POPULARITY
ÄR DU NYTER LILLE VÄN? Vi tar ett nappatag med en trevlig lyssnarfråga innan vi återigen dunkar huvudet i ekträ. Roger Melander, master distiller på High Coast är vår ek-ciceron och läser årsringarna av oss så löven rasslar. Men dagens tips är en attack on the whiskyskåp. Pigg och nyter – nyter är glad minsann! Kolla här bara: https://www.saob.se/artikel/?seek=nyter Hur hålla provningar, hur många flaskor? Tack för bra fråga Simon. Attack on the whiskyskåp som koncept anbefalles! High Coasts master distiller Roger Melander fortsätter jiddra om ek… Vi kör på samma gamla länkar när det gäller ek: Conner, John, ”Maturation”, i Russell, Stewart & Kellershohn, red., Whisky and other spirits: Technology, production and marketing, 3 uppl. (London: Academic Press, 2022), s. 291–311. Conner, John, Alistair Paterson & John R. Piggott, ”Analysis of lignin from oak casks used for the maturation of Scotch whisky”, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 60 (1992), s. 349–353. Derbidge, Andrew, ”The complete guide to oak, casks, & whisky maturation”, 7/1 2022, https://www.whiskyandwisdom.com/complete-guide-to-oak-casks-and-whisky-maturation/ Gollihue, Jarrad, Victoria G. Pook & Seth DeBolt, ”Sources of variation in bourbon whiskey barrels: a review”, Journal of the Institute of Brewing 127 (2021), s. 210–223: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jib.660 [Lüning, Horst], ”Maturation in Casks”, odaterad text, https://www.whisky.com/information/knowledge/production/details/maturation-in-casks.html Reazin, George H., ”Chemical mechanisms of whiskey maturation”, American Journal of Enology and Viticulture 32 (1981), s. 282–289. Strengell, Teemu, ”Oak species”, 30/1 2011, http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2011/01/oak-species_30.html Strengell, ”Oaky flavours”, 15/2 2011, http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2011/02/oaky-flavours.html OCH NEJ ALL WHISKY ÄR FAN I MIG INTE DUBBELDESTILLERAD MATHIAS Här når du oss: En trea whisky på Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/entreawhisky) Maila till oss på hej@entreawhisky.se Davids blogg tjederswhisky.se (https://www.tjederswhisky.se) Följ oss på Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/entreawhisky Bli medlem! https://entreawhisky.memberful.com/checkout?plan=74960
DET DOFTAR DYRT. Mathias dricker honungsvatten med näsdukar och hostmedicin i, vi andra tittar snett på vår boråsman och dricker whisky. Vi träffar återigen Ekkramaren Roger Melander, master distiller på High Coast distillery. Hur påverkar klyvningen eken? Varför läcker Mizunara-ek som ett såll? Vad har whiskytunnorna för likhet med en köksfläkt? Vi lär oss också att det finns 6:th fill och 7:th fill-tunnor, men det anses ocoolt att prata om dem. Dessutom självplock av tunnor, änglarnas andel och saltstänkta lagerhus. Vad var det i glaset då? Mathias mancoldar vidare; David körde på någon whisky från Fuji Gotemba; Jeroen hade en 21 YO Ben Nevis från Clydesdale. Quercus i alla dimensioner – samtalet med Roger Melander fortsätter Vi kör på samma gamla länkar som i förra avsnittet: Conner, John, ”Maturation”, i Russell, Stewart & Kellershohn, red., Whisky and other spirits: Technology, production and marketing, 3 uppl. (London: Academic Press, 2022), s. 291–311. Conner, John, Alistair Paterson & John R. Piggott, ”Analysis of lignin from oak casks used for the maturation of Scotch whisky”, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 60 (1992), s. 349–353. Derbidge, Andrew, ”The complete guide to oak, casks, & whisky maturation”, 7/1 2022, https://www.whiskyandwisdom.com/complete-guide-to-oak-casks-and-whisky-maturation/ Gollihue, Jarrad, Victoria G. Pook & Seth DeBolt, ”Sources of variation in bourbon whiskey barrels: a review”, Journal of the Institute of Brewing 127 (2021), s. 210–223: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jib.660 [Lüning, Horst], ”Maturation in Casks”, odaterad text, https://www.whisky.com/information/knowledge/production/details/maturation-in-casks.html Reazin, George H., ”Chemical mechanisms of whiskey maturation”, American Journal of Enology and Viticulture 32 (1981), s. 282–289. Strengell, Teemu, ”Oak species”, 30/1 2011, http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2011/01/oak-species_30.html Strengell, ”Oaky flavours”, 15/2 2011, http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2011/02/oaky-flavours.html Här når du oss: En trea whisky på Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/entreawhisky) Maila till oss på hej@entreawhisky.se Davids blogg tjederswhisky.se (https://www.tjederswhisky.se) Följ oss på Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/entreawhisky Bli medlem! https://entreawhisky.memberful.com/checkout?plan=74960 Special Guest: Roger Melander.
Joskus 1600-luvulla Ruotsissa vainottiin suomalaisia ja jonkun mielestä se liittyy nyt euroviisuihin 2025. Teemu kertoo myös varoittavan tarinan kaikille kiimaisille internethurjastelijoille. Sydämet täynnä ylpeyttä ja intoa julistamme OY-operaatioiden uudeksi pääkallopaikaksi Goldfish barin! Letkeä ilmapiiri, loistava palvelu, Guinnessia hanassa... mitä ihminen vielä muuta tarvitsee? Tule viihtymään ja nauttimaan juoma jos toinenkin osoitteeseen Korkeavuorenkatu 21! Ja tsekkaa Goildfish myös iigeessä instagram.com/goldfish_helsinki OY-hupparit ja t-paidat ovat taas saatavilla! Nappaa omasi haltuun Otetaan yhdet – Bulkkinen Kiinnostaako yrittäjyys, mutta kaikki siihen liittyvä tuntuu liian vaikealta? Ryhdy kevytyrittäjäksi, ja siinä sinua auttaa alusta loppuun Odeal. Kevytyrittäjyys on oivallinen tapa harjoittaa liiketoimintaa, ja Odealilta saat avun ihan kaikkeen. Kevytyrittäjyyden aloitat ja lopetat milloin vain ilman mitään hässäkkää. Käy rekisteröitymässä Odealin sivuilla ja käytä koodia OTETAANYHDET. https://odeal.fi Miehisen kauneudenhoidon ylläpidosta vastaa Dick Johnson. Osoitteessa www.dickjohnson.fikoodilla teamoy15 alennusta -15% kaikille tilaajille. Lisää sielunravintoa tarjoaa Nextory, ilmainen 45 päivän kokeilujakso koodilla nextory.fi/otetaan45
The concept of Biohacking is evolving, and so are we. In this episode, I sit down with Teemu Arina, author, futurist, and founder of the Hololife Summit, to explore the next chapter in human optimisation.. Hololife. We go beyond red light panels, cold plunges, and smart wearables, into a more holistic, embodied, and purpose-driven approach to health. Teemu unpacks the shift from fragmented biohacks to coherence, intuition, and self-mastery, merging science, ancestral wisdom, and quantum awareness into a new operating system for life. If you've outgrown the gadgets and want to evolve your health from hacks to harmony, this conversation is your next step.
NU JÄDRAR BLIR DET EK! Podden bjuder in master distiller Roger Melander från High Coast för att verkligen gå till botten med ek. Vilka sorter finns det? Hur preparerar man eken innan det blir tunnor? Vilka egenskaper har de olika sorterna? Vi utlovar ett fantastiskt eknörderi och hårt rostad tall. Var inte träig, häng med! Vad var det i glaset? Mathias kurerade sig; David hade ett 3 YO privatfat från Box/High Coast; Jeroen hade Jameson single pot still. Allt om ek! Här kommer en drös saker att läsa: Conner, John, ”Maturation”, i Russell, Stewart & Kellershohn, red., Whisky and other spirits: Technology, production and marketing, 3 uppl. (London: Academic Press, 2022), s. 291–311. Conner, John, Alistair Paterson & John R. Piggott, ”Analysis of lignin from oak casks used for the maturation of Scotch whisky”, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 60 (1992), s. 349–353. Derbidge, Andrew, ”The complete guide to oak, casks, & whisky maturation”, 7/1 2022, https://www.whiskyandwisdom.com/complete-guide-to-oak-casks-and-whisky-maturation/ Gollihue, Jarrad, Victoria G. Pook & Seth DeBolt, ”Sources of variation in bourbon whiskey barrels: a review”, Journal of the Institute of Brewing 127 (2021), s. 210–223: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jib.660 [Lüning, Horst], ”Maturation in Casks”, odaterad text, https://www.whisky.com/information/knowledge/production/details/maturation-in-casks.html Reazin, George H., ”Chemical mechanisms of whiskey maturation”, American Journal of Enology and Viticulture 32 (1981), s. 282–289. Strengell, Teemu, ”Oak species”, 30/1 2011, http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2011/01/oak-species_30.html Strengell, ”Oaky flavours”, 15/2 2011, http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2011/02/oaky-flavours.html Här når du oss: En trea whisky på Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/entreawhisky) Maila till oss på hej@entreawhisky.se Davids blogg tjederswhisky.se (https://www.tjederswhisky.se) Följ oss på Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/entreawhisky Bli medlem! https://entreawhisky.memberful.com/checkout?plan=74960 Special Guest: Roger Melander.
DERAS FETA NACKAR. Destillationsprocessen går vidare! I det här avsnittet hinner vi med olika pannformer, mycket och lite kopparkontakt plus betydelsen av destilleringshastighet. Och så leker vi leken "aldrig nudda koppar". Vad var det i glaset? Inget! Tidsstämplar i vår jiddrande tramsarpodd! Det finns faktiskt några…förlåt Cecilia. Kok i mäsk- och spritpanna – sista gången nu, vi lovar Buxton, Ian, & Paul S. Hughes, The science and commerce of whisky (Cambridge: RSC Publishing, 2014). Mujtaba, I. M., Batch distillation: Design and operation (London: Imperial College Press, 2004). Series on chemical engineering 3 Nicol, Denis A., ”Batch distillation”, i Russell, Inge, Graham G. Stewart & Julie Kellershohn, red., Whisky and other spirits: Technology, production and marketing, 3 uppl. (London: Academic Press, 2022) s. 247–270. Denna text av Roger Melander är mycket bra: https://web.archive.org/web/20211018032747/http://masterclass.boxwhisky.se/sv/the-middle-cut Lite om kopparkontakt: Strengell, Teemu, ”Copper”, 18/10 2014, http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2014/10/copper.html Next level big time totalt nörderi-artikel om kopparkontakt: Harrison, Barry, Olivier Fagnen, Frances Jack & James Brosnan, ”The impact of copper in different parts of malt whisky pot stills on new make spirit composition and aroma”, Journal of the Institute of Brewing 117 (2011), nr 1, s. 106–112: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2050-0416.2011.tb00450.x Pannformer Balblairs pannor: https://flic.kr/p/UTiynU Lagavulins pannor: https://flic.kr/p/dcs16Y Benrinnes mäskpanna relativt spritpannorna kan man titta på här: https://whiskycyclist.weebly.com/benrinnes-distillery.html Kondensorerna och hur de körs – skitviktigt! https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/ask-the-professor/14920/condensers-how-do-they-affect-flavour/ https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/ask-the-professor/6549/how-do-worm-tubs-create-sulphur-notes/ https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/features/17775/worm-tubs-the-inside-story/ Trippeldestillering, för Mathias att plugga lite på: http://tjederswhisky.se/the-enigma-of-triple-distillation/ Vi återkommer om kondensorer! Vi återkommer om trippeldestillering! Leo kom och rädda oss! Det är vägen som är mödan värd är verkligen en rad från Karin Boye: https://www.karinboye.se/verk/dikter/dikter/i-rorelse.shtml Här når du oss: En trea whisky på Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/entreawhisky) Maila till oss på hej@entreawhisky.se Davids blogg tjederswhisky.se (https://www.tjederswhisky.se) Följ oss på Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/entreawhisky Bli medlem! https://entreawhisky.memberful.com/checkout?plan=74960
Saudi-Arabian katuradan pöly on laskeutunut ja koko kolmikko Teemu, Elli ja Juuso perkaavat viikonlopun puhuttavimmat aiheet. Onko Oscar Piastri tulevan kauden maailmanmestari ja mikä on Max Verstappenin tulevaisuus? Pitkästä aikaa myös hieman kipinäsadetta juontajien välillä. Tämä on Suomen F1 Podcast - tervetuloa mukaan! 04:40- Saudien aika-ajojen puhuttavimmat06:39- Lando Norrisin tilanne - onko jonkinlainen lukko tällä hetkellä vain urheilijan mielessä? 13:14- Osakilpailun 1. mutka - Oscar Piastri syötti Max Verstappenille täysin omaa lääkettään20:12- Yuki Tsunodan viikonloppu - mikä riittää RedBullille kakkoskuljettajan osalta? 33:30- Max Verstappenin tulevaisuus - jättääkö mestari Tivoli Seiterän siirtyäkseen toiseen sirkukseen?37:15- Kilpailujenaikaiset rangaistukset - tulisiko aikasakoista luopua tai harjoittaa edes variaatiota? 43:17- Kausi on pitkä, mutta julistetaan jo ainakin ujosti Oscar Piastri maailmanmestariksi48:25- Party in the city where the heat is on - kohti Miamin tekosatamaa
23 Rötös porautuu rikosten synkkään maailmaan Harri Moision ja Johanna Pakulan luotsaamina. Jakson aiheena Metoohon liittyvä Punkstoo- ja Pää Kii-bändin nokkamies Teemu Bergman, jonka maine, ura ja elämä tuhottiin perättömillä ahdistelusyytöksillä. #teemubergman #pääkii #rikollisuus #rikos
Bahrainin viikonloppu tarjosi virkistävän hyvää kilvanajoa ja kavalkadin hienoja ohituksia. Teemu ja Juuso pohtivat tässä jaksossa McLarenin kuljettajien välistä valtataistelua, George Russelin pituuskasvua ja muita ajankohtaisia aiheita menneeltä viikonlopulta. Eipä foliohattuteorioiltakaan vältytä.Tämä on Suomen F1 Podcast - tervetuloa mukaan! 01:40- McLarenin kuljettajien sisäinen taisto - onko Oscar Piastri tulevan kauden maailmanmestari? 07:43- Mercedeksen viikonloppu alkoi rangaistuksilla lauantaina, mutta päättyi podiumsijaan George Russelin urhoollisen taiston päätteeksi11:12- Gridin autojen pienet marginaalit, mutta onko silti McLaren se the auto? 13:53- Lando Norrisin ohitusyritykset Bahrainissa 17:44- RedBullin molemmat autot sunnuntaina pisteillä, silti kulisseissa kuohuu24:14- Ferrarin positiivinen viikonloppu niin taktiikan kuin kuskien osalta28:49- Tarvittiinko 75-vuotias Flavio kääntämään tämä kelkka - Alpinen positiivinen viikonloppu31:42- Kohti Saudi-Arabian viikonloppua, voidaanko odottaa esim. Williamsilta parempaa? 34:57- Aika kaivaa foliohatut esiin, miksi Bahrainissa nähtiin turva-auto sunnuntaina? Seuraa meitä myös Instagram, Threads, X @suomenf1podcastTikTok @suomenf1pod
Nurmikkotulipalojen värittämä Japanin osakilpailuviikonloppu ajettiin legendaarisella Suzukan radalla ja on aika perkaa tapahtumat. Miten Yuki Tsunoda suoriutui RedBull-debyytistään, onko McLarenin taktiikkaosastolle hiipinyt vahvistusta Maranellosta ja sopivatko nykyautot enää ylipäätänsä klassikkoradoille? Juuso, Teemu ja Elli ovat täällä ottamassa tästä selvää. Tämä on Suomen F1 Podcast - tervetuloa mukaan! 01:16- RedBullin viikonloppu; Tsunodan debyytti ja kuinka hyvä oikeastaan on Max Verstappen07:05- Härkäteema jatkuu lyhyellä puheenvuorolla Isack Hadjarista 08:30- F1tv vs. Viaplay11:38- Yrittääkö McLaren edes voittaa kilpailuja? 20:50- Nykyautojen anatomia ja sen heikkoudet24:20- Jack Doohanin osuma harjoituksissa27:25- Koska jonkun täytyy olla heikoin, niin gridillä on Lance Stroll - kehittääkö Aston Martin jo ensi kauden autoa? 31:50- Tilastofakta- ja tietokilpailuosiolla kohti Bahrainia Ota seurantaan myösInstagram, Threads, X @suomenf1podcastTikTok @suomenf1pod
Suomen F1 Podcastin historian ensimmäinen breaking-extrajakso on täällä! Teemu ja Juuso pohtivat tässä extrassa RedBullin organisaation kesken suoritettua kuljettajavaihdosta, tallin yleistä toimintaa ja jopa tulevaisuutta. Tämä on Suomen F1 Podcast - tervetuloa mukaan! Otathan seurantaan myös:TikTok @suomenf1podInstagram, Threads & X @suomenf1podcast
Kulttuuriykkösen Perjantaistudiossa ruoditaan ajankohtaisia kulttuurin ja median ilmiöitä sekä arvokysymyksiä. Raatilaisina ovat Outi Hupaniittu, Jussi Turhala ja Matti Rämö. Ohjelman juontaa Nicklas Wancke. Perjantaistudiossa mietityttää tällä kertaa, voidaanko periaatteessa kenen tahansa maine tuhota väärillä syytöksillä. Teemu Bergmanin elämä tuhottiin pukstoo-saitilla väärillä raiskaussyytöksillä, häneltä meni työt, ystävät ja maine. Pitäisikö poksauttaa shamppanjapullot, sillä Suomi on YK:n sponsoroiman The World Happiness -raportin mukaan jälleen maailman onnellisin maa? Suomi on kahdeksatta kertaa peräkkäin sijoittunut koettua onnellisuutta mittaavassa kyselyssä ensimmäiselle sijalle. Tosin onnellisusarvosana oli vain 7.7! Perjantaistudio ihmettelee myös STT:n ja Bauer Median viime viikolla saamaa suurta journalismipalkintoa. Se tuli tekoälyn valjastamisesta uutistenlukijaksi. Eikö luomuäänellä ole enää arvoa? Raati kummastelee myös ideaa siirtää kesäloma myöhemmäksi sekä hallituksen kulttuurivihamielisyyttä.
After a long break since August 2024, The Modern Way is back! The whole crew is in attendance for this return episode as we take a quick glance back at 2024 at the releases from The Black Series, The Vintage Collection and Lego. The team offer their opinions on the best and worst from each line, whilst Dan continues buy Lego not Lego from Teemu! Stuart's head has been turned with the latest Retro Collection reveal, and opts all in on the line. Will the others agree that these nostalgic throwbacks deserve a spot in their collections?
Teemu Väyrynen gästar podden - Vi lär oss en viktig Finsk fras och taggar för slutspel!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 141 - TT Helmet Trends, BWR AZ, Valley of Tears Preview, and Rusty's Back Baby! What up party people. We've got another fun one for y'all this week with talk about the latest helmet trends more and more resembling something from an outer galactic universe (which I think is actually pretty cool by the way), then we've got some BWR Arizona recap from our boy Dizzle who alllmost cracked his way into the top 10, before we transition over to quite a long discussion on this weekend's Valley of Tears race including our picks for favorites given the wild n out conditions that might show their teeth on Saturday. Oh yeah, and Rusty is back baby after taking Keegan to the line this past weekend! Speaking of taking something to the line, our homies at Silca want to make sure you don't let your next race end with anything short of the finish line due to air whizzing out of your tires with the launch of their updated Ultimate tire sealant 2.0. And if you don't want to take our word for it, just take the trusted age-old approach and use what the winner of the race does because Keegan Swenson is also a fellow Silca athlete. So head over to Silca.cc today and get you some before it sells out. Make sure to use the new code “bonkbrosfiberfoam” at checkout for an extra 10% off. (https://silca.cc/?utm_source=Bonk+Bros&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=stripchip&utm_id=Bonk+Bros+Podcast) Also, make sure you have some quality rubber that you're pouring that magic sauce into by heading out to Bike Tires Direct to nab a pair of(or 5) of your favorite tires today and use the code “bonkbros” for 10% off. (https://www.biketiresdirect.com/?utm_source=bonkbros&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=bonkbros2025) If you have any questions or feedback for the show you can drop us a note at bonkbrospodcast@gmail.com or hit up the Bonk Bros instagram page (@bonkbros @dylanjawnson @adamsaban6 @tylerclouti @raddaddizzle @scottmcgilljr). Alright let's get this party started! FOR UPDATED DISCOUNT CODES CHECK THE LATEST EPISODE: Silca (10% discount code: bonkbrosy2k25): https://silca.cc/?utm_source=Bonk+Bros&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=stripchip&utm_id=Bonk+Bros+Podcast Bike Tires Direct (10% discount code: bonkbros): https://www.biketiresdirect.com/?utm_source=bonkbros&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=bonkbros2025 Dynamic Cyclist (10% discount code: BONKBROS): https://new.dynamiccyclist.com/a/43703/xkYViFV8 Patreon: http://patreon.com/patreon_bonkbros For more Dylan Johnson content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIf1xvRN8pzyd_VfLgj_dow Listener Question Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1T37wGRLk6iYTCF6X_DQ9yfcaYtfAQceKpBJYR5W7DVA/edit?ts=642eb6d6 MERCH: T-SHIRTS ARE HERE! Get your Bonk Bros swag below. https://bb5a73-20.myshopify.com/ IGNITION: Hire a coach. Get faster. It's that simple. https://www.ignitioncoachco.com/ MATCHBOX PODCAST: Check out our more serious training focused podcast. https://www.ignitioncoachco.com/podcast The Following Was Generated Using AI And Should Not Be Held To The Higher Standards Of Sentient Beings - Riverside. Keywords ADHD, podcasting, ketones, bike racing, TT helmets, UCI regulations, gravel racing, BWR, cycling strategies, mountain biking, race strategies, tire technology, bike sponsorships, cycling dynamics, Aero bars, bike customization, cycling performance, YouTube content, niche channels, race commentary, cycling community, Teemu drone, product reviews, sauna, race predictions, weather impact, gravel racing, Mid-South race, cycling strategies, bike handling, race day conditions, mountain biking, race strategies, tire choices, weather forecasts, crit picks, training intensity, listener questions, gravel racing, performance insights, cycling community Summary In this engaging conversation, the hosts delve into various topics ranging from personal experiences with ADHD and its impact on podcasting, to a lively debate about the benefits and costs of ketones. They also explore the intricacies of bike racing, including discussions on TT helmets and UCI regulations, as well as sharing personal experiences from gravel racing events. The conversation culminates in a detailed recap of a recent race, highlighting the challenges faced by the participants. In this segment of the conversation, the hosts delve into various aspects of mountain biking, including personal experiences with competitors, race strategies, and the dynamics of bike racing. They discuss the impact of tire choices on performance, the evolving trends in the pro field regarding equipment, and the significance of sponsorships in the cycling world. The conversation also touches on innovations in wheel design and the implications of these changes for racers. In this segment, the conversation delves into various aspects of cycling, including the technicalities of aero bar positioning, the importance of bike customization, and the impact of equipment choices on performance. The discussion also touches on the challenges of content creation on YouTube, particularly in maintaining a niche audience, and concludes with a lively exchange about live race commentary and community engagement. In this segment, the conversation flows from product reviews, particularly focusing on a sauna and other gadgets, to predictions for upcoming races in the women's and men's categories. The discussion highlights the impact of weather on race day and reflects on past race experiences, particularly the Mid-South race. The group shares insights on race strategies and the challenges posed by varying conditions, emphasizing the importance of bike handling and preparation. In this episode, the hosts delve into various aspects of mountain biking, including race strategies, tire choices, and the impact of weather on performance. They discuss the dynamics of crit races, training intensity, and listener engagement through questions and comments. The conversation highlights the importance of preparation and adaptability in cycling, as well as the community's perspectives on racing and training. Takeaways ADHD can influence focus and multitasking during podcasts. Ketones are debated for their effectiveness and taste. TT helmets may face regulation changes in bike racing. Gravel racing requires strategic climbing and descending. Personal experiences shape perspectives on racing dynamics. The importance of hydration and nutrition in cycling events. Rider dynamics can shift dramatically during races. The impact of race routes on performance and strategy. Team dynamics play a crucial role in race outcomes. Fashion and branding in cycling gear can influence team identity. Kyle Trudeau's relationship with the group is tense. Mountain biking requires strategic thinking and awareness of competitors. Race finishes can be influenced by unexpected events during the race. Tire choice plays a crucial role in race performance. The pro field is increasingly adopting mountain bike tires for gravel races. Sophia's transition from gravel to mountain bike tires highlights evolving strategies. Sponsorships can impact bike choices and performance. Innovations in wheel design are changing the landscape of cycling. Handling and aerodynamics are critical considerations for deep wheels. The trend towards narrower handlebars may affect handling in technical races. Understanding aero bar positioning can enhance cycling performance. Bike customization is crucial for comfort and efficiency. Equipment choices significantly impact cycling performance. Content creation on YouTube requires careful niche management. Straying from established content can lead to subscriber loss. Community engagement is vital for content creators. Live race commentary can enhance viewer experience. Cycling events provide opportunities for personal connections. Technical discussions can be complex without visual aids. Maintaining a consistent theme is important for audience retention. Product reviews can lead to interesting discussions. Building custom equipment can be more satisfying than buying. Weather plays a crucial role in race outcomes. Past race experiences provide valuable insights for future predictions. Bike handling skills are essential in challenging conditions. Riders' mental toughness can influence their performance. The importance of preparation for unexpected race day conditions. Community engagement through product reviews enhances the conversation. Understanding the course can help in making better predictions. Cycling strategies must adapt to changing weather and terrain. Mountain biking requires understanding traction limits. Tire selection is crucial for race performance. Weather forecasts can influence race strategies. Crit picks can reflect riders' strengths and weaknesses. Training intensity varies among cyclists. Community engagement enhances the cycling experience. Performance insights are shared through listener questions. Crit races can be unpredictable and exciting. Preparation is key for successful racing. Cycling culture involves both competition and camaraderie. Titles Navigating ADHD in Podcasting The Great Ketone Debate TT Helmets: A New Era in Cycling? Gravel Racing Strategies Unveiled BWR Race Recap: Climbing and Competition The Beef with Kyle Trudeau Mountain Biking Dynamics Race Strategies and Finishes Sound Bites "I'm working on it, yeah." "That's why it's successful." "It definitely helps with concentration." "Dude, that's last year. That's old news." "I think it was Rob Britton and Keegan." "I just watched the highlights, man." "These actually look pretty sick." "I could have told you all of this." "If anyone has bought a Teemu drone..." "I got that sauna from Amazon last week..." "Last time I checked the weather..." "Dude, race day looks..." "Why would you do that?" "Throw some slicks on that bad boy." "You wanna borrow my single speed anyone?" "Great episode, keep it up fellas." "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good." Chapters 00:00 Navigating ADHD and Podcasting Dynamics 05:54 Bike Racing Insights: TT Helmets and UCI Regulations 11:58 Race Recap: BWR and Climbing Challenges 17:06 The Beef with Kyle Trudeau 19:18 Race Strategies and Finishes 20:51 Tire Choices in Racing 22:35 Pro Field Equipment Trends 24:41 The Evolution of Tire Technology 26:42 Bike Sponsorships and Choices 28:42 Wheel Design Innovations 35:50 Understanding Aero Bar Positioning 38:04 Exploring Bike Components and Customization 40:03 The Impact of Equipment Choices on Performance 43:01 YouTube and Content Creation Challenges 45:56 Navigating Niche Content on YouTube 48:57 Live Race Commentary and Community Engagement 53:00 Product Reviews and Returns 53:58 Building a Custom Sauna 54:59 Race Predictions: Women's Category 55:55 Weather Impact on Race Day 57:00 Men's Race Predictions 01:00:59 Mid-South Race Reflections 01:03:59 Discussion on Race Conditions and Strategies 01:10:45 Navigating Mountain Biking Challenges 01:12:46 Tire Choices and Race Preparations 01:14:49 Weather Forecasts and Race Strategies 01:15:20 Crit Picks and Race Dynamics 01:17:18 Training Intensity and Performance Insights 01:20:46 Listener Questions and Community Engagement
ETT MORDFÖRSÖK MED REFERENSER. David tar i från tårna och bjuckar på riktigt matiga shownotes! Vorlaufing, Oskar Bruno, Pat Heist och … i princip allt som går att läsa om jäsning. NERDGASM INCOMING. Här tipsas vi om en bok som David faktiskt inte har läst. Jo, det är sant! Åtminstone inte hela … Redbreast 12 mot Redbreast 12 cask strength: http://tjederswhisky.se/redbreast-12-pa-40-och-fatstyrka/ Vad var det i glaset? Mathias njöt av J. P. Wiser 42 YO: https://www.jpwisers.com/en-ca/blog/meet-jp-wisers-42-year-old-a-new-milestone-in-canadian-whisky-excellence/ Jeroen hade istället J. P. Wiser 23 YO: http://tjederswhisky.se/jp-wiser-23-yo-cask-strength-for-sweden/ David hade två whiskylikörer som han rekommenderar av hela sitt hjärta: https://www.systembolaget.se/produkt/sprit/shanky-s-whip-5417701/ https://www.systembolaget.se/produkt/sprit/skrewball-9343301/ Från ax till fylla: mer om mäskning, lite om vört, och så det där med jäsning… ”I'll never be your yeast of bourbon, feat. Dr. Pat Heist”, En trea whisky 28/9 2021: https://www.entreawhisky.se/78 Lautertunnor: https://www.entreawhisky.se/87 När Oskar Bruno pratade jäst i ETW: https://www.entreawhisky.se/208 Vorlaufing kan man läsa lite om här: https://beerandbrewing.com/the-art-and-the-science-of-the-vorlauf-process/ https://makebeereasy.com/vorlauf/ Det där med Lochlea och Laphroaig och John Campbell och röra runt lite mer i mäsktunnan tror David han pratade om här: https://whiskycast.com/a-million-miles-from-laphroaig-to-lochlea-episode-910-december-6-2021/ Med risk att mörda er med referenser och ge en inblick i hur sjuk Davids hjärna är: här följer en del men långt ifrån allt av vad David har läst bara om jäst och jäsning: Andrew G. H. Lea & John R. Piggott, red., Fermented beverage production, 2 uppl. (New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2003). Gray, William D., ”Further studies on the alcohol tolerance of yeasts”, Journal of Bacteriology 42 (1941), s. 561–574. Gray, William D., ”Studies on the alcohol tolerance of yeasts”, Journal of Bacteriology 55 (1948), s. 53–59. [Luening, Horst], ”Fermentation”, odaterad text, https://www.whisky.com/information/knowledge/production/details/fermentation.html Noguchi, Y., K. Urasaki, H. Yomo & T. Yonezawa, ”Effect on new-make spirit character due to the performance of brewer's yeast – (II) various yeast strains containing commercial strains”, i Distilled spirits: Production, technology and innovation, red. James Huthison Bryce, John R. Piggott & George G. Stewart (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press, 2008), s. 117–122. Reid, Struan J., et al., ”The influence of yeast format and pitching rate on Scotch malt whisky fermentation kinetics and congeners”, Journal of the Institute of Brewing 129, no. 2 (2023), s. 1–17. Russell, Inge & Graham Stewart, ”Distilling yeast and fermentation”, i Russell, Inge & Graham Stewart, red., Whisky: Technology, production and marketing, 2 uppl. (Oxford: Academic Press, 2014), s. 123–146. Stewart, Graham G. & Stephen A. Martin, ”Wort clarity: Effects on fermentation”, Master Brewers Association of the Americas Technical Quarterly 41, nr. 1 (2004), s. 18–26. Strengell, Teemu, ”Fermentation flavours”, 23/11 2011: http://whiskyscience.blogspot.se/2011/11/fermentation-flavours.html van Beek, Sylvie & Fergus G. Priest, ”Evolution of the lactic acid bacterial community during malt whisky fermentation: a polyphasic study”, Applied and environmental microbiology 68, nr. 1 (2002), s. 297–305. Walker, Graeme M., James Brosnan, Thomas A. Bringhurst & Frances R. Jack, ”Selecting new distilling yeasts for improved fermentation and for sustainability”, i Distilled spirits: Science and sustainability: Proceedings of the Worldwide distilled spirits conference, red. Graeme M. Walker, I. Goodall, R. Fotheringham & D. Murray (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press, 2012), s. 127–136. Walker, J. W., S. Y. Pearson, T. A. Bringhurst & J. M. Brosnan, ”Towards improved distilling yeast: effect of wort gravity and pitching rate on fermentation performance”, i Distilled spirits: Production, technology and innovation, red. James Huthison Bryce, John R. Piggott & George G. Stewart (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press, 2008), s. 127–132. Waymark, Christopher & Annie E. Hill, ”The influence of yeast strain on whisky new make spirit aroma”, fermentation 7, nr. 4 (311), s. 1–11. Wilson, Nicolas, ”Contamination: bacteria and wild yeasts in a whisky fermentation”, i Russell & Stewart, red. (2014), s. 147–154. Yonewaza, T. & Graham G. Stewart, ”Monitoring and controlling of whisky fermentation”, i James Hutchison Bryce & Graham G. Stewart. red., Distilled spirits: Tradition and innovation (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press, 2004), s. 103–111. Det här är en till sådan där bok David har lovat sig själv att aldrig läsa hela men finns det någon stolle därute så varmt välkomna att ta tag i: Stewart, Graham G., Brewing and distilling yeasts (Cham: Springer, 2017). lag phase och log phase återkommer vi till! Men för den som vill få nerdgasm bara av hur många parametrar som kan ritas in i ett och samma diagram, kolla in denna skönhet: https://www.wolfers.se/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/jasning.png Källa: Inge Russell & Graham Stewart, ”Distilling yeast and fermentation”, i Russell & Stewart, red. (2014), s. 143. Med benäget tillstånd från författarna. Här når du oss: En trea whisky på Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/entreawhisky) Maila till oss på hej@entreawhisky.se Davids blogg tjederswhisky.se (https://www.tjederswhisky.se) Följ oss på Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/entreawhisky Bli medlem! https://entreawhisky.memberful.com/checkout?plan=74960
Tuleva perhekonstellaatiotyöpajat: www.viljamilehtonen.fi/konstellaatio Haluatko tukea podcastia? https://www.patreon.com/Miehenmieli Tervetuloa kuuntelemaan Miehen mieli podcastia! Tässä jaksossa sukellamme syvälle ihmismieleen yhdessä psykiatri Teemu Elon kanssa. Keskustelussa käsittelemme hulluutta, meditaatiota ja psykiatrista hoitoa – mitä ne tarkoittavat yksilön ja yhteiskunnan näkökulmasta? Teemu jakaa kokemuksiaan musiikin ja hiljaisuuden merkityksestä, sekä siitä, miten hänen näkemyksensä ateismista, henkisestä kasvusta ja ihmismielen ilmiöistä ovat kehittyneet. Jaksossa käsittelemme myös kriisihoidon merkitystä, lääkkeiden roolia mielenterveyden tukena ja sitä, kuinka toivo ja luottamus voivat muuttaa hoitokokemusta. Pohdimme, miten psykoosit, skitsofrenia ja tahdosta riippumaton hoito vaikuttavat potilaisiin, ja millainen rooli kulttuurilla ja yhteiskunnalla on mielenterveysdiagnoosien taustalla.
