Leveraging Direct-to-Consumer Sales & Unique Amazon Selling Point

August 3, 2021

Andy Slamans

Co-founder of Amazing Freedom

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Andy Slamans is the Co-founder of Amazing Freedom, a program that helps people build businesses on Amazon and scale to $1 million per year in sales. Within Amazing Freedom, Andy also runs the mastermind group, Amazon Seller Tribe, where he teaches sellers how to grow private label brands of their own.

In addition to this, Andy is a multimillion-dollar brand creator who has successfully launched his own 7-figure brands on Amazon. His goal with Amazing Freedom is to empower other sellers to achieve the same financial freedom and success.

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

How Andy Slamans started Amazon Seller Tribe and what differentiates it from other Amazon masterminds
The recent interest in private label brands and how Andy successfully sold his Amazon micro-brand
Andy shares his thoughts about growing a business with the goal of selling it later
Andy’s advice for finding the right time to sell, documenting operating procedures, and managing business metrics
Tips for competing with large established brands and working with influencers
How Andy’s mastermind helps members prepare for a sale
What Andy learned from Amazon Seller Tribe members who have sold their businesses
How can investors generate maximum value from their private label investments?

In this episode…

To build a successful brand on Amazon, business owners must know how to maximize direct-to-consumer sales. This is what drives success for the top-performing businesses in the marketplace. Because of this, new private label brand owners should focus on creating unique selling points in order to compete with large, established brands — especially if they’re selling in niche categories.

While building his private label brand on Amazon, Andy Slamans grew his direct-to-consumer sales by ensuring that he never ran out of stock. This strategy helped him maintain his rank and continue to improve and scale his brand. He also focused on providing great customer service to stand out from the competition. So, what is Andy’s advice to new and current brand owners looking to achieve success on Amazon?

In this episode of the Buy Box Experts podcast, Andy Slamans, the Founder of Amazing Freedom and the Amazon Seller Tribe mastermind, joins James Thomson to talk about how to leverage direct-to-consumer sales on Amazon. Together, they discuss the importance of creating a unique selling point, how working with influencers has impacted Andy’s business, and his advice for successfully selling your private label brand. 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 and 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, checkout 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 account manager for the Fulfillment by Amazon program. I’m the co author of a couple of 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 we 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 for reimbursements on your behalf. To learn more, check out getida.com. Our guest on the podcast today is Andy Slamans, founder of AmazingFreedom.com, a program to train people on how to begin selling on Amazon, scaling to a million dollars a year in sales through reselling name brand products through retail and online arbitrage. Within Amazing Freedom, Andy also runs the mastermind group called Amazon Seller Tribe, where he teaches sellers how to build private label brands of their own. With the experience of having repeated success with his own building and selling private label brands, Andy joins us today on the Buy Box Experts Podcast. Andy, let’s start by talking about the Amazon Seller Tribe mastermind group. You’re helping entrepreneurs leverage private label brand building as a successful business model on Amazon. Tell me more about your group and what differentiates your mastermind, from other amazon seller groups.

Andy Slamans 3:08

Sure, James, just want to say first, thanks for having me on the podcast. I tell everyone the most, the most favorite topic I love talking about is selling on Amazon. So I look forward to the discussion that we’re going to have today. So our group, we bring folks who are new to selling on Amazon. And we basically teach them how to sell branded products like Nike Adidas, Lego, what I found is, you know, being in the Amazon space going on eight years, early on, I was bringing newer folks and teaching them how to private label and sell their own branded products. And Wi Fi, I found personally that it was a lot more challenging, you know, to do that process than it was the way I started on Amazon, which was selling things from around my house. So I sell books. And then I went to thrift stores. Then I went to big box stores like Walmart auctions, even garage sales. And I built my capital that way. And so that’s how I experienced success. So we shifted gears and we said, Hey, you know what, for new folks that are coming into the Amazon space as sellers, we personally think if they’re not well capitalized, the best way to build that capital is basically flipping products doing the age old, you know, retail, buy low, sell high. And you don’t have to worry about PPC and a lot of the other things that you do have to worry about when you private label and build brands. So that’s why we created the Amazon Seller Tribe. And it’s been great. It’s definitely, you know, the way that I feel confident teaching people how to sell and teaching people just the Amazon ecosystem in general.

