Latest / Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast / Optimizing Costs and Managing Supplier Relationships in eCommerce with Sebastian Herz

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Optimizing Costs and Managing Supplier Relationships in eCommerce with Sebastian Herz · Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Selling on Giants.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Mr.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Will, and today we had a guest, a special guest, Sebastian Hertz.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sebastian is the co-founder of Zignify Global Product Sourcing and brings a wealth of experience from his background in electrical engineering and industrial automation.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Having lived in Asia for six years and running a successful Amazon business since 2014, Sebastian has a unique perspective on the e-commerce landscape.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Optimizing Cost and Managing Supplier Relationships in E-Commerce, Sebastian will share his strategies for effective product sourcing, managing supplier relationships, and optimizing cost.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: We'll also delve into his extraordinary journey from Singapore to Germany on a motorcycle spanning 38,000 kilometers in 240 days alongside his wife Yulia, all while raising funds for children in need.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive into the insights and experience with Sebastian.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Sebastian, thanks for being with us.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing I want to do is I want my audience to get to know you a little better.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a fascinating journey from electrical engineer and industrial automation to co-founding Zignify Global Product Sourcing.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can you share how your background and experiences in Asia have influenced your approach to product sourcing and e-commerce?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh fantastic.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, great introduction.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: And really a good question, right now straight from the the I guess, I mean you obviously prepared it, but you hit me right straight there.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, long story short, studied electrical engineering in university, um, got a German diploma, graduate engineering degree, and a bachelor on top because that one just came after it.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and went into industrial automation, stayed with the company for 12 years, moved over to China and Singapore, lived there for six years in total, got to know my better half.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh before moving from China to uh Singapore, um, I mean I've been working like uh like crazy before as well.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in two and a half years in my time in China, I did seven man months overtime on my own will, unpaid.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know why I did this, but in the end I had like three weeks or four weeks off, and I guess I bothered the heck out of my better half.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, You know what, Sebastian?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's time you go to Chinese class.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: So here's the school, go for that.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, I found this podcast.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe listen to this.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that was uh Scott Volker, the amazing seller.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I listened to it and I was like, that makes sense.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: And holy cow, I'm in China! I'm like, I can order samples like every day and get them same day delivery back then in 2000.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the end of China was then for me, 2000.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: When did we go to Singapore?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: 2015.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was in China from 2011 until 14, yeah, and ordered samples like all the time and started my first own brand.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: And my wife has been doing all the time uh sourcing her whole life long.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: She's Russian, comes from the Russian-Chinese border.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: So she went to university, was like super fast done, I think like the age of 17 or so, or 18, or somewhere around there.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: She was done with university, British university inside China.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then she went into sourcing.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, she always asked me, Hey, shouldn't we do this together?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, nah, you can source some products for me for my brand.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: And later on, uh, we went on them, well, after Singapore, if we left this, we did on a world travel, went on a motorcycle and uh drove home to Germany in 242 days, working full-time, everywhere, better internet than in China in Germany.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um and later she got me into it, it's like Sebastian, don't you want to join?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, nah nah, nah, you do your sourcing, I do my grants.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the one thing that you cannot win or that you cannot do against women is win.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You sound like a guy's been married for a little bit.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're not married, but we're together for 11 years, and believe me, Zignify by now has 60 plus ladies.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's all women, fully female e-com power or female powerhouse of the e-commerce industry.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just a small support.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Will I mean I'm standing here not against, but with 60 ladies, and that's a lesson.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lesson, not only from my wife, but uh from the rest of the team, of course.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have a saying in the US behind every great man is a better woman.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: You just happen to have 60.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's always a saying behind a well, a great man is always uh uh a strong woman, right?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I couldn't agree more.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my better half is is strong, and the whole of our team is I'm not standing, I don't know, befront in front behind them.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's an amazing journey for sure.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So before I go in a little deeper, because uh 240 days on the road, still working full time, and you that the experience, it must have been next level.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you mind sharing like one of your most memorable experiences on that on that road trip?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, um, I mean, anybody let me, you know, let's not necessarily talk about sourcing, but talk about like business life and how you can grow it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I think one of the things I was actually I heard it through whatever hidden channels or so that I was um considered a high potential in the company before where I was employed, ABB, a worldwide industrial automation leader.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and everybody was like, I wouldn't never believe that I would leave ABB.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was working obviously day and night, I was on fire, I loved it, it was good.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Industrial automation, yeah, let's go! Work, work, work.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um later on I left, and of course I had a lot of doubts.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, should I do that?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like I've been building the business on the side, and it did, you know, there always came those signs and telling you it's like more and more sales and more and more sales.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and a long story short, all of a sudden, from doing like no sales, it went to um, I think it was somewhere close to like seven or eight thousand dollar revenue in one day.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, that's the last sign, I need to resign.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and when you do this in general before you start, and you do have the belief you do want to go on travel, it is possible.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: You can live, you can build your business, and you can do this pretty much anywhere, of course, in the world.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Most memorable, I guess, is of course the journey itself.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um one of the things that maybe most memorable was to me that I think I worked too much on the travel, actually, um, rather than enjoying the travel so much.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that's definitely as a lesson learned, but maybe as a positive thing, seeing all those countries, seeing all those cultures, being in uh Mongolia in the desert or in the steppe and seeing the dead horses and cows and being there in one of the yortas and living there, dropping the bike in the middle of nowhere, having to ride with a nearly broken leg, uh, 13 kilometers or like about eight miles through heavy, heavy, heavy terrain with a wife on the back and a and uh whatever, like an 800-pound motorcycle.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then finding a hospital and having to drive another 180 kilometers where you cannot shift with your leg, but you need to pull a string around it to shift up and going up and down and bumpy roads all the time for like uh what is it, miles, uh like 80 miles, no more, like 110 miles or so.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: You can do anything if you set your mind to it, I believe.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's just a small survival thing, but there's so much to explore.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: And believe me, once you get out there, you'll see those people everywhere.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody called you crazy before to do it.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Then you get on the road and it's like there's a lot of crazy people out here.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not nothing special.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have the dream, get your butt up, do it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was 30 back then, and I said it's like if I don't do this now, I will never do it.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's uh now we're dreaming.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, babe, should we get you a bike again?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: She had a bad accident, but luckily nothing broken.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: And we were thinking, I was like, let's get a bike again and do this again, now on two bikes.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: So you'll be you'll be enjoying it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: You'll be working your butt off, but it's gonna be a trip of a lifetime.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Hey man, dude, it sounds like it you only get one life to live, so what are you waiting for?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is really inspiring.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just the journey, but also the risk that a lot of entrepreneurs that that first step, similar to myself when I started Bella Vicks, you know, side hustling, and it's like, should I do this?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had uh little kids at home, so it was like it was that added pressure.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: But once I made the jump, I can't picture living a life where I don't have the type of control, so it's uh it's inspiring.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like it's a one more thing.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: You don't necessarily have to be self-employed to do that.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: My wife, until the point of Georgia, so it was about already 30,000 kilometers, about uh I would say 20, 18,000 miles or so.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that was well into the 200 days.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she's been full-time employed by a company.
