Amazon News: AI Commerce War, Supply Shifts & Q4 Seller Surge

Amazon News: AI Commerce War, Supply Shifts & Q4 Seller Surge 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 1: Welcome, everybody. Another week of Amazon Seller News Live. Got Daynon with me again today from EcomTriage. Appreciate you joining me, Daynon. Speaker 2: Always, my friends. Speaker 1: Absolutely. We got some good news today. A lot of AI stuff. As I mentioned, I could have packed the whole show with AI, but I think that would have been a little too much. But we do need to do a complete AI show, which it's just amazing the amount of things that you can do with AI. This morning, I was actually working, looking over a draft of a store that my graphic designer made. And I use AI to just take screenshots of some of the pictures and recommend better text overlays and stuff like that. And it was really good, like very spot on and came up with some really good ideas for better overlays for the store. So it just works awesome. Speaker 2: What did you use for that? Speaker 1: It was ChatGPT that I was using for that. Speaker 2: Oh, so you just uploaded what your designer sent you and said, hey, ChatGPT, make suggestions? Speaker 1: Yeah. I just took a screenshot of what he had and I said, this doesn't sound exactly right. You know, this is a store that sells blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's the website. Give me some better recommendations for this first graphic that's in our Amazon store. It was like, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here's five good recommendations. And like, I like this one. Give me some more. And it was was able to come up with some really good ideas for, you know, cool, like three or four word one liners to put as overlays for graphics. Speaker 2: That's cool. Speaker 1: Yeah, so always interesting ideas that you can come up with. And there's so many things that we don't even think of, you know, somebody who is using it for something that you hadn't even thought of and other people are doing different things. So doing a full episode would be a lot of fun, I think. Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. It would be neat to do like a ChatGPT for e-com or Grok for e-com or whatever, you know, Hey, this is this is how like I have three AI tools that I pay for. I pay for ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude by Anthropy. Yeah, and I find that I don't even use Gemini. It comes with my Google workspace, right? But I don't use Gemini because comparatively speaking, I found it to be absolute trash compared to GPT. Like, I don't know if it's how I prompt it or what, but using the same prompt between GPT-5 now and Gemini, It's a no comparison. The response out of Gemini is just atrocious. Even inside of Google Drive, which Gemini is attached to Google Sheets, Docs, etc. I use Gemini to say, hey, Sell number A1, when I check this box, I want it to highlight the whole row green, right? Sometimes it does it, sometimes it doesn't. It says that the first time I did that, it's like, man, I can't remember what the formula is to do the whole thing green and I don't want to spend the time. So let me just do this real quick. And it said, oh, this is the formula. Would you like to apply it? I was like, yes, I would. And it worked. Speaker 1: I've had the same experience. It's been a while since I used Gemini, but I had the same experience comparing it to ChatGPT and it just, It wasn't up to par. Maybe it's better now. I'm not sure. But I switched back and forth between Grok and ChatGPT. For a while, until recently, Grok was much better. But recently, I've noticed ChatGPT has been better than Grok. So I've kind of switched back. So I bounced back and forth between those two. And right now, ChatGPT replies much faster at their highest level, GPT-5 that they're at. Compared to Grok, it takes a while to think and come up with an answer. And the answer in ChatGPT has been a lot better. So yeah, you definitely want to experiment and bounce back and forth. But ChatGPT seems to always be there towards the top. And then the others kind of every once in a while will leapfrog them. Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and so when that happens, I find that GPT often then leapfrogs the leapfrog. Right. And so this is just a technology race, you know, and, but interestingly, though, we've seen some really big contenders to GPT come out to, to open AI come out. I find that open AI, in my opinion, an expert and, and not worldly in the world of AI, like I'm not testing it all day and night. Um, I just find that GPT rapidly retakes the podium and which when you're a first mover in, in a space, like it's really easy. So I hear in the technology space to be toppled off when you're the first mover. Speaker 1: Yeah, it happens a lot. I mean, if you look back through history, you might remember Netscape. They were like the dominant, one of the first browsers. And they're nowhere to be seen, MySpace, nowhere to be seen. Speaker 2: Even EarthBound. Speaker 1: Apple was the first operating system, actually, and they got overrun by Windows until recently that Mac has made a comeback. But that's just because of mobile and iPhone, really, for that. Speaker 2: Well, iPod. They recaptured the audience with iPod. Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's going to be interesting to watch. Right now, I think ChatGPT is the litmus test for sure. And then the others, leapfrog it. I like Grok, I think does really good, but there's so many different ones out there that you can play with and work on. You just got to find the one that works best for what you're trying to do. Because there are certain ones, ChatGPT is the best overall, but there's certain ones that are better for writing, certain ones that are better for research. You got to find the ones that works best for what you're trying to do. Speaker 2: Yeah, just like there's a thousand different messenger systems out there. I wish there was one cohesive one that brought everything in. I want an AI for AIs. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, when you do that jack of all trades, then they're good at everything and great at nothing tends to be a bad thing. Speaker 2: I want it to bring in the other AI models. Speaker 1: Oh, gotcha. We'll query all of them and then compile the answer from all of them or something. Unknown Speaker: That would be interesting. Speaker 1: I forget what it was called now, but there used to be meta search engines that would go out and get results from You know, Google, Infoseek, Yahoo, Go.com, I think was another one. And you would have all the results on one page. Yeah. That used to be a thing. That would be kind of interesting. Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be. Or you could just have it go, OK, it's this type of question. And I know that that Claude is better for programming. So let me prompt it at Claude. But let me also prompt it over here and see which one has the better, cleaner code that works. And then I can say, hey, check out this code. What do you think about that? Make it better. And now that would be, you know, it would be time consuming. I would do it like It would be cool if that existed and then you could say input, like let's say you want to build a website. You say, hey, I'd like to build a website. Use these three other websites for referencing. These are the pages that I want. Here's the data that I created for each page. Go. I mean, you can do that now. And then I would say, and then build it into a WordPress theme or coding that I can put into the drag and drop theme of WordPress, you know, blocks. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. That kind of stuff is here or coming very soon. A lot of it. You can do a lot of it if you kind of know how to do some of it manually yourself with copy and pasting and stuff. Programming stuff, it's really good at or building spreadsheets and things like that. Speaker 2: Yeah. So I, you know, what I'd love to have is a masterclass on using AI for spreadsheets because I've not been terribly successful. I haven't spent a lot of time with it, but I've got some pretty massive spreadsheets that I use in my company, right? Like for instance, I've been doing strategic partnerships in the Amazon space for almost five years, I think, or maybe longer, whatever. And so I've got a spreadsheet of all of the companies, the influencers, the course creators, the podcasts, the newsletters, everything that I have met and worked with over the years. That list is like 600 or something like that or more. But I don't have everyone's emails and I don't have everyone's domains and stuff like that. So I'd love to be able to just put my spreadsheet in and say, hey, I've got the company name. I might have the person's name. Can you go find me the company's phone number and put it into this field? That's what I'd like to be able to do or even better. Speaker 1: That would be ChatGPT's agents that you would program to do that. You have to set up the workflow and it would find that information for you. Speaker 2: You want to help me with that after this? Speaker 1: I've got to dig into that more as well. I want to use the agents to do a lot of the kind of the grunt work that VAs are doing right now that just is not the funnest stuff for them to be doing. And they could be doing more important things. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. If they can do build the agents then. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's going to be really cool to see where things are going and how much it's going to be able to do. But let's go ahead and jump into the first story and we can actually keep talking about AI anyways here. The AI commerce wars have begun. According to Forbes, the world's biggest tech and retail giants, Amazon, Google, Walmart, OpenAI and Shopify are battling for control of the future of shopping through AI powered agents. These agents don't just recommend products, they make purchases on your behalf, eliminating the need to browse, click, or even leave one app. For Amazon sellers, the shift means whoever owns the agent will own the customer, making it critical to stay visible in trusted platforms like Rufus or ChatGPT's shopping tools. I definitely agree the AI commerce wars have begun. They're definitely in the infantile stage. It's going to be a fierce battle, I think, because the winner of it, if it's not Amazon, could definitely overthrow Amazon at some point for e-commerce. I was actually working in Rufus here I'm trying to get it to see one of the products that we sell and right now it's not. I'm not recommending it, so I'm digging in to try to figure out why and changing the bullets and title and A plus that include more Q&A type stuff that Rufus picks up on. But one of the problems is that if you're not over 4.0 in your rating, Rufus, I do not believe will recommend your product at all. Speaker 2: All right. Well, as we're talking about this, I'm going to try that out because. Let's see if I can get it to recommend something. Speaker 1: Try it, okay. Yeah, and the other thing in the research that I was doing to try to figure it out, right now, supposedly about 14% of searches on Amazon go through Rufus to find products. Speaker 2: Whose number is that? Speaker 1: Last year, it was at 13.5%. So these are numbers coming from Amazon. So use them with a grain of salt. But what's interesting to that is from last year, it's only gone up a half a percent to right now this year. So it's been very minimal movement after that initial adoption of using Rufus to try to find products. Speaker 2: I mean, I think that that adoption of using products, of using Rufus has been us. Speaker 1: Probably a lot of experimentation and Amazon's been playing with replacing the normal search bar with a Rufus powered search bar. So that is probably included in there as well. You know, the beta testers for that. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I mean, in my testing with Rufus, uh, I, I have not been successful at, well, the search sucks compared to just doing the regular search right now. I did test it for that. Uh, you know, it says that, um, if you want to buy something that isn't on Amazon, That it will recommend products outside of Amazon that are hooked up with by. What's the program called by with prime is it by with prime yes so yeah i mean it's a. I was able to find a product that was not on Amazon and get Amazon to Rufus to recommend it. And it says, hey, you can buy this product, but it's, you know, all customer services through that vendor and stuff like that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's definitely not great. It's, you know, it's the beginning days of the AI commerce. So there's going to be a lot of work to fix it. With the product that I was trying to get it to see, I was like, well, why didn't you recommend this product? It's like, I can't find that product. That product doesn't exist. I'm like, well, this is the title, I'm looking at it. They're like, oh, maybe it's a new product or it's out of stock. I'm like, no, I can get it delivered tomorrow and it's been in existence since July of last year. They're like, I don't know why I can't see it. Maybe give me the ASINs. I gave it the ASIN. They're like, nope, I don't see that product. I'm like, okay, I don't know why you're not seeing this product, but I'm going to try to figure this out. I'm battling with Rufus to try to figure out why it won't see that product, even at all, even though I copy and paste the full title, give it the ASIN, give it the link and everything. I don't know, it doesn't exist, I can't find it. But if you see it, then hey, you can go ahead and order it if you want, it's a told me. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: All right, well, that's awesome. Or it wanted me to copy and paste the bullets so that I could give a recommendation based off of it. Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Speaker 1: So yeah, in your catalog, you should be able to see this if I'm specifically recommending it. Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the possibility A probability actually based on how Amazon operates is that they haven't rolled out Rufus indexing all products. They're probably segmenting it. Speaker 1: Yeah. It obviously cannot access the full catalog. Otherwise, with the ASIN, it should be able to see it. Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, to your point on nothing being recommended below four stars, I've asked Rufus, I'm like, Pages or many chat, I kept telling it more, more, more, more. I'm just looking for kids bike, right? The lowest rating and I've only seen two of them out of probably a hundred products at this point. So by a hundred products, you're already several pages in on normal search results. Nothing below a four star and all of them are the only two four stars. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: That's very interesting in that like, you know, I'm in, I help Amazon sellers do negative review removal. Like that's actually a, A very important point for me to know in that is like, hey, Rufus doesn't recommend anything below four star. If you're at four star or below, you'd better be doing what you can to get above four stars. Speaker 1: Yeah. And it makes sense, right? Because that's one of the metrics for whether a product is something good to recommend. That's the social proof. So if you're below four stars, You're going to see a huge drop off in sales anyway, so why would Rufus make any assumptions that the product is good if you're not even above four stars? Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yep, that makes a lot of sense. I still, I still don't see people widespread adopting Rufus, but Amazon may force it on everyone by implementing Rufus directly into the search bar where everyone goes anyhow. Speaker 1: The way I envision it would probably be something like Google or most search engines now. It gives that AI kind of results at the top and then you got the rest of everything down below. That's probably how they'll end up implementing it once they think it's good enough. Speaker 2: Yeah, my guess is that anything that's Amazon recommended or the top converter for the category will go into that synopsis at the top. Like, hey, if you're looking for these types of features, this is the Amazon top seller on this one, but here's some other good ones as well, kind of a thing. Speaker 1: Yeah, so then the question is how much do you think that will eat the conversions? I mean, what percentage of conversions do you think those recommendations will take versus people scrolling down? I got to imagine it'll be a large percentage. Speaker 2: I think the opposite. I think people are still going to want to be able to look at the The options, um, I believe that they will click into that first. So by virtue of that, you're going to have increased conversions. Um, but I think that many people are going to go, okay, cool. This looks like the best to me. Let me go out and look at 20 others. Speaker 1: Scroll down and search. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: To see. Speaker 2: Yeah. But that will be top of mind for the buyer. Speaker 1: Yeah, and it will be an incentive or a bonus, I guess, just like those badges, right? If you get the bestseller badge, that helps your conversion rates go up significantly versus not having it. It'll just be another signal to people for which products may be the best. It's going to really depend on the product. If you're looking at buying a $300 or $400 product, that AI summary at the top will be helpful, but it's not going to be groundbreaking versus a $10 product where people don't really care, they just want to get something quick. Then I can see that AI summary taking a larger chunk of the conversions. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair. Speaker 1: Because in those kind of results, if you're just looking for, I need a USB-C cable. Most people are just buying whatever the best seller is to do it quickly. You're not researching in depth like, oh, what's the best kind of gold for USB cable and stuff like that. It's like, it's $10. Send me the cord. Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, just Out of curiosity, I did I prompted I'm looking for a high rated daily health kit vitamin and my my vitamin came up as recommendation number two. I am, I, I just realized I actually am logged into the master account for that. So that, that could be skewing things, but let me try it in a, in my other one that is not connected to anything except for my business. But anyhow, it's, It's interesting to know still, you know. Speaker 1: And interestingly too, I do a lot of my purchases on the computer still, just I'm on the computer all day and it's easier for me to research on the computer. I don't believe you can access Rufus on the desktop. Speaker 2: Yeah, you can. I'm using it now. Speaker 1: You are? How are you getting to it? Speaker 2: Right below the Amazon symbol is a little Rufus button. Speaker 1: I don't have any Rufus. Speaker 2: Really? Speaker 1: Let's see. I'm signed out. So let me bring it over. Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, you got to be signed in. They want to track that shit. Speaker 1: Yeah. So I've got all button under. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's on mine. It's directly to the right of the all button. Speaker 1: OK, so I don't think it was there for me either, because I do have an Amazon business account. Yeah, that may be why it's not there. They're not doing the Rufus for Amazon business, perhaps. They're not pushing it yet. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Speaker 1: Let me get logged back in and just see if it's there or not. All right. Passkey setup. No, thanks. Come on, Amazon. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: You're slowing down the show here. Yeah, even when I'm logged in, there's nothing. I've got the all business and then small business grants right next to that. Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, I just did the Rufus prompt, same one under my business account, which is, it's logged in, but it has no purchase history. It's got no ties whatsoever. So Rufus obviously suggested my own products. Although I do see my top competitor here as a suggestion, but not my product. Speaker 1: Okay. Interesting. Yeah. It's definitely the future, AI commerce for sure. And I just seen too, Shopify, one of the news items that I seen, they updated their API and added a whole bunch of programming commands for integrating AI to search their catalogs and things like that. So Shopify is like moving Full steam ahead on the AI Commerce link at stores. Speaker 2: They struck a deal with OpenAI. I don't know what and after OpenAI announced it, I never saw anything else on it. Speaker 1: Yeah, they're going full steam ahead. They've opened up their catalog pretty much completely. The only thing that they're denying right now is the ability for AI to check out without a manual process at the finish. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Um, Walmart got their AI. Have you played with Walmart's AI at all for recommendations? I haven't either. So I don't know for sure how good it is. Um, but what else did it say? Open AI, but open AI is working with Shopify directly. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: Um, Amazon, I know blocked, uh, AI agents from accessing Amazon. We were playing with that last week, trying to get ChatGPT to find out information on listings, and it was not able to get information on Amazon.com, so it was pulling from Amazon Australia and India and Saudi Arabia was getting information, because apparently it could access those pages, but it couldn't access the .com pages. Speaker 2: Wow. Okay. So I just prompted GPT-5. Are you able to access Amazon.com? It says, yes, I can retrieve current data from Amazon.com. Speaker 1: Okay. So maybe something has changed. Speaker 2: Let's see. I'm just prompting it saying I'm looking for a daily health kit by my company. Yeah, it found it. Speaker 1: So let me just see here. I'm going to search. So I'm going to say, what are the bullets for this item? Let's see if it can actually get it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: 23 in one. Let's see. Advanced hip. Yeah, yep, I just it's a little bit different. So here's the actual bullets so advanced hip and joint care fortified more active dog at the end and it's got something different so It says it pulled it from amazon.com, but it's not exactly the same What are the reviews total 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. 939 total reviews. 973 is actually what it is. It is not pulling the most recent data. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cached. Speaker 1: Here's the sources. Let's see what the sources are. Amazon.com. It's all Amazon.com that it's trying to pull from. Speaker 2: Well, then I could see Amazon being like, all right, we'll cache data and give it to you like three months later, like three months old data. Speaker 1: And it's claiming it's 4.5 when it's actually 4.6. Behind in the data that is getting so, um, and remember AI is, is okay. Lying to you and making stuff up to pretend it's better than it is. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Are you getting live data from amazon.com? Unknown Speaker: Yes. Speaker 1: Uh, why is it not the same as the live page then? Okay, delayed sync, so not live data then. Okay, it's not exactly the same as what you see for some reason. So yeah, it's live, but it's not the same. That's what it's saying. But yeah, we do know that Amazon is blocking it in some way, at least from pulling it in for results for products and stuff. What are, what is your guesses? And by the way, everybody out there watching, I see there's a bunch of you watching. If you got any questions or comments, throw them in the chat and we'll bring them into the show. So what are your, what are your thoughts, Dane, and anybody out there listening? How long do you think it's going to take before AI commerce becomes just the normal way of life, kind of like shopping on Amazon is now? Speaker 2: I think next year dude i think that you'll be able to go to like gpt commerce gptc you know commerce dot open a dot dot a i and i think that it will. You'll be able to say this is what i'm looking for. Well, I take that back two years, two years until it's basically its own results page similar to Amazon or other websites. But it's going to basically what I think what I foresee happening is Shopify and other large e-commerce platforms are going to add code for AI tools, you know, LLMs to go in and extract the information. So that it can structure it in its own results. But then when you go, so you'll get like a tile of products and descriptions and stuff like that. But when you go to check out, you'll also do that through open AI or the GPT, I mean the LLM and you will So, your credit card information, everything, your shipping, blah, blah, blah. It'll all be there. It'll all be verified there. But then it will send the request to the website and they will then have to fulfill it and stuff like that. That's what I foresee happening, which basically takes you rapidly away from Amazon, which Amazon is going to hate, right? But opens the door to the entire world of products outside of Amazon and hopefully with the same conveniences. Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, You could be correct two years. I would maybe go three to four, maybe even five before it's super commonplace. Speaker 2: I agree with that. But like initial, I think two years or less is when you're going to start seeing it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: The first versions of it. Speaker 1: And here's what I could see happening. Shopify is obviously trying to take advantage of this as fast as possible to gain market share. And the main Difficulty for Shopify has always been that they're just thousands of separate stores with no cohesion at all. And so they've been looking for a way, I think, to do that for a long time. And AI is the way for them to Kind of become a search platform or a shopping platform like Amazon by using AI to bring every site together into one. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And I think you're going to see, uh, Amazon will probably move to open up its, its, uh, data. And ability for AI platforms to shop on Amazon pretty quickly. And I say that because the retail profit of Amazon is shrinking more and more. The profitability of selling products is is less and less compared to selling ads and compared to running logistics, which is and and of course, AWD or not AWD, the AWS, their web services platform. So I think the Amazon is going to be willing to open up their catalog in exchange for some kind of fee or something like that. Because the profitability is not with selling the products. The profitability is with the ads and the logistics and the back end of supporting all this stuff. Speaker 2: Yeah. Uncle Jeff's going to have to make his dime. Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So I could see them opening up and Shopify is already opening up and now you're going to have a central location that's going to search all of Shopify stores, all of Amazon and start bringing results together in a feed and suggestions and stuff from everywhere on the web. Speaker 2: Yeah. So you basically have, you've got Shopify, Big commerce commerce weeks for much smaller businesses and then there's a couple others i can't remember the name of. That are very large commerce companies and of course after that you've got your piece right and but. As a whole, when it comes to building your own e-com website, there's really just a handful of big, big, big options out there. WooCommerce is free, but complicated. Shopify is, I don't know how expensive it is today. I don't do Shopify anymore, but. Speaker 1: It's cheaper when you're small. It gets expensive when you're big. Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, it's, I think that they're just all going to rapidly adopt this and put in a code base to basically create a product feed into AI and then AI will. Assimilate and, and show the results based on their own, um, uh, structure and data. And so what I wonder though, is are these platforms going to take what you've already written for your products and make that The data that it feeds AI or are we going to have to be doing just like in the early days of SEO, some form of keyword stuffing or alteration of content to ensure that the AIs are seeing what we need them to see to display the results. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think both. You know, AI is is going to be smart enough to process the information that's there and and figure things out. But it's also going to be beneficial, as I mentioned, to have A lot of frequently asked questions and answers built into your bullets and description and a separate section. I even as a test on this product that I'm trying to get Rufus to see, I added in a frequently asked questions section to the bottom of our A plus to see questions that customers would ask an AI about the product. And then our answers from it because Rufus is going to index that and that could influence how it answers different questions. So you're going to want to write your copy in those ways in like kind of a Q&A style way while also getting your keywords in there that you need for normal search and stuff as well. Speaker 2: Yeah. There's a few, quite a few people out there that think that SEO is dead. I've heard that, hey, having these pages and building these blogs and stuff like that isn't the way anymore. It's so far from the truth. It's crazy. And so when, if you think about how do you search for a product, let's say you need a new camping tent. Well, do you suddenly and already know the model, make, model and all that of the tent that you want? You do not. So maybe you go to Walmart. And you look around and you're like, okay, cool. Now I know some stuff Coleman and, and, you know, whoever else, but what are you going to do today? Now you're going to go to ChatGPT and say, I've got a family of six. I need a tent that's tall enough for me to be able to stand up in. I'm six foot two. And, um, and, but I also want it to have two rooms in it so I can separate the children from my wife and I, and. Give me a list of what's out there and it's going to go cool. Here's a list of what's out there and create its own thing and you know, and then like I I've been using it to find like category leaders in terms of quality and build. Quality and stuff like that. And that gives me a brand to search down. But if you if if you are not so detailed and you go, hey, I need a family camping tent. What features should I look for? Well, guess where GPT is going to get that data from the blog that you wrote about how to choose a tent for a family. Speaker 1: Correct. Yeah, I mean, that's where it's getting that information. So there you go, I just took your question. REI, Co-op, Wonderland, Marathon, Limestone, North Face. Speaker 2: Those are all good. Speaker 1: And links to it. And there you go, look at that, it brought in the products, pricing and everything. Speaker 2: Yeah, see, this is exactly what I was talking about. This is exactly, they're already doing it. And that's three different vendors there. If you look at where those tents came from, it came from three different sites. REI plus, oh, REI plus. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: Oh, interesting. Speaker 1: Learn more, improve shopping results from ChatGPT. All right. More about how they're doing it. Speaker 2: Can you send, put that link into the, um, to the improved shopping results. Put that link into the, into the chat here, into the comments. Cause I think a lot of people are going to want to see that. Yeah, nice. Speaker 1: Yep, threw that in there. Interestingly, it gave 3.1 stars on its most recommended. Speaker 2: Yeah. So star rating seems to be not as much of a thing for results as Rufus, huh? Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's getting it REI and eBay for that one. This one's at Camp Moore, Saratoga Outdoors, Surf, Wind and Fire. Lots of different ones on that one. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: I wonder if those are all Shopify sites. Core equipment, only the one spot on that one. And you notice that it's writing this information as I click on it, because this was still being populated. Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that. I want to try this AI voice help experiment. Did you see that at the top of the results page? Speaker 1: AI voice experiment. Speaker 2: Voice, voice. It's a phone number to call. Speaker 1: Really? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Let's use source. Confirm Shopify. Is this a Shopify store? Yes, it is. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: So yeah, they're Shopify stores that it's pulling in a lot of them. Um, I don't know about Dick's though. I can't, I can't imagine Dick's sporting goods is using Shopify, but not likely look real good, real quick. Speaker 2: While you do that, I'm going to call this phone number. Let's see what it sounds like. Speaker 1: No, they're not Shopify. So they're connecting into ChatGPT somehow. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: All right. So you're calling what number? Speaker 2: I'm calling OpenAI. Unknown Speaker: Our conversation may be recorded to improve OpenAI services. Speaker 2: Can you hear it? Unknown Speaker: And by continuing, you agree to OpenAI's terms and privacy policy. Speaker 1: Yeah, I can hear it. Unknown Speaker: You can learn more at OpenAI.com. How can I help you today? Speaker 2: I'm looking for a camping tent for my family of six. What do you recommend? Unknown Speaker: I'm happy to help with questions about OpenAI products or services. Speaker 2: Oh, interesting. Unknown Speaker: For camping gear recommendations, you might want to check with a camping or outdoor retailer. Is there anything specific about OpenAI that I can help with? Speaker 2: Yeah, can you list out how many services OpenAI has and their use cases? Unknown Speaker: OpenAI offers several services. First, there's ChatGPT, which is an AI chatbot for conversations, answering questions, and generating content like text and code. Then there's the open AI API, which gives access to various models. Speaker 1: For example, ask her how many e-commerce stores they're connected into. Speaker 2: Okay. Unknown Speaker: Frontier models like GPT 4.0 combine audio, vision, and text capabilities. Speaker 1: I have a new question. Unknown Speaker: We also have DALI, which generates. Speaker 2: I have a new question. So how many Shopify stores are connected to ChatGPT today? Unknown Speaker: I'm afraid I don't have real time data on specific integrations. Speaker 2: That's fine. Give me the data that you do have. Unknown Speaker: I couldn't find specific data on how many Shopify stores. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: All right. Doesn't know, but that's kind of cool that they let you call and you can talk to an AI voice assistant. Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's, it seems like it's actually, um, it's not so much the chat search as it is actually customer service. Speaker 1: So yeah. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 1: Very interesting. All right, cool. Well, let's go ahead and jump on to our next AI here. Speaker 2: Cool. Speaker 1: Next news article, I should say. So how AI is reshaping e-commerce. Wait, is this the- Supplier negotiations. Nope, I'm on the wrong one here, one second. How AI is reshaping supplier negotiations. AI is transforming supplier negotiations by enabling faster data-driven decisions across procurement. From simple repeat purchases to complex contract terms, companies like Walmart, L'Oreal, and Marisk are already using AI to automate, accelerate, and improve negotiations with real-time marketing insights and smart trade-offs. For Amazon sellers managing supply chains, this technology can optimize sourcing, control costs, and improve margins, especially for replenishable or frequently negotiated SKUs. While full automation is growing, human oversight remains key in ensuring compliance, building trust, In navigating legal and regulatory risks. So I thought this was really interesting and could be really useful for private label sellers. But what I read about is Walmart is like using AI to negotiate pricing and terms, execute contracts and all this kind of thing with it. Because just imagine the amount of suppliers that Walmart has. I mean, it's got to be thousands. If not tens of thousands of different manufacturing companies and suppliers they're dealing with. So AI is just going to be amazing for them for that kind of thing, assuming that it's getting it right, because it doesn't always get it right. If you're a private label seller using ChatGPT and AI agents and stuff to handle your communication with your supplier could be pretty beneficial to help you learn how to do things more professionally. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, agreed. Speaker 2: I think I think that human oversight is going to be key on this. You're going to have to check everything that comes out from ChatGPT because if it goes on a tangent, And starts recommending or changing things in a contract that you're trying to negotiate that can have serious repercussions for you. Speaker 1: Yeah, sure. Speaker 2: You know, I, I've definitely, I use, I've used ChatGPT quite a bit for contracts and overall I found it to be very, very good. But what I start with is a contract that I wrote and then I say, Hey, here's the clause. Is there anything that's missing from this? And then I individually update clauses and then I go, here's the contract. Is there anything that's concerning on my side in terms of not being protected? And I'll make recommendations, even though it may have individually recommended each clause, it'll then look at it as a whole and say, hey, you know, Contact the lawyer and blah, blah, blah. But this clause is this. This clause is that maybe you want this here. And, you know, it'll it'll very easily. You can very easily overcomplicate contracts, which I mean, shit, that seems like an impossible thing to do. Contracts are already can be so complicated, but I try to keep my contracts like really simple and really easy. So there's not. Like, well, it could mean this, and it means this to me, and it means this to my lawyer, and it means this to your lawyer, so why don't we pay them to argue about it? Speaker 1: Yeah, you definitely got to be careful with that. I do the same thing with my contracts, and one thing that I've really started using AI for is if I'm signing someone else's contract, I'll download it and throw it into AI and just say, hey, is there anything weird here or anything that I should be aware of and show me like the most important points and it's like boom, boom, boom. This is out of norm with industry standards and stuff like that. So it's really helpful because then you can say, okay, Draft me some bullet points of what I should go back to try to change on this and then you can pick and choose which ones make sense and which ones don't. Speaker 2: Yeah. I sign a fair number of NDAs because I've got very large brands that are clients of mine. I tell every brand the same thing. Hey, look, I have no problem signing it, but just so you know, there's absolutely no reason for me to sign it because I don't have access to anything that isn't already public data. And when I get, you know, send cases through their seller central, I don't have access to anything at all except for the case that I sent. Right. So there is literally nothing that I can see and nothing that I can access, but still these large companies like, yeah, well, Be that as it may, it's company protocol. If you want to talk to us, you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Okay. But in those clauses, I say, hey, listen, I wanted to specifically state that if there's nothing, that it's null and void when it comes to public information. That's not in there. Then I say, well, look, just add that, and then I'll sign it. Speaker 1: Yeah. And one thing that this makes me think about is just the fact that already You can see AI is taking over just about everything in these big companies, you know, from customer service to negotiations and stuff like that. And that's just going to go to the extreme over the next couple of years. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And so that's going to be another area where I think a small company will be able to compete against these big companies, you know, small, you know, five person team or something like that. You guys don't need to make a billion dollars. If you're making five to $10 million a year, you're doing great and you can Do the human to human conversations and support and stuff like that. It's going to be an area where small businesses will be able to set themselves apart from big businesses who just can't do the one-on-one conversations. There will be a certain group of people that will want the human interactions that AI is not going to provide. Speaker 2: Yeah. There's also the fact that there's often going to be scenarios where the AI doesn't have the answer for it. You know, there's got to be, I believe that for every company, there's got to be an option to escalate it to a human, right? Because otherwise AI and these chatbots that help with customer service, they go cyclical, right? It's just, oh, cool. Well, what product are we talking about? This product. Okay. What's the serial number? This serial number. Okay, cool. What's the problem? This problem. Oh, okay. Have you tried this? Yes, I plugged it in and turned the button. It didn't work. Okay, have you tried this? Yes, I've tried all of that. Okay, what's the problem? Okay, well, have you tried this? Come on, I need a warranty replacement. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's super annoying when you get stuck in those either chat loops or phone tree loops and you're like, I've already done all this stuff. I need to talk to someone. Yes. You're yelling in the phone or yelling at the chat bot. Like, damn it, just give me a live person so that I can figure this out. Speaker 2: I'm going to have to ask you to not be so upset. And that's going to aggravate me in the morning. Speaker 1: If you continue to be so aggressive, I'm going to have to disconnect this chat. Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. I, you know, what's funny is I've, I've actually had that in like chats and, uh, phone, phone calls before with companies where they just don't want to actually help you. And, and I'd be like, no, listen, you need to go and go do this thing and look at this over here. This is the order number. These are the details. This is the shipping, whatever it is. And they go, sir, you're going to have to tone it down with me or I'll disconnect this chat. I'm like, this is a chat. You don't know what my thing is, my attitude is. I'm telling you what you need to go look at so you can help me. So either do that or transfer me and then disconnect this chat. Speaker 1: I've had it happen with Amazon support. I'll jump on a chat and we'll be doing stuff and I'll be telling them what they need to do and then all of a sudden they'll just stop replying and the chat will just sit there. And I'll leave it open because I know they're trying to get me to just go away. So I'll just put it on the side screen and leave it open until they finally disconnect it, just to force it to stay open. But they do it to me because they know what they need to do, that they need to escalate or something. But their metrics tell them that we need to stop escalating so much or something, so they don't want to do it. Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to close cases, not escalate them. See, that's the, Well, we better not go down that rabbit hole. That's a heated conversation for me because of the poor, poor, like customer service is a misnomer when a seller support is a misnomer. Like the Amazon doesn't support customers. They support themselves. So I like I've had so I've spent so many hours on phones and chats and emails and stuff like that when It's really just a simple resolution and we tell them, this is what happened. Here's the information. This is what I need you to do for me. You know, and they go, uh, hi, thank you for reaching out to support. Can you tell me what your problem is? Speaker 1: Like, I know it's so annoying. Like I entered my, the whole problem. Why are you asking me? Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually now copy, I write it somewhere else and copy it and paste it because I know that I'm going to have to repeat the whole damn thing. Speaker 1: I usually just ask him, can you see what I wrote in the case? And then they go and look and it's like, why didn't you just do that in the first place? Speaker 2: But yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets extremely frustrating. We're not even dealing with AI with Amazon support. Sometimes it might be better, I guess. Speaker 2: Let's be honest. When it comes to Amazon, I genuinely believe that AI will be better for seller support. Speaker 1: Yeah, in a lot of cases, assuming they do it correctly. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: And they allow for an escalation path. And the chat GPT or the AI, I should say, AI support isn't just like, oh, no, we'll just disconnect the chat instead. Oh, we go silent on us. Speaker 2: I know that I can see Amazon programming that in. Speaker 1: Yeah, probably. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: All right. We'll just jump onto this last news story and see if you got any last tips here. So getting ready for the holiday shopping season, Amazon put out some tips. So Amazon expects the 2025 holiday season to be its biggest yet, offering sellers a major opportunity to boost sales through prime big deal days and Black Friday, Cyber Monday week. The deal submissions are now open for best deals lightning deals. I'm exclusive deals and coupons each with specific fee structure minimum discounts thresholds and submission deadlines so It is the holiday shopping season already. If you don't have your Amazon inventory inbound from China or India or wherever already, you're definitely too late. Well, not too late, but you're definitely late. You need to get going and get your product in there. Do you have any specific tips or suggestions for people out there watching for preparing for the holiday season? Speaker 2: So I think that obviously inventory inbound is number one. Don't forget. Oh, perfect. Oh, no, this is not what it is. But don't forget that Amazon raises fees every year around this time. And then it's like gasoline. It raises up in the summer. And it goes down in the winter, but not to where it was before. Speaker 1: So pretty much. Speaker 2: Yeah. So expect higher, higher feet, placement fees and all those, all those fees, the fees on fees. And yeah. Speaker 1: And this is a big one to remember that they ruined coupons basically by it's no longer a flat fee. It's the 2.5% of sales now. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: That's a big one. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I don't run coupons, do coupons or anything like that, but I know it's an excellent, excellent model, especially for launch, for you to be able to have a higher product price, but use a coupon and not have to do a lower price and then incrementally raise it thereafter. But yeah, I mean, that makes it so expensive. Speaker 1: So here's those dates, by the way. So Prime Big Deal Day is the next sales event that's coming up, which they haven't released the dates for, but here are the dates that you have to have your inventory in by. Speaker 2: Wait, is that a new one? I don't remember Prime Big Deal Day. Speaker 1: No, I think they had it last year as well. It's just another sales event that Amazon has made up. Speaker 2: Is it just another prime days? Speaker 1: So obviously it's going to be in, it's probably going to be in the end of September, beginning of October. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Because they've got the cutoff September 19th. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So I'm thinking it's just going to be kind of a lead up sales event to Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Speaker 2: Probably. Okay. Yeah. I guess that could be, I mean, all right. Interesting. Um, there's, let's see. So, oh, advertising. There was a tip that I recently heard about advertising during the holiday seasons. Oh, depending on the product and all that stuff, you do not necessarily need to go and boost your advertising because you're going to see a rise in your conversions anyhow, because it's just shopping time. Speaker 1: Yeah, depending on what you're trying to do. If you're in growth mode, you'd probably want to raise them. If you're in maintenance mode, then you don't necessarily have to do that. I would look into your budgets and stuff to make sure you don't run out on your best campaigns. Maybe look into day parting as well, especially for that period so you're not running out of budget. Speaker 2: Does Amazon allow day parting inside of their PPC management system? Speaker 1: That's a good question. I'm not positive because I use AdLabs. Speaker 2: Yeah. I was just going to say AdLabs. Speaker 1: And so it's built into there. It's been a while since I've done it inside the Amazon I'm a campaign manager. I don't think so unless it's something recently that they've added. Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think so either, but yeah. Okay. So, uh, Dave, if you want to do day partying, like, you know, that people do research around this time, add to cart around this time and check out around this time. Cause that data is out there in some select places, but, um, you might consider day partying for sure. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And then one thing when it comes to what I do, If one thing that i said this is this is a common occurrence when it comes to just before prime days black friday cyber monday christmas shopping etc. That's when the nasty competitors go out and post a bunch of fraudulent reviews on their competitors so if if you want the best if you're in an area like supplements electronics beauty Toys etc clothing if you want to have the best chance of not having a fraudulent attack and If you want to ruin your sales days, then you need to contact me at ecomtriage and we need to get started with doing review removal for you. You want to start now, not then. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I would agree with that and to go right along with that, I would say, make sure you've got All of your paperwork ready to go. You know, if you're in supplements, you need all the testing paperwork and stuff. You need those documents ready. Have a contact at whatever lab you've used. Well, you probably are using one of Amazon's labs now, so they've got the direct connection. Have your invoices ready to go. Anything that you need for compliance, have that ready because every year Amazon seems to like to do like a major takedown right before Q4. You want to be ready for that so that if you're going into Prime or into Black Friday and it's like the Tuesday before and they take your product down so that you can get all that stuff submitted and hopefully get your product back up before Black Friday or Prime Big Deals Day or whatever it is. Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a more aggressive tactic that will be used is that The competitors will use these companies that have hundreds or thousands of buyer accounts that they can rotate through. And they will leave specific keyword optimized in their case, keyword optimized nasty reviews that like, uh, like got sick, had to go to the hospital, like caused severe bleeding, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. They'll use these in a, in a, and they'll batch them out. So you'll get hit over like a two day, three days, seven day, 12 day, 30 day period. And an Amazon will suspend your product right before it's go time for you. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. One other thing that I just thought of is to number one, make sure your brand registered. Hopefully everybody's already brand registered with their trademark and everything. So your listings are locked down. But even with brand registry, you want to make sure, at least for your main products, if you got a big category, it's a little more catalog, it's more difficult. But for your main products, make sure you go into the backend and edit it and fill in every single field that's back there. Even if it doesn't make sense for your product, put something in there so that that field is locked down because the black hat people will try to inject their own stuff in there to get your listing taken down. I have a huge catalog of like resale products. I've got like over 10,000 products in the catalog and I'm always finding listings I've seen that the brand name has been changed. The bullets have been changed. The description has been changed. A lot of times they're not brand registered products, but sometimes they are. And it's almost impossible to get seller support to change that stuff back. Because usually if they change the brand name, they're changing it to a trademarked brand registry name. And then Amazon support is like, oh, it's brand registry. We can't change it. I'm like, but it's a stolen listing. So make sure all of that stuff is filled out in your back end, especially for your main products. That would be disastrous if something got taken down. Yep. But all right, we'll go ahead and wrap it up there. This has been a lot of fun, a lot of good AI talk. I appreciate everybody out there watching. Every Friday we do this, 1 p.m. Eastern Time, so definitely join us next week. And Daymond, I appreciate you joining me again. Speaker 2: Yeah, buddy, see you next week. Speaker 1: Have an awesome weekend, everybody. Speaker 2: All right, bye, everyone. Speaker 1: Talk to you later. 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 1: 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.