Josh Hadley 5:19
that’s amazing. What what what a journey? When did you get started into Amazon? So I know you started on eBay. But when did you start? You know, diving into the Amazon platform,
Josh Gibson 5:29
then? Great question. I think it was 2009 2010. Because as a refurbished seller, it was really difficult. So that was I went through a couple different variations, they went through a variation where you can only have a new Asin. And then they went through a variation where you’d have new and refurbished, and they didn’t like refurbished and so they took the refurbished away and put it all back into the new Asin. And then certified refurbished came out. And we’re in the entry level steps of that we were asked to join. And so once we once we hit that was a 2009 2010. Somewhere in that timeframe I could be off on that is when we really started to launch because that for us is a third party seller that sold 90% refurbished goods, it was a platform that we could launch and do very well in. And we we ballooned significantly. But with that there’s also a lot of challenges that caused us to learn. So we went from $10 million to $65 million account in one year. And that that was very, very painful, and the amount of money that we lost and trying to so one of the things we also focus on is not only the top end item of sales, but also trying to protect the bottom line. Yeah, saying I say often is the Amazon delete your your bottom line for breakfast, lunch and dinner, that will make you super happy with the dessert on the top end, right. But if we can help you protect your bottom line, it makes a big, big difference. And that comes from A to Z check claims chargeback claims, an FBA returns. So customers is you know, returned or refunded right away once that UPS number tracks, your USPS numbers or tracks when we track that item all the way back to the FC and figuring do we get reimbursed for the item? Or do we get reimbursed for cash. And so that being able to track those minutiae is, is what we learned early on, we lost a lot a lot of money early on by not protecting the bottom line, because we are so enamored with the top line. And with that, we’ve been able to build a lot of strategies and a lot of custom solutions to help track and keep that bottom line protected. So I know there’s a lot of reimbursement agencies out there. We’ve taken all that in house. And we’re able to do quite well. So we brought two clients on recently, just for reference, they had no idea that there was money out there outside and they trusted Amazon, we kept letting them know this is something that we’re able to offer, just as trying to provide a value added benefit, right. And within those two clients, I think was like $100,000, in two and a half months, we were able to find that they had no idea they lost. But the problem is we only can go back 18 months. That’s right, and request reimbursements. And so we spend, we spent a good amount of time helping do that, to show show the value. Because if if we’re able to show the value that we understand Amazon that we understand the nuances that we can, we can protect your bottom line while also providing strategies to help protect your top line or grow your top line rather, it provides a much better solution for a customer. But if you didn’t tell him you can find free money.
Josh Hadley 8:23
Why not? Why not? I think that’s a very compelling case. Right of hey, I can save you a lot of money. What else do you see? So I know like a lot of like damage shipments or, you know, inventory that gets lost. That’s I think, some of the low hanging fruit. What else is there that, you know, you’re saying the Amazon eats your margin for business lunch and dinner for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Right. So what else is there that, you know, people should be paying attention to and Amazon specifically for now that, you know, there could be a lot of, you know, margin, like going out the business?
Josh Gibson 8:58
Yeah, I mean, it’s important to track your weights and your demos and your categories and what products you’re selling. And because there’s some products, say you’re selling your printer, a printer should be in an 8% category, but sometimes I’ll slide into a 15% category. So you’re losing that that amount of money. You don’t see it unless you’re tracking, tracking it or they could dim it out wrong. Say something they as they went through their cube or scanned it dimmed out incorrectly. So being able to go in and update and fix those dimensions, and then do do file backs on those also trying to find better, more efficient ways to do inbound shipments. And so there’s there’s tools out there that we use that can take like right now we’re running a full truckload for $400 inbound, where that same truckload going another route could be three to $4,000. So it’s the more time you do this and the nice thing about our team is we can sit in a bullpen and go okay what are you learning what did you find out and try to take our collective knowledge plus being able to go to like this scale and sales I’m gonna meet other people that know more things and aggregate this info ratios do become more valuable. Which to your point is if you’re an owner operator trying to do this yourself, it becomes complicated because you don’t have the resources and the ability to learn all these things. Yeah. But to your point, it’s it’s the weight and dems, it is the categories it is inbound shipments. I’m blanking on a few others, but it’s really managing that protection of your bottom line. That’s important. It’s also like, specifically with inbound shipments, as the annoying part is you can get that FBA ID cleared, they can say fully received. And we’ve seen with some clients 1012 months later, they say actually, we’re five short. And if you’re not going back and re auditing those, even though you thought you did a good job auditing it, you can lose it.
Josh Hadley 10:42
Interesting. So even Amazon will will mark it, let’s say a month later, it’s like, yep, fully received. Yeah, we got them all. But then 12 months later, they’re like, actually, we’re five short. Right? And I would argue most sellers are paying attention to that. For sure. With the transportation, I think that you know, that’s something that we’ve been able to unlock recently in our business as well as realizing like, why do we keep paying for just sending individual boxes instead of pallets or even truckloads into Amazon? What’s the tools that you’ve been able to use? Are they kind of third party tools software tools out on the market? Or is that something you’ve built yourself?
Josh Gibson 11:20
Now they’re third party, they’re in their API vendors? I think the if you’re, if you’re a software developer right now, the API is open for the most part with Amazon. And being able to find ways to bend it are, are some of the most interesting things to find. So I won’t say just for my own reaction, but there’s something out there that if you can find it. And also, I don’t want there being too many people bending the API, because then that may break for us.