• 8:47
  unknown: Wow.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: We've been working every day, she's had her working times.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: You can travel doing this in your spare time.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if your company allows you, for example, to do be remote, she has been fully like 200 days remotely working for a company, being employed, and that was okay.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't necessarily have to start your whole own business already and be all afraid of everything.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: She is living proof of being able to do that while working for a company.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a beautiful thing, too.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's the future of white-collar work, I'm gonna say.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people can get away with it.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we actually had an employee who did the uh I forgot, but it was like uh he did like uh all the way around um on Europe.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he went from Macedonia all the way to Spain and he took a bus.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: He took this bus and he put solar panels on it, he connected internet and he still worked.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: He had his work hours, you know, and he would work do his thing, and then on the weekends he would just share these like beautiful pictures of him on mountains and like in these valleys, and uh I was uber jealous, but I was super happy for him because it looked like like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and he had his girlfriend at the time, which is now his wife, and you could tell they were really uh enjoying themselves.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: So connects you if if you have a person who does it, if you have a wife or my better half sitting on the back for 242 days going through heck through through hell and anything, and troubles and slight accidents and anything, that connects you together.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's insane.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's jump on to our main topic.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sebastian's here to talk about sourcing products, pricing, and uh uh profit optimization, and I'm really excited to have him here.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, my first question, and I promise I won't throw any curveballs right off the bat, but what are the top three factors you consider when sourcing new products for clients?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh definitely getting enough quotations proposals because you need a leverage of having uh enough quotations to be standing there strongly and self-confident and start negotiating.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, of course, maybe looking into alternative markets.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, when it comes to existing products, do not underestimate the power of resourcing your product.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is an absolute profit machine or profit optimization machine, especially when you sell a lot.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Just imagine you sell 10,000, 20, 50,000 units of a product and you save a dollar, two, five, or only 50 cents.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of money.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, quality control definitely is one of the things you need not only to do for your samples, but please, please, please, please do this, of course, for mass production, especially the first few ones that you uh that you um uh produce with a new uh supplier.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um and be persistent, give it time, don't give up.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think the third thing that I uh would love to give out or say is like when you start sourcing, when you start approaching uh producers, you're not buying, you're selling.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Because those suppliers they exist without you.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: They don't need you.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry to say that, but they do not need you.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: They're out there, they exist.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: They're lucky that some other request from you comes in.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: But they will also well live without you.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you must uh convince them.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I always say give them also a positive but realistic outlook into the future.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Why should they get up and write a quotation for you?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's work.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Why should they think you know, it's like a 50 units?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Why should I get up?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't make any money on 50 units.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um why should I give out a quotation?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: You only want to compare against China anyhow.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: And have you built a business before?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have experience?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you can show all of those things and you convince them, so that is why I'm saying you're selling in that moment.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: The idea of them working together with you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: You must convince them, or we must convince them for you to please give a quotation.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: China is a very typical market.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: I usually or I usually say it's like you know, you contact 30 people uh or 30 companies, you get 29 answers, 28 prices, and all of this you got yesterday.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, the Chinese, they really know, of course, about selling, and China is good, it's a great market as well.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: It has a lot of negative things like anti-dumping tariffs, long uh shipping routes, and everything, of course, as well.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: But look at that.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, us I'm I'm German, so I'm allowed to complain about the Germans over here, old white men not wanting to give a quotation, and you know, so we've never done this, and I have my two, three, four clients.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, why should I do that?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: And changes more and on.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then they ask why the China and how did they overtake us?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're hungry, they're wanting to go, they're ready to go.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: So whenever bring out bring patience as well.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good one.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Bring patience.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that could be applied across all businesses.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to jump into the because this is a really you laid out a whole bunch.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to dive a little deeper in a couple of these.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm actually gonna start with when approaching your selling, not buying.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: That that's actually a really interesting concept that I never really thought of.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just like let's play a little role-playing.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a new brand, I'm a marketer, I have a little bit of experience, but I've never built an empire.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna come work with you to source my product overseas.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say it's a widget like everybody else.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what what does that selling look like?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you email?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Am I getting on phone calls?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how how do I sell that?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the first thing is like if you say a widget like everybody else, stop that immediately.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Please don't.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's too much.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: I started 10 years ago building the first brand, and it's all like Me Too products here, like blocking cards.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that's one of the uh cards that you put into walls.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: So much competition out there, the prices just went down.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: I used to sell it for$15 a piece, now we're at like$5.70.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh a lot less fun.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Make something that definitely has something outstanding in USPs where you're better, those times of just massively selling products uh and just throwing anything on the market and it will work are over.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of competition and lots of competition directly from China, also on Amazon.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Amazon is proactively bringing producers onto the marketplace, trying to skip out, of course, all the white label brands.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're selling, if you're if you are um also building your own web shop and stuff, I mean there is a you know less competition.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: You may still fly with a standard product.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: But again, when you have a product, the thing, I mean, I'll give you an example to suggest in how I would do it or how we do it.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to do this on your own, if you go to China, we usually have from our experience we target to find about 30 potential producers.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Why so many?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in order to get, of course, to check out, we if we may find a lot of them, they may not produce it, they may uh have new products or weird prices, or maybe a trading company and you kick them out.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, get rid of any trading company.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: You always want to go to the source because you do want to find your products, of course, for the best price possible.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need anybody in between who moves boxes and holds the hand open for 40, 60, 80 percent for moving boxes or making big boxes into small boxes and shipping them out.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Useless.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so trading companies, unless it's for different reasons absolutely necessary, get rid of them.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, be patient, be friendly, and now again, paint them a positive but realistic picture.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you've never built a business before, of course, you can't.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you can go in and say, you know, fake it till you make it.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in terms of like, I built a business already before, we're already selling 10,000 units of this and that.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's a similar product to what you have.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, this is a story that helps them understand, ah, okay, so they're selling products already in a similar term.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: So when they come with the next product, okay, that may uh of course help.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that may, of course, uh sorry, that may become realistic.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: So they're not just full of crap and dreaming.