Podcast transcript
Introduction
Hi, and welcome to another very special episode of Marketplace Masters, your go-to podcast for all things related to improving your Amazon vendor knowledge and commercial performance. This episode is brought to you by MerchantSpring, the most intuitive insights platform for Amazon vendors and hybrid sellers.
Paul Sonneveld
My name is Paul Sonneveld, and I'm your host and facilitator for today's discussion. Now, today's episode has a bit of a unique twist. Like we did in January, we're shaking things up again with a different approach to our usual Q&A and interview format. Instead of our usual discussions, we are thrilled and I'm thrilled to present a panel of distinguished Amazon vendor experts, each a master in their field of expertise, ready to share their wisdom and insights for a successful 2024.
Now, let me do my best to explain the format. Each panelist will have exactly three minutes at the start really to share their perspectives on Q1 and their top tips and insights for succeeding the remainder of the year 2024. After that, the floor is yours. This is where you, our listeners, our viewers, particularly those attending live, of course, can make this an interactive session and tailored to what you are looking for. Now, of course, to do that, we need your input. So you can submit your questions directly via the LinkedIn Live section there, or we've got this fancy QR code here that's going to show up across Matt’s face there. I'll bring that up every now and then. You can scan that and you can submit that code directly in our website and we get the question as well.
I also have, and I don't know if that's going to work here, I have Shiv here working behind the scenes. You might see him pop in and out of the LinkedIn comment section, really to help you moderate the questions. We got a lot of questions last time. We want to make sure we get to all the good ones really early on. Thank you, Shiv. That is it. Now, I'm going to start off. I already introduced myself. So why don't we start off with a really quick 20-second introduction by each of the panelists themselves, starting with Bruno here to my right.
Bruno Ferreira
So hi, everybody. I'm Bruno. I'm the founder of Blue Dot Ecommerce. We work 100% focus on helping vendors to align internally with the compliance of Amazon Vendor Central, all the supply chain challenges. So we just try to help them with that.
Martin Heubel
Great. Hi, everyone. My name is Martin Heubel. I'm the founder of Consulterce, an independent strategy consultant helping first party vendors improve their profitability, but also match their business operations to the realities of Amazon's business model. Very excited to be here today and very much looking forward to dive into all of your questions.
Carina McLeod
Hey, I'm Carina McLeod. I'm the founder and CEO of eCommerce Nurse. So I've been in the space for the Amazon space for over 20 years, started up in 2004, working for Amazon in vendor management, working across multiple product categories, and then moved to the other side of the fence in 2012, where I then worked as a consultant and now as an agency supporting brands and empowering them, sellers and vendors to thrive on Amazon. So thank you for the invite today.
James Wakefield
Hi everyone, thank you for the invite. Paul, my name's James, I'm the founder of Wake Commerce and we're an agency that specializes in specifically in Vendor Central. So we've got a team that covers various disciplines from catalogue to FinOps to content support, all the kind of exciting, intricate things that combine to make a successful vendor account. So, yeah, appreciate you inviting me back on this fantastic panel. Thank you very much.
Matt Anderson
Hi, my name's Matt from Optimizon. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer, former founder of Marketplace AMP, was acquired last year in September by Optimizon. I've been in the world of Amazon for about 15 years. My background is digital marketing for large brands, FMCG brands. And I'm really sort of interested in this discussion about, well, data led e-commerce across the digital shelf. How does vendor fit into that? A seller and other channels as well, because obviously it's not just on its own, but absolutely 100% really interested in the vendor space on Amazon as well.
Paul Sonneveld
Excellent. Well, can I just thank our panel? I think we've got a great set of expertise. If there are questions that are raised today that we cannot answer, I'm going to be very, very surprised. I must admit, we actually have also an extended session today. So last time we did run out of time. I'm sure it's going to happen today as well. But I have tried to train our panelists on giving clear, crisp, insightful answers in a short space of time so we can get through as many questions as possible. And I can already see some of the question list filling up. So great, keep it coming. And particularly as we talk, if it stimulates thinking and ideas, pop them in the comments question inside the LinkedIn event, or use that wonderful QR code that I'll show up a bit later again.
Now, to kickstart off and to frame the discussion, I want to start with each participant and really ask them about their perspectives on Q1. You know, most of the people here on the panel today, they work with vendors day in, day out. And I'd love to get their thoughts on what have you seen during Q1? Maybe what has surprised you, what has not surprised you? You know, and what are your perspectives going into the remainder of the year? Now we'll do that in reverse order. So we'll go anti-clockwise, starting with Carina at the bottom, and we'll work our way back up to Bruno. So the mic is yours, Carina.
Carina McLeod
Great, so I mean in terms of Q1 and the results it varies right, it varies according to what product category you're in, although we are definitely seeing positive results against last year. I guess at the moment what we need to be aware of are the major fundamental challenges that vendors are confronted right now, competition is right, margins are getting tighter due to Amazon's push for profitability alongside that forever increasing cost of advertising. Now I won't go into, I'm not going to cover profitability as I know that's sort of Martin's area and the ad space which Matt will be covering off.
But the main thing here and I think is what brands should be thinking about is not getting too fixated on the Q1 results as such as in more so as in what do you need to do for longevity and to remain sustainable as a vendor on the Amazon platform. And those are the key areas that we're focusing on with our clients. And that's all about now vendors needing to be a lot more creative, creative to survive that long term. And when I mean creative, what I'm talking about is from our experience when we're talking to brands, brands are still thinking about how they need to how they need to optimize their product pages with infographics and all of that.
But really what they should be thinking about is where do we need to be? They need to be moving a lot faster than they are right now. And the key thing right now with the launch of TikTok shop and just the influence of social media is that brands need to be thinking about their content, about how their content should be evolving, getting video content onto their product listings, putting video content on their ads, in their brand stores, in their A-plus premium pages. They need to be thinking about creating all this content ahead and not chasing their tails, which we are seeing with brands at the moment, is that chasing tail things, where they're still talking about infographics, which is almost from the past.
So what's happening is vendors, as a result, then, are losing market share. And this is something that's really important for vendors to keep track of. Because the last thing is that you get complacent. You're a well-known brand. And then you're starting to lose market share against other potential sellers or emerging brands, because they are able to move a lot faster than some of the brands themselves by getting the video content. Their product pages have been shiny for a long time. All of these things.
It's also about getting creative in terms of how to drive more traffic onto Amazon. Yeah, we talk about ads. The cost of Ads is increasing. So brands need to be thinking about how they take advantage of using content creators, taking advantage of affiliates, also looking into all those other different ways that they can drive traffic more at a lower cost to really fuel that flywheel on Amazon and not being solely reliant on advertising. So that was three minutes, was that?
