Amazon Selling in 2025: Doubling Sales & Leveraging AI for Growth with Alex Karagiannis – Episode 51 of the Agency Operators Podcast

Amazon Selling in 2025: Doubling Sales & Leveraging AI for Growth with Alex Karagiannis – Episode 51 of the Agency Operators Podcast Speaker 2: Hi everybody, welcome to the Agency Operators Podcast. Today I'm joined by Alex Karagiannis of Lezat. I hope I got that right. Speaker 1: You did, you did. Nice to see you, Pasha. Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Alex, for joining. I'm really excited to chat with you. I know you have run your agency for quite some time and also you guys are really focused on the other side of the pond. I'm over here, I'm in the US and you guys cover a lot of Europe. So different perspective over there. I think even though they're both Amazon, it's a little bit of a different world. So I'm excited to talk to you about the differences between the two and kind of the trends that you guys are seeing from over there. But before we dive in, I'd love to hear your story. How did you and why did you start Lezat? And what's, you know, what's the journey that kind of got you to start your own agency? Speaker 1: Okay, right. So, I'll try to keep it short in terms of how it was created. But basically, it was one of those cases that many things happen at once. So, I was getting fired from my previous job. I was breaking up with the girlfriend I had at the time and they were kicking me out of the house I was living in because they were selling it. So, long story short, I basically had no job, no place to stay, etc. So, I was like, what do I really want to do? Do I want to continue doing B2B marketing for big companies or do my own thing? Someone told me about a priest that was selling on Amazon and making six million selling Tupperware. And I'm like, if someone, if a priest can do it, for sure I can do it because I've studied degrees and business degrees and so on. So that's how I started. I did a very old school course, which was for $20, but it was very up to the point. It was a great, great course. And then that's the style that made me start. And essentially I started as a seller. And then a year after I created an agency, it was my way of basically being able to go from UK to Greece and spend some more time doing it in Greece. First two years I was doing a bit of everything, Amazon SEO, Google Ads, the whole thing. Things were not going very well. And then all of a sudden someone told me, Can you help us with Amazon? I'm like why would you need this? Then I remember the pain that I had to go through selling on Amazon, ungating, hazmat, FBA, all those things and I'm like yeah you need an expert here. So Everything shifted in one day. All those PowerPoints, website, Wix website, all of those things go from to the bin. And since then, which is seven years ago, five years ago exact, it was only as an Amazon full service entity. So we only do Amazon and I think we do it quite well. Speaker 2: Amazing. And you guys are not just doing the operations but also handling, like you said, some of the more serious cases like suspensions and, you know, yeah, everything. So, that's great. Speaker 1: Look, so we work with startups that have DC banking all the way to Fortune 500 and so on. They need someone who's just responsible for Amazon. So, we become their Amazon department, right? We help them with their sales, adverts, growing their sales, suspensions, appeals, account help, restocking. We're expanding from UK to Europe. If we need to get other partners involved, let's say in compliance side or legal side, we have a very good ecosystem of professional companies that we work with that help us actually bring value to our clients. So, we've become their Amazon department, essentially. So, that's how we like to think of ourselves. Speaker 2: Yeah, and people, I think, don't really realize I mean, once they become Amazon sellers, I think they quickly do realize, but so much of this is just a compliance piece and just like kind of understanding what Amazon really wants. And the truth is that over the years, I mean, I've been a seller for 14 years and I've watched the ecosystem develop quite a lot. And they don't tell you whenever they're rolling stuff out. I mean, sometimes they'll tell you, oh, there's a new fee or there's these changes, but on the internal regulation side, oh, there's a new keyword in this category that we don't like. Like, nobody tells you that. You just find out the hard way and then you have to deal with cases. And so, nobody kind of tells you coming into Amazon, like, you're going to need somebody who's like full-time responsible. So, most of the people that come to us, like, we're not specialized in reinstatements, although actually just before I got on this call, we got a reinstatement for a listing that we've been fighting Amazon for for weeks. So, we end up having to do it anyway just because we have a dedicated case support person. We do have somebody that we refer to for the really hard stuff like account suspensions. I don't think we've ever done an account suspension. But yes, so much of our time is actually taken not just by ads and content, but that. Speaker 