Josh Hadley 11:43
Yeah, yeah. That makes that makes a lot of sense. Well, just know that there’s a lot of tools, I think out there that help Amazon sellers. And I think like, it’s important to make sure that you’re looking at every single line item, all the costs that go in shipping, and even your fulfillment fees. I think another important topic to to really touch on is as you’re creating your new products, one of the most important things that you should be doing is paying attention to what are the dimension cut offs? For FBA fees right now, because as soon as you get over that 14 inch mark, right on the longest side of of a particular product, now you’re going into the large standard size, right instead of small, same thing with the weight, right? We recently found out that we have a product that’s 6.2 ounces, and it’s like, oh, man, like we need to just shave off point two ounces. And then it’s like, we’re gonna save ourself in the fulfillment fees. Because it’s a, it’s a change, under six to go to ride over six. I think there’s so many like little gaps like that, would you agree on is that something that you kind of advise your clients on then is like with new product development, or even like, repackaging some of their existing products to make it more, you know, efficient and more profitable. Yeah, we
Josh Gibson 13:02
worked with a client that had really big overcome packaging, like clamshell packaging, that was not friendly for shipping in regards to not only weight, not a ton of weight, but just more bulk. And so we are trying to be very specific on two things is one not having to stick with the product. And so you if you’re redoing your packaging, having your fn SKU sitting on that packaging, right, or if you want to go Where are you going to send in the UPC. I, we personally advise against using UPC just because commingling and a few other things that can can be complicated, but one over packaging, to condense that to keep your weight and Dems within that reasonable range. Sometimes it’s also doing bundling with those as well going well, if we bundle these together, it doesn’t cost us anything more to ship it. But we’re able to add more value inside that packaging. And then, like I said, with labeling, if you can get rid of that label that saves a significant amount of time on the inbound side of shipping. And it also makes the receiving side that much more simple and easy.
Josh Hadley 14:00
Interesting. Now, you mentioned here not using a UPC barcode there for your your label right on your product. I’d love to dive in a little bit deeper on that because I think what’s unique with your agency is that you help people sell on multiple marketplaces. So before we dive deeper on that, why don’t you just kind of give the audience an overview like what are the marketplaces that you help sellers manage right now?
Josh Gibson 14:26
So Amazon obviously the big one Walmart we see continuing to grow and so we’re spending a significant amount of time there. We just got launched on target plus those by invite from Target. We do Newegg, eBay wish back market. Sure there’s more of those are the ones that were active in currently. Awesome. All right, working on a new client that is going on Wayfair as well.
Josh Hadley 14:50
Very cool. We actually just got invited to join Wayfarer as well. So we’re in that that setup as well. So we’ll have to share some war stories there. They’ll come I know there will be. Yeah, as we figure out a new platform there, for sure. Look, going back to the UPC barcodes. Now, I know that’s been one of the challenges that we’ve been able to figure out in our own businesses. What type of barcodes do we put on our products? Right? Because if you plan to sell it on these different marketplaces, well, your Amazon barcode only works for Amazon, right? Like eBay, or especially Walmart is not interested in like, you can’t send in your Amazon barcode, write your fn SKU over to Walmart into their fulfillment centers, right, you would have to do your own third party fulfillment, ensure you can use that Asin. But why don’t you kind of give us the lay of the land of like, what’s the best use, if you want to be selling on all of these different platforms? Like what type of label should you be using? And what would be your recommendation?
Josh Gibson 15:53
So I’ll start with it all depends on how well you control your distribution. What I mean by that is, are you are doing any form of distribution at all out there of your product, because the downside with UPC is on Amazon, if you have distribution as well, and you’re sending it in as UPC only if they do get commingled so being able to keep your inventory separate from theirs, it just it gets together. However, if you can control your inventory, and you have that locked down, there’s no reason not to use UPC. And to your point, Walmart only uses UPC for their listing. And it does make it a lot easier to cross list if you have UPC is, but what we run into is we’re because we’ve taken vendor brands from first party to third party, they tend to have a distribution angle as well. And so that’s why we That’s why I tend to lean toward that. But for the brands that we represent, we do UPC as long as they have their distribution locked down.
Josh Hadley 16:44
Interesting. Okay. So if you’re a private label seller, you have your own brand, you’re not selling, you know, you’re not wholesaling your products out to anybody else. Right, which means you’re in control of your inventory. That’s when you would recommend using that UPC code, then correct. Yep. Okay. And I think another thing for people to consider on that note, is that one thing that you should consider doing is maybe even creating a separate UPC when you go to different marketplaces. And I want to hear your opinion on this, Josh, especially if you’re like selling into retail, because what I’ve heard is, if whatever retailer starts with running a sale, and they mark your product down, right, and your product shows up, let’s say you’re selling into Target, right, and they mark your product down, and then that also hits their target.com website. But it’s that same UPC code. And that’s what’s showing up in Amazon as well. Amazon, you’re going to lose the buy box in Amazon, because they see that your products, a lower price on target.com, even though you were not in control of reducing that price on target.com. You just sold your product into, you know, Target, for example, is that correct? Josh? Like how do people navigate that? And do you have experience with that? And any advice?
Josh Gibson 18:02
Ah, yes, yes and no. So yes, it is important. So I’ve seen a lot of brands, instead of having a different UPC just change the name of their product, because if you’re having to re label a product for a UPC purposes, it’d be very similar to relabeling depending on the cost of your packaging. And what you’re going to have a different different items. So for example, one of our clients as a unit, that’s a 25.5 100. And they sold into Target under 2555. So became a different item. So not only is it a different item, it’s also a different UPC. So when they do discount that, it makes a difference. And that same product is also sold, the target is 2557. And so they they’ve created different models for the same exact product, they may make minor changes. But that way they’re able to control target can’t compete against Walmart, Walmart can’t compete against BestBuy for Right, yeah. And so every, they’ve been able to control the distribution to those locations and protect each one of them because of Walmart sees target selling it. That may be an issue
Josh Hadley 19:00
that makes that makes great sense. I think that’s great advice. So Josh, I want to ask you, with a lot of our audience, they’ve been able to build an established business, right? They’ve hit the seven figures, they’re doing well, they’re established, they’ve maybe even been able to grow to this point by just having themselves maybe another founder and maybe a couple vas, right, they have a really small team. Why is it that people should consider utilizing your type of services? Or why use any agency for that matter? To grow to eight figures and beyond? Why is that important?
