Yoni Mazor 6:07
I can mention one that I’m familiar with in our space. It’s called Ecomtent. Have you heard of them before?
Josh Hadley 6:14
Yes, we had Max on the podcast previously.
Yoni Mazor 6:17
There we go. So Max is up to great things. I know, he was also a part of the accelerator, that it’s an accelerator, I think it’s called this Y Combinator, the first one and then the second one, I forgot the name of it. In San Francisco, it’s like a three or four month kind of intense accelerate environment where you have to kind of bring your developers and really work intensely on preparing you or your products to really shine in the market. If you do it successfully, you get funded, afterwards, you get funded, so he’s, you know, he’s there. And he’s gearing up to, to the next dimension of that, ensure what they do a comm content, sorry, content is, is, you know, you’re able to, you know, plug into their platform and put your image of the product and then really generatively say, “hey, I want my product to be on the table, I want five chairs around it. And these colors, and in this house and this windows,” and boom, it creates a whole scene for you in a beautiful way, right. So once again, harnessing the power of technology to you know, make your products and catalogs shine, but also on the content side on your copyright. So I want to you know, you know, this is my product, I want to you know, I want to explain it or show it or you know, in text and this kind of mood or this kind of ambiance. So this way you can really, you know, craft your listing to the next level. So the ones we’re going to be applying that the sellers, hopefully will see that lift, because all the other sellers who are not applying this will just look like their listings and the price will kind of look stale, and outdated. It’s almost like you know, like, it’s like walking into if I take this to brick and mortar world to the physical world, if you go into Target, you know, if you go to Target today, if you as a certain ambiance and feel right, or if you go to, you know, local moms and pop shop in the 50s in the ministry, you know, if you’re gonna see, you’re gonna be a discord and be like, This is not a comfortable for me, it’s not something I’m, you know, feeling energetic to buy as a consumer, when you go into an old store from the 50s and never got updated, compared to when you go to Target target. Or as they say, Tarjay some people with the finesse of it, I think something like that to the consumer, inside Amazon and shopping online, there’s going to start feeling the distance in the gap between the listings that are very, you know, stimulating, and the ones that are kind of old school like I’m image I’m a carousel kind of boring, you know, so there’ll be the dimension that I think will will probably be more evident. 2024 as all these others embrace those tools and use them, like content as an example as well.
Josh Hadley 8:42
Is there anybody that you would recommend people follow along in terms of you know, somebody in the e-commerce space that’s really making a lot of big changes or advancements utilizing AI? Right? I think that the idea of being able to have ChatGPT and have your own bots doing work for you sounds appealing. But for most of us, it’s like, Where do I even begin? How do I get something like that going? Do you have any recommendations that way?
Yoni Mazor 9:09
Man, you’re putting me on the spot right now. I don’t know, nobody immediately comes to mind that in a meaningful impact, you know, recording this. So as we go along, I want to see if anything pops up too early stage, it’s like asking, you know, because it’s like in the NBA is in the 70s to say you know who’s gonna be who’s gonna be Michael Jordan the 80s. He only came a few years. So we don’t know who’s gonna be the Michael Jordan that was able to kind of push the industry forward because we’re so I guess, magnetic with his ability to perform with all these tools. So it’s early to tell at this point. Yeah. Another thing is, if somebody’s really killing it right now, and killing you so much, they’re not going to pop up and say, look what I’m doing so quickly, so fast. But to the only exception. You know what, maybe wrong Aaron Cordovez. He’s pretty good. You know Aaron from Zulay Kitchen. Yep. He’s actually, you know, I take it back. He’s pretty good. I’ve been to a conference in New York in November AMZ Innovate. And what he did was pretty interesting. He, you know, he’s like kitchen, I think his brand does over 100 million. So he’s figures, right. So I’m like that. Yeah. So he, he, what he did, it was sellers that were brave enough to say, Hey, these are my, here on my listings, they put it on a big screen, and he just tears it apart, he shows them how he compares it to others. And right away, you can see the differences, the gap, the delta, so you know, puts up the listing that he takes up, picks up the category, he sees the top player in the category and where this seller is located, or this particular Aysen or product, and they started ripping you apart. And he shows them how more stimulating the difference between the listings are. And he has a huge catalog of hundreds, if not even thousands of SKUs. And the reason he’s able to do because he is very, very good at scale. And I think he’s also adopting a lot of those tools. So and has a show podcast show, I believe as well. So heads up on that he’ll probably flush out how he’s utilizing some of these techniques and tools with a skill to keep scaling.
