Born on Amazon but built everywhere else

This This is the Billiondoll Sellers podcast. Your go-to source for cutting edge strategies and success stories from the world of Amazon and e-commerce. Buckle up and get ready to take your Amazon business to new heights. Don't forget to subscribe to the Billiondoll Sellers Newsletter. Welcome your host. >> Welcome your host, Kevin King. >> Hey everyone and welcome to the Billiondollar Sellers podcast. I'm your host, Kevin King, and today is Thursday, June 11th, 2026. We got a packed episode for you today. So, uh, let's jump right in. The big story today is how Two Brothers built a ratchet strap brand on Amazon and turned it into a 9-f figureure business that no platform can touch. And I think every seller needs to hear this one. We've also got a huge change coming to Amazon product titles, a psychology trick that could make your listing images way more memorable, and some really interesting stats on Tik Tok shop versus Amazon for product discovery. Plus, there's a new episode of the Marketing Misfits podcast you're going to want to check out, and the software tool of the day. But first, real quick, I got to tell you about Pak's story. Uh, so Pollock attended Market Masters back in 2024 doing about $1.5 million and she implemented what the experts there told her to do and in 2025 she hit $5 million and now in 2026 she's on pace for $20 million. That's insane growth. Market Masters 4 is coming up August 20th through the 24th. So if you want to be the next Polloc, there's a link in the show notes to check that out. All right, here's your stunt Bezos question for today. According to BlueVine, what percentage of small business owners have skipped or reduced their own paycheck? Think about that and I I'll give you the answer at the end of the show. All right, let's get into it. So, the big story today is a brand called Rhino USA. And uh I actually had the CEO Ted Rep or so. And this story is just it's one of those ones I keep coming back to. So, back in 2015, two brothers, Cameron and Dylan Repick, they rode dirt bikes and off-road trucks, and they wanted gear that actually held up, you know, straps, tie downs, recovery rope, the stuff they use every single weekend. So, they built their own and listed it on Amazon. That was the plan. Solve their own problem. Sell a few units and see what happens. And it worked fast. But then they hit that wall every young founder hits where the passion runs right into inventory, cash flow, suppliers, all the boring stuff that quietly kills good products. And that's the day their dad stepped in. So Ted Rebick, the dad, he didn't take the brand away from his sons. He guided it. He brought the operating muscle that two 20somes didn't have yet. And today he's the CEO of the company his kids started. And it does nine figures a year. Nine figures from ratchet straps. But here's the part every Amazon seller needs to to really sit with. Rhino USA was born on Amazon, but it refused to stay there. The Amazon channel did exactly what Amazon's good at. It validated the products. It generated cash and it proved real people wanted what these guys were making. And most sellers stopped right there, right? They optimized the listing. They chased the BSR and they rent their customers from Amazon forever. Rhino did the opposite. They took the brand everywhere Amazon couldn't follow. They pushed into Walmart, Sam's Club, AutoZone. They expanded from dirt bikes into towing, camping, boating, overlanding, over 300 products now, and their sales have quadrupled in three years. And then came Tik Tok Shop. And this is where it gets uh this is where it gets loud. So Rhino joined Tik Tok Shop in October 2023, right after the US launch. And within days, they were organically selling thousands of dollars of gear because their own customers were already filming themselves using it. One retractable ratchet strap turned out to be perfect for short video. It's easy to show, easy to get. One clip of a guy using it as a pair of suspenders pulled over a million views. Another one yanking a stranded car out of the ocean surf with a kinetic rope did close to 4 million views. They're the top seller in the entire automotive and motorcycle category, and they've done 8 figures on Tik Tok shop alone. Last year, more than 6,000 creators moved product for them and drove roughly a billion impressions. Sit with that number. A billion impressions for a Strat brand. Try buying that on Amazon. you can't. And then they did something that most e-commerce founders would never even think of. They sponsored bull riding. Rhino USA went six figures deep into the professional bull riders world. They're the official powersport accessories partner of the Austin Gamblers and the PBR team series. They back top riders like Dalton Case, who they call Mr. 90 Pointer, and Australian rider Cal Miller. Grit, dirt, trucks, adrenaline. the exact customer they want sitting in front of an audience that's never going to scroll their Amazon listing. And now they're building the bullest piece yet. It's called Rhino World. 