You know, hey, I got a great idea. Boom, you put it up there and all these great stories. Those days are done. - Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer, and I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results. I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your e-commerce business. Let's get on with the show. - Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, welcoming to the show, a good friend of mine met him at E-tail West, and we had a great conversation about microphones. But Scott, welcome to the show. Scott is the VP of Digital Commerce at QuickFire. He's also the co-host of the Always Off Brand podcast. Welcome, welcome. I was, yeah. We did a very impromptu discussion at E-tail, and it was fantastic. - It was great. You're my inspiration, my microphone, you're my equipment inspiration, Chase. I went out, I ran out and purchased the exact same cool stuff because you were the cool kid, and I wanted to be like you. - Yeah, and just for anyone that's curious, I guess a little inside baseball here, we're talking about the road wireless setups, the wireless pros is what we have. So for podcasting on location, very, very awesome. Great sound quality. You can sync it to a laptop, or you can just record directly to the devices. Technology is cool. - It's very cool. - Also, comparatively with sizing, I'll let you explain the difference in size between my setup and yours. - Yeah, I had an old style, and I still do, I have a two channel mixer, and I got camera, I got all this equipment, right? And the setup isn't five seconds. I got crap everywhere, wires are everywhere. It was a train wreck, Chase. Let's just call it like it is. And then you breeze in with this just little pocket of like killer little great audio production tools, and I was just a little, I was jealous. I was jelly, as the kids say. - Yeah, you had basically a carry on bag full of gear. - Yeah, I did. And I will, I'm going to email Boston. This is probably, I don't know when this is coming out, but anyway, I'm debating of, I'm probably going to have both. (laughing) - Old habits. - Because I'm pathetic, is I don't trust myself. - Yeah, old habits die hard, absolutely. Well, other than podcasting, which obviously everyone go check out his podcast again, always off-brand podcast, you guys do a lot of work with Amazon. We worked with over 300 brands in a bunch of different categories. You've been in the Amazon space for almost 18 years, is that real? - Yes, I've been in retail for almost 30 years. I got sucked into Amazon in 2006. I was an independent multi-brand rep, essentially. So selling in the Northwest. So selling all kinds of national retailers, independent, especially retailers, retails of all kinds of shapes and shapes and types. And then we started selling brands to Amazon in 2006, and then it just has taken off from there. So yeah, I had my own shop, had my own Amazon agency, and then all that stuff. And now, quick fire, we're just a little small digital agency now, but over the years, I actually counted because, and sometimes I was working with big conglomerates who had like 12 different brands, and we were managing everything. So the two 300 brands sounds real bougie and gaudy. It sounds a little humble braggish, but I've also been doing this forever. So you have to keep that in mind. Yes, so yeah, I'm an old school. I'm an OG Amazon guy. What was Amazon even like 18 years ago? Well, do you do any business on Walmart, Chase? Personally, no, but I know what it is. So if anybody out there listening sells to or sells on walmart.com, it's very similar to like it was in 2006. It was mostly, you know, FBA hadn't really come to fruition yet. It hadn't fulfilled by Amazon in the marketplace. It wasn't really a thing yet. And so you sold, it was a traditional retailer. And we had, it was great in so many ways, so great. We actually had buyers. We had humans, I was on campus. I live here in Seattle area. So it was a local thing. We had a great time. We built great businesses. It was fun. I mean, it was maddening because you're doing business with a machine. That was a whole different thing, but some really smart, great people who I'm still close with today. It was just like selling to any other major retailer in some regard. So it was fun. - Absolutely. And then obviously over the years, Amazon evolved into the 800 pound gorilla that we know today. - Yeah. I mean, I, in 2006, and then in 2012, 13, that's when we had an independent rep agency that covered, you know, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and the sporting goods outdoor specialty business. And that's when I'm like, this Amazon thing? Yeah, I think this is gonna be bigger than I had even imagined. And so that's where we created a whole Amazon agency and then merged and blah, blah, blah. And it got big. It got huge. And so even though there's, well, the reason I still have a job and I kind of handle most of the Amazon business at QuickFire is because there are nightmares to do business with. Thank goodness. So even though it's a love hate chase, I love them, but doing business with a machine and now AI is challenging, but it's job security because people have to have people like us. It's hard to do on your own. - Absolutely. So tell me about like, what are the types of services? How are you actually helping your clients at QuickFire? - So we really specialize in small, medium, kind of challenger brands, newer brands. That's our kind of cup of tea. We don't charge a lot because we don't, I did all the old fancy stuff with the reporting and all this, the big deal, I did all that. And so QuickFire has really meant for that small, medium, challenger brand. And we just guide them. We do all the work, we just do the work, right? So on Amazon, we create the listing for them, all the different stuff that you have to do. And what's becoming bigger and bigger is advertising. So we run and strategize and manage and do the work at all their ad campaigns on Amazon. But we're not big enough, we do it manually still. We do it old school, baby. We pay attention. I got a guy, Alex Schillithany, who I hired in 2017 who I've worked with forever. And he's terrific. He does our listing optimization. He's a super keyword nerd. And he's now getting into all the AI stuff happening. And we help little brands, just grow and sell on Amazon, which is becoming harder and harder chase every day for the little guy. - Absolutely. Now let's set some expectations. Little and medium are dumb words, let's use numbers. - I mean, two to two million a year, sometimes they're just single D2C, native D2C brands. Honestly, two to 20, 30 million is kind of like where we sit. And we have a couple unique situations that are bigger than that. But those are unique, those are kind of one offs. - Gotcha. So that kind of falls in line with my idea of you shouldn't branch out into a new channel or marketplace until you've really hit that million plus on your dedicated channel. 'Cause you still have kinks going from zero to one million is so hard. And everything you do there is together with duct tape and string and it's gonna break and you're gonna have to rebuild to kind of what takes you from zero to one isn't gonna take you from one to 10 million. But adding in Amazon, you know, once you kind of get that first hurdle out of the way, I think that's definitely where a lot of our listeners out there are probably at, you know, most of our listeners I would say are on a Shopify store and they're getting into seven figures. What should they be looking for? Or, you know, what are some telltale signs that maybe it's worth branching out into Amazon? - Well, you make a great point and it's one of the hurdles you got to get over because it's no longer the days. I mean, you know, I was joking about it. Back in the day, you could just load them up and everybody was making a zillion dollars of just, you know, hey, I got a great idea. Boom, you put it up there and all these great stories. Those days are done because the competition, remember over 50% of the sellers on there are Chinese direct. They have margin advantages and they're getting really good at advertising and the marketing part and the listing part. So you should really think about building your brand, like you said, on your D2C, whether it's through, again, just pure e-commerce place or you have small brick and mortars distribution or distributorships because the truth is, and that's what I like about honest commerce, okay? That's what I like about this. This is what brought us together, Chase, is because it's always off brand. We try and cut through the crap and tell it like it actually is, okay? There's not a lot of fluff on our show because the truth is that these little brands, even medium brands, a million dollar brands on D2C, on Amazon, it's an item business in a box. You can't afford to go high funnel and build a brand. You can't afford it. That's the truth. Everybody wants it, but they can't afford it. So to your point, not to get me to, yeah, you triggered me, Chase, I gettin' all fired up here, but the better shot, okay? The better shot you have is to do exactly what you have prescribed. Build up your D2C, build up your business, build up that volume and build the brand and get all the other channels going. Now, in social, I scream at the top of my lungs and this is big, big brands and little brands of organic content. Hello, hello out there. Hello, organic content. Work your ass off on that. Get that really screaming because the new Amazon is off Amazon. That's the new Amazon, Chase, because the competition in the real estate is so tiny on Amazon to get in that little tiny box, you better drive some serious traffic outside because, like I said, and I'll end this sermon here. I deal with, I do some consulting stuff. I know, again, humble brag, bougie, pat myself on the back. It's where I've gotten my dream in my career was to get to people tell them what to do and not have to do it, so I got a couple of those. My point here is whether you're a mature brand or you're a small brand, you typically have a traffic problem. You have a traffic problem and the big guys you're competing with, they could go buy you out and that's the problem. So organic social and organic content is a way around that and there's so many great case studies that brands that are now widely distributed, super popular, they drudge down on the ground with organic content for years. Everyone thinks they just became a trillion dollar brand overnight, but they didn't. Does that make sense? Did I just go on a wandering trail that has no ending and no beginning? - No, it makes sense. It didn't answer the question though, so I'll ask it again. Oh, this is a fun one, Scott. All right, so if I'm a listener out there in the podcast and we're doing a couple million a year and we've been, you know, we plan on our flag and we're only doing Shopify stuff, when does it make sense to explore Amazon? What are some factors within my business that I could recognize as like, you know what, maybe this is a good avenue to explore? - Yeah, okay, sorry. God, you got to have all the other stuff I just talked about number one. Number two, you got to look at your, and this is fun part, I love this, is you got to look at your gross margin. You got to look at your landed cost because the reality today and look at this is, you got to, if you could start with your gross margin at an 85 to 90 plus points, okay? Landing cost, a retail, you got a shot. You got a shot because you have to be prime and it's going to cost you some money to get going on Amazon. But depending, there's always outliers and every brand has a situation, Chase, but I would tell your listener, if that's the scenario, you got to get on Amazon. I mean, my God, 60% of all humans in the United States are freaking buying stuff. You have to be where the customer is. You got to go play the game, I'm sorry, you just do. So that's, go slowly, and the other big advice is focus, focus and into a bigger thing which we didn't discuss and you probably didn't want to bring up. Next year in 2025, if I'm a Shopify, I'm just a direct-to-consumer and I've got a nice business, I am telling you and now you build out and you start out and you play around with Amazon, buy with Prime is a game changer on like 100 different levels for direct-to-consumer brands. - We'll get into that a little bit later. Yes, or maybe we do a whole episode about it when it is pushed a lot more. I know there's some stuff that we're not allowed to talk about yet. Ooh, hey now. I just want to be clear about my position 'cause I've been on this early. Quickfire is an official quote official buy-with-prime agency 'cause I am so into this. It's not fully-cooked. It's just not 100%. If I'm a, we've tested it with clients. It's just, it's almost there, it's very close but it's just not fully-cooked. And until it is, we're not suggesting it to our clients. - Absolutely. Now you mentioned gross margin is a huge consideration for whether or not Amazon would work out for you. And so when you are thinking about the types of businesses that work well on Amazon, would you say something that leans more luxury versus commodity maybe makes a bit more sense? - Yeah, commodities are tough, tough, tough. I mean, the competitive set, depending on what the category is. Tell you right now, footwear is tough because the way that Amazon organizes it, they produce it, footwear and apparel are very tough. In fact, they've just recently tried to make more incentive. They've reduced your pick and pack fees essentially to go fulfilled by Amazon. So it's a prime offer. They just released, again, they're trying to fight Timu so they have this direct from China program. So apparel is tough. I'm gonna tell you, footwear and apparel, I'm doing it right now, it's tough. So if you have a hard goods, you have, you know, everything's tough, it's stupid to say it's not, everything's tough, but it's a, remember this, it's an item driven business and 90% of sellers out there are even vendors, it's the old 80/20 rule. They got 20% of the items of the portfolio of the SKUs driving 80% of their business because you gotta be focused and it is such an item business. So that's what I would do on Amazon. Don't put your whole catalog up there. That's crazy. Yeah, no, so you brought it up. So if I am going to explore Amazon, go with my flagship product, the best offer, not my 120 SKUs, it's gonna be, these are the top five products. - Absolutely, focus, because now on the advertising side, inside the platform, you know, it's at a premium, right? Every dollar spent is at premium. So you gotta focus that, focus on one item and just look at your phone. If you have the Amazon app and look how people shop, it is literally a picture in a white box and the sponsor adds and all that, that is same thing. It's the real estate is so tough. So I would focus on very select hero items and drive that. And that, you're gonna probably have some good success there. Get reviews, make sure the product detail page, follow all the rules you've followed on your D2C. The same thing applies across all platforms. Is a price point a consideration? - Sure, depending on the category and competitive set and all those other things, sure. You can get free trial. They got all these little scraper softwares, jungle scout, I know no free ads, but helium 10 jungle scout, they're little browser extensions you go in if you have a catalog or a category or a competitive set for your item. You can go in there, they can tell you basically who's selling what, for how much, how much are they selling. So you get a good sense of the size of the prize, so to speak, and the velocity you could potentially expect. - Yeah, but don't get disillusioned on that because a lot of people look at these cattle, oh my God, I looked on jungle scout, I looked here and there and this is a trillion, you know, they're doing 20 million a month in this. If I just get 1% of it, you know, sometimes it doesn't work out that way because you got to be found and how much money with paid and organic, how much are you willing to do and spend to get, to leapfrog up into, so when somebody searches it, they can find you. Because new stuff on Amazon, you're on page 8 trillion, I mean, you're just, you're buried deep, deep, you got to spend money to get there. - Now, you mentioned, you know, don't see stars when you see the sales that some of your competitors are doing, what are some other mistakes that brands are making when they're, you know, getting on to Amazon or even just on Amazon? - Oh my gosh, how much time do we have? How many mistakes? And I, by the way, I mean, I raised my hand, I've fallen through so many trap doors, believe me. And the fun of it, because I'm doing the same thing for so long that people are like, aren't you bored? I mean, sometimes I am bored, Chase, I'm going to, I'm in a true confession. But the reason that it's interesting is because Amazon keeps changing, right? It's constantly changing. So the mistakes made are they put way too many skews up there, they just like, let her fly, they, you know what I mean? They just put the entire catalog up there. The other thing is they think they can just, oh, well, I can just have an offer on this particular product because my product's similar or they're trying to resell other people's stuff, don't do that. That doesn't work anymore. The other thing is they go out and they get all their friends to get reviews and Amazon's actually caught onto that. And so then they get the listing actually suppressed and they get in trouble, don't do that (laughs) what other mistakes do they make? If you have a product that is in a category in beauty, beauty is handled completely differently on Amazon than many other categories. You have to get permission. It's a gated, they call it gated category. They got all kinds of rules and everything. So if you're going to go into topical's, lotions, any type of health and home beauty product, be careful, that is my word of wisdom. Be careful because you can create a listing and it's great. And then the little bot finds that you have some type of claim, some type of, that a huge lawsuit with the EPA. So you have anything to do with all kinds of weird stuff that has nothing to do with your product. Boom, they'll slap you and they'll flag you and you get off. So you gotta be careful with all your keywords and all those other things. Advertising, everybody thinks they're just going to go and set up campaigns and they can understand the process and their return on ad spend is going to be huge. No, it takes, it's just like on Google paid SEM, don't get illusion that all of a sudden this is different. It's not, it takes at least 60 to 90 days to go figure out where the traffic is and what conversion rate you can get. Those are just a few. There's logistical mistakes that people make non-stop. It just depends if you are the only human in the world selling your product chase in this scenario or do you sell it to other people? Which one is it Chase? - I would say most of our listeners are manufacturing their own products. - So there's some logistical things you want on the back and when you ship to Amazon and they're fulfilled by Amazon and their network, they call them fulfillment networks. That you got to do the right way when you set it up. Okay, here's a big one. Here's a huge one. Oh my God, I should have led with this. I'm buried the lead. Get UPC codes and unfortunately we all have to just bow down to one of the greatest monopolies mafia systems in the entire world called GS1. You have, I call the UPCs. Now people can buy and this happens to us all the time. They buy recycled GS1 registered UPC codes 'cause they're a lot cheaper from sellers out there, resellers? No, no, don't do it. Because you'll have error. You won't be able to list your product. So I call them fresh babies. You got to go to GS1. It's expensive. I could go on a 17 minute rant of how I think they're the spawn of all evil. But the reality is not only Amazon, if you want to go sell any major, even regional retailer in the United States of America and now it's getting to Europe or anywhere in the world, you have to go buy GS1 registered fresh babies UPCs. - How's that not a monopoly? - It is a monopoly. It's 100% a monopoly and then nobody talks about by the way. - Well, we're talking about it here. - We are because it drives me crazy because it's expensive. And then you buy a yearly deal on top of the UPCs you buy. You die a yearly thing and then you can't let them expire. If they expire, which is one of my favorite advertising commercials of progressive or whatever, expire it. Then you go into relapse and all of a sudden the codes aren't good. And then you're like, oh, I got a new product. Here's my UPC, I already did it. You go boom, you try to load it and it's like air, air, air out. It's, it's, I am maddening. So don't do it. I got a customer right now and a peril customer client. Who tried to buy him and he bought recycled UPCs and I can't do anything with them. - And then re-tagging all your products as a nightmare to do it right the first time is what you're saying. - Exactly. Do it right. And I want to pay in the ass, believe me. It's expensive, all these other things. I get it. I feel your pain. But if you don't do it right the first time, it's gonna cause all kinds of nightmares leading up to it. - I'm gonna have you back on the show. We're gonna talk about buy with Prime in depth in a couple of months here, but before you go, if people are picking up what you're putting down, they want to chat with you about Amazon. Where, where should they go? What should they do? - You go, go to me on the link chase on the LinkedIn. I call it the link, you know, I'm cool like that. No, I'm so obnoxious. LinkedIn, yes, you can find me there. Always off brand, you can find me there and go to quickfirenow.com, quickfirenow.com. And you can get in touch with us there. And we do full, we do a lot of things, we do full digital. So we do paid SEM, Google, you know, all that, paid social. We do influencer management, creator management. We do the whole thing, which is really important. I will leave you with this, Chase. If you just think you got a great business and you figured out the deal on a D2C business, super duper, like super duper, that is killer. But all these other search funnels, all these other platforms are even more important today to having a good Amazon business than they've ever been before. - Oh, absolutely. And something that I tell everyone, I don't know anything about Amazon and Amazon is a completely different monster than your own direct consumer experience, like Shopify ecosystem. It's, there are two different beasts and you need two different people or teams to kind of be in charge of them. You know, sure there are unicorns, but they're rare. You probably need to be realistic and hire smart people for those different types of businesses. - If you want an old, crusty, jaded veteran, call me. - And we'll leave it with that. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show today. - Thanks for having me, Chase. - We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own businesses. You can find all the links to the show notes. You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestycomers.co to get each episode delivered right into your inbox. If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes that really helps us out. Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help you get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to electriceye@electriceye.io/connect. Until next time.
On this bonus episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Scott Ohsman. Scott is the VP of Digital Commerce at Quickfire and Co-Host of the Always Off Brand podcast.
We talk about supporting small brands in a tough market, recognizing signs to branch into Amazon, pushing organic content to stay competitive, and so much more!
