Amazon News: ChatGPT Checkout, Reseller Bans & Market Shakeups

Amazon News: ChatGPT Checkout, Reseller Bans & Market Shakeups 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 3: Hey everybody, welcome to Amazon Seller News Live. Again, another Friday has come already. Looking forward to diving into some news today. I've got Danan and Kevin with us. I appreciate you guys joining us, joining me I should say. I have some really interesting news with AI and Shopify, as well as we're gonna talk about the marketplaces and our thoughts on which marketplace might do best if we end up going into some kind of recession. Gonna talk about Amazon suspending resellers, as well as Etsy making some moves to try to focus on their marketplace, which has been declining lately. With that, anybody out there watching, if you have any questions or comments about the news or anything else, throw them in the comments there and we'll try to bring them into the show. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into our first story here. Shopify builds checkout into ChatGPT. Shopify has integrated a full checkout experience directly into ChatGPT, allowing customers to discover, engage, and purchase products in one seamless conversation. Sorry. No redirects, no new tabs. This marks a major shift towards agentic commerce is what they're calling it, where AI doesn't just recommend products, it completes the sale in the chat. For Amazon sellers, Vanessa Hung emphasizes this isn't a reason to panic, but it is a wake-up call to evolve. As AI-driven shopping experiences become more streamlined, sellers must adapt by reducing friction, creating contextual content, and optimizing smarter data-backed and creating data-backed funnels. And Dana Neuse mentioned before we got going that you were looking at Shopify stock because of this news. So you want to be the first up to talk a little bit about this? Speaker 1: Yeah, sure. I mean, something like this, it just makes sense. This is just the next logical thing for these big companies to do is everyone knows that we're going to AI to find data on products, right? We've got Rufus on Amazon. We've got ChatGPT. We've got Gemini. We've got all, Perplexity, all those different AIs. So, you know, Amazon When TikTok was going wild, at the last Accelerate last September, they announced, hey, we've got a partnership with TikTok now. I haven't seen much result from that because I think it's going to take a fair amount of time to fully implement this stuff. But it makes perfect sense that Shopify would do this and this this could this really could be a huge leap for Shopify if they're able to pull this off properly because if if chat GPT is able to access Shopify's API, let's say and someone says hey, I really want a sleeping bag well You're not just going to Amazon and having to sift through a whole bunch of Chinese sellers selling you don't know what kind of quality because you can't trust the reviews and stuff like that. You're going to be going to Shopify stores where people have a vested interest in a true brand. And if you can go that route, I mean, hey, I would practically switch from Amazon to ChatGPT to find my products because I know And I'm jaded as a longtime seller, but I know that I cannot trust the results that Amazon displays to me now on what products when I put in a keyword search, right? Speaker 3: Way too many ads nowadays, too. Speaker 1: Yeah, something like 40% of the page is ads now. So those are potentially not legitimate responses to what I'm searching for if I'm searching for a longer tail keyword. I think this could be a massive leap forward in what people are truly looking for as long as The Shopify store owners can get their keyword research correct, which they have to just show up in Google. So yeah, I could see this working out really well. Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I like it a lot, and this is a relatively big if, but if they do it right, I could see this as a contender to Amazon's dominance. Now, that's a ways down the road, but it's possible that it could happen really quickly because if Shopify is able to create a streamlined buying experience Similar to or better than Amazon and they would also have to do it in a way where, you know, it's streamlined returns and everything else. You could do returns and such, right? And ChatGPT and all that and get enough stores on board to be able to go into this, you know, this new catalog, this new index for a store. You could totally take a lot of sales from Amazon just by how easy it would be to start shopping in ChatGPT or some other AI, whichever it would be. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, let's face it. ChatGPT would become the next product search engine just as Amazon is today. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: And what do you, how many users do they have? Like 70 million, 170 million? I don't know. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: The, the problem with Shopify though is that, yeah, they have however many tens of millions of users. But all of the stores are separate, right? There's no cohesion. There's not like a Shopify store. There's individual stores that use Shopify. But if somehow Shopify can bring everything together under chat GPT and kind of make a massive store like Amazon based off of all these individual Shopify stores, Then it could be very huge now. Obviously it would have to be an opt-in kind of thing But if they can get enough people to opt into the Shopify marketplace That's running through ChatGPT. It could get really big. Speaker 1: Who wouldn't opt into that? Like would you like to have the opportunity for a gabajillion people to find your products? Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, it's a. Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, you would think it wouldn't be a big deal. But part of the reason a lot of people do Shopify stores is because they don't want to be reliant on a marketplace. They're trying to get away from Amazon. And now if you're in the Shopify marketplace, which in the end is going to charge some kind of fee, just like Amazon, that's kind of coming around to the same thing again. So some people could get hung up on that. Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. I'd jump on it though. I mean, fees are going to be smaller in the beginning and you'll just have to diversify as things change. I want to know what Kevin thinks about this. He's been silent the whole time. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just absorbing. So I have a different take. I think this is interesting, but I think it's kind of gimmicky at this point. Cause I think all of it comes down to user behavior and I forget who it was. Um, maybe it was Steven Pope. Um, a while back had done a LinkedIn like a survey thingy was, you know, have you bought anything from Rufus? Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Speaker 2: And it was like 90% no. And these are even sellers who are, you know, a lot of his audience are sellers who are excited about AI and latest whatever. So if Amazon, I've never bought anything from Rufus. I can tell you outside of the Amazon world, I don't know if I've ever heard one person ever talk about Rufus. So if you're looking at, let's say, quote unquote, normies, What are the normies doing? Then you kind of know things are like getting traction. If normies aren't using AI on, I guess I offended Dan. If the normies aren't using Amazon's algorithm or Amazon's AI to find products, chances are they're not going to do it on Shopify. Sorry, they're not going to use this connection with Shopify and ChatGPT on ChatGPT. They might get ideas on ChatGPT, but I honestly believe most normies don't even use it. Like I won't say the name of the family member, but I had a family member who's older had said, you know, I noticed on the Facebook app, it's constantly talking about MetaL. And we're like, that's meta AI. And I think it's just the average person is not as in tune with AI as we are. Speaker 1: Grandpa, it's metal, just metal. Speaker 2: It's metal. Yes. So I think eventually it's one of those things like kind of keep your eye on the mark for it. But like, and maybe it's because I'm still jaded for all the time I spent trying to figure out how to get, you know, listings up on Jet.com and probably did $300 worth of sales before it all went away. And so I think this is one of those that like, The saying is, you know, that the trailblazers are the ones with the arrows in their backs. You want to follow the trailblazers. So let the trailblazers kind of figure out some of this stuff with AI and AI commerce and then come in later on and figure out like, okay, because, you know, if you think about it, like a lot of times people say like, oh, I wish I was an Amazon back in 2014, 2015, 2016. Well, that wasn't like when it first got figured out, you know, FBA started in the late 2000s. Speaker 1: Yeah. 2011 or 12 or something like that. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So, and people were selling on Amazon Before that, even though most people associated third party selling on eBay. So it's been around for a long time that you could sell on Amazon, but it's become a bigger thing now. I think kind of that like, if whenever the trend happens with AI, Like you figure out what that trend actually is and then jump on it because we're going to see so many of these shiny objects, you know, like, Oh, this company is doing this and everyone's trying to figure it out. And there was, there was some video I watched the other day that reminded me of this. And it was like a YouTube short about like I was looking at car features that are irrelevant nowadays. And it was like, you know, like you could connect your CD player or, you know, your, you know, your CD reads MP3s or 8-track. Exactly. Exactly. These things that like were kind of a big thing for like two years. Or like, you know, they used to make like handbags and things that like would fit like flip phones. And then they made it, you know, fit like a BlackBerry. And then like, you know, all that went away. And then we kind of landed on, you know, this style of phone, which we've had for like 15 years. So I think we're in such early days with AI that like, It's a very good tool for helping you rewrite listings, sort through data, things like that. Use the tool in that regard because it's very good at that. But anything that requires adoption of users to make purchases, it's going to take a while to get there. It might be worth testing something out if you can get some additional sales in Shopify. If this involves clicking a button, click it. If this involves lots of work to AI, Shopify, your listings like it's AI friendly, then I would be a little more cautious on spending time there when there's so many other things you could focus on that actually would get you sales sooner. Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't disagree with you at all, Kevin. That's partly why I mentioned, you know, whether it's chat GPT or some other AI, because I don't necessarily think chat GPT is going to overtake Amazon, right? chat GPT is is very kind of a still relatively like a nerdy kind of thing. You know, if you're not in that world, you probably don't go and use ChatGPT that much. The interface is not Overly user friendly and such. So where I would see this more likely to work, you know, this is I think a proof of concept. We're gonna, you're gonna get a lot of people testing it out and playing with it, maybe ordering it, seeing how the process works and, and honing everything. But what I could really see taking off is if they made Instead of everybody going to ChatGPT, everybody went to Shopify powered by ChatGPT, you know, like Shopify marketplace.com or something like that, or marketplace.shopify.com. Right. And, and they're coalescing, bringing in all the products from various sites into one site that looks like Amazon, but the search bar is ChatGPT. And you're using that to find products. That I think would work better than trying to get everybody to go to ChatGPT and being, you know, what is this black screen with a prompt? Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think that ChatGPT is going to become the marketplace. I think it's going to become the referral source. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's probably fair. Speaker 2: And what's interesting is like, you know, there's other ChatGPT's similar type things like Grok and Claude and Perplexity that aren't as well known, but maybe have the chance to be. Because if you think about it, like Facebook was not the first social media site, you know. But nobody, Friendster, like, I don't even know if you go to friendster.com, is it even like, you just get like an error? You know, nobody goes to Myspace. Speaker 3: I'm afraid to even go there. Speaker 2: Infoseek and Lycos and you know, even Yahoo, you know, they they hadn't asked Jeeves, like some of these Yahoo chat rooms will never die, Kevin. That's true. Yahoo, at least they have email. Speaker 3: Still there. Still there. Friendster. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: So, but like, you know, some of these early or like, you know, the, what's the yearbook website that's been around forever. Maybe it is yearbook.com or classmates. That's what it's called. Classmates.com. So like, but like that never really took off. So some of these things like are good ideas and they're kind of, Paving the road for what will be the big thing. And the hard thing is like, how do you even know what the big thing is? You know, cause sometimes people, you know, like there's YouTubers that are big just because they were, you know, very early on in YouTube, but then there's other people that like went really on and something else that just never took off. Speaker 3: So yeah, I, I agree, agree a hundred percent. And we got a couple of comments I'll throw in there. Saeed says, AI is going to change a lot in the e-commerce space. I think I would agree on that. It already has, yes, 100%. The question is just how. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly what and how. Speaker 3: You know, in AI, we're in like 1995 internet e-commerce day when it comes to AI right now. So we've got, and it's going to move fast. I don't think it's going to take as long as e-commerce took. To take off in the beginning? Speaker 1: No, because it's already been adopted. And this is just an augmentation of the style that you use to get to where you need to be. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And it's so useful of a tool, AI, just in general, that it's going to go really fast. Adoption is going to happen really fast. It already has. In the next five years, the landscape is going to be completely different. But I do think Shopify Shopify has an amazing opportunity if it can make it happen. The struggle is going to be bringing thousands or millions of independent sites together into a marketplace that can compete with Amazon because the main thing about Amazon was that they developed trust, right? So if Shopify can develop that same kind of trust and it already has the products, It could be a major competitor if it does it right. Speaker 1: True. Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I mean, but they've kind of tried it with like this shop thing. Like, and I don't even understand it. Like I'll get like emails like you have $4 in shop bucks. I'm like, I don't even know how to redeem them. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3: They've made some attempts. They've just never, they've never done the entire thing. They've always, I think shop, if I remember right, I didn't really use it, but wasn't it just like a catalog, but then you would complete the checkout on individual sites or something like that? Unknown Speaker: Something like that. Speaker 3: It's very dispersed. It needs to be a cohesive catalog. And then perhaps they have a chance but still then you've got a lot of marketing to do but Shopify is a relatively big name. But for the general audience, like you said, Kevin there, most people aren't going to know what Shopify or chat GPT is right. So yeah, got a lot of work to do there for sure, but I like it. I think it's moving in the right direction. Hopefully it becomes a contender and makes shopping easier. I seen a post, do you guys know who Reezy Resells is by chance? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I know the name. Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's a reseller, Amazon reseller, but he made a post about that he was booking a trip to somewhere, a vacation. And he's like, why is booking a trip such a pain in the butt and such a hassle? When is AI gonna just do it for me? And that's kind of the route that we're going with AI, I think we'll get to and eventually AI will be able to just do the shopping for you, you know, to learn your preferences. And then it will be able to go out and buy, you know, whatever you're looking for very quickly. Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. Speaker 3: So that's what's coming, I would say. All right. So we've got another question here or comment from Deepak. Did you guys hear about Amazon cracking down on main image click-through rate hacks? I've seen a little bit of it myself. I've seen some of my images or listings get suppressed with images that we've had up a while. So I know there's been some enforcement changes. I think AI is getting more advanced at finding image manipulations, but I haven't heard anything like massive. I don't know if you guys have. Speaker 1: Well, can you give me an example of what you're referring to? Speaker 3: So for example, I had a three pack of this product and the graphic designer made a circle and that said three pack on one of the bottles. And that got taken down. Speaker 2: And some of it is it can kind of, if it reads that it doesn't look natural, I think it's more likely to pick it up. But like the example I always give to folks is just go on Amazon, look up toothpaste. It's always in page one. There's like it's Colgate. So you see like the box of Colgate with the tube. And then there's what looks like a moving box behind it with the Colgate logo and says pack of six. It looks very unnatural. It looks like it was poorly created, probably in Canva or something. And that listing is sold by Amazon. Like it's a first party listing. So if you scroll down, I can almost promise we're going to find it. Otherwise I'll be proven wrong. Maybe they press themselves. Speaker 1: You're on the spot now. Oh, I see it. I see it. Hold on. Here's a hold on. Let's see. I put, oops, I posted it in the comments. Let me put it in the private chat. There you go. Speaker 3: 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. Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe try that one, Todd. Unknown Speaker: Hold on. Speaker 3: Opened in the wrong screen here. Let me see. Bring it over here. Speaker 2: Yeah, so this. So if you look, it's sold by Amazon.com. That doesn't even look like something that you would expect. Speaker 3: Clearly they put that logo and pack of six in it. That's definitely not. Speaker 2: Now if you scroll down to the reviews, people take pictures and it's just clearly they just took six boxes and shrink wrapped them together. Because if you look there, you can see that's just the main image. But here's actual photos. It's just two by three. They shrink wrapped it together. No one's complaining. This product sells like a thousand units a day. When I looked at it the other day, it was like 30,000. Again, this is Amazon on their own website. At least at MAG, we talk about adding a keyword to packaging. Are people going to complain if it doesn't have that exact keyword on the packaging? Probably not. Unknown Speaker: Kevin, this is highly rated. Speaker 3: Amazon.com. Speaker 1: When has Amazon enforced their own rules on themselves? Speaker 2: Never. Speaker 1: When has Amazon decided to break the law and let Amazon get away with it? Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. So they're getting away with it. But at the end of the day, like they see the value in Making sure it's very clear to people and using real estate on quote unquote packaging. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. A hundred percent. There's, there's nothing wrong with doing exactly what they did here. Nobody's going to care if it comes in that actual box or shrink wrap together. Speaker 2: Now what they don't like is like the starburst that says pack of six. That's like in the corner. That one, they seem to catch on cause it doesn't look like it's on the packaging. If it looks like it's on the packaging, It tends to get through more often. Speaker 3: That's what got taken down for mine. If this was my image, it would be three packs. It would show three of these tubes and then on one of them, like right here, we made a circle and put three in the middle of it. I picked that up and took that listing down. Speaker 1: John Aspinall goes over this a lot on creating images so that you can make it look like it's part of the packaging. Speaker 3: Well, that one they didn't even try. I mean, their graphic designer didn't even try to make that look. Speaker 1: Oh, no. I mean, the logo follows the lines of the box, you know? Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Which you just kind of take the, like if you're in Canva, you just kind of tilt it a little bit. Speaker 3: Yeah. But if it was actually printed on there, you know, you'd see the roughness of the box a little bit and it wouldn't be like perfectly black. Speaker 2: Well, John, what he shows is like in Canva, you can like put like a layer that's like wrinkles. So it makes it look more wrinkled. He's got a lot, like follow John. He's got a lot of really good tips. And one of them is even like use transparency. So like it's 70% opaque. Speaker 3: So there's a lot of transparency. Speaker 1: That's what I was just going to say. You could just make that at 80%. You get a little bit of that texture from the background and it would look a hundred times better. Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, even the Colgate logo up here looks distorted a little bit. It's because it is. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. But yeah, Amazon not following their own rules. So yeah, Deepak, I've had it happen on some of my listings. I haven't heard anything in mass. You know, LinkedIn is not going crazy about it that I've seen recently. Speaker 2: Yeah, you would hear about it if it was becoming a big thing, but it's a risk, but It's a relatively low risk. If you're listening, just go back to the old image. Speaker 3: It's why I always say just make sure you have an image ready to go that's completely in line with the rules that you can throw up as soon as it does get taken down because if you're manipulating it, odds are eventually Something's going to happen. It's going to get taken down. Even if you're not manipulating it, odds are eventually it's going to get taken down. You always got to be ready with your backup images and being able to throw them up real quick. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 3: And maybe subscribe to your service, Dane, to track those kind of things. I believe your service tracks that, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. You're talking about Catalog Defender? Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. We track changes to track and have a change log of when there's changes to anything, pretty much most of what's in the listing content-wise. Yeah. Speaker 3: And I just bring that up because I seen you mentioned Carbon 6 is like phasing out their tool that does something similar, right? Speaker 1: That was really surprising to me. They're decommissioning AMZAlert, which obviously that opens the door for Catalog Defender massively. I was a user of AMZAlert until we built Catalog Defender. But, yeah, that was a big surprise to me to receive that email. I wish that I'd talked to Qazi first before he sent that email, you know, because I could have said, yeah, hey, Qazi, send it my way. I got a deal too. Speaker 3: Yeah. Here's some advertising dollars. Add my link to that. For sure. Yeah, but tracking those kind of things, you know, with the catalog defender, catalog defender or some other software is definitely priority if you're especially for your big listings, because Sometimes you don't always notice when it gets suppressed and then a few days later you're like, why am I sales tanking so hard? Speaker 1: That's exactly why we built Catalog Defender is because if you don't check it every single day, then you can have these little tiny issues that you don't realize are there until they cost you money. Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely. All right, well, let's go ahead and jump on to our next topic here. Which marketplace wins in a recession? There's been a lot of talk about possible recessions recently. I don't really think it's going to happen, but you never know. There's millions of economists that can't predict it, so I'm sure I could be wrong. Amazon, eBay, and Walmart are positioning themselves differently to weather a potential economic downturn, with each leveraging unique strengths. eBay may benefit from increased demand for used goods and repair parts, while Amazon is expanding its refurbished product offerings and using AWD to manage tariff disruptions. Amazon and Walmart are also pressuring suppliers to absorb tariff costs and signaling they may cut margins to maintain competitive pricing. For Amazon sellers, this environment favors those with flexible pricing strategies, strong supply chain visibility, and potentially a foothold in refurbished or high-end products. So what are your guys' thoughts in terms of if there was a recession, which marketplace kind of gets the best end of that? Speaker 1: Kevin, you go first. I have to think about my answer to this. Speaker 3: Sure. Speaker 2: I think all of them benefit from a recession. I think the, you know, I don't know why, but like, you know, like Facebook, for example, they got reels and, you know, you click on one and they just keep showing you more. I keep seeing abandoned malls. I don't know why. Maybe it's just the nostalgia. I grew up like malls are a big thing. Malls are less of a big thing nowadays, but you know, retail sectors in general, like including restaurants, like that is an industry that's like kind of on the way out. So any, like the thought for most people of like driving to the store to buy something, it's just, it's less attractive. Yeah. Speaker 1: Especially if you've got kids. Speaker 2: Exactly. And there's also the perception of like, you know, you're, you can't really compare like a bunch of like stores together. Like if you're, at the mall, because one, there's less options than there used to be. And you know, you can just go on your phone and on Amazon, you can look and see like, oh, okay, here's five different things that are similar to what I need. You can compare pricing, whatnot, you know, within minutes, whereas, you know, when you go to the store, you're looking at one store and their prices. So I think we're going to, we would see more brick and mortar stores closed down, which just pushes more demand to online. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 1: Have you guys seen what Kroger's been doing? They've like fully adopted the, hey, everyone wants this stuff delivered to them. They are building facilities that are solely for these online orders and deliveries where it's not a store. It's not a person that's going around and like, okay, there's that thing. Let me throw it in the cart too hard and smash it or whatever. It is actually machines that are going, okay, pick this, pick this, pick this. And it all gets packed and it gets shipped and delivered within a, an extraordinary amount of, uh, low, low amount of time compared to, okay, well, this shopper needs to make this delivery first. And one of the, like one of the things that we happen all the time and we actually stopped buying. Um, sliced Italian meats from Costco because they always showed up warm. And we've had two packages where we open them up like, ah, that ain't right. And we just toss them, you know, because obviously I don't want, what is it, Salmonella that you get from? Yeah, Ebola, Zika virus, I'm not sure. Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, it makes perfect sense. With the technology, The conveniences are getting far more and more convenient. I remember as a kid, shopping day was an entirely full day of mom loads up the van with all four of us kids. We go to Costco, we go to Trader Joe's, we go to Whole Foods. You load up that vehicle, you keep it covered, you put ice packs, blah, blah, blah. You get back, you unload everything, you put it all away, you eat half of what you bought in that next hour as you're putting it away. But now, you get a delivery, you put it away, you're done. Speaker 3: Yep. Yep. 100% all of all the the the future on that is definitely those kind of buildings that Kroger is is building. And then you're going to have a self driving. Loading van or whatever that they put the order in. They're going to pull up to the curb in front of your house and a little robot is going to bring your package to the front door and set it there and it's all going to be automated. Speaker 1: I think the robot might be a little ways off. What happens if it's icy out? Speaker 3: Well, we don't have to worry about that in Florida. Speaker 1: Right. Not usually. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, if you're up in Wisconsin, let's say, or Canada, you got a robot with treads on the tires. It's like a bulldozer kind of robot that goes through. Or drones are another option. Domino's already has those self-driving cars that bring your pizza. You do have to go out to it and grab it From the car that pulls up but ridiculous. Speaker 1: No one wants to expend that much energy. Speaker 3: I know much work, but you'll eventually just have a little Self-driving car that comes up to your your house and then a robot comes out and delivers the pizza or whatever I mean 10 almost 10 years ago now my wife and I were in San Francisco and. Speaker 1: And we saw a company testing one of these robots that was doing, I think it was doing food deliveries, takeout deliveries. And it was a box driving down the sidewalk and at extremely low speeds, but we're sitting there eating food and we're like, oh. There goes a robot. That was almost a decade ago. So it's definitely gonna happen. Speaker 3: This is getting a little bit off topic, but I seen a news article that I believe it was, was it South Korea? South Korea or Vietnam, one or the other, probably South Korea. Speaker 1: Probably. Speaker 3: They're having a big festival and they deployed AI Robocops. That are literally robots that have AI in them, 360 degree cameras that are looking for weapons, looking for issues and things like that. And they're actually using them at these This big festival that's going on. Speaker 1: Wow. Citizen, you're under arrest. Citizen, put down the knife. Speaker 3: Right? So, it's moving fast. Yeah, for sure. Now, as far as the recession, my opinion, who wins a recession, which marketplace? In my opinion, Walmart wins that. You know, maybe not by a lot, but I think Walmart has a lot more experience in recessions and town turns than Amazon does. And they know how to negotiate these tariff issues and get lower prices and things like that. And people still think of Walmart, I think, as lower prices than what you'd see on Amazon. And so they're going to turn to Walmart more when they need to save money than they will to Amazon. Speaker 1: I think that really what's going to have an impact is luxury items that people want but don't need. But I think the marketplaces are going to continue onward. The money is going to shift a little bit. People are going to spend less on things they don't absolutely have to have. But it doesn't mean they're not gonna spend. They're just gonna spend their money more wisely on the things that they need to operate their family and life. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. 100%. Any thoughts, Kevin? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it'll be interesting. And this recession is coming. I've been hearing since 2015. It was almost like, you know, we had the recession in 2008, 2009. And, you know, it's usually seven, eight years later, you have another recession. So we've been hearing it ever since. And I find A good chunk of the people that talk about recessions coming up are also offering you gold or crypto against the recessions. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Be careful who you're taking advice from. Speaker 1: Silver's going up to $300 an ounce. Buy silver now. Speaker 2: Right. So it's all these people that eventually they're going to be right. It's just when. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Well, gold has been going crazy. Has it? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: It's at its highest it's ever been, like way higher in the last year. It's gone up a lot. If you had gold, you're sitting good right now. Speaker 1: Yeah. But then you're not sitting so good necessarily because if you sell that gold now, that money is still worth If you're new to the show, I'm Todd Welch. More of preservation than interest bearing or investments that make you money. I think it preserves money. Speaker 3: Yeah, 100%. Gold can go up in value, but it can't generate income for you. Speaker 1: Correct. Unless you're loaning off of it. If you become a bank and you can loan against nine times what you have, then it does. Speaker 3: That is for sure. Yeah, for sure. On eBay, the article mentions eBay. I don't see eBay being that big of a winner in anything at the moment. I think Amazon has enough used stuff. Walmart has used stuff. It might see a little uptake with people looking for parts and things to repair stuff, but I don't know. Speaker 1: That's what I use eBay for. I just busted a mirror out pretending like I was off-roading in the Rover. eBay, to the rescue. Instead of going to Land Rover and buying a $400 Mira, I got it for 60 bucks. Speaker 3: Yeah, eBay is great for that kind of stuff. Amazon has gotten a lot better in the parts world, but eBay still has by far a bigger catalog when it comes to that. Speaker 1: Yeah, and huge sellers that are positioned, have been positioned like that for 20 years. Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. All right, well, let's go ahead and hope that there is no recession and all the tariffs get worked out and the world economy booms here in the coming years. But let's move on to a happier topic here. Why is Amazon suspending resellers in 2025? Okay, maybe not so happy. Speaker 1: I'll give you, like we don't even have to read the article. Here's the answer. Because they are. They always have. They always will. Speaker 3: Yeah, they are cracking down on it even further. I'll read the blurb here. Amazon is tightening enforcement on third-party resellers, frequently suspending accounts that fail supply chain verification, even if invoices and suppliers were previously accepted. Sellers are now expected to source directly from brands or authorized distributors, often needing a letter of authorization to validate inventory authenticity. Generic wholesalers, retail arbitrage and online liquidators are increasingly rejected and resellers relying on these channels risk losing their accounts and funds. For Amazon sellers, especially resellers, the message is clear. Without bulletproof supply chain documentation, your account is vulnerable. And I did just recently have a coaching call with someone who It's a brand name pen. If I said the name, most people are going to know it. You've been selling a six pack of it. He got un-gated for this product, has the invoices. He's got 800 units in FBA, 4,000 units in AWD because this sells really good. And all of a sudden Amazon just auto-gated him again with no option to get un-gated. Speaker 1: I wish I was surprised when I heard this stuff anymore, but this is something that, and I hate to say, I hate that to say this and I hate that it even needs to be said, but this guy should have maybe expected this coming because if the manufacturer doesn't sell a six pack of their pens, And he's created that ASIN himself. Amazon alerted these people, made the announcement that this is changing quite some time ago, months ago. Speaker 3: Here's the curveball, Damon. When I was on the call, I loaded up the ASIN in my account and tried to get approval for it. And I could get approved for it with an invoice of 100 units. Speaker 1: Yeah, but it still doesn't change the fact that they're cracking down on these people that are inventing new ASINs that are not factory. Speaker 3: That is true. Speaker 1: You and I, our seller central accounts will be treated differently. I could be declined, you approved, vice versa. I mean, that's been happening for a long time anyhow, especially when they began gating products. All the guy needs to do is go to that manufacturer and be like, hey, I sell 50,000 units of your products every year and I would just like something written from you that approves that this is a, I think you can do that, but approves me selling a six pack of it. Get it on company letterhead. You know, I would hope that the brand would support that. But if not, then he needs to unfortunately break those apart and sell them on on the listing with other people. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's definitely a pain for sure, but it's been happening more and more. I've been seeing a lot of brands that you know how they used to need 10 units on an invoice. Now I've seen it with 100, 300, 500, even 1,000. On some of these brands when you try to get ungated for them. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yep. Speaker 3: And I, I get why Amazon is doing it. I, I do think it, uh, is definitely immoral for them to, for example, block this guy from having any course of actually get ungated, especially when he's got 4,800 units in Amazon facilities. It's like, right now you're gonna make me pay thousands of dollars to pull this product out. That's a little ridiculous. But I do understand why they're requiring more units because they want to ensure that you are buying legitimate product. That's been a big thing that the government has been pushing on lately and they're trying to make sure to weed out the fraudulent sellers and such. Even when they don't know that they're selling fraudulent goods. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's, they're doing it with policy rather than practicality. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Like sweeping policy rather than practicality of, hey, this person, these types of scenarios are historically problematic for us. Why don't we go solve those things? Instead they go, oh, well, you know, you're not legit unless we decide you are. Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, I think that is and, you know, Amazon's so big, it's hard to see if anything will ever happen. But I just feel like there's, there's some kind of lawsuit just waiting there. Like, you know, Amazon is, is picking winners and losers, like, oh, Todd, you can sell this product and apply to get undergated. But you over here, you can't, we're not gonna allow you to sell. It's like, I don't know. There's definitely something that seems not legal about that. Speaker 1: Discrimination. Speaker 3: Right? Yes. Yeah. That, it's just, it doesn't seem right for sure. But when has Amazon done anything right? Speaker 1: Fully right. Yeah. Speaker 3: Correct. So any thoughts, Kevin? Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't do, Wholesale or reselling, although my very first sales on Amazon were stuff I bought on clearance at Walgreens. So I at least, you know, can say I've sold some reselling. I can understand where Amazon's coming from with, you know, having to kind of somehow be the police of making sure there's no fraudulent goods. It's just, If somebody has, like in this case with this one seller, if he has a history and he doesn't have a bad history, his history of selling legitimate products, can't they at least come up with something like, you can't send in more units or something like that? Until you provide certain documentation, you can't send in more units. We've inspected it, at least passes the sniff test that this is good units. So unless they have some reason to believe, which when they have reasons, they don't always tell you what they are. They have some reason to believe that these are not name brand pens, that they're knockoffs. But then they should probably provide something. And that's one of the challenges I think a lot of people have with Amazon, is that it's shoot first and then you prove that you didn't break the rules, but they don't really tell you what you broke. Speaker 1: Or what you need to do, even if you know, if you can figure out what it is that you purportedly broke, they don't tell you how to resolve it either. Speaker 2: Or if you do provide the documentation. Speaker 1: It gets declined. Speaker 2: It gets declined and it may not even necessarily be that you have the wrong documentation. Speaker 3: They just don't feel like approving you. Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't feel like approving because maybe on their end, it takes more time to approve the document than just decline it. And there's probably not much accountability for inaccurately declining it, but there might be more accountability on their end if you approve something that wasn't actually something you should have approved. Speaker 1: I feel like you're referring to that post on Reddit. There was somebody, an anonymous post that said, yeah, I worked at Amazon and all I did was decline everything and I was rewarded for having such a good Doing such a good job of ensuring that people that shouldn't be selling on Amazon didn't sell there. But the fact is, is that he would play video games or watch Lost or whatever he was doing, binge watching Bluey, who knows, which is what I do. And just going in, logging in, doing some keystrokes and then declining, making sure you had a certain thing account open for five or more minutes, right? And then decline them. And it, this person admitted, yeah, it probably costs, uh, people, uh, tens or hundreds of thousands. I'm like, you, you person, you did you person, you, uh, you probably cost people tens of millions of dollars just because you didn't want to be culpable for maybe making the mistake. And this is the problem with how. Not everybody's like this, of course, right? And good job on this person for exposing that they did this, even if it was anonymous. But it just goes to show the baloney that we as sellers deal with when going into this corporation that's run in such a way that they reward people not for legitimate production, but for handling things faster, not the right way, just handling them faster. And there was the same thing that we had with seller support Back in the 2020s, we're still in the 2020s, but early 2020-ish time where there was an entire team that all they would do is resolve issues without responding, resolve cases without responding. You guys probably both had this issue where you put in a case, it'd be resolved, there was no response, and it was just marked as resolved. Well, that whole team was graded, their statistics were measured on how quickly did you resolve cases. Well, let me show you. Unknown Speaker: Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, right? Average of one second per case. Speaker 1: Exactly. And that team was rewarded for their phenomenal work. And then enough people got pissed off and reported going, hey, I've done this case four times. You just said, hey, you can't do duplicate cases, but you, your team is resolving it without ever even reading or responding. Right? So we're the ones that get the blame for being wrong. And because we're putting in five cases at a time, the same case, because we know that three or four of them are going to get resolved automatically. So this is a pattern that we've seen with Amazon for a very long time. I don't, you know, let's take, sorry, I'm on a little soapbox right now, but let's take my service, the review removal, right? Amazon has been categorically making it harder in every respect for me to be able to do my job. The first thing they did is they made it so that you had to click page to page to page to get the reviews. Then they hid all the reviews but the last 100. Now you have to be logged into an Amazon account to even see the reviews. And now when we're looking at reviews, Amazon is throwing up like false 404 pages. And so it's, you know, if you ask me like, hey, Amazon, if someone in Amazon goes, do you think that maybe we should hide the information that results in what we are publicly showing people is the reason for this rating? Oh yeah, we should do that. Let's hide information. So, you know, there's just so many, don't get me wrong, Amazon's still the best place in the world to sell. But the bullshittery that goes on just needs to be expected. It happens. That's part of doing business with Amazon. And I've said it before. I think I've even said it here. But the best explanation that I have for Amazon is a schizophrenic dictatorship. And that's who you're dealing with. Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah. And it's not going to change until their dominance is challenged by someone else legitimately. Speaker 1: Yeah. By the way, Todd, Rivley's coming. They're like this close. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Awesome. That would be awesome. Speaker 3: I would love to see that happen. Speaker 1: Me too. We got a long road. Speaker 3: Eventually, there'll be someone that challenges Amazon's dominance and then we'll probably have two schizophrenic dictators to deal with. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Amazon will buy them out. Speaker 3: Yeah, that could happen too. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: All right, cool. Well, there's one last story that I wanted to touch on here quick and then we'll wrap things up here. Speaker 1: Let's do it. Speaker 3: Wrong one, and get back. So Etsy, as we've talked about before, is shrinking. Their marketplace is shrinking. So this article caught my eye. Etsy sells reverb to focus on core marketplace growth. Etsy has sold its musical instruments marketplace reverb to focus more sharply on its core platform and Depop. I don't know what Depop is, but it's another marketplace that they have. Aligning with its long-term strategy of streamlining operations, the sale is part of a broader push to prioritize high-performing business segments and improve profitability. Amazon sellers should take note, platforms are doubling down on their strengths and staying niche-focused may offer greater stability and growth. Etsy's leaner model may signal future changes in competitive positioning and marketplace dynamics. Speaker 1: I think it's too little too late. You look at their stock back in 2022, they were almost at $300 right now. They're sitting at $45 per share. And so what we've seen is a three-year decline overall in this company. Speaker 3: They should have made moves back in 2022. Yep Yeah, they should have been the as I've said before the the farmers market of the internet and went all in on that and said hey we are US only sellers strictly handmade Nothing, that's bulk manufactured And they would be highly profitable I think right now if they had stayed that route that they were originally on. Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you remember when Amazon launched Handmade? Speaker 3: I do. Yep. Speaker 1: It was in response to Etsy. They didn't just come up with it because they felt like it. Do you remember when they launched Amazon Hall in response to those other bull crap market like crap product marketplaces, you know? So if if Etsy had stayed in their lane for sure, they Amazon nobody would ever go to Amazon for handmade. In fact, I don't think they even do. If Etsy was like the place for that stuff, you're absolutely right. They got greedy and went, hey, look at all this money over here and over there and let's do this. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: They tried to get too big for their britches. They tried to become Amazon rather than honing in and being Etsy. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Kevin? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they kind of became like a That's what I'm looking for. A haven for print-on-demand. There's a lot of stuff I saw on YouTube a couple of years ago about selling print-on-demand stuff on Etsy. A listing costs, what, 10 cents or something like that? Speaker 3: Whatever the cost is. Speaker 2: It's pretty cheap to add a bunch of listings on Etsy. People just flooded it with junk. And then they didn't really have a good way to get around that like. People are adding Disney and Taylor Swift and all this stuff that they clearly did not have the authorization from the intellectual property owners to sell. Unlike Amazon who had too heavy of a hand with people reselling legitimate goods, people are making up their own goods and they're not really doing much about it. I think there's also a trust factor there too with people and I don't hear My wife doesn't talk about buying stuff on Etsy anymore. People used to talk about buying stuff on Etsy. It was good, but every time I go there too, it's like, you know, People play all these little games of like, you know, it's like $5 for whatever you're looking for. And you realize like, no, that's like one particular, like ultra small size, and one color that people don't actually like. And then they're shipping on top of it. Speaker 1: It's 70 bucks. Speaker 2: Right, exactly. Exactly. So then there's like, there's it. It's not as transparent of a marketplace as Amazon is, and I think that also has hurt them. Transparent, at least on the customer experience, maybe not on the seller experience might be easier. Speaker 3: Yeah, I've definitely experienced that. I jump over to Etsy every once in a while if I'm looking for something unique that's custom and handmade or something like that. Then you got to weed through all the sellers and make sure you're only ending up with ones that are actually handmade in the US or whatever. But then, yeah, you do run into that a lot where you click on it and you're like, oh, that's what I'm looking for. And then you get over there. And it's like, Oh, this is for $5. That's just a sticker of this product. If you want the actual product, it's $100 or whatever. It's like, are you kidding me? Um, but yeah, it's, it's definitely a problem whether they can recover or not. I would love if they do, but I think Not only, Dana, as you said, they lost the trust of buyers potentially. I think they enormously lost the trust of sellers and a lot of legitimate sellers have been bailing on Etsy and going other places. Speaker 1: Yeah. What did they lose? Like 20% of their sellers or something like that? Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. Something like that. If on that last article that we looked at, it was 20% or more. Yeah. Speaker 2: So Todd, I've not talked to him in a while, but like our mutual friend, Scott Volker, you know, he went from being kind of an Amazon guru to a few different things. And he was talking about Etsy for the longest time. I went to his YouTube channel the other day. Speaker 3: I was like, what's Scott up to these days? Speaker 2: He hasn't talked about Etsy in months and he's got a different channel focusing on like YouTube related stuff. But I think part of it was like, you know, I think Etsy is kind of on the way out. Like, you know, Amazon eventually will hit that, you know, spot where Amazon becomes kind of on the way out. But like, I don't see that happening anytime soon, because there's not really an alternative that people want to spend. Maybe it becomes ChatGPT, but we're a long way there. Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's interesting is his last podcast episode was November 19 2024 about Etsy and e commerce stores. Headed for Black Friday disaster was his last episode. Speaker 2: Well, in a lot of those videos, which I think were probably accurate at the time was like, is this the end of Etsy? Which was probably prophetic, because it is seems to be heading that direction. And so you could kind of sense that like, you know, Amazon has kind of been this growing marketplace and like, you know, the, the cottage industry around Amazon has changed and it's less of a cottage industry and more like, you know, it's an actual industry. Um, whereas like Etsy, Etsy never really took off and it's sad because I think Etsy had a good thing going and good potential, but like, Yeah, I think it was they tried too hard and it was also too little of a barrier to enter the market. Speaker 3: Yeah, perhaps. It's hard to say. It looks like you've got some newer videos on Etsy in the last couple of months. Speaker 2: Oh, does he? Speaker 3: What is going on? Etsy, new opportunity selling on Amazon. So maybe speaking back to Amazon from Etsy. Speaker 1: Yeah, two months ago. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Etsy, I think they, they missed the opportunity that they had, unfortunately. And they're probably just going to keep declining kind of like eBay. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And it's like, you know, the, another reason why I'm, I would be hesitant to tell people like go all in on figuring out another channel because eBay, Jet.com, Walmart never took off for people as a third party marketplace the way I think people kind of hoped a few years ago. Etsy, you know, is, you know, becoming a disaster. So it's like all these things and it's like. Speaker 3: Eventually, somebody's got to step up, you would think. Speaker 2: Somebody. Speaker 1: We hope. Speaker 2: We hope. I mean, people were talking about Sears.com when I first started selling online. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: That's right. Oh my gosh. Man, I forgot about that. Speaker 2: You know, it was like Fulfilled by Sears was like something, like imagine if you had Stuff at Sears' warehouse. It might still be there. People are doing abandoned videos and they're taking pictures of your stuff. Speaker 3: Yep, could be. All right, guys. Well, that about wraps it up. I appreciate you guys joining me and everybody out there watching. Every Friday we do this at 1 p.m. Eastern, so feel free to join us next week. Speaker 1: All right. Speaker 3: See you next week. Awesome having you again. Have a great one. Speaker 1: Bye. Speaker 2: Bye. 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 3: 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.