Amazon News: Fewer Sellers, Bigger Stakes & the AI Commerce Shift

Amazon News: Fewer Sellers, Bigger Stakes & the AI Commerce Shift 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: All right, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to another week of Amazon Seller News Live. Got another full house here. Neil and Danan and John in the house today. Welcome, gentlemen. Speaker 4: Welcome to you too. Speaker 3: I appreciate you guys joining us. We're just talking about the snow ice apocalypse that's coming this weekend. And of course, Danan is the only one that will probably escape that being down by Tampa. The rest of us may not have power come this weekend. We shall see. Well, Neil, you're up in Canada, so it's always kind of snowpocalypse up there, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, we're ready. We're going to be hitting negative 24 Fahrenheit. That's where we're at right now. And I think it's still going to get colder. So we're pretty used to this. I'm not worried about power outages or anything like that. It's just I'm not going outside today. Speaker 2: Why live there? Why choose to live where that's just the, okay, like I don't. Speaker 1: Well, so we were saying backstage, like I leave in the winter time. I go down to Mexico in the winter time and I spend time there because I am remote. My wife has the ability to do that as well. So we escape, but we've asked ourselves that we've moved to Mexico for a period of time and it always comes back to family, family and friends. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the hard part. Yeah, I was listening to a podcast. I forget the name of the guest, but he lived in Canada, and he mentioned that his son asked him one time, Dad, why do we live somewhere when you go outside your face hurts? It's like, yeah, yeah, I kind of know how that is growing up. It is. It's a reasonable question. Yes, it is. But let's go ahead and we're here to talk about some Amazon news. And I think we've got some good ones today on the growth of Amazon and or shrinking of Amazon, depending how you look at it. Some interesting AI news and stuff as well. So let's go ahead and dive into this first one and get your guys's thoughts. So, Amazon seller signups collapsed, but survivors are winning bigger than ever. Amazon saw just 165,000 new seller registrations in 2025, the lowest in a decade, signaling that rising fees, ads, AI competition, and margin pressures are pushing out casual sellers and raising the bar for entry. For established Amazon sellers, this consolidation means less numerical competition and more traffic per seller, but only for those with the capital, systems, and sophistication to operate at scale. And I want to talk about this in conjunction with this article here. Which is US Amazon Prime membership keeps going up so it grew Amazon grew Prime membership by 4% to 201 million Prime membership so. Buyers keep going up, sellers are slowing or slightly going down. So I'm curious on your guys' takes on this. We were talking a little bit, John, before we started about some of your predictions for PPC agencies expanding and such and how the market is just kind of maturing. So curious on your thoughts here on this one first. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think it's interesting if you were to look at the numbers of What was the increase of sellers on TikTok shop? Because I'm finding that a lot of people, if they're seeing friction and barrier of entry for new brands, they're seeing that if they're on TikTok and they're on TikTok shop, I know like three brands off the top of my head that I could talk about, or I could think about and not talk about, that they started on TikTok And then they're peppering in Amazon. So that whole flow has changed for 2025, 2026, where people are seeing the explosion of TikTok shop and newer brands that are launching. The barrier of entry is really easy for them to capitalize on. Amazon is also coming as a secondary, not the primary for a lot of these brands. So it's like, Yeah, there's fees everywhere, but where can I go viral? And I think a lot of people are seeing that because then they're parlaying that TikTok success onto Amazon. And I've already spoken to a ton of brands where they launched on TikTok and then they're now parlaying and opening up on Amazon, which is an interesting change from how it's normally been. But when it comes to like I don't think it's the fees. I don't think people are not selling on Amazon or setting up a seller account because they're like, oh, the fees are too high. The fees have always been high in relative. It's always going to be there's fees. So I don't think it's that case. But I think on the other side of it, like Prime membership, You could charge me another $10 a month for Prime. I'll still pay it. It's going to keep on going up because they can command it. Because for Prime, I live in New York City. I can get Under an hour delivery on certain things, right? Inclusive. I'm getting Prime Video. I'm getting all these things, right? Technically, for what I'm paying for Prime membership right now, it's a steal. It's a steal for what I'm getting. And the content that they're putting out on Prime Video, the Prime exclusive kind of content, I think Fallout is one of them that's specifically for Prime. There's no way I would ever give that up. That's why that's on the rise because Amazon's peppering in all these additives, all these perks that you're getting for it. And again, it only matters if you live in an area to take advantage of it. I live in New York City. I can get that 60 minutes or less on certain things. But yeah, no, I think TikTok is the reason why registrations are low. And I'd be curious to see if you circle back on this data at the end of this year. What does the data look like of TikTok accounts that now... They'll probably never have that data. It's all self-reported. But what number of TikTok-only seller accounts then opened up a Seller Central account? I think that if we had the data on that, that's going to be a large number. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good points for sure. Starting on TikTok, yeah, I think that is, I don't have any hard data on that, but that you definitely hear about that more and more. So that, and TikTok's going to be a lot easier, right, to set up shop than on Amazon currently, because you got to jump through a lot more hoops on Amazon because it's a matured platform where TikTok is kind of like Amazon back in, you know, 2015 or whatever. In terms of the ease of starting to sell on there. Speaker 2: But if you look at it where people are already using it, They're already seeing that they're being affected and they're being targeted, right? Because they're the first, they're the consumer. So the barrier is very easy. There's less friction because you're like, oh, I want to sell beef tallow or I want to sell skin cream. Well, I'm just going to do it, do it on TikTok, create my own videos, do my own live stream, which is QVCHSN for 2026. I'll do that all myself and I'll reach, you could have five followers on TikTok. You can run a live and hit thousands of people right then and there. You can't do that on Amazon. As much as Amazon tries video, in my opinion, video fails on Amazon. Yes, you still need video, but video is king where video is consumed. YouTube, TikTok, all those kind of things. Speaker 3: For sure. Speaker 4: I just got back from the Amplify Summit, which is for Shark Tank attendees and I was surprised to find out that in speaking to these people, you know, their D2C and their retail. First, right. But when I was asking them, are you selling on Amazon? Some of them are like, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's there. Right. But others were like, no, I'm going to tick tock. So it you know, on the D to C side, whereas it used to be like, yes, I'm absolutely going to Amazon or yes, I'm absolutely on Amazon. Now it's not like I'm focused on my website. I'm focused on my retail and I'm doing tick tock. Speaker 3: Yeah. And that makes sense because if you look at the stats I have pulled up over here, and John, you'll be happy to know that I'm using the comment browser now after your recommendation. Speaker 2: I was gonna call it out. I was waiting for you to say it. I saw it. I was like, I'm very proud. Speaker 3: Yeah, so we've got this stat right here. Chinese sellers are 60% of new registrations, which is down slightly, but US sellers fell to 16.3% of new signups. Which is really low. So that kind of makes sense, what you're saying there, that these brands are looking at all these other platforms first, rather than Amazon first, because it is just dominated by Chinese sellers. Speaker 1: Well, and Amazon, like Amazon cost to entry is also extremely high, right? So for the, you know, the small time seller, if we're talking about small time, midsize US sellers, like you're, you know, back in the day, you could start up an Amazon brand for 15K. And now every aspect of that needs to be optimized, right? And you have to understand that when we look at these numbers, 60% of registration are Chinese sellers. That's the factory you're ordering against, right? Like you're competing directly against your own factory. And so you have a high cost to entry combined with your supplier being your direct competition. And how do you differentiate like really in 2026 on Amazon? Having a standalone brand is tough because, you know, we see the five character brands, the six character brands from these Chinese factories. They don't care. They're just pushing product. And so seeing those numbers fall when you go multichannel and you go over to, you know, TikTok, Facebook, Meta, whatever, you are competing, but you're not competing If you go out of stock, you're not dead in the water, right? Like Amazon punishes quite a bit for going out of stock. So if you go out of stock and you're on TikTok, oh well, I'm out of stock. I'll get back into stock. When I get back into stock, I'll run another few videos. I'll go viral and I'm back on the wagon again, right? With Amazon, it takes a lot of pushing with ads and lightning deals and sales and promotions to try and get that thing going again. So if you're a new seller, And then you don't have your supply chain mastered. You're running into a barrier further down the line. Right. If you're a new seller and you're not negotiating as hard as possible with your factory to get as close to their margin and price point as possible, then you're competing from a price, a higher price point, which is also a challenge. Right. And then thinking through Amazon as a whole. I talked about this in 2025 as well, where we're seeing reviews on Amazon decline as well. And the only time customers are now leaving reviews is when they're pissed off because everyone turned off the request for review button. So we're seeing reviews come down and the Chinese are cheating as well, right? Like we know that repurposing listings, you know, all of those. I can't remember what it's called where the Chinese will get a hold of your address and they'll just start ordering product to your house. And then with these Amazon accounts and then they'll just leave reviews. So you end up with all this free product that you can't turn off, which is a bad, I mean, a good and bad thing to have happen as well. Definitely in line with all of those things, seeing the small seller decline, but we're also seeing on the, you know, the large cap retail side of things, we are seeing bigger