EP #338] [ENG] - Tips to buy and sell Amazon accounts in 2025 - Aaron O'Sullivane

EP #338] [ENG] - Tips to buy and sell Amazon accounts in 2025 - Aaron O'Sullivane 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 2: Hello, guys. Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy, the place where everything related to Amazon FBA, private label and e-commerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy. And today we bring you for a second time, actually, a special guest in my podcast, Aaron, founder and CEO of Ecomstores, where they specialize on everything when it comes to helping brands to exit or if you're looking to actually buy a brand as well. So today's conversation is going to be all about that. We know that, you know, the exit kind of game is something that is being On the horizon for a lot of sellers or even for people looking to enter into the Amazon game. So we're going to be talking about the panorama, what is happening, things that you have to consider. And hopefully we're going to make your decision making much easier moving forward. So Aaron, welcome back to the show again. How are you doing? Speaker 1: Thank you, Vincenzo. Yeah, doing great. Happy to be back. Speaker 2: Thank you, man. Thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure. Last time we had a very insightful conversation. I'm sure this one's going to be the same. So, you know, for those that might not know you before we dive deeper into the topic, tell us more about you and EcomStars. Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, so my company, Ecomstores, what we do is we acquire Amazon stores from people who are not using them anymore, essentially. People that are just, you know, going to throw in the towel for whatever reason. It might be because they've actually sold their brand, for example, and they've just got this store that they're not using anymore. As you can imagine, there's thousands and thousands of these stores. That people just don't use. So we acquire these following a legal acquisition process, just as if an aggregator was acquiring, you know, an eight-figure brand, same legal framework. We acquire them and essentially what we do then is we make the stores a little bit better and then we sell them to private label sellers or to wholesale sellers that are looking to fast track their growth on the platform. So that's the high level and, you know, the main reasons people And the reason we acquire them is because they're ungated in brands that you can't sell on new stores. The older stores, you probably heard, they're almost a myth, right, at this point. But some of these super old stores, like pre-2010, they have a daily pay cash flow cycle. Where you have a special button you press and the money is released in full every day. So, you know, no money is held in reserve. And then, you know, there's a number of other reasons why people acquire them. But that's kind of the main ones. I hope that kind of makes sense. Speaker 2: Love it. Love it. So yeah, I mean, those all accounts. I know I've seen a few of those. Man, what a time to be alive back then, like you just click a button, the money will be back. Now, that's definitely not happening with any accounts. It's definitely a huge advantage, you know? Speaker 1: Yes, it's wild to think about. You know, pre-2010, as I said, these daily pay accounts where let's say you make $10,000 that day, you press the button, that $10,000 that was in the net proceeds that you paid out would hit your bank 24 hours later. So from like just a cash conversion cycle standpoint, which is, you know, the money put out into inventory until it comes back into your account, that cycle is, I mean, with a reserve, it takes about 23 days to get the full amount. So it's literally 23 times faster in terms of the cash conversion cycle, which is bananas for a company that's looking to reinvest and grow, you know, to keep on scaling. So, yeah, it's, I mean, they're kind of, they're rare, obviously, because they were stopped being made in 2010. They are still out there and we know folks that just kind of collect them. They might have three or four brands, private label brands, and they all just get one of these older vehicles, if you like, these older vehicles to put their brand in. And it's tough for other people to compete in that regard because it's like, I mean, they've just got cash flow to keep reordering stock. So they avoid stock outs, especially in Q4 is a big win for a lot of sellers. Speaker 2: Now, you mentioned something there that is very interesting beyond, of course, this type of accounts, which is the opportunity to also engage with accounts that are on gated for certain categories. I guess before we dive into that, the specifics of that, I think I would like to start with the basics of how this whole kind of opportunity works, because I'm sure some sellers might be thinking, OK, but if I'm already selling on Amazon, but maybe you want to have an account for Noecatera, this is going to be an issue for me. Can I have other accounts? It's specific to certain regions. So give us like an overview of, you know, what are maybe the criteria, the must have criteria that you need to have to be eligible to, you know, kind of repurpose some of these accounts, you know. Speaker 1: Absolutely. So