Podcast transcript
Introduction
Hi, and welcome to this exciting live edition of Marketplace Masters, brought to you by MerchantSpring, the leading platform for agency reporting and vendor analytics. This episode is also brought to you by myagencysearch.com, the ultimate free portal to find your ideal Amazon agency. Elevate your Amazon game with ease by connecting with seasoned professionals who are the best fit for your business needs. Simply head over to myagencysearch.com and mention Marketplace Masters for Priority Treatment. And for agencies out there, don't miss the chance to be listed in their directory and reach businesses keen on your expertise. Act now to secure your complimentary listing.
Paul Sonneveld
Hi and welcome. I'm Paul Sonneveld and I'm the guide through today's exploration on hybrid selling strategies. Last year, around October time, we covered the fundamentals of hybrid selling. And today we are back to really build on that conversation from last time and go much deeper into strategies and tactics, especially how they relate to 2024, what we're seeing here.
Now, to help me do this, I have re-invited Chris Turton from eCommerce Intelligence back on the show to really share his expertise, perspectives, specifically around what's changed in the Amazon ecosystem in the last 12 months as well. Now, let me briefly introduce him before we get into it. Chris, as many of you know, is the Managing Director of eCommerce Intelligence an e-commerce consultancy that currently handles millions of pounds in sales on the Amazon platform every month with a team of incredible account managers, sponsored product experts, and analysts solving the most complex catalog problems on Amazon.
He is an Amazon seller and vendor consultant with 11 years of experience across both 1P and 3P platforms, ranging from working with startups to corporates and brands that are known worldwide. Now, of course, it goes without saying that he's going to bring a lot of experience and expertise to the conversation today. And it's an absolute pleasure to welcome back on the show today. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Turton
Morning, how you doing? Or evening, wherever you are.
Paul Sonneveld
I think it's evening here. It's I think it's evening, but it's all good. So great to have you back on the show Chris, absolutely delightful.
Christ Turton
Thank you.
Paul Sonneveld
I love this idea of hybrid selling because it goes beyond the simple debate, should we do 1P or 3P? And certainly the answers I was getting back many years ago was like, well, just get it 1P is bad. Let's just transition everything to 3P. Well, actually, since we spoke last time, I've learned that, actually, there's a lot more nuance to that question. And actually, you're throwing out one or the other, you're going to throw out the baby with the bathwater. So that's not, that's not great.
But let's dive into it. And let me just pause and remind our audience that this is a live episode. So we are looking for your questions. The more questions, the merrier. That's why Chris is here. That's why I'm here. We're going to talk about some case studies. We're going to talk about some specific tactics and practices. But we also want to answer your questions. So if you have questions, don't be shy. Throw them in there, and I will do my best to get to them. All right. Let's start off, Chris. It's been almost a year since we last covered this topic. And yeah, a lot has changed. Let's start off there. I mean, what have you seen in the last couple of months, last 12 months, and especially in 2024?
Chris Turton
Yeah, so the biggest change that seems to be occurring is the mass of clients, vendors that are going into the hybrid model. So as you rightfully said, Paul, years ago, you were kind of filtered into one or the other. You were either a vendor and you were dedicated to that platform or you're on seller. And what is now happening is as we find that this hierarchical hybrid model is now working for vendors and sellers.
What we've seen from prospective customers that we get is a lot of them are vendors and they're saying we've got X, Y and Z issues. We now want to transition into seller or they don't realize they can do both. and they want to move. And there is this rather large mass migration that appears to be happening. And I've also had that curated by a Amazon partner of ours, Amazon agency partner of ours, who said the same thing. He said that the volume of vendors moving to the seller model and going into the new seller program has become just larger and larger. And I suppose it's exploring the reasons why that's going on.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I was going to say, I'd love to. What's behind that?
Chris Turton
Yeah, absolutely. And we've always said that a lot of the issues from a vendor side, and it's fair to say at this point, the grass isn't always greener on either one. This is why we're saying try and balance both models, you know, don't try and just do one or the other. But one of the key things is obviously down to pricing formats, and that gets quite deep. So there could be issues with cost pricing, where businesses are not able to fulfill that they want to negotiate terms on their pricing, and they're unable to do so because there is a exodus, there appears to be an exodus of Amazon vendor managers in the platform. So that is one of the key things that has started to get that to kind of trickle through and get people to move on to the seller platform.