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: But on the other hand, if they find that out one day, why should they trust you again?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: You've lied on to them in the first moment.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Don't do that.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And believe me, they'll check you out as well, um, especially when it then comes to production.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: And if you give them over-realistic or over-positive uh results in terms of uh sorry, expectations in terms of you're gonna order 20,000 units in a year and you'll end up ordering 2,000, they'll say, uh, sorry, Will, we agreed on different prices, but I mean you're not ordering what you have.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: So please deliver and show that you order that much, then you get those prices.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's why, of course, MOQ negotiations um and price negotiations.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um you go, you receive the quotations.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Do me the favor, one of the things you should directly do is do not go like shotgun principle.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you like you just shoot and it spreads everywhere.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you contact 500 potential producers.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because what if those 500 potential producers come back and give you a quotation?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of emails and that's a lot of work to go through.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So you may know the I I don't know if the English one has the same um phrase, like you know, you sharpen the axe for 20 minutes and chop down the tree in two hours, rather than you know, not sharpening the axe and chopping down the tree in 20 hours.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: So do some pre-work.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Don't go to shotgun principle, look for who could be potential and then stick to them and get their quotations.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Bother them, call them, email them.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's a lot of work.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: And again, you're selling, right?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And when you do this outside of China, um, we suggest usually, and that's where we go to if the market offers that, to target to find about 60 potential producers.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because so many out there, they have web pages from 1994 which are just not updated.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they may do a product or may not do the product uh anymore.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: They may whatever say it's like, oh, my colleague is on vacation.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, he's sick, corona.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I have my two, three, four, five clients.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Why should I work with you?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going and uh gonna retire in two, three years.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: I have my house, I have my house at the lake.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: I have eh, why should I bother?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: So many of them it will actually, especially with smaller amounts, be more difficult.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: But again, be patient.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Expect, please really expect when especially also sourcing outside of China.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Again, there's huge advantages of doing it, like smaller order quantities, shorter shipment, no import tariffs, and uh for sure prices may be higher.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: But you may also have marketing advantages like hey, made in the US or made in the Americas, made in Europe, or we have clients who did big fat letters print onto the packaging, not made in China.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, but stick to it and please really um expect, for example, to say it's like three calls, four emails, or four emails, three calls in order to get it to get a quotation.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Patience, my friend, patience.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's I mean, that's the theme I'm here, and it sounds like it's patience and persistence.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't realize in terms of product sourcing, obviously, we're on the marketing end, we're selling the products.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: How uh how much sales goes into actually getting some of these uh these manufacturers to build this product and even communicate with you?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um another piece you hit that's pretty interesting.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Existing products don't be afraid to resource uh in order to get profit optimization.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you mind diving into that?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: What what exactly do you mean by resourcing?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going around and getting competitive quotes all the time, or like what does that kind of look like?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, uh maybe to the previous one, talking about the the topic of persistence.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's this one uh image you may have seen this on.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Just go to images.google.com and look for, I think, uh diamond mine persistence.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's a guy you know who's like uh uh digging a tunnel and and hacking and hacking and hacking, and there's another one who is like that much, the wall is this thick, and the rest behind it is just full of diamonds, and he stops and turns around.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: He's that close to a diamond mine, like full like crazy.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's I love that little image.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: Great cartoon, whoever drew it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and when it comes to say you're established already, you have a product that sells well, um, always think of like how many units do you sell a year?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: If it's worth it to say, is like, I mean, what if you could save$5,000,$10,000,$20,000,$50,000, or we have clients where we've saved with a single product$1.31 million per year.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: So thinking of, and that could be, I mean, a massive amount could be Chinese products, uh, anti-China, anti-China dumping or anti-dumping tariffs against Chinese goods, um, which will leave you a huge amount.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: And in this case, it was$810,000 that the client left on the US border just to import it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Super important.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Check your import papers.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Many times you may not even know that you're paying anti-dumping tariffs.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: And anti-dumping tariffs is not against the product, it's against a product from China.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you may find the same product in Vietnam or in South America, somewhere else, where the same product may have 0% import tariffs.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we achieved.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: We got that same product from Vietnam.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: On top of that, a lucky thing was it was still even$1 cheaper.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: You sold 500,000 units of that a year.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: 500,000 units.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's half a million dollars just in savings on the product.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: And 27% import tax.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: Originally it was six dollars per piece, five hundred thousand units, three million, and that made eight hundred and ten thousand dollars import tariffs.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: They were gone.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Zero just because it came from Vietnam, neighboring country.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: Insane.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but now also for smaller amounts.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: I have a client of ours right now, actually, by now a very good buddy.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he used to buy products from uh an importer into Europe.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: So didn't need to handle with all the products and he was profitable when selling it for six dollars.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, buying it for six dollars.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, actually, it was two products, but long story short, we combined them.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: The second product actually came for free.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the first product we reduced from$4.80 down to 21 cents.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: 21 cents.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he only sells five thousand.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because we went to China, opened up a mold and produced it ourselves rather than from importer, and uh he saved like five eighty-nine or so per product, or five seventy or whatever it was, um, on a product times five thousand units.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's twenty-seven, twenty-eight thousand dollars just savings on a product.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the second one came in completely for free.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: He also sells five thousand units, and that happens like over and over again.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you spend uh, I mean, let's let's just assume you look at your product, and as soon as you spend, let's say, ten thousand dollars in a year, or fifty thousand dollars in a year, or a hundred or even more, what would it mean to have 10% savings or 12%, which we achieve quite often?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Or sometimes, I mean, with this case, I think it was 96.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, not the everyday business, but look at your best sellers.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Calculate how much you spend on them, how much do you order a year?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: What if you get 10% cheaper?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: You can take that money then also to buy yourself the top left spot.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I hope this is not a left side, top left showing.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the number one advertising spot.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: You get a product for cheaper, you have money to spend in advertising, you market it, you sell more, you make more profit, of course, due to the higher first placement at top left corner Amazon.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, you spend some more, but you still stay profitable.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: While your competitors on place number two or three with the higher purchasing prices, um may even there not be profitable.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: So resourcing it could well be after, I mean, even after first production or after half a year or after two or three years, whatsoever.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: Go back also to your suppliers and maybe use the undercover hack.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: I have so many hacks in my mind we can use in order to find out hey, are they actually giving you the prices for the for new customers?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Experiences on my own, on my own products.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh even when I sent our own team for our own brands to go out and place reorders.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the other day I was just sitting there, and three days in a row, I was in a hotel because I was a I was in an Amazon theater play in a circus tent.