back, I mean, I started selling private label in 2013. It was, you know, back when it was a whole different ballgame back then, as you can imagine. But back then, Amazon was very strict, right? There was, hey, you're not allowed more than one account. That was the That was the, you know, the Stacks quote. Over the years, Amazon have become more lenient in saying, well, you can have as many stores as you want, providing there's a valid reason for you to do so, right? And these, you can Google these, they're very clear, but essentially, you're starting a new brand, you want to have a separate store, you know, you don't want to have co-mingling brands in one store. Different business model, like wholesaling one, you know, private label another. There's a number of other reasons that make it legally fine for you to own different stores. So that's just what I'll say off the bat. And, you know, Amazon are very okay with acquiring stores. Private equity have been doing this for decades on Amazon. You think about aggregators, right? They might have 400 acquisitions under one umbrella company. I was actually sat down. I see you went to Amazon Accelerate recently. I was there two years ago. I can't believe it's gone so quickly, but I sat down with head of compliance with Amazon, who was working directly with the aggregator team, actually, who was You know, and these big aggregators, you know, when that whole industry was really, you know, popping off sort of thing. And, you know, at that point, he was like, look, Amazon are fine with it if you follow the right process. If you let Amazon know, you cross all your T's, dot all your I's. So, yeah, it's sensitive. So that's important that you do it right. But it's absolutely fine if you do it right, if that makes sense. Speaker 2: Cool. So now, when it comes to categories, because I'm sure that's something that people might be learning more about that. You mentioned that there's some specific categories that people are very interested in. Can you name a few? What are some of the categories that you can help us find throughout your company and why they're so difficult to get access to? Speaker 1: Absolutely. So a big one for, I talk about a guy called Connor Busics, his name is. He's a great, great gentleman out Canada. He was doing about a million a month in his supplement brand, his pro label brand, right? Now the model, right? He had it down, you know, down pat. He was like, look, I just want to launch another supplement brand, same suppliers, different branding, and just You know, just see how much real estate I can take up on the Amazon search results, right? We found him a store that was, because he wanted to hit the ground running, when you open a new store, it might take quite a while for you to get ungated and supplement. So we found him a store that he could acquire that was already ungated and ready to rock and roll. So he could literally just copy and paste his business model into that store and start ramping up, duplicating what he's already done. So that's one of the main ones. Supplements is in terms of categories for private label sellers. You know, there's pet, there's, you know, the ones that are generally more restricted on newer stores that can, I mean, if it stops you selling it for six months, it's six months of profit and revenue, you know, and if you put that money into, you know, like six months of revenue, you know, and that compounds, right? So that's a cost and opportunity cost. Yeah. You know, entrepreneurs are not the most patient people in the world, right? Speaker 2: You're going to deploy tomorrow. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Cool. Speaker 1: That's kind of like that from the, sorry, from the private label perspective, that's kind of some of the most common brands, sorry, common categories. But if you're a wholesale seller, then I mean, much of the most profitable brands are hard gated. Amazon doesn't trust you yet, but it's not just to do with that. It's just some of the settings in the back end of the stores just don't allow you to sell certain brands, no matter how good your account health is, no matter how many invoices you get from great suppliers. It's just a setting thing in the back end. So, I mean, we've had people that have been like, hey, I've got this opportunity to sell. I'm just going to make a brand up. Lego, for example. It's a $200,000 profit, $200,000 profit opportunity for me. Got great suppliers, but I can't sell it, right? And, you know, they've come to us. They found a store that is able to sell that brand. This is an example brand, but it gives them access to that so they can hit the ground running, you know, out the gate. Because most 99% of sellers are hard gated in that brand, what that does is it creates so much, you know, there's little sellers allowed to sell it, but there's huge consumer demand. So that's like a big blue ocean opportunity for a lot of sellers to get in there, you know, to find a store that's already un-gated, right? I hope that makes sense. Speaker 2: And in terms of timelines, let's say, because I'm sure a lot of people hearing this now might be thinking, OK, this is actually a huge opportunity for me to leverage. Let's say I'm looking to launch a supplement brand. I've been hitting the wall in terms of getting approved. Now I can just buy one of these accounts and get started. What is realistically the timeline to, for a moment, I start looking for them to actually deploy. It's a matter of weeks, months. What is your experience with that? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. So it kind of varies depending on what they're looking for. But somebody would come to us and they say, hey, this is kind of what I'm looking for, a supplement. A store that's got a lot of, you know, sales history, it's ungated in the category of supplements. Then we would just check to see what we've got in our pipeline. We look at about 200 to 400 stores a month in terms of applications that people come and, you know, there's a lot of people that stop selling on Amazon, as you can imagine. I think there was like a thousand or two thousand seller accounts that were open daily. So most people would never use them or they might use them a bit. So there's a lot of these stores people don't use, right? So we would find And today we're going to talk about the top 1% of these stores and then we would know essentially that would go into our pipeline. So somebody comes to us, it might take, depending on what they're looking for, two to four weeks to get them up and selling. And it's pretty straightforward. It's get on a call with us, show us essentially what you're looking for. And then step two is we'd go and find the store that will be a perfect fit. Once we've done that, we do all the paperwork, let Amazon know, which is step two, which is the transfer of the store. And then step three is delivery. So where we deliver the store in a safe, secure environment, which doesn't link it to any other store that you've got, because that's important. Because we've all heard the horror stories of there's a daisy chain effect or like a domino effect of stores that get suspended, right? So every store, is kept in its own, you know, separate IP address. And, you know, it's like a digital moat that protects it. And that whole process takes about two to four weeks, depending on the type of store. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's not instant as the details. Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's still way faster, trust me, than doing it on your own. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: It's huge. It's huge. So now another thing I wanted to add here is, you know, of course, we've been talking all accounts that have the cash flow kind of benefit. We are talking about categories. But what about out of curiosity, are some of these accounts, maybe some people looking at some of these accounts because they have a lot of feedback as a store, because, you know, I mean, it's a dormant account, but it got a lot of seller feedback. And that's something good for as a wholesaler, for example. Is that even an opportunity as well? Are you having those conversations as well? Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Like primarily it's coming from wholesale sellers or people that are looking to, because that directly impacts the winning the buy box, right? But also people that run the brand exclusive model, you know, like Pattern, where they, you know, obviously the largest Amazon seller in the world, they go and close exclusive relationships with billion dollar brands, right? We actually had a guy called Glenn Jensen reach out. That's his model too. We had a store that had 200,000 seller feedback. It was like a super old store and a lot of sales through over the years. And he wanted that store because it would position him to close more brand exclusive deals because, hey, look, if you're competing for a brand and there's 10 other sellers and all of them have got like 100 seller feedback and they're saying, we're experts, but then you come along and say, hey, I've got 200,000 set of feedback. Here's our store. You know, this is what we're capable of. You know, it's going to help you close more deals. That's what he was looking for the stores for. So, yeah, the seller feedback. Two reasons really. Winning more buy box. Second thing is closing more brand partnerships, you know, for them exclusive wholesale relationships. Speaker 2: Cool. Now, I guess, An opportunity I'm very curious about because I'm sure a lot of people of course will buy these accounts because they want to, you know, really grow a brand and then potentially have an exit. But have you actually also encountered maybe people that will buy some of these accounts as a business opportunity in the sense that maybe they buy from you, they might do some refinement inside and they sell them again. Is that also you have some clients that come to you with that model because I'm assuming This is something that you can use internationally, right? So maybe somebody from China might come and buy from you or somebody from Germany. Like, how does it work at an international level? Like, is there also like a flipping, I guess, opportunity here, if you have seen that in the first one? Speaker 1: I've not seen that for ourselves. We're very cautious who we work with. We have a bit of a, you know, We don't want to sell to anybody. Primarily, our clients come from the USA base. Their companies are out of USA and they're mainly USA citizens. We work with a lot of European folks that have their brands over in USA, but I don't think we work with any Chinese sellers, frankly. I don't know whether it's just they've not really approached us. We'll be careful there as well, but that's not something we... We always want to exercise caution. I'm not saying all Chinese sellers are bad at all. Speaker 2: No, no, no. Speaker 1: What I'm saying is, you know, most of our guys are US based sellers, private label guys. They're like, hey, I've already got this seven, eight figure brand. I'm looking to hit the ground running. The same with the wholesale sellers too. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I guess the question comes also because I'm sure there might be, because I've seen that some agents, maybe an agent in France that has a lot of French brands. But they don't know the Amazon game and this could be a great opportunity. You know, this French agent could come, for example, to you and identify these brands that have some sort of feedback already or they have been getting supplements and they're working with a French company in the supplement space and be the connector. So that's another great avenue here that could be. Speaker 1: I agree with you on that, but I'll make a note. Speaker 2: Yeah, even ourselves as an agency, that's why I'm bringing this to the table. We have been having a lot of conversation lately with people that they don't want to start with a fresh account. They want to start with an account that already has some history. So the same, like we could go to you, of course, and get some of these accounts and help them. Set up, which is a thing that one or listen to some views to know that that's also a very good opportunity. And now we touch international markets there. And I want to tap a bit into that because another thing I know is very attractive when it comes to accounts. It's sometimes accounts that have already the setup done in our country. So for example, people that want to launch to Europe, you don't have a VAT number, you don't have all the different kind of setups. That's costly and takes a lot of time. So is that also something you can buy? Like can you buy an account that has all European markets and everything ready to go? Or no? What is your experience with that? Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's not something we help with just because of the complexities of it. And we've had cases where, you know, we've sold stores that have had all the European marketplaces open. And obviously, as you know, changing, you know, updating all that information can be tough. So, yeah, primarily we don't help in that way just because of the, you know, You know how hard it is to navigate for the VAT purposes and all the hoops you have to jump through. Speaker 2: Yeah, because a legal start is a minefield, I know. That's why I was asking. Speaker 1: It's a tough one. It's really tough. I mean, we have one of our, like, one of our clients, Acquire A Store, that had to do that. And I mean, it took months and it was like, OK, we probably don't want to do that again just because it was so... We got there in the end, but it was tough. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: But one thing I will say is, as we're in the season of Q4, while we're touching it, one of the reasons, you don't have to go to a company like ours to buy these stores. I just want to be clear. You can actually look in your network. You can find them. If you've got the time, you can do that. Because especially in this time of year, you've got Q4, right? So some of these older stores, they have Crazily enough, they have zero FBA inventory limits. So we sold a guy a store this time last year, right? He was actually a wholesale guy, but he got gated in his main brand, right? Overnight, he had 400,000 of inventory on his way to Amazon's warehouses, right? It's a nightmare. But we found him a store from 2008 that was daily pay, but it was ungated in his brand. So he was, you know, he was happy. But what we found out later was he was like, the store's got zero inventory limits. It was like, let me just check. And what happened because the store was so old, it was like, I think six to eight months, it had zero FBA limits. So he could just send in so much inventory in Q4, never ran out of stock. And the logistical complexity of doing small shipments. The cost and the margin compression on it is extreme. So it worked out really well for him because he could just load up all the warehouses, which enabled him to win the buy box more too. And then, you know, Unfortunately, about eight months later, he said, oh, they've now put a, you know, it's pretty high cap, but they've now given him a... Speaker 2: That's actually a very interesting case. I didn't even know. I mean, now that you mentioned, of course, comes to mind, but that's a very good case. A usage of a new account, like the limits. Oh, my God. It's been such a nightmare even for us and our brands and yeah, that can make a game changer. That can essentially make the difference between making it or not, especially drawing out of, you know, all your inventory or not having or having to overpaying fees. It's crazy. Speaker 1: It's an absolute minefield. He basically because he was obviously he was all excited about his Q4. He had all this inventory coming