Maciej is the CEO of Base.com in the United States, where he’s leading the charge in helping brands remove operational bottlenecks and scale across multiple sales channels more efficiently.

Before this, he was with Amazon—so he understands both sides of the ecosystem—and brings a unique perspective on what it actually takes to go from a successful Amazon business to a truly scalable, multi-channel brand.

Originally from Poland and now based in Seattle, Maciej is driven by a simple but powerful mission: eliminating the hidden friction and self-imposed constraints that slow down e-commerce entrepreneurs.

In today’s conversation, we’re diving into how to build a true business operating system for your brand—and how to successfully expand beyond Amazon into new sales channels without breaking your operations.

Highlight Bullets

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley speaks with Maciej Stanski, CEO of Base Com, about scaling e-commerce brands beyond Amazon. They outline a strategic sequence for expansion, covering marketplaces like Walmart, Target Plus, and TikTok Shop, followed by Shopify, international markets, and wholesale. Both emphasize that operational excellence, including strong inventory management, fulfillment systems, and documented processes, is the foundation for sustainable multi-channel growth. They also discuss AI’s role, agreeing it enhances solid operations rather than replacing them. The core message: master your fundamentals before chasing new channels.

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

Timestamps:

00:00:36 Introduction to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast
The podcast introduces its mission to help seven-figure e-commerce business owners unlock their full potential and scale to the next level.

00:01:00 Meet Maciej Stanski
Host Josh Hadley introduces guest Maciej Stanski, CEO of Base Com, highlighting his background at Amazon and his mission.

00:04:03 The Importance of an Operational Backbone
Maciej explains why a strong operational system is crucial for brands to scale beyond Amazon in the current competitive e-commerce environment.

00:06:58 A Step-by-Step Scaling Strategy
Josh outlines his recommended strategy for Amazon sellers: first, systematize Amazon operations, then expand to other marketplaces using existing FBA inventory.

00:11:31 Why Marketplaces Are the Easiest Next Step
Maciej agrees with Josh’s strategy, emphasizing the importance of delegating, avoiding fragmentation, and using MCF to experiment on new channels.

00:16:00 Which Marketplaces to Expand To
Maciej discusses potential marketplaces like Walmart and Target Plus, stressing that the right choice depends on the product and business readiness.

00:19:46 The Six Phases of Scaling Beyond Amazon
Josh details a six-phase scaling path: master Amazon, expand to marketplaces, international expansion, TikTok Shop, Shopify, and finally, wholesale/retail.

00:25:21 A Different Perspective on Scaling Sequence
Maciej offers a different view, cautioning against premature international expansion and suggesting that wholesale relationships should be started early on.

00:33:11 The Role of AI in E-commerce
Maciej shares his perspective on AI, stating it’s a powerful tool but requires strong operational fundamentals to be effective.

00:38:59 Three Actionable Takeaways
Josh summarizes the key takeaways: prioritize operations, scale methodically to avoid shiny object syndrome, and focus on your supply chain.

00:42:03 Maciej’s Final Recommendations
Maciej shares his most influential book, favorite AI tool (ElevenLabs), and respected figures in the e-commerce space.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools and Software
“Base“: “00:02:11”
“Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF)“: “00:10:08”
“ElevenLabs“: “00:42:49″Books
“Thinking, Fast and Slow“: “00:42:09″Websites and Platforms
“Etsy“: “00:09:50”
“Temu“: “00:09:50”
“Shein“: “00:09:50”
“eBay“: “00:09:50”
“Walmart“: “00:10:08”
“Target Plus“: “00:10:08”
“TikTok Shop“: “00:10:08”
“Shopify“: “00:10:08”

Podcasts
“The Real Eisman Playbook“: “00:44:13”

General Advice and Concepts
“Operational Backbone”: “00:04:19”
“SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)”: “00:12:09”
“Product Catalog Management”: “00:14:54”
“International Expansion”: “00:27:29”

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

I started my business 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 email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript:Maciej Stanski 00:00:00  If you’re a great Amazon seller, but all you’ve ever done is FBA selling on target class. Naturally, by extension involves selling your own warehouse, which you may not have dealt with, which on a technical level, software like base can absolutely orchestrate and integrate for you. But the physical operating piece is something that you will have to learn. And I know it’s hard to learn things from scratch that you think you may know because you’ve been in the industry for ten years, but if you haven’t had to do self-fulfillment on any channel. So just be humble and start from scratch.

MC 00:00:36  Welcome to the Ecom 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 Hadley 00:00:50  Do you want to know how to successfully scale beyond Amazon into new sales channels without breaking your operations? Well, you’re going to love the conversation we have with our guest today. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast.

Josh Hadley 00:01:00  I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures, I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in eCommerce. Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael E Gerber, author of the E myth. Today, I’m excited to introduce you all to Maciej Stanski. Max is the CEO of Base Com in the United States, where he’s leading the charge in helping brands remove operational bottlenecks and scale across multiple sales channels more efficiently. Before this, he was with Amazon. So he understands both sides of the ecosystem and brings a unique perspective on what it actually takes to go from a successful Amazon brand to a truly scalable, multi-channel brand. Originally from Poland and now based in Seattle, Maciej is driven by a simple yet powerful mission eliminating the hidden friction and self-imposed constraints that slow down e-commerce entrepreneurs. So today, we’re diving into how to build that true business operating system for your brand.

