19:14] Put me there. Jason: [19:17] But Joe I'm a fan and props to you. Scot: [19:21] Your fan of Joe or the cat ladies are both. Jason: [19:23] Now both originally Joe but now I my my love has expanded to the cat ladies. Scot: [19:29] Do they really sell kitty litter. Jason: [19:31] I believe they do or at least like artificial grass. Scot: [19:35] Yeah that's definitely in the crap category hey hey I'll be here all night, another thing that Amazon announced that I know you're excited for because you're actually moving so this is a great time to buy some cabling and some new mesh network key things they announced Prime Day this year it's going to be July 12th and 13th and then they promptly have started pushing the deals out like right now like just today and yesterday I've been getting flooded with emails that say, they have a new brand for it and they call it early Amazon Prime Day deal exclusives so it feels feels a little desperate to be honest with you that you know they set up this big shopping holiday and now they're kind of, pushing the deals out with a before then I don't know if they're trying to juice Q2 or if there. One school of thought is if we're going into this recessionary period the more dollars you can grab out of that shrinking wallet due to inflation as well, get them sooner versus later so maybe they had set this up before things the macro deteriorated now they're kind of like wow I wish we could set this earlier let's go ahead and get some deals out I may be reading too much into that but I don't ever remember them kind of they've always had you know. Black Black Friday and January or early October kind of things holiday deals in early but I've never seen them, push Prime day as hard and early as they are now. Jason: [21:00] Yeah I mean they always have had some pre-primed a deals like it's not completely unheard of but I agree with you the volume seem significantly higher and it's funny that we still call it Prime day right because for a long time is over it went from like Prime day to Prime 18 hours to Prime two days and now it's starting to feel like Prime month. Um which is interesting I don't know this comes into play, there are some consumer surveys out there that show less interest in Prime day than years past right and you're comping against a tough Prime day in a very different economic environment and so like it's possible that there's some concern like Amazon's rate of growth has slowed and everything else it's possible possible that there's some concern, that. That you know Prime day won't have the it's for sure going to have a spike but that it won't have the same spike it has in years past, um and you know so they're they're trying to you know find ways to Goose it more I you know. I don't know I do think one of the interesting Dynamics there's kind of like two opposite forces that happen on Prime day like secretly. The stuff that sells best on Prime day are Amazon. [22:20] But the penetration on those Amazon products you know continues to be higher so that that like. The what the law of large numbers just means like. You know not you can't sell a smart speaker to as many people as you used to be able to do because everyone has a heck of a lot of smart speakers right and they're they're frankly getting so cheap that it's not as big a win when they do sell one. And so then the other half is this long tail in there like one of the problems there so many sellers on Amazon there so many Lightning Deals that like the signal-to-noise ratio in the, the awareness of some particular good deal and the scarcity of a deal like all of those things that you would normally do that a normal you know brick and mortar retailer with you know constrain inventory, would do for a sale like they just don't work as well. For this Marketplace model and so I do think it's tricky to keep the hype and you know we've seen you know Prime day was modeled after singles day we've definitely seen singles day lose some momentum still a big deal but rate of growth slowing significantly and reasonably that will see that at Prime Day to all that being said the way to think about prime day is it's it's two days of sales in one day which is kind of a big deal. Scot: [23:38] Yeah and then I thought this was interesting that Amazon announced that they're going to use some of that data that we've been collecting in their stores that don't have a check out the just walk out technology and they're going to be selling some of that data to Brands so they can basically say to our brand hey 800 consumers walked by your product three picked it up and put it back on the shelf and you know of those three they read the ingredients and then they put it back on the shelf and and then presumably there are some action ability to that data what what do you think about that. Jason: [24:16] Yeah so I think it's really interesting you know way before there was just walk out technology like we were starting to get some some very early technology to give us some insight about how consumers behaved in stores right so you were starting to get some like, smarter people measuring things that could do heat mapping and and you know we were getting these I could GI tracking technologies that we'd put on on a small subset of customers to kind of understand how they browse through a store, because you know frankly for the last 100 years of Shopper marketing we mostly have been based on these like urban legends about how Shopper shop, and not having a lot of data and then e-commerce comes along and suddenly you've got super granular data about how people pick products and what they glanced at and didn't buy and what they added to their card and then check out and what they you know added to their card and then took out of their car like all of this pre buying behavior that we get in e-commerce, we've never really had in the store and you know the Technologies and the methodologies these match Panel test all these different studies we used to do we're really sort of Kluge, and so a lot of us have said hey one of the secret benefits of just walk out technology is that by accident, it collects all of this really valuable consumer data about how people behave, before they get to the cash register or before they consummate their purchase since they're I guess there is no cash. [25:41] Um and you know we've talked about that being a useful Advantage for Amazon and that they're probably using it too, um sort of inform how they design these new store Concepts, and so now like so many other things than Amazon does they take this this. [25:59] Like you know competitive advantage that they have and they turned it into a product and sell it to other people so now they're selling those. Those Shopper insights to cpgs and you know you're a cpg trying to figure out how people decide to pick your cat litter versus someone else's cat litter on the cat litter shelf in a retail store. Um [26:21] Kroger won't tell you a lot about how they make that decision because Kroger doesn't know but now you can get real data from Amazon about how they make that decision and Amazon and you can probably assume that there's a similar path to purchase at Kroger so, suddenly like Amazon becomes the market research firm for all of the Shopper marketing so I do think that's super interesting, um they're not alone Walmart actually has a store that's heavily instrumented like this that they watch first that's called them, the intelligent retail lab store that you know it's kind of a it doesn't have just walk out technology but it has thousands of cameras and sensors and they sell data from that store through their data licensing arm which is called illuminate if I'm remembering right. And then you know Amazon launched a new product. [27:09] Nine days ago on the 21st that I'm really excited about this called Amazon marketing stream and Amazon marketing stream is, a much higher volume more granular api-based, access to all of the marketplace shopping data so that's you know data on traditional Amazon shopping that like, previously was locked up or you could only get for your own brand or you could you know you can only get in Amazon premium services. Now it gets plugged into pack view in all of these of these digital media tools you get all this real-time visibility to have people are making purchase decisions and then at the same time. They're rolling out this that same kind of data for how people are making purchase decisions in a brick-and-mortar store, super long answer but I think this is kind of a big deal and I do think this is the future is kind of replacing, like urban legends and opinions about how consumers behave with actual data about how they really are. Scot: [28:11] You do you think this stuff is kind of stand-alone or they're going to build this is going to be kind of feeding into this ad Network because they seem to be really putting a lot of effort into Excel. Jason: [28:20] Yeah I do so I think there's only so much so many brands that are so I'll tell you who's not in a position to buy that data is all the digital native startups that then cut a deal to get you know distribution through. Right against the big cpg brands that can afford like have budgets to buy that data and then you know they have so much like institutional. Impediments that then you know they all talk about how much wonder they are with that data but it's really hard for them to act on that data and do anything different than they historically have. And so I think the best way to make that data actionable is you know to filter that data into. New audiences and new ad formats for retail media networks right so like I think there's a natural. Fit between those. Those two products so I'm sure we'll see more Integrations in that but I do think for really smart marketers and in particular the folks that are involved in customer experience design, the the raw data is is super useful and and you know gives gives Brands a competitive advantage that are able to get it and take action on. Scot: [29:30] Cool did you so that's where we are on Amazon any non Amazon news. Jason: [29:39] Yeah just a couple of things to keep our show in its it's tidy timebox format we talked a lot about executive changes so in my mind there are two other huge executive changes, in our industry this week. There's a guy that we've talked about on the show several times Bill ready who's the in X PayPal guy in X PayPal mafia guy. That red Commerce for the last couple of years at Google and he just announced that he's leaving Google to become the new CEO at Pinterest so the, the founder is stepping out of the CEO role at Pinterest and they're bringing over Bill ready, and to be honest that has the pundants whipped up into a lather because everyone's like oh man Bill ready is a Commerce guy he was PayPal he was head of Commerce a Google Now the fact that the Pinterest is bringing a you know a dedicated Commerce guy in the lead the company, it's the most overt sign yet that you know Pinterest thinks it's future is Commerce. Scot: [30:39] Yeah which I think it's driven by the IDF a stuff don't you. Jason: [30:44] Yeah yeah again harder to make a living on ads when you can't show the efficacy of the ads quite as well and you can't Target the ads quite as well and so it becomes much more appealing to say, you know let's monetize our Audience by selling stuff to our audience directly and also that you know gives you that first party data that then you know keeps you, well immersed in the in the advertising business so I think for any of these. Free hydrographic social media sites it's a, it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis to explore to say hey we got to figure out how to play really well at Commerce and make Commerce part of our core offering and certainly you know Pinterest is doing that they've talk forever about how, how much higher buying intent that their users have then other other social networks Tick-Tock is leaning heavily into it snap is leaning heavily into it it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, the one unfortunate truth is nobody's been particularly successful at it yet and. Have they not been successful because they just haven't gotten the execution right or is it because the consumer doesn't really want that like I honestly think that's an open question I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that Commerce can save all these social media networks I mean it's worth trying, but I think the jury's going to be out and I will say the. [32:10] The sort of part of this the bill ready transition that's not talked about that I'm frankly more interested in is to me one of the companies that. His best position to win a Commerce and is underperforming at Commerce the most is the company Bill ready as weaving its Google and you know, bluntly like I don't think Google has made a ton of Commerce progress over the over the last two years that bill ready has been there it's going to be interesting like will Google replace him will they replace him with a, Google Insider will they replace them with another Commerce person will that person have some new ideas like you know will they be able to find a way to kind of Marshall some of the inherent assets Google has and be better at Commerce oh my God I'd love to see Google lean into in-store Commerce more and help solve search and you know all of these retail media Network opportunities for brick-and-mortar retailers like I feel like there's a lot of untapped. Opportunity there that I've been surprised to see Google not succeed at and so it'll be like is this a new chance for Google to start anew. Scot: [33:20] Yeah and then you know it's also interesting so if your Pinterest board and you're like we need an e-commerce Guru the PayPal Mafia thing is good but that was quite a while ago and Google hasn't. Done a ton so I would be hiring somebody to Amazon expects you know it'll be interesting to see what if. Because there's so many floating around what if some of them one of them ended up at Google that would be dug be kind of really interesting to see if Amazon has own Minion. Jason: [33:49] Especially when yeah if Flex Port can get a super senior SS team member. Scot: [33:53] Yeah why can't Google yeah it's kind of weird right, yeah and then you know to watch someone that maybe had a chip on their shoulder that said hey I didn't get a promotion I'm gonna I'm going to you know use all these assets that Google has and bring them to bear I think the reason why is when these people interview at these bigger companies be at a meta a Google or whatnot. You know there's not a board sea level and board level focus on it you know 21 if you're a Google. The sacred cow is the add thing and if you if you say something like you know what I want to divert 20% of traffic to this new thing then you know if you're not going to do that so so startups from probably more attractive because they have more flexibility and they're not stuck kind of in that innovators dilemma like some of the other systems are. Jason: [34:50] Yeah think about that that'll be my deep thought for today yeah so I think that one is super interesting I'm gonna continue to follow that closely one side note like Pinterest has previously hired a bunch of other, I'll call them like Commerce stars and like one that stands out to me is. The chief technology officer from Walmart I moved to Pinterest Jeremy King and so I mean there's you know this is not the first. White indication that Commerce is an important Initiative for Pinterest so we'll we'll see how Bill does there I hope he does well so one other transition that I'm getting a lot of calls about these last couple days, is Bed Bath & Beyond just had their quarterly their Q2 earnings report and it was atrocious, so their same-store sales were down like 24 or 25 percent their e-commerce was down like 23%, um and you know folks may remember like a year or two ago they forced out the. [35:52] One of the founders is CEO and they brought in a turnaround CEO this guy Mark Triton and I talked a lot about Mark Triton he was like very credibly one of the architects of targets exclusive, brand strategies and so he was, the chief Merchant that helped launched a bunch of products at Target that were wildly successful and he left Target to become the CEO of this struggling retailer, Bed Bath & Beyond shortly after they hired Mark Triton they got a new activists board member Ryan Cohen who bought a big chunk of. Bed Bath & Beyond Ryan was one of the founders of chewy and made a bunch of his money there he was like a principal shareholder and on the board at GameStop during all the, the craziness with Robin Hood and GameStop and Bone all that stuff and so, like Ryan kind of inherited Mark as his turnaround CEO and simultaneous with these like very disappointing Q2 earnings, they announced that Mark would be leaving and they appointed an interim CEO who's a Sugo of who's a, already a board member at Bed Bath and Beyond and former CEO from like Goff Smith and several other retailers. So [37:20] What I have found interesting about all this it's a really difficult situation but Bethenny on Xena in a tough situation. [37:29] And they certainly aren't performing very well and they have a lot of cooks there at the moment with with conflicting ideas about where to go but I have seen a lot of pundits kind of. Like dancing on Mark Triton's grave and talking about what a horrible higher this was and how stupid it was for Bed Bath and Beyond Beyond to go after this this. Exclusive brand strategy that Mark was trying to execute and how like oh obviously this was doomed from the beginning and anyone could have seen this wasn't going to work. Um and kind of writing him off and personally I feel like that's a little unfair like II. Mark certainly turned out not to be the right CEO for the circumstances the Bed Bath & Beyond was in but I actually think that that, you know Bed Bath & Beyond needs to invent a reason for people to go there and spoiler it's not the 20% off coupon anymore, um it's not the treasure hunt anymore, like you're not going to win on assortment as a big box like against Amazon right and so one of the smart ways to win against Amazon is to sell stuff that people want that Amazon doesn't have and if you can invent desirable products, that's a smart strategy and every big retailer in America is trying to execute that strategy and Mark like frankly has been better than most of executing that strategy I think. [38:52] That strategy kind of sucks when you're hemorrhaging your customer base people don't have a reason to come to your store and then you, execute the first wave of your private label products and they all get trapped on a boat off the coast of Long Beach and never make it to the store right and so I don't know of in a different era if Mark strategy would have worked. Ed Bed Bath & Beyond I don't think it was an unsound strategy you know it just right you probably needed a CEO who's a lot more focused on being good at supply chain and cost-cutting and was willing to make some hard decisions about. Curating the store assortment and stuff like that to kind of cut costs. Before you got around to launching these products and you know horrific timing that you tried to launch all these products like you do as a. During a huge supply chain disruption so I don't know what do you think you think it was a doom strategy. Scot: [39:47] I don't think the externalities are hard to pick out you know so you go from a supply chain crisis into a inflation. No stagnation spiral this is like a it's a really rough rough rough hand that he was dealt for sure. Jason: [40:04] Yeah yeah so I don't know I do think they're a bunch of other retailers that really aspire to launch more products so I have a feeling that you'll see Mark glance I'm somewhere pretty soon because I think he has a skill set that. That will be in demand and then it does not appear they're calling Sue an interim CEO I don't think anyone thinks she's the, the future of Bed Bath & Beyond so I think they're they are out there doing a CEO search it's going to be interesting to see what kind of person, what you know will step up to that challenge right now. Scot: [40:33] While you were talking about it kind of the crazy idea popped in my head you know these these Amazon FBA acquisition vehicles have all seemed to hit the skids pretty hard thrashy oh and what not, yeah there's a there's a path where maybe they buy one of those if you wanted to like parachute in 500 private label Brands to try and restore that, that's one acquisition path that you can take to become interesting I don't know if you know if that makes any sense for the categories or whatnot but that would be an interesting, way to solve that problem with an acquisition. Jason: [41:09] Yeah no I do think there's something there and I think just the. You know I'm not sure you want to hire a traditional product Centric Merchant driven CEO. You know for a traditional product Centric company you know that's kind of losing its way right like you probably need some complementary skills they add something new to the mix and you're right like there's kind of a big remix going on in the world right now there's a bunch of digital Talent from you know the Amazons and Google's of the world this spinning off there's a bunch of digital Talent from all these, kind of startup ecosystems that you know we're we're playing in the Amazon Echo System and now we're less appealing and in the the you don't have to be a roll ups are a perfect example of all those, you know I think a bunch of those guys you know and and women will probably find, their next career opportunities taking what they know and taking it to a different kind of business than kind of just recreating what they've been doing. Scot: [42:10] Totally agree we will see. Jason: [42:12] In e-commerce guy solving Carwash for the world or. Scot: [42:15] Crazy crazy talk you do cat litter I'll do car washes. Jason: [42:20] That sounds like a great plan and that sounds like a great place to leave it because it's happened again we've used up all our allotted time, but as I always have you found the show helpful or it was entertaining to scream at how wrong we were into your podcasting client then you could reward us for that entertainment by jumping on iTunes and leaving us that five star review. Scot: [42:44] Thanks everybody and until next time. Jason: [42:48] Happy commercing.

Los productos de marca privada son en su mayoría fabricados por un tercero y vendidos bajo tu propia marca. El elaborador de estos productos no tiene ningún derecho sobre la etiqueta o la marca que decidas utilizar y puedes decidir sobre el diseño del producto y su embalaje, el logotipo de tu marca, el etiquetado, y todos los demás elementos creativos que puedas utilizar para identificar tu artículo. La imaginación ocupa un lugar muy importante en este proceso, aunque también hay que pensar en las ganancias que nuestra marca nos va a dejar. Por eso es indispensable analizar detalladamente qué productos nos ofrece el mercado y cuál es el más adecuado para nosotros. Si no fallamos, nuestro éxito es una gran posibilidad. Para no equivocarnos en la elección, en este episodio contamos con Miguel Gonzalez, emprendedor del E-Commerce en plataformas como Amazon, Ebay y Shopify, y estratega de Private Label.  “En cuanto al modelo FBA, una marca privada consiste en encontrar un producto que tiene alta demanda y poca competencia, tratar de localizar a un fabricante que ya se encarga de crear ese producto, contactarlo, modificar el producto a tu gusto y ponerle tu propia marca”, comienza explicando Miguel. Sumado a ello, es un gran punto a favor las reviews. Según el especialista, “si un mercado tiene miles y miles de reviews en los productos que están posicionados en la primera página de resultados, yo no le voy a prestar atención porque sé que va a ser muy demandante para mí introducirme en ese mercado. Diferente a un mercado donde, en promedio, en la primera página de resultados, los productos tengan 200, 150 reviews. Entonces ahí yo sé que tengo una mejor entrada”. Y sin dudas no es conveniente buscar productos que tienen competidores de alto rango. Si uno quiere competir con marcas como Nike o Duracell, es muy difícil poder vencerlas. “Tampoco queremos introducirnos en mercados donde hay una marca posicionada, que domina más del 70 por ciento del mercado, porque esa marca es la pionera en ese campo”, sostiene Miguel. Hay aplicaciones como Helium 10 y Jungle Scout que nos pueden dar una mano al momento de elegir un producto y ahorrar mucho tiempo, ya que hacen un análisis estricto del mercado. O también “hay otras maneras que puedes utilizar y son gratuitas”: “Puedes dirigirte a Amazon, a la sección de ‘best sellers', donde puedes ver los productos que más se venden en Amazon de acuerdo a las categorías y de ahí puedes ver los subnichos, y eso te puede dar una mejor idea de qué se está vendiendo en Amazon”, comenta Miguel. Como dijimos anteriormente, las ganancias es el factor más importante para nosotros. En el caso de Miguel, él busca productos que “como mínimo generen 10 dólares en ganancia”. En los números finales influye el capital que necesitamos invertir para nuestra marca, “porque si se están vendiendo muchas unidades y te estás dando cuenta que para entrar a ese mercado necesitas unos 8 mil o 10 mil dólares, quizás no sea la mejor oportunidad para ti, porque no cuentas con ese capital. Si tú cuentas con un menor capital, ya sabes que tienes que buscar un producto que esté generando un poco menos. De esa manera te puedes adentrar en el mercado, conseguir experiencia y poder competir”. “Hay mejor margen de ganancia” con marca privada, pero “es importante que las personas entiendan cómo funciona el aspecto de vender en Amazon”. “Todos sabemos que van a haber otras cosas asociadas con vender nuestro producto. No es solamente introducirlo en Amazon. Vamos a tener que promoverlo y al principio, cuando no tienes reviews, va a ser más complicado hacer esas conversiones que necesitas para conseguir un mejor posicionamiento”, declara Miguel. En Amazon hay miles de competidores que ya están posicionados en el mercado y que complican la introducción de nuevos productos. Muchos se encuentran en la primera página de resultados, donde “se ha demostrado que más del 60 por ciento de las ventas ocurren en la misma”, y “para tú llegar ahí, en un mercado que es sumamente competitivo, cuesta mucho capital, especialmente utilizando estrategias como Facebook Ads o Pay Per Clic, etc.”. Cuando ya encontramos nuestro producto para vender, es el momento de mejorarlo, darle un valor extra que la competencia no tenga. “Una de las maneras es ingresar en cada una de las páginas de tus posibles competidores, a la sección de reviews negativos, y vas a ver comentarios de clientes que han comprado el producto pero que tienen una queja. Fácilmente ahí ya estás consiguiendo ideas de cómo tú puedes mejorar el producto”, aconseja Miguel. Además, sugiere “dirigirse a la sección de ‘frecuentemente comprados juntos'. Esos son productos que son típicamente comprados juntos por los clientes”. “Ahí tú acabas de conseguir fácilmente una idea de un producto que tu puedes añadir a tu producto principal, y se va a crear una percepción de que lo que tú estás ofreciendo tiene mucho más valor”, añade. El hecho de construir un producto con valor agregado también lo podemos lograr con los suplidores, que se pueden encontrar en Alibaba, una plataforma que te da acceso a miles de fabricantes alrededor del mundo. “También puedes utilizar sourcing agents. Son agentes que están localizados en diferentes países y ellos se encargan de buscar el producto que estás interesado en crear. A veces te van a conseguir mejores precios y conexiones, ya que ellos hablan la lengua del fabricante. También te permiten tener acceso a todos esos fabricantes que quizás ni siquiera están posicionados en Alibaba porque muchas veces no necesitan esa plataforma”, señala Miguel. Es posible que los suplidores no estén ofreciendo el producto que deseamos vender, entonces Miguel asegura que “puedes contactar a un fabricante que genere productos similares”. “Quizás te puede contactar con un fabricante que ya hace trabajos con esos materiales, entonces puedes entrar en contacto con él, darle las especificaciones de cómo quieres el producto y él te puede ayudar con eso”, aconseja. Amazon ofrece la oportunidad de poner tus productos a la vista de los clientes, lo que no lo hace tu propia tienda online, por la cual tienes que “ir hacia ellos utilizando otras estrategias, ya sea a través de Facebook Ads o de Youtube Ads”. “Yo duraría entre seis a doce meses luego de haber lanzado esa marca privada y que el producto realmente esté generando resultados. Entonces, a partir de ahí, yo voy a tratar de posicionarme fuera de Amazon”, opina Miguel. Y para evitar cualquier tipo de problema legal, hay que registrar la marca cuanto antes. “Puedes utilizar diferentes servicios que permiten registrarla. Este proceso toma entre ocho a doce meses en tiempos normales, no sé ahora mismo debido a la pandemia, pero definitivamente es muy importante que lo hagan ya que te da acceso a muchos más beneficios”, afirma Miguel. Habiendo cumplido con todo lo detallado anteriormente y ya teniendo nuestra marca en funcionamiento, ¿qué sucede si las ventas no son las esperadas? “Trata de optimizar lo que son las estrategias dentro de Amazon, porque tú ya tienes el producto y una fuente de clientela que posiblemente quiere comprarlo. Entonces recomendaría elevar el capital para el PPC. Asimismo añadiría un cupón como incentivo para que las personas hagan la compra. Utilizar los Lightning Deals de Amazon, que pagas un fee y Amazon pone tu producto ante más personas, también puede que te ayude a generar más ventas. Luego puedes posicionar el producto en otras plataformas fuera de Amazon. Muchas personas no saben que cada vez que se te haga una venta fuera de Amazon, puedes ir a tu cuenta de vendedor y hacer que Amazon envíe ese producto directamente hacia el cliente”, cuenta Miguel. La última opción es rendirse, y más si la marca es nuestra. Depende de nosotros de que salga a flote. Instagram: @gonzalezdmiguel miguelgonzalezdiplan@gmail.com

Prime Day 2021 is almost here! I know you know things about Prime Day. It's not new anymore. You know how it works. However, in this episode, I go over some setting reminders to ensure you're all set for those Lightning Deals, so you don't miss out on a good deal! I also offer up quite a few questions to ask yourself before ultimately buying that item you just have to have. The Prime Day shopping extravaganza is something I look forward to, but my oh my, do I need to keep myself in check! SHOW NOTES: This post contains affiliate links. You don't pay any extra, and I earn a small commission. I'd also like to call attention if prices I mentioned in this episode were prices I paid at the current time and may not reflect the prices you would pay at the time of reading or listening to this. What You Need To Know: -Sign up for 30 day trial if not a Prime Member..set a reminder in your calendar to cancel before that so you don't forget. -Remember to check out Walmart, Target, Best Buy..in fact thanks to seeing an instagram post from TheKrazyCouponLady they outlined some important dates to know for the week. I want to give them credit for this information for sure. So here it is….Target Deal Days 6/20-6/22; Walmart Deal Days 6/20-6/23, Amazon Prime Day 6/21-6/22, Kohls Wow Days 6/21-6/22, Macy's Epic Specials 6/21-6/22, Best Buy Bigger Deal Savings Event will go through Tuesday 6/22, and Costco…because always check costco -Amazon App is crucial. Open Amazon App>Go to Menu>Tap Settings>Notifications>Turn on Watched and Waitlisted Deals Then just find an upcoming deal and simply add it to your watchlist. Once they are live, claim your deals and checkout before they expire. You typically have 15 min to complete checkout. JUST BECAUSE YOU ADD IT TO YOUR CART, DOES NOT MEAN YOU GOT THAT DEAL. -Make sure your default mailing address is correct ahead of time. -Watch deals and get notified when they start……Watch A Deal notification lets you know when your deal is about to start.  The questions I ask myself before I purchase: -Is this Free Returns? I feel safe with free returns when it comes to my impulse buying -I also have a preset discount rule in my brain. 30% off is my typical threshold. I'll entertain 20% off, but anything below a 20% discount is completely dismissed for me. I can just buy at another time if I need. I advise you come up with a strategy as well. -I check Walmart, Target, and Best Buy (if it's a technology item) -Is this even a pondering purchase I've had? Why do I want this? Will I use this within a one month time? If not, dismissed. -Am I buying this for a Christmas present for someone? If you answer yes, abandon…it's July! No! Is this a birthday present for someone within a one month time? Yes, then get it. -reminder…look at reviews. like around the page 3/4 mark. what are the dates? counterfeit products are a real thing. Special Deals That Jump Out At Me: -Save $10 on Prime Day when you spend $10 with small business…now this is only available if you are listening to this today on 6/20. Before the end of today, if you spend $10 on products from small businesses (amazon.com/supportsmall), you'll receive a $10 credit via email that you can then spend that $10 on prime day during 6/21 through 6/22. -For Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card Members 6% back on amazon.com for Amazon and Whole Foods Market purchases made from 6/21 to 6/22 (normally 5% back) -Amazon kids+ 3 month subscription for $.99 gives access to more than 20,000 popular apps and games, videos, books, Audible books and educational content. -21 free photo prints with AmazonPhotos (code PRINTS21) -There are some deals on subscription networks, for instance, I saw a Discovery+ offer for $.99/month for 2 month and then $6.99 after. There were some other STARZ, SHOWTIME, PARAMAMOUNT+ etc. I'll like to the page in show notes. -Wondery+ 4 months free of Wondery+ Ad Free Premium Podcasts (annual price is normally $34.99 plus tax) find under Amazon Music My struggles: I don't like people taking away deals from me! I stay away from Ebay for this very reason. And heaven forbid I attend an actual live auction. Can you imagine?? What I'm looking for: very random! make your list! -outdoor security camera -cat toys -boom arm -outdoor platform swing -tv for playroom -blue light glasses (felix gray for girls) -any subscriptions -desk -beach canopy -new lunch box for ellie -back to school stuff (I could get behind this reasoning) -golf related -podcasting related (so your hobby) -new towels -berkey water filter system -knife set -scale