Teemu Arina, author of Biohacker's Handbook and one of the movement's pioneers, believes biohacking may have lost its way. In this episode, he lays out a different approach to longevity. He argues that extreme health routines often do more harm than good, and that true well-being comes from adaptability, not rigid optimization. Teemu also shares why AI-driven personal health plans could replace cookie-cutter protocols, and how we can rethink aging as a balance between discipline and enjoying life. If you're tired of endless supplement stacks and prescriptive morning routines, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on what actually works.How long will you live? Take our quiz today to find out! Visit ageist.com/longevityquizThanks to Our SponsorsTimeline Nutrition — our favorite supplement for cell support and mitochondrial function. Listeners receive 10% off your first order of Mitopure with code AGEIST at TimelineNutrition.com/ageist.LMNT Electrolytes — our number one electrolytes for optimal hydration. Listeners receive a free 8-serving sample pack with their purchase at DrinkLMNT.com/AGEIST. BON CHARGE: Want to try the hottest sauna blanket on the market? Check out BON CHARGE's Infrared Sauna Blanket, which is designed to provide easy access to the benefits of infrared heat therapy in the comfort of your own home, here.Key MomentsMany high performers chasing optimization are just running from their own trauma.The problem with perfect health routines is that it can become a prison.You don't need to live forever—you need to live well.Connect With TeemuWebsite: www.teemuarina.comInstagram: @teemuarinabiohackersummit.comHolo Habits App: holohabits.comBook: Biohacker's Handbook – biohackingbook.comCheck out the full interview transcriptConnect With AGEISTNewsletterInstagramWebsiteSay hi to the AGEIST team!
Snappi, Teemu of YaLLa, and messioso join the show to discuss all things wrong with Valve rankings in detail. Before that, we talked about Katowice results and tournament impressions.➡️ Follow us for updates: / hltvconfirmed
While not 100% official at the time of recording, it's clear Teemu Pukki has played his last game for our Loons. He heads home to be a family man now and we'll tell you what it means for the team. We get into that preseason stuff, rosters and rumors, which is what it's all about this time of year. And the American Birding Association has named its 2025 Bird of the Year … (cliffhanger) Loon or Loonlet Trivia - 6:00 Quick Hits Around Soccer - 12:20 Roster Updates - 23:57 Rumor Mill - 38:55 Loon Droppings - 44:18 ------------------ Connect with us on Blue Sky (@loonybindpodcast.bsky.social), email us at theloonybinpod@gmail.com or find us at www.theloonybinpod.com. Dan Elias (@oyvey2you.bsky.social) Matt Leaf (@loonlet.bsky.social)
Teemu Päivinen is the Founder and CEO of ZkCloud (formerly Gevulot), the first universal proving layer democratizing access to ZK proving. Active in crypto since 2011, Teemu has founded companies such as CoinMotion and Equilibrium Labs, known for its collaborations with leading L1s and L2s. In addition, Teemu has advised Dapper Labs, Open Zeppelin, and served on Samsung NEXT's Stack Zero Grant Committee. As a Venture Partner at CompoundVC, he helps blockchain startups scale, combining deep expertise in entrepreneurship, blockchain, and venture capital.
Teemu Päivinen is the Founder and CEO of ZkCloud (formerly Gevulot), the first universal proving layer democratizing access to ZK proving. Active in crypto since 2011, Teemu has founded companies such as CoinMotion and Equilibrium Labs, known for its collaborations with leading L1s and L2s. In addition, Teemu has advised Dapper Labs, Open Zeppelin, and served on Samsung NEXT's Stack Zero Grant Committee. As a Venture Partner at CompoundVC, he helps blockchain startups scale, combining deep expertise in entrepreneurship, blockchain, and venture capital.
In this episode of Growing Pains, GDL host and Games Strategy Consultant Jay Uppal sits down with Teemu Haila, CPO and founder of Metaplay, they discuss Teemu's path in Games from the early days of mobile and live-service games to the behemoth the industry has become today. His journey in games has seen him found and lead several teams across various facets and regions within the industry. So tune in as he shares some of his learned insights from his time growing and building games as well as the teams that empower them. Growing Pains is a series focusing on key business trends and people shaping the Global Games Market and their impact on the Games industry. In this series, Jay speaks with industry leaders across the Games and Gametech space; trying to demystify the industry, understand the state of leadership, and answer the all-important question 'Is having a fun game still enough to succeed in today's games market?' Jay Uppal https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayant-uppal-18ab34a5/ Teemu Haila https://www.linkedin.com/in/teemuhaila Metaplay Inc https://metaplay.io/
Vaellus ja retkeily -aiheisessa Karttahuone-podcastissa on tällä kertaa vieraana pitkiin vaelluksiin ansiokkaasti perehtynyt Teemu Hartikainen. Hiihtovaellus jonka Teemu teki, lähti eteläisimmästä Norjasta ja päättyi Norjan pohjoisimpaan pisteeseen. Mitä me muut vaeltajat ja talviretkeilijät voimme oppia mieheltä joka on hiihtänyt koko Norjan halki?Vaellus, hiihtovaellus, talvivaellus, talviretkeily https://www.youtube.com/@sakkeraappana https://www.instagram.com/sakkeraappana/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064004742199
The Sports Experience Podcast with Chris Quinn and Dominic DiTolla
Episode 279 of “The Sports Experience Podcast” is here & we're back on the ice discussing Teemu Selänne. “The Finnish Flash” was a star in his native Finland before he joined the NHL in 1992-1993. Though selected 10th overall in the 1988 NHL Entry Draft, the Right Winger's skill, speed and grace were worth the wait for the Winnipeg Jets. Teemu set all-time records for goals and points in a season as a rookie and helped the Jets to the postseason. Though he remained a star in Winnipeg, a trade to Anaheim paired him with fellow star Paul Kariya helped Selänne reach new heights. Though injuries and stints in San Jose & Colorado almost derailed the prime of his career, “The Finnish Flash” enjoyed a second act in Anaheim which proved to be quite fruitful. In addition to being named one of the NHL's “100 Greatest Players,” Teemu helped the Ducks capture the franchise's first Stanley Cup title after the 2006-2007 season, and he remained a scoring threat until his retirement after the 2013-2014 campaign. In addition to his NHL success, Selänne shined on the international stage for his native Finland. He helped his country win a silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics and bronze in 1998, 2010 and 2014. Teemu played in 10 NHL All-Star Games, won the 1992-1993 Calder Memorial Trophy (ROY), won the Masterson Trophy 2005-2006 (Dedication & Perseverance), won a Stanley Cup in 2006-2007 and still holds the record for most points recorded in Olympic competition. Overall, the 2017 Hockey Hall of Famer recorded 684 goals, 773 assists and 1,457 points. All of which are records for Finnish-born players. Connect with us on Instagram! Chris Quinn: @cquinncomedy Dominic DiTolla: @ditolladominic Producer: @ty_englestudio Instagram: @thesportsexperiencepodcast If you enjoy this podcast, please help support us @: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-sports-experience-pod/support #sportspodcast #comedypodcast #anaheimducks --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-sports-experience-pod/support
Pitkä F1-kausi saatiin päätökseen Abu Dhabissa ja nyt kun loppua on hetki sulateltu, on aika käydä kausi läpi. Aki, Teemu ja Elli käyvät pikaisesti muutaman Abu Dhabin tapahtuman läpi ja niputtavat koko kauden tiimi kerrallaan. Ketkä olivat kauden onnistujia entäpä epäonnistujia? Kuka jäi väliinputoajaksi ja mitä ensi kausi tuokaan tullessaan? Tämä on Suomen F1 Podcast, tervetuloa mukaan! 02:13- Charles Leclercin nousu Abu Dhabin kisassa 05:19- Faktapotpuri Abu Dhabin kilpailun jäljiltä 07:20- Abu Dhabin aika-ajojen kera Bottaksen risujen ja ruusujen 16:12- Max Verstappenin ja Oscar Piastrin ensimmäisen kierroksen tilanne 19:20- FIAn kilpailunjohtajasotku ja puhetta rangaistuksista Koko kauden läpikäynti tiimi kerrallaan 28:10- Pahnan pohjimmainen Sauber 32:55- Kaksijakoinen Williams 40:40- Racing Bulls - ei tulossa eikä menossa minnekkään 45:44- Kauden ehdoton valopilkku Haas 56:55- Kittilä, kattila vai Alpine? 01:04:57- Aston Martin, josta ei tarvitsisi ihan hirveästi edes puhua 01:10:48- Välihuomiona breaking news 01:11:34- Ensimmäinen neljästä suuresta eli Mercedes 01:21:42- Hatuista kiinni - Red Bull Racing 01:30:42- Onko ensi vuonna vihdoin Ferrarin vuosi? 01:39:40- Kauden ykkönen - McLaren 01:49:57- Kauden kolme onnistujaa 01:52:04- Kauden kolme epäonnistujaa 01:55:10- Mitä toivotaan tulevalta F1-kaudelta? 01:56:49- Loppuhöpinät ja KIITOS kuulijoille kuluneesta kaudesta! Ota seurantaan myös: TikTok @suomenf1pod Instagram & X @suomenf1podcast
IAB Studio jaksot ovat napostelupituisia podcast jaksoja päivän polttavista aiheista ja tällä kertaa studiossa Pasin kanssa ovat Hannaleena Koskinen Allerilta ja Teemu Kurri Craneworks / Doohlabsilta. Tällä kertaa studiossa otettiin kantaa kuumimpaan mediatrendiin, eli puhutaan retail mediasta.Ihan ensin mitä retail media oikein on?Retail media tarkoittaa kauppiaiden ja vähittäismyyjien tarjoamia mainosalustoja, joissa brändit voivat mainostaa tuotteitaan suoraan ostoympäristössä, kuten verkkokaupoissa, mobiilisovelluksissa tai fyysisissä myymälöissä. Tämä sisältää esimerkiksi tuotesijoittelut hakutuloksissa, bannerimainokset ja personoidut tarjoukset, jotka tavoittavat kuluttajat ostohetkellä, kun ostoaikomus on korkeimmillaan. Se yhdistää mainonnan ja myynnin saumattomasti, hyödyntäen kauppiaan asiakasdataa kohdennetun ja tehokkaan markkinoinnin mahdollistamiseksi.Retail media for all - uusi ja avoin ekosysteemiJaksossa Hannaleena ja Teemu kertovat uudesta yhteistyöstään retail median kentällä. Rakenteilla on eräänlainen Retail Media for All -ratkaisu: avoin ja monipuolinen ekosysteemi, jossa useat eri kuluttajaliiketoiminnan toimijat voivat tarjota mainostajille tehokkaita mediapaikkoja ja tavoittaa ostajat entistä kohdennetummin. Tämä ratkaisu yhdistää eri yritykset – perinteiset vähittäismyyjät, verkkokaupat, palveluntarjoajat ja muut kuluttajakeskeiset liiketoiminnat – tarjoten innovatiivista mediaa, joka on helposti saavutettavissa kaikille mainostajille. Kuuntele ja/tai katso jakso niin pysyt retail median pyörteissä mukana!
Teemu Arina is a technology entrepreneur, author, biohacker and founder of the Biohacking Centre. Do we need to Biohack? What are underlying principles? Is it for everyone? Teemu is one of the forefront thinkers on the digital transformation of learning, work, leadership, health and - eventually - the future of humanity. His work focuses on studying the intersection of man and the machine and ways to improve productivity, health and wellbeing with biological and technological tools. In this conversation, we dive into the philosophy of high performance, transcending Maslow's hierarchy of needs, personalising Biohacking to your life, how biohacking can become a copying and much more. https://biohackercenter.com https://biohackersummit.com BIG THANK YOU TO our sponsors at Glycanage! DISCOUNT: https://glycanage.com/price-and-plans?discount=FUNCTIONALHEALTH
Jamie and Fusa review the month of September in Japanese pro wrestling. They start with AJPW Royal Road, then travel to NOAH, DDT, and NJPW. The pair review a number of NJPW title matches, and preview the big Destruction in Kobe card. Read our features on our website WrestleInn.com. Follow us on Twitter @WrestleInn.
EP320 - News, First Half Recap, Early Holiday Preview http://jasonandscot.com 0:23 Welcome Back After Hiatus 2:51 Upcoming Events in Retail 7:28 GroceryShop 16:02 Retail Growth Trends 21:28 Concerns for Holiday 2024 30:27 The De Minimis Provision 40:27 TikTok's Impact on E-commerce In this episode of The Jason and Scot Show, we discuss the current state of retail and e-commerce. We analyze macroeconomic factors impacting the retail landscape, noting a 3.4% growth in core retail and a maturation of e-commerce, dominated by giants like Amazon and Walmart. We address consumer sentiment heading into the holiday season and the potential influences of the upcoming election and interest rate changes. The episode also covers the role of AI in enhancing personalization experiences, challenges faced by dollar stores, and supply chain issues. We conclude with insights into Amazon's recent earnings and their strategies to engage younger consumers through TikTok Shops. 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. Download the complete 54 page deck of all my insights from the US Dept of Commerce Retail Data for the first half of 2024 here https://rgeek.co/retail2024 Transcript [0:23] Welcome Back After Hiatus Jason [0:23]Welcome to the Json and Scott show this is episode 320 being recorded on Monday september 16th 2024 I'm your host Jason retail gee Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot [0:38]Hey Jason and welcome back after a very long time, Jason and Scott show listeners Jason our last show was an early May so it's been about a little over a 4-month hiatus and when people ask me I always blame you do you blame me. Jason [0:57]I do blame you and I'm bitter because in my mind. Nobody's really complaining to you but like I I've gone called out on stage by like I've I've been heckled by people that are like what are you going to do a new show. Scot [1:15]It's part of our it's it's a Nintendo like strategy where you you dribble you know if you could really constrain Supply scarcity that drives demand so yeah. Jason [1:25]Yeah it it we are we are playing 3 dimensional chess in a world of checkered players. Scot [1:31]Exactly the the real reason is as Chief digital Innovation retail and payments and grocery officer your title's gotten bigger and your your more famous your allies on a plane I can never record because I'm like how about now he's like Paris how about now Australia how about now India so you've been flying all over the world. Jason [1:52]I sadly I have been it does feel like travel is back there there have been more International trips this year than any year before coid so I I can I can only partially deny that accusation. Scot [2:08]Cool well we're glad that we have you here for for an hour give us an update what are you any uh show you know what's going on out in the world of retail as you've been expanding the globe for the Json and Scott show. Jason [2:20]Yeah it's been another Super interesting year for retail we'll we'll certainly get into some of what we think are the key topics that have been planned out this year but I have attended a bunch of events I I can't even remember which ones where since this this last show visited a bunch of customers out in the field which is always great learning new things from them [2:51] Upcoming Events in Retail Jason [2:40]but the upcoming show is in early October is grocery shopping in Las Vegas so I'll be moderating a panel on. AI enabling Next Generation personalization, at at that show which I always look forward to to grocery shop and then a week later they're they're shop talk is moving their show their other stuff to Chicago so they're going to have their first, fall shop talk that will be in my backyard in Chicago so I'll be curious to see how if the world wants another another iteration of shop talk every year. Scot [3:18]Yeah give us the behind-the-scenes did you like throw down the gauntlet and said shop talk must move to Chicago or I'm not going to attend or and run all the speaking stuff. Jason [3:28]I basically did that with everything I told every client that they had come to Chicago I told shop talk and I told you you had to come here to record the podcast and yeah you'll note we haven't had a lot of podcasts and you know I still have the same 3 customers here I've always had. Scot [3:44]But you got to show them to me for at least that's a 1 w. Jason [3:46]I did but they really just added a show they're just looking for more Revenue so like it seems like it's probably not. Not just me but I feel like your LinkedIn feed has been more active than me and mostly with accolades for for the the fund that you helped kick off. Scot [4:05]Yeah yeah so the just to update everybody I'm in a post spiffy world so started spiffy in 2014 and then, you know decided to to we got to kind of north of a 60-ish million run rate which is plenty big lots of employees lots of things going on and I had started this little side hustle well first of all I started this thing for our little local ecosystem here called the tweener list in 2015 which was just a little passion project and then started a little fund around that called the tweener fund which invests in early stage startups so I've I've really enjoyed that and decided to, move on from spiffy and make this my full-time gig so have been really enjoying doing that and actually have. I'm sure you do this where you have a list of things you're kind of like want to learn about and you can hardly ever get to it and I've been doing a lot of that the last 4 weeks and 1 of the big 1 is AI I've been going really deep on AI and it's been been a lot of fun to play around with all the cool new stuff going on there and I got a couple interesting ideas I'm not going to reveal anything but there's some interesting if you think from a AI native remember how we used to talk about mobile native well now thinking AI native I think there's some interesting things that could happen in the world of e-commerce so I'm going to I may go back to thinking more about e-commerce so we'll see. Jason [5:23]Come on back though we're we're waiting for you the water is fine man they're they're for your point there's a lot of super interesting stuff the grocery shop will be fun a a show after that that I'm looking forward to is NRF because you know they have this Innovation Pavilion and they've kind of upped the the, rigger around recruiting exhibitors at The Innovation Pavilion this year and I think it's going to it's a big year for Innovation so, probably be a cool time for all of us to meet in the New York in January with global warming it's not even cold anymore. Scot [5:58]Not been there not too long ago and it's still pretty darn cold for this North Carolina. Jason [6:04]Oh okay fair enough fair enough I'm just last year was the first time it snowed in like 2 years in New York at at in her uh and then. Scot [6:10]Okay yeah yeah last time I remember trudging through like 6 inches to get to your hotel which was painfully far away. Jason [6:17]I mean that's yeah that's been my normal life so it's been weird that you haven't had to take the heavy coat to New York so although I wouldn't recommend that if you go to New York in January I'd bring that vote uh. And, I feel like in addition to everything else I know we're going to jump into the retail but all the Apple software updates dropped today so cool new icons and emojis and and delayed chats so I can have, like Emoji based chats hit Scott Wingo at every hour of the day now it's amazing. Scot [6:48]Nice I look forward to that at 4:00 a.m. I'll have my do not disturb on to counteract your your attack. Jason [6:53]Yeah although I may need you talk about new things you want to learn 1 of the things I want to learn is how to make Do Not Disturb work right in the the modern app like the system because I feel like all the focus modes have made it complicated. Scot [7:05]Yeah I have to have you know that that kind of funny YouTube where the dad puts on 6 seat belts that's me putting on do not disturb I have to do the physical thing check the moon do my watch hit D and D in a profile and then that's that that combination of things I don't know which of them does it but that seems to stop everything. [7:28] AI in Grocery Shopping Jason [7:23]Yes I feel like I'm in a similar boat but it would be interesting to figure out how to do it for as intended. Scot [7:29]Yeah or just we know it works so just keep doing it do so just give us a preview of grocery shop can AI do better recommendations than kind of the old school way we used to do it. Jason [7:42]So 1 would hope certainly it can do it at greater scale than we used to do it there's some anecdotal evidence that it's. Better it you know part of it I'm I'm curious to talk to some of these folks So So Meta will be on my panel. They they have a strong POV you know what's going on in the digital ad space right now is all the the ad platforms are trying to talk you into going hands off the wheel and turning over. The bidding to their AI engines and I would say at the moment it's an uneven playing field there like if I if I talk to my. Performance media folks they'll tell you that the the AI robots from some of the platforms are very effective and tend to outperform a manual bidding and on other platforms that they they wildly do not so. Jason [8:33]That it'll be interesting to kind of hear their perspective 1 of the panelists is hungryroot, which to me is a super interesting example they they're truly doing AI based recommendation so they're essentially they're a ger. That is mainly filling out your whole cart for you proactively with AI based. Recommendations so you manicure a Char a cart that they recommend to you versus you hunting and pecking for each individual item and putting it in your cart and they they have some pretty interesting sales metrics using that methodology so they're all in, there you might almost think of them as like the Stitch fix of food and so they'll they'll be interesting to hear, and then my friend Ben from Endeavor and Endeavor may be familiar to some listeners not to others they're the largest adult beverage and hospitality company in Australia. And so they they have a nationwide chain of beer and wine stores that are doing some really interesting personalization hubs and kind of Shifting all of their customer touch points to to 1 to 1 so. I'll be curious to hear how effective they all claim to be. Scot [9:47]How do these it seems like you're going to need some training data like how do they Kickstart that do they look at like your email or credit card data to kind of get an idea for what you like or they just kind of start you at a demographic Baseline and build from there or do you know. Jason [10:01]Yeah well so in many cases you've been a customer of theirs for a long time right so they have you you have a significant amount of personal data I mean Walmart launched a predictive cart feature, in January that's in beta so I think it's only available to a select group of. Of Walmart Plus members but yeah it you it's trained on all of th those members pass purchases leading up to the launch of that product. Um so I yeah good question what signals do they use for a net new customer but I think the first crop where customers where they they already had a significant history. Scot [10:40]Got it cool well that's gonna be a good panel riveting it's also pretty wild they have them so close together now that's like 10 days you're gonna have to kind of like Zip back home rest for a couple days and jump in. Jason [10:50]I I do I was going to zip back home anyway so it's not an inconvenience for me but I my heart does go out to all the the shop talk folks that that have responsibilities of both shows because that I'm certain is not fun for them. Scot [11:02]Cool which of the shop talks is bigger now the. Jason [11:09]Shop talk is still the biggest show that's their March show um and it's it's north of 10,000 people so it might have been like 11,000 this year I'm not sure they, release an official number so hopefully I'm not disclosing something proprietary and grocery shop is only about half that size. So think closer to 5 500 attendees and then this fall shop talk this will be the first time so so. All all bets are off I I certainly wish them no ill will but part of me thinks it's a it's a big lift to get people. To add yet another event to their schedules. Scot [11:48]Yeah maybe the Fallen will be more Regional like you know folks in the midwest or east. Jason [11:53]Yeah I mean that that would be my initial assumption but you know they've they've been able to build up some really good shows in the past so so you know we'll see how they do with this 1 I certainly, would like to see a good show in Chicago they're in as you would remember in the old days you know there was like internet retailer here which still exists but I would argue it's it's probably well past its prime. Problem is when you did the orientation and used to teach everyone how to do e-commerce on the first day. Scot [12:20]Amazon yeah that was fun that was they were like well you do this and I was like well how many people come and they're like I usually 100 and I did it and there's like 700 people say dude you vastly underestimated your crowd size at this thing the um. Jason [12:32]I know I know you're a big draw. Scot [12:34]Yeah well of course the uh and what was always funny is people would want to meet I forget what hotel it was either Hyatt, or a Hilton and there was 4 of them around that convention center and like No 1 could ever find each other at that that Hotel chain because they know 1 realized they all had the same name I'm sure that's still a problem. Was always funny to watch the chaos ensue. Jason [12:54]Yeah. Scot [12:55]The only thing works is in Las Vegas when you're at the Mandalay Bay when the hotel is called the hotel and the bars called the bar it's like a whose first kind of scenario trying to get. Jason [13:04]Yeah I'm sure they thought that was really clever when they. Scot [13:07]Yeah that was the worst worst naming. Jason [13:08]When they first named it yeah. Scot [13:11]Cool well you guys have been waiting for it and we are recording this mid-september all of our friends and Retail and e-commerce are making their final changes to their sites they're implementing their new features they're putting new vendors in place and going through the final QA test, before the big October code freeze so. This is when the Pod turns to really thinking about a holiday of 24 it's a fun to believe that we're already here this fast and Jason to tee that up let's set the table a little bit you put out a really interesting kind of adjacent Mega deck on LinkedIn that was really good and I thought maybe we could go through a couple slides of that and kind of tee up, you know how the year has gone so far and then that'll take us into kind of a little bit of a prediction of how holiday 24 is going to shape up. Jason [13:58]Yeah yeah yeah happy to do it thanks man so maybe setting the table. I don't want to go back and get too deep we'll put a link to the deck so anyone that wants it's like 54 pages of data visualizations about about the Commerce industry so anyone's welcome to download it and check for themselves but the the highest level metric that I like to think about is this thing that NRF calls core retail so that's, all of retail sales from the US Department of Commerce US Census Data uh except restaurants Gas and Automobiles and. Jason [14:33]If you go back in time and you say how how much does core retail grow year-over-year for the last 20 years core retail grew about 3.9% a year. And then of course we had this this huge anomaly more recently which was Co. And you know I like to joke that like well you know some people feel like oh man those were really hard years for retail what they forget is we mailed 5 trillion dollars in extra cash to everyone and didn't let them spend any of that on flights or Taylor Swift tickets. And so those were actually the greatest growth years in the history of retail like we like the the peak year was like 14% growth for core retail. So we had that this like Giant mountain of unusual growth 3 years that were twice as big as the normal 3.9% growth, and then 2023 happened and 2023 was right back to the average 3.9% again, and so now we're halfway through 2024 and we're actually below that average a little bit so we're at 3.4% growth year to date. Which is you know meaningfully off from 3.9% like that you know these are these are big numbers so that's 2.9 trillion dollars worth of sales year to date. Jason [15:50]And the you know. [16:02] Retail Growth Trends Jason [15:53]When we look at holiday I I mean we'll we'll talk about it in a minute but you know that's kind of setting the the table for retail for holiday but of course. People on this podcast are probably particularly interested in e-commerce and will know that historically at least in the modern era e-commerce has grown much faster. So the problem with talking about the average growth rate of e-commerce is of course it only started about 24 years ago and so it's. You know the the rate of growth has has decreased over time if you look at the last 24 years e-commerce is growing 17% a year versus that 3.9% for retail. Over the last 10 years right before coid e-commerce was growing at 12.4% a year. Jason [16:37]So I kind of tell people think about you know e-commerce typically growing at 12% a year retail typically growing at 4% a year is kind of the. The the basic ratios so 4 times faster but this year 2024, retail is only growing at 3.4% and e-commerce is only growing at 7.5% so still twice as fast growth but a meaningful slowdown from the, historic average and you know at the risk of of giving away a spoiler. I I don't think that's like some bounce because of a spike during Co I actually think it's just an indication of the maturing of. Of e-commerce and e-commerce is a you know increasingly big chunk of of the whole retail pie it's. E-commerce is 21.8% of core retail so almost 22% so you know we'll spend over 7 trillion dollars this year and you know well over a trillion of it will be e-commerce. Scot [17:38]Interesting cool so that's the full year. Jason [17:41]Yeah well. Scot [17:43]Basically kind of an average year. Jason [17:45]So so last, yeah so so well so last year e-commerce had already started slow down it it grew again the average was about 12% it grew 10% last year and we're only growing 7.5% year to date this year. Scot [17:59]Okay got it okay. Jason [18:01]But. As I keep pointing out to people the story depending on who you are the story is either vastly better or worse than that those industry averages I just shared because the real story of of retail in 2024 is. This this concept of bifurcation right that there are 5 retailers that are vastly outperforming those industry averages. And they are eating up all of the growth in the industry so these 5 retailers represent 51% of all that growth so if you're 1 of those 5 retailers, you're having a great year if you are not 1 of those 5 retailers you're having a way worse than average year in in most cases so that's, Amazon which alone represents 16% of all retail growth it's Walmart which represents 15% of all retail growth, and it's it's Tik Tok which, you know was well under a billion dollars in sales last year and is trending towards twenty billion dollars in sales this year so they're the fastest growing retail, in the history of mankind and then rounding out these top 5 Growers are the the fastest growing return history of mankind from the last 2 years T-Mobile and shien so, it's kind of T-Mobile Sheen Tik Tok Walmart and Amazon's world and the rest of us are just living in it which is you know somewhat alarming for the rest of retail. Scot [19:26]Yeah yeah definitely is it seems like those the chinese-based guys seems like they're taking share from somebody but it's not Amazon is it dollar stores because it's kind of like this convenience-oriented lower price kind of stuff right. Jason [19:42]Yeah so it it it it's it's inexpensive variety Goods the, it it very likely is taking share from from the the dollar stores the dollar stores have not fared well which historically, you know there's there's some economic headwinds there's a thing going on in the United States that I I like to call A vibe session which means, some of the the economic fundamentals are actually pretty decent but people are really, consumer sentiment is down and people are really cutting back on their spending there's a lot of evidence that people are trading down and and trying to be more frugal, and that kind of climate normally has favored the dollar stores and yet you know they're they're definitely performing below these, these industry averages so certainly a chunk of of the Tik Tok team mushy and growth um is coming at their expense. Some of the sheen growth is coming at the expense of luxury which you know historically luxury has been been insulated from downturns in the market but you know we're starting to see. Some softness in their earnings and for sure softness in their guidance. So you know the you know people that would have bought more designer stuff maybe they're still buying some designer things but they're mixing it in with really affordable fashion from. From shien like I I am sure Amazon is losing some sales to Tik Tok shops that they would like to have but for your point. Jason [21:08]Amazon still you know growing much faster than the rest of the market and so yeah it's not it's not eroding Amazon's any share it's just eroding their Tam. [21:28] Concerns for Holiday 2024 Scot [21:19]Got it okay so that's the setup so e-commerce has slowed down a bit retails kind of doing its thing what what does that mean for holiday. Jason [21:29]Yeah so I I have become Debbie Downer I am concerned about holiday this year, so if we just kind of extrapolate out these Trends again 3.4% growth is below our historic average so if something dramatically didn't turn around if consumer sentiment didn't get a lot better. For this holiday you would expect this to be a slightly soft. Holiday and I I really think this trend of winners and losers is likely to continue through holidays so I think you're going to see a handful of retailers perform really well holiday at the expense of everyone else and I. I I think on average that's going to mean that revenue is kind of similar to traditional holiday growth. But I I suspect that that's that margins, will be even further eroded than usual so so usually for Holiday retail grows about 4.3% e-commerce grows at 12.9% I don't think we'll see either of those numbers for holiday this year and I think. Jason [22:34]You know if if retail grows at 3.7% and Ecom grows at 8% you know I still think you're going to see Amazon Walmart and Tik Tok grab, disproportionate share of that holiday spend which is going to be bad news, for a lot of other folks and those are just kind of the macro Trends you have to layer in that that there's a couple of reasons to to be worried about this holiday regardless of the trends going into this holiday so. We have a different calendar a number of days in the holiday season every year, and this is our worst year this is the year when we have the fewest days and holiday which actually you know historically does depress sales if there's fewer days to shop then then we sell less stuff and so this is the shortest holiday season that we ever get, and historically an election year is not favorable to Holiday spend right so traditionally there's some some anxiety and you know. Competition for attention, that plays into these November elections that impacts holiday and I I think you know this will be the most polarized election ever and so I think it's you know no matter what the outcome is half the country is going to be pretty depressed and that that likely you know translates into not an awesome holiday so so we got some things working against us. Scot [23:53]Yeah so if that's the headwinds I'll throw in a Tailwind so as a our celebrated CNBC junkie the all they talk about is the Fed meeting tomorrow where you know it's pretty clear the fed's going to lower interest rates and the big question is is it going to be a quarter point or half a point I think I I I'm not a prognost prognosticator on that I think whatever they do it's going to be wildly popular and relief a lot of this kind of interest rate pressure we've everything's been on so even if it's only a quarter point I think it'll be somewhat euphoric for the market and for for hopefully for consumers to feel like interest rates are coming down a little bit so maybe that'll like bump start some house buying and selling and they'll be a little bit more liquidity in the market so so I'm going to think of that as more of a Tailwind so there's some positivity going on there do you worry about the election because I think it's just going to take forever to figure out who won and, everyone's going to contest it and it's gonna be like this unknown thing for a very long time so we'll see how that goes. Jason [24:55]Yeah and you live in a swing state so I can only imagine what's happening to your media. Scot [24:59]Yeah we just kind of we can't even like the male is an inch thick full of like Gunk and you kind of have to sort through all the stupidity I'm not a political person to get to like you know the bill and make sure you pay it and that kind of stuff and then the you know, at the TV is just crazy but thank goodness I'm not in Pennsylvania I think they're getting just totally hammered right now. Jason [25:18]Yeah probably so and In fairness while we're covering Tailwind like this could be a headwind or a Tailwind but like I will say in general the macros are getting a little better right so inflation has been steadily coming down the 1 the most stubborn version of inflation had been. In in this core retail category is is food and even food you know they're all down below 3% which like pre-pandemic they were kind of in that, 2.1 2.3% and the FEDS sort of stated goal was to keep inflation between 2 and 3% so, you know we still had all the pain of the high prices over the last couple of years but like. Prices really have started to come down so on the 1 hand that helps consumer sentiment you know just like in announcement from the FED would and so that that's favorable you know most of the jobs reports have been you know pretty good there's there there's some decent news that in theory should make people feel better, the flip side is inflation going down actually hurts retail sales because the stuff they sell is cheaper and so when, comping with low inflation against a previous year of higher inflation it actually can make your comps more challenging. So yeah it's a a complicated mix of stuff going on. Scot [26:35]Yeah does that if you boil all that down do you end up with a like a semi prediction like if your clients were to say to you give me a number what what do you spit out. Jason [26:45]Yeah I I'm saying buckle up I normal retail holiday growth is 4.3% and I think we're retail growth is going to be below 4 this year. Margins vary wildly depending on the category but I think average margins are going to be down across the board like there there are going to be some some outliers like the the interest rates have really been brutal on the Home Improvement guys right like if you know people can't get loans they're trapped in their house uh they don't buy new houses they spend a lot less in Home Depot and Lowe's and I think it's pretty likely Buy holiday that there's some, some movement in the in the interest rates which like at the at the very least is going to Goose. That housing market which is going to have a trickle on effect to the the Home Improvement guys so I I suspect they'll have. Better holiday than they have the last last couple of years but overall I I'm not optimistic, you know with the caveat that some some really good operators or some people with a really clever model like the Amazon Walmart Tik toks are are likely gonna you know have a really good run this holiday. Scot [27:51]Okay cool I will I do not have a prediction so I'll stick with yours. Jason [27:58]Usually that doesn't work out well for you but thanks. Scot [28:01]I have to go review our it's been so long I have to go look at our New Year's predictions because there's always start to be coming to fruition here soon. Jason [28:09]Yeah yeah yeah I've kept half an eye on some of them and there's there's going to be some some are going to come down to the wire some I I would have thought were safer but like you know surprisingly Amazon's pretty slow getting their their AI stuff out the door so we'll see. Scot [28:23]Yeah yeah there's the so this is a sidebar that we didn't really prepare for but did you see they tried to build their own and they kind of couldn't and they had to punt and they're using and. Not anthropology the 1 that starts know they're using anthropic. Jason [28:41]Anthropic that's right yes I did see that um. Scot [28:44]Yeah so that's got to be embarrassing I mean they invested like some bazillions of dollars. Jason [28:47]To I mean Amazon is kind of a not invented here