James Thomson 4:50

So, along comes all of these new investors interested in buying these Amazon private label brands. So it’s a little bit of a shock to the system. I’m curious, in your view, what has happened to generate this recent interest in these businesses when private label brands have been around since the start of the Amazon Marketplace? Yeah, you know,

Andy Slamans 5:11

What I often tell people, probably up till about 20 years ago, is really the big brands who dominated no retail, like one of the guys I follow a lot. I’m sure you probably know, I’m Scott Galloway, you know, and he talks about his really big brand dominance. And you know, what Amazon has been able to do is really level that playing field for smaller sellers, like myself. So I have a brand we did $10 million last year, and in a niche that was really dominated by these companies that were actually over 100 years old. So you know, we have these huge legacy companies that we compete with, who have been, you know, in the business world and sell b2b wholesale distributors, and what we’ve been able to do with my brand, we sell more than them on Amazon, because we’re better at direct to consumer.

James Thomson 6:04

I know the Amazon space, you know, play the game.

Andy Slamans 6:07

Yes, yeah. And so that, to me, is the exciting part. And then as far as like these aggregators coming in, to me, it makes sense, because, you know, they can bolt companies together, like my brand, which eventually I’ll probably sell, and they can actually show profitability, James, what blows my mind is, you look a lot of these companies on the stock market, they’re not profitable, you know, but you can take clear financials from a company like mine that sells on Amazon, and you know, this, you can pull, you know, a million reports that will give you, you know, line by line details. And these companies then can bolt them together, and they can show, you know, their investors, if they’re going to go public, like, Look, hey, we have clear profitability. So to me, I think that’s probably one of the bigger reasons why these investment bankers are starting to get into the game now.

James Thomson 6:59

So you’ve got all this new money flowing in? I’m sure it’s generating a lot of questions among the members of your mastermind. I’d love to understand a little bit more about what are the conversations happening today that a year ago were not very commonplace?

Andy Slamans 7:17

Yeah. So again, like our goals, we want to bring people in who have never sold on Amazon, we want to teach them, we want to help them build capital, and then the end game is like, okay, now that you know, the Amazon ecosystem, let’s build your own brand. Because at the end of the day, if you’re just flipping products, there’s going to be really no end value in that, you’re gonna have to do that until you go to the grave. But if you build a brand, there definitely is an end game. And now on Amazon, there’s a clear path to profitability, and a good multiple if you do it the right way. And so, you know, that, to me, is the exciting thing we shared a little bit before the end of you started. I had the privilege of being able to sell what I call a micro brand, as a brand I started about five or six years ago. And you know, up until about a year ago, I thought I was just going to continue to sell that until the profitability and the margins didn’t make any sense anymore. I was basically going to sell it until it died. And then all these aggregators started coming in. And so then I started to pull back and look, well, hey, look, I had this one at about seven, eight cents. It was worth around $800,000 a year, and it was profitable. So I said, Well, you know, maybe there’s some value in that. And so I was able to sell that to an aggregator and get a really good multiple for it.

James Thomson 8:35

That’s exciting. But it’s hard to plan a business out, anticipating that somebody will eventually find you. And so as I think about working with brand owners who are building businesses, do you see more of them now stepping up and saying, I’m building a business with the purpose of eventually selling it? versus I’m building a business because I need a job and I’m creating a job for myself?

Andy Slamans 8:59

Yeah, for sure. I mean, for me, you know, early on, I was creating a job for myself. Exactly. And, and then, you know, as, as I learned, and started to see what was happening in the Amazon seller space, with the brand that I mentioned earlier that we did 10 million with last year, we set that up right from the beginning, you know, by keeping all the financials separate by having forensic accounting. Yes. And so, you know, we know kind of what we’re doing now. And then that’s obviously the way that we train people who are going to start to create their brands that have separate accounts, never mix financials. And so yeah, that’s the right way to do it.

James Thomson 9:41

actually have a member of your mastermind what do you see as their biggest concerns today? That now though, you’ve got all these investors floating around?

Andy Slamans 9:50

Yeah, I mean, it’s a good you know, it’s a good problem to have it like we were talking earlier. It’s almost like the housing market. You know, someone puts their house up for sale, and you’ll have, you know, No five or six buyers that are off making you offers above your listing price. And so, you know, the main concern that folks have is, if you have a brand, that’s good, and if you’ve done well, and choosing your niche is continuing to remain in stock. You know, like one of the things I really did, right with that micro brand, I was vigilant on never going out of stock, which as you know, right now is extremely challenging with the supply chain issues, you know, that is happening worldwide, not just in our industry, but you know, across the board. And so, you know, that’s a huge one. And you know, this again, from Amazon, by staying in stock, you’re going to continue to stoke that rank, you’re going to, you’re going to submit yourself in that good organic position. And so that’s often the biggest challenge that I see new brand owners have is allocating capital, meaning managing that supply chain, and then just kind of understanding those deep processes that happen when you begin to grow a business, you turn a job into a business.