Josh Gibson 19:36
There’s a few things one, when they you are a carpenter, right? And as a carpenter day in and day out, you’re you’re building, cutting, framing, doing whatever, and then you have to do it yourself or that’s at home going, I can do the same thing. And I may have some experience on weekends, or maybe I did some when I was in college, or I’m right so there’s a different level of experience from us. seasoned carpenter to a do it yourself Carpenter, right doesn’t mean to do it yourself can’t do it, it just may take longer, they may be more mistakes, you may look at that the walls aren’t perfectly square that didn’t go in, right or you’re like me and you built something you always look at your mistake, right? Or didn’t know that you could have done something different. But going with an agency that’s had a tracker that’s been around that sees things and has a solid team of professionals that spend for us a significant amount of time on Amazon, that also work with other agencies that we work in with other agencies for best practices and tips. I actually had a call earlier today with an agency and he was having an issue with Walmart, I’m like, we’ll take this contact and try to fix this problem. And so when you have when you have this, this group, this mastermind group of people that can help you grow, it makes it a lot, a lot better and different. Or if I run into an issue, and I’m and I haven’t seen it before, that I go to my bullpen of Amazon brand managers and go, Hey, what happened, and one of them may raise a hand, say, I saw that two weeks ago, turn this thing on, turn the setting off. And you’ll fix the problem, where if you are a brand doing it yourself, or a third party seller, just doing it yourself as as an arbitrage, you may not have those experiences, we didn’t have those experiences early on. And we made a lot of mistakes. Like I said, if I was able to take the knowledge I have now and put it back then we would have been significantly more successful. Because we but we made mistakes along the way. So they you have your president, your CEO, maybe a couple of people you’ve hired and have your VAs, that’s great, but how do you scale that you may be able to sustain it, you may have the organic growth that happened. But how do you start multiplying that? How do you spend the time and and optimizing your listing and spending the time in backend keywords and title management? And are you adding Spanish keywords in there? And how are you? What are your pictures look like? And then if depending on each agency is like for us, we do a decent amount of PPC for our clients as well. And so how are you managing your PPC and for us, we have two full time PPC people, not a lot of brands will hire two full time PPC people or even a full PPC person, right? You don’t have someone because I mean, if you’re looking at one asin if you’re doing a good job, you’re spending about 10 to 15 hours a month on that one Asin. And that’s just trying to keep that thing going. If you have 40 ASINs, you start multiplying that out, right? Yeah, I’m just trying to keep on top of it. So I would say yes, you can do well as a six, seven figure seller. But for you to scale that next level, it’s bringing on some some strategic partners. And I think there’s a lot of different ways of adding strategic partners. A lot of these brands will add strategic partners and SAS. So let me add Helium 10, let me add this, let me add these these plays. But having someone on your team that is that professional carpenter that can help you make those. So we actually recommend for a lot of our clients to keep an Amazon person on staff. And that way, they kind of become the liaison from the owner from their VPs of whatever to communicate directly to us. Because if not, the C suite, or the decision makers don’t always have that time. And we’re also not in their office. And so if we have a designated person there, we’re able to parlay with them and grow together. And so that that has helped a lot of these brands go I still have my own person. Yeah. And in that process, are they organically learning? And May they take some of our skills and go? Well, you’re out? I can do this by myself now? I don’t think so. But for us, we found that to be a great benefit for someone to have someone on staff.
Josh Hadley 23:31
That’s fascinating. I love that breakdown. And I think to sum it up, I mean, you’re saying in order to really scale, right? Like, everybody’s going to need to build out a team, right? You can get to this point. But if you really want to take things to the next level, you do have to build a team, right? You’ve got to launch new products. And when you’re launching new products that includes more product optimization that includes more PPC management that includes more back end, you know, we just talked a lot about like the profitability stuff, tracking shipments, like everything gets more and more complex, right, as you continue to launch new products. But that’s honestly how you grow. So with that, Josh, let’s say somebody is on that verge of like, Hey, I think I need to build out my team. What’s one of the first hires that you would recommend that they should make? Right? If it’s an older and maybe a business partner, and they’ve got a couple of EAs like what would be kind of one of your initial recommendations to say this should probably be your next hire.
Josh Gibson 24:31
I’d say brand manager first and foremost someone that that can get in there be the nitty gritty because I work with a few CEOs and they’re the ones running Amazon I’m like you don’t have time and so brand owners, they became a brand owner and then they found a place to sell that brand. Typically some people are Amazon sellers and go find brands to resell them and make money but as a brand owner, you’re really good at building and visioning and thinking through what the next product what the next design what the next thing is the last thing they want to worry about. Is it easy or charge Back claim or right, this removal origin come with everything that it was supposed to come with, right. And so I would say first is bringing your brand manager in to help get an idea of what that what that looks like. And then from there, if you weren’t gonna go the agency route, it’d be bringing on private listing optimizer optimizer, depending how many SKUs you have those you have someone that oversees the whole umbrella, and then you start putting people in customer service would be the next one I’d put in there, if you’re not using agency for that as well. And depending on how you want to manage your customer service, you can have them do a significant amount of of your, your claims on their downtime. So if I was to build a team, those are probably the first three I’d put in there. Because early on your your brand manager can handle customer service, they can handle some of the agency claims, they can do the listing optimization, and then they’re gonna start to drown, and then you add someone else and then you add someone else.
Josh Hadley 25:54
Yeah. Do your brand managers also managed some PPC, then at the same time?
Josh Gibson 25:58
Nope. We have specific BBC. It’s a whole different beast, I think there are some people that can do it. I tried to keep the are our brand manager specifically, over a brand big, big picture kind of takes that place of the CEO, the visionary the casting, because if I feel like when I get someone in the weeds, is when they lose sight of the big picture. Because they’ve they’re so deep and they can’t see can’t see the forest for the trees, or they can’t see 268 months down the road. And I need to see that where PPC person is looking at yesterday and hoping to make a different change today.
Josh Hadley 26:33
Yeah, no, that’s good. That’s good input. So then what’s the difference between your brand manager versus having a listing optimization specialist.