Josh Hadley 00:01:57  How to successfully expand beyond Amazon into new sales channels without breaking your operations. With that introduction, welcome to the show, Maggie.

Maciej Stanski 00:02:05  Hi. Thank you. Excited to be here. Thanks for pronouncing my name right and I hope to live up to this great intro.

Josh Hadley 00:02:11  Well hey it. I only had to practice your name a hundred times to get it right, so it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything. I’m just kidding with you. But, No, we’ve we’ve had multiple conversations in the past, and, you know, and I guess we’ll start it with this. You know, we our brand, we are actual users of base, and I am a massive proponent of what you guys are doing. So much so that I was like, hey, Mac, like, you got to come on the podcast. I know we had to move a few times, but like, I truly believe in what you guys have built is so extremely powerful, especially in the way that I view being able to scale off of Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:02:47  And I’ll say it this way for most there there are a lot of tools that are out there that can connect and fulfill your orders through Amazon, right? There’s there’s a ton of them, and I was previously using some of the cheap software that was out there that was only costing me maybe like 100 bucks a month to basically be able to take like a TikTok order or a Shopify order and feed it through Amazon MCF, as well as our business, as we’ve wanted to scale on to other sales channels and our Shopify operations become more complex, we actually want to start doing pre-orders with products. Well, guess what? Some of those other tools don’t have that feature of like. It just has to be fulfilled immediately. Whereas if I’m we’ve we’ve pre-ordered or sorry, we’ve pre-sold over 2000 transactions for a new product that we’re going to be coming out with. And like all the other tools have broke, they they were literally unusable. And so what I’ve loved about like base and this is not just a testimonial for base, but what I’ve loved about it is that we have been able to adapt so quickly and grow on all these other sales channels, because your guys’s backend has been able to handle all the fulfillment without me needing to get my inventory spread out amongst Walmart, TikTok, Shopify, three, PL and Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:04:03  So kudos to you and what you guys are building. But I’m curious to hear from your perspective, maybe you’re working with a lot of different brand owners. Why do you think this, like operational backbone is so important for brands to be able to scale off of Amazon?

Maciej Stanski 00:04:19  Sure. So lots of points to unpack here. First of all, just for the record, we’re not paying Josh to say all this, and I’ll just assume that he’s still happy with us. That’s why I’m here at this podcast. So just to address your your question head on, I think this is an extremely time for us. This is an extremely exciting time for ecommerce industry in general, because we’re transitioning away from the period where, you know, things were somewhat growing on their own. And if you launched your business at some point, conflating rising revenue on Amazon or elsewhere with being a successful, well-run business was, you know, easy and not punishable. I think we’re transitioning away from this where, you know, the growth is still there.

Maciej Stanski 00:05:00  You can see people spending more money every year. Also the e-commerce penetration growing year over year. But what’s happening now is like it’s not growth at all costs. There is additional complexity that people, you know, discover when they’re suddenly expand to new channels away from Amazon that they treat as five different businesses under one umbrella. And suddenly you run into stock out issues, you run into, you know, the fact that you have to have a separate SOP for exception for every sales channel. And I think in this more challenging environment, it comes down to the operations, like the brands that we talk to, the brands that we see run into issues. They don’t really have demand issues because, you know, expanding e-commerce is growing. eCommerce is growing as a percentage of commerce in general. Now is the time to get your operations in order. And you’d be shocked. I am shocked at how many brands we talk to who are big and successful and still are run on spreadsheets and have teams of people who manage all that, and they still get stuck outs because you just can’t manage it that way.

Maciej Stanski 00:06:00  So long story short, transitional periods. You know, the way we see it, those who will get their operations in order, those who have the right sort of product catalog in order, and the single source of inventory that can be then used to easily expand to new channels, will simply take sales away from those who are not able to deliver. And we’ll see operations become the moat for a lot of businesses, those who survive. Or yeah, that would be a nice world for us.

Josh Hadley 00:06:27  Yeah, no, I totally get that perspective. And I see that the same thing, like it was easy back in like the 2016 2019 era to assume that you’re a really good e-commerce operator when you’re just like, doubling every single year, you’re doubling for the aspect of Amazon. Was signing up a heck of a lot more like Prime memberships back then than they are today. And so naturally, like just the number of customers coming to Amazon was growing year over year, but also it was less competitive well in the environment that we are in today.

Josh Hadley 00:06:58  I think that the writing’s already on the wall. Everybody sees margin compression on Amazon and they see that, oh, my outlook on business doesn’t look very good if I don’t change things over the next 3 to 5 years, if I just rely on what got me here on Amazon a decade ago, I can’t execute that same playbook and match. I have a lot of people that actually come to me and ask me questions of, hey, I want to scale my brand, what is it that I need to do? So I’m going to kind of like rattle off like what the steps I walk people through. And I would love to kind of get your take on, on if you think this makes sense, if you would do something different. The first thing I say, most people that have come to me come from the background of scaling first on Amazon, and so they know how to find a product opportunity on Amazon. They know how to launch the product and generate some success. So they’re generating over $1 million a year in revenue on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:07:50  And I call that that’s good. Right. But now, before you even pull the ripcord to go on to other sales channels, this is the mistake most people make. They think that, oh, surely I’m having success on Amazon, so I should immediately go open TikTok shop, or even Walmart.com or on Shopify. And my biggest caveat to that is before you’re able to go scale onto any of those other sales channels, you need to first lock down your operations for Amazon. So are you still the person that is like doing all of your PPC management? If that’s true, then you’re not ready to go. Scale off of Amazon. If you are still the person who’s doing all of the inventory forecasting and ordering and making sure you’re always in stock and coordinating the deliveries into FBA and food or whatever you’re doing, you’re not ready. So the business owner needs to first systematize the first sales channel that was working for them, and they get a focus on, all right, just bring more products, bring more products to Amazon, launch more products, focus on the growth, and hire a team that can execute on the supply chain, logistics and PPC management.