adoption from those mega brands as well, where before, you know, they're like, oh, I want to drive, you know, I'm focused on retail first. Retail first has been a strategy for a lot of these big brands for a long time, but we're still seeing an adaptation and There's lots of large brands out there that are still not on Amazon. And, you know, that's part of their roadmap for 2026, 2027 is get on that platform. And then finally, I'll just say, you know, it shocks me that Amazon Prime adoption isn't higher because like John said, the value you get for it is just unbelievable. Like my whole house is synced to Alexa. My whole system is built around the Amazon system and that's just because it works so well. I recently moved to a small town and now I get five day delivery versus my two day delivery. John's in shock right now, but that's, you know, being able to get things out in the middle of the sticks still. It's incredible, right? Canada Post is on strike again. Our mail system is failing. So being able to have Amazon step in and be like, you know what, we got you in five days versus maybe the month it would take for Canada Post to get to me is also unbelievable. So like, you could easily double my Prime membership yearly fee and I would happily pay it. Speaker 2: But when it comes to, you mentioned a good point where it's like, you have to struggle to get that BSR, to get that organic volume. You don't have to do that on TikTok. There is none. So TikTok literally, I can have a product, I can go out of stock. Oops, oh well, come back in two weeks later, increase my discount or affiliate referral, blast it out to all these people and they're going to go and promote my product. They're going to go on their lives and promote it. They're going to go on their videos and promote it. Maybe I'll promote it myself too and I'm back in the game. So there's no risk when it comes to that because there is no, I got my BSR, I climbed all the way up to the top. Oh crap, I went out of stock. Now I got to, I got to spend all this money, all this time to do it all again. With TikTok, you just, that's it. I'm done. Speaker 1: You know, you're racing against yourself versus, you know, an entire platform, but the conversion rate difference as well, right? Like that 10% conversion rate on Amazon. It's just incredible as well versus, you know, the one, 2% on Shopify or 1.8 on Shopify, whatever it is. Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. We got a couple of comments here just as LinkedIn user, must not be logged in, but did you see after over 10 years, Honest dropped their DTC store? Speaker 4: Yeah, he just sent me that. He's on my LinkedIn. That's why you can't see his name. Yeah, he just sent me the link to it. And yeah, basically it says Honest just dropped D2C and now they're just doing Amazon, Walmart, Target, Kroger, HEB. Speaker 2: Well, to be fair, to be fair, they have a large brick and mortar presence, right? So I think I think that's okay if you have large brick-and-mortar stores cutting you massive POs where you're like, cool, we're done. We don't want to do logistics. We don't want to do all these. That's okay. Speaker 4: I would 100% do it. Yeah, yeah, if I was honest, which I'm not I would definitely I would absolutely Eliminate all because you it's not just logistics. It's staff and vacations and w-2s and taxes and if you have a place in California any any residency in California, it's paying off governments and you know, I All kinds of crazy stuff. So it's probably a massive, massive expense elimination for them. And undoubtedly, this is where the majority of their sales come from anyhow. Speaker 2: Well, their brick and mortar partners are probably happy with that, right? Because then they're getting large POs from Amazon, Target, Walmart, Kroger, frictionless, no effort. And it's like, well, crap, if I want to buy Honest, I have to go to one of these stores and they're happy. They're probably getting really good placement positioning in the aisle because their POs are going up and all these sort of concessions are being made. So it's probably If not, definitely a win-win for them. And yeah, this is obviously not the standard unless you have a monster brick and mortar presence. I would never say to turn off a D2C site, but yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it could be partly too that they're not wanting to, you know, be seen as competing with all their retail companies that they're working with. So there's an aspect there to some suppliers not wanting to sell on their own site. Speaker 2: But honestly, not to be a pun with that, but it's also like when this company first came out and I think out of my three kids, it was my firstborn when he was in diapers and stuff. And my wife heard about the company and ordered it from the site and it was nice. We got the wipes and the diapers and stuff like that. But then it was like- Yeah, but then it was like, oh, we're out of diapers. We want to go to the store and get more. Oh, we got to reorder and wait for the order to come in. That was annoying. That's annoying for things that are essentials like that. So sometimes it's easier just to, you know, get hooked on it with like an order to your door. But then it's like, you don't want to lose that customer because they can't get it quickly in a brick and mortar store with something like this. Because what would happen is if Honest wasn't in brick and mortar stores, because I don't think it was at that time. We're talking like 10 years ago when my kid was in diapers. But it's like, You hooked me and I'm happy with it, but if it's that oh crap moment and I gotta scramble to the store and it's not in brick and mortar, well then I gotta get one of your competitors. Speaker 4: Need diapers for