Helping Amazon Sellers Sell

August 10, 2021

Carlos Alvarez

CMO of Wizards of Ecom

Listen to the podcast

Carlos Alvarez is the Founder and CMO of Wizards of Ecom, an in-person and online e-commerce school that is taught by sellers for sellers. As an Amazon white hat marketer and consultant, Carlos also leads Wizards of Amazon, the world’s largest Meetup group for Amazon sellers. His goal is to help brands take advantage of selling on Amazon and encourage entrepreneurs to gain financial independence through e-commerce and digital marketing.

Carlos has over 20 years of e-commerce experience and has built his own Amazon brands into multimillion-dollar businesses. He is also the Founder and CEO of Blue Bird Marketing Solutions, a company that helps brand owners grow their brands both on and off of Amazon.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Carlos Alvarez talks about what makes his Amazon seller Meetup group so unique
The biggest questions and concerns for business owners looking to grow and sell their private label brands
The importance of documenting your operating procedures and getting your P&L numbers in order before exiting
What it means to have a successful brand on Amazon
Carlos shares his thoughts on working with a broker versus selling directly with an aggregator
How Carlos’ Meetup group will continue to evolve in the coming years

In this episode…

Are you considering selling your private label brand on Amazon? Have you been wondering if now is the right time? If not now, when?

According to Amazon marketer and consultant Carlos Alvarez, it’s important to make your brand as attractive as possible when preparing for an exit. As he says, you have to leverage all the digital marketing tools and strategies available, including ranking for keywords and building an online community. Today, he’s here to discuss his decades of e-commerce expertise and share his sage advice for current Amazon sellers.

In this episode of the Buy Box Experts podcast, Carlos Alvarez, the Founder and CMO of Wizards of Ecom, joins James Thomson to share his tips for boosting your sales and successfully exiting your Amazon brand. Carlos talks about the important considerations that go into making your brand as attractive as possible, the biggest concerns he hears about from private label sellers, and his tips for determining when to sell your business. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

Buy Box Experts applies decades of e-commerce experience to successfully manage their clients’ marketplace accounts. The Buy Box account managers specialize in combining an understanding of their clients’ business fundamentals and their in-depth expertise in the Amazon Marketplace.

The team works with marketplace technicians using a system of processes, proprietary software, and extensive channel experience to ensure your Amazon presence captures the opportunity in the marketplace – not only producing greater revenue and profits but also reducing or eliminating your business’ workload.

Buy Box Experts prides itself on being one of the few agencies with an SMB (small to medium-sized business) division and an Enterprise division. Buy Box does not commingle clients among divisions as each has unique needs and requirements for proper account management.

Learn more about Buy Box Experts at BuyBoxExperts.com.

Podcast Episode Transcripts:

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Intro 0:09

Welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast we bring to light the unique opportunities brands face in today’s e-commerce world.

James Thomson 0:18

A couple months ago, we did a special series of podcast episodes, featuring FBA aggregators, investors, brokers, bankers and some sellers that had recently sold their businesses to these investors. It was one of the most successful podcast series we’ve ever done at Buy Box Experts. And now we’re adding a new sequence. We’re going to be talking to a number of mastermind leaders, talking to them about what their members are saying what they’re thinking about, as they look at all this investment money now flowing into the space. Hope you enjoy our series over the coming weeks. I want to thank the folks at GETIDA, our sponsor for this series. GETIDA is a global leader in Amazon FBA auditing reimbursements, analyzing Amazon data and reconciling FBA inventory, filing claims for reimbursement on the behalf of sellers, check out getida.com. To learn more, enjoy our series.

Hi, I’m James Thomson, one of the hosts of the Buy Box Experts podcast. I’m a partner with Buy Box Experts and the former business head of the selling on Amazon team at Amazon, as well as the first FBA account manager for Amazon. I’m the co author of a couple books on Amazon, including the recent book, Controlling Your Brand in the Age of Amazon. Today’s episode is brought to you by Buy Box Experts. Buy Box Experts takes ambitious brands and makes them unbeatable. When you hire Buy Box Experts you receive the strategy optimization and marketing performance to succeed on Amazon. We also support investors with due diligence services go to buyboxexperts.com to learn more. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to send a big shout out to the team at GETIDA, a global leader in Amazon FBA auditing and reimbursements. GETIDA analyzes your Amazon data reconciles your FBA inventory, and files claims reimbursements on your behalf. To learn more, check out getida.com. Our guest today is Carlos Alvarez, founder and CMO of the Wizards of Ecom, which is the largest Amazon seller Meetup group in the world. Carlos is also the founder and CEO of Blue Bird Marketing Solutions, an Amazon seller agency. Carlos has also worked with the Small Business Administration, talking about economic empowerment. Carlos, welcome. And thank you for joining us today on the Buy Box Experts podcast.

Carlos Alvarez 2:42

Thank you so much for having me, I can check this off my bucket list. And I’m gonna grab your book after this. What’s the name of the book?

James Thomson 2:48

Our book is called Controlling Your Brand in the Age of Amazon. I’ll send you a copy, not to worry. So let me start by asking you, you run this very large Meetup group of Amazon sellers. And there are lots of other groups of Amazon sellers that congregate in different ways. How does your Meetup group different differentiate itself from other types of Amazon seller groups?

Carlos Alvarez 3:11

That’s a great question. What one of the major ways is that we began as Just in person event in, you know, based out of Miami, Florida now it’s just encompassing really everything in South Florida. So having that in person connection, and coupling it with the power of you know, social media and being able to interact in real time between events, has, I feel really allowed a, you know, you say you’re gonna do something in this group, and you show up to the next event and you didn’t do it. It’s not like I just disappear on social media, like you show show your goods.

James Thomson 3:51

You have a lot of events, from what I’ve heard, tell me a little bit about the types of events that you put together for your sellers.

Carlos Alvarez 3:59

So there are 16 events per month. And two of those events per month are they’re all free to have the events per month are gated in the sense they’re advanced meaning to be part of those events, you have to show me a screenshot or something that you’re selling in excess of a million dollars a year on Amazon, it means nothing. I mean, you could be broke, but that we got to put some criteria, right. And nowadays everyone is like 789 figures, right? I forget 100k used to be a big deal, but not anymore. So we show that then the two of the other events per month alternating Wednesdays are strictly PPC themed. I believe somebody from your team is actually presenting coming up soon on one of those PPC events. The other events are all topic based. And it covers the entire spectrum of Amazon ADC with a really heavy emphasis on private label. If it was me it would just be like private label selling but I do know But I didn’t just begin with private label selling and there was like a path to get there. We’re selling on Amazon before reaching that point. So that’s what we cover, and a lot of the soft skills.