T3 article: https://www.t3.com/us/news/amazon-prime-day-2021-confirmed-sellers-asked-to-submit-dealsThe countdown to this year's Amazon Prime Day has begun, with Amazon asking sellers on its platform to submit their proposals for Lightning Deals and Prime Member Vouchers. It's even shared details of the sort of Prime Day deals it wants to see this year.Writing on the Amazon Services Seller Forums, Amazon says "The Lightning Deals and Prime Member Voucher submission window for Prime Day 2021 is now open. The deadline for submissions is Friday, April 23, 2021, for Lighting Deals, and Friday, May 28, 2021, for Prime Member Vouchers. Submit your promotions now for a chance to have your deal considered for this event."That's good news for deal hunters as it's our first bit of official confirmation that Prime Day 2021 is going ahead and given that the submission deadline for sellers is the end of April, it suggests that Prime Day will return to its July slot rather than the October slot that it slipped to last year. T3's current prediction is that Prime Day 2021 will run over two days from the start of Monday 12 July until the end of Tuesday 13 July, 2021.✅ Order a Trademark from My Amazon Guy for $775 and get your brand registry on Amazon in under 7 days. Order here: https://myamazonguy.com/trademark-services/✅ A+ Enhanced Brand Content https://myamazonguy.com/amazon-enhanced-brand-a-plus-content/✅ Beginner Tutorial Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDkvNlz8yl_bC5ERcdJm9mu_MLSTyl3e_✅ Coaching on Demand (Same day Appointments Available): https://myamazonguy.com/book-a-coaching-call/#amazonselling #amazonseller #amazonfba #myamazonguy

EP252 - Amazon FBA Roll-ups w Chris Bell CEO of Perch  [NOTE: The audio quality of this episode is not up to our usual standards due to some internet challenges. But we felt the content was valuable enough to publish the episode anyway.] A number of firms are acquiring, or some would say rolling up, brands that primarily distribute their products on Amazon using Fulfillment by Amazon. By some accounts, these firms have cumulatively raised over $1B in capitol, and are rapidly acquiring brands. This week we explore this trend, with the founder of one of these firms, Chris Bell, CEO of Perch. Chris sees Perch as a next generation CPG conglomerate leveraging the Amazon marketplace. While traditional CPGs may review their pricing quarterly, and set marketing strategies annual, Perch adjusts pricing strategy hourly, and advertising strategies daily. “Amazon marketplace is 2x any CPG and growing faster.” CHRIS BELL, CEO OF PERCH In this interview we cover: Overall trend, and how Chris sees the marketplace Perch criteria for acquisitions Synergies for brands in the roll-up model Off Amazon strategy Potential risks of this model, including from Amazon What the potential future of this market looks like If you’re interested in selling your FBA business to Perch, you can reach them at info@perchhq.com. Episode 252 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, January 27th, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 252 being recorded on Wednesday January 27th, 20:21 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners. In this week’s episode we are going to do a deep dive into a trend that I’ve been really fascinated by and we’ve touched on it on the show a little bit last year. That trend is that there are a number of firms that are acquiring or some would say rolling up Amazon FBA based businesses. Sometimes I’ve heard these called Amazon Roll-Ups FBA roll-ups, what have you and cumulatively if I’m doing my math right these firms have raised about a billion dollars now with this strategy, globally there are several in the US and there’s some rowing across Europe and other areas so it’s really interesting and I can get a lot of questions because one of the founders of Channel advisor I get a lot of questions from Amazon FBA Sellers hey Scot what you think about this and how do I sell my business for a crazy high valuation so we’re going to dig into that in this week’s episode and to walk just do it we’re really excited to have one of the CEOs of one of these companies we have Chris Bell and he is the CEO of perch Chris welcome to the show. Chris: [1:49] Scot nice be here. Jason: [1:52] Chris we are thrilled to have you here because one of Scott’s favorite topics is to talk about Amazon so if we don’t have enough Amazon shows he starts to get antsy so I totally appreciate you. Accommodating us but before we jump in the Amazon we always like to get a little bit of background about our guests and you you came to purchasing a pretty cool e-commerce e way so can you tell us a little bit about. What you did prior to perch. Chris: [2:17] Definitely yeah so I started my career early on I was a computer engineer actually and I my first job was at General Electric Milwaukee designing and implementing software. I did that for a bit and then actually went into sales I wanted to go get a bit more touch with the customer so I’ve told viewers and software for a couple of years which wouldn’t. But eventually wanted to do something a little bit more thought provoking so when the business school at Carnegie Mellon after that I went to Bain & Company which the bomb brought me to Boston about 11 years ago, was that being for six and a half years, and will it be nice spent about a third of my time in the private Equity Group or I worked on over 40 transactions that leading private Equity institutions probably and then the other two-thirds of the time I work. So mostly helping them understand their customers and then I’m doing whatever we could to drive. [3:16] Salesforce Effectiveness pricing products for fitting customer service. And then after six and a half years of being I wanted to go build something and point I was looking at. You can wait there along and asked me to come and build their North American supply chain which was really amusing but also enticing it was amusing because those Supply chains. And I actually tried to back out of the interview process I just thought they had the wrong guy who must be, and they convinced me and it has all my work previous I’ve been in sales and work mostly on organic growth customer like growth called it in, and all I talked about was the customer and they said exactly you know for e-commerce supply chain is the key to the customer, if you think about why people buy they showed me some NPS data which is a festival measure. [4:15] Process and fifty percent of all of their comments positive or negative related to the supply chain that show up on time was it broken even more soberly pair because heavy bulky things people are entering your house. Speaker in your living room where the best of the bed in your bedroom and so I got really excited about about this customer vision and just honestly Wayfarer and the team there was amazing so I joined Wayfarer in 2016. And three and a half years we open 50 buildings across North America 42 final mile Center is deep sort centers whose an absolutely. Crazy amazing time when I left was but a 3 billion dollar supply chain my favorite factoids, is when I joined Wayfair on average it took 27 days from click to deliver for a heavy bulky items if you are infrequent but Kevin Conway Fair 27 days later it would be in your living room, and when I left we were doing 2-day delivery of couches hot tub profanity and so we were kind of Amazon priming that evolved into Bates. All of the conversion left and customer satisfaction lift and repeat lift that you might expect. Then you’re given that time we hear is great company I really enjoyed the time I learned a lot and a lot of fun getting in the supply chain and building that but I really wanted to go build something and I started looking around talking a lot of entrepreneurs in the Boston area, and you know honestly I fell into this space and I really enthralled. [5:40] I’m here back then you’re rolling up Amazon businesses but it’s not really that big of a thing there’s really only one other person that I do have doing it. And as I thought about both the opportunity and just you know you guys know this but from the outside we look at Amazon. You hear it’s big but you just don’t realize how gargantuan this this thing is and you start getting into it and I started I went to a conference in New York and talked to some entrepreneurs that we’re doing this. One I just thought they were awesome right just really true entrepreneurs we strap their company but their own money into it and had built something really interesting, and differentiated and then to it felt like a perfect Mint or Matt from my background I’ve done a lot of them a lot of experience in e-commerce a lot of experience and I change which is a common endpoint. Many small product companies and so I jumped in start. Jason: [6:35] That’s awesome Chris two quick things for our listeners for our Millennial listeners and our gen z westeners a copy machine is back in the day. People used to record ideas on dead trees and sometimes you need a copy of the dead tree so you could actually make a machine that duplicated the dead tree. Chris: [6:54] That’s right that’s you that’s a great summer I thank you for that. Jason: [6:57] Yeah I’m totally here for you, and then obviously Scott kind of spilled the beans about what perch is about but maybe they just get a little bit more clarification. When you say FBA sellers you are talking about, businesses that focus on selling on the Amazon Marketplace and generally use FBA for fulfillment. Chris: [7:26] That’s correct yeah we are today focused on Amazon third-party Marketplace Sellers and you’re right they generally use FPA and you’re probably for you and your listeners you understand the difference between FDA and Marketplace and not Omar. Hello. Find more broadly that difference is lost on full two great people but my incorrectly called an FBA sellers for common understanding but we think I go ahead. Jason: [7:54] No I was just curious in general do you care if they’re using, FBA white so in general you have to use FBA to be particularly successful on the Amazon Marketplace so I imagine you’re mostly interested in successful Sellers and that and FBA is kind of a, a tactic that correlates strongly with successful sellers but like do you actually care like if there was a good business that that had a good run rate and, you know doing their own fulfillment and like somehow miraculously was winning even without FBA like do you, is there some Secret Sauce to FBA as far as you’re concerned. Chris: [8:35] No not at all we generally you’re right most people who have what we call winning products which is what we look for in diligence. Are in FBA but they’re not all in FBA and like you said the oftentimes you get a bit of a thumb on the scale but we have looked at solar people Prime products we’ve looked at companies, that’s just to start going without sewing fulfilled Prime especially in the heavy bulky space, and again you can win there because Amazon doesn’t give you as much of the thumb on the scale for the heavy bulky stuff they don’t really want that in the Fulfillment centers, so in general we’re looking for great companies with great products that are winning within their Niche and ninety percent of the time they’re in FDA but it’s not. Jason: [9:20] Yeah and I imagine when you do look at a vendor that specializes in big and bulky it starts bringing back all of your your Wayfarer vibes. Chris: [9:28] Yeah absolutely I actually I love the big bulky space and I think it’s an interesting, spot for two reasons one you know you can have an opportunity to differentiate yourself a little bit more in the film inside give an Amazon doesn’t play as well in that space. Then too we actually find those spaces to be less competitive just because of the working capital requirements you know you can sell $10 widgets with pretty low working capital and so we generally find those remote quantitative. Sales niches and if you get into a 200 dollar kayak. There’s just less people who want to sell that thing and therefore you get the mildly positive space we would love to do more. Jason: [10:11] Yeah I mean I always like to say well if it was easy eBay would be doing it so. No I’m telling my friends at eBay I’m just kidding I’m rooting for you the the. It’s funny I used to like people used to always ask like what’s the, the category the Amazon isn’t winning at that you could kind of compete where there’s a white space and every time I think of one it eventually gets eliminated right so originally it was big and bulky items, and then it was like live plants and as you may know they have a pretty robust wide plant business now and so I was for a while saying like personalized products and now they’re they’re launching made-to-order apparel so it’s like you can’t win it’s just a matter of when they, they get around to focusing on the particular problem that you’re good at solving I do want to dive in a little bit more on your criteria for a company that might fit in your portfolio but before I do we did hit on wafer a little bit like is there it seems like they’ve had a really good run as a result of covid is there any you still have a lot of friends there is there any remorse about not being in that space at the moment. Chris: [11:22] I do have a lot of friends there and I think they’re doing some amazing things but no remorse at all I mean if perch maybe a perch wasn’t going as well as it is I might be looking back and wondering but this has been an absolutely amazing time and. We are growing really quickly and we’ve been lucky enough to attract an amazing team and so and having the time of my life so no regrets at all. Scot: [11:48] Very cool and then let me make sure I understand the founding story so you were did you get recruited by a VC or this was like your your kind of had this idea and you went out and and got funding and launched. Chris: [12:02] Yeah much more the latter I had spent some time talking with a whole bunch of entrepreneurs around Boston and I met a couple of folks who were not in this exact space but kind of in the Amazon space more broadly and so kind. Your Edge my way into it that way and then yeah kind of circled on the idea ended up talking to a bunch of friends and. And co-workers talked to like neeraj the CEO and founder of Wayfarer about it I’m talking to you game Theo bleep are there about it. And you know in a circle around different ways like you can see the problem which is. Consumer products eventually is a game of scale right Procter & Gamble Unilever all these companies, they are huge and they are highly acquisitive because scale matters you can get, Austin damage on the supply chain you can access to Capital Access to Talent access other channels part of the reason why all these entrepreneurs are on Amazon, because Amazon’s done such an amazing job of lowering the barriers to entry the so many other channels have such high barriers to entry in other markets the oh 75% of the companies we’ve acquired only sell in the US, because one the working capital putting inventory into places the to honestly. It’s just a big pain to register the fell in the UK it took us four months to get our vat numbers so. Scot: [13:22] And a brexit brexit doubled the work so brexit is good for you. Chris: [13:24] Oh my gosh it’s such the as this we’re still talking to UPS about shipping things from the eve of the UK and they still aren’t. We could have done quite yet. And so so we saw the problem and I so I luckily because I’ve been in Boston for 11 years being at vain, and being being around this space I have a lot of friends in DC and private equity and also just in the space like I know a couple people who have software companies in the space, so I just went around and told them hey know what do you think a lot of people say hey build song right that’s what everybody should do is you go build some key to be SAS software, and like try to compete with teca metrics or poor tile or not even compete with them right but try to solve these problems suits off world it just kept coming around to. [14:11] The real thing we’re trying to build a scale the only way to build scale is to build scale like real scale, if you are buying a billion dollars of raw materials a year and we’re not there yet but that’s what we’re getting to and you can’t do that you can’t fake that. You actually have to be buying a lot of textiles and a lot of plastic and that’s when you get their bill scaling so, back to this and then it’s also the other part of the story that I find interesting is as you guys alluded to this is a super popular space you know, Billion Dollar Plus raise, you know I saw something as a dirty reporting entrance when I launched perch I probably had 250 investor conversations in 49 of them were like yeah kind of a weird idea but you know you probably make some money but not for us and luckily Alex afar. Site rages you got it and he was super excited and be really quickly from meeting terms. [15:08] It’s not easy it was really like it was a really not easy path to raise money for this a year and a half ago and now it seems like everybody. Glad with what we did because we got a head start and we’re pretty clearly ahead of everybody in this space but one we’re enjoying and we worked on the man that lead but it’s it’s it’s just funny how quickly things yes. Scot: [15:33] Yeah I feel your pain when I had a SAS company we were like one of the first three and everyone said it was crazy and would never work and then I should do e-commerce and then, now I’m doing an on-demand Services never thinks I should have B2B SAS time I’m like a cycle off it feels feel feels like but that’s that’s what we call Innovation Chris works right out on the edge there so if I look at crunchbase which is often wrong it says you guys have raised north of a hundred million is that kind of directionally right. Yeah and then one other quick question so so you know so let’s say I’m an Amazon Seller and I’ve been selling you know excess inventory of shoes that’s not really what you’re going for right you’re looking at more kind of, nascent Brands so so have a direct consumer brand meaning their manufacturing it and, come up with a product not re selling other people’s products is that is that fair. Chris: [16:30] That’s correct yeah as we as I alluded to earlier we are looking for winning products and Brands as we could find them a little bit more about what that means to us. But we want something that we think is defensible for the medium term, and I don’t believe that competing for the buy box in a reseller Arrangement is defensible and even if you have an exclusive reseller arrangement, still that comes up for Renewal right I don’t know if it’s annually every three years but if we’re paying a multiple of earnings we want to believe if we pay three times annual, sde sorry. We want to believe that we can get at least six years if not more out of that and so the way that we think that is most likely is you have a trademark you have a brand you have bran. Let’s get brand registry with Amazon and then on top of that you are winning within your Niche so you have your top of organic search you have great ratings and reviews a low return rate profitable unit economics consistently right we realize sometimes you have to do, Lightning Deals or other such things to drive some volumes recontact I think that if you are running 25% tacos a generalist. [17:44] We want to see stronger gaming performance. And I really you know the rating review moat and the return rate that’s action and MCX that it’s really really important to us because that shows. The customers are speaking right there telling you and everybody else because of the quality product, and they’re willing to share that with their with their quote are quote friends with others by writing a review for you. Jason: [18:12] Got it and I realize you’re talking I failed to ask if there’s a geographic Focus like we joked a little bit about brexit are you everywhere Amazon is are you primarily in Europe in the US or what’s the. Chris: [18:26] Yeah today we do North America so we do um. As you guys know mostly 95% or plus us and then we do panting you and UK in terms of selling Gio’s we purchased businesses from sellers. Pretty globally maybe 40 or 50 percent in the US. Yo 40% in Western Europe and then you know 20% interest in Europe and so then it doesn’t matter where the seller is it matters that they have a great product and have the attributes that we. But even though it’s been mildly amusing that it’s you know even the sellers and Eastern Europe often times they’re only selling on.com in the US that’s. I’m not the one to go. Scot: [19:22] And then any so I imagined when I look at, these kind of nascent Brands they do tend to Cluster and like cpg so like Health and Beauty supplements is that are those kind of the category hunting grounds that you you tend to focus on. Chris: [19:40] We have a little bit of a broader Focus but you’re right that that’s where a lot of Sellers and so because of another part of our of our company thesis is that, the barriers to entry are come way down if you Google, launching a product on Amazon you’ll find videos that say make sure you have at least one thousand dollars in the time to launch a new product on Amazon which is amazing for all the bad rap that Amazon gets they have been one of the largest drivers of Entrepreneurship ever, maybe millions of opportunities for previously didn’t have opportunities 10 years ago if you wanted to launch a new consumer product in health and beauty or housewares, you probably needed 50 to a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars you probably have to buy a full container load from an Asian manufacturer you have to find some. [20:29] Peter Griffin give them all sorts of your margin and so it’s been it’s really amazing what they’ve been able to do, but we we despite the fact that the barriers to entry or come down which is enabling always with launch products it’s still really hard to launch a great product, we you know we found some research Procter & Gamble still has a 97 percent fail rate on new product launches, the entrepreneurs we talked to also have a 95 to 99% kill rate of product launches you will launch 20 products and one will be 95 percent of their revenue, and so in general a big part of what we think is that it’s really hard to want to do products and cross the chasm to be a winning product winning your in your Niche having. You have to be the number one market share BFW being market share Michigan. And it’s a couple with that is we stay away from launching meaningful brand extensions if you products right so we look for people for cross, as of it have that product Market fit and I really with their customers and that’s that’s an important part of our youth. Scot: [21:37] And then so a company I started is called Channel buzzer in our theory is if you can do X on Amazon you can do Y where Y is about the size of X off Amazon is there do you actually help these Brands so so so Amazon’s kind of like are you proving yourself you’ve, just product-market fit you’re getting good reviews is there a strategy to also start selling off Amazon. Chris: [22:03] Yeah there is yeah we’re starting to experiment with a couple of other channels Walmart being the top of lips we don’t have. Anything that we think would be a perfect fit for ways are yet but obviously Wayfarer is near and dear to my heart, so any other Marketplace Channel as you as you just said why is never as big as X and so we’re trying to figure out the right resourcing actually believe that the way. We want to which is a big part of what we’re building is a technology platform that we can run these products across platforms, and across keogh’s without a ton of humans, and so we can hear you guys may know you can control almost everything about Amazon great guys you can control your your photography you’re a good Merchant copy or price for ads can, you can download a bunch of data and you can get your visibility without even log in to sort them for so. [23:06] But we’re building that we built a lot of those pieces for Amazon to build those things same things for example for Walmart. Cost about the same from a technology investment perspective and your parent for that investment isn’t quite as high so what we’re doing now is a little bit more. I’d call it skunkworks you were Walmart actually been coming after us and they’re obviously investing in the marketplace so they’re working with us and giving us some. Was it some on the scale but they’re kind of helping us with some lunch Cadence and some advertising and some support to get us the list somewhere. Place and so we’re taking them up on that and we’re going to see how it goes right if that ends up being smaller than expected then then we’ll focus where the money is going better than expected. But those things we’re doing is we’re getting some of these brands have chasing boil tea customer or less, so we’re working to monetize those right and how do we leverage social and leverage female Drive traffic either back to Amazon right to drive that organic ranking then move the sales or to their own sites and, save a little bit on the on the sale speed when you drive it to your own site but then you deal with. You know so many returns and all you know what the intermitting state sales tax and all that kind. [24:30] I’m depending on the size of that business brand Stephen looking at multiple channels. As well as good group that means it’s tough you know it’s easy to hate on Amazon but it’s also where all the dollars are so we’re trying to balance your thoughtful multi-channel strategy with also focusing Road payments. Jason: [24:53] Yeah no that makes total sense you you alluded to some of the the tools and automation that you guys have put in place I imagine that is, one of the synergies that you get by acquiring multiple of these companies like are there other other synergies are advantages you you perceive that you’re getting by aggregating a bunch of these guys or is it, is it really just a smart Investment Portfolio strategy. Chris: [25:22] Yeah there absolutely are we I think you’re right that. If possible perhaps to do a smart investment strategy group here. Are I really don’t focus on building but I think could be. You’re better Department Gamble and you love her and others in the future and I think we can do micrograms are taking share pretty meaningfully from large brands, and they’re doing that despite all of these challenges that we talked about earlier great despite not having access to Capital despite not being in other markets another channels. Amazon third-party Marketplace is twice as big as the biggest CPT code paying the world and it’s growing more than twice as fast but the fastest growing which is not the biggest, and so Michael brands are taking all this share despite their handicaps and we want to accelerate that. And build a really amazing operating company that is helping these great amazing products of the next level. Yeah so some of the examples today are on the manufacturing side working with manufacturers both on cost and terms, and that is every manufacturer is different and what we can get there is different with every with every relationship but the capability of being able to do that well it’s common across same thing with inbound your, from our Wayfarer relationships we actually have a great relationship. [26:48] Since broker so we’re helping Salah dating all of our inbound on the full containers we’re getting meaningful reductions by driving volume through a single source and luckily. Yeah I’d say 75 ish percent of our stuff all comes through Shenzhen and so that it was a not necessarily on purpose but it’s been a nice tail went to that ability to consolidate those with ears. And then yeah like we talked about on the top-line side as we are building, our approach to add optimization pricing optimization we don’t price advertised every brand the same but you create the archetypes and we have different product archetype. And we treat those archetypes like for example you can imagine there are really competitive, where the key there is to monitor your competitors prices in real time and reactive real time so that you’re always one of the best price items there and then drive as much process by changing and keep your margin, and there’s other items which is actually probably, you I’d say 70-plus percent of our portfolio are items we call aspirational where we’re priced maybe 15 or 30% more than most of our competitors but we have a review mode, and you have a great photography and great merchandising and there is more about understanding what drives people to buy are we holding share there we go there we can invest more in. [28:14] In sem and kind of ads PPC ads because we find that when you’re more expensive that branding you seeing your image on that first page several times actually batters the best moment they perceive quality when they see. Over and over again and so what we manage that without cannibalizing too many of our organic sales and so a lot of those. [28:37] Is the technology but also approaches and thought processes are common and then as I mentioned earlier most of these brands are not in more than one geography and so we have a team that’s solely focus on, translating easons get it you know the copy, you’re getting as you guys talked about putting things into Europe and now into the UK is its own Challenge and so getting it over there getting it listed going through launch Cadence getting them ranked driving, sales is is not the same for every product but is similar right it’s a similar watch Cadence and an approach process, in general a lot of focus on how do we make these the best brands of the best product and how do we grow them like wildfire. Jason: [29:25] I love it I’m curious is there a a common pattern like like when you do Acquisitions do most of them tend to be have the same strengths and weaknesses or or is it all across the board like do you acquire one company that’s, that’s great a tad optimization and maybe you know could use some help with price optimization and then the next acquisition is, the the reciprocal of that or do you know do most of the entrepreneurs on Amazon tend to have the same strengths and weaknesses. Chris: [29:56] It is all over the board it’s actually it’s I think I’m going to do it one of my favorite parts of this job is meeting these entrepreneurs and hearing their stories but then also getting into their business with them and seeing what they’ve built we find. It’s great I feel like every business we learn something we’re always open to the idea that we don’t do it best be aware learning and not even even if we were the best today everything’s changing so quickly Amazon’s to thing, he’s got these millions of entrepreneurs are innovating so quickly that even if we were somehow the best for one day, next day some think of something brought up so we’re always talking to them always trying to learn so I would say every acquisition learn something, and every acquisition there’s a number of things where we feel like we have a better model Renegade varies a lot really interesting some people, I super cost of course really tight supply chain and cost profile and either good margin or they price their driving a lot of sales through. [30:57] Chris point, and others are a hundred percent focused we’ve acquired a couple of companies that were just amazing at Social and engaging customers and I think all sorts of off the platform for ganic traffic on the Amazon. And and using that to drive both sales but also the as you guys probably done that. Your halo effect Amazon really likes external traffic coming on and finding your product and buying it and so that was a really neat one to one. [31:28] Coordinated all of that and they all these people do this in amazingly Scrappy ways you know nobody’s paying somebody 25 Grand a month to go and create a social campaign they you know they figure out ways to. Part-time VA offshore and I’m ways to recycle content or great new content and cheaper ways and so it’s really interesting it’s a lot of fun to see all these things and corporate. Scot: [31:55] Yeah on the back on the Synergy side it seems like a lot of examples are Supply Chain management like what I would call back end kind of stuff maybe a little bit front end with like Amazon optimization but do you envision a day where where you guys will either. Have some cross-selling amongst your brands or even like a front door where you know people can come in and shop at the perch collection for lack of a better. Chris: [32:20] Yeah absolutely it’s something we talked about and think about quite a bit, we today for the most part today most of our brands are, Brands and products and they are found they’re discovered on Amazon through keyword searches and we are able to drive, usually upside post acquisition on that side of just, optimizing your keeper try to G and getting more ranking on more keywords and also globally across the envelope it is, but we are talking about how we won leverage already engaged customers so email us that we acquire the social engagement that we acquire, and then eventually how do we start driving customers to we started outline view of what we’re calling Master Brands and so I don’t know this is all in development you guys getting a peek behind the curtain here so we haven’t figured all this out, but. Scot: [33:16] We like to call that at Jason and Scott exclusive. Chris: [33:18] There you go yeah you’re getting the scoop. So my current hypothesis is I don’t think that perch is going to be a super consumer-facing brand I had to sell, because the collection of things we have underneath it, is so broad today I’m you asked earlier about where we’re focused and we’re focused where the big bucks are but in general it’s pretty spread out we have apparel Brands we have Sports and Outdoor Brands we have, the house where Beauty Brands and and we’ve been I don’t know if there’s a cohesive customer story about all of those and so we’re we’re Landing instantly creating past two brands, Polio I buy a product or category and so we’ll have a question and we believe if we have amazing. You know facial products and skin care products and hair care products and other things in general if you buy one of our things, the odds that we can email you or connect with you on social and suggest another one and it’s similar adjacent space like that. The odds that you’ll be interested engaged and maybe convert hi if you purchase skin care products and we then email you about soccer balls for you know punching bag or something. [34:37] Read it feels a little bit disconnected and so for we’re still we’re still iterating on it but we’re we’ve started. This idea of Master Brands by product category and driving. The idea is to keep the sub Rams so the way I’ve described it to a few people is and if you guys have ever been in this fora, but Sephora has a brand that people know Sephora it’s a store you want to store but if you ever been in one is actually a collection of microgram. They have the section over here that’s the woman Brooklyn makes her own eyeshadow the section over here are the makeups lipstick from a woman, there were Brazil and so that’s the idea is to really keep the brand identity because there’s a lot of value and what these entrepreneurs have built and but the build on it and create this trusted Rella where people know that all of the brands within this umbrella, our quality and have been vetted also that we stand behind them right we’ll have great customer service and a good return policy. Scot: [35:40] Yeah I’ve seen some of our customers almost like self form around Persona stew so they’ll be like you know the busy traveler and. One seller will pick up a bunch of Travelers and then they’ll be kind of a theme across that or you know like you know busy moms and, then you can actually get broader category expansion because it could be stuff for the car or stuff kids, some beauty stuff so it’ll be interesting to see how you how you figure out those cross-pollination opportunities the one I know we’re going to get this question so I’ll go ahead and ask it as quickly as I can hear if someone is interested in talking to you about selling their Amazon business you know can we have your home phone number or I guess I should say what is the best path is there like can you go to perch your website and just kind of like apply or do you guys kind of have to seek folks out. Chris: [36:35] No absolutely we love we get. I actually pulled this up we have not had a single day in the last 90 days were haven’t gotten one in town who we haven’t gotten at least one inbound dressed so we didn’t had a zero early today on our website so our website is perch hq.com, so you’re welcome to go there and you can fill out our form it comes out I reach out to you or you or just to get another Jason Scott exclusive I’ll give you my email address and if people just want to email me directly I’m happy, to direct you to the right folks and that’s just the Press at perch hq.com, and anybody who likes can email me and I will connect you with the right person on their team to have an initial conversation and in general we love. Talking to entrepreneurs in this case without talk to you about the process and so I would encourage anybody even if you’re only mildly curious if you if you don’t have time for a 30 minute phone call that’s fine hello are on our website and we’ll add you to our mailing list and will send to you, what we hope is a. Helpful monthly newsletter that has thoughts on sale process and Amazon broadly but if you’re also if you want to talk to somebody just get a sense of what is the process feel like. How do we value companies and things like that to me know and I’ll connect you with our head of MMA and where we gladly jump on the phone for 30 minutes. What we’re looking for and it’s not a match today great will stay in touch. Jason: [38:01] Nice and I’ll just try to save you a little bit of email traffic if if you are focused on that busy traveler Persona that Scott mentioned probably don’t bother to email. I’m just I’m kidding but it’s not maybe the best time for the busy Traveler I am curious we talked a little bit about your fundraising do you share anything publicly about like your your your overall scales or sales velocity or anything like that to kind of, give us an idea of your order of magnitude. Chris: [38:33] And we have not shared anything about our revenue and locally we did share in December that we had acquired or 20th brand and we have since then wired handful more and so we’re. Moving quickly. Jason: [38:49] Got it and so would you say maybe then like five Pharma packs is that where your Noms teasing sorry. Chris: [38:55] It’s tuned and it may be give us 6 months. Scot: [39:01] Cool and then on the competitive set so the ones in the u.s. I’m tracking is and I may get these names wrong if I don’t care about apologize if they’re listening there’s Gojo or go yeah I guess and I think they’re in Austin and then thracia or thrashy oh how do you guys think you differ and I’m kind of curious, have you seen any bidding wars break out there seems to be enough people kind of poking around here that maybe there’s been some some auctions going on with some of the bigger brands. Chris: [39:32] Yeah sure it is it is very clearly getting a little bit more competitive over the last six or so months I’d say when we first started. We were mostly competing against SBA buyers so people who get an SBA loan and go and try to buy one of these businesses and run as a lifestyle business was the most common profile we’re up against. And now we do run up against actually I don’t think I’ve seen. Go to at least not my name against us but we do see I actually don’t know if you pronounce of grass to regress show but we do see them. I work frequently and we see a kind of a smattering of other folks and it is it’s getting a little bit more competitive I think as you get some of these new entrants a lot of them are hungry to make their first deal. Or a few deals and so they’re willing to strap a little bit but we’re focused on. [40:30] Doing what we do best which is finding great entrepreneurs. And treating them well work at being fair and transparent and the whole we know what we’re doing we’ve done this a lot we have a really good track record in the Brand’s we’ve acquired performing really well. And it’s a 300 billion dollar market place and so we are focused on building like I said a great lasting company. How we differ I mean in the eyes of the entrepreneurs at the end of the day. I think the most important thing we can do is treat them and this is what I tell Nate who’s our head of m&a constantly that they are. Break beat them with respect to do some typically really amazing. And being fair and transparent and full with them and taking good care of their brand. We’ll go a really long way we still get a lot of our deals referrals from prior sellers, besides you know who maybe don’t know about these competitors or don’t have it have had the same experience with them but had such a great experience with us they tell people they can’t follow us, if they’re thinking about selling their business and we think that referral base and the word of us I’m being good at what we do around the country as well and then on the I also think. [41:46] As I mentioned earlier that we don’t view ourselves as investors we’re not trying to take a private Equity approach and just collect a bunch of assets we’re trying to build a real amazing technology focused e-commerce company, and with the best products in the world and we hope we can make a bunch of these household brand names but I think over the medium term that will prove out and we’ll have we’ll have those brand names and the goal there is then, get analogy I use is your most tech entrepreneurs want to sell through Google right that’s just it’s that you get to tell your friends Google bought my company, and you know you built something amazing or something like Google is going to pay to buy your company and I think if we build the right operating company then that’s what we can get to we are the brands that we own will be, Global names and will be really well known and will be known that they’re part of our portfolio and in the immediate term as you said it’s a little bit. [42:45] Yeah I think in a few years, the it’s all going to come out in the wash and I with the team were building and the track work they were building I expect will be will be there and then it’s no longer you know they’re saying this and works in the proof will be in the pudding, and that’ll one make it easy rest for it to continue by Brands will we can show that we can double and triple in 10x then what we’re time. And to hopefully he’ll make us a buyer of choice because it’s not just about the dollars people actually care about the brand and want their brand to be in the hands of the company that’s going. The most successful it can be. Jason: [43:23] You know it’s funny as you’re talking I’m I can’t help thinking there’s a sound byte we play a lot on the show from Amazon your margin is our opportunity. The end, like I totally agree with you that Amazon has been an amazing incubator for entrepreneurship and growth and I you know it’s a lot easier to write the negative stories than the positive stories but that being said like is there a risk like that you. Get to successful that this model Bears out and then Amazon decides they want to play more directly in that model or maybe even for some unrelated reason, they change the search algorithm or or FBA or something else in a way that derogatory affects your portfolio like is there a concern about kind of Amazon as a single point of failure. Chris: [44:17] Um yes absolutely there is right it’s something that I think about a lot I think so I mean there’s a few things that what you said in there, better probably worth addressing the first one is is Amazon going to try to take more of this crop the pool yes absolutely right there definitely Google’s doing it, great five years ago you maybe had two sponsored spots of reporting people search now it’s half or two-thirds of the page is all sponsored and they have. [44:46] Skulls and all sorts of Amazon has and will continue to do the same thing, and that’s where that’s that will be something that is a challenge for us but back to your complaints I think it will be less of a challenge for us than for the entrepreneur, right if we have the right scale we can pull cost other supply chain to expand our margin we have the best engine that optimizing that’s good. We are driving traffic off Amazon, these customers off Amazon in a way that just frankly almost impossible to do if you’re writing five million dollar Revenue business then it will hit all of us but I expect will be best position to. To cope with it and to continue to grow and be successful in it and then to your other question I know. Do we have actual examples I’m going to turn your evil eye on us and smite us. You know you know we could be a ten billion dollar company and they probably wouldn’t notice right it’s a printer billion dollar market place I mean you probably noticed like you’re not. [45:53] Any means but if we went have Indigo shooting her with them right we would still be just a tiny drop in their master. And so I think the odds that they us as a threat anytime soon and try to mitigate us at a specific. Or last year ago dare anybody like that I think it’s just pretty small and a bunch of ways we’re trying to help Amazon and accelerate the Playbook be we are. Trying to buy great products we’re trying to keep them in stock we’re trying to drive cost out and give that contact to the customer, it’s the customers telling us they won’t they’re calling us they want higher quality higher priced products we also lose if we follow the data but in general we’re trying to be a high-quality seller stand behind our products you know we give. Here we go full refunds if there’s an issue for example right you know a lot of people don’t or make Amazon deal with that we really are trying to build. Great company of great Brands and products into the in general as we’ve never been Amazon. [46:53] They are seeking out good sellers they’ve created a little bit of a problem for themselves with all of their. For creating direct from China especially manufacturers and that has been some good out of that for sure and that’s lower cost. [47:09] But they’ve also created a lot of bad sellers, that is one of the top priorities is I understand it within the marketplace ecosystem today is weeding out and getting rid of bad sellers who are selling company that items and so we are the antithesis of that, I’m hoping they should embrace that. And then if we keep doing that and we’re good seller and we diversify our Channel over time and we’re not all on Amazon and I think one hopefully we can find a way to get into a good. [47:40] Your balance with Amazon and be valued part in the time and they’re a good channel for us and then to becomes less important over time as we. Yeah it’s a risk and it’s something we think about, it’s hard to imagine that they they do something to us and it was a one last point on that is they’ve also you brought you guys probably know about this, a I being such a boon for entrepreneurs they have also created a bit of a political liability you know is those got called in front of Congress there’s antitrust legislation brewing and the EU, trying to push Amazon to separate their first party in third-party business because the EU is saying you’re competing with these entrepreneurs, and you can’t be and all this you know stuff about them stealing data and so I actually think they and trying to do much aggressive here, is heart I think it’s getting harder there by as you said earlier every everywhere they were these opportunity there’s sucking it up which is great there also quickly becoming, big tax and people are getting afraid of except the politicians are getting pretty big Tech so I think they’re going to try to lately in the space for a while. Scot: [48:50] Where do you it’s kind of fun to kind of play forward do you think that I know it’s an e-commerce it’s hard but that’s the fun part of this Jason I do an annual prediction show and it’s a it’s always a very humbling to especially this year for me to see how that turns out so if we kind of fast forward three to five years you guys are acquiring like sounds like about 20-ish Brands a year maybe you can crank that up so you’ve got hundreds of Brands what what do you, what’s the endgame you just keep rolling or do you start. Like offering the your own fulfillment offerings or something or like start kind of you know productizing almost like Amazon does some of the things you build or where do you see things going. Chris: [49:37] Yeah we are aiming for. Being a consumer Products company that owns at least a handful of household names and so what I think that looks like and. Don’t know if that’s five years away or a little bit longer but what I think that looks like is we are selling multi-channel as we’re selling we also have our site. We’re selling through any other Marketplace that is big enough to be meaningful and maybe Walmart will be there you know Google is, I’m actually feels like a drug only but get things off the ground we’ll figure it out. Facebook and Instagram get stores off the ground will be selling their but well whoever is Meaningful in the space plus direct consumer. We’ll be doing that will likely be in brick-and-mortar in some way and selling some of these products. That’s still even though we’re going to make now that will pop back to being 50 people spending at least a year new most likely and. And with all of that right so we’ll have we’ll be using FBA most likely but we’ll also have our own fulfillment for our multi-channel will also have likely a physical distribution so that we can replenish the stores because that’s the different working capital and inventory. [50:53] Will be likely more Global than just north of North America and the UK so pushing into South America Eastern Europe Maybe, some more Asian countries that will have to see the products don’t translate quite as well over there. [51:10] Yeah that’s the idea is we’re kind of we’re a multibillion-dollar company that obviously isn’t that the scale of somebody like parking gamble yet, but is looking like they’re on a path, to having these household names and the big difference being key for e-commerce and like I said we’ll have a brick-and-mortar shred you will be doing that but you’re one of the things I talked about quite a lot that’s good thing about Justin traditional sleepy, this traditional cpg sets bracing annually maybe quarterly if they’re feeling really happy but we set pricing sometimes hourly, we end and same thing with ads and things like that and so we’re building a really different Tech platform and a really different process and approach to managing these brands, but I think and accelerates the share game that there already are already experiencing and if we can take that Global and take that across channels. I think it can be a really powerful story and I hope I hope we have people we have you are were publicly traded company and and some can continue to grow and. Scot: [52:15] Maybe with a SPAC we can pull that into. Chris: [52:17] There you go yes. It’s becoming I don’t know if you guys have heard this I’ve heard several investors say SPAC that it’s like it’s becoming a verb. Scot: [52:26] Yeah wow. Jason: [52:27] You could spec that and then you could hope that a bunch of hedge funds short you so that you could get run up by the the Robin Hood hours. Chris: [52:34] There you go I like it. Jason: [52:36] I feel like we’ve mapped out your whole your whole growth strategy there I like it. Chris: [52:39] I think a notes. Jason: [52:41] Chris I love that vision for the future I look forward to having you back on the show when you’ve achieved all of that, but that’s probably going to be a good place to leave it for today because it’s happen again we’ve used up all of our allotted time as always if listeners have a comment or question there welcome to hit us up on our Facebook page or Twitter I will certainly include your contact info in the show notes and as always if folks enjoyed this episode we sure would appreciate it if you jump on iTunes and right us that, that five star review before you sell your business to Chris. Chris: [53:18] Great thanks guys really appreciate it at this is little fun. Scot: [53:22] Thanks Chris we really appreciate it this has been a Hot Topic and he did a great job of walking us through it we truly appreciate. Chris: [53:29] Awesome looking for the talking again soon. Jason: [53:31] Until next time Happy Commercing!