Paul Sonneveld
So do you mean it's sort of getting a bit harder to do business with Amazon in terms of engagement, negotiation?
Chris Turton
Yeah. But then there is a deeper and this is something we didn't touch on last time, there is a deeper reasoning behind this. And I think this is something that all vendors need to be aware of. And it's not just a case of Amazon just go in, we want to pay you less for that.
A lot of this all boils down to Amazon's margins and their net PPM targets, their profitability targets for selling products. And Amazon is a price follower, traditionally. And what's happening now, the e-commerce landscape is getting wider and wider and wider. We have people going into Walmart. The retail landscape is getting much wider and wider. Rather than multiple marketplaces, Amazon are getting a lot more pricing checks and what they're then finding is if the vendors aren't controlling their retail network, their distribution, their wholesale, then the pricing becomes a lot harder to manage and control. And then of course, without vendor managers in place, that negotiation falls through and then people suddenly go, this isn't effective for us anymore, we need to jump onto Seller.
So effectively, pricing I believe is still kind of a really key area of why vendors are wanting to jump. But I think a lot of the time they need to look at that that retail network that they're selling to first before making that jump. And I think that the real synopsis of whether or not, and we touched on this in the podcast last time between vendor and seller, is it's all a case by case, ASIN by ASIN basis. There is not going to be an outcome for any of our listeners today is not going to be someone who's going to listen to this podcast and go, I need to jump onto moving half my inventory and catalogue onto seller or 40% or 20%. The process has to be line by line, looking deeper at the entire retail landscape. And that that's a really, really critical factor for it.
But what's happening is a lot of people are just getting really sick of the whole vendor pricing model and just go, we want to move because if we move to seller, we have control over the pricing, we have better control over our inventory, we have other different factors. So that's one of the key reasons why that shift has really changed the exodus of vendor managers and pricing and maybe in some ways, a lack of understanding from certain brands about how that retail model works. That's the first point.
Another one is that the distribution model is changing for anyone that's a wholesaler. So typically, distributors, wholesalers could get Amazon vendor accounts and officially since January this year, that has now stopped, but we are really seeing that's kind of progressed and we're still seeing some wholesalers, distributors, retailers. that have store vendor accounts. And that is now swinging to brands only. So that is also where a lot of the migration is coming towards as well.
And then ultimately, I think a lot of the issues fall down to that grass being greener, you know, people will have an issue with the support that is offered through vendor, they have issues with the terms that are in place that may not be negotiated, a misunderstanding of how a lot of the charges work and the costs, and then the complexities of the model in general. And I think that's where the movement is really going. And that's where the biggest change that's happened in 12 months is I think the entire progression of how many vendors are moving on to a seller platform.
Paul Sonneveld
Hmm. So I just want to make an important point, or at least ask you about this. When they're, in your case, coming to you and saying, look, there's all these issues with my 1P channel, right?
Chris Turton
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
Including the ones you've mentioned. Many agencies will go, great, let's start the transition process. Let's transition you to 3P. It's going to take a while, but the intent is to fully transition off 1P and complete that and become 3P only. Now, purely guessing on the basis of what we've agreed to do as a topic here for this podcast, I suggest, I probably propose that that is not your approach with clients. When your business goes, I've had it with Amazon vendor, it's too hard, too difficult, Amazon can't get hold of anyone, can't control my price, don't know what they're ordering. I just want to close it out and migrate to 3P. I mean, how do you react to that? You know, how do you coax them to like, look, let's consider a hybrid strategy?
Chris Turton
The first point of always is to go through a list of specific questions. Do you have vendor management in place? How many POs are you getting? Is it working? Is the net PPM working? Ultimately, is the margins and budgeting structure working for you as well? That's a really cool thing, because there's no point just selling it for the sake of selling it. But every case is completely different. And the majority of our clients that were on vendor are now on hybrids. We have one that has remained on vendor purely because that has worked for them and they've got all the access they need, they've got all the points that they need to be able to succeed on vendor.