Josh Hadley 11:02
Awesome. I love that. Well, I think as you mentioned, you know, we’re in the early stages of AI and being able to implement it into our businesses. But I think the important thing to implement here is actually paying attention to ChatGPT to open AI and not just turning a blind eye to it. Because you know that that rock star, you know, or MVP hasn’t necessarily appeared quite yet, right? Which means there’s still a lot of room for improvement, a lot of room for opportunity. And that might be you, right. And so at the end of the day, it’s whoever is going to hustle the hardest, right? whoever’s going to put forth the fight in the effort to go learn about it to go test it to go start proving their own model is going to be the person that wins. And I think arguably, you know, can you operate figuratively, like a billion dollar company. But if you’re only operating an eight-figure brand, imagine having all those resources that a billion dollar company has, without having to pay the salaries of a billion dollar brand. And imagine the growth that you can experience
Yoni Mazor 12:07
exactly. It’s exactly what it’s all about that promise to hope, right? That you can really perform like a billion dollar company, without all that costs. So you can really be so agile and dynamic compared to them, and you kind of knock it down. And then in Yeah, that generational shift, where Amazon, I’ll take Amazon and Sears as an example. Sears was a beast was the largest company in the world. That’s why they had the Sears Tower in Chicago, because there’s this largest company in the world. And there’s just, you know, the magnitude of them were just beyond anything that anybody ever saw. Because back in the day, there were very innovative in their own merits because they, they kind of created the, you know, today, we’re an e-commerce they created like the mail commerce. So if you were, you know, because they had the railroads and stuff like that. So what they did was able to create a huge catalog on paper, and then send it to any place in America. So even if you’re rural Kansas, or Texas, or wherever it is. So you get the you know, catalog and huge catalog, and you just go in and put an order in with a check. And then boom, they deliver it to us after a week or two or three or whatever. Back then it was huge innovation, because these people never saw these products in their lives ever. You know, if you go to a local shop, it’s very limited. All of a sudden, this whole, you know, national or international market, just a host of goods and products that comes to their doorstep very easily. That was super innovative, and Sears killed it. And then once the malls came in, in the 50s 60s 70s, they were in every mall, a ad anchor store. And theirs just blew up, right? So you would think back in those days, Sears is never going anywhere, right? Nobody can even level up to them. But lo and behold, then you have the Walmart story came in, but Walmart, it’s just kind of the same idea. But even Walmart, if you just put Walmart instead in the same bucket, they have different endings so far. But Sears already fully collapsed. But what Amazon comes in 1994, I believe that’s when they started. And that took the medium of internet and deliver on its promise and level the playing fields all of a sudden, humongous catalog bigger than ever, anything that Sears it was ever able to print on paper, or hold in the store. And then the delivery system and the rest is history. So and the results you’re got fully flushed off, which is nobody even talks about it. But it’s a huge thing that happened a generational shift. Because Amazon which was a super little guy, Jeff Bezos and a humble place in Seattle, with a new medium of internet penetrating into every computer, and then the smartphone penetrating to every form of hands of people around the world. Boom, create the general ship. So once again, on the little guy, the Amazon seller, all these tools, all this medium of generative AI, are there going to be able to, you know, start the general structure of where their brands, which are maybe Amazon native, or some become a household name, and they’ve been you know, they’ve kind of become a real threat to the big ones. So that’s kind of the dynamic that I see in front of me.
Josh Hadley 14:49
Yeah, Yoni. I absolutely love that. And I think that that’s the perfect analogy sharing that Sears and then going to Amazon at the end of the day, if you’re not innovating your business, you are going to die, right. And I would argue, you know, Sears lasted for decades, right? And they did well for a long period of time. Now, the difference here is with technology, and especially AI, the advancements are coming so rapidly, that the kind of the lifespan or the half life, so to speak, is getting shorter and shorter and shorter, which means you can’t just coast, you can’t rest on your laurels. What was working for your brand and 2018 cannot be what you’re continuing to focus on right now. And even if it was working two years ago, you better start upping your game and start looking at what are the up and coming channels? How do you diversify yourself? How, where’s the puck going? Because if you just continue to stay and do what you’ve been doing, thinking that you’ve been making all this money, eventually the tide will change, and you’re going to be left holding nothing.
Yoni Mazor 15:59
So I want to give a few analogies, if I may, to kind of reinforce what you just said. Because I think it’s very, very vital for any entrepreneur listening or watching this. I guess I’ll tell you, I’ll say two things. The first thing is that the sad reality, but I think if you flip it around, it’s actually a very exciting reality is that entrepreneurs, ultimately, are very comfortable being uncomfortable, you gotta get used to it, never be comfortable, you’re always comfortable being uncomfortable, because things always change. And I’m going to, I’m going to connect this to sports. When you’re in business to get yourself over, you know, you have a sports team, and the sports team, you can play in the field and be actually the athlete, and every year is a new season, and you’re gonna grind to deliver results. And if you deliver well, you’re gonna be very well financially rewarded. Okay? So every year just like that, you can’t just sit it like you said, you cannot sit on your laurels, you’re an athlete, and athletes constantly have to improve and change because you’re competing against other teams, they’re constantly improving. So you got to constantly improve that better trainers, better coach, a better method, better strategy, better tactics, and never ends every season, it’s a new thing. And that’s why every season there are different kinds of champions. It’s very grueling for every sports league. So where you’re in the, you’re the athlete playing and playing for the sports team, that’s fine, because you’re the operator. But if you want this to be passive income, so think yourself more like a sports team owner, you own the team, you don’t have to do the ground on the field, but your whole organization, your team, whoever’s there playing has to grind and constantly innovating and constantly be the best to, you know, to perform well and get the titles if not, you’re gonna lose money, you’re gonna get flushed away to go to a different league order or get totally annihilated. So these are the kinds of analogies that I want to highlight, because for way too long, I see that the promise, or the I would say, the empty promise of passive income, you know, this is easy. This is, you know, brainless, no, it’s this. For me, it’s kind of a discord when I see a lot of that that’s what sucks a lot of the talent in into this industry, but creates a lot of false expectation where a few clicks, and everything’s amazing, because it could be that you got it and whatever was working, working, but no guarantee is gonna work, you know, next few months later, a year, a few years later, and then you get flushed off. So if you want to be in this long, long term, think of yourself as an athlete, or, you know, this is like sports. If you don’t want to be on the, you know, you have a good team, and you can just own it, okay, your team has to be very professional with the best players all the time. And you always have to have a players. Because if you have any big players and you lose it, you’re losing compared to other teams. As an owner, what do you do, you got to shell out the cash, you got to get to Michael Jordan, your team. So that’s a cost. That’s an investment. It’s a commitment that doesn’t come easy. So it takes us back to the original statement, you got to be very comfortable being uncomfortable. And that’s a good recipe for my humble opinion for long term success in this environment.
