Retail… is it dead? Product Development Academy’s Steven Selikoff joins us at Lunch with Norm. Steven has been an Amazon Seller since 2005 whose products have been sold online and in stores and have been featured on TV and magazines around the world including Good Morning America, The Today Show, Fox Business News, Forbes, Paris Vogue, and given away in the gift bags at the Oscars. Steven Selikoff sells his own products across all retail channels, both online and in-store. On this episode, we tackle an Omnichannel is, and the strategies behind using one and why it may be the path to follow in 2021, and we discuss what it take to sell to in-store retailers.
Date: December 21 2020
Episode: 78
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Steven Selikoff, a Serial Entrepreneur, Consultant, Author and Founder of Product Development Academy.
Subtitle: Retail is not Dead
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-78-the-truth-about-retail-w-steven-selikoff/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Steven Selikoff, a Serial Entrepreneur, Consultant, Author and Founder of Product Development Academy.
Steven loves developing and selling products. Some of it have been featured in several famous TV Shows, and Magazines and even included in the gift bags at the Oscars. He discussed what an Omnichannel is and what it takes to sell to in-store retailers.
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Norman 0:01
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, the rise of the micro brands.
Norman 0:18
Alright, so today, we’re gonna be introducing you to serial entrepreneur Steven Selikoff. We’re gonna be talking about the state of current retail and we’re also going to be talking about new and hybrid eCommerce channels.
Norman 0:32
So, we’re gonna, I think this is gonna be a cool one, because, where is retail at and we all have our thoughts where it’s going and what it’s doing right now, but I’m interested to hear what Steven has to say about this. But before we get to it, Kels, where are you?
Kelsey 0:53
Happy Friday.
Norman 0:54
Happy Friday.
Norman 0:57
Are you a Sherpa?
Kelsey 0:59
I feel like one. It’s chilly here in Canada.
Norman 1:04
The lake was frozen today.
Kelsey 1:07
Yeah, yeah. First day, it’s been frozen. So that’s where we’re at right now.
Norman 1:12
If you’re watching the video, these are real tears.
Kelsey 1:15
Yeah. So if you’re new to the show, if you’re just joining us, everything you see here will go directly over to the YouTube channel Norman Farrar and if you haven’t yet, please join our Facebook group. Join our community. Yeah, if you’re interested, it’s Norman Farrar or Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective. All fans of Lunch with Norm are there along with Amazon sellers, online sellers. It’s a great place to ask for advice and just make some friends along the way and we are a podcast, so you can find us on Apple podcast, Spotify, anywhere you listen to your podcast.
Norman 2:00
One job.
Kelsey 2:01
Smash that like button.
Norman 2:02
Smash.
Kelsey 2:04
I see we’ve got one like already.
Norman 2:06
Ryan was on the last podcast. What would you say? Smash, Like.
Kelsey 2:08
Smash the like button. We’re also on YouTube. So if you’re watching through Youtube, hit that subscribe button. Ring the bell. Make sure you get all the notifications. Hello, Rad. How are you? Welcome to the show. It’s nice to see y’all.
Norman 2:24
Welcome back Rad.
Kelsey 2:26
Also to get things started, what are you guys doing this weekend? I know we got a bunch of holidays coming up. Yeah. Are you seeing family? Are you prepping for dinners? What are you guys doing? Let us know and yeah, I think that’s about it. I think we covered everything. Oh, and we do have a giveaway today too.
Norman 2:49
We do. Okay. Let’s talk about it now.
Kelsey 2:52
Okay, so if you guys are interested, Steven Selikoff is offering an hour consultation today to our guests, or to our audience. So only one. Yeah. Do you have a hashtag you want to use to get things started?
Norman 3:10
Why don’t we just stick with what we’re doing? We’re going to change this up once in a while. But yeah, I want Steven. How’s that?
Kelsey 3:17
I want Steven. I’ll put in the comment section so everyone can see. Hello, Lisa. Welcome. Good morning. Yep. So I want Steven for the consultation. Put them in the comment section. Also, just let us know how you’re doing. Enjoy the show. Happy Friday, everyone.
Norman 3:36
All right. Okay, so just one quick thing. If you are watching this in a replay, you can always skip ahead. For those watching on my personal profile page, head over to the Facebook page Norman Farrar a.k.a The Beard Guy, and you can see highlights and all sorts of other content. Alright, so questions, throw them over in the content box and we will get to them. Hopefully we can get to them right away during this podcast. If we do miss them, we will answer them as soon as possible. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show.
Norman 4:13
Hello, sir.
Steven 4:14
Hello, Norm. How are you?
Norman 4:17
I am doing great. How about yourself? Do I sound like I’m yelling?
Steven 4:21
You do not.
Norman 4:23
I got these new headphones and they’re these noise cancellation headphones and even if I turn off the noise cancellation, it sounds like I’m yelling. So anyways, I don’t mean to be aggressive. So hey, Steven, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Steven 4:44
Sure. Well, I started selling to retailers back in 2001. Started selling on Amazon in 2005, 2006 got on to FBA as a fulfillment platform less than 30 days after it was announced, I’m up here in Seattle and so I had friends at Amazon, and then soon afterwards moved on to Amazon vendor. I, at the same time, I was working at Microsoft and eventually became business manager for Microsoft worldwide retail sales and marketing, which is nice. It means I have people all over the world, including China. So I eventually started having products made in China and started going back and forth in 2012 and frankly, I miss it right now and at times, it was almost like a commute. Because from Seattle, it’s less than 500 bucks, you can go round trip, so I can’t wait for travel to begin again.
Norman 5:44
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I can’t wait either. Why don’t we just jump into it and is retail dead?
Steven 5:53
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Amazon, according to Jeff Bezos, his testimony in front of Congress is 4% of retail and I know there’s lots of all sorts of numbers thrown around and trends and everything thrown around, I try to be as objective as possible. So I can tell you the date after his testimony, he was actually referring to the previous year and his famous apology letter where he corrected that market share for shareholders. After they announced that it was up to 5.1%, because COVID increased the size of eCommerce by 50%. But that also brings up a concern, because when everyone else grew 50% to 100%, 50%, of where, they were some quick math tells you that going from actually 3.7% to 5.1% is not the same growth and why is that? That’s because there are other omni channel methods of eCommerce and retail that are growing faster than Amazon right now.
Norman 7:05
You mean there’s other eCommerce outlets other than Amazon?
Steven 7:09
Can you believe it? Amazon’s the big gorilla. They’re fitting into the markets. But for example, last June where Amazon actually lost a little bit of market share, Target grew 70%, Walmart grew 100% and these days, like no up in Canada, general tire, Canadian Tire and here in the US, piles of big box retailers have all started a new hybrid type of eCommerce. People go on their phones, they order on their phones, they go to the store, and they pull up to the curb and people bring it out. This is beautiful to retailers.
Norman 7:49
Oh, yeah.
Steven 7:50
They love it. Amazon always had an advantage over retailers, they don’t pay for stores and real estate and all the rest of that. But now, the stores have an advantage as well, because they’re not paying for that last mile delivery. They have employees doing it. So it’s a wonderful experience, people who’ve tried it, love it and then there’s other types of eCommerce. I’d love to talk about that because there’s lots of other types of eCommerce and as a group, they’re still 85% of retail. That’s where the big money is.
