EP #350] [ENG] - Strategies to find winning products on Amazon - Clarence Cheang

EP #350] [ENG] - Strategies to find winning products on Amazon - Clarence Cheang Speaker 1: 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 Ecommerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy and today I bring you a very special close friend, Clarence from the FBA Bros. Which is, you know, one of the top communities out there when it comes to supporting Amazon sellers, especially starting from scratch. And I met Clarence actually, I believe, close to two months now in LA, where we're doing this great series with Healing Time. Some of the episodes are still waiting to be rolled out. I know your episode Clarence has already had and it's been having some good feedback. And then I'm going to leave all information down below so people can find it. But it's a pleasure to have you on the show, Clarence. How have you been? How's everything going? Speaker 3: Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. And hey, let's let's crush it on Amazon together, man. We're all figuring this together. Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know. So I guess for those that might not know you, just give us a brief intro about yourself and your background, then we can dive into the topic. Speaker 3: Perfect. Yeah. So my name is Clarence. I started Amazon in 2019. Back in the good old days, right? The pre-COVID days. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: It's really when I really started and I tried my first product, didn't do so well, learned a lot of mistakes, lost a bunch of money, then I learned my lesson and then we keep launching more and more products over the years and through trial and error actually, right, we develop a system to really study what causes the failures for our launches and what causes the success of our launches. So I think fast forward like four or five years later, we have developed this entire SOP or even a product research system to really increase our probability of success on Amazon launches, right? So that's really something that I pride myself in as well to really, yeah, this entire system is paid for in real hard losses. No blood, but sweat and tears. Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. So I guess based on everything you experienced, especially with your students as well, like I guess let's go back to the very beginning, which is I'm sure the question that you get every single day, which is I was still late for Amazon FBA. What is your take on that? Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. You're too late for it. And this is not me saying, right? This is data. And if you have to search, just search, right? Really, revenue of Amazon, what's the demand like? Let's look at that from a customer point of view. If you see the graph, it is still increasing on a year-to-year basis, right? In fact, the latest data that is pulled up from Statista Yes, I think they collated for 2024. And you can literally see, right, back then from 2020, I think 2004, already to 2024, for a 20-year period, Amazon has just been showing an increase in revenue year after year. I don't know which other company does it except Amazon, right? So, are you seeing it? I don't think so, right? The demand is showing that it's increasing. And on the flip side, the data for new sellers joining on Amazon is decreasing. So I don't know about you, but this is a scream opportunity for me still. Speaker 2: Yes, I agree. I agree. I think, I mean, every single year we see the demand across even the brands that we manage getting bigger and bigger. And I think the reason, and then that's something I want to touch on, which let's start jumping on Boris also, because Let's be honest, it's getting also more challenging, but that challenge is also an opportunity because that means if you understand the methodology and you understand how to read data, you can essentially scale much faster than before. I remember when I started eight years ago, you didn't even have tools to figure out what was happening. You had to pretty much guess everything. Now you have everything at your fingerprint. So let's start with that. I guess it's, you know, with everything happening, In terms of the Amazon space and seeing how complex it's getting, like, what is your take on how to even start when it comes to finding a product? I think we can start with the basic question of budget, right? Because I'm sure people ask you all the time, like, what is the budget you might need? Like, maybe eight, nine years ago, you could start with, you know, $1,000. That's not the case anymore. So what is your feedback when it comes to that? Speaker 3: Yeah, excellent question here. Actually, when it comes to anything relating to budget or dollars, it's a math problem, right? And we got to face it from a very, very math perspective. So what constitutes a budget from an Amazon launch? We had to break it down, right? First off, there's your COGS, your product cost, your shipping cost, and after that, your advertising launch. Then after that, you also have your listing creatives, your trademark, Etc. So if you want to put it all in together in one revenue package, I will just give it to you. Anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 for your first product launch is an excellent starting point, right? Of course, caveat, the more access to capital you have, the greater of flexibility in the kinds of products that you can launch on Amazon. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think something I actually want to add here is that when it comes to Capizana, maybe that's most likely one of the things you consider is that The hardware also you have to allocate. That opens the window to go into products that potentially could be more expensive. And we know by nature that removes a lot of competition, especially sellers. Most of the new sellers focus on the products that go from $5 to $10. So I guess we can use that as an opportunity to start getting this segway into the criteria. When it comes to finding products these days, what are some of the things you look for? Because we know that certain products are getting very saturated, margins are very tight. As we mentioned, if price point is low, it's going to be super, super difficult these days. So what are some of your must-go criteria to make sure you can find out? Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that question. Yeah, excellent question. And if I get asked that so many times, like, how do you keep finding new products again to launch and with such high confidence, right? Bringing back to that product research methodology that we have, it is actually 23 different criteria that we look at. So I'm just going to highlight a few more important ones. Number one, if I were to enter a market, I better make sure that I know that I can win the market. Basically, I do not want to fight with heavyweights competitors. People who know how to do SEO or PPC, they rank well for organic ranking, their images are excellent, their differentiation are great. These are markets that I really tend to ignore or try to say I don't want to choose that kind of battle, right? I want to launch and make my life easier in the future, right? So I'm going to pick my pencils before I even choose that product, right? So one of our criterias is literally checking for competitors' ranking strength. How well do they rank for a basket of keywords that's relevant for that market? So we have a very neat spreadsheet that actually gives them a pretty good x-ray into that market to be able to tell, oh, based on this top 10 competitors is crushing it today on Amazon, nine of them sucks at ranking on Amazon. And yet they're making 20k a month. I think I can do better than them, right? And because of that, we launched in that market. So that's my first criteria that I look for. My second one is definitely, can I differentiate in that market as well, right? It's not just selling a Me Too product on Amazon anymore. It doesn't work. Maybe last time you can go to Alibaba, just put any product on Amazon and you'll probably sell, right? Your uncle's parents will probably buy it as well. But now, visibility is just reserved for the trained and the learned sellers. So, You have to be good as well in terms of offering real value to your customers on Amazon, right? So differentiation, we call it the ability to provide real value to the market, right? That's also something to look at as a very, very big criteria, right? And of course, third one, no point selling products that's not profitable. So I need my margins. I need my ROI. If these three main criteria is not suitable, I will not enter that market at all. Speaker 2: Cool, cool. I think, I mean, first of all, those three, I think they are a must have. I agree. I think the differentiator one is, I would say, the most important one because I know most of the time when sellers are looking to launch a product on Amazon, the first thing they want to do is You know, come up with a product and sometimes that could lead you to desperation to choose whatever you find on Alibaba or using different tools. And then you especially give prioritization to speed, right? I'm coming up with something that might take you a few more months creating your own mall or your own branding. I'm really Bring something to the market that's unique, but we don't know. Like if you're selling a commodity these days, like there is no BBC, there is no listing optimization, there is no trick that is going to make your product succeed. You need to bring something that is within, from an offer perspective, better, both pricing and also quality wise, right? And I guess that brings me to my next question, which is how you make a product different? Because let's be honest, it's easy to say, yeah, I'm going to make a product different, but there's so many verticals you can go. It could be from a material perspective, it could be from A bundle perspective could be from an accessory, but there's so many verticals you can go and sometimes it can get very daunting. So what is your strategy to make sure you come up with something unique? Speaker 3: I love that question as well, because we have exactly 13 different ways to differentiate any product on Amazon today. Right. And I think nowadays is 2025. You guys are so, so blessed. Because you have AI. Come on guys. AI is there to help you as an assistant in terms of differentiation. Like literally you can ask AI for ideation, like 10 different ideas to differentiate a product based on actual feedback of the customers even. Right, so they can literally scan the negative reviews, the critical reviews on Amazon and even off Amazon. It doesn't have to be on Amazon only. And then you find products that have real problems and AI can give you five solutions for each of these problems. And then you got to make the decision. Is this financially feasible? Is this technically feasible to, you know, solve for the market? And there you go. You have your winning differentiation idea. Speaker 2: Cool. And I guess when you mentioned AI, just to touch a high level, do you usually recommend using tools such as, for example, ChatGPT, or you have other tools? Like, for example, there's this tool that's being heavily used called also Axio, which Alibaba has been pushing significantly. What are some of your preferred tools that you would say people should start looking into to come up with something that's unique? Speaker 3: Yeah, let's keep it simple, right? I mean, ChatGPT is the mainstream AI tool that most of us have heard of. Let's use that first, right? Because that's going to appeal to the majority of people first. If you can use ChatGPT well, okay, then maybe you can explore other learning, large language learning models, right? And if you ask me, ChatGPT is more than enough. Just make sure you're the pro subscription merchant. Speaker 2: That's right. Cool, cool. Now, when it comes to the pro kind of research phase, another thing that we're encountering a lot that is getting more and more complex is Where to source it from? We know that with everything happening as well with China, with the tariffs and USA, people start looking to different areas. For example, Indonesia has been very attractive lately, Vietnam, Taiwan, India. So that adds an extra layer of complexity, especially if you don't have experience living with this kind of funding manufacturers as have the traditional kind of China. How you should recommend people to essentially consider that when doing the pro research, I would say. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question as well. You know, interestingly, I'm not sure this is true for you and your brands that you manage. We tried sourcing outside of China. It is a pain. Like, in terms of price competitiveness, we cannot match. Like, whatever we buy from China, let's say a product that literally one of our products cost $4.20, landed in the US. I went to Vietnam. The price for the same product is $15. Come on, man. I'd rather pay the tariffs. It's cheaper to pay the tariffs than to source it from Vietnam, right? Then that same product, when I try to source it in, let's say, Indonesia, right? Because they also have that same product being manufactured there. And it's also not price competitive at all, right? So at this stage, for certain product types, right, China is still the most competitive in terms of price. But of course, I cannot generalize for your product. Like, for example, if you're selling a Rattan product, you probably find a better price in Vietnam or Indonesia, not in China. China doesn't give that Rattan portfolio, right? So it highly depends on your product category. The best advice here is do your homework, compare across the board, and then make a decision. Speaker 2: Awesome. Love that. Now, when it comes to countries, when doing the market research, this is also very important. I know we always push For USA because at the end of the day, that's where most of the opportunity is. But what is your experience or maybe advice for people that maybe say, oh, I actually want to start with Europe or I want to start with any other marketplace where Amazon is currently present. Like, do you advise that or you're seeing that most people have a bigger chance for success in the USA? But we also have to be mindful that it's more competitive. Unknown Speaker: So what is your take on that? Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that because Remember the criteria that we use for product research? Use that same criteria for that market and then it will give you the answer. So we have had students launch first in the UK market, in the Europe or Italian market. Then they did well and then they export it to the US market and they also do well because the data supports it. So at the end of the day, we make our decisions as business owners based on data, not based on feelings and we don't gamble for money, right? So every time I launch in a new market, the numbers must support me in making that decision. Speaker 2: Cool. Love that. Love that. Now enter into the launch phase. These are some of the things I also want to touch very briefly, which is what are some of the elements you bring to the table to make a launch successful? And what I'm trying to ask with this is like you purely focus on using only advertising, which is PPC. You try to bring influencer marketing. You try to do things that are beyond what Amazon offers you as a toolset. Like what is part of your formulation to have successful launch? Because we know that these days there are many more things beyond Amazon PPC that sometimes people could leverage. And I just would like to know if that's something you're seeing with your own products and also the success of some of your students. Speaker 3: Yes, I love that question because I keep seeing this same mistake of new sellers trying to be too ambitious. They're going to do launch, website D2C. At the same time, I'm going to do A, B, C, D and then C, right? And what we see usually, they fall flat on their face because they cannot handle too many things, right? It depends on the stage you are at in terms of product launches and even in your brands, right? So if this is your very very first product on Amazon, this is your first rodeo in the Amazon game, please focus on PPC only. There's tons of learning for you to do already in just Amazon PPC. Master that first and once you get the hang of it, then you can start venturing to influencer marketing, TikTok marketing and etc and so on and so forth, right? Which eventually all brands will have to go towards as well. But just purely from a new beginner launch basis, start with EPC. Don't overload yourself. Speaker 2: Awesome. Love that. Cool. So I guess now let's start diving into, I would say, tools throughout this whole methodology because let's be honest, there's also a bunch of tools Especially when it comes to validating your products, and I think it can also be very daunting when it comes to that. So from your experience as well, what kind of tools do you think I must have tools in terms of filtering products, understanding all the metrics associated with them, and essentially allow you to find that winning kind of product to go for? What tools do you think are the most complete when it comes to that? Speaker 3: Three tools for product research that we rely on. Of course, number one, Helium 10. We cannot do without Helium 10 Cerebro. We need the Cerebro data to reverse engineer how well our competitors launch in their organic ranking. So, sorry bro, Blackbox also is an amazing tool. Basically Helium, that's the Swiss army line, right, for most Amazon sellers. Second tool, use Amazon Seller Central, especially Product Opportunity Explorer. If you're on a professional plan on Amazon, you have access to that, given to you. Alright, if you don't, just contact your seller support help to enable that for you. That too is a goldmine, right? You can literally tell return ratio, conversion rate of the competitors for the past year, for the past week, even keywords that works well. So this is a very, very good additional data point for you to consider. Number