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: There was a crazy guy in Germany making a theater play about Amazon, and I was in there, whatever.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the the the three mornings I sat there, had my breakfast, had my coffee, and then I looked at wow, ladies saved again.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, ladies saved the same amount of units um as as previous order.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: And they saved, I think, 14.8%.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, didn't do anything, have more money.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that is a it's it's a massive power of looking into established products to do savings in terms of resourcing the product.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And sorry if I'm talking so much, but give me another example.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Client of ours, just a recent one, bigger sellers or a bigger seller, he buys for$180,000 every two months.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we went with him to China, went to the Canton Fair, we found other offers, we looked deeper into it.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and now comes the thing, he saves now$77,000 every second month.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: So he places now for$103,000 instead of$180,000.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: And here comes the crown or the cherry on the pie.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Same supplier, same product, same quality.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: What we negotiated the current supplier to stay with him and offered him as a guys, we can also go somewhere else.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: He went from$180,000 to 103,000 every two months.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: He's happy.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I bet.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I bet that is uh next level.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: You got some great stories here to go with them too.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then you know, we're talking a lot about resourcing and finding these producers.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: But do you have any tips on how to effectively manage a supplier relationship?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm new and I'm to your point, I'm being patient, we're going back and forth.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have a supplier I'm working with.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: What is what does that relationship look like?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and how do we foster a good, healthy, working relationship?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: One of the ways that makes him most happy is place a lot of orders.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, on the other hand, I mean, and if you guys haven't seen China, we do sourcing trips to China, we do guided tours to China, or just fly over to China or wherever the country is, go visit your supplier.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe even the simple thing, you know what?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um have a call with him the same way as we have right now.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Have a video call and chat with him and uh yes, talk a little bit about life and family and private things.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because mostly you may not work with the um with the uh owner itself, you may work with a sales agent, but building relationships in between, you know, it's it's it's it's still it's a if you have interest also in them succeeding, and that is why I always say please always stay ethically correct, do not make them your slaves, do not force them down with the prices and anything, and you know why just imagine you want to build a business, and so do they.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: So when you talk with them, just imagine, I mean, they have a family, they have a dream of building a business and becoming rich, of course.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: They want to build something, so they also have to feed a family.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: They need money in order to put food on the table and for them as well to hire people.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: So they need to make profit.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: If you force them down, you place one big order, your product sells well, but he didn't make any profit.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: He said, sorry, I'm not produced for do for for you for that price again.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't make money.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: I made myself a slave.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't, I didn't, I didn't make any profit.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Why should I do it?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course they're also driven by that.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Have a um have calls with them, have also chats with them, be friendly to them.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Don't I mean imagine yourself in their shoes.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you come and you complain and you put all this pressure, they'll say, you know what, Bill, sorry, it's just not fun working with you.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we also, as the same the way as we have it, we sometimes we kick out some of our customers when we notice like it's really just only stress with them.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's really not fun with them.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you offend our ladies or so, and you know, behave.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: We're all humans.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: And another thing, a simple thing could be I mean, if you fly over, go visit for the factory, that's highly appreciated.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, you will learn another culture.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't seen China before, go.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's lovely.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: We used to live there for a long time.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Find out about their holidays, send them small presents.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it costs you$50 for shipping with a present.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: So what?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: It may get you hundreds or thousands of dollars of discount in the future.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: Build relationships.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you have a lot of suppliers, makes it a bit challenging.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well then have your team taking care of them.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Send them flowers for their birthday.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, find out a little bit about what's appreciated in their culture, what not to do.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um make friends.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds pretty basic too, like any other business.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's just meeting people and doing the right thing, to your point.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh being ethical and being responsible.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, some of this sounds like no-brainers, but obviously it sounds like in your experience and the manufacturer you work with, they've had people who are unpleasant to work with and try to crush him with prices.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of this really resonates.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so much in life is about um another great book, I think it was Joe Polish, what's in it for them?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, whether it's sales, whether it's uh we earlier talked about books, and uh, I'm uh I I love to read and now more and more audiobooks and uh anything about business.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: So great book there as well.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Always focus on the other side.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Why should somebody do that?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Understand their motivation, whether it's your employee, or it's your supplier, or it's your boss if you're still employed, or it's uh your wife.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, why should my wife make me dinner?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or weird, you know, weird ex uh example, or I mean anything.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: Why why should she do this?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Why would he do that?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: What's it what's in it for them?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: One of the I think the biggest question I actually told some of our ladies to say take a piece of paper, and uh literally, I mean this is a really good exercise.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Take a piece of paper, put it down, and write on there what's in it for them and hang it next to your laptop or your your screen.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: The more you focus on this, this is some of the biggest things, I think, some of the biggest lessons in life that you can have when it works when when it's about working with people.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Whether sales or purchasing doesn't matter.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um you need to have the the best positive thing for the other one in mind.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's the difference between uh uh just an average business and a great business?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's that customer-centric experience and you know what's in it for them.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's something you should always be asking as anybody who's in the customer service space.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: So uh really resonating.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: What does Amazon want to be?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: The customer most friendly company in the world.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: They're succeeding somehow.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're pretty good.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: Too good.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I would say um awesome.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, on that note too, so you mentioned you know, we're resourcing, we're reducing some product pricing.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: We also go out and get competitive quotes, and occasionally you come back in and you check to make sure you are getting fair prices for people that you currently have relationships with.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um how do you balance cost and quality?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, I'm not gonna lie to you.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when you said, Oh, uh, I managed to get this person from four dollars and twenty-something cents to twenty-one cents, and for me, I'm like, I wonder how that affects the quality of the product.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you mind kind of talking about how you balance between cost and very simple?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Let me see.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's like um it's four words same or better quality.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's the that's the condition.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you don't want to uh sacrifice your quality.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine you have your products up, and I mean, okay, yeah, but no, I would never I would never risk you know negative reviews.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: If all of a sudden your product quality goes down, whether it's ingredients are missing or something, people will discover that.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look at uh look at the all the big brands or so.