#768 - Amazon Seller Strategies From the Accelerate Floor

#768 - Amazon Seller Strategies From the Accelerate Floor Speaker 5: Interviews with seven sellers on the floor of Amazon Accelerate, including a couple who got some advice from somebody and now are going to have their products in Walmart nationwide. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And this episode was filmed live on the floor of Amazon Accelerate recently. And what I did was I had my little mobile setup and would just go around and interview some cool people who are willing to share their brand and Not everybody was willing to share their brand, but share their brand story at least with us. And so we've got some cool interviews today with people who have never been on the podcast before and people at completely different stages in their journey. We got a couple of sellers who are doing millions. We got some doing more than that. We've got some who are just starting out. So it's nice to kind of like to see the variety of different people who are at different stages in their e-commerce journey at Accelerate and that's what Helium 10 is here for. We're here to hear everybody's story and help people out regardless of what stage you're in. So check out some of the strategies. Everybody's got some unique strategies here and I hope you enjoy this episode. All right, here at Amazon Accelerate, and we've got somebody, Sky, who just stumped me with a call. Say again, your college that you went to? Speaker 1: Brandeis. Speaker 5: And where is that? Speaker 1: It's in Waltham, Massachusetts. Speaker 5: Okay. All right. What did you study when you went there? Speaker 1: Business Management. I was only there a year and a half. A lot of the classes I took were just in topics that I enjoyed. Speaker 5: When did you discover e-commerce? Speaker 1: My senior year of high school is when I started my business. Speaker 5: So you started selling on Amazon when you were in high school? Speaker 1: I started my business, yeah, or the senior year, so going into my first year of college. Speaker 5: Were you doing like arbitrage or did you make your own private label brand? Speaker 1: I started with one product. It was a contract manufactured and I really wanted to have something manufactured and I saw opportunity with our first product and it was successful. So I Discovered there was just a lot more, you know, space to grow within that same niche. Speaker 5: So senior year of high school, first year of college, what was your gross revenue like from this Amazon side hustle you had? Speaker 1: We ended the year with three or four products. Maybe like $40,000 or $50,000 or something. Speaker 5: Much better than getting that same amount at Domino's or working like that like most everybody else. Did the business start getting more successful? Is that why you left college? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I left college for that purpose. I just thought if I was allocating all of my focus to my brand, then it could grow much quicker. And it's kind of ultimately like what I always wanted to do is just run a business. So I knew that I probably wouldn't graduate college because I wasn't taking classes that even like were applicable to my major. So it was sort of always I don't know, I've always been kind of arrogant. I have a lot of belief in myself and I knew that it would succeed. So. Speaker 5: So fast forward to now, what are you projected to finish this year in gross sales? Speaker 1: It's going to be like 1.4 or something. Speaker 5: Excellent, excellent. And how long have you been using Helium 10? Speaker 1: Like two and a half years or maybe two years. I'm not sure. Speaker 5: What are your favorite tools? Speaker 1: I think it's called Cerebro. Yeah, that's where you put the ASINs in. You can put 10 of them. I think that's actually wildly useful. We use that constantly. Speaker 5: How did you grow from $40,000 a year to $1.4 million? What were some of the unique things you were doing? Was it the way you launched products? Was it the way you do advertising? Not everybody can scale like that. What would you attribute some of that success to other than Helium 10, of course? Speaker 1: Um, so I never raised capital. And, you know, I was very fortunate when I was in college, you know, I wasn't paying for my own education. So I was able to allocate all of my own capital into the business. And so I would just reinvest everything. And especially in the early days, I really was quite maniacal about return on invested capital. And I kind of discovered that, you know, if a product has a really good ROI, and we're able to, you know, take that cash very quickly and reallocate it into more products, And we can grow quite quickly. So it's just like really understanding our cash flow and how fast we could duplicate our money while also, you know, making products that people really love and that are really beautiful. Speaker 5: How can people find you on Amazon so they can check out your brand? Speaker 1: It's Styxies. S-T-X-Y-S. Speaker 5: And what kind of products is that? Speaker 1: Disposable napkins. Speaker 5: Disposable napkins, who would have thought that disposable napkins could be a $1.4 million business? Is there something unique about it or what's your angle? Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of our competitors are Chinese factories selling direct to consumer and they don't really understand the American taste, the American market. Oftentimes, they're competing on price alone. And within this category, customers are usually not really that sensitive to price. What they care about is a product that is of a premium quality, and that's really beautiful. And if they have an important event, $20 versus $10 doesn't make a huge impact to them. In a wedding, you're spending thousands and thousands. So that's just like a penny. And ultimately, what they want is something that they can trust and something that resonates with them on a deep level and both through the product itself and through the way that we position our products, the photography, the copy. We take a very different approach to like most Amazon brands. We don't really look at what they're doing to derive inspiration. We kind of look at outside sources, and that's given us a huge advantage. Speaker 5: Awesome. Awesome. Well, I wish you the best of success. Speaker 1: Thank you. Lovely to meet you. Speaker 5: All right. We are here at a different place. The lighting is bad here, but hopefully you guys can see us. We've got a couple of Helium 10 Elite members. Why don't you introduce yourself? Speaker 2: Danial. Speaker 3: And I'm Nick. Speaker 5: Where are you guys based? Speaker 2: Toronto. Speaker 3: Also Toronto, yeah. Speaker 5: Okay. Is that where you guys are born and raised? Speaker 2: Born in Dubai, raised in Canada. Speaker 3: I've always been just north of Toronto, born and raised. Speaker 5: You guys go to university in Canada? Speaker 2: Yeah, we did, but we went to elementary school together. That's how we know each other. And then I went to university and college in Canada, and then now we do Amazon. Speaker 5: What year did you discover e-commerce? Speaker 2: Okay, discover? 2017. I went to Waterloo back then. And actually, the founders of Shopify are from Waterloo. So I actually had a meeting with them. Back then, the hamster wheel didn't spin. So we didn't do anything until 2021 when he hit me up one day. Speaker 3: Yeah, I started doing some e-commerce in 2018, right before COVID. Speaker 5: Amazon or what? Speaker 3: No, it was selling things on Reddit, which I should not have been selling. But since then, that started like a kind of idea. And then yeah, started 2020, really blew up in 2021 when we started together. Speaker 5: So 2021, is that when you launched your Amazon business? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 5: What was your first product that you were selling? Speaker 2: Oh, it was teeth whitening products. Speaker 5: That sounds kind of competitive. Speaker 2: Very competitive, but we had no problem selling it. Good marketing, everything was went very well. Speaker 5: What was your biggest year of growth sales on Amazon? Is it going to be this year or was it a different year? Speaker 2: It's going to be this year. Every year you're growing, you have to grow. If not, that's bad. Speaker 5: So about what number are you going to hit you think this year? Speaker 3: What number? Mid-seven. Yeah, just about mid-seven. Speaker 5: And are you still in the dental game or completely different? Do you stick to one kind of product line or are you just selling a wide variety of products? Speaker 2: So we have some different brands. We're still in the dental game, but also we're in sports and goods, so like weightlifting stuff and actually firearm related stuff. And we also have another brand for health supplements and whatnot that we're starting to grow slowly. Speaker 5: Other than Amazon USA, what other platforms are you on? Speaker 3: We have obviously Amazon Canada. We do Amazon UAE, UK, expanding more into the EU, and then we do Walmart US, Shopify, TikTok Shop, and we're Hopefully, we're going to get into Walmart retail as well. Speaker 5: How long have you guys been using Helium 10? About 2022. Amazing. Speaker 2: Highly recommend it. I'm not paid for this at all. Speaker 5: What's been your go-to tools when you first started compared to now? Speaker 2: I