But it is always a case-by-case basis, or as I always say, it's an ASIN-by-ASIN basis. You've got to look at every element of your catalogue. Is the product profitable? Is it working on vendor? If it's not, you need to do some costings analysis, you need to look at the true terms of what you're paying, because there's a lot of discussion about fees, because obviously, FBA fees have now changed vendor fees differ, you know, client by client. And you've got to really look at line by line what that what that is in real life, you know, what's the most cost-effective format for you.
And it all boils down to the margins of the business at the end of the day. And that's what we always look for. And I think that really goes into, yeah, the central point of what we're talking about here that the hybrid for us has been a winner for both seller and vendor. I think there's also this idea that for Amazon vendor, if you move into hybrid, that's actually damaging for vendor. And we'll go through in a minute, one of our clients that we've actually grown their vendor account because of going on to hybrid that we couldn't have done purely vendors.
There is so much there's basically there's so much power in being able to use both platforms if you're able to. And that's really a core thing. So yeah, it's a line by line. check by check, getting your numbers right, getting fancy with your spreadsheets, looking at where those margins are, where that profitability is, if Amazon are making consistent purchase orders, if there is margin in that for you, and you know, you go on to seller, and then you go, actually, the margins will be less on seller, we're not going to sell as many, keep it on vendor, you know, keep that process going.
And that's the discussion there as well. And you know, the bigger retail platform as well as is a real big one, like I said to you before, about looking at retail at large, you know, you might, there might be 20 other retailers you're selling to that have a similar price match against so you have to be mindful of those, those prices that are, you know, and it doesn't just fall down to vendor that is more about your retail pricing strategy. And that's, again, a really, really key part of it.
Paul Sonneveld
Now, I'm really keen to get into this case study because I think that's where it goes really real. Before we do, just a contextual question here from Tomas. This is a live show, so keep your questions coming. Thank you for getting us going, Tomas. Really appreciate it. Just around the context, we spoke about access to vendor managers. I think we don't mean access, E-X-C-E-S-S, but A-C-C-E-S-S, access to manager. And I guess he's asking, why has it become so hard to get access to a vendor manager, particularly in Europe?
Chris Turton
I think it all boils down to the issue that we've seen with cost and Amazon cutting those costs. There was a statistic that came out with, it could have been marketplace polls a few years ago, where they defined that it was costing and again, please don't criminalize statistics, but something like this, where it was actually costing nine persons to operate a vendor category over one person that was operating a seller-led category.
So I think a lot of that just boils down to cost and the implications of KPIs and all that side of things. I just think that's where they're going into. And that cost issue is also transparent in the tools that have been available to vendor recently as well. So, it looks like the costings of a vendor and seller don't translate and there doesn't seem to be as much investment in vendor.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, we've certainly seen that. Although at least the Amazon vendor console looks like It's brought into this century now. It looks like part of the 21st century, right?
Chris Turton
It does. Yes, they finally match the interface, yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
At least the look and feel. Great. Thank you so much, Thomas, for the question. So, let's talk about this case study. I'm sure we'll get into it, but you had me hooked when you said we updrafted a hybrid model and our vendor sales went up 40%. I mean, that's amazing. But let's unpack that. I'd love to take us through one of the journeys you've gone through recently.
Chris Turton
So this client had, I mean, to give you a background into what they did, they had a vendor account, about 20% of their catalog was selling and not selling very well. It was bundles and kind of odd, bundled products that were not available elsewhere. They had a dormant seller account that just wasn't doing anything hardly at all either. So they just didn't have a very good business model on Amazon. And these guys are a big brand, they're in some big UK retailers. They were having issues with POs down to just lack of net PPM and lack of profit in it for Amazon. There was no retail control. They didn't have a vendor manager. And then pricing became an issue. And that's the kind of thing that we said at the beginning.
So we kind of looked at this they wanted better tabs being kept as well as a brand as well because they were finding that there were old catalogue barcodes from third-party sellers that were making their own bundles of their own products before brand registry really got tight on the whole GS1 barcode scenario. And what was happening was their catalog was a bit of a mess. They couldn't really control it through vendors.