company so like when they have to give up on the internal initiative and and rent someone else's Tech that that probably doesn't feel very good. Scot [28:59]Yeah I made the mistake of changing my action button on my phone to the chat GPT voice and then I've been I switched from Google in my search to perplexity so I've gotten used to asking these pretty complex questions and then I chat with Alexa and I feel like I'm talking to a kindergarten I'm like I'll even like ask it something you know play this song from this album by that artist and it loses itself halfway through half the time I feel like it's brain is melting and it's just like getting Dumber even though I know it's at a Baseline. Jason [29:29]Yeah no absolutely and and I would say it's even more acute in my household because I live with a 9-year-old um and and his default is that, it should know all of this stuff right and it asks he asks these really complicated questions and I like can't tell you how many times a day I have to say to my son she's not going to know that. Scot [29:50]Why dad why. Jason [29:54]But but for your point hand him like, you know he basically lives to play Roblox and watch you to Awful YouTube videos um and I can hand him chat gbt 40 and like it's about as entertaining as Roblox to him which is amazing. [30:27] The De Minimis Provision Scot [30:13]Gotcha does uh so you mentioned Teemu and all that jazz you have been tracking this rule that allows China to use our postal system to send stuff free what's going on with that puppy. Jason [30:27]Yeah so that is famously called the Dominus provision and it's this rule that got. Put into the US Customs Enforcement in like 1938 and the idea was hey if people are going to ship stuff in the United States like we want to charge tax on it we want to charge duties and we want to have rules about what kinds of things from a safety standpoint and from a a human interest standpoint can be imported into our country right and so so normally you ship something from another country it has to go through inspections it has to go through duties but gosh there's this new kind of peer-to-peer marketplaces and there's eBay sellers selling stuff in London to people in the US and we don't have enough Customs agents to inspect all these little, packages that Scott Wingo is helping people sell on the internet right so we're going to pass a rule called the Dominus provision which is if you ship something that has less than 5 dollars of value, you don't have to declare it you don't have to pay taxes on it it's not getting inspected by anyone and it was really just a labor savings for for the the Customs agents in like you know originally in 1939 when like it was it was an e-commerce it was mail order back then. Jason [31:44]But in like 1996 that that. 5 Dollar limit got bumped to Dollars and then in 2016 the hundred dollars got bumped to $800 and that really opened the floodgates that's when companies like shien and tiemoue figured out that hey instead of filling up a container of stuff, and shipping that container to the US and having to pay C duties on that container and having that container come over in a boat and take a long time to get here I can put each. Sale in an individual envelope, and Air Freight it to the US and it'll be under the 800 hour minimum so I won't have to pay duties on it I won't have to get it inspected. And you know these these factories in China, and these these marketplaces of these factories in China you know quickly built a huge business shipping individual packages to Americans right and so that's. Jason [32:48]You know today they they quote unquote exploit what we call the Dominus provision. To to ship all those packages right and so there's been a lot of complaints by people that have to compete with the, the those those you know cheap Imports and there's been a lot of saber rattling in Congress about how you know this is exploitation and all these things, and so last week Biden proposed, that he was going to issue an executive order that goods from China no longer qualify for the de minimis exception and so what that would mean is regardless of the value. Every single package that comes from China would have to go through customs would have to be inspected would have to meet all of our import requirements and so, you know some people are looking at that and saying oh man that's going to put a huge dent that's going to make shien goods and Tik Tok goods and tiemoue goods more expensive. And that might rebalance you know all of these trends that that you and I have just been been talking about. I regrettably am a little more skeptical that it's going to have a huge impact. Jason [33:58]Couple of other sort of interesting facts to know about this Dominus thing so first of all. Not going to shock anyone there's a lot of american-based companies that are now taking full advantage of this de minimis Clause right so. Jason [34:12]Not going to name names on the podcast but there's a lot of big sellers that are us-based that import containers of goods to Mexico and then put those, unpack those containers in Mexico and ship, the goods in individual packages from Mexico to the US so they get relatively fast delivery and they get to bypass all the duties and tariffs and you know that's that that's being done by by a number of like big famous, uh retailers and brands in the US so this kind of Dominus rule if it if it affects goods from China. I guess the first thing I would expect to see is Tik Tok and team who are going to start shipping containers to Mexico and importing them from another country right and so we're going to get kind of a a wacko, situation and if you if you Google section 321 which is the the. Part of the the Customs law that that that amendments provision is in section 321 shipping you're going to find that there's dozens of 3pls that specialize in in doing this for you so. I think it's going to be harder to knock down than 1 executive order but the bigger problem is. Tik Tok to and shien together are by some estimates sending about 900,000 packages a day. Jason [35:33]2 of the United States and so if you could magically wave a wand and say all 900,000 of those packages have to be inspected before they can come in. Think what that would do to the rate of goods flowing into the United States right like all everybody's Imports all the containers would get slowed down because, we have the same number of Customs agents we've always had an executive order can't hire a bunch of new Customs agents that would require new budget from Congress and that seems a lot less likely. So just like the reason the Dominus was there is we didn't have enough people to look at all these packages and that was when they're way less packages than there are now so. If we could somehow like do away with Dominus like would it, reduce the number of shipments probably but it still would be way more shipments it would still overwhelm well customs and would likely suddenly mean all those goods that are I guess holiday Goods for the most part are already on the way are already here but like, it it would probably have a dramatic effect on on q1 availability of goods because it would just gum Up Customs so while I I like the ex the spirit of trying to, update the laws to have a More Level Playing Field I kind of doubt in practice that 1 Executive Order is is going to fix this super complicated problem. Scot [36:51]Yeah now that we're through earning season did you hear anything else interesting in earnings that we were not able to do an Amazon's earning podcast there wasn't really anything super exciting other than. You know kind of more of the same I think you know the AWS did better than a lot of people thought which was good, and that everyone's really focused on that because of the AI stuff everyone's worried Amazon's going to lose share but they seem to be holding their own and then e-commerce and, the retails were were kind of in line so they didn't really slow or speed up, if you have any there was a little color around Prime day but nothing Earth shattering any other interesting things from earnings Seasons you saw. Jason [37:31]Yeah so so again like what you've you've kind of had 3 kinds of retailers right you had those 5 retailers that I mentioned only only 2 of them have like earnings calls in the US which is, Amazon and Walmart. Tik Tok is owned by bike dance which has has earnings calls in China and team was owned by poor which has earnings calls in China she and is trying to go public they're trying to list in in London so we haven't really seen any, any earnings calls from them so they they've had interesting things you've actually had T-Mobile stock took a pretty big hit after their earnings because they, reported great sales but by dance like lowered his guidance and part of it is I believe. In in response to how much share Tik Tok shops has captured so this is 1 of I think 1 of the most interesting stories of the year is. Jason [38:23]For probably as long as I've known you Scott like we've always talked about social commerce and people are always talking about like. Hey there's all this attention on Facebook are people going to be able to sell Goods on Facebook and just not even need e-commerce sites anymore and the narrative we've always had is man it's been tried dozens and dozens of times and it so far hasn't worked it seems like. Us consumers don't want to shop on their social platforms they want to interact with their friends on their social platforms and they want to shop on their shop platforms, but the 1 place in the world where this does seem to be working is China where, pendo Duo on Alibaba had been you know pretty successful 10-cent had been pretty successful with with social commerce and, that narrative is kind of over right now because Tik Tok shops is selling twenty billion dollars worth of stuff direct to Consumer and Tik Tok is. Really winning with consumers attention and especially with younger consumer consumers attention so you know. Jason [39:21]Gen Z Shoppers are are gen Z consumers are spending like an hour a day, on Tik Tok like the Olympics didn't do very well because nobody watches long form video on television anymore like they're all watching all this this short form content on Tik Tok and Tik Tok has been able to turn that attention, into sales so much so that you know the most successful e-commerce site on the planet while Amazon has has kind of said like hey we can't beat him so we're joining him right so Amazon announced, a deal with Tik Tok where you can run an ad on Tik Tok have direct Commerce in that ad and check out with your Amazon credentials and have your order fulfilled by Amazon Prime, in an ad on the Tik Tok platform so that is super interesting and Amazon has said and we're going to start shipping Goods direct from China just like Tik Tok and T-Mobile and shien so they've announced that they're going to, [40:27] TikTok's Impact on E-commerce Jason [40:19]direct to Consumer from factory model you know presumably to take advantage of some of this these same de de minimis. Jason [40:27]Provisions that we we talked about earlier so it's kind of interesting to see Amazon have to kind of match some of the, the offerings and play with some of these Frenemies you know historically you know that's that's gone the other way right like it was it was the old Legacy retards that were having to begrudgingly or brands that had to begrudgingly, moved to Amazon so interesting to see Amazon moving to Tik Tok so that was a super interesting. Jason [40:56]Sort of evolution this year I'm going to be really interested to see whether the, the Tik Tok thing you know it's mostly inexpensive impulse Goods at the moment and, you know can that get traction with staples will people buy more premium Goods we're starting to see more and more Brands I just spent some time with, Keurig which owns you know a bunch of the coffee brands and they're now doing direct Commerce on Tik Tok shops so it kind of went from all unbranded stuff on Chinese factories to, you know we're starting to see branded merchandise in the Tik Tok shop so, that super fascinating and then on a much more scale 1 other thing that really jumped out of me in the investor call after the Amazon earnings is the Amazon CFO talked about. Jason [41:43]The softness that people have seen in the drug channel right and so Walgreens write a CVS haven't been having a very good run lately and and he called out that like Amazon probably got a boost in sales because the the Walgreens so helpfully locked all the products behind cages and that like uh. You know was an impediment to sales at Walgreens and caused a lot of those sales to happen on Amazon instead and so you know if you remember last year a lot of retailers were claimed you know crying about shrinking complaining a lot about shoplifting you're not hearing a lot of conversation and earnings calls about shrink this year. And now you know Amazon saying like man we're we're a beneficiary of all the the eroded customer experiences, that that have resulted from an overreaction to shrink. Scot [42:34]Hu yeah I saw there's a CVS has a thing where you can actually tap with your phone I guess it has an NFC chip in it and so I imagine you have to have the CVS app and be logged in and then you can tap to get into that cage so at least you don't have to wait an hour for someone to wander by and and get you your your pack of gum. Jason [42:55]Yeah which I have mixed feelings about on the 1 hand I really admire The Innovation and that's a clever way to reduce the friction if you are going to put all these products and product jail which is what I call those those cases the, the pro you know the the argument would be, in CVS's case you have to be a member of their Affinity program and have their app on your phone in order to unlock the cases and so like in practice essentially what that means is you know all of America used to be able to shop at CVS now it's a members-only store right like now it's it's it's essentially Costco like you you have to be a member and give them all your data or you're going to have really inconvenient access to the razor blades and so you know, I could see that going either way like if if you compare it to Walgreens or Raid where you don't get that option like it might be looked at favorably but if you kind of look at it in big picture and say wait a minute you're going to lock up all this stuff and then you're going to make me be a member of your Affinity program in order to, to just be able to do what I've always done or at least since the 1920s when Piggly Wiggly opened up all this stuff. Jason [44:01]I you know I could imagine consumers not not reacting super well to that, I don't actually know if the CVS is is like Bluetooth or NFC but you did bring up another point. IOS 18 launch today and 1 of the cool features in iOS 18 is they have apple is for the first time opened up the NFC chip to third-party apps so. Under iOS 18 it would be possible for CVS to use that NFC chip to unlock the, the uh their their smart locks that would not have been possible in the previous operating system so that's a fun Commerce innovation, that came to uh Apple today, and I haven't seen any announcements yet but I'll I'll be surprised if we don't see some some cool evolution of some of the digital wallets to take advantage of that new feature as well. Scot [44:50]Pretty cool yeah so anything else before we wrap up that that you want to prep listeners for as we go into holiday. Jason [44:58]No no I feel like we covered a lot of ground again I'm I'm super sorry on my behalf and and Scott's behalf that we've been a little sporadic with the shows we really appreciate all the kind words people have, been sending our way and for sure I take it as a compliment that people are mad at me that we haven't been putting out shows so hopefully we'll we'll be able to find some good Windows throughout the rest of the year to get some, some shows out there I you know certainly want to do a recap after grocery shop coming up and we'll certainly want to cover holiday and maybe we can do some. Go old school and do some live shows from interrupt this year if we can get you to come to to New York Scott. Scot [45:35]Yeah yeah the we'll look at the weather and see how it goes. Jason [45:39]Yeah yeah yeah if if you're an investor in his fund use use that leverage to pressure him to do it. Scot [45:45]Hey that hurts. Jason [45:46]And if you're not an investor nurse fund why the heck not. Scot [45:49]Heck yeah between your fund.com come on aboard. Jason [45:52]Exactly well Scott that's probably going to be a great place to leave it if you're super ecstatic that we are back on the air feel free to jump on iTunes and give us that 5-star review we want to refreshen those up and. Until next time happy commercing.
ounder & CEO at Forceget, a leading expert in global supply chain and logistics, who reveals crucial strategies that Amazon sellers need to thrive in the fast-approaching holiday season. Burak unpacks how to save money on logistics and explore new marketplaces amidst the rise of new players like TikTok Shop Temu, and Shein. As a special treat, Burak shares his favorite restaurants in Istanbul, just in time for Bradley who is heading to the upcoming conference in the city. We break down the factors driving up international shipping prices, from reduced vessel schedules to container shortages and shifting market demands. High inflation and the growth of platforms such as Temu and AliExpress are reshaping e-commerce, creating new challenges for Amazon sellers. Learn how to navigate Amazon Global Logistics' practices, adapt to the new fees, and optimize your shipment strategy to stay competitive in today's volatile market. This episode is a goldmine of insights for those grappling with the costs of selling large items on Amazon. Discover why more sellers are turning to third-party logistics providers and exploring multi-channel selling to maximize profitability. We highlight the benefits of early inventory planning, the impact of Amazon's new delivery rules, and the critical need for flexible fulfillment options. Plus, find out how expanding into physical retail stores like Walmart can be a game-changer for your business. Tune in for expert strategies that can transform your logistics approach and boost your bottom line this Q4. In episode 593 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Burak discuss: 00:00 - Global Supply Chain Insights and Tips 04:11 - Impact of Rising International Shipping Prices 07:20 - Impact of New Amazon Fees 12:26 - Amazon Global Logistics vs Independent Freight Forwarder 16:38 - Maximizing Amazon Seller Profitability 17:31 - Expanding Sales Beyond Amazon 23:00 - Diversifying Sales Channels and Maximizing Profits 24:03 - Saving on FBA Fees and Freight 30:11 - Benefits of Investing in Your Brand's Website ► 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 one of the world's leading experts on global supply chain and logistics and he's going to talk about a wide variety of topics, like things Amazon sellers can keep in mind for Q4, how they can save money on logistics and expanding to other marketplaces. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Black Box by Helium 10 House is the largest database of Amazon products and keywords in the world. Outside of Amazon itself, we have over 2 billion products and many millions more keywords from different Amazon marketplaces, from USA to Australia to Germany and more. Use our powerful filters to search through this database for pockets of opportunity that you might want to get into with your first or next product to sell on Amazon. For more information, go to h10.me/blackbox. Don't forget you can save 10% off for life on Helium 10 by using our special code SSP10. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am 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 we got somebody who helped Serious Seller all over the world, I think the third, maybe fourth time he's been on the Podcast. Burak, how's it going? Man? I'm great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again. Burak: I'm great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again. Bradley Sutton: Are you in Miami right now? Burak: Yes, Miami Florida. Bradley Sutton: Okay, I'm wearing my Miami hat. This is, like, I think, an older minor league baseball team or something. That's why I'm wearing my Miami hat today in your honor. But you're originally from Turkey. Did you know that I'm going to Istanbul in a little bit? Burak: I think you mentioned. Yes, I'm very excited. I wish I was there to take you to the best food restaurants, you know. Bradley Sutton: You'll have to tell me what the good ones are. Are there any in Istanbul that for sure I need to go to so I can maybe even by myself I can go? Burak: I think you should definitely visit Galata Port. It's a new place. It's right by the water. There are some good Kebab places and also definitely Baklava. You should try Gülolu, the best Baklava in the world. Bradley Sutton: Perfect, all right, I'm going to those places. By the way, I'm not sure when this podcast is going to go out, but if anybody is in Turkey and is down to meet me on September the 4th or 5th and you want to go with me to one of these restaurants or take me there. Conference I'm speaking at, you can get a link to it at h10.me forward slash Istanbul. H10.me forward slash Istanbul. It will forward you to the conference I'll be speaking at. So, I'd love to do like a little mini-Helium 10 meetup over there. Now. We're not here just to talk about Turkish food and Turkish delights. I'm sure we could spend a whole episode. You know as much as I love food to talk about that. But you know you're one of the leading experts in the world about, you know shipping and logistics and things like that, so let's just hop right into it. You know the last time you were on this show was episode 457. So, by the way, if anybody wants to get Burak's more of his backstory, actually go back to the very first episode he was on, which is episode 324. You can learn about his origin story. And then 457, we talked about some other topics, but what was 457? I think it was around, like you know, May, June of last year. So obviously you know things in logistics change month by month, even. What are some of the biggest changes that sellers should be aware of, just in general? First of all, in the logistics world, whether it's about pricing or taxes, what can you tell us has been different since the last time you were on the show? Burak: You know you're right, things sometimes change its daily base and you know, when we started ForceGet, it was probably five years ago, we were mainly focusing on international shipping, but we became more like a supply chain. Now there has been a lot of changes within our company as well as in the world. In the industry, with the e-commerce, especially with the Amazon FBA plus, the new players are coming into the market TikTok, Teemu, Shein and Shopify. According to the reports, they have lost some revenue. However, a lot of companies they're trying to enter omnichannel. That's something that I mentioned before we start recording. When it comes to international shipping, actually, international shipping prices increased. Compared to six months ago. I think we have seen the lowest shipping prices last probably a few decades. Full container price was almost uh 1500 dollars from China to Los Angeles. Now it went back up to seven, eight thousand dollars. Now we see the range of five thousand, five thousand, five hundred dollars, which is, I think, a hell to range for both um shipping lines, freight forwarders, as well as for f the um e-commerce and amazon sellers. Bradley Sutton: Prices went down but then prices have been going up again for different things. Obviously, there was that thing that happened last year in the Red Sea and things like that. So obviously there's always random things COVID, or there's a container ship blocking the whole Suez Canal or something like that. Those would obviously have an effect. But the recent price increases in shipping, like what is that attributed to? Because, like, is that because of the, the war that that's happening, or is it something else? Burak: Actually, this was uh sort of uh happened, I would say, inorganically. Uh, one of the reasons was the shipping lines. Uh, you know all these worldwide companies like Hyundai, Zim, Evergreen. I'm sure everybody's familiar with that big logo block less US channel they have canceled a lot of scheduled vessels because maybe 30%, 40% of the container vessel was not 100% fulfilled, vessel was not 100 percent fulfilled. Basically, they were losing a lot of money so they decided to roll over one of the week's shipping schedules to the next one. So basically, there was not enough demand but there is a lot of supply. Obviously then the prices start going down, basically in order to save money on the fuel, maybe the crew, maybe the insurance. So, they started to cancel a lot of scheduled vessels and obviously this caused a big chaos in the market. A lot of containers went, uh from China to other places like Europe, us did not come back. Then we start having container shortage. So, this is something uh started organically. Uh, there was not enough demand in the marketplaces, like in the US, like North America, USA, Canada, because of, I would say maybe, high inflation, or companies like Teemu, AliExpress start to do very cheap price Drop shipping from China, which is something interesting that we maybe talk later. Teemu is start entering US market. Start working with local 3PLs to acquire Amazon sellers to start selling the ones which are qualified OEC. Start selling on Teemu so they will start doing local deliveries with a shorter period of delivery times, which I believe they will try to attract Surplus. What is Surplus? The product that already has been sitting in the US for a long time. Amazon sellers or their wholesalers they cannot sell it, so they need to liquidate the product. So, Teemu was basically saying that hey, use our platform to liquidate them, not on the retail price, but heavily discounted price, maybe 60%, 70%. So, I think all these things happening last two years after COVID, when we saw a very big peak when the Amazon sellers were making really good money but then the sales dropped a couple of different reasons, and I see that it's the same thing is affecting the international shipping prices and fulfillment prices. Things are really very different right now compared to even six months ago. Bradley Sutton: Obviously, this has been the year of crazy Amazon, new fees and new announcements, you know, be it inbound, placement fees, and so I want to talk just a little bit about that. First, like in your you know you're handling both sides, you know, be it. You know shipping side, be it logistics side, warehousing and things. What have you seen as far as how this has changed, what Amazon sellers are doing, like, for example, me, I've got my own warehouse, but still now I'm being very mindful of how many you know, like, how many, you know what kind of boxes I'm putting in. Like, like, maybe before I was only trying to do you know a certain number of shipments, but now I'm like, no, I got to have minimum five, you know of one box or, oh, I need to try and increase a 15 because I got to avoid that placement fee. But what have you noticed as far as your clients? How are their practices different because of some of these new fees? Burak: Man. It's a really, really long topic actually when it comes to make it shorter version. When Amazon came up with this, the idea was start charging sellers for all those distribution fees that they need to ship to many small warehouses across fulfillment centers across the nation so the end user can receive the products not in two days but one day, even maybe sometimes half day. But we have seen a lot of case studies actually our customers. They created five shipments and when, let's say, 100 cartons, Amazon asked you to ship 50 cartons to Texas, we saw that the final delivery address Amazon distributed these products were still Pennsylvania or Florida or still North Carolina maybe. So what? Amazon was actually telling sellers in theory hey, split the shipments to five locations because that's going to be closer to the buyers. That was not really the case. Yeah, I guess they're still working on a lot of Optimization, uh structure. Obviously, this was like a new project for them. But there has been a lot of confusing for sellers. A lot of seller's kind of felt like they have to use Amazon Global Logistics to avoid those uh placement. But then when they tried to book the shipment, amazon Global Logistics did not arrange to pick up. Three weeks, four weeks' time Then they have charged people wrong HDS code. So, a lot of sellers they paid very high tax and duty instead of some other lower charges that they're supposed to receive. I mean, obviously we talked to a lot of people, some people they have good experience with Amazon Global Logistics, some people have bad experiences. But in my opinion that was not really fair for Amazon to tell people, hey, if you use AGL, then you will not be paying any of these fees, but then if you don't, then you have to pay for it. I guess I understand they have invested billions of dollars into this fulfillment center supply chain logistics, so they want to leverage the power of their seller the seller power, I would say. But I think I would not put all my eggs in the same basket, so I would not just use AGL and AWD, you know AWD also a new program Amazon has launched like two years. But since they're pushing a lot harder right now and I think the fourth quarter will be very tough uh test for Amazon with all the check-in processes, transferring uh products between the fulfillment centers and making sure that they become available and one of my I believe most of our customers now start looking into FBM options. Number one very high FBA fees. Number two all these delays with AGL, AWD, fulfillment center transfers. Obviously, amazon is going to prioritize. The products are already sitting in the fulfillment centers. They will prioritize to ship the products first, not receive the products first. So that always has been the case. So, if you ask my opinion, it's going to be a tough year for a lot of sellers to get and understand these FBA fees. But also try to be profitable. You know that's something that we've been talking about. It doesn't make sense anymore to say, hey, I'm seven, eight figure seller, but how much profit I'm making? So, I believe to make plan B, plan C is very, very important, Bradley. Bradley Sutton: Me having my own warehouse and obviously I can repack things and I do smaller quantities. I can easily make sure to send to four or five locations to get that, you know to skip the low inventory fee. But if I'm sending in containers and before I would send to Amazon directly, I pretty much have no option, right, like I am going to get that low inventory fee no matter what unless I send to a 3PL first and they divide it. Or am I thinking of that wrong, since I don't send containers directly to Amazon? I don't know, but is that correct? Like pretty much anybody who's sending full containers or containers that can't be broken up or shipments that can't be broken up, they're forced into this fee. Burak: Yes, kind of. But we have done some case studies to see what really makes sense, if it makes sense to ship, because Amazon Global Logistics is also not charging sellers the market fees. They're charging actually higher, a lot higher. So, if you're looking at door-to-door shipment from China to one of the most popular Amazon FBA fulfillment centers, let's say ONT8, which is in Los Angeles, California Riverside, if you use us it's going to cost $6,000, but with Amazon Global Logistics they're charging $8,000 or $9,000. So basically, they're kind of charging a little higher so that they can use probably that money to distribute the products within three to four different locations. And if it is LCL, then less than full container. Yes, you can actually choose to use your own freight forwarder and price is very similar. But one of the things that we realized; their FC transfer times a lot longer than using an independent Freight Forwarder. So, which means if you ship with AGL it will maybe be fully delivered to Amazon, fully check in, all received 90 days, versus you use your own Freight Forwarder, probably it will be delivered and checked in 45 to 50 days. So, does it matter for you? Maybe it doesn't really matter because the sales are not that fast right now, unfortunately, I don't see really much Amazon sales recently saying that, hey, I'm running out of inventory all the time. I hope it's a good problem. I hope some of the people having that problem. But majority of the people are saying, hey, I'm not in the rush, so I'm okay to take these fees. But then you should really understand the cost of actually paying everything in advance and your cash tied up to. If you're using a loan, if you're not using just cash, if you're, you know, withdrawing some money with, I don't know, amazon financing or third-party money, you get funding. So, you need to understand you may be paying monthly two to 3% because these are short term funds, so probably charging 20, 25% annually. So, every month you're paying two to 3% something that you're not selling. So that's basically three percent minus from your actual margin. So, there are so many things to consider. You know trying to explain as basic as possible. So definitely understand and see what is better for your business. And if I were a big seller, I wouldn't send all of my inventory FBA. I would keep some of my inventory in a 3pl close to amazon and send it in a you know, smaller batches and more frequent. This way I'm not going to be paying high inventory fees, the storage fees and, more importantly, I can test other marketplaces. You know, I can try to drive traffic. I will do FBM, I can do Tic Tac Shops or maybe even Walmart. So, it will give you more flexibility instead of sending everything to Amazon, FBA. And if one day somehow your listings get suspended or hijacked or your sales is down for some reason, then you'll be like, oh my God, what I'm going to do versus you have some inventory in a different location and you can start considering some other options. Bradley Sutton: We talked about new inventory fees that Amazon sellers are having to do, and then the question about whether to go AGL and things like that. But you also mentioned Fulfilled by Merchant. Now, for me, I do all of my products both. I have two SKUs for every product. I have FBM and FBA, and I always tell people to do that. Not necessarily anything to do with logistics, but just because there's still some people out there who don't have Amazon Prime and then, especially if we're talking about products that are priced below $25, they actually prime prices them out of it. So, like, if you're only FBA and you've got like a $24 product, when that person checks out, it's going to add like $8 shipping and now that $24 product became $32 product and you just lost that sale, probably you know, to somebody else and then so for, for that person, I can. I always have a skew. The buy box is actually the FBM skew, because it's only I'll do 2497, you know, with shipping, free shipping, I can, I can fulfill, uh, for almost the same as Amazon, considering that I don't have to pay, I don't have to send it to Amazon. I have to send Amazon pick and pack fees, but that's my reason for doing FBM, but are you saying that you're actually seeing some sellers go to Seller Fulfilled Prime and not do FBA, or you're just saying they're just forgetting Prime at all and having a listing that's strictly FBM? Burak: For larger items. We see sometimes only FBM, because some people say that, hey, Amazon is taking 50% to 55% of my sales price for large items. FBA is extremely expensive and I feel like a lot of people, a lot of buyers, are more price sensitive recently compared to two years ago. That's real. Most of our customers, they have both FBA and FBM. They do most likely what you do. Because you're right. I mean, some people they don't need the product in one day, they want to do the cheaper version. So why wouldn't you add an additional strategy to your listing? And it's your own money versus paying Amazon and 3pl will handle that a lot cheaper and then, if it is not a big item, your shipping price is not going to be that expensive. You can still buy the shipping within Amazon, which is great. You don't have to have your own ups FedEx account. But majority of our customers, they want to test new marketplaces. I know that our some of our customer they're investing into their own websites and when they get the order, they drive traffic, they convert. Then it's much easier to launch a product with your own email marketing, like with your own email database which you've been talking about. You know how to launch a product, like all the honeymoon period, amazon changing the algorithms, a lot of our customers also they have problem with launching a brand-new product on Amazon. It's not that easy as it used to be like a few years ago. So, people are testing different marketplaces and different channels to see if they can get a better ROI. Obviously, amazon still has. It's very interesting actually, when we see the Amazon's quarterly earnings report, we see that Amazon is keep growing their profit, number of buyers, their revenue. We see a big part of it from the seller's fees revenue. But there is a fact that Amazon does not want to leave the market share to other players that aggressively come in, especially out of China. We see that a new Amazon program is going to roll out which is Dropshipping from China. I don't think that's a great idea, but I think just Amazon wants to keep it. Bradley Sutton: I don't think any Amazon seller is based in the US thinks that's a good idea. Burak: Not only Amazon sellers, but I think it's also not fair for other traditional importers who have, like a warehouse people in here. They're paying tax and payrolls. That's my personal opinion. Obviously, it's not a yes or no, white or black topic. A lot of people have their own opinion. But eventually I know that we have some importers, like traditional wholesalers, that their business is down 30 to 40% just because a lot of people buying products directly from China and those companies. Of course they have a cheaper price. They don't have local expenses, all these utility fees, the warehouse rents and et cetera. We all know that it all adds up. So, I think it's going to be a tough uh year for next year for a lot of amazon sellers. That's why I think it's a really good idea to start considering uh different strategies and different plans for uh increasing the revenue and profitability.. Bradley Sutton: We're heading close to Q4. Um, amazon's made different announcements as far as hey, have your inventory in by. I think one of them was like, if you want it for Black Friday, you got to have it in by October 19th, or something like that. They had said what are your predictions as far as like? Is this year the same thing as every year, where Amazon has a deadline and you got to kind of stick to it, or do you notice anything from some of these announcements where you think there's something that sellers need to be aware of going into this year's Q4? Burak: I think last week they announced a new Q4's delivery structure and delivery rules. Some of them are the restriction with FBA delivery appointments, reduction in capacity limits, holiday peak fulfillment fees. So, all these are basically saying that the amazon sellers uh, need to plan better when they're going to send their inventory, how they're going to send it. And you know the thing. What amazon wants you to do is actually send your inventory as early as possible. So, this way they can charge you a lot higher for the fourth quarter, with the maximum amount of, you know, the low inventory fee. Because even if you don't ship it to Amazon, you still pay in that inventory because inventory fee, because Amazon thinks that, hey, I, I allocate some space for you according to your sales history. Now, whether you ship it or not, I'm going to still charge you that. So, we have a lot of sellers. We I think they still don't know exactly how this fee structure is going to work for seasonal products. We had a client they shipped like four or five containers for Christmas lights, Christmas tree decorations. So, they don't have enough space right now in Amazon FBA. So, I think that is a problem for sellers, like they sell seasonal products. So basically, like what amazon is saying versus what they are doing. I think it's a little bit opposite, um, because you cannot really ship as much as you want, but then amazon is saying, hey, send me all this product. I want to charge you more, but same time you cannot