Norman 8:31
It’s interesting that you’re talking about these hybrid because that happened this morning. I went to order something online. I think it was a dog bone or dog antler, a couple dog for Christmas for my stupid dog. Anyways, my wife said that no, she’d rather contact just ordered online from the pet store, pick it up curbside. I’m always, let them deliver it here. Yeah, I’m too lazy. But yeah, so that’s actually an incredible marketing strategy on the part of the retailers, for them to be able to get back in the swing of things, make people go online, have the action of going online and still working with your favorite or possibly your local retailers to help stimulate the economy.
Steven 9:21
Absolutely, absolutely. People miss shopping. It’s retail therapy. People when they go on vacation, we go to the beach every day. No, let’s take a day off and go shopping and discover the local stores and stuff like that. Teenagers, they get together in little groups and they go shopping and girls go for their Kingston era dress and they go with 16 other girls who all have to look at it and judge and stuff like that. Yeah. It is a different experience than eCommerce and it’s a different opportunity for people who are selling products. But in even more so, as I said, now, this curbside delivery, there’s bulk online, there’s private online, there’s selling to retailers online. All of these are different flavors of eCommerce and Norm, the one thing that people are always surprised to hear is Amazon’s hard. If you can figure out Amazon, you can certainly learn how to sell to retailers. Come on algorithms, PPC, I mean, just getting it done. Anyone who can find a product that’s good, get it online and Amazon can definitely learn how to do that with retailers as well.
Norman 10:51
It’s interesting, too. So we’re talking about retailers, but also these hybrids, or eCommerce channels you don’t think about. I’ve talked about this on the podcast before where we got hit, my client got hit with hazmat, it happened three times to them. Each time it got hit, it was harder and harder to rank the product. We had to do all sorts of things to get it but never achieved the actual sales at it, the first hazmat issue came out. So we looked for a different channel and we approached eBay and eBay, took us by the hand, wanted to work with us, showed us like all these other things I had no, I used to sell on eBay. eBay sucked, like in the last four or five years, I just abandoned it, I would never go back until I went to this conference with Steve Simonsson over at Empowery, he brought us over to the eBay headquarters and we were talking to the business development people, I’m sitting there going, Oh my God, you can do all this stuff, which I already had the product on, by the way and that product was selling the three products, we had three SKUs, $150,000 a month off of eBay. Who needed that? The pain, the aggravation of adding now, like you said, at the beginning, the big elephant right there, the elephant in the room is Amazon. But there are these channels and retail like we’re talking about today. So let’s go down and let’s discuss some of these other channels. Now, first of all, if I were to ask you, most of the people that listen to this podcast, I like to think that there’s a lot of online sellers, but the majority probably are on Amazon, Amazon sellers, who are still probably either on Amazon, exclusively, or just starting to explore the outside world of Amazon and there’s been people on this podcast that have said, Do not look elsewhere and that’s fine, like, and that’s why I bring all different people into this podcast to give different opinions. But let’s talk about these Omni channels and which are, who should be on the channel? Like what niches and the pros and the cons of each?
Steven 13:20
Sure. The first thing to people who say don’t go off of Amazon, I’ll use eBay, your example. People think well, because everything is the US. But once you get out of the US, eBay gets stronger in some countries, it’s still stronger than an Amazon in Australia and I think Shopee is stronger than Amazon in India and so on and these are our markets that are full of people who want to spend their money and buy your product. So don’t ignore them. Yes, the US spends a ton of money on merchandise, we are terrible. We are materialistic culture. But you should be strategic and materialistic too, which means if you can make money, look at where you can make money and then there’s where, what niches are best for which. So if you’ve got a product that people want to buy in bulk, so let’s say that you’ve got an office, it’s a good choice of products but for an example, when you buy plastic cups, you buy a whole bunch of them at one time. Think Costco, anything that you would buy a bunch of at Costco, you can also sell in eCommerce through Boxed. Boxed is a great company and their business model is to be the Costco of eCommerce. Buy things in bulk and at good prices and yet a lot of eCommerce folks are not even Aware of Boxed.
Norman 15:01
I’ve never heard of Boxed.
Steven 15:03
B O X E D and they were in the news a lot just before COVID or about six months before COVID because they offered scholarships to the kids of all their employees.
Norman 15:20
Oh, really?
Steven 15:21
Yeah, quite an amazing offer to just keep the workplace happy and stuff like that. They’re based on the East Coast, I think they’re out of New York, Manhattan. So that’s one different model of online that people are not aware of.
Norman 15:38
Okay, while you’re explaining this too, Kels, if you could just put these into the show notes and links. Okay, very good. You’re doing your job Kels, thank you.
Steven 15:50
Then there’s selling to independent retailers and specialty stores and frankly, I love selling to independent retailers and specialty stores. I’ve probably, gosh, I’ve spoken to thousands, thousands of store owners, and we’ll get to this in a moment. But they are great ways of getting into the stores making sure that you provide what they want. But an interesting way of getting a hold of these retailers is through eCommerce platforms that are just for retailers, such as ShopZio, S H O P Z I O and that’s put on by the same people who who run the Atlanta Mart, the AmericasMart in Atlanta, and the Las Vegas gift show. So again, it’s eCommerce, one of their competitors, one of ShopZio’s competitors, Omega Net, they actually help you put up an entire back end site to your website, they enforce all of your business rules so that you because you’re selling to retailers, just like Alibaba, you get to set your own MOQ, you get to set multiples, and so on. Losing my voice. So let me take a sip here.
Norman 17:11
Can you set up map pricing and everything else?
Steven 17:14
You can but I never recommend map pricing. I always advise against map pricing.
Norman 17:20
Why is that?
Steven 17:21
Well, the goal is, frankly, to get some big box retailers, you want the Walmarts to Targets, the Bunnings, the Canadian tires, and so on and if you set up map pricing, and you have Joe’s specialty retailer on the corner, and they suddenly, go on, they set up their Amazon site and they try to undercut the price, you have to go out there and stop them. That’s what MAP is. It’s an informal agreement. So they go ahead and do that. But now let’s say that Walmart with 4000 stores, doing 200 units a week, they do a special and they advertise a special, you have to legally turn around and kick them off as well. You don’t want to do that. So the easiest way of doing MAP is or effectively doing MAP is just somebody starts undercutting the prices, stop selling to them. You’re in control.
Norman 18:20
Let’s explain MAP, I just thought of that. I shouldn’t be using these acronyms. So let’s talk about MAP for a second.
Steven 18:26
So I’ll give you an exclusive here. I’ve done a couple of actually three books, but two books about retail in China, I am coming out with a third book and MAP and all other acronyms in retail, shipping and so on are all being defined out. So hopefully people won’t have a problem with acronyms. But boy, we have a lot of acronyms, acronyms and stuff. MAP is a minimum advertised price. So that means that when you sell your product to a retailer, they’re not allowed to advertise a price that’s lower than what you state. They can sell it in their store. They can have a marked down in their store, they can have a clearance in their store, but they can’t advertise it and posting something online for sale is considered advertising. So that’s the challenge there.
Norman 19:16
Right. Okay, very good. So, I threw you off topic there.
Steven 19:20
I love talking about this. I gotta tell you, I was chatting with with Kelsey that a few weeks ago, I got contacted by a couple that was on Shark Tank and they actually when they got invited to Shark Tank, they have to sit there in Las Vegas for nine days because of the COVID concerns and so they got my book to prepare and they read it from cover to cover and say well yeah, let’s chat. We started chatting and it was probably two and a half hours before I got off the call with them just because I love talking about it. So ask anything you want.
Norman 20:02
Very good and I guess they can see you right now.
Norman 20:07
If anybody does have questions, please post them in the comment section. Kelsey, are there any questions that have come in?
Kelsey 20:15
No, I put out a question about which sales channel do people use right now and we got a couple of responses. Darwin uses 90% Amazon, 2% Shopify, and I believe this is lower, how I’m not sure exactly how to pronounce her name. But thank you for this wonderful sharing today. Currently, I’m using Etsy as the main sales channel.
Norman 20:40
So Dave kettner. You know Dave, Steven, I think you know Dave, he was my partner over at AMZ and beyond and he started an Etsy course. I think it’s out. But anyways, he’s been training people on Etsy and I was talking to him the other day, and since the beginning of the month to now, just print on demand on Etsy, so no inventory, nothing, nada. He sold over $67,000 worth of product. There’s another channel that he would have had nothing, no sales coming in. He only started doing Etsy, like, with print on demand over the last couple of months and now he’s got a really thriving store.
Steven 21:26
Etsy is a great channel that people overlook and it’s also a great way for people to dip their toe in the water and see.
Norman 21:34
For nothing.
Steven 21:35
Exactly, exactly. You have Maayan on the last show. I absolutely love her. I have a glassblower to glassblower crush on her because we both blow glass and she does it so much better than I do. But when I first started, I mentioned I got into retail and selling to retailers in 2001. It was because I had taken my first glassblowing class and during class, we’re making these little glass Globes, and they promoted us to color. So now we’re doing color, color, color and I’m doing all these wonderful class globes in shades of purple and lavender. Well, lo and behold, I’ve got a pile of these. My wife says we can’t put any more outward displays and there are a bunch of lavender farms just west of us here in Seattle. So I went out to the lavender farms and said, Would you be interested in these? They said absolutely and I started a little cottage industry. Every time I was doing my practice glass balls, I was going out to swim and selling them to the lavender farms who were selling them to tourists and voila, a business was started. People can do that these days on Etsy. I love it.
Norman 22:56
Yeah. So let’s continue down the omni channel route. So any other options that you can give? Because you’ve given some great examples here that are not talked about.
Steven 23:04
Yeah, well, just to give, I mentioned objective data. To give some framework to this, there’s a research company called Nielsen and the US people are familiar with it, because they have Nielsen ratings for TV shows. But most of their work is done on consumer and shopping research and they live by accuracy. So no one can say Oh, you’re skewed because you’re trying to sell a course or a tool or something. That’s not what they do. They just give data and they have particular during COVID, there’s been some big shifts in how people shop. Interestingly, they’ve broken it down into a few different groups of shoppers, those that are have their incomes impacted by COVID. Those that don’t have their income impacted by COVID and then those who have their ability to go out and shop in stores impacted. So they’re restricted, and those are not restricted and what they found is that those people who have their incomes restricted, have moved more online and they are spending more time looking for the best possible price. As Nielsen described, it does shopping for survival. Those that are not threatened, their incomes are not threatened by COVID. I can’t travel, can’t spend money where they would otherwise so they are now looking at paying for more high end things, for celebratory things, for feel good products and they are shopping at retail more than they were shopping online. So there has been a shift because they drove a lot of online sales results before. All of this turns around so they pulled people how many people are exclusively online, how many people are exclusively in retailers and how many are doing omni channels, which is a range of all types of purchasing, they found 33% are still exclusively in retailers. But so many have gone online, that now that hybrid model is 66% and 1%, only 1% shops only online. So that tells us that we are not in the eCommerce business, we’re not in the Amazon business, that’s people’s platforms to sell. We are in the business of selling products and making money and when you put yourself in that mindset, it’s okay, where can I sell and make the most money, whether it’s walmart.com, or a Walmart store, whether it’s amazon.com, or as we have around here in Seattle, Amazon four star, Amazon go. All of these are physical stores and of course whole foods are physical stores. That’s done by Amazon as well. So even Amazon’s moving into the business of brick and mortar in store shopping, online shopping and so on.
Norman 26:15
Just to have a bit of both right, get the best of both worlds.
Steven 26:19
Get people’s pocketbooks. If people have a product that they want, and you’re selling it, make it as easy as possible for them to buy and make them happy. Make sure it’s a good product.
Norman 26:30
Well, that’s the key. I’m lazy, I don’t want to go to the store because you know what? I’m so used to just going online. I bought that orange light bulb that’s behind me. I think it was 3.99. I don’t want to go to the hardware store. Think about it. Last year, I’d hop in the car, go to the hardware store, get the light bulb, bring it back. I wasted a half hour in my day. I just take two seconds I ordered online now and I’m doing that for everything, chocolate bars. I don’t know, I literally bought chocolate bars that Kelsey is rolling his eyes. I know. But, there’s an online service that delivers groceries, right? So one night I’m watching a movie and I didn’t want a pizza. What did I do? I ordered chocolate bars. Yeah, I like chocolate.
Steven 27:21
I got woken up last night by someone who was delivering Grubhub and had the telephone number wrong and they called me up and they said Dustin, I said no, not Dustin, who is this person and they were delivering Grubhub, they have the wrong number. You can get stuff delivered at any hour and that’s an example of what’s happening, the changes in the restaurant business, that’s a hybrid restaurant model that wasn’t around prior to COVID. So we can’t ignore those changes. We need to respond to them and take advantage of them. If you’re a restaurant, and you’re not letting your stuff be delivered, you’re falling behind.
Norman 28:00
People are always asking about niches, what, where would you go? What product opportunities do you have? You want a product opportunity? Find out these new niches that have opened up delivery services or what restaurants need or How can they be doing something a little bit different or better, find that product and bring that into the marketplace and then you’ve got something that nobody has, and you can offer to all these restaurants or all these other types of services, gyms, people that are suffering right now and if you can give them the leading edge with that product, and just think about it for a second restaurants, Grubhub. Is there something that you can produce for them that’s a product that can be delivered. You have wipes. But is there any other type of added value product that’s very inexpensive that you could provide to those two services that could I mean, who knows? That could be a million dollar idea. I’m not sure. But these are the types of opportunities that are out there that are not only selling on Amazon, but going out to those types of services as well.
