#144: Retail Opportunities For Amazon Sellers

Norman Ferrar  0:03  

Hey everyone is Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here, and welcome to another lunch with norm, The Amazon FBA and e-commerce podcast.  All right, so today we have a first time guest. I know of Joe, Joe’s auto. He’s coming over from riverbend Consulting. He’s the co-founder and co-owner. And he’s gonna drop a ton of knowledge on DTC and retail. So if you’re interested in that, there’s a lot of talk. This is a topic that a lot of people don’t really talk about, especially the retail side. We’re gonna be learning a lot more about that today. But before we get to it,Kells, where are you? 

Unknown Speaker  0:59  

Hello, it’s friday .Yeah, welcome to the show, Manny. Yeah, let us know what you guys have planned for this weekend. In the comment section, we’d love to know also where you’re watching from. So let’s just kind of jump into it. Of course smash those like buttons. If you’re looking for the full episodes, or any highlights, you can always go to our YouTube channel. Norman Farrar, I think we’re just over that 900 or we’re getting close to 900 subscribers. So I’d really appreciate it if you guys can get us up there a little bit. And let’s see, we also have a fantastic charity event happening right now. Happening right now. But Yep. So this is from Mega. It is like an eight hour charity in Singapore, and it’s a fundraiser for COVID-19 relief in India. So I’ll put the link in the comments description. In the comments. And yeah.

Norman Ferrar 1:49  

Yeah. So you know, just to touch on that a bit more. So as for underprivileged children in India, you know, suffering with what’s happening over there. I mean, I’m sure everybody saw the news. India is getting hit, just incredibly hard right now. And mega has put together this incredible charity. So check it out, donate if you can, it’s for a worthy cause. All right. So yesterday, and I don’t want a big intro here. I want to get right into this because it’s gonna be pretty cool. And we have a cut off time. But we had an incredible clubhouse room. So I’m happy to say that we’re part of the largest clubhouse community with over 500,000 members. I have a room called econ weekly, the Learn to sell on Amazon, or learn out here, I go, learn to sell online. And we cover all sorts of topics. So the Apple lobby was there yesterday. And we just talked about all sorts of stuff. But anyways, we had a great turnout. If you’re interested in this, please check out clubhouse Thursdays at one o’clock. It’s our weekly schedule. Hopefully, we can bring in another room or two, but it’s fantastic. So it’s not the same old, same old, where you’ll see 25 people on stage. It’s one topic with one or two people talking about whatever topic is cool for that day. All right, so don’t want to spend too much time on that. Let’s see. Kelsey, do you have anything else to say? Did you forget anything? Do I have to remind you about something?

Kelsey  3:26  

I think we got to, just one little thing before we get started, we do have our Patreon going up. June 1st is going to be the first day of it. We’re kind of revamping everything. There’s tons of stuff happening there. Yeah, yeah. So we have tears from like $3 $30.70 $5. So just check it out. It’s like a monthly subscription service. But anyways, I don’t want to take up too much time. And I think that’s it. 

Norman Ferrar  3:52  

there we go. Kelsey is off the screen. All right. So if you have any comments, just throw it over into the comment section. We’ll try to answer all the questions as they come up. But if we do miss a couple, you can always catch a catch those questions and we try to answer them in the group. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy this episode. Where are you sir?

Joe  4:15  

I’m right here.

Norman Ferrar 

 Hey, how are you Joe? 

Joe

I’m doing good. I’m doing good. Thanks for having me Norm.

Norman Ferrar

 Hey, good. It’s good to meet you.

. 

Joe  4:24  

Yeah, I’ve seen your picture everywhere. And I said to you right before you know, we were in the waiting room. I said that beard is even more glorious than it is on Instagram and, and, and Facebook in person. It’s some serious get some serious length there. It’s very nice. Yeah, yeah, no, it’s uh, we’ve, you know, like I said, it might inspire me the next time you see me I might go here. I’m like, All right.

Norman Ferrar  4:46  

Okay, I’m gonna you know, leave you to it. I want to see the beard the next time. At least a goatee that I can do for you. All right, good. A in case people don’t know who you are. And riverbend I’m you’ve been around forever. Tell us a little bit about it.

Joe  5:03  

Sure. So riverbed was a company that my partner Leslie hensel, and I started about four years ago, I was an Amazon seller. At the time, still an Amazon seller and I my account was suspended was up all night for a month figuring out how to appeal, couldn’t get it approved. You know, just the same old problem that I guess most sellers have, that they just don’t understand fully how to navigate seller performance and all the, you know, the problems that they bring. And I was introduced to Leslie. And Leslie is an amazing person, amazing woman. And she’s very bright, obviously. And she was able to solve my problem within a day. So obviously, that I knew that was the beginning of an important relationship with us. And over the next few months, we decided to open up a company that helped Amazon sellers with similar issues with either acent, suspensions, or takedowns, or count the activations, and things like that. And that’s how we started the company four years ago. And since then, it has been really an unbelievable ride, nothing that I’ve ever probably even dreamed of. At the time when we started. Now we’re over 50 employees strong in the US. We are, you know, we’ve we’ve expanded our offerings to few things other than just suspensions, we do a lot of preventative work for some of the largest sellers on Amazon, all the way down to New sellers as well. We deal with all different problems. And it’s a very wide range of problems. As you know, right now on Amazon, it seems like almost every day, they come out with something new that you have to be aware of. And in addition to that, it’s given us the opportunity to launch some new products that help people really drive their business. So we don’t only protect them and help them when they’re in crisis mode. But we also offer some some interesting services that can help propel their best selling hastens or their brand to the next level. So that’s the story of riverbend. And I’m very proud to save that story.

