Tag Archive for: Amazon & (FBA)

The Four Standard Physical Product Business Models

The following two video’s are part of the UnderstandingE project I have been working on & I’m sharing them here for any feedback you may have.

This hasn’t been clearly defined before (that I know of) and will be an immense help if you are considering an eCommerce product business for eBay, Amazon, transactional websites, the other channels etc… Or as I’ve found, to help realise that you’re actually using one or more of these and why you’re actually using more than one of them.

Four Standard Product Business Models

There are four standard product models that a business can use when it comes to physical based products which are intended for resale, this applies to almost all incarnations of an eCommerce product based business.

These are:

  1. Stocked
    This is like a retail shop, where the items are pre-purchased, then used as the inventory to drive data for the online channels and to fulfil orders. I cover the advantages in the video, however this has one major disadvantage, the outlay of cash to fund it.
  2. Manufacture
    This doesn’t have to be as hardcore as making glass, where you take sand (silica) and add other additives such as lime (calcium oxide) and then adding immense heat & other processes, it can be the combination of two or more products to make a unique third product. In the second video I use the example of the lighting in my office, taking stands, plugins, blurbs & softboxes and combining them into a kit, which is a unique product offering.
  3. Virtual / Just-in-Time
    I personally hate the phrase “drop shipping”, a more apt description would be “virtual” or “just in time”.
    This is typically where stock is made available virtually and then put on offer by the business, when an order is taken, the stock items are ordered and then fulfilled. This may be directed to the customer, but also to the business for sorting and then sending out (as I learned two days ago, the correct term for the latter part is called “Cross Match”).
  4. Asset Recovery
    We can also include refurbished products under this model, as essentially they have gone through the asset recovery process and been re-manufactured. This model can enable the highest returns, but also some major downsides, such as availability and quality.

In their Purest Form

In the video below I cover each of them in the purest forms, you’ll need to watch this one before moving to the second as without the explanation of them in this form, the hybrid models won’t make sense.

Hybrid Business Models

However, in reality, there are very few business that use only one of these, instead in this video, I explain how and why you would want to use a hybrid of these standard models for your business.

I also cover a model that I have not included in the four standard models called “Flipping”, as I explain in the video, this is not a scalable model and if you do find a product base that you can scale with, then I would suspect that it falls under the asset recovery hat.

Summary

Documenting these have been exceptionally useful for me & I’m sure for you also.

I’ve found when talking with business owners about these, this has helped them realise why they’re doing what they are with their businesses. It also makes it a pick & mix exercise, however you can now see why you would want some elements of each, but to limit as much as the negatives as you can by combining them together.

Stop - Take Action!Which models are you using?

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Updated Amazon Seller Pages & How To Update Yours

Amazon have updated the Seller Details pages, from the old tabbed style to a new universal page.

To show this more graphically to you, I’ve made a quick video that shows the updated page and how you can edit yours.

Updated Amazon Seller Page Video

All the links used in this video are in the resources section below and its also worth noting that you may find this page more product for referring customers to over the category list pages on Amazon, as there are less “exit” points for the customer to follow.

Resources

Below are the links to the pages shown in the video and the links you need to update your seller information on Amazon.co.uk.

If you sell on Amazon.com the URL’s will alter differently and you can locate the section you need by using the “Your Information & Policies” from your Amazon Seller Central dashboard.

ChannelAdvisor Amazon 360 What this Could Mean for the Future

Two weeks ago I was kindly given a walk around the new Amazon 360 as part of the Autumn Release which also included Buy.com upgrades and comparison shopping merchandiser from ChannelAdvisor.

What struck me the most was what ChannelAdvisor has been and created, could be the foundation parts of a much larger offering which I’ll cover in this article. I decided that it would be easier to explain the points covered in this article in a discussion video and have included this above.

ChannelAdvisor Amazon360

What is Amazon 360?

This is a great question as the Amazon 360 feature includes the follow new elements:

  • Improved seller dashboard
    Displays key information on your Amazon sales, top-performing products, orders pending shipment, and product listing status
  • Amazon seller metrics
    Highlights important seller metrics monitored by Amazon integral in your seller status
  • Detailed feedback
    Imports all negative feedback notes for quick response
  • Product performance view
    Covers seller performance down to individual SKU details
  • Competitive landscape view
    Shows a compact view of your major competitors on Amazon by SKU
  • Rule-based price adjustments
    Configures rules based on margin to automatically change product price

Basically it’s the combination of multiple elements from Amazon, into a single dashboard to empower merchants to have the information that they need know, instantly available to them.

How Do I View Amazon & Why is this Important?