Josh Gibson 26:43
So listing optimization kind of is very similar, in my opinion to a PPC person, they’re in the weeds. They’re trying to figure out keywords back end keywords, what was my click through they are listing optimizers also work with our PPC going on here, we made these changes, How’s that look on my click through rate because I don’t necessarily think my PPC person should be looking at click through rate, or really, I just don’t see that. And so the optimizers are spending a lot of time and also the optimizers are reviewing sales from the private party as well. So trying to see what has changed is pricing change as you use change. And so the optimizer and the brand manager are very similar. When the team is small, the that gap becomes a lot bigger as the team gets bigger. Because there’s there’s more minutiae that the optimizer does, because you can spend hours building on a listing for optimizing right during the thing through the strategy, and then constantly trying to change and and tweak. And if I do this change today, how’s that changed tomorrow?
Josh Hadley 27:42
Yeah, no makes makes a lot of sense. Now, Josh, I know you have years and years of experience, I think that’s one of the valuable things to make note of here is that when you work with somebody that has years and years of Amazon experience for yourself, you’ve been on the platform for 13 years, you’ve seen it evolve drastically over the last decade for sure. And so you’re staying current where you know, somebody that’s newer, right, or has launched a brand in the last two to three years. Right, some they haven’t crossed some of the challenges that you’ve had a lot of experience dealing with. And so to that point, I think that listing optimization has also evolved over the last decade quite drastically. So Josh, what would be kind of like, if you were to, you know, kind of go through like the listing optimization process, like, like, What’s number one, right? Like, this should be your first focus, second, third, fourth? And what should people be paying attention to? What their listings,
Josh Gibson 28:39
so if you’ve been following Amazon, so it’ll take a step back, because the longer you are with Amazon, the more you see how often they try to kick you off the platform. It’s just what they do, they change their account health, they change, like for those that were an SFP, they they’ve made all these different changes within SFP, to make it almost impossible to sell in SFP. And so being able to see those cycles of what Amazon does, the same thing goes with when they do API launches, they just had a big change in their API for PPC, and didn’t do a great job of communicating. So if you have anything that’s built on that API, now you have to go back and try to fix it as fast as possible, versus them coming out and saying, Hey, here’s the new change module, build your platform for him. Yeah, I know, it’s probably out there. We just haven’t seen great communication on that. Because even like if you use some of these, these big companies, and you see it break, they’re like, I had no communication. We’re trying to figure out what the API change was. But back to your original question around optimization, because the world is going so much more mobile. And you’re you find more people shopping mobile than you find shopping on PC, make sure that when you’re viewing you’re listening or viewing on on mobile, when you’re viewing and on mobile, there’s only a three to four things that really, really matter. If you’re just doing the listing, listing optimization side, not outside of the search, background stuff. So the simple things are title, How clean is your title? How organized is your title? How’s that title fit? Within with mobile, so when you’re viewing it, are you seeing exactly what you want to see, especially when you’re scrolling through your feed is your title can be longer, but it doesn’t always fit nicely. Second is how does your first and second picture look? So I’m we’re playing around with lifestyle photos of the first photo versus the brand, the picture of itself. So the the item itself, but still on those lifestyle photos, making the that product, still the main piece of it, but maybe like trying to engage lifestyle, we’re not fully set up by the way, it’s always been a white background product image, right. But we are seeing a little bit of a change in lifestyle and how those work. And then with that, too, under brand manager making sure you have a video, we’ve we’ve done a quite a bit of market survey. And if there’s a video what we what we’ve heard, and what we’ve seen is people scroll through all the photos looking for that play button, and they want to watch how that product is being used. I think bullets description. And if I put them in order bullets description, and a plus content are becoming less and less needed. Bullets, I’d say yes, they’re still above that fold on that scroll. But we’re seeing lists on our end that less and less people using the a plus contacts, it’s not as convenient to scroll down and find that a plus content on mobile.
Josh Hadley 31:17
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Going back to the listing image, right, that main photo that should be on a white background. You mentioned that, you know, maybe there’s a little bit more leniency. Tell me more about that. And like what you’ve been experimenting or trying there.
Josh Gibson 31:33
Ah, so just trying to keep things really simple. So if it’s a cooler, for instance, do we put the cooler on a white background? Or do we put the cooler on a beach that kind of has a white ish background? Right. And so and trying to make it more like, again, there, there is a little wiggle room. But I think that there, that’s part of the fun play in doing this more often is how does that? How does that change? We have seen a little positive growth in doing a lifestyle image first. So but it’s still early on?
Josh Hadley 32:02
Yeah. And I think the good news on that is even if Amazon doesn’t like what you decided to do with that image, it just gets suppressed. It’s not like you’re getting a deal on your account, right? Like, oh, you’re not following tos. It’s more like, sorry, this we’re not accepting this image or listing suppress? That’s it correct?
Josh Gibson 32:22
Correct. Yep. And that’s why when you have a team built out being able to go through your account health, so we do all account health on our end. So we’re in Pacific Time, all of our account health is done by 6am. We monitor it throughout the day. But we’re will make those changes really, really quick. And that’s what happens when you have a team versus trying to do this by yourself.
Josh Hadley 32:39
I love it. I love it. So Josh, if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I’ve got a brand, we’re doing well on Amazon, what are the first steps that you kind of take them through and like quick wins that you can give a business that comes to you.