Josh Hadley 18:41
Yoni. I love that analogy. And I think that arguably, for our entrepreneurs, that I think you can be an athlete, a superstar athlete, and get yourself to a seven figure business pretty easily. But when it comes to crossing the eight figure mark, and especially going to nine figures, you have to be a master at being the owner of the business. It’s no longer about how good you are, and your skills and your talents. It’s more about can you provide the leadership? And can you as the owner, be good at selecting and identifying talent, right? I love the analogy of sports, because I think it’s very evident.
Yoni Mazor 19:20
1000%. What you just said, it’s exactly what it said. There’s no no more no less. It was on the dot. Yeah, perfect.
Josh Hadley 19:26
But how many? How many times do you hear people talking about, you know, hey, guess what, I hired somebody for $250,000 for my team, most people would laugh at that and be like, Oh, you’re wasting all this money. But if you really take a step back and you think about this, we all like to tell Hey, I found a VA over in the Philippines there. I’m paying them $2 an hour, right? It’s a steal of a deal. And it’s like, okay, that’s, that’s cute. But let’s take this sports analogy. Who would you rather have LeBron James that you’re going to be paying hundreds of millions of dollars to or do You want to get the person that, you know, some unknown name, that $10,000.
Yoni Mazor 20:05
Yeah, their college dropped out that played basketball in college by still dropped out. And he’s very cheap, because we want to just sit on the bench or be on the field, but not really score anything, just you know, just because you want to pay low salary, it just doesn’t work.
Josh Hadley 20:17
Exactly. So I think that’s a huge mindset shift that our entrepreneurs need to have. If you’re trying to grow and scale a big business, if you’re not, and you’re just content with what you have, right now, then keep being that athlete, but just know that your upside is very limited. And you got it really sit in a completely different seat and see yourself as the owner, and then you’ve got to start hiring those rockstars, the eight players, your superstars, if you want to really scale to that nine figure mark.
Yoni Mazor 20:46
For sure, put it this way, when it comes to business, you know, there’s a lot of limits in the business, business costs, or especially maybe a fixed cost that should be on the rest of the bottom. So you know, when are you sourcing economist skill per unit costs should be the rest of the bottom, whatever you can do to really make it efficient with the big magnitude. So you know, your unit economics is a race to the bottom, so you can maximize on your profit right on your margin. But when it comes to talent, I think this important for somebody listening, watching and make a switch where it’s actually a Race to the Top, how can I apply my resources to get the best talent in the world, on my team to score the most points of the longest possible longevity with this organization to maximize cash flow, because these top players will be the ones who actually focus on the unit economics, to make it a race to the bottom. So you have to distinguish between the elements that need a Race to the Top, which is talent, and the rest of the bottom, which is anything else that but with no compromise on quality, not on the quality and not on talent. So once again, between the seven, eight figure to nine figure beyond that should be the switches some people should make.
Josh Hadley 21:46
I love that. Well said, Now, Yoni, you have yourself selling experiences. Well, why don’t you just talk briefly, you know about that business that you scaled? And what were maybe some of the big levers that you pulled in order to get yourself to a $20 million a year business.