Paul Sonneveld
Fantastic, Karina. I wrote down a lot of notes, particularly around the moving faster and that whole off Amazon advertising, TikTok shop, social influencers. I'm sure we'll get some great questions there a little bit later on. Thank you. Over to you, James.
James Wakefield
Well, I've run out of things to say now. I’m joking. Yeah, I suppose if we're looking at kind of when we had our last conversation, there's a few things worth flagging, which I maybe we didn't discuss or weren't necessarily expected. And there has been a kind of stiffening up of the kind of criteria for becoming a vendor, particularly in the UK, not so much in the US because they're always Few years ahead of us in terms of who they will allow onto the platform, but there's definitely been a shift over to amazon focusing on bigger brands.
They have a list now and if you're not on the list, then they're probably not going to onboard you onto the platform whereas three four years ago, it was easier for those kind of smaller brands to get through. So, you really need to have a brand or products that are in other retail channels for Amazon to now consider your brand for the vendor channel. So that's quite a big change. I believe the list of brands that they've got is around 20,000, which may be a mixture of existing kind of 3P sellers or brands that are just not active on the channel at all. So yeah, definite shift there.
And another kind of big one for me is that I've started to notice more pressure coming from China in kind of categories that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see. So I've had a few conversations with brands that have come to me and said, look, our kind of sales have really nosedived in the past kind of year or so. And before I've even pulled the data to try and understand what's going on in their segment, I've had a kind of inkling that, OK, it's likely that there's been quite a lot of Chinese pressure coming into this category and then lo and behold when I've looked to that category that's exactly what's happened.
Some quite obscure products so not so much the kind of stuff that you would necessarily see in the private label FBA space but actually kind of more niche specialist products that might be more kind of aligned and suited to vendor So, yeah, that's kind of a continuing threat. Obviously, the price pressure is always quite significant. And then, yeah, just general kind of profitability challenges. Amazon turning the screw quite hard this year with their negotiations, but particularly on the accounts that are kind of struggling with net PPM. And then, yeah, final one is just kind of the fees, the fee structure changes that we're seeing on the FBA side, which might lead people to consider Vendor more so than they have done previously due to the completely different cost structure.
Paul Sonneveld
Very interesting, James. A lot of topics there. How do I become a vendor? I think we'll have a couple of those. I mean, it's very difficult, obviously. Profitability came up again as well. So yeah, lots of topics there. Thank you for sharing those insights with us, James. Over to you, Matt.
Matt Anderson
Yeah, I think, well, to give it a bit of an extra sort of viewpoint is looking at I think like the lower end of the price range within Amazon. There's been a lot of products for vendors that we've seen that Amazon have been wanting to CRAP out, can't realize a profit. And I think a lot of that has been doing by TEMU in the market, certainly in the US and UK. There's about 40 odd billion dollars worth of GMV on that platform and they've been aggressively pushing in into the space. I think Amazon to a certain degree is probably letting those kind of marketplaces and Wish and others to pick up that lower end of the market where there's not the margin that it can compete at and just let them deal with the logistics through FBA which is quite an interesting No point, Amazon always get their margin somehow, don't they? But I think there's that definitely lower end of the market.
I think when you're looking at profit, what I've been advising brands on, vendor brands, is fairly just looking at actually playing to your strengths, USP, and really looking at selection across channel. And that can be vendor and seller, by the way. What we're going to use seller for and vendor. No doubt we'll come to that later. But looking to compete on quality of price to Karina's point, content as well, making sure that really justifies a higher price point rather than trying to compete with a lot of these Chinese sellers and having a race to the bottom. And obviously, then you're going to get stuck with that BPM issues with the vendor managers, and you'll end up losing more margin.
So I think there's that looking at selection, looking at bundles, how can you add value, versus cutting price for consumers. How can you add a range of products or a selection of products that actually provide a gifting occasion that can perhaps warrant a slightly higher price point? So rather than just being thinking, oh, I've got to be the cheapest on Amazon, which ultimately, you're not going to win against the Chinese competition if you're in the States and the UK based as a manufacturer, is looking at other tactics about selection choice, exclusivity for Amazon overall.
So you can actually have some sort of control over that profit and price against other channels like eBay. And then think of it strategically in the long term. Because the inflation pressures overall have begun to drop within the supply chain. And it's making sure that now brands, how can we win back some of that margin that we've had to lose post-COVID because we had to drop our prices and all those sort of things. So yeah, lots to go at.
Paul Sonneveld
Definitely very insightful. I think it's the first time we've spoken about the impact of TEMU and Shein and lower price points. Clearly a massive dynamic that we're now seeing, you know, and how do we, should the vendors think about that and how should they respond? So some great, great insights there, Matt. Thank you. We're moving, we're going north over to you, Martin.
Martin Heubel
Yeah, thank you, Paul. Yeah, I think a very turbulent quarter for vendors is coming to an end, or has come to an end. And we are going to see the actual results being released by Amazon in its first quarter results later today. It's very clear that there has been a very strict focus with vendors about profitability, gaining initiatives, we saw much more lengthy vendor negotiations in the 2024 cycle. Some of you who are listening in are actually going to negotiate with Amazon still for 2024 and beyond. And that is not necessarily the exception. It is indeed the reality of a lot of brands right now.
So certainly, it is something where we need to kind of focus on realizing that we are working with Amazon in a new reality, namely, that Amazon is much more focused on its own bottom line and is also putting an enhanced focus on its operational excellence. And we've seen that two weeks ago when Andy Jassy was also releasing the annual shareholder letter of Amazon, where operational excellence was really put at the front, right and center of his message, highlighting that in the US alone, Amazon was able to reduce its cost to serve customers by a staggering $0.45 per unit on a year-over-year comparison basis. And that is staggering and that is quite significant and explains why many of you will see a very different ordering pattern of Amazon.
Earlier this year in our session, I also highlighted that Amazon will put an enhanced focus on driving efficiencies, particularly along its supply chain. And this is exactly what we are seeing right now further unfold. Amazon is ordering less than ever before, particularly when you compare it also to the first quarter period year over year of 2023 and is primarily explainable because Amazon wants to remove and reduce the risk of carrying any loaded overstock position over to brands and rather orders in a new just-in-time fashion, where in a lot of countries and a lot of product categories.
