Amazon News: Cyber Week Wins, AI Agents Rise & 2026 FBA Reality Check

Amazon News: Cyber Week Wins, AI Agents Rise & 2026 FBA Reality Check Unknown Speaker: Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 2: What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode, Amazon Seller News Live, the post-Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week, Cyber Month, Cyber Year, I guess they're going to be going for pretty soon here. Overall, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week was very good for me. I hope it was good for everybody else out there as well. And the numbers are looking good. But before we dive into all of that, let me welcome everybody we got on the show today. So in my upper right here, we got Andrew Morgans of Marknology. So Andrew, appreciate you joining us. Chelsea Cohen of SoStocked. Great little software if you haven't checked it out. And of course, Danan from EcomTriage. Appreciate you all joining the show. Speaker 3: Thanks for having us, Todd. Speaker 2: Did you all have a good Thanksgiving? Speaker 3: We did. If we're talking about business or personal, I guess they both were good. Speaker 2: Both, yes. Speaker 3: I say local, family small. It was very restful, very peaceful. It was great. Speaker 4: I drove up to Tennessee and my wife and the kids, they flew up before I got there, right after I got home from Thailand. So they flew out and then I drove up a couple days later and it was madness because there are horses and goats and chickens and donkeys and all that stuff out there. So the kids were just like, poof, gone. And then we ran out of inventory over Black Friday weekend. Yeah. Speaker 3: Well, you know, the commandments of Amazon. So, you know, that's not good. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 4: We got charged for running out of inventory. You know how it is. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 4: Fees and all. Speaker 2: So nice of Amazon for sure. Yeah. Speaker 1: I had some family over to my brother and his kids and his family. So they met my son for the first time and yeah, it was great. The older one, she was great with him. So it was nice to have a little bit of a breather, had a little bit of a babysitting situation, especially with getting all the turkey in the oven and all that. So yeah, it was great. Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome. Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw those pictures. They were super cute. Speaker 2: We had a big Thanksgiving at my house, about 30 people. So it was kind of cool. We had a nice long like king's style table set up and everything and playing outside and stuff, even though it was down into the 50s, but it was still, you know, the sun was out, so it felt good. And it was a lot of fun for sure. And of course, sales were really good. Amazon tried to harm my sales by taking down my best-selling product, which has transparency on it. And we sent in like 400 units or 500 units recently and they said 30 of them somehow didn't have the transparency code. So they took it down as like we're selling inauthentic product. It's like, all right, so I had to submit everything and thankfully we got it up before the big sales day hit. Speaker 4: That's good. Speaker 2: Always annoying when that happens. Speaker 3: Stress, just pure stress for no reason. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. It's not like it's a new product that we just started selling. We've been selling it for many years, so it's like, come on. Speaker 4: Under the transparency program. Speaker 2: I guess, but yeah. Amazon doing what it does best, making things hard for sellers. Speaker 4: Through Amazon. Speaker 3: What happened when you just ran out of inventory, like oversold, like just killer, just killer? Were you running lean or were you guys like great and it just took off? Speaker 4: Well, we were up we were obviously running lean we didn't think so Initially, but yeah and and our our Time to replay a replenishing inventory has increased recently with manufacturers So that was another factor that where we went. Okay, we need inventory and it's in our inventories in California and So they're manufactured in California, but we didn't get in time, unfortunately. And of course, check-in now is like... Speaker 2: Yeah, take it forever. Speaker 1: Do you store excess inventory at your supplier's warehouse or you have to start the manufacturing process from scratch? Speaker 4: So the inventory is always being made and sold. And it's manufactured and stored in California, but So it's not our product, right? It's the supplements that we sell and we've been selling them for a decade on Amazon. And so they're always making and sending inventory. But I think that their process on making it, Jade knows better because she's the one that actually runs this stuff these days, these days for the last You know, eight or 10 years, something like that. And so, yeah, there's something changed over on their end. I know they removed facilities recently and rebuilt everything. And but yeah, whatever it is, it's I think it adds another 10 days or so of like, hey, we need inventory. They used to basically ship it out. We'd give them a label like here's a label, ship it out and it'd be out like the next day. Now it's taking like a week or more. Speaker 2: Yeah, supply chain hiccups going on. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 2: It's changing. Do you typically send directly into FBA, Danan, or do you utilize AWD at all? Speaker 4: I think that my wife, no, she, you know what? I don't know. I'm pretty sure we send it all into FBA because the inventory historically has been a day or two away from being shipped into Amazon warehouses. And it's in California and the majority of our sales are California, Texas, and then in New York and Florida, but it's like really fast to ship an inventory. But I don't know logistically what's occurred lately, but not, yeah, something. Speaker 2: Yeah. If you're able to get product in, I like to use AWD during this time of year just so you can kind of overload it a little bit to make sure you're not Running out of stock, best sellers and stuff like that. Speaker 3: I heard like in October, even that like AWD was maxed out and not taking any more product. Like, is that right Chelsea? Speaker 1: Yeah, it had the same timeline as FBA, which was surprising. So yeah, and a lot of people last year had a bad experience. I think it's improved so far, but we saw a lot of people I went to AWD in Q4 last year and then started pulling things and then as fees got crazy, went back. So mid-year people started going back and I think a lot of people are now using AWD newly. So that could be a factor in Amazon kind