1: Yeah, sure. And that's probably one of the top three, I would say, thorns that clients have, brands have when it's on Amazon is listing goes down, I contact Amazon, I panic, I contact them and again and again, nothing happens. Can you help us? expiration dates, IPI score is not performing very well, fees, remove the inventory from Amazon, I've seen a lot of cases, and actually we've supported a lot of cases to get those things going. Ideally, you don't want to go there in the first place. So what Amazon has been bad at, actually, because we're always going to hear the bad side, but something that is actually bad is they didn't used to give you warnings. It used to be like a bow. Now, there's a tendency to give you warnings, so there is silence, have good account health, more price, like you've got 30 days to do this. Otherwise, you're going to get taken down. So, but the issue is a lot of the times those emails go to the owner, who already gets like, I don't know, 20 or 30 emails from Amazon, because they know they're really checked which notifications are important and not, which they delete, delete, delete, delete. So if you don't have a dedicated person, or it's a big account, an agency, if you look after that, it's going to go unnoticed. So it might be on the radar, which has happened. Actually, one of our clients, they're doing around 6 to 700,000 per month in cosmetics when I was in USA. That exact thing happened. Amazon said, in 30 days, we're going to take your business down, the best seller, which is about 70% of the revenue, if you don't do this. And it was something easy. It was something like just a piece of paperwork. It was a compliance. They already had And then the owner didn't see it. Their in-house team that they have in USA didn't see it because it wasn't on Account Health. It wasn't Performance Authentication. They didn't have a SOP to check this regularly. We went in because we're supporting them in Canada. So we're just trying to prove ourselves like, look, we can grow your sales in Canada. And then if we do this, we can also bring you in UK and Europe. So we're testing it out. So hopefully we're going to get that business. Then this happened. It's like, can you help us with GSA? And then we had to troubleshoot and we saw that. So yeah, 100%, this is a very big issue for some of us. And it's constantly evolving, as you say, right? Nowadays, even Rufus Flynn automatically takes your listing. Unknown Speaker: Rufus Flynn says, I'm going to take your listing. So accept it or not accept it. Speaker 1: So God knows what's going to happen. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the frustrating thing is that most people they run into a situation where they're repeating the case over and over again and waiting until they get somebody competent. I will say that over the years also I've noticed that case responses have gotten a little bit better. I don't know if it's because AI is getting better. Or maybe they have better people or maybe because they're implementing systems like you said to prevent too much flood of inquiries. So maybe their resource management is better. I'm not sure. Speaker 1: All of this are definitely playing a role. And also, look, there was a very big emphasis about 10, 11 years ago for Amazon to completely outsource the complete customer service to India, like completely. And then that obviously brought some benefits, but also some issues because it created, in my opinion, a very robotic method of replying to all these thousands and thousands of messages because Amazon just kept growing and growing. But probably the method that they had to deal was not for that volume of messages. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: So then that created another issue, which is not based on location or anything. It's based on, well, that team setup that you wanted to do is not enough. It might work for companies doing telecommunication or something else, but it's not going to work for this. So I'm sure you know some cases of legal action that people have actually Because there are cases when you're not replying to these things and my product expires and then it's ruined. Well, guess what? There is lawsuits that happen. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there's serious money on the table, right? There's sellers who are selling, I mean, eight-figure, nine-figure sellers. Every single hour makes a big difference. Speaker 1: I'm sure. Speaker 2: And you're just relying on like an entry-level I'm a case support person. I mean, if you have such a large account, you probably have a dedicated person who's getting like a nice salary. Speaker 1: It's not going to change. Speaker 2: No. Yeah. They still have an escalations team that they're sending it to. Speaker 1: Exactly. And then the other thing is, the other thing is there's even a subscription where you pay. You basically, let me remember the name of the team. Speaker 2: SAS. Speaker 1: Is it SAS? Speaker 2: SAS Corp. Speaker 1: They basically say, look, our customer support is really bad for sellers. Our seller support is really bad. So you don't have to deal with them. Unknown Speaker: You can come to us. But you have to pay