Josh Hadley 00:09:00  Listing back end optimizations. Get a team set up there first, then once you have a basic foundation under you now, I think you’ve earned the opportunity to go scale on to other sales channels. And my first recommendation is to go scale to other sales channels that are marketplaces first. And so the best, like the best marketplaces I would throw out there are going to be like the Walmarts, the target pluses. You have Etsy, you have Temu, you have Sheehan, you have eBay. Those would be my next recommendation for people to move their business off of Amazon. And the reason why is because the operations that it took for you to run Amazon can be ran in parallel on all of those other marketplaces, meaning all you need to have is a listing and you need to have some advertising going to your listings. And that’s the entire business. And you’ve got something that’s going to be shipping those packages, right. And so if you’re on Amazon, they have the Amazon multi-channel fulfillment option, which allows you to say, hey, I’m going to go list this product on eBay.

Josh Hadley 00:10:08  If somebody buys it, I can ship it straight from Amazon. Now people will argue, well, their rates are expensive. And it’s like, okay, that may be true. You may be paying an extra dollar or two per package to send from MCF, than if you were to just go to a three PL. However, the advantage is you’re not locking up your cash and your inventory into speculative sales channels. So and I love the change that Walmart did. Like Walmart previously did not want any MCF orders. Now they said yeah, it’s all good. Well we’ll take it. And I’m a big proponent of that because like, I didn’t want to go ship a thousand units into Walmart to just test it out because if I don’t sell through now, I’m just my cash is just sitting sitting there. And now Walmart’s fulfillment center, accumulating fees and things like that. And now my cash is locked up, but instead now I can just pull from all of my Amazon inventory. It makes my logistics, my sourcing supply chain so much easier, and I can scale on those marketplaces first off of Amazon, then we’ll talk about all the other fun stuff of then I can get into TikTok shop and get into the Shopify’s that that’s where it’s going to get a little bit more complicated.

Josh Hadley 00:11:14  But that would be like my recommendation match if somebody came to me and said, hey, I got started on Amazon, I’m having success. Where do I scale beyond from here? My first recommendation is other marketplaces and leveraging your existing Amazon FBA inventory. Like would you agree disagree with that kind of like strategic approach?

Maciej Stanski 00:11:31  I wish I could disagree because that would make for a, you know, more fiery and interesting conversation. But I wholeheartedly agree. So maybe instead of firing it up, I’ll double click on some of those points, because there’s again, a lot of stuff to unpack here. But absolutely. First of all, you know, and you talk about it from the perspective of an actual operator and like an e-commerce seller. I may be talking about it from the perspective of, you know, both launching and SaaS business in the US, but also, you know, just starting solo and then expanding the team. It is extremely important to be able to, like, detach yourself from different elements of the business and delegate them.

Maciej Stanski 00:12:09  And, you know, make sure that you’re not dipping your finger into every piece of the business. Like if, like you said, if you’re still running your PPC campaign, still actively participating and stuff like that, that is definitely a sign that you’re not ready for it. And it’s a broader topic of, you know, how to documents and create SOPs, not just in the context of operations listing and stuff that we deal with, but exactly, you know, PPC marketing, anything else, making it detachable from yourself to be able to scale your business, go from 7 to 8 figures to God knows how many other ones. So that’s the number one angle here. Number two. Absolutely agreed. I think we as people tend to veer towards stuff that we feel comfortable doing in general, and my uneducated guess would be that people who start e-commerce businesses start them because they’re excited about the product. They’re excited, excited about selling that product and the general sort of product marketing and of the business they find way more exciting than operations and making sure on the back end, everything works and is scalable.

Maciej Stanski 00:13:09  And this is somewhat of an afterthought. So naturally, when you’re in great seller at Amazon and you think about launching on TikTok, you go into, okay, what am I going to sell there? How am I going to structure the SEO kind of inputs, and how am I going to advertise it? And you don’t really think about, you know, how am I going to leverage the machine that I’ve built to squeeze as much revenue out of my current operations, the way they are set up? Instead, you’re going to create another business that’s like sitting under the same umbrella. You’re going to have a huge fragmentation with product catalog. You’re going to run into issues with inventory. So unless you have all that figured out via through SOPs or a system like this or others. I don’t think you’re honestly ready. That’s number two and number three. Maybe I will double down on the experiment experimentation angle with fulfillment mechanisms like MCF. It used to be the case that launching into a new channel was extremely complicated.

Maciej Stanski 00:14:07  Now with stuff like MCF, we are able to quickly test like what’s selling, what’s not. The purpose of using it and selling on other channels, if you think it’s too expensive, is, you know, to isolate one element of the entire puzzle of expanding to a new channel like fulfillment. You know, with MCF, yes, you’re going to lose a certain amount per order, but at least you’re going to figure out, okay, I got a product that sells. Well, I figured out advertising. My only problem is that I’m getting charged an extra dollar in fulfillment. Well, there’s a bunch of ways to address that, but at least I know the demand is there. And I’ve got some things right. So isolating and trying out, you know, solutions like this, it’s great. And lastly, to your point about, hey, which marketplaces we should go to. I think you know, the list of names you threw there is great. I agree with the point that marketplaces are easier to start with.

