Amazon FBA Strategies for 2021 With Amazon Expert Kevin King | Kevin King | Ep. 159

Amazon FBA Strategies for 2021 With Amazon Expert Kevin King | Kevin King | Ep. 159 00:00:01 Hey everyone, it's Norm Farrar aka the beard guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, the Amazon FBA and e-commerce podcast. Okay, so today we're gonna be talking about anything that's going on in Amazon for June and July. Maybe we'll even get into what the heck happened on Prime Day. Was it a good one? Was it a bad one? Kind of everything in between. But my guest today, always love having our guests on. He is, actually I didn't know this, but he was ranked one of the top 40 direct marketers by Target Magazine. He's also been, get this, featured on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He's been on Entertainment Tonight. He's been featured in USA Today. Also in the Wall Street Journal, man, the guy does everything. 00:01:00 And also he's the king of Amazon. People know him for Freedom Ticket, Helium 10 Elite Mastermind. And of course, I'm going to say it right this time, the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, which is coming up in September. So I don't even have to introduce him. It's Kevin King, and I can't wait to talk to him. All right, but before we get started, I just want to give a big thank you out to our sponsor, Global Wired Advisors, a leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process. For more information, please contact Chris and his team over at globalwiredadvisors. com. Where's Kelsey? Hello. Hello. Hey. How's it going? I'm doing pretty good. It's a very sad day in the daddy world. And why is that? You're going back to Toronto. 00:01:51 You're not going to, you could stay a few days longer. I could, but I think I'd never leave if, if it was up to you. So it's off, off today. And yeah. Very sad day. Very, very sad. Welcome everyone, welcome to the show. If you haven't already, please smash those like buttons. Also, if you're looking for more episodes or any daily highlights, we can go over to our YouTube page, Norman Farrar. That's where the whole catalog is there. So you can enjoy all of the different Kevin King episodes we have. I think he's, it must be at least eight or nine episodes now. Welcome Amar, Simon. Beardos, that's a good one. Yep. Hey beardos, Dr. Kaz. We've got some guys from Belgium today, I believe. That must be Andrew. Is that Andrew? 00:02:42 Yeah, it's gotta be. And yeah, welcome everyone. Enjoy the show. If you have any questions, just put them over in the comment sections. We'll try to get to as many as we can, just depending on time. And we also have a couple of mugs that we're going to be giving away today. So stay tuned for that. And if you guys are interested in more beard, we can go. You can check out our paid membership program over on our Patreon page. I'll leave the link in the comment section. But if you want guest lessons, small group AMAs with Norm, free services, we got exclusive deals, custom merch, it's all over there. But yeah, that's it for me. Welcome Theo and Belmark. It's good to see you guys. And DK Kim, Roz. 00:03:28 It's awesome to see our beer nation here. And I hope you guys enjoy the show. All right. And the only other thing I have to say is that if this is going to be a good episode, if you know anybody who'd take advantage of learning what's happening, the trends in Amazon right now, make sure you ping them and get them onto the podcast live to get these questions answered. You know, it's always great to have Kevin on-he's always probably every time he comes on, it's the largest audience that we have. So make sure you come on. We're going to try to get all the questions. Do you have any questions? Throw them over in the comments section. And I think it's about that time. All right. And welcome, Darwin-great to see you. 00:04:09 Oh, Darwin's back-great. All right. So sit back, relax, grab that cup of coffee. Where is the man, the myth, the legend? Oh, oh, just a sec. Don't spit it out. Yeah, we got it. Hey, very good. Fashionable, Kevin. That's right. That's right. I got my good old coffee mug I got at the garage sale the other day. At the garage? Was it filled with M&Ms? It was, actually. It was filled with coffee. Peanut M&M's. Very good. Last time, yeah, I stumbled over your event. You know, made a mistake a couple of times. It's not billionaire. But anyway, BDSS, it's coming up in September. I want to talk about this just for a second. We'll get on. I'm not getting anything from this. 00:05:01 I just know that when anybody asks me about the top events to come to mind, one is definitely you. And it is an incredible. Who's my competition? Who's your competition? Well, for buffet, it's definitely Ed Rosenberg. But look, content. And you sent out, I saw a post the other day, and I just wanted you to talk about it briefly. The average dollar amount per month, revenue-wise, the average seller has in your event. So it was some incredible amount. Yeah, I posted that. I don't have it off the top of my head, but the last one was about $10 million. And then the last one was a virtual one. And the last in-person one was about seven, I believe. The first one was about three and a half or four, somewhere in that neighborhood. 00:06:01 But this one, so far, it's limited to 100 people. And with the sponsors and the speakers and stuff, there's about 140 total people there. But right now, with what's signed up, we already have close to $3 billion in the room. Wow. And there's about 30 seats left. I think there's about 40 right now. So we're about 60% sold out. A lot of people wait until August and September, but just to see how the COVID stuff is or whatever, but it's going to sell out. Right. And we're going to share that. I think Kelsey already did it. If you're looking for an event, the one event to go to in this year. Prosper is a great gathering point for networking. But if you want some really solid content and actionable items, get over to Kevin's network with these huge sellers. 00:06:51 I mean, it's great, uh, last time we the last time I went there, I haven't been there for a little while, but um, you remember, I just remember having that huge cigar night out on the patio where we had about 16 people, and about 13 of the 16 were throwing up because the next day, because of the cigars they never smoked before. Yeah, that was our first time there; we have it, I think, we have a photo like 16 people in this huge uh balcony. That was crazy. Yeah, that was, yeah, we were like, we had some really nice cigars. Norm and I had gone and gotten some really, you know, $30, $40 cigars or something, and we had a stash of them, and all these people had never smoked before. 00:07:29 You don't want to give them a $40 cigar because a lot of times, you know, they might puff a time or two, and then they're like, oh, I don't like this, and they just basically waste a cigar. And so I was like, we're digging around, like, which one are the older ones in here? They're flaking a little bit. Where can we find the white owls? Here, try this one. Oh, yeah. But no, that was fun. We'll have to do that again on this one on maybe the night of the fun day. But this one's even more jam-packed. I mean, each one gets better and better. I know you weren't at the second one. This is the fourth one. You weren't at the second one. The third one was virtual. 