an oh crap moment for sure. Speaker 2: Cue the dude wipes. Speaker 3: Yeah, you're 100% on that one, John, because we use, I'm trying to remember what the name of it is, Every Something to get diapers delivered. And every life I think it's called. They deliver it every month or whatever. And yeah, when we run out of wipes, you know, we run and we buy a different brand at the Walgreens or wherever we happen to be. Because they're not in stores. So, you know, having that multiple market play, not only online, but also in retail is becoming more and more important, you know, instead of just being an Amazon seller, if you're going to be a big brand. Speaker 2: Well, that's a hook for retail media for brand selling on Amazon because even though Amazon is super quick, if I order diapers on Amazon and I'm brand loyal to this diaper company and I need diapers now, if this could have a blowout and I don't have anything left, I'm going to go to Instacart or DoorDash and that's when those advertisements for, like if it was Honest and I ordered Honest on Amazon and I got it and I need more and I need it within like half an hour and I can't wait and I open up Instacart, well if an Honest ad was to pop up there, then it's cohesive, there's continuity and it's like, oh good, phew, the brand I love is here and I'm going to click on it. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yep. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. It's a shifting world. That's for sure on for Amazon sellers. It's maturing and changing, growing up. And that's just kind of the nature of things when you become the largest e-commerce platform the world has ever seen. Things are going to change. You're not just going to have the flippers that are going to Walmart and selling on Amazon being their primary source of products anymore. Speaker 4: Right. Speaker 3: You're going to see those kind of sellers kind of squeezed out in favor of the brands who are running a full and complete business for sure. Speaker 4: I mean, I actually am not upset about that because you won't have such vast price variations. Like if you look at like walmart.com And even Amazon during holiday periods like, you know, the new PS 42 or Xbox 123 releases and people go and buy out all of the available inventory or pre-order it. Then they put it up on Amazon or Walmart for double the price. Yeah, like I remember the first year that Walmart allowed other sellers to be doing that. And I went on there, I was like, whoa, why is Walmart selling this for so much? What am I getting extra? And it dawned on me at that moment when I looked, it was like, oh, They're not, this is third-party seller. Speaker 2: Yeah, what you're getting actually, you're getting screwed. Speaker 4: That's right. Speaker 3: Yeah, you get that for everything. I mean, you get the same thing on eBay. All the Amazon listings are listed on eBay for more money. Canada as well. If you go on Amazon Canada, there's a lot of products that are sold third-party for a lot more than Amazon US and what they're doing is just buying in the US. Speaker 1: As a Canadian, there's nothing that angers me more than seeing that because they mark it up pretty significantly and they're just willing to do the legwork of getting that shipping done. Speaker 3: Hey, Amazon sellers. 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Speaker 3: Or Canada could just become the 51st state. I mean, we can come back to that again. Speaker 2: That's the tax you pay on freedom is what I'll say. Speaker 3: I guess you guys would be the 52nd state now after Greenland. Unknown Speaker: Oh yeah. Speaker 1: All right. Speaker 3: No more politics. Okay. We got another comment here from LinkedIn user. Again, do you know the guy's actual name, Danan? Speaker 4: Nate. Speaker 3: Nate? Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 3: He's asking, thoughts on ChatGPT charging 4% for conversions on platform, which I looked up and- Oh, that one's actually not from me. Okay. All right. Well, I did look it up and it says that what they're charging is a 4% transaction fee on every sale completed via its instant checkout. And that's a charge to the Shopify merchant or whatever the merchant is, not to the customer. Speaker 4: So now ChatGPT is a payment processor? Speaker 3: I guess that's what they're trying to become, or at least a platform that's going to be their platform fee for the seller, essentially. It's a seller fee. Speaker 2: Everyone's worried about these fees and ads and ChatGPT. What people really need to come back to is, are people really making purchases there? As much Goopla and as much, oh my goodness, this is the new big wave. I use every AI tool under the sun. Speaker 4: You pay for every AI tool under the sun. Speaker 2: I pay for every AI tool under the sun. And I use them to the extent, and I have yet to buy anything or through there. Because, again, video is king where video is consumed e commerce is king, where, where e commerce is done, and I'm not tripling down on. Buying things in an LLM right now, in my opinion. Speaker 4: I'm with you on that. But I do think the day will come, you know, I'll tell you exactly how I would use it as a consumer right now is once I know that I want this anchor thingy, right? I go, hey, find me the best price on the internet for this thing and then purchase it for me. Speaker 3: Yep. Speaker 2: Yep. That's still research, right? It's research. Speaker 4: Correct. Speaker 3: It's doing the work. Speaker 2: And I'm not a fan of Cool. Even if it said, I found you the lowest price, click here to buy it from us. I'm good. I'm good. Because if it's Amazon, I might have something else I want to order on Amazon. I might want to add it to my cart. I want to shop around a little bit. And I don't think that that's good for platforms like Amazon or other e-commerce because if I could just buy that one item and check out, Isn't the AOV going to go down? What about adding more stuff? What about upsells, right? So I think that eliminates a lot of that. Whereas a lot of people think it's like, I'm going to make more sales at what cost? Speaker 4: Yeah. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 1: So I would look at it as a discovery mechanism, right? Where it's like, okay, now my ad's on top, it's showing up in GPT. I think there's a lot of trust in GPT from the regular consumer. So they'll see that, they might click on it, and then they might go try to find it on Amazon, right? That could be the other process where it's like, It's the starting point and it's raising that overall brand awareness. Should you be showing up? Probably. Is GPT going to make a lot of money from this? Probably not, because the consumer is going to go look for the easiest way to get it right. Like if you're running shop, like The age old story is Shopify, like my Shopify site versus Amazon, like nine times out of ten customers are going to pick Amazon because the return policy, because it's a trusted brand source. You get all of these other benefits for purchasing on the Amazon platform. And I don't see why it would be any different for that GPT platform where it's like, oh, this is the first product that shows up. I'll start scoping this one out because it's a recommendation from GPT. I'll go to Amazon. I'll find it there and then start my process. Right. And adding products to cart. Do I need more? Yada, yada. Speaker 2: But it's even like Apple. Sorry, dude. It's even like Apple. I just say this. I love Apple. Everything. I'm an Apple fanboy. I have Apple Watch, MacBook, phone, iPad, everything. Trust Apple immensely. I have not purchased one thing on Apple.com. Any Apple product I've bought through Amazon because Apple is not going to be able to get it to me same day, sometimes in the store if you were to buy it. But also, if I don't like it, I just want to return it. I don't want to think about it. Then I have to go in the store. So it's not a matter of trust. For me, it's not a matter of do I trust the brand or not. It's just convenience. Amazon is just too convenient. Speaker 3: That's the big thing for sure. Speaker 4: Oh, I was just going to say as a consumer, I just. I forgot I actually even did this, but yesterday or the day before, I saw this guy wearing a backpack. I was like, that's a really well laid out backpack. It's a perfect size for me going to events and stuff like that. So I just snapped a picture of it real quick and threw it up in the ChatGPT and I said, hey, what is this? And it was able to determine that it was a Fjallraven, one of those, I don't know if they're Swedish or what, but anyhow. It determined that that's what it was. I said, cool, find me a link to it. And it just sent me to the main store for Fjallraven. And so when it comes to I think that if people are going to start buying, it can't just be, cool, here's a link to the store or whatever. There's going to have to be an actual inventory list that they have and then the ability to kind of like buy from me with Amazon where you can buy products off Amazon. It's basically going to be that way. And I just don't see consumers actually adopting that. Speaker 2: But Amazon's going to tell you, if they were to answer, they would say, that same thing, Danan. We have it in our app. Just click on the little camera icon and take a picture of something and we'll show it to you on Amazon. So it's not even the technology. But it's not even the technology. Speaker 3: If it's on Amazon, along with the Chinese knockoffs of it. Speaker 2: But let's say it was. It just proves the point that people Act where they're naturally going to act and the natural way of searching that in that use case is going to ChatGPT or an LLM or an AI tool, even though Amazon has that same capability inside because it's, people don't think of it. It's not second nature for them to do that. Speaker 4: Yep. Yep. But that being said, I would then move over and purchase on Amazon. I would not buy it from Cal Raven's site. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I love the feature with Amazon to be able to snap a photo and find it on there. But when you're in the research phase, I throw that into Grok or ChatGPT, Perplexity or whatever, because it's just easier to find the information you're looking for if you're not looking to immediately buy. And then, yeah, you probably end up going to Amazon and buying it anyways. Speaker 2: Going back to TikTok, TikTok makes it easier. So if you're watching a TikTok video and you click the screen to pause, the icons come up for a camera that says, do you want to find anything that's on the frame? And you click yes, and it pinpoints everything that's on the frame, in the background, on the person's head, on their shirt, if TikTok shop sells it. So it's even more frictionless for something like that. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's smart. Well, this next article here goes right along with what we're talking about. So Google unveils AI shopping protocol that could reshape product discovery. Google announced a new open standard, the Universal Commerce Protocol, designed to let AI shopping agents handle discovery, checkout, and post-purchase actions across retailers. Speaker 4: There's the database I was just talking about. Speaker 3: Yeah. With direct checkout inside Google search and Gemini using saved payments and shipping info for Amazon sellers, this signals rising competition from AI driven commerce outside Amazon. The key to this is if it's going to be an open protocol. If it's an open protocol, it may have a chance. If it's a closed by Google, I'm not sure if it has a chance of making it anywhere. Speaker 4: An interesting thing about this, we know that Google's tried to get into commerce on two or three separate occasions and they've failed miserably. Now, this, though, would make sense because there's Google Wallet, and I think almost every Android user has Google Wallet. So then checkout becomes as simple as it is on Amazon. So I could see this working quite well, as long as they launch it, they don't screw it all up like they have in the past. Speaker 3: Yeah. And, you know, hopefully something like this takes off, you know, because if you think about Email, right? Everybody uses email. Well, a little less nowadays, but most people use email in some way. It's an open protocol. You can use Outlook. You can use Gmail. You can use whatever platform you want. You're going to receive the messages to that platform. Unlike, say, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, any other place, text messages, they're all siloed in their own worlds, right? You can't open up Messenger and get your WhatsApp messages like you can with email because those are all closed protocols. So having an open protocol like this that every website can set up And then any AI platform that ever comes into existence can just hook up to that protocol and pull in your products. I think that'd be a pretty major for growing the future of AI commerce, if we want to call it that. Speaker 2: So I think it comes back to the conversation before, it's like, do I trust OpenAI natively enough for me to make purchases and all that kind of stuff from? Right now, no. But then when talking about Google, right, how much trust I have in the Google infrastructure is enormous. While I'm not someone that uses Google Wallet or uses Google Shopping, Almost everything that I do from email to calendar to AI to workspace drive to pretty much everything in that fundamental, I'm all in for Google. So, you know, when it comes down to if there was a seamless way for, you know, me to make transactions without doing like a Google wallet, because I'm never going to do that. It boils down to I'm already just like I'm ingrained heavily in the Amazon ecosystem. Just at a sane parallel, I'm all the way in when it comes to Google. So yeah, I have tons of trust in Google when it comes to that. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be, there's some kind of future here, how big AI commerce becomes. If you have an open protocol like this, you know, John, it may not, you know, you're, you're smart when it comes to AI, you, you know, a lot about it. The average person isn't, but for example, if someone is using their browser and they've got Google Chrome installed and they're just looking for products and AI is recommending all these products and they're like, okay, that's the one I want. I want to buy that one and it checks out for them and sends it to their house. And maybe it comes directly from the brand's website. Maybe it comes from Walmart. Maybe it comes from Kohl's. Do we get to a point where the end user doesn't care where it's coming from, but they're using their favorite browser or their favorite search engine or even Amazon? Uh, to buy it, uh, and they're just getting it delivered from wherever the protocol is finding the best price for it or, you know, whatever the case may be. Speaker 2: I think that the answer is now no, but I think six to 12 months, it'll probably be yes, because Google is getting so advanced with their quality of life improvements on everything. For example, in Gmail, uh, whether it be an individual or workspace account, doesn't matter. If I order something, Google's smart enough to know to update me at the top of my inbox with the tracking number for my order that's coming soon, if it's going to be here, if it's been delivered. So they actually made an update to Google. I think within the past 72 hours, where they're going to be switching the standard inbox to an AI inbox. So now your Google Gmail or Workspace Gmail will have a toggle that could be the default, where say goodbye to a standard inbox, and the new inbox is going to be an AI inbox where it's literally going to tell you, Here are your priorities. Here is what to look out for. Here's what's coming. So I think the more people give up some sort of, not freedom, but more allocate those efforts to AI, they're going to be more prone to allocating those shopping efforts to it as well. Speaker 3: And I think it needs to be integrated into normal everyday things that we use. Like you mentioned Google there or Gmail showing your tracking information. So what if you log into Google and on the side it says, hey, you're probably almost out of Honest Wipes. Do you want to order some more? Yeah, sure. Okay, cool. You ordered it before on Amazon. It's a dollar cheaper on Walmart. Do you want to get it from there? It'll be delivered in two days. Yeah, go for it. Send it to me. You know, that kind of integration I think is where we need to get to before it really takes off. Speaker 2: A hundred percent. Speaker 3: Cool. Cool. Any other thoughts on AI commerce or anything, or we can move on to the next? Speaker 4: I'm look, this is the, just one last comment. And this is, that is, I'm looking forward to seeing what Google comes up with. Like they're, This whole AI revolution they've not been the the leader in it i but and yet they have by a vast amount the most data out of any other any any corporation in the world so. I just hope they deploy right because I do think they could, they could do it. They could create this, this next evolution of e-com. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Well, I, I agree. I think my old boss, Steve, Steven Pope said this last time we were on is that, um, Google is almost never first to market, but they almost always are winners. And that is the horse that I go behind. So I'm not, I'm not saying like look at like just image generation. Like Google wasn't the first with AI image generation. In my opinion, Google's the best right now with Nano Banana Pro. So I don't need you to be the first. I need you to be the best. And for me, that's what Even right now, Todd was talking about Perplexity and Comet Browser. As much as I am in the Google ecosystem, I defaulted away from Chrome. I came back to Chrome for a little bit because Gemini was inside of it. I've recently left that to go back to Comet Perplexity Browser because even though Google wins at search. Perplexity is just better because when I want to search a topic and I want to see data about it, I don't want to go to individual links. Google's getting better with their AI overview at the top, but it's not as comprehensive as perplexity because at the end of the day, if I want to know something, I want you to summarize it, give me everything I need to know, source and cite everything if I want to go further, but it's just better at that. Speaker 3: Yeah, and we got to remember we're so early in AI, you know, and if we look back through the tech history, you know, Microsoft was not the first operating system. But they became the dominant one. Google was not the first popular search engine, but they became the best. Chrome was not the first browser, but they've became the biggest browser. And that just repeats itself over and over. So being first to market in tech world is not necessarily the best thing. Because, you know, the other people come after you and learn from you, leapfrog you in technology because it moves so quickly. Yeah. Speaker 2: But the funny thing is... Sorry, go ahead, Neil. Speaker 1: Well, isn't GPT bleeding market share right now as well, right? Like they were first to market when they launched their LLM model. And now they're just bleeding out from all these other models that are catching up. And like, I know you use Brock, we use Gemini, I use GPT as well. And so there is that where it's like first to market doesn't always mean you're the best. But like when we look at Netflix, you become that staple. We're no one wants to get rid of it as well. So there are those kinds of pros and cons around that too. Speaker 4: But Apple just announced that they're partnering with GPT with open AI for Siri. Speaker 2: Yeah, because because they tried to because they tried to purchase perplexity and perplexity said not enough money. So they knew they knew perplexity was stronger, but they their CEO was like not enough bucks, but going back to like. Google Chrome being the winner for browsers, right? Google wins even further because Chrome is built on Chromium, which is the basic fundamentals of the browser. And the browser I'm on now is Comet by Perplexity. It's built on Chromium, right? So Arc Browser, Dia Browser, Brave, they're all independent browsers. They're all built on Chromium. So Google still wins. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely. It's going to be fun to watch. That is for sure to see where it goes and I hope something big comes of it. But let's go ahead and jump on to the next article here. And just wanna get your guys' thoughts on negotiating with suppliers, especially like how often you do that or seeing other people doing that. So Amazon pressures suppliers after tariff cuts, pricing talks begin. Amazon is reportedly pushing suppliers to lower prices after US tariffs on Chinese imports dropped. Signaling that earlier cost concessions may be rolled back as trade pressures ease. For Amazon sellers, this points to renewed margin pressure and tougher negotiations ahead, especially for import-reliant products, while uncertainty remains as the U.S. Supreme Court considers ruling that could further reshape tariff policy, considers rulings, I should say, on whether the tariffs were legal or not. So any thoughts on this, but also in just the more broader negotiating with suppliers on price breaks and things like that? Speaker 2: Well, is this mainly talking about Amazon holding talks with their suppliers for their Amazon basics? Yeah. Boo-hoo. So sad. Don't care, is my opinion, because Amazon makes it a point to go out there and find the best sellers and then roll it out into their Kirkland-style iterations. And I think that while there's a lot of Amazon basics and essentials that I'll buy, I think that Amazon does a disservice by doing that because it's almost like your I'm the sports bookie and you're also betting on your own with inside information while also taking bets from other people that you know are probably not going to parlay out. Speaker 4: And you don't have to pay out on the winnings either. You keep that too. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Right. So in my opinion, oh, well, sorry, your cost is going to go up, you're negotiating. But I think from a fundamental standpoint for other brands that are selling on Amazon, I think it's a more impactful conversation. Because when it comes to Amazon, it's like, oh, your diamond shoes are too tight. So sorry, here's some tissues. To me, it's like you're already If you look at the numbers, and I don't have any numbers on it, but how many brands or how many hero aces did Amazon knock either off Amazon or down on the BSR because they came out with their version or iteration of it and crushed another supplier by doing that, right? Speaker 1: And they give themselves premium placements, right? So it's like they're not even playing fair to begin with. Speaker 4: Yeah. Their ad cost is zilch. Speaker 2: For me, it matters more for actual brands selling on Amazon