Amazon reduces its weeks of coverage of inventory to only two to four weeks of actual shopper demand. And that requires brands to, of course, respond in a different manner. Because, A, if they're accruing overstocks by loading too many born-to-run orders, for example, they're seeing that Amazon is much more aggressive and releasing markdown or markdown activities which are reducing their prices of products to end shoppers just to get rid of this unhealthy inventory. On the other end, vendor managers and also AVS brand specialists becoming very adamant and then asking for margin recovery support or as Amazon these days calls it cost support for vendors which they have to actually then deal with in trade negotiations and mid-tier negotiations as well.
So the key success area for vendors in 2024 will certainly be to realize that kind of the reality of trading with Amazon slightly has changed. And they need to kind of win in each area that is the success pillar of dealing with Amazon from a vendor perspective, namely that they have to optimize their assortment. They also have to put an enhanced focus on their operational efficiency, but more so also on their commercial excellence and distribution control that they really need to create strategies around in order to effectively sustain and maintain their margins in 2024 and beyond.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you, Martin. Yeah, I'm actually seeing a lot of questions about what you're talking about, a lot of people asking about PO volume reductions, which I think is speaking to you around Amazon's desire to reduce working capital just in time, reduce the day's cover. You know, hopefully that just means it's a temporary adjustment. The underlying demand is there. But yeah, I look forward to really getting into some of those questions as well. Last but not least, Bruno.
Bruno Ferreira
Yeah. Well, what to add to this amazing comment. I can try to bring my vision, as you guys know, always looking internally to each vendor, to their internal setup, to their SOPs, to the cross-functional team. Karina mentioned that she keeps seeing vendors, brands not moving fast enough. I see the same. I still see vendors showing too much, in my opinion, focus on the sellout.
Guys, let's keep the ideal, that Amazon vendor is a B2B business, we should really pay attention to supply chain and sell in. Of course, it's very important for a brand. We all understand that how good improvements and easy steps sometimes to follow will give a huge brand awareness, will increase the sellout. But you guys know my opinion. Look inside, Martin was just mentioning how Amazon actually noticed that and is doing the same internally. They are checking every point of their SOPs. How can they gain efficiencies? How can they save costs?
We sometimes get irritated with our vendor managers or with any Amazon policy, but sometimes we need to step into their shoes and look at Amazon business. It wasn't profitable for a long time. They want to make it profitable now. They made a huge effort this year in the negotiations to push for more accruals, more rebates, a lot of pressure coming from some categories for vendors to move to AVS.
So I will insist again, so I would like vendors to start looking internally for 2024, how can they sometimes avoid the cost price increase to Amazon, just making more efficient the internal processes in the warehouse. Let's review the cost of a box to ship. Can we review the minimum order quantity per ASIN? Is it worth to consider a pallet ordering? I would like vendors for 2024 to start thinking more serious about their internal setup. That's my key message for you, Paul.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. Thank you very much, Bruno. And making sure we always put a spotlight on our own house as well making sure that we are fit to trade with Amazon as a vendor channel, so appreciate it and look forward to getting more into that right now. Okay, so I'm just looking at the questions if you if you see me looking sideways, I'm literally scrolling down the questions. We've got lots of questions coming in through our website that QR code apologies Matt. I will take it off your face right now and we've also got lots of questions coming in in terms of LinkedIn.
So maybe what I'll do now is I'm just going to pick some of the more top-line, high-level questions for about 10 minutes or so. And then we'll dive into really some of those specifics. So let me start off. And just a reminder to our panelists, let's try and stick to a response time of 60 seconds maximum. If you can do it in 30, even better. And let's get right into it.
I want to start with a point that you made, Martin, about the letter or the Q4 results back in Feb. What do you think are the most important insights for Amazon vendors? You already spoke about it a little bit and someone else, by the way, mentioned the fee increases on the seller side and there's a push. Let me rephrase it a different way, which is I think Amazon is releasing its Q1 results maybe today or tomorrow, depending on what time zone you're in. What do you think we're going to see in their mind with particular relevance to what's important to vendors?
Martin Heubel
Yeah, I mean, looking at the fourth quarter results and also the full year of 2023, we've really seen Amazon delivering very strong top-line as well as bottom line growth in general. Now, especially on its operating income, Amazon has shown that if you're looking at the individual contributors to its bottom line, within 12 months, it was able to really reduce its operating income losses from the retail division by over 100%, breaking even as in the fourth quarter of 2023.
And I expect this to continue also in the first quarter of 2024, simply because Amazon has seen, with a lot of vendors, strong sustained growth in the first quarter, even though that may not be reflected in the way it orders, it is still a very high sell-out performance that Amazon has and enjoys towards end shoppers. And on the flip side, it has really kind of utilized the negotiation process as well as the pre-negotiations during cost support discussions with brands in order to utilize and focus on the more profitable portfolio segments, equivalently reducing the costs that it incurs from especially low ASP and highly dilutive selection.
Now, Andy Jassy has restated his commitment to low ASP selection in this annual shareholder letter that was released just two weeks ago. However, the profitability focus of Amazon can pose a threat and weaken Amazon long term because it poses a major headwind to Amazon's flywheel, which relies on brands offering their entire selection and launching it on and with Amazon, whereas we are seeing more and more Asian rivals such as TEMU, Shein and TikTok Shop, of course, becoming more and more aggressive in their approach of targeting and shoppers, not only in the US, but also in the European countries as well.
So Amazon needs to kind of balance this profitability focus, also mid to long term again, against a growth focus on its top line. And I expect this to come really to life following the second half of the year where profitability will still be Amazon's set ambition, but then also leaning in more with vendors who have certain above average profitability levels into the overall sales performance again.
Paul Sonneveld
Great. Thank you, Martin. I want to go back to the broader PO volumes. So Kirsten is asking, how do purchase orders compare to last year? Does anyone feel like macroeconomics are hurting sales? Now, you've made the point, Martin, that a lot of this seems to be more of an adjustment around working days cover, working capital, the Amazon holding on to. I guess the question is, are there broader factors at play as well? And, you know, I'm just looking at James, maybe you, you're managing a lot of Amazon vendor clients, what are you seeing? And what's your perspective on purchase orders this year versus last year?
James Wakefield
I think for us, the biggest pressure that we saw was probably 2022. Certainly, coming out of the pandemic, Amazon's weeks of cover was quite significantly reduced, whereas traditionally we'd see them keep around 12 weeks of stock. They were quite aggressive in reducing that on a lot of accounts. In some cases, we were kind of thinking, you know, when is this going to stop? But we saw them get a lot tighter with those kind of stock volumes over that period. And then it kind of slowly started to recover.
So last year felt better from that perspective. And I suppose if we're thinking back to what happened post-pandemic or even during the pandemic, Amazon was under such pressure in terms of their fulfillment centers and capacity that they were taking quite drastic decisions in terms of decisions around ordering. As everyone knows there's been a lot more kind of pressure and restrictions on the FBA side. And Amazon has tried to work out what's the best way to model this to kind of discourage sellers from keeping too much stock in their warehouses. And we've seen that from the recent new fee structure. But yeah, I would say that PO levels have been okay. Certainly not as tight as we experienced back in 2022.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you, James. I noticed, by the way, Chris Khoo is here as well. He's in the comment section there. I know he manages a lot of Amazon vendor order data, so I'm sure he's got some great perspectives on that question as well. Fantastic question here from Kirsten, actually. You know, we mentioned TEMU, we mentioned Shein, we mentioned, I think, Karina, I think you mentioned TikTok Shop at the start.
So I think Kirsten's question, kind of, you know, at a strategic level, is very interesting, which is, are younger consumers moving away from Amazon more towards social media? So as a vendor, you know, maybe a bit of a cheeky question, but if I'm selling to a younger audience, is Amazon Vendor as a channel still relevant? I was going to say maybe Matt and Carina, I'd love to get your thoughts on that from a consumer lens. Do you want to go first, Carina?
Carina McLeod
Yeah, sure. I mean, in terms of is it moving away, I don't think it's necessarily a question of moving away here. I think at the end of the day, Amazon is the biggest online retailer out there. And so presence on Amazon is always needed. Amazon hits all levels of demographics. So that's really important. And Amazon is just that place of convenience, that place of trust.
However, with social media, what social media are doing is, and this is the key difference, I think, with social media shopping and Amazon shopping, is Amazon is very transactional. People go onto Amazon. They know what they're looking for. They type in the search box what they're looking for. It might be a very specific search. They might be at that point of browsing. But they're searching for something.
Social media is very different. Social media can play. the sky's the limit. It's about creating awareness and creating demand that people will be going on social media and not even think about shopping. It's only until they see things like it's the hashtag TikTok made me buy it type scenario, right? In terms of it's creating that demand. So you're on those channels and you're not even planning to make a purchase, but you end up making a purchase because you get hooked on some of the content, whereas Amazon is different.
So I think really if you're thinking about should I be on Amazon, should I be on social media, I think the part here and when we're talking about demographics of course the demographics are shifting on TikTok they started younger they get you know it's increasing like it did on Amazon or they always sort of startup more tech savvy starting off with those channels and then more and more people are getting familiar with those sites.
But it's more about in the strategy is thinking about right okay am I going for this channel because I want to create more awareness and this is more a demand generation channel versus that presence that you have on Amazon where you've got consumers that are already at that purchase intent point where they already know what they're going to buy and you want to convert that effectively that click into a sale.
Paul Sonneveld
Anything you'd add to that, Matt?
Matt Anderson
Yeah, no, I agree. I think Is Amazon at threat as a shopping marketplace? No, not by TikTok. But it certainly is well on their radar, as Martin alluded to as well. The TikTok's growing tenfold in sales, about $17.5 billion in the US. And it clearly is taking a lot of the younger market share. But I think ultimately, to Carina's point, the product discovery channel, now Amazon is always this numerous stats depending what you read, but around sort of like 60% of search for product discovery is on Amazon first and then Google typically.
I'd really like to dig into the data and look at that in more depth, you know how that's going to change over the next three to five years. Are people going to go on to social and TikTok channels first, discover a product, then potentially buy there or end on Amazon afterwards? I think that's the trend that's going to be changing first, the product discovery first. And how Amazon deals with that, we'd like to see DSP. Super interesting.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, we've got a few questions on that and AMC just to give you a heads up as well. Before we get to that, I want to go back to kind of the Amazon vendor manager negotiations, building a great relationship. If you have a vendor manager, we'll get onto that. Martin, and I'm sure Bruno's got some thoughts on here as well, but let's start first on the agenda.
So you've spoken about Amazon's agenda at a top line from a results point of view, you mentioned the great implications there, but in terms of the bolts and nuts in terms of negotiations this year. How would you summarize the agenda of the vendor manager in terms of what you're seeing and particularly any nuances and differences compared to Q4 last year or last year in general?
Martin Heubel
Yeah, I think the cycle of increasing cost prices as easily as it was before, if it ever can be described as such, has become a lot tougher for brands to manage. Vendor managers have had the directive to not accept any cost price increases whatsoever. And only the largest multinational clients and vendors of theirs were actually being able to achieve that. That means that the tier one managed vendor accounts are at the highest chance of really driving their front margin with Amazon and especially also recouping any kind of margin gains that Amazon has had when other retailers were actually swallowing up these cost increases as well.
And Amazon, especially for mass vendor managed accounts, so tier two and the unmanaged vendor accounts, tier three vendors, has not given the same chance and option, which means that vendors have had to really go into very lengthy negotiation cycles if they wanted to achieve a much better outcome and reducing at the end of the day their trading terms or also recouping any of those disputed fees such as shortages or penalty charges that were unjustified in the first place in a lot of cases.
And vendor managers have been really kind of focused around not giving up too much of their own margin and creating quite creative storylines, even if net BPM trajectory has been trending up year over year, on why they cannot kind of give back this margin opportunity to brands. And that really kind of creates this new narrative that brands need to opt into, where it is not only about controlling the distribution and also ensuring that you are having the right e-channel strategy that integrates and incorporates Amazon as a key player, but also that you are kind of really becoming selective in the first place which products you're onboarding on Amazon, and which products you are probably also withholding from the launch.
Unless you get a key or certain predefined commercial incentive, either from your vendor manager, or also from your AVS brand specialist that a lot of you will be having subscribed to, in order to not only increase the return on investment of those trading terms that you've granted Amazon in the first place, but to also dangle a little bit the carrot in front of your vendor managers and AVS brand specialists knows of what you can accomplish going forward if they're helping you to achieve the kind of commercial gains that you are looking for in a lot of other areas.
This can be trading terms and cost prices, yes, but I would also urge, and I'm sure Bruno will kind of delve into that a little bit more, focusing on the operational excellence that you can achieve, especially in the vendor setting. This means exploring efficiencies and cost-saving initiatives in your supply chain, but even more so ensuring that you're fully aligned with the process requirements that Amazon has for you as a 1P brand.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you, Martin. Bruno, what would you add in particularly around building great relationships? I know you've been a strong advocate of building strong relationships with Amazon vendors. I'd love to just hear your thoughts around that and maybe particularly considering, and I'm just going to tie it into another question we have here around, many European vendors have sort of shifted to this PAN-European kind of vendor relationship. How should vendors manage that relationship so that it can actually drive mutual commercial benefit for this year?
Bruno Ferreira
Well, Paul, on that point, I will go back to that effective training of the cross-functional team. Once again, you guys know one of my jokes, one of these days I'll get beaten in the street for saying things like this, but Amazon publishes their compliances, the manuals for shipment, for fulfilling. I think that for vendors to maintain a good relationship with their vendor when they have access or even to the brand specialist, I will drive my business to try to be as best as I could in my performance, in my supply chain to Amazon. That will, of course, make the vendor engage in a different relationship with me. Instead of me asking him for solutions, I am identifying the issues and presenting a solution. Can you help me to implement it? I think it's a more effective way, and it starts with that aligned training for the cross-functional team in different departments from sales, logistics, and finance.
And let's keep in mind that Amazon Vendor is a self-service tool. I think that sometimes we see and I continue to see that a lot. Vendors, not because it's their fault. Of course, we know that Amazon doesn't do an excellent job training vendors. They get them on board. They have the honeymoon period and three months later they are out. But we need to understand that the vendor manager work will be to support this. Once there's no action that we can take from the self-service menu tools on Vendor Central, right?
So start aligning that training, prepare your teams, make sure that you're doing the right things, make sure that you have an excellent supply chain for Amazon. Know your weaknesses and try to work within your team to sort it, to implement changes that become more efficient. I've seen vendor managers engaging differently when vendors actually start from within and then bring everything to the vendor. And I've heard from vendors, everybody here speaks with vendors on a regular basis. And I hear comments sometimes like, I'm not here to teach a vendor how to complete an NIS. I'm not here to tell a new vendor that he made an error uploading an invoice and how can he fix it?
The trainings are there. That's what they think. And they are. And they are complete trainings full of information. But from my experience, what I've learned is that a new vendor, someone from the sales team going through all of those videos, if it doesn't have an helping hand to explain the details, it's not effective as it can be if you invest in training your cross-functional team. And that will surely help to resolve some misguided relationships with vendors.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. Thank you, Bruno. I want to shift a little bit. Martin mentioned it from vendors to AVS as well. I've got a few questions on AVS here. The first one here is from Wesley. And this can be a long answer. And I might get you to have a look at this or have a go at this, Carina. It's really around this concept, is there ROI in AVS? So Wesley's asking or stating, AVS is changing. Amazon's offshoring. I'm sure they're taking some costs out there as well. However, the fees and the floor in terms of fees remain. Is it worth challenging as part of the negotiation process and probably is it worth paying for? Second question. You spent many years inside Amazon, so I'm really keen to get your perspective on this.
Carina McLeod
I think the first thing here in terms of how do you quantify worth, right? And I think a lot of it depends on your rationale and your reasoning for needing that AVS. Sometimes I appreciate vendors are almost that it's not necessarily a negotiable, but really you should be thinking about the benefits that you get from an AVS. So if you know you're needing, you're having a number of issues where that internal escalation is needed and you're seeing results from that. If you didn't have that, What would that mean? You need to think about that because that's part of whether you want that AVS or you don't want that AVS.
It's definitely always worth challenging, but I think to make sure that you get the right results. But I think that first point is, what do you want to get out of your AVS in the first place? And how have you had that experience today? And have you seen those results? Because you can start looking at that. And that starts creating more of a narrative for when you have that conversation in terms of, whether or not you renew, you challenge the amount, etc. But I'm always for the reasoning first before, you know, going to that point of challenging, because you've got to question whether or not it's even worth you having that. But again, those conversations then become tough, because it's almost once you're locked into it, it becomes more of a challenge to get away from it at the same time.
Martin Heubel
What I would add to this as well, if I may, is I completely agree with what Carina has said. I mean, the question also becomes where do you get a better return on investment from your trading terms from, right? From an automated marketing standpoint, probably not, because we all know that doesn't drive any materialized growth. So I think try to see it from a different perspective, like Amazon will unlikely to give away all of the percentages. However, what you can focus your future negotiation on is to at least shift those investments partially from buckets that drive a lower return on investment.
If Amazon asks you to increase the investment going forward or meet a higher rate card as compared to what you're paying right now. because the truth of the matter is also without an AVS support, you will likely face more challenges and be left without an escalation support should things go wrong in your catalogue, should agents get suppressed, or you lose the buy box.
Paul Sonneveld
It's a really good point. Actually, we had a question I can't find at the moment. It was really around to the extent of, if I can't have access to a vendor manager, but I do have the opportunity to go for AVS, should I take it? It sounds like you should certainly consider it and make sure that you get a good ROI on it. I do want to press a little bit further because there's a follow up question is really around this point around, your service model for AVS changing from an onshore to an offshore resource, and therefore Amazon is lowering the cost. You know, what is the scope and opportunity there to renegotiate some of the AVS terms? Has anyone seen that done? Is it reasonable? Is Amazon open to that?
James Wakefield
I've managed to convince a few clients historically to give notice on AVS. The level of success in terms of have they been able to fully recoup that percentage? In most cases now, but it really depends on the kind of circumstances and who you're up against in that negotiation. Not done that recently. And I have a feeling that this year it would just be a lot harder based on the kind of psychology and how they're approaching negotiations this time around.
But I think there does need to be a clearer understanding of what AVS is. And I did recently see an AVS deck, and I felt that it was kind of portraying the service as being some kind of account management, which I would sort of disagree with, because if I look at the kind of account management that we're doing on this panel, is really quite different to what an AVS or brand specialist can do. They're not going to run your ads. They're not going to dispute your chargebacks, shortage claims. They're not really going to dig into your operations. They're not going to have the capacity to be filing and chasing tickets for fairly mundane issues that require that level of attention to get those issues resolved.
I think that the way that AVS is pushed on vendors, there's obviously certain advantages in terms of the type of reporting that you get. Certainly having a direct line of contact on the other side is important, but the question you've got to answer, and often you can't work this out until you're into the service and you know who your brand specialist is, you need to sort of understand how competent is that person and how willing are they to actually push issues and get stuff resolved. Um, so yeah, that's my view on it.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you, James. Yeah, go Bruno.
Bruno Ferreira
One point quick. So then I think AVS should also consider that analyze the cost, but then also go and check the previous year if you can. What is making you think that you need the support of the AVS? Because if you get to the conclusion that a lot of those tasks that you're doing, probably with some training or changing the way that you are managing the account, maybe you don't need it that much.
AVS is good to escalate, but let's remember that you can escalate cases for the support teams too, as long as you know the different steps to take and how to open a case and request the escalation. So that's just it. To analyze that cost, think about why do you need the AVS. And sometimes maybe you will find out that your team can do a lot of the tasks that we are requesting the team from Amazon side to do for us.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. Thank you. I want to shift away a little bit from AVS, Amazon Vendor Managers, more towards sort of catalogue and we'll get into the marketing side of things. But I'll kick off here with Kristen's question around bundles. I think we spoke about in our introductions, virtually all of you spoke about profitability. I think Matt, you particularly called out kind of bundling as a clear strategy going into 2024.
The question that Kristen asks is, you know, how are others dealing with Amazon created bundles? Some clients feel that these clutter the page and sometimes with incorrect images of information, making it really confusing. So, she's referring specifically to bundles that Amazon creates as opposed to necessarily creates by the vendor themselves. I'd love to hear, you know, have you seen this and what are your thoughts on this?
Matt Anderson
I've seen some testing around like the virtual bundles appearing within the Twister and actually being like a product variation. I think, Bob, look at it as an opportunity. If Amazon's creating it, they've obviously got the data that the customers are buying those products together. Do have a look into your brand analytics and any sort of other proprietary data you've got access to.
So I think look at it as an opportunity, as an area that you might be able to get some traction with an AVS on, although it's probably unlikely. But I think it's an area that you can actually look at creating hard bundles and sort of crowding out that space yourself, because clearly it's an opportunity to boost that net PPM. What do the consumers want to boost around that value? So, I think there's, yeah, it's an opportunity. And so, if you see Amazon doing it, create your own bundles, see if you can get them listed on vendor as well, because clearly there's a demand, and Amazon's seen that through the data.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, yeah, certainly Amazon will be making data-driven decisions on this, so there must be some benefit in getting it right. I'm actually staying with Kristen. Thank you so much for all your questions, by the way, Kristen. That's really great. Probably a question for you, Carina, because you spoke about this in your introduction, but what are some of the methods you'd recommend for really driving off Amazon traffic to your product display pages without interfering with your D2C sales? I mean, what does good look like? You know, I've done quite a few webinars around TikTok and various things in the context of 3P. But, what does good look like from a vendor point of view? So let me bring you up.
Carina McLeod
Yeah. The part here is there is always there's going to be interference when you're doing when you're advertising and trying to create traffic off of Amazon, right? And I think this all comes back to the fact of, I often keep sort of going back to this, but it's almost like making sure you're clear on your strategy and why you're doing certain things. Because I know you've sort of asked the question of what good looks like, but it all depends on what you're trying to achieve.
Now, a lot of the reason businesses are trying, if you're trying to a lot of businesses, when you sort of say, oh, drive traffic off of Amazon, off Amazon traffic to Amazon, a lot of brands aren't necessarily comfortable with that, right? Because you start going into, well, we could get our, why would we do that? Why would we want to not drive traffic to our website? We're paying, you know, we benefit more from sales from our website.
But again, you've got to then sort of take into account, And this is where you start and lead to be testing a lot of things to start looking at the data to understand, well, what's the conversion look like when you're driving traffic to your website versus driving traffic to Amazon? Because Amazon is about much more trusted site people, as I talked about the convenience and everything earlier on. And so chances are that your sales are likely to convert. It's also going to help fuel that flywheel in that you're starting the more traffic you drive to Amazon where you're less dependent and paying out loads on ads.
Let's say you're driving more traffic in different ways from influencers, et cetera, on to Amazon. Then you've got that. I've just completely lost my trail of thought there. But basically, it's really, you've got to think about the strategy and why you're doing that. In terms of what good looks like, again, it's down to what your plan is at the start and making sure that you're looking at the right channels to driving the right traffic to Amazon. So, I've gone a bit around the houses with that answer. But I always say, every case, it's very different according to what you want to achieve.
Paul Sonneveld
Absolutely. Matt, what would you add to that?
Matt Anderson
Bring it back to the data. I think it's probably best to answer that. Different product categories, different demographics. The traffic's going to convert differently, but absolutely should be A-B testing between the two. I think, don't forget, Amazon DSP is a really good tool to leverage off-site traffic to Amazon. And you can A-B test and link out onto your own D2C site. So you can, you know, how's it looking on Amazon? How's it looking on my D2C site? And actually pull back a lot of granular data.
And do remember that if you're looking, if you find a really good converting source, whether it be Facebook or whatever platform you're using, that conversion rate is driving high quality traffic into your listings. And that's going to drive organic rank on Amazon as well. So being able to analyze that using AMC is super interesting. It's something that we're looking at the moment for clients is being able to, Okay, what's the best channel to attribute traffic offsite onto Amazon as well? What's this customer journey? So I mean, yeah, essentially, refine on what the data is telling you. But yeah, it's a super interesting question.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you, Matt. We are moving in probably our last 10 minutes. So if you've got a final question, make sure you pop it in the comments. There is not necessarily a theme to some of the questions here, but I think they're really, really interesting questions. One, it's a great question from Chris, because that's really been on my mind as well. You know, as we know, last year, Amazon made a big announcement around clamping down on, you know, we no longer want to deal with distributors.
We want to deal with the brands directly. It's a big statement. There was a lot of angst in the market right now. But is that actually happening? And I would push it even further. I'm seeing service providers opening up businesses to actually act as the merchant of record on vendor and therefore essentially becoming new distributors on the Amazon vendor platform. So Amazon getting rid of distributors, fact or fiction? Who wants to go first?
Martin Heubel
I'm happy to go and start. I mean, generally speaking, it comes down to the distribution setup that Amazon has, right? In electronics categories, a lot of the large manufacturers are exclusively distributing their goods with a lot of retailers, including Amazon, through distributors. And that's not going to change even if Amazon has the ambition to get rid of them.
So should Amazon remove the distribution relationship here, of course, they would not have the goods themselves to sell to end shoppers. And this leaves them with a little bit of a selection gap that in order to spin their flywheel, they cannot afford to activate. So in categories where Amazon has only an exclusive distributor available to source the goods from and they are also not in direct conversations or do not perceive that there is an opportunity to gain a direct first party relationship with them, the distributors will generally be further in place.
Discussion becomes a little bit more challenging when we are talking about brands that have multiple distributors and not an exclusive distribution agreement with any of them and are also potentially already a vendor to Amazon. Here, the online retailer is going to cut the ties with distributors more and more. But here we are also talking about larger brands and what you mentioned, those kind of service providers that are acting as the merchant of record and coming on to distribute Amazon with selection that it currently does not have.
They're doing that usually on the back of smaller to medium sized brands, not multinational corporations that would usually be better off to start a direct trade relationship with Amazon in the first place. And that's the intended purpose of a distributor, right? Expanding selection at scale without necessarily driving up costs. So Amazon is very happy to continue the conversations here, but it primarily targets those brands who have multiple distributors in between. And this is also then the opportunity that Amazon goes after.
Carina McLeod
I often smile at that question, actually, because even from the days when I was at Amazon in like pre-2010, there was always these conversations going on and even as a vendor manager, I was told, right, you need to go direct with all these brands. But the reality is not all those brands want to go direct with you. And so, a distributor will always be needed to a certain degree. But as Martin said, it really depends on that relationship and the type of distributor and why that distributor is needed to how much Amazon wants to manage that relationship.
Bruno Ferreira
Can I just add something, Paul? I think the question, we need to go back to what happened in March last year. We saw a lot of distributors being pushed out from vendor with the reason that Amazon wants to be closer directly with brands. I have my own opinion. I think they might be ready to reverse the decision. I hope so, because I know a lot of distributors that lost a huge slice of their business.
But what I want to add is that if you are a distributor, and we see a few of them, a lot of them still, remember that Amazon is a long-term partnership. Expand. Why are you sticking with the UK and Europe? Speak with your vendor manager, with your brand specialist. Make it for the negotiations as an agreement for them to help you to expand. We have emerging countries. Let's check Poland that needs help, needs distribution brands. Turkey, Brazil, a lot of new places that really will love to hear from vendors. And if the message gets passed internally, it's more effective.
So I still see on our forums, on LinkedIn and others, people concerned, I heard that Amazon is still delisting distributors like me. I wonder if I'm at risk. Well, stop focusing. Once again, I don't know if I should speak like this, but stop focusing on that and start expanding. Because if you are a strong vendor, then Amazon will never push you out because you're too much important. You're supplying Mexico, you're supplying India, you're supplying UAE, KSA, Brazil, Turkey. There's so many places. Just expand your business. And I think that then as an important distributor, it will be easy for you to keep in the system.
Paul Sonneveld
Thanks, Bruno. I'm going to rapid fire a few more questions. Just to, there's some ones I generally don't know the answer to, so always keen to see. I'm going to bring one up from Emil here. I think Emil is based in Germany. Do you know something about GPSR in Amazon? All my customers have received a message from support on this topic. Do you know what kind of things need to be delivered to them? Does this ring a bell? And any advice for Emil on this question around GPSR?
James Wakefield
Bruno is…
*(all laugh)*
Bruno Ferreira
I can go a bit. So, first of all, those are not Amazon compliances. They are just adhering to EU compliances. They will be on from the James, help me out here. From the 31st of December or 1st of January, it's the same, I think.
James Wakefield
I thought, yeah, December sounds about right.
Bruno Ferreira
Yeah and just to be quick in the answer so all of the details in the question they are actually in the emails, the email has a lot of content that can be read there's a few categories that do not need to engage and very quick in a nutshell basically you just need to make sure that your labelling in your product is compliant with the rules that you have the name of the brand contact or the official distributor for that country, points of contact, depending on the category, they might have different requirements. And it's not such a big task as it is. And remember, guys, Amazon is just complying. This time it's not Amazon just dumping some new compliances on us. Okay.
James Wakefield
Yeah and Paul if you don't mind me saying it kind of leads into a really important topic around compliance and I don't think I've ever come across a client who doesn't have a compliant product. What we do come across a lot is Amazon being quite reactive or taking action against listings, which can have a very significant impact on that vendor's business. So we've had a few of those this year. And if we kind of look at what happened in those situations in hindsight, that there wasn't really much we could have done to prevent certain listing suppressions. And unfortunately, when that happens, you're kind of locked into dealing with a team that is not particularly responsive, dare I say it, not particularly competent. And it's kind of a fight to get listings reinstated. And the trigger for that can be really anything. Sometimes it can happen at random. You know, the algorithm can pick something up and just decide, OK, we maybe want to do a spot check on this listing. So they'll remove it from sale.
There can also be other triggers, such as a buyer leaving a specific feedback or comments when they're, you know, filing a complaint or doing a return, which makes the system think that there's a, you know, some kind of health and safety issue here. So obviously, certain categories are affected more than others. Cosmetics, grocery, supplements, all that kind of stuff are very susceptible to being, as we call, yanked. But the implications can be very severe, particularly if it's, you know, one of your highest-performing ASINs.
So the advice I'd have in that situation is just be prepared for that. And the way that you can be prepared is by ensuring you've got all your compliance documents, safety data sheets, whatever you think you may need in that situation to justify to Amazon that this product is legitimate, compliant, et cetera. Have that ready. He can upload it onto Vendor Central, but we've kind of determined internally that that probably doesn't make any difference. The teams who are doing these suppressions don't look at it. So just be prepared for those situations.
Bruno Ferreira
Paul, can I just add something to James? He's right. Sometimes the teams are not as competent as we expect because we're dealing with compliances and sometimes even European level regulation. And I will just quickly give an example so that everybody that is watching, keep an eye to embargos. Sometimes they can cause, understand where you are producing your products.
I remember a couple of years back, I worked with a vendor and it was a long road until we found out because the team, like James said, they wouldn't, they don't tell you what it is. But then someone remember, what about the ingredients? Wait a minute. We're selling soap. And Aleppo is under an embargo to Europe, the products from there. And actually, Amazon was just following regulations that were not internal. So when that caused that product, because it was launched against an embargo and it's not Amazon decision. So keep in mind that sometimes the details might be really important for you to check.
Paul Sonneveld
Great build Bruno. Thank you. OK, I want to ask the last question of today's session. We have gone over time. I think I've got through about 30% of the questions. Apologies to those we didn't get to. I did try my best to pick out themes to make sure that we provide some coverage there. But I think this was the one that came in via website from Farran. I think it's a really timely question. I'd love maybe for every panelist to share their thoughts.
The question is as follows. What is your initial thoughts or predictions for Prime Day this year? I know many of you are working with clients directly on this question. Are you ignoring it? Are you building up to it? Are you doing anything special around it? And what are your expectations in terms of Amazon's purchase order volumes? Particularly because they're running things a little bit closer to the wire but so through strong you know do we think I think vendors are really asking am I going to see a nice little bump in my purchase orders. So yeah any insights when it comes to kind of prime day obviously we don't know the exact date yet but it's probably you know two months away or
Matt Anderson
I guess typically in the in the past you'd see that you know more orders have would increase over time. And I guess it goes to the original question about how little inventory that Amazon is keeping within the supply chain at the moment. So what we saw in the run up to Black Friday Q4 was purchase orders ramping up much later and then actually causing a lot of strain on the supply chain for clients. And I think that's probably going to happen again. And of course, that has the bump on effect of when you go into, you know, when you've got the trucks going into DCs and then there's congestion and there's a longer lead time to come in.
So I think plan accordingly. I'd say if you can get any born to run orders in earlier and start building up the volume rather than waiting for the automated POs would be my advice, because you may take a jump on the competition if you've got stock and they haven't for that congestion element. And also, Prime Day this year, we're looking at ways of, okay, should we say, for example, FMCG projects go hard on Prime Day when these products broadly going to be bought anyway in the world of pet or food or whatever it may be, health. And actually looking at how can we leverage those events for new to brand customers and drive lifetime value rather than discounting heavily and having new existing customer base, just buying, stocking up basically, which we did see a lot in Q4, particularly in the world of like out home and garden and cleaning. Consumers were just bulk buying because they were getting good value and it was a deal.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, it's just shifting demand forward at a much lower margin.
Matt Anderson
You're getting less margin, but you're getting a bump in your POs. So yeah, keep an eye on the bottom line as well as the top line.
Martin Heubel
Yeah, and to build on that, I think subscribe and save for CPG and FMCG brands is really critical, right? Because that really builds on what Matt was just describing, focusing less on the impulse purchase, but rather kind of driving up the retention so that you are also getting an increasing likelihood of the chances of shoppers repeating their purchase, which lowers over the long term also your customer acquisition costs, even though they may be a little bit higher in the beginning.
In terms of the overall ordering behavior, I don't expect that Amazon will change too much. So don't keep your hopes too much up. I think, as Matt said, looking at one-to-one orders or the large-scale product launch program is really critical to utilize this year. And also, if you can, and if you have, for example, a vendor flex or direct fulfillment setup to ensure that you're being able to kind of accommodate for this push of volumes that Amazon is unlikely to take into its warehouse network.
Paul Sonneveld
Some great points there, Martin. James, do you want to share your thoughts on Prime Day? How are you working with your clients to get them ready?
James Wakefield
We're just going to switch everyone to Seller Central. That's the plan.
*(all laugh)*
Paul Sonneveld
Excellent.
James Wakefield
We haven't touched on hybrid today.
Paul Sonneveld
No, we have not.
James Wakefield
Yeah, should we?
Paul Sonneveld
More seriously though, is that part of your strategy around?
James Wakefield
No, actually I was being quite facetious, yes. Yeah, and obviously hybrid is a question that comes up typically and my response is usually the same, which is, if you're running one channel, then do it well. Try and get it performing to the maximum of its capability, which by the way, I rarely see anyone do. And only then should you consider adding another channel into the mix just because of the added complexity. Obviously, there's nuances and different scenarios to that.
But at hybrid or switching to seller completely is often seen as the kind of antidote to some of the pressures and stresses you see on vendor central but my mantra is to kind of just be persistent and there are workarounds and ways of dealing with things and to actually concentrate on the whole growth of the channel rather than just some of the challenges that you might be experiencing within it. So yeah, that doesn't answer your question about Prime Day, but as everyone's kind of mentioned here, having foresight on your stock, looking at your forecasting, trying to get additional stock in if you can through Born to Run and just being prepared for, yeah, what is likely to be an uptick in POs as we approach nearer to that period.
Paul Sonneveld
Thanks, James. Any perspectives you'd add to that, Carina? And we'll finish off with you, Bruno, last but not least.
Carina McLeod
Yeah, I think everything's covered. And I think, you know, it's about also thinking when you're talking about Prime Day, just not getting too fixated on whether or not that's going to bump up my POs, right, because there's so much more to it. It could be that it's an opportunity that you've launched a new product, it hasn't had much awareness, you have that opportunity to push it in Prime Day yet then prices will go down, they'll go back up again, but all of a sudden you've then helped fly the fuel wheel, you're getting a better ranking on your products and so forth.
So it's thinking about, yes, you're going to get increased POs because Amazon's going to order more because hopefully if Amazon thinks that your product is going to actually see an uptake in sales, But then also thinking about when it comes down to selecting what products you want to go into Prime, it's always that balance between the short-term versus the long-term.
Paul Sonneveld
Spot on.
Bruno Ferreira
Can I just add one point, Paul?
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, go. Take it away, Bruno
Bruno Ferreira
For vendors to be proactive. And from my side, as you guys know, is prepare and don't think that Prime Day is going to sort whatever issues you were having before, any challenges you were having before Prime Day was just multiply them by 10 or by 20. So remember that if you don't do a previous work aligning in the previous six or eight months before, You will be just running to, OK, you will receive more POs, but can I fulfill them? How will that impact my business as a whole? Am I prepared? Do my teams know what to do? All of those details, just be proactive.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you so much, Bruno. Now, we are out of time, so we need to wrap it up here. I want to really thank you and please join me in thanking our wonderful panelists today, Carina, Matt, Martin, James, Bruno, for your useful and practical insights. And just in case you didn't realize, the questions are live. And our panel has no warning of them. So thank you for being flexible and really sharing your expertise. Now, of course, we can't hear the audience. So instead of giving them a round of applause, why don't you leave us some thumbs up, some comments. We'd love to get your feedback.
We haven't got through all the questions today, so I will ask the panelists over the next few days just to provide responses to any of the comments and questions that haven't been responded to so that you do get some useful insights and actions and you can drive your vendor business forward. Just while I'm on thank yous, a quick shout out to Shiv here. He's been working tirelessly behind the scenes on answering your questions, arbitraging them for me, coming in through various. And also, thank you. Big shout out to you, Shiv. Very much appreciate it.
Bruno Ferreira
Thank you, Shiv.
Carina McLeod
And a shout out to you, Paul.
Matt Anderson
Yeah, Thanks Paul.
Paul Sonneveld
You're most welcome. You're welcome. Thank you so much for making yourself available. It is working. I'm learning. I'm learning. I think I've been audible for at least 80% of the time today. All right, guys, that's it. Thank you very, very much. That's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoy that. For those that have registered for this webinar, you will get a link tomorrow with the on-demand recording so you can re-watch the whole episode at your leisure.
Of course, I'm always open to ideas. So, if you've got great ideas for our Marketplace Masters Amazon Vendor Edition, just send them to me in the chat. And of course, if you are a vendor and you're just not happy with Vendor Central or the spreadsheets and managing all your data, and you're looking for a really easy but insightful intuitive analytics tool, hit me up or go to our website and book yourself a free demo. On that note, all the best for 2024, and no doubt we will connect again very, very soon. Take care.