do it. So, I don't think there's going to be a big solution for these people. The best to do is create an FPM auction to make sure you don't get charged all these high FBA fees, especially for the long term, and, God forbid if you miss that season. You can't sell out everything and you have some inventory left over. In January you definitely need to take the product back, otherwise your fees are going to be very high. Bradley Sutton: In the past you've talked about ways that, without even doing anything, major Amazon sellers can possibly save money, like they're probably doing something wrong or not taking into consideration the right tariff and or you know they're letting their freight forward or take advantage of them in a certain way. Can you remind everybody out there what are some easy steps they can take to save money? You know, without having to completely overhaul their entire system of where they could save a little bit of money potentially here or there, just by maybe doing a little mini audit on their SOPs or something like that. Burak: You know, I really think that they should go download their FBA fees and to see how much they're spending on their storage. That's one thing that Amazon is going to hit everyone really bad this year, especially in the fourth quarter. And what is the average age of their inventory stays in the FBA before they sell out. I know that there are a lot of people their sales decrease. I think one of the best ways to do is have a 3PL option. Ship everything to your 3PL and then ship it frequently to Amazon FBA. Because, yes, you will be maybe paying that placement fees but at the same time you can manage your listings somehow. We have seen last year, last quarter, that a lot of shipments delivered to Amazon but Amazon took way longer to check them in. So, we had some clients that they ship product to Amazon FBA. It's delivered but Amazon never checked in. They waited the busy season to pass. So that was pretty bad for some people and they were selling like toys or I remember we had a client that we shipped for them puzzles but Amazon checked them in like very late, so they had to like sell it for a cheaper price. So, you should plan it. Send in your inventory as early as possible on FBA and keep constantly shipping to Amazon FBA to avoid the fees. I think the big saving this year can be from the FBA fees. Obviously check the Freight prices. Compare AGL with other Freight Forwarders to deliver the products instead of one place to five locations. That's a good way to do it. HTS code is a great way to check that. But I think this year's big jackpot is going to be FBA fees. Bradley Sutton: We've been going over some beginner strategies, some advanced strategy. But if some of this is a little bit over your head or you want to just get a nice overview for you or your team about logistics and shipping, Burak actually is in Freedom Ticket 4.0. So, if you guys want to have your team go over some of the basics and some advanced stuff, to go into your Freedom Ticket inside of Helium 10 and then click on the week or the group of modules called supply chain and logistics, and then you're going to see some different modules here that Burak has done. That will help you with that. So, make sure anybody who's a Helium 10 member make sure to go into Freedom Ticket and be able to see it. Do you remember some of the other things that you talked about in that module? Just to let people know what to expect in there. Burak: I think yes. One of the things that relates to FBA fees are the product size, whether you can make your product smaller so Amazon will charge you smaller tiers. I know that we used to do some free audits for the FBA fees that what we realize is actually customer products are a different size than what Amazon is actually charging them, so Amazon is supposed to charge them lower. So definitely, order your competitor's product to see their packaging so that you can redesign your, maybe package. This is a little bit of my background. I lived in China eight years. I've done a lot of sourcing so I'm kind of familiar with like how to make things like lighter, maybe smaller, maybe if you're paying too high for the duty and tax because your product has a different material. So definitely I would say, order your competitor's product to see the size of the box. Maybe they fold the product, they maybe made it smaller. It's definitely helping to see what are the product sizes, mustard cartons and maybe even labeling and maybe inserting some special cards from the competitors. Obviously not asking five-star reviews, but you could see some other maybe conversions that they are doing, maybe because you have other products in the same category. You don't know whether your customers have them. You know they love your brand or not, but you can actually let them know that you're selling some other products that can be related. So, I think it's a good idea to order a competitor's product to see if you can save anything on the size of the product which can save you money on shipping fulfillment in the 3PL as well as Amazon FBA. So, it could be up to 10% to 15%, which is going to be, when you look at it, annually. It's a huge saving. Bradley Sutton: What else do you have for us? We've got sellers of all levels here and I think nowadays maybe people are thinking about some of these newer marketplaces, like TikTok Shop, which now you know, has fulfilled by TikTok and then, and then Teemu is now trying to recruit, you know, US sellers. You know I'm trying to get on the Teemu platform just to just to see how the process goes myself. But what are some things you think you know? When we think multi-channel, you know, gone are the days where people can just say, hey, I'm only going to sell on Amazon, and then maybe there are some days where it's like, oh no, I only need to worry about Amazon and Walmart. So, 2024, 2025, we live. I think it's the year of the many marketplaces trying to make a name for themselves. What are some trends that you're seeing? What is some advice you have for other sellers? Burak: You know? I think the Teemu strategy is very different than Walmart. If I want my products because, if you think about it, Walmart has thousands of stores across US and Canada and even in Mexico. Now they're trying to acquire sellers and they have been very active. You know we go to a lot of different events Prosper Show and others. You see that all the time Walmart's booth there. They're trying to acquire D2C brand events like a shop talk and stuff. What I see is, if you want your products to be in a long term, maybe one day a big brand acquires you because you're in a niche category. Let's say you're in a cosmetic, you're doing something maybe just special for lips or for some special type of skin. I don't know. You could be acquired by a big brand if your product can be on the shelves like physical stores. We have so many customers in the past that they started only online but then they were invited to as a test run to start selling on the retailers. Like you know, it could be Dick's Sports, it could be Walmart. If you're in a sports category, you know those retailers are trying to get some good brands on their shelves which can add a lot of value to your branding and people who see you actually on the physical store. They can go and buy online, because I personally love to compare the price in a retailer versus online. It could be Target. It helps you to find and give your brand a big shout out and people can go and find you and then wholesalers can find you. Maybe, like a retailer chain can find you. So, there's actually both options. I think you're right. I mean, there's so many options. It makes really sense to enter all of these platforms to have reached out the maximum amount of audience. But obviously you need to understand how to manage that inventory because different market channels require maybe different UPC codes, which one of our customers? They had an issue. What the UPC codes the factory is putting actually has not been scanned by the retailer. So, the UPC codes was not valid, so they had to bring the products back, relabel it. Uh, baby steps are good if you're a brand-new seller. Amazon FBA is very good way to start, but maybe it's not that profitable as it, as it used to be. Definitely look for the fpm options and then whatever makes more sense. But I would definitely keep one more sales channel, one more marketplace. Teemu is not the great one yet, because either you need to have a special invite, we have so many people actually asking about the Teemu. Either you have to be invited by a friend or referred by Teemu team directly so you can actually send an email to Temu. But I think in the long term it will be great to invest into your own website because you can easily launch different products. Great to invest into your own website uh, you can do it on Shopify and you know you will have definitely better margins in that and some people they have their own website. They even never want to go to Amazon because they want. They don't want to compete on the price. You, we all know that how amazon works, so it's really a long-term plan. I don't think anyone can really get rich that fast anymore through the e-commerce. I think it's all about branded strategy and it makes more sense to invest in your own website and Shopify. Obviously, amazon has the traffic. It's very hard to bring in traffic. It's not hard but it's going to be expensive in that converting. But, I know that Shopify is working a lot on how to convert more on the products they left in the cart how they can have better conversion. It's very interesting. Recently, I see that installment options pops up on many websites If you're selling an expensive product and I was going to buy a kayak for summertime, it was like $800. I'm like I don't want to pay $800. Then it pops up, hey, you want to pay six times. I was like, okay, but I still didn't buy. But it made me think about okay, that's doable, Bradley Sutton: You're a little bit more hesitant. Burak: Yes, exactly, you're a little bit more on the fence, exactly so looking for different channels definitely is a good strategy and eventually it's your own business. You know we have seen a lot of changes with Amazon algorithm. Maybe this new AI tool that Amazon is offering actually messes up a lot of people's listings. Have you heard? Have you tried using Amazon AI? Did it affect your ranking on keywords? Bradley Sutton: No, I'm not touching that, I don't want. I opted out of that immediately because I don't want Amazon doing anything, because the Amazon AI is nowhere near where it needs to be. All right. So, before we get into your last strategy of the day, just heads up for everybody out there. You want to get some more information about what ForceGet does. Go to h10.me forward slash ForceGet. That'll take you right to our hub website where you can open up a contact with them right there. How else, other than your website, can people find you on the interwebs like Instagram or LinkedIn you want to promote at all? Burak: Yes, absolutely, and they can subscribe to my YouTube channel. We are recording a lot of real case studies and scenarios, what's going on and we're going to a lot of different in-person events. We will be in Amazon Accelerate in Seattle. We will go to other events throughout the year so they can come and meet us in person at most of the events, as well as find us on forescan.com. Bradley Sutton: All right, what's your last 30 or 60 second tip for our sellers out there? Burak: Be careful about your lending costs. That's something that a lot of people they don't really pay attention. Profit is everything. Bad profit means bad cashflow and bad cash flow means that you can't be sustainable in your business. So, understand your lending cost. Look at your FBA fees, how you can save and what is the strategy. Are you paying too much for your international shipments? Are you paying too much for FBA fees? Are you paying too much for long-term storage? So, find out where you can make optimizations, where you can make savings. I believe this business is open to different optimizations and every different aspect you get closer you can find 1% or 2% saving, and if you find three to five different ways of savings, you can save up to 10%. So, talk to the experts. Don't forget to subscribe to the Helium 10's newsletter. I see a lot of interesting topics actually about that. So being part of the community, it's the most important things and whenever you have a problem, ask the right people, get the right answer to fix your problems. Bradley Sutton: Awesome. Well, Burak, thank you for coming on here. I'll let you know what I think about those restaurants you told me and then I'll see you at Amazon Accelerate in Seattle and hopefully some other sellers that are listening to this episode, and we'll definitely have you back on in 2025 and let's see what else has changed in the world of shipping logistics. Burak: Looking forward to see you, Bradley.
We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. YouTube takes on TikTok Shop with expanded Shopify partnership https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/20/youtube-takes-on-tiktok-shop-with-expanded-shopify-partnership/ Walmart adds a Burger King benefit to its membership program https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/22/walmart-plus-burger-king-benefit.html Shein sues Temu over copyright infringement, alleges rival loses money on every sale https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/20/shein-sues-temu-over-copyright-infringement-trade-secret-theft.html FTC finally makes a sneaky online shopping tactic illegal https://www.thestreet.com/retail/ftc-online-shopping-tactic Temu's Semi-Hosted Japan Site Will Officially Launch on August 27 https://pandaily.com/temus-semi-hosted-japan-site-will-officially-launch-on-august-27/ 50% of Amazon Prime, Walmart+ Subscribers Step Up During Sales Events https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2024/50-of-amazon-prime-walmart-subscribers-step-up-during-sales-events/ How Amazon supports Black-owned businesses during Black Business Month—and all year long https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/small-business/how-amazon-supports-black-owned-businesses-during-black-business-month-and-all-year-long Make sure to watch this week's training tip in our Helium 10 Alerts tool, this is something that could potentially save you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars. That's how valuable this tip is. Lastly, don't miss our insights into Helium 10 Adtomic's new features for creating custom bid rules in PPC management, designed to optimize your campaigns effectively. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:50 - Big Amazon Coupon Change 03:05 - Youtube x Shopify 04:47 - FBA Inventory Deadlines 05:36 - Walmart x Burger King 07:07 - International Return Update 08:08 - Temu vs. Shein 09:48 - FTC vs Fake Reviews 12:48 - Temu Japan 13:11 - Prime / Walmart+ Stats 14:33 - Black Business Accelerator 15:10 - Subscribe to Helium 10's YouTube Channel 15:40 - Training Tip: An Alert That Can Save you $1000's 19:07 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts ► 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: Amazon has made a big update to coupons and promotions that could save you from some expensive mistakes. YouTube's trying to pull off some TikTok shop type moves. Walmart's giving away free Burger King Whoppers these stories and more on this edition of the Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the news stories and goings on in the Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new Helium 10 features have and also give you a training tip of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. I've got a number of articles this week, so let's go ahead and hop right into it. First one coming up here is actually I was adding a coupon to this new product launch I'm doing of a coffin letter board and look what we found here on the coupon page. Anybody else notice this? In your browsers when you're trying to do coupons, there's this section that says stack promotions and it says do you want to allow this coupon to stack with percentage off or buy one get one. Promotions yes, allow stacking or no? Allow stacking. Now, this is pretty important because, as you know, in the past, like promotions stack with coupons and vice versa, meaning like let's say you had like a 20% off coupon on your page but then you had a 20% off promotion, that customer who's savvy could pick up both of those and apply it to your order, get 40% off right. But now, finally, you have the option to have it not stack If you're creating the coupon. Next, in the new help document about this, under stack promotions, amazon says here, based on your input provided on if you are going to stack or not, either one or both of the coupons or percentage off or buy one get one, free promotions will apply at checkout. So, for example, gave an example here it says let's say that you create a coupon 10% off and a percentage off coupon 20% off on the same ASIN, same duration. Now, if you say yes, I'm going to allow stacking during this promotion creation. Now both of these promotions are going to stack and the customer is going to get now 30% off at the checkout, right, the 10% plus the 30%. But if you select. No, I do not want them to stack. These promotions won't stack, and so the customer maybe they might see it and try and clip the coupon and do the promotion, but it says they're only going to get the higher benefit of the two promotions. So, like in that case there was a 20% off coupon and a 10% off promotion, they would get the 20% off coupon. So that's something that's pretty cool. I highly recommend doing that, for you know, usually people don't want to stack, and then when people have had stuff stacked, it's by accident and they end up losing a lot of money that they didn't realize. So if you're one of those who do not want your promotion stack, make sure to always click that no stacking. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from TechCrunch and it's entitled YouTube takes on TikTok shop with expanded Shopify partnership. All right, we talked a little bit about this, oh, I want to say, about four or five months ago, but now it looks like YouTube is ramping up efforts. It says, as TikTok shop is gaining traction, YouTube is expanding its partnership with Shopify to onboard more brands for its YouTube shopping affiliate program. All right, so now creators and influencers are going to get access to 1000s of new brands. It wasn't, like you know, before. We're just like 10 brands or something like very small number of brands you could actually promote for in a shopping experience on YouTube. Now it says 1000s of new brands are going to allow those products to be tagged in shopping videos. So you know, generating a lot of affiliate commission for these YouTube creators. Now if you're wondering, hey, what is the potential of this, well, YouTube actually had a pretty interesting stat. They said that people watched more than 30 billion hours of shopping related videos on YouTube last year and that the platform saw a 25% increase in watch time for videos that help people shop. And so you know, traditionally, the only option is okay, here I'm an influencer, I'm going to make a video about something and I'm directing people to Amazon, or I'm directing people to TikTok, or I'm directing people to Walmart or whatever, right. But now the YouTube influencers are going to be able to create content and then, right in there, link directly to Shopify products and people are going to be able to buy directly from YouTube or in the YouTube platform. And then these influencers are going to be incentivized because they now can get affiliate commission on YouTube. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from your Seller Central dashboard. Just a reminder of some important dates coming up. All right, prime big deal days is coming up in October. So now they announced that, hey, the last day that you can get inventory in to make sure that you have the Prime Ready badge is going to be September 13th. And then they reiterated again we already announced this a couple weeks ago Black Friday and Cyber Monday you've got to have your product in by October 19th. One other update they gave was hey, if you are using, you are going to get 25% off the base rate for e-storage fees and 15% off the base rate for AWD processing and transportation fees. All right, so this is going to be a limited time offer. If you're using a, amazon is giving putting some money back in your pocket for a change. What, what? What a novel concept. That is all right. Usually we're used to the uh, the other, the other side of things, right. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from CNBC. This one gave me a chuckle here. You know we've talked before about how amazon will come out with something. Wal. Walmart will come out with something. Vice versa, Walmart is now a pioneer in doing something new. Now we've always talked about the benefits that Amazon Prime starts adding, the benefits that Walmart Plus starts adding et cetera. Because the more Walmart Plus, the more Amazon Prime members, the better it is for us sellers, right, the more likely it is that we're gonna get sales increase. Well, now Walmart is doing a first. They're the first ones in this. They're adding Burger King as a benefit to the Walmart plus program. All right. So now, if you've got Walmart plus, you're going to be able to save 25% off of any Burger King order made through the Burger King app. All right. In addition, members will also be eligible for a free Whopper every three months, starting in September with a purchase. All right. Bradley Sutton: So first of all, you know it's painful to do this article. I've been on a crazy diet this week before I go traveling, lost already like eight pounds, and I'm looking at these hamburgers and fries. I'm like, oh my goodness, my stomach is growling. But anyways, I digress. What I really want to see now is all right, amazon, the ball's in your court. Let's see you make a similar deal with, like a fat burger in and out, Jollibee, something like that, and I'm going to be there. I need something for my Burger King. I'm not too much of a fan of, so. So, amazon, please hook us up with some good fast food and I am there to take advantage of it. Bradley Sutton: Next article is going back to the amazon dashboard. It's an update just on international returns, all right. So seller fulfilled international returns is going to be updated starting September 16th. So if you're an international seller who's selling in the US but you're overseas and you don't have a default US return address in Seller Central, now you are going to be required to issue a return less refund or provide a prepaid international return shipping label. So this is kind of interesting. This might seem like one of those articles. Maybe you just completely skip over, but read this in detail. But read this in detail. You know, those of you who are overseas, check do you have a U S return? Because, trust me, guys, that's going to get expensive. All of a sudden, you know your customers start getting you know returned without even you being consulted, and you don't realize it. Or you have to go pay for some international shipping which is crazy expensive, all right. So take a look at this article in your dashboard, see if that affects you, those of you overseas sellers out there. Bradley Sutton: Let's go back now to CNBC for another article, and this one's entitled Sheen sues Temu over copyright infringement, alleges rival losses money on every sale. So you know people are talking about oh man, Temu is trying to be like Amazon, you know, because they're trying to recruit US sellers and fulfilled in the US. You know, amazon trying to be like Temu. You know, trying to get Chinese sellers to ship directly with subsidized shipping. And then you know they're scared of each other for taking market share. You know, stories like that here and there have been coming up. But now it's Temu versus Sheen. All right, so this is something that was actually filed in the US. All right, this isn't some internal battle going on in the streets of Beijing or something right in China. This is happening in the US, in Washington DC. Bradley Sutton: A civil complaint where Sheen accused Temu of stealing its designs and also that an employee stole confidential trade secrets. They also say, hey, Temu is losing money on every single sale it makes and it uses trademark infringement to make up for the losses. This, this fight, you know, talks about a lot of different things, but it's kind of interesting because it kind of paints a picture of how sheen and Temu are making money and it makes you wonder, like, is that model sustainable? Like, if they are losing money in every order. How in the world can they keep that going, right? So, if you're interested in in these other marketplaces, I'm trying to get my Temu account set up just to test it out. I'm having a heck of a time getting approved on there, so so I'm still working on. I still want to be able to give you guys an update about Temu. So we'll see how it goes and let's see what if this lawsuit, ever you know, results in anything. Bradley Sutton: Next up article from the Street. It's entitled FTC finally makes a sneaky online shopping tactic illegal. Now, this article kind of confused me a little bit. I need to do some more research on this, because I'm not 100% sure that this article is going to happen the way it thinks it's going to happen. Okay, but this is a step in the right direction, all right. The article starts out hey, if you've ever read an online review for a product and thought, hey, this is too good to be true, you're probably right. It says that 30 or 40% of online reviews have been fake. But then here we go. But that will soon change, as the era of fake online reviews is about to come to an abrupt end. No, guys, I'm sorry. I don't care what FTC or Amazon or anybody, there is no way that you're going to clean up bad reviews, you know, like super fast, all right, it's just I'm sorry it's not going to happen. But again, I'm not trying to badmouth this. This is a move in the right direction, all right. Bradley Sutton: Now this new rule that's going to go in effect in October from the FTC, it's going to ban fake online reviews in several different ways. All right, the first rule says it's going to prohibit reviews from people who don't exist. Like wait, how can people who don't exist make review? No, obviously, what it's referring to is people making fake, you know. Can people who don't exist make review? No, obviously. What it's referring to is people making fake you know, profiles and leaving reviews, doing brushing and things like that, and also reviews generated by artificial intelligence. It's kind of saying that it's inferring that it's not going to be allowed. And now the interesting thing here maybe the most interesting for me is it says reviews from individuals who never experienced the product, business or service will be banned as well. Bradley Sutton: Now, why do you think I found that interesting? Because to me I'm now wondering does that mean that they're going to require Amazon, you know, Walmart, other platforms, to not accept any reviews other than verified reviews. You know, right now I can just go on any product and leave a review, right. But that almost makes me think, right that that Amazon might, or FTC might, ban that. The non-verified review is interesting. Now the rule also blocked businesses from providing compensation for positive or negative reviews. Okay, so I mean up until a few years ago that was even allowed on Amazon. It's still not illegal per se. Like I if I have McDonald's, I can go pay somebody right now to leave a good review on my google profile. I guess you know, but that that's not going to be allowed anymore. So it's not just amazon's getting bad. It looks like that's going to be banned across the board. It says insider reviews, like by those who work for the company, is going to be prohibited. And here's a funny one, a funny statement. It says businesses will also no longer be allowed to use legal, groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, to prevent a negative review. It says no longer be allowed. Does this mean that until now you've been allowed to use physical threats to get people to change? I don't know what this article is trying to say, or the FTC, I mean it is supposedly it was just quoted here but interesting stuff coming to the world of reviews. Bradley Sutton: Next article up here is from pandaily.com. Quick note Teemu is opening up a new marketplace in Japan on August 27th. Go look up information on that. Take a look at this article. It might be a good opportunity to get in a brand new marketplace. You know, right before it gets too big, who knows? If you're selling in Amazon Japan, you could probably get your stuff on the new Temu marketplace pretty fast if you hurry. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from payments.com. It was another one of these surveys. Some of these surveys are pretty interesting. It says 50% of Amazon Prime and Walmart Plus subscribers step up during sales events. Now, based on this study, they had some interesting data points here, all right. For example, it says shopper spending climbed 11% to 14 billion on this Amazon prime day. Now, 40% of all consumers participated in prime day. 20% participated in Walmart plus week, which is like their version of prime day. Now, this is pretty interesting because that Walmart number is still lagging way behind Amazon, but that surged 71% from 2022. It was only at 12% in 2022. So interesting Walmart Plus might be catching up. Walmart Plus subscriptions have increased 30%, especially among millennials and individuals earning less than $100,000 annually. But it says here Walmart Plus still lags way behind Amazon Prime, and both events saw a 50% participation rate from their subscribers. So interesting little stats that maybe you want to check this article out. Walmart plus is is still way, way, way behind amazon, according to this article, but they are catching up, maybe at a little bit faster rate than you might have expected. Bradley Sutton: All right, the last article of the day is just from amazon. Remind sellers that this month is black business month, all right. And then it talks here in this article about the Black Business Accelerator, a program that we've talked about right here on the podcast. It talks about a lot of the features they have for black owned businesses. It has some quotes here from Rod. You might remember right here he used to be. He was on the Serious Sellers podcast before. So if you have a black owned business, make sure that you get certified so you can get that badge, and then you're actually going to qualify for some special programs inside of the black business accelerator that Amazon has. Make sure to check out the article link to below for that. Bradley Sutton: So I want you guys to do is to go to YouTube search Helium 10, and make sure to hit this subscribe, the subscribe button right here at the top, and then make sure that you put notification on all, all notifications, so you know when we come out, weekly buzz and other articles. If you guys are watching a video right now, you're watching this on YouTube itself. Right under the actual video there's that subscribe button. Make sure to hit it, make sure you're subscribed, make sure it says all so that you get notified when we have new videos. Bradley Sutton: All right, let's get into our training tip of the week, and this is something that could potentially save you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars. That's how valuable this tip is, all right. So a lot of sellers have said oh man, you know, I wish that I could be able to know if I'm on the border, what am my packaging on the border of one of these size tier changes like bulky to standard size, you know, or small oversize to just regular oversize? If I'm on the border, that could actually mean a lot of dollars to your bottom line. How are you going to find that? Whether you have a Platinum Diamond, whatever plan you have, watch this, what I want everybody to do right after this video or you can do it right now If you're at home. Go to Helium 10 Alerts. So go to your Alerts page you can find it in the tool menu and it is under operations hit Alerts and then check out on the top left-hand side under the overview section. Bradley Sutton: Normally, under overview, most sellers only have three lines of notifications talking about the buy box, monitoring slots et cetera. But if you have a package that is near the border of one of these size tiers, you are going to have a fourth line of Alerts here and it's going to say products with size tier automate optimization suggestions. And, as you can see, it says I've got three. So I click this button and it's going to take me to those suggestions. So take, you can see it says I've got three. So I click this button and it's going to take me to those suggestions. So take a look here. It took me to the place that has my dimensions and there's a big red little icon and then it's giving me a message. It says we've identified an opportunity to optimize your FBA fulfillment costs. By reducing the link by one inch, you could potentially move from size tier large bulky to large standard size, decreasing the FBA fulfillment costs from $10.75 to $7 per unit. Bradley Sutton: Guys, do the math really quick. All right, let's that. That's a whopping $3 whopping. You see, I was thinking about the Whopper that I talked about in the weekly buzz earlier. Yeah, $3.75 is nothing to scoff at. Let's do some math here. All right, so let's say I sell of this product 15 units a day, and now on my next shipment or maybe I can just change the packaging now on my next package and I can go take that one inch off, and now I save $3.75. Let's say, what did I say? Let's just say I sell 15 units a day, all right, so $3.75 times 15 units a day, that means every day. This could mean $56.25 to my bottom line. Times that by 365. Bradley Sutton: Guys, this one alert from Helium 10 has the potential to get me $20,000. I think that's a pretty valuable thing that Helium 10 is offering. So I hope everybody rushes to their computer. Check your Alerts page, check If you've got that size to your optimization active. Go to it and then take it. Take a look Now. You know some of you who are selling products that are a set size like because you have a mold or something it's not like. You can just snap your fingers and change your packaging. But, like me, if this is like one of my coffin shelves, I can easily redesign my next shipment where I can just shave off a half inch off the product itself and maybe shave it another half inch off of the packaging inside so I can cut down to that size All right. So that's a really cool update. Guys, make sure to go check that out. I said update. This has actually been around for about three or four months, but I think a lot of you guys didn't realize we had that. Now we are going to get into our Helium 10 new feature Alerts. Last week we had a huge one with a completely redesigned keyword tracker. This week I've got a lot of Adtomic updates for you. Bradley Sutton: All right. The very first one is the ability for ad Adtomic now to run sponsored ad TV ads. The first one here is now ad Adtomic is pulling in your sponsored TV campaigns. You're gonna be able to make rules in Adtomic for your sponsored TV ads. You're going to be able to see the metrics and run analytics. All of you can see me like I don't have any sponsored TV ads. It's going to be able to see the metrics and run analytics. All of you can see me like I don't have any sponsored TV ads. It says zero right here, but now it is importing. How many of you guys out there are using sponsored TV? I'm just very curious. I'm not sure you know, like how much this is being used out there in the Amazon world. Let me know, are you, are you running sponsored TV ads? Have it? Has it worked out? Well, regardless, if you're using Adtomic, you can now make AI rules and bid rules and a whole bunch of cool keyword harvesting and things from those campaigns directly from Adtomic. Bradley Sutton: Another thing we have in Adtomic is a new way to make bid rules. Okay, so in Adtomic you can create your own custom rules. You can say, hey for my bid. If, if my ACOS is over this amount and my ROAS is less than this amount, then I want you to take the bid and increase it by 10%. Like it can get super, super granular and very complicated, and rightfully so. I mean PPC is complicated. A lot of our customers out there use a lot of different methods when they're running their PPC, so you need this level of granularity to be able to make rules. But other people you might be like overwhelmed, like oh man, I don't got time to make all these rules. I really like some templates and so you know, now we actually have some templates. So if you go to add Tomic and hit add new rule, you know you choose all the products that you want to apply to this rule. Now, on the right hand side, you choose all the products that you want to apply to this rule. Now on the right hand side you are going to see this button that says apply template. So hit that and you'll be able to choose from some bid templates that we have, and we're going to keep adding more. Bradley Sutton: Like I believe destiny from better media is working on some. But, for example, you've got one that says high a cost bid window and current bid safety net set up to lower a cost. That sounds like a mouthful right there, but basically what it means is like hey, you're decreasing bids on a high a cost target within a window based on certain kinds of criteria. Another one is decrease when cost per click is lower than the bid. So some people are like hey, I've got a bid that's $4, but if I'm getting cost per click for only three, I don't need to be at $4. You know somebody could bid me up and I could lose money. I want to go decrease it. You can just create a rule and all the little algorithms instead of having to, you know, come up with the actual rule step by step, it's going to just automatically create that for you. You've got an automatic bid rule, that's that takes away your wasted spend who doesn't want that? And then another automatic or another template that increases your exposure and resets your bid if you feel that there's a certain you know threshold that you're not reaching. Bradley Sutton: So a couple cool updates right there in Adtomic. Now, the coolest one of them all is now you can do paw. You can set a rule to pause your targets. Okay now, why is? Why is this important? I have rules in Adtomic where, for my search terms, I'm like, hey, if I get 20 orders and, by the way, guys, you know whether you use Adtomic or not this is something that I hope you guys are doing with your own software or with your own spreadsheets but basically I have rules where I'm like, hey, if I get 30 clicks or something like that 25 clicks, 30 clicks, 20 clicks with no sales I want to pause this or I want a negative match, right, this search term. Bradley Sutton: Now, I've always suggested do not negative match search terms in your performance manual campaigns, your, your exact manual campaigns, because now it's going to look like you have a target active but you really pause it in the background and then you might be like, oh no, I can't add any more keywords or targets to this campaign, cause I have so many, but in actuality you had pause all of them. You just don't realize it. So because of that, now we have the ability to make a rule. Let me show you guys how to do that here in Adtomic. I can go in here and I can select a new rule type and I'm going to put bid. All right, I hit next. Now it's going to take me to the new bid rule page and then watch this from here. Bradley Sutton: Under the criteria, I can say, hey, if my ACoS is greater than I don't know, 50%, right, I can actually now choose to pause targeting. All right, so it's going to pause the target. So if you've got an exact manual product targeting, ASIN targeting campaign, a keyword, exact campaign, and you've never and you always had to pause the targets manually, one by one, because you couldn't do a negative match or you didn't want to do a negative match. Now you can set that as a rule in your Adtomic. Another super cool thing that saves you tons of time and, as we know, time is money. So if you guys haven't gotten into Adtomic, make sure to go to h10.me/adtomic and sign up now, because this is what I use to manage all my campaigns and it's just getting better and better as we go along. All right, guys. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for and tuning in. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.
