#085 - How to finally take Amazon seriously in 2025 with Danan | The Amazon Wholesale Podcast

#085 - How to finally take Amazon seriously in 2025 with Danan | The Amazon Wholesale Podcast Speaker 1: All right. Welcome back to another episode of The Amazon Wholesale Podcast. So I've got a guest with me today. His name is Danan Coleman. And what him and I, or I guess how him and I met is through a man named Todd Welch. So Todd has been a guest on the podcast before. Todd hosts, Todd and Danan actually host a weekly news segment called Amazon Seller News. And they invited me on recently to discuss And I'm here to talk to you about the evolution behind TikTok shop, what's going to happen with the potential ban, review manipulation, a lot of really cool topics. And that was actually last week's episode on the podcast. So if you missed out on that conversation, go back and listen to last week. But I wanted to have Danan on as a standalone guest and really talk about some of his areas of expertise, which we'll get into during the episode. But one of those is around cleaning up reviews and negative reviews on your How this applies to us as wholesale sellers is if you're working directly with brands or if you're a representative of some of these brands, this is going to be a really good skill to have in your back pocket, or at least to know someone like Danan who has the ability to sometimes get some of these negative reviews removed, assuming they break terms of service. So Danan, I appreciate you taking the time with me today, man. I'm looking forward to diving deep into that topic as well as a bunch of other topics as well. So appreciate having you, man. Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it. Thanks for having me on, Corey. I appreciate it. Always good to... I love talking about this. Now, I will forewarn you, I can get a little bit passionate. Speaker 1: No, I love it. So can I. Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's a bit of a passionate subject. And how about I start off by just basically telling you a little bit about my history and what's led to where I am today. Okay, cool. So I have been selling on Amazon since 2010. I'm still an active seller to this very day. The only times I have not been an active seller is when I was suspended by Amazon. So collectively, that's a number of months. But basically I've been selling on Amazon nonstop the entire time. I have done a lot of categories. I've done beauty, food, supplements, toys. Let's see, what else? Oh, camping equipment, knives, so outdoor, a lot of categories. I've done private label, which I personally actually hate. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not a fan of it myself. Speaker 2: I have done wholesale, which I don't particularly care for that either because there's a lot of liquid cash, your liquid cash out there. And I've done arbitrage, which is just a time suck, you know, and then I've done what many, many don't do at this point. And that's, but I think a lot more are, and I know that Todd is one of them and that is getting exclusivity to a brand on Amazon. So it is kind of wholesale, but it's almost not to the degree that you buy wholesale, but you're the exclusive seller, right? And so it's almost like private label without having to pay for the inventory and the marketing and all that stuff. Assuming they've got a brand that someone's searching for, right? And so I'm in supplements doing that. So I've got exclusivity to a supplement brand and You know, it's just chugging along. It's been chugging along for, I don't know, maybe nine or 10 years now. And so that's kind of my history on the seller side. And then I've been in software, you know, SaaS and service for Amazon sellers specifically for six years now. Next year will be my seventh year in that area. And so I've worked for companies helping to bring partnerships in and and do. I even do product design and road mapping and stuff like that for companies such as Managed by Stats, Carbon 6 and Tracefuse. And now I have my own company. I decided to take all my experience, my entire network and distill that into a company called EcomTriage where I can help both the brand side and the agency side. And we're here today with basically bolt-on services that just either increase your revenue or prevent you from losing revenue, right? And on the agency side, helps them to keep their customers longer and increase LTV. So that's pretty much what I'm, I'm doing today. Um, I've been consulting brands for a long time. I I've never, I've never promoted that I do that, but I've consulted a couple of very, very large brands. Um, and, and even software in the service companies in the space as well. It just kind of fell into it just based on my experience where people say, Hey, what about this or that? And I go, Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they go, Oh man, thanks so much. I go, cool. I'll forget to invoice you forever. You know? Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, no, I love it. I love the fact that you've got experience on the seller side and you've got experience As a service provider to, like you said, to brands and to agencies as well. So there's a lot to unpack there on both of those angles. But I think the first direction that I want to go with this is you mentioned that you've sold on Amazon using really all the different models available. You've sold private label, you've sold wholesale, you've sold arbitrage. And I mean, based on your own words, it sounds like really the wholesale business model that involves getting exclusivity with brands to you is the superior way to sell on Amazon and is the way that you're currently selling. I guess my question for you is, how did you go from selling regular wholesale to taking this more brand direct exclusive route and how did you do that? Speaker 2: I never really sold the traditional wholesale model. I started off with exclusivity. Speaker 1: Got it. Okay. That makes a lot more sense. Speaker 2: I did dabble in the wholesale model and I went, I don't want to do this. I don't like holding inventory. My garage is full all the time. Forget this. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: Yeah. I'll tell you a little bit about that and let me preface this with, I don't necessarily condone my own behavior on this. It's just how I'm doing it, okay? So I don't run ads. I don't run subscribe and save. I don't run lightning deals. I don't run coupons. I don't do any of that stuff. We just have the product there and it sells consistently year over year, over year, over year. I have not updated my listing in, must be at least five years. And once again, this is not behavior I condone. Speaker 1: I feel like this is like the opposite of what everybody else does or says to do. So I'm curious as your strategy here. Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. So look, I'm well aware that if I don't do something that eventually the product will die out, right? Essentially what's occurring is I am riding on the coattails of the brand who is doing their own advertising and driving that traffic organically. So that I don't have to do any of those things. The customers already know what they're looking for and they're there to buy. They're not doing research. They don't want to know, do I want this supplement or that? They know exactly what they want. They arrive, they buy. My conversion rate, it's very, very good. I'm actually not sure what it is. I haven't checked it in years, but the last time I checked, I told someone and like, Oh my God, like, Oh yes, I guess that is good compared to someone who has to drive tons of traffic, you know? Speaker 1: Right. So my question for you then is, I mean, you sounds like self admittedly, you're saying you're not really, it's not that you're not adding a lot of value here because maybe the only value that the brand is looking for in this case is somebody to just buy and sell their products. But is the brand not highly incentivized just to get rid of you? Because maybe in their minds, it's like, well, hey, if Danan's not running our ads and he's not optimizing our listings and he's not really updating anything, couldn't we just sell on Amazon ourselves? Why haven't they kicked you out yet? Speaker 2: Because I still sell. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: You mean, but meaning what exactly? Like you're just buying so much that they're just like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And we'll just let him do his thing. Speaker 2: Yep. Yep. Speaker 1: Got it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And do you have a contract in place with this brand? Speaker 2: A handshake with the CEO. Yeah. I also don't suggest that. So let me, let me, this is like a fairy tale story kind of, kind of sorted right now. Right. But there's, there's been a world of hurt in, in this, in this long term of selling. I have had exclusivity to manufacturer's brands that I have launched into the United States that have then got themselves onto the shelves of, not Ulta, but like beauty, big, fairly large beauty brands and stuff like that, only to be cut out saying, hey, thanks. See you later. What happened was I went to reorder this beauty brand. I said, oh no, we're not selling to you anymore. I'm like, the hell are you talking about? And they went, Oh yeah, you know, uh, we don't sell to you anymore. Like, cool. It was like five, five, six years. I've been selling this brand and incrementally increasing 20 plus percent every single year in revenue. And then they decided to do it themselves. And, uh, you know, I warned them, but you cannot, you can no longer find this brand on Amazon because they just completely fell apart. They totally screwed it all up. Yeah. Speaker 1: It's funny, there's a brand that I used to work with early on in my career, very similar situation where they just Totally neglected the Amazon channel. They were selling to me. My numbers were going up. We were moving more and more of their product. And eventually they decided they wanted to take it in-house. And if you look at them today, they're down, no exaggeration, 80% from where they were back when we were selling them and back when we were working with them closely and they just didn't get it. They thought it was easy street to do it themselves. But a lot of brands find out the hard way that that's not the case. Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. And so that's, this is a classic case of, you know, a dentist goes to school for eight years or a doctor goes to school for eight years. They come out and they're like, I am going to be rich. Speaker 1: Right, not exactly how it works, unfortunately. Speaker 2: Not exactly how it works. They go, they create, they put a million dollars into a practice and they go, Where the hell are all my patients? Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: Why aren't they walking through the door? What is going on? Turns out they went to school to be a doctor, not a business person or a marketer. Right. And so these manufacturers, uh, I'm not going to say all because they have definitely gotten, many have gotten much more sophisticated. Uh, perfect example. I just happened to be wearing their shirt. This is Rhino USA. Right. Those guys are the manufacturers and the brand manager. And they have some of the most astounding and perfect, in my opinion, just gorgeous listings. Speaker 1: What kind of product is it? Speaker 2: Off-road equipment like recovery straps and tie downs and stuff like that. Just the fact that their products are awesome aside, They're branding, their ability to create this brand, to be the manufacturer and then also to manage it. They've got that down to a science, right? Speaker 1: I feel like I'm looking them up right now. Speaker 2: Yeah, look them up. Yeah, Rhino USA. And you'll be like, okay, cool. These guys, they have extremely clear images. They've taken up all the space in there. They show everything about that product that you need to know as you're scrolling down a list of products. Speaker 1: That's actually a great point. And unfortunately, I can't share the screen while... Speaker 2: You actually can. Speaker 1: Oh, can I? Speaker 2: Yeah, you actually can. And when you go to export this on the vertical, it'll be three tiles. It'll be you and I, and then the screen share at the top. It's a little hard to see, but if you zoom in, people will be able to see it. Speaker 1: Yeah, let's look at this here. And for those listening on Apple and Spotify, unfortunately, this is not going to be great for you, but for those watching on YouTube, it's a great example. and welcome to The Amazon Wholesale Podcast. Great point here where, like you said, I mean, they're taking up the full, every square inch of this image here has a reason, right? You see the product itself right here, completely laid out. Then you see the packaging and then you see the little carrying case that it comes with. Speaker 2: And you know what? The carrying case to me is super