of changing their rules in terms of check-in. Speaker 3: One thing that was, for anyone listening, one thing that was like, insightful, I guess, to me about it was, you don't have to be all or nothing with AWD. So you can have that hero ace in or that, you know, your two best sellers and the rest like, you know, on your own terms and just have those two in AWD. So that hybrid model is really like, For us, I kind of changed the decision matrix for us and whether we would do it or not was basically, do we have to do all of them? Because, you know, it is a big risk if they're still glitchy and you know how Amazon rolls stuff out. It's a nightmare. So for anybody this year that might think about it for next year, just know that you can test with a couple of your ASINs and you don't have to do everything. Speaker 1: Yeah. Having plan A, B, C and so forth has always been important Second year I started selling on Amazon, 2015, we had a problem where Amazon, we gave Amazon all of our inventory, FBA, and they lost it right before the holidays and then found it afterwards. So it's definitely a major problem. One of the reasons why I created SoStocked because, you know, having that balance and Knowing when you can pull a trigger other than Amazon, really having all your eggs, you know, putting all your eggs in that one basket. And I think AWD, it is a different, it is a different source than FBA, but they are still Amazon. So then having that third piece where you can, let's say, switch to, you know, fulfillment, your own fulfillment, because, you know, this, this season is so important. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 3: Agreed. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Logistics is, is so important and it's, it's a piece of the puzzle that a lot of people don't focus on. Because it's, you know, it's not the sexy part of, of Amazon, like PPC or optimizing a listing or something like that. But yeah, if you don't have that locked down, especially this time of year, you can run into all kinds of different issues. Speaker 4: Yeah. So many, so many times, especially in this, Last couple of years that I've been doing content and having people on my podcast and stuff like that It's the unsexy stuff where all your money disappears Mm-hmm. Speaker 1: Yeah, I always say it's you know inventory is the most expensive thing you can get wrong. Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. Speaker 3: I tell my team, for us, it's the PPC. We're spending other people's advertising dollars and inventory. You can make mistakes there. One of the biggest mistakes I made early on was even doing a good deed. I was going to help trunk or treat at the church or something, volunteering, and got an email from a customer last minute that he wanted to send in this supplement. Can I get him the labels? Just email him over the labels. K2 and D3 and he had been selling like K2 for a long time and this D3 had been sitting there ready to go but like not stocked for a couple months like waiting on it and so it was like that's why he was anxious to get it but I just looked at the label and you know it truncates it to just it looked exactly the same in the shortened title on those FS and SKU labels. It was like a $15,000 mistake before I had the $15,000 to lose. Ended up splitting it with the client, you know, but it was also this product that was moving like, you know, a couple hundred thousand a month. So you're having to pull everything out. And so with my team, I'm like, guys, like when we're managing, this is where we can mess up the most or where we can like, we need to use the most caution is, you know, increasing a client's budget or spending frivolously on, you know, not being negligent on keyword harvesting and things like that. And then also being super careful whenever we're doing anything with inventory to trip Check and double check triple check. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, one of the things I talk about is you can run someone into a stock out or you can run your own brand into a stock out. And so knowing what your runway is and knowing that spike and how much you can sustain. Knowing how detrimental it is to stock out, making that plan to figure out what is that breaking point and how do you avoid that stock out? When do you back off on the ad spend and maybe increase your pricing? Because then you're avoiding a stock out, hopefully, and you're also increasing the profit of that particular product by reducing the ad spend, increasing the price, slowing down those sales. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Where do you come down on that, Chelsea? Because one of the problems with that, if you start increasing your price, that could potentially harm your conversion rate, which could make you drop in organic rankings. Because some people talk about, you know, just go full bore out of stock is better than increasing your price. But then at the same time, running out of stock isn't good either. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that assessing whether you are going to run out of stock and not be able to avoid it, or whether you can save it, you know, you've got product on the way, it's maybe a few days. So it depends on, you know, if you're going to run out of stock, you kind of go out in a blaze of glory. But if you can't avoid it, slowly bring down that price or increase that price because you also don't want to lose that buy box. So being able to make that decision based on the data that you have. Speaker 4: You know, I've actually got a question on that because I've done this before. Back in the day, we were selling a supplement. We were going to run out of stock or maybe it's one of our beauty products. I actually don't remember, but we basically doubled the price, right? And our sales actually increased after we did that. But these days, if I'm not mistaken, if you double the price, you get buy box suppressed. Is that right? Speaker 2: Yeah, most likely that quickly. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the interesting thing about increasing your price is also being able to and this was talked about, you know, years ago, just testing the price elasticity to see how much am I actually losing? How much are people able to accept that price? Because maybe the price is too low and it helps you to discover what that sweet spot is. Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. There are products out there where their margin might be 10% or 20% and if they just increase the price $1 or $2 and they're well within the range of acceptability, they double their net profit. Speaker 3: There's a lot of factors like As an agency owner, I have my own brands where I can do whatever I want with pricing and can test and experiment and do all those types of things. We also have brands that are on map pricing or wholesaler agreements where that pricing, you're not able to adjust it or you shouldn't be. Everyone has their own kind of pricing rules and what's allowed. The way like you can get around some of those is like the bundling plays or things like that to get price higher or try like what can it really sustain where as soon as you get away from a product they have in the other retail channels, you can get a little bit more elasticity. But if you're doing private label for sure, you got to see where it can go. And something else is like sometimes the price point is really just tied to the quality of your content. And so if you have, Great content that's communicating premium or communicating the right things. You can handle a couple dollar increase if your content is crap and you're just selling a commodity product. That price really matters a lot and you'll see that there's a certain number you can't get over and they just won't buy it because they want to know that. As an agency owner, you just get a wider view of all the different things that work or don't and that price point is a huge deal and you can then sustain. But you're also thinking about what price tiers you get into if you're in a $10 below product and those types of things. It's really one reoccurring thing we've talked about already this morning between inventory and ads and price is like just the different pillars of Amazon and really how they're all working together. You gotta be able to see that big picture so you really know what to do. Can I get more inventory in in time? Do I have FBM backup? Like what are my options when it comes down to running out of stock? Speaker 4: Yeah, well said. Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely. All right, let's go ahead and dive into the first news article here. So Cyber Week recap. Online sales climb 5%. In-store shopper visits increase 3%. So Cyber Week sales jumped again this year with U.S. e-commerce up 5% and AI influencing 20% of global orders. A major signal that Amazon sellers should expect even more AI-driven shopping behavior and competition. Mobile dominated checkout and BNPL hit new lows. Showing where customer convenience is shifting fast. In-store traffic also increased 3%, proving omnichannel still matters and giving Amazon sellers insight into why big box competitors continue to invest in hybrid shopping experiences. Strong early season numbers suggest a trillion dollar holiday season ahead, meaning sellers should push hard now while demand is still elevated. So a couple things I just want to point out there. 5% climb, 3% for in-store. It's good that it increases, but we do have to take into account there's about a 3% inflation year over year, at least official. Unofficial probably more like 6% to 9%. So if you take that into account, it's not quite as good as it may seem, but still it feels good that it's increased, especially in the climate that we're in now where everything, all the news is kind of dire when it comes to the economy in a lot of ways. Speaker 3: I agree. I think 24, 25 have been very hard years as an agency owner, not just on the agency side, but on the brands within the agency side. We're getting results there. And I think that we've had a government layoff, right, for extended amount of time. That's a huge portion of our country's employed. And even if they were, even if it's not them specifically that's impacting it, that's a small amount. But if you were to say, hey, maybe that's 5%, you know, that are now going into the holidays, uncertain. I think the main thing that has been impacting the economy, if anything at all, if you want to put your finger on anything at all, it's that uncertainty. And uncertainty has people being frugal, purchasing different things. Obviously, different money brackets depend if you're still in that upper class, you're still spending the way you want to spend, but the rest, you know, middle class, lower class, I'm really thinking about what they're spending on, what they're buying, really being frugal, shopping deals instead of just buying stuff. It all impacts it a little bit. And so, you know, pick your poison on what that impacting factor is. But between tariffs, between inflation, between the layoffs, between all of those things, you know, I'm pleasantly surprised at an increase at all. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'd be interested to see where that increase lies. You know, is it, you know, the toys and electronics category? Is it the bulk buys? Because I know I personally bought a lot of, you know, those bulk items, those things that I know I'm going to repeat by, you know, wet ones, things like that, that were on heavy discount. And so judging by your comments, are the increases in those essential categories or are they in the toys? What was the split last year compared to this year? And then also the deal prices, I think they were lower because Amazon enforced more. They had the price history calculation. I don't know if you guys saw that feature. Very, very cool feature. Deals can no longer be faked. We've all done it. It's been a thing. Deals can no longer be faked and you can see those things. Even though the sales dollars have crept up a little, I'd be interested to see the sales units as well because maybe there are more units being purchased. Speaker 2: And we're here to talk to you about how to sell on Amazon and how to sell on Amazon 2026. So let's get started. I'm Danan Coleman. I'm Andrew Morgans. And we're here to talk to you about how to sell on Amazon and how to sell on Amazon 2026. So let's get started. Speaker 1: I'm Danan Coleman. And we're here to talk to you about how to sell on Amazon and how to sell on Amazon 2026. Some of the value-based essentials. Speaker 4: And I know my wife, she went on a whole bunch of websites and bought next year's clothes or the next size for all three of the kids. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 4: Because especially Black Friday, like, She buys a lot of bamboo for the kids, bamboo clothing, which immediately get destroyed, but we won't talk about that. Shirts are normally $20 and she was getting them for $4. She bought them a bunch of shirts for $4 a piece. Kids' clothes are crazy expensive. But little side note, Chelsea, by the way, how much did you ever think that wipes were such an unbelievable commodity and before you were a mother? Speaker 1: Diapers, you know, all of it. And looking at, you know, how much you spend. Ari does a lot of the diaper changes. So he's like, no, you know, he doesn't need a diaper change yet, you know. Speaker 4: It's like taking money and like, oh, there's a whole bunch of pee in that money and let me throw that in the trash. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you spend a lot on kids. That's for sure. Yeah, because yeah, they outgrow it every few months. You got to get something new clothing, new diaper sizes. Speaker 1: They wear it like three times. My friend sent us like boxes of clothes of all sizes. As soon as she heard that we had a boy, she or we were having a boy, she sent all of this stuff to us. Luckily, we haven't had to buy a lot of clothes because they were, you know, you pay $20, they wear them three times. Speaker 4: And then they're a foot longer. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 4: My wife, she started this whole mom totally off subject. Sorry, everyone. But my wife started this entire like clothing, like yo, okay, you've got this a baby girl. Good. This is everything that you need for your baby girl. You know, and we have done like, I could, I probably could fill my truck two or three times with everything that's gone in and out of our house for clothing and baby stuff and toys and stuff like that. Like don't buy new you just don't need that $5,000 bill. Speaker 2: 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. So this stat, I'm curious what your guys' thought of this is. So AI influences one in every five orders. So if I move this over here, it says, AI has quickly become an important consumer shopping tool. During Cyber Week, AI and agents influenced 20% of all orders worldwide, accounting for 67 billion in global sales, according to Salesforce. Agentic AI drove 17% of orders or $13.5 billion in sales. This one I thought was interesting. Retailers with their own branded agents saw their sales increase 32% faster than those without agents. So I don't know exactly what AI-influenced orders means. Like, did they ask a question to AI before going to buy a product or something? I'm not sure how in-depth that is involved, but... Speaker 4: It's extraordinarily in-depth on our end. So, like, Jade, my wife, she uses AI Like crazy when it comes to finding products. So for instance, we just bought a new vacuum, right? Before we bought the vacuum, she went, I need, basically we moved houses. Now our whole house is hardwood floors. And so the vacuum we had was for carpet and it just doesn't work here and not enough, not a long enough cord. So we're like, okay, we need a battery vacuum. It's gotta be easy to empty out. And her mom has this Dyson vacuum and it's got this green light on it and it lights up the dust like crazy. It's really crazy. And my wife is like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. So she said to ChatGPT, I want this, this manufacturer needs to have this feature. It needs to be a canister. Speaker 3: Blah, blah, blah. Speaker 4: And it goes, oh, here are your options from Dyson that have all those features. Boom, boom, boom. These model numbers. Now she goes and she investigates each model number, goes, OK, I know that that's the model she had. Let's see if there's a newer version. Right. And so she basically goes, it's kind of like, you know, what it's kind of like is like the new version of Amazon. When when someone goes to Amazon to search for a product, they know what they want to sell. They're looking for a product to solve a known problem. They roughly know or know exactly what product they want. They just need to decide on which of them. That's what ChatGPT has become for us. Even when I was going to get my vehicle, I went, I want a truck that has these features. Which models have those features? Speaker 3: And you're asking better questions instead of just like the generic top of funnel ones. Like I guess you're just going deeper. Like I want a truck or one of the top trucks. You're now saying, I want trucks with these things. Like it's just making everything a little bit more accurate. And I think like even with Google We call it Googling something. Did you Google it? Did you look it up? Did you research what that word means or what that thing is? It would be like a curated list. It got to a point where it could be a curated list of the top 10 trucks or people are paying to be on the list. Who wrote this blog? Oh, it's coming from Ford. Okay. Their truck's included with GMC. And there's a level of like filtering through that that you have to do to be like what's authentic. And I feel like if she hadn't even said Dyson, but she had just said like a dust light with a cylinder and cordless, you know, I put those things in there. ChatGPT isn't biased. And so it's just going to list them. And if it's Dyson, it's Dyson. If it's not Dyson, it's going to say it's shark or it's Hoover vacuums or whatever. And I think that's one of the things that I like about it is I don't feel like I'm being manipulated by a Google expert like I am on Amazon, you know, in a way, like the word manipulation might be like, you know, I think even a lot of us have been cleaning up the Amazon catalog as much as we've been gaming it. We've been cleaning it up for years. And AI is just kind of like, writing some of those wrongs, I feel like a positive way of seeing it. Speaker 4: Now, this is interesting. I've never seen this version where you're actually choosing features here. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got alerted to this just the other day. It's a new called Shopping Research that you can collect it from the plus sign here in ChatGPT. Speaker 4: Oh, I'm behind then. Speaker 2: I mean, that will ask you questions and things. And now it's showing me different ones and I can preview them and rate them. Like, Oh yeah, give me more like this one. No, I don't like that one. Why don't I like it? You know, I don't like the style or something like that. And so it kind of narrows it down for you. Speaker 3: It's pulling in from Walmart, Best Buy, Dyson's official website, Ryobi. Speaker 4: Ryobi makes one? Speaker 2: I guess so. Speaker 4: I have the battery for Ryobi. Speaker 3: Hoover, there we go. Speaker 4: But yeah, so this is really cool, but I mean, I've never seen this. We were just using it as a normal text back and forth, but this is like... Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, it's definitely more in depth. I thought it was kind of cool that it helps you narrow it down and stuff. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 3: I just think anything that has that authentic play and the thing is, is AI is sure it's not a human. It's like, you know, it's an intelligence like to an extent and there's a scary element to it, but it's also like It's bringing back better communication in some ways. It's bringing back authenticity with its responses and results. It doesn't feel like it's biased toward one thing or another. Speaker 4: It's not like bestvacuums.com and top10vacuums.com with 10 affiliate links. Speaker 3: That's what it feels like anyway. Whether it's being done to us or not, it feels more that way. I think that's why it's being embraced. Speaker 4: Yeah i'm opening i did make a statement i can't remember exactly when but that you will not be able to pay for results on on products there's. Speaker 2: They won't put ads in the results. Speaker 4: Ads in the results, yeah. That's right. The way it was worded made me think, okay, there's a way around that statement a little bit, but not getting direct response. Being ads, I think it's gonna be fantastic. And as long as ChatGPT goes, okay, this is what the client wants, these are the features it wants, let me take a look at real reviews on these products. Let me get an assessment of everything, the pros, the cons, and stuff like that. I mean, that would obviously be a deep research thing, but you can see it's still going. I think it is actually using deep research to get your results. Speaker 2: Yeah, it said it was looking at the page, getting prices, and Checking review. Review citations for Dyson and Shark is what it's doing now. So it's going super in-depth, it appears. But the question is, you know, where is it getting the information? Is it pulling information from top10vacuums.com, you know? Or how exactly, is it casting a wide enough net, I guess is what I'm saying, to not be manipulated by those kind of sites. Speaker 4: Yeah. Look at this. It's like at the gas pump. It's giving you little bits of information as it's doing its job. Sorry. Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought it was cool. Speaker 1: So have you guys seen the new search on target feature on ChatGPT? When you're searching something, there's a little icon on the bottom that says Search on Target and you can click it and then it'll look for you on Target. So we'll probably see more of that where it is kind of a choose-your-own-adventure rather than a manipulation, a choose-your-own-adventure, go, well, I shop on Amazon or I shop on Target. So yeah, let's see, you know, I get free shipping there. So I'm more inclined if you can find something. Speaker 3: It's what we would do naturally if we could. I mean, I remember shopping with my dad for a computer. We'd build our own computers and stuff when I was little and he would go to Micro Center and Best Buy and different places and get the rebates. Or my grandma would have her coupon book and she'd know to go to Hy-Vee for this and Price Shopper for this. And you manually did it. You manually went to your stores and wrote down the prices and then you knew where to go for what. At least it's changed a lot since I was a kid, but I remember that. And then this is kind of the same thing where it's like, Okay, I have free shipping here. So on a big item that I have to pay shipping, it makes sense to go here and like, you know, maybe my groceries are use this one versus a different one. Like Amazon, I've ordered groceries. I've been working a lot. I've ordered groceries online to have them delivered. It can be costly, but it's cheaper than my hour, if that makes sense. Doing what I have to do. I've also recently ordered something on Amazon. Amazon is really pushing their Amazon Fresh once you make a purchase. It's like, oh my God, it's a lot cheaper to buy anything that's within Amazon Fresh. The prices almost seem like they're just They're launching a product at a really low price to try to get reviews and stuff going as it seems like what's Amazon's doing. But that has jumped up and now it was like, this is my price if I go in person, this is my price that has my orders if I'm buying from, let's say, Instacart. But Amazon's jumping into the game and I'm having to write down where can I get what is the best way to do it, like old school. Speaker 4: You know, I can see chat GPT becoming and or building a full blown dedicated. shopping system just like what you just did here, wherein they're even taking into account best deals. So if you can connect your Amazon account, connect your Walmart, connect your Target and all your other platforms, then you can say, find me the best deal for this product. And it'll go, well, You're logged in and you've got API, you've got a credit here, coupon here, blah, blah, blah. So the best place to buy it is here. And you go, good, buy it and ship it to me. Speaker 3: Danan, I can't help but think. This is a primary reason to be omnichannel. Let's say that Amazon is not listed in the LLMs or as far as like a listed product, but let's say Walmart or your Shopify can be or Michaels.com or Wayfair, some of these other big retailers that have some juice that are embracing open AI, maybe a little faster than Amazon is. I'm sure Amazon will be there. They're not gonna not show up in Google results, so to speak. But right now they're not, and like Walmart and Shopify are. So, you know, if you can't get your, you're an Amazon seller, Amazon's not listing there. You're losing out to everybody that is selling on some of these other channels that are integrating with open AI. Speaker 4: I fully agree. And that goes doubly, I think, for the reviews. You should have your own website where you have legitimate reviews from clients. Because I think that ChatGPT is going to be looking at that stuff. It's not just going to go look at Amazon. You know, if you're an Amazon seller and you've got an e-com website and you don't have any reviews on there, you don't have your specs properly and it's just a landing page with a buy now or buy with prime, I think that's going to be a big mistake. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's going to be critical. The amount of commerce going directly through the AI agents right now is still extremely small, but I think it's going to grow quickly. Like you said, there is no Amazon here. We got results from Best Buy and Home Depot and then one that goes directly to Tineco US store, which I'm assuming is some Chinese brand probably, but it looks like they've got a Shopify store. They're getting picked up and they're the budget pick for the vacuum. Definitely important to at least have a Shopify store with your products We're a functioning Shopify store and even if you're fulfilling it through Amazon, have your own reviews and things like that so that you can take advantage of and get included in these kind of results. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy that that standalone store compared to all the others that are in that list, which are just like massive retailers, I'm sure with like massive backlinks or whatever used to make websites rank well on Google, you know, they still have that juice. And then to have a, I don't know of this Tineco brand, but I know of all the others, right? And so they're in that lineup. That's pretty amazing for a brand. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to go to Amazon.com here and just search. I bet you that brand is in Amazon. Well, let's see. Yep, right there. They're not rated very well on Amazon though, 3.7. 3.7 is pretty rough. Well, they got a different one. That's the S30 at 141. So they're a little bit low on Amazon. Speaker 3: As a heavy vacuum user, maybe that's where my ADHD goes, is I just vacuum all the time. But it's always the batteries with these. I love that it's in, but it's always the battery is the first to go. And if it's not a good brand, I would almost bet that it's a battery thing. Speaker 2: There's the battery life. 271 negative, 197 positive on the battery life. Speaker 4: Wow. Speaker 2: And the motor. Motor life. Looks like the motor stops working. For most of the people. It makes you wonder because obviously chat GPT got its information from places other than Amazon then most likely because otherwise if they had gotten any information from Amazon they probably wouldn't have included that vacuum now it is the budget pick right it's not. Listed as the top pick. The top pick is the Dyson. Speaker 4: Well, Amazon is blocking ChatGPT and any other LLM and scrapers. Speaker 3: Because they have their own. Speaker 4: They have their own. And yeah, this is one of the things that I run into an issue on with the reviews is even getting the reviews. Amazon's blocking everything from downloading. This came in much heavier after the advent of ChatGPT. But basically, Amazon doesn't want anyone scraping their data. They've said that for a long time, right? Like, we don't like this. They don't want anyone gathering their data because their data is valuable. Speaker 2: Yeah, so essentially, Brian, the answer to that is no. It does not look like it. I mean, we don't know for sure. I don't think it tells us exactly. Well, it shopped for five minutes. And so it's not giving us exact specifics where it pulled all the data. It doesn't look like. But I'm assuming not, otherwise it probably wouldn't be there. But let's see what it says here for the trade-offs. Shorter battery life, 40 minutes on carpets. I don't see anything about the motor dying, which if it had pulled reviews from Amazon, it would know about the motor dying. So I doubt it. That brings up the question of how effective can ChatGPT be without the data from the largest e-commerce store in the world? Speaker 4: And the largest source of reviews, product reviews. Speaker 3: Think about it as authenticity again. If you were scraping YouTube, scraping TikTok, scraping Amazon, scraping Walmart, scraping an internal brand's website, There's no guarantee, there's 0% chance of having a perfect guarantee that those reviews are not biased or gamified or someone's been encouraged, even if I send a free product to leave an honest review, even a Vine reviewer is given a free product to an extent to leave a fair review. Maybe that Vine review was, the price was dropped when they got the Vine review, like all the strategies that are employed, right? So all of those things to say, There's no guarantee. I think Reddit might be like the last frontier of like people commenting that's not actually like, they're not being sponsored or they're not influencers or creators that are incentivized to do anything. Almost every other channel, to an extent, even Amazon, has a level of bias and has a level of like, you know, creators and influencers and Amazon associates and Amazon influencers, all that stuff, having an impact. And those are people's, Biased opinions. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting to see how long Amazon can hold out and remain siloed. If AI starts chipping away at the market share for e commerce. We're not even close to that at all. Some something like 1% of e commerce right now goes through AI. 20% is influenced, you know, however, they're tracking that. But 1% actually checks out through ChatGPT or some other platform. So there's a long ways to go. But we're in, you know, the very early days of it. So it'll be interesting to watch if Amazon can hold out. Speaker 3: What's incredible, like the last thing I'll say is what's incredible is like, There isn't really a marketplace that exists that pulls in everything. Like, you know, you can be on Amazon, but then you need to go on Etsy. But then you need to go on like, you know, if you're looking for a certain thing, you need to pull up certain different marketplaces and search all of them and then make a decision. What's really cool about this is truly being able to maybe pull in an Etsy and a Walmart and the website itself all in one search. To anyone listening, I would say the best thing that you can do if you are an Amazon seller is just optimize for Rufus and Cosmo to the best of your ability on Amazon. If you have off Amazon, and you want to see stuff like Shopify, Walmart, do that as well, or see if you can integrate with OpenAI because it's obviously a setup that you do to have your products listed there. But if you're on Amazon and we know it's not there yet, do all of the things for their They're an AI agent that a lot of webinars are talking about, people are putting out content on. And when that time comes, you'll be optimized and ready to go. It integrates with everything else. Speaker 2: Let's jump on to the next article here because it goes right along with what we're talking about. Tech giants build synthetic Amazon and Gmail for AI training. Tech companies are now building synthetic replicas of Amazon and Gmail to train AI agents, allowing them to practice shopping, comparing products, and checking out inside a fake Amazon environment. For Amazon sellers, this means AI-driven shoppers will soon become more common, agents that automatically find deals, select products, and optimize purchases, making listing quality, pricing, and keyword relevance even more critical. So this is interesting because they can't get access to the real Amazon. They're just creating their own duplicates of it. So I can see the lawsuits coming shortly on this already. But the question on it will be if that'll be effective at all, if they can actually stop these AI agents from browsing Amazon and checking out for customers. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I see it as you know, an AI war games, you know, trying to recreate the the platforms and the scenarios to, you know, figure out what the What the plays are. I think it would be interesting to use this to, obviously they're trying to predict buyer behavior, but trying to categorize, and I think Amazon would, it would be great to see them do this to a larger extent, trying to categorize the buyer types. You know, you have the pro buyers, you have the, you know, the value buyers, the brand loyal buyers, that sort of thing. And start to tailor the offers and, you know, Amazon's trying to get into content, that sort of thing to the particular buyer type, you know, technical specs and things like that for the technical buyer and so forth. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, and to answer Brian's question, do you think Amazon is powerful enough or are they pulling a blockbuster here? I think it's just a matter of time before they relent. To me, AI is the future of search and finding anything. It'd be like Amazon saying, okay, we're going to block Google from showing our search results because we want people to come to our website instead. Maybe in the early days, that might have been something they got away with, but in the long run, that would be a really dumb play because Amazon gets a ton of traffic from Google. So I can see eventually they're going to have to relent and open up to this kind of thing because it's just going to be a more natural way of shopping and looking for products once this is all built out and more effective. Speaker 4: Yeah it there they're gonna. Probably keep this stuff away as long as they can and then give little tidbits like. Think of the difference between Apple and an Android, right? Android comes out with all these new features and stuff like that. They're really awesome. They're super helpful. And then Apple, five years later, goes, and now you can do multi-touch on your screen. Revolutionary, right? And then everyone at Apple's like, oh, oh, they're so good. So, oh, I was just waiting for this. And Android people like, we've had that for half a decade. You know, and I think that that's what Amazon is essentially going to do here is they'll allow little bits and pieces to go so that they look like they're heroes to everybody, but really the rest of the world is operating in a much more efficient manner because if, if Amazon doesn't open it up to the LLMs, they're going to miss out and they are missing out right now. And the only way that I, that, you know, I could think of Amazon preventing that from happening is going, Oh, well we just released Amazon Galactica, you know, and it's your own search, your own LLM that's also tied into Amazon. And I can see them doing that. Speaker 3: It's like that article we just read, though, that said like 30 percent increase from the retailers that have their own AI agents. Right. So there is a benefit to being in the bulk, but there's also a benefit to having their own AI agents and they are doing their own AI agent play. I think about it, I think it was like last year, maybe two years time flies, but Amazon and Meta and Amazon and Snapchat and Amazon and TikTok all partnered. We're now like from the swipe up, you can like click to buy on Amazon and they've integrated like that and they never had before. Speaker 4: It used to be like- That was last year. Speaker 3: Last year, right? That was a huge play. And I think it was a precursor to like something like this happening as well, which is they are playing with all the big dogs. TikTok changed a lot of things where meta got in line and Instagram changed to be more like a TikTok and discovery and search and things like that. And I think Amazon will too. Look, think of it like being a small brand and the things that you have to do to find little like niches and little opportunities, little blue oceans, like you're strategically trying a bunch of things because you're smaller. And when you're the big dog, you don't have to do that to an extent. You can just operate on brand and you can move a little bit slower. And you're like, I'm going to do moves that like last five year moves, not like this six month move. And To Amazon's end, I've been in tech for 15 years like a lot of you and if we jumped at every little change, we would be constantly jumping everywhere. I think they're working really hard on their own tech and they want to just before they start bringing in other stuff, they want to like really perfect Rufus and Cosmo. And then when they feel like that's really strong, I mean, think about the layoffs they led. They made, that's to invest into AI. I think 15,000 employees or something crazy like a couple of months ago. And think about those layoffs too, not jumping subjects, but back to what we were saying earlier, there's been like massive layoffs across like T-Mobile, Amazon, some of our massive American corporations. In double digits, right, like absolute or five, six digits, people being laid off, all affecting the economy. Didn't even think about those those layoffs, like I've had quite a few people affected that I know. So anyway, just I know that that actually is because Amazon's investing heavy into their own branded AI agents. So I really do believe it's a matter of when and it's like just same thing when you're changing a bunch of stuff on Amazon as a seller. It's like if you change too many things at one time, you don't know exactly what made the difference. And I think Amazon can be, because I mean, they put stuff on us before it's ready all the time. They're not always Apple. A lot of their stuff is like, crap when it first launches. Speaker 4: And they don't even tell you about it either. Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like, I mean, there's nothing more embarrassing, right, than being like a partner agency and they drop something to a customer and you're like, I haven't even heard about that yet. But to that end, I think they're just going hard on Rufus and Cosmo and don't want to muddy the waters too much all at one time. Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, something that I just thought about is obviously Amazon has a lot of valuable data, right? Just the volume of products they have, the volume of reviews, the eyeballs and stuff that they have. What if at some point Amazon's like, okay, perplexity, would you like a licensing deal to get access to all of our products? How much are you willing to pay us to get exclusive access to our full catalog of reviews and everything else? Because that's valuable content and TV shows and stuff have been doing this forever, right? If you have an exclusive license to be on AMC or something like that, and they pay millions or billions of dollars depending on the show for that, you could potentially see something similar with Amazon and holding that out to get more money from these LLMs to use their data. Yep. Speaker 3: And which one do you pick? You want to pick the winning horse, right? To an extent, you want to pick the winning horse. Speaker 2: So definitely could see something