On this episode of Quiet Light, we speak with Jon Elder, who had a seven-figure exit and now guides others on their startup journeys. We discuss the start of his Amazon career; his new business, Black Label Advisor; and how he guides his clients to success.   Topics:  Why he got into an Amazon business. How his conservative spending affected his start. What he negotiated in the sale of his business. Who his current business helps. How his methods have changed since he started. Why you should consistently innovate. Creating experiences for customers. Who his typical client is.   Resources: Black Label Advisor Jon@blacklabeladvisor.com Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com   Transcription: Mark: Starting an online business and an Amazon business, that can be tough, right? There are a lot of mental challenges in that and especially those first couple of years; there are a lot of decisions you have to make in order to be successful. You have to think about how much inventory should I be buying in that first year, how much should I be investing, how many new products should I be launching, all while not seeing a lot of cash in your pocket, because any money that you bring in, you're typically reinvesting in that business to be able to help it grow. And so, there are a lot of challenges through those first few years and I think a lot of people get drowned down mentally during that time because there are just so many decisions to try and make as you're growing a business. Joe, you had Jon on the podcast to talk about that. He went through this. He went through a successful exit, and now he's training people on that startup process. How to start up an Amazon business, how to build brands and make those decisions a bit more clearly, have the right mindset as well going through this to make sure that you have some resiliency through that process. Joe: Yeah, Jon reminds me of us and what our website says which is a bunch of entrepreneurs with a bunch of crazy, been there, done that experience. That was a terrible quote from our own website. I should have had it up and read it. Mark: It's something like that. Joe: It's something like that; a bunch of people that have done something. Mark: We're just a bunch of guys and Amanda. Joe: And Amanda, she runs the show. Jon, he had a mid-seven figure exit and it was a substantial and life-changing one that will probably change a generation or two of his family. And he did it through building an Amazon business the right way with multiple brands in one Seller Account. Not that that's the only right way. There are many ways to do it. But he's sharing his direct experience. He's not the typical guru if you will. And I shouldn't say that because we have many friends who would be considered gurus that are actually really good at what they do. But he's been there, he's done it, and now he's going, okay, look, I can help people. I truly, truly can help people. And he set up a system and a process to help people understand how to identify the right product, not just from maximizing value and return on dollars but upon doing that, you're going to be happy and satisfied with working with you and your cash flow; how long the launch process really takes, how often you should launch. He never used any launch services or anything like that. There are a lot of steps that he's set up and he goes through and he's working with people one on one. And I thought it would be beneficial to have him on the podcast because he does have a crazy amount of done there and done that experience. Joe: Hey, folks, Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Today we've got somebody that had an incredible exit, one in the mid-seven figure range. Jon Elder ran an Amazon business with multiple brands. Jon, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Jon: Yeah, thanks for having me, Joe. Joe: That was a short but powerful introduction if I do say so myself. We don't read fancy intros here. Jon, can you give the audience listening a little bit of background on yourself so they understand who you are and why you're here? Jon: Yeah, of course. My story is kind of similar to a lot of people in the sense of I wanted to get more out of life and there is always an entrepreneurial spirit in me. And so, 2014 is when I started on Amazon and I was also working on a corker construction job and I honestly thought I was going to be in that type of career the rest of my life. I went to college for Construction Management and so it's a pretty high profile, very successful career. But the scaling of salaries is driving me a little crazy and so I wasn't okay with just getting the 5%, switching companies maybe down the line. So, I got into the Amazon world because I thought it was a really great opportunity. At the same time, I'm really conservative so I didn't go in with a large amount of capital. I started with roughly $5,000 and I got my feet wet in the golfing category. Some of that is due to just my general interest in sports and it was a product that there weren't a lot of competitors in that category. It was something I was interested in and something that I thought I could innovate a little bit in that category and become the leader. And within a year I actually did become the leader. I became the number one seller for that specific product. Joe: And you have a job the whole time, Jon, or did you quit? Jon: Yeah, actually I worked full time until 2016. Joe: Excellent. Okay, that's good to hear. Jon: Yeah. Joe: That's what I like to hear. It's a less risky path for people. Jon: Yeah, I'm married, I have a son and so their needs actually come first. I had to make sure that I wasn't putting my family in a bad financial position. So, yeah, I definitely worked with factories in eight. I spent a lot of hours. My wife was very sacrificial, allowing me to spend all that extra time. We used to have conversations about this that we're building a business in the future and there's some sacrifice that has to be made for that. And that's just part of life. Anyone who says that it's easy and it doesn't take that much time is a complete lie. It's a lot of work and very, very stressful but it definitely paid off. Joe: Yeah, you've got five brands over that time period as well, not that just one? Jon: Right and part of that story is just pursuing products that I had an interest in. And not all the brands were successful. Some of the brands were definitely not successful but thankfully the vast majority of my brands took off and became leaders in their respective categories. Joe: Okay, so just to review and just to understand fully who you are, what you've done, because we're going to talk about some of the nitty-gritty here. But in the last year that you sold the business, you did about six and a half million in revenue. You ran the business side by side with being a new dad and a full-time job for a couple of years before you exited. You had five brands and ultimately you sold for mid-seven figures. We're not going to give away the detail here, but an amount that is a life-changing figure that would have taken you 20 years in your construction business to earn probably maybe even more, right? Jon: Oh, yeah. Joe: Over the over the five years or so that you were running the Amazon business, I always love asking this question and it's a tough one because you haven't done the math yet but did you take and make more money as you were running the business; take more cash out of the business for you and your family during that five-year period, or did you get more when you sold the business? Jon: Oh, I definitely got more when I saw the business. One of the driving factors behind the success of my business was the vast majority of the money; any profits that we got were reinvested. That helped us launch products faster. It helped us launch new variations faster and so that allowed us to grow the business very, very quickly. Joe: You must have taken something out for yourself, though, I would assume. Jon: Oh, yeah, definitely. Joe: Just enough to live off of, was your wife working? Jon: No, my wife is a stay-at-home mom. In 2016 when I went full time with Amazon, the goal was to pay myself a salary that mimics my salary at my job and then as the business grew to continue to scale that up from there. And of course, at Christmas time because of the sales and the profits there, doing things like small bonuses and things like that. Yeah, the money that I paid myself definitely increased over time. In the first two years, I paid myself very little just because I was obsessed with growing the business. And honestly, from the very beginning of starting the business, I had a number in mind for my exit someday. A lot of people will say they have vision boards mine was a very specific number. It was in the multiple seven figures and everything I did in the business was geared towards that end goal. And so that's everything from having all my brands under one seller account, all my bookkeeping, just keeping everything clean, strong tax records. Joe: Preaching to the choir, I love that. I love all of it. That's great. It's a clean and easy deal. Did that enable you; was your buyer and SBA buyer or were they a cash buyer? Jon: He was an SBA buyer and the package deal for that was kind of interesting. Roughly 75% was upfront cash and then the rest was split between the seller note over five years and then an earn-out in perpetuity. And so that actually wasn't originally in the contract and with my lawyer at my side, we negotiated that to be perpetuity so I'll get the money eventually. Joe: Wow, that's fantastic. That part of it was probably outside the SBA guidelines though, yes? Jon: That's completely outside the contract. Joe: Good, good, good. Understood. Okay, so you learned an awful lot, you had five brands, some were successes, some were failures along the way, and you're now helping other people as well. What are some of the basic tips that you would give somebody if they're just starting out? So this podcast, even though you had a multiple seven-figure exit, even though you've operated five brands, you're really focused on helping people that are just starting out more than anything else. What are some of the basic things that somebody should look for if they're, let's say, either starting out or if they're buying a small Amazon business, that might be a couple of hundred thousand dollars in total value? Jon: So it sounds cliché but follow your passion. That's something that I tell my clients and friends and family who are interested in starting an Amazon business. Do something that you're generally interested in. And it doesn't have to be your ultimate passion. For example, golfing was never the ultimate sport. It was just a general interest in it. But go into something that you have some sort of interest in because at some point you will have hurdles and you will have issues with your business. So, for example, you might have to spend a couple of hours on a Friday night talking with one of your factories about resolving quality issues on a previous purchase order. You got to be invested in that product and if it's not a product that you're interested in, for example, I would never go into women's makeup because I have zero interest in it. I just don't know if I would be totally in it once I hit those bumps in the road. Joe: Yeah, and I've heard people say just the opposite, except for that part of the bumps in the road. So you could be product agnostic, but it helps, it's not an absolute requirement, it helps, as you're saying, to have some passion about the product. If you're going to end up on a call at 11 o'clock on a Friday night with a manufacturer on the other side of the world to work out some kinks in the detail, if you're not passionate about it, if you're not interested, if you hate it, you'd probably think about doing something else. Jon: Yeah, and I think along this subject too it's even deeper than that. I mean, so often, you're going to have other competitors for your product. There is so much innovation and improvement in your product that takes place over time. Personally, I wouldn't want to be looking at makeup and spending hours and hours and hours trying to get a better formula because I just don't care about it. One of my other product lines was an outdoor kid's product. The mission behind that brand was actually to encourage kids to rediscover the great outdoors. So many kids are on tech now and they spend hours and hours inside on the Switch and on iPads that; and this is how I parent as a dad, too is I encourage my son to go spend hours outside. Joe: How old is your son? Jon: He's five. Joe: Okay, wait until they're teenagers. It gets even worse, man. It gets even worse. They're playing with friends all the time it's just online I tell you. So, yeah, have some passion about what you do. There's no question about it. You started with 5,000 bucks. Are you helping people that haven't even picked a product yet or those that have a product idea and has sourced it and are really just trying to figure out how to how to get some traffic on? Jon: Yeah, obviously it depends. Some of my clients definitely have product ideas and they're already innovating and they want to go into a category where it's going to be truly unique and different. And then others are still in the brainstorming stage. My job is to just advise and help them along the journey all the way through sourcing and getting on to Amazon and launching. But there is so much that goes into the product research phase, and that's what I tell people, is just expect to spend hours and hours researching and researching because this is your money you're talking about. And some people take out loans. This is real stuff. You need to be 100% sure that you're in it for the long haul with your product. So, it comes down to researching the estimated revenues for that product. The thing that made me the most successful was innovating products that had some negative reviews. So I would harness all those reviews and fix all the problems. Joe: How do you do that with the manufacturer on the other side of the world? Jon: It's pretty incredible. I actually never visited any of my factories. I had four factories and it was all through phone calls, Skype, and emails. Joe: And it worked, not a problem. So are you working with a product innovation firm that's doing industrial design work for you or are you just sketching it out yourself and asking for innovations from the manufacturer? Jon: No, actually, the innovations were things that; again, because I was in product categories that I had a deep interest in, I was able to innovate myself. Joe: And do you then just put a drawing in front of that manufacturer and say can you do this? Jon: Exactly. Yeah, sketches are really useful, and then something that blew me away was how intellectual or sophisticated the Chinese factories were. They actually had 3D modeling engineering guys in-house. And I worked with some big boys. The factory for the golfing product that I sold, they actually supplied some products for the PGA Tour. One of the keys to my success was working with factories that were not starting out their journey as a factory. These were very established factories that sold products to Walmart and brick and mortar companies. Joe: Yeah. For those listening one of the additional options is Gembah, www.Gembah.com. We had Zach on the podcast here. It's a product innovation company, its industrial designers that can do that. If you're not good at drawing and innovating, they can do that work for you so that you present a more professional look to the manufacturer. Okay, so advise number one, spend a lot of time on deciding what product and product categories you're going to go into because this is where you're going to be spending all of your money in the future years, yes? Jon: 100%, and all your time. Joe: All right, let's just say we picked a great product. What's next? I mean, is it simple photography, put the listing up, look at basic stuff in terms of recommendations from Amazon? Are you using a launch service like Viral Launch or are you using some other launch service or a combination of different things? Jon: Yeah, for launching, I can get into that in a second. So, the next step that worked really well for me was doing a ton of screening with the factories. And then what I would do is I would do three final samples and we're dealing with weeks and weeks of communications here. Like this is a long process to make sure that my factory is the best of the best. So I would test the factories over email and I would ask oddball questions. I would also come across as the VP of Logistics or the VP of Product Innovation. So I would definitely present myself as an image of a large corporation. They never thought that I was a mom and pop shop in the States. But getting three samples from three strong factories was really successful for me. Joe: Three samples from each or one sample from each? Jon: Sorry, one sample from each factory. And then I would stress-test those products, use them, inspect them, see how they feel in my hand. I would do all those types of things. I ask friends and family what they thought of the products. That was a very common process. And then I ended up after taking in all that data, deciding on my final factory. Joe: This may be a basic question, but I assume you're paying for the sample and paying to have it shipped, right? They're not sending free samples and free shipping. Jon: Correct. Joe: So you're going to spend several hundred to a thousand dollars in just reviewing product samples I would assume, depending upon product cost of course? Jon: I would say a couple of hundred. Joe: Expected, and that's an incredible investment that you have to make, right? You can't just look at some stuff and get one sample and off you go. Jon: Yeah, so it's common to see that everywhere right now. It's like you can skip all those steps and you don't need to worry about that. There is some time and money upfront that is going to save your butt long term. 100%. Joe: So then if you've got the product samples; let's say you want to innovate on all three, let's say they're pretty close but you want a thicker grip on a handle or something like that, are you asking the manufacturers all three just to see how they respond and react and work with you in terms of innovation? Jon: 100% and part of that is also testing how flexible they are as a factory and how easy they are to work with. Joe: Okay. Jon: If they put up a big fight and complain about things, that's going to be a red flag for me. In the factories that I ended up working with, the answer was always yes. Their response was yes, we can do that. Yes, we want your business. Yes, yes, yes. Those are the guys that I ended up working with. The ones who caused issues for me and said, no, we can't do that, that's going to cost $5,000, I just got rid of those guys off the bat. Joe: All right, so what's next? You've tested three manufacturers. You chose a product, you innovated the product, and you're at the point where you've got the final decision on what you're going to invest your money in. What's next after that? Jon: So at that point, you have your final sample, and hopefully you have that in hand, typically production, depending on how many units. My test unit order was always 250 units, sometimes 500 units. So what I would do is while production is happening, whether that's two weeks or four weeks, I would have my final sample sent to a professional photography firm. In the very beginning, I actually took pictures myself and had a designer kind of edit my pictures and pump up the colors a little bit. But later down the road, when I was launching product after product, I'd send the products to a professional photography firm and have them do the enhanced brand content just to tie in the branding for my product. Because in the beginning, I sold a lot of random products, and then as time went on and I got more educated on it, I realized I need to be establishing my brand. I need people to come to Amazon for that specific golfing product. I want them to see my name and think quality and fantastic customer service. That's what I wanted them to remember about me. And so part of that is beautiful packaging, part of that is beautiful enhanced brand content. I had videos as my seventh picture on the listing. Joe: I was just going to ask that. How many of your listings had videos on them, all of them? Jon: The two largest brands had videos and that was kind of like a cost decision because the videos that I went with were extremely high production videos. And not everyone has to do fancy videos. The reason why we justified that was those brands were very, very large. We're talking big revenue numbers so it was something that I felt was needed. Joe: You didn't do that out of the gate on that first golfing product I assume, right? Plus, it was 2014. It probably wasn't an option for you. Jon: No. I don't remember the year that they allowed videos on the listing. I think it was maybe starting to happen in 2017-ish but yeah, in the very beginning you were locked out of everything. You had a paragraph for your description; you had bullet points, and then seven pictures. That was it. Joe: Yeah. Okay, so now you've ordered products, you ordered 250 units, spent a couple of hundred bucks on samples, you got another final sample you sent off to a photographer. It doesn't sound like you've got a whole lot of money left if you're starting out with five grand. I guess it depends on how much product cost is. Jon: That initial investment can range drastically. My first product in the golfing category, I sourced it for a dollar a unit. Joe: Well, that makes a difference, that it explains it right there. Jon: Yeah, exactly, it makes a huge difference. And I did that on purpose just because I'm so financially conservative that I wanted to learn the logistics process of Amazon and if I did screw something up along the way, whether that was customs or something at Amazon, I wanted that capital invested a tad small. Joe: And if you were in a competitive space that would have meant the barriers to entry in terms of cost are pretty low. A year later you said you wound up with the top listing, but did you start to see competitors come in pretty rapidly after that? Jon: Oh, yeah, 100%. And I think what drives that is people see a new seller take over that category and then they see all the revenue go to me and then they think, oh shoot, I'm going to mimic him and I'm going to come in and take some of the revenue. And that's part of life is you have to; and when I mentioned innovation, you have to be constantly innovating your products. So I ended up adding a special device to my golfing product that actually had a patent for it. No one else could do that but that was kind of like an additional tweak I did for the products that made my listing unique and different from all the other listings. That's just the harsh reality of Amazon is once you become a category leader, you will have a lot of other people come in and mimic you. Joe: And the way to fight that is to innovate. Jon: Innovate, be the best, and when you think your pictures are good just get even better pictures. Joe: Yeah, I hear you. All right, so now we've got the product. You've ordered it. You are starting to have your photos done. What's next? I had mentioned launches and systems and things of that nature, where are you helping your clients and advising them to go from there? Jon: I'm different in the world of Amazon because most of my products; actually all the products were done organically and so my strategy is a little slower than other sellers. Joe: Let's define what you mean there organically. Jon: So for example, never using services like Viral Launch or other services where you're paying discounted rates or using websites to launch your products. Joe: You simply put the listings up on Amazon use Amazon Sponsored Ads and off you went? Jon: It's a little more than that. Joe: It always is. I'd like to simplify things and dumb it down but I know it's a lot more complicated than that, yeah. But no launch services, nothing like that? Jon: Right and so what was really beneficial was really actually humorous autoresponder emails. So we use a service called Feedback that was really, really successful. Alongside that doing a little bit of a giveaway through the early reviewer program and then just pumping PPC, to be honest with you. And so typically we do like slightly reduced cost for the products to be priced a little lower; nothing too drastic because that can mess up your Lightning Deals down the road. So we would reduce it a little bit and just funnel a ton of money into PPC. And then we had an autoresponder series on average two to three emails. Joe: So explain the autoresponder part because you don't have control of the customer. This is after they buy the product? I'm confused on the autoresponder part. Jon: This is right after someone buys the product. So one email goes out three days after they receive the product and then another one goes out seven days and another one goes out 14 days. And those are all tweets specifically to be kind of funny. So many people open up emails and to be honest with you, most people don't open their emails very often. So having a really funny title for the email and then the actual body of the email being short and sweet and using a joke or something about the product was really, really helpful. Joe: I got you. So, you're not breaking even upfront, I assume, because you're spending a lot of money on Pay-Per-Click. Jon: No, I'm definitely in the red when I first started. Pretty much all my product launches started in the red. Joe: How long are they in the red for? Jon: Probably a minimum of six months because I'm doing it organically. Joe: So, how many products are you launching in the first year; two or are you going after more? Jon: The first year was two products actually. Joe: So, if somebody is coming to you with a little bit bigger of a budget and let's say they've got 20 grand and they're really needing your guidance to get launched and they've got an idea of the product. Are we still looking at losing money or breaking even for the first six months, eventually breaking and making a little bit? Jon: That is so dependent on the category that you're in. If you go into a category where you're competing with guys that have 500 reviews or a thousand reviews; let's say the top 10 sellers have a thousand reviews, it's going to take some time and you're going to have to burn through some cash. And the reason why is PPC gets more expensive every single day. That's just the reality of it. And everyone is competing for those keywords. And so, for example, with my products, I always outbid my competitors for the top search volume keywords, and the reason why is that that drove incredible sales to my listing. And PPC was actually the highest cost in terms of expenses for my business. Joe: Do you know what it was overall as a percentage of your revenue? Jon: Oh, man. Joe: I'm typically seeing anywhere between 10 and 20%. Jon: Yeah, I want to say was more like 25%. Joe: Okay. Jon: If we're dealing with the PPC costs alone my CPA would just look at me and be like, man, you guys are spending a lot of money on PPC. But that's just the reality of the business. Joe: But your CPA still has a day job? You get to do whatever the hell you want at this point in your life, right? Jon: Yes sir. Joe: Then who is right, you or the CPA? I think you were. Jon: Those expenses look kind of scary, but when you're looking at the percentage of revenue, it becomes a little less scary. Joe: Yeah. Now do all; I know the answer to this, but not all product launches are going to take six months to start to get traction and breakeven, did you have any in your five-year stretch where you would see some just home runs out of the gate or get some profitability within the first one to two months? Jon: The kid's product took off very fast and that was a very organic launch. And the reason why was there were maybe two or three sellers for that product and they had an inferior quality problem. So if you go look at the reviews, the actual liner of the material for the toy would just deteriorate like within a month under the sun. And so we innovated and we got the best liner possible, got UV-resistant liner and improved the product drastically and that took off with beautiful pictures. We actually hired some models; some family members actually took pictures with the product and just focused on quality for that product. People bought it and I realized, wow, this is like; it showed up in the reviews, your product is as lasting a long, long time. And that became very successful, very quick. Joe: And it was all from looking at other listings and the negative reviews that those had and innovating and improving the product? Jon: Correct. Joe: Yeah, pretty cool. How hard is it, though, to find a category where there are only two or three sellers? It seems like an impossible task these days, is it not? Jon: So Amazon is definitely; there's a lot more competition now. I think the secret's out about FBA. Joe: It might be, yeah. Jon: It's definitely harder now. I think that most categories are going to have far more than two to three sellers and so what I always recommend is even if there's seven sellers, you can break into those market segments as long as you're not dealing with sellers that have like a thousand reviews. If seven of them have 75 reviews or maybe 200 reviews, that's something that you can definitely go into and compete with. But there is always going to be a hole in the market. There's always going to be a chance to innovate and do something and spend the time to make the best product possible that lots of other people aren't going to do. And one example was actually the leather goods category that I was in. It was specifically for men. We drilled down all the way into the product packaging. A lot of people don't do that. They would get their leather goods products and they'd open it up from the box and it's in a polybag, right? That's not an experience. Joe: Right. Jon: So our idea was let's make it an experience for this person to open it up and sell everything down to the custom packaging for the box down to a branded tissue with branded tape. So whenever the person opened this product up, they knew that they were receiving a high end, high-quality product that was different from everyone else. So that's just like; it sounds kind of silly, but no one spends time with packaging and what does it feel like when you open up that product at home? Joe: It's because it's not sexy. They spend time on marketing and topline revenues and talk about it with their friends because it's sexy. But packaging and good bookkeeping and good branding and good photos and videos and the profit is actually what puts you in the best position possible, which is doing whatever you want at this point in your life. Jon: Yeah, definitely. What's interesting about that is the customers would actually talk about all the nitty-gritty details that I spent time on. That would come up as content and some of those reviews would be the top-rated reviews. Someone left a review on one of the leather goods products and it was this detailed long review with pictures and they went out of their way to be like, I've never opened a product from Amazon and the packaging was just stunning. So I was like, yes, it worked. And so other customers who are on Amazon obviously see the top-rated reviews and see that type of content and it definitely helps and it soon became a leader in that category. Joe: Cool. Jon, we're a little short on time, but I wanted to ask you, what are some of the biggest challenges you think folks are going to face? Jon: I think the biggest challenge is definitely just not getting swept up in sexy products. I've seen this online so much, just this huge push for going into supplements, for example. I tell my clients, do not do supplements. Don't go into that category. Don't do it. Don't do products that go on people's skin. Don't go into products where you're ingesting things. I'm always recommending kind of simpler products that are very, very low risk. And don't go into knives; things where people can get injured. So, just focusing on a product that you're interested in and it's low risk. And that's always tough because you see the revenues that other sexy products are bringing in and people get swept up in that. Joe: This is one of the first times I wish I just hadn't asked that question because I sold; my own company was a digestive wellness supplement company. I've got a good friend that's selling his makeup business for like 40 million dollars. We have, as a company supplement companies that are under contract for anywhere from two to 20 million dollars. And I think when they're when they're done right, they're done right. Jon: Exactly, and I would never want to give the impression that it's not possible. It's just my conservative nature kind of stays away from those types of product lines. And you have to be you definitely have to be a more sophisticated seller to… Joe: These guys are. These guys are all very, very smart, very good at what they do, have SOPs that'll pass on to the owners of the business, as did mine. And it's competitive, right? It's that they are low barriers to entry cost-wise. Jon: Extremely, you have to have big capital and that's one of the barriers for sure. Joe: Yeah. Well, I think it is a nice; it's a low barrier to entry to buy into the product category, but then you've got to rank and that's where the additional capital and expertise goes. It's very, very challenging. All right, so how do people reach out to you? I see its www.BlackLabelAdvisor.com, but ideally, let's talk about who your typical client would be and how they reach out to you. Jon: Yeah. So the easiest way to reach out is to go to my website, www.BlackLabelAdvisor.com or you can email me Jon@BlackLabelAdvisor.com. My passion is to help other people replicate my story. So many people I talk to you are they'll see my story and they'll say, oh my gosh, that's a dream, you know? And I used to think it was a dream too. And when I closed on the sale of the business, it was a dream come true to see the money come through. It was an unbelievable feeling that you just never think it's ever going to happen. I have recommendations and systems and third party companies I highly recommend. Along the way, I made mistakes myself and my passion is to help people avoid those mistakes and grow their business faster just because of all the experience I have and just help them along the journey with the end goal of selling someday. Joe: Yeah, I like it, folks. Jon is not somebody who can't so he teaches. He actually did it. He built an Amazon business with five brands, sold for a multiple seven figures, and now he's helping them. And that's what we do at Quiet Light, we help first. We want to help you succeed. Strangely enough, it actually helps us in the long run too, right? Somebody listening in the audience hire somebody like John who has real-life experience to give real-life advice to help them succeed in their online business. That person will come around at Quiet Light someday as well. So with that look around, who can you help? Help out your neighbor, help your friend that's in the online space and keep helping, it'll come back around too in time. Jon: Definitely. Joe: Jon, I appreciate your time. BlackLabelAdvisor.com folks, reach out and connect with Jon if you need some help to help get your Amazon business off the ground. Jon: Awesome. Thanks, Joe.