Norman Ferrar   7:07  

All right, Joe. Thanks. Now, you also we’re gonna have a giveaway today. So why don’t we just get into that right now? What is the giveaway today?

Joe  7:16  

So we’re gonna give away a free assessment. So it’s an account health assessment, basically, it’s done by one of our exam is on people. And they do a very comprehensive assessment on your account and point out all the risk levels. And in that has about a $500 value, that if someone were to come into riverbend, and ask for it, we would charge $500. So because you were gracious enough to have me today will offer it for free. In addition to that, we’ll also give one free month of reimbursement service, which means we do a full audit of the account and submit cases to get you reimbursed for fees that Amazon owes you. Normally, we would charge a percentage of that fee. I’m sorry, of the funds that we recovered, but for the first month, we’ll waive those those fees.

Norman Ferrar   8:03  

Very good. And for people that don’t know about the reimbursement fees. That could be a while before it used to be a real goldmine. Because it went back so far. Now, you know, it’s unlimited. But you still it’s found money, though? Oh, yeah. If you’re just learning about this, having going back and claiming what is rightfully yours, it is a skill. You know, if you do it yourself, you might get nothing, you might get a few bucks. If you go with a company, that usually the way the model is is the company does it for free. And they take a percentage of the the the reimbursement Is that correct?

Joe  8:46  

The recovered funds, yes, rollover funds, we have a team that’s Yeah, that’s, you know, some of them are x Amazon and they used to work in the seller support team and Amazon. So we file those cases manually, we do all the, you know, the reports to find where those missing dollars are, we file and whenever Amazon approves. For example, if they approve $100, you get to keep a big portion of that. And then we just get like a finder’s fee, so to speak,

Norman Ferrar  9:11  

Got it. Got it. So it is something that if you haven’t looked into, you got to look into it, because there’s lost inventory. There’s all sorts of things that you don’t know that Amazon might owe you money for. So check it out, and what a great giveaway. So if you’re interested in this hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, if you want to enter twice. The best way to do it is tag two people, and we’ll get you in there twice. So let’s get to our topic today. And that’s really direct to consumer and retail. How do you identify a good product to take the bricks and mortar

Joe  9:50  

So, so my background before actually I got into Amazon for about 10 years, I was in the wholesale and manufacturing space. So Though I used to sell and merchandise and, you know, be in all those meetings with Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, and TJ Maxx, and Burlington and all those guys, and, you know, with all that experience, it definitely taught me what type of products that buyers are looking for, and what type of brands they’re looking for. And, you know, being an econ for the last four or five years, I started to say, you know, what, I don’t want to fully, you know, walk away from that whole business, it was it was a fun business. I mean, I like e commerce much better, as most people probably do, there’s much more control and you’re going direct to the consumer. So there’s sometimes more built in margins. But, you know, there’s still some big opportunity. So we actually, we partnered with a friend of mine who has a sales agency. And he’s done over $100 million in retail business. And we actually started to bring him the best products from our client base. So if we are working with a seller that has the number one best seller in a specific category, and an umbrella, massage gun, it could be anything, they would come to us, and then we would introduce them to my friend Irv. And then he would be basically reaching out to buyers, building a line, a skew sheet, a line plan, all this different type of cards that you need to show buyers, price sheets and everything, and trying to get that product into retail. And it’s actually been really exciting, because the biggest, the biggest thing that a buyer needs is validity. Right? They don’t want to look bad at the end of the day, a buyer for that works at TJ Maxx, Ross, Burlington, Macy’s, Costco, any of them, they don’t want to look bad to their boss, how do you look bad to your boss, you buy a product that doesn’t sell it sits on the shelf, and then you have to mark it down. And what does that mean? That means that at the end of the day, that person has a low margin. And that looks bad on them. So the concept is bring something that has validity on Amazon, that’s a best seller that you know, at the end of the day, the end consumer likes they’ve reviewed it, they think the value is right, they think the branding is right, the quality is right, the you know the entire package. So now bringing that to retail, it cuts through all those steps of Hey, is the product going to work? Is it going to sell? Is the price right? Is the value right? Is the branding good? Does it speak to the customer is the packaging right? To call out certain, you know, important features. So all those things are very important to a retailer. And that’s what we’ve tried to kind of teach and educate our our Amazon sellers to say, Hey, everyone has this, this, this this dream of right of having like a section in Walmart, or a section in target. But not every product actually fits that mold. So what we’ve tried to do is explain to some sellers, if you have the right, if you have the right features, if your product is is well packaged, if your pricing is right, if you have the reviews to back you up on Amazon, then chances are a buyer on the retail end will give you a shot. And they’ll give you a test to see if they’re you know if their consumer likes your product.