Josh Gibson 32:54
First thing we look at is reimbursements. Not a lot of people think about reimbursements and understand what those reimbursements are. And so that’d be the first thing. Second is we open ourselves up for some consulting talk, like Okay, tell me your the issues that you have, I was asking you the top five problems that you have with Amazon, let’s walk through those, and seeing if we can provide some level of help. Because I shouldn’t be asking for anything if I can’t provide more added value. So I come at this, as let me show you the value I can add and then let’s grow this this brand together. And so for anybody that comes to us that only Why spend the time upfront asking, Okay, what are your five things? What do we what do we work on? I’ll do a roundtable discussion with my team, we come back to them. If I can’t answer them right away with solutions, hey, do this do this. It doesn’t cost them anything. I think you should make these changes. And you’ll see significant growth will point them a couple different ways. And if they continue to be interested, I always offer the first one for free. Go ahead. Let me let me walk in here. If I don’t add value for you, there’s no reason for us to work together. So I always look at these as partnerships, if you benefit if I’m able to benefit you and your account, they will benefit us it’s a win win. If that ever becomes skewed. There’s no reason for us to do business together. I’m confident enough my team that that first month they’re gonna go I didn’t know I didn’t know this. How did I not know this? It’s so clear, you guys have made us so much more money. And just even in the reimbursements for the first six months covers the expense that we are right, typically not all the time, but they’re amazed at the amount of revenue, they’re able to get back in those last products. And just the small nuances being able to change some of their PPC strategies. And they want us to being able to change their listings and listing optimization or going in and doing brand registry stuff. As much as I was talking about a plus content, I don’t think is that valuable. A lot of brands like it. And so being able to build that A plus content, so they have their own landing page. So I think that that’s the first thing and the second thing we do as an agency is okay, well you have Amazon, what are you doing on Walmart, what are you doing on target? What are you doing on these other places and they may have nothing and so we walk in offering our services they’re saying I think we can help you here. And once we are able to show them that we know we’re doing in one area, it also allows us to continue to help on the other.
Josh Hadley 35:07
Yeah, I want to dive a little bit deeper into that, like expanding your distribution, right? I think a lot of people, you can build a seven figure brand real quick on Amazon find success. But then it’s like, Alright, now how do I take this to other distribution channels? And where else can I find success? So I want to go down the list of what you would consider like priority of importance. If somebody is like, Hey, I do I’m interested in expanding our distribution channels, what would be the top ones people should focus on? And then with that, I want to hear from you kind of, what’s the estimated sales lift in terms of like percentage, right of revenue? Like a you get onto Walmart? It’s next year, probably 5%? Or is it 10? So like, if you wouldn’t mind? Like, let’s go down the list of marketplaces, what sales lift do you typically see on average? And then what you would recommend?
Josh Gibson 36:01
Yeah, so let’s start off if you’re doing FBA, which I wouldn’t imagine why you’re not doing FBA, I would start off with North and being able to expand to Amazon and Mexico turnkey. The reps in Canada and Mexico are really easy to work with to build out your listings. And if you’re not familiar with NARA, what it does is it takes your US inventory and list it in Mexico and or illicit in Canada increases the cost to the end customer to cover all the inbound fees. And when the customer if the customer returns the product, it comes back to the US on a removal order. So you’re not having to worry about taxes, duties, tariffs, inventory, that anything. I mean, I guess that that but I mean, in that is easiest, we see a 7% left almost overnight, once we’re able to get that implemented, and it doesn’t cost you anything more. It just gets you exposure into Canada and Mexico. And what that does is then it lets us know, okay, if Mexico is seeing this much of a left or Canada seeing this much on the left, maybe it’s worth us looking at expanding and getting a presence up in Canada or getting a presence down in Mexico, even though even though those tend to be more complicated than just doing north, it may be worth it. Because you’re 7% Return to 14%. Now that it’s in country, it’s a little bit cheaper, so on and so forth. That’s on Amazon. And if we if I take it off Amazon, I’d say the next one would be Walmart, I think Walmart’s finally made good strides in their growth on marketplace, I thought was gonna happen, right when they acquired jet, I figured is going to be a turnkey process. Walmart’s highly difficult to work with their customer support their service, their ticket process is not great. And they’re making it more and more complicated. Because they’re pushing everything toward Walmart fulfilled services. And they’re making that so that becomes a little more complicated. In regards to where inventory sits. For a while there, you’re able to do a brown box program with Amazon and then use MCF and ship that product, all these different places. Yeah. Terms of Service now don’t allow that. So that makes it that makes it more complicated. Now you’re taking the inventory having divided in two places, but play around with it. But I would say Walmart and I’d say Walmart specifically with Walmart fulfilled services, starting off with a small amount of inventory in there based on what’s selling on Amazon. And also I believe Walmart’s ad Ad Council is ripe for the pickings. It is not nearly as complicated. It is complicated. But it’s not as as heavily diluted as Amazon’s PPC is right now. So if you come in there with with good data that you’re able to take from Amazon, your buyers are different. So not all keywords and terms and they don’t all cross pollinate. Well, but there’s not a lot of people on Walmart connect doing ads. Well, so you have interesting need to put your put your listings right to the top pretty quick with limited ad spend. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 38:48
I think that’s a great point to point out is that Walmart still kind of in that new phase where Amazon was maybe like, I don’t know, maybe a decade ago, right? Were still kind of fresh, new. Hopefully I see some growth there. And maybe you’re gonna get to this, but like, what percentage sales lift Do you see from Walmart,
Josh Gibson 39:08
Walmart, that one’s still unknown. The MC or the WCF? We’re seeing anywhere from five to 10. Initially, and that’s if you’re doing Walmart connect as well. But it’s also trying to do that page jockeying right so right now is that process. Walmart’s listing process is odd and different and a little wonky, where you have some of them, say your competition selling belts, and they have 10 belts on 10 of our pages and tender Masons or sometimes they can have that same belt in multiple different listings because they’ve bent the system and Walmart hasn’t had the infrastructure to help clean that up a little bit. So there’s a lot of noise. But I think if you can come in come and swing with good ads. You can set yourself up for success long term because then you start getting that placement. You start getting the click through you start getting the reviews early on. So I’d say five to seven I think it’s conservative. But I’m also we’re still early stages of what this Walmart fulfilled service is going to do, what their timeframe is how they’re going to be Amazon? Are we going to see any type of Prime Day type stuff from Walmart? What we do find is we’re, we’re Walmart is really strong in regards to their retail locations, we find that we’re getting a big pickup in sales for Walmart in those areas. And so they tend to be more rural, they tend to be more Midwest. So we’re seeing because typically our heat map you see California, Texas, Florida, New York, Washington, like you see the corners, you see the big, big cities, but what we are seeing is pick up in these rural areas from Walmart, because that’s a lot of these places. That’s the only store in town. Yeah, Walmart and so there’s a lot of brand recognition, brand loyalty, Walmart’s doing a lot of good jobs and advertising their products so you make it you may not have the same amount of sales but you’re getting a different client that you didn’t have on Amazon
Josh Hadley 41:01
interesting that’s that’s a great perspective. All right, what would be next after Walmart? What would be your next person that you are next marketplace after Walmart then
Josh Gibson 41:11
that’s a hard one um, I think it’s going to be target um, I really do I think there’s a lot of brand recognition because I not to speak ill of other platforms but you’re seeing a lot of the other bigger platforms kind of dissipate specifically in like the electronics categories I think the only one that would be interesting is in Best Buy over ever open up us they have Canada open but they don’t have us open so I think if they open up us I’d be interesting play because we’re seeing I know some people see success on eBay and Newegg, I think it’s it’s a good platform to be in if you have a good distribution channel, our distribution network meaning so you have a good three pl You have a good pick, pack and ship. And it doesn’t cost you much more to list on those places. Okay, you can pick up some added revenue 234 percent spattered everywhere. It’s not great. As long as the cost of doing business on there. It doesn’t cost them more than the revenue you’re making. Right? So you got to you got to balance that one out. But I do think targeting targeting the next big player, I do think Wayfair is also going to be good depending on your category. Yeah. Because Wayfair is a growing a growing market. And you’re seeing more on there. I will be interested to see as they open up this this third party playing getting more US based companies and Wayfair I think that will that will be good. But I do believe target for certain artworks. Yeah, how
Josh Hadley 42:29
hard is it to get on the target then?