Browse, search & buy millions of products right from your Android device. Product Features * Customers are able to shop millions of products on any of Amazon's sites around the world from a single app *Use Alexa to help you shop—just use your voice to search for products on Amazon, track your orders, and reorder your favorite items. Tap the microphone icon and say “where's my stuff?” to access open orders. Reorder products by saying “reorder paper towels” or “buy more batteries”. * Take advantage of 1-Click ordering, customer support, Wish Lists, create or find a baby or wedding registry, order tracking, and more * Scan product barcodes and images to compare prices and check availability using Scan It * Check out Gold Box Deals - including the Deal of the Day and Lightning Deals, and get automatically notified when new deals become available * Send and share links to products via email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and more * Sign-up for automatic shipment notifications to know when your order ships and arrives * Buy with confidence, knowing that all transactions are securely processed Product Description The Amazon Shopping app lets you shop millions of products and manage your Amazon orders from anywhere. Browse, shop by department, compare prices, read reviews, share products with friends, and check the status of your orders. Compare prices and availability by typing in your search, scanning a barcode or an image with your camera, or using your voice. Never miss a deal with easy access to Lightning Deals and the Deal of the Day. You can also sign-up for shipment notifications to know when your order ships and arrives. You have full access to your Shopping Cart, Wish Lists, payment and Prime shipping options, Subscribe & Save order history, and 1-Click settings, just like on the full Amazon.com site. All Amazon Shopping app purchases are routed through Amazon's secure servers to encrypt and safeguard your personal information. Important Note Regarding Permissions Please note that the Amazon Shopping app requires access to the following services to operate properly: * Contacts: Allows you to send Amazon gift cards to your contacts or invitation to install the Amazon app. * Camera: Allows the Amazon app to access your camera on the device. You can use your camera to find products by scanning the cover or its barcode, to add gift cards and credit cards, or to add pictures in the product reviews. * Flashlight: Allows the Amazon app to turn on the flashlight. You can use the flashlight to find products with the camera feature even in low-light or dark conditions. * Microphone: Allows the Amazon app to access your microphone to use your voice to search and interact with your Assistant. * Location: Allows the Amazon app to access your location to help you discover local offers and select addresses fast. * Account: Allows you to share products on Amazon with your friends and families through Facebook or other social networks. * Phone: Allows the Amazon app to pre-populate the Amazon Customer Service number on your phone's keypad. * Storage: Allows the Amazon app to store your preferences so that some features can load and run faster on the device. * Wi-Fi: This permissions is used when setting up either a Dash Button or Dash Wand using the Amazon Shopping app. OS Requirements: Requires Android OS 5.0 or higher and a rear-facing camera. The Amazon App for Tablets is available on Google Play. Search for "Amazon Tablet" to install the app and begin shopping.

If you sell on Amazon, you've likely heard of Amazon Sponsored Product Ads. In this episode, etailz's digital marketing manager, Jeremy Rossow, joins Kunal to pull back the curtain behind the uses, strategy, and typical performance of the different Amazon ad types, including Sponsored Product Ads, Sponsored Brand Ads, Sponsored Display Ads, and Demand Side Platform (DSP). Their conversation also delves into the uses of Amazon Brand Stores, Lightning Deals, and Amazon coupons, before venturing beyond Amazon to discuss Walmart Sponsored Products and the importance of high quality creative assets to support ad performance.