Norman Ferrar   13:30  

I was talking to a person earlier this morning. And they have a variety of different brands. And what they’ve what they had to do is cheapen the brand, it was a calculated decision. But on Amazon, it was almost double the price. But to get into retail to hit the spot where that retailer was looking for. They had to almost rebrand, cheapen the price, get it in, but you got tons of volume, just less margin. It worked out for them. But you know, in you know, it’s funny because it’s just 100% coincidence. But that’s a decision. Sometimes you’ve got to look at when you’re going into retail, most of the time, I’m agreeing 100% it’s about the brand. You know, we hear some people come on and say the complete opposite. Brand sucks. Why waste your time? Just move product, keep your winners and then move on. You know, and I’m kind of the opposite. I’ve been involved with branding forever. And you know, building a proper brand. I think I’m on board with you. If if you’re going to a buyer, and you can show establish sales at an established price. Why wouldn’t they dig it? Like dig into it? Especially, you know, if you’ve got a little bit of margin built into it. So anyways, that’s just me being long winded. If anybody has any questions you know for Joe, this is a great topic. We don’t talk about it enough. People are usually thinking about, you know, Amazon, the one legged stool. We’ve got to diversify. Look what happened on the weekend? You know, look what happened on the weekend, there was a major glitch, organic sales were off, they couldn’t find them. You know, there was a glitch, it came back. But what happens if you get one of those bloody emails to that just suspend you for no bloody reason, but pesticides or whatever it would be? So how do we get? What’s the first action step that a seller can do? So a lot of the people here, we’ve got about a third, a third, a third. So new sellers, medium sized sellers, and then the expert sellers, what can we do to start the ball rolling.

Joe 15:48  

So I think you touched on something that’s super important. And norm is the branding factor. I know a lot of Amazon sellers are very item driven, as you should be, you know, you need to make sure that your item is the best it can be and they don’t want to go too wide, especially private label sellers, because then you can lose focus. But the branding element is super important. So imagine you’re going to a buyer, and you’re trying to tell a story. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it is, right? You’re telling your story, you’re selling a story, you’re selling a brand, you need to be able to show a variety of products that all are cohesive, that the branding makes a lot of sense that it’s very, very visually pleasing for the category that it’s in. And that would sit next to some of the top brands in the country, right at the end of the day on Amazon. Usually what you’re sitting next to is another private label seller, right, that probably has, you know, a lot more reviews than you do or that they started a few years prior. But especially in retail, retail is made up of all the biggest national brands in the country. So if they have great packaging, and you have subpar packaging, no one cares that your items you know, has 10,000 reviews on Amazon, that’s not going to sell it. The selling point is the design the packaging, and making sure that the product is visible. A lot of times on Amazon, people don’t even invest in packaging at all right? Why would you you’re just taking a picture of the product outside of the box. Right? That’s the main image. And then Okay, the other images, you can, you know, you could play with you put some lifestyle images, you put a branding shot fine. But to make sure that a product sells at retail, you need some nice packaging. And they also need to see the product. So putting like a Windows putting a little piece of plastic there. So it see through so they can have a picture of the packaging, but then actually see the product, that’s very helpful. You know, another thing on Amazon that you never want to do is you never want to waste space, right. So if you’re putting it in the most compact bag or seal or, you know, whatever you can to make sure that the fees are the lowest, but at retail, it’s the exact opposite. You want your product to stand out. So you would want to invest in nice packaging, right? colors, anything that you could do to really stand out on the shelf. So these are just some of the things that if you are getting in the retail mindset, it’s almost like don’t use your Amazon inventory, keep your Amazon inventory for Amazon or for your Econ, direct to consumer business. But bring in different inventory. Again, same product, but different packaging for the retailers, because whether you think it’s gonna happen or not, if you get an order, they’re not taking your product in a plastic bag, I can tell you that much, because that’s not going to sell on the floor. So that’s a very important part of it. And you nailed it with branding, branding your product and having a nice cohesive line is very important. a buyer is not going to give you an order if you have one product because if they don’t like that product, how long is the meeting going to be 30 seconds, you know, they need to actually see and understand the story about the brand. Why you have each product that has to make sense. So that’s a pretty important part of it. And again, not everyone is built for retail. That’s what we actually tell a lot of people everyone wants to have a section in Walmart and Target and you know in home goods, but if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. So a lot of those things have to do with branding has to do with price point has to do with quality. A lot of those things are very important. We

Norman Ferrar   19:18  

had a Mina Elias on the podcast just about a month ago. And he he had a great point. If you’re getting into retail, or even for product research, go to a bloody retailer. Yes. And you can ask the person, you know one of the staff you could walk down a bloody aisle and see what your competition is. And you know if you’re way overpriced or if your packaging isn’t up to it, or if your brand’s not up to it, don’t think you can play the game because the buyer is not going to bring you on board. So I love what he said and one of the things that we’ll do on an Amazon launch which I think is is important you It’s all about the and I don’t want to say, the buyers journey. But it is about, you know, your experience. So I’ll go out and I’ll buy, let’s say that I’m buying soap. So I mean, I sell soap, alright, I’ll buy, you know, five of the top competitors. And I want to see what that experience is I want to I want to receive it, I want to open it, I want to see the packaging, I want to smell it. And I want to see if I can improve and do the small things that might get me in the door or get people to buy on a recurring basis. So I mean, those are just a few things. I think human senses, you know, touch or smell are very important when it comes to this.