So we went through their entire global catalogue, everything they were selling in retail entirely, and worked out line by line what was working on Amazon and what wasn't, where the margins were, where they weren't. And we basically built a golden list of all items that were working through vendor, and then we built some through FBA, where we could really get into some of the data points that I'll mention a bit later on about what we could define would work better on FBA and what worked better on vendor.
Paul Sonneveld
And of course. Can I just pause you there, Chris? So you were going ASIN by ASIN, and you actually built up a profitability model what like in terms of what does it look like on the seller side versus what does it look like on the vendor side? Have I got that correct? I don't want to miss it.
Chris Turton
Yeah, exactly. So, products that we're just, we're not able to make a profit on vendor, or had any kind of chance effectively, or there was issues with their retail pricing or anything like that. And we were able to move those into a seller, the seller market. So that, you know, we built that plan. Any products that would, we're not going to make a profit in what we just discarded them. You know, we knew that there was no viability in them by three vendor or seller, or they had more better options with some of the retailers. And we just made this big sort of structure. And it's a key thing at this point as well, it's always mentioned about never crossing the stream.
So, so one of the things that's really important with the vendor and seller model is there should be no circumstance where you have the same product, the same ASIN on both vendor and seller at the same time, because you'll either upset Amazon with your purchase orders, or you'll upset your FBA scores and your costs and everything. So only one of them can get the buy box, right?
Paul Sonneveld
So yeah, you went into for those people who sort of what is Chris talking about, like this whole episode, almost on this topic, like we went into a lot of depth in terms of, you know, FBA to FBA together?
Chris Turton
Yeah, no vendor and seller conflicts for your ASINs. I mean, something my thinking is going to do and we see it now, we still see it with major, major brands. And we say, don't do it because you're going to upset one or the other. You know, if you come to us and say, hang on, Amazon aren't buying anything, you go, well, hang on, you've put all your catalogue into FBA here. You've got to work.
Paul Sonneveld
It's not a win-win. It's a win-lose by definition.
Chris Turton
Absolutely. And that's a really, really key thing as well. And based on what we said last time, it's all about this line-by-line analysis. Is it in one or the other? Not both.
Paul Sonneveld
Can I pause you there, Chris? Because we've got a question that goes directly to the point you just made now from Suraj about this sort of line-by-line analysis. And so he's just asking for a little bit of clarification. So I'll throw that in. Before we sort of go too far down into the case, sort of when you say the cost has to be checked kind of by ASIN, as per the vendor measurement model, they calculate based on COGS. How do you do that? What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate a little bit?
Chris Turton
Completely the same. We will work from a core warehouse COG basis, and then we will factor in a two-point pricing model within our spreadsheet and we'll look at what are the client's terms, you know, what are the real terms of things and we'll focus into things like AVS or marketing your operational costs and all those kind of things versus what are the seller costs.
And we'll basically say how much is it from a COGS perspective to go from here into vendor or how much into seller and that's kind of how we do our analysis and that's the basis to it. Sometimes there's very little in it but occasionally there are more reasons to keep it with it. So say if you have you know, you've got your product line by line and you know, your end kind of gross margin is that you've got 15% FBA, and it's 20% on vendor, you're going to keep it on vendor.
But then if the roles are reversed, and you're saying, well, actually, we make a little bit more on seller than on vendor, but hey, vendor making purchase orders of 300 a week, you know, if we make that model change, and we've got to do operationally that kind of movement in terms of orders, we can get quite deep into this for your whole subject itself, we've then got to also be mindful of saying, well, actually, the PO model works better, there's a less operational costs there. So again, it is really deep in terms of the analysis you need to do, but you've got to do it line by line just to make sure that you can compare costs.
Paul Sonneveld
Absolutely. All right, back to the case study.
Chris Turton
Yeah, so we had a few other issues as well. We had certain international licensing issues with vendor as well, because vendor would fire out a product into the EU, even though we've got restrictions now with panning EU from the FBA side of things. But we would find that products would be shipped abroad where they shouldn't be because of licensing rules. And there was some real internal cost perspectives we had to look at because of these licensing rules that occurred and do not have set distributors. And again, this all boils down to the larger retail model of making sure that you would do everything from this multi-channel marketplace structure rather than just saying what's going to work best from a vendor perspective.