EP199 - Dreamforce and Retail Earnings Episode 199 covers the 2019 Dreamforce Conference as well as this weeks news including Walmart and Target earnings reports.. Dreamforce Salesforce held their annual Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco this week.  They launched a major new functionality "Customer 360 Truth" a universal customer data platform. Singles Day - 11.11 Day - $38.38 billion US (up 26% YoY) Amazon News Nike leaves Amazon Amazon Grocery Concept in LA won't have Amazon-Go Amazon is internally testing Amazon-Go in grocery sized space in Seattle Earnings Reports Walmart - US up 6.6%, E-commerce up 41% (mostly grocery) Target - Retail up 4.5%, E-Commerce up 31% (mostly store pickup/fulfillment) Other News PayPal acquired Honey for $4b. 20X their $200M Revenue Kylie Jenner sold 51% of her business to Coty for $600m Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 199 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday November 21st, 2019. Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 199 being recorded on Wednesday November 20th 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your compost Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners, well that's pretty exciting times here it's November 20th we are about seven days away from Thanksgiving T minus 7 Days folks to Holiday kicks in some would argue it done right after Halloween but I like to think of it really kind of kicking off at Thanksgiving, Jason was kick-off I saw on Twitter Some Noise around the world's largest Starbucks where you the first person in there. Jason: [1:08] Sadly I was not a side note on Thanksgiving I've been training all week by eating pumpkin pies. Scot: [1:14] Nice already. Jason: [1:14] Getting ready. I think it's a rookie mistake to just go in the Thanksgiving cold without a good one. Scot: [1:21] If you been pumpkin spice latte into it as well. Jason: [1:25] I don't I stick with my classic ice cream key around I'm weird. I did try to get my classic iced drink at the world's largest Starbucks which opened on Friday. So a little less than a week ago in Chicago, and I struck out so I was out of town Friday I went there Saturday morning at 8 when the store scheduled to open and there was already an hour line waiting to get in. And I had families in toddler with me so I we had to abort in. Do a plan B so I'll have to go back and visit another time that kind of an impressive draw that it's drawing that kind of crab for a retail store open. Scot: [2:06] You think the world's largest could hold more people. Jason: [2:09] That was my promise I actually thought they would be popular but it would still be easy to get in because. It was on Michigan Avenue which is like the premier shopping location on in Chicago and this was formerly The Crate & Barrel flagship store, so it was a four-storey 40,000 square foot furniture store that they've converted into a Coffee Roastery. So my assumption was it could hold an awful lot of people but apparently they're still you were still sort of them dating how many people they let in. Scot: [2:40] Is this one of those doesn't really have much mobile order it's going to be a food concentration there's no venti takeaway cups all that kind of strangeness. Jason: [2:51] Semite so that the concept of this is called The Reserve Roastery I want to say it's the like this one. If I have this right the first one was in Seattle there's another one in New York this is the third one in the US there's one in Shanghai there's one in Italy on which is controversial, enter this is like the premiere Starbucks concept it was a pet project of the founder of Howard Schultz the founder of Starbucks. It does have all the regular stuff you could place a mobile order there you can get all your traditional drinks. But it has a lot more stuff so they roast beans there and if you go to any Starbucks anywhere in the world and you buy a reserve being the beans that come in the the black and gold Packaging. [3:37] I got roasted in one of these roasteries so they're so it is a commercial Roastery but then they have kind of a you know it's a it's a beautiful. Kind of handmade Roastery with all glass windows so you can watch them working and they have kind of a Willy Wonka set up where they have these, translucent vacuum tubes that lead from the Roasterie to all the coffee bars in the in the building and said the beans like, fly through the tubes over your head so you can watch the beans getting delivered for making coffee. Any of your classic drinks with a much wider variety of beans that make a bunch of other drinks that aren't typical they make a bunch of drinks mixed with alcohol that have ice cream that was stand-alone restaurant everything merchandising section, this is all based on the other roasteries I visited and I'm assuming that what we're going to see in the Rock somewhat localized so when I'm assuming we're going to see you soon. Cool architecture in some variation of all that in this the Chicago store will have to report on it after I physically get in one. Scot: [4:46] Awesome well I'm here at home in North Carolina and you are out in California at drink for so tell us what's going on at dreamforce. Jason: [4:57] Dreamforce has the annual trade show for salesforce.com sales force is based in San Francisco so this is kind of on their home turf and that I saw someone refer to this is a quite Big Show it's it's every hotel room in the city of. San Francisco sold out I think I saw that I was like 40,000 people are here attending it so they they call it Burning Man for people with jobs. Which I thought was pretty funny because there is a lot of like chocolate brand building entertainment experiences in addition to the sort of. Salesforce product experience is so that like really extravagant. White outdoor Forest that they built in they give away free expressos the forest has like. Like a redwood tree that you can drive through and you know all this kind of cool stuff and have a lot of celebrity speakers, show Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones this year Megan Rapinoe dying from USA World Cup team this year, a Beckham the musical act is like Fleetwood Mac and then the the big headliner Tina I mean Tim Cook is speaking but the big headliner is Barack Obama speaking tomorrow so they get a lot of. Interesting to listen to people that are you know probably not talking about the marketing cloud. Scot: [6:23] Yeah and then so then they that they talked a lot about a lot of social kind of stuff obviously so that the CEO of Salesforce is really into that and then I usually wear like crazy shoes. Jason: [6:37] Yeah he likes a mark Billy off is a very Progressive CEO and he be like there's a lot of really good causes and so we highlight some of those, on the stage right he's built through hospitals in San Francisco and sponsored some public schools and things that are kind of cool but they do they have like they have content about helping people to, be more Mindful and they they have a whole exhibit full of actual monks that are helping people to meditate you know they have a lot of bad like Arianna Huffington talking about like. Trust and transparency and yeah I just I mean yeah she wouldn't go into the sweet thing but. Yesterday they have a lot of people talking about like their pet interest which are you know potentially interesting helpful lifestyle Tibbetts. But then they also do generally make some big product announcements at Salesforce and and so like. I'm not sure this is going to go down as the biggest year but there's some I guess I'm reasonably sized interesting new announcements. Scot: [7:46] How much of the show is there like a track for e-commerce and an of the you know they're there I guess they called the Commerce club now is that a thing or is it. Jason: [7:59] There is there so there's a there's a Commerce track Commerce is like integrated into the the Keynotes along with the other clouds but I will say. They're shifting a little bit more from products to rolls so, when they were product-based like the Commerce cloud is about e-commerce in the marketing cloud is about sending emails, and you know that they're kind of Shifting the content to be more roll bass content so it's a retailer or a b2c company and that that roll. Yeah would obviously you need Commerce and marketing cloud and CRM and customer success rights are there. I would say like they haven't completely transition there still are definitely some products and Trick Tracks and there's there's a stand-alone Commerce keynote for example as well as some. Dedicated Commerce content in the the main stage keynote but I do think I feel like it is Shifting more it won't surprise me if a couple years from now there's a retail track. Not accomplished you know that's a pretty reasonable thing to do. Scot: [9:07] What are the highlights of utena the show. Jason: [9:09] Yep so the a big one so one thing that like. Obviously is well known to you but you know very first Cloud companies so in fact when they launched the company they launched it at Oracle world and they they did like fake picketing outside of Oracle works at World saying like. Like free software you know and put it in the cloud and it was you know this whole like counterculture thing, and anyways I still feel like they are a really good example of the cloud like they, it took a lot of feedback on features from their customers and their customers can vote on the features they most want in every quarter they do a new release and you go to the home from work on Friday and you come back to work on Monday and suddenly you have all these new features, that where that features most requested by their customers and so that doesn't sound like rocket science but a lot of other Cloud companies I still think like. You're not getting the full advantage that you should from the cloud and so at the show what they tend to do is release some major new feature. It's free and instantly available to all the that users on the cloud so I can couple years ago they launched Einstein which was their AI module and it was, you know a free new thing for all their customers so this year they watch them a major new platform that's free to August and customers of customer 360 true. [10:32] I think they're starting to struggle with their naming conventions a little bit here. But that this is is interesting like I feel like this is very on-trend so it's a couple of, can a customer data features rolled into a meta offering so the Met offerings called customer 360 truth and I think truth stands for kind of, the single source of Truth for all customer data and the the modules inside of it is they have kind of a data manager that lets you map all your data from your various Salesforce and non Salesforce systems, into a single Universal. [11:10] Data platform so it's based on customer and it has a unique ID for each customer so like normally we would call that a CDP or a customer data platform, so it seems like Salesforce has launched one and they made it free to all their existing customers, and said that the actual example that use on stage was a retail example they had Louis Vuitton they commented you know. Despite the fact that Louis Vuitton uses marketing cloud in the Commerce Cloud that the you know the keynote speaker bought some cool Louis Vuitton shoes. Last week and he got an email you know marketing on this week because the in-store POS doesn't know you know that the the email system doesn't know that the insert POS old shoes. I'm inside with this new 360 data manager you can't. Relatively easily Plum all that data together and then the marketing Cloud knows to you know Market stuff to people that already bought their shoes instead of, to try to sell you the shoes you already bought so, the CDP space is pretty popular right now makes total sense that sells words would be in it kind of big news that they are not trying to sell it but they are giving it away and because they a lot of companies already have a lot of their data in Salesforce. [12:30] That's a pretty big competitive advantage of its kind of one click and you load all that data and all the data mapping and stuff is already done for you so that's pretty slick. New problem we're all struggling with is data governance and privacy, you know there's a European data standard and the California did a standard goes Live January 1st and so suddenly we all need new metadata about, who has permission what rights to us or what data and how we collected and all that sort of stuff so part of this 360 trap trust is a privacy and data governance module which is a product a lot of people are having to buy right now to get compliant so that's interesting, and then they have a customer in audience is module I may have the name wrong, this to me sounds sort of like what we would in the advertising space traditionally call a DMP or data management platform and so this is kind of, ability that take all the state of that you now a aggregated, and like create audiences and segments for specific campaigns and specific uses so it's the ability to do really sophisticated slicing and dicing of all this customer data you have, and the work with it. Known data IE people that you actually know and also unknown data IE you know an honest users that I've text you but haven't identified themselves, so that's kind of a pretty comprehensive interesting product that they want that's basically available immediately we stand. [13:59] In their sandbox so I'm sure some customers are excited about that. Scot: [14:03] Is the CDP thing on acquisition or something they build organically. Jason: [14:06] To the best of my knowledge they built that because I am not familiar of this specific acquisition there are like, a lot of the plumbing like so a big part of this is is data mapping and transformation and they they bought a very big company in that space mulesoft. Last year so it wouldn't surprise me if they revered some of that capability in here but you know they also had new announcements around how you'll stop is developing as a standalone tool so. So don't know I'm not specifically aware that they bought a CDP. Scot: [14:37] Do this is disrupted in the CDP world because if you already have a salesperson you get this for free then you're going to. Jason: [14:44] I think if you're a. Scot: [14:45] Buy another city. Jason: [14:46] Has has like you know very much data in the Salesforce Cloud it's it's definitely going to be a much tougher sell for anyone else and you know I would say a lot of people that have had a lot of trouble getting. The anticipated return or value out of it right like they you know the IT department to love to move around all this data and buy all these new tools that they often don't have buying from the business users in the office. Don't don't change their marketing activities based on having these new tools and so you don't get a very good Roi and. Because Salesforce has a lot of the marketing tools. Yeah I think they have a better chance to be successful and I think it's going to mostly go head-to-head with Adobe that you know also has a very robust marketing stack and has their own CDP, but yeah I'm sure the rest of the CDP vendors would rather a Salesforce have not gotten into this place. Scot: [15:41] And then if I remember from our deep dive on personalization that's kind of the heart of personalization alive times has this CDP thing. Jason: [15:49] Exactly in Encino sales force has a lot of person with Asian features they have a pretty robust a eye capability the day they have Brandon Einstein and so, kind of one of the cool things about the cloud is like you do do this mate data mapping you plug better data into it and all the recommendation tools you have and they iTunes you have. Just start working better without really having to do any new implementations or anything else which is to me pretty cool kind of like when you get up in the morning and your test was faster. [16:21] And then add some more. [16:23] Some other product announcements I mention Einstein a couple of times that big Einstein announcement is that they there beta testing Einstein voice so this is a natural language processing engine for all the sales for school, and so that they use case they damn it is you know you're in. In a sales meeting with a customer and you walked out of the meeting and now you kind of dictate your notes into the Salesforce app you just using natural language and you know Salesforce logs at contact in the CRA, you don't create the forecast if that's appropriate their you know all those kinds of things they did a couple other use cases that are kind of cool where. It can listen to the sales calls on the phone and listen to customer service calls on the phone and, either do kind of post call analysis and recommend different things to the salesperson than what they actually did you know based on its artificial intelligence, when the case of the customer service module it can be calling up like knowledge articles in and and helpful resolution to a problem just while it's listening to the, the customer service person talk to the customer so voice. That seemed a little less like live in a little more kind of this is the early version. [17:45] And then they now have some partnership well I guess those first ones not a partnership Salesforce about Tableau last year which is a big. [17:55] Data visualization data analytics tool. Today announced that the full integration of Tableau and Salesforce so now your Salesforce customer you get the whole Tableau capability set to use against your data for free so that's kind of cool. Is Salesforce a much better fate of visualization and analytics capability and then they announce Partnerships with three other companies so they announce the apartment or they, renew to partnership with apple the announces partnership a few years ago and this mostly takes the form of they launched on the sales force apps to run on iOS and so they have a. Pretty robust. Interface for all their tools that runs on iOS and and that's where they demoed Einstein voice is Kentucky into that app and stuff that was kind of cool. They announced a partnership with Amazon and I would call this one the least interesting they. [18:52] Have made a version of their customer service module stand alone and they're selling it as a as an app on AWS sojourn AWS customer you can turn on this. Customer success portal from Salesforce they announced that some of that Einstein voice stuff that we just talked about is available in beta on the Alexa devices. I'm so you potentially could dictate yourselves notes into an Alexa instead of in your phone. And they announce some training material that sells horse has a big warning portal and they announce the AWS training is is now available on the Michelle Sports training for so a pedestrian stuff there I would say, and then the last announcement which was a little surprising to me was a partnership with Microsoft. And the the biggest component of this is that they're moving the whole marketing Cloud to Microsoft Azure so this is to my knowledge the first time Salesforce is kind of formally picked. A public Cloud to host their Solutions on I think you're the for like most of the apps that run on Salesforce his own cloud so interesting and I'm sure a big win for Microsoft. Scot: [20:03] The so I guess that won't really be back customers just got like the back ends where it says. Jason: [20:10] Yeah I know it's Maura inside baseball thing like I'm sure you know if your Google Cloud platform you're upset and I you know I almost feel like the AWS announcements might have been to kind of soften the blow that they didn't pick it up. Scot: [20:24] Brickell the other big event that has happened since our last podcast that were recovered news is singles day did you track a I had to be at a fleet conference so I was not able to track lost a very close see did you see how that one. Jason: [20:38] I did I kept an eye on it it's it's almost gone so mature that it like personally I'll say it's like slightly less exciting for me. Then it was four years ago when we started this podcast for example but not shockingly they had another big year so, total sales for the day we're 38.38 billion dollars in US so that's a. Huge number that's more than six times bigger than the biggest e-commerce stay in North America. The scales just amazing and they're all these ridiculous stats about how many orders they take in the first minute in the first hour and all that stuff by partly because. Bape resell all the sales for so much that customers have chewed up a lot of purchases and they log on the first or second of the sale and click by, to my knowledge alibaba's never had any major infrastructure problems with this day which is like super impressive to me, is this feels like one of the biggest stress test of it and a delivery infrastructure in the world then it seems like they nail it every year. The one thing I would say so that that 30 billion dollars represents 26% year-over-year growth which is where the first time ever a deceleration in the rate of growth. [21:56] So you know the day might be kind of maturing a little bit the thing I go in a single day looking for most is if there's any evidence that there. [22:06] Expanding their International reach so single day like definitely. A place to a broader audience than just China but it tends to live primarily in Asia and there's some you know Western retailers that try to piggyback on it but but Alibaba themselves you know their main pushes get Western brands, on the platform selling to Asia for singles day not get Western consumer shopping on Singles day. And I would say like I saw less evidence this year than I had in the past that they were even sort of leaning in that direction, but it's definitely true that you know Western Brands tend to be amongst the biggest Sellers and fastest runners, on Singles day like it was a mix this year so they were like 15 brands that did over a billion one, in sales and that was like Chinese companies like way way, a Japanese company like Fast retailing that owns Uniqlo and then you know it's apple and Nike so, kind of a good mix food supplements are actually the biggest category so you know it's a lot of people buying like like gourmet food and nutritional supplements. Mostly imported products and then Cosmetics makeup Beauty are the second biggest category in her quite huge. [23:30] And then you know stuff like and Mike are like diapers do well to so so good day all around. [23:39] It felt like generally continuations of trends that we seen in the past rather than something while be different this year. Scot: [23:45] Used to be on Amazon would be up on that list as well have I wonder if they had a good singles day and I didn't see anything about. Jason: [23:52] I didn't see them referenced and you know singles Day falls on Veterans Day in the US and obviously you know it's a. Short. Of time before Thanksgiving and this year because. You know there are fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas like a lot of people started their Thanksgiving promotions earlier so you know it all together. Scot: [24:18] Yeah Google when did Jason Scott show without some Amazon news. Jason: [24:22] Amazon news new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [24:36] Big amazon news that we want a report on is discovernursing so on the 13th of November not called this kind of the holiday punch in the news Nike pretty publicly announced that they are going to suspend that pilot program where they were selling Direct on Amazon there's a lot of this started this in 2017 there's a lot of speculation that so John Donahoe who was CEO of eBay and then went to, assassin company for a while and then it now has become CEO of Nike he had something to do with this obviously not a huge Amazon fan so that was pretty interesting Jason what it what did you make of that one. Jason: [25:20] Well there's a lot of speculation I Channelview the speculation that like when Nike started this pilot in there in 2017 I think it was, did it wasn't necessarily an effort to sell a ton of product on Amazon and Nike sort of felt like they had to be on Amazon for their customers the speculation was, did they wanted more leverage over Amazon to help and get Amazon to cooperate with sort of anti counterfeit anti gray marketing. And so you know a lot of us think that they they put a limited assortment of Nike products and certainly not the like poppy are new releases on Amazon in order to have a more formal business relationship with Amazon to achieve some of these softer goals and you don't now the inference is that didn't work very well or Donahue felt like it wasn't worth it or or you know whatever the case is but it, doesn't it never seemed like it was a full court press to create an amazing Amazon Nike brand experience on Amazon. I still like I think it's interesting I think it definitely gives cover to a lot of other brands that are on the fence about whether they should be on Amazon or not like I definitely think when Amazon Nike moved on there. It made it harder for other brands to say like we don't think that's right for our brands, and now like I think it did they're not on there I think it makes it easier for other brands that make that say move what it what do you think about that. Scot: [26:48] Yeah Yeah lyrics and see what how other brands react part of I think what Nike was thinking when they did this was they could control part of this was simultaneously Amazon put the clamps on people selling Nike products and if so I haven't heard anything but I'll be interesting to see if those, yo come off as well and then so will happen is this product will still be on on Amazon but just did the third-party Marketplace and argue, Amazon Prime makes more money that way anyway so I think Amazon will be okay I wouldn't I wouldn't cry for an hour don't stay up all night worrying about Amazon Chase. Jason: [27:28] I was not going to but you actually reminded me of another day point I actually heard some rumors that in the run-up to this that Nike may have been. Actively soliciting some of their authorized dealers to be comforted party sellers so like Nike may have even decided to help make sure that the. The product stayed on the platform when they pulled off the one piece sales. And I would just add one another thing that's a little more about Nike than Amazon but the to me. Nike being on Amazon was kind of counterintuitive because the same time they announced this pilot they announce this big initiative to cut way back on the number of wholesalers that they had, in the premise was we only want to work with retailers that have a really differentiated customer experience otherwise we would just rather sell the rest. [28:19] And so they literally had like 30,000 businesses that were selling Nike shoes and allegedly they tried to cut that down to 40 in these forty all had to kind of commit to have an enhanced Nike experience so think of like, Nordstrom with a Nike shop and shop for things like that, so to be kind of a commodity on Amazon at the same time you making that other shift kind of fell in kangaroo it is and they really had a lot of success with that initiative so, in 2013 so while ago 19% of their sales were direct-to-consumer today 30% of their cells are directions to consumer in it it's a that's a big number and Nikes case so that's pretty successful. [29:02] They're like 35% of their their their online sales are growing at 35% same-store sales growth like 6% so like most of the growth is coming from, their online direct to Consumer which is super interesting and I talked a lot about Nike being really good at digital in-store and doing a lot of really smart things, in their house of Innovations and their Nike towns and the one bit of news I didn't get to cover when it happened but that I think is super interesting is, Nike has this really good app that lets you kind of specify shoes you want to try on and in a Nike store of the shoes get delivered to a locker and you can try them on and buy them without ever having to talk to a Nike salesperson there now. Piloting that capability in Foot Locker stores so you walk into a Foot Locker in the upper east side of Manhattan and you can. Use the Nike Plus app to try to win merchandise and Foot Locker store you can order merchandise and it gets delivered to a Nike Locker inside the Foot Locker store it's a, it's super smart and interesting for Nike it was shocking to me for Foot Locker because it essentially means that Footlocker is encouraging. Customers to use the Nike app in Footlocker and you know like that doesn't help their Adidas sales very much so it was it that was it. An interesting thing that I've never seen before where a brand had a successfully done a takeover of the in-store digital experience of a retailer. Scot: [30:32] Yeah yeah must be complicated to manage all these different brand experiences at some point. Jason: [30:36] And then one other like so I started with an irony of and I'll finish with an irony this announcement that they're pulling off of Amazon happened two days after single day and of course Nike is one of the biggest presences and is all in on, I'm single day so that you know they one of those 40 retailers definitely is Ali Baba. Scot: [30:56] One of the R9 listeners were one of the kind of previous holiday punches in the nose that Amazon received was from Toys R Us so we'll see how this goes for Nike. Never a good idea to kind of flip your nose in Amazon so maybe we'll see some amazonbasics shoes with swoosh like things on them. Jason: [31:18] Yep. Be interesting. Scot: [31:19] Another quick Amazon one they did announce that they are going to start a week of Black Friday deals on the 22nd so they're they're going to have a week of Black Friday deals so it'll be interesting to see the kind of settled on on this deal format with a good kind of a combo of it got the gold box it got some Lightning Deals at the other day and then they wrote a bunch of that stuff in the past experiment was video and whatnot. I'll be watching on the 22nd just going to get a flavor for is there some new kind of platform at the deals as a kickoff Black Friday deals. Jason: [31:57] Yeah yeah I'm watching it in a we talked a little bit about this but the you know they also publish their physical toy catalog and one of the things they did a really good job this year and the toy catalog is. Digital integration in the paper catalog in it and sort of quick to buy capability and so. I thought that was really smart and then I noticed that the Walmart toy catalog holiday catalog just came out and is the first time Walmart has implemented that capability as well so that seems like the new the new standard and catalogs as you finally have to. You don't make your catalog digital friendly. Scot: [32:33] The any other Amazon news before we go on to Walmart earnings. Jason: [32:40] Just too quick to bits on grocery so we've talked about the fact that Walmart or Amazon has some real estate in Los Angeles and that and that they intend to open in grocery stores in Los Angeles. They they responded to some press inquiries last week, and in one of the one of the questions was are these stores going to be Jay Watts stores just walk out store so will they will they use Amazon go in this La Market in these much bigger grocery stores and Amazon said no so, that was kind of a definitive answer that you have these grocery stores aren't going to be bigger go stores and of course all the speculation is that they're going to be. Lower price of grocery stores like Target in a broader audience. [33:26] So we're all going to be eager to see when in January these doors open and I'll sure make a truck out to LA. Take it out of the winter and do some shopping in the new Amazon grocery concept but then there was an article that came out this week that although they're not using, Amazon go in this La Market concept that they're opening, Amazon did admit that they have a dark store at private store that they don't you know what let test customers and employees into in Seattle this a 20,000 square foot grocery store, that is using the Amazon Go technology so they apparently are pressure testing and stress testing, the the Amazon Go technology for a bigger form factor store which is interesting and in that same article they also acknowledge that they're actively talking to several retailers, about attentively licensing the technology and one of the ideas was apparently Amazon has productized kind of a small kiosk version of The Go technology. That you might use it like an airport or a hotel lobby and that a sibo which is a sort of a gourmet food and convenience store concept it's in a lot of airports. Was apparently named as a potential licensee for that so give me interesting stuff to watch. Scot: [34:50] Record then we have a couple earnings to report on super stuff is Walmart. Jason: [34:56] And not shocking but they they had a good earnings call so Revenue was up 3.3% same-store sales in the US were up 6.6% so the US is doing better than International for them econ was up 41% so that's right in the range that they've been. [35:16] Announcing a recorder they've been kind of bouncing around between 39 and 45 per cent they promised that for the year that be up 40% so 41%, feels good and Doug mcmillon acknowledged that the bulk of that gross in e-commerce is Grocery and specifically grocery pick-up and and he did kind of, talk about the the elephant in the room on that that that growth is not particularly profitable and you know one of the goals for Walmart is that they need to do a much better job of. Selling more stuff to those those grocery customers to make the sales more profitable and so what's interesting about that is the aov, on grocery pick-up is already higher like twice as high as the it'll be in the store but what isn't happening in grocery is you're not adding any general merchandise to that order, and though that's you know one of the big challenges that that Doug mcmillon talked about is they got to turn online grocery customers into overall Walmart customers. And you know we were at the moment there's a separate app that you use to buy groceries then there is to buy general merchandise and so you know. [36:29] They call that the gold and blue app and don't be surprised if you see, the feature set of those two apps kind of merge in order to affect the School of the Dead was talking about but it is interesting to me either. 1400 their stores now do grocery delivery $3,000 stores now do grocery pickup, again they have about 4,000 stores in the US so they can expand for another quarter and a thousand more stores and keep having this kind of growth, you know is very likely that growth is going to slow down once they get to 4000 stores that are all doing grocery pick-up and delivery and then it's going to be really critical that they, change the customer Behavior or their other cops are going to be really challenging and then kind of related to the earnings announcement they did introduce their new CEO for the us so that used to be a CEO named Greg foran he left to become the president of New Zealand airlines he's a native New Zealander so, best way to drag and they promoted John firmer who was the former CEO of Sam's Club to be the president of the u.s. So he's a longtime Walmart guy but he's a really young guy so. [37:42] Congrats and it's going to be interesting to see how he does it Walmart and then they back filled his job with Katherine Maclay who used to run Neighborhood Market so that's. The stand-alone Walmart grocery concept and so she steps up to become the CEO of Sam's Club so some some internal matriculation happening it at, at Walmart. Scot: [38:05] Sunmark Lori reports right to McMillan right so would does he is eCommerce, cross-section so the u.s. guide actually just run stores in the Commerce a separate how does that. Jason: [38:19] Yeah yeah so there's two presidents of the US there's there's the president of stores which it was dragging now John and there's the president of digital which is Mark they both report to the CEO. At Walmart which is Doug mcmillon and the like there's a chief customer officer, that's kind of above marketing and she reports to both of them so she coming to you don't have to report that to the digital and the stores. And you know I think some of the old articles from last year about Walmart we're about like some sort of friction between the store guy in the digital guy in the fact that you know. A lot of the digital growth was actually being delivered by the stores with this online grocery pick-up and that you know Mark was kind of getting credit for it but it was probably, the store guide doing most of the work so it'll be interesting. John's a little younger than Greg you know I think it's a fair assumption that he's a little more. Digitally native then dragged was and so it'll be interesting to see if he has a different relationship with Mark and Greg. Scot: [39:25] Selena on the heels of that we had Target earnings and this is what in the world of all straight we effectively call a beat and raised so this is really well-received by Wall Street, so the beat part expectations was EPS of a dollar 19 came in well north of that at a dollar 36 and then they bumped up the guidance at Wall Street was expecting 592 620 on the revenue side and they came in at 6:45 to 6:45 so they kind of move the range of guidance up above all she was acting self shares were up pretty sharply I saw, thanks to this so that was good and then there was a e-commerce was up 31%. Gets me back to this question we should we talk about Pride like every 10 shows or so if everyone's e-commerce is growing north of 30%, these are big companies so Amazon's at like 25 Walmart we have at 41 Target here at 31 how on Earth, even like Shopify is growing forget their number but it's it's like 30% I think last time I saw GMB wise. [40:40] Then we have e-commerce growing at 15% I I. I don't know how that works something something has to be like a negative growth even eBay is like just flat so it's not going to really be a negative trim there so I can look inclusion e-commerce is either going faster than we think it is or, or there's some peace some dark matter in there that we don't have any visibility on that I'd like to me but I digress did you see anything interesting in the Target earnings date they the talk a lot about ship-from-store some sure you if you were interested in that. Jason: [41:13] Yep yeah that was super interesting that we talked about it before but my answer to your conundrum below is that e-commerce is growing faster than we think, and the problem is like all of these these, companies that come out and say e-commerce is growing at 15% of index there their forecast of the US Department of Commerce data in the US Department of Commerce data is flawed for, Ecommerce particularly for omni-channel e-commerce and so when Walmart says they grow 41% and that's mostly people going to pick up groceries at the curb the US Department of Commerce counts that is best for sale so that's part of your bra. But in any case yeah the target announcement was super interesting to me for some of the granular data they shared about their curbside pickup so first of all they said hey we grew 31%, 80% of that gross was pickup in-store orders. So so that the that you know they bought this company ship they they really enhance their curbside pickup capabilities they do deliveries from store and they do they actually built with all male rooms in the back of all their stores and they do ship from store and so. [42:27] That store inventory is being used for 80% of their digital growth which is huge and then most interesting is that they said that when a customer comes to the store to pick up an order so we don't have to ship it to the customer. That takes 80% out of our cost or 90% rather out of our costs 08, curbside pickup order Casas 10% of what a ship to home order cost us and when we get a ship the homeowner and we can ship it from a store. That cost that's 40% cheaper than ship from a fulfillment center and so, the you know a debate has always been like Ashley stores aren't going to be as efficient at picking and shipping as a fulfillment center so you know the unit economics could arguably be worse the pic and chip, and then the counter argument is but your shipping in a way shorter distance because the inventory is already a lot closer to the customer and so the shipping cost should be well or and you know people debated about whether that netted a positive or negative for the retailer and what Target is saying as. Man we can ship something from the store that I get there faster to the customer and it says it's a bunch of money and we can get the customer to come to us and pick it up it saves us, a boatload of money and that's what most of our customers are doing so. [43:46] To me that's super encouraging for Target and it's fascinating and it really high like me. The difference between the Walmart and Target strategy. [43:59] So one problem with all the ship from store and pick up in store stuff is you can only sell the inventory you have in the store right, is a target's got 65,000 skews in the store and soda Target digital strategy is to sell those 65,000 skus, either Walmart you had like 200,000 skews in the store but you're trying to compete with Amazon for the total wallet share and you're trying to sell tens of millions or hundreds of millions of skews and throat you know Walmart is totally leaned into building more fulfillment centers in developing a Marketplace, and that that kind of thing to sort of get there their catalog up to be you know competitive with Amazon and they're making progress and doing that, but it really makes the unit economics challenging for Walmart whereas Target is selling a much more constrained, catalog but they're actually able to do that profitably you know it's kind of not sure once Reggie's right or wrong but it feels like, Walmart is trying to hit a homerun and compete with Amazon and Target is trying to head a sort of a single or a double and you know being more successful at doing. Scot: [45:09] The one thing that doesn't add up for me so the store has 65,000 items Target's website has I would imagine orders of magnitude more than that right. Jason: [45:21] Maybe a order of magnitude more they have more but it's not their target does not have millions of products. Scot: [45:27] That's what's to say it's a hundred. Jason: [45:30] Yeah could be two hundred thousand. Scot: [45:32] Yeah but what's a 200000 the chances are. Yeah that the thing you order online is not going to be in the store so do they know are they pushing people to order things in the store and some way like the top of search results. How are they or just happens to be the head of the distribution curve and that's kind of the 80/20 rule. Jason: [45:54] So I do I think it's partly that that 80/20 rule but I do think target is more actively merchandising the in-store assortment in are you know, then there are some other retailers and you know it is I think it's two because they have a. Metronidazole a lot of items but and I don't know this for a fact but I would bet you anything did the percentage of customers on target, Define products through the guided navigation is much higher, then the percentage of people that find products through the guided navigation on Amazon or Walmart like the Walmart and Amazon assortments are so big The Galley navigation is use very little and almost everybody has to find things through search but Target is so much more known for curation, a lot more with target cells are their own Brands brands that are exclusively available through Target. And like I do think they have like a more chill rated taxonomy that's more friendly to shopping and so, you know part part of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy is that you know more people are clicking through the menus they're saying the first page of that menu result they're buying stuff that's all stuff that's in the store. I think that's literally the target strategy and it's kind of opposite of the Amazon Walmart strategy. Scot: [47:14] And then a couple Acquisitions to talk about the first one that I think shocked both of us PayPal acquired honey-honey is a well, browser extension so it sits there you install it into your Chrome or your Safari or your Internet Explorer, messenger name that always forget and you know what kind of watch is your shopping behavior and if it sees you throw something in your cart somewhere it will go and try to find a lower price so essentially just like. [47:43] Scot Anderson there's tons of these out there none of them have got no attraction but for some reason honey is done a really good job with marketing and and seems to have a pretty good user base the thing that shocking about this one is a couple things first of all the price tag of four billion dollars this is asbestos, we've seen reported this 200 billion dollar Revenue company just got a 20 x multiple so that's just me there was some kind of a bidding war hear the other thing I wonder how PayPal navigated is I would imagine so if you think of Amazon having 50% of e-commerce it's probably 50% of the honey I'm activity or more is on Amazon. [48:28] My understanding is there some kind of an affiliate relationship they're so so Amazon hasn't black honey but now that it has a new owner I'm Amazon you know do I really want it your PayPal owning this there's going to be some, preference PayPal payments Amazon doesn't take PayPal, yell at my say something happens and they are in Amazon turns off honey which which is very viable yeah you can look at the IP in and just shut the crawlers down that they have you know that thing has huge exposure from getting an award Amazon so I hope PayPal is thoughts through that and, got some somewhere around that challenged his communication to see what happens to that one. Jason: [49:13] Yeah and I can try to shut them down they can make it way harder for honey but like there are companies that successfully still. Do stuff with Amazon even though Amazon doesn't want them to I'm not saying that's the position you want to be in but I'm not sure it would completely exclude on that would just make it much harder if Amazon. Active it at preventing it, but I think they might have a broader version of that problem you know Visa V PayPal in that like I I don't know that much about honey but I imagine that the retailers have a love-hate relationship with him if, you're not a honey partner and people are shopping on your site and honey is trying to divert those customers to a site that is a honey partner, you don't like honey very much right so if your target you're not paying honey and when you you know try to buy stuff on On Target it's saying like hey there's this other retailer that has a lower price, or you know honey you says like hey they have a promo code over here these kinds of things. You have the potential to to alienate a bunch of retailers and those are the same retailers that PayPal is trying to get to a doctor platform, so it is possible that they're going to have some customer conflict here don't don't know enough to know that for sure yet but but it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out and improve your point. I sure hope PayPal thought through that when they paid for billion dollars for me. Scot: [50:43] Yeah we should probably rename this segment Scott and Jason are super jealous or why didn't we think of that so it so number one congrats. Short forgetting this exit and then the other one that was kind of mind-blowing was Kylie Jenner she started a makeup company and you know obviously she's she in her hole Kardashian Clan there are a really big influencers this has blown up 2 / 200 million in Revenue very quickly and she sold half the business to the large conglomerate in the beauty category called Cody for 600 million which is effectively gives that a 1.2 billion dollar valuation in the real mind-blower is the company has six employees. Jason: [51:29] Yeah that Revenue per employee works out to be pretty good huh. Scot: [51:32] Yeah I have a feeling Kylie may take a disproportionate amount of that but we don't. Jason: [51:40] Yeah I know it's that super anything in that I mean it's a nuanced but I think Cody actually bought 51% so that's that a controlling interest. Which is somewhat interesting like I wonder if that will in any way put off Kylie Jenner fans but I mean mad props to her like I think she's actually totally changed the way influencers think about monetizing, their popularity comes before this they all would take money to, sell other people's stuff and this model has been so successful that you now see a lot of other popular influencer saying hey. I'm not going to promote someone else's product. No launch my own products and so there there's a lot of lot of folks trying to follow in her footsteps but this is a. You know what that huge home run and congrats Shopify by the way cuz that's this probably the biggest biggest retailer on the shop. Scot: [52:33] Yep and it's also important to point out that this is also a DMV be kind kind of a strategy here so imagine fairly large percentage of her sales are from her website and then she does I think she does sell thru I always get it could use which one but she's in either Sephora or Ulta. Jason: [52:55] Yep and I think she started out online only and then only in the last year has she added the the wholesale distribution but so yeah for sure. Scot: [53:06] So Jason and I have a big announcement we are starting the Jason and Scott beauty company and we're going to come out with a palette for Holiday 2020 so stay to. Jason: [53:16] Yep yeah we're not to upgrade the servers for the mass influx of traffic we get for that but looking forward to it and it will include a browser plug-in which will help you buy a product instead of anyone else's product on the web so we're kind of think of it is, honey + Kylie Jenner. Scot: [53:35] Yep we'll just call it Scott and Jason honey or something like that we're still working on the brand. Jason: [53:40] Exactly send your suggestions to Scott, and sadly that's going to be we're going to have to leave it cuz we have used up all our a lot of time as always if you have any questions or comments you have to hit us up on Twitter or Facebook page and I please please please this is a great time for holidays to give us that special gift and go to iTunes and give us that five star review the the reviews key keep coming but we we want and need more and we really appreciate it. Scot: [54:10] Thanks everyone we're probably stay tuned for episode 200 you're going to love it. Jason: [54:18] Yeah absolutely that's going to be fun next week and until then Happy commercing.

On today’s episode, Mike is joined by Lukas Matthews of Twin Scroll Marketing to talk about the difference between advertising commodity products and unique, novel products (like a WiFi jump rope). They break down what types of goals to set, customer behavior toward each, and a solid set of keyword strategies. You don't want to miss Lukas's expert advice on this one. See you in the Badger Den! Episode Highlights: 2:50 About our guest Lukas Matthews 5:45 Commodity vs. unique products 10:55 Goal-setting for commodity products 13:30 Aim for discovery instead of sales for unique products 16:50 When to use a laser or a shotgun for your keywords 21:30 Controlled vs. uncontrolled clicks 22:53 Find keyword trees for commodities 24:25 Long-tail, niche keywords are better for unique products 27:55 Saturate everything above the fold 29:00 The real value of Lightning Deals & coupons 34:20 Find Lukas at Twin Scroll Marketing Get all of our episodes and show notes at adbadger.com/podcast Have a question or suggestion for the show? Leave a Voicemail: adbadger.com/voicemail or 833-BADGERZ

Amazon Prime Day 2019 (Europe) Lightning Deals Prime Day is a potential major sales boost for any Amazon seller. The submission window for Lightning Deals is open in Seller Central but will close on May 17th 2019 at midnight. So now is a great time to revise whether Prime Day should be part of your Amazon sales strategy. What  is Amazon Prime Day and why does it exist? Prime Day is Amazon's annual retail holiday. It was introduced in 2015 as a one-day only sales event that boasted more deals than Black Friday and also celebrated Amazon's 20th anniversary as a company. Though the first one disappointed some expectations, subsequent Prime Days have improved in both the quality and quantity of deals. Is it open to all Amazon shoppers? Prime Day is only for Amazon Prime subscribers. Prime membership costs $119 a year. Despite this, Amazon hit 100 million global Prime subscribers in April 2018. About 8 million are in the UK. According to research, Amazon Prime members typically spend almost double that of non-Prime members. Is Prime Day for USA only? No,  the event has been made available to more countries outside the US every year. In 2017, it was extended to Canada,  Mexico, the UK, Spain,  Italy, India, Germany, Japan France, China, Belgium, and Austria. In 2018 to Australia, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. When is Amazon Prime Day 2019? Amazon typically announces the official date in late June or early July. In 2018, it only officially announced the date a couple of weeks in advance. Prime Day  will probably  be  sometime July 2019 as every Prime Day has been so far. Most likely mid July. Predictions range around Tuesday July 16th - with the deals themselves actually starting the day before on the 15th and ending at some point on Wednesday the 17th. How long does it last? Is it literally a day? In 2018, Prime Day ran from 3 p.m. ET on Monday, July 16 through Tuesday, July 17, so our prediction is that it will be in mid-July again this year and last 36 hours, if not longer. Amazon Prime Day itself seems to be growing each year. It grew from 24 hours initially, to 30 hours and then 36 in 2018. There is speculation it could be going on for 40 hours this year. Amazon Black Friday deals  now last about a week Amazon won't be announcing the official date of Amazon Prime Day 2019 for a while yet. Is it only on Amazon? While November's Black Friday deals certainly see a wider range of retailers unleashing some of the hottest deals you'll find all year, Prime Day is mainly about Amazon rocking the best offers. Sure, other retailers might try to match prices or launch rival sales (and of course we'll be sure to roundup the best of them too) but make no mistake, the best deals and low prices will be found at Amazon. How big is Prime Day? The online  sales event of the summer was the biggest day of sales in its history in 2018, with over 89 million visits logged (10% more than in 2017). We can only see 2019 being even bigger as the sale has grown every year since launching back in 2015. How much money did Amazon make on Prime Day? Amazon was predicted to gross $3.4 billion on Prime Day 2018, although Amazon doesn't release such information. It did announce that third party sellers sold $1 Billion dollars of products in just “one day”. As for its own sales, Amazon was content to say that “sales this Prime Day 2018 surpassed Cyber Monday, Black Friday and the previous Prime Day, when comparing 36-hour periods, making this once again the biggest shopping event in Amazon history.” As ever with Amazon, we have to learn to read between the lines…but it's certainly huge for 3rd party sellers. Delivery Times for Prime Amazon has promised to cut delivery times worldwide for customers of its Prime service. Prime users in the USA   get free two-day delivery at the moment, but the plan is to cut that to one day soon. Prime customers already get free one-day delivery in much o...