Joe  20:44  

Well, no, I’m thinking of it this way. Right Amazon sellers are so I don’t want to say spoiled, but they have all these tools, you know, at their fingertips, Jungle Scout helium 10. You’re doing all your product research beforehand, right? Before all those tools existed in before the internet existed before people sold on Amazon. Guess what we used to do? 10 years ago I was I went store shopping, right? I would go to actually three different types of stores. And this is actually very important. If someone is going to take retail seriously. You go to three different tiers. You go to the department store level, which is department stores are considered. You know, Macy’s, you can go to Kohl’s and go to JC Penney, you can go to Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom Neiman’s, those guys. And by the way, those guys also have outlets. So there’s, you know, there’s what’s it called Saks. Fifth, there’s, you know, Nordstrom Rack, those guys are very open to testing things because they have opened dollars constantly, they don’t plan six, eight months out like the like the actual department stores do. So those are great targets for for people to go after. So that’s the department store stage. Then there’s mass, right, which is Walmart, Target Costco, those guys plan way in advance, but it’s also good to see what’s on their floor. Because they’re not taking things that aren’t selling, right, they only replenish items that are usually very good. And they’re dealing with big and nationally on big national brands. And then there’s the the last kind of tier, which is super important, I think to a lot of the people in Amazon is the off prices, right? So the off price market is actually the biggest growth market in all of retail. Why? Because they have great prices, it’s a treasure hunt. And people are going in, they have to pick it up and walk out with it. Otherwise, it may not be there next time. And those guys have tremendous amount of growth right now between all the categories. So there’s the TJ Maxx and Ross and Burlington, then there’s the five billows, then there’s the big blocks, you know, those guys are just growing and growing. And if you can get some good traction in there, that can lead to 1000s and 1000s of units as upfront orders, six, seven months in. So again, you said it before everyone BTC, you know, in selling on Amazon is used to getting paid, you know, one piece at a time. And again, that’s not so easy for your cash flow. But imagine getting an order for 50,000 or 100,000 units and being paid in 30 or 60 days outright. That’s great for your cash flow. So imagine what you could do with that. And and I think that’s the the benefit of you know, also diversifying, where like you said, if one of your items gets, you know, delisted for whatever reason, or something that I’ve seen a lot that no one likes to talk about, because they’re afraid to mess with Amazon retail. But Amazon is launching a ton of you know, Amazon basics products, they’re also launching a lot of their own, you know, the brands that they work with that they have vendor relationships with those brands somehow magically kick up the top 10 spots, even on new launches, right? I just was talking to one of my biggest customers, and he said, Well, I’ve been in the underwear business for 510 years, I have 10 15,000 reviews on my underwear, and I’m in the top 10 spots for all the main terms. Well, Amazon has a deal with Adidas, they just launched 10 new listings, and five of them are in the top 10 spots with 50 6070 reviews. So now his sales went way down. At the end of the day, some things you just can’t control. Right, right. But if you’re diversified, you have, you know, multiple streams of income.

Norman Ferrar   24:26  

Okay, so just before we get to the next question, just a reminder, Joe is giving away a consultation or an audit, he’s gonna dive deep into your listings. It’s and you were telling me about, you know, the, how complex or how, what’s the right word? Jeez, that’s it. Okay, so how comprehensive the audit really is. It’s about a $500 audit. If you were going to go to the site and pay for it, he’s going to give that away as well as one month’s worth of the reimbursement fees. So it’s a great little prize. Look, hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, if you want to enter twice, it’s just tag two people, and you’ll be entered twice. One of the areas that I’m big on, and I don’t know for, you know, direct to consumer, if what your thoughts are on this, but I like building up authority. So on Amazon, I know people are going to go off of Amazon to look for my brand, because it’s a micro brand, people have never heard of it. But if I can build up the authority, like through press releases, or through content, or through images, through video through influencers, and I can get ranked on Google, that helps build this authority. In my eyes, Ville, authority builds trust and trust build sales. Is it important that way as well? Is it important to have that authority, so when the buyer looks for you, that they can see consistency, consistency of the brand, on the website, social media on Google, how important that is that to D to D to see,

Joe  26:05  

oh, I need to show you something. So I’m going to, I’m going to actually act out something that happened to me a few a few months ago. So I sat in on a meeting with, with my partner who was presenting to a retailer, and we’re sitting across in the buyer, we actually know this buyer for a long time. We tell them the brand, they immediately stopped looking at us, right? And they What did they do? They went down on their phone. And they went like this for the next 15 minutes. Without even talking to us, didn’t matter what we showed them didn’t matter what the prices were anything. She looked, we saw what she was doing. She looked on Instagram, how many followers what the content look like, she looked at the website, she looked at, obviously, Amazon, she looked at, you know, Google to see if there was any, like you said press or any other articles about the brand. That’s very important. No, I mean, that’s a great, great point you made, they do like the story, they need to know that there is an audience for it. And again, it all comes down to these buyers not wanting to take a chance and looking bad if the product doesn’t sell. So all those things are very important. And that’s why only a select few are able to get their product into retail. It’s the same way, if you were to become a best seller on Amazon, it’s usually not a mistake, is it? Right, there’s usually it’s a great product with multiple variations every size, it’s a great shopping experience. They have a video, they have all the best pictures, they have the best EBC, right, the best price, and they’re doing tons of advertising. These things aren’t a mistake, I think people sometimes think like, oh, someone got lucky or they’re cheating the system. Very few people actually do that in less than and keep their spots. It’s the same thing with retail. If you have the story, if you have the product. And you’re you’ve invested time in to what you’re doing, and there’s quality there, the buyer will see that.