Steven 29:08
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely and if your local stores, if your local mom and pop shops, and gift shops and specialty stores are not online, and if you’re selling your own products on Shopify, you now are a Shopify expert in the eyes of those small stores. Contact them, reach out to them, and Hey, are you online, I can help you get online. So now you’re providing a service as well as selling products and now you have a relationship with retail that you can sell your products too so they can sell them online as well. You’re helping the economy. You have that expertise that they need. So there’s an opportunity right there during COVID and frankly Norm, after all of the restrictions lesson two, and after the vaccination is out there, and COVID in the rear window, our behaviors are still going to be changed. There are going to be times when you say, I don’t feel like getting up from the movie, I want my chocolate bars and you’ll think of options that you didn’t think of before. We, as entrepreneurs, want to be there across the board.
Norman 30:22
Very good. All right, so two things. First of all, if you’re looking for the giveaway, today, Steven is going to be giving away an hour of his time, free consult. All you have to do is put in I want Steve, and you’ll be entered in for the giveaway at the end of the podcast today and as well, I noticed that there’s a couple questions here, Kelsey, if you want to just add those?
Kelsey 30:47
That’s correct. Let’s see. First one, we have just a clarification on two of the sites that you mentioned. What was the name of the platforms? One is boxed.com and do you remember the second one?
Steven 31:05
I mentioned a couple of platforms that allow you to sell to retailers. One is ShopZio, one word, S H O P Z I O, another is Omega Net, O M E G A N E t.com and for omeganet.com, they actually work with our programs. So let me know if you’re interested in it. We can always make the introduction and get you some discounts there as well. Other sites we mentioned so far is walmart.com, which I think a lot of people are aware of and then of course, we talked about getting into small shops, specialty retailers, independent retailers, and both as approaching them in person trying to sell to them and also, if you’re local ones don’t have an online presence yet. See if you can help them do it.
Kelsey 32:04
Okay, great. Let’s see for Darwin, for high end baby products. Besides Amazon, where should I look next? My own Shopify store Walmart or another platform?
Steven 32:17
Really good question. Amazon’s famous for having no bar to entry. Anyone can sell anything. If you want to sell a moldy toast, you could sell it on Amazon, probably not successfully but you can sell it on Amazon. The bar to entry to selling through retailers, and a lot of these hybrid retailers is that you have to have something that will be successful, they won’t let you sell moldy toast. The number one question I have heard from managers and owners of specialty stores from buyers of big box stores is always what do you have for us that we haven’t seen and if you have a product, you guys know all about differentiation. I usually have my book here from Jack Trout that says Differentiate or Die. But I have my own book here today instead, you guys know about differentiation, differentiate your product in such a way that customers want it that customers say, Oh, I haven’t seen this before and now you’re halfway to being able to get into all of those other options of retailers and the other is to make sure that you’re profitable and this is something that Oh gosh, Norm this one I’m passionate about. I went to a major high end business school here in the US. I went through accounting courses that I hated and probably slept through half of them. But profit for your business means after you make your money, you receive your money, revenue, you take out all of your expenses from what the cost of the product is to the shipping to the advertising, marketing and everything else and what’s left is profit and there’s a lot of Amazon people who just selectively take items off of that debit list, don’t remove those items with debit list. If you’re making a profit and your margin or your multiplier is strong enough and as a first thing, if you have a product that customers want, then absolutely you can move into retail and be very successful. I can give you some numbers to compare retail to Amazon that’ll blow you away. You got a moment?
Norman 34:47
Let’s do it.
Steven 34:48
So during COVID, we got into a major retailer that has 2700 stores. Now, I know from Walmart test market, that we could sell 10.5 items a week. But if you just have that, you say five items a week, I’m gonna have to use my calculator. So forgive me here, my nephew could do this in his head. But five items a week times 2700 stores. That’s 13,500 sales a week from one retailer, that’s just one retailer. So you can see how the numbers in retailers can just absolutely blow away your sales. You can expand that like you can on Amazon by bringing out additional products, variations, different colors of your sweatshirt, if you choose. You can also expand that by going into other retailers, there are no other online sites the same size as Amazon, there are great opportunities, they’re not the same size. But with retailers, you can expand to other retailers. So now your 13,500 units a week can be doubled. Because you’re in another similar retailer and Tim Bush, who does a great podcast about getting into retailers also helps out and mentors on our program. We were live in his VIP group, when a purchase order came in from Costco for one of his clients for five and a half million dollars for one product. The numbers are huge.
Norman 36:46
So I got a question, and others are probably hearing will have the same question and that’s okay, I’m ordering 1000 units on Amazon. I’m ordering 2500 units, those units are gonna last me two months. If I go to a retailer, how do I get cash flow to fund 13,000 units a week? Now, is it something that for me, I’ve been in retail, I’ve been in and out of retail. I understand how the system works. But is it something that you really have to think about? Should you pursue, especially if it’s going to bump your sales that much that could bust you as well, couldn’t it?
Steven 37:39
Absolutely. I was in a showroom in Atlanta’s Mart with a fellow. Gosh, he was all excited because he had gotten into Bed Bath and Beyond and we were together six months later at the next show and he was sad, depressed, he had succeeded himself into bankruptcy. Because he was selling so much then he had no money. He didn’t understand cash flow. So the first thing is cash flow. It’s different than cash flow when you think about it for FBA, where you’re saying, okay, I’ve sold out to have I saved enough of my money to order again. When you’re in retailers, you want to have a consistent inventory. So you’re not looking to sell out, wait two months of production shipping and start up again. But you’ve got a couple of advantages when you sell to retailers. When you’re selling to mom and pops independent subspecialties, they pay up front, and they pay for shipping. So that’s beautiful. The second thing is once you get into chain stores, larger chain stores, big box stores and everything else. It’s a completely different model. So when somebody wants to, let’s say that you get into Canadian Tire or Target or whatever, they’re not going to say, Hey Norm, we love your product, send us over three containers, they’re going to say we love your product and we’d like to have you in the store in June. So now you have between now and June to have that produced. So let’s say that your product retails for $20 on the shelf, which means you’re wholesaling it for half that price than Keystone so you’re wholesaling for $10. But you should have a multiplier of 7x or 10x to start with. So if it’s selling on the shelf for $20 you should be paying $2- $2.50 per unit. So let’s say they’re ordering 100,000 units, that’s two and a half 100,000 units. So 200,000, 250,000 units. 250,000 units at two bucks each. I’m sorry for the math lesson. I’m doing this without my calculator. So correct me if I’m wrong, but 250,000 units at $2 each is $500,000. So that’s $500,000 but you don’t come up with that right away. First of all, you negotiate. When you’re dealing with real retailers, you’re no longer dealing with Alibaba trading companies, you’re dealing with real factories that are used to dealing with real retailers. It’s not difficult to get yourself in a situation when you’re 15% down, and you’re paying your balance 30 days after receipt, 60 days after receipt, it’s not rock, that’s negotiation, we should have another conversation just about negotiation. That’s a lot of people, I think he has a bunch of YouTube, where people have recorded me doing talks about negotiation. But reality at this point, your finances are that you need to only come up with 15% down on that $250,000, which is, do the math is much less, you come up with much less. The next thing that happens is when you have a reputable credible company that purchases that amount, that purchase order and then once you deliver that invoice, or financial instruments, you can walk into any bank, say hey, I’ve got a purchase order from Target, Costco, whatever and they will front you the money. So that’s called factoring and it’s one method and with factoring you actually, they front you the money and then they get paid by the retailer, and they save 3% in their pocket, 4% depending on what their standards are, and you get the rest. So not a bad situation at all. But you don’t get the rest when they get paid by the retailer, you get paid the rest when you present them with that invoice. So the moment you make that delivery you have now got, they’ll usually get 85% up front, then they’ll wait for the rest upon delivery, upon payment by the retailer. But now you’ve just got 85% of your 100,000 units at $10 each, that’s a million dollars, you just got $850,000 put into your bank account and all it cost you was being able to come up with that 15% of 250, which was whatever that is 100 something maybe $40,000 I don’t know, off the top of my head. So that’s one way, then there’s revenue based loans. Then there are also, I use investors, angel investors, there are VCs, particularly for products, which Circle Up I believe is one out of California. There’s Matt, which is done by Howard Schultz to go into Starbucks, he believes in products. So there’s a number of ways of financing it. You want to think about that from the very beginning. But you don’t want to let that fear stop you and again, I know I’m taking this off in a tangent, maybe that’s another topic to talk about. But financing when you get into too large orders is not as difficult as people think.
Norman 43:33
Okay, if we were going to bring this back to the retailer.
Steven 43:40
I bored all these people with numbers.
Norman 43:42
No, no, no, this is really great information. A lot of people probably have not heard about factoring or any of these other things. Factoring is great. Just don’t go to the first factoring company two, because you can pay through the notes. But one of the things I want to get your opinion on, you can try to go to Walmart or you can try to go into a retailer and sometimes it’s great because you can just go to your local Walmart and they’ll give you a try or Costco. I know Costco does that. But a lot of these retailers, Hey, you just get around. I live in a small town, just a small town. We’ve got all these big box stores, you could just do it locally. But another way that we’ve done it is through distributors. We’ve called up just a bunch of distributors and wholesalers and said hey, how would you like, you send them up the product. They take all the risk, we get paid and they know how to get into these. So if they like your products, they take them on and yeah, you don’t have to do too much work.
Steven 44:49
Oh, yeah, they are retail. First of all, there are retailers who are hungry for your product. Pick up the phone, write an email, get a hold of them and then there are retailers that have the door shut, they’re saying, go, we’re not going to talk to anyone. But if you reach out to the retailer, and the retailer world, if they work with these distributors will say, Hey, we don’t deal with manufacturers directly, we only deal with someone, so distributor. Now you get back a hold of them and you say, Hey, Norm said he is interested in the product, but he wants me to work with you, Mister distributor, and they say oh Norm, Well, we love Norm. Sure, let’s talk and set something up. Oftentimes for distributors, you need to have some sales history and that you can get by being online, Amazon, eBay, walmart.com, and so on getting that sales history is important and being online, that’s a great way of doing it and then lastly, along with distributors, this also Field Sales Reps. Now during COVID, they’re staying home. But during non COVID time, you can have Field Sales Reps. So you could be sitting in Australia or Singapore with a great product that’s in the US ready to be distributed and your sales reps can go around from store to store to store and they’ll have a book of products and they’ll have your sell sheet or your catalog and they’ll show their products and say, hey, we’ve got a great new product for you, are you interested and they’ll actually make a sale for you, while you’re halfway around the world. So there’s another great way. Because all these great opportunities and again, we are in the business of having good products that people want to pay for. We just want to put it in their hands, the easiest way, whatever however they want to shop. Great. We want to be there.
Norman 47:00
One of the things that you talked about, I just forgot to ask the question. But you talked about this, at the beginning of the podcast, you said, be an innovator, do something different with your product and the first place to start with that and I think it’s pretty easy. So you might look at it and I like using plastic shoe stretchers, okay, what can you do differently than everybody else getting it from the same three factories? As the manufacturer, just ask the manufacturer, what is it? Or could it be in a different color, but the manufacturer, a lot of the times they don’t get asked this. The seller goes, see in Alibaba pitcher, they’ll contact them and say hey, I want 500 red plastic shoe stretchers. When you’re checking out your competitors, check and see what the complaints are, check and see what the positive is, it might be a different type of product and this is a true example that I was looking at. I had a guy contact me about a plastic shoe stretcher, I advised them against it because I think there was seven on the market and the highest rating that I saw was three and a half star and they’re all crappy, however, and the highest amount there was only 3300 I think at the time in search for or not search volume and sales, in sales per month. Unless the data was wrong, but I checked it a few times it looked like it was 3300. I went to a wood shoe stretcher. Full foot almost like a last right? It stretches out. There were 3.25, these ones were like 25 cents each. They were crappy. The 3.25 we’re going upwards towards $99 for the set and they were selling at 100,000 a month. Crazy, now it’s completely saturated, completely saturated. People saw the same info I saw. Now you’re getting the same wooden ones for like under 20 bucks. But at the time, you could make a killing on it. But all I’m saying is by changing the material. So it could be from a really crappy almost tin foil spring to a titanium spring to plastic, it might be a better plastic, it might be a different color. Then you can look at the reviews, what are the problems with it? But ask the manufacturer, a lot of times the manufacturer, they’re just thinking that North American sellers want cheap crappy products. Yep, that’s all they want and same with the packaging. You can increase it. I mean even on the packaging, if you have an outer package and an inner package that could change things, it could be as simple as a half penny transparent sticker, that doesn’t allow somebody to open it up, psychologically. So that half penny sticker probably can translate into 50 cents, a $1 extra, who knows? All these little things. It doesn’t have to be product innovation. It can be in packaging, it could be in the whole customer journey, or experience. But I would definitely just ask, what can I do to improve this plastic shoe stretcher that nobody else is doing?
Steven 50:43
Absolutely, 100%. Ask your factory, ask customers. I got a piece from my computer a couple of months ago and it came bundled with a tiny little screwdriver that you use for the little tiny screws on the back of the computer and it’s like, that’s fabulous. Yeah, next time I need a computer piece, I’m buying from this company. Because I mean, that was not an expensive addition. But the value added was and the fact that it was something that I needed at the time was absolutely brilliant and I mean, even talking to your factories, I’ve got a factory in China that does push groups, industrial push groups. That’s boring. How can you make that better? Well, a woman owns the factory, but her husband does the engineering, the operations and he loves to fiddle with things. So he created a little thing that’s attached to the handle of the broom, that’s just a slider, you slide it down, and a hard plastic blade comes out of the end. So people who are doing industrial sweeping can also scrape things off the floor without bending down and picking them up and he did this himself and they were using it around the factory and he was having a great time. They weren’t selling any because they weren’t on Alibaba, nobody knew. But all it takes is one person to ask, Hey Jack, what is that thing you’re using? Or if you’re not there next to him, Jack, what new things do you have that I haven’t seen and they love that, they absolutely love that. Because this is more income for them. It gives you a chance to have something innovative that that’s not out there and it gives customers something that solves a problem. They didn’t even know the solution existed for you. I mean, it’s a win all around.
Norman 52:36
Oh, yeah, absolutely and like you said, a bloody screwdriver that probably cost under what, 10 cents? Maybe? Yeah, so anyways, these are the things that we love talking about on the podcast about perception and building out that image, that overall image. All right, you talked about sell sheets too. So when you’re presenting that’s perception as well. This is where and you’ll let me know if you agree or disagree. But if I’m designing a sales or a spec sheet for somebody to take a look at, I have one for this podcast, if I went to Fiverr or if I went to some crappy artist because it’s the cheapest person out there. You’re going to get back what you pay for. So I can show you presentations, I can show you labels and packaging and all this other stuff that I like. My graphic artists are really good and I pay the price for it too. Sometimes I’ll do a presentation, I get whacked. This is my team charging, they’ve charged me too much. But a couple 100 bucks for a presentation, but it’s a high quality presentation, people are gonna see it, they’re gonna like it and that’s the same thing with a sales sheet. If you go out there with something that looks crappy, well, you’re gonna get that response back. So your image, this is the same as an Amazon listing by the way. Your images, your copy, everything has to be like on track and if it’s not, don’t expect the results. Is there anything that you can tell us about a spec sheet? What should a sell sheet have on it that maybe people wouldn’t realize?
Steven 54:22
Well, first of all, I’m going to agree with you 100%. Fiverr, I’ve found great voiceover artists on Fiverr and others but they are doing a unique them only type service. When it comes to graphic artists, I actually have a section of my book logos done by people on Fiverr Freelancer and these other low end cheap graphic artists providers and I show actual results from artists where they all literally are providing the exact same image, it comes out of a logo making app. There are simplified templates that they can use to create, sell sheets, and presentations and so on. It’s going to look the same as everyone else. Yeah, it’s not going to be effective. If you’re going to do something, find yourself a great graphic artist. If you’ve ever done a contest on 99 designs, or if you’ve got some good work, use them, keep coming back to the same ones. It helps the ease of communication, they know what you want, you know what they can do. A good graphic artist is golden. I mean, just hold on to them. In fact, I’ll tell you I have one of the graphic artists I used was an old girlfriend from years ago and after my divorce, I felt comfortable, reached out and we became friends again and she’s a professional graphic artist and I’ll still go to her and ask her for help. Because she’s that good. If you have a good one, hold on to it and on that sell sheet, you want to keep it simple. People do not buy toothpaste to clean their teeth, people buy toothpaste for white teeth. That’s what they do. They don’t buy toothpaste in the tube, they don’t buy it because oh, I’ve got to buy toothpaste, they buy it for the benefits. People buy benefits. So the number one thing you have on your sell sheet on your packaging, which also does not need to be done by an amateur is the benefits. Why do you want to buy this? Don’t say, Hey, this is a coffee mug. Say why this coffee mug is different. Why is this shoe stretcher different? What does the customer receive? What does the customer feel? What makes it unique from everything else? That’s what you want to communicate and that’s what you sell on your sell sheet. The other thing that you do on your sell sheet is that adds the benefits to the retailer. Does this bring new foot traffic into the store because it’s popular? I had a product that was in the gift bags of the Oscars and let me tell you something else. We put that on the sell sheets, on the emails and everything else. As soon as people saw that, they opened it up. It’s different, it’s unique. It might increase your category sales. So you let that known, know who your audience are, put the benefits for that. So your benefits of the product and your benefits to the retailer, the rest this becomes details then they’ll ask you the questions. You don’t even have to put a price on it. They want it, they’ll ask you what the price is.
Norman 57:47
Right and you talked about the gift bags, the Oscars. There’s services that you can contact that will make sure that if you want to get into the Emmys or if you want to get into the Oscars, they’re looking for good quality products to put in these gift bags. You donate them, sometimes there’s even a cost to it but look. you’re getting them in the hands and how much exposure is that? My product was featured at the Oscars.
Steven 58:17
Absolutely. Lash Fairy who does the Oscars has been doing this for years. He’s wonderfully flamboyant and a brilliant businessman and his concern with our product getting in the bags was the fact that our product is so unique and compelling that he was concerned that the other products would be upset and jealous by it and it was on his desk for three days and everyone who came in asked about it he decided that the interest was so high that there was no way he was going to say no he wanted us in there and our product which is at its most fundamental. A cleaning product was mentioned everywhere from Fox Business News to Forbes to Paris Vogue to House Beautiful, I mean, it’s just all over the world and that’s marketing, that’s making it unique and stand out. That’s, come on Norm, I’m not 20 years old. There’s a lot still to be said for good old fashioned marketing. Put your product in front of people, let them know why they want it and they will look for it. Amazon is the end of the funnel. If people are looking for your product, and they typed it in on Amazon. Sorry, competitors. They’re typing in my product. So good old fashioned marketing is still.
Norman 59:48
Yeah, that’s what we’ve talked about that a lot about at the end of the day, you could hear and you could take part and you can get involved with all these shiny objects, listen to 20,000 different people. But at the end of the day, just marketing 101. That’s all it takes, you can launch a product, you can do it simply by exactly what we just talked about today. Image copy, just having a great impeccable customer service. Now, that’s the other thing, too. So, anyways, I mean, we could talk about tons of different things. I know we’re coming up to the hour right now. Why don’t I do one more shout out here, too. So Steven has agreed to give one hour of his consulting. So if you’ve listened, if you’ve just joined us, you’ve missed out, we’ve been talking about a ton of stuff today that nobody’s talking about and if you’ve joined us from the beginning, you’ll see how valuable this information is. So again, if you’re looking for an one hour consult, or a chance to win that with Steven, type in #IwantSteven and Kelsey will put it in. Now while that’s happening,
Steven 1:01:07
Norm, can I up the ante on that for a moment?
Norman 1:01:10
Sure.
Steven 1:01:11
Okay, so this is my most recent book and the camera, there we go. It’s a tiny little ebook. Over 500 pages, it’s on Amazon, Amazon Kindle, because I was coming on the show today, anyone who goes out to Amazon and finds it on Kindle. It’s for free download today, just download it for free on Kindle, it’s all yours. A lot of the stuff we talked about today and a lot more. Go ahead. It’s free all day, December 18.
Norman 1:01:45
That’s awesome. Thanks. I bought it by the way. But no, that’s absolutely great. Get out there, grab that book. That book is fantastic.
Steven 1:01:56
I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to all the people that I mentioned in the dedication. Tim Bush, who got mentioned before, he’s got the podcasts for getting into big box stores. David Bierbaum, who’s launched products that everybody knows and is in their home and he’s launched those all the wonderful people who have helped me both as people who are agents and salespeople and account managers, and this students that have given me feedback and help and advice. I have to recognize them all, because that’s what this book is all about.
Norman 1:02:37
Very, very good. So while we’re waiting too, let’s talk a little bit, you’ve talked about this, I’ve heard you talk about a course. So what’s the course about, how do people get involved with that?
Steven 1:02:49
So the course is the Product Development Academy and you can just find that online at Product Development Academy. There’s also a Facebook group Product Development Academy and it focuses on developing unique products and bringing them all the way to retailers’ shelves. It’s not Amazon, or FBA specific, it crosses all channels of retail, all these channels we’re talking about today and more and it starts with the very beginning with product ideation coming up with new unique products and not using search tools. But using again, I get to go old fashioned here, using old fashioned ideation methods, everyone from Tony Buzan who invented mind mapping to Leonardo da Vinci that was he was a little artist in Italy years ago. The techniques that all of them use, because we look at ideation as a process of creativity and then we take you through customer demand validation. We take you through profitability and market analysis, we take you through the design stage, DVT design, validation, testing, engineering, validation, testing, packaging, how to find factories, how to vet your factories, how to manage your factories remotely, which is really good for COVID. Logistics, setting up logistics centers, marketing sell through and sell to marketing, which we touched on briefly. You are selling to end customers, but you’re also selling to your retailer. So there’s sell to and sell through marketing and of course, sales. How do you make those sales? Because if you do everything right, if you check all of your boxes, the sales, that becomes easy. It’s a product that people want. It’s a product that people will pay for. Oh, Darwin says I love product development. It is the best. As you can see I talk about, Can I share a story about Porsche for a moment?
Norman 1:04:56
Sure.
Steven 1:04:57
So Porsche knew that they had to enter the SUV market and they brought together their current customers, they brought together SUV, potential SUV customers, and every design decision went in front of them. They said, Do you want this and are you willing to pay for it and for example, they asked about cupholders. Do you want cupholders? Are you willing to pay for it and the feedback was, yeah, we want cup holders. In fact, we want larger cup holders, because here in the US, we love our 64 ounce slurpees. We want more of them spread around the SUV. So Porsche went ahead and did that. They did that for every decision, including the famous Porsche six speed transmission and the customer said, No, it’s not important to us and the car, the engineers, they were really upset about it even, rumors got out. My brother’s a car person, and he’s upset about it like everyone, but they listen to their customers. They launched the Porsche Cayenne. Within 10 years, it was the category leader and responsible for more than half the profits of the company. Because they listened to customers. So that’s your secret profit, customers.
Norman 1:06:16
Yeah, and I remember a show with Homer Simpson doing the exact same thing.
Steven 1:06:22
Well, now you’re making me walk doughnuts.
Norman 1:06:24
Yeah. Me too. Kelsey, I forgot to ask. But were there any other questions that we didn’t get to?
Kelsey 1:06:30
There’s actually a couple that came in. If you still have time, Steven.
Steven 1:06:36
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kelsey 1:06:38
Okay. So first of all, this is Darwin. I think he wants to do a little invention with you Norm. He said, Norm, you got me thinking I’m an inventor. That’s the fun part. Let’s make a serving tray with dividers and you can individually seal sections for warm, cold and vents for fried food, no more soggy fries. So it’s always on the go, if you’re interested.
Norman 1:07:01
Oh, by the way, guys, when I had my promotions company, we got bombarded with all sorts of different products, right? So this is why you have to know your marketplace. From China, we got this really cool cup holder, just listening to you, Steven. Yeah, I just thought of this. So it’s a cup holder that you could put in your console that was like on a gyro, what is it called the gyro plane or whatever. So it moves, it is stabilized. So the car moved, your drink would stay. On the packaging, I’m not kidding. It had something you wouldn’t see here. A glass of cognac and on the other side, a glass in a car with a beer. Yeah, they didn’t do their product research too well.
Steven 1:07:58
That is classic. That is classic. I love that. Know your customers.
Kelsey 1:08:04
Yeah. All right. So Rad had a couple. So the first one, back to sales channels. How about Shopify and Pinterest? Are they good channels for selling the products?
Steven 1:08:18
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely and I’m pretty sure you’ve had Joe Reinfeld on here.
Norman 1:08:25
No, I haven’t.
Steven 1:08:26
Oh, yeah. Reach out to him. He is brilliant about selling particularly on Pinterest. There are great opportunities there. Shopify, as my aunt had mentioned, if you’re live on TikTok, you can send people to a site. There are Facebook now, you can sell off of Facebook as well and during the Global Sources Summit, I listened to somebody talking about selling off of Reddit. There’s so many opportunities out there. Yeah, absolutely. Shopify and Pinterest when you do Shopify, one bit of advice, you have the opportunity because you’re not paying all these other fees to really drop your price dramatically. Just drop it a little bit. Because there’s no reason to give away the rest of that money. People save 15 cents, they’re super happy and you’re not devaluing your own brand.
Norman 1:09:28
I won’t say the brand, but I know actually, I won’t get into it. But anyways, the brand that I’m working with, 10 million off of Shopify, 20 million this year off of retail. Maybe 400,000 off Amazon. Just to give you a yelp and this is a very high inexpensive product.
Steven 1:09:58
Yeah, absolutely and going back to the two I mentioned in the Nielsen reports earlier, they’re finding that people are looking for non Amazon options as well. That’s not the way it was years ago. In fact, back in 2013, 2012, 2013, everyone thought Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, and then younger folks started to be aware of Wish and AliExpress, they started going and buying from Chinese platforms, because the prices were lower and Amazon was so threatened by that in 2015, they removed the prohibition against Chinese national selling on the platform and look where we are today on Amazon, where factories are competing with their own customers, it’s wild and crazy. Amazon does not want people going off their platform. But these days during COVID, they are. Pinterest, Shopify, there’s a lot of opportunities out there.
Kelsey 1:11:01
Okay, and I think this is actually a question that you probably feel quite strongly about. Is packaging design so important on Amazon? On Amazon, you can present your product without showing the package at all.
Norman 1:11:16
You want me to answer that? You know what I’m gonna say about that.
Steven 1:11:20
It’s gonna be interesting. Let me go for it and then you go for it.
Norman 1:11:24
All right.
Steven 1:11:25
So here’s an example of packaging. So this is how my product was packaged for retailers for Bed Bath and Beyond. It was slightly different. Instead of a flap, it had a zipper, but has a hang tag and it’s great in retailers. This is how it was done for Francesca’s. They wanted a different type of packaging and he’s faced with four color printing and all the information. This is online, just a bad and a piece of paper saying what it was. That’s it. I am a big believer that when you go to retail, packaging is king, it is your listing. That is what speaks to the consumer from the shelf. But when you’re online, it is the listing, not the packaging and if it’s a good product, people are thrilled. If it’s a gift product, of course, you want a really nice box, a rigid box even. But if it’s in most cases, I believe that save money and make money by not packaging. Now, I’m very curious about what I’m going to hear from you.
Norman 1:12:46
All right.
Norman 1:12:49
Absolutely agree with retail. I disagree with Amazon because I’ve seen the differences that great packaging would make by slipping in the picture. So just to give you an example, I had a product, it was a toe wart remover. It was ugly powder blue packaging. Wart on a toe showing on a package with this oil drop coming down. Two bottles in the package that were brown with the same ugly looking package. Changed that, there were some marketing changes here we went from like almost a medicinal sort of thing to a health and natural kind of holistic type of package. But we changed it from that ugly package to white, a microkorg instead of a tuck box and we made the experience and this is where it’s key for us. This is what I look at. I’m a big packaging guy. The whole user experience. At the end of the day, somebody bought a toe wart remover, but when they got it, they were able to unveil it, it sounds kind of gross. It’s toe remover, but that 45 cents in packaging, brought a $1,000 in sales in 18 months. It went from 8000, 23,000, 28,000, 68,000 up to $124,000. We were able to increase it from 9.99 to 24.99 and I’ll give you another example that I shared. This is just recently, I love packaging. So on Amazon, we were doing this product that basically was in a clam shell. It was a clam shell. So just if you don’t know what a clam shell is, it’s just a package sealed with plastic, really cheap plastic and then there’s a little cardboard insert in it. We changed it, launched one year ago, December 13th, at 49.99. Changed the packaging and we relaunched at 69 and brought it up to 99 then we were able to take it over the year over the 124 mark. So it maxed out at 124 we have brought it back around 104 ish. But it’s 104 instead of 49. Get this Steve, you’re gonna love this. We went, we bought a $3 package, wood package, laser engraved, put it in an outer package, so it looks almost like an iPhone. Okay, so we spent money there, that same product with a cost of goods $16 and people that have listened to heard me say this before, is now selling on Amazon for 224. I love packaging.
Steven 1:15:45
That is beautiful. So now, where do you place your packaging image within your choice of images? What position do you place it in?
Norman 1:15:54
It depends, slot two or slot three, it depends where the balance is. If the product and the product with the packaging look very similar to slot one and two, then I move it to slot three. I want somebody aesthetically, I want somebody to look at it when it’s in that row and it’s just not another picture of the product. Because a lot of people do that, they’ll just do a front shot back shot on its side with the cap off with a couple of capsules lying beside it, and they all suck, and this is where I use PickFu. PickFu is absolutely perfect for taking those rearranging them and seeing what people like. But anyways, we are, I think way over again, we could talk forever on this sort of stuff and what’s really great? So what Steve was talking about, and what I was talking about are just two different ways of doing it and you can just judge, the best way to do it is look at your competition and see what they’re doing and if you can go up a little bit, that’s what I always look for and that’s with everything.
Steven 1:17:11
I love the idea of packaging being up early, as two or three because to the customer now, the customer is looking at others and they’re just seeing this, this, this, this, but when they’re looking at yours, it’s an introduction, you’re establishing credibility, and a difference right away.
Norman 1:17:31
Right. I just noticed. It goes on. Hello, hello. Hello. All the way from Latvia. Alright, and yes, that is absolutely true. I just thought I saw right there. Yeah. Yes, images with packaging on are starting to be pulled down. You’re absolutely correct. They’re getting a bit more strict on that. Okay, so let’s get to today’s winner Kels.
Steven 1:17:59
Let’s spin the wheel.
Kelsey 1:18:02
It goes Estonia, Estonia.
Norman 1:18:07
I’m sorry, Estonia.
Kesey 1:18:10
So we did get a couple entries. If you’ve won several times before or have had one like that consults. I left you out. Just to let everyone win. But if you want a smaller swag giveaway, like a free mask, I kept you in to the contest. So we do have lots of new people in the contest as well. Just let me get the wheel. Alright, so this is our Wheel of Kelsey, here we go. To win an hour free consultation. 3,2,1.
Steven 1:18:55
So close.
Norman 1:18:58
Oh, Oleg won. Okay, great. Wow, we’re getting a lot of winners. I saw a bunch come up. Man. You’re just, you’re demanding, not allowing all those other people into the wheel.
Kelsey 1:19:11
I showed a couple of them twice. Yeah, but we just want everyone to win. Yeah. Because I know I think some people even won like three times.
Norman 1:19:20
Look, everybody’s a winner because we’ve got that free giveaway which is incredible. So again, thank you Steven for that.
Kelsey 1:19:28
I put the link across the Youtube, Facebook pages so you can go ahead. This is only for today. Correct?
Steven 1:19:35
It is for today though we’re going to do a Christmas discount if KDP allows us to do it. So we have to wait until midnight tonight before we can plug it in. If we can, then there’ll be a great big discount but frankly, it’s inexpensive. Both the book and the Kindle are inexpensive and once a month we do a free giveaway. I mean we all bootstrapped at the beginning. So let’s help people out.
Norman 1:20:04
Right. Okay, fantastic. So Oleg, you can just get in touch with Kelsey.
Kelsey 1:20:09
Yep. I believe I have his email already too. So it should be easy.
Norman 1:20:14
Okay, very good. All right. Well, that’s it for today’s podcast. Steven, thank you so much for coming on. We’ll have to get you, Kelsey’s got to send you a link to book for the next time. I think we got February, March slots, so I got to get you on.
Steven 1:20:31
Obviously, I’m pretty quiet. I don’t talk much.
Norman 1:20:39
Oh man, get you in me on this podcast. We go on forever. Alright.
Steven 1:20:44
Thank you so much for allowing me on here.
Norman 1:20:48
It’s been our pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us today. Lots of great new information and can’t wait to get on the next one. So, once again, thank you, Steven and for everybody else, thanks for sticking with us today. Glad that you were able to hang on and listen to the whole podcast. We went over an hour but had lots of great information. Once again, if you want to hear this whole podcast, you can go over Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy or check out our YouTube channel, if you want to see the video. Kelsey works hard at putting not only the whole podcast up, but also clips. He does a great job with that. Kelsey, where are you?
Kelsey 1:21:26
Actually, Rad just asked, how did you get in touch with Steven? I’m not sure if you guys got in touch with that.
Steven 1:21:33
I’m just chatting, I never even mentioned that. Yeah, it’s pretty easy. steven@productdevelopmentacademy.com and there’s also the Facebook group Product Development Academy and there’s actually if you get the book, there’s contact information in the back and inside of it. So it’s all steven@product developmentacademy.com.
Norman 1:21:59
Very good. That was an important point. Okay, so Kelsey.
Kelsey 1:22:05
Yes. Okay. So I went ahead and I added our YouTube channel link to the comments. So if you do want to watch it not live, if you miss an episode, and you want to go back, go ahead and hit the link and give us Subscribe. That would go a long way. You can always ring the bell too, that helps you get the notifications for the new episodes that come up. So that’s always very important. That’s even on a little mug that we made, what the hell’s a bell? Norms’ famous catchphrase and yes, we have a Facebook group. So please go ahead and join that we got a couple of people, even just throughout the podcast join today, which is great. We’ve got different conversations going. If you need questions answered, opinions, advice, if you just want to share a funny meme, Norm looking like a gnome, or Santa Claus, whatever you’d like, please throw your memes in there. I love to see the different things we can do with Norm.
Norman 1:23:08
Oh, when you had that mustache?
Kelsey 1:23:11
Yeah, I got the Borat before. So if we can give it back to Norm that would be fantastic. Yeah, so that’s everything for today. We have a guest Monday. Do you want to talk about that?
Norman 1:23:25
Sure. So yeah, Monday, get this. If you’ve never thought about translation, if you’re using Google Translate, stop, stop using Google Translate. There’s going to be an expert from Wild Tea Translations Yana Carrick, and she is an incredible business person. I want to touch on that during the call. We’re also going to be talking about international marketplaces. So it’s going to be a great call. Please join us then and I got some great stories about translations. So that’s it for me today. That’s it for Kelsey. Please join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon, Eastern Standard Time and thank you for watching. Thank you for joining the community. We can’t do this without you and enjoy the rest of your day.