important Having just tie downs rattling around. If you got a truck, okay, cool. You can just throw them in the back or if you got one of those things that, not a ton of cover, but one of those toolboxes in the back of the truck, you just throw them in there. That's no problem. For me, I've got a Rover that I do off-roading in. And if I just had those things loosely around, they'd go all over the place, right? So having them in a bag and then stuffing that bag somewhere or tying it down somewhere is, you know, It's just another thing like, oh, I get the straps. Awesome. Oh, look, I've got those little twirly D's there. Oh, sweet. It's all in a bag, man. I'm in. This is exactly what I'm looking for. Speaker 1: Right. And I mean, just the listing itself is so simple, even down to the way the variations are set out. You've got a simple color variation, so you can go black, blue, gray, looks like orange or red. And then you've got a simple size variation. You've got a two pack and a four pack. And look how the images are perfectly aligned with the color and the size variation. Like everything about this listing is stellar. And it reflects in the fact that this product is ranked like number 50 in tools and home improvement. I mean, this is a top 50 in the entire main category product. And I bet, so it's funny to look at here too, this Keepagraphs over the last three months, it looks like for a while, these going into the holidays, they averaged around, you know, 200 to 500 sales rank in tools and home improvement. And now in the holiday season, they peaked at a low of 45 in the main category. And right now we're six days out from Christmas. Uh, they are on a one to two month backorder looking at this buy box here, right? So it's usually ships within one to two months. So I mean, this is an example too of a listing and a brand that is doing almost too well for its own good. Here we are in crunch time. We've got two days left. The two biggest sales days of the entire year are today, December 19th, tomorrow the 20th, and really one more day on the 21st. It's for people to buy stuff before Christmas and these guys are sitting on a one to two month lead time because they sold through every single unit they had, it looks like. So that's what being too good at Amazon and having too many sales can sometimes do. There is a downside as well. Speaker 2: So all that to say that They're not my client, right? Speaker 1: Right, right, right. Who is your ideal client? Who do you go for then? Speaker 2: I'm not actively seeking out more people to sell for. When my wife and I started having children, she and I were the team, right? And when she became mom, she became not my business partner, right? And so we basically just, right now we keep it, we have one company that has 60 or 70 SKUs and that's it. We just sell that one company's products right now. In probably a couple of years, I may ramp that back up. I might not though. I might not know though, because now I'm offering services to sellers and agencies. I will always be a seller because that keeps me in the game and staying in the game is super, super important because, and even being in the game, you would know, Corey, like you don't have time to know it all. And it's always changing. And that's part of the reason why I do the news with Todd is because that also helps me keep in the game, right? Like somebody actively goes out and seeks stories as to what's going on in the Amazon and in the e-com space. Sweet. Then we talk about it and I know what's going on there, right? Speaker 1: And that's why I love that segment. And that's why I really appreciate every time you guys invite me on there because you're right. It is important to stay abreast of what's going on, not just in the Amazon world, but in the e-commerce world as a whole as well. Yeah. Right. And to your point about wanting to always be a seller, as long as you're in this space, I mean, I agree a hundred percent as long as I'm talking about Amazon. I plan on being a seller and I still am to this day. And you're right about, it's like we don't, even as sellers, even as active sellers, we don't know everything that's going on. That's why I really am a big fan of my mastermind community just being a part of that, right? Aside from the fact that I run the community, having access to all of those other very high level sellers, when something like, for example, this week when the reimbursement policy changed, I didn't really understand the email. So I just pinged the community real quick. I'm like, guys, like, what's, what's going on here? And someone who is way smarter than me, who's been around way longer than me, kind of filled me in on the answer. So yeah, just. No matter how long you're in the game, you're never going to know it all. And there's always going to be more to learn and always more to do to kind of protect yourself as a business owner. Speaker 2: Yeah. And look, you know, I've said this a number of times nowadays. I feel very smart for saying this, but you either. Oh crap, now I've forgotten what I say. You adapt with the future or you die in the past. Something along those lines. Speaker 1: I mean, it's spot on, yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, it's, everyone said, it's no new term to say change, the times are changing, change with the times, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this is like, that's talking present, right? Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: You either adapt to what's coming or when you get there, which is then going to be your presence, you're operating in the past and it's already dead. That's a dead technology. That's a dead style. That's dead knowledge, right? And so, and I have firsthand experience with that, right? Like my wife and I, we were borderline retired in 2015 to 17, right? So we started, is that right? Yeah, we started in 2010. We were borderline retired, 15, 17. This is before we had kids. We were just traveling the world. We spent months on the road, just driving all over the place, all over America, going to the Bahamas and stuff like that. And, oh yeah, well, it is. If you remember to breathe life into your business. Because a business does not run itself, right? The lifeblood of your business are the team members that are running it. And if they're not there, there's no business at all, right? And so we made the big mistake of going, we just got money coming in every two freaking weeks. We get a massive deposit into our bank account. And well, guess what? We got cut out of our top two selling products. And this was not even necessarily an Amazon change, right? Although those have affected things as well. Like I now give Amazon for probably more now, call it four times what, as much money as I did when I started on the same product. Speaker 1: For in fees and fees and stuff like that. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. That's a significant increase from, from when you started, which was years back, obviously. Speaker 2: Yeah. So I've been selling this, this company's vitamin supplement companies products for probably about a decade now. And, you know, my price hasn't changed on them, by the way, because, you know, I have to maintain that pricing that they've got, right? Map policy. That's part of what I offer is If a brand comes to me or a manufacturer comes to me and they say, we want just you to sell this for me, I go, cool. You'll never have to worry about map violations. Part of what I do is protect their brand on Amazon. For them, at this point, Amazon is out of sight, out of mind. They know sales are happening, but they know that their brand image and their brand pricing and their perceived value is protected. And that's more so what a manufacturer cares about than the sales coming in the door. Speaker 1: And that's such a great point to make, especially, obviously we're on a podcast dedicated to Amazon wholesale. And that's one of the things that we've discussed at length in the past is, well, how do you persuade a brand to sell to you? How do you get a brand to take you seriously as an Amazon seller? And the point that I've made over time, and you just pretty much reiterated this, is that When it comes to distributors, yeah, distributors mainly care about money, right? They just want you to place large orders. They could care less about brand image or brand integrity, kind of the things that you just mentioned there. But when you're buying directly from a brand or when you're working directly with the manufacturer, they do care about those things. They usually care about them more than they do the actual dollars and the actual purchase order. Speaker 2: Because it's the lifetime of that product, right? Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, a brand knows that Well, yeah, they could make a lot of money this week if they just turned around and sold to every Amazon seller that called them. They might make a quick, you know, 50 grand in purchase orders, but then just like you said, the long-term really devaluing that that would do to the channel and to their pricing and to the brand image and to everything else that that affects downstream. It's not worth it long term. They're going to lose way more than the 50K that they made in purchase orders that week. So that is why brands prefer to work with just either one seller or worst case, just a small handful of authorized sellers who do get it and who do value the brand image over dollars and cents. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I also have experience salvaging a brand on Amazon. This is way long ago. This is at a time when you didn't have virtual bundles. You didn't have, let's see, what else didn't you have? I think that PPC was fairly new at this time. I'm trying to remember what year this was. It must have been 20, I started in 2012-2013, I think, when I started with this brand. But basically, there was a brand, a supplement brand, where a whole bunch of people had purchased their product and was selling on Amazon for $20 below MAP, right? So this $40 product was $19.99, right? And so they contacted me like, hey, we are getting killed out here. What can you do? I'm like, what can I do? Don't sell to those people. That's what you can do. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: And like, we don't know who they are. And so I came up with the plan. Well, I know that that would be I tested ideas that ended up working in a plan overall. What I did to take this market back and incrementally increase the price was I created a two-pack, a three-pack, a one-pack with a sample, a two-pack with a sample, and a three-pack with a sample. I owned the entire first page. for these keywords on this product, right? And so I was selling through inventory like crazy, right? And because my conversion rate, now I didn't know this at the time, but basically because my conversion rate was so crazy high, I started winning the buy box on the single, which is where the pricing was like crazy low. And then I incrementally over the course of like a year, raised the price back up to where it needed to be. Speaker 1: So let me make sure I understand that correctly. So you're saying with this brand on all of their preexisting listings, which was for the single pack of this product. Speaker 2: There was only one. Yeah. One listing. Speaker 1: Okay. One listing. So, but a ton of unauthorized resellers, prices getting killed. So you're saying you approached the brand and you said, Hey, let's forget about that main listing. There's not a whole lot that we can do about that right now, except for you guys not selling to those people. Speaker 2: No, no. The brand approached me. And then I told them stop selling, put it in a contract. You're not allowed to sell this on Amazon and stop selling to those people. Speaker 1: Right. Okay. That makes sense. And I guess the concept I'm trying to get at here is that then you made, it sounds like some variations to that listing. And because you know how Amazon marketing works, you were able to rank those variation listings a lot higher for the keywords that people were already searching for and therefore drive a ton of sales on these new bundle listings that you owned. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: That those unauthorized sellers basically weren't able to sell on. Is that accurate? Speaker 2: That's accurate. Yeah. Speaker 1: And that's still a viable strategy in late, I mean, we're in December 2024 going into 2025, right? It could be. Amazon did just, I was going to say Amazon did just update their bundle policy. So obviously there are considerations to keep in mind there. Speaker 2: Well, I mean, they updated that policy to the degree that you cannot create unauthorized bundles, right? There's got to be a skew for the bundle. That's my understanding as well. Speaker 1: And that's exactly what I'm getting at is that by working directly with these brands, you can do that. You can work with them to like, well, hey, if it's got to be a manufactured skew, one of their authorized bundles, then maybe you bring them those insights and say, hey, Mr. Brand owner, I see that. You guys are currently selling this, you know, lime flavor and this red flavor and this blue flavor all individually and they're selling great individually. So how about you guys create a three-pack bundle with its own barcode, its own, you know, under your brand name that you guys maybe even sell on your website and we'll help you launch it on Amazon and let's capture that traffic that's already probably there. And that is totally within Amazon terms of service. And you're offering to essentially create a brand new revenue stream from scratch for that brand that they hadn't yet identified themselves. So it's a much easier pitch than, hey, can I just be another reseller? Speaker 2: Yeah. So it is my firm belief that these days, if you're going to approach a manufacturer or a brand owner, you need to change your viewpoint of, I want to make more money. I'm going to help you build your brand and protect it. Right and I'm going to make it so that you don't have to worry about map violations. You don't have to worry about Fraud right because I'm gonna be keeping an eye out for that. You don't have to worry about hijackers I'll keep an eye out for that and I will help you manage this now Everything that I sell is through my seller central account. Yep, right and And there's a good chance that some brand or manufacturer these days has their own seller central account. So and you asked me earlier, why didn't the supplement company just kick me out? Well, and I answered, well, that's because I make money and I just order from them. Right. But they did try to put other products on Amazon and could not figure it out. And they went, oh, screw this. So they gave us administrative access to their Seller Central account, which by the way, to this day, they don't have brand registry, but we just got access to the Seller Central account. We're going to help with brand registry. We're going to get them enrolled into the Transparency Program, and we're going to manage every seller on there, which just so happens to be only us, right? Now there is, however, another seller that occasionally goes on, and we're just going to tell them, nope, you're not allowed to sell here. Speaker 1: Or just by enrolling in Transparency, too, will help with that as well. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: But I love how the basic premise of what you're saying, it's just being a good salesperson or really being a good service provider at its core. It's figuring out what are the pain points that my customer usually deals with. And in the case of a lot of the brands that we talk to, like you mentioned, it's Matt policy not being followed. It's the brand integrity not being preserved on Amazon. It's pricing fluctuating by 30% one way or the other. Speaker 2: So perceived value. Speaker 1: Perceived value. Exactly. Right. So it's, it's, it's literally identifying the pain points that these brands are having and then helping them address those pain points. It's that simple. And then it applies in any service you'd provide to anyone. Speaker 2: It does. Yeah. And if you wanted to go really crazy with, you know, out reaching out to brands, Call them. Speaker 1: It's a shocker, right? Get on the phone and actually pick up the phone and ask them what their pain points are. Speaker 2: Well, you could do an audit, right? So if I were actively seeking out brands and I really wanted to scale this up, this is how I would do it. I'd go find brands that I have a personal interest and love for, right? I'd go look at their products. I'd find the out points that I know I'd be able to correct. I'd record a Loom video saying, Hey guys, just wanted to, you know, this is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I found on your listing. I'm interested in working with you. I'm going to follow up with a phone call. Send them that email, you know, and if it's a Loom video, I think you can put a link in there and then you can just go through a regular contact form if that's the case. I would use LinkedIn to find who the executives are and then I would connect with them and add a note saying, hey, listen, I just did an audit on your brand. This is what I do. This is who I am. You got 300 characters to do that with. And then I would follow up with a freaking phone call because nobody calls anymore. Speaker 1: That I think is such good advice. And that was actually one of the questions that I was going to ask you next is, okay, let's say someone hears what you're saying here. They like the idea, they like the business model, but maybe they're still newer to the Amazon space or maybe they're newer to wholesale. What's their best course of action? And it sounds to me exactly what you said. It's let's identify some brands that have some clear pain points based on an audit of their listings. Which by the way, guys, you don't need to know how to audit a listing yourself. You can use a tool like SmartScout and use the brand report function, which I've used a million times where you literally type in the brand name, it spits out the brand report and then boom, there's your audit, right? That's what you can use to then draw your conversation points from. But so you do that audit, you send it to the brand and you tell them that you're going to follow up with a phone call and then you actually follow up with a phone call. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Speaker 1: Danan, I bet if you did that, Even if you're brand new and your pitch sucked and you were inexperienced, I bet you at least go one for 20 on that. Right. I would be willing to bet. Speaker 2: I mean, that would be, what is that? That's 5%. Speaker 1: Right. Because I mean, think about it. If you're, if you're actually targeting brands that have a need and we can get in touch with the right people. Speaker 2: I say, if you get that message in front of the right people, 20 times, let's put it that way, then you'll get about one in those 20. So, so the, the word on the street in marketing is that you have to, there needs to be seven to 11 touch points before somebody takes action. Right. Um, also on cold calls, you typically have a one to 2%. Success rate on those so for every hundred calls you do you'll close one to two people, right? It's obviously like you could do a hundred videos on loom You only need to do a three five minute video and at a certain point All you have to do is read a freaking script right now and move your mouse around to indicate certain fields and you just pump those out right and And then you keep track of that stuff in a spreadsheet and with dates when did you send it? Did you get a response and what's the status and stuff like that? But yeah, I mean the other thing that I was going to mention is that it used to be a In sales or marketing, I should say that you just did a bunch of snail mail, right? But nobody's really using that anymore. They're using email. I, I, I think that to an extent that, excuse me, getting over this, uh, Christmas cold. Um, so I think that to an extent that email has been over leveraged because people are not reading them as much. If you go back to snail mail. And you write a handwritten letter that you could produce an even greater effect. And to that point, let's say you've got exclusivity to a brand and the brand says, look, we need more reviews. Well, I have kept tabs on a friend that was testing this out. And granted, you do have to have the name and address of these people. But if you do a handwritten postcard, your review rate will go through the freaking roof. Speaker 1: I believe it. Do you know what's the average review rate just for Amazon customers in general? Probably half a percent, something like that? Speaker 2: Yes. It's something extraordinarily low. I don't know what it is. And then of that, the percentage of written reviews are even lower than that. Speaker 1: Right. That's a good point. Yeah. So there's a lot of people just go in and leave a rating, right? They leave a five star, but, but actually taking the time to leave the rating and leave a written review, that's probably like one 10th of 1%, right? Speaker 2: Something like that. Yeah. That sounds about right. Yeah. Speaker 1: Well, that's such a good point you make because So I'm just trying to think how this would work in theory. Are we, do we get access to, we get access to customer addresses, right? As FBA sellers, but we don't get access to like phone. I know we don't get emails or phone numbers or anything like that anymore. And if we don't get addresses, we used to, I know that for a fact. Speaker 2: You used to. Yeah. Speaker 1: You don't anymore. Speaker 2: No, you get the city and then you get like a, I think it's the first letter of the first name or the first name and the first letter of the last name or something like that. Speaker 1: Interesting. But I guess if you're doing FBM, you would have actual addresses. So maybe this wouldn't work quite as well if you're doing FBA, but I mean, there's a situation where you could test a campaign. If you're a brand or a wholesale seller as the exclusive representative of a brand, maybe run a campaign and maybe it's on a product that you've mainly FBM where you take all of your FBM orders from that month and you have, you don't have to do this yourself. There are companies that you can hire for X amount per note, like pay them, you know, a dollar or 50 cents per, per envelope to handwrite these review requests, send them to all your FBM customers over a 30 day period and measure that, that, that response rate and measure how many reviews you get over that time period. Because even if you go from a, you know, a half of 1% to let's say a 5%, that is, I think by definition, a 10 X increase. And I would have to think that you, you know, you get. At least a two to three to maybe five to 10 X bump by doing the written hand notes, handwritten notes. Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, let's just, let's take this one step further. Let's say it's not possible and I'm while you're while we're talking. I'm trying to I'm trying to go into my orders and see What do I actually see? From customers shipped I I don't go into Seller Central anymore, so I don't know where I'm going, but... Speaker 1: It's a good feeling, isn't it? Speaker 2: Yeah. I'll look back at that. But anyhow, I'm pretty sure you don't get the address, right? I've heard in the back channels that it's still possible to do that, but I don't know what it is. But let's say you've got exclusivity to some manufacturer. Well, guess what? They have a list of customers. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: Right? Propose then, and maybe you even get them to finance this, propose that you run a campaign, a review campaign with handwritten letters and they pay for it to be done and it goes out to their list. Speaker 1: That is such a, that's such a unique value add that us as Amazon sellers can bring to these brands because, and this is for the audience, like guys, think about this. Think about how few people are actually doing this. When you think about the people that are doing Amazon wholesale, if you think of your quote unquote competitors, you've got a large group of people where let's say 95% of them, the extent of the value that they're offering is they're sending an email and asking to place an order. Maybe only 5% of those people are even picking up the phone and having real legitimate conversations with these brands and with these distributors. If you take it all the way, you know, take it multiple steps further, and now this would only be appropriate after you've gotten a foot in the door and have a relationship. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: But if you're, let's say they have 10 Amazon sellers and you're one of those 10, but you're the only one calling them up, trying to brainstorm marketing ideas and proposing to run a review solicitation campaign that you're fully managing. Like think about how much of a pedestal you put yourself on in terms of their other Amazon sellers. So if, and when that brand decides, well, Hey, let's cut down the number of sellers we have from 10 to maybe two or three. Speaker 2: Guess who's not getting cut. Speaker 1: You are like 100% guaranteed to be on that short list for a fact. Speaker 2: And so let's take that a step further. Let's say somebody gets a wild hair and goes, we need to do X about Amazon. Guess who they're going to come to for advice on that? Speaker 1: Yep. You. Exactly. Speaker 2: So your job as a As a wholesaler of this, of this manufacturer's product is to build so much freaking value in their eyes that you are their Amazon seller, right? Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it. You essentially want to be the resident Amazon expert in the eyes of the, and not just the brands, right? There's value in being the quote unquote Amazon expert in the eyes of your distributors as well. Because think about how many of these distributors have really good relationships with brands. And when these brands need help on Amazon, they're like, oh, I know a guy, one of our customers, he's crushing it there. And I mean, you talk about delivering value to these brands above and beyond what most of their other sellers are doing. A fantastic example of that is someone inside our wholesale network community. Her name is Caitlin. She has been courting this brand for months now and she has spent, and I'm not exaggerating, she spent four and a half hours on the phone with this brand owner. And I know that because she screenshotted the timestamp and sent it to me and said, Corey, I've been on the phone with this brand owner for four and a half hours. We're getting brand registry set up for them. They're not technically savvy at all. She doesn't really navigate a computer very well, but we got it done. And that is the quote unquote price that Caitlin had to pay to become an authorized retailer for this brand. So now that she's done that, now that she's helped them and provided value that none of their other sellers are bringing, she gets a seat at the table. And guess what? The owner decides he wants to cut off a couple of their other sellers. That aren't bringing that same level of value that Caitlin's bringing. So there's just so many ways to do this that don't involve spending a lot of money. If you're scrappy and you're willing to learn, you can bring a lot of value to these brands. Speaker 2: And also be willing to fail. So when I was a kid, I did door-to-door sales and I sold dry cleaning punch cards for dry cleaners. And so you want to cut your teeth in sales Now that's cold calling. Speaker 1: I love dude. I've talked about this so many like door-to-door sales I've done it. I've done it so many times to you have yeah. Oh, yeah the the best way by far to learn how to sell and to learn how to deal with objections that you get your your skin turns into a Leather made steel when you go door to door, even just for a summer. Speaker 2: Yeah, I have been kicked out of a city by the sheriffs. I have gotten into a fist fight with somebody in their front yard just because they didn't like the fact that I rang their doorbell. It is crazy if you if you want to get indifferent about not even objections but having doors slammed in your face cold calling. or but door-to-door sales is all the way, because first of all the person at that door, they have to have the courage to be like, not F off. Clash. Speaker 1: They have to like go out of their way to be an asshole to you. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: That's how it works in person. Whereas on the phone, you can just hang up and it's whatever, right? Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So, but you know, rejection is the word I was looking for. Don't worry about rejection, right? If you got rejected, first of all, maybe that person, you know what, we don't even have to go into this. Now we're going into like sales, like Les Dane's Surefire Sales Techniques here, which is an old, old book about sales, which in many ways is still relevant today for everyone's edification here. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, You are providing value to the brand. You are there to help them. You become the opinion leader or thought leader for another way to put it. You become the thought leader. You become the authority on Amazon by providing them help without saying, hey, I helped you. Can you throw me a bone now? Just be there. Provide help. Right. I can't tell you how many consulting calls I've done with brands and just even just business owners. They go, hey, what about this? What about that? Well, let me help you. My help doesn't cost typically. Yeah, exactly. And so if you can get the person on the other line, on the other side of that camera, on the other side of that phone, whatever, in person, in front of you, if you can get them to trust you, That's what you have to do. Build instant trust and you do that in large part by offering your help with no strings attached. Speaker 1: That's a great point. I mean, at the end of the day, you're here to serve. You're here to provide value. And really the money you make and the value you get back is going to be in direct proportion with the value that you give out first without the expectation of return. Speaker 2: It's a byproduct of your help. Speaker 1: Exactly. Very well said. Well, Danan, man, listen, I appreciate the time today. I think we've had a great conversation. Before we go, I want to hear a little bit about EcomTriage and what you're doing on the services side. We kind of glossed over that a little bit. What sort of services are you offering? Speaker 2: So basically, I've got two core services on that. One, I have Catalog Defender, which is a new ASIN monitoring tool. Hey, look, Actually, now that I think about it, if you want to provide more value, you can monitor your manufacturer's ASINs and let them know when there's an issue, unless you have full control over it, right? But yeah, so Catalog Defender is ASIN monitoring. We're looking for your standard stuff. You lost the buy box and all that kind of stuff. We are doing IP infringement detection, trademark infringement detection, orphaned ASIN split reviews, lost reviews and stuff like that. And it's all done in one, it's a Google sheet is what it is, all on one sheet and organized by BSR so that you have your highest dollar makers At the top. And so if there's any critical issues there, of course you want to handle the stuff that's making you the most money first. So that's yeah. Speaker 1: Oh, I was just going to say, I didn't realize that you were offering that kind of like ACE and Defender service because of the way I'm seeing it from my perspective and the audience here, they've heard me talk about sometimes essentially white labeling the services of another agency, right? I'm just seeing a scenario where if I'm talking to a brand owner and maybe they are having issues with, they're losing the buy box or people are constantly breaking map or bottom line, they need more visibility into their listing. That could be something where I go to you and I say, Hey Danan, I've got this brand who has this need. How much would you charge me so that I can then either turn around and charge the brand a little more and make the difference or say, Hey Danan, how much do you cost so that I can eat that and then provide that service to the brand and tell the brand, Hey, by the way, I'm covering this service that costs, you know, X amount per month. I don't know how much you charge. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And then by the way, I need an extra 10% off on the wholesale costs because I'm paying for this. Right. So that can be a big negotiation point. How much is it? Do you mind? Do you mind? Speaker 2: No, I don't mind. No, it's look, it's extremely cost effective. So it's basically 50 cents a day. And we do have a minimum price of $50 a month. Like there is, we do have hard costs on this. Right. Obviously. But, uh, So that covers your first hundred ASINs. It's 50 cents an ASIN per month. Speaker 1: That's incredibly cheap. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We wanted to make this at a price level where, so because there's two of us, it's just me and my partner Mark, there's two of us. We don't have a huge team, right? So our core purpose on Catalog Defender is keeping it at a price that makes it It's stupid for anybody to not just pay for it because it's a peace of mind thing, right? We can detect thousands of issues for thousands of ASINs all in one day, right? Which would take thousands of hours for somebody else to manually do it, right? The more ASINs you get, the cheaper it goes. I think our pricing goes all the way down to like 23 cents an ASIN per month or something like that. Speaker 1: Wow, okay. So that's a steal. And what about, what other services are you offering on top of that? Speaker 2: So my other core service is negative review removal. And for your wholesale team, it's white labelable. Speaker 1: Okay. That's good to know. So you could offer that to a brand as well. Say, hey, if you guys have a ton of negative reviews, or if you have some old reviews that maybe aren't within terms of service, we can go in and hopefully get some of those removed, right? Not all of them, but some of them. Speaker 2: Somewhere between 5 and 15% of the written critical reviews. Speaker 1: Okay. So that is the data point that you're seeing then. So we can go and confidently pitch that to a brand. Hey, If you guys have been on Amazon for, you know, any amount of time, you've got a lot of reviews and with that comes some negative reviews and my team can go in and remove anywhere from 5 to 15% of those negative reviews. Like that's basically the pitch, right? Speaker 2: Yep, pretty much. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And then I charge you, you charge your client and then it's easy peasy. It's all branded to you. And so whatever company you have or your name, if you're just a person, which is also totally fine. And yeah, so and technically Catalog Defender is also white labelable to the degree that if you as the seller are the one that's accessing it and paying for it, like the price is not a barrier, right? If you're managing If you're managing 10 ASINs, you don't need Catalog Defender for that, right? You can just manually go look at the listings. But maybe you don't want to and it's still only 50 bucks a month to monitor At all 10 of those ASINs every single day for a wide variety of issues, right? But anyhow, yeah that the point is is that yes monitor monitor ASINs for critical issues so that you can Solve them as quickly as possible. We are also like we are constantly developing So we just put in our trademark and patent infringement detection. It's a separate service, but it exists We're going to be putting together a For each different type of issue, a template to send Amazon to get it resolved because different issues require different sets of data. Right. Speaker 1: That's very true. And as we know, Amazon might respond favorably to one template and they might not respond at all to a template that maybe is even slightly different. Speaker 2: It's true. Yeah. Because if you don't have every piece, it's like a government. Dealing with the Amazon is like dealing with a bipolar government. Speaker 1: Right. That's a good way to put it. You never know what you're going to get. Speaker 2: Never know what you're going to get. And if you don't cross this T or dot that I, well, then it's completely incomplete. The form is, we don't know what this is. Speaker 1: That might as well be Chinese. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The form was never submitted properly. This completely filled out wrong. Why? Oh, you didn't capitalize the first letter of your name. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, it's always some just like complete nonsense point. Speaker 2: Except they'll never tell you that. Speaker 1: Right. And it's like, or it's proprietary. We can't reveal what the actual cause of the submission rejection was. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1: That's usually how it is. Speaker 2: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, anyone that's interested, you can just go to ecomtriage.com and then from there, you actually schedule a meeting with me. Speaker 1: Perfect. And we'll put that link in the description below as well and in the show notes. So guys, that's EcomTriage. Triage is spelled T-R-I-A-G-E. And then Danan, is there anywhere else people should come to find out more about you? Anywhere people should follow you? Speaker 2: I mean, LinkedIn is a good spot. You know, uh, I've got my podcast as well, which is the e-comm growth show. It's you won't probably won't find it on Google quite yet, but, uh, I'm 10 episodes in, well, nine released, but yeah. Um, I'm, I'm available, you know? So it like, I'm a, I'm a seller just like you, I'm a seller just like your, your crew, you know? And my, one of my greatest passions is. Stream, helping others streamline for sales and retention and a return on investment. Because let's face it, it's fricking expensive to be alive these days. If you want to have a comfortable life, it can get very expensive. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very good point. So, guys, go check out his podcast. Go follow him on LinkedIn. And if you're still with us, guys, if you're watching this on YouTube, take a quick second and like the video. And if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, give us a quick five stars. It really helps out and helps get the show in front of more people. So, Danan, thank you so much for the time, man. I appreciate it. Speaker 2: Absolutely, Corey. Like and subscribe or else, people. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: All right, man. All right, Corey. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: Yeah.