three, the most basic tool of them all, surprisingly, Excel sheets, right? So unfortunately to this day, right, you still need a certain level of Excel mastery. Not that great, right, just because I'm not so that great in Excel sheets, but at least good enough, right, to know the formulas, to know how to use this well, navigate Excel sheets so that you can manipulate the data. To make sure it makes sense for you. And that's from Product Launch. Another bonus tool that I want to give everyone, especially for conversion rate improvement for listings, is using an AI tool called VAS. It's given out by 3M. It's 3M Virtual Attention Software. This is so powerful, we initially used that to do A-B testing. I think this is a very golden nugget for everyone here. Instead of using brand experiments which take eight weeks to get your results from Amazon, you can actually use 3M BAS and in five minutes you can tell image A or image B will perform better on Amazon. How that works? VAS reverse engineer your products or should I say your images right and they run through the huge database of many many images with many eyeball tracking on the screen and they try to simulate thousands of sellers or thousands of customers looking at image A and B and they will show a heat map. They will show in the first three to five seconds which image gives the best attention capturing element. Speaker 2: Cool. That's actually pretty cool too. So just for people here and watching, what is the name of the tool as well? If you can spell out maybe. Speaker 3: Yeah, just Google 3M, literally 3M the company. VAS, virtual attention software. There we go. Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, that's a good hack. Thank you, man. I'm gonna make sure to then put it on the description below so people can definitely make the most out of it. And I guess this one is a paid tool. Is it free? How does it work? Speaker 3: It's a paid subscription fee. I believe it's close to $40 to $50 a month. But hey, you can have unlimited tests once you paid the subscription. Speaker 2: Cool, cool. Awesome. We'll definitely look into this. Great. So now, I guess to start shifting into, I would say also the timeline to make this happen of launching a product. I'm sure you get this question a lot as well, which is when is the right time to launch? It could be Q4, Q1, Q2, a specific month of the year, because there are certain things like that that might influence significantly essentially the success of the launch. So what is your take on that as well? Speaker 3: Yeah, I do have a few students who ask me as well, when is the best time to launch? Since Black Friday, Cyber Monday is coming up, should I launch two weeks before that, get organic rank, ride the wave? To be honest, I have no good answer because if you ask me, for most people, the best time to launch is as soon as possible. Get your product out on Amazon today, get your organic rank, then you can ride the wave, right? So I would say as soon as possible. That's my best answer. Speaker 2: Awesome, awesome. And I would say to start bringing everything to a full closure, like what would be maybe your top three tips you would give to anybody throughout this journey of research and products? I know there's many things that, of course, we didn't cover today because, I mean, this is a topic that will take, you know, multiple days to cover in depth, but I guess three things that you wish you knew when you get started that you think is a must to consider in 2025, what would that be? Speaker 3: Number one, look at data, man. I kind of stress this enough. Product research shouldn't be gambling. You should know when you launch a product, it will sell. If you cannot say that confidently with your heart, don't launch a product on Amazon, right? Because the numbers will give you that confidence. So that's the level that we are striving towards, right, in terms of using data. So top three tips. Number one, know how your competitors are doing in terms of organic ranking. How are they doing in PPC, right? Because eventually you're going to go head-on with them. So you want to have the best chance to win, know how they're doing, right? So that's my first tip. Number two, learn all the latest AI tools you can, man. This is the day and age for AI, right? And you can literally replace a lot of VAs, a lot of employees with an AI tool, right? And it can make you a more efficient entrepreneur, especially for Amazon. So AI is great for, you know, listing conversions, improving your listing conversion rate, your picture rate. That is so powerful for using AI right now. And tip number three, hey, get in touch with a seller community, right? I know most Amazon sellers, they are the solopreneurs, they want to, you know, just stay behind the screen of the computer, you know. I was there, right? And it didn't do me a lot of help because I made a lot of mistakes by myself. If I had known that there's a seller community in Singapore or anywhere in the world around you, that you can join, you can ask and float ideas around, you will probably make lesser mistakes over time, right? So, hey, this time I talked to you. Speaker 2: Hello Clarence. I mean it's been a pleasure and I always appreciate your time. Thank you so much for all the tips and I'm sure you know people may want to reach out more to you especially if they're around Singapore or you know just exploring more your community. So tell us how people can find you. Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can search us on Instagram or on TikTok or even in fact YouTube with the FBA Bros. That's T-H-E-F-B-A-B-R-O-S. Speaker 2: Cool, and make sure to put everything down below and other than that it's been a pleasure and hopefully I see you soon at one of the upcoming events and thank you so much for being here man. Speaker 3: Yes man, if you're coming to Singapore let me know. I would love to host you. Speaker 2: I will, 100%. Thank you man. Have a good one. Speaker 3: Thank you so much bro. Bye. Speaker 1: 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.