00:08:07 The fun day in the middle is just a crazy day the way we do it. The networking and the content is no fluff zone. You go to some events and it's a bunch of jibber-jabber, a bunch of corporate speak, a bunch of stuff that just puts you to sleep. But everybody at this event, all the speakers, I hand-select them. I'm like, you've got to bring it. I'm like cracking the whip. Behind, I'm like, no, that's not good enough, man. Yeah, and no pitching either, right? Yeah, no pitching well, the sponsors can pitch um, we're sponsoring but the speakers uh cannot pitch um uh anything uh and they gotta bring it, and this time it's 35 minutes for each speaker, there's 29 speeches, 29 talks uh and uh that's 35 minutes uh for each speaker so they gotta get straight to the points no spending the first 15 minutes telling your life story uh it's like get straight to the point, and there's a $5,000 cash prize for the top speaker. 00:09:06 So it gets really competitive. $2,500 cash for the Ninja Tips. At the last virtual contest, we had about 140 Ninja Tips submitted, which was awesome. I still go back and look through those. I'm like, oh, shoot, I need to do this. I need to do that. Andre says it should be in Cartagena. Cartagena would be great. I've been to Cartagena about 17, 18 times. My wife actually went to law school in Cartagena. So I'm very familiar with Cartagena. That's actually where Andres, where I actually got married, got married in Cartagena. So very familiar with it. That would be cool. You actually rebuilt the city to have that wedding of yours. Yeah, we have the equivalent of the Colombian TMZ. I don't know what it's called. 00:09:52 I actually wanted to pay to come and film it and stuff. That's crazy from what I hear. All right, so look, there's, probably the big question on everybody's mind right now is Prime Day. Expectations of Prime Day were met. What have you been hearing? I've heard a few different things. Well, see, the thing about Prime Day to me is I think it's overhyped. I think it's a great thing for the consumer and it's a great marketing tool for Amazon and Walmart and all the other Best Buy and all the other people that kind of create their own little sales day. It's great for that. But from a seller's point of view, I think it's way overhyped. You know, people before were always asking like in the Freedom Ticket, like, what do I do to get ready for Prime Day? 00:10:35 What do I do to get ready? You see blog posts, eight things you need to get ready for Prime Day. It's bullshit. All you need to do is do the same thing you should be already doing. And the only thing you need to make sure is that you have maybe some extra inventory. Make sure you're stocked up either in your 3PL. Uh, or and or Amazon's the most you can, you know some people it hurt them this year because of some of the inventory limits they couldn't have enough, but that's where you have a 3PL make sure you have stock maybe a little extra stock and that's it, I mean otherwise your listing should be already optimized, your PPC should be optimized, you should not spend more on PPC, you should not be raising your bids, um in my opinion you should just be doing what you've always done and just enjoy a nice day of extra sales, you know. 00:11:21 Prime Day is one day, I mean it's it's nothing compared to the to the fourth quarter if you haven't been selling on Amazon from Thanksgiving or mid-November really uh but especially Thanksgiving onwards uh till early January every day is a Prime Day, every single day is almost as good as Prime is, a really good day so I think it's overhyped um and uh so that's this year, you know I did see a little bit of a bump on on our accounts. But it wasn't anything to get super excited about. And if you've got a lightning deal or Deal of the Day and you've got good positioning, you can crush it. You can knock it out of the park in those days. 00:11:58 And, but some people were like, 'You know, I saw a lot of people saying,' Should I reduce my prices? They're like, 'No, you don't; don't unless you've got, unless you want to get rid of something, take advantage of extra traffic because you've got some excess stock or you're trying to blow something out, then lower your price maybe. But on your best sellers, why lower your price? Because your PPC costs are probably going to be higher. There's no point. Some people create the little graphics, put the little things, and I just think it's kind of a waste of time to do it. Unless you've got a deal. Unless you've got a really prominent position in a deal. So Prime Day back in 2016, 17, 18, that's a different story. 00:12:39 You know, if I were going into Prime Day and I wanted to get a one of the deals of the day or a lightning deal or uh just I would lower my price back then, but now I mean I remember Tim and I did a Legion live and that's exactly what you're saying verbatim was what we were saying is just that like don't change your listing, don't go crazy with it um especially when you hear Amazon talking about increasing your bids, you know on on PPC we're saying no don't do that lower your bids like at the beginning and maybe bring them back up later on so you could take advantage like Brian Johnson taught me uh what I'll just call it a cascading campaign very good just a second there, there we go dueling cups but uh yeah a lot of people uh 00:13:36 bite into the hype and they think that that uh you know they're gonna have this huge bump and it just doesn't happen I didn't see it last time I saw a bit of a bump in some accounts this time uh but where there was a difference which this is the first year for it, Target. walmart all these retailers are now jumping on the bandwagon to try to take a bit of market share away yeah i mean everybody's trying i mean holidays in general are great times to do promotions whether it's a prime day or anything i mean it's a it's a good excuse to do a promotion it's always worked in the old in 00:14:12 the old direct mail days when i was doing catalogs through the mail and i still do some but when i was heavily catalogs and brochures through the mail you would always try to time things to arrive uh either right before or right after a holiday because those are actually good times and especially and when i was doing Email marketing, like 10-15 years ago, my up to my own site not to Amazon I would always come up with something around a holiday, you know. This Fourth of July Fourth of July sale, see it in the TV ads and everything all over the states too, so our Memorial Day weekend sale on, you know. All the mattress companies or the car dealers do this and those are great times to do it um to do a sale um, so that's why Target and all these other people are jumping on the Amazon thing like we don't want to miss out, you know let's capture our own little thing here and that's why they're doing it too. 00:15:04 I mean, Amazon, what they do is 11 billion, I think they said, something like that. Something like that, yeah. Which is nothing to shake a stick at. That's a lot of money in a single day. But also, remember, that's spread out. A lot of those people would have bought a week before. They would have bought yesterday or the day after or the day before. So most people see a drop the day after Prime Day too. So those sales are – it's a nice $11 million day, but it's kind of a – it's it a lot of those sales would have happened anyway, uh, at another time. I'd like to ask any of the listeners, you know, how they position themselves: did you increase your price, did you keep it the same, did you do anything differently? 