Hey guys!  My quote/message for this episode is: "Contemplate the impermanence of life" In this episode I do a quick round up of some interesting news around Amazon and also the latest of what's happening in my business this week! Also, if you haven't already it would mean A LOT if you were signed up to my mailing list at www.tazahsan.com/contact and left me a review! I'm at 81, just 19 more to get to 100! :) Have an amazing weekend!

Hey guys, My quote for this week is  "Comparison is the thief of joy" - Seller central is pumping out updates regularly with info to help us regularly - There are a load of new Alexa's that have come out! - Don't just think about Q4, think about staying in stock for January too - My interview with Steve Simonsen on the awesomers.com podcast is up, click here to listen and I encourage you to subscribe to Steve's  podcast - he is one of the best out there! - Write your Dear John letter to tell Amazon why you are going to dump them! Go to empowery.com/dearjohn to get the details on how to do it! Talk soon friends 

Amazon FBA Canada A quick episode to explain the difference in lightning deals on Amazon FBA Canada, and how the price is less than 10% of the lightning deals in amazon.com Amazon FBA Canada  

A seller since 2014, Liran shares his experience on how to hack lightning deals for your amazon fba products. His insights on the algorithm and the best ways to increase your chances and success with lightning deals. What products work best with Lightning deals? More of a general mass appeal product as more customers for them Seasonal timing is also important (snow shovel in August may not sell well on a lightning deal) Avoid certain products Spinners cannot be used on Lightning Deals Anything with safety issues should not be used Optimising your time of day At night is no good Have 2-3 windows open and hit the confirm button one after the other to get the time slot you want A decent time for west cost 12:00 and good time for east coast 15:00 Anytime during day and evening is pretty good Multiple Lightning Deals Is it worth doing one after the other? If you have the KEEPA chrome extension – it gives you data on ASINs Shows a dot to show when someone runs a lightning deal – Liran noticed a seller had lots of red dots all in the same week. If you open multiple windows in the browser and hit ‘confirm, confirm, confirm, confirm’ in those windows you can trick the system and get multiple lightning deals all in the same week. It’s one of the only true ‘scarcity’ options you have on Amazon.... Go here for extended show notes

It’s that time of year again, 4th quarter! Are you positioned in the best possible way for your brand to get the exposure and results you need? What will it take for this year to end well for your bottom line? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Scott and Chris as they help prepare sellers like you as the fourth quarter of 2017 kicks into full swing. The guys discuss their planned PPC strategy, when to use PPC and when not to in the 4th quarter, how to use Bid Plus, when to use headline search ads, and much more! You don’t want to miss this crucial episode! Increasing PPC Usage Have you thought of or developed a plan for using PPC during the 4th quarter? How do you think your usage will change during this time of year? Should it change? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, Scott and Chris jump right into how they plan on using PPC this final quarter of 2017. One aspect that the guys touch on is regarding sudden increases versus a steady increase in PPC spending. At the end of the day, both Scott and Chris encourage sellers to lean more toward a steady increase over a sudden increase. If you’d like to hear them expand on this topic and more, make sure to catch this episode! Black Friday and Cyber Monday PPC Effectiveness Are you prepared for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? What lessons will you integrate from your experience last year? How do you plan to document your experience this year in order to make changes for next season? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Scott and Chris as they explain their approach when it comes to using PPC during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Both Scott and Chris agree that if your product is performing well up to those days, there is no strong reason to change your PPC spending. To hear the guys dive deeper into this subject, listen to this episode! Headline Search Ads Is it a good idea to take advantage of headline search ads during the 4th quarter? Have you considered using headline search ads before? Not every seller has access to this feature, but for those of you that do, this is an important question to consider. On this episode of The Amazing Seller, Chris shares his thoughts on this important feature. If you have multiple products listed for your brand, Chris encourages you to take advantage of this helpful tool. Don’t expect to use this tool and see explosive or massive results, make sure you use it as part of a larger 4th quarter strategy. Don’t miss this episode to hear further thoughts on headline search ads and more! Using PPC with Lightning Deals Have you been able to utilize Amazon’s Lightning Deals feature yet? What has been your experience using that promotion? Do you plan on using PPC in addition to Lightning Deals? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, Scott and Chris give their take using PPC while running your product through Amazon’s Lightning Deals promotion. The guys conclude that it’s not the best idea to continue using PPC while you have a product featured in the Lightning Deals program. Make sure to listen to this episode as they elaborate on their reasoning and share additional helpful insights - don’t miss it! OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER [0:03] Scott’s introduction to this episode of the podcast! [3:00] Chris opens up about PPC use in the 4th Quarter. [9:00] The wisdom of slowly increasing your PPC usage. [15:00] Making PPC adjustments and increasing spending for 4th Qtr. [20:00] Is it worth running PPC on Black Friday and Cyber Monday? [23:30] What is Bid Plus? [28:30] Should you use headline search ads? [34:00] Is it a good idea to have PPC on in addition to Lightening Deals? [36:30] Chris recaps his strategy for 4th Qtr. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE www.theamazingseller.com/ppc www.theamazingseller.com/ppcbook

What are the holiday deadlines and dates that you need to be aware of for this Q4?  What are the requirements for running Lightning Deals and should you even consider doing it?  We discuss do's and don'ts on Lightning Deals and Q4 Dates in this episode, so that you can be ready for this busy and most profitable time of year!  

What are the holiday deadlines and dates that you need to be aware of for this Q4?  What are the requirements for running Lightning Deals and should you even consider doing it?  We discuss do's and don'ts on Lightning Deals and Q4 Dates in this episode, so that you can be ready for this busy and most profitable time of year!  

Planning your next phase of growth for your ecommerce business? Wouldn’t it be helpful to hear from ecommerce business leaders who have been where you are trying to go? What have they found to be the most helpful in growing their business and attracting new customers? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, Scott welcomes back Jason Bear to give an update on his seven figure ecommerce business and the strategies he’s used to increase profits. Make sure you take the time to sit down and listen to this episode with pen and paper ready, you are going to need it! Are Lightning Deals Worth it? You’ve heard about Amazon’s Lightning Deals - but the question remains, are they worth it to you as a seller? On the one hand, they provide great exposure for your product listing and brand but on the other, it may not be the best time for your business given the phase of growth you are in. How do you navigate the best route? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Jason Bear as he opens up about his experience with Lightning Deals. If you haven’t considered Lightning Deals yet, this is an episode you want to listen to and even come back to as a helpful resource! Product Liquidation Do you have an endgame in mind if your product does not prove to be as profitable as you had hoped? You’ve got to have a way to cut your losses and recoup some of your funds. On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Jason Bear as he goes over how he was able to liquidate products that didn’t sell as successful as he had hoped. Don’t miss out on Jason’s helpful insights - it could be just the information you need to take your business to the next level. Find out more from Jason on this episode! Getting the most out of your Email List If you’ve been around the TAS community for very long then you’ve heard all about the many reasons why you should have an email list for your brand. But how do you make sure you are getting the most out of your email list? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, Jason Bear explains how leaders like you can leverage your email list not only for product sales but to also plan ahead for future campaigns. Jason’s strategy is a great example of thinking outside of the box and using common tools in new ways. Don’t miss this fascinating episode full of helpful lessons from Jason, Scott, and Chris! Are you using Facebook Live? What if you had access to a free tool that could help promote and build your brand exponentially? Can you imagine what that would do for your business and its growth potential? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from business leader Jason Bear as he walks through how he has been able to leverage Facebook Live videos to promote his brand and create a following. Learn how you can use this helpful tool to make your brand stand out from your competitors! Don’t miss this valuable episode to hear more! OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER [0:03] Scott’s introduction to this episode of the podcast! [3:00] Jason Bear and Chris join the podcast. [4:30] Jason gives an update on how his brand performed on Prime Day and after. [6:00] Are lightning deals worth it? [9:30] Jason talks about how he’s dealt with product liquidation. [13:30] Post Prime Day sales growth. [16:00] Ramping up sales after running out of stock. [18:00] Crafting effective emails to your client base. [20:00] Utilizing Facebook Ads. [24:00] Jason talks about building an email list for future campaigns. [33:30] How to use Facebook Live. [47:30] Dealing with hijackers and other issues while liquidating products. [55:00] Lessons to take away from Jason’s story. [59:30] Creating a quality team with clear goals. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE www.theamazingseller.com/386 www.theamazingseller.com/buildlist

Did you know that it is becoming so lucrative to sell on Amazon that traditional businesses are finding that selling their products there are increasing their profit margins? What does that mean for the future of brick and mortar stores? How do those businesses adapt to the ecommerce wave? On this episode you’ll hear from business leader, Jason Bear has he dives into his company’s move to start selling and really leveraging their presence on Amazon. Jason also has a ton of great tips and insights that will benefit ecommerce sellers like YOU - don’t miss it! The Lowest Price Point Doesn’t ALWAYS Win Many Amazon sellers seem to be under the impression that the lower the price the higher the volume of sales. Is that really the best way to run your ecommerce business? What about quality and building a brand? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Jason Bear as he explains how he has seen product quality and brand dependability beat out low prices. Jason isn’t just your average ecommerce seller, he has a fully staffed and thriving business with multiple products with a great reputation. Learn from Jason and his knowledge of selling and marketing quality products on this episode! Optimize Your Product Listing You’ve heard Scott talk about this topic at length but it bears repeating - you’ve got to make sure you optimize your product listing! Don’t skip this step! Seriously, go back and take a look at your product listing and really scrutinize it. Does it live up to the standards you have learned from Scott by listening to his teachings? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear Jason Bear goes over how he has optimized his company’s product listings and how ensuring that this step is done with a high level of focus and attention to detail has led to increased traffic and sales. If you are looking for that one lesson or piece of insight that could make the difference for your business, this might just be it. Make sure you listen to this episode! Build Your Email List How do you communicate with your customer base? What method do you use to test and determine if a new product will be successful for your brand? What if you had a tool that would help you get KEY input from people who have purchased from your brand before? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from business leader Jason Bear as he shares how his company has leveraged the use of their email list to drive traffic, test products, and more! You’ve heard Scott’s rants on why you should use an email list - take a moment to hear from Jason’s perspective and how he has seen it make a HUGE difference in how his brand engages with customers. To hear Jason, Scott, and Chris dive deeper into this topic listen to this episode! Know Your Audience! Don’t you hate it when a brand totally gets you wrong? You get a piece of marketing that doesn't’ apply to you or you get that email that is totally out of left field - it’s annoying and irritating. What would it look like for a brand to “get you?” What would it take for you to understand your audience? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from business leader Jason Bear as he shares how his company has honed in on their efforts to effectively communicate with their audience in a way that matters. Jason goes over key steps they have taken to bring value and worth to their customers where they are in the digital space if that’s Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or other spaces. To hear more from Jason on this topic, make sure you catch this episode. OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER [0:03] Scott’s introduction to this episode of the podcast! [2:30] Jason Bear and Chris join the podcast. [3:30] Jason gives a bit about his background as a business leader. [6:00] The decision to expand and sell products on Amazon. [12:00] Jason talks about how he set up is first batch of products for success. [17:30] It’s not about the lowest price point. Brand and quality matter! [21:00] Amazon’s performance metrics. [23:00] Optimizing the product listing. [26:30] Jason talks about some current projects he is working on. [30:00] Addressing PPC issues. [35:00] When to move on from a failing product. [38:00] Jason talks about driving traffic to his product listing. [42:00] Know your audience and adjust your email offers. [50:00] The best traffic source. Facebook? Instagram? [52:30] Jason talks about how to utilize Amazon Prime Day. [1:01:00] Participating in Amazon’s Lightning Deals. [1:04:00] Preparing for Amazon Prime Day. [1:07:00] Jason talks about running product promotions. [1:11:00] Parting thoughts from Jason. [1:14:00] Start where you are.