over and then he got hit the gating on his store. He was up here and then he was down here. We found his store. But what happened was Within 30 days, he'd done 300 grand in revenue with his first month. But because of the daily cash flow cycle, he was able to place a $2.5 million purchase order by day 40, right? With a normal store because of the reserve, he wouldn't have been able to turn his money that fast. But because he was doing it daily, he accrued the money. And then placed another order of two and a half million dollars. So he was on track for a million dollars a month within a couple of months. So that's what, you know, and with zero inventory limits, it was like a compounding effect of these three things. But yeah, that's what can happen. If you find the right vehicle, is what we call them, it's kind of like an analogy is, you know, You know, winning on Amazon is like winning a race, right? You know, there's two parts of that. There's the driver, which is the product, systems, you know, capital, all super important, like the systems, all really important. Then there's the actual vehicle that the team operate within, like the driver operates within, right? So, yeah. You can find these older stores out there in the wild. If you've got a network of friends, you've got communities, you've got Facebook groups, you can go and find these yourself. You can do it if you've got the time to do it. Some of these older stores just have these grandfathered-in benefits that really can make a difference in terms of building generational wealth for Amazon sellers. I don't say that lightly. It's the case. These moats, when everybody else has got these slower vehicles, it's hard to compete. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. So, I mean, Aaron, it's been a pleasure as usual to have you for the last minute that we have here. Is there any insight you want to share with us in terms of, you know, why this is, you know, something to consider? And finally, like, how people can find you? Like, you know, I'm sure people might be wondering, you know, how do I explore this opportunity? How do I reach out? So give us more information about that as well. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I would, I'd basically look because generally what I've found is when you're, when you do everything that everybody else does, it's, it's kind of like a red ocean opportunity, right? Where everybody is, but when you, when you think about, okay, What vehicle could I use that's going to enable, it goes back to a quote by Warren Buffett. I always kind of think of what he said. When he was in college, he grew up with one of his good friends. He went into the steel business. Warren went into businesses and stocks, right? And he was, the other guy was smarter than him. And, you know, he's worked harder than him. But the steel business went under, essentially, in America. And Warren's lesson was it's not about how hard you row, it's about the boat you're in. So just think about that with the store you're using. Is there a better opportunity in terms of cash flow, in terms of being able to sell different brands or categories? So that's kind of what I would say. Speaker 2: Okay, that's awesome. Yeah, and I'm sure like for this I think as a conclusion as well because I think this is a very important thing to take out of this episode. I feel especially for those listening up that have been having such a tough journey to, you know, get engaged in all the things that we mentioned, like, understand that, you know, this is the perfect solution for that because I get emails all the time, like, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that in terms of engaging and things like that? And sometimes the solution is right and trying to do it yourself because you're reaching this roadblock is just, you know, work with somebody like Aaron, which can make your journey so much easier. So, Aaron, to conclude, how people can find you and work with you? Speaker 1: Absolutely. So what you can do underneath this video, there'll be a link to ecomstalls.com forward slash ecomcy. So ecomstalls.com forward slash ecomcy. And that'll give you an option when you go to that page. If you have a spare Amazon account that you don't use anymore, you'll be able to click the button, schedule a call so we can make you a cash offer for your store if it works out and makes sense. And then there'll be another option if you're looking to potentially acquire one of these faster vehicles to help you scale. You can follow the links on the page there too. So that's it. Thanks so much, Vincenzo. It's been a pleasure. Speaker 2: I appreciate it. It's a pleasure as usual and see you in the next one. Thank you so much for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Bye bye. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for listening to The Ecommerce Lab by Ecomcy. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you are at it, we would appreciate it if you could leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That will make it easier for others to find out about the show and benefit from it. Want more? Visit our website at www.ecomcy.com where you can get your first consultation for free or find us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn at Ecomcy.