The Ecom Survival Blueprint: Thriving Despite Tariffs, Competition & Rising Costs with Brandon Fuhrmann

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The Ecom Survival Blueprint: Thriving Despite Tariffs, Competition & Rising Costs with Brandon Fuhrmann

Brandon is a seasoned Amazon entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Innovate, and he is the driving force behind a successful Kitchenware Brand with years of experience building and scaling e-commerce businesses. Brandon brings a unique perspective, shaped by both his entrepreneurial journey and his background as an attorney. Today we’re going to be diving into his business. What is he doing with the challenges we’re all faced with tariffs and Amazon fees and increasing competition? He’s going to be sharing his journey and his tips and strategies he’s implementing in his business today.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

  • Journey and experiences of an Amazon entrepreneur in e-commerce.
  • Challenges faced in 2025, including tariffs, Amazon fees, and competition.
  • Importance of pricing strategies and ad spend management for profitability.
  • Insights on product listing optimization and inventory management.
  • Growth and significance of the Innovate conference for e-commerce sellers.
  • Strategies for navigating sourcing challenges and diversifying manufacturing locations.
  • The role of customer feedback and product testing in successful launches.
  • Legal considerations in e-commerce, including trademark and patent issues.
  • Importance of continuous product innovation and optimization for sustained success.
  • Recommendations for leveraging tools and resources to enhance e-commerce performance.

 

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Brandon Fuhrmann, Amazon entrepreneur and co-founder of Innovate. Brandon shares advanced strategies for scaling e-commerce brands, including optimizing pricing, ad spend, and product listings amid rising tariffs and fierce competition. He discusses leveraging international markets, building a lean team, and the importance of continuous product innovation. Brandon also offers actionable insights on legal protections, customer feedback, and multichannel expansion. Listeners gain practical, high-level tactics to drive profitability and resilience, plus an exclusive invitation to the Innovate conference for elite sellers aiming to reach 8 figures and beyond.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

  1. Play the Price–Ad Spend Game: Adjust pricing & PPC together. Drop prices to rank faster, then raise and boost ads to keep momentum.
  2. Keep Listings Fresh: Constantly update images & copy based on split tests and customer feedback. Have backups ready to pivot fast.
  3. Diversify or Die: Sell in multiple marketplaces (EU, CA, Walmart, Shopify) so you can shift inventory when tariffs or demand change.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):


Episode Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.
I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.
If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Transcript Area

Brandon 00:00:00  When you look at profitability, there’s the two biggest levers are really pricing and ad spend. Right. So you can you can price your product cheap and have lower ad spend and make the same amount as having a price that’s expensive. But you’ve got to pump the ad spend, right. So it’s kind of a fine balance between the two and kind of seeing, you know, can I lower ad spend here but keep pricing the same? Can I lower pricing and then lower AD spend to make up for that.

 

Host 00:00:24  Right. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

 

Josh 00:00:37  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Aaron Cordovez, and Michael E Gerber, author of the email today on the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m excited to welcome Brandon Fuhrmann.

 

Josh 00:00:54  He is a seasoned Amazon entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of innovate, and he is the driving force behind a successful kitchenware brand with years of experience building and scaling e-commerce businesses. Brandon brings a unique perspective, shaped by both his entrepreneurial journey and his background as an attorney. Today we’re going to be diving into his business. What is he doing with the challenges we’re all faced with with tariffs and Amazon fees and increasing competition? He’s going to be sharing his journey and his tips and strategies he’s implementing in his business today. So with that introduction, welcome to the show Brandon.

 

Brandon 00:01:32  Hi. Great to be here Brandon.

 

Josh 00:01:35  So AMZ Innovate. This is well, it’s no longer AMZ Innovate. It’s just Innovate. Yes. But, this is your seventh year. Tell me more about it. And how did you get into that? Because that’s originally where you and I met. And, I’ve loved that conference you guys put together.

 

Brandon 00:01:50  Yeah. So it all started years ago. About ten years ago. Jared Orkin, who’s one of my partners on the conference, started this meetup group in New York City, and I also lived in New York City at the time when it was just starting to sell online.

 

Brandon 00:02:03  and, you know, I went to the first one and there was like four people there. and we were just trying to learn how to sell, what to do, what FDA was. And then the next one I went to had like ten. And Jared and I started running it together because I had nothing else better to do. And then it was 20 and then 50 and then, you know, it just kept growing. And at some point Jared said, do you want to put on a conference? And I was like, sure. And we had no experience doing it, and we did it anyway. And the first one had like 120 people, and it’s just grown and grown and grown. And now here we are seven years later and we’re over, you know, 700 attendees last year and growing even more, you know, as sellers for us, like, I think we put on the event that we want to see something that’s like unique, something that really resonates with us as sellers and not like a lot of other events where it’s a lot of like service providers, or people who don’t really know e-commerce.

 

Brandon 00:02:52  We really, you know, know e-commerce. And we really, you know, put on the show that we think is the best.

 

Josh 00:02:57  Love it. No, I think the speakers that you guys bring to the table. I mean, you had the guys from Hex Clad. There you have David Guillaume with Mary Ruth. Like you’re bringing in heavy hitters. And with that comes like just a wealth of knowledge that everybody can learn from. So. And the networking is hands down top notch. So.

 

Brandon 00:03:16  Yeah, absolutely. It’ll be all of our friends end up speaking or coming or. Yeah. It’s a great event.

 

Josh 00:03:21  Yeah. Love what you guys are doing there. Thank you. Let’s let’s also talk about your brand. So tell me about your kitchenware brand. How long have you been on Amazon? Walk me through kind of your journey there.

 

Brandon 00:03:33  Yeah. So I originally started on Amazon, years ago. I was selling kids furniture, actually, like, way back in the day. just kind of like, you know, it was kind of more of an experimentation.

 

Brandon 00:03:45  before there even was like an FBA, I didn’t even know what I was doing. and then, you know, I had sold, oil paintings online for years. and did some SEO consultation. Didn’t go well. because Google changed their algorithm and everything kind of like went to dust that I was working on. Went to law school. and then started selling my books on Amazon. And someone I knew from the SEO world messaged me about, like, you know, FBA, and I just kind of clicked with me. I was like, I know the China side. I know how to do this. Like. And I just jumped right into it about ten years ago, selling kitchenware. and at the time we lived in New York City and had a very small apartment. And my wife loved to cook, and it just seemed like the natural progression.