Yoni Mazor 22:04
So my journey was, I guess everybody’s journey, most of the journeys of people into this industry off the beaten path. So over a decade ago, I started selling products online I was working for, I was doing sales and distribution for a supplement company. And when I worked that we also had a website, and we’re getting orders online, and we’re selling to Amazon. But at some point, you know, I was, you know, fulfilling all the orders, and also doing the brick and mortar, sales and distribution. I just listed some products, you know, actual products that listed on eBay. And then at least I listed on Amazon, that’s how I like early dabbling. But long story short, I’m Jewish, and I go to synagogue and at the synagogue, I met this other gentleman, his name is Max Borin is still my partner for over a decade now. He was doing accounting for a furniture company. And on the sidelines, we’re kind of you know, becoming friendly. And we’re had, you know, flaming entrepreneurial spirit, I would say, and we’re like constantly talking about opportunities of things to do. And we definitely saw in front of us the promise of e-commerce. And so we started selling whatever we could get our hands on, especially on eBay, and it was kind of ramping up. And then 2013, we started selling on Amazon, and then the business really, really kind of blew up. And then, you know, we reached a dimension of $20 million annual revenue. And then we actually kind of became a part of a larger group. And together as a group, we’re doing about 100 million in revenue. So actually get to what I do, it was born from that experience, because we have so much inventory we’re sending in to Amazon to FBA centers. And so many transactions, were not in so much data, we’re not able to use spreadsheets anymore, they were breaking. So that kind of forced us to do two things. The first thing was to create software and technology to constantly scan and audit the transactions in a large scale. And the second thing was to get talent, a team to constantly, you know, take that data, open the cases with Amazon, manage all the back and forth and solve the issue. So we created the solution for us. We told our friends from the industry, we have these capabilities, they told us to help us we’ll pay you. And that was kind of the early Genesis of get Tito back in 2015. I’m gonna have its own track we can put aside for now. But on the retail side, you know, we had four of our own brands or used to do travel baby and travel baby and what am I missing and travel baby and jewelry. And then we also had access to a lot of big brands, but the business really start from me and Max, two of us. He was doing more of the sourcing and really the market research what’s working, what’s not, what should be sold or not. And I was doing a lot of the operations. So I guess for this episode, it would highlight that, you know, at our peak on the retail side, we have 30 to 40 you know team members and you know, in the United States but also around the world. And it was a pretty strong, intense magnitude and experienced all these things you you know you’re mentioning of you know, a chance to be cheap and while you know on talent and then getting talent that’s simply not productive enough and they realize you know, the premier is worth you know, the The payments so I we focus on hiring better and better, more expensive but yeah more productive, so tender, you just making more of an outcome with the talent that you would that you hire in our contract back to get theta today, you know, when when we started getting back in 2015, it started small, and then it was just growing organically from word of mouth. Because the value proposition we’ll get to that is very comfortable. There’s no subscription, you don’t have to pay anything, it’s free to join, it’s free to stay, there’s no commitment, you can cancel anytime. So it was kind of growing organically for a bunch of years. So in 2018, we made a strategic decision to cash out of retail, and all the profit that we made, will plow it into good theta. And once our focus attention, motivation, creativity and intensity was in one place instead of splitting it 50/50 in the middle. That’s when GETIDA took off. And we kind of took leadership on the niche. So today, we’re the largest organizing organization in the world focused exclusively on this mission of maximizing FBI reimbursements for sellers. And we have a team of 240 employees in 12 countries. And we are tens of billions of dollars of transactions daily. So for the past decade, e-commerce put me into all these channels and conditions of upscaling with team with talent on the retail side and dimensions, but also on the technology and solution provider side. So it’s been a wild ride. And once again, I’m very comfortable with being uncomfortable. So I’ve been here for more than a decade and looking forward for another decade or more.
Josh Hadley 26:23
I love that. Now, Yoni, I’m interested to hear you know, you’re helping operate a nine-figure brand, right. And that’s where kind of the idea of good Tina came from. And I think the important thing to really focus on here is that you are trying to capture margin and extra money that was just being lost. Right? So tell me a little bit more about that, maybe to our sellers, that if they have not heard about you, I’m not sure how they haven’t heard about GETIDA yet. But if they haven’t heard about you, what are the ways that Amazon sellers are currently losing money, and they don’t even know about it?
Yoni Mazor 27:01
You got it. So you know, a crash course on FBI auditing and reimbursements and what it means to Amazon sellers. So, you know, when you sell on Amazon, and you ship your products into Amazon, so let’s say Josh, you ship that 1,000. So let’s start with the basics of basics, and then throw in further complication to give you guys the scope and context of the challenge or the opportunity. So Josh is shipping 1,000 units to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, Amazon instead of receiving 1,000 units, they’re receiving 990 units, right. So 10 units are missing, the responsibility, and the onus is on the seller to discover that. And then, you know, open a case with Amazon and bring it to their attention, provide necessary documentation, if needed. So Amazon can investigate. And if Amazon investigates, and they find the missing units, great, you can sell it make money, problem solved. But of course, if they don’t find it, Amazon does have an insurance policy. And within that insurance policy, they have the reimbursement policy and where they reimburse you for the loss. And that’s just a basic example what which more sellers can understand and relate to because it’s very intuitive, I send something that you receive it all yes or no ABC of logistics. But what many sellers don’t realize is that once the units and inventory are inside Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Inside the centers, all of a sudden units get lost, damaged or destroyed, disposed, disappeared or get overcharged with fees. It’s inside the centers, but also between the centers. Because often Amazon might move around your products between centers, let’s say from Texas to California to Nevada to have that one- or two-day Prime shipping spread, same elements happened units get lost, damaged, destroy the spirit, all that stuff. Also, from the fulfillment centers, to the consumers, the customers wants the orders come