us $400 or whatever it is per month to have access to this team. And every single client that I've seen that has done this, every single one has told me, didn't do anything. We still have the same issues. Exactly the same issues. Speaker 1: So it's like you're trying to resell an existing broken service to upsell it to other people as if it's going to be fixed, yet it's not fixed. And I guess back to your point, this is why, you know, just having one person How can one person manage Amazon? I always tend to say to clients like, it's like having a business that has 90 guests and you say to one person, manage my website. What? Advertising, SEO, the cybersecurity, the optimization, the mobile, the backend, the frontend. It's just, they become such a complex beast that you need all these different Expertise really, which are constantly up to date, constantly learning, ongoing trainings to get AI, to get the new, all of these things, to be able to keep up with everything and obviously deliver good results. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have the same kind of perspective and our agency, you know, you just see like the model that we have, both of us, we share the same thing. It's like having an in-house team means that you have to bring one or two employees and try to train them and expect them to do everything. But it's just becoming more and more complex. The landscape has become so competitive also. Not to mention I'm going to go into the topic of tariffs relative to the time of this recording. Right now, we're in the middle of this tariff madness, maybe not as much as last week or the week before that. But still people are figuring out what they're gonna do about it. And I think that this is causing ripples in the market on a both consumer and seller level. I mean, we're seeing some categories buying has just dropped off. And in some cases, people are pricing sporadically. So you have to, how do you, like you need the tools and the know-how in order to navigate that kind of landscape, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Look, I cannot sit here and say that I'm an expert on how to solve the solution of 50 tribes getting Gemini, et cetera, which I hear a lot of other Amazon agencies say they do. No one has ever done this in their lifetime. No one knows how to do it. What I can tell you for a fact is some basic business good policies and practice. As with anywhere in business when it comes to this, I also sell products on Amazon and so from that side of thing, if my manufacturer catches fire, what do I need to do? I need to have a plan B. I need to find a different manufacturer. So it's good to have a plan B wherever you source them from. From Europe? Find one from Europe if China is no longer working. Find one from USA. Find one from Canada. Do this. You don't have time because you're a CEO. I get it. I understand. You understand. Time is limited. So, get someone on Fiverr or even better on Upwork. Give them $500. They go out, sourcing agent, they find these people, they find these factors, they qualify them so then you can do some meetings. That will help you. Now, what will at least be one of the many Legos you're going to put together to somehow safeguard your business? And if it means for the first quarter or two, you won't have an impact on the margin, then be it. Prepare for it from a cash flow point of view. And all the other things as always apply, being more profitable on Amazon. Yes, it works. Grow your sales. Yes, it works. Of course, these are the no brainer ones. But these are good times to do in general, because we don't know what's going to happen realistically. It's all hanging from someone. Talking and someone else talking back and then it just goes like this. So everything needs to settle down. But I think one thing that is evident is that the global supply chain and how you're restocking Amazon and In general, marketplaces and so on is a bit more fragile. So it's good to have different options, right? That's what I see. I don't know. I don't know if you agree with this point. Speaker 2: I absolutely agree. Yeah. And I think some people, they don't plan for a plan B. So when it hits, then it's like, ooh, shock. You don't put all your eggs in one basket. I mean, it's the old saying. And I think that applies across many facets of life, business and everything. Speaker 1: You might have seen this a bit more on the agency side because as agency owners, we do see, you know, maybe sometimes our best person leaves or someone, you know, they go maternity leave or something happens, for example. So, then first time that it happens, we're like, oh no, and then you kind of always plan for it. So, then you're going to have someone more junior that has been trained. You have someone else, etc. because We don't have that flexibility to say, oh, you know what? I cannot continue this service because I'm a man or two now, right? We always have this. So I think it's a bit more embedded on the services side than it is in manufacturing side. In manufacturing side and product side businesses, brands, they take it for granted that There is always going to be there. It's always going to supply us with goods, et