 

Josh 00:04:25  I love it. Yeah. Well, all all of us have dabbled around on Amazon. It was like our first, like, experience of, like trying to sell something random on Amazon.

 

Josh 00:04:34  For me, it was like my college textbooks. Like, yeah, exactly.

 

Brandon 00:04:38  That’s what I did. Yeah, yeah, it was making more money than the law school was giving me on the textbooks.

 

Josh 00:04:42  Yeah, yeah. Same here. Yeah, we we did the same thing. My wife would get a scholarship that gave her, like, that would purchase all of her books brand new. And I was like, this is awesome. We’re gonna make so much money. Just so love it. All right, well, Brandon, talk to me about right now. So the the audience, we have seven eight figure audience listeners. Right. A lot of people are kind of like this year, 2025 has been a roller coaster year with tariffs and FBA fees and just increased competition on Amazon. So talk to me about your business. Talk to me about where you guys are currently standing and what are the things that you’re doing in your brand to survive? What I consider like this is the purge and only the strong will survive when we come out of this.

 

Brandon 00:05:32  Yeah, it’s been tough. It’s really been hard. I’ve had a couple of really hard ones probably, you know, some of the toughest months since I’ve even started, you know, ten years ago. and it’s just been, you know, one thing after another, like you were saying with tariffs and fees and inventory fees. Right. And, you know, it makes it tough when you don’t estimate demand properly, and suddenly you’re hit with overstock fees, or then you don’t. You sell too much of something and then you don’t. You’re not making the money. You should. So it’s been it’s been really a difficult year for me, especially with the tariffs too. something that has helped me, I would say is, you know, because I’m international, I sell in Europe, I sell in Canada that I’ve been able to place some orders as almost hedges and tell the factories like, you know, we’ll sell this inventory whether it’s going to go to the US when it’s ready. I don’t know whether we’re going to pick it up right away.

 

Brandon 00:06:20  I don’t know, but at least we have an outlet so we can confidently say like, okay, we’re going to sell this in Europe at some point, right? And I think that’s been helpful along the way. and also really just lately we’ve been really working to be mindful of fees and realizing that, you know, maybe we can’t compete in some way as at the levels we had before dialing back ad spend, dialing back inventory orders, things like that, where it’s like, you know what? We need to kind of dial things, canceling certain products that maybe just aren’t profitable anymore, and really kind of taking it back to square one in those regards. so that’s certainly been helpful. and then the main thing that I would say that we always do, is whenever we’re in trouble, you know, financially or whatever, or, you know, there’s, you know, we go in and we strip the listings down to the studs and basically it’s not performing as well as it should. And we and we look we do the we do keyword research again.

 

Brandon 00:07:11  We get all the images done again. We look at reviews, we reprice out things with our factories. right. Sometimes things creep up. Some things we can get lower prices, really everything we can do to be successful again. Almost as if we’re starting at square one. and by the time we’re done with that, usually, you know, we’re kind of successful. So, like, at this point, I would say this month has been like the best month we’ve had since February. and like the last couple have been terrible, but but, you know, not great. But, you know, we’re kind of growing back again. And like, about 60% of our products are actually up in the month of August. Year over year. Which is great. The other 40%? Not so much. But you know, we’re making progress. We’re getting there. So, you know, it’s good to be resilient. It’s good to work hard and really try to be successful coming back from that.

 

Josh 00:07:56  Yeah, I totally agree.

 

Josh 00:07:58  I think the resilience thing is very overlooked oftentimes. But I want so you’re saying you’re up 60% of your products are up year over year. Why is that? Are you just attributing that to optimization. Is it main images? Is it the SEO? What would you say? Like if you could say like one thing, right. What was the one key optimization that you’ve made or was it a serious thing?

 

Brandon 00:08:23  I think it’s everything. I mean, I think Amazon right now is, you know, it can be death by a thousand cuts, right? and that comes with fees and that comes with marketing and your listings. Right. And I think it’s easy to get complacent when things are working and not change things. And like, I’m guilty of that and I think like, it almost makes sense. Like, you know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But when it is broke, really go in and examine everything from square one. Right. So, you know, we’ve done things like lightning deals, work with our pricing, redoing our listings.

 

Brandon 00:08:53  really? Again, everything we can think of that could be, could move the needle in some way. we’ve worked to try to fix. Right. So I can’t say there’s any one thing. Maybe the images are probably the biggest thing because, like, that’s what really, I think drives most sales compared to anything else.

 

Josh 00:09:08  Yeah, it seems like that’s been the case, like through multiple podcast interviews that I’ve done. Like, seems like that main image is honestly like the number one optimization strategy that you can implement.

 

Brandon 00:09:20  I mean, not just main image but all images really. Right. Like making sure you’re telling your story. as customers see the product. Right. And you can pull up, right when things are less competitive. Right. If you had the same images from like 2016, for example. Right. It’s completely minor, completely different now. Right. Because the level of competition has leveled up so much. So you go in there and you can see what everyone else is doing, what stories they’re telling, what reviews are saying.

 

Brandon 00:09:45  Right. And you might want to change our image to to feature something else. Right. A different benefit to a customer that maybe wasn’t as important years ago. Or maybe you don’t need that, didn’t need that differentiation because, like, you were the only one doing that kind of thing where now it’s like, okay, our product is different than these guys because of X, right? So there’s always things that you can do and like it changes. And as your competition changes, which it does constantly, you know your image stack needs to change as well.

 

Josh 00:10:11  Yeah. What have you done on the pricing side or what are you seeing right, with the impact of tariffs? Are you raising your prices or have you had to even decrease prices just based on competition and losing market share? What? Tell me what you’ve seen on the pricing side of things.

 

Brandon 00:10:29  So it’s been a lot of different things. So I will say, you know, I kind of saw a lot of this coming, and decided last year to place a really big bet, for Q4, with the idea being that, like, if it doesn’t sell, which I wasn’t expecting it to sell.

 

Brandon 00:10:45  But like, you know, giving myself leeway to be like, if this doesn’t sell, you know, we have through Chinese New Year and, you know, tariffs may be coming and things are happening. So I took big bets. So I was not as affected earlier on as some companies were, because I still had old inventory that I was still working through. And now I’m at a point where like, okay, things are different, but I had a lot that kind of carried me through those tough months. right. So so that was that was a good move on my part. inventory wise, I still had to pay a lot for storage, so maybe it didn’t work out as well as I was hoping, but, you know, it was a hedge. in terms of, like, raising prices, lowering prices. I’ve kind of come in being a little smarter about prices and working one to make sure that I’ve got variations on most products that I can kind of upcharge for. right. And this is Aaron.

