Looked at something that I thought was

just fascinating is that profitability,

because Prime Day just really just kind

of crushed me this year with everything

that went on. I actually made more

money in August than I did in July.

Are you frustrated with growth on Amazon?

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Well, hello and welcome to another edition

of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce,

and today we're going deep on Amazon.

How is Amazon trending in 2025?

We'll unpack a little bit of Prime

day from the context of what did we

learn then that we can apply to Q4.

Amazon has always been a wild

ride and this year is maybe

wilder than most.

And so we want to give you what you

need to be to crush holiday sales.

And so my guest today is Brandon

Fuhrmann and he is the co-founder of

Innovate. Used to be Amazon Innovate.

If you've heard of that event

or seen that event in the past,

my buddy Sean Frank from The Ridge says

it's the best Amazon show He attends.

Brandon Young, also confirms that,

and so high praise from two powerhouse

individuals in the D two C and Amazon

space. And so going to talk

about the show a little bit,

but Brandon is also,

he's been a top seller

on Amazon for 12 years.

So either a seven or eight figure

seller essentially the whole time in an

extremely competitive

category, kitchenware,

which most people have just

dropped out of that category,

it's deeming it too hard, and

so he's got lots of wisdom.

Excited to unpack this one with that.

Brandon, welcome to the show, man.

And how's it going?

It's going good. Good to be

here. You mentioned 12 years.

It seems like it's like a hundred

years in Amazon years, but yeah.

Yeah, totally.

I think we can definitely count

digital marketing or or Amazon years.

They should feel like dog years

or be calculated the same way

because yeah, if you've been doing this

for longer than three or four years,

you're sort of a veteran, right?

You've been doing it for 12. Dang,

I can't even believe it myself.

Know the game. Yeah, for sure.

And so we love the Amazon game.

We built a full service Amazon department

inside of OMG starting back in 2016,

and so kind of fell in love with

Amazon. Love Hate though, right?

It's such an opportunity.

There's such madness there as well.

And we'll get into things like fees and

how those are going to continue to go up

in Q4 and talk about some weirdness around

Prime day and what we can expect from

that.

But obviously with Amazon

at 50% of all e-commerce and

growing can't ignore it. Got to

have a good strategy there. Good T,

just good execution plan.

And so we'll dive in,

but I guess let's start with Prime Day

because it's always a bit of a bellwether

of what is holiday going to look like

and of course we'll have the fall prime

day probably. And curious, and actually,

have you heard anything about the fall

prime day as in terms of when that's

going to be or what that's

going to look like this.

Year? I've heard a couple of rumors,

but I don't really want to say because

I'll say it and then by the time this

comes out they'll have announced

it and I'll be dead wrong.

But.

Something is coming there sometime.

Yeah, I think is a great way to put it.

But even the early prime day, the

July prime day, the OG prime day,

it's somewhat of a bellwether for holiday.

And so let's talk about that a little bit.

It was a four day event for the first

time. Last year was a two day event.

It's been a one day event in the past

because it was an extended event,

you didn't have the same urgency

as years passed, day one, day two.

This year globally

we're down 40% in sales.

We saw that across a lot of

our clients. We decided, hey,

if we're going to do a

year over year comparison,

we need to look at the two days of

prime day plus the two days after,

because you can't compare four

days of sales to two days of sales.

That's an unfair comparison, but

overall, it was a decent prime day.

A lot of our clients were up. It

didn't feel quite the same as normal.

And I know you kind of

echoed that as well,

that it was not the biggest

prime day you've had.

And so unpack that a little bit.

What was Prime Day in general,

and then where did you see the

biggest drop off or the biggest change

related to Prime Day?

So I've been doing Prime Day for

a long time. I sell kitchenware.

And kitchenware is usually great on Prime

Day because I feel like there's a lot

of people who are just like,

I want to buy something,

but I don't really know what it is,

but I know I want something because

deals and then kitchenware kind of slots

into that perfectly because it's like

everyone could always use something for

their kitchen.

So I feel like I've always

benefited in years past from that

mindset and from the urgency that takes

place during the two day prime day.

I've woken up one of the

first years of Prime Day.

I woke up at five o'clock in the morning

and this is before they had cookies or

anything,

and I went to amazon.com and my product

was literally sitting on the front page

of amazon.com and I sold out of every

unit I had by 6:00 AM Eastern Time,

not even PSD. So I've.

Been through my part of the

country, aren't even awake yet.

And you're.

Done.

So I've been through a lot with that

and I've seen that happen in years

past, and a couple of things

definitely affect that one.

Obviously the four day Prime day led

to a lot less urgency when you have

that kind of, people were just

taking their time, waiting for deals,

kind of thinking about it,

not sure what they wanted,

and it really changed the products that

sold compared to years past when you had

that urgency, it kind of put

a little pressure on there.