The gang is mostly here to recap #TFClive vs Miami, JMR to Montreal, a whole bunch of #woso news, including AFC Toronto announcements, NWSL announcements, and MLS?!? Some #CanPL news, predictions and malarkey. In this episode Kristin can't contain her love for Finnish hockey players, Mark is still trying to make "the robins" a thing and Duncan makes an Eric Lindros reference at Bournemouth's expense. We had an article that we were/did speak about that was retracted at time of recording, but we've kept the segment in.
Join us as we welcome back Steve Simonson, a renowned expert on sourcing and leveraging AI technology for Amazon sellers. This episode is packed with insights on a wide range of topics, from managing remote teams to the innovative use of voice AI in customer service. Steve shares his experiences over the past year, highlighting the rapid advancements in AI technology and how his team has been integrating these updates into their processes. We also discuss effective strategies for managing remote teams, emphasizing the importance of building management skills, fostering online collaboration, and maintaining team morale through regular communication and celebrations. Listen in as we explore the evolving role of AI in enhancing workflows and customer interactions, particularly for Amazon sellers. Steve sheds light on how major companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta are advancing AI technologies, with mentions of Meta's open-source Lama model and Amazon's AI applications like Rufus. Despite ongoing concerns about AI accuracy, Steve assures us that issues like hallucinations are gradually diminishing. We discuss the successful deployment of AI chatbots in customer service and the growing importance of AI in managing brand websites and internal company processes, with specific resources within the Helium 10 software highlighted for deeper insights. We also address the challenges facing Amazon sellers, including new fees, profitability issues, and competition. Steve offers reassurance by drawing parallels to past economic cycles and emphasizing persistence, sharing insights from Jeff Bezos' relentless approach. Additionally, we tackle the complexities of modern supply chain disruptions, offering practical tips for short-term problem-solving and long-term strategies such as resourcing and nearshoring. Finally, we highlight the significant opportunities that AI presents for small brands, encouraging businesses to embrace AI tools and look forward to upcoming events like Amazon Accelerate in Seattle. In episode 586 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Steve discuss: 00:00 - Managing Remote Teams and Leveraging AI For Amazon Sellers 03:53 - International Team Leadership Reflection 10:27 - Emerging AI Tools for Ecommerce Sellers 16:05 - Accessing Freedom Ticket for Amazon Sellers 19:09 - AI Video Creation for Beginners 20:46 - Leveraging AI for Listing Generation 22:56 - Navigating Challenges in E-Commerce Business 28:24 - Talking About Retirement 31:29 - Navigating Supply Chain Disruptions 34:09 - Enterprise Software and AI Integration Advice 35:32 - Small Brands Embracing AI Opportunities ► 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 Steve Simonson back on the show, one of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to leveraging AI for Amazon sellers. He's going to talk about a wide variety of topics, such as running remote teams, to sourcing, to voice AI that can actually be your customer service rep. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you afraid of running out of inventory before your next shipment comes in? Or maybe you're on the other side and you worry about having too much inventory, which could cap you out at the Amazon warehouses or even cost you storage fees? Stay on top of your inventory by using our robust inventory management tool. You can take advantage of our advanced forecasting algorithms, manage your 3PL inventory, create POs for your suppliers, create replenishment shipments and more all from inside Inventory Management by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me. Forward slash inventory management. Forward slash inventory management. And don't forget, you can sign up for a free Helium 10 account from there, or you can get 10% off for life by using our special podcast code SSP10. Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. You know, here at Helium 10, I don't know how this happened but we have a lot of S things. You know, we've got the Serious Sellers podcast, we did the Sell and Scale Summit. Now we've got Steve Simonson here and so I did have a hat with an S. This is actually a unique minor league baseball Sacramento hat here, but we're trying to keep the S theme together here. Steve, how's it going? Steve: Boy, I'm well, I love it. The alliteration does not stop. That is really impressive. If you look closely at my forehead, you'll see a giant S carved into the forehead. So everybody, get out your inspection equipment. But it's there, you can rest assured. Bradley Sutton: I love it. I love it All right, guys. Well, this is not the first rodeo of Steve here. He's been on the podcast before, so if you want to get back into a little bit more of his backstory and different things, some of the episodes he's been on is episode 38, episode 459. And we're going to talk a lot about AI today because I think that's what Steve is known for and that's what his module on Freedom Ticket is also about. But before I even, I just wanted to just see what you've been up to like the last year. It's been a year or so since you've been on the podcast. How's the back end of 2023 and 2024 been for you? Steve: Yeah, it's been good. I tell you it's a very fast-paced world we live in, and particularly as I focus on AI and how we integrate that into some of our enterprise-level software, it is just an endless train of upgrades, like every week somebody's got a new model and some new AI breakthrough has happened, and so we've been really quite busy at trying to figure out how to support these future frameworks within the same context of how can you build it once but allow it to be upgradable. So it's been exciting, it's been fun, but, no, no short of challenges as well. Bradley Sutton: Sure, sure, absolutely, absolutely. Now, one place in the last year or so that we caught up was in Bali. We went and spoke at this event and that was an amazing event. So anybody who has a chance to attend an event that Regina organizes, you should definitely, you should definitely try. We even had mud wrestling and everything. And I remember one thing you were talking about there. It's funny. I don't remember what I did yesterday, but then I'll just remember the strangest things or the most random things. I remember you had a big team across different countries and you were talking a little bit about that and it just, you know, across. You know across different countries, and you were talking a little bit about that. And it just got me thinking too. You know, as entrepreneurs most of us we don't have like an office and we've got, you know, in-office employees. You know we might start out hiring a VA here or there, and then you know the team scale. So you know somebody like yourself with experience, you know managing scores of employees at the same time. What are some tips you can give Amazon sellers out there or just entrepreneurs who have remote teams Like how do you, first of all, just what are some tips on managing a remote team where you're not there in person? Steve: Well, the first thing is it is. It's a skill that you have to learn right. So a lot of us think that somehow management is just built into all of us. I don't believe it is, and I think entrepreneurs are some of the worst at it, myself included, maybe first and foremost terrible manager, but I think you've got to build the skills, and so one of the things that we try to do is find ways of collaborating online that would be similar to an office environment. So, you know, our HR folks will have, you know, birthday celebrations or, you know, have monthly meetings to celebrate everybody's birthday or those types of things. We also have other things systemically that try to help, you know, remind everybody. Hey, celebrate your Wednesday weekly win. Everybody has at least one win every week, so let's share those amongst the company, because there's a lot of people in the company who may not know each other different locations, different parts of the world but I do want to just remind people that the basics really matter, like how you talk to people, you know understanding, you know where they're coming from, do they have the essentials that they need to, you know, perform the job. Steve: And the biggest I don't know revelation, especially dealing in the Amazon world is everybody expects a VA to be a unicorn. It's like you can do everything as the entrepreneur, so you just think you're going to delegate everything over to this unicorn. That's not going to happen. It's unfair, it's unrealistic and it shows that you're not yet a competent manager. And so my advice is you know, start slow, give very specific, task oriented things that have a beginning and an end, and then you know kind of work up from there and, as the internet says, educate yourself right. There's lots of books. One of my favorites is it's. It's the book name is called it's the manager. People don't quit jobs, they quit managers, and the faster we, as entrepreneurs, learn that, the better off we'll be. Bradley Sutton: Yeah for sure. Now, speaking of managers, you know, once you get more than a few employees in a foreign location, you know you might make some kind of managerial structure. So for the subordinates, hey, you know performance management, things like that, you know it's probably handled by the manager. But how do you, kind of like you know performance, evaluate the managers themselves? You know, because you don't have really a middleman, they're directly reporting to you. How do you know who's your stars? And then how do you know when you need to take, perhaps corrective action? Steve: Well, the number one thing that leads our decision making and I recommend this for anybody is data right. Let's start with what are the responsibilities this particular section manager, right? Are they in charge of marketing? All right, how are the leads going? What are the KPIs related to this? And people have a lot of trouble coming up. They ask all the time what are the KPIs? What are the KPIs? And you know we talk about AI a lot. Go ask ChatGPT. Here's the position. Give me a you know, general position description and give me good KPIs and then massage it right. It can't read your mind, but it can, you know, kind of move and groove with the suggestions you give it. So KPIs are absolutely doable. Now, sometimes getting the data is a little harder than you want it to be, but once you overcome that hurdle or at least come up with an alternative, then data should drive those conversations. And the question is like hey, you're doing really well this week. What's going right? Why is this going so well? We want to be able to understand and replicate it. Or hey, you're behind your numbers. What are the challenges you're facing? Maybe they got a bunch of people on vacation or maybe the Google credit card stopped charging. There's all kinds of things that happen in business, but numbers drive decisions and we like to say what's broken in the system, not what's broken in the people. The people want to do a good job In general. If you manage them and you're fair with them, then you're going to find that they want to perform well. They want to do a good job. Bradley Sutton: I'm sure we talked about more things. We had a good time there at the Balinese massage. That was my first one. I don't like those rough, those really rough ones. The Thai massages Guys, don't get Thai massages unless you like pain, oh my goodness. But I think they put you and Leo like in a couple's massage. Steve: Yeah, Leo, and I decided that you have the romantic couple's massage. Yeah, it was lovely. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, yeah like I had my room all to myself and then you're like oh, okay, well, I guess we're going to be here in this room. Steve: How did he get the room? Although we all had the room with no walls, which is like you know bugs and everything else but yeah, it was pretty neat. I think all of the you know for an hour it was nine bucks or something and it was a joy. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, you can't beat that. Steve: Yeah, it was a delight. Bradley Sutton: Can't beat that. Great food and everything else. All right. Now switching back to you know, one thing you talked about there and you've been known for the last couple of years is at the forefront of how Amazon sellers and e-commerce entrepreneurs should be leveraging AI, and so that's something that's changing on a weekly, monthly basis. The last year, what are some of the most notable advancements or differences in the world of AI as it relates to Amazon sellers? Steve: Well, first of all, you know, last year it was kind of the year of ChatGPT, right, everybody heard ChatGPT and this became a synonymous term with AI. But they're just one company. ChatGPT is led by OpenAI, which is ironically not open now. It's closed source, and over that they kind of led the tip of the spear into this new world of AI. There are plenty of others trying to get things done. Google has tried and has had a couple flubs. Amazon itself is now deploying AI for the customer-facing side, as I'm sure many sellers are recognizing. And then there's so many others, including Meta, which has allowed their stuff to go actually open source. The Lama model, which is a large language model built on, like you know, 400 billion or 40 billion, I can't even remember. The numbers get so insane. I think it's 400 billion data points in the Lama 3.1, which is as good as any closed source or paid service, and that is exciting. Groq is exciting. So there's a lot of these engines coming out. For sellers, what they, in my opinion, should be focused on is like how do I make my workflow today better, right, whether it's my own personal workflow which I use AI all the time, or the work, you know process of my colleagues. And it's really important to tell your team this is not to replace you, this is to enhance you. The AI will not replace you, but somebody who uses AI will replace you if you don't get your act together. Like this is really, really an important message. And so you know, the first step is just how do you improve those workflows, and then there are many other exciting steps coming up down the line. You know almost immediately. Bradley Sutton: Maybe it's because I'm an old fogey, as it were, as far as adopting new things sometimes, but a problem with AI I've had in the past is a similar one, which I remember you kind of talked about in some of your presentations. How you asked AI last year like who is Steve Simonson? And it had your birth date wrong and it said you had done this when you were some author or something like that and this and that. And so you know like, hey, you know, I guess we call those hallucinations. But then, like, you know somebody even you know we're a year later and I'm still seeing similar things like for example you mentioned the Amazon AI you know there's Rufus and then there's ones that summarize reviews and stuff like that, and some of it's just absolutely useless. You know like, no, yeah, customers love how large this seems and they also love how small it seems. I'm like, come on, like this doesn't even help me. So like, is that an accurate assessment or am I being biased? Like, say, hey, why is it taking so long to fix a lot of these hallucinations, or are you seeing a macro? Uh an improvement on those kinds of things? Steve: Yeah, no question it is improving. So if you start comparing you know ChatGPT three and a half to ChatGPT four to you know 4.0 and some of these other evolving models the hallucinations are shrinking. They won't go away until there's a large enough data set that is just more robust, honestly. So we should understand that it's still lying to you 20% to 25% of the time, just making stuff up out of thin air, and so that should be a real staunch warning to everybody. When you see the thing, tell you something. In my case it had the several book titles that I had written, that I had not written, and no one's written right. So, like I was very impressed with what it wrote, but it was unfortunately it was not me. So expect that hallucinations will continue, but they will continue to reduce over time as well. So don't use that as your obstacle. That ain't going to work. There's so much positive, good stuff. Now some of it has to do with how you structure the prompt or how you use the ins and outs of the data, and it's certainly not flawless. But you know, every day it's getting better, and I've seen like the voice stuff is incredibly good now and I suspect within, let's say, 12 months, all the early adopters will have on their their brand website. They'll have a brand, you know, a message bot that is completely trained on their stuff, right? So all your PDFs, all your products, all your company policies, return policies, shipping, whatever and it will be able to perform chats better than a human on average, right? And, by the way, this has already been proven. Steve: This year, a company sent 2 million live customers to their new AI chatbot and it had more first touch resolutions, it had higher customer satisfaction and obviously, the cost was less and it was the equivalent of 700 full-time people. So what we want is we want better customer experience and if you can do that with AI, people will come to expect that to be available. So, early adopters within 12 months, you know, and then other people over time, for sure. Message bot chat, you know, 24, seven live, educated bots about your stuff. We're doing this now. It's very powerful. By the way, the larger your company is, sometimes you need this internally, right? Hey, what's the HR policy? What's the vacation and where it can actually interact and go? Oh well, can I get this vacation off? And it will allow it to schedule and do other things. So very powerful stuff that's coming real quick. Bradley Sutton: We're not going to go into everything he talked about in our module, but just for those who have access to Freedom Ticket, which is pretty much any Helium 10 member let me just show you, guys, where you can go to see his information. Go into Freedom Ticket 4.0 under the module Product Research and Sourcing. Click on the Power of AI for Amazon. We got you in a very flattering screenshot right there. Steve: That's actually how I talk. My eyes are closed. Bradley Sutton: Love it, but, hey guys, he goes in-depth there on how it can help Amazon sellers. But let's just stay on this subject and talk about some specific use cases. I think one of the things that was terrible maybe a year and a half ago or a year ago that has gotten a lot better, in my opinion is images. You know, um, and obviously Helium 10 has integrated some things Amazon has integrated into their advertising. They actually require, um, you know, sellers to have a custom images now for, like, sponsored brand ads and things like that. So if you're not, if you don't have this humongous repertoire of, or a repository, I should say, of, all these images, well, AI is kind of like the only way to go. So what kind of different AI tools should Amazon sellers be using now as far as imagery? And then, what are the use cases that you see most useful? Steve: Well, the first is the idea of simply being able to scale up your images. Right? You can upscale images with very high fidelity that you could not do in the old days, right? I remember watching shows, you know, maybe as far back as the 80s, you know, and the cop shows like, zoom in and enhance, and it's like anybody's ever worked with photos or videos. It's like you could zoom in all you want. You're going to see giant pixels. There's no enhance available, right? But today you actually can upscale those images. So anybody who doesn't have giant zoomable images, I think that's a lost opportunity and within that module, I put in a couple options that will do that upscaling for you. The other thing is coming very fast down the line is, you know, beautiful room scenes or lifestyle shots. They might be called with your product in the shot itself, and so that gives you just unending abilities to position your product in natural life. You know style images. There's any number of other ways you can do it. You know we use, uh, AI images to make themes, right, so you may say well, gosh, I want to have my I don't know my little travel bag and I want to show it with a, a Washington state theme or a, you know, a California theme, and AI will make beautiful, beautiful background imagery. And there's your social media right. You can just do that for every single day or multiple per day. Really incredible. The ideation that this AI brings to the table, I think, is worthwhile, and the quality, as you said, Bradley, incredibly advanced compared to how it was, you know, even a year ago, especially two years ago. So really, really, you know, images should be a high priority for everybody. Bradley Sutton: I forgot it was a webinar. I was watching Kevin King. He showed some kind of like I'm not sure if it was released yet, but some previews of different AIs for video and it looked real. I was like, how is this not real? So what is available out there that you're not having to pay thousands, you know? Uh, obviously you can get super advanced stuff and you can make movies and everything you know with it, but something that's accessible to like Joe Amazon seller, um, who could you know, perhaps you know, make make a product video with just uploading an image or a short video and then and then make that into a nice video ad or something. Steve: Yeah, so one of my favorites for this type of purpose is called Invideo.io, and I believe I highlight it in the Helium 10 presentation. But basically you can either just give it a text prompt, right, and it'll make an entire video for you. You say how long do you want it? What's your? You know, are you going on a vertical short format or a horizontal long video format? Right, so you know, one might be more appropriate for TikTok and the other one for LinkedIn or YouTube. And then you can even upload images of your product or videos that you may already have, and it can incorporate those and it will do the music, it'll do the voiceover, it'll do the pulling in a bunch of videos around it, and it can be very, very effective. And so you'll. You know, we use that every single day to make videos that are mostly good quality. There's a couple little pieces. It's like I basically told my marketing folks. It's like it's more important to have the video and get it out there and show some content and then have the final little you know accent or the little you know relic that's on the screen solved, but in video is very, very powerful, and that's just one example. There are many like it. Bradley Sutton: What else. As far as you know, I think the number one thing for me that even I'm using AI and like even six months ago I probably still hadn't really used AI, but now I use it for almost every single one of my listings is like listing generation. You know, obviously, since Helium 10 has it, I get access to it for free. But hey, you know people, you know you can get free versions of ChatGPT. But that one is really powerful to me because I'm not just for you know, I'm, I'm obviously a native English speaker. I don't need help writing an English listing. But then sometimes I have writer's block and I'm like, hey, let me go ahead and say, hey, make a listing here's, here's my keywords, and I want it like in a funny tone. And then it's not the listing I end up with. But then I'm like, oh, this is a great direction. Let me just, you know, tweak a couple of things. But for me the power is like, hey, I'm going to make a listing in in UK and hey, I need to make one with British. You know English. Hey, I need to make a listing in Spanish. I can kind of speak Spanish, but I'm not a native speaker. So, uh, I can write all my prompts in English and then it'll go ahead and, and you know, make a listing in Spanish what. What are some things that you maybe think that sellers might be leaving money on the table as far as leveraging AI when it comes to their actual copy that they're doing, whether it's listings, whether it's, you know, blogs, et cetera. Steve: Well, the first thing is I believe that because AI is so new as a tool and a lot of people, myself included, we had negative experiences right. I would generate an image on mid-journey and the guy would have nine fingers right and I'm like so the clear thing that a lot of us said is this stuff is crap, it'll never work, I'm out right. And if you had hallucinations or you had kind of weird images and you haven't revisited it, you're making a mistake. So when you get in there, the next most common mistake is single dimension thinking. Right, you say I need a listing for Amazon for this product and it writes out something that's, you know, relatively generic because you gave it one single dimension listing Amazon, this product. But if you say you know I'm, I want to add a language, like you talked about Bradley, or I want to write this like Dan Kennedy, You know one of the you know very, very best copywriters, or maybe you don't know the name of great copywriters. You go who are the top five copywriters, right, that are direct response copywriters, or who's the best you know, fantasy writers, whatever and then write it in whatever style that you're looking for. So, having a writing style, having an audience that you're trying to reach, is just adding extra dimensions to that. You know, first, single dimension concept right, I just need a listing. No, you need a listing written in a style for a platform to an audience, in a tone, right. And the more of these dimensions you add and there are far more that you could go the more personality comes out of that and that's really what you're looking for. You want the AI to help bring forward your own personality and I highly recommend people add additional dimensional layers and they will have better results. Bradley Sutton: Switching gears a little bit and, who knows, maybe this conversation will, or the answer might be some version of AI. But you are in, you know you network a lot, you go to events, you talk to a lot of Amazon sellers and I'm sure you have felt the sentiment this year. It's probably, I would say, the most negative it's been in a while as far as new fees and profitability and competition. And hey, now there might be almost like Teemu-ish thing going on where Chinese sellers can sell directly and ship directly and stuff. And so what is your advice to those people who maybe have a little bit negative connotation compared to before as far as selling on Amazon, not sure how they're going to proceed? Steve: Well, the first is, if they can get on the screen, I'll just pat them on the head. Hey, little buddy, it's going to be okay. So you guys can line yourself up if you're feeling down, and go in for the pat. Listen, I've been around a long time, right? Dinosaur is you know? They're the young upstarts compared to me. So I've seen these patterns happen for multiple generations of e-com. Right, believe me, back in 99, 2000,. It was the glory days. Then 2001, 9-11 happened and it was a nightmare and everyone hated everything. And the dot-com crash happened. And then it got really good again in the mid-2000s and everybody's flying high. And then the housing crisis and financial crisis globally happened and everybody hates everything again. Right and so and again, these continue to happen. And so my, my mission for true entrepreneurs is if you're going to be persistent, if you're going to be in the game, expect ups and downs. Do not play that just straight up line. There is no line that looks like that, even those crazy hockey sticks that you see. That you know from companies there were little iterations of up and down all the way, and I just want people to know that. You know, persistence is really part of the game and you know if you go to relentless.com. Do you know where that goes, Bradley? I do not. It goes to Amazon. And the reason why is because Jeff Bezos said if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you better be relentless so you can check it out right now, relentless.com for anybody out there. That's what you got to be. And so listen, it's okay to. I always say take one lap and go. This sucks, I wish this didn't exist. These fees, this competition, this problem, this whatever. And then get to work and try to solve it or come up with a strategy to get over the obstacle. That's your choice deal with it or get out of the business, and I think serious people have to get serious about business, so they should listen to a podcast for serious sellers. I don't know. There you go. Bradley Sutton: Double clicking on your little dinosaur comment. You know, if I'm not mistaken, you even at one point kind of retired and got out of the game and then you got back in. How does somebody know when it's time to? You know, I'm not talking about the, you know long sail into the sunset or anything, but hey, it's time to just relax and enjoy life, or no, you know what? I still need something that drives me. You know, because it's not an age thing. You know like, I know people in their late 20s who retire because they've had enough success and they've accomplished what they want to. I know people in their 80s who are still working strong. So how does the entrepreneur get to a point where it's like you know what I'm ready to, kind of like, relax a little bit. Steve: Well, the first thing is, you know, everybody's got their own context of where they came from and where they want to go. So don't let me project my stuff onto you guys. But I can tell you retirement 1.0 sucked right. It was awful, and it's not a question of you know. Could I do anything I want? Yes, I could, but my friends couldn't come out and play right, and my family got tired of being on vacation. My kids were tired of being on vacation. Now people can go oh, crying me a river. What kind of first world problem is that? But it's still a real problem, right? Because I did not enjoy it. And then I felt guilty, because I'm living a life that anybody would kill for and that doesn't make you feel good. So my brain is not wired to kind of check out. And so retirement 2.0, which I've recently begun testing we're in beta is basically just trying to say well, listen, I don't want to work 80 hours and I don't want to work any hours on things that I don't like. So over time you'll find things that you like or don't like and start positioning even your role within your current company on the things that you like to do. By the way, somebody loves to do the thing that you hate the most. Right, and I had this realization. One of my finest team members she's been with me gosh, it's probably coming up on, you know, 25 or 30 years she loves the thing that I hate the most. So I kept doing the details and very complex Excel sheets and forecasts and inventory and things that I hated doing far too long. When I was able to turn it over to her kind of an exasperation because I'm a terrible manager and I don't know anything. She's like, oh, thank God, I've been dreaming about this and I just couldn't imagine in my own small brain that, like somebody else, would love to do this thing. So remember that there's so many different people. Somebody wants to do the things that you hate to do. So please, the faster you can excuse yourself from the things you hate, get the people who love to do those things and then you'll start to chart. You know, chart your course, whether it is a financial course or a lifestyle course or whatever it is, towards, you know that, that bright future. Me, I, I have to do stuff. My brain will not allow it to stop and you know, that's why I try to spend so much time helping entrepreneurs. I want them to come on vacation with me and let's go play. Bradley Sutton: That's good advice. You know I asked myself this question. You know, sometime of wondering, hey, well, when is it time to? You know, to hang it up, as it were. But I wouldn't be doing what I do if I wasn't feeling, you know, fulfillment and motivation from it. So as long as I still can, I'm still going to keep on trucking. Now, speaking of pre-retirement 1.0, one of your previous lives you were heavy into sourcing and things like that. I'm sure you keep your pulse on that industry as well. What should Amazon sellers these days be thinking about when it comes to, hey, I'm competing sometimes with Chinese factories. Now, hey, there's tariffs, you know, should I be considering India and Pakistan and Vietnam? Hey, you know, shipping prices are fluctuating like ridiculousness, you know, like as if it were still COVID. You know what's some just general advice you can give sellers who are, you know, thinking about those kinds of issues. Steve: General advice get in the bunker and prepare for war. It is yeah, it's we still the companies I sold, we still have me and my team still have some supply chain responsibilities. So we're interacting frequently in this space and I just got off the call with some sourcing folks I have in Pakistan just before our conversation, and all of the things you just brought up are annoyances. They're just part of the thing. I did not predict shipping getting spicy again, but I did predict some of what I call kinetic action over the last couple of years. We've said the people who follow geopolitics. We've said there's going to be more kinetic action, which is a nice way of saying people are shooting stuff at each other, which is terrible. What that means is these supply chain disruptions are unexpected. The fact that the Red Sea is kind of closed for business is insane. Nobody had that on the bingo card, right. So everybody's going around the South African. I just saw two ships going around the Arctic on their way to Holland. So from China around the Arctic to Holland, and at some point they'll need icebreakers there. So there are unique things and unique challenges that we face, but it's kind of like take a beat, look at the immediate picture. Right, you have your short term. I got a ship product. Now deal with that, overcome whatever the obstacles, pay what you have to, and then think about all right now, in six months, what does it look like? And is there a way I can avoid this, whether it's resourcing elsewhere, nearshoring or onshoring. Steve: But I can tell you like right now we have a very complex project and I've got people in Pakistan and India and it is very difficult to solve this problem. But that's why there's a moat right, and everybody who's complaining about how difficult or hard or whatever all of those are moats right. This is your advantage. We're, ultimately, most Amazon sellers are not manufacturing the product ourselves. We have somebody else do that. So what value do we add? We add all the value of solving the problems throughout that supply chain and then into the marketing side, like all of that is our value add, and we either add value and deserve what we make or we don't. And we deserve what we make right, and this is a very important point Our value that we're adding is overcoming all of these problems. So guess what? That's why they you know you get paid. You got to deal with the trouble. Bradley Sutton: All right, before we get into your final strategies of the day. How can people find you reach out to you on the interwebs out there? Steve: The awesomeers.com podcast still records videos from time to time and I have a whole founder series directed at folks. Just, it's almost like a little mini course for you. It's free, it doesn't, you know, doesn't take anything to do it. You can find me at parsimony.com just steve at parsimony.com. I spend most of my time on software and AI, trying to smash those things together in an enterprise way, right? So anybody who's doing you know 5 million, 10 million. If you're doing 10 million or more and you don't know what ERP is, you are unnecessarily driving yourself insane. But I recommend not going insane. Systems are better. Bradley Sutton: Usually better not to. Yeah, yeah, you know. Steve: I'm not a doctor, I'm just thinking. Bradley Sutton: There you go, all right. Now, you know, can you give us a couple of 30 or 60 second tips? Could be about traveling, could be about AI, could be about sourcing, anything you want. Steve: Well, one thing, I mentioned earlier that chat bots are going to be a big thing for early adopters in the next 12 months. But I want to call out one of my favorites, bland.AI is a voice customer service tool. And that company is an example of it. I'm saying this concept is coming to a voice line near you, and especially for brands who have the capacity to pay nine cents a minute to interact with customers. You train it on your own data and then this bot can be a sales person for you, a customer service person, and it's really really good. Bland.ai, amazing types of technology. I'm not suggesting this is the only company. There are many and many more. Bradley Sutton: Is that the one that at Billion Dollar Seller Summit we were waiting for the helicopter, and then you're like here I'm going to call this, Okay, yeah, yeah, I remember that. I remember that it was kind of it kind of blew me away, yeah. Steve: It's still the great example of what if you could just call a number and talk to a AI like a human, which is the ironic twist, and stop yelling representative a thousand times right, which is the ultimate nightmare. So all the big companies are moving this direction. I think small brands have this opportunity to, in the same way that AI can supercharge you know, a non-English speaker into beautiful English language listings, which should be a warning to everybody. Small guys can do what big guys do, right, whether it's video, voice messaging, AI levels of playing field. That is the most important point. So if you feel scared, if you feel nervous, talk to your friends, figure out those easy use cases, but don't be afraid of it. Embrace the fear and get to it. Bradley Sutton: Thank you so much for joining us. We're definitely going to have you back. You know, unless you're on retirement 3.0 and full launch mode, we'd love to have you back next year to see what you've been up to, and I'm sure I'll be seeing you at an event. Are you going to Amazon Accelerate? Steve: Yeah, yeah that one. I actually live in Seattle, so a good chance Bradley Sutton: I know, I was like about to say just maybe walk there, ride a bike or something. Steve: Yeah. Bradley Sutton: All right, well, I'll be seeing you at Amazon Accelerate along with everybody else and thanks a lot for joining us again.