 

Brandon 00:11:31  I know you mentioned Aaron’s on your podcast. I know he kind of pioneered this and he’s in the kitchenware space. Right. But making sure that I’ve got variations where I can kind of upsell those and kind of having my main product be maybe lower price to kind of bring them into the listing. so I’ve been doing a lot of that. I would say, but really it’s been about testing pricing along the way as much as I can. In some cases, I’ve had to lower. In some cases I’ve raised, but I kind of view, you know, when you look at profitability, there’s the two biggest levers are really pricing and ad spend. Right. So you can you can price your product cheap and have lower ad spend and make the same amount as having a price that’s expensive. But you’ve got to pump the ad spend, right. So it’s kind of a fine balance between the two and kind of seeing, you know, can I lower ad spend here but keep pricing the same? Can I lower pricing and then lower AD spend to make up for that.

 

Brandon 00:12:22  Right. So it’s kind of you’re kind of moving the needle on both ends on that.

 

Josh 00:12:25  Yeah I remember we’ve we’ve had a couple products where we, we reduced the price by over 50% and we’re like, well if we do this, we’re not going to be able to spend money on PPC. But let’s see what happens organically.

 

Brandon 00:12:40  Right.

 

Josh 00:12:41  And like, overnight, we shot up to like number one. Number two. Number three just on the first page. Whereas like, we haven’t been able to touch the first three spots. And so I think like definitely like pricing plays a big part in Amazon’s algorithm. we don’t know how, but, it does because you’re right. Like, it is a balance of like, well, how much PPC spend do you want to have versus do you want to just have like the lowest price in the market? How have you kind of like navigated that? Because it doesn’t seem like your strategy is like, no, I’m the I’m the low price leader across the board.

 

Josh 00:13:17  Seems like maybe for some products I might need to be, but other products I’m not. So like what’s your strategy behind that for your brand?

 

Brandon 00:13:26  It’s really mostly on a product by product basis, right? If the market can afford me to raise my prices, I’ll raise them. If the market can’t, then I won’t. That’s basically what it comes down to. Right. And if the product is not profitable enough, I cut it. If it is, then I keep it right. it’s kind of as basic as that. Right. And, you know, a lot of times if I have a lot of variations and it’s a really, well selling product, I kind of usually end up being the lower price on the main variation, with the other ones being higher. because I’m in kitchenware, I’m, I’ve got I was really affected when they took away the small and light program. right. A lot of my products are in that 9.99 range where like, you’re in this weird variable time where if you’re 9.99 or less, your fulfillment fees are less than they are.

 

Brandon 00:14:12  If they’re 10.99 or up to like, basically, it doesn’t really make sense until you get to like 11.99, right? So like it doesn’t make sense to price any products at 11. So, you know, in some ways I’m kind of sometimes caught in that, you know, that middle area where it’s like, okay, how do I make this work? These have to be 1199. This should be 9.99. I can’t be at ten. Or you know, it’s definitely an art, but it’s kind of also being cognizant of what those fees are too.

 

Josh 00:14:38  Yeah. So what’s your, team look like in order to execute this? Like, are you doing this just yourself, or how many team members do you have to help you?

 

Brandon 00:14:48  So I love having a really small team. so I have a sourcing. There’s a sourcing team that I use out of China that handles everything on that end. and then I have a PPC agency that I use, that handles everything on that end that I. That is great.

 

Brandon 00:15:01  And then I have a VA that handles everything else in the middle. And then I kind of just do big picture stuff. So that’s it. That’s the team. So you know, it’s great in that, you know we have slack channels set up with both teams and they’re very communicative and responsive. so it’s almost like they’re, you know, part of our company, but they’re they’re not. Right. But, it makes it easy for us to kind of, you know, focus on what we can do best, or at least what I can do best on my end. Yeah.

 

Josh 00:15:25  Yeah, I love that. So you’re very lean.

 

Brandon 00:15:27  Very lean. Yeah. And that’s part of helped me what’s helped me survive downturns and survived when things have been difficult is that like, you know, I’m as lean as I possibly can be. And I don’t like having big teams. I don’t. I’ve, you know, had them in the past. I just it’s tough, but like it makes it easier when you know it’s as lean as possible.

 

Josh 00:15:45  So do you mind talking about who your PPC agency is and what you’ve done for PPC? Because I think that is a pain point for most sellers, where it seems like lots of people have very different experiences with different PPC agencies. I’m sure you’ve been around the block. Yes, yes. Since you’ve been in the business for so long. So what have you seen both the good and the bad from PPC agencies which led you to who you’re with today?

 

Brandon 00:16:10  So I did it myself for a while. And, you know, I realized that’s not my core competency. And it’s something that I’m not great at. and then, you know, I’ve gone to other agencies. I won’t badmouth any of them. But, you know, a lot of them seem to not be so responsive to really be focused on, like what the automation of it is. right. Without regards to like the big picture. and a lot of them, this is always my one of my biggest is they don’t focus on the creative at this point.

 

Brandon 00:16:39  Right. When, when PPC first started, it was PPC, right? You were right. paying per click and you bid on the keyword and that’s that. And it’s very easy to automate that. But now there’s so many opportunities for creative for video ads, right. For, for different things that you can be doing that can move the needle just based on the quality of what you’re producing. Right. And a lot of agencies don’t really focus enough on that, in my opinion. And it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. So you know, my current agency. So I use insiders agency, who’ve been tremendous. but, you know, we really focus on a lot of that stuff and really thinking outside the box as much as we can, and being as responsive as we can. Right. You know, the main metric that we use is tacos. Right. Looking at overall spend for sale is like a halo effect. versus like ACOs on any particular product or keyword. so it kind of helps to kind of look at the big picture.

 

Brandon 00:17:34  each month as we go forward.

 

Josh 00:17:36  Yeah. No, that makes, makes a lot of sense. And I love that approach. That was always my challenge with anybody that we worked with on the PPC side of things is you. This is not just a black box that you stick over in the corner, and then you just optimize, let a computer optimize it. It’s right. You need to take all the different variables into context, which is what if you are trying to price your product low right now? Well then you obviously want to pull back your PPC spend. What if you’re trying to increase your price? Well, maybe you want to juice your PPC a little bit more. and there’s so many different factors with that. In addition to like the amount of creative that I think is now needed in the Amazon ad space to really, like, take full advantage. I think you need somebody that is almost like a like a part of your team in a way that are willing to, like, dive into those details and discuss, like images and discuss like what you’re doing with your price and your overall overall ranking.