Norman Ferrar   28:05  

One of the other things I’m interested to hear what your take is on. I’ve got an Amazon business, I want to go over to retail, what effect could the to like taking an Amazon product? Put it putting it onto retail? Or vice versa? How could that affect my product?

Norman Ferrar 28:27  

Or my question? Sorry, yes.

Joe  28:28  

A lot of people ask that, right? Because what’s the initial thought is, oh, well, what if someone sees my product at retail, and I’m, you know, cheaper on Amazon or less expensive about back and forth. So here’s what we’ve seen. And this is through many case studies. First of all, Amazon pricing is usually nine out of 10 times depending on the price point of the product is going to be higher than it is at retail, because of all the fees. Right? So if you could take, let’s say a, an item that you would sell wholesale to a retailer for $10. Right? So you’re good at math, and oh, I suck at math. Alright, so I’ll go through it slowly. I’m pretty good at math. So you start at $10. Right. So that’s the price that you would sell to a retailer. And what do they do they call it Keystone. Keystone is a 50% markup. So you sell it for 10. To them, they sell it for 20 in their stores. So as long as it sells pretty well with very limited markdowns, they’ll be between 45 and 50% margins on their end. They’re good with that. Now take that same 10 $10 price that you sold it to the retailer, right? Your cost on that as an Amazon seller or a manufacturer is probably between six and $7. Right? Maybe even less in some cases if you’re really good at sourcing you’re buying a lot of volume. So what price would that item be on Amazon? Probably between 25 and $30, right between all the fees and all the marketing and all the storage, and you know, the inbound fees, the return processing fees and all that, you’d probably be between 25 and $30. Okay. So in almost all situations, your Amazon price will be higher than your retail price. Now, there’s two things that why that is okay. Number one, if someone walks into a retail store, they’re very rarely going to walk out of that retail store, if they went to buy something, right? Especially if it’s at a discount store, or if it’s at a department store, they’re going to go in there, they’re shopping, they’re buying other things, right? They’re going to buy their kids clothes, their husband’s something, their mother’s something, they’re buying toiletries, whatever, they’re going in and buying a bunch of stuff, and then they’re leaving. on Amazon, a lot of people, what do they do they go, they look for the exact item that they want, they buy it, they put it in a cart and the checkout in two seconds, because they just have to swipe. So very rarely do people go to a store and walk out. So now number one, you got the sale at retail. Now how does that help your Amazon business? It’s marketing, it’s free, not free, but it’s marketing. Because the next time that person wants to buy your product, if she can’t get to a store, right? If it’s during the weekend, she can only go on the weekend, and she needs it again, show go on Amazon, she’ll find the item, even if it’s more expensive, what we’ve seen is that it does not hold back the sale, people that shop on Amazon are paying for convenience, right. So especially if it’s a reorder of something that they bought in a store, they will most likely buy it on Amazon for a few dollars more. And then it works the other way around, too. If someone is that is buying something on Amazon constantly. And then they see that item at retail. They’ll buy it because they’ll say well, I’m already in the store, it’s a few dollars less, I’ll just buy it, that doesn’t hold them back from buying it again on Amazon the next time they want to be lazy and not get off their couch. So it kind of does work both ways. Is that clear?

Norman Ferrar  32:02  

That’s clear. And that also brings up a really great point for PPC. And just making sure that you are not only looking for sales when you’re doing your PPC on Amazon on Amazon, but you’re surrounding your competitors. But you know, if you do get sponsored brands, if you can get the display, if you do get the PPC, like just kill it, it’s a psychological thing, building your brand, building your brand awareness. This is where it might not be an Amazon sale. But you know, you’ve got these seven touch points, right? Humans just have to see it, they have to it’s got to be drilled into their head. Then when they do go shopping, oh, there’s that brand. They don’t know why they want to get that brand. You know, and they buy it so that it works. Although it can get a little, you know, expensive. But in the you know, for the long haul, it works really great. I got a question about Oh, and by the way, if you do have questions, we’re going to get to them in just a few minutes. So just make sure you get them in, we’ve got a limited time today, we’ve got to get get Joe going at around 1255. So make sure you get your questions in so we can answer them. How about how do we get to how do we go about getting into retail? If we don’t go to a company? How can you manually do this.

