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Why Your Products Should Be on 60 Marketplaces, Not Just Amazon · eCommerce Podcast

0:01
Well, hello and welcome to the E-Commerce Podcast. My name
0:05
is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with
0:08
you today. If you're new to the show, very warm
0:10
welcome to you. Make sure you like and subscribe and
0:12
do all of that good stuff. If you want to
0:15
know any more about the show, what we do, what
0:18
we get up to, the community that we've got, the
0:21
cohorts you can join, all of that sort of thing,
0:23
you can find out more information at ecommercepodcast.com. Everything is
0:27
there. Come check it out. We're good to see you
0:29
there. But given that this is the second time recording
0:34
this podcast, we had a slight echo issue the first
0:38
time. So without further ado, Jorrit, welcome back to the
0:41
show again.
0:43
Well, again, thanks a lot, Matt, for having me. So
0:47
always great to talk to someone that has been in
0:50
the e-commerce space for a long time. So looking forward
0:53
to the conversation again.
0:54
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's good. And hopefully we fix
0:57
the echo problem now. I'm monitoring my sound meters very,
1:00
very— in fact, let me put them on. There we
1:02
go. I can see them better there. But yeah, it's
1:04
great to have you all the way from the Netherlands,
1:08
it seems.
1:10
Yeah, correct. I'm in a place called Leiden, half an
1:13
hour below Amsterdam, close to the beach. That's important.
1:19
Has the weather turned for you yet? I mean, it
1:21
started to get a little bit better here.
1:23
It's sort of sunny a few days so far. So
1:28
you never know in the Netherlands, but it's looking good
1:30
so far.
1:32
You never know in England either, to be fair. I
1:34
don't think it's just a Dutch thing. It's all over
1:37
the place, isn't it? Tell us a bit about Channel
1:40
Engine, what you guys do, and about your software.
1:45
Yeah, sure. So ChannelEngine is a multi-channel e-commerce marketplace
1:49
integration and automation solution. I can make it longer. A
1:54
lot of people call it marketplace integration solution, marketplace integrator.
1:59
The whole idea is that brands, sellers can use our
2:02
solution to connect all the different e-commerce channels worldwide. Marketplaces,
2:07
social commerce, agentic commerce is coming up. And basically you
2:11
plug into all these different channels, whether it's Amazon, Walmart,
2:14
Macy's, in Europe, Zalando, ASOS, etc. And you can sell
2:19
at scale. while automating a lot of processes that typically
2:23
take up a lot of time. Yeah.
2:25
Yeah. I think, I mean, we were saying before we
2:27
had to start recording again, but there, there seems to
2:30
be this sort of, belief, this default belief that
2:34
there's sort of one or two channels that you, you
2:38
sell into as an e-commerce entrepreneur. So I have my
2:41
website, you know, we sell on Amazon. If I'm in
2:45
America, I might sell on Walmart. and I, I
2:48
think, I mean, yesterday we were talking as a team,
2:50
do we even sell on Etsy? I mean, steady on,
2:52
you know, we were starting to get to 4 there.
2:55
there's obviously a lot more to the, the sort
3:00
of the marketplace. There's a lot more channels that I
3:02
can sell through, right?
3:05
Absolutely. Not a lot of people are aware. so
3:08
we currently have the largest marketplace network in the world
3:11
with 1,300 marketplaces. And we even have to prioritise the
3:15
next marketplace. Which ones are we going to do first?
3:19
And it has to do with the big players, Amazon,
3:23
Walmart, but all retailers are becoming marketplaces or have become
3:26
marketplaces as well. So for instance, in North America, Nordstrom's,
3:32
those are curated marketplaces. You see the same thing happening
3:36
in Europe. Media Markt, Decathlon all became marketplaces. And next
3:41
to that, every country has their own local hero. So
3:44
in the UK, Amazon is super big, Germany, Spain, but
3:48
in other countries, for instance, Netherlands, Bol.com, Poland's Allegro, every
3:54
country has their large local marketplace, local hero that is
3:58
already present. And then depending on the vertical, there might
4:00
be some vertical marketplaces. Think of fashion, apparel, Zalando, Otto,
4:05
About You in Germany. But they have marketplace across Europe.
4:10
You see the same things happening in Southeast Asia. Shopee
4:13
Lazada, nice horizontal marketplace where you can sell everything, and
4:17
then Zalora, more on the fashion side. So lots of
4:20
those marketplaces, and we do that across the globe.
4:22
Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it, how this has all
4:24
turned. I noticed this, I think, a few years ago
4:27
with, we had a beauty company and we were
4:32
selling these sort of, beauty products. And I noticed
4:37
those beauty products starting to appear on Next, which is
4:40
a clothing brand right here in the UK. And it's
4:43
like they, they'd made a deal with a beauty company
4:46
to sell the same products on their website. You're like,
4:48
well, goodness me, that's, that's, that's quite fascinating. You don't
4:52
have to— they weren't stocking it necessarily, but they'd made
4:55
an agreement to, to sell it on their website. And
4:58
you kind of saw a lot of these bigger brands
5:00
going, let's be—
5:01
let's do what Amazon did and do the whole marketplace
5:05
Yeah, yeah, you see that happening a lot, especially during
5:10
COVID It kicked off and then the interest rate rates
5:14
went up and all these retailers didn't want to carry
5:16
that much inventory on the balance sheet. So they asked
5:18
a lot of brands to start augmenting their collection. So
5:22
typically they buy the fast movers and then said, well,
5:25
can you sell the rest of the collection on our
5:27
website in drop shipment or marketplace form? And that really
5:31
kicked it off. And now it's a worldwide phenomenon. So
5:36
you have centralised locations where brands can sell on Amazon
5:41
and the other marketplaces, as well as to the retailers
5:44
that typically buy wholesale.
5:45
Yeah.
5:46
But now as the next level, they augment that with
5:48
marketplaces. And I do see a shift also for Amazon,
5:52
for instance. Amazon always was a big, 1P vendor-buyer,
5:59
but that is shifting as well. So they're raising, raising
6:01
the thresholds. I think in the US it's actually— they
6:04
went to— you have to do at least $20 million
6:06
a year to actually get a vendor account. So they're
6:10
pushing more towards the seller accounts. A lot of our
6:13
customers have both, so they don't get purchase orders for
6:17
all their products. So it's always good to go hybrid.
6:21
So 1P 3P, and that's different. That same model happens
6:25
on all other marketplaces as well. Walmart, same thing. Target,
6:28
same thing. So depending on your product, and it
6:31
also happens, for instance, in shoes, where a retailer wants
6:35
the full range of sizes but maybe doesn't want to
6:39
stock the very large or very small sizes. So you
6:42
can backfill or size fill, with a marketplace model.
6:45
So that's happening more and more.
6:48
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I suppose there's two routes,
6:50
there's two lots of questions appearing in my head,
6:53
Jurit. One is, should I start my own marketplace?
6:57
and the other is, what marketplaces should I be looking
7:00
at for my own stuff, right? And I suppose,
7:04
it, it intrigues me because, I mean, you mentioned you're
7:07
now prioritizing obviously marketplaces, so this is becoming a bigger
7:11
and bigger thing and more and more popular thing, isn't
7:13
it? With the marketplaces coming on board?
7:16
I happily answer both. So the first one, no, don't
7:21
start a marketplace. Don't start a marketplace unless you have
7:27
a website, retail webshop with a, with a lot of
7:32
physical stores where people already know you and can find
7:35
you and know how to find you without doing a
7:38
lot of top-line advertising. Yeah, because it's really hard to
7:42
crack that supply and demand on a marketplace. So you
7:48
need to have a lot of traffic. So that's why
7:50
it works for TikTok. They had a lot of eyeballs,
7:53
a lot of traffic already driving traffic to e-commerce sites.
7:56
And then it's easy to become a marketplace and become
7:58
transactional. Yeah, similar to very large retailers that you know
8:02
already and you visit already. And then if you see
8:05
other products, you already trust that brand, you can buy
8:07
it. Building up a new marketplace is super hard to
8:10
do, especially now, because where are you going to get
8:13
the traffic? All the social media is going to be
8:16
transactional. Google's becoming transactional. All the AI answer engines become
8:22
transactional. So there will remain top-line advertising, and it's impossible
8:27
to win from other guys. So I wouldn't do it.
8:31
We still get monthly new players with a beautiful idea,
8:35
we're going to launch the next marketplace. Unless you have
8:39
a shit ton of money, it's not going to work.
8:42
Yeah. So I do see new ones popping in. So
8:45
in Europe as well, JD launched Joybuy, and they come
8:49
in with a lot of money. They're buying their own
8:53
logistics infrastructure at a scale— even in the Netherlands, they
8:56
invested €150 million just for logistics. just to start off.
9:01
Yeah. And that's the scale. And then you need a
9:03
lot more money to drive traffic.
9:06
Yeah.
9:06
So yeah. Question 1, no, don't do it. What was
9:11
question 2 again? Yeah.
9:13
What marketplaces should I sell on? I suppose that's,
9:16
which is probably where we'll spend most of the
9:18
time focusing, isn't it? Is, is actually if I'm running
9:21
my own e-commerce business, I suppose, how do I think
9:25
about getting onto these other marketplaces? What things should I
9:30
think about? What things should I look for? although
9:34
I do have— before we get into that, I do
9:36
have one other question. So you, you mentioned, for example,
9:39
the shoe company, and yeah, they— I might not want
9:44
to retail the extreme sort of sizes, but I
9:48
want to be able to put them on my site
9:49
and have a deal with the, the supplier. I
9:53
am, I am seeing that more and more across e-commerce
9:55
sites. So it's not technically a marketplace. It's like, I
9:58
suppose, a mini version of it, isn't it? Sort of
10:00
just-in-time fulfillment kind of thing where it's gone, actually, I
10:04
want to, I want to sell all your stock, but
10:05
I don't want to carry all of your stock. And
10:07
I need some integration that allows me to do that.
10:10
Yeah, it's a form of drop shipment. So drop shipment
10:13
and marketplace sales are very similar. The biggest distinction is
10:17
that it's very transparent who's selling it. So if it's
10:19
a marketplace, you see sold by. And that is more
10:24
also a legal and fiscal thing. So the person selling
10:27
it, where it's transparent who's selling it, is responsible for
10:31
the transaction. So then the marketplace is sort of a
10:34
transaction facilitator and takes a fee without bearing the risk.
10:39
And the biggest difference is that the seller can determine
10:42
the price. If it's drop shipment, the marketplace or the
10:46
retailer determines the price.
10:47
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair play. That's fair play. Okay, so
10:53
back to my, second question.
10:55
Where do you sell?
10:57
Oh, we sell all kinds of stuff. We've got gift
10:59
stores, we've got, supplement businesses. I mean, there's all
11:03
kinds of things, that we sell across the world,
11:07
right? We take the supplement business, we sell those
11:11
all over the world. we sell on our site,
11:14
we sell on Amazon. I think we do Walmart,
11:19
in the US. Our gifting business is purely our site
11:25
and not on the high street, which again is another
11:28
marketplace in the UK, on Amazon, but it's all
11:31
UK only, if that makes sense. So, I've got
11:35
those two companies that I can sort of talk from
11:37
and think from. How would I approach this? What would
11:39
be a good route forward?
11:41
Yeah, first, first thing is you set up a podcast
11:44
with me and then we'll make sure you're using marketplaces.
11:49
And then in a year from now, you can report
11:51
how well it went.
11:52
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I do. I should do.
11:55
Yeah. I think choosing a marketplace, everybody thinks of Amazon,
12:01
which makes sense because the majority of the buyers are
12:04
on Amazon.
12:05
Yeah.
12:05
But also there's competition. So on Amazon, there's 600 million
12:09
products at least.
12:10
Yes.
12:10
That you have to compete against. And a lot of
12:12
them, a lot of the sellers on Amazon are very
12:15
sophisticated, very focused for a very long time. So it's
12:18
hard to win those listings, to show up in the
12:21
rankings unless you really know what you're doing. So yes,
12:24
you can be super successful on Amazon, but that needs
12:26
a specific type of focus and investment to do it
12:29
well. Definitely start using Amazon, but next to that, look
12:34
at your specific product vertical and then see what is
12:39
the competition like, how many products are on the marketplaces
12:41
versus how many visitors are on the marketplace. So look
12:44
at the ratio of sellers, number of products versus number
12:48
of buyers, and sometimes it's way more favourable and easier
12:52
to rank on a local marketplace with less customers and
12:57
then reach more customers because it's easier to rank high
13:00
in a certain category on a certain search term,
13:04
it's easier to do what now is called black hat
13:08
tricks that are not allowed or not tolerated on Amazon.
13:12
You can do them on many other marketplaces because they,
13:16
they're not aware of those kind of things. How do
13:19
you influence the search ranking by increasing your seller velocity,
13:24
your sales velocity, and, and stuff like that? Also, depending
13:28
on your vertical, what kind of products. If it's fashion,
13:32
then start selling on Amazon, start, try to get on
13:34
the fashion-oriented marketplaces. And that's also where you can load
13:39
your brands. So if it's a brand in a new
13:42
country, it's easier to spend some money and have the
13:46
right brand adjacency to other brands in that region. And
13:48
we actually see a halo effect if you have physical
13:50
stores as well, where people see it on the marketplace
13:53
and then buy it in the physical stores, right? So
13:56
lots of information there to digest. Nowadays, tools like Claude
14:02
and Perplexity can do research for you. We have a
14:05
big data set. We can also help you out with
14:07
the specific selection. Not every marketplace is open to every
14:11
seller. So on Amazon, eBay, everybody can just sign up
14:14
and sell. And a lot of the, the more niche
14:18
marketplaces are curated. So you have to have a quality
14:21
brand, of a certain price point to get on there.
14:25
So that's a bit of pathfinding. We can help out,
14:29
but it's figuring out where you can win.
14:32
It's a really interesting one, isn't it? Yeah.
14:36
Yeah.
14:37
I mean, I can see me going to Claude and
14:40
going, Claude, right, give me some marketplaces that I need
14:42
to think about. And Perplexity as well, and seeing what
14:46
it comes up with and then doing a little bit
14:48
of research about them. And I, I, I do.
14:54
You can even ask Claude, just grab the whole list
14:56
on ChannelEngine and then start seeing where similar products
14:59
are being sold.
15:00
Yeah, that's true. Just scrape the data and just come
15:03
back and tell me what's going on. It's, it's an
15:06
interesting one, isn't it? I, how many— I, I realize
15:12
as this comes out of my mouth, you're— it's a
15:14
bit like how long is a piece of string, but
15:17
How many marketplaces should I be looking to get on,
15:21
do you think, as a sort of a— if I'm
15:23
an established e-com brand, I'm doing a couple of million
15:25
a year, my website's doing pretty good, I want
15:28
to start to expand, like, what would be a good
15:33
sort of aim over the next—
15:36
I don't know, depends a little bit on your team
15:40
size and sophistication. I would start slow, so start doing
15:44
next to Amazon one or two marketplaces. Once you have
15:48
the hang of it, then you can rapidly scale up.
15:53
Typically, it's easier to start selling on other marketplace in
15:56
a country where you already sell because you have to
15:58
set up the logistics and the customer service and stuff
16:00
like that. Once you're in the country, you can just
16:02
add more marketplaces while you're going. Yeah, if I look
16:06
at some more sophisticated sellers. I'm thinking of a German
16:11
customer, they're running 60 marketplaces with a team of 2
16:16
people focused on those marketplaces because it's connected to their
16:20
normal e-com stream. And that's going very successfully. I would
16:26
say first year, aim for 6, 7 good marketplaces with
16:30
the right attention, right focus, and then expand from there
16:34
once you have the knowledge and expertise.
16:36
To, to sort of reshare. I guess the— I mean,
16:39
you mentioned something there about the chaps in Germany,
16:42
2 people handling 6 marketplaces, 60 marketplaces.
16:45
60. Yeah. Yeah.
16:47
I mean, well done them. That just sounds like a,
16:49
a headache, and a nightmare. And I suppose this
16:51
is probably where I'm guessing your software helps, but I
16:55
guess this is also the biggest nightmare people have got
16:57
in the sense that managing marketplaces in itself becomes a
17:03
nightmare. You've got to obviously make sure the listings are
17:06
right, you've got to make sure the pricing's right, and
17:08
if it's out of stock, and then how do you
17:10
get the orders into your system, and how do you
17:12
fulfill the orders? And, what are some of the
17:16
things there then that you see people doing entirely wrong?
17:21
Like, if you could wave a magic wand and fix
17:23
the biggest single problem that people have, when it
17:27
comes to selling on other market places, what would that
17:29
be?
17:32
So maybe step back. I started ChannelEngine because I
17:35
was running e-commerce sites for a very long time and
17:37
then started selling on marketplace, and we didn't want to
17:40
run out of stock, so I built ChannelEngine as
17:44
a solution to, to solve that. The processes, if you
17:47
look at it, typically most time-consuming is getting your product
17:50
information or your products listed on the marketplaces, and that's
17:54
where ChannelEngine grabs the content out of your e-com
17:58
platform PIM system and transforms that into what is required
18:02
for the marketplaces. But require marketplace typically have way more
18:06
attributes and specifications that they want than most sellers have.
18:10
Think of the ingredients of your food supplements, packaging size
18:16
and stuff like that. So if it's there, if you
18:18
have that in your site, great. And otherwise you need
18:20
to apply rules. You can do prompting to get that
18:24
in the right format. But that's a one-time exercise. Operationally,
18:28
it's essential to have a connection to your whatever warehouse
18:32
management system you're using, whether it's a 3PL, a combination
18:35
of Fulfillment by Amazon and a 3PL, or your own
18:38
warehouse, because stock is essential. As soon as you sell
18:43
on multiple marketplaces, you need to have an automation in
18:45
place, because if you have 10 items and you sell
18:49
10 at the same time on eBay and Walmart, then
18:53
you have sold 20. So as soon as an order
18:55
comes into ChannelEngine, we take it off of all
18:57
the other marketplaces, then send it to the 3PL, get
19:00
back the new stock levels, and then syndicate, synchronize it.
19:06
So making sure you are not overselling, that's the essential
19:09
one. Getting any orders automated and streaming it into your
19:13
normal D2C flow. So you have one inventory layer, the
19:16
orders are flowing in, and you see which marketplace it
19:19
is from. but then let automation make sure that it's
19:22
not available on another marketplace or on your D2C site
19:25
at the same time. Yeah.
19:27
Yeah. Well, there's a lot there. I, have you seen
19:29
people run these things manually?
19:32
Yes. And a lot of them then get banned on
19:35
marketplaces and then after their 7th strike and getting banned,
19:39
they come to us. Can we please automate and can
19:41
you get us unbanned? That's too late. It can happen,
19:45
but it's, we've seen it. You see it a lot
19:48
in Asia as well because manual labor is— people are
19:53
used to it, but it's getting less and less. So
19:57
our most happy customers are the ones that used to
20:00
do it manually or that try to automate it themselves
20:03
because they said, how hard can an API be? API,
20:07
maybe not, but then all the processes and the unhappy
20:10
flows and optimisations, that's where it gets hard. The edge
20:14
cases. How do you do reservations so you don't do
20:17
double reservations? How do you balance from FBA runs out
20:20
of stock on your own 3PL? That's where we come
20:22
in. So I always prefer people that have that experience
20:26
before, they know how not to do it, and then
20:29
they can benefit from the automation we have.
20:31
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So what is then,
20:36
what is, do you think, the biggest single mistake we're
20:38
making when it comes to selling on other marketplaces? Places?
20:43
Not doing it. That's the single biggest mistake. A lot
20:47
of people say, I've got my D2C shop and I'm
20:49
selling on Amazon. So that's about it. So not exploring
20:53
other marketplaces where there's a massive opportunity. That's a big
20:57
mistake. Another big mistake I see even with gigantic customers,
21:02
large enterprise customers, is underinvesting in a marketplace team, I
21:06
think it's strategically important to do marketplace sales and multichannel
21:11
sales well and then just hire the right people. So
21:14
sometimes I see the equivalent of 2 interns. Oh, they
21:17
can do the product listings and the strategy and the
21:20
price optimisation and all the different marketplace and the customer
21:22
service all at once. It's impossible no matter how much
21:25
automation you do. So take into account that the strategic,
21:30
and put the right resources into it. Also, if
21:35
you have your own brand, your own product, it's also
21:38
a search engine advertising optimisation problem. Amazon is a massive
21:43
search engine. You sell on Amazon, so it's not that
21:46
easy. There are other food supplements. How do you rank
21:49
high? Which keywords are you doing? Do you do advertising?
21:52
Do you spend your money just trying it out? You
21:55
will never rise in the organic ranking. So, or do
22:00
you have a launch plan? So just Google launch plan
22:02
Amazon and you'll get the best way to do it.
22:07
You probably have podcasts around it, but how to do
22:10
that well, because the sales velocity ramping that up with
22:14
the right budget that influences your organic ranking. Make sure
22:18
you don't run out of stock because then your ranking
22:21
will drop again. So it's again, all the information is
22:24
out there. Everything is on YouTube. You can just Google,
22:26
ask ChatGPT, Claude for whatever. To do it, but don't
22:31
underinvest. I think the biggest problem is the opportunity cost.
22:37
People don't want to spend a couple of thousand and
22:40
then missing out on hundreds or millions of euros or
22:45
pounds or dollars in revenue.
22:48
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a fair comment. I think, well,
22:51
there's a couple of things there then, isn't there, really?
22:53
Let me— we'll come back to the opportunity and the
22:57
investment. So the first thing you said is obviously people
22:59
aren't taking the advantage of the opportunity in terms of
23:02
selling on marketplaces. And it sounds like, you know, listening
23:06
to you talk, if I was starting out in e-commerce
23:10
today, I'm, I'm listening to you talk going, I,
23:14
I, there's a lot I need to do that well.
23:17
There's opportunity there, but it sounds like there's, on the
23:20
other hand, I need to put resource into that. And
23:22
I'm starting out, I don't necessarily have that. But then
23:24
I hear you talk about two guys in Germany managing
23:27
60 marketplaces. So I'm—
23:30
what, there's a whole operation behind it, right? So they
23:32
have an e-com operation and logistics, and then two people
23:35
only run the marketplaces, right? Okay.
23:38
so at what point in my, in my e-com
23:43
career, if I can put it that way, my e-commerce
23:45
journey, you know, I've started my business, At what point
23:48
do I start looking at marketplaces? Is it from day
23:52
one and just need to rebalance where I structure my
23:54
time? or is it I, I should get, you
23:58
know, at least somebody who can run this full time
24:02
to start out with and have to then think about
24:04
building that team as we build the marketplace out?
24:07
Yeah, so, so two, two answers on that. If you're
24:11
a professional brand already running a sizable business get an
24:16
agency to help you with the launch, get the
24:20
automation in place connected to your ERP system, get an
24:22
agency to help you with the launch, and hire and
24:25
train people on the job with an agency, checking
24:29
in from time to time for optimisation. That's the fastest
24:32
path to do. If I would start it myself, not
24:36
super much budget but a great product, I would definitely
24:40
start on marketplaces but also launch a D2C shop with
24:45
a great brand at the same time. So make sure
24:47
the D2C shop looks great, you can find it, but
24:52
then spend my advertising money on marketplaces because people will
24:55
find your product. And especially in supplements, just nice QR
25:00
codes, promotion, get them in your own loop, and then
25:05
you can target them for your own D2C shop, or
25:07
people start Googling, or ChatGPT or Perplexity to get there.
25:11
And I think that's the ideal combination. So if you
25:14
start purely on the marketplace, I would always launch a
25:18
D2C shop next to it, because there will always be
25:20
people that go directly and you'll grab that. But most
25:23
budget I would put into the marketplaces.
25:26
That's a really interesting idea in the sense— so would
25:29
you, if you were starting out, I mean, you've obviously
25:31
built your own e-com sites, right? So this is your
25:34
supplement business, you're starting this supplement business. Are you putting
25:38
your money into advertising on marketplaces versus money going into,
25:42
say, AdWords or Meta?
25:45
Yes. The reason being, I started my e-commerce journey with
25:49
search engine optimised e-commerce sites because back then there was
25:52
no Google Shopping, there wasn't Google Ads. So it was
25:54
super easy or relatively easy to do. Eventually, it's all
25:58
about finding that consumer. So consumer searching somewhere for a
26:02
typical product that you have. Where are they? Their start,
26:06
their journey starts on marketplaces. So the advantage as a
26:10
consumer is there. You can reach a different type of
26:12
consumer on a different marketplace. And the biggest difference between
26:17
Google Ads in combination with organic search in Google is
26:21
that on the marketplace, spending money on ads also influences
26:26
the organic ranking. So the normal free ranking. So if
26:29
you start selling faster and faster for specific keywords, you
26:33
will show up in the organic ranking. And there are
26:36
people searching very specifically for products. So that's their purpose.
26:40
They already have a checkout. So I would invest my
26:43
money there and then have the spin-off effects to your
26:47
own D2C store.
26:49
Interesting. An interesting customer acquisition strategy. And I'm— I think
26:54
we might experiment with this a little bit because It's
26:57
getting harder and harder, isn't it, to acquire customers now
26:59
on Google, Meta? this is the biggest complaint I'm
27:03
hearing a lot at the moment. People are struggling with
27:05
it. And so shifting that out into marketplaces where it
27:08
might be— I guess you're going to get a higher
27:12
ROAS, it's going to be much more targeted. and
27:15
you can, you can definitely experiment with it, can't you?
27:18
And, and you can even do—
27:21
yeah, you could even go to other ad networks drive
27:25
traffic to your product listing on any of the marketplaces
27:28
to influence your organic ranking, because typically that can also
27:31
be cheaper per click, per transaction versus advertising on the
27:37
marketplace itself. And the marketplace likes it because they get
27:40
free traffic, right? So it's like it's not penalised in
27:44
any way. It's like there's traffic coming on the listing,
27:47
awesome, and they buy. That's all they care about. So
27:51
that's a great way to experiment. I know other people
27:53
that even use all kinds of, you know, the comparison
27:56
sites and get relatively cheap clicks and then send them
28:00
over to listings using social networks. So there's a lot
28:04
of options there to do it in a different way.
28:07
And then that way you can build your own brand
28:10
as well. And there are some brands that started on
28:14
Marketplace and then spun out to physical retail to their
28:18
own D2C shop to do. So it's basically the other
28:21
way around, and that works because you always have to
28:24
look at where is the consumer.
28:26
Yeah.
28:26
And find that consumer, with their intent. Yeah. And
28:31
if you're not there with your product, they're gonna buy
28:33
your competitor.
28:34
Yeah, that's so true. Always be where your customers are,
28:37
right? It's a standard theory, isn't it? I guess one
28:40
of the questions that that, I've heard people bring
28:44
up a lot when it comes to selling on different
28:46
marketplaces. I suppose it's the biggest issue people have with
28:50
Amazon, other than Amazon's crazy-ass fees, is the fact that
28:55
they just increased again. Yeah, thank you, Amazon. God bless
28:59
you, because you're not making enough money, obviously.
29:02
It was a big wedding. Yeah.
29:09
Yeah. It's gotta pay for itself.
29:11
You know how much diesel costs for a yacht.
29:16
Oh, goodness me. I suppose the two bit, I mean,
29:21
the two complaints then, something like Amazon fees would be
29:25
one and two is the lack of control, right? So
29:31
Amazon, I think in many ways you can make money
29:34
on Amazon, but Amazon's a bully. In so many ways
29:37
to towards the, the resellers. Part of me gets it,
29:41
part of me thinks it's a bit overboard on occasion.
29:43
I— where do you notice it? Sorry, selling on
29:49
Amazon. Where do you notice it selling on Amazon in
29:55
terms of—
29:56
I mean, there's obviously very strict criteria that you have
29:58
to go through, with certainly with supplements. And the—
30:05
for example, a classic example, I've been asked possibly to
30:10
mediate, or to become an expert witness, which always
30:14
intrigues me in a case, where someone was selling
30:19
on Amazon, one of their competitors complained to Amazon,
30:23
Amazon took them down, it took 13 months to get
30:26
reinstated, by which time they've lost you know, their whole
30:28
business had sort of imploded really. and it's very
30:32
much a case of you're playing by their rules. So
30:37
there's, there's not the control. At any point they can
30:40
switch you off and go— and you've seen this, right?
30:43
Amazon are notorious for it. So, we'll, we'll start
30:47
making our own vacuum cleaners and start promoting those because
30:50
we can. We, we now see the demand. Thanks for
30:52
generating the demand. We'll sell them you've got nowhere to
30:55
go kind of thing. And so that's what I mean
30:59
in terms of the sort of schoolyard bully. It's like,
31:01
it's our way, that we're not talking to you. In
31:03
fact, if you try to talk to a person at
31:05
Amazon, it is, it's almost impossible. so I'm, I
31:10
think these are sort of the two biggest complaints, are
31:12
they? So I'm thinking, I'm multiplying this out, I'm multiplying
31:17
fees, which I guess is just a simple mathematical calculation.
31:19
Is it worth it? Yes or no? but each
31:23
marketplace in my head is probably going to have its
31:26
own quirks, its own set of rules. I don't own
31:30
that customer, and I have a sort of distinct lack
31:34
of control. How can I mitigate against that?
31:38
Yeah, so first of all, it is well known what
31:41
you say about Amazon, both on the vendor side as
31:43
well as on the seller side. So there's a lot
31:46
of negotiations, so Brands start moving from a vendor to
31:50
seller as well, so they're more flexible. And that's also
31:53
why a lot of brands now don't purely want to
31:56
rely on Amazon as a channel. So you start selling
31:59
on all the other marketplaces that make sense for you.
32:02
So even if Amazon does something weird like that,
32:06
then you still have your revenue running. The things they
32:10
are very strict at that I do like is pre-fulfillment
32:14
cancellations. So basically everything for the consumer experience. Yeah, that's
32:18
great. Yeah, the, the examples you mentioned, that's definitely
32:23
something I've seen in the market space where people are
32:26
taken down because there was a claim of, having
32:29
fake products, and there are actually teams of your competitors
32:32
that can submit that. Yeah, that's where they need to
32:35
step up and automate and validate way, way quicker because
32:40
it just costs completely amazing businesses, their full business. So
32:47
there's no solution I've seen yet. I know they are
32:50
aware of it, but the sheer scale of Amazon sometimes
32:54
makes it hard to do that. But that shouldn't be
32:57
an excuse, especially with all the money they get in.
33:00
So they should fix that. So they're ruining some businesses,
33:05
especially smaller businesses that don't have any way to fight
33:08
it. Yeah, so let's hope that works. And,
33:12
that's also why it makes sense to start selling on
33:14
other marketplaces as well. that will hopefully in the
33:18
future give some more pressure on Amazon to, to fix
33:21
these kind of situations.
33:23
Yeah, we should wait and see. We should definitely wait
33:25
and see. So how do, how do I— what
33:30
are some of the creative ways then that I can
33:32
get access to the customer data. So again, if I
33:38
sell a product on Amazon, I don't get that email
33:41
address, right? They're very, very protective about that email. And
33:44
in fact, they've all kinds of rules about what I
33:46
can and can't put in the box to try and
33:48
get that customer to contact because it's their customer. And
33:50
I get it. I totally understand that.
33:53
Yeah.
33:54
But obviously I want, I want email addresses. You know,
33:57
it's the second most important thing that I get after
33:59
the sale, isn't it, is your email.
34:00
So 'what are some of the creative ways that
34:03
I can do that?' Yeah, so Amazon, be very careful
34:07
doing that, because they will just kick you off,
34:11
if you get caught. also, and you will
34:14
get caught, you will get caught. They have a massive
34:18
amount of algorithms to, to check it. also asking
34:22
for 5-star reviews and then landing on a page where
34:25
you click on 3 stars and then redirecting to a
34:27
different page instead of to Amazon. You're gonna, you're gonna
34:30
be banned. So it's gonna be very short-lived. So I
34:34
would say use their rules, adhere to their rules as
34:39
much as possible, build a strong brand that people like
34:43
and want to repurchase, and then have a D2C shop
34:46
that people can find, and then hopefully they come there.
34:49
Otherwise, just use Amazon, accept the fees, and drive more
34:54
revenue. Other marketplaces, it's a bit easier, so they're a
35:00
bit more relaxed. I would say look at TikTok Shop.
35:05
I do see customers that are using that really well,
35:08
are doing a lot of volume, and they just give
35:10
you the customer details. So that's the difference. So they
35:15
are more the transaction, so that's an opportunity to do
35:20
it, but be careful in getting them back into the
35:22
funnel. You can always do register for warranties and those
35:27
kind of things, but please be careful because they can
35:30
take away your full revenue. Talking about right away being
35:36
reinstated and stuff like that, it's easier on other marketplaces.
35:39
They're more seller-friendly. It's a lot of marketplace you can
35:43
just get in touch with the, with the team, the
35:45
seller team, actually on the phone and emails, and it's
35:48
the same person instead of sort of randomised guy somewhere
35:52
in the world that answers tickets, hopefully.
35:55
Very good. You're right, listen, I'm aware of that.
35:58
That's another advice, by the way. If you send in
36:00
a ticket and you don't get the right response, change
36:03
the subject a little bit and then send in a
36:05
new ticket, and then there's some sort of randomised algorithm
36:08
and hopefully you get somebody that does.
36:10
Okay, yeah, yeah, spam the ticket systems.
36:14
Why not? Not too much, but it's like if you
36:17
don't get a resolution, change the title a bit and
36:20
then do it again.
36:21
Absolutely. No, totally. I'm with you. I do it all
36:23
the time. You're right. I've just looked at the clock
36:27
and I'm like, goodness me. So I guess firstly, how
36:34
do people reach you? How do they find out more
36:35
about ChannelEngine if they want to know more about
36:38
that? If they've got questions for you, how do they
36:40
connect? What's the best way?
36:43
Yeah, so the best way is to go to channelengine.com.
36:46
To the website. You can reach our company and me
36:51
on LinkedIn. So we share a lot of information also
36:54
on our website. Even if you don't want to use
36:56
ChannelEngine, there's a lot of resources with starter kits
36:59
on marketplaces, checklists, stuff you can download. We did a
37:04
research report, a few research reports about the marketplace to
37:07
get more information. Just go there, it's free. Some are
37:10
gated where you have to sign up and you get
37:12
a whole bunch of useful email addresses from us. Emails
37:15
from us, and then you can sign off if you
37:17
want. But it's, it's valuable information, so start using that.
37:22
And otherwise, just reach out to me or our team.
37:25
Fantastic. We will of course link to your— in the
37:28
show notes, which you can get along for free with
37:33
the transcript and all of that sort of good stuff
37:36
at the website ecommercepodcast.net. They'll be in the show notes
37:38
if you scroll down on your app. They'll be there.
37:40
If you're on YouTube, they'll be in the description, so
37:43
you don't actually have to go to the website, but
37:45
obviously go to the websites. Just do that, you
37:48
know, it blesses everybody. but yeah, it's one of
37:52
those, isn't it? I, I, I'm, I think you— I'm
37:56
curious to see how many people go to your website
37:58
and start looking at it, because I'm definitely going to
38:00
go in there and I'm sending Claude at least.
38:04
Yeah, let me tell you, tell me what Claude says.
38:09
Yeah, absolutely. but genuinely eye-opening conversation, Jorrit, and I—
38:15
and it's made me think again about marketplaces. And,
38:19
so thank you for, for stirring that and, and challenging
38:22
our thinking on a few things. and I agree,
38:25
we should definitely be thinking about this an awful lot
38:27
more. So if you're listening to the show, do reach
38:29
out to Jorrit on LinkedIn. we'll put the LinkedIn
38:33
profile and all that sort of stuff in there as
38:34
well. And just even if to say, how's it just
38:36
say hello, and enjoy the show. I'm sure I'd
38:39
appreciate hearing from you. but you're right. let
38:43
me ask you two questions actually before we, before we
38:46
close the show, if I can. question number one,
38:49
what's your question for me? This is the segment of
38:52
the show where I ask for a question for Matt.
38:54
I'll take the question, I'll go and answer it on
38:55
social media.
38:58
Okay, Matt, what is the weirdest thing you used AI
39:02
for?
39:04
Oh, that I can tell my wife about, right? I
39:15
love it. What a great question. I'm going to look
39:18
forward to answering that. So if you want to know
39:20
how I'm going to answer that question, come follow me
39:22
on social media. And Jorrit, in closing, I'm going to
39:25
give the microphone to you, my friend. And this is
39:28
where I ask you just to for those that have
39:30
remained to the end, top value, what's your
39:34
top tip just on the whole? We've talked about doing
39:38
marketplaces. What's the number one thing people need to know
39:42
to do this like really, really well?
39:46
Yeah, I think first of all, start doing it, not
39:50
just think about it, and, and hope for the
39:53
best. So yesterday I was at a Microsoft event and
39:55
I saw One of the speakers had a great overview
39:59
with two lines, one going down. So the cost of
40:01
doing is going down because you can automate a lot.
40:03
So you can do that really at scale. And we
40:06
have a lot of AI implemented. There are all kinds
40:08
of tools you can use. And the cost of not
40:10
doing it is incrementally increasing. So the opportunity cost, and
40:14
especially I would say in Europe, people are way
40:20
too focused on the out-of-pocket cost. Versus what they lose
40:23
in terms of opportunity. I see a difference in the
40:26
US. People are going for the opportunity and are happy
40:29
to spend some money to get there. But Europe sometimes
40:33
are way too much focused on saving $1,000 and then
40:36
debating it for 3, 4 months, and then they just
40:39
leave millions in revenue and hundreds of thousands in profit
40:44
on the table. So really act, automate, do it, experiment,
40:49
and go for it. And the information is out there.
40:51
The information is everywhere. So go to your whatever chat
40:56
engine, ask questions, let them be the marketplace expert, and
41:02
then guide you along the way. And of course, if
41:05
you have a certain skill and you want to automate
41:07
stuff, come to us.
41:09
Fantastic. You're right. Thank you so much, man. Genuinely appreciate
41:13
you coming on the show. Really great to chat, and
41:15
thank you for your patience earlier with the dodgy recording.
41:18
I don't know what that was all about anyway, but
41:20
this has come out well. Thank you so much, my
41:22
friend. It's been an absolute treat.
41:25
It was fun, Matt. Thanks.
41:28
There you go. What another great episode that is.
41:31
thanks again to Jorrit for joining me. And of course,
41:34
like I said, all the information, show notes, everything will
41:36
be in your descriptions, wherever you're checking out this
41:38
podcast or on the website ecommercepodcast. But that's it from
41:42
me. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a
41:45
phenomenal week wherever you are in the world. I'll see
41:47
you next time. Bye for now. Awesome.