EP #297] [ENG] - Strategies and mindset of sellers on Amazon Italy - Fabrizio Sutera

EP #297] [ENG] - Strategies and mindset of sellers on Amazon Italy - Fabrizio Sutera Unknown Speaker: Welcome to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. This is the place for everything related to Amazon private label and e-commerce. Learn exactly what you need to start or scale your business. Get insights from the top industry experts who will discuss the latest trends and best practices in the world of Amazon. From choosing products and sourcing from a supplier to setting up your Amazon account and marketing your business, you will hear it here. Let's get started. Here is your host, Vincenzo Toscano. Speaker 1: Hello guys. Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy, the place of air related to Amazon FBA, private label, and e-commerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy, and today we bring you another special guest. His name is Fabrizio Sutera, which is one of the top consultants I've known in the region of Amazon Italy, which is a very interesting market. And the reason why I wanted to bring Fabrizio today is we want to pretty much have a conversation about how the space has been changing, specifically around new sellers that jump into the space where expectations are sometimes not aligned with what is the reality of the market, specifically in markets such as Amazon Italy. Just try to give you as much insight as possible, especially for those just getting started about what you should be aiming for on those initial weeks, what is realistic, and what are some of the elements that if you're missing, you're effectively going to struggle to scale your business on Amazon. So Fabrizio, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Speaker 1: Thank you, Vincenzo, and have a nice day to all the people who are listening to us now. This is a big emotion for me now because this is the first episode with you and I'm very, very happy to be your guest today. Pleasure. This is, yes, my big pleasure. This is the first of the I think a lot of different episodes that we can just manage together. So thank you once again and thank you guys, all the guys who are listening now in the future this episode. So today we're going to talk about the world of Amazon worldwide, but specifically in Italy. And now I have experience just for 2018. My first experience was born in 2018. I was just launching my first product in Amazon, Italy. And after I studied a lot of several courses, and after a few months, on January 2019, I started with a consultant, to be a consultant also. So I had this second job, I can tell. Of course, mainly I'm a seller since almost seven years now and I have different products in Europe among different markets. So Italy, Germany, UK mainly in Europe and four products in the United States. After this short period, three, four months, I started from my first launch, I started also to be a consultant and actually I have more than 9,000 coaching calls about Amazon with all Italian people, Italian speaking people, I can tell. So Italian people and who speak Italian and the other people who are living in Italy. Or abroad from Italy. So we are managing with our team. Masterzone is our brand and we are managing an account from different companies. And we have approximately now almost 700 students like Amazon seller in Italy and Almost 30 companies we are following now on Amazon, even in Italy, but they are Italian, but they are selling in Europe and some of them in the USA. Just to introduce you, introduce me, just a short presentation. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Thank you, Vincenzo. So, what is the two main topics today? First topic we discuss today is about what are actually the most frequent mistakes people are doing in Italy when they start to sell on Amazon. And I can tell the first main or most frequently is a mistake is about what are the expectation about what's the business online on Amazon. So many people start today to sell on Amazon and they think about that this is very quick business and very easy. Quick, because they think about I launch my product today and just one week after one week I would be the top. Speaker 2: I think that's because they see all the flashy Ferraris and Lamborghinis on Instagram and they sell the dream, you know. Speaker 1: Yes, something like that. And that's a big mistake because they don't have any consideration of the different companies who are the competitors, who are in the market maybe just from 2, 3, 4 years. So most of the Amazon sellers which are starting to sell on Amazon, they don't have experience. They think about, I can introduce one product in the market, I just become rich in a few period or just I can invest. 3-4 thousand euros and I can reach just 5 half million euros revenues in just 2-3 months. That's okay. Of course, it's not true because we need to invest. We need more money and we need to have the good expectation and we need to wait more time in order to reach the top of the BSR, of the ranking in the Amazon pages. And of course, we need to invest the money and proportionally we have the revenues and after the net profit. The first mistake is about the not good mindset. Some of them, they come from employer, or maybe they are employer, and they think about in the opposite way, if we compare with the right way to think about how to manage a business. Because in a normal world, in business, you need to invest money, and after you invest money, money back. If you are an employer, you receive money from your employer, and then you need to manage this money in order to, of course, save money, and you need to use this money for one month before you wait the second wage, wages in a second. So, approach is opposite. And approach is opposite, it means if I need to Before I become an investor or if I wanted to start a business on Amazon, profit of business on Amazon, I need to understand about how many money I need to invest in order to reach one profit and one amount of revenue in one period, maybe one year or six months. So the best important thing is, from my opinion, to prepare a right business plan. With the project, what are the goals you want to reach in one month, three months, one year, two years? Speaker 2: I just want to make a quick stop on that because that's a very good insight. I feel most of the time when they get started, they don't have little goals to get towards the bigger milestone, which is Yeah, X amount of revenue or X amount of profit or X amount of profit in launch. I think when you lack the ability to break down a big goal, such as being a successful Amazon seller in small goals, that's where it can be very overwhelming. And then you end up easily being sidetracked by the shiny objects and doing costly mistakes, which is what you're mentioning. Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 1: I right now you can you can think I just managed more than 9000 coaching calls in six years. So I I knew a lot of people, individual people, individuals with individual companies, sellers without experience or maybe people who have just a medium company or big company. So different kind of people with different generation and Young people with a very low budget. To invest in Amazon, the main mistake was Okay, I have 2-3 thousand euros to invest. I. Take one product. I sell online on Amazon this product and I can have a salary, one more salary. And that's the not correct approach. It's a wrong approach because you think about if you invest money automatically you receive the salary. It's not automatic. Because the right mindset when you approach a new business like ecommerce, like Amazon in this case, is invest money and you have an amount to invest and after that every month you can recover money. But it's a process which depends on your niche, in which market you want to approach, how many competitors you have. And it depends also if your competitors are strong competitors, if they are in the market for a long period or just a short period. So it depends from different topics and you know sometimes some mistakes depend if they studied a video course with the right information and complete information because they sometimes these people they didn't know how to calculate the budget, how to prepare a business plan and I have to manage the first order. Sometimes I saw they order first time, for example, 500 pieces of this product. They think about, they thought about, okay, I have 4,000 euros budget. The product has a cost of 3,000. Okay, I can buy. Speaker 2: Yeah, HMS Tech. Then you have no money for PPC, for different things. Speaker 1: You need the money to manage PPC, advertising, traveling for maybe the shipment. Or you don't have the money to make the second order because you cannot wait to receive the money from Amazon and make the second order. So they didn't calculate and prepare for this mistake. For example, during this year, I prepared an Excel sheet, a Google sheet, which I shared with my students. And by this document, I prepared different counts. In every count, there are different numbers. So, for example, the cost of the product, the cost of the shipment, how much money I need to I need to have to the second order. So I just think about Amazon will pay me after one time, every two weeks, or maybe after one month. And so if I need to order after one week or two weeks, the second stock because I am selling more quickly than which I'm thinking before. And in this case, I cannot order because I don't have the money because they didn't calculate how many money they need to invest for the second stock. So by this excel sheet, we avoid a lot of mistakes from people and because some of them couldn't, they started but they couldn't go forward with the business because they didn't calculate it rightly. And this calculation, this was a very big problem for them. And it's another second classical mistake for Italian people. But basically I think if the mindset, if you don't have the right mindset to approach a business, to approach rightly how many money you need to invest in order to receive back a minimum net profit monthly, calculating all the cost expenses or PPC advertising, restock of the goods. So these things you need to learn when you start this business and you need to have someone who explain to you how to manage these things because sometimes the video course which I saw in these years, in these almost seven years, they teach about They teach technical issues, technical way to solve the problems, but they don't teach the basic topics about business and specifically the basic topics about the Amazon business. So that's why sometimes people with a good brain People smart, smart people, I saw they couldn't go forward in this business. The mindset. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: But that's sometimes because I didn't receive the right information in the video course in which they started. Yeah. Speaker 2: So going to information, that's good that you mentioned that. Like, it's very difficult at the beginning. You have so many, you know, content out there, podcasts like this and courses and masterminds and all of that. So it's difficult to sometimes make a sense to what is the right information to follow. So from your experience, is there some advice that you give to people? Try to stick to this process and it's going to make sure you go with the best approach possible essentially. Speaker 1: Yeah, in fact after our experience what I teach now in our lessons, in our video course, in our channel, Facebook channel, to our students is the right approach and how to calculate rightly basically how many money you need to invest for the product and split all the money you have in your pocket and split it in different kind of amount you need to have before you start the business. So if you have, for example, 5,000 to invest and you want to start this business with 5,000, you cannot invest 4,000 in the product. So you need to split in the 50%, 40%, not more than 50% for the product. And this cost, you need to invest for this cost 2,000 or 2,500. Yeah. After that, you need to invest this money to launch the product, PPC, shipping cost. If you don't have shipping cost because, for example, you have a supplier from Italy, Of course, it's a good thing, but you need to invest to the PPC, to the launch, the pitchers, of course. Sometimes I saw very bad pitchers. It was not impossible to sell by the pitcher because they don't explain the The main feature of the product, the strength of the product. So it's very fitting on because you invest a lot of money. Sometimes people invest a lot of money in the product and they don't invest it for the launch. So you need to, we need to teach to our seller how to split the, this is the one, The I think one of the strongest points, and the one of the most frequented mistakes. They did. They don't split the budget, rightly in the different. Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, cash flow is what kills most Amazon businesses because if you put everything on the inventory, PPC is very high and you have only a tiny bit of PPC, then the traffic stops coming, sales can stop coming, you don't have cash flow to buy the second batch of inventory, and the business dies. So that's where most people actually I see, like I would say 80% of sellers get stuck on the second batch of inventory because... Speaker 1: The classical sentence is sometimes from the Italian people. If I have a good product, if I have good pitches, I can sell this product by itself. I don't need to advertise. I don't need to explain this product. Very strange. It's not possible because in the first two, three months, and sometimes it depends on the competition you have in your niche, maybe you need five, six months to complete 50, 60% of the process of the launch. And sometimes, not sometimes, I can tell frequently, the video course, when I started this business in 2018, some video courses teach it. Okay, the launch is you start today and for eight days, for one week, you make giveaways for one, two keywords. And you finish this week, you finish the launch. So what happened is that this product with good pictures, good investment and account with the smart people, this product, after two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, they started to fail down because the launch cannot be complete after one week. The launch is not I make a giveaway, make a coupon for one week, two weeks, launch my product on two, three keywords and I finish the launch. Even if the competition is not high, you need to You need to push the sales, you need to advertise, you need to make a lot of process. That's why I decided after three years ago, almost three years ago, I decided, OK, that's the right time to make a masterclass about how to launch one product on Amazon FBA. Of course, I was talking about how to sell on Amazon with the private label, because in retail there are different ways to sell. But specifically for a product to sell on Amazon with the private label. I decided, okay, there is a video course we teach how to launch. There is the possibility to make a video call with us, with our consultant team, but there are obviously some mistakes. So that's the right time to make a practice masterclass and step by step explain what are the actions you need to do to launch the right product on Amazon FBA. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think something I would like to add on that is like, especially on things that are very complex, such as PPC, like, I see the mistake as well, a lot of people try to do it on their own, which you understand when the budget is limited, you try to be as resourceful as possible. But at the same time, the fact that you don't have the budget to have some expertise on your business to do PPC, that's at the same time, maybe a signal that you might not be ready to then go into this type of business. Because then if you're gonna All the effort that you put on a good product, good branding, which is a lot of work, then you're going to effectively kill all that because it's just going to experiment and play the roulette with PPC. That's where, you know, there's a huge disconnect on what you expect and what is actually going to happen. So when it comes to PPC, how you handle those objections as well for clients, especially in Italy. I know people are very, very sensitive to pay services. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: But, you know, about the PPC, I can tell you also one very frequent mistake was the mindset behind what is the PPC and how you need to consider PPC really, you know. Because I explain one example to my students every coaching call when we speak about PPC and when they tell me, no, I don't want to invest in PPC, I want to save money in PPC. And maybe they are after 10 days online, just 10 days. I explain them this fact. I say, If you tomorrow decide to sell your product offline, let's forget now Amazon. Think about you need to sell your product offline. If you need to sell your product offline and you decide to invest in TV and you want to invest your advertising in TV and you invest 100,000 to Italian television, Rai or Channel 5, Italia Uno, for example. No, just example. What do you think about this investment? You never will tell to Italian television, okay, today I give to you for two months 100,000 euros and I want to receive back 100,000, for example, or 10,000 pieces sold. Because this is investment to make brand awareness to the public, not to the people. Speaker 2: There's even people that don't believe in that, which is even, there's people that don't believe in PPC and they think that they can sell organically. Speaker 1: Yeah, so the same people, yes, you say rightly, the same people which they don't believe in PPC or they consider PPC in the wrong way. Because if you invest in your television, you want to create your brand awareness because nobody knows your brand until now. So the topic, the first focus is I want people to know from today my brand. And you expect the people will see your advertising and you will be glad to invest that money. It doesn't depend if you will sell after this investment 1,000 or 2,000. That's the right way. If you are investing on Amazon, why you don't think in the same way? Why do you think if now you are investing 1,000, 2,000 people just one week, you are investing a lot? You are not investing a lot because that's the right amount you are investing to make the brand awareness in the same way when you are investing on Italian television, just example. Speaker 2: And the other thing as well is that the outcome because it's PPC is not only For making sales is for creating organic, which organic is what is going to make you profitable in the long term, you know. So that's something a lot of people don't understand that PPC is not only for making sales, it's also for creating the asset, which is the ranking, which is the exposure you just mentioned. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. When you have brand awareness, you constantly invest on PPC, you will have the results. But they want to have results very quickly. So if today Today is the first day. I have a client who is selling for 10 days on Amazon products for pets. And just yesterday he told me, how much money are you investing now on PPC? I told him less than 1,000. It's nothing. Oh, what we can do to save some money daily because too much. So you can imagine. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's the other thing as well, which is, I mean, PPCs, of course, is something I know because I've been doing this for so many years. And I don't know why, but I understand in Italy, in France as well, and we're having this friction, like people don't see the value. But it is for lack of education. Speaker 1: That's the reality. Speaker 2: Lack of education, they don't understand how the system works. But on top of PPC, what is your take on even more complex things? Like, do you see people in Italy exploring things, for example, external traffic, influencer marketing? A DSP or this is like a even extraterrestrial to bring this conversation. Speaker 1: Maybe 4-5% of the people, the students which I follow in these years in Italy, they are asking me, Fabrizio, after maybe 10 days or two weeks they are selling my product, I'm not selling maybe one, yesterday one unit, two units, Today it's zero. Speaker 2: Why? Speaker 1: First the question I asked them, did you launch the product? Did I launch the product? I need to do the launch? Oh no, what do you think about? You don't need to make a launch? So it's normal you need to do the launch. So why launch is the last step? So you invest a lot of money in the product, in the shipping, in the pictures, and you don't invest the money in the launch. Okay, but I was thinking, I publish my product online and start to sell. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: Why we explain the launch, this is the last step, because you need to do a launch. Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know. Speaker 1: Completely, absolutely, they removed from their mind the launch step. I know, I know. Speaker 2: What about international, what about external traffic, external channels? So do you see Shopify being a big thing, TikTok as an online distribution channel? Is that a conversation that a lot of Amazon sellers are having within your community as well? Or a lot of them are purely focused on Amazon? Speaker 1: Actually, I can tell you 80% of the people they are focusing on Amazon, but I started education last year with many events, live events in my channel, in our channel. To explain them, they need to push the external traffic from TikTok. I explained how to prepare campaigns, TikTok ads, social media marketing, because it's a critical, important strategy to rank the products online on Amazon just when you start the launch in the first place. And now some of them, they understood, they need to push on the social media marketing, they need to increase this area. And so they are investing something. But you know, in Italy right now, 90% of the people, they don't understand how to right manage the social media in order to sell more product on Amazon. And then some of them, they think about they are wasting money, they are losing money to invest in the social media. Because they, even in this area of the social media, they have wrong expectation about which results they can receive from the invested money, after they invest the money. They think about, okay, I invested 100 euros on Facebook. How many sales I'm doing by this investment? So the mistake is always the same, dependently if it's on Amazon or outside Amazon. So the mistake is I don't think about this investment to build the brand awareness and after that I will receive the sales and money. But I want, if I send 100 euros to Facebook, I need to receive automatically 12 or 20 sales because the people look at my product the first time. The people don't know my product. They don't know my brand. They don't know my brand, my history, and so I think We need to, together, build a strong education, the people about how to build a good brand awareness. In Amazon now, in 2025, you need to build brand awareness. You need to build a brand, not just take a product and sell online, because there is a large number of competition. Speaker 2: I can tell. Speaker 1: Larger competition if we compare with the seven years when we started. That's for that reason, main reason we need to build brand awareness and in every niche, in every category you need to sell. When I started, I remember seven years ago, they teach to us that you take a product, you bring a product to take online, you can sell it with one brand, maybe seven products of different categories, electronic, food, no problem. Just you take online and you can sell. Now, after seven years, things are different. It's not the right strategy. It's not the right strategy. The right strategy is brand awareness. That's my... Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: 100%. Speaker 2: 100%. Speaker 1: Cool. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Building a brand. 100%. Speaker 2: So, Fabrizio, to come to a closure, any last tip or advice? For everybody watching, a voice of encouragement. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 1: OK. Follow the consultant by service when you don't have time. This is my tip for people. If you if you don't have time or if you don't want or if you don't want to, you don't have time at the same time. Both the reasons. To invest money or you don't have time or you don't know how to do some stuff, you need to assign to a consultant and trust our work because we have the right experience after seven years and we manage many, many, many different situations. And we solved many situations so we, we know and we can, we know how to do and we can really, we can add to you. And the second very big tip I can tell. My advice to the people is study with the right approach Amazon FBA and try to have the right focus and forget if you are employer mindset, forget what you did in the past and focus on what really in Amazon works today on 2025. That's my suggestion. Speaker 2: Thank you so much Fabrizio. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. I appreciate your time and tell us how people can reach out to you and get in contact if they want to talk more in depth about this. Absolutely. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm going to put all your information down in the description, your email and social media as well, so people can find you. And yes, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: See you next time. Speaker 2: Thank you. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for listening to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. 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