The other thing that changed is if

you were running a prime day deal,

like a lightning deal essentially,

you used to be able to

adjust the quantity on that,

so you could kind of sit there and

create a full scarcity as the deal was

running and people would

just start running away with

it because they thought it

was like 90%, you can't do that anymore.

So a lot of that urgency

was also taken away.

Does that mean, and so

since that went away,

does Amazon just show all of your

inventory or did they just take.

That You could either choose a finite

amount or use all your inventory.

All your inventory basically means that

there's not going to be any bar at all.

So there's not even a

little bit of scarcity.

And the finite amount is you could

sell out immediately and then be done,

or you could not do too much and then be

at 1% for the entire day and look like

you have the worst product

that no one's interested in.

So it's a really fine line with how you

set that and how you prepare for that.

So I think that with that,

a lot of that kind of changed how people

responded to Prime Day and how products

were sold during Prime Day.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And

just a quick note on the urgency piece.

I know you're into events and we'll

talk about innovate in a little bit,

but we see small events and you think

through webinars and things like that,

and you always want to make it where

this is super easy to say yes to,

where if I look at it, I'm like, I

don't really have to think about it.

I want to say yes to this,

but also where there's not enough time

for you to be comfortable coming back

to it.

And I think that's potentially the

chord that was not struck with a four

day prime day where it's like, okay,

fairly easy to say yes to this deal.

It's a pretty good deal,

but I've got time and what if I find

something better and what if I Right,

exactly. There was a lot of, it was

just enough hesitation, right? Yeah.

So I'll be really curious to see

will Amazon shift this next year?

What will they do for fall?

I think fall was Prime week last week

or something like that, or last year.

And so I'd be really, really

curious to see what they do next.

The other thing that changed too is

how they were calculating discounts and

factoring them in,

and they were using coupons in last 30

day prices and they made it that it was

an extremely complicated

number to fill out.

And also because of when Prime Day fell,

those numbers reset on Prime Day.

So it was kind of crazy if you

have a certain price within

the 30 days, but it wasn't 30 days before,

you might get flagged and your deal

might not be running on Prime Day.

So there was a lot of

weirdness where it was like,

I don't even understand

how they calculated it.

I'm sure I feel like people at Amazon

don't even know how they calculated it,

but some of the prices for my products

were so bizarrely low that I couldn't

really do anything or so

bizarrely high that it was like,

this isn't really a deal,

but that's what they wanted.

So I feel like that was a really kind

of interesting wrinkle in it as well.

And again, that's an area where you

don't have a ton of control over that,

where Amazon says this is the base price,

I guess you have control

over your discount,

but do you have to set the discount before

you see what they're going to approve

as the base price?

Yeah,

I mean you set the discount and then

they'll come back and just flag it and not

let the discount run. Depending on there's

15 different discounts you could run.

You use the prime exclusive discount

or whatever they're calling it now.

I think they changed the name again,

but all those different discounts and

then they don't tell you exactly what's

running or not until it actually,

the system automatically

flags it for whatever reason.

But they usually do that on Mondays or so,

and then we were already kind of

going by then, so it's like, yeah,

it's tough to figure that out and tough

to figure out what's working and what's

not, so.

Yeah. Got it. I know,

and so related to that,

you were telling me kind of offline

Lightning deals, those were impacted,

and I know a huge, huge part of this.

That's kind of how you sold

out so early in years past,

but how have Lightning deals

changed and any additional

points to add to that?

So in addition to how

they calculate quantity,

it seemed like the way they were being

displayed on the front end also was

similar to how Prime exclusive

discounts were being displayed.

It didn't seem like there was really

much additional marketing being done to

them. They kind of got lost

in the shuffle. That seemed

kind of the same thing.

And to me,

it feels like I wasted a thousand

dollars a deal compared to years past.

Because you got to pay for that deal

regardless of how much you sell.

That's right. You got to pay to be.

Yeah, exactly. And end of your

discounts. A year ago prior,

I sold 5,000 units of one of my

products where it was like, heck,

I would take that chance every day

course. So it was like a no brainer to me,

but it just, nothing really took

off. Nothing really happened.

So it just seemed like it just had a

different level of marketing than what

maybe they had done in the past.

So they paid a thousand dollars

to get the Lightning deal

this year. You both

had the quantity issue,

how many units you consider are eligible

for? You have the pricing issue,

so maybe it ends up not looking as

much of a deal and then they're maybe

not promoting it as well either.

Do you think that just applied to

potentially your deal or your category,

or did it seem like globally lending

just didn't get the same traction.

It seemed globally? I heard

this in a lot of sellers,

and I think for some, at least the four

days may have played an aspect to it.

Again, if there was no scarcity

as well, then people just don't,

and they literally removed every

possibility of scarcity from Prime Day.

Which just seems really

silly to me. Amazon is smart.

They're brilliant retailers,

not a better retailer on the plane

except for maybe Walmart or something.

But yeah, it seems like they maybe missed

it. So here's an important question.

Based on that information,

what are you going to

do differently in Q4?

What are you potentially going

to do differently next Prime Day?

That's a long ways away. Things could

shift. Again, they will shift, I'm sure,

but what lessons are you taking

from this? You're applying to.

Holiday? Yeah, well, so there's two.

First of all, we have the fall prime day,

and that's the next thing to get ready

for. So the lessons that I'm taking,

so first of all,

I've looked at something that I

thought was just fascinating is that

profitability,

because Prime Day just really just kind

of crushed me this year with everything

that went on. I actually made more

money in August than I did in July way,

which shouldn't happen.

Which should not.

Happen. No, but it did.

So I think with the fall prime day,

there's a couple of factors

that definitely you need

to take into consideration.

So first of all is the storage

fees are already in effect.

So you have the Q4 storage fees,

which are like four x normal storage

fees and selling in kitchenware.

I'm selling items where I sell a lot

of items that are at a relatively low

price. If you're selling a $400 item,

maybe you don't care that

much about Q4 storage fees,

but for me that's a huge deal.

So it's very hard to bring

in extra inventory for that

prime date. So for me.

That's another way that's going to chip

away at your profits if you get that

quantity wrong.

Yeah, exactly. So to me, I think I'm

bringing in the inventory I want for Q4.

I always overestimate,

especially with Chinese New Year

coming in shortly thereafter,

it's okay for me to have a

couple extra months of inventory.

So if I have stuff and I know

that I've got a good amount in FBA

and I know the pricing is good,

those are the products I'm

probably going to be discounting,

knowing I can probably get the rest of

the inventory in time for Black Friday,

cyber Monday.

So that's kind of where I'm going to

probably start looking at discounts is

actually discounting products that I have

a good amount of inventory and that I

could actually use to reduce

storage fees leading into Q4.

So that's definitely the first

way I'm probably looking at it.

The second is really sitting down

and drilling down and understanding

how they're going to be marketing each

of the different deals and coupons

and discounts because there was so many

different ones going on that it was kind

of difficult to really understanding

and kind of get confused by.

So I'm going to accelerate in a couple

of weeks, which is a great conference,

but great show. Great. It's amazing on.

Seattle. Love.

It.

But that's one of the things I really

want to discuss with the people there is

try to understand how they're promoting

these and how they're viewing each of

these different kinds

of deals. From our end,

we kind of get lost in the shuffle.

Yeah, totally. Totally makes sense.

Are you still going to lean into the

same kind of lightning deals or do you

think your deal strategy might shift.

A little bit? It might shift. I think

it's going to be a game time decision,

but it's definitely going to

shift as far as right now,

it's going to shift away quite a

bit. I still might run one or two,

but I'll probably just go with the prime

exclusive discounts and maybe a couple

of other things and call it a day.

People have been talking against Lightning

deals for years and how they don't

work for them, but they'd always work

for me until now. So I believe in

verifying with my own data instead of

trusting random people that I know or

friends or whatever, different. Every

category is different, but yeah,

I'm going to definitely move

away from that for the most part,

but keep probably a couple

just in case. I also,

I'm kind of viewing it as a bellwether

for Black Friday Cyber Monday,

which is obviously going

to be a lot more sales,

and it's kind of like they've

got between July and October,

they've got three months

to get things together,

figure out what they want to do,

but I can kind of test some things and

see how they're going to work maybe for

Black Friday,

cyber Monday and use that as to figure

out how I'm going to plan for that

instead of just not testing anything.

So probably run a little

bit of everything.

Totally. Yeah, I think that's a real

advantage of the October Prime days.

Run some tests, experiments a little bit,

then that's going to maybe inform

your Cyber five strategy even more

than T 12 or.

Whatever it was last year. What's that?

It was like T 12 last year, right?

It was.

Yeah. Yeah.

Totally.

So we'll see.

I mean that kind of the trend and

we saw four day Prime day this year,

so probably won't see

the Cyber five or the

Turkey T five, whatever this T 15.

I mean I don't dunno how more you can

expand it. Keep going. Exactly, exactly.

Any callouts on the way

you guys approached ads

during Prime or any shifts you expect

this year or what you're hearing from your

community? I know my ads team,

they're very active and

obviously CPCs rise 20,

30% got to pay on the category

during these prime windows and

usually worth it because conversion rate

goes up in step with that or conversion

rate goes up more. But any changes

for you on your ad strategy?

Anything not you're expecting there.

Too far? The only thing that

we do differently is that

we always will try to start increasing

it leading up to prime day to kind of

really get a foothold and start

preparing and just start increasing

it and getting maybe some little

better rankings here or there because

sometimes, especially in July,

sales are not at their peak,

whereas those two days can be quite a

bit of extra sales and get extra ranking

that could last for a

month or so. So yeah,

we'll do some extra promotion

on the ads leading up to it.

But other than that we don't really,

I don't think there's anything we're

planning on changing, but again,

it's a ways away at this point for.

Yeah, yeah. Although we'll be

here before we know it for sure.

Let's kind of double

click a little bit on,

you talked about storage fees and other

fees and stuff. Can you talk about what,

and those fees, some of those

fees are going up four X for q4.

Can you talk about all the

fees and costs that you're

considering and what's shifting and

then what you're doing about it?

So there's so many different fees

at this point. When I first started,

there was a couple fees and you

just had to kind of look at them.

Now when I look at my seller board

report, there's, I don't know, 15,

20 different fees and you can't

even really trace back half of them

your transaction report. You

can barely see what they're for.

So it's really important to really

manage every fee as best possible.

It's like death by a thousand cuts.

And something that I always want

to impress on people is that

if you're making, I'm just using a number,

a hundred dollars a day

and then there's a $5 fee,

you might be like, oh, $5 isn't that much,

but that's 5% of your total profit.

Your profit has gone down considerably

based on something that's relatively

small and you get a bunch of those and

suddenly a hundred dollars turns into $73

or $52 or whatever that number is. And

that's maybe most of your margin, right?

Exactly. Or all of it.

And so some of what I've been doing too

is kind of digging back and looking at

each month and being like, okay,

what's going on? What can we change?

Where do we lose what's happening here?

And trying to see if there's

any bleeding that we can cut,

anything that we can change and trying

to factor in all those ghost fees into

your profitability of each product.

And none of the profitability softwares

really do this perfectly because there's

a lot of global fees and things

that they might factor in globally,

but not to each product, but

really trying to figure out, okay,

is this product really profitable or is

it just kind of ghost profitable because

I'm getting charged this

much in storage fees,

but this much at a WD for this

and we've paid this extra for

whatever it is.

There's so many different things that it

can be that really trying to make sure

that I understand where the money's

actually coming from and building in extra

margin almost in a way

to take care of that.

I know I also am not going to be perfect

at calculating that. So if I want,

I dunno, 15% margin, then

I should really aim for 17.

To give yourself a little bit of buffer

because you may not have calculated the

fees correctly, there may be some

extra fees come in, things like.

That. Yeah.

So a couple things to note there.

So you mentioned none of the

softwares calculated perfectly,

maybe a global fees and not each

individual SKUs fees or as fees.

Any recommendations there though?

Are there any software tools that

you do recommend or are you mostly

doing this by hand with spreadsheets

and digging into Seller Central.

And things like that? Yeah,

so I use seller board,

which gets me like 90% of the way there

and they tend to report the fees as

far as I can tell. I mean there's so many,

I might be missing one and

I probably would never know,

but that seems like they're reporting

all the fees in their backend. But again,

some of them are globally,

so I'll kind of look in and look at let's

say long-term storage fees and look at

else everything that I might be charged

as a fee and kind of making sure that's

being broken down properly and being

added to the bottom line for each product

as well. Got it.

There's always a couple that

don't really get moved in.

Like a WD fees for example is a really

good one that doesn't really get factored

in properly in there. So if

I'm paying for storage there,

I'm not paying FBA storage,

but I'm still paying a decent

amount in storage as well.

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And so then what are the levers that

you can pull to improve profitability?

I know you can look at

that and then raise prices,

and that's probably the clearest,

simplest things to do, thing to do,

but that can impact philosophy and sales

and conversion rate, things like that.

But what are you changing

based on this data?

And then if you've got any specific

wins that you've seen lately and you can

speak in generalities, that'd be great.

So there's a bunch of different ways.

Every fee is a lever you can

pull to improve profitability.

So you could store less inventory

and kind of not keep as much.

That's definitely a lever, right?

That'll definitely move the needle.

Probably the biggest is probably a. And.

With that, are you just

looking then for hey,

these are the ASINs or these are the

skews that we've just got too much

inventory in and so you're looking at

velocity and stuff and running those

calculations and maybe

your software helps with.

That? Yeah, for sure. Trying to

just get better at that, right?

That's certainly a way, I mean if you're

paying, I don't know, let's just say,

I don't know, a thousand

dollars a month in storage fees,

if you can get 10% better,

maybe you'll be paying $900 a month and

that's a thousand dollars a year that

you're going to save. So even

just little wins like that,

10% better at something can really

yield big results over the long term.

So it used to be that you could just be

pretty good at an Amazon and figuring

out what you're doing,

but now you've got to be really digging

in and really every little bit counts

and you try not to make one

wrong move. So that's one thing.

Another thing is I use a WD quite a bit.

Some people will send their

inventory directly into FBA,

but then you've got to pay the inbound

placement fees and you're paying those

storage fees on that.

If you're sending it into a WD,

they will drip in that inventory.

So you might end up saving

significantly there on FBA fees,

and even if you're storing it at three pl,

you'll still have to pay those placement

fees unless you're shipping it to five

locations, which is kind of crazy.

So there's different ways to work with

inventory like that that'll definitely

help yield results.

So I've definitely done some work there

in repositioning how I do some of that.

The biggest is probably the ad spend

though really realistically that's the

biggest lever outside of price or

anything like that or so that's definitely

something I've worked to

cut down a bit. Totally.

Where are you paying too much? Exactly?

Where do you have wasted ad spend?

What's not leading to either overall

lift or direct conversions? And yeah,

that is a, look, I'm a huge ad fan.

I think it drives

velocity drives rankings.

You almost can't succeed

depending on the category.

Almost can't succeed without

it on Amazon, but man,

is it an area for waste as well.

So that's definitely a spot

you got to be looking at.

And.

Watching closely, especially in q4.

Exactly, exactly.

And I've went through my tacos

and it was just like, okay,

my total a cost how much I'm spending

per dollar. And I was just like, okay,

I've got to cut this down a

bit. I have to, I'm sorry.

And I cut each one a little

bit and I didn't sell as much,

but I got more profitable and that's

okay, right? So little wins like that.

It's not about top lines about how much

you keep, and so you've got to maximize.

Profits for sure. So that's

definitely another thing I've done.

And then another thing that's a couple

of things that are kind of underrated is

one,

obviously if you've never audited your

packaging is trying to make sure that you

fit within Amazon's guidelines,

that if they say that they charge $4

and 83 cents for something that's this

size,

don't be a 10th of an inch over it because

you're going to pay the next level.

If you can get that down, even

if the packaging costs more,

even if they got a packet tighter,

even if you've got to vacuum seal it,

whatever it is, that's going to save

you significant money on each one.

So that's definitely a big piece there.

Another one is just really updating

your images and making them look nicer,

just trying to improve conversion

rate. If you're converting better,

your ads are going to cost less.

You can maybe charge more money.

So probably every two years it seems

like I go back to the well and completely

redo my entire lineup, like little

by little technology change,

graphics designers change,

and you can kind of eke out some

pretty decent success that way.

And you'll be surprised sometimes how

much a product may take off by a new main

image.

Yeah, it is such an interesting point,

and it really is looking at all

the component parts of success on

Amazon and even looking at if I can

get 1% better in some of these areas

exactly, or 10% better maybe in

some of these areas, those do stack.

And it's one of those

things where if you find,

let's call it a 10% improvement

in a handful of key areas,

That may end up being a 30% lift,

a 40% lift in overall performance

or overall profits. And so yeah,

you've got to look at that and yeah,

we can't just rely on Q4

conversion rates, lifting,

rising all ships, and we benefit

from that. It's going to happen,

but what can you do to create

outsize gains there? Exactly.

And so even simple things like images, a

buddy of mine always talked about, Hey,

I want to craft my images

on my ASIN so that if that's

all someone saw, so remove the

copy, remove everything else,

all they saw was the

images and the videos,

that'd be enough for them to

convert. And if you can do that,

then your listing is in a pretty good

spot if you can't upgrade those images and

look for improvements there.

That's a great point. That's

a really good idea for sure.

Cool.

And then I know a few other things

you mentioned when we were prepping is

removal fees, reimbursement fees

being reduced, things like that,

and any callouts there on some

of those feed some of those fees?

I mean, nothing I can really

say to help with that.

I mean obviously three reimbursement

portal you can of update your prices and

try to get a better price and

get more money returned to you,

but there's not really

anything you can do about that.

The other fee is the returns is if you

can do anything to cut down on your

return rate as well.

So I always will take my reviews

and return reasons and put them into

chat GT and kind of be like,

summarize this, what should I do?

And try to figure out if there's anything

that patterns that might be missing or

anything that I could change

might help reduce return rate.

Super smart. So it was

funny, someone had said,

put into chat GPT and asked them things

about myself that I don't know or what I

should be doing with myself

or something like that.

And it gave this whole thing

and it was like, by the way,

you should upgrade the metal in your

product. People are complaining,

do it already or something. And it was

like interesting. Wow. And I was like,

wow, that's some tough love.

But it's one of those things where the AI

Is just looking at the data and doing

recommendation based on the data.

It's maybe saying things that

a human might not say exactly.

And so really valuable there. And so yeah,

you got to look at that

feedback. And again,

that's another piece is you've got

this amazing feedback loop if you close

the loop, if not,

it's just feedback that's floating

around and you do nothing with it.

So you got to take that, apply that to

changes and improvements in the product.

So yeah,

I mean the return reducing the

return rate makes such a difference

in so many ways. You got extra

fees there, you got shipping costs,

things like that. If your

delivery rate is too high,

that impacts ranking and a number of

other things. So yeah, get on that.

That's definitely time well spent.

Want to transition to a couple

other really key points.

I know we talked about offline,

the competitive landscape is shifting

with Chinese sellers getting better at

quality listings and things.

We talked a little bit about AI

and some of the changes there,

so I want to get into that too.

But let's talk about the competitive

landscape and particularly

Chinese sellers, they seem

to have up their game.

What can you tell us about that?

Yeah, I mean they're using the

same AI tools that we're all using,

so suddenly the listings have

much better English on them,

have much better English

copy on the product images.

The images are looking nicer.

So a lot of the branding advantages

and language advantages that I think US

sellers had or English based sellers had

have kind of gone away and it's kind of

a much more level playing

field in that regard.

And a lot of times they're able to price

products cheaper and get better deals

on them. So it's become a really much

more difficult landscape in that regard.

I think especially in my category, which

is really just a tough one for that.

It used to be.

Mostly a price issue where Chinese

sellers would come and just undercut

everybody else,

but it looked a little janky and then the

listings were not great and stuff like

that. Now that's improving.

Now we got a real problem here with

lower prices and comparable listing.

So what are you doing to combat that?

Any recommendations or any insights there?

Like I said,

I redo my main images and really

I say every two years or so,

I bring everything down to the studs

basically and start over again and kind of

redo the best I can.

Whatever your listing was in

2023 is not necessarily going to

convert the same way in 2025.

The competition is different,

the pricing is different.

And so I feel like every two years

or so I'm really restarting again and

looking for what my competitive

advantages are and what can I can promote,

what I can press, what I

can charge, and it changes.

So that's really all I can do is really

try to push those levers and make that

work.

And that that's really the

game forever, isn't it?

Where we're looking for the next

innovation, the next product enhancement,

the next optimization meaning

better merchandising, better images,

things like that, and how can we

stay ahead of the competition?

Because certainly if you make

those changes and they work,

your competition's going to copy you

and then you have to be looking for the

next thing and feels exhausting, seems

exhausting, but that's just the game.

That's the retail game, that's

the Amazon game for sure.

And the speed is pretty quick

there, but got to be reinventing,

got to be optimizing on the

ongoing and so makes a ton of

sense there.

What about AI and what

are you doing specifically

using AI to give yourself an advantage?

So yeah,

I guess a couple of things I've been

doing is I've been playing with AI I just

mentioned in terms of

analyzing large bits of data.

That's definitely been helpful.

I'll take it and I'll compare SQP reports

over different periods and kind of

try to gather where maybe I've

increased, maybe I've decreased,

maybe I'm missing something there.

S QP reports for those that DONA.

Search query performance reports in

brand analytics I guess within Seller

Central and that will show you what

keywords you're ranking for and what

keywords you're actually

making actual sales for.

It's really the best

place to find that, right?

But it's easy to kind of miss something

in that report if you're comparing a lot

of different time periods or are just

different time periods in general where

it's kind of tough to see

all that data side by side.

So I will go in sometimes and

compare several of those and have it

put together reports for

me where it's like, okay,

I noticed in January you sold 32 items

on this term, but now you've sold eight.

And then you go, okay, well that's

the problem. I got to fix that. Right?

It's a problem.

Totally.

So being able to actually.

Segment, add an issue, it's a ranking

issue, it's some kind of issue there.

But being able to segment

exactly what's going on,

which keywords are actually

the problem is huge.

So I've definitely been using it for that.

I've also been using it

to iterate on images.

So I think I was telling you before

about this nano banana or whatever,

I hope I'm not even saying.

It correctly. Yeah, Gemini.

From Google,

but it's been really great to play

around with images and telling it to make

boxes or text or whatever.

And that's a really great way to me

it seems like it gets like 85% of

the way there, 90%. And then I can send

it to a graphic designer and be like,

just make this good, but I've

done most of the work already.

That's all need.

So it's a lot less work for them and

I can kind of get it to where I want.

And way easier than you trying

to sketch it out or using

Google Docs or something

to annotate something.

You can create it using Gemini

and now you're much closer in

your designer. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. So that's definitely

a big thing that I've been doing.

And then also sometimes when it comes

to writing texts with keywords in

them,

AI has been pretty good at making it look

nicer and not look as keyword stuffed

as it might be. Right.

Yeah. And curious, what are you using

there? Using chat gt, using clawed,

using something.

Else? Pretty much just chat GPT.

Yeah. Yeah,

I think all the tools have their benefits

and as an agency we're probably using

chat GPT the most for a lot of things,

but I do love Gemini for research

as we're pitching a new deal or I'm

researching a new category or whatever.

Or if I really am leaning into something

search based a lot, I'll use Gemini.

And then for me, anything

that's copy based,

so all the copy that I pull in from

show notes and stuff for the pod,

I think Claude is the best, but

there's reasons to use all of them.

So just curious what you

were leaning into there.

Yeah.

So what about the impact of rufuss?

So now looking at the AI that Amazon

is using, what impact have you seen?

What are you shifting in terms of

strategy or tactics because of rufuss,

if anything?

So I'm not really shifting

any strategies per se.

I guess the only thing I would say is

Rufuss makes suggestions, questions,

or data that it's kind of,

do you want to know if this is

cotton for a t-shirt or something?

So I'll just make sure that my backend

is filled with answers to those questions

that maybe we will address

those questions. So I know

that they're asking them,

especially if they're on competitors

listings where I can see what questions

they're asking about them.

Then maybe I want to make sure

they're asking them about me.

Maybe there's some kind of disconnect

in how it's interpreting the data.

But other than that, I haven't really

changed that much. I don't see a ton

of what customers are doing with it.

But yeah, I mean I'm sure it's coming,

but it's kind of tough to reconcile that

with the standard search and then how

to do that.

Yeah, it makes sense. How are you finding,

are you just visiting your listing,

visiting your competitors'

listings, playing with Rufuss,

seeing what the questions are and

what it's surfacing and then making

adjustments there? Are there

any tools you're using?

Any specific recommendations.

There? Yeah, so what was the tool's

name? I completely forgot the tool.

We talked about it last.

Time, me later, we'll put it in the show.

So theres a tool,

a seller release that I thought was really

cool that would actually extract all

the rufuss questions in one place for

you. I don't remember what it's called,

but I'll find it and I would like to use

it. I would like to say I have used it,

but I haven't yet. But yeah,

it seems like a really great opportunity

to get those all really quickly and be

able to address those as best you can.

Yeah, cool. But I think

it also makes sense,

something you should be doing anyway is

shopping your own listings and looking

at your competitor listings and seeing

what's surfaced from roof is there,

and then making adjustments

accordingly. So makes a lot of sense.

Anything else I want to make

sure we talk about Innovate,

which is an amazing show in New

York City coming up here quickly.

Anything else you would note

in terms of what's shifting,

what's changing and what

you're doing to prep for q4?

Yeah,

I think the only other thing that I

kind of haven't mentioned is I mentioned

some of the inventory strategy,

but I think really looking at a WD,

I know it did not go so well last Q4,

but I feel like they'll probably do a lot

better this Q4 and kind of making sure

I've got a good amount

of inventory with them.

It's going to make it easier to get

things into Amazon when things might be

tight, especially during the middle.

Can you maybe just explain, I

think we're familiar with that,

but how does that work and

how, when are you using it?

Yeah, so it's basically like a warehouse.

They call FBA fulfillment center.

So this is more of a warehouse,

so you can use this to ship to

pretty much anywhere like case packs.

You're not going to ship individual units,

but they make it so that you can ship

into Amazon relatively affordably.

You don't have to pay inbound

placement fees, you just have to pay,

I think it's a dollar 70 a box plus

whatever the shipping charge is.

So it actually ends up being relatively

economical to book those Amazon.

And then Amazon will also

have it on auto replenishment,

so it'll actually drip in as

it sees fit too. So for me,

most of the year,

it makes it really easy if I have stuff

in a WD where I don't have to think

about inventory planning as much

because I know the inventory is kind of

dripping in. Maybe I'll think about

it from an ordering perspective,

but not like a what's in FBA perspective.

But in Q4 I've manage it definitely a

lot more head on because moments can

change thousands of units,

but when it comes to booking

appointments and getting a

truck,

you might not be able to get that truck

in Q4 and a WD will just seamlessly send

it. I'm not saying it's going to perfect.

I'm not saying it's going

to be great necessarily,

but it's another tool where you can

get your inventory in that might beat a

truck potentially as well.

Great, great. Totally makes sense. Love

that. Well, tell us about Innovate.

Like I said, some trusted friends of mine,

some leading influencers in the space,

say Innovate's one of the best.

I'm speaking there this year.

I'm really stoked about that.

I can't wait to hang in New

York with you and your team,

but tell us about Innovate. Why is it

so special? What's going down this year?

Why should top sellers plan to attend?

Yeah, so this is our seventh year, which

is, I can't even believe I'm saying it.

What makes our show special I guess is

a couple things is one, first of all,

the show started completely

organically. It started up as a meetup,

but seven or eight years ago for people

just trying to learn how to sell online.

And I was one of them.

My partner Jared started it and

I started running it with him.

And then at some point it

just kept growing and growing

and growing in New York

City and we decided to put on a conference

and we had a little basement for a

hundred people and cut to today,

this is our seventh one and we're going

to have over 700 people this year.

And it's just grown to be

this massive, massive event.

Something that I think really sets

us apart is a lot of these shows or

events are put on by either event

companies or service providers or people

who just don't really know who they want

to get to speak at the event where for

us, we know we have a lot of friends,

we have a lot of connections,

and we're able to get really

the people that we want to see,

speak and get them to talk about the

things we want to see them talk about. So

we're all sellers and we're just like,

Hey, we're interested in TikTok, great,

let's get someone to talk about TikTok.

We're interested in branding, great,

we'll get someone to talk about

branding, whatever we're interested in,

whatever the hot topic is to us,

we're going to get the experts

to come talk about that.

And we're going to get mostly actual

operators and not as much service

providers to talk. People are

actually doing it themselves.

Running these businesses will tell you

about what they're doing specifically,

I'll say, and we get all different kinds.

So some people will get the

aspirational guys who are doing a

billion dollars and we've

got a couple of those,

but then some of the people doing five

to 10 million are really in the weeds and

they've got great things to offer too.

So we try to get a really good mix of

platforms and people that are really doing

different things just exceptionally

well and getting them to talk and share

their secrets where they

may not normally do. So.

You can generally tell an event

that is run by just an event

company where their primary goal

is how do we profit from this

event? And obviously if you run an event,

you want to turn a profit, but goal,

I.

Wish that was my primary goal. What's

that? I wish that was my primary goal.

But for you guys,

it's like what do I want to learn and

what is going to give me an edge in the

coming months and coming

year for my brand?

And so this is put on by

sellers, run by sellers,

curated by sellers,

and these are just hot topics.

And even the occasional service

provider like myself, when we come in,

it's still like, Hey, this

is what sellers want to know.

And I'm still in the weeds on a lot of

things, so can provide those insights.

But yeah, it's just been,

it's received top marks from

so many people that I trust

that I think you got to

make it a must attend event. And

also the venue is cool, right?

I love New York City. Of course.

Did you guys on one of the

P Pier 67 or something.

Like that? Yeah, it's amazing venue.

It's right on the water and

it overlooks the Hudson River.

And last year we opened the windows and

just get this beautiful breeze coming

in. It was really spectacular.

The food is great.

We've done this for seven years.

This is the first time we were doing a

venue three years in a row because we

just loved it so much that it was

like, we got to keep doing this here.

So it's a great venue.

And something else too for us

is like the timing is important.

It's just before Q4 where there's

still time to make changes.

You might need to get involved

to get things together.

If it was a little bit later, it

could be problematic or earlier,

maybe it won't be the most

updated and advanced content,

but this is just before Q4 hits,

so you got time to really get things

together and have a perfect q4.

So the timing is strategic,

take advantage of it, Brandon,

where can people find out more

and where can they register?

So you can register at Innovate

Show, that's our website.

And you can see all of our speakers

that we have there, including of course,

Ezra Firestone, who's amazing, who

I'm super excited for as well as,

and I think I made that connection.

I don't want to take too much. Yes.

Absolutely, dude. He's legendary.

He's so good. I know you know that.

But for those that have not heard Ezra,

that's worth a trip to

see him live and in.

Person. Great. Absolutely. And

we've got a bunch of others too,

including Evan Dash, who's not

as known in the D two C space,

but literally runs the

Dash Home Appliances,

which is like a billion

dollar brand, just tremendous.

They're in every retailer.

And something that's really unique to

them is they've started within the last 10

years or so.

And I don't think there's

another kitchenware brand

out there that's ever done

anything like that recently.

So just some really amazing

people that I'm excited for.

And like I said,

I'm a seller and I get excited about

these people and what they're talking

about.

So I sit through most of the

sessions as best I can or watch them

after. But yeah, it's just

a great event. But yeah,

if you can visit Innovate show,

you can get a ticket and I'll drop

you a coupon if you want to put that

somewhere, if you want to.

Amazing. Yep, I'll put it

in the show notes as well.

And yeah, you can use that

coupon and register as well.

Innovate Show, be there. Can't wait

to hang out in New York City. Brandon,

how else can people follow you?

So are you active on socials,

you want to connect with people on

LinkedIn or Twitter or anything.

Like that? Yeah, you can find me on

any of the socials. I'm on LinkedIn,

I'm on Twitter. I don't really

post very much. I'm just that guy,

but I am there, so if you want to

connect, ask a question or whatever,

you can definitely find

me there. Yeah. But yeah,

I wouldn't expect too

many postings from me.

Keep those expectations low.

It's.

Quality, not quantity, but

It's brand Fuhrmann.

So it's F-U-H-R-M-A-N-N. Yes.

Two ads as you're searching on the socials

defined, Brandon. And so with that,

Brandon, this has been awesome and

thank you for dropping knowledge.

Thank you for the time and look

forward to seeing you in New York City

soon. Great. Thanks for having

me. Awesome. And as always,

thank you for tuning in.

We'd love to from you,

what would you like to hear more of on

the show? If you liked this episode,

if this was helpful for you,

please share this with someone

else who would benefit from it.

And if you've not left us or view

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And with that, until next

time, thank you for listening.

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