Maciej Stanski 00:14:54  I would only say that there isn’t a single bullet here. You know, Walmart is great for generally products and companies who know how to function a professional marketplaces. So if you figured out Amazon, you know Walmart is a good step. TikTok is great for products that lend themselves well to, you know, influencers sort of demonstration and discovery. Like maybe having a commodity product on TikTok is probably not the best idea. Then another underappreciated channel might be B2B and wholesale, because that’s a really interesting one that we see, you know, grow. And that’s an additional channel of actually, you know, incorporating it into your operations. So there is no single bullet bullet here. The two truths that I believe in are number one, wherever you want to go, first, you have to really hone in on on your operating system and how you run your operations. And number two, you know, just be mindful of the channels, whether your product is a good fit. Whether the audience there is incremental. Like if you’re going to cannibalize yourself.

Maciej Stanski 00:15:50  Like have an idea why you’re doing it. Or if you if your approach is to just spray and pray. There are different approaches here, but just be mindful whatever you do there.

Josh Hadley 00:16:00  Yeah. And here would be my kind of take on that. And maybe another follow up question for you is, is there another marketplace that you see Amazon sellers like winning in? If you take an Amazon brand, they’re ready to expand. What are the best like marketplaces specifically not not TikTok shop not Shopify yet, but marketplaces specifically where you’re seeing, wow, these guys are picking up some decent volume. What do you hear and what do you see from your side?

Maciej Stanski 00:16:26  You’re not going to love the answer. The answer is like it always depends. It depends on the product and it depends on the business. But I would say the core like always the same underlying principle we see and those that succeed elsewhere is, you know, they know everything about their product catalog. Their product catalog is rich in information. It’s very easily discoverable.

Maciej Stanski 00:16:47  It’s not just optimized for title CEOs. They have great. They have a single source for inventory tracking, so they don’t risk stock out across those channels. They have their fulfillment and order orchestration logic perfectly mapped out. And lastly, they have a full suite of analytical tools that let them take decisions. If you have all that, if you have that operating engine and you’re successful at Amazon, you know, depending what you sell, I would say, you know, Walmart is a good direction for a lot of products, maybe, you know, not certain fields, but let’s not get into it now. But the reason why it’s great is because, you know, it’s a natural number two on the market after Amazon. They’re chasing Amazon very aggressively. They invest very heavily in all their services. I don’t have the most recent record of fees Walmart versus Amazon, but you can assume that them chasing the big Amazon on the horizon like this is a good opportunity because they are more likely to invest in seller incentives than Amazon are at some point.

Maciej Stanski 00:17:48  Yeah, and another one that’s interesting that we get a lot of questions about is target. Plus target class is interesting because, you know, it’s very difficult to get into. It’s a curated marketplace. But once you’re there, I think that you limit the number of sellers per category. So the assumption would be once you’re there, the the likelihood that you’re going to do well, or at least the competitive pressure might be lower, you still have to be great with them, meet all their APIs, but there’s a few and maybe one other brand. The biggest issue there is to, you know, get to the program. And a lot of those marketplaces are curated too. So yeah, I, I really don’t want to give recommendations for specific channels because it’s just a business decision that every business should take on their own based on many inputs that I don’t have insight into. But again, like the simple truth is, before you even think about all that, get your house in order in terms of product catalog, inventory and all the other stuff.

Josh Hadley 00:18:43  Yeah. No great advice with target. Plus they do not allow you to ship though with MCF, right. I think like you’re forced to have like an actual PL to sell.

Maciej Stanski 00:18:54  That’s correct. And that’s a bit of a challenge for the sellers that we recommend to target class because, like a partnership that we have with them, you know, we see the application forms. That’s correct. So that’s another layer you have to, you know, connect like if you’re a great Amazon seller, but all you’ve ever done is FBA selling on target class. Naturally, by extension involves having our own warehouse, which you may not have dealt with, which on a technical level, software like base can absolutely orchestrate and integrate for you. But the physical operating piece is something that you will have to learn. And I know it’s hard to learn things from scratch that you think you may know because you’ve been in the industry for ten years, but if you haven’t had to do self-fulfillment on any channel. So just be humble and start from scratch.

Maciej Stanski 00:19:39  Maybe try on Amazon first. See what your KPIs are like and then move to another channel. You can make an attempt like that.

Josh Hadley 00:19:46  Yeah, yeah, really good advice there. So here’s the way I, I think about this match to like paint this picture because I know you throughout TikTok shop and also even wholesale here’s like the path that I would say this is the easiest path to scale. Now not everybody follows this direct path. So there’s always caveats. But like if I were to just like lay out the picture perfect, like scaling operating system for somebody that got started on Amazon, this is the way I would do it. Number one, you get really, really good with your Amazon ops, right? You have team members locked down. They can do the advertising. They can do the back end optimizations. They can do your supply chain fulfillment and forecasting. All right check. We’ve got that. Now I’m going to move to other marketplaces. Maybe I’ll leave Target Plus off the list for now.

Josh Hadley 00:20:32  And I’m just going to leverage all of the other marketplaces that I can fulfill using MCF and all of those T Mushin Walmart. You can utilize MCF. So I think that’s the lowest hanging fruit that you go and you’re like, let me copy and paste my listings over here. Now Walmart has different like title structures and bullet points and descriptions I get that. But that’s an easier adjustment, especially in the world of AI that we live in now. You can easily make those updates and changes. Then the third place I would go, if I’ve started to generate some momentum on those other marketplaces, that’s when I would actually do some international expansion, specifically on Amazon, right where I’m if I started on Amazon US, I would then maybe go to Amazon Canada, Amazon UK and Amazon, like get into the EU as well and begin expanding that way because again, the operations are similar. However, like obviously you know, the ads standpoint, you know, the back end optimization standpoint, but now the complexity that you’ve got to figure out is going to be your logistics and supply chain, how my shipping into those countries, how am I staying compliant from a legal and a tax standpoint, right.

Josh Hadley 00:21:40  In the EU and UK. You’ve got VAT that you’re going to have to factor in. And how does that all get paid. But an easier kind of like thing to figure out compared to where we get to step number four and five. My step four for me would be figuring out TikTok shop, and the reason why I have it further down the list is because it is a completely different business model. What made you successful on Amazon is not going to be what makes you successful on TikTok shop. You mentioned this match. It’s very like, is your product demonstrable and is it something that people would like to see and affiliates want to pick up and talk about it? And then at the core of it, like everybody wants to work with all these TikTok affiliates. And so there’s thousands of brands going after a very limited pool of TikTok creators, which, by the way, fun fact for you, I learned that there are only so there are only 20,000 creators. There’s over 2 million creators on TikTok.

Josh Hadley 00:22:37  Only 20,000 of them make over five K and GMV on a monthly basis. Which means you’re working with like literally, it’s not even the 8020 principal you’re working with. The top 1% of creators are the only ones that can really drive like meaningful volume and revenue on a monthly basis. So guess what your business turns into? At this point, it’s all about relationships and being able to like, like give a reason to these affiliates to keep working with you rather than any other brand that might pay them a higher commission. That’s a tall order, but that’s what it takes now to, like, succeed and win on TikTok shop. But the good news is, if you can unlock TikTok shop, the fifth step I would take is scaling on Shopify. And the reason why I say that is if you win on TikTok shop, it’s because affiliates have found an angle that works. Because TikTok is like an entertainment platform. It’s not a marketplace. People aren’t going to TikTok shop or to TikTok to go buy something.

Josh Hadley 00:23:34  They’re going there to be entertained. And so if a creator creates a video that’s good enough to stop somebody in their method of entertainment, to then pull out their credit card and buy something, that’s a very clear signal that if that works on TikTok, it would probably work on meta. If I run some Facebook and some Instagram ads but direct that traffic to my website. But then when you’re dealing with Shopify now, the magic of Shopify. This is another completely different business model. It’s all about retention, and it’s all about building that, like nurturing your customers after they purchase from you so that they come back and they want to repurchase from you again. It’s all about email flows. That’s where the success in Shopify stems from is all about, like your customer lifetime value. And again, you’re not really focused on that on TikTok shop or on Amazon. And then the final thing, bringing it back to where you talked about wholesale, that’s like the sixth and the final like missing puzzle piece here that I would say if you’ve got all those other channels working and systematized, then you pull out the wholesale big box retail expansion because again, they’re in.

Josh Hadley 00:24:41  Your operations are going to need to change. Ideally you’re dealing with much bigger POS. You’re going to need to have some financing in place because Walmart might order 10,000 units but won’t pay you for 90 days. Right. And so it gets into a whole level of nuance. But being able to scale through those six different phases is only as good as the systems and the operations that you set up. So tell me a little bit more about like, would you agree with that match? And do you see like other brands following a similar pattern or like do, do you actually see maybe other brands that don’t follow that pattern that end up like using your software don’t have success and then they pull back out? I’m just kind of curious, like, what are you seeing happening on the market right now?

Maciej Stanski 00:25:21  And thank you for the breakdown. Finally, something that I can, you know, offer some maybe different perspective, different perspective on. I definitely. Well, first of all, my main takeaway from what you said is no matter like whether I agree with the sequence or not having some sort of a well thought out sequence approach is the way to go.

Maciej Stanski 00:25:40  Number one. Number two, I keep repeating myself and maybe tooting our own or hear it again. Whatever the sequence, it boils down to having your operation system ready to handle any sort of sequence or channel you want with that off the table, fully agreed. You know, start somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Amazon. That has to be your core channel where you build your competence. Referencing it back to some of our customers. We actually have client schools. Biggest channel right now is TikTok. And the TikTok opportunity is huge because, you know, beyond advertising, it’s a bit of a different field than Amazon, where PPC is king and you’re competing against the big guys with big budgets. Tick tock is a little bit different in the sense that if you know how to manage that Discovery Channel well, where I, you know, believe in at least in terms of cost, the route to entry is lower, you can do really well. And that sort of is reflected in the fact that you threw out there the.

Maciej Stanski 00:26:36  I don’t remember the exact number, but the long tail. The long tail on TikTok is huge or free or or sellers who don’t make much money there, but there’s a very tiny concentration of really successful ones who are able to just get in and within a span of a year or two, just figure it out really well. But you need that core channel. I think where I diverge a little bit myself from the sequence you proposed, and what I’m seeing from our brands is the international expansion, if somewhat again, like this, maybe White Rabbit of, hey, let’s expand to as many channels as we can and then let’s become global. Like, I don’t know if it’s an ego thing. And yes, there are some operational underpinnings that make it easier for you. For example, like you said, Amazon FBA exists in the UK, so why not just start that and again, why not? You’re on your business, you know your product. You know your audience is like what your what your target market is.