I always refer to Amazon as a person, this “person” has several key attributes and requirements from 3rd party merchants, these are:

  • Have the highest regards for their customers
  • Expects the best possible pricing for their customers
  • Will not be mucked around by merchants that poor results to their customers
  • Is looking for and at the long term relationship
  • Expects that ALL customer queries are answered ASAP
  • Does not tolerate disgruntled customers for whatever reason
  • Doesn’t like competitors (amongst other things)

If Amazon had a gender, it would be a woman.

Firm, but fair and you’d never cross her (ever).

That’s why (to me) a dashboard system like Amazon 360 is so critical. You need to know this information and if you don’t then that’s asking for trouble.

What Could this Mean?

This is curious as it became glaring apparent that what ChannelAdvisor has done is bring in the core information that sole merchant needs to survive on the marketplace, but has also opened the potential for providing key information to a business that has multiple employee levels.

For this example, we’ll assume that we have three people in company XYZ, their roles are:

  • Company Director
    Dave runs the entire business and manages both staffs and provides the direction for the company.
  • eCommerce Manager
    Ian, is Dave’s “man on the ground”. Ian is responsible for ensuring that all the channels are working effectively and efficiently
  • Miss Fix-it
    Zoe, she’s the do-er. Give her an issue and she’ll fix it. When Ian has an issue, Zoe resolves the issues for him.

Now can you realise that each of these people have different business roles to perform. Dave needs to information to help guide his company direction, Ian needs detailed information to identify where attention is needed and Zoe needs to the information & tools to action Ian’s requests.

What we can see in Amazon360 that this is on-the-way to being able to provide these differing requirements to different business roles. Not only can you see the account status, but also identify issues such as products, account status and feedback, but also identify products that require further attention, whether that be to focus upon pricing, data or to look at bringing in adjacent lines to complement the lines that are performing.

An Open Suggestion

Also digging deeper down this rabbit hole [think Alice in Wonderland], let’s think beyond what we can see from the screenshot above. ChannelAdvisor now “has” access to the information that each of these key business roles need to operate effectively.

An open suggestion to ChannelAdvisor is not stop where they are right now, but to introduce a multi-tiered dashboard that can be tailored to each role function and also to not stop at just Amazon, but include company-wide information. Combine all the channels together, but also tailor the information to specific business roles.

Take Zoe in our example above, she does not need to know how well the channels are performing, she needs to know what needs her urgent attention to solve issues. Now!

Ian as the eCommerce manager, needs to know how each channel is performing and also as a group, to identify where the staff should focus their attention and to focus his time upon expanding the business.

Where as Dave needs to know where the business is heading, not only individually on a per-channel basis, but company wide and help steer the direction or follow the direction its following as needed.

Summary

Firstly, nice work!

This was the first time I have seen a 3rd party solution provider incorporate this information into their solution and not only is it fabulous to see, its also exceptionally exciting what could be done with this information, when you look at the larger picture and realise the ramifications of combining data & metrics together.

Tesco Taking on Amazon, Great Choice!

Tesco Logo

Update: This article has been expanded upon further, see Part 1: Battle of The Giants – Tesco V’s Amazon – Who Will Win?

The PR wheels have been turning for the past few days on the news that Tesco is to take on Amazon. It was interesting reading the comments left by users on the article posted on Tamebay, as they had a distinct eBay feel to them.

Amazon in many ways is almost the perfect model to follow, its core differences between its  marketplace and eBay are reason for its huge success year on year.

The Marketplace Differences

eBay UK LogoeBay facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers, but does not sell or create product to sell on its own marketplace (like a ‘farmer’ hosting a ‘carboot sale’), where as Amazon is its main (note not sole) selling platform which ‘allows’ other sellers to sell along side ‘it’ and to use the Amazon umbrella.

Another huge differences is the way inventory is handled, eBay is still a free-for-all, although a few categories like Sat Nav and DVD’s are moving towards single listings, multiple sellers, but for the best part, its a mess of same items all designed and displayed differently [this is both a positive and a negative] in vast amounts of listings.

Amazon UK

Hey look, Amazon!

Where-as Amazon’s structure is quite different, this is a true single record > multiple sellers environment and its a fight based upon ‘mainly’ price. So instead of creating a listing per seller, its one listing per multiple sellers.

This is not without its complexities over duplicate records and damn annoying duplicate barcodes especially in the media categories (sold a book when it was supposed to be some fancy dress item, grrrr) but generally the system works, if its to work then Tesco need a backend system that can cope with the creation of new records, a way of verifying them on multiple criteria and allow edits to them to maximum inventory creation potential.

Seller Thrashings

Another fundamental difference between the marketplaces is that you can generally talk around eBay and cover up miss-haps. If you piss-off Amazon, then you are screwed. Its their marketplace and if you let their customers down, then you better have a damn good contact list to start bailing on, its extremely rare for sellers to get back on. I know of only perhaps just three in almost 10 years.

OoO Wait, What About Play.com?

play.comIts worth noting here that no-where I have seen has anyone mentioned Play.com, not I think this has a potential in itself. Again for those new to the different platforms, Play.com offer something called PlayTrade and PlayTrade Pro, which allow sellers to sell on their platform along side their existing stock.

Now the biggest limiter (by their own design I hasten to add) is that Play.com have chosen to the stance that ‘if its not in our database you cannot sell it’, which in many ways keeps things cleaner, but also seriously stunts their growth when compared directly to Amazon.

Yes you can ask Play to create new records, but the data better be squeaky clean and its not a fast process by any means as from I know if its checked manually [poor Chris B!].

Processing the Sales Data

The other no-brainer for Tesco is that they can pull an Amazon style javari.co.uk on the data they pull. Again for those who don’t know this, remember you are selling on Amazon’s platform, they sell there too, its their platform. So when they spot a sweet spot, like footwear, don’t be supprised if they do a javari.co.uk or an endless.com with this data. If I was Tesco, I’d be gunning for this data, data that says what sells, when, how and who for, its utter insane when you think that Amazon have been doing this for years and haven’t even started to monetize their data to sub sites.

On a side note, checkout javari.co.uk and endless.com they are super slick and not a patch on what Amazon have released in the Amazon Webstore platform for merchants.

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate!

Now if Tesco is going to open its doors to other sellers, then it better have some ‘common’ tools at its disposal to enable sellers to port data (coff, just like Play.com did) from existing marketplaces (Amazon) and enable its use on their own site.

A few common sense things, like keeping condition codes the same as thats used on Amazon (coff Play.com) and file formats would be a good start. One thing that Amazon lacks on in direct comparison to eBay is that its API isn’t that great. eBay’s API has to be one of, if not the the best documented & thorough API there is.

Working with 3rd party tools like eSellerPro , Channel Advisor, AManPro etc is going to be key to the marketplaces success, I really do not see such a channel taking off if no-one can list data there quickly, especially the businesses that already have great data sat there waiting to be deployed.

Fulfillment By Tesco?

Infact I don’t even want to contemplate this right now, but thinking about it for a few movements, if Tesco are smart enough to take a swipe at Amazon, why not go for the jugular and take some FBT (Fulfillment By Tesco) as well? Buy up a third party like ProFS, bingo instant fulfillment network to take on Amazon’s. See crazy stuff! My head hurts on the sheer potential they have here.

Tesco Affiliates, Amazon Style

Another topic that I have seen absolutely no-one mention and that is affiliates. For those who have never heard of this concept, its simple, you transfer a customer that converts, you get a commission (its what I have been hiding away doing for the past few months on a larger scale).

My point is, Amazon have BOAT LOADS OF AFFILIATES and the crazy thing about their affiliate program is that they offer 24hr cookie where the rest of the industry is around 30 days, but Amazon converts like crazy, times this by thousands and an astore product that is simple to use for community sites and can be deployed in minutes.

Its like an army of sales staff working for you, its crazy.

Note to self, need to find out the figures quoted for Amazon affiliates, I am sure they account/contribute for a massive amount of the total sales revenue of Amazon.

So Matt Your Point Is…

Tesco would be insane to try and copy eBay, by-god thats a dirty marketplace when you compare it to Amazon. I have no idea how this is going to pan out, a new site or a bolt on module to their existing Tesco Direct site at http://direct.tesco.com/ (which again for those did not know it has a proportion of an amalgamation of supplier feeds branded as Tesco, well and some Tesco owned items too I suspect).

If its going to work, they’re[Tesco] are going to have to push their brand name to the limits of what can be pushed. That Amazon logo instills a sense of comfort & trust that just isn’t found elsewhere on the Internet and is going to be extremely hard to get anywhere near to it, regardless of their starting base.

They’re not going to need luck, they’re going to need some damn gifted management heads, every single corporate based tool at their disposal and some fairy dust for good measure.

Exciting times ahead for all of us, be sure of that.

Dan Wilson: What are your nuggets of eBay selling advice?

Online Business Forum eBay

Online Business Forum eBay

An interesting question came up in the LinkedIn ‘The Online Business Forum powered by eBay‘ group by Dan Wilson and I think I am only one probably prepared to spill anything of any substance (I might be wrong by the time this is released), here is the question in full:

What are your nuggets of eBay selling advice?

I was asked last week for some advice regarding online selling by a journalist. The hack in question wanted little known tips for an article he was writing. Needless to say, I had a view. Here’s what I said:

Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Dealing with trouble customers and problems takes time and time is money. Sometimes quibbling over a few pounds is just not time or money efficiently spent. And when it comes to customers, there really are just some people who can never be satisfied, so save your energy and don’t try. Refund and move on. Finance this by making sure you build up a notional fund for such situations. The size of that will depend on what you sell online, but a small levy on everything you sell soon adds up because most customers really are lovely.

Are you getting the best deal on fees?
On eBay, there are several ways of getting better, lower fees. The first is an eBay Shop. Just by paying a subscription, you can get preferential treatment on the fees for BINs in particular and that can significantly lower your outlay if you want to expand the inventory you have available in the marketplace. And don’t forget PayPal. The merchant rate offers lower PayPal fees if you’re taking a lot of money through the system. But you do have to ask!

What’s your best little nugget of online selling advice? Or is it too good to be shared?

After writing what was a hefty reply, I decided it would be worth beefing it out and including it here for all to see. I’ll keep to my two points I could go on a blogging-bender quite easily.

Point 1: Do not devote 100% of your business to eBay

Amazon UK

Hey Look Amazon!

Its a mistake I made a long time ago and will not let clients make the same one. If eBay is taking up more than 40% of your over-all business turnover then you have a *critical business issue* and need to diversify your marketplaces, FAST.

I’ve said for a very long time that I am sure that sure that eBay does what it can to cause maximum impact to sellers to keep them ‘entertained’ with the eBay marketplace. The entire selling process could be a lot simpler and dare I say it less ‘unique’ to each buyer. eBay selling can-and-will hog your time, you need to be wise to this and look for ‘tools’ to aid you to diversify into other channels.

I’ll come back to viable actions for this point later in this post.

Point 2: My other tip is risk Aversion.

The point here is to not rely solely upon a single eBay ID. This could mean breaking ‘eBay policy’ to some, but I see each eBay ID as a ‘business’ in its own right and if done well it acts like one too.

To list on eBay has never been so cheap for pretty much ALL eBay sites, yes ALL sites, not just the eBay UK site. By spreading the risk of selling on eBay into two or more (20 plus is not unheard of now) eBay ID’s that have specific persona’s and product cross overs can be done from well managed backend systems.

Once you have created your inventory in a backend management tool (Channel Advisor ‘loosely’ fills this spot, eSellerPro is suggested [yes I used to work there, hell there is not one part that I didn’t influence. blah blah blah its ace]). The point is that to prepare the data for a second eBay ID is a fraction of the work, to prepare it for many eBay IDs (including on multiple sites) is again ‘a fraction’ of the initial work.

By spreading your inventory groups over more than one eBay ID, loosens the reliance upon a single point of income which in my eyes is a bad thing. It also allows you to focus each business (eBay ID) on to its core role. This does need to be done well and its a whole topic for another day on how to do it well (if I ever decide to divulge this info publicly, actually I doubt it).

Expanding Upon These Points – Real Life Tips

Now here some real life tips you can action really easily if you have the right tools.

Here is a no brainier, did you know that the vast majority of the eBay US categories are exactly the same as the eBay UK ones? That means porting your eBay UK data to a eBay US eBay ID is really quite easy, especially now that both sites are using custom item specifics for almost all categories? The same goes for nearly all the other sites too, they all have a common base, just with a few tweaks here and there.

Settle for the ‘Other Category’ if you have too, if its a decision between actually getting listed and getting the categories right, screw the cats, get the items on. You can sort out the re-categorisation (not mess as I first typed) later.

Also remember that America is massive, buyers are used to orders taking over 10 days to arrive for non expedited services and guess how long it normally takes for a UK parcel to arrive in the US? Yep you got it, about 10 days!

The second is a set of two questions:

  • Do students really cost that much?
  • Does outsourcing your language translation requirements sound really that scary?

Now leading on… eBay Germany [DE] is bigger than eBay UK and they will pay by PayPal (used to be a big issue, as those Germans love bank transfers). Yes thats right eBay Germany is BIGGER than the UK, let that sink in for a moment.

* let the dust roll by *

Sunk in? Here’s an idea for you, use Google Translate on your top 10 products, now search on eBay.de for them, making an excel spreadsheet as you go, then use xe.com to get the latest rate, the numbers work? If you have a Terapeak account, pay the extra and research the foreign eBay sites, I guarantee you, you’ll start feeling sick.

I Need Help Now!

I’d love to, but cannot commit to anything before the new year due to prior commitments. My content creation team is working literally 24/7 currently and its time I start looking at a VA (Virtual Assistant) again. Hey at least I’m admitting my flaws! Are You?

Anyway, its the reason why I have published this in front of the other posts that were due to be released, at least I can help you go in the right direction.