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We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon is responsible for dangerous products sold on its site, federal agency rules https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/amazon-responsible-dangerous-products-sold-site-federal-agency-rules-rcna164309 Etsy Is Getting Loyalty Program for Its Most Dedicated Shoppers https://gizmodo.com/etsy-is-getting-loyalty-program-for-its-most-dedicated-shoppers-2000481536 AWS Outage Hits Amazon Services, Ring, Whole Foods, Alexa https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2024/aws-outage-hits-amazon-services-ring-whole-foods-alex Amazon looks to reduce costs to compete more aggressively on price as consumer habits shift https://www.geekwire.com/2024/amazon-looks-to-reduce-costs-to-compete-more-aggressively-on-price/ Dozens of angry Chinese suppliers swarmed Temu's office, saying they're tired of giving Westerners refunds without returns https://www.businessinsider.com/temus-office-besieged-chinese-suppliers-protesting-refund-policy-2024-7 New landing page in Sponsored Brands Grow brand impression share goal https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/grow-brand-impression-share-with-new-landing-page/ Scale your message with priority delivery using Prime Video programmatic guaranteed deals https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/scale-your-message-using-prime-video-programmatic-guaranteed-deals/ Harvest high performing targets with Target Promotion, now available for Sponsored Products advertisers in UCM ads console https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/target-promotion-for-sponsored-products/ This episode is jam-packed with news and insights to help you stay ahead in the competitive world of selling on Amazon, Walmart, and ecommerce! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:50 - Amazon Recall Change 02:40 - New Bullet Point Rules 06:23 - Etsy Prime? 07:01 - Amazon Outage 07:43 - New Amazon Fees 09:50 - Amazon Cost Cutting 11:30 - Product Images Update 13:22 - On Time Delivery Policy 15:42 - Temu Sellers Gone Wild 17:38 - Labor Day Sale 18:16 - FBA Capacity Fees 19:51 - New Sponsored Brand Page 21:24 - Prime Video Ads 22:03 - Keyword Harvesting 24:04 - Sellerfest Online Event ► 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: Amazon is changing its bullet point requirements. There is yet another new fee that Amazon sellers are going to have to pay. Temu sellers in China storm the Temu offices in protest. This and more on today's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Series Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. Today might be a first. There's so much news today. I think there might be a total of 14 or possibly more news articles that affect e-commerce sellers out there. So a very abnormal week. Let's go ahead and hop right into it. Bradley Sutton: The first news story that we're going to talk about today is from NBC News and it is entitled Amazon is responsible for dangerous products sold in its site. Federal agency rules, all right. So the Consumer Product Safety Commission is classifying Amazon, it says, as a distributor of the product and therefore bears legal responsibility for a recall. You know, in the past Amazon kind of like had this stance where they're like hey, we're not the sellers. It's third party sellers. You know like we'll do what we can to keep customers safe, but we're not the ones who are responsible for it. But now this ruling says that Amazon has to notify customers about and remove products deemed dangerous that it sells through its website. Federal regulators ruled on Tuesday, all right. So basically it's saying that, hey, amazon bears legal responsibility for product recalls, even if they are sold by us. You know, third party sellers. I guess there was a few years ago, three years ago, there was about 400,000 products sold that had faulty carbon monoxide alarms and and flammable children's pajamas, that's. I shouldn't laugh at that. But that's like who? Who is selling flammable children's pajamas? Like what kind of quality control are you guys doing? And flammable hairdryer, and they're subject to this order. But you know Amazon says it's already removed and notified customers about it. But anyways, you know like this might seem like, hey, we're not selling flammable pajamas, what does this have to do with me? But you know if this requires a lot more procedures or things that Amazon is going to have to do, well, you know there's costs that come with that and we might see some of the cost of that. Now, on the flip side. You know, let's say, there are sellers from other countries, like factories that are are selling, you know, not high quality things that are dangerous. Now it looks like maybe Amazon might take a more proactive approach and so you know, hey, this could help Amazon sellers long term. Bradley Sutton: Next article is going to Seller Central. Spend a little bit of time on this one because this is interesting. I think a lot of sellers are going to find this important and it's entitled Review Updated Bullet Point Requirements to Optimize your Listing. All right, so effective in a couple of weeks, on August 15, 2024,. It says Amazon is updating its bullet point requirements. All right, so we announced this a long time ago, actually, where it was for hardline. Now it says here that the main points is restriction of special characters, emojis and some phrases such as refund related guarantees. Now, supposedly, you know like Amazon a while back said no more emojis, but we haven't seen that policed too much. So now that it's kind of like coming out with it a little bit in a more official capacity, perhaps like could this mean that you know, listings might start getting suppressed, or things like that. Well, let's read on here. Other thing is it says is that one change is you're going to have guidance to help you create high quality bullet points that are clear and concise. Bradley Sutton: All right, now here's the thing. They're going to use AI to help optimize listing quality. They're going to remove non-compliant content and use AI to generate compliant, high quality bullet points. Supposedly they're going to share these with you for review before published. But again, this is kind of like something like before. We talked about how Amazon has image requirements, we're going to talk about that later and then, if you're not meeting the requirements, amazon could go in there and change your images. They can go in there and change your title, and then you're kind of stuck with that. So, buyer beware now, hey us. Or seller beware. I guess I should say, if you're a seller, who's kind of like towing the line and then using emojis or using things that you shouldn't. Potentially this kind of like policy might state that, hey, you're giving Amazon the right to go in there and put some AI thing or put what it thinks is valid, and in the past, when Amazon does that, you know, be it with images or be it with titles, once that happens, it's like you can't change it back, right. So it's kind of a serious thing Now that article that was in your seller central dashboard. Bradley Sutton: It says hey, don't put a sense, don't put N a or not applicable or not eligible or TBD or copy pending. Don't do any of that. It says don't use phrases such as eco-friendly, environmentally friendly, ecologically friendly antibacterial made from bamboo I didn't realize. Made from bamboozle. I have a bamboo brand. I didn't realize. Made from bamboo. I have a bamboo brand. I didn't realize that that's not allowed. Made from soy or contained soy. You can't say hey, if not satisfied, send it back. Full refund, unconditional guarantee with no limit, not allowed to say those things. Obviously no company information there, no repetition. Bradley Sutton: It says and then you have to include at least three bullet points as far as character limits, as hey, uh, use more than 10 characters but less than 255, uh characters. So something to think about. Like, uh, you might want to do an audit on your listings. Make sure that you're compliant instead of like just taking the chance that you know Amazon might just slap you on the wrist and you can just remove your emojis or something later on. So curious, what do you the wrist and you can just remove your emojis or something later on. So I'm curious, are you guys going to just take this seriously, or maybe think that's kind of like their image requirements where Amazon doesn't enforce it too much, or hey, they've been saying bullet points, no emojis for years and I've been able to get away with it. What are you going to do? Are you going to keep going or are you going to actually change it this time? Let me know in the comments below. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from Gizmodo and it's entitled Etsy is getting a loyalty program for its most dedicated shopper. So this is going to be an invite only closed beta. It's going to cost $5 a month and kind of like. Makes me think of Walmart plus. You know Amazon prime target three, 60, where it's a membership buyer called Etsy insider. So it's not called Etsy Prime, but it's called Etsy Insider and it's going to offer exclusive benefits to buyers. So something very similar perhaps to what you guys know about Amazon Prime is now coming to Etsy. So is that going to increase sales, increase loyalty on the Etsy platform? Will be interesting to find out. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from CRN.com and it's entitled AWS outage has Amazon services, ring, whole foods and Alexa. Um, you know a lot of stuff in this article. Maybe doesn't, you think doesn't apply. But this is maybe what happened. Like how many of you guys out there, I saw a lot of message boards and groups where, talking about a few days ago, the seller central dashboard was glitching like crazy, you couldn't even get into your Amazon advertising, et cetera. So it probably is related to this. So I saw some people saying, hey, is it just me or you're not able to get your data? Well, it's no, it wasn't just you. There was this big outage that even affected whole foods, uh, supermarkets from Amazon. So don't worry, it looks like everything's back to normal. Uh, but you weren't the only one affected, if that was affecting you. Bradley Sutton: Next article, back to Seller Central Dashboard, and it's entitled Digital Service Fees Effective October 1st. So guess what, guys? We have got yet another set of fees, but it's not anything huge and it's because of some kind of regulation. So it says the Canadian government recently implemented a DST Digital Services Tax similar to those of the UK, France, Italy and Spain, and so on October 1st, we're going to start introducing a digital services fee to account for DST. Now, who does this apply to? All right, well, this DST rate is 2% in the UK, 3% in Canada, France, Italy and Spain. But it depends on the location of the buyer, the location of your business, et cetera. Bradley Sutton: So if you are a USA seller and you only sell in US, all right, so you're a US-based company and you're selling Amazon USA, you're not going to have to worry about any of this. All right, it's not going to apply. But if you sell in Amazon USA but your business is established in a country in which DST has been introduced UK, France, Spain, Canada now the sales in your Amazon USA store is going to apply to this DST fee. All right, so it is a 3% fee in the US store. Now you might be thinking 3%, good grief. Now that's crazy. If I'm already paying 15%, what? It's 18%? No, it's 3% of your Amazon seller fees. So if your seller fee is $2.25, like it is on a $15 item, you're paying only 7 cents more because it's 3% of that 225, as opposed to 3% of the 15. All right. And another example they gave here is if your product is in the UK, uh, that's going to be a 2% fee based on the Amazon fee, all right. So, so make sure to check your dashboard If you're not sure. Hey, is this going to apply to you? Um, you know, if you're outside of Canada and these other places, check the fee schedule in your dashboard for more information. But hey, it's not going to be a surprise if something is coming months from now and Amazon is giving everybody a heads up on it. Bradley Sutton: The next article here is from CRN.com and it's entitled Amazon looks to reduce costs to compete more aggressively on price as consumer habits shift. All right, so a lot of this was on their Q2 report. You know they actually had some. The shares of Amazon went down. But whenever you have these reports there's always some interesting tidbits that Amazon kind of like not leaks but mentions, and it kind of can give you insights into what their plan is in the future. And then one thing that Andy Jassy was saying is they're trying to make cost improvements, all right. And the thing that I thought affected sellers is. It says here Jassy said that the company will expand its use of automation and robots, continue to build out its same day delivery network Okay, great so far further regionalize its inbound network and strive for better inventory placement. He says it's going to enable faster speeds, more orders per box, and then here we go Fewer inventory transfers once items hit fulfillment centers. So that's the part that I liked. The other stuff, whether Amazon's using robots or not I don't know how that's going to affect me, but how many times have you had some inventory and all of a sudden it goes into transfer status or reserve status and then a lot of times that's because Amazon's having to move it around to different warehouses. Well, I think this is definitely going to help because the less you know, the more it kind of like you know distributes your inventory in a correct way and doesn't have to redistribute. Well, that's going to. That's going to help. You know your, your buyability, in my opinion, and how much you know units you have available to sellers or to buyers, and then you then it's going to help the shipping times as well. So let's see how this works out, if sellers are going to have an advantage because of these changes. Bradley Sutton: Our next article is going back to the Seller Central dashboard and it's entitled Update to how Product Detail Page Images Are Selected. So back in January on the Weekly Buzz, we had talked about how product details pages for hard lines product types are going to start displaying, potentially, images from multiple sellers. All right, now, in the coming months, this article says it's going to now include both soft lines and consumable products types. All right, and supposedly this is going to help increase sales. Um, but you know the they made a couple of tweaks to it since January. All right, they're going to prioritize brand owner images, thank goodness. All right. So if you're a brand registered owner, it's not like you're just going to automatically get your images removed. Um, and they're only going to use Amazon or brand registered sellers content If the required images are missing in the product detail page or to upgrade low quality content. Bradley Sutton: So this is what I talked about a little bit earlier, about what's going on, where sometimes, if Amazon says, hey, if you're not hitting our requirements on images, on title, on bullet points, we're going to step in and make necessary changes that we see fit. Now, again, this is the thing that I brought up like seven months ago, back in January. That I thought was super noteworthy, and they're reiterating it here. It says, as a reminder, each product detail page must have at least three required images one with the product on white background main image. One with a product in an environment that's what we call lifestyle images and one with product information such as dimensions or nutritional facts. This is an infographic. January was the first time I ever saw this where Amazon is basically saying you need a white background image, you need an infographic. January was the first time I ever saw this where Amazon is basically saying you need a white background image, you need an infographic and a lifestyle image. So they're reiterating that requirement. Now, you know, like three years ago you never, you only saw the white background image and the rest of the images could be whatever you wanted it. So, so make sure your images, guys, are in compliance. Bradley Sutton: All right, the next article back to the seller central dashboard. I mean, it seems like they they just seems like they just spit all these things out back to back to back 're going to have to maintain a 90% OTDR on time delivery rate. All right, I don't know what it was before. I mean, 90% seems pretty reasonable, like I thought it was a hundred percent that you pretty much had to do, but it's recommending that you actually do 95% according to this article. And obviously this does not apply at all to FBA, you know, because sellers aren't responsible for on-time delivery promises. Okay, now another thing is transit time settings. Now, before this September 25th date, on August 25th, the transit time requirements are going to be updated to match delivery capabilities of shipping services. So if you're shipping within the continental US you know that means that's not including Puerto Rico and Hawaii and Alaska you have to have a maximum transit time of only five days for standard and eight days for free economy shipping. Now this is interesting to me because I know some sellers who are doing FBM. You know, including myself. Bradley Sutton: You know maybe your initial reaction is like oh, this is going to be a pain in the neck. But remember what was announced in the Weekly Buzz a few weeks ago by Carrie about how Amazon might have like a Teemu-ish kind of like setup where Chinese sellers can ship directly within like eight to 10 days. Well, if that happens, who knows, maybe this is kind of like a protection for those of you shipping for full but fulfilled by merchant domestically, where you're going to have a guaranteed advantage over those Chinese direct shipping where you know the buyer is going to see five days delivery time, all right. So this five day delivery time, it's because Amazon's going to be displaying this as the as the shipping time for the product. And then if the Temu ish ones have like eight to 10 days, well, you, the Temu-ish ones have like eight to 10 days. Well, you know, this might help you know the buyability of your products. There's a lot more information here in this detailed article on your Seller Central dashboard, so make sure to check it out when you can. If you are an FBM seller, if you do 100% FBA, you can just go ahead and forget about that article, as it doesn't apply to you. Bradley Sutton: Now, speaking of Temu, this next article is kind of funny. Like sometimes, I think, amazon sellers, you know, like, especially when I read message boards, they get on the same page. They want to complain about the same thing of Amazon. Have you guys ever fantasized about or like thought about, let's all get together and let's like storm Amazon's headquarters not storm it, but, like you know, let's go there and let Bezos or let Jassy know how we feel and see if we can get up a meeting. Well, that might seem comical and like not realistic, but that is like literally what happened in Temu last week. All right, so this is an article for Business Insider and it says dozens of angry Chinese suppliers swarmed Temu's office saying they're tired of giving Westerners refunds without returns. Now, 80 people got in the building. There's like 300 people this article says was protesting and then 80 of them actually were able to storm the building here and they're disgruntled. So I know we're kind of jealous of what's going on with Temu sellers. Man, how could we ever match the prices? But not all is rosy over there. So these Temu suppliers are upset that Temu is trying to recruit US-based sellers and they're also upset about the refund policy. Bradley Sutton: So if they ship something from China to the customer and the customer says you know what, I don't like this product, it looks like I didn't realize this. I've never bought one thing from Temu myself, but Temu just returns the money and they don't even have to return the product to the, the product to the customer. So, like the sellers are up in arms about this. One merchant said told this Chinese newspaper that he lost almost all of his profits when he was fined $400,000 for customer refunds and complaints. First of all, holy crap, if he profited $400,000, how much did he actually sell in the last you know a few months? But anyways, this is what's going on in Temu. Don't get any ideas, guys. I don't think if 300 of you tried to storm Amazon Seattle offices that 80 are going to get through. Pretty sure Amazon has got some pretty tight security over here. Bradley Sutton: All right. Next article, again going back to Seller Central. It's not necessarily a prime day, but there is going to be a special Labor Day sale that Amazon is going to have. All right, it's actually entitled Labor Day sale and this is going to begin August 26th and runs through September 3rd. All right, so right. There's going to be deals that you can offer and these are time bound promotional offers and go to advertising, go to deals hit, create new deals and then select the week of the 26th and then that's going to go ahead and see if you're eligible to be able to have a special Labor Day sale deal. All right, the next article is for the last time, I believe again going back to Seller Central Dashboard, and this is an article about peak readiness and timelines for FBA capacity limits. Bradley Sutton: Now a couple important things. Number one a date that you have to keep in mind. It says if you want to guarantee you're going to have the prime badge for black Friday we're looking way ahead you have to have your inventory in the fulfillment centers by October 19th. So set a reminder for yourself. However you ship your inventory to Amazon, you've got to have it in the fulfillment centers by October 19th. Now that's kind of crazy if you think about it. When is Black Friday? Isn't that like November? You got to get your stuff. Don't think that you're going to send it in the beginning of November. You got to get your stuff in there pretty early. And one more thing here about fees and actual elimination of a fee. You know for once. Isn't that nice. It says additionally, to help you simplify operations and manage inventory more efficiency during peak, we have eliminated this overage fee for storage effective July 1st 2024. So if your on-hand inventory exceeds your capacity limit, you are not going to get this overage fee. All right. So that's, how often is it that there's a reduction or elimination of fees? Usually the announcements we we give her are about new fees that Amazon is charging. So that's a nice little welcome surprise from Amazon this week. If you want more information on that, make sure to check that news article in your dashboard. Bradley Sutton: All right, now we've got a few Amazon ads announcements, all right. So for those of you who are doing PPC, we have got some advanced ones, some beginners ones. Let's go ahead and hop into that. The first one from Amazon advertising. They announced new landing page in sponsored brand grow brand impression share goal Right. So what is this? That launch says the sponsored brand grow brand impression share campaign now allows advertisers to utilize a new landing page option in the product collection ad format. So you can select three products to advertise and then that's going to lead shoppers from a top of search ad to a new brand landing page containing these products. Bradley Sutton: All right. So one of the differences is now this is a new type of landing page that Amazon creates that buyers can land on. So sellers who even don't have a formally prerequisite Amazon store brand store which hopefully you guys have, but that used to be a requirement to be able to advertise some of your top of search ads Well, now you don't need that prerequisite stores to say you can just start this campaign super quick and ensure the brand product discovery experience. So where this is is under your goals when you set up a new sponsored brand campaign, one of the goals is grow brand impression share and now you can choose, once you, if you select that one, the product collection ad format, and then there's a brand new section right here that says new landing page and says pick products to advertise and we'll create a landing page for you here. For those of you watching on YouTube, I'm showing an example of the shoe brand. Who's got one of these set up right now and where this is now available. It's across the board North America, south America, Europe, middle East and Asia Pacific East and Asia Pacific. Next news article from Amazon advertising. Bradley Sutton: It says scale your message with priority delivery using Prime Video programmatic guaranteed deals. I'm not going to go too much into details because probably not that many of you are using Prime Video ads, but basically they launch programmatic guaranteed deals for Prime Video so you can have run of service deals, contextual deals that can go on, like you know top best of TV shows, page best of movies, best of Prime Video originals, et cetera, and then audience based deals. Check the link in the comments below or the description below If you want, if you're somebody who uses Prime Video ads and you can get a little bit more information on this. Last article of the day is an announcement from Amazon Advertising says on this last article of the day is an announcement from amazon advertising says harvest high performing targets with target promotion now available for sponsored products advertisers. So this is kind of like funny. It's like like very similar to what like atomic and another you know PPC software does where you can supposedly harvest keywords from like auto campaigns and move it to a manual. Now I tried to test this in my account and it wasn't working. So like just got a bunch of error messages. But for those of you who aren't using software, you know this is a potential option for you. Um, I'm not sure I can suggest using it yet because I got to see first how the suggestions work. You know, like if Amazon's algorithms was perfect in advertising, they wouldn't we wouldn't even have to negative match keywords because once we get like 30, 40 clicks they would start negative matching itself. But no, if we don't do anything, amazon's still going to keep charging us. So you know that in mind, like I'm not sure if we can, you know, quote unquote just trust this Amazon suggestion thing to move keywords in the right way. But who knows, maybe it's going to be pretty cool thing to move keywords in the right way. But who knows, maybe it's going to be pretty cool. Bradley Sutton: But for me it doesn't affect me much because I've been doing keyword harvesting for four years using Helium 10 Atomic. I set my rules and I say, hey, if one of my auto or broad campaign gets two orders at this ACoS or less, I want you to go ahead and move it to this campaign and I could exactly set up the flow. So there's nothing that is coming out here that is going to really affect the way I do things, but maybe for those of you who are just trying to eyeball your Amazon advertising and not even using the search term reports and not making pivot tables and not using software or whatever, maybe this might be a feature that can help you a little bit. So check out your advertising console, go to one of your auto campaigns, go to the ad group, go to the search terms page and take a look there. Does it show you something that? Uh? Does it give you suggestions on what you can move? Uh, it did it on mine because it was broken, but maybe it's working on yours. Let me know what you think and I'll leave a message in the comments below. All right, that's finally it for the news this week. Bradley Sutton: One last thing I wanted to give you a heads up. I'm going to be giving some cool strategies at the Seller Fest online next week. So if you want to get free tickets. I think it's free. I'm not sure if it's free or not but for more information, go to h10.me/sellerfest. Even if you have to pay, it'll be worth it. There's going to be tons of great speakers uh, other than myself as well, so I'm sure you're going to get a lot of value. h10.me/sellerfest for more information. All right, guys who that literally made a record? We've been doing Weekly Buzz for four years and this was the most articles, the most news stories in one week that we have ever had. So thank you, guys. For those of you who stuck to the end, let's see what's going to happen next week. Make sure to tune in next Thursday or Friday to see what's buzzing.
Tässä jaksossa vieras viime kesältä tekee uusintavisiitin, sillä aiheet ovat vaikeita ja tarvitaan moniulotteista ymmärrystä. Jaksossa käytiin läpi mm. onko meillä ihmisillä vapaa tahto tehdä mitä haluamme vai onko kaikki lähtöisin ulkoisista ärsykkeistä? Onko motivoituminen yksilöllistä, onko kaikilla ihmisillä jotain yhteisiä tekijöitä siihen minkä eteen jaksamme ponnistella? Mitä ovat vieraan mielestä terveyden tukipilarit ja miten niistä saa pidettyä hyvää huolta? Mitä tahdonvoima on ihan tarkalleen ottaen ja tarvitaanko sitä tavoitteiden saavuttamiseen? Mitä tehdä silloin kun tietää kyllä mitä pitäisi tehdä, mutta ei saa itseään liikkeelle? Miten ylläpitää hyviä rutiineja, kun alun kuherruskuukausi on ohi? Näitä ja muita mielenkiintoisia kysymyksiä pohdin yhdessä aivoterveysalan yrittäjä Teemu Vornasen kanssa. Linkit Optimal Performance - Hyvinvointiluennot ja verkkovalmennukset: https://www.optimalperformance.fi - Kuntosali ja valmennuskeskus, Helsinki: https://www.opcenter.fi Teemu Vornanen - Kotisivu: https://leekki.fi/ - Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teemuvornanen/ - IG: https://www.instagram.com/aivovinkit/ - Edellinen jakso: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GWDQSj6TWg5alfsVFwUGF?si=510f9a704baf4265 - Sapolsky: https://youtu.be/RI3JCq9-bbM?si=Et4JwQSh4Dmm3KMQ
Send us a Text Message.On this episode of the Hockey Cards Gongshow podcast we start by honoring the NHL's (almost) greatest player to wear the number 8 for episode 208 (10:50). Next, Josh went to The National and gives a recap of the show, health of the hobby and a hockey report (23:44). In hobby news, we update The Road To Infinity plus there's yet another mind-blowing Connor Bedard card grading milestone (1:17:48). Phil's back with some more hobby positivity with What Puts the Glow in Phil's...ahem imaginary...Flow (1:24:42). We take a look at the Top 5 Very Early 2023 Alure sales (1:41:35). You asked us hockey cards questions and we answer them in Gongshow Mailbag (1:48:36), then end the show with personal pickups (2:49:18).Partners & SponsorsOur Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/HockeyCardsGongshowFanatics Collect - https://fanaticscollect.pxf.io/Y96ARPSlab Sharks Canadian Consignment - https://www.slabsharks.comMy Card Post - https://www.mycardpost.comSign up for Card Ladder - https://app.cardladder.com/signup?via=HCGongshoFollow Hockey Cards Gongshow on social mediaInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/hockey_cards_gongshow/TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@hockey_cards_gongshowFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/HockeyCardsGongshowTwitter - https://twitter.com/HCGongshowThe Hockey Cards Gongshow podcast is a production of Dollar Box Ventures LLC.