 

Josh 00:18:40  Is that what you’re doing with your agent?

 

Brandon 00:18:42  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And there’s times that I’ll come to them and I’ll say, like, listen, we’re trying to rank for X, Y and Z terms, right? We ran a deal and we’ve moved up and we’re trying to really rank for this. So let’s push on these keywords with PPC spend. And you know, I don’t care what we’re spending on them. We’re just trying to rank right now. And then there’s other times where I’m like, listen, we’re trying to get more profitable on this term. We’re going to dial things back. Our ranking is pretty good, but we just need to be more profitable to keep this product going. Right. So, you know, every month we go through every product that we that we run and really look like holistically at it and kind of like look at it and see, and then we also communicate throughout the month as well. Right. But we kind of, you know, we really look through and try to figure out a plan for each product in each marketplace.

 

Josh 00:19:24  Yeah. What are you doing on the sourcing side of things then? Have you when tariffs rolled out initially back in April and they’re still in limbo as of yesterday. Right. They just perpetually extended. Yeah. what’s been your approach that way. Have you tried to diversify and maybe bring stuff into the US or gone to other countries? What’s been your approach and where do you see the puck moving over the next 18 months for sellers?

 

Brandon 00:19:54  Yeah. So it’s really tough when it first. So when it when the tariffs first hit and they were crazy high I was in a good place inventory wise that I didn’t have to like really ever pay that. so that worked out okay for me. But we started looking overseas to see what could be done, what could be done at what price. And, you know, it seemed like the prices are higher and the infrastructure isn’t necessarily there in some countries, right? But it is doable. so, you know, we definitely have a couple on the back burner.

 

Brandon 00:20:26  And now that the tariffs are lower. It’s kind of at a point where it’s like at these current tariffs, China is still cheaper, but not necessarily by much, but it is. so we’ve kind of decided to stick with that, with the idea being that some factories have operations both in China and in other countries. Yeah. And if we can prioritize those and switch to those, it kind of makes it easy to like to switch on and switch off if we need to, at that time. So that’s kind of where we’ve ended up, is like one going and finding some of those, some of those factories that do that and getting sample. I mean, the other thing too is like this process can take a long time. Right. Getting, you know, moving your product over, getting the sample, finding how long it’s going to cost, negotiating. Right. This is months. Right. So, you know, we’re still in the thick of it on several of our products. but knowing that like, okay, we’ve got an option here if we need it.

 

Brandon 00:21:20  So I’m still with like all my current factories, but we have a couple options if things were to change back again.

 

Josh 00:21:27  Okay. So you have started to hedge your bets, but they’re more kind of like backup plans.

 

Brandon 00:21:32  Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly where I would say I am and where things are headed in 18 months. I mean, I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that. What I would say is, I think that there’s just too much trade between the US and China for things not to resolve themselves somewhat amicably, to the point where it’s going to be like, still probably the primary place to to manufacture. That’s my personal opinion. But again, sentiments have gone really, you know, poor towards China for some time. So I could be very wrong about that.

 

Josh 00:22:02  Yeah. We never we never know.

 

Brandon 00:22:04  We never know.

 

Josh 00:22:05  Right? Right. what else have you done this year to kind of diversify yourself? Maybe off of Amazon? Do you see that as a good strategy for sellers to it’s time to start looking for something else.

 

Josh 00:22:19  Or do you think like, no, actually, double down on Amazon and let the let the weak ones die, so to speak?

 

Brandon 00:22:26  I think kind of both. So what I would say is, is that, first of all, it’s never been easier to expand to other channels outside of Amazon, right? I mean, most channels now. So, you know, I was telling you about how Walmart, we expanded to we’ve been on Walmart for a while but haven’t given the channel much notice. but then has an integration now with Walmart that will sync to your, FBA inventory. And Walmart is okay with this for the first time, and it’ll ship in a black box. It won’t use Amazon shipping. So. Right. So all these things happen that now suddenly you can sell on Walmart using your Amazon inventory. Previously we just kind of sent like, you know, at random more or less. Or if we have a couple extra boxes or we’ll send things here and there, but now we can suddenly have all our inventory on Amazon, on Walmart.

 

Brandon 00:23:10  And, you know, our sales are exploding. And this has only been for us a couple of weeks now, right? And it really requires almost no extra work once it’s set up. So this is, you know, great to start right here. the other things are right. It’s very easy to pull things into Shopify, right. Shopify at this point is like a Swiss Army knife to all these outside channels. So if you have your own website, you can be on Cheyenne, you can be on TMU, you can be on TikTok, you can be on. Right. There’s tons of channels there that you can suddenly start selling on. Right. So, so it’s never been easier to just be like, okay, I’m going to spend some time setting up these channels, set it and forget it, not really think about it much, and then suddenly have a decent amount of outside sales coming in. So to me, I think you know that that one is like, okay, it’s worth it to do that, to get those sales, to really set up that diversification.

 

Brandon 00:23:55  And even if that’s only like 10% of your sales outside of Amazon like to start, it still helps a lot to really get that going. Right. And it’s never been easier for that. the other thing is with Amazon is they now have AUD, so you can now take your, your master cartons and send those in there before they go to FBA, and you can use that to sell to retail and to sell to a bunch of other places. Right. So being on a place like fair and being in, you know, anywhere you want where that’s also very easy to, to accomplish. So to me, I feel like it’s never been easier to sell off Amazon, at least in some regard, whether that’s going to be a huge percentage of your channel. Like that’s a different question for me. It hasn’t been, but it’s growing. And like I like having that number there. other than that I feel like, you know, Amazon, it’s been a tough year for a lot of people.

 

Brandon 00:24:41  So in some ways Amazon’s gotten less competitive. And and in some ways, you know you know the sales aren’t as much. They’ve turned down their Google ads and things like that where maybe the sales coming in aren’t what they were. But you know, I still think it’s worth fighting for that and really focusing most of your time on that. Like if you’re doing 8020 right, 80% would definitely be Amazon, right? Like, yeah. So I would really still focus on that.

 

Josh 00:25:03  Yeah I think that’s that’s good words of wisdom there. What have you done. So I’m surprised to hear that like you’ve just exploded, so to speak, on Walmart, relatively speaking, to the previous amount of sales.

 

Brandon 00:25:15  I mean, it was minuscule. Yeah.

 

Josh 00:25:17  because that’s been our journey as well. We were one of the first people on Walmart.com, and Walmart has just continued to struggle after struggle. Yeah. so what do you think is the difference? Is it did you come out with better SEO or is it just like fast or.

 

Brandon 00:25:33  It’s literally just having that integration in place? I’ve done I’ve done literally nothing else with that. Like, I mean, and now we’re going to start doing more a little bit more here and there. There’s definitely some things we want to do, but like I’ve put no time into the platform and literally all I did was connect it with the Amazon store and keep the pricing the same. And like that’s it. So, you know, I wish I could say that there was some genius on my part, but really it’s just having inventory for sale that I can sell. Right. And I think part of it too is that Walmart, you know, spends money on Google ads. Still Amazon doesn’t. So it could be that just my products are starting to take over in the search algorithm on Google that used to be there for Amazon.

 

Josh 00:26:13  Yeah, yeah, really good perspective. Love that. So Brandon, what is the what is your game plan look like for your own brand as you look into 2026 now? Like what things are you going to be focusing on for your brand? Is it new product launches? Is it a main focus of diversifying sales channels? What do you think you’re going to be doubling down?

 

Brandon 00:26:36  Yeah, I think it’s it’s really new product launches is really what moves the needle the most.

 

Brandon 00:26:40  So I think that’s what I’m going to focus on. Hopefully, you know, again this year it’s been tough. I’ve been behind the curve. Cash flow has been an issue. So I have a backlog of products that I’m excited to launch. I just don’t have them launched yet and I don’t have necessarily the cash flow for it. So yeah, I’ve got that’s what I’m really excited for right now.

 

Josh 00:26:57  What’s your how do you come up with your product ideas? And because again, that truly is like the number one lever for any Amazon based brand owner is like you want growth. Launch more products.

 

Brandon 00:27:08  So yeah.

 

Josh 00:27:10  Are you still using, like, the helium Ten’s the Jungle Scouts to find products.

 

Brandon 00:27:14  A little bit? Yeah, I mean, so I mean, the main thing with the product to me is there has to be demand right, in some way for it. So I will use it. Not necessarily as much as before. I’ve been selling kitchenware for ten years. I’ve got a pretty decent sense of the market.

 

Brandon 00:27:29  but what I like to do is like, try to go for base hits. I think a lot of sellers go for like, home runs, Grand slams, launching, like the thing with like the highest keyword volume, right? I like to take like a niche that’s got good runway and then maybe go a little bit more micro on it because it’s easier to rank for that. and kind of going with that and going with something that maybe no one’s really doing yet and trying to rank for that term and then knowing that, like, you know, my eventual goal is to kind of kind of climb the summit to the higher keyword. But I’m usually not the guy that’s like going for like, you know, fish oil or whatever, like the number one term in the category, Right. So that’s kind of how I kind of prioritize that. I also go to the Canton Fair every year, every couple of years, and a lot of times I’ll just see products there or I’ll be like that one.

 

Brandon 00:28:13  That’s the thing we got to buy, right? And kind of know intuitively, just because I know the market at this point, what’s going on, I love that.

 

Josh 00:28:22  What what makes a product successful when you launch it on Amazon? Maybe. Do you have any case studies of like, hey, here’s a time where we crushed it with our launch, and then here’s the time where we’ve had some flops. What do you feel like the the difference has been in those?

 

Brandon 00:28:37  The difference to me, well, first of all, is getting those early reviews and having them be positive. Right. Nothing kills a product more than having negative reviews when you’re launching. Like if you get negative reviews, it’s like you’re done, right? And I had a product where, you know, it was like a cheap product that I kind of like, didn’t put enough time or effort into, and I just wasn’t focused on it because I was like, oh, these are these are cheap I right? And it was like, okay, let’s try it.

 

Brandon 00:28:59  And then it bombed completely. And the reviews were bad. And it was like, that’s the end of the product. And like, there’s nothing you can do to recover from that. I don’t care how good you are at launching that product will never be successful, right? What is successful to me is usually like when you’re starting to run it and you get you get those good reviews come in and you’re getting sales and like sales are kind of coming and you’re not really sure where they’re coming from or why they’re even happening. Right. And that can definitely happen. And like that to me is like, okay, that’s a grand slam. Like initially when you’re starting to get those early sales, right. right. And sometimes, you know, you’re sending things out to your list or your team, you’re doing things to like, get, you know, sales or get reviews. all white hat, of course. But like, you’re doing those things and they’re coming in and you’re like, okay, this is good.

 

Brandon 00:29:41  But then you turn that off and it’s like, oh, there’s nothing there outside of what I’m doing that’s different than like when they’re kind of coming in organically.

 

Josh 00:29:48  Have you ever had to do much with like external traffic for your launches or have you done everything with just like PPC.

 

Brandon 00:29:55  I mean we have a list and a lot of times we’ll tell the list, you know, hey, we’re launching this product. We’ll publicize it on like some of the socials, things like that. I don’t know how much it moves the needle, but it definitely helps a little bit. We do focus primarily on PPC. Once we have those initial reviews in.

 

Josh 00:30:11  And then it sounds like your strategy on PPC is like just long tail keywords to begin with.

 

Brandon 00:30:16  Yeah.

 

Josh 00:30:17  And then you guys ramp that up like what’s kind of like do you go with like, hey, seven long tail keywords. Do you have a, I don’t know, a system to your madness? Or is it just like, hey, as many long tail keywords as we find for.

 

Brandon 00:30:29  I mean, yeah, it depends on the product. I mean, like, my goal is like is like there should be like 3 or 4 that I’m like, this is a no brainer that we can rank number one for. And like these are not like huge volume keywords, but these are keywords that are going to like maybe they’re making like 30 sales a month or something. 50 sales a month, right? Nothing too crazy, but stuff that nobody’s really gone after. Right. But we can launch. We can launch and probably be at number one relatively quickly because we’re also like kind of geared for those terms. Right. But knowing that like, okay, here are these other keywords that like down the road we want to rank for. Maybe this one is like, you know, 300, 500 sales a month. Okay. That’s where our goal is. Our next goal is and we’ll kind of work towards that goal and kind of go from there. but really, really targeting those really low volume terms that nobody’s really given a second thought to.

 

Josh 00:31:16  Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s what I’ve heard is, again, Matt Altman shared that strategy with us as well as like, just start with really long tail keywords, and then you ramp them up to where you can get to the bigger keywords.