in, not all the orders get there. It’s not 100%, perfect, right, from the consumers back to Amazon with all the refunds and the returns issues. And then you have from the fulfillment centers back to the seller, if you do a removal order. So all these logistics friction points, the sellers need to be on guard to find all these discrepancies. And on an annual basis, I can share with you the dentists statistics that we have over the years, the discrepancy rate on an annual basis ranges between one to 3% from your revenue. So if you do a million dollars a year on Amazon, that can be 10 to $30,000, you have to kind of be on the lookout for if you do 10 million, it’s 100 to 300,000. And on and on it goes. So that was kind of the reality we were in, we had $100 million activity. And every year, we had to kind of recover one to 3 million. And that was material enough for us to say, hey, we’re gonna apply serious resources to solve this problem at scale. So we have an airtight solution for us. And that’s how we continue was born unintentionally, because we did share these capabilities with other sellers after they requested it. And that kind of gave it its own track that that’s what took me in today to focus on what I do. So at the end of the day, whatever you are doing in revenue right now you can make your own calculation what one to 3% means. Another way to look at it is that for every 100 units, you shipped Amazon between one to three units is going to experience a discrepancy throughout his lifecycle so but the responsibility is on you, the seller to discover it and reconcile it. Now if you’ve never heard of this This is all foreign to you, you know what to do? No worries there are solution companies out there that can help with that, we happen to be one of them. So if you ever need help, we’re happy to help with that. And we’re performance based. So you don’t have to pay anything upfront. There’s no commitment, it’s free to join, it’s free to stay wherever you’re comfortable. So you can really focus on what moves the needle and create a business, which is revenue and sales, sourcing, launching all that stuff. And for us, we’re like archaeologists, we always look into the past, we come with our toothbrushes and the rubble and the sand. And then we brush it until we find this golden nugget. And we bring it back to your pocket. And only if we’re successful, we get rewarded. So once again, if you’ve never heard of it, now you did, and you can do you know, you can do something about it. And if you didn’t hear about it, but you didn’t know the scope of it. What I do recommend is that, if you get your reimbursements keep doing it, we encourage you to get everything you get on your own, but still connect to a solution provider that can recover everything that you’re missing out, for whatever reason, and only if they’re successful, only, then you’re gonna get rewarded. So this way you can fulfill the maximum opportunity that you have with this recovery solution I can do, I can share an interesting story, our case study where a customer became an interesting partner to us for GETIDA. So today, our CEO, which is Eytan Wiener, and he’s also a partner of the company, he actually started his journey with GETIDA as a client. So Eytan has a very distinctive experience in resume in the e-commerce Industry. He started back in 2008, she had two very successful businesses that he sold to public companies. One of them is the famous PROSPER Show, is one of the founders of the PROSPER Show, was so wildly successful, got sold to a public company. And the second was quantum networks, his, you know, company where he sold all his brands. So that also got sold to a public company. So he did two exits. But what happened was we came to the PROSPER Show, GETIDA , right? And we exhibited, and he came to a meet and greet the people, the companies that have a booth and in the show, and he said, What do you guys do with the reimbursement this and that, he said, Okay, let me go give you guys a try, get a really good impact, we recovered a lot of money. And then he recommended a few other players, and they got a lot of money. And then a few years later, when he sold his business, he discovered that 14%, one for 14% of his profit, were coming from reimbursements. And then all that 14% got a multiply of whatever multiply he got when he sold the business that was very, very material, you know, material impactful to his exit. And, then once he had time and money in his hand, and he looked around, connecting and partnering with GETIDA made sense for him, because he felt like he had the whole journey for micellar clients to a successful exit. So today is with us. He’s a part of the company, the CEO, and he’s helping many other sellers kind of capitalize on that promise and opportunity. So yeah, hopefully that gives a bit more of a vivid explanation of the spirit of GETIDA with its top leadership from, you know, from the once again, we came from the bottom up with this journey, and also our current CEO as well.
Josh Hadley 32:54
Yeah, I love that. Well, and I think it’s something that you can’t overlook, like you said, you know, 14% of somebody’s profits coming directly from reimbursements. This is not something that you can overlook. So I’m curious.
Yoni Mazor 33:08
I do want to highlight, I apologize. But I want to highlight one thing, why was your sense of 14%? How could it be? The reason it can be is this is very important, this is should be, there’s like a shifting moment, in this episode, I want to holla to everybody. If you don’t get all the reimbursements that you’re entitled to get you as a seller, you lose two things. The first thing you lose is your investment, the money invested into the inventory. The second thing you lose is profit. And why? Because when Amazon pays your reimbursement, they actually do a beautiful thing. They don’t pay you the cost, they pay the retail value. So our mission is to ship the double negative to a double positive where you get your money back and turn it into profit. And that’s what was 14% because it was all the margins will hold inside. And guess what? No A cos.
Josh Hadley 33:51
Yeah, no. Exactly. I love that. Yoni, and there’s a time limit as well. Right? How long can you actually go back?
Yoni Mazor 33:58
Yeah, so today, you know, this constantly changes the rules of the game constantly changes as with anything other things with Amazon. So as it stands today, there’s kind of a few brackets for any winning dimensioned discrepancies where they overcharge you, I can elaborate more about that later. You have 90 days, only 90 days to recover is to be 18 months, when it’s only 90 days. And that got updated back in 2019. When you ship your products to Amazon, to the fulfillment centers in Europe, EU, UK and Germany in Europe, you have six months in the United States, you have nine months. Not sure why for the same issue, different timeframes for different continents, not sure why. And then kind of everything else, as a generalist general view, you have like 18 months, so I’m sure we can go up to 18 months. Some of them are limited to 90 days. Some of them are six months and nine months, and then kind of 18 months. So these are kind of the brackets. And once again, if you don’t audit and reconcile and get reimbursed on time and open the case in the allowed timeframes. That’s when you lose on that, you know, opportunity that I mentioned where it was a cost and profit interest. stink.