EP093 - Amazon Prime Day Hot Take Amazon Prime Day was July 11, 2017.  In this episode we give our hot take on this Amazon created sales holiday. Goals for Prime Day History of the Holiday Results for 2017 Prime Day Jason & Scot's conclusions from this years event Interview with Jamie Dooley Head of e-commerce at Dorel Juvenile Group to discuss their Prime Day experience Amazon Prime Day Recap press release Amazon Deep Dive EP24 Podcast Full interview wth Dorel Juvenille Group, Jamie Dooley - EP86 Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events.  http://jasonandscot.com  Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 93 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, July 12, 2017. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 93 being recorded on Wednesday July 12th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot & Jamie:  [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scott show listeners, well yesterday was the third annual Amazon Prime day and it's Day show we want to go over the highlights with a Jason and Scott exclusive Prime Day hot take. [1:09] Well Jason did you take advantage of Amazon Prime. Jason:  [1:12] I did not as voluminously as I might have thought I would but I found a few things to buy. Scot & Jamie:  [1:18] I think the problem with you and I as we're probably at at Peak Echo so it was, it's actually frustrating day when you're at pekic Echo and you paid no I think I paid north of like 18190 for my couple of my Echoes and to see it there at at a. Much lower prices it's almost got a negative effect in a weird way. Jason:  [1:41] I have that happen in a couple of ways like certainly with Amazon first party for like but they're also some some other products I purchase from Amazon recently that then went on on Prime Day deals that they gave me a little bit of buyer's remorse in, night my family frequently likes to remind me that I have a very short gap between desire and fulfillment so it's. You know I'm not good I'm not going to waiting for those deals. Scot & Jamie:  [2:08] Yeah next you need to create a prime day blackout for pretty much all of the spring so no shopping past me. Jason:  [2:16] Yeah yeah that that would be the smart thing to do I'm not committing to it. Scot & Jamie:  [2:21] So it's funny I probably like you I spending a lot of time for the day looking at the deals and, really funny one I don't know why it made me think of you but I did and it was this lunch box and it kind of started working its way up as a hot deal pretty quickly and I don't know how many they sold these things but it must have been, thousands of them but it's a it's a lunch box and the gag is it's this kind of white medical looking box and it's got an EMT tag on it and it says human organ for Trans, so you know imagine you see your colleague in the lunchroom and they're brought walk in today open this up and start eating stuff out of its kind of like. Zombie apocalypse lunch box that was a really strange when you know some of the strange ones that you see over the years are like The Yodeling pickle and those kinds of things with this was a new I had not seen this before I am and it was kind, at the same company makes fake take out boxes that for you to put your lunch in so that he's kind of like you know, strange-sounding stores in you they they look like Chinese take out and you put your lunch in there any doubt of it just kind of like throw people off that what you're doing. Jason:  [3:28] I got it that seems like a lot of thinking type stuff. Scot & Jamie:  [3:31] Yeah yeah it was kind of funny it's from a third-party seller where these guys I will have to have one of our interns look it up and get back to you. [3:43] But I thought it was pretty funny one to bring out for folks. Jason:  [3:47] Good luck with that with the interns I can't get those guys to do anything. [3:53] Scot before we jump into this year's Prime day maybe it's worth a setting the table a little bit and talking about the the history and context answer the first thing I was like to remind folks of, is the Amazon is not the originator and does not own the market on inventing their own sales holidays there's a, a great great tradition there but specifically in an e-commerce you know Cyber Monday which is been the biggest shopping online shopping day of the year in the u.s. for many years was really an invented Holiday by one of our former podcast guests and the original shop.org team. Scot & Jamie:  [4:37] Yeah yeah you know the what to pull up the episode but Scott sober in the, does that story goes they saw the trend in the kind named it so you know the back before we all had Broadband Sans fight 3G 4G 5G kind of connections you would go to work and you would use that nice juicy Broadband connections that's why that Monday took off and they decided to name it, that was the first created holiday and then another one we talked about a lot is singles day. Jason:  [5:07] Yeah absolutely in that and you know that the global people and or the Alibaba people that created singles day. [5:17] Would quickly point out that that the. It's it's become much bigger than Prime day or Cyber Monday are at the moment and so there's a lot of momentum there by the way the the Scott Silverman episode was episode 66 of any listeners want to go back in, and catch that up, so we have that Cyber Monday then we had Ollie Bob launching singles day where they took sort of a niche holiday and turned it into a huge shopping day and it's now you know by far the largest single online shopping day of the year globally in the end of course 2 years ago. Amazon 2015 Amazon launched the first Amazon Prime day. Scot & Jamie:  [5:59] Yeah and pretty quickly it has become their single largest day and that's a good segue thanks for a little history on that and before we dive into, a little bit more details on Prime day I think it's important to take a little bit of a step back and say why does Amazon do this I think the common. The surface level is to sell more stuff you know if you can take a month like July and make it into a put a peek day in there that that actually helps right and maybe pull forward some holiday things, and it also helps with Q3 you know Q3 is kind of slow or time. And summer is kind of, little bit boring any Commerce there's a lot of extra capacity in the system but but I think you know as we go to the episode, I think that you have to peel the onion on this to really understand, the first child refer listeners to the Amazon deep dive which was very early in our podcast and career which was episode 24 shame on you if you have not made it through that episode, but for those of you that the didn't which I know is very small part of our audience what are the keys to Amazon success is the prime program. Jeff Bezos has a fun crew out there that you're a lot he kind of says we want to put so much value into Prime that you would be effectively irresponsible not to join. And right before Prime day there's this, This research company called consumer intelligence research and they they they tend to have the highest approximation of prime users and it came out at 85 million Prime users. [7:34] I think that's their Us number most other people are in kind of the 65 to 70 million range and, the other thing that is common about prime is it when someone's on Prime, they spend at least twice some surveys show twice as much and some show three times as much I believe is more towards the three times, as much so I believe the prime numbers a little bit lower than that you 5 million but I think the actual usage and the multipliers higher if that makes sense so, so I believe there's five reasons that Amazon created Prime day number one is to create a generate more sales or what we would call and Industry gmv gross merchandise value I like that term because it encapsulate Stu 1p in 3p, transactional volume a little bit clearer and that's too deep for this episode but again hours for you to that deep dive, the number to is prime adoption so again people spend more money on their own Prime and if they can get people to, try Prime data shows that, dead again this is from survey data so take it with a grain of salt this is not Amazon releasing this but as people there's nothing surveys out there I think you get a pretty clear picture that once someone enters a Prime trial 73% become paid numbers, flip side of that is 27% of people probably just join Prime for the 30 day, trial. And then turn out but 73% stick which is when you look at online trial rates is actually pretty high usually they're kind of been to tend to 15% stick on Amazon 73%. [9:09] Then if people stay a year then the retention rate goes up to to greater than 90% so if they is kinda like the roach motel once you check in to prime your chances of checking out are pretty slim and Amazon's got a lot of devious things. Genius depending on which side you look at it for forgetting you deeper into Prime and accessing one of the many kind of spokes on the Hub, the third reason for this is an Amazon has an increasing we talked about this a lot on the show portfolio devices so getting more devices out to you and in your house, creates more stickiness in all those devices are tied to Prime Lenny's flywheels overlap each other the 4th when is prime day, drives engagement of the Prime offering and adds value so so it's kind of foreign five together so by driving engagement of saying okay I'm using and maybe you're enjoying today shutting will try video, Prime music try Prime Pantry Prime here's some exclusive deals Prime now try, Echo deals that are for Prime members only try some of our private labels that are prime exclusives, the more they can get you to activate inside of the Prime family and offerings and ecosystem the more kind of stuck you are in the web and, you're the fifth one is that that making sure that you're reminded every year that there is a big benefit in this annual sale is one of those many benefits that exist, Nordstrom's is kind of famous for their loyalty program they have their annual sale and giving people today's exclusives or something like that to go shop. [10:43] Sets on the surface it feels like it's a reason to sell stuff but in reality I think the real reason and benefit of prime day is to drive Prime sign ups and add to the value prop in the seals are really just the icing on the cake. Jason:  [10:58] Yeah I would totally agree like of those five benefits the the sales while like certainly valuable and important as probably the least important of those five reasons so they. They recognize all those opportunities they launched the first Prime Day in 2015, and serve remind people how that went you know it was generally viewed as pretty smart and favorable that they had created their own holiday so I think they got like a good vibe and there was some Buzz coming out of, that first year but it was not what I would call a home run right like so there was a lot of the narratives from 2015 where. The man the deal sold out super quick and so a lot of people weren't able to take advantage of the deals and and we're somewhat upset, there were some actual you know customer-facing technical problems and so this hashtag emerged on Twitter Prime day fail and folks were complaining because. The card didn't work and they weren't able to take advantage of the lightning deal and then the deal expired and they missed out and they were upset there were some. [12:06] Vin deals in in the prime day so they were there some kind of. Products with they were underwhelming that you know not very many people are interested in and or the deals weren't very good it was a little confusing to even find the deals. And you're going back to one of your subjects. You don't half of Amazon essentially is is that that 3p Marketplace and those guys really weren't included in the first Prime day it was almost exclusively for Amazon products and for 1p products in so that you know both was bad for customers cuz so many of the things that customers buy from Amazon or 3p, no certainly bad for all the 3p Sellers and then you know wow Amazon paid lip service to it being sort of a global holiday and being in all of the Amazon markets, from the volume standpoint you know it really only was meaningful in the u.s. in the UK. [13:01] So in spite of all those challenges like you know I think the big win for that first year is you know that they were able to say that they added hundreds of thousands of prime users in that one day so regardless of those challenges, that alone would have made 2015 a success. Scot & Jamie:  [13:18] Yeah yeah it was it was definitely rough riding and on the 3-piece side I think they were so secretive about it, that didn't tell anyone about it literally until about 24 hours before they just had told us you know maybe like 3 days before that there was going to be something happening in to get the servers ready, so that was kind of funny and you know. [13:38] It's only two years ago which is which is crazy but Amazon had some candles that line was getting kind of old and tired, they're the tablet's they had where did really didn't find kind of the niche that they have found now that's kind of like you know this value kind of tablet they were there still kind of, premium tablets and they just come off the failure of the fire phone you and I are the only two people that think in the globe the have them, and so there was a lot of that that device stuff that they could sell in 15 so then 16 came along and you know what how I would characterize that is typical Amazon fashion they learned a lot from 15 and in 16 they are they. They righted the ship in and fix a lot of the wrongs the deals were more aggressive they they now had Echo to kind of go out there and push. Call you and I bought a couple that multipacks tobacco so I think we bought some three packs of. Some of those kinds of things so if you are kind of, early adopter it helps you kind of get echo in your whole house which was nice. The spread the deals to the day so instead of having them all at launch and then it won't come through them they they were much more well distributed they open the valve a little bit for 3p and, then when the dust settled they announced that it was as big as Cyber Monday so they had actually created a day that was kind of into that top 5 kind of a day, two or three day for them dad and more countries so they expanded it they were in, nine countries and 15 Inderal and 10 in 16 but I would say they they got more serious about it and we're countries and in 2015 it was probably United say 80% attention was US 20 UK and then like. [15:18] Almost nothing in other countries and then 16 they realize they could create more of a global push so there's a lot of push special an Indian and then. Again with the dust settled at Amazon announced that the sales were up over 300% from the previous year so 16 it feels like this really got a lot of traction. One thing to highlight is the top 10 deals from last year so I think that's kind of interesting as we can look at what, sold this year something to this quickly so the number one was this air vent cell phone holder, number two was an Amazon gift card so it's like a $50 card with $5 off which is effectively 10% off anything you want to buy from Amazon some in the ear headphones noise-canceling from pose a USB thumb drive that worked on both USB C and normal us, Echo was number 5 fire TV stick was number 6 fire 7 tablet was number 7 pressure cooker was number 8 and, one of those 5-port Chargers was an Amazon Basics 1, number nine and then one of those power Banks or or a movie like charger but it wasn't the movie was the 10th largest so. So that was really the the kinda the Highlight there from 2016 feels like they had addressed a lot of the technical issues and in really kind of, started to get their sea legs on the Steal. Jason:  [16:38] Yep and then when it came time to talk about prime this year Amazon made some, some pretty significant changes to the program so one of the biggest ones is it's no longer Prime day it's Prime dazed. Because they've extant extended the deals to 30 hours so it actually started the evening of the 10th and ran all the way through the 11th. [17:04] So you got six more hours they really sort of. Try to prime the pump and get more people using their Alexa to do shopping and so they actually started offering deals. Alexa users that were willing to use voice two hours earlier so that started at 4 p.m. eastern time and that was a clever way to to get people to start doing a voice Commerce the. [17:30] They greatly expanded the the number of deals that greatly expanded the the opportunities for three peas to have deals globally they added China India Mexico. They. For the first time they now had so many deals that they had to offer some some filtering so that you could filter deals by category and a little bit by price point so they started giving you some some basic tools to. Turn call through all the deals and find the ones that you're interested in they had a lot of exclusive deals to the Alexa platform. And they even had some International deals where you could do some cross-border shipping for some things in some markets. Scot & Jamie:  [18:18] Yeah and then so that was kind of lead up and then when the deals went live again we're talking about this year, I always think it's interesting to kind of see what they highlight on the homepage is kind of like those that is really kind of priority deals that they're launching and I think it helps you read the tea leaves on what's their priority for that Prime day, so there was the you're obviously echos a really big push so the. Was 34.99 versus 4999 so that's like a, that's a really low entry point to get into the family at like now at 3499 did is some interesting bundles with the. I saw him bundling it with the whole Sony speaker, that little Sony speaker only added like $15 so that was interesting, the main line Echo was 89.99 or his 179 sets half off which is very aggressive and I think I think. I think it 179 they're probably making a little bit of margin on the hardware I think it 90 they're losing money so they must see you know some some, data from putting these devices out there there must the razor razor blade thing must be working for them or I don't think they would be selling a, prices you and I both know did it was funny that they had a really good deal on Oculus where is effectively $100 off of via an Amazon gift card, another really big seen this year was home automation so they were really pushing folks like yourself and I that have already kind of, flushed out the The Echoes in the house should really try to do more home automation I took advantage of some of those but so some of the things like the higher-end Philips hue light bulbs kits were rather. [19:49] Attractive price some of the plug automations I don't do the locks but I saw those were pretty aggressively priced so you can tell that that was a really big scene was was getting people to activate home automation in connection with the echo, another one that's really interesting I saw was some of these ancillary parts of the Prime mucosa. [20:09] So they have Prime now which is same-day free 2-hour delivery and paid 1 hour delivery that's in about 45 markets now most of the stuff on Prime now was 25 to 35% off, plus they had this $10 off coupon that if you hadn't used the service before you could use on your first two orders, there's a program called Amazon restaurants which competes with Uber Eats. Push mates in all those kind of food delivery companies and in cities I don't have that where I am but where you are in Chicago they were pushing, people pretty hard on that Music Unlimited, Prime Pantry so those programs we've talked about on the show had pretty substantial discounts Prime Pantry with 35% off your first use, and then a lot of the private labels that was talked about on the show everything from apparel to amazonbasics and whatnot those were very aggressively priced up to 50% off. So heading into the day internet retailer magazine projected that for 2017 that they would have their first billion-dollar Prime day. And they were kind of saying it would be about a 20% increase. [21:20] Zach that's kind of lead up to the day and when it first launched and here we are the day after and now have some early kind of hot take results that we can walk you through, Jason you want to take a stab at some of those. Jason:  [21:31] Yeah so you know. Amazon has issued some press releases of their own most of the stuff that they give us is sort of a relative number so how things did this year versus last year and then you know there's some third parties that do their own estimates based on surveys and things like that, so one of the the Amazon. [21:53] Claims was that they sold 7 times as many Echo devices this year as they did last year so and I would have argued they sold the awful lot of echo devices last year so selling 7X. Is pretty impressive I think they mentioned that 50 of the top 100 sellers on the platform ran. Ran promotions and I think you know some of the Animas have said that this probably ended up being about a billion dollar day for them instead of put that in perspective. A normal Q3 day for Amazon's about 444 million dollars in Revenue so it's a little more than than twice a normal day as a result of of this pig sale. Scot & Jamie:  [22:39] Yeah I know that equates to when you start doing the math it's like you know between one and 2% so this you know I think people, you hear about these things that are like wow this is going to increase Amazon's overall sales 30% or something and certainly for the day it does but in the the overall vast sea of GMB that is Amazon actually. Doesn't move the needle that much but if they can add 10 20 30 million Prime users into a subscription into a trial period and and like I said at the top of the show 75% stick. That's huge when because those guys were are now in the ecosystem now they have to come like moving to the next up witches get them you get them loving 2-day Prime shipping and then get them using something else and then Delp Delp stay around forever, what are the interesting themes you and I have talked about a lot of the last year is Bran's really waking up to the Amazon opportunity and one of the guys we had on this show on episode 73 or the Wall Street analyst Omar Asad, he had a note out today and in his take away was. Did there was just this crazy level of participation from softline Brands this is topical because we had a lot of news here lately where we've had Nike coming onto the platform and and whatnot. So so you kind of rated the different brands and and how they did and. Let me kind of pursue this in the Brand's he saw take, Shakira advantage of prime day would I would imagine this is kind of a. [24:12] We're going have a guest on later that will kind of walk us through how they think about it but you have kind of the foundation is you know you have to have product Prime eligible that's important which means they need to be fbar you can use self Rafael Prime and then. That's that's the platform then you need to offer deals into the different deal platforms Amazon has been kind of another dial you can turn as a brand of selling 1p, and even 3p most of these that is we'll talk about her one piece Amazon gives you quite a bit big of the big ad platform so they have AMG which is display ads and Ms which is search ads. So the highest levels participation in the softlines category coined Omar were awarded to Calvin Klein Hanes Carter's Lee and Wrangler VF Corp Levi's Puma. I feel like this is a who's who's list of who's gone the show fossil guess and Skechers the ones that kind of underperformed or really didn't, dissipate are let me see if I can get this right Gap American Eagle Lululemon Vans and and Nike I need to make sense I think. You a lot of those guys kind of proceed themselves beat up, so some of them are on the platform very aggressively it all a lot of them view themselves to be kind of a premier or luxury brand a lot of her new the platform like a Nike so Nike just started selling no literally. Days ago right it's been kind of formalized I don't know if they're late actively selling very much so I think next year will be a year for that so it's interesting his takeaway was this is kind of the year for four Prime day that Brands really woke up and participated in the end of material weigh. Jason:  [25:53] Yeah and I then I kind of think you know there's Brands they were very clearly playing defense. [25:58] And you know they're on their and they're they're they're doing some participation but they're being really careful not to sort of poison. There other channels and in markets with promotions and then they were brands are playing offense and we're saying like Hey we're going to take advantage of this day when we have huge incremental traffic with my intent and try to sell as much stuff as possible. [26:21] So the like looking at the official Amazon announcements they said Revenue was up 60% year-over-year. Which is obviously very good it's not as good as last year which was sort of in the area of 300% up but obviously. You know now they have a bigger base they said 3p was up more like he wasn't very helpful statistic, they said that they were a record number of new Prime members tens of millions in a 50% more customers this year than last year, more folks joined Prime yesterday than any other day in history and the number one product sold was the Amazon Echo. Scot & Jamie:  [27:08] Yeah and another one they highlighted a lot is they've gotten they worked with the manufacturer and I can't remember who it is but they made this TV maybe it's the element I believe it is and it's 55 inches and it's Alexa enabled, and I haven't seen one but I talked to a lady there and it is pretty wild you you can say the whole experience is through, everything you can do on a remote you can do to the Lexus so they've built this skill and you just going to say Alexa you know go to Channel 5 or Alexa find, you know the two men then whatever your favorite show is fine Star Trek next Generation or whatever and it will it will do all that stuff, so that's a relatively new product that was announced earlier this year and they promoted it very heavy another big element of. Prime Day this year is Nate they ran a lot of TV deals which I took his kind of putting a bit of a bull's-eye on on Best Buy and this TV day, they hiked it a lot going into they had a lot of them in his to be aggressive and actually sold out in 2 or 3 hours which means at to get this deal really over performed what they are expecting. They did put out a list of best sellers by country I want kind of take it went to that for once I wanted to just chat about quickly, pretty much an every country there was a private label offering so if Riggs ample in Mexico the number one seller was an Amazon basic, Cable in Japan happy but happy belly pure bottled water was a top seller that's a private label brand that they have for cpg there's. [28:40] What other Canada the double a batteries the Amazon basic double a batteries were a top seller so what what's interesting is, private label seem to do very well this year I saw him pushing it very hard and in the u.s. deals also is a bunch of accessories so whenever someone buys that TV I'm sure then you get on Amazon basic HDMI cable, I'm so that was interesting to see a lot of private label push they didn't put any other stats out on that the other stat that was interesting is they said, stop base which means you're using the Amazon app on on your smartphone those orders doubled so if the whole day, orders grew 60% and does effectively doubled between hundred percent they really over indexed which means desktop Ryland group. [29:23] Percentage when you're 30% Amazon does a lot of things where you can always see the deals and track them you know that the app experience is truly better than the desktop experience they said they sold 3.5 million toys again, it's a nursing number but I have does a lot of reference. [29:41] Another one that's kind of interesting is this this voice Commerce so they're so aggressive with the Alexa deals and pushing those early, I looked at them they're pretty good too had a 3D printer on there that was normally $600 for like 250 or something like that and, that's some really interesting deals on there they had Greenies that were more than half off there's a PR firm kind of pushing stats that say, before Prime day 19% people had purchased using voice in a 33% additional intend to if we kind of when the dust settles on Prime day I think we're going to see. You know 30 to 50% of folks, either having use that for Prime day or will it with their new Echoes they will be ordering something online so so that's pretty interesting Callen came out the survey also right before Prime day that said, they believe 13% of us households have echoes, and you know if if it's since we have this Echo. As the top seller and eyemagine the normal Echo was up there these TVs it's going to nursing you know I think, by the end of this year with holiday and Prime day maybe we start to see 20% of households, that's pretty interesting because you know Amazon is on their lap of this thing and and the rest of competition is really kind of stuck on the starting blocks. Jason:  [31:01] Yeah absolutely that that's one where it felt like they came in the prime day with a commanding lead and then for that to be the the biggest seller and 7 times more than last year, they're absolutely lapping the field in terms of a penetration there so if they can turn your point they probably did make a bunch of money on any of those devices so the magic question is going to be vacant. They can turn that into customer value over time. Scot & Jamie:  [31:26] Yes sir so let's wrap up this segment with kind of what what were your your big takeaways from Prime Day this year. Jason:  [31:34] Yeah what's it looking at the day in aggregate I definitely feel it was a big win for the 3p sellers there we saw a lot more 3p sellers participating, there as a result doing a lot more deals in a lot of the Amazon advertising Vehicles which can be very effective. In addition to making some nice revenue for Amazon where vailable the three-piece hours for the first time so so definitely. A win on the 3-piece side of the fence. On the one piece out of the fence why we don't have real data I strongly suspect that by far the biggest win we're first-party Amazon products and so that's. You know certainly that the echo family that we've talked about but also the Kindles and all the new private label stuff. [32:24] That they're starting to push and that really leaves me too. To my biggest takeaway from this whole thing which is to me the big winner and Prime day is the Amazon Echo System way more so than sales like almost everything we've discussed up till now. Was Amazon using prime day as a tool. To get people more addicted to the rest of Amazon so using more of their services discovering more of their services. And you know getting more value for that Prime membership and just making Amazon more sticky and increasing the customer lifetime value of all those Prime members and you know wow. I think that's in stark contrast to singles day. Which is really just a day to buy stuff like we really haven't seen Ali Baba turn singles day into this powerful flywheel for Ollie Baba. For the rest of the year like you know maybe they that use singles day a little bit to get new international brands on the platform but it really is. [33:28] Kind of a one-day Wonder for Alibaba and to me the Amazon approach is almost the exact opposite it's way less about you know Dublin sales that one day and way more about. [33:40] Making Amazon much stickier and making it in a much more difficult for consumers to choose to buy stuff. [33:47] Elsewhere after they get addicted to all the stuff that they were encouraged to try for the first time on on Friday so in that way I think. [33:55] Prime days a home run for Amazon in this year only sort of the extended that when I will say you know they're still things that aren't perfect as a result of having way more deals. [34:07] You need to give users way better way to filter those deals and find the deals that are relevant to them and you know while they added some super rudimentary tools in the mobile app. [34:17] I would I would say they were very deficient and so I like to say that they had a signal-to-noise problem this year that it was probably harder than ever before for consumers to find the deals. [34:28] That would have gotten them excited and so I suspect that something will see Amazon work on and in years to come I mean you and I used to joke about. [34:37] You know there being no search in the in the Echo skills go to store and in that same way like you know there's actually is no search. [34:44] For for Prime Day deals for example you know I'm curious I think it depended a lot on category but in a lot of these categories. [34:54] I'm not sure that the prime Day deals are necessarily the best deals of the year. [34:59] So it's a promotional day but but not necessarily A deeply promotional day for everything you know I do chuckle. [35:08] The reason Amazon doesn't give you any hard numbers for for any of these things are obviously they don't want to but they don't have to because this whole day is not financially material to them right in so you know what ones are reminder. Yeah they do no more than double sales from 450 billion to 2 a billion but that's still not a meaningful. [35:31] Bump in the in the overall Amazon Echo System so while they brag about the day a lot it's really not about that that. [35:40] Financial stuff and then I guess my last. [35:43] Big takeaway is that by far the biggest winner of all is the the echo echo system or the echo platform. [35:53] Is a quickly lead to hit mute on on my device in the room. Scot & Jamie:  [36:00] 8 devices in your house just woke up. Jason:  [36:02] Exact side note for people that haven't listened to all the previous episode shame on you but my sister-in-law is actually named Alexis so all the devices in my house have to answer to Echo not to Alexa. But I do think. There there is a a holy war going on to win that that end home intelligent agent every other retailer in in the world has huge reasons to root for anyone but Amazon winning it. And you know we we in our CES recap this year we talked about all the products at CES that had Amazon built into him you know they certainly have the Lions. Market share and then they're the only one that have a huge promotional event like this so it just it feels like. Despite the fact that you know a lot of people have a lot of reasons for to not see Amazon win in this category it's getting hard to imagine anyone anyone really catching them at this point. Scot & Jamie:  [37:01] Yeah I think voice Converses the big wind and. Not only is it just the device lead that they have but Google is stuck in this weird place where, yeah because they don't control a consumer experience for ordering anything with with exception of Google Express, you know it's this really it's hard to build that so if you say to Google Voice you know order me an air filter for my house they've got some Partnerships with eBay and that kind of thing and but you know, what are they going to do like shop that order out to Home Depot and Lowe's are you going to have to go and set a preference for everything you want to do it. [37:39] Is that becomes an important part of this this home assistant, it's kind of game over for Amazon and then you know let's say Google does go solved that how are they going to monetize it their whole business is Mata, monetized off ads and you know a lot of the Google things the music and all has all these ads in it and it's like a really terrible user experience compared to that, now more more people are coming out with these assistance to Apple's it hasn't hit the market yet but they're already announced one Samsung has one coming out in Alibaba analyst 1, forgiveness cost at T Mall in the name so you everyone's working hard to catch up but I think Amazon has this inherent kind of. [38:18] Advantage not only with the device penetration but with the use case of ordering stuff now you know you could argue home automation is a lot more level playing around, but again if they can get to 20% kind of out there and US households and it's clear from the deals that are running they want you to do more home automation they're already kind of got a commanding lead and and again if that kind of starts to become your standard and you start to use that, ecosystem are locked into it it's going to be heavy sliding for these other guys trying to compete, voice Commerce is kind of really interesting one to watch this year I mentioned the brand thing earlier, and I'll refute one of your points a little bit you kind of talked about it not being in material sales day and I agree but it is financially material because of the Prime Subs so if they get 20 million Prime subscribers the average Prime users. Spends about $1,200 to make math easy let's say they spend $1,000 a year, well on the day it's not a significant impact that's a 20 billion dollar add to the Top Line and that's like it oh that's like Walmart's entire online business. Doing the math right so so there is a long-term Financial impact by those Prime subscribers and then, the more they can keep them and you let say the number is 85 million if they don't want to turn in those folks so if they can get you to use another spoke on that benefit and lock you in even longer again it's kind, but huge win and it keeps you from going to other retailers. Jason:  [39:46] For sure and and I guess I meant to sort of lump the Prime Membership into that. Thing one of the powerful drivers in that ecosystem versus talking about the revenue. [39:57] I would make just one other point that you so reminded me of on the how commanding this this voice, sweet is and how problematic it is. [40:08] You know. More more products are going to be built with voice in them and if all the manufacturers have to build Alexa and because that's the strong consumer preference think would that means to every other retailer like you can go buy a bunch of Samsung refrigerators in Best Buy right now, and those refrigerators I'll have Alexa in them and so guess who's shopping list, when you are you're using with that product you bought from Best Buy is enabling you to shop at Amazon right and you know it's not exactly Apples to Apples but Walmart selling a bunch of Samsung phones that have the Amazon app in bedded in it and so you know you can tell how commanding this Echo System advantages when your competitors are forced to sell products that are, that are sort of gateways to your echo system. Scot & Jamie:  [40:54] Yeah yeah one other aspect of it we talked about it a little bit on the show but I want to kind of bring it up again, as I mentioned the report on Brands and one of the levers brands have to pull is, the advertising so so I'm pretty convinced I'm hearing more and more when I talk to brands that they are spending more and more ad dollars on Amazon and there's two platforms and so folks are interested in. We had, we had Melissa Burdick and Andrea on and they talk a lot about these platforms we don't have time to go into it today, but I'm convinced this is going to be not the next billion-dollar business for Amazon but it could be 30 or 40 could be the next. [41:38] Cloud computing for Amazon because bran just can't get enough of these ad dollars into efficacy is super high we see a lot of people moving money out of, Facebooking Google into Amazon's add platforms and this day another win for this day was getting all these Brands to activate and get into those things you know, I ate when the if we could speak inside the Amazon curtain I think maybe the biggest Chunk on margin probably came from Those ads would be interesting and then, the huge long-term win is now they got a Brands kind of activated on those platforms AMG and Anna's I think that is is a huge huge. 10 20 30 billion dollar opportunity forum. Jason:  [42:21] Yeah I totally agree. Scot & Jamie:  [42:23] Well that's our view of what we saw for Amazon Prime day but we wanted to bring in a live first-party and third-party seller to understand what they saw from the frontlines of this exciting e-commerce holiday. Jason join me in welcoming back to the Jason Scott show Jamie Dooley. As a refresher for everyone Jamie is the head of e-commerce a dorel juvenile group we did a full episode with Jamie and one of his colleagues and that is episode 86 so, hi if you want to learn more about what they're up to as regards Amazon listen to that episode and tonight we're really here to get a fresh hot take about, Amazon Prime Day Jamie welcome back to the show xcaret. Jason:  [43:09] Hey Jamie thanks very much for doing this we totally appreciate it so obviously the the biggest and most important question how were your Prime Day sales. Scot & Jamie:  [43:20] They were very strong so it to remind everyone wear a hybrid so we we sell both. [43:27] Directly to Amazon as 1T and we're a Marketplace seller or three-piece all as well. [43:33] The data for Marketplace sales comes their way real time so we know that we had. Fantastic day on over the third over the course of 30 hours. As a Marketplace our sales were up 600% year-over-year and it was the second biggest day we've ever had on the market place II only Cyber Monday last. [43:56] So it was it was certainly a very very good day for us on the market side on the one piece side that the data takes usually at least two days to get to work. And we're recording it's now only day after Prime day so we're still waiting for the final sales data to come but as far as we've we've seen we had a record-setting day. On Prime day again for even the one piece eyewear. Almost 100% of our lighting deals fold-out many of them in the first 30 minutes and then where is subscriber to one quick retail and they were able to give us. Intraday reads as well as a final estimation of what our sales were no looks like we beat all of our forecast. Jason:  [44:41] Well congratulations. Scot & Jamie:  [44:45] Yes 600% is amazing because Amazon announced they were up 60% so you over indexed by a factor of 10 which is which is pretty awesome set that leads me to ask you mention Lightning Deals, and you know this is. Did you guys participate in 15 where are was second last year so then been doing it for 3 years was last year when you really get serious about it or we actually was 15 kind of when you started. [45:11] I'd say we we really got serious about it last year. But this year we we we took it to another level as well. [45:26] So what what were some of the things that work well for you I know a lot of of both 1p and 3p people that are using what I would call different platform so different deal that they, they got a different deal for mats that I hadn't been in before also more people are in other parts that you go system like maybe Alexa deals Prime now, Pantry that there's kind of a wide range of things what were some of the platforms you guys utilize this year to get such a great result. [45:56] Sure sure to remind everybody we're baby Products company so we sell strollers and car seats and Hardline items that really aren't. They don't play very well into a pantry or even to Echo there they require a lot of a lot of kind of stuff a lot of. Merchandising online and there is there's a lot of there's a lot of consideration that's required but what we we use the combination of of a mass and. We had a number of Lightning Deals as well as what it called Chianti's or or Prime member promotions that were on the. On the Friday deal page when when the customer. Navigated there and then we had aggressive pricing on on our everyday items as well I'd say on the one piece side we had a very good combination of. Traditional TNT's and Lightning Deals as well in in combination with. Advertising that we we we bought through Amazon as well as using social media and other external traffic drivers to drive even more traffic back to those promotions on Amazon. Jason:  [47:08] This great Jimmy a couple of follow-ups was that would you say it was a pretty similar promotional strategy to your 2016 so like when you look at that 600% comp is that mostly because. Prime day was more successful for three peas or. [47:26] Or because you know you also got got more sophisticated in your in your marketing. Scot & Jamie:  [47:33] I think we on the marketplace side if I had to say what what drove the 600% year-over-year growth. Definitely one part was we have more items overpriced and obviously that that's that's really the name of the game on Prime day so that that certainly helped. We did you ever tizing much more aggressively this year and. On the marketplace side there were a lot more opportunities for 3-piece hours to to take part and Prime day so for one example to work really well for us with headline, search ads were available to Mark play for this year they weren't last year it's actually I think it's still in beta right now we were fortunate to be part of the beta program. We we watch that drive to some good sales growth. And I think we that come in combination with just many more items aggressively priced and and Prime dad's I think that that was the key to success of the marketplace. Jason:  [48:34] Got it and that that seems consistent with the general Trend that we've heard and talked about for this year that. Prime prime day was just much more accessible the two three piece sales so the fact that you're you were able to get many more products badge than you had a bigger palette of marketing tactics available to you that that all makes perfect sense that you'd blow it up with with 3p, that might imply that while I'm sure your 1p will be way up this year it may not be proportionately up as high as three peas that is that a affair guess. Scot & Jamie:  [49:08] I think so yeah we are we have obviously had a much bigger base of sales to the cop from last year's Prime day. [49:17] So yeah we're not going to say I would expect us not to see 600% your growth if we do then I expect to be a CEO somewhere next year. Even if we even if we see no 104 just under 100% urea go that's going to be a huge win for us. Jason:  [49:35] The promise if you do 600% 1p growth this year your current CEO is going to take credit. Scot & Jamie:  [49:43] That's good. Jason:  [49:46] Totally fair a related question in your category or or specifically do you like how aggressive do you have to get on promotions are we I mean are we talking like. 20% 10% 30% like is it is there a is it similar to other promotions you do through the year do you have to get more aggressive what's the general. Promotional philosophy. Scot & Jamie:  [50:09] It's it's. It's not great it's it depends depends on the category and then it depends on the level of competition so in general what I saw in a lot of categories was, it only took 20 20 to 30% discounts to do some significant damage one of our biggest competitors. Most of their deals were running at about 20 to 25% off and I know they did I'm pretty sure they did extremely well most of our promotions hovered around the the 20 to 30% range and we sold out of our inventory for, lighting deals in in sickness and in a very quick amount of time. My takes away from this Prime day and it builds on last year as well as that you don't need to. To be at 70% off I need a robot aggressive deals out there that call them loss leaders or attention getters. We found we had some of those too but in general we focus on profitability too and we didn't feel like we needed to. [51:16] Start a race to the bottom in our categories and I feel like. In general what we saw across our categories and other categories was the same you didn't see every deal required to be 60% or more. Jason:  [51:30] That definitely mirrors with what I sort of informally saw it felt like people were a little conservative with deals in their core products and maybe a little more aggressive with with some of the the West core products if you will. Scot & Jamie:  [51:46] I think we saw that and some of the day that one quick retail gave us too so we know that Amazon sales were up 60% but there was a 114%. Lifting promo count according to down so you thought many more deals but I did was there they weren't quite as aggressive and then I've seen reports. I'm all over the media where they're saying conversion rate was actually down for Prime day so I'm curious to see if that's at validated but that would all imply that. Progressive deals potentially across the board but not deeper so. What will then you and I are were chatting about is one of the interesting things is on on some of the non lightning deal deals you know they utilize that feature we had to add it to cart to see the price, why do you think that is what's going on there so I know that I've talked about this. I felt like that was sort of like burying the we we had and we had an item that was priced $50 off and the customer really had a, went and searched to see that they were getting a 30% discount on one of our top items and that was really consistent with with, with a lot more deals at work and keys throughout the deal. [53:11] My opinion is that it allowed them to prevent Walmart and other competitors from price matching them as easily. I know that said you know what this Amazon ever going to come out and say that they're only really too big categories of a promotions that you can have to get onto the prime. Hyundai page deals of the day does he the Lightning Deals are pmt's and Amazon official word to us. Can keys are designed to allow you to be on that page with slightly less aggressive discounts so that would be widened Art discount, pricing is a set-up but I do think it helps avoid price-matching and we saw that in our category there was just a lot less price matching from Amazon's top competitors, on our deal because they were they were pmt's and they were harder to describe. Jason:  [54:07] But I guess one of the ironies there and tell me if it's different in your category but you know they sort of hurt the customer experience a little bit by bearing a lot of the deals in the, the carts to avoid letting our competitors price match but it kind of felt like most of their competitors unlike last year sort of sat out this year so it almost seemed like, like they had no intention of sort of aggressively. Trying to ride on the prime Day coattails this year at least I didn't see big indications of that did you. Scot & Jamie:  [54:41] No I didn't either so I I was actually that was one of my surprising observations would this last year. Competitors like Walmart even, they took a shot anyway I didn't see that I saw most of most of Amazon's direct competitors almost in feet, day in the week to Diamond maybe they'll plan something for later in July but any Amazon on that day and they only. Jason:  [55:09] Yeah I think eBay obviously did some like pretty serious National advertising that was sort of counter Prime programming and let you know they did a special deal with the Google home but the, you're right that the sort of traditional omni-channel retailers Walmart Target like really didn't see any indication that they were trying to make any head of the day. Scot & Jamie:  [55:31] Amazon credited manufactured this Holiday Inn is they've done a great job with us. Jason:  [55:38] Absolutely any promotions you saw from others that really surprised you. Scot & Jamie:  [55:44] Well I think one of the ones that I was surprised didn't happen as it was it was also not just Prime day with national blueberry. Muffin day and there were no blueberry muffin promotion so that was that was my biggest surprise I couldn't find any promotions to get me a cheaper blueberry muffin delivered. But I think the some of the ones that I thought we were actually our kind of our we talked about the last. Discounted just kind of product but it seems like in our category somewhere I competitors took some really big shots with with some deep discounts. One of our biggest competitor to deal with a day which they have some fairly aggressive discontent what was interesting was that they had some new merchandising that we've never seen before. With the car completely custom land and gauges on mobile and desktop that they were very interesting so it looks like they spent on a significant amount of money to make that happen and it'll be interesting to see whether. What are the sales actually paid off for those. Jason:  [56:47] Interesting I definitely agree with you I think there's a huge mess on the blueberry muffins I myself actually missed Prime day because I was spending all day at the Muffin Shop. Scot & Jamie:  [56:59] The morning was completely shot. How many muffins in the morning your teeth were blue all day. [57:10] Cool Jamie really appreciate you coming on and you know we record this show late at night cuz we both have, allegedly have day job so I appreciate you taking time one last question so based on what you know and I know it's early what, what did Vice would you give to both Brands 1 p.m. 3 payout there for next year. [57:34] The things I say were one plan it out as early as you possibly can. Some of the some of the issues we saw this year had to do with just operations and Terriers not being able to pick our ship and saw. [57:48] To deliver them to Amazon DC's or two-and-a-half 3 weeks out from Prime day so. In retrospect next year I'd advise our is get your product into Amazon DC's as early as you can. [58:04] And I think just in general planning in advance probably needs to start in Q4 or earlier for the next prime day is depending on the items that you want to promote. I'm already in existence today I already have sales history today already have product reviews if they don't you need to build all that up before Amazon even going to consider them for a major deal and then even want you to get those approved. [58:31] They're going to need it before casted in depending on whether you're Lee X or. Your 90 days or 120 days or six months to have them into fakturert and shipped here you're talking about potentially you're 9 months in advance that you need to start thinking about your promotional strategy for. Prime day so far in advance based on your company's Lee X is number 1 number 2 is is expected the things are going to go wrong. [58:59] We did a lot of contingency planning with what we. [59:03] Is it going to go on call of a dead and we had a whole team of of of of e-commerce professionals from is to Ops 2 merchandising and sales all. [59:14] Call pretty much working off and on The Whole30 hours and you'll eat we did have a lot of things go wrong on our end and it on Amazon so I think having a good contingency plan is is it real. [59:28] Yeah I think. [59:30] Third is just making sure that you know your competition and and having a good understanding of what's going to go on with pricing I think a lot of the deals we've heard. Other sellers just they lose they lose out on the light and gillikins cancelled a few days prior to. Prime day that's a very common thing and we were fortunate not to have that happen so the more that you can understand your your channel strategy and they make sure that the pricing that you have set up for for Prime day is going to hold out for the day that's. Jason:  [1:00:06] Wow what Jamie that is terrific advice, and that is going to be a great place for us to land because it has happened again Wii U, used up all our allotted time so certainly like to remind listeners that if you enjoyed this episode we love to continue the dialogue on our Facebook page and if you really enjoy the episode we'd sure appreciate a review on iTunes. [1:00:31] So until next time happy commercing!

Welcome To Episode #78 of the Amazon FBA Private Label Show Podcast! In this episode I tell you whether or not Amazon lightning deals are still worth running in your private label business. Listen to Amazon FBA Podcast!   Are Amazon Lightning Deals Still Worth Running? EP78   There has been a lot of talk in the Amazon FBA community about the lack of effectiveness of Amazon lightning deals lately. Amazon lightning deals used to be an amazing way to drive sales and push lots of units out.   In this episode I weigh in on whether or not you should still be running lightning deals in your business.   [powerpress] Not a member of the Facebook Mastermind group yet? Join here!