182 acres of central Texas scrub land outside Austin. Trails, recovery courses, a prototyping lab, a retail store, a campground, a marshia range, and 8 miles of proving grounds. And there's even an 8,000t building going up just for filming live shopping content. Ted Rep said, "Rhino World is our content factory." And that's the whole strategy in five words. You know, a physical place built to manufacture the videos, the demos, the live streams that feed every channel they sell on. It won't fully open until 2027. And Repic says it'll never really be finished. A tree falls. It becomes a new obstacle. The playground keeps changing. So, what does a strap brand in Texas have to do with you? Rhino USA is one of the clearest examples I've seen of a move every Amazon only brand should be studying right now. Amazon was a launch pad. It was never the ceiling. The brands that went from here aren't the ones with the cleanest listing. They're the ones people search for by name. The ones with an audience, a content engine, and a brand that lives in the real world, not just on a product detail page. Amazon can change a policy and erase a seller overnight. But they can't erase a billion impressions, a shelf at AutoZone, a bull riding sponsorship, or 182 acres in Texas. Two kids built a brand, their dad helped them turn into a business, and then they spent the next decade making sure no platform would ever own them again. That's the lesson. Build it on Amazon if you want. Just don't die there. There's a link in the show notes to read more about Rhino World and also a link to the AMN podcast episode I did with Ted Rick about a year ago if you want to hear the full story. And uh real quick, I want to mention my buddy Chris Rawlings. So a few months ago, he hosted a live workshop for Amazon sellers who want to replace themselves with cloud workflows. And it was so popular that BDSN subscribers are still asking me how to get access weeks after it ended. Well, he's doing it again later this month. It's called the AI Amazon PPC Challenge. It runs June 29th through July 3rd, live daily, and early bird tickets just went live. So, his company, Sophie Society, manages over $5 million a month in Amazon ad spend across more than 800 brands. And in this challenge, he's going to show you the exact AI powered PPC systems, the plug-and-play agents and campaign templates they actually use. You know, you need to learn how to use Cloud in your Amazon brand, and he'll show you the specific skills and how to connect Cloud directly to your Amazon data. There's a link in the show notes to grab a seat while they're still available. All right. So, Amazon just announced they can now talk to customers directly, but only if the customer initiates the conversation first. Um, so that's a that's a new one. There's a link in the show notes if you want to see the details on that. All right. So, next up, you got to see this. Norm Ferrar and I just dropped a new episode of the Marketing Misfits podcast, and we went deep with Zara Soyol. She's the Harvard MBA founder of Savana AI on how AI is completely disrupting e-commerce photography. So, if you're still spending thousands on product photography packages and, you know, costly 3D renders and endless back and forth with freelancers for a few listing images, uh, you really need to hear this one. We talk about how AI is changing product detail page images, fashion marketing, batch image generation for sellers with thousands of SKUs. Whether you're an Amazon seller, a Shopify brand owner, or a marketer trying to scale ad creative globally, this episode shows you exactly where it's all heading. link is in the show notes and uh be sure to sign up for the Marketing Misfits newsletter, too. That's also linked in the show notes. All right, let's talk about some interesting stats. So, the first one is uh Tik Tok Shop is now beating Amazon for product discovery. At least according to a new survey from Global Data, 67% of online shoppers say Tik Tok Shop is their go-to platform for discovering products compared to 57% for Amazon. That's a 10point gap. And then everything else is way further behind. You know, search engines at 35%, physical stores at 30% and then YouTube and Instagram are both down in the mid20s. Now, I think the survey scope matters here. You know, this was a multi-response uh survey of online shoppers. So, people could pick more than one, but the fact that Tik Tok shop is leading Amazon on product discovery, that that's a big deal. And it kind of ties right back to the Rhino USA story we just talked about. And the second stat is about agentic AI and mobile apps. So there's been a massive boom in iOS app releases since these AI tools became available. App releases have gone up to almost 80% compared to 2024. But here's the thing. The apps with significant usage and app reviews are both flat or even declining. So people are building a ton of apps with AI, but nobody's actually using them. It's easy to ship something, but it's still really hard to build something people actually want. So, uh, keep that in mind if you're building AI tools for your brand. All right, this next one is a big deal and, uh, if you sell on Amazon, you really need to pay attention here. Amazon is capping product titles at 75 characters. Starting July 27th, product titles in every category except media got to be 75 characters or less, spaces included. Amazon says it's about mobile. You know, shorter titles display fully on phones and line up with what other online stores are doing. Now, to make up for the lost real estate, Amazon's rolling out a new field called item highlights. It gives you 125 extra characters for materials, use cases, and comparison details. And it's searchable. It shows below your title and search results and on the product