Josh Hadley 35:00
Now I know especially I think we want to dive in, especially to the FBA fees, right, because oftentimes, we found this with our own brand, we have over 1300 SKUs. And oftentimes, Amazon’s going to incorrectly measure your product for no good reason not sure how it happens. But you end up just loot you pay a higher FBA fee. However, I know that you only have kind of like 20 remeasurement cases that you can actually open per month. So what happens to a seller that has a large SKU catalog, they find more than 20. But yet, they’re limited to only 90 days of pull of clawback right for reimbursements. What type of recommendations do you have in that situation?
Yoni Mazor 35:44
So this is a complicated and loaded question, I can share with you that over the years, we kind of bundled the few cells together that were experienced there have super high, you know, like yourself big catalog with a high amount of skews and high volume. And they really can show financially materialistically how much they’re being impacted. So in both of them together and kind of made a push to escalate to Amazon’s higher brass and brackets. So I think some of you got resolved not sure all of it, and it’s not so resolved on a mass scale, because the thing for Amazon is it’s a mold. And in this mold right now, statistically, most of the sellers have like 50, SQS, or less. So it’s more than enough, but it doesn’t feel fit the mold are the ones who have over 50, or 100, or a few 100, or a few 1000, or some of them have hundreds thousands are in extreme cases, a few million, right? Depends on you know, over the years, it’s not a single year, but over time, it constantly changes because they do close out and stuff like that all these ones are. But in any case, one dimension is escalate to the top. Another one more tactical on the surface is that, you know, once for a given example, once you connect to get theta, we provide 24/7 view on this. So once you connect to get to the we have all the measurements, all locked in to position, all the fees are being charged, I just want to step back a little bit, just understand what we’re talking about. Amazon charges, the sellers, fulfillment fee, every time a unit is sold. So of a film a few basically the color also pick and pack because they pick it from the bin, they packaged in a box and ship it out to pick and pack fee. And this fee is based on the weight and dimension of the product. So the larger and heavier Amazon thinks the product is the more they’re going to charge you. Right. It can be by accident or can be because maybe you’re being attacked by another seller. I’ll give two quick examples. By accident can be where you sell a handbag, and then somebody bought it, they returned it back. And when they were returning back, they put the strap on the handbag and now it’s adding 30 inches to the when the measurements. So when Amazon scans the machine as 30 Inches extra, they they recalculate, boom, they’re charging more fees. So there’s no need to think about it also on the sort of charging $6 per unit every time they ship it, they’re charging you $4 So sorry, it’s charging $10. So the overcharging $4, you sold 10,000 units or $40,000 each trade extra, and you don’t even know about it. Right? That could be a mistake, right? Because of the handling. Another one that we’ve seen over the years, that being you’re being attacked by a competitor because you’re clueless, I can take your ace and I can list it on my Amazon account. I never offer it all it’s all anything I do is just change the winner of the measures or the winning dimensions, I say oh, instead of four inches at 400 inches instead of four ounces and 400 pounds. Also an Amazon system is overcharging overcharging, we have no clue and you get flushed out. Alright, so it can be these are kind of two quick reasons. So for us, once you connect to GETIDA, we provide a 24/7 kind of look out for this. So anytime it changes for whatever reason, we can next day or same day, we open a case with demos and say, Hey, what’s going on? Why is this change? You know, can you please revert it back. So in this scenario, it could be kind of a 50-50 split. Sometimes they might say, Okay, let us re measure and then utilize that one measurement out of 20 per month, or the other 50 will be like, Oh, you’re right, there’s no explanation for that. We’re gonna fix it. No remeasurement, and you’re good to go. So, in short, the solution is real time action, real time tactical ability to solve it on the spot. The quicker you do, the better because hey, you just change it, there’s no reason you don’t have to even remeasure Amazon, it was here an hour ago was like this. An hour later, or a few hours later or a day later, is different. There’s no measure, nothing changed, they could just pull the switch and put it back together and no harm done. So if you have speed, that can be an advantage. If you come a few days, after a few weeks it gets very clunky, very, very heavy. So the utilize that you know, a one out of 20. And then you kind of get trapped in this position if you have a large catalog. So if it’s any help, real time, tactics or ability, if you can’t do that, once again, with a solution that can do that we happen to be one of them so we can provide that opportunity to as well.
Josh Hadley 39:39
I love that — fascinating. Yoni. There’s a lot of reimbursement companies that have started over the last few years. And so sellers have probably been hit up multiple times. I guess my question to you is, how is GETIDA different compared to all of these other people and is there anything that sets you guys apart?