We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. TikTok Launches New Program To Attract More UK Merchants https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-launches-program-attract-more-uk-merchants/720798/ Temu Breaks With Direct-From-China Strategy In Threat to Amazon https://www.theinformation.com/articles/temu-breaks-with-direct-from-china-strategy-in-threat-to-amazon Amazon Price Matching Update: As we all know Amazon has been price-matching Target and Walmart for a few years now causing many issues for brands. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brandonfishman_amazon-target-activity-7215821589546721280-2Rv_/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Flip, The TikTok Shop Competitor, Expands Social Commerce By Acquiring Curated https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2024/07/09/flip-the-tiktok-shop-competitor-expands-social-commerce-by-acquiring-curated/ Amazon defeats US consumer lawsuit over ‘buy box' product listings https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/amazon-defeats-us-consumer-lawsuit-over-buy-box-product-listings-2024-07-08/ Etsy loses its ‘handmade' and ‘vintage' labels as it takes on Temu and Amazon https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/9/24190843/etsy-handmade-vintage-policy-change Don't miss an exciting preview of the Amazon Accelerate event and how you can win free tickets from Helium 10. Lastly, Bradley talks about the latest update on Helium 10's Chrome extension, designed to give you the competitive edge you need in title optimization. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:47 - $1M TikTok Shop Program 01:43 - Temu Becoming Amazon-ish? 03:27 - Target / Amazon Buy Box Blunder 05:12 - New TikTok Shop Clone 07:12 - Amazon Wins Lawsuit 08:24 - Big Etsy Change 10:38 - Walmart Connect Updates 11:15 - Amazon Accelerate Updates 12:00 - Follow Helium 10 On TikTok 12:54 - New Feature Alerts & Training ► 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: Temu's going after Amazon now. Big buy box issues. If you sell on Target and Amazon, is change coming to Etsy? These stories and more on today's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on the Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We give you training tips of the week and we let you know what new features from Helium 10 can give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. All right, we got a lot of articles, so let's go ahead and hop right into it Now. The first article that we're going to be talking about today is actually from social media today, and it's entitled TikTok launches new program to attract more UK merchants. All right, so this is basically called the 1 Million Pound Club Initiative and it says it aims to help UK retailers reach 1 million pounds, or about 1.28 million in US dollars, in revenue via the app. Now what is involved in this program? Well, it says they're going to offer special incentives, support offerings, 0% commission, free sales, free storage, free fulfillment by TikTok seller support priority service. Some of you all might be saying, hey, sign me up. So it's kind of crazy these benefits that they're going to do Now. If you're interested in getting more information on this program, if you're in the UK, there is actually a link in this article that you should be able to get to down below. Bradley Sutton: Let's go talk about another platform and it's funny. A couple of weeks ago, when Carrie was doing the weekly buzz, there was a news article she had where it was entitled Is Amazon Becoming Temu-ish? You guys remember that story. It talked about how Amazon's opening up a kind of channel where it's kind of like Temu, where they have Chinese sellers, sell directly to US buyers and then they ship directly low-priced items and it gets to customers in like 10 days. This is funny. Now this is entitled Is Teemu Becoming Amazon-ish? So there's this article from theinformation.com and it's entitled Teemu Breaks with Direct from China Strategy in a Threat to Amazon. And basically what this article is talking about is how Timo is trying to kind of go away from just the direct from China to US model and they are actively trying to recruit US sellers, or at least sellers who have warehouses in the US, to ship and then potentially, you know, who knows, maybe Temu would have some um fulfillment now for the very first time ever. I started like downloading the Temu app and looking at it and I'm like, oh, my goodness, uh, they've got coffin shelves and other stuff on there for super, super cheap prices. I'm not sure how it would work in the U? S. Now I I'm going to be actually trying to reach out to Temu and maybe do like a little mini case study to see how in the world they expect to have US sellers selling on the platform. But who knows, maybe it's an opportunity, like if they have a whole bunch of incentives where you can make a profit, you know, due to maybe no selling fees and very, you know, no advertising, et cetera. So let's see, come back in maybe three or four weeks I'll let you know how my project X team is going. Bradley Sutton: Next article is not really an article but just a LinkedIn post. In case you missed it, Jason, who comes here on the podcast sometimes, and he along with the CEO of VitaCup, Brandon, were reporting on something that's going on where you know how Amazon price matches, you know, with Walmart, Target and other websites. And now target had this circle, target circle prices like target, that target circles, kind of like their club where they get special discounts. But then what's happening is, on this target circle Now they're showing the target circle price over here with the regular price, with a line crossed out of it. Now you know you might be wondering, well, how is that an issue? You know that's pretty cool. But no, it's not cool because what's happening is Google, I guess, picked up on that new Target Circle price which only a few people have. It's not like, oh, everybody's a Target Circle member, like everybody's an Amazon Prime member, almost right. So what's happening now is that's a special price, a special discount that I believe Target even gives. It's not really the buyer or the seller who's giving all of that discount. Target, I think, is subsidizing it a little bit. And now what's going on is that Amazon's price matching that and so of course, your Amazon listings are priced higher than that Target circle price. And so what happens when Amazon detects that? No, buy box. So a lot of sellers out there it's not just VitaCup, I've heard this across the board that a lot of people are being affected by this where Amazon is removing the buy box because it thinks that they're price gouging, right. So if you're selling on Target and your Amazon sales have gone down, take a look at your Amazon listings. That could be the reason. I don't know offhand of a solution, but I'm sure Amazon will come up with something before Prime Day. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from Forbes.com and it's entitled Flip, the TikTok shop competitor, expands social commerce by acquiring curated. Now, I have never heard of Flip. I have never heard of curated, but it's interesting. First of all, why should we care about this? This is like you know. We're talking about social commerce where there's social media blended with buying right in one. That's, that's the whole kind of like premise. You know, there was TikTok and then now there's TikTok shop. Now this is big overseas. You think it's already getting big in the US. Well, the social commerce market in China is going to grow from 350 billion back in 2021 to 900 billion next year. Now US social commerce was 37 billion in one and it's projected to get to 80 billion. But that's like China's like 10x the ceiling. If it really starts to take off in the US, you know, who knows how big it can actually get. So it's interesting to follow, hey, who are the new players in the game? We saw what happened with TikTok shop in the US and now it says hey, it has over 500,000 merchants in the affiliate program selling products via influencer produced shoppable videos, as we know, right, bloomberg reported that TikTok shop expects to reach 17.5 billion in sales by the end of this year. Bradley Sutton: So now there's another social commerce player. It's called Flip and they're similar to TikTok shop, but it's significant differences, it says, could make it more appealing to customers. In the US it only has 5 million users, so this is not something that TikTok Shop is. Shaking their boots, oh, my goodness, this Flip company is coming after us, but they curate every brand. It features On TikTok Shop not anybody, but it's a little bit loose. But on TikTok or on Flip, it said pretty, a little bit loose, uh, but on Tik TOK or on flip it said 70% of the sellers that apply uh are actually rejected. Uh, giving customers more confidence. So, anyways, um, just another, maybe marketplace that you can maybe get in a little bit early on. Um, if you think it's going to get bigger, uh, take a look at flip. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from Reuters and it's entitled Amazon defeats US Consumer Lawsuit Over Buy Box Product Listings. Now, at first when I saw this I was like, oh, did that crazy FTC lawsuit finally get thrown out? No, this was just like something that a couple of random Amazon customers wanted to do some class action lawsuit, saying that, oh, amazon is not rotating the buy box in a fair way. You know, it's actually showing some prices that were a few cents more expensive than other ones and we're all affected by it. So obviously the judge kind of like threw this one out because they're like all right, well, show us the receipts. Like literally like where's the receipts? And they're like well, we don't have any receipts. I guess is how it worked out. But you know, remember that other FTC lawsuit I haven't heard about that in a few months. You know, what I've said always from the beginning is like I don't understand why the FTC is going after certain things that Amazon is doing when there's so many other things that Amazon sellers are concerned about, like you know, the new fees and buy box matching and things like that. But here I guess anybody can file a lawsuit against Amazon. But hey, just because you do it, that doesn't mean you're going to win. Amazon won and these Amazon Prime customers zero on this one. Bradley Sutton: Next article is kind of near and dear to my heart because a couple of weeks ago, literally two weeks ago, I got a whole bunch of my Etsy listings suspended. And I don't know about you guys who sell on Etsy, but when you sell on Etsy or you get suspended, like on a listing, there's like no way to contact customer support, no way to argue. It. It's like final, it's like this and that and my products, you know, like coffin shelf products on one account and on another account some other similar, uh, not mass produced products that I sell on Etsy. It absolutely falls within what Etsy is says. It's like the handmade policy. It's got to be handmade or made by a member of your shop, uh, or designed by you, like. I qualify for all three of those. You know pretty much. So it's ridiculous that Etsy was removing my listings but now this week the verge is reporting it. Etsy loses its handmade and vintage labels as it takes on Temu and Amazon. So what does that mean? Well, it says hey. Bradley Sutton: A policy update announced today creates four new classifications for items for sale on Etsy Made by, designed by handpicked by and sourced by. All right, all products need to fall into just one of those four to be eligible. Vintage items will fall under handpicked by. But again, this is kind of crazy. I had to redo a whole bunch of my listings just because Etsy erroneously removed it. Couldn't they have waited two weeks? Their policy was about to change anyways. There's no way that. I mean, who knows, I was already not breaking the policy. So who knows? I mean Etsy probably still could remove my listings. But anyways, this is kind of big news, I think. You know Etsy wants to kind of like, you know, make sure they're competing a little bit more with Amazon, and you know websites like Teemu, I guess, and so this move you know, let's see might help them. You know, let's see might help them. Does this open up the possibility for you to sell on Etsy? Maybe before you didn't think you qualified. But do you qualify under one of those four things? I, technically, if you design your product, even if you're not the one making it, you absolutely should qualify if you take that at face value. So a little bit interesting for those of you. Maybe you can start considering Etsy as a marketplace. Bradley Sutton: Speaking of different marketplaces, Walmart had a Walmart Connect few announcements that they sent out in email. They said they launched a couple of new things a video module, item and module reordering for brand shop. So brand shop is kind of like I guess you know the your brand store on Amazon, but now you can add a video module to that. You can also rearrange your modules on your brand narrative or brand shop page and do a couple other things. So I don't even have my brand store set up on Walmart. I better get on that and then I can go ahead and take advantage of some of these other features going to Amazon seller central they have. Bradley Sutton: This is the last story of the day Amazon accelerate We've been talking about for a few weeks. They announced a couple of the special speakers Amazon Store CEO, Doug Harrington, and also Martha Stewart is going to be joining Amazon Accelerate 2024. So there's your chance to meet a couple of celebrities of the Amazon and pop culture world. I guess there that you can do if you go to Amazon Accelerate. Now Amazon Accelerate, if you go to h10.me forward slash accelerate, you'll be able to get a hundred dollars off your um tickets, which I believe is only four 99 right now. But do you guys want to go to Amazon accelerate for free? Bradley Sutton: We have a contest going on right now. If you go to our Tik TOK channel right, helium 10 software. Right, helium 10 software follow us and then like one of our posts. All right, don't just software. Follow us and then like one of our posts. All right, don't just always just pick the first one I don't know why my face is all over this TikTok channel right now but pick one of the recent ones and like it and then comment something with the word accelerate. Don't say, hey, I'm entering the contest for Amazon Accelerate. Say something like Bradley, looks like your hair growth has been accelerated lately with your haircut, I don't know. Just trying to come up with a unique way of using the word accelerate. And then our social media person, Lailama, she's going to pick one of you to win a completely free ticket to go to Amazon Accelerate worth $600. So make sure to do that when you see this sometime this weekend, if you can. All right, that's it for the news this week. Bradley Sutton: Now let's get into a couple new cool Helium 10 feature alerts. All right, we've got some new things that are coming to our Chrome extension. Actually, they have come to our Chrome extension and here's the background of it. As you know, when you take some of my listing optimization classes, or if you've learned from other people out there, like Tomer Rabinovich, he's always said, hey, try and find out what is the niche theme? Right, like what kind of images the competitors are using and like what kind of style they have. But one part of a niche theme is the length of title. All right, it's not like hey, every single category, every single product, you should have 200 characters in your title. Every single product, you should have 50 characters. No, some could be 50. Some could be 200. Different things work in different niches, and so now what sellers were looking for is hey, how can I just really quick, at a glance, get an idea of what the top 10, 20 products on a keyword page? What is the length of their titles? Well, watch this. Bradley Sutton: If you go into the Chrome extension now, you are going to be able to hit Xray, for example, right here. This is a search that I have here for collagen peptides. And if I hit the search button now, as you can see, there is this new widget at the very top. It says average title character count 169. And then, if I put my mouse over the eye here and it says here at the bottom there's actually six that have 180 to 189 and there's seven, seven listings, 35%. So 65% of the listings on page one of collagen peptides have between 180 and 200 in the top 20. All right. So now compare that to another one. We go and search accordion on Amazon, all right. And then we run a Xray on this page remember the collagen peptides was 169. What's the average on accordion? It is only 116. All right, and if we put our mouse over right here we can see that, hey, 25% of the listings on page one actually have less than 100 characters, all right. And another maybe 50 percent or 40 percent have between 110 and 139. So completely different than what you were seeing for collagen peptides, right. So again, just because a list you know, even helium 10 has listing scores. It's just based on like kind of best practices overall. But this is something that is interesting, where now you can see what's going on at the individual product level. You can see the title character count of every single product on page one and on average. So pretty cool update for the Helium 10 Chrome extension. Bradley Sutton: Now one more update here in the Chrome extension. Hopefully you guys have had a chance to maybe use the new tool that we launched a couple of months ago that uses AI to kind of aggregate and analyze and organize your product research maybe projects, right. Well now, let's say you're researching accordions and you ran Xray here and you want to add a few products, like, oh, I want to add this to my product research project right in product launchpad. Well, now what you can do in Xray is go ahead and select any of the ASINs you want and then you are going to hit the button right here save product idea. And once you hit the save product idea, it's going to open up a widget and now, if you actually have some projects open in product launchpad, you're going to be able to choose it from here and then just add it right there. Or if you're just like oh, wow, I'm just browsing Amazon, this is like actually a really interesting idea. These mini accordions for kids never thought of that. I want to start researching that, uh, without having to go and do all this research right now. Let me save this for later. So then you would hit new product idea and now it's going to go ahead and save in your new project. So super cool updates this week from the Chrome extension and hats off to Simon at Helium 10 for helping push those through. Bradley Sutton: All right, now it's time for the Helium 10 training tip of the week, and this also has to do with the Chrome extension. Maybe a new way that you can see who is targeting your ASIN and start tracking it. All right, it's not available like in black box or in the Helium 10 tool. It's available right here in the Chrome extension. Just go to your product pages or go to your competitors product pages If you want to track. Hey, who is showing up on my competitors product page? Where am I showing up on my competitors product page? Or vice versa, who is showing up and who is bidding for the most on the Product Targeting Ads on my page? Who's putting sponsored brand ads on my page? Who is putting a Sponsor Display Ads on my page? Let me show you how you can do that. You go into Amazon and like, let's say, this is my product. Actually, this is one of the products I work on in motion hemp cream. You can see that there's plenty of ads all over the page. Here's products related to this item. There was a couple of sponsor display or some sponsored brand ads down here towards the bottom. There's even more products down here that are showing up. Bradley Sutton: So what you can do, all you have to do now is hit Xray and then instantly all of the products on this page are going to show up. All right, so you can see here that there's actually um, let's see, it looks like 25 products are all appearing on the front of this page, from sponsor brand to sponsor products. Uh, maybe some sponsor display here, and I could just go ahead and just save this as an excel file and just start storing it to see. All right, hey, maybe you can have one of your VA's do it. You know throughout the day, like, uh, or every once a day, it's like, all right, let. Hey, maybe you can have one of your VA's do it. You know throughout the day, like, or every once a day, it's like, all right, let me just track who is showing up the most on my page. So again, that's just two clicks it takes to do that. Bradley Sutton: Make sure to start looking at your competitors pages. Look at your pages. I like looking at competitors pages too, because it might give me ideas on different products that I can target in my Sponsored Product ASIN Targeting Campaign. So, uh, pretty cool feature. I think you guys maybe are sleeping on. You might not have known that it existed. Make sure to go to hop on any product page, run Xray and tell me who is advertising on your page. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining us this week. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.
Especially in Europe, a growing number of people choose not to be affiliated with organized religion. But does it mean that they reject everything religious? And does sport have something to offer for spiritual life, at least for some? In this episode, Dr. Teemu Pauha helps us to explore the fuzzy lines between contemporary 'religious', 'spiritual', and 'atheist' identities and some of the key characteristics of new 'spiritualities of life' that are formed outside of organized religion. With the focus on embodiment and everyday life, these new spiritualities also sometimes find their expression in physical cultures such as martial arts. We explore various cultural characteristics of martial arts practices and Teemu shares what he sees as some key considerations for sports researchers when studying the spiritual in sport. Dr Teemu Pauha is a University Lecturer at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki. His research has explored the religious and national identities of young Finnish Muslims and the role of religion in intergroup relations. Teemu is a long-term martial arts practitioner and has also recently worked on the topic of religion and sport (which will be the focus of the second part of our conversation).
Kristin speaks with Teemu Alanen, a Finnish pilot turned poker player who moved from Europe to Mexico and changed his life. Hear why he made the life-changing leap to digital nomadism, his tips for thriving as an expat in Mexico, and what a typical day in the life of a remote poker player looks like. Teemu also talks about the differences between Finnish culture and Mexican culture, revealing why he's not moving back to Finland anytime soon. Plus, Kristin highlights a few listener stories and questions about Tulum. Special Offers: Travel to Costa Rica with Kristin! Check out Tortuga Backpacks Stay covered with Nomad Health by SafetyWing (Global Health Insurance for Remote Workers and Digital Nomads) Topics Discussed: Why Teemu decided to quit being a pilot to pursue online poker. Unique aspects of Finnish culture (communication, socializing, dating, etc.) What you need to thrive as an expat in Mexico. Tips for finding a trustworthy immigration lawyer in Mexico. Activities and groups in Tulum. The phases of moving to a new place as a digital nomad. Differences in living in Tulum vs. Playa del Carmen. A typical work day in the life of a remote poker player. Teemu's invite-only “family dinners”. Questions Answered: Why did you decide to move abroad to Mexico? What was it like being in Tulum during the pandemic lockdown? What makes Tulum special compared to Playa del Carmen and other cities? How is Finnish culture different from other cultures? What phase of life and digital nomadism are you in? Will you move back to Finland or to another country in the future? Episode Resources: Trusted Bilingual Immigration Lawyer in Mexico: Adriana Vella - Immigration to Mexico Online Men's Group: Men of Means Related Podcasts: Ep 77: 8 Essential Skills You Need to Become a Digital Nomad Ep 97: What I Love About Living Abroad Ep 184: How To Find Community Abroad With the Co-Founder of WiFi Tribe Ep 219: How To Move Overseas With Confidence - Bigger, Better World Ep 242: 7 Things to Know Before You Move Abroad Ep 249: Tulum, Mexico: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Ep 250: From Canada to Mexico – How a Near-Death Experience Changed This Expat's Life Related Videos: How I See the US After Living Abroad for 15 Years [CULTURE SHOCK] Living in Mexico as an Expat: Crime, Health, Cost-of-Living, & More Why He Left the US to find FREEDOM in Mexico
EP318 - Temu Deep Dive with Earnest Analytics Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep Temu, the online marketplace operated by the Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, that has become the fastest growing retailer in history. Joining us on the episode is Michael Maloof is the Head of Marketing for Earnest Analytics. Earnest works with world-class data partners to acquires, anonymize, and productize insight about the entire U.S. Economy. They have posted numerous insights about Temu in the US this year: Feb 28: Temu's 2024 Super Bowl ad blitz failed to accelerate growth March 5: Temu is growing fastest among high income earners March 12: Almost half of Wish, AliExpress customers shop at Temu In this episode we cover who Temu is, how big they have become, who their customers are and what retailers they are likely impacting, their go to market strategy (and especially their marketing spend), the controversy around their use of the Global Postal Treaty, and some of their potential risks. We also explore where they could go next. If you're in the commerce space, you'll want to make sure you are up to speed on Temu. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 318 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. 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 Scott show. This is episode 318 being recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg. And as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott show listeners. Jason, one of the topics that is coming up a lot this year, we talked a lot at a lot in our recap and our preview is Temu. By many measures, people think they're one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in history. If you watch the Super Bowl, I think they spent $8 trillion on ads there. So we want to do a deep dive into this and cover a number of topics. We want to talk about a little background around Temu. What's it mean for U.S. retailers? And, you know, it's a Chinese company. Does it even matter? If yes, why? Because Temu isn't public and they are a Chinese company, they don't really disclose any information. So we wanted to bring on a guest that is basically a Temu expert. So we looked around and we found Michael Maloof. He is the head of marketing at Ernest Analytics. Ernest works with world-class data partners to acquire, anonymize, and productize insights about the U.S. economy. They have posted lots of articles. This is how we found Michael. I think you know him as well from the trade show circuit. So he's going to help us do this deep dive into what's going on at Temu. Welcome to the show, Michael. Michael? Michael: [1:59] Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show. Big fan of your annual predictions and the work you guys do. So I'm head of marketing at Earnest Analytics. We're the leading credit card retail pricing and healthcare claims data provider for investors and retailers. Before Earnest, I was actually a tech and telco analyst over at Goldman. The two credit card data sets we work with now, Orion and Vela, are probably the most pertinent to my conversations about the consumer economy and certainly this conversation today about TMU. They sourced respectively from a large account aggregator, like a budgeting app, and part of a POS system in the US. And Ernest essentially takes these massive and messy data sets, normalizes structures, and then puts them onto our platform so everyone from portfolio managers to marketers can see this third-party data. For example, you'd see market share, competitive benchmarking, customer behavior, revenue predictions, and macro trends for thousands of companies, including TMU. Scot: [3:03] Awesome. Thanks, Michael. And then, so which sector did you cover when you were an analyst at Goldman Sachs? Michael: [3:08] Tech and telco. So anything in the tech space, we had a few marketplaces in there, telecom companies. It's been a while though. Ernest has been my home now for seven years. Scot: [3:20] Okay. Was this in the Anthony Noto era you were there? Michael: [3:23] This was in the vera rossi era she was my my lead where we recovered uh latin american tech and telco. Scot: [3:30] Very cool awesome yeah they did goldman did the channelizer ipo so i get to know the team there pretty well awesome well before we jump into the data which we're excited to kind of hear what you have to share here jason i know this has become a very hot topic in your world you you You spoke on it at NRF. In your day job, you're getting tons of questions about this. I think you're booked out solid with Tmoo briefings. So those people pay big money for it, and our listeners don't pay. Give us the free version of your backgrounder on Tmoo. Jason: [4:05] Yeah, thanks, Scott. And I'm sure we'll spice in some other tidbits as we go, but I'll try to give a concise bullet. it. Temu is a subsidiary of a company that used to be called Pinduoduo in China. It's now called PDD Holdings, which is infinitely easier to spell, by the way. And PDD Holdings is one of the largest e-commerce companies in China. On a market cap basis, they keep flip-flopping with Alibaba. So they're super competitive. They're way north of like $400 billion in GMV in China and had a really interesting trajectory, but a couple of years ago, they launched Tmoo into first UK and then US, now 49 other markets as a new retail concept. And so a couple of things I'd want folks to know before we dive in with Michael, first of all, the name is a loose English acronym for team up price down. So I always pronounce Tmoo as in team. [5:08] There are multiple pronunciations out there, even from Tmoo employees. So I'm not sure there's an official pronunciation. In the United States, they launched in September of 2022. So they're about 18 months old now. And most folks were not familiar with them until, a surprise, three months after launching, they bought a Super Bowl ad. So they became familiar to millions of Americans with the Shop Like a Billionaire ad that ran in the Super Bowl in 2023. And then as Scott alluded to, they bought five ads in the Super Bowl this year. So they haven't disclosed what they paid. A normal 30-second spot in the Super Bowl costs about $7 million. They ran four ads during the Super Bowl and one during the postgame. So estimates are in the kind of $20 to $30 million that they spent just on that ad. There's a bunch of estimates for how big they are in the U.S. I'm eager to hear what Michael thinks, but his old rivals at Morgan Stanley have them at about $16 billion in GMV in the U.S. But more interesting, Morgan Stanley estimates they're going to be $32 billion by 2030. So you think about a retail company that launched in September of 2022, and then in the first year, business sold $16 billion worth of stuff. That's the fastest growing retailer of all times. We do know from other sources that they get more traffic every year than Target. [6:36] They've been the most downloaded shopping apps on the Android and Apple app stores since they were born. So they've kind of owned the top of that list. And a couple other little interesting things. They are a marketplace. They have invented a model they call next generation manufacturing. So they're a marketplace. It's all three-piece sellers that are selling goods on Temu. But unlike traditional Western-based marketplaces, Temu does a lot more of the work, of listing the products and fulfilling the products for the factory. So they may, if you're a factory, they say the only thing you need is a cellular internet connection, and they provide you all the infrastructure to become a successful seller on Temu. There's somewhere between 80 and 100,000 Chinese factories that are currently sellers on the marketplace. And then one big innovation is this week, they're turning on the ability for U.S. Marketplace sellers to sell and fulfill their goods from the U.S. as well. So one interesting question about a marketplace is, are they competing for sellers with Amazon and Walmart? And now they're bringing that fight to American soil. So that, I feel like, is enough to get us started. There's certainly an interesting company that's worth following. [7:52] The way I originally discovered Earnest is through this show. One of our most popular guests, Dan McCarthy, has been on a few times talking about his his CLV methodologies. And our listeners have really enjoyed his his commentary. He has partnered with Earnest Data several times to do some really interesting analytics. And you guys at Earnest have published a couple of those as thought leadership. And so that's how I first met you. And then, Michael, I noticed you published like three articles on Temu this year. Michael: [8:22] That's right. Right. Teamio has been one of the top client asked for themes. It's definitely something we're seeing a lot in the press. We work a lot with those thought leaders as well. And that's something that we're getting a lot of questions on from everyone from business to fashion to Dan McCarthy. So glad to answer any questions there. We are kind of in a unique spot, kind of have the dashboard on the consumer economy, if you will. Basically what's going on within the last few days we can see everything from customer acquisition they have to their gross market merchandise value. Scot: [8:56] Got it let's let's start at the basics and let's pretend you know so i see Temu and you know it looks like they've got and you know one of my theories is it feels a lot like wish.com so it's really kind of cheap stuff slower ship going to what i would call value-oriented and consumers, you know, in your data, what, what kind of customer are, is buying this and then how fast do you think they are really growing? Michael: [9:22] Yeah, let me answer the second one first. Timmy's growing very quickly. Like you said, from late 2022 onwards, our data is showing double digit month to month growth, which is just explosive, right as it became a household name. In the first three months, for context, it had roughly as many weekly active users in the US as the largest fast fashion brand, Shein, and within 10 months had surpassed Shein in sales. And it had taken Shein years to get to that point. So really, a much shorter timeline. For an idea of size, about 18% of US households have shopped at TeamView since its launch. And in terms of GMV, in February, we saw about 1% of Amazon's US GMV. If you look at that, if you just break that out over the whole year, I believe in 2023, their net sales were something like over $500 billion. You're looking at around $50 billion in gross merchandise value moving through the service. But nevertheless, it's kind of not made really meaningful inroads with the largest online brands. I mean, it's still 1% in a good month. And that's actually decelerated since 2023. In fact, February of 2023 had fewer sales than January, despite the really heavy advertising spend you mentioned. [10:47] So yeah, there's some signs that the growth is kind of changing there. Mainly that retention is increasing even while this like... [11:01] New customer acquisition-based sales growth model is slowing down. TeamU's average customer lifetime value tracks higher than Walmart. And we're seeing customers becoming much more loyal. So that's an interesting kind of plus for them while sales in total are kind of hitting a lull. But yeah, let's talk about who those customers are too. It's definitely been one of the more interesting finds from our data. Despite the really low price points and that kind of gamified discount system, TeamView's US customer base skews middle to high income, actually. Sales among customers earning that over $190K, which is obviously very high up there, they're the fastest growing income bracket. And that's from May to January, May of 23 to January 24. So those sales to customers earning under $55K, like less than the median U.S. household income, that's actually the slowest growing. So today, about 44% of TeamU sales come from earners making over $130K. Not only do high-income earners account for the largest share, they're outgrowing. We just think that TeamU resonates mostly with customers with more disposable income. income, people who can afford to take a gamble on an item that might not work out. [12:27] You buy a floor mat for $5, it doesn't work. A middle high income person might just say, hey, it was $5 wasted, but the poor people don't always look at that. They're looking for a little bit more bang for their buck, can't afford that type of gamble. Yeah, it's interesting. Scot: [12:46] Cool and then you've you know you mentioned that they're you know basically their ltv is going up do you have any insight into why are they getting better at like maybe predictive analytics or recommendation engine or you know they see jason bought some gadget and then they they know he's now a gadget geek and they kind of start targeting do you have any insight into what's driving that that bump in LTV? Michael: [13:09] That's a good question. So I don't really have much insight into that. I try not to get out over my skis in terms of the data that I have available to me. We're looking at retention. We're looking for what's called a smile. Dan McCarthy talks about it all the time, which is over time as a company starts to bring back more customers that stopped stopped spending with them. And that's been pretty rare to see in e-commerce history. That's something they've managed to do. How they're doing that, I'm not totally sure. So it's definitely going to be the key for them to continue growing as new customer growth slows down, though. Scot: [13:52] Yeah. Jason, do you know? Jason: [13:54] Yeah. Well, so I don't know. I just want to point out that while Michael is wisely trying to not get