Joe  33:24  

So it’s a little difficult, I’m not gonna lie. But there are ways so depending on the product, or the product category, it really differs. I would say if you’re in the food or anything that could be sold to a grocery. That’s probably the I don’t want to say the easiest because nothing is easy, right? But it’s probably a way that you can that you can get in because they have local and regional chains. When you’re trying to get into a national chain, you only have one buyer, right. So there’s one buyer that buys for that category for the entire national chain. So if you’re dealing with TJ Maxx, or Burlington or Kohl’s or JC Penney, they have one buyer for your category. And if you don’t get in touch with that one buyer, or if they don’t like your product, you’re out, right you don’t get in. But with a lot of these regional grocery stores, there’s again, there’s like a sea of them. And depending on where you live, you can go and you can make some calls or go on LinkedIn and find out who the buyer is for that regional store. And you can pitch them and a lot of them do like to give the local you know the local companies the business. So I would say that’s like a good first step. And if you do have some success there then again, there aren’t tons of these companies out there. That’s kind of why we partnered with with my friend which is called Project retail. If anyone wants to look at the website, we’re very selective obviously on who we take. It has to make sense for everybody but then you can find either a sale agency or there are brokers that work directly with certain retailers, which is interesting. So there are people that are just specialists that Kohl’s sales, right. So if you want to get into Kohl’s you hire them, they have good enough relationships with certain with the retailers in certain categories, and they get you a meeting. And you might have to pay a percentage of the sale for that. But again, you’re getting in front of a buyer that you would have normally not been able to get into, you know, in front of. So again, doing it yourself is is difficult, mainly because you never really want we preach this, we don’t want an Amazon seller or an e commerce seller to take their focus away from D to C. The reason for that is twofold. One, the growth at what’s going on right now over the last two three years has been for most people close to 100%. Okay, you don’t want to walk away from that business, or you don’t want to not excel at that business. The other reason is, at the end of the day, your margins will always be highest going direct to consumer rather than selling to retail. And you’re also building your brand with a loyal following. If you have loyal customers, your end consumers a loyal customer, they’re going to come back to you. With a retailer, whatever product they put out in that category. The consumer doesn’t really care, right? If it’s interchangeable, if you can’t ship this month, someone else ships that month, it doesn’t matter, they’re going to pick up whatever’s in the store. So at the end of the day, we don’t like people moving and shifting their time away from their direct to consumer business, it should really be in addition to it should be something that they invest in that they either have someone that manages it for them in house, or that they that they work with someone, you know, external, but I think it’s a huge mistake, if you shift your focus and say, Hey, I’m going to split my day, you know, 5050 or 8020. And I’m going to shift over and manage my my wholesale business, because for a few reasons other than just the obvious of potentially losing your DTC business, but it also takes a lot of time, right on Amazon, there’s instant gratification, you put up your product that sells great, you made some money right away with wholesale, it could take three, four or five months until you get a meeting. And there’s a lot of follow up. And then also, when you do get that meeting, you have to prepare, you have to put a whole presentation together, make sense of it, the packaging has to be right. And then when you get the order, you have to produce it in a timeframe that is that is agreeable for you know, from the buyers. And so there’s so many steps there. That, again, I think trying to do both is a very dangerous thing. I think it’s something that you either invest in internally, and you bring in someone that can manage it, or you find someone that’s a professional that does it as a you know, as their as their livelihood.

Norman Ferrar   37:50  

I can tell you firsthand experience with my family’s company. We’ve dealt with a lot of retail and get distributors pay the commission, get the distributors, you know, the buyers, you’ll just it’s Yeah, it’s worth the money. One last question before we get into the questions. And just like real quick couple bullets, what are the benefits? What can you expect from retail.

Joe 38:18  

So the benefits is, we touched on this the the brand awareness of your product, I mean, there’s what 200 million Amazon shoppers, a lot of them also are in the stores a lot. So if they see your product, they pick it up, they’re going to buy it on Amazon at some point. So that’s huge, the, the growth of your buying power will also be very beneficial. So if your product is selling pretty well on Amazon, and you sell 5000 units a month, or 3000 units a month, and you’re giving your supplier, you know, two, three months worth of stock by, okay, it’s a nice sized order, you know, 12 15,000 units, that’s nice. But if you get a you know, a TJ Maxx order or Home Goods order, and they give you 50,000 units or 100,000 units, and then you pair that with your you know, with your Amazon buy, look how much more powerful you are right that factory, look how much more leverage you have to demand better pricing, better rates, quicker shipping, you know, so you become much more important to your supplier. And then the obvious one is also, you know, just expanding and diversifying your, your, you know, your you know, your revenue streams. So, at the end of the day, we all know this that unfortunately, I’m in the business of suspensions, I’ve seen it happen like that, where, you know, you have to pay your suppliers, you have to pay your employees. But if you only have income coming in from Amazon, that can that can stop at any minute, unfortunately. I mean, we’re good at what we do, we’ll get you back on, but it may take some time depending on what you did. So you never really want to be stuck to a point where you can’t pay your people or you can’t pay your suppliers. So diversification you Alright, Cal. So let’s get into some of these questions. I think there’s a bunch I

Kelsey  40:04  

can’t read there is some speed ones. Okay. Okay, so let’s go through this hazmat on Amazon, you can convince a customer to buy and stay with your brand with your copy a plus content, etc. Really important for products positioned as premium in high quality and Walmart, it’s just another product on the shelf. What’s your view on this?

Joe  40:24  

So it says really important for products positioned as premium premium and high quality in Walmart. It’s just then. Yeah. So if I’m reading this correctly, are they saying what, what would make it different or stand out on a Walmart shelf,

Norman Ferrar   40:45  

that’s how I’m reading it is that you’ve got the copy on a listing, you don’t have that available to you when you’re walking down an aisle.