 

Brandon 00:31:31  Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you’re in a, in a category, even if it’s not that competitive, right. And you’re there with 30 reviews and someone else has like 5000 reviews, right? And there are four and a half stars and you’re four and a half stars and like, maybe they’ll pick your product because they like it, but generally speaking, they’re not going to go in there and be like, oh, we’re going to go with this product over that one for any reason unless the price is really competitive, the product is really good. Right. So like you’ve got to give them that reason, which is tough, which you can do. But like ideally you want to kind of just be the best thing that’s going to rank for another term where it’s like it’s almost no contest because you’re just like the product for that keyword.

 

Brandon 00:32:13  Yeah, right.

 

Josh 00:32:15  And how differentiated are your products. Right. Are you able to get design pants? Are you able to get copyright right.

 

Brandon 00:32:22  I mean it depends on certain ones. We absolutely are right. We definitely can get, design patents or, you know, copyright things like that. So yeah, we definitely can be differentiated. I think at this point you need to be some of my earlier products weren’t that differentiated and they still sell well. But like I wouldn’t launch a product now that’s not that differentiated. you know, I’m pulling actually this up on my screen. Right. So there’s one of my terms that I went for on one of my latest products was, keyword sales last four weeks was 38. Right. And we’re ranked number one. And another one in that one is 44. We’re ranked number one. Right. So like like these are not terms that have a ton of sales, but they’re the ones that we’re just like, no, no, we’re clearly the best here.

 

Josh 00:33:04  I love that. Yeah. Love that strategy. So how do you differentiate yourself then? especially like, as it gets more competitive. Are you the one who just has to think creatively, like how to stand out in the market? Is it primarily colors? Are you thinking? Do you survey your audience? What do you do to help yourself stand out?

 

Brandon 00:33:28  So I guess I would say there’s a couple of ways, right. So first of all, I feel like I know the niche pretty well. So I kind of feel like I’ve got a maybe a sixth sense a little bit for what I think is going to be successful. but it doesn’t necessarily mean that, like, I know what I’m doing. It’s just like, I think this is a good idea for a product. so we’ll dig in and we’ll try to find molds. We’ll try to find products that, like, really are unique, that aren’t sold in the marketplace. Maybe stuff that’s new. sometimes our suppliers come to us and they’re just like, hey, I got this thing for you.

 

Brandon 00:33:58  What do you think? and then we’ll try to figure out how we can put our own spin on it to make it something that’s unique, that no one else is doing, that no one else can do. Right. but really, once we do that, before we even. Well, maybe we’ll get a sample. But before we order the product, we’ll try to create a master like a hero image for it. And using some of those split testing softwares like Sellametrics or in Telavi, we’ll run it against the competitors and see how we’re doing. and sometimes if we see something online that already exists, we’ll do that anyway and just kind of compare them. Right. But we want to like kind of run those tests if we can and be like, okay, how do you like this compared to this? And if they say yes, then I know we’re on the right track. Right. And sometimes they’ll look at the feedback and be like, okay, this is interesting. We want to change this.

 

Brandon 00:34:39  Oh, they want this. They think this is better. And you can kind of change the product based on what customers think before you’ve even designed it. other times we’ll look at the feedback and be like, this is stupid. Like there’s nothing here that like, I know why they voted for the other product. I still like mine and we’ve been successful doing that too. but kind of take it or leave it, but kind of knowing where they’re coming from when they give those that feedback. so I would say that’s probably the first thing that we do. And it kind of definitely saves money over spending. Tens of thousands of dollars on products that may or may not sell.

 

Josh 00:35:06  Yeah. Love that. Love that approach. it’s always like, can you start with, like, your minimum viable product?

 

Brandon 00:35:13  Right, exactly.

 

Josh 00:35:14  MVP just to get things going, get some quick feedback so that you’re not buying 10,000 units and then like, oh, crap.

 

Brandon 00:35:22  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And there’s been times where we’ve gone back and forth with like a graphic designer about like the main image on a product that we don’t even sell yet.

 

Brandon 00:35:30  spending a lot of money on those images. Right. Just trying to make it work because we think it can be successful.

 

Josh 00:35:36  Yeah. What tools are you using to test images?

 

Brandon 00:35:39  Right. so, like I said, we use Sellametrics. and Intellivy are probably the top two.

 

Josh 00:35:45  Okay. Yeah, I know there’s been pick few that people have used in the past.

 

Brandon 00:35:51  Good product. Those are all great, you know, and they all have their own functions. but, you know, Andre from Sellametrics is like a good friend of mine. so I use his, and it’s actually probably one of the cheaper ones for split testing. so I kind of use his probably the most for that specific purpose I might use Intellivy. More if I’m testing. like, you know, if I’m testing other things to or even just to to confirm what’s going on in Sellametrics. Right. I’ll do that too. but but, like, yeah, I kind of use his. It’s cheaper for that kind of thing.

 

Josh 00:36:26  Yeah. Totally agree. So for our listeners, we we have had Andre from Sellametrics on the podcast with Matt Coston from Product Opinion on the podcast. So like go back and listen to those because like those dudes, they know their stuff and how to optimize your images and really how to stand out. Because I agree with you, Brandon. Like as it gets more difficult and more competitive, like, you’ve got to be able to test before you even place your purchase order to make sure you’re going to win. and it’s because, like, PPC isn’t the magic pixie dust when the products here. Right? Like, right. It’s your decision. Your success is already baked in at the time you place your Po for whatever that product is.

 

Brandon 00:37:16  Yeah.

 

Josh 00:37:17  Your success or failure is baked in at that point, right? You’re not going to be able to resurrect it after the fact.

 

Brandon 00:37:23  Well, also, you know, I also think that, like, right, you do all these tests and maybe you come to a conclusion and you launch the product and you might have 3 or 4 main images that you didn’t like.

 

Brandon 00:37:33  Right. That didn’t work for the test for whatever reason. But you still have those, right? And if you’re doing a launch and it’s not going well, nothing stopping you from going back and having those and trying those on the main image. Right? And they might not. They might have. You know, I’m a big believer in using split testing but not using it as the end all be all and being like, this is this is, you know, the gospel. And a lot of people do treat it that way. But like saying like, okay, I’ve got these other images. Let’s try one. I kind of like this one, right? But having those backup images kind of ready to go and not having to go wait and go to a designer and wait a couple weeks or way to, you know, you have them ready to go. Right. And you can try those two. And that might save a launch where maybe you weren’t going to be successful before. Right?

 

Josh 00:38:14  Yeah, I think that that is very true as well.