and having negotiations with the suppliers, but then the conversation comes into, you're going to negotiate with your supplier. Is that supplier themselves selling on Amazon too? Because then those negotiations aren't going to be as good, for lack of a better term, because they're not going to negotiate with you if they're selling themselves directly on Amazon. That's why I think I'm a firm believer in Get something that's consumable, have it manufactured and made here in the US because nine out of 10 times those supplement manufacturers, topical wellness manufacturers, they're large businesses that typically don't have a stake in selling themselves, from what I've seen, don't have a stake in selling themselves on Amazon. Their core fundamental is We're an oil distributor. We're a degreaser. So we just, we supply, we'll supply to you, but our bigger clients are these larger industrial corporations. So we have no skin in the game to sell on Amazon ourselves. I think that's where people should really double and triple down. Speaker 1: And I just want to touch on, I just, so I spent a lot of time looking at search query performance reports and some of the things that I've been tracking is just the median price. So there's a couple of interesting things on the search query performance for looking at the 2025. I've been doing a review of 2025 and just looking at the search query volume from January to December and then as well as the median price. So there is an interesting thing that I have seen where the search query volume has gone down compared to 2024. So overall traffic being down. And that's consumer sentiment, right? So tariffs announced, uncertainty, everyone's a little concerned. What do we do? What do we do? So the shopping went down. We saw spikes in March and April around Liberation Day, but for the most part, search query volume was down. And I expected to start seeing the median price rise in the SQP reports, but it was actually the exact opposite. I started seeing it drop, and that's because Less shoppers on Amazon. So a lot of Amazon sellers were becoming more competitive because their sales were down, volumes down. So then it actually created a price compression instead of price increases, which everyone expected. So I thought that was a very interesting underlying piece in the data that I saw there. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, it's a and it's interesting you say you're seeing a decrease in the search volume. Speaker 1: So less searches purchases are still. Somewhat stable purchases, some category by category, but overall, I would say search volume was down, but purchases as a overall was stable, right? So we're just getting average, less browsing, more intent purchasing. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. So that makes me think back to, you know, the first article we talked about, or the second one, I should say about the Prime memberships being up 4%. It makes me wonder what percentage of those new Prime subscribers were already Amazon shoppers that just decided to get Prime in this last year versus brand new Amazon shoppers that had not shopped on the platform before. Speaker 4: That's a fair question, yeah. Speaker 3: Because if search volume is flat to down and purchase volume is flat, but you're seeing a 4% increase in Prime users, it might just be people shifting over and saying, oh, maybe Prime is actually worth it to get that one or two day delivery. Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and free. Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. We all know how free works. Speaker 1: For the hundred bucks that it is, it's just too good of a value. Speaker 4: Yeah. One comment I have on negotiating with suppliers is I feel that at least yearly, you should be taking a look at absolutely everything from your year prior and go, where can we optimize? It's the unsexy things in commerce that make, that cost you the majority of your money. It's little fees. It's, I mean, it could be long-term storage fees. It could be low inventory fees. Like we all know that Amazon charges you for having it there, having too little and having too much, right? So like, what can you look at? What fees, expenses, areas can you look at to optimize? And that's not just like on switch 3PLs or switch suppliers, but what about manufacturing? Can you take a, a, a metal piece and make it plastic? Like, you know, when, when, when we were all kids, uh, you had more and actually even prior when our children, when our, when our parents were children, They had wood and metal toys and now we have these crap plastic gears that wear out really fast. But now you also have got some really good composites that can last just as long as what used to be the quality of metal back then. So, you know, it's just all these things. Can you, do you need 10 variations? Can you get away with eight? Because pink only sells 30 a year or something like that. So just really dive deep into your data. And of course, but you need that data. Speaker 3: Yep, or increase the price of your pink to make it more profitable and worth continuing to carry. Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely. All right, guys, we've just got a few minutes before the top of the hour, so I think we can go ahead and wrap it up there. I appreciate everybody out there watching the show. We do this every Thursday at 12 p.m. Eastern. And Neil, Danan, John, as always, I appreciate you guys coming on and giving us your thoughts. Speaker 4: Yep, absolutely. See you next week. Speaker 3: Have an awesome weekend, everybody. Stay safe with the crazy weather that's coming and make sure you stock up on some essentials if you need to. Later, everybody. 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.