Josh Gibson 42:32
I don’t know. I will say from our experience we’ve been since they reach out to us and since we got initially approved, I got my email for our first client last mate. Okay, so I have clients ready to launch but they finally said this category this brand is finally approved. So it’s a process and there I appreciate them taking it slow. I don’t know how it’s all gonna play out. But we’re ready to roll with it
Josh Hadley 43:00
interesting. And with target do you have to fulfill from your own warehouses like do you have to have a separate three PL because I imagined similar to Walmart, they don’t want you you know using the multi channel fulfillment from Amazon.
Josh Gibson 43:11
We’re working through that I haven’t gotten no on the multi channel especially if you’re a brown box program. Interesting. The thing if you’re not familiar with brown boxes, there’s a program in Amazon where they don’t send it out with the smiley box or the colored boxes during their promos. So the brown box and it still has that little white square slip so you can tell it’s from Amazon if you really paid attention but I assuming target and at least initially I don’t think there’s going to be an issue um this is just me hypothesizing yeah until they start figuring out their their fulfillment services. But we are planning and building out because we have a three PL R on three PL and Texas we’re building out that that infrastructure right now to make sure we are doing our pick pack and ship different for them
Josh Hadley 43:55
specifically interesting. Awesome and then outside of that, you know you kind of grouped in you know, eBay Newegg, you know, wish as like maybe a two to 3% Lift, correct.
Josh Gibson 44:09
Maybe, depending on depending on your category. And, and how much time you wanna spend both a lot of these other platforms are built around electronic sales. So I don’t, I’m not seeing a ton out there. If it’s easy, like I said, if you’re able to make more than a cost you to fulfill it, it wouldn’t hurt to do. But the problem is if you’re, you’re doing all this work and doing all the management and customer service and phone calls and emails and returns and you’re not making it, it doesn’t make sense. I’m just selling. How about longtail I think there’s a few big players up front that do really well and there’s this really, really long thin tail. And it just depends on how, how deep in that longtail Do you want to go for exposure and brand? Brand growth?
Josh Hadley 44:50
No, I think that does make a lot of sense. What about any experience with that? See at all.
Josh Gibson 44:55
We don’t have any client that would sit that sits on Etsy currently, that’s not a category that we we put I enrolled heavily. Okay,
Josh Hadley 45:01
perfect. And then just so our audience knows, is there a particular type of brand that is best suited for your guys’s agency, right, a specific industry or niche that you are more experienced in?
Josh Gibson 45:13
We are more experienced in consumer electronics. That’s why you’re hearing me talk more a consumer electronics play, where we just picked up a homework company, that’s going to be interesting. It still sits in the electronic space, but it’s not really electronics. But that’s where we spent kind of our bread and butter and what we know, because there does there’s a lot that goes into electronic sales, shipping lithium ion batteries, storing the future different things that go into that, that we were invested in, in. So that probably be Yeah,
Josh Hadley 45:45
no, that makes sense. That’s good to know. I figured as much, but just wanted to clear the air with the audience. I appreciate it. Great. Now, kind of one of the final questions I want to ask you here. Before we get to the My kind of three final final questions that I like to ask every guest is I think it’s fairly challenging. If you’re on all of these marketplaces, like that’s, that’s much easier said than done in terms of managing multiple listings across multiple marketplaces. So are there any tools that you use to kind of make that easier?
Josh Gibson 46:17
Yes. And so to your point, if you’re not using some program, out there to help multi lists, it is really complicated. So like cart.com, I think does a decent job. They do Amazon, Walmart, and eBay. And that’s a fairly simple bolt on, we personally use ChannelAdvisor. We like that for various reasons. I know some people hate ChannelAdvisor. Some people love ChannelAdvisor, we build that into our costing for our clients, because it’s not a cheap, cheap solution at all. But within that solution, we’re able to control rules, we’re able to control pricing, we’re able to control, shipping templates turning on and off, so we’re able to control a lot within that. But if you’re not doing that, that makes it very difficult, and also trying to find some solution for your customer service. And so some people use Zendesk, some people use Zoho, some people use a variety, we have one that we’ve kind of worked and built, where everything comes in, we’re able to have everything tagged individually. And then we’re also specifically for Amazon have product pages. So we’re able to redirect customers off Amazon only because it’s a non selling site to a website that either can help register your product for warranty, can help set up a return can submit like a general ticket or we also have FAQs and or the user guides. And so we’ve been able to bring people off Amazon. And also work it’s a on Amazon, you can see when you set up a return, you can say get support. Yeah. And that that is able to bring us bring us over as well. So really, yeah, but you have to have a solution. For customer service, you have to have a solution for listing to make it easy, because if you if you’re popping in and out, especially if you’re doing multiple different sites, it becomes very complicated. So having a single solution makes a big difference. That
Josh Hadley 48:04
Tell me a little bit more about that. I think that part’s really interesting, right? With the get support. Plus, you’re also kind of having a standalone website that has like FAQs, maybe a tutorial video, things like that, right? Or registry or warranty. Tell me how that’s working? Like where’s the customer getting that link? And how are you getting that set up?