Yoni Mazor 40:00
So when we came into the market back in 2015, we’re definitely not the first second fourth, or I don’t even know what’s number Meza, we’re not within our credit game, we’re just came into play. But today, we’re the largest and the world during this, I guess, for a few reasons. One thing I’ll mention is that all these solution partners, they’re great, we support this industry as an industry, and we think they do a really good thing for the industry. So that’s a blessing. But in our perspective, we see sometimes that, you know, a lot of these solution providers, for them, it’s like an add on, it’s not the only exclusive thing that they do. Sometimes they do other things, they can do something stuff with advertising, they can do stuff with inventory management, they can do stuff with repricing all these other things. So they have a kind of a platform for them, it’s like an add on. So they’ll cover some of the basics of reimbursements because they don’t, you know, you know, once you apply 240 team members, day in, day out, and over the years, tens of millions of dollars in research and development constantly being on the cutting edge. And also having patents, we have some patents on our, on our innovations, that creates the impact. So the focus attention motivation to one thing, instead of four things or, or 20 things, or whatever it is other providers are doing, I think I think that makes a lot of an impact, because we’re able to eventually compound our ability to deliver more and more. And, you know, there’s something called in Japan Kaizen, which is incremental improvement over time. That’s what the Japanese invented were, that’s what created Honda and Toyota, where they’re constantly improving over time. So the reliability and the value because very, very good, long term. So for us day in, day out, we’re constantly you know, improving, improving where other organizations, they have, you know, a group of 12, 45, 20, 30 people. But not all, all, the focus intention of top to bottom brass is into one dimension. So that creates an impact. And the end of the day, the impact is the performance. So the maximizing on the recovery. Oftentimes, you know, if you’re also a few things, if using your own team and using other providers, and you like them, keep them for us no conflict, you can come in, we can give you a free audit, and show your numbers, how much is being left behind and how old it is. This issue is, you know, 70 months old or 60 months old, which means it’s being left behind, it’s about to expire. So it’s very, very data driven, we live in the data. And then with data, you can make an educated decision if you’d like us to help you recover that or not, right, and typically say, Hey, this is all money from the dead money, I don’t have access to only if they get it to me, I pay so becomes a very comfortable proposition where over time, that made the difference for many, many sellers. So it became, we became kind of a core element, or synonymous for for solving this issue because of the focus, energy attention, which is relentless in one place with no distractions. I’ll tell you another thing over the years, because we have such a large user base, we have tens of thousands of sellers using us daily, right? There’s always that temptation to kind of add another feature or product and upsell. So we can do PPC for you we can do in our pricing for whatever it is because we have, quote unquote, a captive audience. But over the years, we decided to No, just, you know, I think somebody said, if it’s Warren Buffett or someone else that when you grow into certain dimensions, and you want to be successful, it’s the ability to say no to things, right. It’s not always saying yes, it’s saying no. So we said no to all that stuff. So this is what we do. This is the only thing we do. And we’re very, very dedicated into maximizing the opportunity for all of our users. And that’s going to make its impact in the market. That’s the strategy we chose long-term. And long-term, there was a gap that went to kind of create a one second, we’re not first a second, we came in, there was big dogs, but a lot of these big dogs, some of them faded away completely sound them are kind of down and under and when for us, you know, we made that strategic decision. At the end of the day, it proved itself. And I said, well, one last thing, you’re gonna get to be the largest in the world. Especially when it’s performance based, but due to lack of performance. Yeah, and I’m saying so it can’t be that big. If because once again, every time we go to work, we start from zero, if we don’t create $1 for somebody, we don’t need 240 people, that makes it very, very energetic. Because we don’t have an alternative. We don’t have a subscription of some kind, or another software that can we can fall back on. So if there’s a few bad weeks, bad months or whatever, we don’t have that, those cushions, we have to constantly be on the edge for the sellers to make it on the maximum level. And this is one thing it goes back to what I’m saying earlier, we got very comfortable being uncomfortable. And that’s our kind of recipe for success because we’re constantly energetic on solving. So hopefully this gives a lot of scope of the nuances.
Josh Hadley 44:31
Yeah, you guys are experts at what you do. Now, Yoni this has been a fantastic episode, I think you’ve left our audience with lots of gold nuggets to chew on here. As we wrap things up, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted you let me know if you think I’m missing something here. All right. So number one, I think if you are not paying attention to the AI space and at least experimenting with creating your own chatbot in ChatGPT or experimenting with some of the AI software that is meant for e-commerce sellers, you’re going to be left in the dust. Imagine somebody that’s able to figuratively create a structure and have team members, like a billion-dollar business, but with the salary of an eight-figure business, right? Imagine who’s going to win at the end of the day. And that’s the opportunity that AI hopefully, will afford us. And so at the end of the day, it’s best just to dive in, and then get your hands dirty experimenting and seeing what works for your brand versus not. Action Item number two is hiring MVPs or A-player’s going back to the sports analogy that we talked about, if you’re the owner of an NBA team, who do you want to hire? Are you trying to get the cheapest guys out there possible so that you can have a healthy profit? Bottom line? Right? The answer is no. The healthy profit bottom line comes when your team wins the NBA championship. And that only happens when you have MVPs on your team, right? So who are you hiring? And I think it’s just experiencing the mindset shift of, hey, how little Can I pay somebody? Rather than, hey, how do I go find really, really good talent, they might require or command a much higher salary, but the amount of work that they can do and the results they can bring can be 10x what somebody that I’m paying a fraction of the price can bring. Third, last but not least, reimbursements can be a huge catalyst to bringing in additional profits to your business. I think what you highlighted Yoni, you know, one of the black hat tactics that is out there is one of your competitors could go list your product, go in the back end, change the dimensions. And overnight, you could start losing money, overall, right? And you don’t, and it would be difficult for you to really see like, Wait, like, how are we starting to lose money, nothing really has changed. Now, there’s ways that you can eventually go in and see that. Most sellers are overlooking, hey, what am I being charged for my FBA fees on a daily basis? Right? How many units were lost in that last shipment? And so the you know, the number you shared 14% of profits coming from reimbursements. When you start to add a 3x of 4x multiple to that, and let’s say, you know, you have a million dollar EBIT da or SDE, right, that becomes basically another million dollars in your exit.