James Thomson 11:06

So let me ask you this, you’ve got a lot of private label sellers saying, okay, maybe I’m ready to think about selling, because I’m not quite sure how much longer this paydirt is going to continue? How would you give guidance to some of these brands around figuring out when’s the right time to sell? And do they still have time to keep building their business? Before they ultimately look to exit?

Andy Slamans 11:33

Yeah, so I mean, that’s really, it’s a business question. But it’s also kind of a personal question. You know, as far as where does that owner see their brand going? Do they see competition coming in and possibly driving down their margin? Do they have anything proprietary, you know, most of the time for Amazon sellers, we don’t necessarily have proprietary things, regarding our products or business. You know, if someone does have a patent, you know, then that makes their business so much more valuable. And, you know, not not only a patent, but they if they also have the capital, you know, to kind of fight off potential patent issues, then I think you want to keep growing your brand, you know, if you’re in that position, but you know, for us, it definitely comes down to where do you see your niche? Where do you see the competition coming in? You know, and if you don’t have anything proprietary, that’s kind of a gut check. Like, you know, do you have a unique selling point? Because if you don’t, it, especially with these aggregators now coming in, right, who have 800 full time employees, if they buy one of your competitors brands, they can really clean your clock. Yeah, you know, and so, to me, you as a private label brand owner, that’s one of my I wouldn’t say scariest things. But one of my concerns, you know, that if a competitor of mine is bought by one of these big aggregators, they just have the machine right to really come in and potentially could make life difficult for a brand owner.

James Thomson 13:11

So let’s run through a number of issues, as we think about the next generation of private label sellers, adapting to this changing environment where there are investors available on the other side, so to speak. Talk to me about what you’re seeing owners doing to improve the way they document operating procedures. Sir,

Andy Slamans 13:33

yeah, you know, one of the things that we’ve tried to do with our brand, so I’ll just kind of speak out of our personal experiences, we’ve tried to build what we call a moat, right, against our competition. So what are our unique selling points? And, you know, as we work with different brand owners, that’s often one of the first questions we ask them is, what are the unique selling points? How can you build a moat, you know, against competition that makes your brand different. And so, you know, for us, like we’ve really focused on customer service. You know, that’s one of the ways that we’ve been able to kind of differentiate, and especially as you have a lot of international sellers coming on Amazon more and more every day. That’s like a huge part of the competition. And so, you know, what we try to coach them on is like, Look, pick two or three areas that you are going to make your company, your brand is going to be different than what’s available out there. And then how are you going to execute upon that, because then when you do get to that point where you are going to, you know, potentially sell your business, like those are the really foundational the core foundational pillars that you are going to be able to show to that aggregator, or to that company that’s looking to buy your business.

James Thomson 14:49

What about issues around how brands are rethinking how they manage their p&l or their metrics, with the anticipation that that’s now going to matter to somebody external who’s going to look at those

Andy Slamans 15:00

Yeah, I mean, you know, again, from day one on this brand that I’ve been building for the last two years, we just made sure that we had everything, you know, from a forensic accounting approach. And so, you know, again, if you talk to anybody in business, they’re gonna tell you, that’s what you should do. But a lot of times, you know, if you go back three or four years ago, as Amazon sellers, like you said earlier, we were just kind of looking at this as a job, and didn’t necessarily see it as a business. And so that’s always the number one area that you have to make sure all your T’s are crossed, right, and your i’s are dotted, when it comes to the financials, because they’re going to comb through, and they’re going to dig through everything. So when I sell my micro brand, they get in contact with my freight forwarder with my customs agent, but they have to have access to my business bank account records, you know, and they are going to match everything. These guys are good. They’re investment bankers. So if you know, and I was actually surprised at how thorough they do they go through and with their due diligence, combing through every single dollar that’s been spent, you know, in your business.

James Thomson 16:13

How should new brand owners today get started on building your own brands? How should they be thinking about a timeframe sending a timeframe between launch and potentially selling? How do you see that conversation going?

