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Why Your 2-Pound Parcel Ships Like It Weighs 18 · eCommerce Podcast

0:04
Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson, and
0:08
it is great as ever to be with you on what can only be described as a really hot
0:12
day in England. It's like the only time of the year it's hot, and it's now. So
0:17
welcome to the show. Great to have you with us. If you're new to the show, we
0:21
talk about all things ecommerce. That's the plan. That's the aim. That's the
0:25
hope. We get great guests on the show to come and talk to us about their
0:29
knowledge and their insight or their stories if they're a founder. Um, but we
0:34
also like to get experts on the show, and Andrew is no exception today. So we're
0:38
going to get into a conversation with him in just a second. But before we do,
0:42
uh, let me just tell you, we've got a website. Of course we do, uh, we're in the
0:46
digital space, ecommercepodcast.net. Um, if you head to that website, you can
0:51
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0:55
to the episode, all the links that that come out in the conversation, everything
0:59
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1:03
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1:33
all of that. Everything, like I say, is on the website ecommercepodcast.net. You
1:38
can see it all there. Do go check it out. Now, without further ado, I'd do a
1:42
drum roll, Andrew, if I actually had a drum, but I don't. So welcome to the
1:46
show, man. How you doing?
1:51
Thanks. Appreciate you having me.
1:53
No, no, it's good to have you, man. Good to have you. For those that don't know
1:56
you listening to the show, uh, just give us a sort of the brief snapshot of, of
1:59
all things Andrew.
2:03
Okay. Um, I've been doing Amazon about 7 years. Uh, I was a, uh, I guess as far
2:09
back as an ecommerce director for a, a large, uh, beach supply business. Mm-hmm.
2:15
And yeah, I think I was just so in love with Amazon and everything Amazon. And
2:21
so one day I was like, you know what, I can keep doing this without the 9-to-5
2:27
work and open up my life a little bit. And that's kind of the direction I've
2:33
taken. And now I not only run my own business, Amazon, Walmart, but I help
2:40
others do the same through a business called SellTrue. So that's, yeah, that's a
2:46
little bit about me.
2:53
And it's fair to say, Andrew, that Amazon has changed a lot over the last 7
2:56
years.
3:01
Yeah, that's a fair assumption for sure.
3:04
Since you started and obviously since you sort of went down this path, what are
3:07
the key changes that you've seen?
3:11
Well, I mean, during this period of time, right, we've had COVID, which was
3:16
like, you know, an easy— I want to call it like an easy path to selling products
3:20
online. Like, that was— so, you know, transitioning from something that was, you
3:25
know, the beginning, I was more just, you know, learning, just getting started.
3:30
And then all of a sudden it became like really easy, really fast. And then
3:35
coming out of it, it became harder. So, but, you know, I had more time and
3:39
experience to like start to figure things out. So I made a lot of mistakes
3:44
during, you know, that transition period. But I guess that would be my biggest
3:49
change, right? I think that happened for everybody though.
3:54
It did. COVID was a fascinating one. I mean, we don't talk about it hardly these
3:58
days. I remember one time it was the only conversation that we had, you know,
4:01
with COVID But it's quickly how— well, it's amazing to me how quickly the world
4:05
forgets. You know, about that and sort of adapted and moved on from this, this
4:09
whole event. But it is true to say, and maybe, is it still the case? Do you
4:12
think that it's harder to sell now since COVID I mean, COVID, like you say, was
4:16
the easy path to online sales. You know, you could sell snow to Eskimos if you
4:20
could ship it online. Do you think that's still the case? Do you think things
4:23
have changed?
4:28
Definitely. There's a lot of products that used to sell that are just no longer
4:33
viable anymore. Even, you know, after COVID, I think we saw this big search term
4:38
spike where different products— I'll give you an example. The one that's failed
4:43
now is like a back pillow for like sitting in a chair, right? And that was like,
4:48
that was huge. You've seen the keyword spike and now it's like there's so much
4:53
saturation. But like, at that time, it was just like the easiest product to sell
4:57
in the world. Yeah.
5:02
And, uh, so it's interesting, isn't it? And, and they— I remember one time
5:06
somebody coming to me and going, Matt, I need some help. And I'm like, what do
5:09
you need help with? They're like, I've got a container load of, um, fidget
5:13
spinners. Can you help me sell them? I went, I went, no way, dude. No, that's
5:16
just— I'm not getting—
5:20
no, that's a dangerous road to be on, right?
5:24
Yeah, it is. It is. It's interesting, isn't it? How quickly you can, you can
5:27
miss the trend, right? In the sense you go, well, I'm gonna make a shedload of
5:31
money here, buy, buy some products. And before you know it, it's sort of, it's,
5:34
it's gone by at 1,000 miles an hour.
5:38
Absolutely.
5:41
So you obviously work with people, uh, with Amazon, with Walmart. Um, fast
5:46
forward, obviously we're sort of post-COVID now. And like I say, long since
5:51
forgotten about COVID If you could mave a— wait, mave? No, not mave, wave a
5:57
magic wand, right? And solve the single biggest problem that you see for you,
6:02
for your customers, what would it be and why?
6:11
Solve the single biggest problem. I would say that I talk about this a lot, I
6:16
think, and going on to the Walmart topic, the single biggest problem that I see
6:22
with brands is treating every ecommerce platform like they're Amazon. Like
6:27
they're the— if I just take my workflow that already works on Amazon and just
6:32
copy and paste it onto Walmart, for example, that should work. Yeah, that will
6:38
work for me. And that's just not not true. Um, you know, each of these are their
6:43
own search engine, and I, I primarily and only focus on Walmart and Amazon. I
6:49
like the marketplaces. That's been my bread and butter. Um, but like I said,
6:54
they're their own search engine. Yeah, there's different keyword searches on
6:59
Walmart as there are on Amazon. You know, some are the same, but I would say
7:05
that the majority are slightly different, uh, So you can't just copy and paste
7:10
these listings from Amazon to Walmart and vice versa. It just doesn't work. I
7:16
think a lot of people struggle with that. Yeah.
7:21
Well, you can see why people do it, right? Because in your head you kind of go,
7:25
it's a marketplace. I'm selling to people through Amazon or I'm selling to
7:29
people through Walmart. How hard is the same product is going to get shipped,
7:33
right? You can see why, uh, why people would think that. Um, and also it's easy,
7:37
I suppose, isn't it? But you don't have to sort of— you just kind of think,
7:41
we'll cut and paste, we'll try that first. Um, what are some of them? I mean,
7:46
you've mentioned keywords, which I, I actually is an interesting one because
7:50
obviously people are typing in different searches in Amazon for that product
7:54
than they are in Walmart. What have you seen there?
7:59
Well, I think the easy part is the— is maybe the biggest thing, right? So like
8:04
you, like you touched on for a second, it's, it's really easy to just export a
8:09
list and then import it into Walmart and just be like, okay, I'm done. And if I
8:14
need to make, go back and make changes later, I can. And the issue is Walmart is
8:19
just not there yet as far as changes that we can make. I mean, I have a listing
8:24
I've been trying to change a main image on for like a month. I mean, it's just
8:28
sometimes it's just like, it doesn't make sense why I can't just change it.
8:33
Like, Yeah, it's wild. But with that thing, it's like, so that means like you
8:38
really have to set it up properly the first time. Um, so, so that's—
8:43
yeah, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? With, with— do you think Walmart is
8:47
getting there? I mean, how long do you think it'll be before it catches up?
8:50
They're definitely getting there. Um, they're, they're working hard on it. I
8:55
mean, I see it every day. When I first started on Walmart, we had to upload
8:59
Excel spreadsheets. There was no UI that you could go in and even add a product.
9:04
You know, you had to go through a Walmart account manager and then they would
9:08
help you, and it was just like a whole back and forth thing with, with, you
9:13
know, all these random people, and they would switch you out. It was just like,
9:17
it was a nightmare. But yeah, they're, they're getting to it, they're working on
9:22
it very, very much. That's why I still say like it's just such a place right now
9:26
where if you can get over those difficulties and those humps and like
9:31
Understanding when you're getting onto the platform, like, it's not an
9:35
automatic— it's not like Amazon. You're not just going to gain traffic overnight
9:40
if you just pump PPC campaigns, or yeah, if you just, uh, there's no shortcut
9:44
really. You have to know that you're going to endure some of these little
9:49
hiccups because the platform just isn't mature yet. But once you can get over
9:54
that and you can find that spot It, it's, it's a great platform.
9:58
I'm intrigued actually, Andrew, listening to you talk, cause I, I'm, I'm sort of
10:03
thinking in my head, well, Amazon will be a bigger platform than Walmart. I'm
10:07
guessing, right? It's going to have a bigger audience. It'll have more orders,
10:12
which in my head would also probably equate to Walmart being less competitive
10:16
than Amazon. Would that be a fair assumption?
10:22
Walmart is a lot less competitive. A lot less. There are a lot, a lot less
10:27
competitive. I, I do think, and I, you know, hold me to this, I still think that
10:32
in the long run Walmart might beat out Amazon in the ecommerce space.
10:37
Okay.
10:38
I say that because Walmart has storefronts that Amazon doesn't, and you know,
10:42
the thing right now that makes Amazon so great is their fast shipping and
10:47
Walmart's more getting into that with WFS, and I think that the, the whole
10:52
concept of being able to purchase something from Walmart, get it fast, right?
10:57
Say we're in the future a little bit and Walmart can get you those single-day
11:01
deliveries or, uh, for products, right? And then you don't like it and you can
11:06
just take it to the store and drop it off, or take it to the store and exchange
11:11
it real quick for something. That's something that Amazon can't give you.
11:16
Yeah.
11:16
So I see that being a, uh, a big help, as well as the fact that like their
11:21
warehouses are their storefronts. Yeah, so that, that really helps them in the
11:25
logistics side of things and getting products to you quicker. They haven't
11:30
really implemented all of those, right? They're still building, but I think that
11:35
that's a big driver in why they could be more successful than Amazon in the long
11:39
run. As far as ecommerce goes now.
11:44
Yeah, it's an interesting point, isn't it? Because what, what you've got, I
11:48
suppose, with Walmart, like you say, you've got the ability to go to the store.
11:53
I don't know what it's like in, in the States as much as I do here, but simple
11:57
things like click and collect, like almost like a drive-through where you can
12:01
pick up your orders. Um, Amazon, again, don't— I, I I don't think it'd be that
12:06
difficult for them to create them, but they don't— certainly don't have the
12:10
infrastructure right now, whereas Walmart, um, you do. Like, I, I'm assuming
12:14
that— I mean, you can do it here, so I'm assuming you can do it in the States
12:18
where you can just literally do click and collect and somebody will come out
12:23
there with your order to the car, um, literally like a drive-through. Uh, it's
12:27
the most extraordinary thing. And dropping returns off like that, you know, on
12:31
the way back to the office or on the way home or something Uh, you're bringing
12:35
a, a level of convenience there, aren't you? Rather than just, we have to send
12:40
it to your house or your place of work, and if you want to return it, you need
12:44
to figure that out. Uh, we need a courier involved. Um, so that, that— yeah,
12:48
you're right. I guess there's a level of convenience that Amazon just don't
12:53
have, right?
12:57
Exactly. And especially especially in the home space, the grocery space, right,
13:01
where people need things pretty quickly, um, and you can just pull up and get
13:05
them. It's, it's a game changer in my opinion.
13:10
Yeah. Are you— is it fair to say then that you're concentrating on Walmart more
13:14
than Amazon, the same amount, or is it still not as big of a deal for you right
13:18
now but you think it will be in the future?
13:23
I would say time-wise I probably put 40% of my time into Walmart just because it
13:30
does require a little bit more of that, those little nuances. Like I said, I, I,
13:36
I just really believe in what I've seen in the growth that I've seen of specific
13:43
products on Walmart. And I know that, uh, I just know how successful and how
13:50
high the margins are., with the crazy low competition. So I, I'm, I'm in on it.
13:57
I'm all in on it. I really, I really like the platform.
14:04
So what sort of things do you see working well? Like, if I— I mean, I sell
14:08
supplements and we sell them on amazon.com, we sell them on amazon.co.uk, and
14:13
it's one of the products that we have. It does okay for us on Amazon, actually.
14:17
I, I have no complaints. It's always nice to sell more, isn't it? But You know,
14:22
what it, it sort of has its pros and cons, I suppose, Amazon. Um, would that
14:26
work on Walmart? Should I think about— I mean, we tried Walmart and it didn't
14:31
work as well as we thought, but this was a couple years ago. Um, but yeah, I'm,
14:35
I'm curious what kind of products are working well on Walmart, do you think?
14:40
I think supplements are fantastic. I think the food products are probably some
14:44
of the best. Yeah. Um, obviously Walmart's a large grocery retailer, so food
14:49
products work really well. Anything in that home space, um, you know, when I put
14:54
my mind in like the customer avatar, if you want to say that, for, for somebody
14:58
who's shopping on the Walmart app, um, you know, they're, they're buying their
15:03
groceries and maybe they're buying a couple other things for their house around,
15:08
around that period of time and they're just adding them to their cart. So I
15:12
think those products work really well. And I've seen real success with, with
15:17
those. So that would be my, my go-to.
15:22
Very interesting. Another client— is the clientele similar for Walmart? Like,
15:27
I'm— I mean, I've been in Walmart stores in the States, um, got lost in Walmart
15:31
stores because they're so huge, uh, but I'm kind of like— and actually Walmart,
15:36
uh, until recently owned a big supermarket chain here in the UK called Asda, and
15:41
they sort of turned them into these mini Walmarts, but I think they've sold it
15:46
on now. Is the people who go into Walmart, are they the same clientele buying
15:50
online or is it a different clientele buying online as opposed to the ones going
15:55
in the store? I don't know if you know.
16:01
Yeah, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's, I think it's a, if I'm generalizing
16:05
here, I think the average Amazon customer avatar is slightly different than the
16:10
Walmart customer avatar. Um, yeah, I don't think— I think you can get away with
16:15
selling, uh, more high-ticket products on Amazon than you can on Walmart. Yeah,
16:20
like I said, the, the grocery niche is really the one I, I stick in, so I can
16:25
speak from that niche. But yeah, I think as far as Amazon goes, you could
16:30
probably get away with more of the higher-ticket items.
16:35
Yeah, it's interesting because I— again, the little I know about the States,
16:41
you've I suppose they've done very well aiming at the niche, which is the budget
16:46
conscious. It's like, you know, we're gonna sell you the tin of beans for like
16:52
10 cents lower than the guys down the road because we're going to leave them on
16:57
the pallet and it's going to be fine. Um, whereas the guys, you know, that shop
17:02
at say Whole Foods, they have a very different demographic, right? And so Do
17:08
you— well, I mean, let's touch on that. Do you see— I don't know, actually, I've
17:13
not even thought about this— places like, um, Target and Whole Foods and sort of
17:19
the whole raft of sort of Walmart-style stores creating their own marketplaces?
17:25
Yeah, I mean, Target has their own marketplace. Um, Whole Foods is owned by
17:30
Amazon, I believe, so they use, uh, you know, Amazon's platform, right? So, but
17:36
yeah, Target has their own. It's not open to the public like, uh, Walmart and
17:41
Amazon are, uh, so it's kind of gated. And, and, uh, I haven't found any. I
17:47
tried it once before and I, I wasn't happy with it, so I kind of moved on. But
17:52
yeah, they, they do have a platform.
17:58
Okay, so let's, um, let's get into Walmart then. So what are some of the secrets
18:02
to doing Walmart well? That I, I should think about, maybe as a supplement brand
18:06
or as a, a grocery brand or a household brand? What should— what are some of the
18:11
things that I should look at doing to do this platform well?
18:15
Start with your expectations. All right, I think, I think you got to start
18:20
there. You really do. You have to start there and under— like I said, it's not a
18:25
platform where you're just going to jump on. Even, even in the supplement space,
18:30
right, where we, we know there's massive search volume Just don't expect to just
18:35
rush everything with PPC campaigns and just get traffic overnight and, yeah, you
18:40
know, you can kind of brute force it. That's just not the case. Starting with
18:45
obviously having a product in the right niche, understanding the Walmart
18:49
platform, great. And we'll just use your supplement product as an example. So
18:54
setting up a a Walmart-specific listing is really important, right?
18:59
Mm-hmm.
18:59
We want to go in there, we want to see what keywords are a little bit different.
19:04
You already have the data from Amazon, so that's a great starting point. But
19:09
let's check that data against Walmart search, right? And make sure that, okay,
19:14
these key terms actually work here and are getting similar searches. Let's set
19:20
up a Walmart-specific listing because their titles are different, their bullet
19:25
points are different, all of that. I would say generally you can use the same
19:30
images, but, um, so start there. All right, once, once you have your listing set
19:35
and you're ready to launch, you just double-check it one more time because like
19:40
I said, it's really difficult to change once you're already on there. So yeah,
19:45
be 100% that, that this is, this is my listing, this is the best I can do, and,
19:50
and then we launch. That's, that's the start, obviously. My next step, and this
19:55
was a lot easier in 2025, 2024, 2023. They've changed it in 2026, so I've
20:00
prefaced with this, but the biggest and most important thing that I found to be
20:05
success on Walmart is what's called a Walmart account manager. This is something
20:10
that Amazon doesn't even offer, but it's essentially a Walmart employee They
20:15
have a lot of accounts, let's say, yeah, 30 accounts or whatever. But what they
20:20
can do for you is pretty special. So they can do what's called virtual shelf
20:25
placement, and this is pretty cool. So if you tell them, hey, you know, these
20:30
are the— and this is how I do it— I'll say, hey, look, these are the keywords
20:35
that my product ranks for on Amazon. Okay, I'm successful on Amazon. If you want
20:40
my product to be successful on Walmart Here's my key terms, I'm gonna give it to
20:45
you. And what they can do is say, okay, with these key terms, here's the shelves
20:51
that exist within the Walmart platform, and I can go through and I can manually
20:56
put your product on those shelves. So it's kind of like skipping the whole
21:01
search term, um, uh, you know, ranking, right? Like, yeah, they can manually do
21:06
that for you. Now there are, and the way I've been explained to it, there are
21:11
shelves that are search-specific, that aren't like generalized shelves. And so
21:16
those they can't do that for, but right off the bat they can get you on some,
21:21
some visibility within these virtual shelves. So I would start there and I would
21:26
say, okay, you know, give them my report, give them my data. Hey, this is, these
21:31
are the key terms, and, and then have them add that virtual shelf placement.
21:36
That's a strong foundation to start with. And you'll start to garner sales just
21:41
from that.
21:47
So these Walmart account managers, can anybody get them? Do you have to have
21:52
like a minimum trade value? What's the scoop there?
21:57
So in 2026, you do have to have like a minimum GMV, what they call that, a sales
22:02
number. So like, if you're— let's say you're just starting, you know, you don't
22:06
have much Amazon data, you're not a big seller on Amazon, then you have to grow
22:11
that account by yourself for a while. I'm not sure what that number is, and I've
22:16
asked that question before to a few of these account managers and they don't
22:21
really have an answer. But you have to grow it to a certain point and then they
22:25
reach out to you now at this point and say, hey, you know, we've seen your
22:30
account, we would like to bring you on with an account manager so they can kind
22:35
of help you get to that next level.
22:40
Yeah.
22:41
If you have a— if you have an account on Amazon that's doing pretty well, I
22:45
would imagine at some point they've already tried to reach out to you via email
22:49
because that's what's happening. A lot of these account managers are, are having
22:53
to reach out to these Amazon sellers and they're trying to get them onto the
22:57
platform. So I would imagine if you have, you know, if you're doing good sales
23:01
on Amazon, they've probably already tried to reach out to you.
23:05
That's interesting. So actually the minimum GMV, the minimum requirement to get
23:10
on Walmart is not Walmart specific, it's Amazon specific.
23:16
It's not Amazon specific either. Like I've asked this question a few times and I
23:20
haven't gotten a real answer. It's just that they reach out to these people
23:25
trying to pull them in. I don't know what the value is. Because it could be
23:30
different for each category. I, like I said, I've asked them, they don't even
23:34
know the answer. They just say that, you know, they're asked to reach out to X
23:39
amount of people per month and that, that's kind of how that works.
23:44
So do you have to wait for them to reach out to you or can you be proactive and
23:46
reach out to them?
23:49
You used to be able to, uh, pre-2025 you could, uh, not anymore. Um, and, and
23:54
that's kind of a little frustrating. I'm actually— that's one of the topics I'm
23:58
going to the Walmart convention in San Diego this year, just to try to speak to
24:02
some of the directors about that. Like, maybe there's a tip line or something I
24:06
can— we can have that we can say, look, this account has X amount of sales. I
24:10
believe they should have an account manager. Can we— because they want that,
24:14
right? I mean, that's in their best interest. So I'm not sure why they don't
24:19
have something like that currently. Uh, but yeah, that's one of the questions I
24:23
have for them.
24:28
How do you get an— I suppose if you've already got an account manager, or if you
24:30
know someone that has someone, then, you know, it's— it becomes your old boys'
24:33
network, right?
24:35
That's, that's interesting as well, because the account managers are so specific
24:40
on their category, um, that yes, if you have the exact same category of a, of
24:44
another seller, then I could recommend that person to you. But if they're not
24:48
And they're so hyper-specific in their categories, um, so it's— that kind of
24:52
makes it a little difficult.
24:58
That's really interesting. Okay, so Amazon, in theory, uh, if you're doing well,
25:01
Walmart's going to reach out to you. If they reach out to you, sort of don't
25:05
look the gift horse in the mouth and, and go yes. That, that would be a
25:08
conversation I'd love to have.
25:12
Take that gift and, and run with it because they can be very beneficial.
25:17
And supercharges the relationship right from day one, doesn't it? I suppose.
25:21
Absolutely. Um, and just, you know, maintaining a good relationship with them.
25:26
Like, I try to have a, a conversation once every 2 weeks, you know, with my
25:31
account manager and, and, um, you know, building that relationship. And yeah,
25:36
and, uh, each one is a little bit different and, and they're, um you know, their
25:41
backgrounds and how they've come up through the Walmart system and that kind of
25:46
thing. So, you know, I have one that, you know, I've worked with for a long time
25:51
and she even has a good relationship with the director of that category. So
25:56
sometimes when I bring things up to her, she's like, "Okay, let me ask my
26:01
director about that." And then, you know, then the director knows your account
26:06
and then you can kind of work that relationship higher up the chain. That helps.
26:11
So what sort of things— I mean, obviously they can— the account managers can get
26:14
stuff on the shelf for you, or these virtual shelves that you, you, you call it.
26:17
What are some of the other things that you're hoping to get from your account
26:19
manager?
26:23
So they do these things called flash deals. Uh, those are very interesting. So
26:29
they do those, I think, once a week, uh, once every 2 weeks. Sometimes they make
26:34
you skip one anyways. Flash deals are just essentially a spot where they say,
26:40
okay, if you discount this product for us X amount, I believe the minimum is
26:45
10%, if you discount this product 10%, we will then put you on this special
26:51
shelf within the Walmart website which gets extra traffic and give you, you
26:56
know, just that spot where you can you can garnish even more sales. Um, these
27:02
are all things on Walmart, like, again, that typically, right, if we're running
27:07
Amazon, we would always stay running advertising 24/7. Run advertising, run
27:13
advertising, run advertising. Yeah, um, that's just not the case on Walmart.
27:18
Once you're on Walmart and you've— it's a lot easier to maintain organic keyword
27:24
search spots and rankings than it is on Amazon. Like, if I cut my PPC on Walmart
27:29
tomorrow, I'm going to keep those spots for sometimes a month, 2 months. So
27:35
typically my plan is I launch a product, I run those keywords for a couple
27:40
months, understanding that maybe I'm breaking even or losing some money at this
27:46
point, but my goal is to get organic ranking. At that point, I can cut those,
27:52
those ad spend. Yeah, I can use these flash deals and, uh, the next one I'm
27:57
going to get into, what's called the tentpole events, uh, for the rest. Like, I
28:03
can run straight off that and be a great seller just without any advertising.
28:08
And that's, uh, that's a strategy I've been running for a while. It's been been
28:14
pretty good for me.
28:21
So, wow. So there's— I mean, there's a lot there. So you've— you're, you're
28:24
running these flash deals to build your rankings, in effect. And then you've
28:27
mentioned the sort of the tentpole event.
28:30
Did I get that right? Yeah, yeah. Tentpole events are pretty special. These are
28:35
events that Walmart runs. Um, you know, they have their big back-to-school
28:40
event, they have their big, uh, Black Friday event, they have Christmas, they
28:45
have— these are like their big events. And these events are really special
28:50
because they get their own Walmart page. Okay. Um, and then also if you do
28:55
Walmart, Walmart is really heavily trying to, to compete against Amazon. So say
29:00
you have a product at $20 on both websites. Walmart will tell you, okay, if you
29:04
run 15% off on this product on Walmart specifically, you can't run it on Amazon,
29:09
but if you do it for me on Walmart, I'll give you a break on your commission
29:14
fees. So typically when you might pay me 15% of your commission fee, I'll cut
29:19
that down to 7 or 6% for you. Okay, so then that discount that you're running at
29:24
15% is actually, you know, whatever minus the— yeah, the percentage that they're
29:29
giving you. Um, and they're doing this to incentivize these sellers on Walmart
29:33
to run these discounts that aren't available on Amazon. And that's kind of how
29:38
they're, you know, playing that game against Amazon. We still have the lowest
29:43
prices because our sellers are running these discounts, but on the back end,
29:48
they're giving us this, this, uh, you know, rebate essentially.
29:53
Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm, I'm curious, Amazon climbing, clamping down on this? I
29:57
mean, I, I think it would be hard to do so in a free market economy, but Amazon
30:01
do like to be dictators, don't they? And, and so I'm kind of curious, are they
30:05
clamping down on systems like that?
30:10
I haven't had any issues with it, uh, thus far. You know, maybe after this
30:14
podcast comes out. No, uh, I haven't had any issues thus far. And, um, for my
30:17
clients, we haven't had any issues with it this far. So keep our fingers
30:21
crossed.
30:25
Yeah, I'd be curious to see how much longer Amazon let people get away with
30:30
that. Again, I, you know, short of staying legal, obviously. Um, So you've got
30:35
the flash deals, you've got the tentpole events, and so you're doing these
30:40
things to boost your sales on, uh, Walmart, which hopefully has the knock-on
30:45
benefit of increasing your organic rankings, which I'm assuming Walmart, like
30:50
Amazon, look at sales, um, volume, don't they? And they— that will help with
30:55
your ranking. Um, but in the midst of this, you, you mentioned you're still
31:00
using PPC, but maybe with a view to turning that off at some point, which high
31:05
enough.
31:10
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Once, once I see that, uh, you know, my organic ranking is
31:15
page 1 in a good spot, uh, for specific key terms that I'm, I'm looking at, then
31:20
I'll go ahead and, and cut that off because it will, it'll maintain its, its
31:24
spot for a while, especially when you continue to run these flash deals and
31:29
tentpole events because you're, you're getting that sales velocity that they're
31:34
requiring. Yeah. So, so we can cut back.
31:39
Yeah. So the— you're in effect, you're paying it forward, aren't you, with the
31:43
discounting? So you're like, well, I'm going to lose money here, but I'm going
31:48
to save money by not having to pay the, the paperclip. In terms of ad spend
31:52
then, um, is it comparable to, say, Amazon? Is it more costly? Is it— is it— are
31:56
you getting a higher rate of return on, on Walmart?
32:01
Yeah, I mean, their CPC is a lot lower on Walmart, but I'll say their conversion
32:06
rate is lower because of that as well. Walmart platform is just not, I guess, as
32:11
trusted as the Amazon platform yet. I would say that if you have a healthy
32:17
product and, you know, it's been on the platform for a little while, you got
32:22
some good reviews, and I want to go into the reviews thing in a bit, but If you
32:27
got some good reviews, then you can get some great returns. I mean, 4x, 5x
32:32
sometimes. I mean, it really, you, it does it well. You can get some good, good
32:37
returns there.
32:43
Yeah, yeah, especially as competition is still fairly, fairly settled on Amazon,
32:47
uh, and, and slowly moving over, I, I would imagine. So Yeah, okay, well, let's
32:51
dig into reviews. You mentioned that, so this is obviously part of your process
32:55
as well. So you're taking advantage of the sales, um, you're growing your
32:59
rankings, your sales velocity is going up, um, you've got these sort of special
33:03
events going on. So what about reviews? Because obviously that also helps with
33:07
conversion.
33:11
Yeah, when we launch a product— now again, this is not something Amazon offers,
33:16
but when you launch a product on Walmart, if you have It used to be different
33:22
and now it's a lot better on Walmart. So we can import reviews from our Shopify
33:27
website directly onto our Walmart listing. Obviously that helps a lot. Yeah. If
33:32
you have— it's only a few platforms that allow it currently. You have to have a
33:37
specific few and they're like the main ones that Shopify promotes anyways. But
33:42
if you have those, you can just import Excel file, upload those directly to
33:47
Walmart. They do a review check and then launch them on your product listing.
33:53
I've— I'm not sure how much actually they help in like the, the algorithm for
33:58
Walmart, but they definitely help with— and this is a weird they definitely help
34:03
with sales, right? Because yeah, I'll get a review later and they'll be like,
34:08
oh, I read the reviews and this product was great. And it was, it was amazing.
34:13
Uh, but like, how much does it actually help the algorithm when you upload
34:18
those? I'm not, I'm not sure.
34:24
Yeah, I can't imagine a whole great deal, but I can imagine it will, especially
34:28
if you're new. But I can imagine the conversion rate would go up. Yeah, because
34:31
you're gonna, you're gonna, uh, as a consumer, you're gonna, you know, I do it
34:35
all the time on that. I mean, we don't have Walmart in the UK, but on Amazon you
34:39
kind of go dude, you've only got 10 reviews, whereas this one's got 180 reviews.
34:43
Um, it might even be like a pound more expensive or a dollar more expensive, but
34:46
it's got so many more reviews, I'm going to trust that, right? I, I, that's kind
34:50
of how it works in my head, which I'm assuming is, is how it works in most
34:54
people's heads.
34:59
Yeah, I, I agree. Um, definitely it's, it's, it's boosting conversion rate for
35:02
sure.
35:05
It's interesting though that they've allowed you to upload reviews from other
35:09
platforms. I think that's actually quite smart, um, especially if they're
35:13
verifiable reviews, because why would you not, right? This is the— it's gonna
35:16
help Walmart, right? They're making more conversions, um, they're making more
35:20
sales.
35:24
I agree, it's, it's a win-win situation for everyone. Um, you know, interesting
35:28
why Amazon's never done that, but I know Amazon's historically had issues with,
35:31
with— yeah, they have fake reviews and things like that, so maybe that's the the
35:34
route they've taken.
35:38
Yeah, they— I think they've had to work hard to sort of regain that trust,
35:41
haven't they? I suppose. Um, that's really fascinating, Andrew. I mean, is there
35:44
anything else that we should— I mean, you've given us a lot there to think about
35:47
where Walmart is concerned. What are some of the other things that we need to
35:50
think about?
35:54
Yeah, so I would say that when it comes to the Walmart ad platform, if you want
35:59
to touch on that for a little bit, You know, I mentioned we launch campaigns.
36:07
You can't—
36:07
again, you can't take your Amazon campaigns and copy and paste them onto
36:13
Walmart. It just doesn't work. The ad platform is just not that mature. Um,
36:19
campaigns on Walmart are like 3 keywords, 5 keywords max I'd put in a campaign.
36:24
Like, you just can't do the same as Amazon. So really dial in, like, these are
36:30
my keywords, I know the product converts for these. Yeah, let's run those and
36:35
then hands off. That's, that's what I would recommend. Again, run those for a
36:41
few months and then you can kind of dial it back as you start your flash deals,
36:46
as you start your promotions, as you work your, your, you know, account manager.
36:52
And then one thing I want to talk about is like the next step. Okay, so say
36:57
you're running very successful on Walmart, you know, your GMV is $100,000 a
37:03
month, $200,000 a month, whatever that might be, right? And you're, you're
37:08
starting to get to that next level. Um, they'll actually pass you off from an
37:14
account manager to like the next step of account manager. These account managers
37:19
have even more access, even more ability to promote your products through
37:25
influencer campaigns that run on the homepage of Walmart, which are very
37:30
interesting. Now, I've been doing this a while. I've only had access to one of
37:36
those before, but again, those are prime, prime real estate spots. I mean,
37:41
hundreds of millions of people see those.
37:47
Yeah.
37:49
So, but, but again, they start to have that, that access that, you know, you
37:53
just can't get these kind of things on the Amazon platform. But like with those
37:57
relationships, working that, uh, like I said, with, with the directors directly
38:01
or those next level account managers, we can start to get those, those prime
38:05
placements.
38:09
It's really interesting, isn't it, how it feels, Andrew, if I can put it this
38:14
way that Walmart is being maybe a little bit old school, you know, with account
38:18
managers. And the more valuable the account, the more valuable your account
38:22
manager is, if that makes sense. That success begets success in many ways. And
38:26
it does feel a bit old school, which actually appeals to someone like me. I'm
38:31
not going to lie. I think that's genius. I'd love to be able to pick up the
38:35
phone. I remember in the early days when we had a beauty company, we sold
38:39
product direct to Amazon and Amazon sold it on the Amazon site. So we were in
38:43
effect a supplier to Amazon. And, um, and in name only, I would probably say, I
38:48
think we still did exactly all the same amount of work. We still put the content
38:52
together. We still, you know, in effect ran it for them and they just took a,
38:56
you know, they decided the sales price versus us. And we decided, you know, we
39:00
knew what the selling price to Amazon was and they just took care of the rest.
39:05
And it was a really interesting experiment for me. I don't know if they still do
39:09
it actually, or whether they've gone back to it, because the one difference you
39:13
did have was I had someone on the phone that I could pick up and call and go,
39:17
dude, what's going on here? And they could resolve the problem. We've never had
39:22
that since. Yeah, you know, the ability to call someone at Amazon and get them
39:26
to resolve the problem. Uh, to be fair, it didn't even last with them. I think
39:30
once the account had been set up, after a year or two of running it, maybe, um,
39:35
that feature disappeared and it became a lot more, no, the machines are going to
39:39
deal with this, um, which became quite frustrating actually on, on a few
39:43
occasions.
39:48
Yeah, that's, that is one thing that I do like, uh, as far as, as far as my
39:53
account managers go. Like, I've, I've had issues where I'm trying to make a
39:57
change, I'm trying to do something and on Amazon, it would just be like, pick up
40:01
the phone and call Amazon support and we've all been there, we know how that
40:06
goes.
40:11
Yeah, good luck.
40:12
And instead, I can just say, okay, I'll tell my account manager, this is my
40:17
problem, how can we resolve this? And when she starts a case for me, it gets
40:22
resolved so fast. It's like, it's like they, they can get to the next level
40:28
almost instantly. So that's, that's a really nice feature.
40:33
Yeah. To have.
40:35
Yeah.
40:35
Now I imagine it is. It's, and it's sensible, isn't it, in so many ways. Um, but
40:39
I love it. I, again, this is, I think goes back to the difference between Amazon
40:43
and Walmart in so many ways. Amazon has come the old school route. It's got the
40:48
big superstores, right? And it you're used to having account managers. Um, and
40:52
I— one of the things we've been talking about over the years in our team is how
40:56
we bring that customer account management feel into our own ecommerce site for
41:00
our own customers. How can we do that? Um, because that just ultimately, it
41:05
breeds repeat sales like nothing else, right? It's, it's quite an interesting
41:09
concept or an interesting idea. Um, where do you see it all going between Amazon
41:13
and, and Walmart? Do you think it'll just carry on down the road it's going to
41:17
go? Walmart's going to catch up, Amazon's just going to stick in its lane, or
41:21
have you got some kind of insight into this that maybe we've not all seen?
41:28
You know, I only know what's available. And I think that if I had to guess,
41:33
Amazon's pushing, they're pushing innovation, right? They want to get to that
41:39
next level of how fast can we ship the product. And And I think that that's—
41:45
that is the next level of ecommerce, like where can we take that? Is it even
41:50
economically— it doesn't make sense, right? I think that if I had to guess,
41:56
Walmart does catch up in the near future as far as the ecom space goes. I mean,
42:01
they're not that far behind in traffic already. Now, they don't have that years
42:07
of trust and shipping speed and delivery that Amazon does have. So it's going to
42:13
take a little bit more time. Yeah. But, you know, in the age of AI, right? Like,
42:18
for all we know, Amazon could pivot and go more AWS, AI-focused, and that could
42:24
be their lane. And maybe they take their hands off ecommerce a little bit, and
42:29
that's where Walmart makes their ground. I don't know. We'll see. It's, it's
42:35
interesting.
42:41
It is. Do you, I mean, talking about AI, um, obviously Claude, everybody's using
42:45
Claude Code or ChatGPT or some kind of, uh, frontier model right now, aren't
42:50
they? I'm, can you, are there, I don't know if you know, are there MCPs, are
42:55
there APIs that Walmart have that enable you to sort of dial in via your AI of
43:00
choice, or is that not happening yet?
43:05
That's not happening yet. Um, you know, that would be really great. I know, uh,
43:09
I know I use Helium 10 pretty much every day. I'm sure a lot of people, others
43:13
out here do. I, I think they're coming out with the MCP pretty soon that, that's
43:17
going to be directly tied into the Claude system. So that's going to be, you
43:21
know, a game changer in my opinion.
43:26
Yeah, it will be, um, very much.
43:28
So maybe we can get some of that Walmart data from that.
43:31
Yeah, watch this space, as they say. Andrew, listen, I, I'm, I'm thoroughly
43:35
enjoying the conversation, but I'm also thoroughly aware of time. Uh, if people
43:39
are listening to this and they're like, you know what, uh, we want to start this
43:43
whole Walmart game, how do they connect with you? How do they reach out to you
43:47
if they want to do that? Um, what's the best way?
43:52
Yeah, visit the website, uh, selltrue.com. Uh, you can reach me at
43:57
andrew@selltrue.com. That's the two best ways.
44:01
And selltru is true without an E, right?
44:04
True without an E. Tru.
44:06
Yeah, very good. Okay, so selltru.com. We will of course link to that in the
44:10
show notes. So, uh, wherever you're listening to this podcast, you'll be able to
44:15
scroll down, you'll be able to click that link, and if you're on YouTube, it
44:20
will be in the description, and you'll be transported by the sheer miracle of
44:24
digital technology to Andrew's website. Um, But Andrew, man, thanks. Listen, I
44:29
thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for answering all
44:34
my questions about Walmart. Got the brain juices flowing. I'm especially
44:38
interested in Helium 10's MCP coming out. So we will see what happens there. But
44:43
we've got to the stage of the show where for those that listen to the end, I
44:48
like to do this thing called saving the best till last. So given everything that
44:52
we've talked about, what is your best bit of advice for someone who's wanting to
44:57
get started on Walmart that we've not already covered, um, that's really going
45:02
to give them the edge, if I can put it that way?
45:06
Yeah, I— if, if you're just starting on Walmart and you don't have like a niche
45:11
or, uh, you're not specific to something, my best piece of advice would be to
45:16
wholesale. I think there's a big opportunity out there for wholesale on Walmart.
45:21
And what I mean by that is, go to Amazon, there's tons of small businesses, tons
45:26
of small brands out there that have great products, that do great sales on the
45:31
Amazon platform, but just don't exist on Walmart. Maybe it's because they don't
45:36
have a big enough team, maybe it's because they don't want to learn the
45:41
platform, whatever that might be. And, and there's an opportunity right there is
45:46
to you know, call these brands up, have a conversation with them, explain who
45:51
you are, and that, hey, I want to sell your product on Walmart, can you give me
45:56
a wholesale price? And very good, take that product and, and follow that recipe
46:01
that, that we explained earlier, and, uh, you know, go ahead and sell it on the
46:06
Walmart platform. I think there's a lot of opportunity there for tons of
46:11
different product categories. It doesn't just have to be the food space. But if
46:16
you see something that's, you know, doing well, uh, on Amazon, it'll probably do
46:21
well on Walmart as well. That's a really great little advice.
46:27
Love that. In fact, it's almost like a different form of dropshipping, isn't it,
46:31
in one respect? Because you're not buying stock per se, um, yeah, well, you're
46:35
not having it manufactured. You're, you're, you're bringing something in that's
46:39
successful and said, oh, that's pretty smart, like that. Like that a lot.
46:43
Andrew, before we go, the one thing I forgot to do, which inevitably I do on
46:47
quite a few of the podcast episodes, is ask for a question for me. This is where
46:51
you give me a question and I will go away on social media and answer said
46:55
question. So what's your question for me, sir?
47:01
Hmm. It could be anything. Doesn't have to be ecommerce related.
47:04
Can be absolutely anything, you know, as long as it's sort of PG.
47:09
Yeah. You know, I'm fascinated by this topic. I think a lot of people are right
47:13
now in the news, in the media. So my question would be, are aliens real? That
47:17
would be my question.
47:23
That's a very good question. A good exercise. Oh, I love this. I really hope
47:26
E.T.'s real. I really want to meet him one day. Me too. But no, if you want to
47:30
know whether I think aliens are real, then come follow me on social media,
47:33
@MattEdmondson. I will try my level best to answer that question. Question. But
47:37
Andrew, in the meantime, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.
47:40
Genuinely really appreciate it.
47:44
Thank you. Appreciate you having me.
47:45
Oh, it's been great. Genuinely been great. So there you go, wrapped up another
47:50
episode of the eCommerce Podcast. Love that conversation. I don't know about
47:54
you, but I learned a lot. I've got pages and pages of notes, as I, as I tend to
47:58
do, old school, write them down. Uh, and we're going to have conversations with
48:03
the team, which is awesome. Uh, of course, if you're using Sam's Slingshot, the,
48:07
the system that I mentioned earlier, AI system, you will be able to go to Sam
48:12
and you'll be able to ask Sam for help in taking all of Andrew's tips and
48:16
applying them to your business, and it will go, sure, we will help you with
48:20
that. That's the genius of this whole thing. So give that a try if you are a
48:25
Slingshot user, you'll enjoy it. It's a new feature where we've tied the
48:29
eCommerce Podcast episode in with the AI system every week. So that's very cool.
48:33
Yeah, it is really cool. Even if I do say I'm selling myself. But yeah, do go
48:38
check it out. But anyway, all of that said, that's it from me. That's it from
48:42
Andrew. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a phenomenal week wherever you
48:47
are in the world. We'll see you next time. Bye for now.