cetera, et cetera. So they kind of always don't deal with that part of the stream. They tend to focus more on the nicer things, which is like clothing brands, influencers, affiliates, all of that stuff. Speaker 2: I think if you don't have any intellectual property that you can carry over from one manufacturer to the other, It's a risk that you take as a brand owner. So that's the only thing where like not every factory will be able to produce the same products in the same quality for the same price. So that's I think like the difficult Part of it all, it's like, you know, if you have some type of mold, you know, and then you can just send that mold over to another factory, then fine, you know, any factory can do it for you. But, right, it's like if you have something unique, how are you going to replicate that process, especially if you don't need to right away? Speaker 1: I agree with you, but if it's like something that I would say is it's also a money thing, right? I mean, Apple is looking at their whole supply chain to different countries and having them across. So it can happen. It's just a question of how much it's going to cost and how much time it's going to take. I remember one of the things that always amazed me when I first started selling on Amazon and I went to Canton Ferry in China, a classic place for many Amazon sellers, especially in the West, that started, was the supply, the factories there would say, show me what you want and I'll make Yeah, so the results of that element. Models are extremely cheap nowadays. I don't remember. It used to cost a fortune to do models. Speaker 2: Yeah, 30,000. Yeah, now because it's 3D printing. That's why. Speaker 1: Exactly. That's why. Yes. And it's so easy now to do these things. So in which case, just speed things up. It's the same idea. So how does this work? Find the list of possible factors. Have your assessment of a creator. Even ChatGPT can help you to put a version one and then you adapt to your needs. Two, see how they communicate. Test their products. Send a sample of your product if they can create something back to you. All of those things Further down the line will be places that actually you're not going to lose time or anything. It's going to make you, it's going to safeguard your business regardless because you don't know what backlog and things are going to change because maybe the other side now is not willing to supply anymore or export anymore, for example, because something might have happened. So it's good practice to do, in my opinion, by the go of supplies from other countries. Speaker 2: Agreed. And Alex, I wanted to ask you, you know, how are you guys leveraging AI for Amazon? Because Amazon is very different than You know, you hear like right now there's this like a whole GPT thing that they've made this updates about image generation. And now you see on LinkedIn, every other person is posting about it. I even had a post about it, just like how amazing it is that you can create ads for Facebook or whatever creatives that you need. I think with Amazon is a little different. It's not as easy or straightforward just to like use ChatGPT to like improve Amazon sales, right? But there are ways and it's interesting. So, any ways that you guys are kind of leveraging it both on the Amazon side or maybe like in internal operations? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So, basically, I read somewhere that, you know, how we move from hammer and nail to power tools. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Now, it might have been a bit difficult for people and a lot of them also have a tendency to not want to use new tools. It's like, oh, I've always used this. But actually, it's more than a year now, a year and a half internally, and I've deliberately said each department within our company has to use AI tools. We also give incentives to staff members when they bring new ideas on AI and how to use it and so on. Every single process has an element of an AI tool. That helps us in multiple ways because we can do things more efficient. We can do things faster obviously, which is good. As long as obviously you base the manual checks, so you have to be very careful and not rely too much on it. You have to be very, very careful how it does things. And then also it helps us gain better insight on things that we weren't able to do before. For example, every department from PPC to content to data, account manager, everything has things on our monthly report. So the one to ones that I have with my clients. We use those insights that come out of it from AI into those market reports. A very basic example, I might say, is now, I know Jungle Scout is kind of doing this nowadays, and some other people have caught on to it, but we've been doing this for about a year and a half, and I think there's probably others that are doing it even better than us. But it's, Amazon is a gold mine for data. It's the third biggest search engine in the world. The reviews are very, very accurate and very true to a very big extent, right? As true as you can get with online reviews, but it's definitely, in my opinion, the best one you can find. Downloading them is pretty easy to do