Josh Gibson 48:25
So we are including business cards within the packaging, QR code and a URL. And again, because it cannot go to a site that has anything that you’re selling, you’re not selling anything, this is just for product support. With that you’re able to have I have a few different questions. So we disguise one as product registration. Yeah, but with that we get name of the customer, we get email, if they want to get phone number, it’s not required. And we get the serial number of the product. And so now we’re able to use that poor communication directly with the client and taking it off Amazon as much as we possibly can. And so that also works with if we’re selling on Walmart or Target or whatever, we’re able to bring a customer back and help them and fix a lot of the problems that they’re having off Amazon. Yeah. And because when you’re on Amazon, it’s easy to go defective return shipped back, right or doesn’t fit or listing inaccurate or whatever. And they get these free shipments. But if we’re able to say, Hey, this is where you register your product, one of our customer registers or product, they’re less likely to return it for no reason. And to now you have their information and if you choose to, it’s against TOS but if you choose to now you have a mailing list for promos down the road that they gave you, they gave you willingly. And that way if you’re building your brand and building that back to back to if you have your custom belt and they bought this belt, they really liked the belt and they registered the belt for maybe an extra one year warranty for whatever reason, right? Yep. And now you’re having a sale on handbags, you’re having a sale on wallets. You have their name and email and you can email say, hey, pop on our website and shop here. But I think that’s it That’s an interesting play around taking a customer off Amazon
Josh Hadley 50:03
makes sense. What about the Get support button from Amazon? Are you able to link people off of Amazon from there? Then how are you using that? Yes,
Josh Gibson 50:11
it does link and it goes right to our chat. Okay.
Josh Hadley 50:14
So that opens up your own chat feature where I think, again, to that point, you’re able to kind of mitigate some returns. And you know, it mitigate the amount of like, damaged inventory or stuff that Amazon will start marking up like, oh, that the defect rates high, or whatever, and even start closing down specific inventory. And specifically,
Josh Gibson 50:34
like I said, we’re a consumer electronics place, so doesn’t turn on or this isn’t happening, or why is my paper jammed or right? So it helps us answer some of those questions for grandma Susie in Georgia that doesn’t know how to paper and
Josh Hadley 50:50
make sense. Make sense? Well, Josh, I think this conversation has been super fun. I do have my final questions that I want to get to. But I love to leave the audience first with three actionable takeaways from each episode. So here are the three takeaways that I noted. Josh, let me know if you think I’m missing something. So first and foremost, I would say you’ve got to establish, you know, a successful brand on a particular sales channel. That’s, that’s your first action, right? And double down on that sales channel. First, make sure you’ve, you know, you’ve leveraged all the different selling points for that sales channel in in the example of Amazon, if you’re on Amazon, make sure you’ve exhausted your resources there. To grow your brand, make sure you’ve turned on PPC, right. I’ve even heard many brands that are like, Yeah, I don’t want to spend any on on PPC. And it’s like, well, you’re missing out on organic ranking, additional sales, etc. On top of that, you have the NARF program that Josh talked about. And I think that is super important, like leverage everything you can on Amazon first, because that’s going to be much easier than you know, when you have to cross the bridge and go to these other platforms, you’re going to be doing a little bit extra work. So that’s number one, right? Leverage everything you can on the existing platform that’s bringing you the most success. Number two, I would say is kind of in that same vein, make sure that you have optimized all of your listings, in that specific channel where you’re finding success against. So if you’re on Amazon, make sure that you go through that optimization checklist that Josh talked about. And the first thing that you talked about Josh was like optimizing things for mobile views. So optimizing the title, what is my title look like when it’s on mobile, optimizing your first and second image for your product listing, and even experimenting with some lifestyle photos for that main image, then you would go into, you know, next would be having a video and demonstrating, like how that product works. So that the customer sees it in action, not just kind of like a, I think some people go the cheap route of, hey, I’m just gonna turn my images into videos. And it’s like, no, the customer wants to see it in action, right. And then last, but not least there with optimization, work on your bullets, your A plus content, your description, things like that. And then kind of my third action item for everybody is to begin, once you’ve kind of accomplished number one and two, you’ve maxed everything out, you’ve got your maximum conversion rate, you’ve refined things really well, your keywords are, you know, humming along there, then the next thing is to maybe look at additional distribution platforms, right. We talked about, you know, if you’re on Amazon already, the next best place to go is probably going to be Walmart. And then you know, you should even consider going through the signup process with target because I know back in the day with Walmart, I think you had to wait like six months to a year to even get approved. So why not start that process early now for target? And then you’ve got some of the other lower hanging fruit marketplaces. That would be eBay. Newegg, you know, even Etsy that you can experiment with and even Wayfair. But just know that, you know, your your sales, you might be looking at two to 3% of incremental revenue there. Josh, does that sound like the appropriate like next steps that people should be taking in terms of actionable takeaways from today?
Josh Gibson 54:27
Yeah, absolutely.
Josh Hadley 54:28
Awesome. All right. So let’s go into my final three questions for you here. Josh. What has been your most influential book that you’ve read and why?
Josh Gibson 54:39
It’s a great question. Heads up on this would have been nice. I think if you are building a brand specifically and this is not to be, like just tongue in cheek, but I think any book from Gary Vee is really helpful, because I think that there is so much that can be done through social media. That’s all being done. Like he talks about us tick tock suffocation, right? And just understanding, okay, if I’m building this brand, I can do PPC and I can do listing optimization, I can do lifestyle photos, and I can do videos, how is the customer going to know about your brand? And so I think he’s done a really good job at building some of the basic stuff. If I was to look at books, then his his content and videos really, really good. But it does take a lot of energy. And it takes a lot of time. But I think for if you’re building a brand and building, building a story, having having that out there as a big play is really important.
Josh Hadley 55:33
Yeah, I think I would echo what you just mentioned there, Gary Vee came and spoke at the sell and scale Summit, which is where I met Josh to begin with. And I think the knowledge that Gary Vee shared with everybody was very valuable. And he does put out put out a lot of great content. It’s a lot to consume, for sure. And there’s a lot of it’s much easier said than done. But if you’re trying to build a real brand, definitely highly recommend that as well.
Josh Gibson 55:59
And I don’t know, maybe maybe, you know, Josh, I think it’d be interesting, if there’s an agency out there that does support for, like Tiktok, verification, and like, all these plays, I get someone they can come in and have like, can build that. So I don’t know if you know anybody, but if you do, I think it’d be good to share because that takes a lot of resources to build all that content, where you’re posting it, what it looks like. And so I think that’s an interesting play.
Josh Hadley 56:21
Yeah, I agree. You know, I actually, it was odd as on Tik Tok the other day, and I came across the video, it was the guy who had run all of the media, social media for Gary Vee, and he’s open, he’s opening up his kind of own agency. So I don’t remember the name off the top of my head, I’d have to dive into tick tock, nobody wants to do that long on the podcast. But that is out there. So I agree with you, Josh. Like it’s better to leverage somebody else’s experience, rather than trying to like, start that from scratch. Because social media is evolving quicker than we can even learn it. I think. Question number two that I have for you, Josh is what’s your favorite like productivity tool, or resource that you use? Whether it be in your personal life or even for business as well?
Josh Gibson 57:08
That’s a great question. tool. I say, for our team, we use Slack. That’s been a really, really good keeping communication. I’m not a big meeting fan. I think it takes up too much time and you don’t get nothing’s done. The first last second thing to keep in mind is having a computer that can keep up with what you’re trying to do. Alright, one of the worst things is having a computer that slow and you’re waiting for pages to load. But you’re sure the Internet into your house, especially if you’re an online seller is is up to par. Because waiting can can take a lot. But my personal PC is stronger than our server, just because I do a lot on here. And so for me, that’s my biggest tool figure. If I was a carpenter, I probably have all the walls or all Milwaukee Tools to do everything I need to do I look at my computer as my tool. And so I make sure my computer’s up and operational the best way I possibly can.
Josh Hadley 57:58
That’s great recommendation coming from the guy that used to you know, sell refurbished computers, and I think you know that space really well. So like that, that’s good advice coming from you. Last question here is who is someone that you admire or respect most and kind of this ecommerce space? Or even Amazon FBA space? And why like who are the people that other people should be following?
Josh Gibson 58:21
Um, I think, what’s the name Steven Pope from My Amazon Guy, I think he does a really good even Pope. Pope. Thank you. I think he’s got really good content. I think he provides a lot of value out there in the space for free. You have Bradley Sutton from Helium 10 be able to pop on his his podcast, I think Stephen King, no, Kevin King, and then calm. Yeah, does a really good job. And so find these people that are willing to provide free content. But I think those three guys do a really good job in the space of sharing what they know what some of the tips and tricks are. And really, unashamedly, like, do this, because it’s very similar. Like, if you look at Toyota, and they have been doing Lean for years, and they let any brand Honda Chevy, they let anybody come walk in their, in their facility and do a tour and see what they did. But they never cared about people being there, because they knew by the time they left, that they’re gonna be better than the people that they, they just trained. And so, though three people specifically are so great at what they do, they can give it away for free because they already seven steps ahead and what we’re trying to pick up where they just left off, right. And so it’s trying to find those people that are that in the game that know what’s going on really well. They give it for free because they keep on growing.
Josh Hadley 59:34
Yeah. I love that. We’ve had Steven Pope on the podcast, so people should go check out that episode in the past. The episode with Kevin King has been has been launched as well. So you can go check that one out. And we have Bradley Sutton coming up as well. So stay tuned for that one that will come live but all of these other big players we’ve had them on the podcast so make sure you go back in the search history there the podcast and go find them. because they did drop a lot of great knowledge to Josh’s point, they are somebody that’s kind of been there, done that. And they’re they’re giving back to the entire Amazon FBA community now, so definitely recommend those as well. Now, Josh, I think you have a gift that you wanted to give to everybody on the podcast, a free month or so of your services. Do you want to tell us more about that?
Josh Gibson 1:00:23
Yeah. So if you you’re interested in? I don’t know, Josh, if you’re gonna have like, follow up content, we’ll
Josh Hadley 1:00:28
have show notes. Yep, we’ll have scripts.
Josh Gibson 1:00:31
I will have all that down there. But we do. Like I was saying, we can either do we do one of two things, let’s have a conversation, we can go talk to your top five issues that you have, see if we can provide value. And then if that does provide value, then we offer a free month of our services.
Josh Hadley 1:00:45
Awesome. And where do people go to find you and learn more and take advantage of this offer? Josh, I will
Josh Gibson 1:00:51
put that on the notes. We’re actually relaunching our consulting site right now. So it’s down. But it is SojournConsultingServices.com. And so I’m hoping by the time this podcast is up, we’re up in line, but we’re relaunching it specifically for the ability to have people set up and get these free months of service going.
Josh Hadley 1:01:09
Awesome. That’s excellent. Well, Josh, thank you so much for sharing your in depth knowledge about selling on multiple marketplaces, and making them profitable today. I know that I’ve got a lot of action items for our team that I’m going to be taking away and I appreciate your time.
Josh Gibson 1:01:23
No, my pleasure. Thank you.
Outro 1:01:24
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