We also found that, interestingly, that there was always an argument, and we mentioned this last year, about how when you have a seller content and vendor content, retail contributions always used to trump seller. So, if you had the content in Asian and your brand registry on vendor and in seller, the content in vendor would, would normally stick, right? That's now changing. And that used to be, you could, ask them to change it but we're now seeing the content that is being put into seller has higher authority over vendor.
And it's an interesting concept because Vendor always had the upper hand. And again, I think they're realizing that there's a bit of a restriction because of old Vendor accounts that might not have access to the catalogue anymore and all that kind of stuff. So it's just worth mentioning that point as well that don't always think that you're going to do content changes in Vendor because that is slowly changing. I'm not saying there's something for all marketplaces and everywhere yet, but we are seeing this change happen.
So we did this kind of analysis and worked out the best pricing structure, line by line, what worked well in the marketing side, all that kind of structure. And what we found is in the last 12 months, and we got this data built from MerchantSpring, by the way, so this is all relevant to what we're talking about here, is as well as growing their seller account by half a million, it would be from nothing to half a million in revenue, what happened as well is we built their vendor account by 40%. Their vendor sales had grown by 40%. Their ship COGS had grown by 40%, and their ship units was even higher. And the reason we think that's happened is literally down to the way we've been able to develop brand growth through Seller.
So we've been able to build sponsored brand advertising. We've been able to build this entire model and that has now sparked vendor to now make purchase orders. So, what we're saying is, hybrid isn't a case of just moving from seller to vendor and vendor loses out. What we're saying is doing hybrid is effectively assisting both and it's assisting Amazon with both because you're developing the customer experience, right? That's the main focus of what we're all doing here, where we're here to build brands, and to develop the customer experience. And that is, for me, more and more important than the splitting hairs of what goes best vendor or seller, you know, it all boils down to what's best for the business and what's best for the customer.
And that was just literally why that happened by being able to purposely be able to build marketing content through seller, which is also more cost effective, and I'll probably get into that a bit more in terms of what the data points are that are different between vendor and seller. Being able to build A+, premium A+ content, being able to develop all those brand tools and analytics tools that are within seller helps grow the vendor account by being able to grow that brand awareness and development. And that's kind of the whole process of why we do this.
Paul Sonneveld
Do you mind if I just want to touch on kind of marketing and particularly advertising a bit more, because you mentioned sort of sponsored brands running campaigns there. Obviously, you're running them on your seller, advertising account, talk us a little bit through how that logic sort of washed through and created that halo effect.
Chris Turton
Yeah, this is where it all drills down into the data. And you know, you'll see if you follow me on LinkedIn, I am really a data guy. And what we were able to do with seller is sellers’ data is a lot more developed than what we've got on vendor. And interestingly, before we've had data on vendor that has now been removed, right? We had conversion rate analytics within Amazon vendor on brand registry, that has now disappeared. And there's been certain changes made there.
Seller has just developed all the brand tools, all the new areas of brand development are now on seller. So, we were able to build, brand store, sponsored brands on Seller, we're able to use our business report data and brand analytic data to look at conversion rates, what products are working, what isn't working, and really kind of develop a good framework of the entire brand experience.
But the actual idea of being able to build tools, so being able to build a premium A plus, for instance, is more cost effective on Seller. So, unless vendor have given you some little promotions here and there, and again, I'm going to use this as a caveat because they don't give the official price. Premium A plus will cost you about 500 pounds on Amazon vendor at the moment, I believe. Oh, that's what's happened before. But on Seller, it's free.
So the cost format through Seller can be also more effective. Exactly the same with Amazon Vine. So again, these costs don't seem to be fixed on Vendor, and you have to do some digging. But we've seen Vine cost up to 1,000 pounds on Vendor, where the cost on Seller is about 170 pounds, I believe, plus the cost of the product that you're fulfilling. So, there is more cost-effective tools and more available within Seller. So being able to utilize those, you can still develop your vendor brand and your vendor content through Seller.
Paul Sonneveld
That's super interesting. I mean, presumably, I mean, Amazon vendor is moving towards a lot more self-serve models, surely those costs must come down, but how interesting to just sort of just come on it basically through the back door, you know, I guess it's probably the wrong analogy, but through a completely parallel platform to still do all of that work around your brand. Particularly now, obviously, that vendor no longer holds those trump cards when it comes to content and brands and all of that.
Chris Turton
Exactly. Yeah, it's becoming interesting. And I'm not sure why. I'm assuming, like I said earlier, I think it's down to the sheer costings of how the framework work. And I think vendor is going to maintain itself really well for the really big, sweet, hot brands. You know, you really, really class top A brands. But I think what's happening is these smaller, and when I say smaller, I don't mean tiny, I mean, sort of, you know, five, six, 7 million revenue a year businesses, they are tend to go into this sort of sliding format where they're adapting to vendor, because sorry, adapting to hybrid because of the, the limitations within vendor, and then these kind of challenges they're facing.
So you can, I mean, you can check this off if you do have a vendor and seller account and to all listeners, you know, if you look at the data that's available to you, and this is a really great way and a great exercise for as well to be able to look at is if you go onto your brand analytics for Amazon vendor, you will see that you've got access to repeat purchase, top search terms, and market basket analysis. This is UK by the way, in the US, you've obviously got the more customer-led customer retention and repeat customer metrics that are available to you as well.
But just in the UK and EU, those are a little bit limited. But on Seller, you've got full catalogue performance, conversion rates, search query performance. You've got brand share metrics. The US has customer loyalty analytics, which I don't believe Vendor has either. So they are investing so heavily in Seller. And these tools, they're brand-led, right? So it doesn't matter whether they're Vendor or Seller sold. You can still use those universally for your brand.
There's tools like Product Opportunity Explorer as well, so it shows things like your return rates by category, and that's obviously holistic of a whole category, right? It's not a vendor or seller, it's the whole category. You can see search volumes by category, you can see demand and product return rates, and all these sort of things that you can really utilize within a seller account that you would not be able to do within Vendor.
So that's a really key element and being able to utilize those reporting tools really will give you that. momentum to be able to grow both. And you know, you may even be able to grow your vendor account and be able to, you know, get some of those tools back, maybe be able to get, you know, some support from vendor internally, if you're developing your brand holistically, I think is the key thing.
Paul Sonneveld
Some really great points there. 1P plus 3P can be greater than 100%. Maybe it's 140%, like in your case. It's really fantastic. We're almost out of time, Chris. It's been fantastic and really like, I'm taking some notes and definitely learning a lot. We've got a few more questions that I just want to throw in. Some of them are a little bit long, so it may take 10 seconds to read them, but they're good. So a question here from Matt. Matt is asking, if you have a large 1P presence, say in the US, and you want to expand globally, particularly Europe, Would you recommend starting as a 3P or really trying to expand on that 1P partnership first?
Chris Turton
It's an interesting question, because in order to obviously get onto to vendor globally, you'll need to obviously get an invite and get access to the EU platform unless you're, you know, you've got vendors. So I think the question all boils down to is how well is that working?
If you've got a large US inventory, and you've got vendor management in place, you've got a good business where you're getting great net PPMs from Amazon, you're getting a good return on investment from that business, I would maintain that vendor relationship. Because if it's worth it's not, you know, if it ain't broke, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You know, that's, that's the way I would look at it. But it really, again, will depend and define those points, you know, what what's going on internally in the business. And if it is, you know, if it's working really well, I would probably stay within vendor and you know, for doing that.
Again, your caveat for what Matt's asking is, with the US there has been, I don't know if these rules change now, US vendor accounts that are led by vendor managers have put in certain restrictions in terms of people opening seller accounts. And as far as I know, this only affects the US. Within the UK, Europe, I'm not sure about yourself, Paul, within in the Australasia regions and things.
But the US, if they've got a vendor manager, there does seem to be some restrictions in terms of that expanse of going on to sell it. So you've got to also be mindful of that. I would definitely, first of all, just say, is the vendor account working? Do I have good net PPMs? Do I have good vendor management? Do I have good relationships there? Can I expand that into Europe on vendor first? If the answer is no, and you're getting limitations, you're getting restrictions, you're not getting your net PPMs, or a large part of your catalogue is not working, yeah, I would certainly look at an FBA EU model.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. I guess for me, a supplementary question on that would be, because we know vendor invites are hard to come by these days. Unless you are on Amazon's hit list of these are the catalogue items and the brands they're looking for, it's really hard. However, if you have a strong track record, say in the US as a vendor, in your opinion, Chris, does that increase your chances of getting an invite in Europe?
Chris Turton
I don't know. I've not seen that before, because the people that are running that in terms of vendor management are very KPI to their own location, really. I think unless there is some additional account managers that are looking at international expansion, they tend to be quite into their own marketplace. So, I'm not 100% sure in terms of how that would work.
Paul Sonneveld
Fair question. Fair answer. Hey, last one, another one from Matt. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate your contributions. A really good one though. And in fact, you may want to, we've got a whole separate episode we did about, I think three or four weeks ago about products being correct, cannot realize a profit and all of those issues.
But his question for today is any recommendations or hearsay on what the 1P net contribution margin needs to be post shipping fulfillment damage and all that, you know, you know, he's asking that because they're already hitting the category thresholds of net PPM.
Chris Turton
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
But the item is still being prepped. Any thoughts, ideas for Matt on that?
Chris Turton
It really is a piece of, you know, it's that provisional piece of string, isn't it? It really does depend on if the category is saying that, but then others are reaching higher margin, higher targets, and they're not getting to that market, then you know, if the product is CRAPped, get on to sell it if possible. Again, check your retail pricing and all those other points. But I would certainly know if it's not, if you're not able to achieve that, get the cost pricing to that point where it's not CRAPped. Get it. Yeah, get it moved.
Paul Sonneveld
Great. Thank you so much, Chris. We're going to have to wrap up there. We're six minutes over. If you go to our YouTube channel, check out all of our vendor episodes. I don't think you'll find any that finishes 30 minutes on the dot, but I try to finish before the 40 minute mark. So let's wrap up.
Of course, I want to thank you, Chris, for coming on the show again today, just sharing your expertise. I love the fact that you went through the real case study. To me, the plus 40% whilst going hybrid sounds too good to be true, but actually it is true. And you've taken us through some of those points and the evidence is there. So that's been absolutely fantastic.
Maybe there's some vendors that are listening here and then want to maybe talk with you a little bit more around, hey, I'm thinking about hybrid or I'm thinking about getting rid of vendor altogether. Continue the conversation. What's the best way for them to get hold of you?
Chris Turton
You know me, Paul, I'm a bit of a LinkedIn, daily LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn is probably the best place to get me for look for Chris Turton. I'm also on TikTok, you can find eCommerce Intelligence on YouTube, or email us, which is just hello@christurton, ecommerce.com.
Paul Sonneveld
Perfect. Here I thought you were a vendor expert, but it sounds like you're a social media expert as well.
Chris Turton
No, no. I just want to rant like I do on most things.
*(both laugh)*
Paul Sonneveld
All right. Well, Chris, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. We'll talk again.
Chris Turton
Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye.
Paul Sonneveld
All right, everyone, that is a wrap for today. I hope you enjoyed today's follow-up episode on hybrid selling in terms of an Amazon vendor and doing both 3P and 1P together and how you do both of them together to create a bigger, what do they call it, some of the parts. I'm thinking pie for some reason.
Now, of course, if you are looking to streamline your analytics, vendor analytics, 3P analytics, combine it all together, see it all in one place, MerchantSpring is certainly worth exploring. Feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn or get in touch with me via our website. That's merchantspring.io, and I'd love to show you how our analytics platform can potentially help you.
Lastly, I am all ears about what you want to hear next. If you are an Amazon vendor, you've got specific questions and topics that you'd love for me to tackle, or at least find an expert to help me tackle it, please send it through. Drop me a message on LinkedIn, and I will do my best to find a relevant expert and speaker. All right, until next time, keep thriving. Thank you so much, and we'll see you very, very soon. Take care.