Maciej Stanski 00:27:29  I will just say this selling abroad especially, you know, in Europe, elsewhere. an extra layer of complexity because you’re not only dealing with operations fulfillment like that’s the easy part. Now you’re dealing with business entities. You’re dealing with taxes. All of that number one costs effort. Number two affects your margins. So just, you know, make sure that the opportunity you’re looking at is really big and you haven’t really. Ultimately it’s about the margin you get on your incremental dollar. So if you haven’t really, you know, used all the opportunity you have in the US or US plus Canada, I would just be careful about investing very heavily into something that may not even turn out, you know, profitable for you. So I’m not going to say it’s not profitable. I’m not going to say it’s not a good idea. I will just say, don’t do it for the sake of wanting to become a global brand, because that’s just not how it works. The second and.

Josh Hadley 00:28:20  I would and I would totally agree with you and I’ll, we’ll come back to your statement there.

Josh Hadley 00:28:25  But I agree with you. Like going international is not a small like task, right. And there’s a good number of people that I’ve spoken to that are like pulling out of those different marketplaces internationally because, like, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, the tax complexity and also like, just like the product demand wasn’t what they thought it would be. And ourselves personally, we have not expanded internationally at all, even to Canada or like, which seems very basic. But for us it’s like, yeah, I’m not worried about that market opportunity because I don’t want to like pull that operational complexity lever. However, I paint it there to say, you know, hey, it’s there as an opportunity if it’s big enough, right. And our products are very unique for the US marketplace. We’d have to like, actually change the product itself to go international, at which point like it breaks the whole thing apart. So but if I was selling a basic widget like a mug or something like that, and it’s like it’s the same mug wherever you go, right? I just need to, like, convert the listings into another language.

Josh Hadley 00:29:25  That’s an easier lift. And if you see a big opportunity there, yes, dive into it. So again, the international expansion definitely is very nuanced. And so I want the listeners to know, like, I’m not even international at this point. So we skipped stage three, so to speak.

Maciej Stanski 00:29:40  Yeah. No, it makes perfect sense. Point taken. And you know, there are some other ways of doing it depending on your scale. There are, you know, if you’re big enough, you can work with a distributor to see how your stuff is selling. Otherwise you can work with maybe local e-commerce accelerator, kind of a pottery counterparts elsewhere. For example, in Europe where we’re from, we have such an entity. It’s called Super Merchant, and we can, you know, take your inventory and sell it through our accounts. You don’t need an entity. You don’t need, like a lot of things that you would need if you were selling directly, you won’t need to deal with. But again, only if you think it’s big enough.

Maciej Stanski 00:30:11  And, you know, in a case where you have to invent a whole new product that’s almost like launching any business. So just bear that in mind. And then my last point would be about the whole sequence. You know, you said wholesale would be at the end. It makes a lot of intuitive sense. You have to be ready. You have to be a big brand to even get into those conversations. but I think the one maybe point we’re missing here is that this whole sequence from 1 to 6, these are not entirely incremental steps. We’re missing, for example, the lead times, where we’re missing the fact that, you know, it’s not like you get on a call with Costco and the next day you win the deal and you start selling there. Those conversations take months, if not years. And this is something that actually dawned on me recently when I was listening to a podcast with Chad Janus, the founder CEO of Brin’s recently sold to Unilever for 1.2 billion, I believe. So the guy knows better what he’s talking about than I am.

Maciej Stanski 00:31:02  But in that podcast, he basically said, well, you know, we started conversations with false sales very early, not because we felt we were ready to get there, but like just because it takes so much time. So if you really have that vision for your product, the product is suitable for wholesale and that’s sort of where you want to get in there. Yes, you will probably get in there towards the end, but you have to, you know, you have to like spark those relationships early, those relationships early. Make sure to surface your products to those potential partners because it’s not going to happen the next day. It’s going to be an extremely long process. And again, well thought out and functioning operational system will prove very helpful in that. But this long term relationship will also be necessary.

Josh Hadley 00:31:43  Yeah, totally. And definitely as it relates to like wholesale and retail, it goes back to it’s a similar, similar type of model to the TikTok model where it’s all very a relationship based.

Josh Hadley 00:31:54  Right. And so now, like your core expertise needs to become playing that game of patience and working with brokers and getting the the meeting set up with the Costco or whatever big box retailer it is, knowing that like they’re buying cycles are like 12 to 18 months out at any given point in time. And so but you’ve got to foster and nurture that relationship. And again, that’s a different skill set compared to just sitting in your PJs, working on Amazon and rolling out of bed and lighting up a, you know, a lightning deal or something, and being like, oh, that’s this is how I succeed. And I think that’s the important aspect. but again, the only way that I can build those relationships with retail is if I know my operations are on lockdown. Right. And that’s what you had talked about is like, that is the backbone. Like, I can’t spend the time going to these meetings if I’m just firefighting all day long, operating out of spreadsheets, running out of stock, etc..

Maciej Stanski 00:32:48  Absolutely. And you need that core channel experience and like a track record of success, then have something to talk about to those relationships because meeting them is one thing, but then proving to them that you’re a serious business and the buyers want to buy your stuff. That’s a different ballgame.

Josh Hadley 00:33:01  Yeah. Love it. Well, Maciej, this has been very enlightening. is there any other topics that you wanted to cover? Any things that are coming to your mind that you think our audience needs?

Maciej Stanski 00:33:11  I can’t believe that. It’s been 40 minutes into that podcast and we haven’t really discussed AI. It blows my mind. You know, in a funny way. So maybe, maybe I’ll touch on this a little bit because, everywhere we go and everybody we talk to, AI is front and center And, you know, my core thesis is this, you know, AI, again, is not another silver bullet that is going to arrive on the white horse and save your business if your business is not structured properly.

Maciej Stanski 00:33:39  Sure, you may use some, you know, tools to speed up how you list a product or structure a title from like one minute to 10s, but the underlying problems are still going to be there. So if you think about, you know, a genetic e-commerce, everyone wants to talk to us about that and like, oh, what are you doing to make sure that my products are visible to LMS? Well, our take is this first of all, AI is hugely transformational, probably mid to long term underestimated short term, maybe a little bit overestimated. We use it internally for code generation. You know we’re fully AI enabled company when discovery of the product turns away from, you know, keywords towards more contextual conversations with agents, the underlying infrastructure is still the same. You need your product catalog. And again, like sorry if this is not entertaining when I repeat myself, but those agents require the same information, just more of it to be honest with you. So if you have your products and they have ten parameters now with agents you can provide 100 to make recommendations better.

Maciej Stanski 00:34:38  If you don’t have your product catalog built out in a very intentional way. You’re not going to be able to take advantage of the whole switch whenever it happens. You know, from keywords to Atlantic commerce, whether it happens at all, because agents won’t have enough information about your product to be able to recommend it. So again, you know, product catalog is clicking here. So that’s essentially our take on the I hugely transformational. But just like launching on a new channel build your build the back end of your of your business first. Even more so than for channels, because then agents are able to ingest way more information than, than listings on marketplaces. And you’re going to need it either way. So, you know, leaving that context here, I don’t want to be called an AI skeptic. I am absolutely not. I am just a big fan of, you know, getting the fundamentals right before you jump on the bandwagon. And I don’t think I don’t think brands in the US have got their fundamentals right.

Maciej Stanski 00:35:34  Fundamentals right. The number of conversations we have with brands who are extremely, who’ve been extremely successful, sell a ton of products and still run on spreadsheets or don’t even know why don’t they? Stock counts in their warehouses is mind blowing. So get that done first.

Josh Hadley 00:35:51  Yeah, I think here’s what AI is going to expose in my opinion, over the next couple of years. I love your sentiment where I think we’re over inflating what AI can do today and undervaluing what AI does in the long term. Right. And I think what AI is going to do is it’s going to expose people with like, really bad operations. And because what I think happens is like with AI, it’s going to scale whatever systems and processes you have in place today. So if you have lazy processes or things are kind of disjointed, it’s only going to scale those. And so if you’re scaling a broken process now where you’re just kind of like it’s only as good as the founder makes really good calls and as frantic, frantically like putting out fires like that breaks with AI.

Josh Hadley 00:36:38  And so I think that’s what it’s going to expose. So my favorite like process for this is like to protect against AI and just like build your your business, the best thing you can begin doing today is like every process in your business, whenever you do it, hit the loom record button on your, you know, your chrome extension and record the process. Narrate it out loud and you do that five times, 5 to 6 times. For every single process that you do in the business. You give it to AI, you help it build the SOPs, you help it build the processes. Then you can work with it to enhance, refine and make your processes that much better. But again, everybody is looking at AI is just like, well, surely I’m just going to like plug in cloud co work and it’s going to just run my Amazon store for me. Right. And it’s like using what process, right? Because like you ask a hundred different people how they optimize their ads on Amazon, you will get 100 different responses, and AI will have its own flavor of how it’s going to optimize your ads if you give it the chance to.

Josh Hadley 00:37:36  But I’m more of the opinion of like, I’m going to tell it exactly what I want it to do, and then it will go out. Execute a human 100% of the time, but I want it to go execute the processes that I’ve already established in the business. Do you like that framework? Would you disagree with that?

Maciej Stanski 00:37:53  No, I like that because ultimately, no matter how you look at it, AI is just scaling mechanism, maybe way to a way higher extent than whatever technology came out before it. But if you have a broken product, you’re only going to scale the broken product. It’s like, you know, the joke about selling a loss making product, but whatever negative margin you have on it, you’re going to make up a volume like this sort of thing. So yeah, like and I think the reason why, you know, you never get an enthusiastic reaction to such a conversation is because ultimately people hope for some silver bullet or like this magical tool that’s going to come in and fix all their problems, and their problems are usually down to something really boring and something people don’t like to deal with, for example, fulfillment, logic, or your warehouse operations.

Maciej Stanski 00:38:41  But there is absolutely no way around it. So, you know, if you if you if you’re a brand right now, you’re seven takers and you want to become eight figures and it’s the age of AI and you’re not thinking about how to get your entire operating system ready for that revolution. I don’t think this is just going to.

Josh Hadley 00:38:59  Yeah. Well said. Well, Max, as we leave, as we wrap things up, I leave. I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I know that you let me know if I’m missing something. Action item number one. Your operations are the backbone for your success scaling on other marketplaces or on any other sales channel. And so that would be like we could talk about hacks and how to like, you know, exploit the Walmart algorithm and get ranked really high. And it’s like, that might be fine. And we could talk about that. But like, it breaks. It breaks if you don’t have the right system behind it to actually fulfill those orders, to be able to re forecast those orders to get your supply chain to replenish it.

Josh Hadley 00:39:43  And so again, it goes back to that earlier conversation. Utilize AI to help you perfect your SOPs. Just record loom. You’re already doing these things in your business today. Just narrate it out loud. And like certainly AI can help you like map out and create these SOPs for you. Action item number two is that when you are scaling, try to avoid the shiny object syndrome of doing everything all at once. And just because you heard on this podcast, oh, somebody is selling into big box retail. I need to go pull that lever today. Oh, and I need to be on TikTok shop, and I need to be on Shopify, and I need to be on Walmart, and I need to be doing all these things tomorrow. That’s where things are going to break down. And when you try to spread yourself so thin, you end up becoming a master of none of them. You get very mediocre performance on any of those channels, and then you chalk it up and you say, none of those work, and then you come back to Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:40:34  That was originally like giving you life. And so I think that’s the other thing is like as you scale, do so methodically and do so so that you master one channel at a time, while also maybe putting a couple irons in the fire for retail and things like that, knowing that they will pay off down the road. And my third and final action item is like one of the core operational like aspects that allows you to scale to these other sales channels. Is your supply chain in your inventory. And that’s again going back to like why I wanted to have you on the podcast. Like, we’ve absolutely loved utilizing your software because like, it helps support all of the supply chain forecasting, inventory replenishment. As we’re executing pre-sales on Shopify and pulling from MCF, I can hold orders. And so like that’s become the backbone that all of our strategies are scaled off of. So those are my three final action items for our listeners. Match. Did I miss anything anything else you would add here?

Maciej Stanski 00:41:31  No, I think I would just sum it up saying again, look like the brands that we see not succeed is not because of demand issues like the demand is there, the demand is growing.

Maciej Stanski 00:41:40  It’s all about execution. And in these days, the earlier you build this operating layer, you know, as you scale, the better and the more successful you will be. We’ve seen, you know, even with Amazon, you know, Amazon made it. Their moat like FBA was an afterthought. Fulfillment was an afterthought. Look at them now. Every brand needs a moat like this. If they want to be successful in the future. And we as they hope to, you know, make it rally.

Josh Hadley 00:42:03  Well said. All right. My final three questions here for you. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Maciej Stanski 00:42:09  Well, for quite some time, thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman I’m not going to, you know, recommend folks in e-commerce. I think everyone needs to break from that. Take a step out of whatever we’re doing day to day and think about why we behave certain ways and what dictates that. And this is one of the groundbreaking books by Nobel Prize winner.

Maciej Stanski 00:42:30  So I totally recommend everybody read this. It was like the ideas they had back in the day at that point were revolutionary. Now it’s common knowledge, the whole behavioral science. Really interesting stuff.

Josh Hadley 00:42:41  Yeah, I’ve read that as well. Great recommendation. Question number two. What’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and how have you been using it?

Maciej Stanski 00:42:49  Yes, I love tools that, you know, address heads on the problem that I have and do it in there, very easy to use rather than tools that everyone talks about that I don’t know what to use for. So in that context, 11 labs is actually groundbreaking for us. You know, we we deal with a lot of video case studies and we’re in 20 countries right now. So within a minute or two with with the 11 labs software, we’re able to translate all of those videos and, you know, make them sound realistic and then get the get the voiceover on them, and it’s extremely easy to use. Like I was able to use it in a couple of minutes to to get a video done.

Maciej Stanski 00:43:24  And we do it across multiple countries. So 11 labs, Polish company, great AI product. Kudos to those guys that are really killing it.

Josh Hadley 00:43:30  Love it. Third and final question here. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-comm space that other people should be following and why?

Maciej Stanski 00:43:37  Sure. So I’m going to share one in E-comm space, but I also have another one, you know, more and more more in general. So an ecom space I’m really like I would encourage everyone to take a look at Dennis and what he’s done with groups. The recent transaction is just mind blowing. You know us supplement space is super crowded. It was one of the first industries to blow up. Every time I go to Las Vegas for a trade show, like we were surrounded by supplements, sellers who wants to sell their business. And yet he launched it not that long ago, and now he sold it. So he he knows how to create businesses. He’s extremely creative, individual, and it was a pleasure to listen to a podcast with him.

Maciej Stanski 00:44:13  And I’ve been following him ever since. But another person, maybe not specifically in e-commerce, but I think in general, extremely helpful podcast to just understand what’s going on in financial markets and beyond. The Real Eisman Playbook is a podcast that I follow every day and every week about financial markets and what’s going on in the world.

Josh Hadley 00:44:31  Awesome. Well, Maciej, this has been fantastic having you on the show. If people want to reach out to you or learn more about bass, where’s the best place for people to go?

Maciej Stanski 00:44:39  I’m sure thing. So my email is m.com. I’m an old school person and email works best. You can also catch me on LinkedIn. Again, old school. But this is where we communicate right now as base. Just search for LinkedIn. Com search for matches dance key. That’s really where you’ll find us.

Josh Hadley 00:44:58  Awesome. Well thank you again for your time and joining the show today.

Maciej Stanski 00:45:01  Thank you very much.

MC 00:45:03  Thank you for listening. Visit Ecomm breakthrough com for more information. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, the best way you can show your appreciation is by clicking the subscribe button and quickly leaving a review.

MC 00:45:15  See you again next time!