 

Josh 00:38:17  Like the the software tools, they’ll give you an idea of what’s what’s right. But I love like sometimes you got to have the Amazon customers vote with their money. Right.

 

Brandon 00:38:30  Yes.

 

Josh 00:38:31  And that’s where like the rubber really meets the road. So again, you take it for what it’s worth, like try to dial it in. But like if it’s significantly different, right. Like that, you can have more confidence in like, oh, wow. 80% of people selected this. Yeah. Okay. That’s pretty good. But like when you’re splitting hairs. Like 55 to 45% for a couple images, you’re like, this could go the exact opposite way.

 

Brandon 00:38:57  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. And a lot of them don’t focus on, like, what is statistically significant. And a lot of them aren’t necessarily. the other thing I keep in mind is I don’t know if I’ve been following, Scott Adams. He’s like the Dilbert guy on Twitter for a while. and he has like a really good point that, like, whatever, anything, he gets pulled no matter what it is, 25% of the people just have the wrong opinion and you should just disregard it and you’ll see, like polls of, like, the craziest things.

 

Brandon 00:39:25  Right. And it’ll be like 75. Yes 25. No, 23. No. Right. Or something like that. Right. And it’s like and it kind of holds true. So when it comes to these split testing, I kind of like disregard like 25% of the, the. Right. So if you get an 8020 I’m like that’s bad. That is like, that is like you’ve lost. That’s basically 100%. No. Right. Yeah. But if it’s like 55, 45, I’m like, okay, that that that doesn’t mean anything, right? Yeah. so I kind of like, view it that way.

 

Josh 00:39:54  Totally agree. I couldn’t agree more.

 

Brandon 00:39:57  Yeah.

 

Josh 00:39:58  Brandon, you have a legal background as well. I know you’ve also had to deal with some Amazon account health issues as it relates to copyrights, trademarks. Talk to me about the things that you’ve dealt with and how you’ve resolved those throughout the years.

 

Brandon 00:40:12  Yeah. So we’ve had a couple of things come across. for trademarks, for copyright, for people stealing our images.

 

Brandon 00:40:20  you know, I think first of all, being brand registered is obviously key to helping protect that. That’s like the number one thing. but, you know, the thing that I really use is, when it comes to contesting those is archive.org. or our own website, because what it does is it has like a history of when of like the product page. So you can go there and see what your product looked like five years ago, whatever. and it kind of has that history. So when I contest things to Amazon, to protect my, my copyright or my trademark, whatever that is, I say, like, look, this was our page in 2016. It has the image on it, right? And they can look at that and be like, yeah, it does. Right. And like there’s really no, no, you know, refuting that. Right. you know, taking you know, if you want to take screenshots of your products at different points in time, that’s like a good idea to, right.

 

Brandon 00:41:08  But there’s been times where it’s just not possible or just don’t do it. so, like, you know, I think that’s number one to kind of help for, for, fighting that, in terms of like when people have come after us for trademark violations, right? And they’ve come for patent stuff or things like that. Right. The most important thing for the patent is to really look at, you know, when prior art was used. Right? Because there’s a rule and I think it’s what it can’t be a year prior to when the patent was issued. Right. And if you can find that, then that patent is basically useless, right? And not only can you then go back to them and show them that, you can then come back to them for damages and say like, look, you’ve took down my listing on Prime Day. We would have made X amount of money. You know, we’re happy to take this to court or do whatever with it, right? we can do whatever we want.

 

Brandon 00:41:57  And, you know, we’ve been successful coming back and finding that prior art and something I feel like I’m good at is like, you know, I can do deep dives on Google and internet searches and things like that. And we found that prior art and been like, no, this, this, this, this patent doesn’t make sense, right? and they kind of have to begrudgingly agree with you, right? So that’s kind of like the best way to get out of that kind of thing.

 

Josh 00:42:19  Interesting. So you’ve had success basically like that, even though the government has provided the US Patent Attorneys Office has granted a patent on something, but it was disclosed maybe earlier than what they told the examiner. It was actually.

 

Brandon 00:42:35  Yes, absolutely. and then another scenario that we had actually was we had worked with the company where they had us on the patent and that we were dead to rights, and it was a great seller. And we were like, that’s it. Right. And we went to an attorney and they worked out a profit share with them until we sold out of that inventory.

 

Brandon 00:42:55  And they were really happy with that. And we were really happy with that. And we gave them that profit share. And then we came up with a different we redid the product to not infringe on their patent, then patented ours. So now they have their patent and we have our patent. And basically no one can enter the marketplace for that exact product except for them and us. So it actually worked out in our favor that this, this even happened, because we didn’t realize what we were doing then, that what we were doing was not was infringing, and we were going to kind of patent something else. And we ended up putting this and it was like it all worked out. So, it actually worked out in our favor. So, you know, I think IP is a really Important piece of this, right? Even though you are going to have trouble and copycats and things like that. It’s like really the biggest and most defensible thing you can have.

 

Josh 00:43:40  Yeah. Very smart. I like those strategies.

 

Josh 00:43:44  And your guys, your approach there. Brandon, as we begin to wrap things up, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways. Here are three actionable takeaways that I noted. from your episode today. Number one, resilience is one of the most underrated skills that you can develop as an entrepreneur. And the reason for that is we just heard Brandon talk about like various topics from legal issues, from PPC, from product launches to sourcing products. And the name of the game is this. Over the last decade, things have changed on Amazon, and over the next decade they will continue to change and they are only going to get more difficult. A new book that I’ve been reading called grit. Talks about the most successful people in life. It’s just time in the game. That’s all it comes down to. It’s not that they’re smarter than other people, but it’s like they will keep going when the going gets tough and they don’t give up. Brandon, you and I see this a lot in the Amazon space.

 

Josh 00:44:49  The number of people that as soon as it gets a little tough, they then venture into the the Airbnb market or they go to another business. Now they’re in the crypto or maybe they’re starting their own agency. And to be honest with you, there is nothing more damaging to your future earning potential than switching industries. Yeah, if you’ve got a decade of experience in an industry, stay in it. And if you keep doubling down on it and you go through all the legal hurdles, the product launch, the sourcing, the tariffs, if you can stay in the game, you will be able to compound your returns exponentially another decade from now. Just because, like you keep going in the same direction, you’re not digging in ten different holes like one hole dug really deep goes a lot further than people trying to dig ten different holes at the same time.

 

Brandon 00:45:47  Yeah for sure. I will add to that. You know, first of all, I think that very well stated. I think if there is a problem, there’s always a solution.