Andy Slamans 16:28

Yeah, so I mean, I think it’s gonna depend again, on what the that owner is kind of looking for, typically, what I’m seeing right now, the multiples are from three times, all the way up to 6.5, some even seven times, whatever your, your net profit is for the year. So, you know, if you have a brand that sells a million gross and you make 200,000, then you can anticipate, you know, potentially three to five times multiple, right on that brand. And so, it, you know, really depends on how you want to exit, do you want to exit with 10 million while you’re gonna have to grow that, you know,

James Thomson 17:07

a bit. So what about helping brand owners rethink what they knew what they needed to do, basically, to be able to build a data room faster? You talked about forensic accounting totally makes sense. But there’s a bunch of other stuff that as I do due diligence projects for investors, I go through and I look at the data rooms, I see stuff that isn’t always well, it’s obviously it’s just been put together very quickly. And that kind of data wasn’t historically being tracked, what suggestions would you have for sellers, as they build the foundation to allow them to be in a position to share information?

Andy Slamans 17:47

Yeah, um, you know, so accounting is not my strong point. So what we did, again, from the very beginning with our companies, we went, and we hired a professional, who is dedicated to our business. Yep, we saw that there was potential. And so, you know, from a business perspective, I outsource that, and I kind of allowed him to really manage and take care of all that. And so, you know, my advice would be, you know, to to a brand owner, if you’re just starting out, like once you get to the point where you are profitable, the first hire you want it to be is someone who is going to understand your finances and understand the very things that we’re talking about, right? That is going to be able to put all of that data together, and it’s going to help you because at the end of the day, that’s going to help facilitate yourself so much better.

James Thomson 18:40

So the mechanics of building a business is one part of the equation but one of the other big mechanics is figuring out how am I building this brand? What is essentially the minimum set of requirements, I need to be able to say I have a brand versus just a white labeled product. What do you think about branding on Amazon? versus what your 100 year old competitor might be thinking about branding? Yeah.

Andy Slamans 19:06

Yeah, so you know that the amazing thing about Amazon is, you know, I tell people this all the time. If I wanted to sell a ballpoint pen, I have one here in my hand, and I wanted to create Andy’s ballpoint pen. I can do that in two hours. And if I’ve never even sold on Amazon, you know, and I have the right UPC that you know, the GS one codes. You know, Amazon will allow me to list that ballpoint pen. And This to me is still mind blowing James, I’m sure you know, because you’re in the Amazon space all the time. If you are willing to spend on PPC and ads, you can actually get this ballpoint pen to show up on the first page. You know, that digital IO? Can you imagine the work you’d have to go through if you were to try to get Andy’s ballpoint pen at a Walmart or Target mean, you’re spending 1000s and hundreds of 1000s of dollars to get that specially in the checkout aisle, which is the premium placement, right? And Amazon allows us to do it in two hours, even if you’ve never sold on Amazon before. As long as you get to know those sales and it’s relevant to the keyword you’re going to continue to sell and your products are good, the reviews come back. And so that, to me, is the mind blowing part that Amazon allows us to be able to do that. And so that’s kind of like the starting point, people have to recognize the amazing opportunity. How long would that happen? I don’t know. I mean, anytime on Amazon. We know they want to be the everything store, the lowest priced everything store. Yeah, yeah. Right. But I mean, how long before Amazon says, You know what, we’re just not going to let people jump on our platform for $40 a month. You know, which is pennies. You know, James was crazy as if you were to own a subway franchise. And I tell people, when they start new business all the time, the average subway franchise, they gross about $500,000 a year. Now, that’s then you have to take in all of your expenses, what you pay for the franchise fee. I mean, you’re lucky if you’re breaking even right that first year, whereas on Amazon, I’ve seen it over and over folks will scale up to a million dollars in 12 to 16 months, you know, at a healthy margin, with only one person from the ride, you know. So that, to me, is the mind blowing part. But brand owners have to recognize the opportunity that you can take like Andy’s ballpoint pen and get it on that first page of that digital aisle for those highly valuable keywords.

James Thomson 21:42

The flip side is those 100 year old national brands are used to doing business one way of being successful one way. Now along comes the Amazon Marketplace. And some no name guy can start selling ballpoint pens against them, and actually eating their lunch, which is pretty amazing. Pretty amazing stuff.

Andy Slamans 22:02

Yeah. And then you add in social and influencers that, again, a lot of these legacy brands they’re starting to utilize now. But you know, like for our brand that we have, every day, our team is reaching out to these influencers and saying, hey, look, can you test the product? We’re willing to give it to you for free? Now? No, would you? Would you leave us a review? What is there anything we can do to help you? And that’s been hugely valuable in building up our brand. So we just had two gentlemen that left a YouTube video yesterday, and he actually had an issue with our product, he messaged on Instagram, our Instagram page, and our customer service team responded within five minutes. And the whole video was about how amazing it was that he was able to reach out to our team on Insta, and then get a message back five minutes later. And we helped him solve that problem. So I mean, that’s you cannot pay enough money, right for a video like that. And then all the comments in the comment section was, that’s right, I’ve worked with this company before their customer service is amazing, legacy companies haven’t caught on to that yet. You know, they’re too busy paying their salesmen, paying their middle managers, you know, and on top of that, they all understand the value of that on the street credit that you can get from these influencers.

James Thomson 23:26

So you have the firsthand experience of having somebody approach you to buy your micro brand. How do you help your mastermind? colleagues think through when it’s time to sell? Do you bring a broker in? Do you go direct? Do you wait for one of these companies to approach you? How do you help them? Think through this plethora of options available today? Yeah,

Andy Slamans 23:52

so I think, you know, from what, what we’re seeing is there’s a few kind of different strategies that you know, aggregators, for the most part, they’re not necessarily concerned with, you know, how good your images are, how good your listing is, they just want to see kind of the nuts and bolts The, the, you know, the financials. And, because they have such a powerful team, you know, they want to see the upside, but they’re able just to take any brand, I don’t think you’re going to get as high a multiple from them, as you typically would from someone else. And so that’s kind of one, you know, way to approach your business like, hey, look, if you just want to easily sell, then you know, you can approach some of these aggregators, let them look at your business and they’re gonna make your offer. And then the other one is, like we talked about a little while ago, you have these more, I would call them boutique brokers who are going to help market your brand, right? And so they may have connections or maybe you know, they have a good web presence. And so they do have these more strategic buyers who are going to vet your brand much harder, but you could end up with a better multiple. And then you have what I call kind of the next tier where you’re going to go to a, you know, could be a financial firm, or to a law firm, who definitely is going to approach so they have contacts, you know, with strategic buyers. And that’s what, that’s how I think you’re going to get the highest multiple. But again, in order to do that your brand has got to be super firm and sound when it comes to your accounting, right and to your financials. But that’s what I would see as the third tier. So it just depends on where your brand is at and its growth stage. And then as an owner, do you want easy, you know, like, for my micro brand, it was easy, I don’t have to do anything. I showed it to the aggregator, gave them access to my Amazon account, to all my records, they were able to do everything, I didn’t have to do anything. And then they offered, you know, they made me an offer. And it was good to me and I took it.

James Thomson 25:59

So what does your mastermind group do today to help its members Prepare to be evaluated or prepared to sell their business? Yeah. So

Andy Slamans 26:08

you know, one of the first things that we ask is, hey, look, you know, do you have your accounts separate? Yeah. So like, I’m working with a seller right now, he’s got a good private label brand, a gross on, it’s about a million and a half. And he had it mixed in with his account where a lot of the retail, what we call retail and online arbitrage. So I said, hey, look, one of the first things you do, let’s go ahead and separate it, get a new Amazon approved Amazon account. And so get that totally separate. So that’s the first thing that we say, you know, like, if you have other stuff mixed in, get another approved account, get everything separate? And start treating this as a separate business?

James Thomson 26:49

How do you help your colleagues think through irrelevant costs or trimming off some of the fat that they might otherwise have in running their business?

Andy Slamans 27:00

Yeah, I mean, you know, our thing is, we always say you want to bootstrap until it’s so painful, or until it’s impeding growth that you then have to, you know, hire or, you know, you have to get other software, that’s going to become a monthly expense. But you know, as a brand owner, when you do, you know, begin to think about that process of when you’re going to exit just like typical big companies do, you know, you’re gonna want to look and see what fat you can trim. Because that ultimately is going to give you you know, a higher higher payout. You know, what, what we like to say, too, is, you know, you got to think for every, you know, you’re looking at a seven times multiple, right, as a brand owner, you know, for the next year for every $1,000 you spend, if you’re planning on, you know, offering your brand to sell your later every $1,000 you spend, it’s really 7000. So think of it that way, and then they’re able to kind of tighten the reins a little bit, you know, financially,

James Thomson 28:01

I’ll have lunch after I sell my business. I get it, I get it. So let me ask you this from the members in your mastermind that have sold their businesses, what have you been able to learn or share with other members within the organization? What have you learned that was surprising from the experiences of these folks that did sell?

Andy Slamans 28:20

Yeah, you know, again, I think it comes down to Amazon being a relatively new thing. Being an Amazon seller is a new thing. If I go around my neighborhood, I live in Hershey, Pennsylvania, I knock on my neighbor’s doors, and say, you know, hey, I’m an Amazon seller, most of them would scratch their head, they have no idea. You know what I do? People just don’t understand. And to me, that is just the signal that it is still a new thing, like people don’t understand, you know, what you and I do and, and they don’t understand the scale, you know, that you can really become as an online seller. And so, but I’ve seen your garage, and it’s

James Thomson 29:01

full of inventory, so something must be going on.

Andy Slamans 29:04

Right, right. Most people think, you know, around my neighborhood that I sell on eBay, you know, and I sell like a few pairs of old shoes a week, you know, they don’t have any idea. So, you know, with that said, it’s still again, just a huge opportunity that our industry is still an infant. And you know, so much room to grow.

James Thomson 29:28

If I’m a member of your mastermind, and I come to you and I say should I be selling now, should I be waiting? How do I make sure I don’t lose out on this opportunity to have investors interested in my brand? How do you help people think through those issues? Yeah. So,

Andy Slamans 29:42

you know, kind of what I said earlier, it really comes down to a kind of personal decision on where they see their brand ad, are they you know, are they receiving a lot more competition? are they seeing new listings pop up on Amazon, right that directly compete, you know, with their product. at a lower price. And so, you know, if you’re starting to see that and if you haven’t built that moat, then you know, you potentially could look at, you know, 14 months down the road, your brand may be less valuable, right? No, I think always the best time to sell is you know, when your brand is going up, when you can tell great brand story to those potential buyers, you know, where you can show them upside, I mean, they’re always going to value it initially, what your past profits have been, but where you can also tell that story of how you’ve built that moat. That to me is what gives you a lot more value.

James Thomson 30:38

Want to finish up our discussion today? By asking you a little bit of a trick question here. As these brands are being bought, the investors that buy them are obviously looking to do something with these brands. I’m curious, in your mind, how are these investors going to get their value out of these businesses, when they’re paying six or seven, multiple? And the half life of most of these brands on Amazon is what two years? How do you see this equation working?

Andy Slamans 31:06

Yeah, so you know, it’s interesting to think about, I often thought that, like, you know, what, my micro brand that I sold, I started building that five, five years ago, and it’s really kind of a commodity product. And I thought, you know, the shelf life on this is gonna be two, maybe three years, yep. However, I managed it properly, because I never went out of stock. And because the product was quality, the reviews kept rolling in. They were good reviews. And Amazon kept me in that one, two, or three organic rank positions. And I was able to keep my price higher, because my reviews were probably about 600 more than the next competitor, like the shelf life stayed good. And so that’s kind of what I would push back to you like, you know, I don’t necessarily know, and again, every niche is different. You know, if you’re selling massage guns, you know, then yeah, the shelf life is not gonna last because you got, you know, 400 pages of summoners sure. But if you’re in a niche that what I would call is kind of less competitive, more hidden, like your shelf life, as long as you keep good quality, those reviews keep rolling in, you know, Amazon is going to keep ranking you at that top position. Yep. And I don’t know the answer to that, you know, like, how long will this product that I just sold that the brand that took it over, they’re doing a really good job. And so they’re actually increasing the rank of those seven nations. And, and so, you know, looking at it that way, you know, these aggregators, they actually have a business, you know, if, again, the company goes public, where they can show financials of, you know, profitable products. And so whereas unlike a lot of the businesses, a lot of the penny stocks, you know, a lot of them are just kind of shell companies, this is actually a physical product business, right, what you and I do on Amazon, and there is value in having physical products. Now, obviously, you don’t want to have products that you know aren’t selling. But if you can show that then to me that there’s definitely value to those future investors, or if that company goes public, you know, at the end of the day, it’s going to be really how well is that aggregator run? And can they continue to combine great profitable products? That’s how I see it.

James Thomson 33:31

Andy, I want to thank you for joining us today. For those of you interested in learning more about Amazing Freedom or the Amazon Seller Tribe mastermind group, please visit amazingfreedom.com. Join us again next time on the Buy Box Experts Podcast. Today’s episode is brought to you by GETIDA. GETIDA is a global leader in Amazon FBA, auditing and reimbursements. GETIDA analyzes your Amazon data, reconciles your FBA inventory and files claims and reimbursements on your behalf. No obligations, no hidden fees, just GETIDA recovering your money. GETIDA helps you get your money back into your pockets so you can focus on investing in more inventory and growing your business. To learn more, check out getida.com. That’s getida.com.

Outro 34:20

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