page. So, that's that's actually pretty useful. So, here's how it plays out. After July 27th, any title still over 7,000 characters gets rewritten by Amazon's AI, and it happens gradually. Your listings stay live the whole time. You can edit titles and item highlights whenever you want. and brand owners get a safety net. When Amazon makes a change, you have 14 days to review, modify, and approve the AI's version before it goes live. You'll find those under review listings changes. But, and this is important, that review window is a brand registry perk. If you're not registered, the AI just changes your title. You don't get a say. If you want to get ahead of it, you can pull Amazon's recommended titles and item highlights right now. Go to manage all inventory. Find your listing. Select edit from the drop down. And then click view enhancements on the left to see Amazon suggested title and item highlights. The keyword stuffed 200 character title is dead. Your job now is to leave with the keywords that actually convert and push the overflow into item highlights. And if you're not in brand registry, fix that before July 27th because you're going to want those 14 days to babysit what AI does to your listings. All right. Now, let's take a look at the software tool of the day. So most e-commerce sellers are juggling six to eight different tools and paying hundreds of dollars a month just to keep operations running. Storeclaw replaces the whole stack with one autonomous AI engine. It monitors competitors, optimizes listings, automates marketing, and tracks profit 247. You just connect your store and let the AI handle the work. No prompts, no complex setup, no credit card required. There's a link in the show notes to try it for free. All right. So, this next one is uh I think this is really fascinating and it's about why your product images might be getting forgotten even though you think they're perfect. So, back in 2020, researchers showed people a list of famous brand names. Then, they showed the same brands again, but this time with one letter missing. So, HSBC became HBC and later they asked everyone which brands they remembered. The brands with the missing letter got recalled 14% more than the ones spelled out in full. And that gap has a name. It's called the generation effect. It works because your brain remembers what it has to work for. You hand someone the complete answer and they glance, then they move on. But leave a small gap and their brain fills it in. And the thing they complete themselves is the thing that sticks. Now look at your product images. Most sellers spell out everything. Every benefit stamped on the photo, every feature labeled, every claim buried in a paragraph of overlay text. It feels thorough, but it's also forgettable. You did all the work, so the shopper's brain does none. So use the generation effect on your listing instead. Open a loop in the image stack. Image two asks the question. Image 5 answers it. Something like, "Why won't our buyers travel without this?" Now they scroll to find out. That's working. That's skimming. Show the gap, not the lecture. Show ice at hour zero in the same ice at hour 24 with no paragraph. Their brain does the math that it stays cold all day. Their brain owns the conclusion. And stop overabling. 10 call outs screaming at once means nothing lands. Pick the one thing worth remembering and let them figure out the rest. Now, two rules before you run with this. Keep your main image clean. White background, product filling the frame, no clever gaps. That one's for clarity and Amazon's rules, not psychology games. Save the generation effect for your secondary images, A+ content, brand stories, sponsor brands, creative, and the meta on Tik Tok ads pushing people to the listing. And keep the gap small. A satisfying gap pulls people in. A confusing one makes them bounce. The brain loves filling a blank. It hates being lost. And here's proof this scales. The American Red Cross ran a campaign called Missing Type where they dropped the letters A, B, and O from their ads. The same letters as the blood types they needed most. And in under a month, more than 320,000 people donated. The missing letters did the recruiting. That I mean, that's the power of making your audience's brain do a little bit of the work. All right, before we wrap up, few more hot picks for you. Amazon PBC optimizations often fake. And there's a piece out on what you should focus on instead. There's a great article about how you should stop showing product angles and instead kill objections with your images. And there's another really interesting article on when AI will become truly transformative. Plus, Tik Tok just banned AI voices from live streams. So, if you're doing live shopping with an AI voice, that's that's done. Links to all those are in the show notes. And here's your parting shot for today. This one's from Callaway. When social media was more social than media, people followed for personality and stayed for topic relevance. Now that social media is more media than social, people follow topics and stay for personality. And finally, about that Stump Bezos question from the beginning, what percentage of small business owners have skipped or reduced their own paycheck? The answer is 62%. 62% of small business owners have gone without getting paid according to BlueVine. All right, that's all for today, folks. Have a great weekend and I'll see you again on Monday.