Amazon News: Walmart QR Test, Pattern vs Anker, Theme Reversal

Amazon News: Walmart QR Test, Pattern vs Anker, Theme Reversal Unknown Speaker: Welcome, fellow entrepreneurs, to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle, and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 1: All right. Here we go again. Another week for Amazon Seller News Live. Got Robyn and Dayna with me today. Appreciate you both joining me. Speaker 2: Yeah, man. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: Absolutely. We were talking a little bit before we got going. Some very interesting third-party news going on with Walmart and Best Buy testing out some new things that we're gonna dive into today. But lots of good news this week for the most part. I think mostly good news this week, which is surprising, especially in the Amazon world. Usually there's some bad news, but as you were saying, Robyn, Amazon can surprise us at any time with these kind of things. So we'll see how it goes. But everybody out there watching live, feel free to throw your comments in the chat. And we're happy to bring them into the show and talk about them as well. It always makes it more enjoyable when we can interact with the live crowd out there. So if you're watching, Throw your comments in and we'll discuss them. But without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into the first story here. So Walmart tests in-store promotion of online marketplace products. Walmart is plotting a new strategy that connects in-store shoppers with online third-party marketplace products using QR codes. Customers can scan these codes in a Texas store to view and purchase extended variations of products Like appliances, TVs, and even beverages that aren't physically stocked. So right now only in Texas and I'll zoom go down here. You can see the little QR code here that people can scan. I'm assuming look at more variations of this grill. But they'll probably put them all over the store and see how it goes. So I guess why don't we start with you, Robyn? What do you think of this and how effective it's going to be? Speaker 3: I think, you know, it says they're doing one trial store in Texas. I think that I'm wondering right now if the demographic is different. So I would have to see how this test goes. So I would be cautiously optimistic. It looks like it's going to be a small test. You know, I think that I would expect this would be a smaller lift than what we see. I work with Walmart's Home and Home Plus. I've got Walmart Home Plus where now I can get my groceries delivered, but if you do the extra upgrade, then you don't have to pay tip. And you don't have to pay a delivery fee. So that's having me order more. And then while I'm in there, I'm ordering sometimes things that need to be shipped to me. And so that's really reduced the friction on some of these third party marketplace sellers where, you know, this still has quite a bit of friction because they'd have to, you know, have it and then have a login. So I would have to see how it goes. But, you know, it could, it's one of those things that's going to be either awesome or it will go the way of the. Speaker 1: I'm the founder and co-founder of Seller School, and I'm the founder and co-founder of Seller School, and Finicky, I guess, is a good word. Speaker 3: QR code should really thank COVID. I mean, they really gave them a renaissance, right? That's true. We thought the QR code was dead. I don't know about you, but I kind of, when they give me a QR code for the menu, I feel like a 90 year old woman, like, I want my menu, you know, but. Speaker 1: I always try to get the finicky for sure. Speaker 3: Yeah, with my flashlight. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. This is definitely for the younger crowd, I would say, millennials and younger, although millennials are getting up there towards 40 as well. It could be Gen Z and stuff like that. They're going to be using this the most, but millennials and down, I would say, for sure. But still, like myself, When I go, when I find a QR code and you put your phone at it and sometimes it gets it, sometimes it doesn't. So you're like standing there like trying to get it to get the link. And then when you get the link, you click it, and sometimes it'll open in the app, sometimes it'll open in the browser, and then you gotta log in, so then you're just like, the heck with this. I'm not doing it. Speaker 3: And that's where I think the friction will be, right? So like, are the people in the stores, do they have the app? And is it opening in the app? And if it's not opening in the app, then they have to log in. And so I think that it could be great, but I'm a little, I can't imagine like my dad shopping, And doing that, and I can't really imagine my son doing it, because he's 18 and I think he'd be like, mom, they don't have the purple passion. Can you see if it's online, right? Or he would go to, you know, so, or he would look on Amazon or something. So, well, I mean, I think it's a good thing to test. It could be interesting to see the data. Speaker 2: I see two things here. So, yeah, by the way, Justin, you're old, man. So those gray hairs, I know you've got gray hairs behind that dark beard in that picture there. That's a before children picture. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an older one, I'm thinking. But yeah, I just turned 44, Justin. So I feel, yeah, I'm at the very, very top end of the millennial slash Generation X end of that. Yeah, millennials are getting up there. It's pretty crazy to think about. Speaker 2: Yeah, I have no idea what generation I am. I just know I'm 42. I know what year I was born. Speaker 3: You'd be a millennial then, because I think it was 81 was the cutoff. Speaker 2: OK, I find. Speaker 1: Well, the one was that it depends who you talk about. Speaker 3: Definitely like what is this? Speaker 2: We'll ask chat GPT. Ryan says he's 45 wolf. Speaker 1: Yeah, 45. I got another year before I get there. Speaker 2: So before you start hunting for headstones. Speaker 1: Yeah, then I'll start saying back in my day didn't stand QR code. Speaker 2: You know, in odd eight I was a youngster and. But OK, so back to on topic here. Clearly people's ages are a hot topic, but when it comes to e-commerce, I see two things for this QR codes. Number one, And what I think is really important is that Walmart is going to be able to display more products in less space and not have to hold inventory. And number two, I think if this comes to pass and it rolls out to the other stores, you're going to, what they're promoting is use of the Walmart app. Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. Speaker 2: Which they're going to want people to, Any business, let's just take social media as an example because that's where people spend most of their time. The whole purpose of those platforms is to get you to doom scroll until you fall asleep, right? And so these platforms, they want us on there longer. They want us spending more time. I think this makes sense for them and I also think that Walmart as a brand is considered, well, so you've got your Walmarts and then you've got your Targets and you've got your Amazon and you've got, I don't know what else is out there, Whole Foods, right? Kroger. Yeah, Kroger. Yeah. And they're all catered to different classes of people for the most part. And I think that Like Walmarts are everywhere, of course, but they're known to be in rural areas, right? Because in a rural area, everyone can come from hours, two hours around, and there's just nothing else that has the quantity of things that they have. And so this is going to make it so that people in these rural areas that don't travel to big cities can go into them and go, hey, look, look at that sweet barbecue. And then they'll go scan the app and, oh, I have to download this app. Well, I guess I'll download the app. And I think it'll just foster more adoption of their app, which ultimately is what Walmart wants. They want more people spending more time on their app and on their website and basically positioning Walmart of it's not just what's in the store. We're not just the biggest retailer in the world, I think, or whatever. I don't know what their size is compared to others, but we're not just the biggest Retailer in the world. We're the biggest on on the internet as well so This makes sense. It makes sense to me. And I think it's a quite a good tactic to get people to be using the app and also see that they can see other products, whereas the store only has to house one or two of this item. And and then that's a big ticket item. Right. And they don't have to they don't have to ship it to 150 stores. They can have it in three or four or five central warehouses. And there you go. Speaker 3: And I wouldn't limit Walmart to lower socioeconomic classes either because they're bringing in more six-figure earners. And I think the Walmart Plus partnership that they did with Emacs Platinum has definitely brought in some higher income earners as well. Speaker 2: I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that If you, if you go outside of big cities, you don't see targets there. You see Walmarts because they can attract a massive amount of people from rural areas and Walmarts. Like I have cousins that when they wanted to go hang out, they went to Walmart, you know, cause you could get subway there or little Caesar's pizza and roam around the store and you know, hang out outside. And that's just what they did. Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, I remember doing that when I was younger as well every once in a while. Just I mean, they're open till all night, 24 hours. So, you know, you're you're 17, 18 years old, or in college or something, you're looking for something to do. Go to Walmart, look around and see what's happening. Speaker 3: And the Walmart in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley in Arizona is just as busy as the one in Phoenix. So, I mean, it's just, I mean, I lived in a small rural town for a couple of years too. And, you know, Walmart, it seems like they've been changing the, you know, the things in the front. They don't have as many of those options in the front anymore. So, but it definitely is a place, I think they're definitely trying to change their brand and to maneuver. They keep shooting themselves in the foot a little bit. As soon as sellers are getting excited, they've been kind of killing a lot of the momentum that they had in getting sellers excited to move over. But I think it'll be interesting to watch over the next six months. Speaker 1: Before we went live, Robyn, you were talking about that some of your brands are struggling to get their products activated in Walmart, that they're having to go through some advanced. Speaker 3: They're trying to limit resellers and there's a new enhanced vetting process for several categories. I know a lot of people, really reputable good sellers that have been shut down in the last couple of weeks or that have been restricted with products with no notice. As an approved agency for Walmart, they sent us saying, hey, by the way, it might be tough on pretty people. They didn't say it that way, but there's going to be this slower enhanced vetting process. Even a brand that we have that's in Walmart's retail stores in the food category, We are having problems with the listings being taken down for that enhanced vetting and having to get, you know, they're like, how do I do a letter of authorization when we're the brand owners? You know, so, you know, it's, it's affecting more than just resellers, even those resellers that have already been vetted by Walmart. Speaker 2: So did Walmart hire some ex-Amazonians? Speaker 3: I was so pumped up about Walmart and the future of Walmart. I was like getting to get gung-ho and then this happened and I was like, man, you know, just talk about- It literally sounds like Amazon. And I think they're trying to do it too fast. So, you know, you can, Amazon can do those things because, you know, they can take their ball and go home. There's a lot of places, you know, that we have that. Speaker 2: I don't care what they affect and they'll fix. It's more that I've been saying this for a long time and we're going to talk about this topic in a moment. And in fact, I'm doing a webinar on it in a couple of weeks with a couple of my buddies. But, you know, Amazon, I've never seen Amazon do an announcement And say, this is changing at this point. And everyone goes, fantastic, that's gonna make everything so much better. Speaker 3: This is exactly the improvement we asked for. It's always like AI listing help. No, we don't want that. No, thank you. Speaker 2: Exactly. And like, Hey, all those survey questions that I answer on every Seller Central account that I have, it finally means something. No, that doesn't happen. What happens is Amazon says, by the way, we're making this change. This is when it's going into effect and they break a shit ton of stuff and then everyone has to go to seller support to get it fixed. And seller support says, you're not authorized to fix this problem. Or they say, what's the problem? I see no problem. Or they say nothing. And then everyone has to go through this crazy, these hoops that don't even exist yet. To get this stuff fixed. And we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that in a little bit. And I'll give you my opinions on that. Speaker 1: But you're talking about the variation cleanup. Speaker 2: Yeah, cleanup, cleanup. Speaker 1: We can jump to that one next year. Sure. But one last thing I wanted to say on these QR codes that, you know, they're going to be having a little bit of a battle with that. Because there's been some news lately about how QR codes are being hijacked. Like these QR codes in stores, someone puts a sticker over it of their own QR code that leads people to a malicious website and hacks their phone, steals their information and stuff like that. So that's a little bit of a worry out there as well, especially if you're just putting up these signs in the store. Anyone could walk over and be like, slap their QR code over the top. And now they're hacking phones. Speaker 3: Even if they put the actual physical product in some of these stores, if they took select products and gave them sample shelf space, like if it's not with the other stuff, you know, like there's so many things, even if they did that, it would still be, we'd have to kind of see how it would play out. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I'm happy they're doing something, you know, you talked about last week Best Buy launching their third party marketplace as well. It's all these things are good. It's just a question as to, you know, how much effect they're going to have. Speaker 2: It's execution and adoption. Speaker 1: Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Adoption is huge, but execution goes a long way towards pushing adoption. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. I totally agree. Speaker 1: All right, cool. Let's go ahead and jump on to the variation news here. If I could click the right button, there we go. So Amazon halts variation theme cleanup after seller backlash. Amazon has reversed its plan to remove variation themes from listings after strong pushback from seller community. Originally, the policy would have impacted listings using themes considered irrelevant or redundant, sparking concern over lost search rankings and the need to rebuild parent-child relationships. Now, I will clarify that a little bit. At least according to Amazon, they didn't halt anything. They just clarified that, oh, we were just kidding on that. We were talking about these variations that nobody's using that we're removing. Speaker 2: Yeah. Six months old or something like that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I'm just going to go out there and say, they're going to break shit. This is what's going to happen. They said, hey, we're going to, first of all, they announced, hey, we're going to go break shit. And then everyone, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't just break everything. Okay, we're going to not break shit and use something else that'll break shit. Speaker 3: And they've been working on trying to clean up the variation mess for, I mean, this is kind of, in some ways it's kind of old news. I mean, they've been suspending people for variation of use for, I mean, it feels like forever, but the way that they have handled it, I understand the reasoning behind it, because there were definitely people You're doing a variation with like an old spatula to sell their new baby carrier. Because, you know, and so I definitely understand the impetus behind it. But, you know, there have been times where we've had clients that have gotten policy violations for variation abuse. And it's like, this is literally, we're pretty white hat. This is, you know, and we were able to get those overturned, but it's easy to get snagged in those. Especially if you have like a complicated product mix with, you know, size, color, you know, style variations. Speaker 1: Yeah, I is that's the actual notice that Oh, yeah, there we go. Speaker 2: I was looking for that just now. We announced that irrelevant or redundant variation themes would be removed from our listings. This variation theme is deprecated, do not use. Change is only intended to impact variation themes that were not needed. Whose opinion is that based on? Speaker 3: But that's what you were intended, intended. I feel like they need a larger board of sellers that they talk to. Speaker 2: Oh my God, that would be amazing. Speaker 3: That they could, from different categories, different verticals, different sizes, because I think sometimes they're making these decisions with bigger brands in mind, but then they forget some of the edge cases. And for them, the edge cases are probably rounding numbers. So it might be that they've done the numbers and determined it's not necessary for them. But yeah, it's what they change that they don't, the changes that they don't intend. Speaker 2: Yeah. So here's another thing, um, that that's going to be interesting is that, uh, for legitimate child parent, child variations that are out there, there are plenty of ones that like, I, I have one my own. In fact, that the reviews from my prior variations, let's say I just do a version two. of my camping blanket, which is what I did at the time. Well, if Amazon goes, Oh, well, that one's not been sold for 12 months. Let's strip it out. That also strips out all the reviews. And that, that would be a fully legitimate, Hey, I've, I've, I've iterated on my product. And now this new product that I launched two months ago has 11 reviews or 30 reviews or 13 reviews. But my prior product that has eight years of sales. All those reviews get stripped away. That is going to happen. They say here, the change was only intended to impact variation themes that were not needed. Well, who the hell defined that? Intentions mean nothing when it comes to Amazon's actual actions and the impact that that has on sellers. adamantly say that they're going to break a lot of stuff. And, I mean, I'm actually going to, Todd, I'm going to plug Catalog Defender here for just a second because we built it exactly for this. I think that a lot of people are going to need Catalog Defender because you're not going to know that your variations get split until it affects your money. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a pain, especially when you have a big catalog. Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. Speaker 1: Sorry, go ahead. Not even because of this, Amazon just breaks them up randomly all the time with no notifications. It's very annoying. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 3: There's a couple of ways to read this. We're only going to remove the variation themes. The way I originally read that was that if a weird theme, And I'm wondering if, you know, flavor style or something, if some variation theme hadn't been used anywhere for 12 months, but then how many of those aren't being used at all? And then is it, so is it, are they looking at the, they're only gonna remove certain variation themes? And of those, I mean, there's still, I think there's a lot of room for interpretation there. Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And some kind of notification, I guess, would be good as well. I mean, they're going to look at ones that haven't sold in the past 12 months, but. You know, that's it's going to affect some people that still want those variations up, you know, for whatever reason they haven't sold in the past 12 months, maybe they've been backordered or something like that. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: And for sure, it's Amazon. There's going to be ones that they're going to do that, you know, are still in use. There's going to be accidents that they're going to delete. And so it's going to affect people for sure. But like you said, you're just going to have to keep an eye on your variations like you do anyways. And if you're not, you should be watching your variations anyways, because Amazon does this regardless of this notice or not. They've been breaking up a lot of variations lately that they deem, you know, incorrect, whether they are or not. Because, you know, I had, for example, It's a fishing lure that comes in different colors, right? And fishing lures are named like, the colors are named watermelon and crawfish and stuff like that, right? So those are the legitimate color variations for these, but Amazon didn't see it as legitimate colors. So they broke up the variations and then we have to put them back together. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Hey, Amazon sellers. 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These days, like when we all got started on Amazon, it was far, far simpler. We had call centers that we could just dial in to that were in Arizona and Florida and New York and California, I think. And so this is just the price of doing business. It's not as simple as just listing a product and making money anymore. This is a legitimate business. You have hurdles that you have to overcome and those that do it better than others make more money. So you have to learn how to deal with Amazon. I say this all the time, Amazon's like a schizophrenic dictatorship. They're the boss and they don't know what they're doing in life, right? And their AIs and computers are exactly the same way and their seller support is also the exact same way and you know the policies better than almost anyone that's helping you, right? And so you just have to learn how to navigate the waters, the Amazon waters, yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't explain how I'm happy I am when I'm calling Amazon support and don't take this the wrong way, anybody out there. Don't cancel me or anything. But the person answers the phone and they're like, hi, this is Mary or this is Mark. And they have like a Southern accent or something. I'm like, yes, we're going to get something done this time. I reached someone in the USA who can actually have access to systems and knows how to do stuff. It's just one of those things that you deal with with Amazon and it's just part of the beast these days. Speaker 2: Yeah, an old tactic was to pretend like you spoke Spanish so that you get transferred to another call center. And you would get better service because they could actually, they weren't just, you'd ask a question and it wouldn't be like, okay, hold on, please. You have to, have you pressed the power button yet? Like, okay. Transfer me. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Those are fun. When you, you type up the case and you say, I've already done this. I've already done this. And the first question they ask you, of course, is the first thing you told them you already did. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: It's like, did you read the case? Speaker 2: Yeah. So I have no evidence of any of my dealings with seller support that they actually do read the case. You can imagine how many cases I file doing review removal. And the modus operandi is less is more. Don't write a story and keep your feelings out of it because they don't care. Speaker 1: It's definitely good. Something that I keep thinking of, so Rufus, which of course is on the front end, I read now that Rufus has access to all of your shopping data and all the chats and everything that you've done in your front end account. And so Rufus supposedly is going to be getting much better at recommending products and stuff like that. And I've heard that they are working on AI for the seller side. But it would be very cool if the AI has access, you know, to all of your case history and every communication you've ever made with Amazon. So it can be look at all that and be like, we've got all this information already. Let's go ahead and just Clear this issue up right away you know yeah i covered this recently i think on my podcast. Speaker 2: I think two things one i actually believe that. AI as the first point of contact for seller support will will get you actual support faster than going through their their current system. And I believe that because you will be able to locate the policy and quote the policy and say, this is the problem that I'm having. Or alternatively, I'm running into this issue. What is the policy? Right. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So that's one thing. I think that's actually going to be a good thing and eliminate a lot of just back and forth that Amazon's getting with existing sellers, especially new people. Right. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: On the flip side of that coin. Amazon policies often contradict each other. So there are different policies in different places. There's public facing, there's behind seller central, and then there are policies that are quoted inside of like their chat, the community and stuff like that, that are from legitimate Amazon employees with links to these places. And I have found it's not extreme and I can't imagine even how it would be possible to keep this all organized. It's certainly not for my mind, but I have found contradictions, direct contradictions. And as a matter of fact, one of them is in their Vine program contract. Where it says, you may not under any circumstance contact the Vine reviewer. And two paragraphs later it says, should you want to use their review for marketing and some other stuff, please reach out to the Vine reviewer. So, you know, and that's two paragraphs apart in a contract. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you've got that. And then seller support will tell you to violate the terms of service as well. I've had it happen numerous times, you know, where you're working with a client and their brand name is like missing a letter or something, right? It's missing the S at the end or the brand name is like the product name instead of the brand name and so you're trying to fix those kind of things and seller support will tell you, oh, you got to create a new listing. That's always their first thing. So you're saying I need to violate terms of service and create a duplicate listing for the exact same product? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And then they're always like, they go around in circles and you end up back where we were in anyways. Speaker 2: But I'm on the, uh, the seller sent behind seller central login on the, uh, variation relationship FAQ. And it says how to reassign a child, a son, a child item to a new parent. Number one, delete the child item. Uh, okay. Yeah, that would work. But if you delete the child item, Does that not delete all the reviews? Speaker 3: No, we do that all the time. Really? You would delete it and then there's a specific way you do it but there are times where there's issues with like a listing not changing or something with the variations or the reviews not showing up and so we would delete the child and reinstate it and it doesn't impact reviews. Speaker 2: So it says here you must wait 24 hours before you can reuse that SKU. So they'll hold that because if you get of orphans Asin, where a child variation splits away, it takes the reviews with it. So you can reuse that and it'll hold on to those reviews and everything. Speaker 3: For that 24-hour period, you might, 24 to 48 hours, you might see a discrepancy, but yeah. Speaker 2: Okay. Well, that's good because I would be terribly worried of that occurring. I don't do variations. All of mine are single-parent Asin. Speaker 3: We have a client that's got like 10,000 products under like 50 parents. So we deal with a lot of variations, yeah. Does it mean I still hold my breath every time we do it, right? We don't do it willy-nilly. You know, so it, cause there's always that one day that Amazon is like, just kidding. But it is an effective way to fix things that can be stuck on listings. Speaker 2: Since you've got that client, I'm compelled to ask, how often do you have to handle orphaned ASINs where the child ASIN gets split away? Speaker 3: You get more orphans when you have a ton of resellers that are creating and things aren't getting matched up and then people are messing with the parent. We don't have a ton of those. Every now and again, Amazon will just randomly break one up, but we're going to see that pretty Because of the way that we monitor the ads, that's why we do everything kind of all in one package is because we'll see it in the ads. So you would see it in the percentage of ad sales and the budget and the conversion rate really quickly. So having everything together allows us to see those things a lot faster. Speaker 2: Yeah, cool. Unknown Speaker: All right. Speaker 1: Yeah, that 24 hour wait though is the most annoying thing, especially if it's like a good selling product. You're like, so you're telling me I have to Take, remove my product from sales for 24 hours. It's just... Speaker 3: Well, every time we do it, the brand's like, are you sure? We're like, we do it all the time. This is what Amazon told us to do. I was like, there always could go something, something could always go wrong, but this is what, you know, what we think should happen. So there's always that, you know, there, yeah, we definitely still have, you know, a little breath holding there. Speaker 1: Yeah. And the 24 hours, it definitely doesn't take 24 hours. You know, I've got a computer programming background. I don't know the sophistication of Amazon systems, of course, but It definitely doesn't take 24 hours to replicate data through databases, at least not nowadays. Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. So from my days of Managed by Stats, I know that Amazon has a lot of different data banks, which is why you might see on the East Coast a different version of a product display page than you might on the West Coast. You know, on this side of the planet, it's different than on this side of the planet. And so I've definitely seen, like when Amazon rolls out, first of all, we all know they're always testing, right? And so you see these occasional changes, but when it comes to a full rollout, I've seen that it actually takes weeks. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's good that they segment that way so that they can test things out, you know, kind of like Walmart is testing out in a Texas store. It'd be like them having, Oh, we have to put the QR codes in all the stores to do the test. Cause we don't have segmentation, but similar thing. It's just online. There's they segment different areas so they can do testing and silos and such. Speaker 3: Yep. Speaker 1: But I think the 24 hours is way more than it needs to be. It's more just a way to get you to go away until the next day and come back, I think. Speaker 2: And hopefully forget. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, cool. Any other comments on the variations and things like that before we move on? Speaker 2: Nope, I just think we're going to break stuff. Speaker 1: All right, awesome. Let's go ahead and jump on to our next story here. So Pattern versus Anchor, $2 billion Amazon strategies face off. Pattern's IPO filing reveals a stark contrast to Anchor's Amazon native strategy. While Anchor built recognizable brands and diversified into retail, Pattern built backend infrastructure and doubled down on Amazon with 94% of its $1.8 billion revenue tied to the platform. So this just interested me because it's, it's the battle of I think the two main methodologies to sell on Amazon nowadays, right? You've got the You're a private label like Anker, where you're creating your own brand. And then you've got the brand partnerships, which is what Pattern is doing and becoming the exclusive seller for these products and helping them sell on Amazon. So Pattern is basically what I do on Amazon, basically what you do for selling your products as well. And Robyn, I know that you work with both Types of sellers on Amazon as well. So this is just really cool that Pattern is going to be doing their IPO. Anker, I believe, already did theirs earlier in the year or last year. So it's just really cool to see the growth of these two companies. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: I want to hear what Robyn has to say since she's, I have experience on both sides, but I want, but she's got experience with more on both sides. I want to know what she's got to say on this. Speaker 3: I think that there are, I think, I feel like this is gonna sound like a non-answer, but I think that there's a pros and cons to both, right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: So you have a distributed risk with something like Pattern, but you also have more plates to spin. So like what we saw with Thresho is, you know, you get the wrong person with the wrong level of expertise. Trying to do too many things at once that doesn't really understand and thinks that they're just going to be able to scoop up brands and cause profitability. That doesn't always necessarily mean that that's going to happen. Now, I think Pattern has, you know, I noticed people that have worked at Pattern in the past and they've been very highly skilled. And so, you know, I think that, you know, just like Anker, these massive success stories, yes, Anker started at the right place at the right time. But they also have done a ton right. And, you know, so I think that these are both kind of unicorns. I don't think that anybody should set up their Amazon business thinking that they're going to be Anker or Pattern. If that's something you want to strive for, you live your best life, you know, do you. But I think that holding many brands is difficult for, If you're actually gonna hold the brands versus just manage the brands, then that's very cashflow intensive. And so you would need somebody that's really analytical to really constantly be analyzing what products to spend the money on, where to grow, watching inventory levels. So there's a lot of logistics and distribution that would be involved in something like Pattern. Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you completely. So I have done my own private label. But I started with and remain doing brand exclusivity. Now, Pattern and I actually started selling at the same time on Amazon. So it was in 2010 because I remember when I went to the very first Accelerate by Pattern, which not to be confused with Accelerate by Amazon, the CEO came up and said, hey, I started in 2010 and I did this. I was like, oh, my God. If I were a smarter businessman, I could be the other pattern, you know. But one thing that's unique about pattern As compared to my model, and Todd, even yours, is I've never purchased my inventory. It has been a partnership with the brand. They have the inventory. I manage the sales and customer service and logistics of Amazon, right? And so my cash flow is maximized. But also maybe my profit is not as much, but, you know, I, I prefer it that way. My, my risk is subsidized across brands that I am partnered with, that I intend to treat as my own brand, which is what any brand would want. Whereas, on the other side, if you are on the Anker side of things and, hey, my hat's tipped to those who do private labels and especially do them well. I don't care for it because it is a ton of work as compared to managing someone else's brand where they have the facilities in place. They've got somebody that does their marketing, their images, ideally, not in my case sometimes. Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if they do all that well. All the outside Amazon stuff, if they have that all built up, they have a following, email list, social and all that stuff and they just don't want to deal with Amazon and you can take that over for them, those are great to work with. Speaker 2: That's a great scenario. Yep. And that's exactly what all of my business relationships have been, my business partnerships with brands. They exist. They're doing marketing. They're driving their own traffic. They don't want to deal with Amazon. So I go, cool, I will deal with Amazon. I have extensive experience with it. I have pre approvals on all manner of food and supplements and all those gated areas. And I can handle that for you. And I just take my piece off the top and that's it. You know, and you're like, cool, we're hands off. We're still making money. You handle that. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a, like I said, these are the two growth areas on Amazon and ways to sell either building your own brand. Or reselling other people's brands for them. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And, you know, just being a straight reseller, those days, I think are going away, you have to be a value added reseller, essentially, and building a partnership with the brand, not just You know, going to Walmart and buying stuff off the shell and reselling, you can still do that and make money, but it's getting harder. Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you get straight into the pattern model, like might as well just go in deep. You know, if you could find yourself, I'm trying to figure out what my and my wife's capacity would be to manage brands, depending on size. Three to five, I'd bet. Probably like, yeah, probably without a team. Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. You have to build a team, of course, if you're going to get bigger. Speaker 3: And Pattern did have a good team early on, you know, and they had, they had a ton of capital. I don't know where they got their capital from, nor does any of my dating business, but I, you know, I know that they were fairly well, at least it appeared from my point of view, that they had a good stream of capital. Speaker 2: Sure. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. And with Anker, you know, if you're someone out there looking to build a private label brand, they're the perfect one to look at, you know, and they're based in China, but you wouldn't really know it because they don't act like a typical Chinese brand on Amazon. They're more, they made high quality products. I buy their products because they're good. I know they're going to work really good and get the job done. They made really good products, really good marketing, built out great listings. And built their brand outside of Amazon as well. Social platforms, influencers, their own website, and all that stuff that you have to do now if you're going to be successful on Amazon. Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're in my community, in the off-road community. Me and my buddies are actually sponsored by Anker. It's not Anker, it's Anker Solix, which I think is like a subsidiary. They do the big old battery banks. And so the five of us are actually sponsored by Anker. And that marketing side of thing on the influencer side of thing, they do work like a Chinese company. Yeah, it's not your standard. It's not like buying direct from the brand. I don't know how to put it. There's just a way that the brand operates. You're like, that looks like quality and I like it. And then on the influencer side of thing, it is very much dealing with a Chinese company and they hire these other Chinese marketing companies to manage the influencers. And so the contract is with them. But then when you want to talk to Anker, like I had a port fail on my Anker. And they're like, well, we don't have your order. I'm like, well, there's no order because you guys sponsored this and sent it to me to do content on. And so I had to go a bit through a couple of hoops with the mothership company. But I've got three different battery banks and Anker is by far hands down my favorite because it's higher quality than the others. So I'm a big brand fan personally. Speaker 1: Yep, definitely. Any other thoughts, Robyn? Speaker 3: No, I think that's pretty much it. Speaker 1: All right, very good. Let's go ahead and jump on to our next and last story here. Amazon buyers are flocking to essentials but paying more for top products. Searches in essential categories like health and household and grocery have surged on Amazon in 2025, while interesting categories like electronics and clothing have dropped. At the same time, prices for top-ranking organic products in many of these fast-growing categories have actually gone up. So this one just caught my eye because, you know, everybody's talking about inflation and recession worries and stuff like that. It feels like for like the last 20 years now they've been talking about that. What's that? Speaker 2: Buy silver, buy gold, buy silver. Silver's going up. $400 an ounce. Speaker 1: Yeah, gold has been really good for me. I did buy some quite a long time ago and it's been at its peak though for quite a while. But yeah, so health and household, beauty and personal care and gourmet or grocery, I should say, have become the top categories currently on Amazon while others have been dropping. And these are the current average prices in those areas. So, of course, grocery pretty low around the 15 to 16. Health and household up there quite a ways, 25 to 26. And then beauty and personal care between 18 to 24, a little over 24. So have you Robyn seen with your clients any kind of issues with declines in sales in the more, the categories that typically drop when there's recession fears? Speaker 3: Yeah, so the highest, highest in luxury brands are still doing fine. And then essentials are still doing fine. But companies that had kind of like the middle, like aspirational wants but didn't provide like a big social status or weren't tied to like a specific special needs or like special interest or like some sort of like community. Those are definitely we're starting to see, you know, slowing down in growth, we're seeing some dips in sales, you know, and then just overall pressure The brands are, we're having more brands that are having more pressure as far as finances because, you know, and if you are a brand that's facing these tariffs, I saw somebody, somebody said, well, you know, I had to increase my price and I lost my buy box. You need to be looking at those proactively. So if you know that your next shipment, it will be in two months and you will have to raise your price due to the tariffs. You need to start slowly raising the price now because otherwise you'll have a buy box suppression. So part of that is making sure that you're managing things so you don't have a big dip. I think that was in the article there is, you know, she said that, or maybe I read it somewhere else today, but you know, so I think that there is managing that. And then I think that, you know, looking at the overall costs, it might be that for you, for some of our brands, we have decided to not do as aggressive promotions, to not do, maybe as big of a discount to focus on product A versus product B because that has a higher profit margin. So the overall, we have one client, their overall revenue is down significantly, but we've been maintaining or increasing their profit. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah. We, we have one of our brands that we had to increase the prices quite significantly because their products are made from aluminum. In the United States, and the pricing of aluminum has just been insane. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So it was a pretty big jump. And they did have a few of them that got suppressed. But we were able to get seller support to unsuppress them successfully by submitting, you know, the new costs and everything to them. And they, they on suppress the buy box, which was good. And so none of them are suppressed anymore. But yeah, it's definitely something you want to watch out for if you can predict. The aluminum price was like overnight. It just doubled in price. Speaker 3: There wasn't a big window there for you. The other thing is we head into Q4 is you need to be thinking about reference prices. So if you know you want to be able to do a discount, but to do that discount, you need to be at a certain price. You need to make sure you're at that price. And today we're going to be looking at how to sell on Amazon at least 30 days. And that reference price is at least 30 days before the next tentpole event, which we're going to be, you know, if they do fall days again, that's going to be just around the corner. So you need to be looking at where do you need your pricing to be profitable and where do you need your pricing to be in order to have the promotions that you want to have? Because you won't be eligible for a lightning deal if your reference price isn't, you know. Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, you got to be really careful of that. They can mess up all of your promotions pretty easily with that. Speaker 2: See, this is one of the things that really pisses me off about Amazon is you have some significant increase like you have with aluminum. I've got a buddy that does two containers a week of aluminum and it nearly bankrupt his business when we saw these spikes because they can't just double or 250% their prices over a week. You do need to raise rates and Amazon will thrash you for doing so and this is an unacceptable business model in my opinion, but All that aside, we all know I like to go on rants about Amazon. Speaker 3: Do you? I didn't know that about you. Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's a thing. I put it on my LinkedIn. Speaker 3: Is it on your credential? It should be on your credential. Speaker 2: One of my things is internationally renowned as giving great hugs and the other one is Amazon Ranter. Yeah. Actually, I should put that on there. Speaker 1: Put that as your job title. Speaker 2: Yeah. So I have to ask this because My wife is the one that manages our product details page and I've gone in there a couple of times looking at numbers going, we got to raise the price and raise the price and I kill our sales and we're the only ones selling the product, right? I know it's not, you can't give a blanket response on this, but there's got to be a safe percentage to increase and a safe chronological increment to do it. So what percentage would you raise rates over what period of time? Is it weekly, monthly? Speaker 3: We usually do like 3% weekly, but you need to make sure you're really testing and looking at this during non, uh, like without a hot, without like a tentpole event in there. What we're really looking at is not only losing the buy box suppression, cause that's one thing. But there's also a price elasticity issue. So for every product, there's, you have to test to see price elasticity. So we had a pair of folding sunglasses that we were working with and they were priced at 39 and they were supposed to be like a knockoff of like Ray-Ban, right? Not a knockoff, but like a, an invitator, right? An alternative purchase, right? And so what we did is we actually found that on that product by raising it from $39 to $80, the conversion rate actually went up. You know, so because then it made it, you know, it made it so people are like, well, that's too cheap. It can't be good if it's that price. So there's a bottom where you hurt your conversions by being low. And there's a top, like I was just looking for something. I think it was, I was looking at a baby carrier for a friend and I was like, Oh, I will pay this, but I will not pay that. Speaker 2: You know? Speaker 3: And it was like, just like $3 over. I was like, that's just past what I'm willing to pay for something. You know? So there's, there's, you test, you test up. We kind of start raising up. If we can do it at launch, we start it up and then we discount down, alternating back and forth between the higher and lower pricing so we can make sure that one week is not statistically significant data. So by using the discounts to bring the price up and down and then slowly raising the price, we can see where the elasticity hits. Speaker 2: Yep. Makes sense. I have always gone to the middle upper to upper price point in my categories because there's two reasons. One, I actually find I have a better conversion rate. And two, there's more profit to put into advertising if you're doing advertising. Speaker 3: There was one product that we worked with for a while that there was no difference between their product. They were selling a $90 product and other people were selling it for $20. It was not materially different, but they were able to take that money and plow it back into advertising. But you have to make sure that, so with that elasticity, if you make a significant change to the listing, that might change the bar. So if you are really able to refocus on features that appeal to a customer that has a higher socioeconomic status or is willing to pay that has like a more vested emotional interest in buying that product, you might be able to increase what you're able to purchase or sell your products for as well. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. You got to play with it. You never really want to be like the low price leader. Speaker 3: No. Speaker 1: You want to stay away from that, but playing with moving the price up and seeing where things can go. If you've got a $20 margin and everybody else has a $5 margin, well, that's $15 more per sale you can spend on ads to outcompete them. So yeah, it's really important to think about that when you're, when you're creating products. Um, especially, you know, if you're based outside of China, essentially, um, you're going to have to compete on value versus instead of price value. Speaker 2: Yeah. Or just brand image, which That's a part of value. It is, yeah. Speaker 1: Anker, for example, there's probably other companies that make battery chargers that are just as good as Anker, but the perceived value of the Anker brand now is just so high that you just assume that it's probably better. Speaker 2: Yeah. I happen to know that the brand Bluetti, Manufacturers for a lot of brands in the space. Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And that happens a lot. You know, you just go to the grocery store and you can see that all over the place. The, you know, the grocery store brand is probably from the same factory as some of those other brands. That are for sale for a much higher price. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yep. Speaker 1: Happens a lot. But yeah, anything else on this or we can go ahead and wrap it up. Speaker 2: I'm good. Speaker 1: All right, cool. Well, that was another fun episode. Robyn, Dana, and I appreciate you guys joining me. Anybody out there watching, we do this every Friday, so happy to have you join us next week, and we'll talk about whatever happens this coming week. So until then, everybody have an awesome Labor Day weekend, and we'll see you next week. Speaker 2: Bye everyone. Speaker 3: 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 1: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.