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: When people are complaining, it's like oh quality went down, oh sizes went down, oh customer support, not good anymore.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, that was a great brand, now it sucks.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um don't.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: The thing is, like, you know, most in most cases you will succeed with, I mean, in almost all the cases, we find uh cheaper production or or negotiate better terms.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: And another term could also be not only the price, but you know, having lower uh order quantities, having faster production times, being preferred in the in the production um uh lineup whenever you come, stretched out uh payment terms, not do 50-50, but do 20-30-50.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: For example, 21 down payment, 30 when uh receiving or when products are being shipped out, for example, after quality control, 50% at 90 days payment after receiving.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this would be nice, or you do 20% down payment, or sometimes you even achieve, depending on where you are, like no down payment, and you pay money afterwards.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: But like that, that's inside the same economical regions, like the European economical region, um, can well be.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: And those are terms which is like you're building positive cash flow, and that's like like wow, I get money before I have to pay it.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh perfect.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but never sacrifice uh quality.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and here another hint maybe.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um again, Amazon seller myself with two own brands.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: So when you also when you get a new product and you feel it's the same quality or even better quality, I mean, even sometimes better quality, people would see it like and they maybe don't see it like this, or say, hey, that thing has changed.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: I had something previously before, it may be better quality, but it's not exactly the same as it was before.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: So people get angry.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but sometimes what it's much a good example is maybe wood, you know, that after a while, uh, wood, depending on how it was packaged, uh, and you may not see those things in the beginning.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: You will learn it along the way when it went overseas, it was stored here somewhere in heat, hot and humid conditions where you are, for example, um, it might start molding inside cellophane wrap, you know, if it was plastic wrapped, and then those are things you don't think about maybe in the beginning, depending on where you ship or you haven't experienced that.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, whenever you have a new product, make another ASIN.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, make it a separate product, combine it under the same parent.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: So you have two children.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't screw up, for example, the average uh star rating.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if something goes wrong with the second product, whether before or afterwards, I can tell you another thing afterwards.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um an example when it happens afterwards, one of my first products was USB cables with LED lights inside.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, dang, this is good, this is awesome.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: I took the greatest pictures laying on the floor with great lighting, and it was lighting up so beautifully at night.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: My phone was charging, and I sold a couple thousand units, and then the problem was like, well, yeah, after three, four weeks of usage, the LEDs for whatever reason went went dim.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's like, didn't see that coming.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: But then you separate your second child from the other child and you you you know kind of delete it and you keep the average uh star rating, for example, on Amazon, uh, to the old amount with the old quality in case you need to go back and never make a hard cut with an old supplier.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Always think you may need to come back and order again.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Don't ever, don't ever piss them off.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Reduce your order amount, maybe, but keep them in there and let them know maybe, hey, you know what, I may still order from you in the future, but maybe right now, if he's asking it's like we're selling still a lot, but from a different supplier, we just had better conditions.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: And this may make your original supplier also consider, you know, of course, reducing your purchasing cost.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: Good thing it's recorded.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so when you notice an issue, you just kind of decouple that that child ASIN and then you know you kind of let it let it die out because it's a poor quality, but you still have that main listing, and you could still go back to your original manufacturer if uh if you did make the changes and the quality wasn't there.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean for sure you could do that um as well.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it doesn't, to be honest, happen really if you do a solid quality control.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes some surprises come in, but that's you know, same as uh if there's a product with a chemical reaction which you can't see happening or beforehand, you know, even foodstuffs.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: For whatever reason, it rots faster than whatever it is.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's nobody can predict this if you look at the bacteria level, can't really go in there.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, hey guys, will you react with one another?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Will you cause troubles in uh three weeks?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: But uh yeah, just do it for the purpose of security.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Makes a lot of sense, and I like that too.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: We would do that a lot on the Amazon side with those separating the ASINs rolling up.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't want to invest in a UPC, for example, you may consider using an FNSQ, which is kind of a workaround.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so a lot of great tips there.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, of course, sorry.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're good.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're totally good.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so how do you handle product recalls or other quality issues?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what advice can you give a seller if they face a similar challenge?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, when you have issues, for example, in the quality, I mean, this is where it becomes important, you know, you don't get products.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh what's it?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you don't make the final payment before quality control done.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you go in, you check the products, and only then you release the rest of the money.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, you won't get your money, of course, back from the supplier.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I once had a very, very tough issue myself also uh I faced with uh, you know, have I had wallets made out of wood where which are like exactly the size of uh cards, and I ordered them many, many times.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, it worked well, fine.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't do, did my myself didn't do quality control, and just ordered them, got them into my my uh local storage and looked into there and I was about to ship it into Amazon, uh, got the boxes ready, I think 12 um master cartons ready, and then looked at it and said, Ah, you know what, just do a quick check.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I opened one, put uh looked at it, looks okay, put a cart inside, and was like, what the hell?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: The cart doesn't fit.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was like a millimeter, which is like one twenty-fifth of an inch, I guess, or somewhere, whatever, it's like too short.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: So for whatever reason, they had a C A D drawing or like a 3D file.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: They used some different measurements in production by the CNC uh mills, and I was like, How is that even possible?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've never gave you those measurements.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I opened up the boxes and it was like 900 units, and all of them had the trouble.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, luckily I found it like before sending it to Amazon because that would have just been 900 negative reviews.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um and had a long, long, long, long discussion with the supplier.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: Guys, I've been ordering so many times.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: Why the hell?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: What did you do?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no, we don't, we you paid everything done.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, we agreed with you know, shipping the stuff back.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what was it?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: I paid for the shipping back, and they reproduced the products then and then shipped them back.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas like, I mean, even this, I had to pay for the shipping.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas like you guys screwed up.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so very, very do take care of your quality control.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: And again, surprise them sometimes, or say it's like whether you do it or not, but don't lie to them too often.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: You say, Hey, can I come around like next week?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I or I will come around, I want to do the quality control locally there.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: And they was like, oops, we better make sure the product is good.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: He's gonna come by.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna make a quality control test um or a quality control, and if that's not right, well, we don't get our money, so make sure you get good quality.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: Some stuff to be open to be honest, again, also if you're working with them, they still don't need you most of the cases, I guess.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Unless you're a super huge brand.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they sometimes may also say, ah, let's quickly produce it, there's whatever 900,000, 2,000 units, smaller customer, let's just do it.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: And if you break away, meh, okay, I have so many other big ones.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: Always think how important are you to them?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: In that many cases, very much psychology kind of goes in the air.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what are they thinking?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: What are their motives?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of what you you know, what you alluded to before.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: What's in it for them?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what's in it for them?