with tools. We all know those. So therefore, you can actually end up with a very big accent of thousands and thousands of actual reviews from customers. Now, how you turn that with workflows, AI, what questions you ask, apart from data, the classic time people say is like, if you were to create a product, what would you create? In my opinion, that's a stupid question. The much better question is, what is 78.5%? What is the percentage of the sales? Those are things actually that end questions similar to this, but actually going to help you produce better products, improve your existing frames, improve your content, and also fuel future R&D processes. Today, we're going to take a look at an example of how we use, for example, AI. Speaker 2: Very cool. So you're treating Amazon, you're looking at it as a data source, and then you're saying, okay, we're going to take it differently, where back in the day, somebody might say, find me a good product. Now we're looking at, hey, we have all these tools, why don't we actually discover what people are trying to solve for? And then we'll create the solution. And that makes us more successful, right? Knowing the problem and then creating a solution for it versus coming up with an idea out of the blue because we think or because it's something that happens in our personal life, but we don't actually know if there's a real demand for this thing, right? And I think most people don't see Amazon as a search engine, but 100% it is. I mean, it's basically the Google of solving physical problems. Speaker 1: It's Google, YouTube, then Amazon in terms of biggest search volume, which is the third biggest search engine in the world. So there's not a lot of conversation around. What do you want? Traffic that goes in, which gives you also the consumer intent and data that you need. So that's a nice, that's something that a lot of, especially the very big brands and enterprise clients, they don't really understand that you're able to do this. Like you saw them at Helium 10 and you're like, what? Helium 10? I can do that? They're like, yeah, okay. Let me show you competitors. Here you go. And then like by SKU and ranges and etc. So that is for us, it's just basic stuff, right? We've been able to do this for a very long time. Now if you take it another level and actually go inside the review side of things, and then another level What do they say in Germany versus UK versus USA to fill in, to basically fuel your product launch strategy? And obviously, customers use it differently, some products or different occasions or different localizations, I'll just call them. And that's taking it another level. So all of this is really fascinating because it's real data. And then you're asking AI, which is extremely powerful, And we're here to do the analysis based on that data. So that's where things become really powerful. Speaker 2: So you guys do and help with product ideation, creation, and... Unknown Speaker: Yeah, well, not... Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that we have, you know, someone coming. So normally we work with companies that do at least 2 million in Amazon, outside of Amazon, anyway. Right? We're not transitioning here. If your product is not 4.2 stars and above, it's going to be very difficult to sell it on Amazon. So that's why established brands is much better ICT products and so on. Having said this, with work with startups, especially ones that raise funding and so on, because that's a different conversation in terms of the support they have to fuel the restocking of Amazon sales and so on. And when it comes to ideas, usually this is for our existing clients that we have a very long relationship with. Literally before this, I was talking to one of my clients, which is four years, I think he is the oldest client that I have or one of the oldest. And basically it was this. It was two brands were supporting me on Amazon. I should announce another two. What are they? What should I be selling? What type, for example, let's say, I don't want to say it's a sector because it's a bit of a niche, but let's say it's socks to make it easy. Okay, what type of socks? Should it be like women, men? It should be for diabetes. No, what is the item you should take for each country? All of those things. So, that we do, the R&D part, et cetera, as part of our long-term relationship because that's how I see bringing value to clients. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Speaker 1: But we also have a consultative approach in terms of what all of this gives us and we can support them. So that's a very interesting aspect of the job, I would say. Speaker 2: Very cool. And if somebody wanted to reach out, where can they find you? Speaker 1: LinkedIn, I'm very active there, so Alex Karagiannis. Also, they can reach out to me on info.lezat.co.uk or they go on my website, www.lezat.co.uk. So, any of those places are going to find me and I'll make sure to reply on any questions or anything Amazon-oriented. Speaker 2: Very cool. It was a pleasure speaking with you, Alex. I appreciate the nuggets of gold you shared today. Speaker 1: No problem at all. Thank you. Speaker 2: Take care. Speaker 1: Bye-bye.