first started. Go-to is definitely just like Cerebro or Listing Builder. Atomic back in the day, which is now Helium 10 ads, depends. Everyone's different. I'm not super techie, so the UI that Helium offered with Atomic was phenomenal. With the colors and just the ease of the dashboard and everything was probably my favorite. And now, especially with Claude, amazing. Speaker 3: Yeah, like right now the Claude Helium MCP connection is insane. Like we use it a lot for keyword research. You can pull all the information. You pull all the keywords and then you can also see how you rank in those keywords and then adjust the copy based on that. And yeah, it's just amazing. Speaker 5: So for you the biggest advantage of the MCP is it time savings or are you able to make like? Speaker 2: Comparisons and things that you just weren't even able to you doing the using the regular cerebral So time is the first foremost that like it's the most valuable asset we all have right time saving is incredible with it and I'm not joking and then after that it's It's able to present you things because you can chat with AI and whatnot and it can present you certain things that you didn't think about considering and certain points. And I actually use Claude MCP with Helium and whatnot. Literally a day before I met with a Walmart buyer, And we created a presentation from data that we use with the Helium MCP and whatnot, and we pulled all the information we needed. We made the presentation the night before, and we showed it to the Walmart buyer, and I think we got the contract. It's not set in stone, but I'm not going to lie. The Helium thing, it sped up so much of the process. It made it so easy to pull data. I was able to pull all-time return rate on Per SKU basis, per marketplace basis, and have the data to back it and show it. It's amazing how much time that would have taken me to just go pull out information, decipher it through Excel sheets, even if I still fed it into AI. One prompt, that was it. Speaker 5: How about you? Any other use cases that we haven't mentioned for Claude MCP? Speaker 3: For the Claude MCP, I think, I don't know, from what I've noticed is listening copy, keyword research. The truly the biggest thing. Speaker 5: All right. So how do you use the MCP for the listings? Speaker 3: So we get Claude to go to see all the listing information and get a bunch of information about the product. And then it goes through Helium and uses all of Helium's tools to pull the keywords that it thinks are relevant. And then it also checks the ad keyword or ad rank per keyword and include those into the listing copy so that we can not only rank But we can also rank naturally through the keywords that we include on our listing. And it's been really good and it's really cool how we can use Claude to see our keyword rank and maybe if we want to do any manual changes to our listing copy. Speaker 5: Now, I know you're starting to do some stuff with the MCP and Helium 10 ads. But before that, just with the regular Helium 10 ads, what was your flow? Did you set a whole bunch of custom rules and just look at it once a week or what was your flow before? Speaker 2: So, I tried the custom rules, but because I was managing a lot, it became kind of like a jack-of-all-trades, master of nothing. So, I just stuck with a more simple SOP situation and update the ads once every two weeks just based on that. Speaker 5: And so now, with MCP, what are you doing or what are you planning to do with some skills or some custom prompts? Speaker 2: First, I'm building a cloud scale with my current SOP. On how I like my ads to be done with certain limitations and you know, other like considerations as well. And then with that I'm making the cloud skill and then I'll be using that skill along with the MCP connection. So it's going to give me like a cloud recommendation. It's going to give me based on my own SOP recommendation. And then from there, I'll have the gentleman that I hired for my ads on my team now, and he'll be monitoring that to make sure it's all good, Claude doesn't do something crazy. And the workflow is insane now. The time-saving is incredible. It's so much that now I have time for DSP, AMC, and all other stuff that I didn't have time for before. Speaker 5: I like it. Speaker 3: I like it. Speaker 5: Now, you were telling me a story about how we were on an elite one-on-one call and we were talking about Walmart. You want to talk a little bit more about that story? Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I mean, we scheduled a call with Bradley and we're like, You know, what should we do with our products? What's next, right? And like he said, Walmart, even though Walmart doesn't do the numbers, just get the presence there, TikTok shop, make the presence, make the product packaging, retail facing, the UGC, make the listings nice. And who knows, maybe one day in the future when Walmart comes, they want to see something. They want to see something on their platform. And because of that one phone call with Bradley while he was driving, we did everything that he said. Speaker 5: I was on Tesla autopilot. I was not driving. Speaker 3: But because of that, we got right in front with the Walmart buyer and they liked the product and Yeah, hopefully we get a contract out of that, but they really liked it and it looks like it's, you know, it's going to be fruitful. Speaker 2: The buyer saw we had the product in Walmart. It was PPC bid on Walmart and it was organically ranked number one when he searched it up. Bradley also told us to make the packaging retail ready just in case. And he said, generate that UGC from TikTok. We're making no money on TikTok. Well, we got the UGC out of it. We put it on the Amazon listings, which actually directly increased some conversions. And we put it on the Walmart listings. The Walmart buyer was like, he's like, sorry, he's loving it. You know, the whole like atmosphere that we created. And it's like our brand for that product. It's like one or two skews on that. So it's phenomenal. And that's just pushing us to do more now. One phone called Bradley. Speaker 5: That's reason enough to be on the Helium 10 Elite Program, I guess. All right. You talked about some Helium 10 strategies, Walmart strategies. What's just a general Amazon strategy? You think something unique that you guys do is a little bit different than the run-of-the-mill kind of strategies? Speaker 2: So, just strategy on how to increase sales or just anything in general? Speaker 5: Anything. Speaker 2: Okay, I'll give you guys two things, okay? One is when you're getting Vine reviews, if you're registered in Canada, US, and the UK, you can Vine review all three at the same time and get 90 reviews. That is for sure. I don't believe you can do Mexico or other countries, but I know those three definitely work. That's one. And the other thing is, if you put... Okay, so you have your product, your main, your hero image, the thumbnail. And then if you put your product box behind it, and it has to look like a product box or else Amazon's not going to accept it, and if you put the flag of the country that you are selling on, just the flag, not made and not designed, just the flag, that will actually increase conversions. I've A-B tested this on multiple SKUs. It works. Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would also say in addition to that, one thing that people don't really do much is expand to other countries. Like a lot of people stick with one country because that's what they know best, but sometimes if you do just the simplest thing, just open up shop in a new country, don't even change the listing much and just send some product, see if it sells. It might not sell, just send a couple of units, but you might have just Who knows? Doubled your sales just because you opened up product to a new country. Obviously, there's a lot of things with VAT and figuring out VAT, but I think Amazon is making it easier now to deal with that. But no, it's a good way to maybe increase your sales just opening up shop in a new country. Speaker 5: Awesome. All right, guys. I wish you the best of success and have a great rest of Accelerate. Speaker 3: All right. Speaker 5: Thanks a lot. Speaker 2: Thanks so much, man. Speaker 5: Thanks. Thank you. All right. We've got somebody else who's graced us with their presence here at the Helium 10 booth, and this is Todd. Todd, you're based in Illinois? Chicago. Yep. Chicago. Is that where you were born and raised? Speaker 3: Born and raised. Speaker 5: Lakehead Park, Chicago. What's the good pizza? Is it Giordano's? Baccino's, Giordano's, Lou Malnati's. Lou Malnati. That's the one I'm thinking. That's my go-to place right there. That's my go-to place. Guys, you've never had When you see deep dish pizza and dominoes, no, that's not the true thing. You've got to go to Chicago for it. Did you go to school out there too? I went to school at University of Texas for one year. Longhorns. Speaker 4: Had too much fun. Speaker 5: Got back in one year. Speaker 3: Ended up working at a computer store as a stock boy. Speaker 5: I got into IT security and started a business, sold that, and then I started making new products, and that's why I'm here. What year did you discover e-commerce, and was it Amazon or dot-com or what? I'm about as green as green can be. My product is hitting the shelves now, so this is all new to me. How did you discover e-commerce? It