 

Brandon 00:45:55  but in terms of like a decade of experience. Right. And I think that’s a really interesting point. and I don’t know why I bring up Scott Adams again, but he also has another amazing concept which he calls his, like, talent stack. Right. Saying that, like, you can be, you know, if you’re in the top, like 20% of, let’s say, selling things on Amazon, but you’re also in the top 20% of, let’s say, knowing kitchenware, right? So those two things combined, you’re suddenly in the top 0.01% in the world of knowing kitchenware on Amazon, right? And you can take that with just about anything. Like if you’re a great photographer and you know Amazon, you’re suddenly in the top 0.0 1% of people who can photograph products for Amazon. Because you know both things. Right. And I think that’s a really important thing to think about. What plays to your advantage going forward, even if you are switching or are you staying the same? And most of the time I think it means just sticking with what you’re good at and using your skills.

 

Brandon 00:46:47  Right. And like our conference is another example. Right. I’m, you know, knew nothing about conferences. I was good at selling online. I learned at about conferences. And I think we have one of the best conferences because we know about selling on Amazon and we know about putting on conferences now. Right. And no one else knows that the way we do.

 

Josh 00:47:02  Yeah. Excellent. Very well said.

 

Brandon 00:47:05  Thank you. Yeah.

 

Josh 00:47:07  so tip number two, takeaway number two from today is go back to your optimizations. If you are in a cash flow constraint right. You have kind of two options. You can either get really creative and get creative financing in order to launch new products or if you’re really in a tough spot and you don’t want to pursue those creative financing solutions to launch new products, then the best thing to do is like work with your existing products, optimize their price, optimize the main images, get, bring them back to the studs, as Brandon mentioned, and begin adding on.

 

Josh 00:47:44  Because there’s sometimes like there’s a lot more room to grow, but because things have been easy, you just have kind of neglected things. And so now’s a really good time to like, make sure that you truly are the best in your niche or your market. And that comes with optimization.

 

Brandon 00:48:03  Absolutely. Yeah, 100%.

 

Josh 00:48:06  My third and final action item here is to always be launching. So as Brandon talked about what’s his plan for 2026, I hope to launch more products. I got a whole pipeline of products ready to go, and that would be my encouragement to all the listeners. Like you should already know the products you’re launching in 2026 and even into 2027 at this point, because that is your best growth lever. It’s the way that you combat the overseas competitors that try to copy you. And if you can do what Brandon’s talked about today, which is like finding, finding and differentiating yourself with, Whether it be design patents or actual utility patents, like that’s how you create a moat that compounds for the next decade.

 

Josh 00:48:53  So those are my three action items. Brandon, anything else you would add or that?

 

Brandon 00:48:58  Yeah, I would just say when it comes to launching, I think one way to think about it is that competition is always changing, right? And if there’s something that’s successful, there’s always a million competitors, right? one of our products, we were like the first ones to launch. And, you know, now there’s about 30 people doing the exact same thing. and if we had just been complacent, we would have just lost market share and died. That would have been the end of our business, right? When you’re launching, you’re looking at new niches, at new products, at new optimizations that like maybe don’t exist when you were doing it last time. And you can find edges that are new, right? Versus old, which is what your old products are. Right? So I kind of think of it as, as like you’re looking at the products lifecycle, right. And as you go farther along, maybe the sales drop a little bit, but if you go over something new that’s the hottest, newest trend, right.

 

Brandon 00:49:51  And kind of look at it that way and not just like, yes, you know, every launch is a lottery ticket, but like you’re also like optimizing towards 2026 versus optimizing towards 2018.

 

Josh 00:50:02  Love it. Love it. Really well said there Brandon. Thank you. All right Brandon in 60s here’s the lightning round okay. What’s been the most influential book that you’ve read in y.

 

Brandon 00:50:13  Ou most influential book? man, I think the deep work right now, Cal Newport has been what I’ve been really thinking about, trying to get away from my phone completely. yeah, that’s probably that’s probably number one.

 

Josh 00:50:29  Excellent recommendation. Yeah. All right. Number two, what’s your favorite software tool that you’ve been using?

 

Brandon 00:50:36  Ooh. Favorite software tool. So. Yeah, I’m going to give a shout out to a new tool that nobody knows about yet. just because I think it’s really interesting and that is flowing. it’s really cool. and it does a lot of interesting stuff with listings and listing optimization that no one else is really doing it.

 

Brandon 00:50:57  and I’ve been playing around with it and getting some really interesting insights.

 

Josh 00:51:01  Flow in. I II flow in II. Awesome. Always, always on the lookout.

 

Brandon 00:51:11  They were interested in sponsoring our conference, and I started talking to them. And I looked at this tool and I was like, oh, I got to try this and it’s been great. Yeah, it’s really cool.

 

Josh 00:51:19  Awesome. Love that. All right. Final question here. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

 

Brandon 00:51:30  so the smartest person I have met in E-comm is probably Jabran Niaz of Utopia Deals. He is like the largest seller, I think on in like, Amazon maybe outside of like there’s like 2 or 3 ahead of him. but like, they’re $1 billion company. He’s like the largest exporter from Pakistan. He is incredible. I have I’ve never talked to him and been like, you know, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Or like, you know, I’m, like, taking notes as furiously as I can.

 

Brandon 00:51:59  There is no one smarter than him, in my opinion, in all of e-commerce. And he doesn’t come out much. He doesn’t talk much. We had him at innovate one year. Like he is, he is easily the smartest person.

 

Josh 00:52:09  I love it. He is definitely a great brand to be following. They have built something incredible.

 

Brandon 00:52:14  It’s incredible. Yeah.

 

Josh 00:52:16  Well, Brandon, it’s been an honor having you on the podcast today. And, definitely, we want people to go check out, innovate coming up in October there in New York City. great conference.

 

Brandon 00:52:28  Yeah, it’s going to be great. And I created a custom coupon code for you guys to use. Code Hadley. You get to save $100 off a ticket. So.

 

Josh 00:52:37  All right, there you go. See, that’s what you get for staying till the end. Here.

 

Brandon 00:52:40  There you go.

 

Josh 00:52:41  Yeah. Got 100 saved you a hundred bucks today, so. Yeah. Use, definitely sign up for innovate. Go there in October in New York City.

 

Josh 00:52:49  I will be there and, save 100 bucks, use coupon code. Hadley and, Brandon. Looking forward to it. Thanks again for your time today.

 

Brandon 00:52:57  Yeah, it’s great being here. Thanks for having me.

 

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