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we we covered a lot, but what are what are some common mistakes you find that e-commerce sellers make when it comes to sourcing products that they end up end up coming to you for services?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: Again, not having the time for searching for enough uh quotations or not looking for enough quotations, not knowing where they come from, uh, where to find manufacturers all over the world, how to communicate with them, not knowing the language.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it does, by the way, help massively.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: If you know a local language, if you speak Spanish and you want to produce in Mexico, it helps a lot.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you speak Portuguese and you want to source in Brazil, or if you speak Polish and you want to get it from Poland because it's a wooden product or whatsoever, it helps a lot being a local because you're being very well of or much more accepted and you're like one of them.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, oh yeah, I'm gonna give you a quotation.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, or just not knowing how to negotiate, or again, not knowing where to find the suppliers, or simply being too lazy, which is a which is on the other hand, I fight find by now a smart thing.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because another book, like we said earlier before, um, I think um is it Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: When you start realizing it's like, hey, it's good to do the sourcing on my own, and you should please do this a few times on your own.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: Go through it, go through almost every process on your own.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: I never did bookkeeping on my own, I really hate that stuff.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but go through every process and until you understand it.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then there will be one day there will be a switch in your brain that will tell you you gotta focus on RGAs, revenue generating activities.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: I should be doing sales and marketing and maybe bring in more products and look where I can sell more.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's one of the major things why most of the startups in general fail, is because they can't sell.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're ready for that step and you can afford it, get somebody else in there, whether you hire them internally or yeah, outsources uh to us, of course.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Kidding, but I mean, you know, in general, like you give this to a sourcing company or and you see all those admin things like bookkeeping.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: What's the benefit of me doing bookkeeping?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is it really worth my time?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is sourcing for my own brands really worth my time, or should I be focusing on growing the business?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um so look into those things.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I think those are mostly the reasons that when people grow up, have grown up, or resourcing the product saying, Hey, I have issues in my profitability, or I'd like to make more profit.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, who doesn't?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um than to say you focus on uh building your team, you focus on building your company, have somebody focus on optimizing the purchasing cost, same or better quality.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: I like it too.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I forgot what I was reading, but something along the lines too of like understand what your hourly worth is.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you could hire a bookkeeper for$22 and you're charging$150 an hour, that's how much your time is worth, then it makes sense that your$150 an hour should not be invested in bookkeeping.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I like what I hear.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Revenue, revenue generating opportunities is definitely the best way to go, especially if you're the business owner.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you're not good at that, well then you know what?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Hire somebody for it.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of entrepreneurs who are really who are startups, who are technical, who are doers.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's I think one of the biggest challenges.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm an again electrical engineer, so I am a doer.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm uh uh and that a long time.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: If I had wouldn't have had my wife, we'd still be like the two of us.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: She has the MBA, she's much smarter in terms of you know hiring through people, working through and with people.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and this making this switch of letting go, trusting others, growing, and to say it's like, okay, I need to focus on other things I can't do, even though it's fun, it's in my comfort zone.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I like it.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: I like doing that.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: So why shouldn't I?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: No, you shouldn't.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's really probably not the point of growing your business.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to sell, again.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Majority of startup fails because they don't know about sales and marketing.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: And if you are a person who is maybe an introvert or who doesn't like to speak on stage or who is not good at selling or who doesn't know email marketing ads, making images.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: There are great companies out there, of course, doing full service Amazon management.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hire them.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because somebody needs to sell that stuff.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: Just yesterday, my my wife is she also likes those uh what's it called?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: The the golden girls, uh like this old Tierno falling asleep.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Classic.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: Back then in the 80s, I was just sitting, I was doing something and I listened to it.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and one of those golden girls back then, you know, said it's in there, and I repeated immediately.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, somebody wants to move a product and they gotta have exposure.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, babe, if somebody wants to move product, they gotta have exposure.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it was such a nice thing, you know.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, look, they knew it, of course.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they knew it all lifetime in the world long, but the 80s grandma tell you if you want to move product, you gotta have exposure.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Amen to that.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if the golden girls are preaching it, it must be true, right?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think we owe them a lot of money, they deserve a lot.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is really awesome.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: You've shared a whole bunch about product sourcing and resourcing and profit optimization.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think I could take notes fast enough, and I know our listeners got just jam-packed with value.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to talk about Zignify Global Product Sourcing.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've shared just an absolute ton of case studies.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what I love about our conversation so far, it's been like every recommendation comes with some type of experience, whether you as a seller or you working with sellers to help improve their business sourcing products.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been really great.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, just for our seller or for our listeners who may not know about what you do and about product sourcing, can you explain about your core services and and how they're unique to uh to the market?
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'll challenge you maybe a little bit, or to less the listeners in here.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: I have like slides with with 30 plus hacks.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: So if anybody wants to hear some more hacks, I'm a person who loves to share, who loves, you know, to give out all the secrets.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's all the the secrets, but there are no secrets, it's just about doing, doing, doing.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: So if you need more hacks, if you want to hear more, I mean, I guess let Will know.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm happy to come back and give more of those hacks, and we'll prepare maybe a list of the top five or so.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: We just go in.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, how can you optimize your profit?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um the uh I'm sorry, I can't stop it.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Can I give you four like profit optimizations besides sourcing?
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's do it.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things definitely is uh PPC.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: We all spend way too much money on PPC.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: If I look at my own numbers, I'm guilty myself.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: I spent way too much, I have not automated, I do not have it optimized of my uh and didn't kill the money eaters or the profit eaters of keywords.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: Have somebody looking in there and optimizing it.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: I have a team now, of course, of a partner company looking into it and they're optimizing, and it's like, look, there were those$2,000 which I didn't have last month.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, fantastic.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: Another one is uh reimbursements.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you want to share links or so as well, like you know, for example, I I have I'm a person, I usually get the biggest discount and bonus codes from all of the software and service providers out there just to give value to sellers.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: Whether we get an affiliate or not, I always tell them it's like I don't want no affiliate fee.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Just make more bonuses and make more discounts for all the sellers.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: So we have, for example, with Getita, I don't know if you know them, like a thousand dollar or two thousand dollar discounted discount.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not allowed to give up publicly.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: Feel free to contact me if you're a bigger seller.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: But we can, for example, give like a thousand dollar discount, but it doesn't matter.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: But now Getita, the the thing is Amazon loses and destroys products.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, they make them, they break them, and they don't tell you about this.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: So a smartest and simplest move um is uh, you know, you get one of the reimbursement systems in there, um, and the reimbursement will um, you know, they will look into getting the money back from from Amazon.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: And what they say is like one to three percent, for example, is what they recover of revenue per per year, which doesn't sound a lot, but if you break it down, like a million dollar seller, 10% profit is a hundred thousand dollar, and if they get 101 to 3% back, that's$10,000 to$30,000.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and all of a sudden your profit moved from$100,000 to$110 or$130,000.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's like 10 to 30% profit increase.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: Again, we have a code here.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if you if if I'm sorry, I didn't ask you this before if I if we can, but if this brings value to your uh to your listeners, happy to share it.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: If not, contact me to give you the content as well.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Or I'll share that.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: So everything that Sebastian's referencing will be in the show notes.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: We can use his code, and we are actually a proud uh partner with Getita.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've actually had Yanni on the show.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: We uh yeah, hands down, he talked a lot about the reimbursement.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we could definitely get behind that.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: And everything Sebastian references will be in the show notes below.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was uh I was uh wondering if he's gonna block me out or beep me out later when I mention any company name.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh again, very close with them uh as well.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we know the founders and so on.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: And um another thing is I mean, obviously the the purchasing, the rep purchase uh the the the the cost reduction of your purchasing, well, your purchasing cost reduction of your products um and reducing the import uh tariffs, the anti-dumping tariffs.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in the third one is for example, FBA fees.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: When you have your product and you're selling on Amazon or anywhere else where they do a fulfillment service for you, it all depends, of course, on the size of the product.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: So now the target for me, this is one of my products, is always what I had in mind is that I take my product and it should always fit in the smallest envelope.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: So in the smallest envelope, why?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because if I sell them out, send them out myself and they fit just right perfectly in there.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um to have the cheapest purchasing cost, uh sorry, to have the cheapest shipping cost, because usually you pay for the shipping, right?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, none of the the buyers usually want to pay for shipping, so you always do it for free.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but now here comes another thing.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Go check out if you're selling on Amazon FBA rate cards.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: You will see what size and what weight does your product have and what is the charge.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: You may be just above the the border of one FBA um rate, and uh there you may what is it?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: You you may pay two, three dollars unnecessary more.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Reduce it.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: So, what we do, of course, as well is a lot of packaging reduction, size reduction.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and this once optimizes your purchasing cost, uh, sorry, optimizes your FBA fees, storage costs, long-term storage costs, of course, as well, but also the international shipping, container costs and everything.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: So you may agree if I say that this product or so in a box like this, I usually I only have small products.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: 250 units fit in there in a small box, and I know a lot of you will be jealous and it's like, oh my god, you don't have no shipping costs.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you the following this is now the real size of it, and it's about the size of a condom wrapper.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: I reduced it even more.
• 50:51
  unknown: Wow.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: And now we don't fit 250 units in there, but 3200 units in a small single box.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care about air shipping rates.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: I really don't.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's maybe also the benefit that I have of always doing air shipping or because I'm sometimes also too late ordering and think, ah, do I order this product or not?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: So that was another four cost savings uh that are somewhat related, of course, to sourcing or not.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually a great hack too.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I work with a lot of launch brands, especially when they're new uh to manufacturing and sourcing products, a lot of times they send us samples because they want to get their uh their partners on board and understand like the look and the feel.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: And for us, like what's the customer experience?
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when my partner and I look at this, we're always like, how much air is in here?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we see air, it's like how much wasted space.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'll always come back.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, like we're not in that world, so we can only make the recommendations.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it's nice to hear on your end, like you know, as a shop, you're like, how can we make this more efficient to reduce the fees?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because to your point, one to three percent, a five percent savings on a thousand, two thousand units a month, you might be moving.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that adds up after time, and that's just a second one of those great numbers.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: Keep talking about I don't want my camera to move and show the mess that I have here, so camera freeze.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's cool.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: So here I'm back.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now, one of the things like you talk about the empty space, right?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, look at this.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: This is all lost space in here.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's all unnecessary, it's just a card that I'm selling.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: We went from this that used to be 600, I think 600 units as a single pack in a mastercart and 570 or so as double packs.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now I went with this one and that's now a double pack.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's less.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this you know, much smaller in this and that.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: And now I get double packs in one master card and 2,000 units, where I used to have 570.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's just even, you know, I mean, yes, again, my fault, air shipping because too late orders, or you're running out of inventory, or sometimes over sales.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then you just come in and you just reduce it.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: Even this, if I look at this, I mean, I'm sorry, but this the card is up here.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: I could even reduce this space, but you know what?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, 2,000 units in one box, that's pretty cool.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is pretty cool, and quite a savings.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: And just for our audio only custom uh listeners, uh you're sharing uh cards.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of cards are those, by the way?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's an RFID blocker card, one of the ones that you put in your wallet where you prevent.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, check out the Chinese competition.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's sad.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, he showed us the the original dimensions, and we talked about wasted space.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can see all the card space on top, then the product in the center that's in a card.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Think about if you buy a gift card at the mall, like your MasterCard, and it's all that wasted space.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then Sebastian just showed us another version where he you probably reduced that in half.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you can hear by the packaging, you know, 500 units to 2,000 units, and not to mention the FBA fees, but I'm sure your supplier fees, your shipping to the US, like all those are reduced because it's one box with a lot more units.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in the other one, it's uh the one that I had previously before, I reduced the size by about 12 uh or one to one twelfth because originally I had like 12 uh boxes needed for 3,200 units, and now I have it in one box.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: Now, and even the cool thing here is as well, the product used to weigh before 14 grams, which is about half an ounce uh for the Americans out there.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I don't know all of the whatever.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um now it's about the weight of this little condom rubber that I showed you with the product inside is 1.5 grams.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's like that's nothing, that's about uh let me see, 1.5 out of 929.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's about 5% of an ounce, is one of my products.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: And what I've reduced it to is from uh it was 14 grams before.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think eight, eight, is it 18, 14?
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, but I've reduced the the weight also by 90% reduction.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's that's insane, right?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you if you can reduce it that intensely, and in the beginning, you know, everybody we try to make like great product and packaging and this and that and should go into the store.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we need it bigger and larger.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so much of that until you're ready for retail, retail uh bringing products into retail is another one of our comp uh companies, because I also brought my products into big box retail.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um until you're there, that takes a while.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: Reduce your shipping, storage, FBA fees.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a lot of money.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: And look at your competitors.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: If you can optimize it, you have massive amounts of optimization.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: And since you asked, like, what do we do?
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, those are also parts of what we do: packaging, packaging, design, packaging, redesign, finding manufacturers for your new products or for the additional products, reducing purchasing cost for your best sellers, finding logistics companies, uh, making product design, product research, niche analysis, trend hunting.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, anything that, you know, when you don't have an idea until you have an idea of the product, then you design it, you make it happen, you create it.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: If electronic design is needed, we've also done that quite a bit.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, battery management design as well.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh packaging, packaging design, finding certificates that are necessary to have or guidelines, anything that's about production of the product and then getting it safe to sell, getting certificates, laboratory work done, um, and shipping the products over to into your warehouses.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: And also then we don't want to stop.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: We don't charge for the additional things, but I'm happy they well, they there's a sign here.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: They I don't have a light up, but they call me the connector.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that on your LinkedIn profile as well.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean I'm uh super happy, you know, of connecting to other ones.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: What's the next step?
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you have a product in your hand, you didn't win anything.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: You only have a product in your hand.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now, again, who wants to move product needs exposure.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_02: You need great listings, you need great images, you need great PPC, you need good storage, you need good fulfillment, you need to get everything.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: You may need marketing, advertising, social media influencers.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we have pretty much solutions for all of that um with through partners and super happy to connect to others for for free.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: And whether we get an affiliate or not, we I don't I don't think I've ever received affiliate from anybody so far yet.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: But that's part of the business, right?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: We all want to grow, we all need to build our products and brands.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the only way, in my opinion, is is help each other, help each other achieve what you want to because you also you also help the producers achieve their life dreams.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_02: They want to build a business, make money, and make their wife happy with a new ring or a good vacation or a nice dinner, right?
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not married.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pay it forward, it's a great philosophy.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, beautifully said.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh we're short one profit optimization tip.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: We got PPC spend reimbursement, FBA reimbursements.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: You got one more product.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: A product cost reduction, of course.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um not only kill your kill your margin um killers in terms of PPC, but kill your margin killer products.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you see that some of the products just don't work, kill them.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_02: You cross-finance your sucky products when you notice nah, they're just costing money, you're taking the profit away from the other products.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: They may come in and so analyze the profitability of your products and kill what kills you.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually really interesting, too.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're working with uh a brand who really adopted that methodology.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: So they're a private equity company, but uh we used to have like one large catalog that had like just a bunch of different verticals, and what they chose to do was just the specialized, so now they have one or two, three products very specific in a vertical, and they have like sub-brands all around it.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: So they they almost took that concept to the next level, which is pretty interesting.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: When it comes to selling as well, I mean, especially in the US, I mean, focus also on other marketplaces, like you say, selling on giants, right?
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: Why not be on Walmart as well?
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and maybe another I'll make this very short.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: This is maybe for the ones who understand you can capture actually the whole market.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you have a product and you know how it's usually like cheap purchase or cheap buyers, medium buyers, and premium buyers, why not create three brands and own them all?
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: Be your own competition.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't matter who you buy from or which product you buy, they all buy from you.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's the Volkswagen principle, right?
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: They have Volkswagen, they have Skoda, they have Audi, they have uh uh what else belongs to them?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think Porsche belongs to them.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: So anything from the cheap until the medium until the premium brands.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's uh don't get me wrong, or so is Lamborghini or is it some some other company that belongs to the Volkswagen?
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter what's what's the truth about this, but to understand the principle is just simply of um understanding you can own the whole market.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: So offer something and listen to your clients.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, another one, Content Inc.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: Great book.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: If you've built an audience and you understand what your audience wants to have, if they if you know what they want to buy, well offer it to them.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you have an audience, if you're an influencer, then that term, just listen what else they need.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: Tell you maybe one small anecdote still from myself.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: My first brand has uh wallets, slim wallets.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I was dumb enough to create seven different slim wallets.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: Who needs seven slim wallets?
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_02: I should have done six other products, umbrellas with it, maybe some backpacks or so, because that same customer can buy a lot of additional products.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: So, what I've done is like seven different wallets, and it's like, okay, I'm fighting with everyone, then I'm there, you know, cannibalizing each other.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you think it's like maybe I should have one good wallet and uh a lot of other products.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: Listen to your audience and find out what they also buy.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_02: And once you have a client, uh what's the uh what's the uh return on ad spend?
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: Or in I think acquiring a new customer is five times as expensive as selling the same product or another product to the same client.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: Make your clients happy.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sage advice, sage advice.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have a tradition.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: My last question, Sebastian, and this has been jan-packed.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm definitely gonna have to have you come on again.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what with we like to talk about the future of e-commerce and technology, and as you know, AI is all the hotness.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, with the advanced business technology, how do you see the role of AI and machine learning evolving the realm of product sourcing and supply chain management for your business and other e-commerce businesses?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking you're gonna ask now how AI is gonna change Amazon to automatically optimize, optimize your images or destroy them.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um scared of seeing what's gonna happen there.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um when it comes to AI in terms of sourcing, um, for sure this will have an impact.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_02: For sure, this may automatically send out emails and or communicate with um the companies.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is just really, I mean, you know, business is done between humans.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you can use quite some uh technology probably in there.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I have to admit we don't use much yet on our own because all that we do is human connection, is human communication, is what's in it for them, convincing, influencing producers to give a quotation.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um this may partially be done, but in the end it's humans who take decisions, right?
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: And who listen to and trust one another.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not sure that AI will really take over the whole purchasing, procurement, production, and all the processes.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's always humans to be involved.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: Unless, I mean, if AI takes over the world, then we're screwed anyhow.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and terminated here we come.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sage advice too.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I totally agree, there is a human element that just can't be removed.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, you're gonna have the conversation.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like sourcing in general, and based on your experiences, I'm sure, is similar to a lot of others.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's that relationship building.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Once you establish a good relationship and you have a rapport with the manufacturer and you're getting fair pricing and good quality products, um, you know, that you can't build that with AI.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like a robot's not gonna be able to do that.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, not yet, at least.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: So probably we'll learn with the language models and everything, but uh and may renegotiate and and and all of those things.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_02: But that's uh I mean, we wouldn't have 60 plus ladies in the company who do nothing else but, or not all of them, but a big chunk of them to contact suppliers and communicate with them and bother the heck out of them to give a quotation in a friendly way.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, awesome.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Nano, thank you so much, Sebastian, for sharing your valuable insights and expertise with us today.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's been actually an absolute pleasure getting to know you and all the insights you shared.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: Before we wrap up, please let our listeners know where they can find you and Zignify Online, and if there's anything else you'd like to share with our audience.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, zignify.net, uh Zignify in the beginning with a Z and the end with a Y.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's a book book a call, or you can have a call, uh, what's it called?
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like a scheduler, right?
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: To just book a call whenever we're available.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_02: Or you find my wife and me or the rest of the team, I guess, of course, on LinkedIn, or part of the team at least.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, easiest way is of course to go to signify.net and just book a call.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't cost you anything.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: We'll explore and see, we'll hop on a call and see about the potential if there is uh a way of you know finding your products or the producers wherever you want them, whether in China or Mexico or Vietnam or other countries, um, or the US itself or Canada or South America, and or to explore whether there's a potential to um to to do to do to save money on your products or your best sellers and reduce that by maybe add another couple of millions to our$500 million saved.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think I mean one of the things is uh when you do want to start a business or the maybe the thing to send you off with, don't give up.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_02: If you really want to build something, fight.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um if you really want to continue, continue.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you say this is not your thing, get out and go back, be employed.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_02: And or hire somebody who does the things that you don't want to do.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_02: Read a lot, look into all those business books, listen to audiobooks, you will learn so much.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I wish I would have started this a lot earlier.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've been only doing this for like the last two, three years.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um and just keep fighting, believe in yourself, keep going.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_02: Winston Churchill, never, never, never give up.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you will fall.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_02: There is a phrase that says, uh, you know, we gotta fail, we just gotta fail faster.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_02: You will fail so many times.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_02: Just get up and uh another, I think it's a whether Chinese or Japanese, I think it's a Japanese phrase actually.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, fall seven times, get up eight times.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um just keep going.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to do something, keep going.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: If you can afford it, keep going.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you need help, keep going.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, surround yourself with others who are like-minded, who who want to achieve something else, or if you're the smartest in the room, you're in the wrong room.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_02: Surround yourself with people who can help you and always think what's in it for them.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think Joe Pollard should pay me by now.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: On that note, Sebastian Jampack, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you as well for having me.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us uh on this episode of Selling on Giants.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure to have Sebastian share his invaluable insights on optimizing costs and managing supplier relationships in e-commerce.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: His journey from electrical engineering to becoming a co-founder of Zignify Global Product Sourcing, along with his remarkable motorcycle adventures, is truly inspiring.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: We hope you've found this episode as enlightening as we have.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to connect with Sebastian on LinkedIn and visit Zignify's website at zignify.net for more valuable e-commerce tips and updates.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe to Selling on Giants on your preferred platform.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: Your support helps us continue to bring you insights from industry leaders and actionable strategies to help you succeed in your e commerce venture.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and achieving greatness in your e commerce journey.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening in.