Joe  40:52  

Got it. So there are a few things that you could do, depending if you are going to get into Walmart. So at times, they will give you the opportunity to make your own display. And that’s something that you can use to draw attention to your product. And then something else we spoke about, which is always I think the most important thing at retail, that’s the biggest difference to Amazon is your actual packaging of the product. Do not cheap out on the packaging, if you need to put a little window to see the product, but also have call outs of key features on the packaging, do it right, make sure your logo is big enough, make sure your packaging is colorful enough, but also shop your competitors to make sure that it doesn’t look exactly the same, because some of those guys have much more brand recognition, and therefore their price will be better. And they’ll get the sale, you need to make sure that you it’s almost like merchandising, right? If you see your three or four competitors, you don’t want to make something that looks exactly like theirs. You want to make it elevated, make it better, make the call outs better make the window better to see the product. Clearly. Those are very important parts of retail that people don’t always think of on Amazon, because the main image is just of the product.

Kelsey  42:09  

Great. from Simon, can you tell us about the payment terms and built in discounts required by the big box retailers?

Joe  42:18  

It’s a great question. So that’s something that we get a lot of. So each retailer Does, does vary. But for most of the discounters it’s a 60 day terms. So that means that the day that you ship the order and that you invoice the order, they will pay you in full in 60 days. So you have to have that type of leeway with either your supplier that they may give you those terms, or you have to have the cash to cover yourself. By the time you know they pay you. There are options with some of these bigger retailers like Nordstrom Rack and Burlington and TJ is where you can give up a few points. Right. So you can go to their billing department and say, Hey, I’ll give you a 2% discount on this order. But I need to be paid in 15 days, and most of the time they will do it. So that’s that’s something that again, if you have the built in margin, and you’re willing to give up a point or two or three, I think it’s usually a point or two, they will pay you early. And most of the off prices, they are factored factor approved. So they do have good finances, some of the other guys, not so much. So you have to check out you don’t want to take an order from someone that’s, you know, file chapter 11. And then you may never get paid on.

Norman Ferrar   43:31  

And I Yeah, I was gonna say that. It doesn’t have to be a cash flow drain. At worst, you can go to a fact, like a good factoring company. And they can help finance it will not finance it, they’ll they’ll take care of it for you.

Joe  43:45  

Well, it’s called p OE financing. So if you actually have a p o from a retailer, you can go to you can go to a factory, they’ll front you the money up front for two or three percentage points, they’ll give you the money to produce the order.

Kelsey 44:00  

Okay, so we’re running pretty close to the time, maybe one more and then we if anyone needs answers, we can have the posts in the group. Okay, I think all right, so this is from Angela, I believe we need help with retail packaging, is clamshell still acceptable, or is it now seen as environmentally unfriendly?

Joe  44:21  

So, Hmm, interesting. Some retailers will, will care about that some retailers won’t. If you need help with retail packaging, I would definitely go online and look for some some companies that specialize in it. They do have depending on the company that you find, they will usually have experience in your category. And some probably on some feedback from buyers, that will give you the right direction. You really only get one chance at that you don’t really want to take a you know you don’t want to take a chance at putting your product out and the retail packaging is not really what it needs to be. So I’ve said Before the same way you invest in copy in videos and content for Amazon, you really need to invest in the right packaging. for retail, so also demographic, right? Yeah. Know your demographic correct. Know your regions. Yes, very important. If anyone is interested, they could reach out to me after and I can connect them with some companies that we’ve used in our project retail space. So yeah, be happy to make those connections for a great cause. Why don’t we do one more?

Kelsey 45:31  

One more? Okay. Let’s see from Rosalyn, what’s your threshold thought or priority when establishing a new brand? So it appeals to customers and retailers? In other words, if I’m assembling the ingredient in a new brand, what must be included? And what should be excluded? Thanks.

Norman Ferrar   45:47  

Okay, so obviously, there’s a ton of research that you could do on Amazon, to really identify that the niche market that you want to go after, if you’re thinking of it in a two pronged approach of, hey, I want to build a great Amazon brand. But at the same time simultaneously, I know I want to go into retail, do the same research upfront on the retail end, if it’s a beauty product, go into Sephora, go into you know, Walgreens see what’s on their shelves, there is definitely because it sounds like ingredients like it might be something that’s topical, definitely go towards the organic and natural route. That is the hottest thing right now in the beauty and anything to do with skincare or supplements or anything like that. Organic, non GMO vegan, that is a very hot category. And I think it’s going to get hotter on Amazon, it already is pretty popular, but it’s going to get hotter on Amazon. But at retail, that since those retailers have a lot more exposure to bad publicity and things like that, they definitely are always looking for things that are more eco friendly.

Joe  46:58  

Okay, so, before we get to the we’ll have Kelsey, Joe, how do people get ahold of you and your company.