00:15:47 Um, and what were your results? Did you see upticks, down ticks, was it sideways? Just let us know; I'm curious to see what what you have to say about that. Uh, I just got off the phone before I came on with one of my clients having a real problem with inventory. Inventory strategy. This new inventory strategy. We talked about it last time, you were on. They can't get their best sellers into Amazon quick enough. They just can't. Any tricks, tips that you can give for this? No, I don't know a specific on that, other than taking slow-moving stuff out. I think that Bradley from Helium 10 posted something. I think he posted it on Facebook yesterday. 00:16:31 This is probably not something you should do um, but he actually I think uh figured out if you go in and create a removal order or you create a a seller fulfilled order and put it on hold um, it actually will allow you to send those units in so like if you uh, you know, I don't know, go and say you need to ship an extra hundred units in or something, go and create a uh, a seller, a fulfilled order, uh, and, and then put it on hold, um, you know, for a hundred units, and then go back and cancel it later. But it'll let you adjust the, uh, the, the restriction allows you to send some more in and then go back and cancel it. Now that's probably something Amazon's not heavy. 00:17:13 Uh, and he says this too in his post, like, look, you know, I don't know that I'd be doing this, but he just discovered that. Uh, he said this, you know, might get you, they might not like this. So he's not saying do this, but. It appeared that, uh, that worked. Um, but that's a loophole that'll probably get closed very quickly. Yeah. Um, but, um, yeah, so I, I don't, uh, I don't have any, you know, other than trying to, you know, write them and trying, or if you have an, uh, an internal person at Amazon, um, and trying to get them, I mean, that's worked for me in the past, worked last year when I had restrictions that was on more hazardous goods type of, so they were able to get it raised for me. 00:17:53 Um, I don't have an answer on that. I mean, the other way I know some people have done it is they've considered opening second accounts. They're spinning off part of their business and saying, look, legitimately splitting off part of their business and setting up a whole other company and having a second account. And I don't know that Amazon's been like that either. But I know it's costing them. I mean, the sellers are getting hit on all levels right now. Way increased shipping from China. If you're shipping out or anywhere in Asia, if you're shipping out of Asia, double or triple the costs on your freight. And then you're not able to send in good quantities into Amazon anymore. You know, you can't, you might not be able to send a pallet economically. 00:18:36 That might've cost you a few hundred bucks to send in. Now you guys send in those small little shipments. You got labor pick and pack charges more often, get extra labor charges. It's killing a lot of people and really squeezing the margins. And then on top of that increased PPC costs. So it's becoming even more and more important to really source very, very well to be able to absorb those hits. Now, a lot of people don't have those margins to do that. You know, they're buying a product for $5 and selling it for $12. 99 or something, and you can't do that. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens. Another question I get a lot is people saying, 'You know, what do you think is going to happen with the pricing on Amazon? 00:19:16 Do you think people are going to be raising their prices?' because of all these additional costs. And I say, 'Yeah, I think so.' You got people that still have their inventory that they bought at lower prices. They got it in to Amazon or they got it over the, you know, they came in in January or something before things started getting really crazy. So they can still sell at the old prices. But come this fall, I think you're going to have to, people are going to have to raise their prices or they're just going to say, you know, heck with it. I don't want to lose my position. I'm just going to sell at a loss. But that can only go for so long. So prices are going to have to rise. 00:19:52 And I think Amazon is going to have to make some changes on this inventory thing, especially for established sellers. And part of the reason they're doing it, I've heard, is not so much that their warehouses are just stuffed to the brim with extra stuff. Part of it's a labor issue. They can't hire people. They've grown so fast, they can't hire enough people to maintain it. So that's another reason: people aren't going to work and they can't get enough people in their warehouses. So that's part of the problem as well. It's not just we're overstocked with slow-moving stuff. So I don't know what the solution may be. A lot of the supplements, at least in Texas and some states where the government's been paying a lot of workers in the US to sit on their ass; they're making more sitting on their ass. 00:20:42 um you know they can go get a here in texas i have a buddy last year you know he was making i don't know 30 30 000 a year or something his job 30 35 000 a year working his job and he was making more than that on unemployment because the state of texas was giving him uh was it 300 a week i think and then the u . The government was giving him another um 600 a week or whatever the number was, it added up to like four thousand dollars a month I don't remember exact deal um and it was a coronavirus uh supplement or whatever for for those for unemployment and he 00:21:16 didn't really have to go and he had to apply for three jobs a week or something and I know people that were going out and applying for one job they would be offered the job and given the job and they just never show up and I guess I'm just going to stay home so a lot of that's starting to expire for some uh some people so maybe the workforce they'll be more motivated to go back to work And that'll help Amazon and help some of this problem, and they'll be able to open this back up. I'm not sure, but we're coming into the fourth quarter where things are just going to get worse pretty soon. So it's a problem. And then, you know, the answer is go to FBM, but that hurts you on your conversions. 00:21:55 And for most people, FBM costs a lot more on the fulfillment side. And even once you factor in the cost to ship it into Amazon, you know, from your 3PL into Amazon and Amazon to do it, for you just to ship it directly bypass the middle going into Amazon; still oftentimes, unless it's a small lightweight thing they can go first class mail, you know, you sell them jewelry or something really lightweight, um, it usually costs a lot more, and so that's squeezing the margins too, so it's it's tough right now, um, yeah I was looking in a couple of groups. I'm not sure if it was the Helium 10 group. It was one of the groups and somebody posted, oh, last year my container was between $3,500 and $4,500, 40-foot container. 00:22:40 This, I just got a quote of $24,000. Is this real? And it was, well, I haven't gotten quotes quite that high, but they've been up there. I'm saying 12 to 15, 000. Yep, that's right. In around 24 hours, that's pretty high, and I'm seeing delays and we have something right now yeah supposed to be in on the 20th for a new product launch for our uh one of our dog products and it's still not here uh and so um yeah there's not only that there's big delays all over the place too. And if you're shipping inland, a lot of these shippers don't want to take your don't want take your shipment because it's tying up containers. 00:23:24 So you have your shipping as the final destination say uh Oklahoma City or something that's where your 3PO is that container's got to get offloaded in Long Beach and go all the way to Oklahoma City I'll get unloaded then come back and a lot of shippers aren't wanting to do that. They want you to final destinations Long Beach unload it there and put it on some other truck uh and and get it over to Oklahoma City or wherever, wherever you're sending it so that that's a problem too. There's I know they're making more containers in China right now, and there's several more ships in the shipyards, container ships being built. But I saw something the other day, it's 2023, 2024, before a lot of this capacity comes online. 00:24:03 So, yeah, I mean, the other thing is start trying to look to source more locally. You know, if you can sort, switch to Central America or the U. S. even in some cases. The U. S. is hard on small quantities, though. Most people in the U. S., you call them and say, 'I want to make $500 or something or $1,000 or something.' They won't even return your phone call. But you can get that, some items in Latin America maybe, Mexico stuff, if your product is suited to that and you're selling in the U.S. market. Or if you're in Europe, looking at some of the other more eastern countries to see, like Turkey and some of those places, see if you can get something that's not going to cost so much to ship over. 00:24:45 right and you know size weight on like the dimensions uh so yeah you just gotta do a little bit more digging uh what was the uh oh i forget what i was gonna say it was about uh logistics anyways you were talking about sourcing a little bit earlier or you know selling on amazon prices going up one of the main areas that you can um One of the main areas that you can make up for these losses, proper sourcing. If you have a sourcing agent that can go up to bat, negotiate, if you're using the proper currency. But even with that norm, the cost of materials is going up. It depends on what's in your product. You've got the cost of steel, the cost of wood, the cost of some fabrics. 00:25:34 Just material costs are going up too. But you're right. I've always said the money is made in the sourcing, not in the selling. Um, but you're absolutely right; but even there it's a bit of a struggle uh with with some of the factories with labor issues and and raw material issues. The other part to this too is also in the perceived value, so you know being able to package and or repackage what you're doing to bring it up. It's interesting what you said about having the two different accounts because it is risky, right? You're not allowed to sell the same product. I would not sell the same product. I would split your brands. I mean, if you've got a single brand, it's kind of hard to do. 00:26:19 But if you've got multiple brands, if you've got a dog brand and you've got a baby brand, and right now they're in the same account, you might consider splitting those. Yes. putting the baby brand in his own account and keeping the dog brand in the current one or whichever way you want to do it. That's a little bit of work and it takes a little bit of time and a little bit of mucking around to move things and get things sorted. But that could be an answer. But by the time you do that, it might take you a couple months to sort that all out. Maybe Amazon's going to make a change and it was all for nothing too. So you never know. 00:26:54 Well, also when you talk about splitting it like that, you're also making it a better way for you to hand over. It's more of a turnkey operation when somebody wants to buy your business, right? So if you're looking long term. It depends on the buyer. Most buyers, if you're selling to an aggregator, they don't care. They're not buying your business. Right. The vast majority of these aggregators are just buying their ASINs and they're oftentimes cherry picking them. But if you're a strategic buyer, if you're selling to a strategic buyer, then yeah that does make it easier right? So I'm an aggregator, right? So if they're buying, if they're buying the brand and you already separate it and let's say it's XYZ Pet Products and XYZ Soap Products, you know it just makes it easier if you got it already set up. 00:27:48 But anyways, yeah, there's a lot to bring into or think about right now going into your Amazon business. All right, let's go to the next topic. New, anything new, trending, exciting, anything going on in Amazon or other platforms? There's some new features. It's in beta right now, but the new feature on Amazon where you can actually collect email addresses and phone numbers. I like it. And then message them out. What's it called? Brand engagement. That actually could be a pretty powerful thing once some of the books get worked out of that. I can see that for product launches and for promotions and stuff. That could be really good. Yeah, what I wasn't clear on, I couldn't find it anywhere. 00:28:40 Uh, so what you do with this basically is it's under your brand, um category you click on it says brand engagement and you can put an ASIN in, you can create a title, you could select a week that you wanted to go out and you can, um, have an offer like you could say oh new new product launch whatever it is and when you hit the submit Amazon sends it out but I'm not sure who it's sending out to, is it sending out to your followers, yeah, you gotta put you what we just covered this in the Helium 10 Elite yesterday. I showed that in one of my Ninja tricks in the Helium 10 Elite presentation yesterday. You basically got to sign up for the program. 00:29:21 It's in beta, so it doesn't show up in everybody. You have to be brand registered. From what I can tell, it's also tied to Amazon Posts. I'm not 100% sure if you actually have to do some Amazon Posts for it, but that's where a lot of the followers are coming from. Um, what it'll do is once you post, put a two, a couple of posts out, um, a little follow button will show up on your storefront. Um, there's a little follow button that will actually show up on the, on the navigation of your storefront and you can direct people there. I'd be sure to hit follow or be sure to go and follow us or you can create a little graphic or whatever. 00:29:57 And anybody that does that, that follows you on your storefront, um, will actually be on that list. So it's not all your customers, but it's the ones that you do that. I showed a screenshot of a company that I'm not exactly sure how they're doing it, but they have a full page on their storefront. Basically, it says sign up for our list. This is on their Amazon storefront. Sign up for our SMS list to get notified about this and this and this, or sign up for our email. I've never seen it. Yeah. It's called The Drop, I think. The Drop, and it might be tied to an Amazon Live or something. I was trying to figure out how the heck they did it. Or they might be a vendor account. 00:30:40 But, yeah, they have a full page, and they're promoting it on their actual listings. And go follow us. Click here, and it takes them right to that page to enter their email address and their phone number. So if that keeps going, that beta keeps getting pushed out and they keep refining that, that could be very, very powerful. And I just saw, too, I think Leron just posted something yesterday where now you can actually contact your one, two, and three-star reviews. Oh, Sharon just posted. What did she say here, Kels? She said Amazon also added the ability to contact reviewers who left a bad review under the customer reviews tabs in the brand dashboard and allow brand owners to contact the reviewer. Yeah, I think it's a template. 00:31:26 I think you can't just write whatever you want in there. I haven't tried it, but my understanding is they've got some basic templates where you can contact them. But that's good, too. That's a good thing. I know Amazon, they're trying. I mean, it's a big company, and sometimes you think they're all against us. But I spoke to my guy yesterday that helped us with the germ shark, with the PPE stuff that we did. You know he thought we made all this money and uh, and a few weeks ago I told him no, we actually lost over a million dollars on that, uh. He's like, 'No way, I thought you; I was like, 'No, we 00:32:03 got suspended 13 times um, you know, for, for, and go through the same thing said yeah it was ridiculous and he got he said it was really frustrating that you went through all the way up to Amazon legal and we did a whole case study this in the last billion-dollar seller summit um, Steve and I showed uh everything um but uh. He's like, 'Yeah, we went all the way up to Amazon Legal. You were approved. You're in the COVID story. This and this. Still, the algorithm kept just taking you down. And in fact, two weeks ago, we went down again on one of the products, and then he got it back up. And two days ago, it went down again. Same reason. Restricted product, not allowed to sell this on Amazon. 00:32:41 We've gone through the rigmarole, shown the FDA, shown everything all the way up to Amazon Legal. i just said the hell with it and we had 60 units i think left i said dispose of them screw it we're not we're closing this out but he said that they're actually having meetings uh and he's using us as a as one of the examples in some of these meetings like look we got to fix this problem this is not right for for the system that's not to be able to flip a switch this guy's been approved he's he's fine leave him the hell alone and so they're they're actually working internally they're trying to see how they can fix this but the problem like he said is 00:33:17 it this department talks to that department and this partner does this and it's not all cohesive and so it's a challenge and it's not like you're that idiot in uh texas not you that idiot in texas who had like 70 000 of ppe that was overcharging yeah like pro scout you've got a legit brand a high quality legit brand and man like i when you showed me the product and what you sent me a few of the samples they were awesome i i i loved what you had you should have been able to take off with that but man i feel so bad that you get yanked down forty thousand dollars a day to a couple hundred dollars a day yeah so i okay here's a question on that what are you doing You've got a great product, probably one of the best in the market. 00:34:09 What are you doing? Are you going off Amazon? How are you salvaging this? Bankrupting. Get out of here. No, we're bankrupting it. I've lost six figures on it. We had some other investors that lost a lot more than me. We had $800,000 at cost of our inventory that's completely being donated. 100% free. Anybody will take it. And we're having trouble getting people to take it, actually. So we're working with Convoy of Hope, which works with Nike and Home Depot and stuff. They've taken – they just came and took a trailer load full. But we have 460 pallets in our 3PL of stuff that we have to get rid of. We have another religious group in Seattle. Our warehouse is just south of Seattle, and we have a religious group there that just took a bunch more from us. 00:34:59 We're talking with the government of Ethiopia right now to actually come and take some of it off our hands, just pay the shipping. We're not going to pay the shipping because the freight will kill us too; we're literally donating it. We had 10,000 units of one of them in Amazon. And Amazon came out a couple months ago and said, 'Hey, we're reducing your storage limits from 3,000 cubic feet or meters or whatever the hell it was down to 297 or 277. So it's like a 90% reduction. And you have one month to get it out of here. And so we had to pull it out and we just donated it all over the place, did fulfillment orders and just donated it. 00:35:42 And then we had to pay to ship it out there and we had to pay double because it's a hazardous goods. So it was a double per unit cost. And as soon as we took it all out, Amazon came out with a notice saying, 'Actually, anybody that's got hazardous goods in our warehouses, the next few weeks, you can withdraw everything for free. We just spent $10,000 to pull this stuff out. And now you're doing it for free. It's ridiculous.' It's just been a money pit. So, we're actually bankrupting it and closing it down. And getting out of it, it's not worth it. But you know what? And we couldn't advertise our Facebook. We had a Shopify site. We had a huge, big advertising company running. 00:36:25 Facebook shut us down after we ran $42 worth of advertising saying 'You're not allowed to sell this on Facebook.' Google shut us down saying 'You're not allowed to sell this on Google.' Uh, no, no, people see others doing it getting away with it, but they're usually short-lived, and so we we couldn't drive traffic through any traditional means; it's just this wasn't worth it. Talk to me after this podcast; I might have a a charity that's perfect for you. Awesome, yeah? So uh, anyway, that is, that's terrible to hear, but what I like hearing is that uh, so you got kicked between the legs and it didn't phase you. No, I mean, it sucks to lose that kind of money; it does suck. 00:37:09 Put in a year of hard work to build a real brand. And then, you know, we even talked to some of the aggregators. We're like, you know, you guys want to take this? We have this other opportunity here with this laundry additive. You guys patch it in and just nobody wants to mess with it; you know, so it's still a good product. We had some growing pains with it, but we launched some new versions, which I think is what I sent to you like in November. And they're five-star average reviews, real reviews on Amazon, not us. All real customers that just bought it randomly, not even email follow-ups or nothing. And it's five-star rated. It's a really good product. It's just time to move on and cut our losses and move on. 00:37:50 We have so much there. It's hazardous stuff. The fire marshal could show up and like, hey, why do you have all this extra stuff in the warehouse? It's just got to go. And I'm in the process right now of launching a brand new Amazon account, like I just mentioned, in the pet space. And we're doing stuff there. Yesterday, I put up the first listing. And these are life jackets for dogs. And they're made out of recycled plastic bottles. And it's a really nice product. And we have a license on the product. So we're doing this. I don't want to say the name, but we're doing this for one of the biggest surfing companies, beach companies in the world. 00:38:28 And we put the product up, put the listing up, was it Wednesday night, filled in all the bullet points and description, and loaded all the pictures. The listing had been sitting there just with a title and basic listing for a couple months. This was Wednesday night. Yesterday morning, I wake up checking the account just because I was going to go, I was like, oh, shoot, I forgot to add something. I see all the listings have been removed as a restricted product. And I'm like, not again, you gotta be joking. This is a whole different account, a whole different everything. And it turns out, it looks like it's a, some sort of a, the brand that we're, we have the license for, we've already gone through brand analytics. I mean, sorry, brand registry. 