It’s time for another TAS Power Hour! That’s right, you’ve got Dom, Chris, and Scott all fired up and ready to deliver some awesome content that will give you the insights you need to get out there and TAKE ACTION! On this episode of The Amazing Seller, the guys discuss what it takes to succeed as an Amazon seller, mindset, PPC data use, Amazon Lightning Deals, and much more! This is another one of those episodes you that you don’t want to miss as the guys banter in their usual style and deliver some great insights and lessons along the way - don’t miss it! You’ve got to put in the work! One of Scott’s pet peeves are people who constantly look for or spout tricks, tips, and secret strategies for success. He wants business leaders like you to know that the best way to get your business off the ground and find success is to put in the hours of hard work. On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear a bit of Scott’s rant on why you need to pay attention to lessons and strategies but also be willing to log the hours it takes to see the growth you are looking for. If you want to find out what it takes to really succeed in the ecommerce space from some of the top industry leaders, make sure to catch this episode! Mindset Matters! There are a lot of young leaders and others out there who are looking for the path that will get them the most success with the least amount of risk. That’s a pretty natural thing to do, we don’t often like risk. But there is no easy or quick way to success, that’s the wrong mindset! You’ve got to wrap your mind around the fact that it is going to take time, effort, and it will end up costing you money to get your business started. On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear as Dom, Chris, and Scott talk about how they’ve struggled through ups and downs along the way to find the success they enjoy today. They will be the first to tell you that you’ve got to be willing to take a risk if you want to see any amount of success. Learn more from the guys on this episode! PPC Data Pay Per Click (PPC) is a helpful resource that you’d be wise to utilize and pay attention to as an Amazon seller. There is a lot of misinformation and confusion on how to use it to it’s fullest capacity. One thing that you have to realize when dealing with PPC is that the longer you have the campaigns run and allow it to collect data, the better. On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Scott, Chris, and Dom as they discuss their PPC strategies and how it has led them to successful product sales and growth. Make sure you are utilizing this resources wisely! Find out more on this episode! Amazon Lightning Deals What has been your experience with Amazon Lightning Deals? You’ve seen the program on Amazon what is it like to go through the process as a seller? Is it something that is worth your time participating in? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Scott as he describes his experience as a seller with Lightning Deals. Find out if Scott recommends you take Amazon up on the program or if you should avoid it. As always, it’s a lively discussion with Dom, Chris, and Scott on this special TAS Power Hour episode! OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER [0:03] Scott’s introduction to this episode of the podcast! [3:00] TAS Power Hour! Dom gives an update. [12:00] What is an open brand? [16:00] Scott’s Rant on hacks, secrets, etc. [22:30] Learning from failure. [25:30] You’ve got to put in the WORK. [28:00] Get the right mindset! [31:30] The value of collecting PPC data. [39:00] Lightening Deals. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE theamazingseller.com/300 theamazingseller.com/fb

Today on the show, I have one of the first contacts I made when starting this show, David Aggiss. I had him on, all the way back in November of 2015. Since then, he has given up the day job and is his own full-time boss. He has a few business, one of which being an Amazon business. We’re going to dive in and find out David’s strategy for selling on Amazon.com. Getting Started selling on Amazon.com David started learning about Amazon in April/May of 2015 and began receiving some training. In about four months, he started selling his own product. He took off quite well in Q4. At the time, incentivised reviews were still allowed so he made that a large part of his strategy. His sales exceeded his expectations going from 10 units a day to 30 on average. He launched his second product in Q4 last year and focused on his listing since incentivised reviews were no longer available. Finding a product There are a lot of techniques for finding products. David decided to simply look through Amazon. This is a great technique for finding good products. Look for lower prices and low competition items when first starting out. If you find a good product and the listing isn’t optimised, then there is definitely an opportunity for you to sweep in and take over. You can use Google Trends, Merchant Words to help you find what popular and what people are looking for. David didn’t use any tools to find products, like Jungle Scout etc. He didn’t know what his products would be so he wouldn’t know what to search. Once he picked the products, he verified through Jungle Scout that there was a demand. Now he has about 5 products he’s working through launching. He search Amazon to find his products. He narrowed his search to products between $15 and $50 and looked for products that interested him. If you are interested in the product then it’s easier to relate and figure out what those buyers are looking for. Then you can tailor your listing to those shoppers. Selling on Amazon.com Post-Incentivised Reviews Getting reviews has become much more difficult since Amazon banned incentivised reviews. With this new world, you have to pay more attention to reviews since you can no longer give products away in exchange for a review. One thing to pay attention to when getting started with a new product is the number a reviews your competition has. If they have thousands of reviews, it’s going to be much harder to compete because it is more difficult to reach a competitive level. Make sure you competitors only have a hundred or so reviews so you can better compete. Then you can use other services to help get legitimate reviews. You can also try to get traffic coming in from off Amazon.Ads on Facebook, Google, and Bing are great places to start. There are also ways you can use Amazon to boost your listing. Spending heavy on PPC at the beginning is a good way to drive traffic when selling on Amazon.com. Once your listing gets going, then you can cut back to where it’s profitable. One thing David mentioned was participating in Lightning Deals. These deals on put on by Amazon that offers their shoppers very good discounts for a very limited amount of time. There is a link underneath your Advertising tab on the main screen of Seller Central. It’s not all the time, but Amazon will offer you a Lightning Deal when it’s relevant. This is a great way to drive a lot of sellers to you listing and gives a nice boost to new products. Amazon sets the parameters. They will tell you the time slot, the minimum number of units, and the sale price which is based on your sales history. David, for example, recently got a time slot for 1am to 7am. Not the best time as many people aren’t looking at Amazon so early in the morning. Despite that, he had an additional 40 sales from the deal. Watch Selling on Amazon.com with David Aggiss Part 1 of 2

Brainstorming Amazon private label and e-commerce strategies is something Scott and his buddies love to do. They have been connecting on Fridays for a while now to do that and thought it would be great to record their conversations and publish them for you to hear. That’s what this episode of The Amazing Seller is - and they’re calling it the TAS Power Hour. And more than simply pontificating about what’s going on they also field questions from people who are watching on Facebook Live and Periscope so you can hear them address real-life scenarios and questions as well. Does driving traffic to my Amazon listing help my ranking? It’s a good idea to drive traffic to your product listings on Amazon. No question about it. But you have to understand that while it’s a great thing to get people to your product, if they don’t actually buy the product you could be hurting yourself. On this episode of The Amazing Seller Scott and the guys chat a bit about how the Amazon Algorithm calculates a product’s popularity from visits to the product page. It turns out the action visitors take from there has a huge impact on whether or not the product is ranked higher or lower. How long do they stay on the page? Do they buy? Do they click away from the page? All of it matters, so be sure you listen to discover the best strategies. What are the best ways to get my product to page 1 - besides pay per click? Amazon pay per click is definitely the simplest way to get your products listed at the top of the search rankings, but it costs money. Are there other ways you can rank your products without spending that kind of money? Scott, Chris, and Don say there are only two other ways. The first is to sell products. They don’t say that in a smart alec way but because it’s true. If you could sell products consistently without any PPC or advertising of any kind, Amazon would organically rank you at the top of your category because sales are the main thing the algorithm looks at. But there is another thing you can do to maximize your potential of landing your product on page one, and Scott and the guys tell you what it is on this episode. Is it OK to include inserts in my product packaging? What should I include on them? There has been some debate about whether or not it’s OK with Amazon’s terms of service to insert some kind of promotional or call to action card inside your product packaging. Scott, Chris, and Don all feel that it’s totally legitimate to do so. But if you’re going to do it, what should you put on that card? The guys talk about insert cards at length on this episode and address a number of possible things you could include. If you want to know what they think is the absolute best use of insert cards, you need to listen to this Power Hour episode. What’s the best way to create product giveaways? One of the strategies that Scott, Don, and Chris recommend for promoting your products is the use of product giveaways. You’re able to gather email addresses of people who are interested in your products and get eyes on your products at the same time. But there are ways of doing it that are not quite as good as others and the guys walk through the reasons behind using a professional giveaway service on this episode. If you’re considering a product giveaway you’ll get a good deal of insight from this episode. OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER [0:03] Scott’s introduction to this TAS power hour edition of the podcast! [3:47] Clarifying the new review rules - from conversations with Amazon. [13:46] The best way to get ranking after running out of stock. [15:00] Does outside traffic help ranking within Amazon? [16:18] The only ways to get to page #1 besides pay per click. [19:34] Best practices for product insert cards. [21:02] Emailing your customers? Here’s how you can do it. [23:39] How can you target people outside of Amazon? [31:00] The balance of when to make offers to your email list - and when not to. [38:51] Giveaways and the platforms you can use to set them up. [43:00] What are lightning deals and how do the guys use them? [56:00] Books the guys recommend. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE www.TheAmazingSeller.com/FB - TAS Facebook Group www.TheAmazingSeller.com/Hour - The TAS Page JumpSend BOOK: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook ShortStack KingSumo 22Social Heyo Lightning Deals BOOK: Crush It BOOK: Essentialism BOOK: The One Thing

Today’s guest is no stranger to the Amazing Seller Podcast - not only has Danny Brewer listened to the show from almost the beginning, he’s also been featured on the show as a guest twice, back on episodes 17 and 100. Danny’s back today because he was able to take advantage of a special opportunity Amazon gave to certain sellers, called  “Lightning Deals.” In this conversation Scott is going to ask Danny to walk us through the details of how this opportunity came about, how he took advantage of it, and what the results were from participating in this special Amazon promotion. You’re going to learn a lot from hearing these two guys dig into this topic.   Prime Day was a great boost for many Amazon sellers. What can you learn from it?   Both Scott Voelker and Danny Brewer participated in the Amazon Prime Day event - an opportunity for Amazon buyers to get special deals on lots of products all over the Amazon platform. Scott and Danny both participated, not necessarily giving discounts on their products and the sales were tremendous! Both of them saw much greater returns during a time of the year when sales are not typically the best. In this episode Scott and  Danny spend a little bit of time discussing the pros and cons of the Prime Day event. Their chat could help you prepare for the opportunity the next time it comes around so be sure to listen.   If you get an email from Amazon inviting you to part of a Lightning Deal, you could be in for a wild ride!   Amazon’s newest approach to promotions is called “Lightning Deals” and it’s a way that the Amazon company is reaching out to private label sellers with an offer to participate in 4-hour promotions of your products that could increase your sales and possibly even boost your product visibility from that point on. The initial contact would come from Amazon via email and you’d be invited to participate. At that point you’ll be asked to fill out forms regarding your products, pricing you’re willing to offer, and other information. If you’re product qualifies and Amazon accepts you into the program, you’ll be assigned a specific day and time slot when your product will be offered as a “lightning deal.” You’ll have to have your inventory in Amazon’s warehouse 48 hours before the deal goes live. Find out more about these incredible opportunities for Amazon to promote your products on this episode.   The power of building relationships that keep you moving forward.   Danny Brewer, today’s guest on The Amazing Seller, is a great example of a person who takes action in partnership with other people who are doing the same kind of sales he is doing. He’s a very active member of the TAS Facebook community and also has been involved in a local meeting group of Amazon sellers who share information and keep each other accountable. If you are not part of a group that can help you push forward when you hit your own internal resistance, you have got to find that place. The TAS Facebook group is an amazing option where you’ll find people who are all about helping each other move their Amazon businesses forward.   “TAKE ACTION!” It’s Scott’s favorite phrase.   Many people listen to podcasts all day long and do nothing with the information they hear. Others buy online courses or books and devour them, but don’t move forward with any of the strategies they learn. Are you one of those people? If you are, you’re probably making excuses as to why what you’ve learned doesn’t apply to you, or why you can’t move forward into a business or life you feel you should have. That’s too bad because good things happen for those who take action. You don’t have to know everything, you only have to know the next thing. So find out what it is and get rolling. Take action to see your own Amazon Private Label business succeed!   OUTLINE OF THIS INTERVIEW EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER   [0:05] Scott’s introduction of this episode with his guest, Danny “No B.S.” Brewer. [1:49] Introduction of Danny and how he and Scott connected. [6:38] Amazon’s “Prime Day” and how it impacted private label sales. [7:53] What is an “Amazon Lightning Deal?” [9:26] How Prime Day impacted Danny’s product and product line and how he would do it differently. [12:44] How the lowest average price is used and what pricing you have to offer to participate. [15:05] The benefit of having a rush of sales before the 4th quarter began. [16:53] Filling out the paperwork and getting an acceptance email. [19:04] How long a lightning deal runs. [19:20] The boosts Danny experienced on his product from the LD. [23:45] Summary of what a Lightning Deal is and how to make the decision if you want to be involved. [27:23] What Scott would do if he had to start all over. [33:50] Danny’s suggestions to increase sales and be ready for the 4th quarter. [41:10] Summary of this episode with Danny Brewer.   LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE   www.TheAmazingSeller.com/FB - the TAS Facebook Community   Scott’s free workshop  - http://www.TheAmazingSeller.com/workshop   Danny’s original episode - www.TheAmazingSeller.com/17   Danny’s most recent episode - www.TheAmazingSeller.com/100   Scott’s story episode - www.TheAmazingSeller.com/125

Black Friday Preview 2015 Black Friday is an ever-evolving event and every year we can't get enough. This year, some stores are opening way earlier, others are skipping Black Friday altogether. If you're planning to wait in line, we wish you the best of luck. Just like prior years, the deals are as good as ever. Looking back, the deals we thought were unreal are totally inflated now.  In 2008 the cheapest Blu-ray player was $128 and a 50-inch 720p plasma was going for $900. In 2009 the Blu-ray player price dropped to $78 and you could get a 50-inch 1080p plasma with a Blu-ray player for $1000. Not inflated, last year the lowest price for a tier one brand HDTV was a 50" Panasonic 1080p LED for only $199.99 Our research came from our favorite goto sites for Black Friday circulars, including: www.bfads.net, www.blackfriday.com, and blackfriday.gottadeal.com. WalletHub put together a pretty cool analysis of 2015's Best & Worst Retailers for Black Friday Deals. The lowest price tier one brand HDTV is at Best Buy Toshiba 49" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (49L310U), $149.99 The largest TVs are at Sears and h.h. gregg Sears - Samsung 75" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN75J6300), $1,999.00 h.h. gregg - Samsung 75" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN75J6300), $1,998.00 h.h. gregg - Sony 75" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (XBR75X850C), $2,998.00 Honorable mention: Wal-mart - Vizio 70" Smart LED HDTV (E70-C3), $898.00 The list has multiple 720p TVs 32 inches or larger, more than we expected to see. There were three last year. Wal-mart - TCL Roku 32" 720p LED Smart HDTV (32S3700), $125.00 Target - Samsung 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (UN32J4000), $177.99 Target - Westinghouse 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (WD32HT1360), $99.99 Sears - LG 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (32LF500B), $209.99 Sears - RCA 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV/DVD (LED32G30RQD), $199.99 Sears - Samsung 32" 720p 60Hz Slim LED HDTV (UN32J4000), $179.99 K-Mart - LG 32" 720p HD LED TV (32LF500B), $209.99 K-Mart - Samsung 48" 720p Slim LED HDTV (UN48H4005), $429.99 K-Mart - Seiki 32" 720p LED HDTV (SE32HY), $159.99 h.h. gregg - Proscan 39" 720p LED HDTV (FLDED3996A), $188.00 h.h. gregg - Samsung 32" 720p LED HDTV (UN32J4000), $178.00 h.h. gregg - Samsung 32" 720p LED Smart HDTV (UN3234500), $198.00 The list has multiple 4K TVs as well, also more than we expected to see. Best Buy - 10 Wal-mart - 2 Target - 3 Sears - 6 h.h. gregg - 24 Deal lists: Amazon Amazon announced in a press release that holiday deals start on Friday, November 20, with new deals added as often as every five minutes for eight straight days - so keep an eye on their Black Friday Landing Page in order to not miss anything! Customers will have access to 10 coveted Deals of the Day starting at midnight on Thanksgiving, and up to 10 more on Black Friday. They can also shop limited-time Lightning Deals on thousands of sought-after products per day throughout the eight days of deals. Best Buy Logitech Harmony 700 8-Device Universal Remote, $49.99 Sony USB Stereo Turntable, $64.99 Amazon Fire 7" 8GB Tablet (Black), $34.99 Panasonic Streaming Wi-Fi Built-In Blu-ray Player (BD903), $39.99 Samsung Streaming 4K Upscaling 3D Wi-Fi Built-In Blu-ray Player, $87.99 Sony Streaming Wi-Fi Built-In Blu-ray Player (BDPS3500), $49.99 Onkyo 805W 7.1-Channel 4K Ultra HD & 3D Pass-Through A/V Home Theater Receiver, $249.99 Amazon Fire TV Stick, $24.99 Google Chromecast (2015 Model), 2 FOR $50.00 Google Chromecast Audio, 2 FOR $50.00 Roku SE Streaming Player, $24.99 Roku Streaming Stick, $39.99 Insignia 2.1-Channel Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer, $99.99 Insignia Soundbar w/ Bluetooth, $49.99 Klipsch Reference 10-in. 300W Powered Subwoofer, $174.99 Klipsch Reference Bookshelf Speakers, $124.99 Klipsch Reference Dual 6-1/2-in. Floorstanding Speaker, $174.99 Klipsch Reference Dual 8-in. Floorstanding Speaker, $224.99 Samsung 400 Series 2.1-Channel Soundbar w/ 6.5-in. Wireless Active Subwoofer, $147.99 Samsung 500 Series 2.1-Channel Soundbar w/ 7-in. Wireless Active Subwoofer, $247.99 Insignia 40" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (NS-40D420NA16), $159.99 LG 24" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (24LF452B), $79.99 LG 43" 4K 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (43UF6430), $399.99 LG 49" 4K 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (49UF6430), $499.99 Samsung 24" 720p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN24H4500AFXZA), $147.99 Samsung 32" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN32J5205AFXZA), $227.99 Samsung 40" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (UN40HS003AFXZA) & Xbox One: The LEGO Movie Videogame Bundle, $499.98 Samsung 40" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN40J5200AFXZA), $317.99 Samsung 48" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN48J5201AFXZA), $379.99 Samsung 55" 4K 120Hz 3D LED Smart HDTV (UN55JS8500FXZA), $1,499.99 Samsung 55" 4K 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN55JS7000FXZA), $999.99 Samsung 60" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN60J6200AFXZA), $697.99 Samsung 60" 4K 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN55JS7000FXZA), $1,299.99 Samsung 60" 4K 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN60JU6390FXZA), $799.99 Samsung 65" 4K 120Hz 3D LED Smart HDTV (UN65JS8500FXZA), $1,999.99 Sharp 50" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (LC-50LB370U), $299.99 Toshiba 49" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (49L310U), $149.99 Toshiba 55" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (55L310U), $349.99 VIZIO 50" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (D50U-D1), $599.99 VIZIO 55" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (D55U-D1), $699.99 VIZIO 65" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (D65U-D2), $999.99 Wal-mart Apple iPod Touch (Black, Gold, Grey, Pink, White), $165.00 Apple iPad mini 2 w/ Wi-Fi (Black, white), $199.00 RCA 7" Voyager II Android Ad-Free Tablet, $28.88 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite 7" Android Tablet (Black, White), $79.00 RCA Twin Portable DVD Player, $49.00 Sony 2500 Wi-Fi Blu-ray Player w/ PlayStation Now, $45.00 Sanyo Bluetooth Soundbar, $35.00 Vizio 24-in. 2.1-Channel Soundbar, $118.00 Chromecast Streaming Media Player, $20.00 Roku Special Edition Streaming Media Player, $25.00 Samsung 2.1 Bluetooth Soundbard w/ Wireless Subwoofer, $158.00 40" 1080p LED HDTV (Brands may vary by store), $149.00 50" 1080p LED HDTV (Brands may vary by store), $269.00 Hisense 55" 4K LED Smart HDTV, $448.00 LG 55" 4K LED Smart HDTV, $698.00 Samsung 32" LED Smart HDTV (UN32J4500), $198.00 Samsung 40" LED Smart HDTV (UN40H5203AFXZA), $298.00 Samsung 55" 1080p LED Smart HDTV (UN55J6201), $498.00 Samsung 55" 4K LED Curved HDTV (UN55JU6700), $998.00 TCL by Roku 55" 1080p Smart LED HDTV, $348.00 TCL Roku 32" 720p LED Smart HDTV (32S3700), $125.00 Vizio 70" Smart LED HDTV (E70-C3), $898.00 Target RCA 10" Portable DVD PLayer, $54.99 RCA 8" 8GB Android Tablet, $39.99 Samsung Wi-Fi Blu-Ray Player, $52.99 Samsung 120W Bluetooth Soundar w/ Subwoofer, $87.99 Apple TV, 25% OFF VIZIO 29-in. 2.0 Sound Bar, $49.99 Element 43" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV, $169.99 Element 50" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV, $239.99 Element 55" 4K LED Smart HDTV, $399.99 LG 49" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV, $499.99 Samsung 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (UN32J4000), $177.99 Samsung 40" 1080p LED Smart HDTV + Free $20.00 Target Gift Card, $317.99 Samsung 55" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN55JU6400FXZA), $797.99 Samsung 60" 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV (UNG6J5200), $697.99 Westinghouse 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (WD32HT1360), $99.99 Westinghouse 55" 1080p LED HDTV, $249.99 Sears Samsung Smart Blu-ray Player w/ Built-In WiFi (BD-J5700), $49.99 Curtis Compact DVD Player (DVD1041), $19.99 LG DVD Player w/ DivX Playback (DP132), $29.99 Nakamichi 300W Bluetooth Soundbar w/ Wired Subwoofer (NK6), $99.99 Samsung 2.1-Channel 120Watt Soundbar w/ Subwoofer (HW-J355), $89.99 Samsung 2.2-Channel 350W Sound Tower Speaker System (TW-J5500), $249.99 LG 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (32LF500B), $209.99 LG 50" 1080p 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (50LF6100), $549.99 LG 60" 4K 120Hz LED Smart TV (60UF7700), $1,399.99 RCA 32" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV/DVD (LED32G30RQD), $199.99 RCA 40" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (LED40G45RQ), $269.99 Samsung 32" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN32J5205), $229.99 Samsung 32" 720p 60Hz Slim LED HDTV (UN32J4000), $179.99 Samsung 40" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN40J5200), $319.99 Samsung 48" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN48J5200), $429.99 Samsung 55" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN55J6200), $579.99 Samsung 55" 4K 60Hz Curved LED Smart HDTV (UN55JU6700), $999.99 Samsung 55" 4K 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN55JS7000), $999.99 Samsung 60" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN60J6200), $699.99 Samsung 65" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN65J6300), $1,099.99 Samsung 65" 4K 120Hz Curved 3D LED Smart HDTV (UN65JU7500), $1,799.99 Samsung 65" 4K 60Hz Curved LED Smart HDTV (UN65JU6700), $1,499.99 Samsung 65" 4K 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN65JU6500), $1,399.99 Samsung 75" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN75J6300), $1,999.00 Seiki 20" 720p 60Hz LED HDTV (SE20HY), $99.99 Seiki 43" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (SE43FK), $279.99 K-Mart Amazon Fire 7" 8GB Tablet w/ Cover & 32GB MicroSD Card (Black) + $10.00 Back in SYWR Points, $54.99 Samsung Smart Blu-ray Player, $49.99 Curtis Compact DVD Player, $19.99 LG DVD Player w/ DivX Playback, $29.99 Samsung Progressive Scan DVD Player w/ 1080p Up-Conversion, $39.99 Sylvania 7" Portable DVD Player, $39.99 Samsung 2.1-Channel 120W Soundbar w/ Subwoofer, $89.99 LG 32" 720p HD LED TV (32LF500B), $209.99 LG 50" 1080p LED HDTV (50LF6000), $449.99 RCA 50" 1080p LED HDTV (LED50B45RQ), $399.99 Samsung 32" LED HDTV, $179.99 Samsung 43" 1080p LED HDTV (UN43J5000), $339.99 Samsung 48" 720p Slim LED HDTV (UN48H4005), $429.99 Seiki 32" 720p LED HDTV (SE32HY), $159.99 Seiki 43" 1080p LED HDTV (SE43FK), $279.99 h.h. gregg Swann Xtreem QuadForce 720p Video Drone, $79.99 Garmin 5" Touchscreen GPS w/ Free Lifetime Maps, $79.99 Samsung 3D Wi-Fi Smart Blu-ray Player, $64.99 Samsung 4K Upscaling 3D Wi-Fi Smart Blu-ray Player, $89.99 Samsung Smart Blu-ray Player, $49.99 Samsung Wi-Fi Smart Blu-ray Player, $54.99 Sony 4K Upscaling 3D Wi-Fi Smart Blu-ray Player, $99.99 LG DVD Player, $24.99 Portable 9" DVD Player, $39.99 Proscan DVD Player, $9.99 Bose SoundTouch 130 Home Theater System, $1,349.99 iLive 37-in. Bluetooth Soundbar, $34.99 JBL 2.1 Channel Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer, $249.99 Polk Audio 100W 10-in. Monitor Series Powered Subwoofer, $98.99 Sony 2.1 Channel Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer, $349.99 Amazon Fire TV 4K w/ Voice Search, $74.99 Amazon Fire TV w/ Game Controller, $139.99 Apple TV, $59.99 Apple TV 64GB w/ Siri, $179.99 Chromecast Media Player, $29.99 Roku 3 Streaming Player, $79.99 Roku Streaming Player, $19.99 Roku Streaming Stick, $39.99 LG 2.1-Channel Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer (LAS454B), $139.99 LG 700W Bluetooth CD Music System, $149.99 Samsung 2.1-Channel Soundbar w/ Subwoofer (HWJ355), $89.99 Samsung 2.1-Channel Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer (HWJ450), $149.99 Samsung 2.1-Channel Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer (HWJ550), $249.99 LG 43" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (43UF6430), $398.00 LG 49" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (49UF6430), $498.00 LG 55" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (55UF6430), $698.00 LG 65" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (65LF6450), $998.00 Samsung 32" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN32J5205), $228.00 Samsung 40" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN40J5200), $318.00 Samsung 40" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN40JU6400), $448.00 Samsung 43" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN43J5200), $368.00 Samsung 48" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN48J5200), $428.00 Samsung 48" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN48JU6400), $598.00 Samsung 48" Curved 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN48JU6700), $798.00 Samsung 50" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN50J5200), $498.00 Samsung 50" 4K S Ultra Smart HDTV (UN50JS7000), $798.00 Samsung 55" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN55J6200), $578.00 Samsung 55" 4K S 3D Ultra Smart HDTV (UN55JS8500), $1,498.00 Samsung 55" 4K S Ultra Smart HDTV (UN55JS7000), $998.00 Samsung 55" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN55JU6400), $798.00 Samsung 55" Curved 4K S 3D Ultra Smart HDTV (UN55JS9000), $1,998.00 Samsung 55" Curved 4K Ultra 3D Smart HDTV (UN557500), $1,298.00 Samsung 55" Curved 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN55JU6700), $998.00 Samsung 60" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN60J6200), $698.00 Samsung 60" 4K S Ultra Smart HDTV (UN60JS7000), $1,298.00 Samsung 60" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN60JU6400) + Free Samsung Soundbar, $898.00 Samsung 65" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN65J6200), $898.00 Samsung 65" 4K S 3D Ultra Smart HDTV (UN65JS8500), $1,998.00 Samsung 65" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN65JU6400), $1,298.00 Samsung 65" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (UN65JU6700), $1,498.00 Samsung 65" Curved 4K S 3D UHDTV Smart TV (UN65JS9000), $2,998.00 Samsung 75" 1080p Smart HDTV (UN75J6300), $1,998.00 Seiki 65" 4K 120Hz HDTV (SE65UY04), $598.00 Sony 43" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (XBR43XB30C), $698.00 Sony 49" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (XBR49XB30C), $798.00 Sony 55" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (XBR55X810C), $998.00 Sony 65" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (XBR65X810C), $1,498.00 Sony 75" 4K Ultra Smart HDTV (XBR75X850C), $2,998.00 Haier 48" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (48E2500), $288.00 LG 43" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (43LF5100), $298.00 LG 49" 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV (49LF5100), $368.00 LG 55" 1080p LED HDTV (55LF6000), $548.00 Proscan 39" 720p LED HDTV (FLDED3996A), $188.00 Samsung 24" 720p LED HDTV (UN24H4000), $128.00 Samsung 24" 720p LED Smart HDTV (UN24H4500), $148.00 Samsung 28" 720p LED Smart HDTV (UN28H4500), $188.00 Samsung 32" 720p LED HDTV (UN32J4000), $178.00 Samsung 32" 720p LED Smart HDTV (UN3234500), $198.00 Samsung 40" 1080p LED HDTV (UN40H5003), $278.00 Samsung 48" 1080p LED HDTV (UN48J5000), $398.00 Seiki 55" 1080p 60Hz LED Streaming HDTV (SE55FGT), $298.00 Sharp 55" 1080p Aquos LED Smart HDTV (LC55LE653U), $488.00