sounds like you just discovered it recently. Of course, I know what Amazon is. The product itself is something that someone had a patent on for years and years and years and I thought this is a great product. I know I can do this. The patent is over and I thought let's give this a try. Let's try selling it on Amazon. The company that I'm competing against is selling over a million dollars a year on this particular product with no competitors out there. And so, I'm really excited to get more engaged in working with Amazon, obviously, and then Helium 10 has just been a great tool for me. How did you find this product? Were you looking at expired patents or was it something you saw and then you just happened to see that, oh man, this patent is about to expire? So, the product, it's a thin piece of film that goes between... In Chicago, you have what's called a city sticker. You have to have it in your window. It's like the only city left in the country that requires a city sticker. And so when you put the city sticker on your windshield, it stays there permanently for the year. Then you got a razor blade take it off. So this is a thin piece of film that goes in between the windshield and the sticker. So you just peel it off at the end of the year. Speaker 3: It's a quirky little product. Speaker 5: What's the keyword for that? The keyword would be like I-pass city removal film. I'm just getting acclimated to keywords, so I don't even know. That's interesting. How did you discover that? I mean, you obviously lived there and you knew this was a thing, but is that where it came from or were you looking at something on Amazon and you saw there's only one seller? How did you land on this as like, hey, this is an opportunity? Well, it's not only Chicago, so any parking permit or anything that you have to put on your windshield, This is a product that I knew there were high margins. It's a small little piece of film that goes in between your windshield and a sticker that costs $0.18 to make. So when you're selling something at a higher margin, it just seemed like a good product with a lot of profitability. You haven't even launched on Amazon yet. How have you been using Helium 10? Of course, Helium 10 is made for experienced sellers and huge brands, but new sellers also can leverage it. How have you been leveraging Helium 10? Quite frankly, I interface with Claude and it builds keywords for me. It looks at the competitive landscape. So I don't know all of the modules that you guys use because I basically talk to Claude that talks to you and builds my keywords for me and it's just launching now. How can people find it? Maybe by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be searchable or maybe not, but what can they search for? Unstuck Sticker or Unstuck is the name of the company or the brand. I love it. I love it. All right. I wish you the best of success and maybe next year you'll be coming back. We just interviewed somebody who said she went from $40,000 to $1.4 million. Maybe next year you would have gone from $0 to $1 million. I plan on doing that. Speaker 4: I'll see you next year. Speaker 5: Love it. Sounds good. All right. Back here with our interviews here at Amazon Accelerate. Can you go ahead and introduce yourself? Speaker 4: Hello. My name is Youseong Ha. I'm an e-commerce manager for the brand named Leudorf. Speaker 5: How do you spell that brand? Unknown Speaker: N-E-U-D-O-R-F-F. Speaker 5: What do you guys sell? Speaker 3: We sell pesticide, fungicide, anything related to garden. Speaker 4: And we are the best seller in Germany and Europe. And now we have expanded into the US. Speaker 5: Pesticide, the thing that everybody Doesn't want their listing to ever have that keyword and that's literally what they sell. Speaker 4: Exactly. Speaker 3: Trust me, I used to sell skincare products. Once our product has been flagged as a pesticide, that was a nightmare. But now I sell those. Now, yeah. Speaker 5: Where were you born and raised? Speaker 4: I was born in Korea. Speaker 3: I came to the U.S. Speaker 5: 2012. Where in Korea? Speaker 4: In Busan. Speaker 5: You have the Busan accent. Exactly. Unknown Speaker: You know it. That's the accent that I have. Speaker 5: When you go home, do you take a train to Busan? Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, that's a good question. Speaker 3: Now, there's a plane. Speaker 5: No zombies? Speaker 3: No zombies. Speaker 4: But yeah, fortunately, I just, yeah, no train is a phobia. Speaker 5: Did you go to U.S. for like university or why did you come to U.S.? Unknown Speaker: So yeah, my sister went to army here and then she had a very Fortunate opportunity to be a citizen here. And she helped me immigrate to the US. And also, yeah, for here, I studied financial economics. And we're at in Rutgers in New Jersey. Speaker 5: Oh, Rutgers. What's the what's the mascot Rutger? Oh, my goodness. What is the mascot there? Speaker 3: I haven't forgot. Speaker 5: No school spirit at all. No school spirit at all. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Yeah. Don't invite him to the reunion party. Speaker 3: I'm loyal. Speaker 5: Okay. So then, when did you get into e-commerce? Speaker 4: So it was before COVID in 2017-18. I say, 언제? Speaker 5: When? Yeah, when. Speaker 4: 언제? That's exactly right. 2018 was the first year that I had an experience with Amazon. Speaker 3: We're selling skincare products. Speaker 5: Before K-Beauty and skincare was so big, you were a little bit early to it. Unknown Speaker: We sold pimple patch products. Before that, to treat pimple, it was all about putting a tape over it or putting essential oil over it. But with all the K-Beauty coming in, pimple patch dominated that market and so on. And I was lucky enough to see it from the start and how saturated the market became later on. Speaker 5: Now, how in the world did you land on pesticides then to switch to that? Speaker 4: Exactly. So, I wanted to sell the product that has a proven record of effectiveness and then that has high bar of a standard. Speaker 3: The pesticide is heavily regulated by EPA and then I wanted to sell the product that has kind of a high standard. To for entry, then, and yeah, and then a company called Neudorf, the company that I work for, wanted to I find someone who's not only knowing how to sell on Amazon, but really understand the business around Amazon business, what's required, what kind of operation procedure there needs to be, that kind of stuff. I also am a project manager in the background, so they wanted to work with me and I wanted to work with them to begin selling pesticides in the U.S. Speaker 5: What's the advantage? We all know the disadvantage of selling pesticide. You've got to be super careful. You probably have had listings suspended that were okay, and then you have to get it re-enabled. What's the advantage of selling such a difficult product like that? Unknown Speaker: The competition is of course, compared to skincare industry, it's pretty low, you know, comparably. Therefore, it is really easy to find the market gap in the market. What kind of function is missing? What kind of efficacy data that needs to be acquired? To sell this product, to fill that gap. So it is very interesting to see the market, how each customer, to figure out what kind of needs customer wants, that kind of stuff. So which is huge difference that this particular market has over different industry, I guess. Speaker 5: What was your biggest years of sales, growth sales for that company, or is this year, your projected sales, is it going to be the biggest year and what would it be? Speaker 4: Yes, seven figures next year. It's going to be third year into the business. Speaker 3: It's going to be very successful year that we're projecting because we're launching seven to 10 more products, not only in the US, but also in Canada. Speaker 4: I think it's going to be very successful. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 5: How long have you been using Helium 10 and what's like your main use for the tools? Speaker 4: Great. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 4: Since 2018, the second year into Amazon business. Speaker 3: First of all, I started using Helium 10 for market research purpose to see what kind of competitor there are, what kind of review that our competitor is getting, what kind of reaction that they have, that kind of stuff. That's how I started it. Helium 10 is the tool that if a brand wants to launch on Amazon, they have access to Helium 10 even before launching on Amazon. That's why I wanted to use Helium 10 due to the best. Speaker 4: Data that you guys have, which I'm a huge fan of. Speaker 5: Have you started using our MCP or any of our AI tools yet? Unknown Speaker: Not yet. I'm excited about it. Speaker 5: What is a unique strategy you think you guys do? It could be Helium 10 related, it could be advertising related, it could be whatever related. Something unique that you guys do that you can share with the audience that is a reason why you guys have been so successful. Speaker 4: So I think the reason that we Can become successful is coming back to basic, which is becoming kind of a unique. During this, all the transitioning face with all the AI, with all the star bangled stuff that's happening. So I think you have to, even through this phase, you have to understand the basic, what kind of customer, what kind of function customer needs, what customer wants, that kind of stuff to really offer something valuable to customer is something that you should definitely focus on, even in this space of AI. Speaker 5: Give an example of how you did that for one of your product launches. Speaker 4: For instance, one of our products is Outdoor Ant Killer. Speaker 5: I need that for my house. Unknown Speaker: It kills ants. However, we didn't want to launch just mere me-too products. We wanted to launch something that really fills the gap to what customers really want. For instance, there's no product that has There's much of efficacy towards ants, but also that's considered organic products. And we were one of the first people launching that kind of product and fill that gap. And then that's why I think the coming back to basic, figuring out what customer wants, and then filling that gap are the most important stuff. Speaker 5: I like it. All right. Any quick message in Korean for our Korean selling community out there? Speaker 4: 안녕하세요. Speaker 3: Yeah, you can do it too. Speaker 5: 파이팅! Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Speaker 5: All right. Awesome. Thank you. All right. We are back here at the Helium 10 booth and we've got a couple of brothers here. Brothers from the same mother. I should say not brothers from another mother. Can you introduce yourself and where are you guys from? Speaker 3: Ben, Louisiana. Yep. Speaker 2: Josh, Louisiana. Speaker 5: Did you guys go to school out there, like LSU or something like that? Speaker 3: Louisiana Tech. Speaker 5: Louisiana Tech. You're not supposed to say LSU if they want to. Unknown Speaker: Bad week for LSU. Speaker 2: Bad week. Speaker 5: What's the mascot there? Speaker 3: Bulldogs. Bulldogs. Speaker 5: Okay. Did you go there too? Speaker 3: I did. Speaker 5: I did. Yep. Are you guys second generation? Second, third, fourth generations. So four generations have gone to that university? Speaker 2: Yes. Unknown Speaker: We applied for Harvard, didn't get in, and then so we just went to Louisiana Tech. Speaker 5: That's a good backup plan there. What did you guys major in? Speaker 3: Hospital administration. Speaker 5: Marketing. And then when did you guys get into e-commerce? Unknown Speaker: 2012. Started with eBay. Then went 2015 to Amazon. Speaker 5: I know your model is a little bit different than others. Did you ever have your own brands on Amazon or you've always been doing this like partnerships with existing brands? Unknown Speaker: We have had our own brands on Amazon. We still have a few of our own brands, but for the most part, it's partnerships with larger manufacturers. Speaker 5: How does that work and how did you guys even have the idea to go for that model? Unknown Speaker: There's lots of problems out there and there's lots of solutions and you just have to be able to solve problems for people. A lot of manufacturers like to make money shipping full truckloads to Walmart, Home Depot, whoever it may be. And so working with them to handle their website, order fulfillment, smaller orders, we've had a lot of success with that. Speaker 5: How long have you guys been using Helium 10? Since about 2016, 17. Yep. What's the main tools that you guys have been using? Unknown Speaker: Refund Genie for sure. And then he uses the keyword search for launching campaigns and helping out our partners. Speaker 3: Cerebro and then just trying to kind of look at what competitors are doing and try to be better. Speaker 5: What are you going to end this year's sales in approximately? What do you think you'll hit? And is this your best year that you've had? Unknown Speaker: Not best year total, but most profitable. Yeah, so we really, you got to look at the back end with all the fees and all the overhead that you have as a company and you've got to work on that. Revenue is a great number. Profits better. And so that's what we focus on. Speaker 5: As far as revenue goes, eight figures about? Speaker 3: Yes, eight figures. Speaker 5: He's counting the zeros right now. Speaker 3: Yeah, between 20 and 30 million. Speaker 5: And then so without giving too much of your secret sauce, I mean, not anybody can just scale up. So you guys have to have something that you're doing a little bit differently or that you think it gives you an advantage over others. What's something that you guys are doing that you think is different than, maybe not everybody, but at least that's somewhat unique? Unknown Speaker: Besides following in your footsteps. Speaker 5: Hopefully more people are doing that. Speaker 2: Something that we're doing different that may be a little unique, man, it seems like doing what we say we're going to do and representing brands really well, building trust with brands. Speaker 5: What about like your on Amazon strategy, like the way you do something in advertising or the way you set up a listing or maybe the way you launch a product? What there do you think might be unique? Unknown Speaker: Well, you want to make sure you have the ANON algorithm covered. You want to make sure that you have all of your images, all of your titles, descriptions, A plus content. Enough product in the right places at the right time in order to convert and you also might help you to have good shipping rates too on your own, not just relying solely on FBA. Speaker 5: So you do a lot of FBM as well? 50-50. Are you doing like a seller fulfilled prime or whatever that's called or is it just a regular? Unknown Speaker: Once they changed the rules in 2021 where you had to We hit different metrics. We shut that down and now we're just on premium shipping. With shipping it on time and as fast as you can, it puts you above other sellers because Amazon is manipulating the ship times, handling times in the background, but they can see if you do a good job. They'll put your promised delivery date way lower than everybody else and that's how you beat people. Speaker 5: I tell everybody you should always have two different, I mean, one listing, but you should always have a FBA and FBM at the same time for the people who don't have Prime. But it sounds like maybe that's not a 50-50 split. That's like a 95-5 split or something. So for you to have a 50-50 split means that you must have a lot of ASINs that are just FBM. So what's the reasoning behind that? Is it because it's oversized or the competition are all FBM or why did you guys choose that? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, you can create Endless UPCs. As long as you're working with the manufacturer and using manufacturer issued UPCs, you can create as many virtual bundles as you want to out of your own inventory and then pick, pack, and ship to those bundles. Speaker 5: Ah, so it allows you to do the bundling without having to invest in like 50 different SKUs and then each of those send like 200 units to Amazon. You can just keep smaller amounts and then handle that. Speaker 3: Yes, correct. Speaker 5: I like that strategy. All right. I wish you guys the best of success in the future. All right. Next department here. Let's go ahead and let him introduce it. What's your name and what department do you work at at Amazon? Speaker 4: I'm Sugam. I work in the global selling team in Middle East. What we do is we speak to successful brands in other Amazon locales and help them succeed in the Middle East. Speaker 5: And when we say Middle East, which countries are involved? I know UAE, KSA, Saudi Arabia. Is there any others or just those two? Speaker 4: So we're currently focusing on UAE and Saudi Arabia only. We have plans to others, but not yet. Speaker 5: Why is that region a good opportunity for Amazon brands who are selling right now in other places? Speaker 4: So a couple of points. Look, we're about a 45 million population, purchasing power parity of much higher than Europe per capita. We're already a $43 billion e-commerce industry growing much faster than the West. And Amazon is the leader in e-commerce in these regions. So it makes a lot of sense for brands already versed with FBA to come in and scale in the Middle East. Speaker 5: What kind of incentives and programs do you have for people who aren't selling their larger brands and they're like, hey, what do I have? What do you guys have to offer me if I go into this region? Speaker 4: All right. So before I get into what we have to offer, what you need to know is the UAE and KSAR are really easy to enter as a market. The compliance requirements are much lower. You just need to set up a VAT license in both markets. It takes about two weeks, costs a couple hundred dollars, but we do for Top brands have significant incentives. We'll cover the cost of freight, give them great offers on referral fees, zero storage fees, free account management, 50% discount on your referral fees, 50% cashback on ad spends for your first year, just to help them experience the market and succeed. And once they get in, we know they're going to last. Speaker 5: All right. If one of the brands out there wants to get more information, what should they search for or go to in Seller Central to get more information on how to expand to Middle East? Speaker 4: All right. The best way to do that is reach out to us via email. We have an email ID USA2MENA, all in letters, USA2MENA at Amazon.com. That's the best way to reach us. Speaker 5: All right. Sounds good. Guys, if you aren't selling there yet, it's time to get started. Speaker 4: See you soon.