over his skis, I live over my skis. So I'll tumble down the ski slope once again. One of the things I maybe should have said up front or maybe apparent to a lot of people is T-Moves marketing spend isn't just that Super Bowl ad. They're spending a fortune on digital ads and almost certainly losing a lot of money on every sale. So there's a Wall Street Journal article that came out this week that said that Temu or PDD overall spent over $2 billion with Facebook and was Facebook's largest advertiser. They're also Google's largest advertiser in the U.S. And so they're buying a lot of customers. And the the Wall Street Journal estimates that they're losing $6 on every sale. They're spending so much on customer acquisition. And so in that first year, they're doing a ton of marketing. There's a ton of people that never heard of Temu. They're acquiring those customers. They're getting that first order. [14:54] And, you know, a mini version of this is what Wish did until they ran out of money. But though it doesn't seem like there was a lot of evidence that Wish ever got traction, right? Like they didn't get those repeat orders. And what I think we're seeing And what I've seen in some of the data that Michael shared with us is that Temu very much is growing that LTV, getting repeat orders, even as the flood of digital marketing they're spending is sort of losing some efficacy as the law of large numbers kick in. And then I would also say Pinduoduo in China and now Temu in the U.S. Is very well known for their gamification. So they have lots of clever gamification mechanics on their websites, group buying, contests, gifts, one-time deals that are all like very carefully crafted to entice you to make an incremental purchase and to make an unplanned purchase. So I think all of those things appear to be working and then they hit you on social media with, you know, a huge spend, you know, right when you're, you're doom scrolling and expressing some, some purchase intent through your clicks. Scot: [16:08] Very cool. How about you, Michael, you mentioned this, this, this slowdown, which is exactly opposite of what I would have thought given the Superbowl ads. What do you, does the data show you anything there? Is it? Normal or like what what's going on. Michael: [16:23] Yeah i mean i don't know i don't know what would be normal for this company that's still up hundreds of percent a year but when i'm looking at at month over month growth which is the kind of the best way i can think to to look at it it is pretty remarkable there was some sort of a step change in august of last year where it went from growing double double digits each month to growing just single digits or down. The holidays, December actually was smaller than November in terms of their sales. And January was smaller still, makes sense. But February, also very challenged in terms of sales. I'm wondering if they're in a sort of spiral in terms of the new customer's first time kind of buying frenzy is over, or if this is a shift towards very purposely trying to get people in the door and they're just actually tapping brakes a bit on advertising spending. I'm not totally sure what this signals just yet. Scot: [17:35] Got it. Okay. Jason: [17:36] Is it safe to say that there's no clear evidence that spending $30 million million dollars on the Super Bowl had a super observable impact on their sales. Michael: [17:46] Okay. Yeah. So the Super Bowl. Let's talk about that. The million dollar question or $30 million question, I guess. The answer is probably not. There are a lot of ways to measure advertising effectiveness, as you guys know better than most. Brand awareness and net promoter score. But yeah, for a young company like this facing slowing new customer growth, I'd imagine they're looking to move the needle with each of these like big marketing events and the data just suggests that their multiple ads on February 11th had no meaningful boost in sales actually TeamU saw a noticeable deceleration in sales growth following the event actually kind of, like sales were significantly slower in the next few days. So unless they're measuring this on a much longer timeline, I don't think this investment was worth it. I think they would be better just plowing dollars into digital, wherever that is. Jason: [18:42] Yeah, it's super interesting. You know, obviously for listeners that don't know, my salary gets paid by those Super Bowl ads. I work for a big ad agency for which I'm very grateful. But the lot of controversy around our water cooler the day after the show. That was a spin that you rarely see. And in one metric, it clearly had an impact. There was a lot more discussion about Temu than any other company on social media the day after the Super Bowl. So the Super Bowl ads triggered awareness and conversation. I think they were the second behind Verizon, which had Beyonce, right? And so there was a lot of talk on social media. It was not all positive. There was a lot of discussion on social media, but people that hated the team who had the first time they saw it because it was sort of by Super Bowl standards, not a very high production animated ad. I think they made it in-house and they, you know, ran it with much greater repetition than audiences are used to. So it generated a lot of conversation that didn't necessarily translate to sales, at least that we can measure in the short term. And so that that's going to be interesting long term case study about what what these kind of, you know, splashy big reach audiences can and can't can't do. Right. Michael: [20:00] You know, I don't, again, skis and getting over them. It just seems like the outcome for them at this point should be a little further down the funnel. And I don't see how advertising spend like that will marginally get someone, persuade someone to buy a team you that wasn't already going to. It seems, yeah, it was a lot and there was no really movement in our data, either in new signups or in sales. I think there's some other research out that downloads are trending downwards or slowing down as well. We don't have that data, but I was reading elsewhere. So I think, Scott, this is maybe more to your 2024 prediction that people are realizing this is wish and slowing. and becoming less enamored or falling out of it. Jason: [20:52] No, no, no, no. Scott's predictions cannot be right. Scot: [20:55] Wait, if I hear that, you're pre-anointing that I'm right. Is that you're here in March, you're saying I was right with my prediction. Man, I'm good. Michael: [21:04] I didn't want to pick a side here, but I think people might be falling out of love with it, although it's not because it's not wish, it's because they're out wishing wish. We can talk to it a little bit. But I think people just realize Teamio is managing to disrupt Wish. And we can talk to the brands that it's disrupting. That's just one of many. It's got higher retention, bigger scale than Wish. But it does have the same limits as Wish and that this deep discount model doesn't have the big household brands that people want when they're making those everyday purchases that are slightly bigger, like the Tides and Cloroxes or the recognizable alternatives. There are just some things you don't want to replace and you don't want to gamble on. I don't think anyone wants to spend a dollar on detergent and see what happens. It's just going to be tough for them to scale at some point. I think the question we should be asking is if they've reached that point yet. I'm not sure. The sales growth slowing suggests they could have. But in the meantime, they are actually taking a wrecking ball to several other brands. So just because total sales is slowing doesn't mean the disruptive effect is slowing. Scot: [22:22] Yeah, let's go, Jason. Jason: [22:51] Because Temu is buying so many ads and driving the price on all those auctions up. So don't know if it's moving the needle on consumer impact or not, but it for sure is having an impact on their competitors, at least in that regard. Michael: [23:04] So you're saying maybe their goal is to just suck all the oxygen out of the room? Jason: [23:08] I'm saying that's potentially an unintended positive benefit. Mm-hmm. Scot: [23:15] Yeah, and you've teed us up there. Who is, is it retailers or is it more brands? Who's getting impacted by this? And kind of embedded in this question is, do you have an idea of the categories? Like if we looked at that pie of the 50 billion GMV, is it largely electronics? Is it apparel? Like what are the big wedges inside of there? Michael: [23:35] Yeah, well, so the great part about transaction data, it's really good at looking at brand disruption, or I should say retail disruption by brand. Not great at looking at the categories. You know, I don't see what an individual breakout of a credit card receipt is. I'm just seeing where people are spending. So I think that's the question I'm more equipped to answer. In terms of impact, some of the folks you think of when you think of mass market and discount retailers like Five Below and Walmart, the ones that you immediately want to ask if they're being disrupted, they seem like they'd have the most overlap. They've been pretty untouched, actually. Part of its overlap, only 19% of Walmart and Amazon's customers have even tried TeamU. And that's about the same as the total percent of US households that have tried it. substantially the whole country has made a purchase at Walmart and Amazon. So they're just not as at risk, maybe on the margins. But what we're seeing, I guess, next step up with some risk is the dollar stores. Dollar General, they share about a quarter of their customers with TeamU. And if you look at Dollar General's customers spending at TeamU, it's up over 800% year to year from January 23 to 24. Obviously, a super small base and flat. at Dollar General itself. [24:54] And then those TeamU customers who aren't, or those Dollar General customers who aren't TeamU customers, they're spending slightly up at Dollar General. It suggests that there's some impact. Again, not the biggest that we've seen. So I'd say like dollar stores kind of marginally. [25:10] This is not as supported by data, but just putting the data point together that the TeamU customers are spending less and TeamU customers are richer, you could come to the conclusion that Dollar General role is losing out on richer customers looking for deals a little bit. Maybe they're popping in for something they really don't want to spend a lot of money on, like a party, something like that. That's where the sales that they're losing is. Which actually kind of takes us to the last and biggest impact. Wish and AliExpress, as well as all those hobby lobby party supplies, like Oriental Trading. So I'll start with Wish. Their customers are just fleeing. I think there's no better way to say it. 50% less spend on Wish in January 2024 than January 2023, and over 680% increase at TeamU. That's just astounding. The Wish customer, once they try I, TeamU, they're done. It's game over. It's similar for AliExpress. And I think that what TeamU has really done early on, we need to think of them less as like an Amazon killer, and more as a brand that just came in to consolidate the existing demand for this deep discount online spending that these two, AliExpress and Wish kind of got off the ground in the US. [26:35] In terms of the hobby space, Oriental Trading, Hobby Lobby, Party City, they all experienced double-digit declines year-on-year in February among the customers who also shopped at TMU. And these brands, they're catering to occasional and discount merchandise. I think they're really going to struggle adapting to TMU. It's like I said, the person who doesn't mind throwing away $5, $10, $15 on party supplies if they don't work out. But it's a one-time thing anyway. way you know it's it's things that they're somewhat disposable items to these customers and very interchangeable got. Scot: [27:12] It i noticed you didn't mention amazon on that list is there is it there been an amazon impact or has it been. Michael: [27:18] That's great good catch pretty negligible just just like walmart they're just brands on those platforms at this point that you can't find at at these places i think when i say on the margins that's what i mean there could be hey, I need this small thing for my kitchen that I could get for $1 or get for $3. And that might be the sale they lose out on, but they're doing a better job of being one-stop shops. And I think with what we've seen, it doesn't seem like the business model is set to take on Amazon yet. Scot: [27:57] Got it. Yeah. Jason: [28:00] You know, a couple of things that come to mind. A, I think the dollar store thing is super interesting because historically dollar stores haven't sold very much online. Like, and, and, you know, usually their excuse is that, that super low price point discounted items don't work online. Right. And I, I think like in some ways I look at Temu and I say, they're actually the digital dollar store that did figure it out. Now. [28:25] It remains to be seen whether they can make money doing it in the long run. But it doesn't surprise me that those are some of the categories that are being disproportionately impacted. And I think you really hit something interesting on some of these everyday essential retailers that sell the brands that consumers are looking for and trust. [28:46] That, to me, feels like a different shopping occasion than the shopping occasion I think Timo is winning. Branding there's this whole new trend on all the social media platforms called dupes and you know people think of like knockoffs and forgeries where you you try to pretend you're a brand that you're not but dupes is a something different dupes is this is a very similar product to a name brand product but it it overtly is not the name brand product and it's a way better value and they're now these big cohorts of consumers that talk about their dupes and brag about their dupe finds and, you know, proudly make these, these dupe decisions. And it feels like those are the kind of things where, where Teemu's playing really well, where, you know, you're into, you know, crafting and you've, you know, there's some expensive machine, a cricket machine for cutting vinyl. And you say, oh man, I found a dupe on Teemu for 20 bucks, right? Like those Those feel like the kinds of occasions they're winning when you're willing to trade down for that no-name product and take a gamble versus when you know you want the Tide dishwasher soap. Michael: [29:58] I think that's a great point. They're taking advantage of the trading down phenomenon in general right now that a lot of brands are seeing, a lot of retailers are seeing. This is the perfect spot. I'll just go ahead and see if Temu has it. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Scot: [30:15] Cool. One topic, and this is kind of a jump ball for you guys, is the, you know, I read a lot about this shipping model, and this was always Wish's kind of secret sauce is there's this, there's this like loophole in the postal code where if you send this something small, you know, it doesn't have any tariffs, number one. And then number two, there's like this really cheap postal rate, or I can't remember if China subsidizes it or it's free or we subsidize it, but there's some, there's kind of like double loopholes. There's a tariff one and a shipping one. And I've seen some noise lately about people wanting to kind of shut this down. Do you guys, either of you more expert on that than I am and have an opinion on if it's going to be sustainable or not? Jason: [30:57] I could certainly jump in there. So what you're talking about is there's this thing called the Global Postal Treaty. And it's a prearranged agreement between like 95 countries, 94 countries for how they'll deliver each other's mail. When you try to ship a letter from the U.S. to Germany, the U.S. Post Office is going to hand it to the German Post, and they need to know in advance how much the German Post is going to charge the U.S. Post Office to deliver that so that the U.S. Post Office can charge a rate in advance to you to deliver those things. So this global postal treaty is super valuable, and it makes it possible to cost effectively and, you know, with predictable rates, mail stuff all across the world. [31:41] Unfortunately, there's a couple of problems with it. There was the developed nations agreed that for less economically developed nations, they would have a preferred rate. So they would charge even less to deliver. The U.S. post office would charge less to deliver mail from a developing economy than they would from an established economy. And until recently, China was characterized as a developing economy, which is probably not accurate. And then the Postal Treaty specifies a dollar limit that it only is in effect for packages under a certain value. And so this is called the de minimis clause of the Postal Treaty. In the United States, the threshold is $800. So when Temu ships something to a consumer in the U.S. that costs under $800, they get a predetermined rate from the U.S. Post office, which is often cheaper than the rate to mail something from one part of the U.S. to the other. And Scott, per your point, there is no tariffs charged on that item and there is no import inspection on that item. So, you know, normally when we, you know, if a U.S. Retailer imports a container of goods from China, there's all kinds of inspections to make sure that the factory in China met labor standards and, you know, met environmental standards, and then they pay tariffs on all that. [33:08] The team who hands one package to the U.S. post office, they they get to bypass all that, which, you know, is, of course, controversial. No one wants to get rid of the Global Postal Treaty or even de minimis. But what they're saying is that the U.S.'s 800 hour threshold is probably way too high. Like China's threshold for reciprocation is something like forty dollars or something. So you could you could put a big dent in Temu if you just lowered the the threshold. And so there's There's, you know, noise in Congress about trying to change that limit. I would say that, you know, it is an unfair advantage in many ways, and U.S. Companies are certainly right to complain about that. [33:51] I would say that Temu is different than Wish. Wish took advantage of this cause. Temu takes advantage of it way more effectively, right? So Wish sold, you know, was a marketplace, and they had a factory sell something to an American consumer. And then it was up to the factory to get it to the American consumer. So the factory had to have their own postal account. And then they, you know, had to trigger this postal treaty. And there was no shipping confirmation. And often Wish products took a very long time to ship and a very long time to arrive. As part of this next-gen manufacturing model that Temu has, they do all that for the seller. And it uses Temu's postal account. And they expedite all of these things. Most of these goods get air freighted to the U.S. and put into the U.S. postal system. So while Wish items would have averaged three or four weeks delivery time. [34:46] Temu normally averages like five to seven days, and they almost always outperform their shipping promises. And in fact, they even have a guarantee. They give you $5 back if the package arrives late. So, you know, part of the reason that I don't think they're just purely Wish 2.0 is they actually do have a better, more reliable shipping experience than Wish. And they actually more effectively take advantage of this postal loophole than Wish ever did. Scot: [35:18] Yeah. And Wish took the proceeds of their IPO and built out some fulfillment centers. And they almost did their own version of that Amazon dragon boat or whatever that was called. Has T-Mood signaled they're going to do something like that where they have, you know, even more? Jason: [35:32] Yeah, they already have in some. So they're in 49 countries now. So they do have D.C. fulfillment centers in some of those countries. They've actually talked about opening a fulfillment center in Mexico for delivering goods in the western U.S. And so so they are talking about that. But then this other big thing is starting this week that a U.S. Seller could list their goods that, you know, the goods are already in a warehouse in the U.S. that US seller could list their goods on Temu and then deliver those goods from a US fulfillment center. So that's a potential way to get much faster delivery times for Temu. And we've already seen some badging. Temu has items with a rapid ship badge that are guaranteed for two-day delivery. So it does seem like Temu recognizes that over time, their fulfillment model is going to have to be more nuanced than just the the individual parcels uh coming one at a time but but you know that still seems like the the sort of biggest foundation of how they're delivering all these goods got. Michael: [36:36] It um the minimus though i can't imagine that much they would change would really have an impact we're seeing average ticket prices at 38 last month for for timmy like are they thinking thinking of reducing it by that much or. Jason: [36:52] So, I mean, a just talking about way over our skis, like my, my political acumen is very poor, but yeah, I don't think Congress is gonna do anything. I think like at most they'll have a, a hearing and try to look like tough guys talking about how unfair it is and how they're gonna try to protect the American businessman and the American consumer. And then when push comes to shove, they won't, they won't do anything, which is my, my cynical nature. But you're right. Right. Nobody's talking about dropping the de minimis low enough to to, you know, really trigger the bulk of these these Temu shipments. So it's it's more likely if they made a change, it would be a gesture, not like, you know, some some game changing thing. Now, you know, there's another big Chinese company out there, ByteDance, which is TikTok. And like there there is a bill going through Congress right now to ban TikTok. And so, you know, if something like that were to happen with, with a PDD or Temu, you know, that, that would of course, you know, be a, a big threat of a disruption. Scot: [37:54] Yep. And then on that example you gave, Jason, of a U.S. seller in a fulfillment center, is that Temu's fulfillment center or the seller's fulfillment center? Jason: [38:04] The seller's fulfillment center. So potentially what would be one of the ironies of this is, of course, as Amazon has expanded their fulfillment services, you could be an Amazon seller, be using FBA, and sell something on Temu and have Amazon fulfill it for you. Scot: [38:20] Yeah, Wish did something like this. What we found was the U.S. Seller struggled to get things in the price point that consumer wanted, right? It's like it's such this low quality stuff that almost has to be offshore for even to the manufacturer. Jason: [38:36] Yeah, I think you are 100 percent right there. I don't think they're going to like we don't know what the uptake is going to be on these U.S. Sellers. It's an interesting talking point, but it doesn't seem like there's going to be a bunch of U.S. Sellers that are going to likely participate in this like low price dupes demand that they have today. Now, what would be interesting, Pinduoduo, I mentioned, which is a huge, huge entity in China. Pinduoduo started with this same stuff. They started with really inexpensive marketplace goods. And as Pinduoduo got bigger and more established and won the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers, they moved up market. They started selling brand name stuff. They started selling higher quality stuff. And today they're a hybrid seller. PennDuoDuo in China sells their own goods in addition to marketplace items, which I've never seen before. Usually it always goes the other way. And so there's at least a premise that like maybe the U.S. sellers don't like add to the current assortment, but maybe the U.S. Sellers help Temu round out their assortment with some higher price point, you know, more recognizable goods for the U.S. consumer that helps them win more wallet share. Scot: [39:49] Interesting. Cool. We're running up against time. Do you guys have any other topics you want to hit before we call it a show? Michael: [39:58] No, I think it's fair. You know, I already mentioned one of your predictions. I should talk about the other one. Just to pick on Jason for a second. I don't think we'll make it to the 75% of target USC comm this year for Temu, Jason. Sorry. It's like a stretch. Scot: [40:17] Man. How do we get Michael on the show more? Like, I'm really enjoying this. This was a really good guess. Jason: [40:24] I feel like you're calling the winner of the Super Bowl in the first quarter, man. Come on. Michael: [40:27] Okay, well, I'll just put it this way. At 18% of the US households, three months into the year, it seems unlikely at their current growth that they get there. My view basically though, writing this, is that they've done a great job in the first year of attracting folks with a lot of disposable income to buy things that they likely wouldn't have bought anywhere else, like party supplies, household goods. It's maybe a different model than they they have in China. The challenge for them now, you guys both definitely identified this, that it's basically to convince people to switch everyday spending from Amazon and Walmart on those bigger items. And they don't have the assortment right now for that. And that's what you're mentioning. They need to either move up market or figure out what that assortment looks like. But that's going to be a bigger hurdle. They're reaching critical mass. They just have some decisions to make internally at this point. Jason: [41:17] Yeah. Well, in general, I feel like that is going to be a great place to leave it for this show because we have run out of our allotted time. But Michael, we really appreciated your insight. We'll certainly have you back. I know your view of the U.S. economy is useful for a whole bunch of topics that come up frequently on the show. But as always, if listeners enjoyed this episode, I hope you will jump on iTunes and leave us that five-star review. Scot: [41:46] Thanks, Michael. And this has been really good for Jason's ego. So I feel like you've knocked him down a couple of pegs. I appreciate that. And then if folks want to read more about your writing or connect with you, is LinkedIn the best place or are you more active on TikTok? Where can people find you? Yeah. Michael: [42:04] Michael Maloof on LinkedIn. I'm always posting a lot of Ernest data on there. And then also on our company blog, ErnestAnalytics.com. Go to the Insights blog and subscribe. Jason: [42:17] Yep. And I will put links to both the team new articles you guys published and your LinkedIn in the show notes. Michael: [42:23] Thank you. Jason: [42:24] Until next time, happy commercing!
CNBC's Deirdre Bosa is BACK with Dan Nathan to discuss what has the Valley buzzing. TikTok might be forced to part ways with ByteDance, what does this mean for Teemu and Shein (2:00), Perplexity Set To Double Valuation to $1 Billion (10:30), will investors “sell the news” after Nvidia's GTC 2024 next week (17:00)? After the break, Dan is joined by Matt Turck, Partner at FirstMark Capital and Florian Douetteau, CEO & Co-Founder of Dataiku about the state of Enterprise AI and the “Globalization of Entrepreneurship” (22:00) Listen: Aravind Srinivas on “Invest Like The Best” with Patrick O'Shaughnessy Read: Matt's 2023 MAD Report Read: Amazon, Google Quietly Tamp Down Generative AI Expectations — View our show notes here Learn more about Current: current.com Listen to 'Strategic Alternatives': https://www.rbccm.com/en/gib/ma-inflection-points Email us at contact@riskreversal.com with any feedback, suggestions, or questions for us to answer on the pod and follow us @OkayComputerPod. We're on social: Follow @dee_bosa on Twitter Follow @GuyAdami on Twitter Follow us on Instagram @RiskReversalMedia Subscribe to our YouTube page
CNBC's Deirdre Bosa is BACK with Dan Nathan to discuss what has the Valley buzzing. TikTok might be forced to part ways with ByteDance, what does this mean for Teemu and Shein (2:00), Perplexity Set To Double Valuation to $1 Billion (10:30), will investors “sell the news” after Nvidia's GTC 2024 next week (17:00)? After the break, Dan is joined by Matt Turck, Partner at FirstMark Capital and Florian Douetteau, CEO & Co-Founder of Dataiku about the state of Enterprise AI and the “Globalization of Entrepreneurship” (22:00) Listen: Aravind Srinivas on “Invest Like The Best” with Patrick O'Shaughnessy Read: Matt's 2023 MAD Report Read: Amazon, Google Quietly Tamp Down Generative AI Expectations — View our show notes here Learn more about Current: current.com Listen to 'Strategic Alternatives': https://www.rbccm.com/en/gib/ma-inflection-points Email us at contact@riskreversal.com with any feedback, suggestions, or questions for us to answer on the pod and follow us @OkayComputerPod. We're on social: Follow @dee_bosa on Twitter Follow @GuyAdami on Twitter Follow us on Instagram @RiskReversalMedia Subscribe to our YouTube page
The GTC Media podcast discusses the latest developments in international trade, with insights on digital taxation, sanctions, green energy, and forced labor. Tune in for a roundup of global trade news. Main Points - Digital taxation at the WTO could impact consumers through higher prices for online goods and services. Governments see this as a revenue opportunity, while consumers want to avoid new taxes. - Sanctions on Russia pose challenges for international supply chains. Businesses must regularly update restricted party lists and vet new customers/suppliers to avoid sanctions violations. - Egypt aims to become a leader in green hydrogen production through a $40 billion investment, showing renewable energy initiatives are here to stay. Hydrogen can also be extracted from fossil fuels as a cleaner alternative fuel. - Allegations of forced labor in Teemu's supply chain highlight the need for online retailers to properly vet vendors and source goods ethically to avoid legal issues and consumer backlash. This insightful podcast discusses timely international trade issues and their implications. Listeners gain valuable perspectives on navigating taxation, sanctions compliance, renewable energy opportunities, and the importance of ethical sourcing in global supply chains. Enjoy the show! Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SimplyTradePod Host: Annik Sobing: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annik-sobing-mba-b226251a2/ Host: Andy Shiles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyshiles/ Guest Host: Renee Chiuchiarelli - https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-chiuchiarelli-8964a19/ Host/Producer: Lalo Solorzano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalosolorzano/ Co-Producer: Mara Marquez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mara-marquez-a00a111a8/ Contact SimplyTrade@GlobalTrainingCenter.com or message @SimplyTradePod for: Advertising and sponsoring on Simply Trade Requests to be on the show as guest Suggest any topics you would like to hear about Simply Trade is not a law firm or an advisor. The topics and discussions conducted by Simply Trade hosts and guests should not be considered and is not intended to substitute legal advice. You should seek appropriate counsel for your own situation. These conversations and information are directed towards listeners in the United States for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes only and should not be In substitute for legal advice. No listener or viewer of this podcast should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information on this podcast without first seeking legal advice from counsel. Information on this podcast may not be up to date depending on the time of publishing and the time of viewership. The content of this posting is provided as is, no representations are made that the content is error free. The views expressed in or through this podcast are those are the individual speakers not those of their respective employers or Global Training Center as a whole. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this podcast are hereby expressly disclaimed.
Deirdre Bosa joins Okay, Computer. to talk about all things in tech this week. Teemu takes over the Super Bowl, Is Microsoft Co-Pilot worth the price?. Plus, Deirdre got her hands on the Apple Vision Pro, what's it actually like? Later, Dan is joined by Zach Reitano, Co-Founder & CEO of Ro, and Rick Heitzmann, Co-Founder and Partner at FirstMark Capital, for the first installment of our Funders x Founders series. They hit Ro's origin story, stigmas around obesity, what attracted Rick to Ro, and how their relationship has evolved. Links Referenced Listen to our last interview with Zach Reitano FirstMark Leads $88 Million Round in Men's Health Startup Roman He Sold Burritos Out of His Apartment Window. Now He's Running a $7 Billion Startup Acquired Podcast: The Complete History & Strategy of Novo Nordisk --- View our show notes here Learn more about Ro body: ro.co/okay Learn more about Current: current.com Email us at contact@riskreversal.com with any feedback, suggestions, or questions for us to answer on the pod and follow us @OkayComputerPod. We're on social: Follow @dee_bosa on Twitter Follow @GuyAdami on Twitter Follow us on Instagram @RiskReversalMedia Subscribe to our YouTube page
Our “SuperBowl” as marketers? The commercials for the SuperBowl. In this episode, Lauren brings on two of her team members: Mack (BGT's Marketing Manager) and Hannah (BGT's Content Manager) to go through the best and the worst of the SuperBowl ads from 2024. They're dissecting not just from a consumer POV, but a marketer's POV, and sharing what brands can learn from these campaigns (and tactics we were impressed/surprised to see!)Find Lauren Loreto/Brand Good TIme online:Our website: brandgoodtime.comFollow us on Instagram: @brandgoodtime @shesbusyafConnect with Lauren on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/laurenloreto Timestamps:The introduction (00:00:00)Discussion of the star-studded Super Bowl and demographics (00:02:47) Analyzing the Wicked trailer (00:03:02) Snapchat ad critique (00:08:23) Discussion of the Jesus commercials (00:11:12) Etsy's "Gift Mode" ad (00:17:52) TThe Paramount commercial (00:18:49) Teemu ads and potential targeting of Amazon (00:22:23) Pluto TV's couch potato farms ad (00:26:05) Google Pixel ad for visually impaired (00:27:54) Verizon Beyonce ad (00:30:23) Uber Eats ad disappointment (00:34:33) Homes.com ad series (00:36:35) T-Mobile Magenta Member Ad (00:39:22) Favorite and Least Favorite Ads (00:41:12) Super Bowl and Halftime Show (00:43:10) Overall Impressions (00:45:07) Topics Discussed: podcast, She's Busy AF, Super Bowl commercials, Wicked, demographics, Broadway, Taylor Swift, celebrities, advertising, marketing, full funnel, Service, Michael Sarah, Etsy, Google Pixel, Verizon, Beyoncé, Uber Eats, Homes.com, T-Mobile, Paramount, Arnold, Christopher Walken, BMW, Popeye's, Google, halftime show, Usher, Ludacris, Alicia Keys, roller skate ring, technology, sleep deprivation
Deirdre Bosa joins Okay, Computer. to talk about all things in tech this week. Teemu takes over the Super Bowl, Is Microsoft Co-Pilot worth the price?. Plus, Deirdre got her hands on the Apple Vision Pro, what's it actually like? Later, Dan is joined by Zach Reitano, Co-Founder & CEO of Ro, and Rick Heitzmann, Co-Founder and Partner at FirstMark Capital, for the first installment of our Funders x Founders series. They hit Ro's origin story, stigmas around obesity, what attracted Rick to Ro, and how their relationship has evolved. Links Referenced Listen to our last interview with Zach Reitano FirstMark Leads $88 Million Round in Men's Health Startup Roman He Sold Burritos Out of His Apartment Window. Now He's Running a $7 Billion Startup Acquired Podcast: The Complete History & Strategy of Novo Nordisk --- View our show notes here Learn more about Ro body: ro.co/okay Learn more about Current: current.com Email us at contact@riskreversal.com with any feedback, suggestions, or questions for us to answer on the pod and follow us @OkayComputerPod. We're on social: Follow @dee_bosa on Twitter Follow @GuyAdami on Twitter Follow us on Instagram @RiskReversalMedia Subscribe to our YouTube page
Teemu Hartikainen is a Finnish thru-hiker, nordic skier, gear designer, and wilderness guide. He's covered around 7,500 miles across various trails, from Finland's UKK-Trail to the Pacific Crest Trail. Very soon, he'll attempt Norge på Langs (Norway Lengthwise) on skis, and will be launching a Finnish website to help educate hikers. List of accomplishments: 2018 UKK-Trail west, Finland ~1000km/620mi 2019 Pacific Crest Trail, attempt 1700 of 4265km/1090mi of 2650mi with some of the Sierra on skis 2019 Gröna Bandet/"Green Ribbon" in Sweden, 1350km/830mi 2020 Vita Bandet/"White Ribbon" attempt, 400km of 1300km/250mi of 800mi in winter (his partner finished) 2020 UKK-trail east, and connecting trails near the eastern border of Finland ~700km/440mi 2021 Vita Bandet/"White Ribbon" in Sweden during winter 1300km/800mi 2021 Nuortti-Saariselkä-Tsarmitunturi-Vätsäri-Näätämö, unmarked trails and off trail, Finland 450km/280mi 2022 Ylläs-Pallas-Hetta-Tarvantovaara-Kilpisjärvi, along trails and off trail, total of 350km/220mi 2023 Pacific Crest Trail, flip flop, 4265km 2024 Upcoming Norge på Langs/"Norway lengthwise" winter traverse ~2700km/1700mi *** Great Backpacking Gear (Support the Podcast): https://bit.ly/3PswpQi #skiing #winterbackpacking #wintergear #thruskiing #nordicskiing #crosscountry #crosscountryskiing
Missin Curfew Episode 243 x Teemu Selanne Anaheim Ducks Recorded at HallPass Media | Presented by DraftKings Teemu is still in Great Shape Post NHL Career Watching his Daughter as a Tennis Athlete How Good were the 2007 Anaheim Ducks? Ryan Getzlaf was an Elite Teammate Playing with the Niedermayer Brothers The Honda Center can get back to form Teemu's thoughts on Trevor Zegras Important Dinner's on the Road 1988 Training Camp with the Winnipeg Jets What's wrong with the attendance in Winnipeg SAUCE HOCKEY MERCH | https://saucehockey.com/collections/missin-curfew YOUTUBE | www.youtube.com/@MissinCurfew SPOTIFY | https://open.spotify.com/show/4uNgHhgCtt97nMbbHm2Ken APPLE | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/missin-curfew INSTAGRAM | www.instagram.com/missincurfew TWITTER | www.twitter.com/MissinCurfew TIKTOK | www.tiktok.com/@missincurfewpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices