Amazon News: Agentic AI, End of Commingling & Netflix Ads

Amazon News: Agentic AI, End of Commingling & Netflix Ads Unknown Speaker: Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 2: Hello, everybody. Another week for Amazon Seller News Live. We've got some good news. You know, we've got Amazon Accelerate going on right now. So they're releasing all the bombshells and everything as they typically do at their They're yearly events that they do. So we've got some cool stuff that could be cool or maybe could be annoying depending on how Amazon integrates it. But that is true usually about everything. We've got Neil from PPC Ninja joining us today. So appreciate you joining us, Neil. Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Todd. Always a pleasure to be back. Speaker 2: Yes, always good to have you. You said you're hitting the 30s up there in Canada already, which is crazy. Speaker 1: Yeah, getting down there. Our leaves are falling off. The fall is here and expecting snow probably in a couple of weeks. Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Okay. I heard where we used to live in Utah, they've already got snow in the top of the mountains up there, but they've got some nine, 10,000 foot mountains there, so that makes sense. Here in South Carolina, we're just starting to hit the 50s overnight. So looking out my window here, there's a few like yellow leaves, some red ones that are starting to change. Speaker 1: Yeah, I've already done one pass on raking my leaves, so we're in it. Snow is coming. But I mean, that's the problem with being so far north, right? Northern Canada gets cold early. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's why I moved down from Wisconsin to get away from some of that. But I do like the snow. They don't get much here in the Greenville, South Carolina area, two inches average a year. But I'm hoping we get some so that I can at least see some snow. It would be nice. But at least we'll get the nice cool weather and the leaves changing and all that good stuff. Speaker 1: I do have a, you know, if you don't mind, there is an insight from the Accelerate and Ritu shared a couple of things with me. So Amazon's talking about a AI-powered seller assistant. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: The creative studio and agent. I'm a product opportunity explorer with AI built into it. And then AI powered custom clearance. So some of the things that the bombs from Accelerate that got dropped. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Everything is going AI for better or for worse. We'll see how that goes here. Yeah, we can dive into that here. Our first story is actually gonna be about the AI seller agent coming in. But for anybody out there watching, if you have any questions or comments on anything we're talking about, throw them in the chat. We'll bring it into the show. Or if you just have questions in general about selling on Amazon, throw those in there as well. We always enjoy answering those and always happy to help the community out there watching the show. Without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this first one here. So AI takes the helm, as you mentioned, Neil. Agentic AI transforms the Amazon seller experience. Amazon is rolling out agentic AI tools that go far beyond automation, handling inventory, pricing, advertising, and even account health with reasoning and proactive decision-making. This new seller assistant powered by Amazon Bedrock can save sellers up to 60 hours a week That sounds like a marketing number to me, while boosting efficiency and competitiveness. For Amazon sellers, the message is clear. Embracing AI is no longer optional. Those who leverage these tools will scale faster and more profitably, while those who delay risk losing ground in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace. So go ahead, Neil. I'll let you dive in with your first thoughts on the AI seller support, especially. Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean, my first thought is they mentioned taking my job there when they said it can help with advertising. So I'm very interested to see what comes out of this. I do see that they are rolling out lots of new updates in the advertising console. They're coming out very, very rapidly. You know, last year, We didn't see too many major updates within the advertising console this year. You know, I think we've seen five or six major updates and they're going to keep coming. So it's interesting to see how that works when it comes to an Amazon Seller Assistant. I think this is fantastic. You know, one of the biggest issues that I know a lot of sellers have a problem with is inventory management, right? Liquidation versus LTS fees, long-term storage fees. Just understanding the health of your overall catalog. I'm seeing the AI come up inside the business reports now. This is a platform where it's giving you, you know, your top SKUs that are going up. It's giving you your top SKUs that are going down and it's giving you a little bit of analysis insight into it. So, you know, the more information that you give to sellers and the easier that you make it to access and understand and digest, the easier selling on the platform becomes, right? When we have all the data available to us, we can start making a lot more informed decisions I really only benefit the overall business, right? And that's my take on it. I think this is fantastic. I think it's long overdue. I think, you know, the back end of Amazon from business reports to inventory management to understanding your LTS or those kinds of issues need to be made easier for people to understand and digest, right? Like one of my clients had Massive overstock and he ended up taking all of his catalog, putting it into ChatGPT saying, hey, I paid for this, like I've already paid for this. What's my best course of action here? Am I looking at liquidation? Am I looking at donation, disposal? LTS starts in 11, or not LTS, Q4. Amazon fees kick on October 1st, so that's in 11 days. So he made the tough decision. He had a nice long conversation with ChatGPT and said, hey, you know, what's my best option here? What model out these different scenarios? And hopefully that's the direction Amazon goes with this, where you can have that AI assistant, you know, help you understand the tough advanced modeling required to make these hard decisions. Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. On the information side, this is very good by implementing AI in the different areas for analytics and PPC to be able to process that information more quickly and, you know, chat with the AI about things that you can do to improve sales and stuff like that. All that's going to be fantastic. Where I am a little hesitant is on the seller support side. And I think it's going to be really helpful for the Amazon sellers that don't know how to sell on Amazon very well. Those basic things is going to be really helpful for people like you and I who are very knowledgeable on the platform. By the time we get to opening up a case, we've already gone through all the basics, right? So I can just imagine now. With the AI seller support, we're going to go on there and we're going to describe our problem and it's going to come back and say, did you turn it on and off again? That's going to be the first thing. It's like, yes, of course, I already did that. I'm like 50 steps beyond that already. But it's going to walk you through all that basic stuff that a knowledgeable seller is already going to do. And it's going to be very irritating before you can actually get to real answers or talk to live support. Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll have to start off your support request by saying, I'm four hours deep into this. These are the things I've already tried. I'm extremely frustrated. Don't give me a canned response. And what will you get? A canned response. Speaker 2: It's very possible. Hopefully not. You know, with AI, it'll be able to learn and get smarter over time. So hopefully Amazon isn't limiting it. But I can definitely see Amazon using it as like a scapegoat. And if you get to real seller support, it'd be like, oh, sorry, AI says we can't do it, so we can't do it kind of thing and blame it on the AI system as to why they're not able to do something. Speaker 1: I know you're a big rock guy and I use, I'm a GPT guy myself. I've caught my GPT line to me quite a bit. And you know, the hallucinate, I think they're what called hallucinations or something like that, where they just start making up stuff. You know, this is also a big implication that could be something that Amazon really needs to make sure is If you're making business decisions based off of, oh, the Amazon support told me that, you know, this product is now in terms of service and I'll never be able to get access to advertising again. So I'm just going to go ahead and end of life the product line. Then, you know, you're making massive decisions with wrong information. So there is that ugly side of it as well. That is a potential. So, I mean, all of this AI stuff, it's in its infancy stage and it is going to get better. But early adoption on this, like I can see Amazon wanting to push the support very, very quickly because, you know, it would just make sense from Their side is a business leaning out and seller support is probably one of their biggest overheads as a business. If they move that into the AI realm, I can see them wanting to move towards that very, very quickly. But at the same time, is that best for everyone? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you'll definitely have to be careful because it will lie to you. I've got a good example. Just recently, I started playing with generating AI video ads for marketing and stuff, right? And so I went to ChatGPT, and I asked it, Can you create me a AI ad that talks about all of this? It's like, yeah, yeah, I can do it. And so then I gave it more information and like make me the video. And it comes back with, here's the script, here's all the production and everything and what should be in the video. And I'm like, okay, go ahead and create the video for me. And it's like, oh, I can't create the actual final video. I'm like, well, why'd you lie to me? And it's like, I didn't really lie to you. I just can't create the final video, but I can do everything else. I'm like, so you lied to me. He's like, I understand your concern, why you might think that. It goes, I'm like, oh my goodness. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So yeah, it will tell you sometimes what you want to hear if you're not careful. Speaker 1: And I found that, you know, I'll be asking you questions, and then I'll go through a whole sequence of talking to my AI. And then at the very end of it, I'll say, is this a probable scenario? And then it'll come back and say, this probably isn't realistic. Okay, well, why did I just spend the last 10 minutes talking to you about this potential idea? Speaker 2: You have to be really careful if you're trying to get objective data from it that you don't lead it in any way. Because if you use leading questions with the AI, it'll pick up on that as to the answer that you want to hear back and it will respond to you in the way that it thinks you want to hear. Rather than just coming up with an objective idea for whatever you're looking for. So you have to be really careful on that and the way you word your questions and what you're looking for. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, overall, I think this will probably, if they can get it to a state where you're talking with, say, like a C-level person on the support team, that's a win for everyone. If they know the entire Amazon compliance catalog, every single issue that's ever been created within Amazon and how they solved it, that's a great achievement and can really streamline the process. Speaker 2: Especially if it has access to your own cases. Like I've got some products that you just, you kind of have the same problem over and over sometimes for listings getting taken down for, oh, this is a pesticide or whatever the case may be. So if you can chat with the AI and it can look at, oh, we solved this same problem 10 times before by doing this and then just do it. Rather than making you jump through all the hoops that normal seller support does, that would definitely be a win. If they try to use it as a blockade of you getting things done and talking with real seller support, then it could be a step in the wrong direction for more advanced problems that you deal with. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: But we'll have to see. Overall, you know, AI is awesome. I use it every single day. I'm more complaining about the restrictions that Amazon might put on the AI than the AI itself. So we'll have to wait and see. But Amazon doesn't necessarily have a very good track record with a lot of these things. So we'll see. But I am excited about all the informational stuff that they're going to be pumping into the AI with brand analytics and PPC and everything else and being able to help you make decisions on that information. Speaker 1: Yeah, being able to map out everything that's going on within the Amazon ecosystem from like, you know, brand analytics merged with PPC data gives you a full holistic Point of, you know, how you're doing for each keyword and then listing optimizations integrating into that, you know, that's, that's the future. Speaker 2: Yeah. And as far as the Amazon AI taking, you know, the jobs of consultants like you guys at PPC Ninja, that's, that's not going to happen. Speaker 1: We're a few years away from that. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, I don't know if it will ever happen completely because A seller is going to set up a PPC account and then Amazon is going to blow through $1000 in PPC and it's going to be like, sorry, too bad. Speaker 1: I know Amazon is actively beta testing. I'm in full AI ads management right now within some seller accounts. I'm active in the Reddit community and I saw someone posting about that saying, hey, Amazon's rolled out this AI ad system, so it automatically creates campaigns for you, does bids, budgets, placements, all that kind of good stuff for you. I'm not sure on how you give it inputs, but the person said that it was hitting the KPIs that it needed to hit. It's ongoing. Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's good. It's going to be an ongoing thing. Like you said, there's always going to be a need for people to help with this kind of stuff because some people are not going to want to deal with the AI and figure that out. Anyways, so you're always going to have people like that, but it's just going to make you guys more effective at what you do as well. Speaker 1: Absolutely. You know, you think about it like the software's out there, they already do a lot of this stuff, right? So realistically, Amazon's behind on bringing this into their platform where, you know, 3P or software as a service companies have had these for years. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely exciting, but it'll be interesting to see how the actual implementation goes. We'll have to wait and see on that. It's good that they're implementing all this stuff for sure. I'll just say again, anybody out there watching, feel free to throw your comments in there and we'll bring them into the show. If you have any questions on selling on Amazon, we're happy to help with that as well. But let's go ahead and jump on to our next article here. After years of backlash, Amazon finally ends a practice that many sellers have long loathed. Amazon announced at Accelerate that it will be phasing out commingling, the practice of pooling identical products from different sellers under one barcode. While this system sped up shipping, it also exposed sellers to risks of counterfeit, expired, or damaged goods being sent under their brand. For sellers, the end of commingling means customers will only receive the exact inventory they supplied, reducing liability concerns and boosting brand trust. It also eliminates costly FNSKU restickering, saving sellers an estimated $600 million annually and giving brands more flexibility across sales channels. So for me, This is fantastic as long as it works correctly and I don't have to start labeling every single product. From what it sounds like, they're just gonna use you sending in the products along with the UPC to give you a specific bin with your products and not require you to put on an Amazon barcode to not have to be commingled. Is that what you understood, Neil? Speaker 1: Yes, that is what I understood. So to me, the products like you will have to have that FNSQ code, which to me is no big deal. You know, a lot of sellers already have packaging, right? And so then it'll just get printed on the packaging and there's not going to be an extra step required there. Where this is fantastic is just like you said, the consumables space where it's not first in It's first in and then it gets commingled and then you don't know how much time you have because Amazon says you're not allowed to sell expiring product, I think within, I can't remember, it's 90 days or? Speaker 2: I can't remember what it's on. 90 or 60. Yeah, either 60 or 90, I can't remember. Speaker 1: But if you're sending in other shipments, you don't know because they just commingle it, then all of a sudden the stuff that's in the, like if you just have a bin, You get a restock, they just throw all that new stuff on top. You don't know if your expiring product just got pushed to the bottom, right? And it makes supplying or making sure that your inventory supply is clean. This cleans that up right away, right? And you know what? It's good on Amazon for them to take some accountability around this because this has been a... You know, the amount of times I've heard the first in first out or the commingle issue is massive, especially around Being able to segment your products as well, right, for making sure that if you do have some of those commingled products, like they said, the brand authenticity, right, where you're getting those fake products snuck in, now they'll clearly be identified as your products connected to your SKUs. So again, more transparency is the win. Speaker 2: Yeah, and the way it sounds like is you're going to have your products separated. And you're not going to need an FNSKU label specified on the product. Even if you send it in with just the UPC, it's still going to be separated into your own inventory bin. And that's the inventory that will sell under your account. Speaker 1: So for products that are moving on the wholesale model, That would mean you would get your own bin then because those are also commingled, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the way I understood it because it says here in the article that their logistics have gotten to the point now where they don't need the FNSKU labels to know whose inventory is whose. Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's a win, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll be major. That was the first worry when I seen this. I'm like, oh man, am I gonna have to start putting labels on everything? Because I direct ship a lot of products from the brands that I partner with, right? And I don't wanna have to make them put labels on everything. A lot of these companies I have exclusives with, so I'm the only seller anyways. And now having to make them take that step of putting labels on, they're not gonna like that too much. So when I read deeper and I seen that, okay, so you're still gonna be able to send it in with UPC only, and you're still gonna not be commingled. You'll have separate bins for your product. That'll be very beneficial. I'm looking forward to this for sure. I forget when they said it's coming. I don't know if they gave a date in here or not. Hey, Amazon sellers, tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. I don't see a date. I think it might have been beginning of next year. Over the years, past year, many years. I don't see exactly the date when it's going to happen, but it's going to be very beneficial and make things a lot easier for companies, especially brands, like you said, who I didn't want their inventory commingled with resellers' inventory, which may or may not be up to the standard that they are requiring. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: For sure. All right, cool. Let's go ahead and move on to the next article here. Netflix and Amazon team to turn streamers programmatic offering upside down. Netflix and Amazon ads are partnering to bring Netflix ad inventory into Amazon's DSP starting Q4 2025. So essentially right now. Across major global markets, including the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and more, this move allows advertisers to buy Netflix ads programmatically with Amazon's advanced targeting and measurement tools. For Amazon sellers, the partnership expands opportunities to reach Netflix's massive Engaged audience through Amazon's ad platform, blending retail media insights with streaming inventory. This creates new potential for brand storytelling and performance marketing in one of the fastest growing ad channels. So this is your world, Neil. I guess a couple of questions for you. First, what do you think about this? And what is your current experience on how good ads do on Amazon TV, when they're streaming ads there. Speaker 1: So we have run, we've spent some money on Amazon TV. And It's not great. So my personal experience running these ads, as a consumer, as someone who's sitting on the couch watching Amazon Prime, and it says, hey, you know, this video or this program brought to you with a 30 second ad prior to and you get hit with like four ads before you're Before your program starts, I think about what I do. I think about what my wife does. I think about what my friends do. We get up, we go to the bathroom, we pick up our phone, we scroll for 30 seconds to a minute and we do everything but look at the TV. So that's part of the problem with this is, you know, we're so used to being as a consumer, the amount of ads we see in a day is It's excessive, right? Like we're exposed. I saw a study on it. I can't remember the exact number of ads that you are exposed to every single day, but it's absolutely astronomical. And so you become very fatigued to this, right? And so when you have an opportunity where it's like, okay, I know for the next minute, 30 seconds, they're serving me an ad. I've already seen 500, a thousand ads today. I'm going to check out. Speaker 2: It's very annoying, that's for sure. Speaker 1: And that's where we're at right now. So I think that's typical consumer behavior when you're getting ready to sit down and watch a show, you know, oh, here's the ads, scroll, and you can get it with the ads on your phone versus the ads on your TV. So we'll see. From an awareness perspective, though, this is crazy. Like, you know, you're getting access to Netflix audience, which is, you know, the largest streaming platform on the world. So not everyone is on, not everyone is on Amazon, but almost everybody is on, you know, everyone's got 15 bucks for Netflix, or I think they even have that free version with the ads. And so, you know, your reach. And so for brands that have the budget, right, that have the budget to be able to push this, this is a very cool opportunity where you are getting access to retail media, right? Production level commercials to consumers to come to your Amazon stores, scan the QR code and away you go. So your awareness goes through the absolute roof. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's, uh, yeah, I agree with everything you said. I don't think it's going to be, um, you know, crazy effective for most sellers. Um, it'll be good for brand building, you know, if you're, if you're, uh, Nike and places like that, that have giant advertising budgets and you're okay with spending lots of money without a clear ROI on it. You're just trying to build your brand. It'll be really good for that and make it easier. Not necessarily for the normal seller. We've been watching a show, The Chosen, lately, my wife and I, which is on Amazon right now. And so I've been seeing the Amazon ads and such. And the one ad The other thing that I like because it's not annoying is when you hit pause, it will just bring up like a static ad on the pause screen. I even seen it the other day where it was a product. I can't remember which one it was now, but you could go up and add to cart right on the pause screen that was there. That I thought was kind of cool It wasn't annoying. It's not interrupting me from watching my show. It's just taking up space on the screen while I was going to do something else anyways. And it did make me stop and kind of think about the product that was on the screen, if it might be something that I would want to add to my cart or not. So that I thought was kind of interesting. And if you can target that specific ad, it may be something good to test and see what your ROI is on that. But I think the normal video ads, unless you're a big brand, probably not extremely effective for the money that you're going to be spending. Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's just like running a TV commercial, right? Where it's like, you know, you're going to get I have 4 million impressions on a day, right? And for some, that's a lot of impressions and for others that's not a lot of impressions. Are you looking for eyeballs? Are you looking to stay top of mind? In the retail space, staying top of mind is super important. Look at all the fast food joints. They're always trying to say, you need a burger. When was the last time you had a burger? Trying to just stay top of mind. For some of the consumable products, definitely. For some of the smaller brands, it's not going to work, but that's just DSP. You need to have a good advertising budget. You need to make sure that you have good lifetime LTV from the clients, so lifetime value from the clients. And those are important KPIs that you need to look at when doing Amazon DSP. So that awareness piece is huge, though. But effectiveness remains to be seen as, you know, commercial comes on, so do the phones come out. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is for sure true. You definitely tend to grab your phone as soon as that comes on, especially it tells you like, oh, two minutes of ads or something. Speaker 1: It's like, okay, we have a timer. Speaker 2: Ignore the TV for the next couple of minutes or whatever. Do you think this kind of advertising will ever end up in the Amazon ads console? Speaker 1: There already is a section there, Amazon TV. There already is a section there in with the sponsored display. So that's already there. The DSP has always been different. They've given a sponsored display, which is very similar, just for ease of targeting and lessen burden of budget. So if you are looking to run some sponsored display ads, I do recommend them. I think they're great for awareness. They're great for Being able to target contextual targeting, right? So you can go after interests, you can go after different categories, and you can go on an interest-based kind of awareness campaign saying, hey, you know, I think I like this. One of the cool things that we've seen is Amazon is starting to roll out lookalike audiences. So anyone who's done Facebook ads knows what a look-alike audience is and it's, you know, my customer likes this and then they just link their buying or their profiles together and they say, hey, you know, I think this person's like this person looks like this person and then they just grow an audience that way. And so Amazon is starting to roll that out. I think that's going to be a very powerful tool coming down the pipeline. Speaker 2: Okay, very good. Yeah, what what would be really interesting is so since they're partnering, if, if Amazon got some kind of insights into the Netflix customers, and you were able to say, hey, Run this ad to anyone watching Netflix that visited my product page and didn't buy. If you could target that specifically, that would be probably worth testing out and seeing how it goes, even if you're just a smaller brand. But I got a feeling that's not going to be that targeted. That kind of targeting may end up in a lawsuit for sharing data across the two companies. But that would be pretty cool if you're able to do that. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And that's that's where my mind went. It was like, how do they connect these two platforms together? Right. Like Amazon would have to give up. All of that data to Netflix to be able to link profiles together. And then it would be, then you would have two profiles merging into one, two mega companies sharing data. I'm sure that's against a lot of FTC laws and who knows where that goes. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. At the same time they could, you know, you, you randomly get one of those pop-ups that say, Hey, we've updated our agreement. Accept. What are you going to do? You're just going to hit accept. You're not going to read that. Hey, we're going to give all your data to Amazon and vice versa. Speaker 1: So I just, I just threw up a GPT query and I said, how many ads is the average person exposed to in a day? You want to take a guess? Speaker 2: I would say probably at least a thousand. Speaker 1: So it says many sources say people are exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 ads in a modern digital and physical environment. Speaker 2: Wow. Per day. Speaker 1: Per day. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy. There's a lot of noise. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot. But I mean, you know, you think if you're out in the world, you know, billboards, posters, all those kinds of things, right? Everywhere you go. Speaker 2: Yep. So, yeah. Yeah, they pop up everywhere, ads. I mean, they've figured out ways to put them in just about every place. Speaker 1: I saw an interesting one on, I think it popped up on Reddit, where over in China, if you're using a public bathroom, you have to watch an ad in order to get access to toilet paper. Speaker 2: Seriously? Speaker 1: So who knows, that could be coming down the pipeline. I know BMW is experimenting with ads in their, like, watch an ad to activate your car starter, I think, or something. No, they were doing a subscription model. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think that one went very well. Speaker 2: Someday you'll go into a gas station and you got to use the bathroom and it's like, watch this quick advertisement from Chevy and then you'll get access to the bathroom code. Yeah, very good. All right. Well, you know, at a minimum, this is a good thing. I think it gives you more advertising options. If it's something that you're trying to do, build a big brand. If you're a small seller, probably don't waste your money on Amazon TV or Netflix TV ads, focus on the I sponsor product ads and things like that before you do anything like this, but if you've got a multi-million dollar ad budget, then this is probably something worth testing. Speaker 1: And give me a call. Find me on LinkedIn. Speaker 2: There you go. Neil Robinson on LinkedIn. Give him a call. All right, cool. Let's go ahead and jump on to our last one here. Amazon expands multi-channel fulfillment to Walmart, Shopify and Shine, which I thought was interesting. Amazon has expanded its multi-channel fulfillment services to support Walmart marketplace orders with integrations for Shopify and Shine rolling out by year end. Sellers can now manage one inventory pool through FBA while fulfilling across multiple platforms, simplifying operations and reducing stock outs. For Amazon sellers, this means a chance to capture more sales outside Amazon while still using its world-class logistics. Early adopters report a 19% sales lift and faster turnover, making MCF a powerful cross-channel growth tool. I think this is really interesting because it really points to Amazon doesn't really see these other e-commerce platforms anymore as competitors. They see them more as an opportunity to gain more foothold in the logistics world. Speaker 1: Yep. That's, that's 100% correct. You know, it's, it's interesting, though. So overall, this is, this is great for everyone, right? Like, when I read this, my takeaway is Amazon wants to own, absolutely own the warehouse and fulfillment network. They don't care who they work with. They'll work with the devil in order to achieve that goal. And the devil looks like Walmart and Shein and Shopify. And I'm surprised TikTok's not on the list as well. I know TikTok is building up their own warehousing fulfillment system as well, fulfilled by FBT, fulfilled by TikTok. And so they don't care who they work with. They're looking at filling their inventory space and that's their goal, right? Overall, this, you know, one centralized warehouse controlling everything. I mean, at the end of the day, that's not such a bad idea where, you know, you're a one-stop total logistics system, right? You can ship your products straight from China using the Amazon logistics. It goes into their warehouse system. The whole end-to-end system is handled in one space, right? So they're getting you from China All the way to the customer's door, every step of the way they're owning that chain. That's a massive, you know, I don't know what the details are on the amount of products shipped in a day. But it's not a small number. And if they're getting a piece of that on every single platform, that's a big piece of the pie, right? That's the way they're looking at this. They're going, okay, you know what? They can have the e-commerce side of things. We're going to continue to eat lunch on the logistics and warehousing side of things. And it'll have for them, right? It gives Amazon a lot of control because Amazon will know How many orders a specific business is doing through Walmart? You know, they'll have all that intimate competitive data flowing into their system and they'll be able to benchmark their own stuff against these other competitors. And at the same time, right to refuse work. You know what I mean? So like, at any point, Amazon gets threatened. They shut this down. These other companies, they got fat and lazy. They stopped building their own warehouse infrastructure. What happens? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: All of a sudden, they don't have space. And Amazon says, Oh, yeah, anyone can come in now. Like we got lots of room. Right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: It's a big play. It's a very strategic play. But crazy implications. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's smart on Amazon side. Because logistics is seemingly more profitable than e commerce. Ads, of course, is way more profitable. And AWS, the web services is way more profitable. You know, e commerce, the actual selling platform, I think is their probably least profitable division at this point. And so they're, they don't really have anything to lose, they're going to gain more in profit by Helping Walmart fulfill orders than they will be by trying to fight Walmart and fend them off from stealing any of their market share in the e-commerce world. And I think what this will eventually lead to is well, one, I think you'll have lawsuits for monopoly. That's where they're controlling all of the logistics and they have an e commerce side. There's going to be all these accusations of them favoring amazon.com over walmart.com over Shopify sites and over Shine, which, you know, as a fulfillment company, You can't really do that, at least you shouldn't, especially if you control a super majority of the market, you know, you can get in a lot of potentially a lot of trouble for that. So I could see something like that, you know, kind of like what happened to Microsoft back in the day over their Internet Explorer browser. The government basically said you can control all the operating systems. You can't just mandate what internet browser people use. So you could see a similar thing here. Like you control all the logistics. You can't mandate that people You know, or favor amazon.com over all these other sites that you're serving. But then I could also see, you know, I kind of predicted something like this. It might have been earlier this year, last year, but eventually we could see a world where everything just is delivered through this magical network, you know, and we build on top of it, kind of like, You know, programming languages, you know, computers read ones and zeros, right? But when you computer program, you're programming in English language, and then it gets compiled down to ones and zeros. It could be eventually the same kind of thing where everything just gets delivered on this Amazon network, and it's almost like the power lines or the phone lines, you know, it just becomes like a utility almost that we all just pay a monthly fee to have access to and all these platforms are using it. I could definitely see that at some point. Speaker 1: And I can see Xian being really interested in this as well. Like they would send Thousands of single package parcels, right? Like they would just ship DTC from China, right? I think that's what their model was. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: And that loophole just recently got closed. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken. Right. And so do they have warehousing stateside? Absolutely. Do they have enough? Probably not. That's, you know, this all developed within the last three months. And I think it's hard to stand up a, you know, a high level fulfillment warehouse system in three months, unless you're Amazon, right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And so Amazon seeing a need from some of these guys as well. And they're just filling that market void of where there's an opportunity. But what's interesting is, you know, Amazon saying that They're full, right? Like I'm hearing a lot of rumors that Amazon is full as well. And so when you layer this on, it makes sense that yes, this is probably why they're full or going to be full, right? And they can just continue to expand. Speaker 2: Yeah, I just tried to make a shipment into AWD a few days ago and all centers are full. I couldn't send even a single UPS package into any of them. So yeah, they're definitely full, and this is probably part of the reason why. So they'll have to get on that and fix that, and that'll be one of the problems with a single-channel solution like this. If you've got all your Walmart, all your Amazon, all your Shopify, and all your Sheen through Amazon Logistics, and now all of a sudden you can't send any more product in, That could be a big problem. So you've got to be careful about that. Yeah, it's nice to be able to reach everything through one channel. But at the same time, if something goes wrong with that channel, everything goes down. Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of eggs in one basket. Speaker 2: Yep. And you know, Walmart is making a play for the multi-channel stuff as well and having their own delivery teams and such, whether they can catch up to Amazon or not, yet to be known. I think it's going to be one of those things kind of like internet search engines. And kind of like even delivery companies, you know, back in the day, you had hundreds of different search engines, at least five to 10 that, you know, were very popular. And then everything consolidated to Google, they won. And then, you know, you used to have more delivery companies as well. And now it's pretty much consolidated down to UPS and FedEx. Now you got Amazon kind of eating their lunch, but it consolidated down and the other ones kind of disappeared. And you could see the same thing in the multi-channel fulfillment where Walmart tries to compete, maybe TikTok tries to compete and other companies try to compete. And then over time, one of them becomes the big winner and the others, you know, just relegate to a small percentage of the total fulfillment. And that's probably what you'll see in this area as well, just for ease, you know. And Amazon is definitely way ahead of everyone else in the space, for sure. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And like, you know, Amazon's one big acquisition away from really owning it. And that would be Today we're going to talk about TikTok, right? The rumor of the sale of TikTok has been going on. They just said it sounds like they're getting close to reaching a deal. I don't know. I saw something yesterday. I think they said they were closed this morning. I think they said there wasn't anything happening until December. So I don't know. Speaker 2: Yeah, they just pushed it back again. They extended the deadline for a third or fourth time, whichever it is. It sounds like now, though, they're not forcing them to divest completely from China. They're saying that China has to be at 20% or less control and all data from U.S. customers must stay inside the U.S. is basically... It's kind of seeming like Oracle is probably going to be the winner. Speaker 1: That's what I read was Oracle, I think his name is. But if Amazon could get their hands on that, just the interest based If I could have a data set that they could merge with their purchasing personas that they already have for the last 15 years, that would be insane. Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be interesting. I would like it on one hand. On the other hand, I wouldn't because, you know, I prefer more competitors than Amazon just controlling everything. But we'll see. I got a feeling it's going to be Oracle. They seem to get mentioned the most. And I think Trump has even mentioned Oracle a couple of times in passing. But we'll have to see. Something's going to happen. It takes a long time. You can't just snap your fingers and have that magically transferred to a different hosting company and everything else, especially when you're dealing with Two of the largest governments on the planet that technically are against each other. There's gonna be a lot of irons in the fire and people fighting over stuff. Speaker 1: Looks like we got a comment here from Peggy as well. Walmart has trouble with their order system when you order for pickup. I've experienced this firsthand. I have ordered from Walmart to go pick up in stores and they tell me it's ready and I get there and they don't know who I am. Speaker 2: Really? Speaker 1: Yeah, I've had that happen once or twice. So Walmart's still working out the kinks. It is a growing platform. You know, they are seeing growth on the e-commerce side of things. Speaker 2: Yeah, I've enjoyed it. I haven't really had too much trouble with order picks ups other than sometimes it taking too long for them to bring it out after you arrive there. But for the most part, it's been pretty good. I've even had a bike delivered to my house with their system and they delivered it in like hours to me after ordering it. So everything's gonna have kinks and problems sometimes, but Walmart is definitely making a play for it, which is good. Walmart, I think is one of the few companies with the fulfillment network and the money to be able to compete with Amazon. So I'm really hoping and pushing for them to be a big competitor because I would prefer to have two behemoths rather than one behemoth. You need that competition. You got to have that competition for sure. Speaker 1: And Walmart's like we know Walmart's warehousing system is full as well. Right. Like once the once the tariffs were announced, Walmart started front running inventory and they loaded up. Right. And so Walmart is bursting. But with their own stuff. And as they dwindle through that, you know, they'll restock it, but they also front ran a lot of it. And now they're looking at going, they probably went to Amazon and said, Hey, you got a little space over there. Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe that's why AWD is full. Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Right. And so there's probably something going on there, but it makes sense that, you know, Amazon's ultimate goal is to become the number one logistics system. And are we going to run into a monopoly? Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Right now they're by far way ahead from everyone else. Amazon or Walmart is a distant second place. Hopefully they can grow up and be more than a distant second place. The interesting thing would be if Amazon ever allowed Walmart Fulfillment Services to deliver Amazon packages. And what that would look like, you know, that would be an interesting thing to happen if it was to ever get that big of a battle, you know. Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't even know how that would shape out. That's a lot of thought. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. All right, cool. So I don't see any other questions in the chat. So we can go ahead and wrap it up there. Appreciate you coming on the show, Neil. Always fun to have you on. We'll definitely have you on again soon. Peggy, thank you for the question and everybody else out there that I see that is watching. I appreciate you watching the show. We do this every Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern, so hope you'll join us again and until then, everybody have an awesome weekend. Speaker 1: Have a great weekend. Thanks a lot. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller. And always remember, success is yours if you take it. Speaker 2: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.