Yoni Mazor 47:44
And before that, if you keep on reinvesting this newly found cash, it compounds your ability over time to reinvest in the business, buy more inventory, using more for PPC. So you’re losing a lot if you’re not maximizing on your cash flow. And once you put that cash flow back to work that grows and grows, and once you do that exit again. So it’s a virtuous cycle, you know, against the drainage. Yeah, yeah.
Josh Hadley 48:06
Well, and I think what you also mentioned too, that’s really important is that, yes, can you do this yourself? And can you train a VA to go File reimbursements for you, you certainly can. But partnering with somebody kind of like yourself, that lives and breathes this, and Amazon’s constantly changing the rules and how they respond to cases and all of that, the question you need to ask yourself is for you, as the CEO is your time better spent identifying new growth opportunities for your brand, are trying to solve, you know, these reimbursement issues on a regular basis. So at the end of the day, you know, continue to even if you’re getting a cut, it’s worth my time to say, hey, they’ve got this covered. I don’t even have to think about it, I will get 14% of my profits back hopefully, right? And then I can go focus on new product ideas or new channels, new partnership opportunities, that’s where the growth comes. So at the end of the day, it comes back to are you assembling the right team? Right. and your right team can be partners, agencies, even software companies, that can make a big difference in your business. So Yoni, those are my three action items. Anything else you would add to that?
Yoni Mazor 49:19
Every word will be away, so it’s beautiful.
Josh Hadley 49:21
Awesome. All right, Yoni. I love to ask each guest the following three questions at the end. So here we go. What has been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?
Yoni Mazor 49:31
So yeah, this past year, I’ve read, The Happiest Man on Earth, by Eddie Jaku. Really touching story about it was his Jewish gentleman who already passed away but he was born in Germany and survived through the Holocaust through many, many camps. But nevertheless, he never lost his spirit, his humanity, his happiness. And after he survived, he emigrated to Australia, you know, got married, brought up a family, a beautiful family, and he lived to over 100 I think he passed away 101, and it became this national symbol for Australia, because he went all over Australia and the world, you know, sharing that powerful message of staying happy and optimistic through major challenges and troubles and catastrophes. So that was a very powerful book that I read lately that I highly recommend.
Josh Hadley 50:14
Awesome. I love a good new book recommendation. I have not heard that one.
Yoni Mazor 50:18
And an Amazon seller recommended to me somebody from Australia, an Amazon seller from Australia, I was in Mexico in a conference, she recommended it. So thank you for that — I forgot her name. But thank you, Amazon seller.
Josh Hadley 50:26
I love it. All right. Question number two, what is a new productivity tool or a new software tool that you think is going to be a game changer?
Yoni Mazor 50:35
There’s a software tool that we’re using for a while, I think it’s a game changer because it provides an extra layer of understanding what the hell is going on in this marketplace. So we use it for R&D since now, where the sellers are at, it’s called SmartScout, by Scott Needham. He has his own show a package show a really good one. It’s called the smaller, smartest seller in the room. So he’s pretty well known figure. If you don’t know him yet, check him out. So the tool is called SmartScout. What we are able to do with this tool is to really understand like, where are the sellers located globally, what’s the status of each seller and their health, but if we can do it, it means you the seller can do it, and especially hone in on the categories and ASINs. And sellers are brands that you’re competing with. Because the more you know, the more you understand what works for them that can work for you and always, you know, stay on top of it or even be edgier. So I think that’s a powerful tool for sellers out there that they should know about. And if you’re using it right now kudos if you’re not check it out.
Josh Hadley 51:28
And love it. Love a good new software tool. Alright. Last but not least, who who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the E commerce space that other people should be following and why
Yoni Mazor 51:38
All hail the king Kevin King, has been around for so long and he never loses his edge. He also recently kind of launched his Billion Dollar Newsletter. So as preferred describes subscribing, lots of content, lots of tactics, things that work, things that will not work. So you know, very powerful, so highly recommended.
Josh Hadley 51:59
I agree. We had Kevin King on the podcast, he is one of our first episodes shared a lot of knowledge. So Yoni, this has been a fantastic episode. Thanks so much for sharing your insights and your journey as well. For our listeners that want to learn more, they’re interested in learning more about Katina or following you and your story. Where can they find you?
Yoni Mazor 52:20
So if you want to check out GETIDA, just visit getida.com. All the content is there. We have blog articles about everything that’s going on the industry, we have podcast shows that we’re gonna have, Josh, hopefully very soon or it could be that you’re watching this. He’s already on our show. It’s called Prime Talk. I can’t wait, you know, to capture Josh’s story. And so yeah, that’s getida.com. I’m always available on social media. Just check me out on Amazon. I’m pretty active on Facebook and LinkedIn. Any question you have, any thought, any idea, just a warm advice feel free to reach out at your disposal.
Josh Hadley 52:57
Awesome. Yoni. Thanks again for your time and for sharing your knowledge with us today. My pleasure.
Outro 53:03
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