like that, but yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch. It's exciting, you know, if you're into this kind of stuff, you know, especially someone who is around at the beginning of the internet and seeing the internet really take off. This is kind of like a whole new version of that. So it's exciting to see how things are going to play out here. Speaker 3: Maybe Amazon's even partnering with the tech giants and it's like, look, you need to get your tech working perfectly before you even touch ours. So go build a replica, show me that it's working perfectly, and then we'll start talking. Instead of a lawsuit, it could be that they're like, hey, if you want our contract, you need to prove that you can do this seamlessly and there could be some of that stuff going on that they're just trying to get it right before they implement it. Speaker 4: And they'll put in their contract. And you're not allowed to ask us the difference between why one line on this API has different data than this line that's the same thing, same piece of data. Don't ask us about our tech. Just make yours perfect before you can use ours. Speaker 3: No further questions, your honor. Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So we're pretty much to the top of the hour. I'm just gonna jump onto this next article, just throw it out there, because to me it's kind of exciting. So lawmakers urge Amazon and FTC for clearer product origin labeling. So lawmakers are pressuring Amazon to promptly display country of origin information, component sourcing percentages, and whether sellers are US or foreign controlled. Now, this is something that we've talked about a lot, Danan, in the past that we wish we had a button, you know, show me only U.S. made products, show me only U.S. sellers. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 2: So maybe we'll see a comeback. It sounds like there's a coalition of Congress people who are pushing for it. Speaker 4: I'm all for it. I don't see it happening. Speaker 3: I would like this. So I can see a lot of ways where this goes sideways because I'm about As much as I buy on Etsy, which is generally international, the stuff I find, I am about Made in USA for a lot of different reasons. One, I can get ahold of the people that made it, which is nice. But the other thing is like, now there's like a symbol in the USA. What if you're an American that's living abroad? So it's like an American company, you're paying taxes here, but it's made in China. What does that impact? Like, you know, what do we actually clarify or classify as made in USA? Does it need to be what the box comes from India? What if so like to those components, and maybe that's the component makeup? Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I see so many made in USA badges that I'm like, okay, if we actually like, You know how hard it is to get something entirely made in the USA? It's actually pretty hard for a lot of products. Speaker 1: My chain is going to be difficult. And Chinese suppliers or Chinese sellers are always going to find a way around it, especially with, oh, is it a foreign country? That one is, I think, useless, whether it's a foreign or domestic country or company, because it's very easy to become. Speaker 4: We're a domestic marketing company. Speaker 3: I just want to see like need a badge like kind of like, or like FDA approved or something like this. That's like if you want to be made in USA and maybe it could be assembled in USA to a certain percentage or, you know, put together by the components are put together by American workers or like some kind of thing like that. But it's like, it actually has to be validated. That would make it so much more valuable if you're like. Speaker 2: You have to get certified. Some kind of certification that says this is a U.S. company owned by U.S. citizens and have it certified in some way. Speaker 4: Amazon's got something that I tried to go through. Speaker 2: They've got business certification, veteran certification, women-owned certification, all those different ones that you can get as a seller. You have to do something similar like that. Speaker 4: And they've got something you used to be able to just say made in the USA and now they don't like you just telling that. To people and then they put some kind of program where you could you could make it so that it was but even though our products are made in manufacture the United States package in the United States shipped and sold in the United States by Americans in America. We somehow we didn't qualify because the ingredients that are used to make the supplements are from all over the world. So it's not an American, it's not a made in the USA product. I think the component part is probably going to be pretty cool. If they did the same thing with sellers, like you got to send Amazon a blood sample and then be like, okay, cool, you're 30% European, 5% Indian, so we'll give you a credit. Of this over here, you're 12% Chinese, so no important fees for you. Speaker 2: Everybody has to do ancestry DNA to get that. Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. So like Chelsea was saying, it's easy. You do a Delaware corporation and you're good to go. You can be a foreign entity, you create an S-corp, you're in Delaware, boom, you're an American company, right? And there are tax reasons and stuff like that. Like they've got their own courts specifically for for corporate like corporate courts, but you know. Are you a Chinese? But are you actually just a Chinese company? Is the money going into America and then going into China, you know? Speaker 3: That's a ridiculous law that came out about those LLCs that you had to report every owner on the LLC. And it was like passed through. And then like, I think Trump backed off of it. So like, I mean, I had done all the work and I have like too many LLCs to mention. So it was a pain in the ass for them to just back off of it. Like, you know, by the time you pay your CPA and whatever. I think that was the point kind of was being able to see who owns what. At the LLC level, and it's really just to find this many people, but everybody's doing it. And that was such an ask that they backed off already. So, I don't know. Speaker 2: It'll be interesting to watch. We'll see. We're over the top of the hour, so we'll go ahead and wrap it up there. Everybody's got a busy day ahead of them, I'm sure. I appreciate you, Andrew, Danan, Chelsea, for joining me and everybody out there watching. We'll do this again next Thursday. Until then, everybody have an awesome one. Speaker 3: See you guys. Speaker 4: Bye, everyone. Speaker 1: 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 2: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.