Norman Ferrar   47:07  

So the best way to get ahold of the company is to go to river bend, consulting calm and they could fill out a contact form, we’re actually launching our new website in a few days. So it’ll be much easier to navigate and see all the different services that we have right now, some of them are a little hidden, because we’ve just opened them up to some of our existing clients. But you know, something like project retail, which I mentioned will be on our new website. So if they want to learn more about it, some of the new services that we offer will be on the new website as well. So for now, they can go to riverbed consulting comm or if they want to reach out to me directly, they can email me at jo jo e at riverbend consulting.com. You asked for it. Okay. I’m a little afraid to get out that email, but I’ll be glad to answer any questions.

Norman Ferrar   47:52  

Alright. So Joe, you’ve never experienced we’ll have Kelsey have you

Joe  47:56  

know, we decided to sit back for a treat. Here we go. Just a second. All right. All right. We’ll see you week go. So thank you for everyone who entered, and we’ll give this a spin. Alright, so 321 Okay, Simon. All right, Simon. Very good. Okay, so Simon, you can contact me at K at lunch with norm calm and believe I have all your information. And I’ll connect you with Joe. And yes, thank you, everyone.

Norman Ferrar   48:59  

You know, just thinking about Simon, who’s got products that the royal family use? Who’s got products at David Beckham’s kids use? I mean, it’s crazy. We had him on the podcast a little while ago, and he just blew me away. But anyways, Simon, this will be great for you. I think that’s it, Joe, thank you. No, major cut off three minutes early. How’s that?

Joe  49:26  

Now? You did great. I really had a great time speaking with you. You’re as smart and as handsome as I as I heard. And I’m very happy to be on here and hopefully, we could speak again soon. Great.

Norman Ferrar  49:39  

Okay. Thanks a lot, Joe. Okay, guys. Alright. See you, Kelsey, let’s talk about megalis event. So, put it back up there and just let everybody know that this event is you know, for the underprivileged kids, there’s problems happening in in India right now with COVID. It’s horrible what’s happening over there. And one of our friends is putting on a, is that a six or eight hours, single eight hour, eight hour, oh my gosh. But anyways, check it out. And if you do have some extra cash, please donate it’s, it’s for a really great cause. And by the way, I’m doing it, I’m putting up some cash as well, because, you know, I think it’s, it’s a fantastic cause. So, you know, I don’t think that counts. But I just wanted to let you know that it’s something that I’m going to be donating to. So please take a look at it. Other things a little bit of before we end the show. So the Patreon thing is cool. Look, I want to make sure because I was really concerned about this when we were gonna do this. This is a free podcast, this is free content between this and private label, Legion. We do tons of just content for everybody. We’re not going to change that. But we thought that there’d be an opportunity where we could provide more content, more training more of everything in a way that, hey, we can help pay for the podcast, got to pay Kelsey some way. You know, he doesn’t work just for you know, food and soda was Yeah, he is right now. But that’s why the Patreon open to change things. Yeah, well, hopefully, we hope that he can, he can actually, you know, buy things at one point. Maybe a fridge, you know, that would be nice for your house. Anyway, look, we’re doing that it’s going to be June 1, I think you’re gonna think is awesome, I think is awesome what Kelsey has put together. And we’ll be taking a look at it. But let’s see, what do you got to say, and then we’ll close up.

Kelsey  51:48  

So for those that don’t know, Patreon is like a monthly subscription service. So I don’t want to take up too much time. But I just want to show you guys I think, actually see what we were offering maybe just a good thing. So stick around if you want to see this, but this is our Patreon right now. Basically, there’s three different tiers for those listening. As a podcast only, there’s a bronze gold and platinum level beards. And then each one has a bunch of different perks. So our most expensive as a platinum, which is $75. And that’s something where you can get free month of Centurion League, those free press releases that are involved, you get a monthly ama, you get a hot seat with norm as like a private small group monthly guest lessons. So there’s a bunch of great stuff. See so and then reemerge.

Norman Ferrar  52:40  

Yeah, yeah, so I didn’t know we were doing that today, by the way, Kells, but as you can see, like, if you’re investing and helping us, we’re giving back tenfold. So anyways, we’ll that’s June 1, if you like it great. If you don’t pay, just stay tuned, you know, to the to lunch with norm. Okay, so if you liked what you heard today, because Kelsey didn’t do his job, smash those likes, hit the subscribe button, ring a bell, do whatever you do in social media, we’d love to have you in our community. We do have a community, a Facebook group that is growing tons of engagement in there. And it’s great that

Kelsey  53:19  

you’re just saying loving it like, Oh, I saw that a FET had a question that was urgent. And I think our nation helped out and kind of jumped on it. Just

Norman Ferrar   53:31  

so you know, in the in the nation, for Tia had an urgent question. And I saw, you know, a couple people hop on it immediately and help solve a problem. So I mean, these are the things that we do as a group. And I love it. And you know, I want to thank everybody who’s being part of our community. I know it’s been a long closing. But anyways, thank you join us every Monday, Wednesday, Friday on at noon, Eastern Standard Time. And once again, I can’t thank you guys enough for being part of the community. You know, Kelsey, and I love doing this podcast. We love you guys hearing from us and we love you being in our community. Like I just said, Oh my god, I’m going I’m going senile cows, you’re gonna have to pay for a little bit in my old age. You know, get me in a home or something. But that’s why I got the Patreon. Oh, thank you. That’s how you’re gonna do it. Anyways, thanks, guys, and we’ll see you next week or month.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai