Worried it’s too late to start selling on Amazon? Chris Fryburger is about to destroy your self-doubts. Founder of nReach, a company that “matches” Amazon sellers to specialists, Chris understands the value of Amazon know-how.
Having lived through waves of innovation, Chris knows an opportunity when he sees it, and can’t stress enough the value of adding Amazon to your resume. So if you think the e-commerce ship has sailed…think again. In this episode of Entrepreneur Adventure, Chris puts the Amazon superpower into perspective. Stay tuned.
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Chris’s Background
Having spent years working for advertising agencies, Chris realized that despite Amazon’s growing market share, only a handful of agencies specialized in Amazon services. So Chris took his digital expertise and added Amazon to his job title.
Matchmaker In E-Commerce Heaven
When he first dove into Amazon, Chris noticed that the Amazon specialists that existed had varying degrees of legitimacy. So his agency vets Amazon services for you and matches you with the best possible specialist depending on your seller needs. Because hiring an agency is like finding a spouse. Picking one on a whim rarely works out.
The Amazon Job Market
Chris’s advice is to follow in his footsteps. No matter your specialty, whether it’s SEO, video, graphic design, account management, add Amazon to your repertoire. Salaries in the Amazon space are skyrocketing and it’s truly the future of retail. If 2020 didn’t make that obvious to you, nothing will.
The Amazon Value
We’re living in a new type of gold rush; the Amazon gold rush. Companies are snatching up Amazon brands quickly and at a steep price. Think of it this way, if you’ve got an existing brand, that brand will be four or five times more valuable on Amazon. Not to mention, it’s easier than ever to finance your Amazon business. The money is cheap and you’ll likely pay back the loan with future sales.
The more IP you have, the better. In the wholesale world, that translates to exclusive agreements. And don’t let anything stop you from building your Amazon business faster. It may feel like Amazon’s reached its peak, but take it from Chris, we’ve barely scratched the surface.
Goodbye Old Models & Going Global
Jeff Bezos has single-handedly crushed the distribution model as we know it. More and more brands are skipping the middleman and selling direct on Amazon. Chris recommends starting a brand from scratch or at least forming a partnership with a brand for an equity stake.
When it comes to international sales, that’s just another lucrative avenue in the e-commerce universe. Canada and Mexico are most sellers’ go-to’s, but it’s just as easy to break into Europe.
Overall
At the end of the day, it’s Amazon’s world and we’re just selling in it. So if you’re looking to pandemic-proof your next career move or start a side hustle with endless opportunity, Amazon is your answer.
Interested in adding your business to Chris’s rolodex of resources? Contact him! And if you’re a seller in need of a service, nReach is your middleman.
Happy selling everybody.
Resources From This Episode
Outline Of This Episode
[00:38] Todd’s introduction to this episode
[01:15] Chris’s background
[05:22] All about Amazon matchmaking
[11:22] The Amazon job market
[17:54] The value of an Amazon business
[29:36] An ever-changing distribution model
[39:29] Going global
[43:03] Todd & Chris’s closing thoughts
Transcript
Chris (00:00):
All the ad dollars, all of the dollar dollars, the service dollars, all the brands, all of them are now trying to solve for Amazon. And so if you have skills in this area, you are a unicorn. And if you are, you know, depending on what you’re good at, you may be a gold unicorn. You might be a rainbow one, but regardless you’re a unicorn. And I would just say you know, run with it,
Announcer (00:22):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the entrepreneur adventure podcast, where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch.
Todd (00:38):
Welcome to another episode of the entrepreneur adventure. I’m your host Todd Welch. And today I have on Chris Fryburger. He is an Amazon matchmaker and founder at nReach, and he’s also has a bachelor’s of science in aerospace engineering from Iowa state university. And he does a lot of philanthropy as well. He’s been a volunteer for big brother, big sisters, pro kids and peace Corps as well, which is really cool. Chris, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Why don’t you tell me a little bit more about your background?
Chris (01:15):
Sure. Thank you for having me on time. I appreciate it. Yeah, my background really is, you know, 25 years in the ad agency business. I come from, so, you know, I’ve worked with a number of brands, different sizes of agencies, and really just come from that traditional ad agency world. But really the digital bent of that. So you can think Google ad words and SEO and back in the day used to be well back in my day. Maybe not yours, but you know, back in the day used to be, if you learned HTML, you made a lot of money making websites. And so I come from back from those days, but about two and a half years ago, I just realized in that whole industry, the ad agency world hasn’t reacted to Amazon whatsoever. And so now you have this new ecosphere as you guys well know providers and sellers and brands and this whole chaotic well wonderful, but chaotic world of Amazon. And so what nReach does is basically just networks within that world and vets resources and helps match people together to solve, I guess, problems if you will. So, yep.
Todd (02:18):
Yeah, for sure. It always surprises me the number of people who started out like selling on Amazon and now have like an advertising agency or something like that. So, yeah. So what you’re saying is like the big advertising campaign companies are, have not transitioned into that world.
Chris (02:38):
They have not, I mean, this is a, you know, a steak, you know, for you to kind of measure off of as, you know, the largest one P agency. What I mean by that it’s just a regular agency, client relationship, you know, we’ll, we’ll help you get up on Amazon relationship. The largest agency in the space right now has 200 people. Okay. So and you know, no names, but you know, they’re known in the industry and they, and the like, but that’s, that’s really, you know, we’re just getting started. You know, in the, in the traditional agency world, the largest one has around 10,000 employees. Okay. Just, just as a stake. And so it is just beginning. We can talk about what that means and you know, if you’re a seller in this space, you have skills in this space. This is where it could be good for, for a decade at least. It’s cause everybody needs to be on Amazon.
Todd (03:27):
Absolutely. And it’s good, right? It leaves a void for entrepreneurs like us to, to fill that void. It does, and probably even do a bigger, better than some of the big companies out there.
Chris (03:39):
You’re right. Actually, you know, the sellers, if I may, you know, are the ones that are following this stuff day to day, they’re trying the new techniques, they’re participating pitying and the beta programs and the different ad types and trying different things and keeping their eye on Amazon day to day following it. And you know, big brands can’t do that. And we’re, again, if I may is if you have that skillset you’re gold right now, because everybody needs it. And even though you may have been doing it for a long time, and you might think that it’s crowded right now and everybody’s doing this stuff, it is not, you are a unicorn in outer space. Like I say that all the time you know, and it’ll be a long time before I think it’s 1997, you know and Netscape just launched. Okay. Or think it’s 2001 posts, Google. Okay. And so if you knew ad-words you were, you were, you ate well for a decade, right. Until everybody starts doing it and now it’s ubiquitous. Well, we’re bad at that way. Again, it’s its own.com environment.
Todd (04:40):
Yeah, for sure. There’s so much opportunity out there. It’s amazing. And we’re going to dive into a bunch of topics in Amazon today, like your matchmaking service, the job market venture capital and distribution internationalization. So we’re going to have a lot of fun going over those topics because Amazon is changing all the time and getting bigger and better. And so if anybody’s out there thinking about selling on Amazon, stop, delaying get going. But let’s quick talk about Chris. Your guys is matchmaking service on enrich. What is that all about? What are you actually matchmaking?
Chris (05:22):
Sure, sure. So again, if you could go back maybe two and a half years ago, I, you know, all the brands I was working with in the agency environment say, you know, you do our content, you do our PPC or SEO. You do our social media and flash influencer stuff, all of that. And all the things that that entails what about Amazon? Right? And, and for the most part, it was crickets. So I look over, you know, and you’ve got the agency environment, that’s growing the sellers that have become agencies, as you pointed out, you know, everything’s maturing. Right. And you know, I call them Amazon years. Other it’s more like Amazon months. And so it’s over the really, you know, the oldest agencies, about six or seven, eight years old you know, we’re just getting started. And when I looked over and just realized that, Hey, you know, nobody’s vetting these guys.
Chris (06:06):
There’s a lot of fly by night stuff going on. There’s a get rich quick millionaire stuff. And to take these millionaire courses, you know, it’s really easy. Well, what might’ve worked back then. Yeah. You could’ve made some money back then, but at this stuff’s getting more and more complicated. You have to fire on a lot of cylinders on Amazon. Most of the time you need to wait as you grow, you need eventually an agency. And certainly if you’re a big brand, you need agency. Well, my skill set to answer your question the long way around is when somebody comes to me, a brand comes to me, I’ve vetted a lot of agencies. I’ve spoken to hundreds of them in one in this one scenario and they’ll tell me what category expertise they need in what their pain points are. They may be on their second agency, their third agency in the space because they’re looking for maturity and a good account management and project management.
Chris (06:55):
And they do what they say they’re going to do. And they execute their PPC plans and they report back and they use data and AB testing and it’ll on and on and on. Right. They need all those things to succeed on Amazon now. So you need an agency, you need a team, right? So within reach does, is it vets, those guys that have Mary, so skies, I’m free to the seller. I’m free to accelerate, you know, a brand or a seller that needs an agency. And I charge a success fee to the agency side. Okay. as their provider. And so hopefully using my service, there’s a better match. They’re a match made in heaven. A marriage made in heaven, if you will, because that’s exactly what it almost feels like when you’re choosing an agency, you’re almost choosing a spouse. And so anyway, I digress, but
Todd (07:39):
Yeah. And that’s really helpful because there’s, if you’re just looking for someone to do your ads, for example, you know, there’s could be hundreds of different companies out there, some good, some not so good. Absolutely. Almost impossible to know. It’s not like you can go to Google and look up reviews of the companies really for this kind of stuff typically. So having a matchmaking service like you guys can be super helpful, is that something that anybody can apply to be in your directory, so to speak? Yes.
Chris (08:15):
So if you’re a service provider and I don’t know about you already happy, please reach out to me and both sides of the aisle, please reach out. I love to have conversations and learn more and more in this space because it is small. It is a burgeoning community. And every conversation, I encourage everybody to have a conversation about Amazon with everyone, but that, that said that kumbaya. Right. but that said, if you want to be in my quote unquote network, you know, reach out to me, it’s not a formal application. It’s more, I would actually look at your peers if you’re recommended to bring you in. And what, what hole or what, what space on the shelf that you feel that I may not already have filled, if that makes sense. Because I do match with lawyers, I match with financial like bookkeepers for Amazon, Amazon HR companies hiring this space is a nightmare, which we’ll talk about right. Programmers for APIs you know, everything down to some times people call me Mr. Wolf from pulp fiction because Hey, you know, I just got delisted and I’ll get a frantic call, you know, one day and say, Hey, I need to get back up and running, you know, yesterday. And the right people to call that make that happen is a challenge as well. And so I have those resources also. So but yes, I’m happy to talk with anyone.
Todd (09:34):
Yeah, for sure. And I think I seen on your LinkedIn page, something about a huge need for graphic designers that speak Amazon.
Chris (09:43):
Yeah. It, every space is being flushed out. It just has an Amazon logo on it. And the tools are a little bit rudimentary. Right. You don’t have, like, if you were in a really into SEO, I would encourage you to get into Amazon SEO. And you’ll look at the tools over here and you’ll laugh. Right. Because those tools developed over the last 20 year of Google. Right. but those two, but the need it’s it’s, but the space over here, if I may, in Cincinnati where I am due to Proctor and gamble, I can throw a stone and hit six SEO companies. Okay. Honestly, they all sound the same or, you know, digital advertising companies. Right. Or, or the like, but if you added Amazon to one of those, it’d be cricket. Okay. it’s, it’s just a whole new world. There’s green pastures. I don’t know what analogy do you want to use? You know, the wild, wild West, that’d be a good one and you’re only as good as your posse. I mean, you can run with that one. But that’s the environment we’re in right now. So I encourage maybe the tie into the other subject is add Amazon to your repertiore. Whatever you do. So
Todd (10:46):
For sure. So what’s the best way to reach out to you guys if somebody is in need of some kind of specialist?
Chris (10:52):
Sure, sure. It’s in reach without the, I there it’s N reach.com. You reached that with me that way. Linkedin, it’s Chris Fryburger can’t miss a name like that. And just feel I’ll just reach out and we can you know, arrange something we’ll talk from there.
Todd (11:09):
Okay. Awesome. And that kinda what we were talking about kind of transitions us into the Amazon job market. And we wanted to dive into that the kind of jobs and stuff that are available out there.
Chris (11:22):
Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And this is really, you know this is out of borne out of this out of, I have a lot of friends that are on the job market due to COVID. And they’re very much, you know, very talented folks creatives and the like that happened to be with agencies that, you know, through no fault of their own, that were part of our portfolio that does, when it wasn’t COVID friendly. Okay. maybe they had managing counts or working at those accounts and that’s unfortunately the world of Amazon agent or of agencies. I should say that you’re only you expand the contract with the portfolio that you have. Right. So to those people, if you happen to be listening, if you’re creative or a PPC manager or a sales agent, or you know, an account manager or project manager, that’s worked for agencies or the line, just add the Amazon aspect to it.
Chris (12:10):
Okay. And learn Amazon and consume as much Amazon as you can, because guess what salaries in that space just went to about 30 to 70. I know this because they work with one of the only Amazon HR companies out there. But since COVID, since March salaries have gone up 30 to 70% for senior executives, executives that know how to conduct themselves in front of large companies and run projects and the like, but if you add Amazon, you know, again, it’s just a huge value. And so if you’re a creative that you briefly mentioned, if you’re in the videography, get really get into Amazon videography and learn the format, what can you do with video? And you know, in a, on a listing it’s changing all the time. What about video ads and B roll and that kind of stuff apply yourself to the Amazon world because it’s just a reflection. It’s just like a bizarro Superman, bizarro world, if that makes sense. So,
Todd (13:03):
Yeah, and it’s, it’s only going to get bigger as we, Amazon keeps growing there’ll be competitors. And those skills that you’re learning for Amazon could probably easily transfer to Walmart or eBay or whatever company comes up to compete more with Amazon as well.
Chris (13:23):
No, I, I agree, but there’s so much to eat with Amazon. I mean, seriously, I, I don’t, I don’t agree with disagree with, like for instance, a Walmart just launched their, a DSP their am, they’re a DSP network for ads. They have, Walmart has 8% of the traffic of Amazon. Okay. So, you know, if you’re gonna, you know, if there’s a land grab, right. Which is what what’s going on, it’s more of a planet grab, but more on that in a second. But if it’s a land grab, you know, are you gonna mess with, you know, this PA you know, this smaller chunk, you know, I’m going to get a lot of, or am I just going to start grabbing as much cake and the other 92% of the world? And, and what I would say is also, that’s only the.com environment. You know, there are 14 other marketplaces out there as well, you know, so yes, those skills are important and I don’t mean to dismiss them. Absolutely. There, I would learn anything in commerce is going to be gold going forward. Anything I D to C you know, web development you know, placing Facebook ads, it’s going to play being an SEO person, but I can guarantee if you add Amazon to it, it will be much more lucrative to your career or your company or anything along those lines.
Todd (14:33):
Yeah. Big time e-commerce is exploding. Amazon said that in one year, their sales increased by 60%. A lot of that, thanks to everybody going online with COVID and everything, and not being able to necessarily go out. But yeah, I don’t think that’s going to reverse anytime soon. That’s for sure.
Chris (14:55):
No, no, no, no. I mean, they it’s quite the opposite. I mean, I, again, I spend most of my, today it seems like paced, you know, painting the environment we’re in right now, but I truly mean it’s like, it was supernova and now it’s double supernova. And, and what I mean by that is just, you know the retail environment just shrunk 30%. Okay. Most of that, they estimate probably will not come back. So this is the Macy’s of the world. This is, you know, your mall, your local mall, which we had one close here in Cincinnati was on its death knell already, but COVID killed it. You know, no disrespect but you know, so the point being is all those ad dollars, all the ad dollars, all of the dollar dollars to service dollars, all the brands, all of them are now trying to solve for Amazon. And so if you have skills in this area, you’re a unicorn. And if you are, you know, depending on what you’re good at, you may be a gold unicorn. You might be a rainbow one, but regardless you’re a unicorn. And I would just say you know, run with it. So,
Todd (15:55):
Yup. A hundred percent. So for whatever, it doesn’t work out, selling on Amazon, the skills that we’re learning and how to do all this stuff can translate into some kind of career going forward. For sure.
Chris (16:08):
Yeah. That large agency, that 200 employees, 60 of them are from the Philippines. Okay. With the Philippine government, just a little tidbit and we’ll go, we’ll get off the subject. But did the, the Philippine government came down because they’re used to be able to get your VA’s from there. Like my virtual assistant and my secretary was, you know, you’d be able to get them from the Philippines because they’re native English, speaking, highly educated around the world, you have 24, seven coverage and so on and so forth. Well, the government came down and said, okay, well, what other skills can we learn? And they said, Oh Amazon, you know, so if you want a PPC person, you got to hire one, I should say, right. To have an employee, a full-time FTE, a full-time employee, the best chance of you hiring one right now would be from the Philippines. And they’re excellent. Okay. highly trained retrained and, and programs and certain way quality controlled, tested, certified. Cause there’s none of that in the Amazon world going on right now, either there’s no developer environment, there’s no certifications like you would with Google or Microsoft. There’s none of that going on either. So anyway, the point being is that yeah, these skills are highly coveted,
Todd (17:15):
A hundred percent agree. I’ve got several VA’s from the Philippines, so definitely know all about that. They do really good work over there. Yep, yep, absolutely. Yep. For sure. All right. Very good. So let’s talk a little bit about VC capital and the value of businesses, because that’s always fun. Right? We’re building these businesses. Maybe we grow it to a million in sales, 3 million, five, 10, 20, whatever the case may be. What are you seeing out there in terms of the market for selling Amazon businesses?
Chris (17:54):
If there was like a triple supernova thing going on. So your S your it audience may or may not know about nine months ago, or so there was a company called THRASS thoracic [inaudible] T H R a s.io. I believe it’s what it is. They got the, they were the fastest evaluation to a billion dollars in us history and what they’re doing, cause I’m sure all of your sellers have gotten a phone call from them. If not repeated phone calls from them is they got a lot of money in the capital money and they’re going in there buying sellers brands up because they know they can come along and they have a team that can Polish those, you know, those sellers just a little bit more and to make a little bit more off them and flip them much like houses.
Chris (18:38):
Okay. So again, think real estate, you know, it’s a real estate, boom, it’s a land grab. Okay. And so they come along, they low ball them. I, if I may, I’m not talking bad about THRASS, but they’ll give you maybe two or three X when you may be worth four or five X. But if you’ve lost your job due to COVID, or, you know, you may not realize what you have by the tail, right. You they’ll come along to buy you, which is great. Good for them. Okay. But what that created is an environment of, of the Silicon Valley money just woke up New York money, just woke up. A lot of private equity gets showed up. And what that means for everybody is that now there’s a rush, there’s a gold rush on top of all of this. Okay. And so if you are an agency or you’re a brand or a seller with brands or a distributor that’s figured out how to get product in en mass onto Amazon, or if you’re in, certainly if you’re an agency that knows how to pull all the levers and make them win, the buy box is your, you know, again, I don’t, I’m running out of analogies, gold unicorn, Stripe something.
Chris (19:47):
Right. And so that’s, that’s, that’s where we at. I I’m doubling back again on myself, but but yeah, so I mean, that’s right now, what that means is that if you, for instance, are a brand that you have a brand that you’ve brought up over the last, like you’ve sold over the last years, especially if you have IP or, you know, you have a trademark in that brand and it’s made the transition over to Amazon, right. It’s now considered post COVID and it lives in the new world. Right. So it doesn’t have to worry about the shelf anymore. You’re now a brand that’s worth four or five X, what you were okay. If you’re native to Amazon. So for instance, anchor the brand on Amazon, what was the first public company that was native to Amazon that happened about six months ago.
Chris (20:36):
That was a huge wake-up call. Okay. So if you own a brand on Amazon, nevermind the skills. Now we’re talking about owning the actual brands that is the place to play. Okay. because those brands are now worth it in again, a multiple, but they, you know, for instance, I watch brands that were maybe three on the grocery store, self turned themselves in the number two in the Amazon space. And guess what, number one called them and asked them how much, you know, so that’s, that’s the kind of stuff that’s going on, the kind of place that go on. So, you know, it’s just starting, you’ve done all this work to learn how to surf and you’re on top. That’s a new analogy on top of the wave. You know, I wouldn’t say sell now. You’re gonna be worth more this time, next year, whatever you’re doing, but learn more and more Amazon. Now that you’re they’re surfing, I guess. I dunno
Todd (21:32):
For sure. It’s when you start seeing the big institutional money come into something, it just pushes prices higher and higher and higher and makes those skills worth more, your company worth more and whatever is associated with that value. That more,
Chris (21:48):
Yeah, it’s interesting. Everything’s affected, right? So even the investment world is, is affected. So the even the it volume went down at the sorry at the even the investment world, the finance world is affected as well. So if you want to loan, let’s say you’re a seller, right. And you want to get a loan because you can’t, you know, you want to get more inventory and get a better price from your wholesale, or you want to invest in your marketing or you want to, you know hire an agency that money is cheaper than ever. And you can actually repay it back with your future sales. Okay. There’s no equivalent of that in the old world. No, but it’s so hot then, then the money is so cheap that that exists. Okay. So, or, you know, if it’s not a bridge loan, if it’s not just an outright blown from your bank who here’s Amazon and they’re like, okay, whereas before, if you’re a small business owner, there’d be like, what, you know? You know, so there’s that kind of environment, as long as you put Amazon on it. We’re good. Okay.
Todd (22:54):
Yeah. I recently going into first quarter, last year, I was able to get a a hundred thousand dollar line of credit from the bank completely financed by the inventory in the business. I didn’t have to buy a house up or anything else, and it’s only a 5.9% interest. So yeah, the opportunity is just going up and up.
Chris (23:18):
Sure. And so, but if you have a brand and you’re looking for a VC investment, you know, like to just pump the brain of like, we’re going to, we’re going to go, we’re going to go for it. We’re in our space. We, you know, we’ve, we’ve walked and now we have the best dog toy out there in this particular niche. We just need some, we need some fuel, right. That money is cheaper than ever. Okay. And so in that can, you can give that up in equity. You can give that up in again, you know, just it through inventory. There’s a number of ways of doing that. So I encourage you. Don’t, don’t let anything hold you back from going faster and faster and faster.
Todd (23:54):
Yeah, for sure. And I think that kind of stuff is really important too, to remember and keep in mind because a lot of people just look at like the profit that they made. So you sold a million dollars and made $150,000 profit off of that. And they’re only looking at that and not looking at the bigger picture of what, you know, if you decided to sell the company at some point what you can actually make, just so it makes, it gives you a bigger perspective of what you’re building and that it’s, you know, it’s bigger than just the profit that you’re making.
Chris (24:31):
Exactly. And that changed. I mean, it was, it was true, but it’s now everything’s kind of crunched down because of COVID or the last, the next three or four years was kind of crunched down into this year, I think. Because of that, everything’s moving a little, even more fast, but, but yeah, you know, if you, I would encourage you if you, you know, to, to own a brand. Okay. I mean, I know you can sell and the like, but the, the real environment, if you can afford it, if you can get there and you get the resources to grow a brand. And what I mean by that is grow a brand in all senses, marketing wise, both on and off Amazon you and fire on as many of those cylinders as possible. And you will, you will have many suitors outside of your door in the coming years.
Todd (25:17):
Yup. A hundred percent a the more intellectual property that you can own, the better the wholesale world that might be, you know, exclusive agreements. Maybe you pick up some trademarks and stuff like that, but primarily it’s going to be exclusive agreement, contracts, companies for selling their products.
Chris (25:38):
Yeah. You know, let’s, let’s talk about wholesale real quick. You know, that is just getting started as well. You know, there are, I have manufacturers, actually, one of the largest ones in Canada has 4,000 products. They skipped the two thousands. They have done nothing digital at all, and I’m not even talking I’m seriously, not even a website. I mean, they have a website, but not, you can’t order through it. And you know, they’re used, it’s a good old boys distributed network where the sales rep of the other region of the region of the region, you know, you call them up or fax in your order because you know, for you to get your let’s say you’re a mom and pop hardware store, okay. You wanted to restock your inventory, what you call these guys and, you know, he’d fax in your order.
Chris (26:22):
And it might show up in a week or two, you know with missing a few items. Cause they were out of stock, well guess where they’re gonna get there, they’re in a place, their next order. Right. And so they’re out of a job. And so the point is, is that we could call gone back to this manufacturer. It’s 4,000 products and needs help getting up on Amazon. And so, you know, either as a distributor role, they help them up that way or going up to them and helping them themselves, you know, as themselves that there’s all kinds of plays there, but it’s all just getting started because that manufacturer has been around for 75 years. You know, the family owned business that’s worth a billion dollars. Right. And guess what? There’s like a thousand of those. So, and it hasn’t, you know, they all need help. Everybody needs help. So instead of five times, I think, right.
Todd (27:10):
And just build those relationships, get them to know like, and trust you and work that into an exclusive agreement or something along those lines. Exactly. It’s easy to forget when you’re in Amazon all day, every day that most people have no clue how Amazon works. You know, it’s just one of those things that it’s easy to forget about, but you got to keep that in mind that most people just, they don’t know how to sell on Amazon. They don’t want to know necessarily, but they maybe know that we need to be on there, but that’s about it.
Chris (27:48):
I will, I’ll tell you right now that 75% of listings on Amazon are not fully optimized. Okay. So that’s, again, that’s where THRASS is coming through and others are coming through to gobble up all those apples and Polish them. I don’t know what went down I used back then, but so, you know, so yes. I mean, it’s just, it’s explosive and you know, if you are a seller or a brand or own a brand or have the opportunity on a brand you know, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be good for awhile. So
Todd (28:18):
A hundred percent. All right. Very cool. Anything else we should cover on the venture capital side?
Chris (28:25):
I don’t think so. Just know that they’re it’s, you know if you haven’t revised, if you’re in the U S you haven’t refinance your home, I would suggest that you look at those, the, the rates right now, and it’s the same thing in the Amazon environment. If you need money, the cost of money is lower than ever. Yeah,
Todd (28:41):
For sure. For sure. Yeah. I’m on that as Amazon used to have Amazon financial, which they probably still do, but you’d be able to get those loans through Amazon and typically be like 16, 17, 18%. Now they’re going through a, another company I’m drawing a blank on the name, but those interest rates now are like seven, 8%. So yeah, it’s the price of money is going down. You can take that money if you can’t make double or triple, quadruple 8% you’re doing something wrong.
Chris (29:17):
Exactly. Exactly. If you, right. It’s just a matter of, you know, if you have cash flow problems, it’s the purpose of that. And so but yeah, absolutely
Todd (29:25):
For sure. All right. Let’s shift gears and talk about the distribution model changes that you’re seeing and how people are going direct to consumer and all that. Yeah.
Chris (29:36):
Yeah. We, we touched on a little bit of it, but, you know I mean, I got a whole, I got ahead of ourselves, so I apologize. You know, really it’s those manufacturers with those, with products that you know, again, it kind of operated in that even the old world, the old, old world in the sense that everything was done over the phone through a district, you know, through a distribution network everybody was kind of getting their cut and then at the end they would end up on the, you know, I’ll use the an example of when I ran into last week, it’s the jewelry industry. Okay. So you can think of a ring, right? So the ring, I think I got my ring at Macy’s. Okay. my writing band, this is not, you know, it’s just a generic band.
Chris (30:17):
I thought it was made by Macy’s, but it’s turned out it’s by made by a manufacturer, you know, somewhere four people, four distributors back, they all got a cut of it. And to the, I didn’t get at the mall, but let’s say I got it at Macy’s or the mall. There were probably four people taking a cut of that. Okay. now the Juul realizes, well, I actually got into it because the distributor, one of those four people, if you back in, you know, three people you back into that got a cut, as it got up to the mall, one of them called me and said, you know, I don’t need these other two guys. I want to go straight up to Amazon with the pricing I get for the rings I get, you know? And so it’s true of any product, right? So the distributor it’s like, okay, so he he’s killing it on Amazon.
Chris (30:57):
Well, his, the guy that gave it to him, the guy that got it from the manufacturer, they gave it to that distributor. He realizes, well, I can put it back up on Amazon. Right. I can put this thing up on Amazon. Why do I have to let this guy do it? You know, I’ll realize the retail price or a good chunk of that retail price that all these guys were divvying up. Now I can realize it. Well, the reality now is also, if you’re smart and you’re a manufacturer, you realize, well, why do I need any of these guys? My distributor is Amazon. I’m going to put it straight up on Amazon. Okay. So you can see how, you know, depending on your slicing it again, you’re a lot of your audiences know maybe, you know, wholesalers or the like there are no danger, but you know, they all may be aware that at any point, the people that supply them product could also do this stuff. Right. And so that’s what I mean by that that’s whole, that whole stack of, you know, distributors or, you know, whatever, whatever you, where do you wanna apply to it is, has kind of collapsed thanks to Jeff Bezos, you know, and there’s just a lot of product, 80% of the product I’m throwing out these statistics, you know, I hate to say, but really 80% of the product out there, it’s not on Amazon yet. And that’s where it is. It’s all that wholesale product that’s not here yet.
Todd (32:13):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and that, you know, going direct to the brand, I buy a lot directly from the brand cutting out that middleman, as you say, and the, and stuff. And in the past, that wasn’t necessarily something that was possible. Right. Everybody was going through distributors for the most part. So it’s definitely changing big time. I had an interesting conversation the other day with one of the, the sales reps for the company that I’m buying direct from. And he’s like, yeah, it’s, it’s really weird. I was trying to figure out, you know, you’re in the middle of the country in Utah, but for some reason you’re buying a bunch of stuff that’s made for salt water. And it was like, figuring out this Amazon stuff. It’s always interesting. It throws our systems all out of whack because it’s like, okay, maybe we should be selling salt water stuff in, in Utah. Which totally makes sense. Of course. But
Chris (33:16):
Yeah, I literally talked to a company there were a distributor, they were supplying sellers, all kinds of sellers to the tune of about, I think it was around like 20 or $22 million. They were, you know, funneling product to sellers to put up on Amazon. And the founder just like literally rolled out of bed by morning. He’s like, why don’t I just do this? Like, I mean, literally it was like, duh, like he’d been in the space and didn’t realize like, well, I could just hire somebody like an agency or hire some people or learn this, do this myself, which I wouldn’t encourage, but, you know, and just put it up myself and did all those people were out of business. You know, those two distributors were gone and they of course probably went off, got different product, but you know, it’s just, it’s an interesting world.
Todd (33:56):
Yeah. Things are changing. There’s going to be more and more of that. That’s where your Amazon expertise really comes into play because a lot of these brands and businesses are going to need help. They’re not just gonna wake up. Yeah. He woke up one morning and said, why don’t I do this? But he still got to figure it all out, help you with it or whatever the case may be. So that goes back to the job market as well for positions like this.
Chris (34:25):
Yeah. And so it’s great for your career. But if you know how to do a lot of this also, you know, in your, in a position again, you know, invest in a brand, you know, find something that you can own and you can, you know, bring to life and it might even be a side thing. And again, I’m sure a lot of your audience is already doing this, but nurture that brand because that print environment where it’s, you know, it will, I think again saying about fifth time, but you know, we’re an environment where it will rise much faster than than most assets, any other asset that you may have, but so, you know, and there’s gonna be a lot of brand portfolios, I think that are being, going to be put together. I I’ll give you an example, a quick story.
Chris (35:05):
I’m actually really friends. How am I going to name the company? But I’m a good friends with the CRO of a very large seasoning company out there. And their biggest nightmare is that somebody’s going to come along, you know, maybe with some capital buy up some of the darling seasonings that are coming up on Amazon, identify them, put them together, rebrand them and do sort of like a line of, you know, seasonings and take on, take them on in six months, you know, where that would have taken 60 years to do that in the past, they had took, they’ve nurtured those brands forever, you know, and, and, but that’s their nightmare right now. And so because everybody’s buying on Amazon, right. So anyway, interesting stuff,
Todd (35:48):
A hundred percent and, and kinda another aspect of that as a, I’m a wholesaler, right? So I sell other people’s products on Amazon. But I’ve also been looking at buying brands and, you know, I’ve actually discussed it with this one company. They’re an older mom and pop kind of business. And you know, they’re, they’re still the, a lot of the systems are kind of old and day systems that they’ve got run in and stuff like that. And so I talked about potentially, you know, buying the business or licensing the product or something like that. And they’re, they’re definitely interested. They wanted to wait until after COVID stuff to see what happens there and things, but that’s another route that we can go, you know, we’re making profit from selling other people’s products. We can take some of that profit and maybe buy a brand or buy a private label. I know Scott need him, who is one of the owners of buy boxer. They do about 60 million in sales, on Amazon of other people’s products. They’ve recently acquired a private label brand, and now they’re growing that because they look at that brand, what they currently have on Amazon. They’re like with, with all the knowledge that we have, we can make those products even better and make back our money that we spend quite rapidly.
Chris (37:15):
Yep, absolutely. And, you know, and maybe I and that’s kind of where I was going is, you know, your unicorn dust, right. That you may use on other people’s products either whether you’re a wholesaler and you’re getting the best pricing and maybe exclusivity exclusive online retail agreements. And, but you’re ultimately selling somebody else’s product. You don’t have any equity in that product necessarily, but I would also, you know, again, you’re getting, probably getting a pricing, you’re making a lot of money and that’s great. Right. but you know, at that point, but you’re not really building equity. And so if you can then over time or, you know, outright start a brand from scratch, or if there’s brands out there that you’re reselling or the, like you believe in, as you were saying, you know, can, you know, maybe I’ll reduce my rates or I’ll do I’ll reduce all I’ll, I won’t charge any service fees we’re going to be, this is gonna be a partnership, but I also want an equity stake in this brand.
Chris (38:06):
Let’s go do this together kind of thing. You know, literally as together there’s some of that there’s sales performances also as well. So it means it doesn’t have to be solely an equity stake, but you know, the one thing that does exist in this space, which does not exist anywhere else is that you can say, I want 20% of sale now. Okay. 5% of sales as a performance instead of as well. And so there’s a lot of barriers that are, you know, kind of falling if that makes sense, but the ones that have the nicest exit, if you execute on all the things are the ones that are going to own Amazon brands, brands that have made the jump to Amazon.
Todd (38:44):
Yep. For sure. Yeah. Wild, wild West, as we said,
Chris (38:49):
Surfing wild West.
Todd (38:51):
Yeah. That’s lots of fun. Apple’s just a fun space. I love just coming into work every day, learning something new, figuring stuff out, or build a business. It’s a lot of fun for sure.
Chris (39:03):
It is, it is, it’s a fun space. And then when you think he knows something, you know, like you run it, somebody like, Oh, like, you know, like there’s great work going on in all kinds of spaces of data and tools that are being developed and just some great creative and those types of things as well. Yeah. It’s a fun space.
Todd (39:19):
Yep. Absolutely. All right. Well, let’s wrap this up by talking a little bit about internationalization since selling overseas and things like that.
Chris (39:29):
Yeah. So, you know, I think this is important because it really just sort of, and this, another multiplier out there right. Of just, you know, things are so awesome on the amazon.com marketplace. And there’s so many things to execute there. Right. again, most people I would contend are not doing all the things like if you’re not doing influencer or affiliate, you know, if you don’t know you know, if you’re not doing you know, review management or, you know, things along those lines, there’s still blots of thing, gold to mine and the.com environment. But once you get that down or soon before getting all that down, you should think about inner zap internationalization. So it’s no brainer to go to MX and CA from just a distribution standpoint, but actually believe it or not, no harder to go to Europe or to you or India, or you know, all of the 14 marketplaces international marketplaces that are out there right now, follow Jeff around the globe.
Chris (40:32):
Right. and I would just add also, it’s easier to get listed in McCotter Libra in Brazil, and it’s easier to get listed on Alibaba. And, you know, so a lot of these products, if you sell hammers, either wholesaler or your brand, you know, if you manufacture whatever those is a hammer, you know, whether it be in Malaysia or in the U S and so and they ship really well too. They’re kind of heavy, but they ship well. So think internationalization as well, because now you’re looking at reflecting your talents at your, your sales out across the world, but that’s the first time that’s ever happened. So if you need another wave to surf, you know, there’s one coming behind it and another one coming behind it and another one combined it.
Todd (41:14):
Yep. So, so essentially Amazon owns the world and we did, yes.
Chris (41:20):
There, there is a frontline. Do you know if your watch PBS frontline there’s a pre PBS frontline documentary that I think is mandatory to watch. That’s called the Amazon empire. And it’s a two hour. It’s fantastic. And it outlines say, yes, he will own e-commerce and probably space. He and Ilan will own space and all the other things as well. But I recommend that PBS frontline documentary again, I think it’s called the Amazon empire.
Todd (41:50):
Yep. Yeah. And it’s interesting that Jeff pesos just stepped down as CEO. He’s now only because he wants to focus on his other endeavors, like going to Mars and things like toys, lots of excitement out there,
Chris (42:10):
Actually that documentary is it starts out with him. I don’t know if you knew this, but like, I think it’s eighth grade, he’s holding up like this, he won a science fair and he’s holding up this article that he wrote in the school paper. And it’s like, people are consuming too many of the, you know, the resources of the earth. We’ve got to get off the earth and to save humanity, we’ve got to go to the stars or something like that. That will be my goal in life, you know? And it’s like, that’s how I can really start. It’s like, Oh, okay. Like, that’s what drives the man. It’s not selling things. It’s, this is just to consume to fund us getting off the planet. And I hope you not.
Todd (42:45):
Yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting time, you know, it’s no longer the, the space race, it’s the Mars race. Right. And to go all the way to Mars instead of just the moon or something like that. So
Chris (42:59):
If you’re a trillionaire or whatever, you know sure.
Todd (43:03):
A hundred percent. All right. Cool. Well, Chris, I really appreciate you coming on the show any last words of wisdom before we close out
Chris (43:15):
I think it’s an Amazon, Amazon, Amazon you know, it’s a good space and it it’s just where you want to carve yourself out and I would hold on, cause it’s going to be a pretty wild ride, but if you need help along the way, and anything with respect to any aspect of Amazon, please think of inReach.
Todd (43:33):
Yup. nreach.Com. Let her in reach.com. Check it out. All right, Chris. Appreciate it. And you have an awesome day. Thank you so much.
Announcer (43:44):
This has been another episode of the entrepreneur adventure podcast. Thanks for listening fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours. If you take it.