00:39:08 And it's listed, you know, in all of our brands, we have three brands and brand registry for this particular account. One of them is this big national brand. Uh, it's already in there; we're already approved; we have the letter; we're authorized to sell; they've already contacted Amazon but Amazon systems are not talking to each other and they're saying no, you're not allowed to sell this oh because of the uh, because of the IP; they're a gated brand. So now we're having another dance to get someone to go in and change something and do this and um, it's yeah, that's just selling on Amazon, you know people; this is not a Lamborghini sipping wine and checking your Amazon accounts on the beach in Cancun and just laughing all the way to the bank. 00:39:50 This is real work. But this product is going to do and there’s a moat around it, and it’s an expensive product. Most people are selling these dog life jackets for $15, $20. They’re a piece of shit. And there’s some from like Outward Hound or Easy Dog or something that are like $60. We’re above all those, but we have a really kick-ass product. Um, that’s way better on it. It’s very, you know, like I said, it’s environmentally friendly. It’s made out of, I think our extra large size, one of the sizes takes five bottles. One of them takes 14 bottles. Um, uh, you know, they're recycled plastic, you know, big water bottles that are actually used in the process of making these. 00:40:31 Um, but the quality is really, really good. You know, I was, um, I was listening to, I think it was Vern Harnish. He was talking about building the moat. And you know how do you do that around your product? So Afalabi was on here and he was talking about product innovation. I used you as an example, um yeah, I said a lot of bad things, but uh, but you know. Product innovation is your moat, packaging is your moat, uh, you've got to build that, and if you don't, I mean, I don't think everybody can afford to do it. But if you're serious and you want to really expand a brand, it's definitely building a moat around the brand. Do you agree? Yeah, I agree. For long-term success, you've got to have that. 00:41:24 And it's becoming even more and more important on Amazon. The days of just putting your logo on a product you found on Alibaba, you might be able to make money for a short period of time, but the window's going to close pretty quick unless you can differentiate. That's packaging. That's a true differentiation like ours. You know, someone else could come along and copy these life jackets. Nobody else has a license for this brand. And you just saw, I even have the license. I have the paperwork, I've approved, and I can't even get the damn thing listed without jumping through hoops. So nobody else is going to be able to come in behind us and try to knock it off or do anything. So that's a moat. 00:41:59 The fact that it's made out of recycled plastic and nobody else has done that. you know so that's very important to a lot of people it fits in with the beach theme fits in with the water theme um so that that's another moat um the quality is second to none uh so so that's another mode we innovated it we actually put a pouch on the side it comes with these uh uh there's like a velcro uh strip across it where and it comes with 10 patches and it has the different each patch has the logos ones like a flag one's like a dog one's like a so different ones and you can customize the the life jacket by putting three of these on this little velcro strip and that so you can truly customize it then you if you got your own logo you can send it in to us and we'll actually create a little patch for you you know it could be your dog's name could be whatever 00:42:48 And it comes with just a bunch of things that nobody else is doing. And we'll see what happens. We think it's going to do pretty well. And the other advantage is we have this branding behind it. So this brand is a big brand. They already have a presence on Amazon. They already have a storefront on Amazon. So, we'll immediately go into their storefront. And so that'll be a little bit of extra traffic. They've got distribution already in all the sporting goods stores and everything all throughout the U.S. So they'll take the product and introduce it there for us; we don't have to go knock on doors. Um, they've also got athletes that some of them have two million followings on Instagram or whatever; they'll take the product and and use it with their dog and talk about it and show it. 00:43:29 So it's a win-win for everybody. It's costing us extra because you know we got to pay about an eight percent licensing fee, so we have to build bake that into to our cost. Uh, but at the end of the day, that's like an eight percent taco or something, you know. Um, and um, there's already brand recognition on Amazon; people are researching for this type of thing, so it's going to be a good case study. You know, ask me in a year and I may tell you we just bankrupted this one too, but I don't think so. I don't think so; I think this is gonna do very well, okay? So before I get to the next question, uh, we have got a giveaway today. 00:44:05 The giveaway actually, I'm gonna give two things away; sorry Kelse, we are going to be giving away a lunch with Norm Mug with M&M's sent out to whoever wants one all you have to do is i'm not sure what the hashtag is going to be uh hashtag i want a mug there we go something here just making everything more difficult yep yep because i'm gonna make i am gonna make affa lobby's life miserable so he's going to give away a consultation on product innovation okay he doesn't even know about this but but hashtag uh wheel of kelsey okay you tell me am i so hashtag wheel of kelsey for the mugs because i've already posted it all right and then hashtag let's do hashtag innovate 00:44:55 okay sorry guys i messed it up i didn't even see these comments if kelsey was doing it usually he's not Doing his job and I could just you know say whatever okay, so that's what we're gonna do okay, we're gonna do the mug which is Wheel of Kelsey and we're gonna give away uh a session with Alpha Lobby because we've just touched on the moat and product and innovation we're gonna hit up Alpha Lobby for that. Okay, so that is hashtag innovate for the Afolabi consultation and then hashtag Wheel of Kelsey for the Lunch with Norm mugs. Just to be clear, we have to have North American addresses for the winners for the mugs. For the mugs, not for Afolabi. Afolabi, anyone can enter. Right. Okay, so. 00:45:43 Do you want to do any questions, Norm? I've got a hard cutoff today. Oh, you do? Yeah, so I don't know if you want to answer any questions. What's your cutoff, Kev? 12. My time, so one year's time. Let's get to the questions. Okay, let me see. Just give me a second. I have to be somewhere at 12:30. Okay. Jeffrey Anderson asks, what are your thoughts on the big tech bills in Congress right now? Yeah, I haven't actually read all the details of those, but I know Paul Rafford talked about them on Clubhouse last week. I think they could be problematic. They're very – they could cause some problems, and I think you could get some people, some people that don't know what the hell they're doing. 00:46:30 I think there's something that needs to be done. So I agree that some sort of action or at least the threat of action is going to help, could help. But the way that they are right now, and I have not read them all. There's like five of them, but I'm going off of what Paul, who has read them, who specializes in this, says. They could be trouble for us, for sellers. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting. I know the first discussion on them was like Wednesday, I think, of this week. I am not seeing what came of that. I know Amazon put out a press release yesterday or the day before. I think actually on Wednesday, basically saying, 'hey, you guys got your head up your butt.' Look, this is not good. 00:47:14 And I agree some of what Amazon is saying on that. But something does need to be done. But, yeah, I think that the way they're written now, it actually could be a problem. What's one or two of the major issues that could affect us? Basically, that's Amazon. The way some of it's written now, my understanding, I could be wrong on this, but it basically would eliminate third-party sellers. Amazon would have to coat everybody with the first party and go back to buying. Amazon would be the seller, not us. And so Amazon would be controlling it. It could be Amazon could set up an almost like a consignment basis where we're shipping inventory in on consignment. You know, I don't know how they would do it. 00:47:54 It's not all worked out, but, and then Amazon would actually set the pricing, not us. We would set what we want to get paid. Then Amazon would actually set the market pricing, which is kind of what they do in the Advantage program. That's one thing it could affect. Or they're saying Amazon would have to quit their first-party and quit selling against sellers and just be a marketplace, which would change things too. There's a lot in there. I'm not the most qualified to speak on it. I just know that Paul was super passionate about it. That, hey, this is a serious thing. You guys need to pay attention. Go read these. I'm not sure. He's like, I'm not trying to sound an alarm here or be a. 00:48:39 We bring everybody down, but if this stuff passes as is it's going to be a major problem. And they're trying to reign it in, trying to take some power away, trying to say Amazon's gotten too big, they have too much control and setting prices and competing against the sellers on their own marketplace, and taking people out. That's what the press release that came out from Amazon Wednesday said, basically: 'Like, I forget, you know, we have half a million... I forgot what the number was, but we have a lot of people that they're living off. Half a million people in the U. S., I think is what it says, something like that, that make their living selling on Amazon. It's in our best interest to make sure they're okay as sellers and so on and so forth. 00:49:24 We support them, which is true and not true. So it's going to get interesting, I think. I think Amazon may proactively make some changes, which you've already seen the last couple of years with brand analytics and providing some of the data. Some of the things um, but I think you're going to see more as a proactive thing which could benefit us, but if these bills go through it could be some big changes in store for how we actually sell to Amazon and I see Victor just put a response impossible split into separate companies 1P and 3P yeah yeah. Okay, next question. Next from Andreas. What would you say will be the best categories to source products in 2021, considering these times where raw material prices are exploding almost for everything? 00:50:10 Anything you can make money in. I'm agnostic as far as a category. Unless you have a brand that's very specific to a category and you just want to stick in that category. But other than that, like with products and bonds, I'm looking everywhere. Where can I get a markup? I mean, I used to say three to four. So if you're sourcing it for five bucks, you need to sell it for 15 to 20. That's a three to four markup to have enough. I think in today's world, that may not be enough on Amazon. I think you may need to go to the five to seven. And some of that could be maybe yours. I mean, Sharona, who was on here, she did a presentation yesterday on the Helium 10 Elite, kind of talking about this. 00:50:55 She used a knife as an example. And she has a client that was doing knives and he's going, I think, I may be mistaken, but I think he's going to like the same factory as a lot of other people and they're buying a knife for, I'm just going to say five bucks and they're selling it for $19. 95 on Amazon. He's buying the same $5 knife from the same factory and packaging some other $2 item in with it and changing up his packaging, making it look nicer and selling it for $70. It's all in the market. It's all in perception. Same freaking knife, basically, just with an extra thing added and a much nicer packaging. So you've got to look for ways, and not every market can sustain that. 00:51:37 I mean, the knife market can, because when you search for one of the keywords for, I don't know, chef's knife, that's not the keyword, but chef's knife, you see pricing all over the place. You see someone selling for $19. 95, someone selling for $20, someone selling for $70, someone selling for $100. That tells you there's an open market there for differentiation. You could maybe slide in and make your product stand out. Now, this guy, he's not selling. The guy's $19. 95. He's selling $100 a day. And this guy's selling $5 a day. And is he making as much money as the guy selling $100? Probably not. But does he have the same problems and same issues with hijackers and all the other craziness and price competition? 00:52:16 No. So he's just sitting down there, maintaining his little $5 a day at that higher level, just happy. He just has money coming in, and doesn't have to spend as much money to buy his inventory and stuff. So those kind of things are things you could be looking for. But if you're selling, like I know from my experience in the makeup brush category, you're trying to position a 70 makeup brush set on for the word 'makeup brushes' or something like that. Good luck because everything on that page is three dollars and 99 cents or four dollars and 99 cents, and so if you're going to be the one guy that's way out in left field, um that's going to be difficult to stay on that keyword. 00:52:50 You're going to find other keywords where you can, you might have a chance to stick. So it's not it doesn't work across the board on every category and every keyword, but there's plenty of opportunities like that. I mean products advanced we have a product that we just gave to one of our guys that super competitive and most people would look at it and go 'no way but we found a factory that can do this at a much higher level and does it with a special type of metal and special type of everything, And they can sell it for four times what everybody else is selling it for. And there's one guy that's doing it already, but ours is even better. 00:53:21 And we think this guy is going to crush it out of the park and have a seven-figure product, one single product, seven figures off of this. So there's plenty of opportunities still. But it's differentiation that's key. Alright. Let's have one more question, Kels, and then we'll get to the wheel. Okay. From Victor. We are considering China warehouse storage for excess inventory. It's quarter of the cost of U. S. storage. What's your opinion about doing this? What are the pitfalls in your experience? I think that would have been probably a smart strategy a couple of years ago. But with today's problems with freight, I don't know. You know, you're going to have a couple of years ago, you could store that over there and save that cost. And then like, hey, send me another container. 00:54:08 Few days it's on the water and coming to you with the issues right now I don't know if it's going to be as easy to do that, shortage of space too right yeah, shortage of everything so uh I don't I don't know um I'm going to be pretty compelling reason it's cost savings for me to do that uh given today's shipping climate um not now if you if you're doing something like that to negotiate a better price if you tell your supplier hey we're going to sell 20, 000 of these this year but um from a cash flow point of view you're like I only need 5, 000 now go ahead and make them 00:54:45 or go ahead and buy the raw materials and that way you get a lower price and you don't you can pay it out over time and they're storing that kind of thing there that would probably be okay yeah but I would be I would be careful i mean it may make sense for you but um just logistically I would be careful with that. Okay, so that is the end of the questions. We'll try to answer as many as we can in the group. Kelsey, let's get to the wheel. Okay, I'm still adding all these names. We got a lot of entries. You need another minute? Yeah, I think so. So we could tackle, maybe we can do the wheel when Kevin is off, when Kevin has to go. Sure, okay. 00:55:33 Answering another question here and then yeah um okay from Sam uh how would you launch a product where the design is inconsistent across the niche what do you mean design is inconsistent you mean that there's a variety of different designs, that's actually a good thing so uh I mean you don't want to look like everybody else uh so if that's what you mean design is inconsistent, you don't you don't want to look like everybody else, so it's the same type of launch and hopefully yours stands out and your imagery stands out and your colors or whatever stands out. I guess I don't quite understand the question, but I think that's what you mean. Okay. Any thoughts on the current antitrust case against Amazon? Could all this affect Amazon sellers down the line somehow? 00:56:21 Yeah, we kind of talked about that. It's different, but it's kind of similar to what we just talked about. Okay. And from Tony, can I qualify as an Amazon influencer under my personal account? I have no idea. Norm, do you know anything on that? I'm not sure. I believe you can under a personal account, but no, I'm not too sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. I can find out, Tony. Okay. Kevin's got to go in a couple of seconds. All right, Kevin. How do people get a hold of you? Let's talk about the event. We're going to post the event in here. But how do we – Yeah, if you're coming out to Prosper in a couple weeks too, we're doing a breakfast. Rich Goldstein and I are hosting a breakfast over at the MGM. 00:57:15 So definitely from 7 to 9 o'clock on the – Did you say 9 to 11? 7 to 9. Oh, I know. 7 a. m. to 9 a. m. Everybody else is doing nighttime stuff, and I heard you might have something cooking too, Norm. Maybe. Something's possible. But, yeah, so hit us up for that, or you can go to BillionDollarSellerSummit. com if you want to see what's happening in September, or if you just want to follow me on Facebook. That's the ways to get a hold of me. And join us for a cigar over at BDSS. That's right. That'd be awesome. It's going to be fun. If you want to find me and Norm at BBSS or at Prosper, just look for the smoke. Yeah, that's us. In the crowd, just look for the smoke. 00:58:07 All right, sir. I mean, it's always great having you on. I know you got to go. So we will talk to you next month, and I'll see you in a couple of weeks. I can't wait. Looking forward to it. All right. We'll see you later, Kevin. Take care. All right, everybody. So the wheel of Kelsey, if Kelsey's doing his job. Let's see. Let's get them back, or am I just going to sit here in the fetal position fairly soon and talk about – no, good. All right. How are we doing? We're doing good. I think we've got all of them. I just don't want to miss anyone. We've got a couple new entries. So, yeah, Adriana. Also, let us know who's going to prosper. Yeah. Yeah, let us know in the comment section. 00:58:51 Sorry, we just got a lot of entries today. We're trying to see if we can get something going over at Prosper. So now that I've got my vaccination. Yes. All righty. Okay, I think I got everyone. Apologies if I miss anyone. I'm doing my best over here. But okay. Yeah, so I'm going to share my screen. Alright. So which one is this? This is for the Wheel of Kelsey. So this is for the mugs. Alright. We're going to do a few draws for this. With the M&Ms. With the custom M&Ms. I'm going to shuffle everyone's name up. Three, two, one. Oh, Sharon, he is the best. Okay. Brian. Alright. Okay, Brian is the first winner and this oh that was actually strange why I think uh the wheel was glitching out a little bit well Brian gets a mug okay and what are you doing now oh my gosh I'm doing two giveaways oh you are okay yeah thanks Sergey okay and then for our innovate let me just see Got to share my other screen. This is the one that Afolabi has no ideas coming his way. That's right. And I'll just make sure no one's entered it. Okay, here we go. Three, two, one. 01:00:33 I really want to screw him up. Oh, okay. Who's that? Sean C. All right, Sean C. Okay, so get it. Alrighty. Get your information over to Kelsey. I'm not sure if you're YouTube or where, but especially if you are YouTube, make sure that you send it over to Kelsey so he can contact you at k.lunchwithnorm.com. Yeah, so if you are a YouTube winner, if you're Ankit or Sergey, please message me at lunchwithnorm. com or you can find me on Facebook. But there's no way for me to contact you, so I'll need to get that email to connect with you guys, so that's super important but uh yeah okay. So on Monday we have another really great guy um John Heffer he's over uh he's at Thrasso and we're going to be talking about how to build a successful ecom team, so anyways we're um I'm looking forward to that one. 01:01:30 He's always an interesting guy to talk to. I also want to just say a big thank you to our sponsor for this episode, Global Wired Advisors, a leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process. For more information, please visit globalwiredadvisors. com. All right, guys. Andrew C. is coming to prosper. Anyone else? Sharon, you should come. Yeah, that would be great. All right, so if you haven't yet, you can always join our Facebook group, Lunch with Norm, Amazon FBA, and eCommerce Collective. That is our main group. That is where all the action happens. And if you want more, if you want guest lessons, if you want small group sessions with Norm, we've got a bunch of other hot seats, exclusive deals, freebies. You can join our paid membership program that is our Patreon account. 01:02:28 You can go over to our Lunch with Norm website, lunchwithnorm. com, and just click on memberships, and it'll be right there. And let me see, if you missed today's episode, you can find it on YouTube. That's where all of the episodes go, as well as some daily highlights. Just search Lunch with Norm or Norman Ferrari, and you'll be able to find it. Believe that's it, smash those like buttons if you haven't already and we're almost at a thousand subscribers on YouTube so it'd be amazing, you just need a couple more and just hit that red button, that'd be awesome um but yeah that's it uh yeah enjoy your weekend everyone, it's great talking to you guys and yeah and so Kelsey will be remote again oh my gosh maybe we could talk I'll be back in the dungeon there you go yeah all right, so tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday Eastern Standard Time uh and also thanks everybody for being part of our community uh we really enjoy having this interaction with you and if you have any ideas uh for future guests or uh topics just let us know like Kelsey said have an awesome weekend all right thank you everyone.