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Show Notes:

In today’s special Q&A, Todd answers your questions live! Stay tuned for answers on everything from selling internationally to communicating with brands and finding profitable products. 

How To Communicate

When contacting suppliers, Todd uses a VA (virtual assistant) to email brands or distributors before following up with a phone call. While emails capture the low-hanging fruit of suppliers willing to open accounts from an email, it’s always best to eventually get on the phone with a supplier for the purposes of relationship-building.

Boxing Products 101

If you have a product that requires unique packaging, companies like Uline and The Boxery can help you out. If a product has a high ROI, you can afford custom boxes. However, for cheaper options, you can look on Amazon for ready-made boxes. You can also go overseas for better pricing or check if your supplier is willing to help you out.

Do I Need A Website?

If you don’t have a website, don’t let that stop you from getting started on Amazon. If you’re not comfortable building one yourself, consider outsourcing. Also, check out websites from other Amazon sellers for ideas on how best to showcase your value.

US Market vs. International

If you’re located outside of the U.S., there’s no reason why you shouldn’t start selling locally. Once you’ve learned the ropes, then consider expanding to the U.S. You also have the opportunity to introduce international products to the U.S. market. Although the U.S. Amazon market is larger, there are many U.S.-based sellers who wish they had started selling earlier. If you have the chance, start selling on Amazon before your market becomes saturated!

Debit Cards & Bank Statements

You can open an Amazon FBA account with a debit card, just keep in mind that debit cards don’t offer the same protections as credit cards. In terms of bank statements, you should receive one within 30 days.

Combing Through Products

Yes, combing through pages of products is time-consuming. That’s part of the Amazon grind. But that’s also where time-saving products like AMZ Analyzer and Tactical Arbitrage come in. It’s also smart to go through lists manually to sniff out products that may now show up on the software. Finding products that others won’t ultimately reduces your competition.

Vetting Distributors

If you’re confused about whether a company is a distributor or a retailer, check out their website. Retailers let you add products to your cart for check-out while distributors generally make you jump through a few hoops. If you’re really concerned about the validity of a distributor, you can hire a PI to investigate, check out Google maps to see if they have a legitimate physical structure on street view, or simply call them.

Big Brands & All About PPC

While big brands may feel like the norm in other countries, you can always find distributors that sell that particular brand. Simply search “Nike Distributor, UK” and comb through pages of options. In terms of PPC, in wholesale, Amazon only runs your ads if you’re in the buy box. If you’ve got products with a high ROI, add something like a 25 cent auto-campaign so Amazon runs your ads when they’ve got nothing left to run, for cheap!

IP Complaints

Reaching out to brands to confirm that you’re authorized to sell their products isn’t necessary. Again, that’s where plugins like IP Alert come in. However, for the purposes of relationship-building, it’s not smart to sell products that brands don’t want you to sell. So if you’ve got a hunch a product is off-limits, check-in with a brand.

How To Find Profitable Products

The key is building relationships and negotiating prices with suppliers. Because there’s so much competition around very profitable products, you may need to look at low-selling products and work to boost their listings and gain exclusivity. There are so many products out there – keep looking!

Overall

If you’ve got more questions, ask away. And if you’d like more resources, schedule a one-on-one coaching call with Todd. If you’re farther along in your Amazon journey, add yourself to the waitlist for his small group course. As always, happy selling everyone.

Resources From This Episode

• Uline
• The Boxery
• BuyBoxer
• Etail Solutions
• NetRush
• Wholesale Academy
• NerdWallet
• AMZ Analyzer
• Tactical Arbitrage
• IP Alert
• Schedule a coaching call
• Sign up for the small group course

Outline of This Episode

[00:19] Todd’s introduction to this episode

[03:32] How to contact brands effectively

[06:38] Boxing 101

[11:47] Website tips

[13:52] The pros of staying local

[18:52] Debit cards & bank statements

[21:54] Efficient product-hunting

[25:20] How to vet distributors

[28:56] Dealing with big brands and wholesale PPC

[39:00] Avoiding off-limit products

[43:55] How to find profitable products

[48:28] Todd’s closing thoughts on this episode

Transcript

Announcer (00:01):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Seller School podcast where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an eCommerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Good morning. Thank

Todd (00:19):
you everybody. Hope everybody had a great Memorial day weekend so far. Uh, took a little time out to honor those who were remembering that fought for our freedom here in America. But uh, I wanted to jump on here this morning and do something a little bit different. Um, this is the first time I’m doing a live on YouTube, but normally I release a new podcast every Tuesday, but I don’t have one ready for you guys this morning, unfortunately. But I did not want to leave you hanging. So I decided I’m going to jump on here and do some live Q and. A. Um, now you might see my background looks a little bit different than what I normally have in my background because I’m not in my home office today. I am in the new warehouse office. The audio hopefully is pretty decent. It’s kind of echoing in here still.

Todd (01:20):
I’ve got some panels and stuff that I’m going to be putting up here. You know what I mean? Putting things like this around the office to try to get the echo outta here, but hopefully it won’t be too bad for you guys here, but we’re going to do a little live Q. And. A. I’ve got some SpeakPipe messages from people who have left. Questions are ready, so I’m going to go over a couple of those and anybody out there who’s watching, make sure you use the comments and if you have a question, let me know in the comments and I can answer it here. Possibly live on the air, depending on how many we get. We may or may not have enough time to go through all of them, but I will do my best here. I’ve got about maybe up to an hour a week ago here, probably less, more like 45 minutes or so.

Todd (02:15):
Let me adjust the camera here a little bit. There we go. Perfect. So yeah, I hope everybody had a really good long weekend. Like I had said, mine was really excellent. We went down to Moab, Utah and got to check out the red rocks. We rafted on the, uh, Colorado river, did some hiking and seen some of the big arches and stuff like that. If you’ve never seen any of that stuff, really cool. I definitely recommend checking out. But it was my wife and I’s second anniversary this past weekend, so we had a really good time. Um, Hey, uh, TIF Meleek I see you there in the chat. Um, have a question which I will get to here in a second, but yeah, just one to jump on here. We’re going to go through some questions and see if we can answer some of your guys’ questions out there for Amazon wholesale so that I didn’t leave you hanging here this morning without a new episode.

Todd (03:20):
So, um, like I said, I’ve got a couple queued up here. Um, but uh, TIF is here live, so let me go ahead and answer his question first. Um, he says, what is the most effective approach to contacting brands in reverse sourcing method? So it kind of depends on the brand or a distributor and I to say brand. If you’re going to contact brand, you can either call them first or you could, um, you could email them first. Now what I do is I have my virtual assistants send an initial email and they are just trying to open that line of communication initially with the brand. And then I follow up with an E, a phone call no matter what the response is to that email. Because that way you’re getting some of the low hanging fruit, right? If the brand just lets you open the account from an email, then you’re not having to take the time to get on the phone and talk with them right away just to get that account open.

Todd (04:29):
Now you’re still gonna want to call them and talk to them at some point because when you’re talking with a brand directly, remember that relationship is very emotional. So you’re there emotionally connected to their products. So you want to build that relationship, become friends with them, get them to know, like, and trust you so that you can open those accounts or build that relationship and maybe get additional discount. Find out about new products and things like that. So, um, jumping on the phone is always a good choice. Um, talking with them directly is always a good choice to be able to do that. So I highly recommend that for sure. But I do initially send an email just to try to get that low hanging fruit of people who allow you to open an account just by an email. So hopefully that answered that question, that teeth.

Todd (05:25):
Appreciate ya joining me this morning. Um, got a few more people. We got Santos Santos, hopefully I’m saying that right and Brett in the house. So thank you both for joining me this morning. Um, before I jump on your guys’ questions, I did want to answer a question of someone who left it earlier already. So I’m going to go ahead and play that here. Um, before I do that, uh, let me know in a chat. Are you guys hearing me okay or is the echoing really bad? Let me know real quick. If you can just shoot me a message if I’m coming through. Okay for you. That would be excellent. And I will get this question queued up here. Uh, JC and Nelson in the house. Everybody’s saying sounds good. No echo. Perfect. That is good cause I hear a lot of echo so I’m glad you guys aren’t hearing it. So let’s go ahead and play this question. This one is from Sarah Owens and I’ve done some coaching calls with her in the past and she is doing a really well. So let’s go ahead and listen to this and hopefully you guys can hear it. All right.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Hey Todd, this is Sarah from Florida. My husband and I have really appreciated your one on one coaching. It’s made a big difference for our business. Um, going from knowing nothing about wholesale to, you know, now we have a couple of products that we’re working with and we’re getting moving, which is exciting. And we have a profitable product that is a glass bottle and it comes with an expiration date. And it is taking forever to individually bubble wrap each of these items. And so I’m wondering if you have a place that makes custom boxes or a custom packing supplies where we could just order a mass quantity of boxes that would fit this particular product and how you handle that. So anyway, thanks.

Todd (07:29):
All right. So Sarah, thank you so much for the question. Appreciate it. And it’s a good one because you’re definitely going to run into those products that are fragile or glass or maybe they’re a unique shape or something. You require some kind of unique packaging. So, um, I think you said that it has an expiration date and you’re just having trouble. It takes a long time to bubble wrap everything. So you’re looking for a customized box. So I’ve never ordered customized boxes much myself, so I don’t have a lot of experience in that. But I know you line.com has a lot of boxes that you can choose from a lot of different variety. Um, you line is not necessarily the cheapest place. Uh, from what I’ve read from other people who use a lot of boxes, I just made an order of boxes from a company called the boxer read.com.

Todd (08:36):
Uh, they don’t have a whole lot of custom stuff, but there are a lot of different companies out there that sell and make boxes. So it all kinds of depends how much you’re looking to spend on those boxes, right? Because the custom box could be anywhere from two, three, four a box, depending on how much customization and what kind of quantity you’re ordering. If this is a product that is doing really well, has really high ROI, and you’re able to add a little bit of expense on a box, then you can go down that custom route and getting some boxes and stuff like that made, you know, just do a Google search for custom boxes, maybe even search on Amazon. You can find a lot of stuff on there that, a lot of different box styles and things like that that people already have out there.

Todd (09:32):
So if you can get stuff that’s already made that’s just going to be cheaper for you and better, I’m not going to cost you as much. If you have to get it made custom and it’s something you can order. A lot of you could even look at a, just like a private label product, right? Getting a product made, you could get it manufactured somewhere, either in India, Vietnam, China, the USA, Mexico, something like that. Find a suppliers that make boxes just like you’d find a supplier that would make your product and they could make custom boxes for you as well. But lots of options out there that you could look into. I apologize, I don’t have any particular experience in that area myself, but just do some searches. Google searches, check on you, line check on Amazon. Um, and if you need to go and do the route where you’re making your own boxes and sourcing them from overseas or something like that, that would be an option as well.

Todd (10:34):
So hopefully that helps you and gives you a little direction on how to find some boxes for the custom or for the glass product that you’re looking to have. So appreciate it. Sarah, thank you so much for the question. And uh, if anybody’s watching this later and I don’t get to your question, make sure you head on over to entrepreneurial venture.com. Forward slash ask and I can, or you can record your question. I can answer it later on an upcoming episode. So appreciate it again, Sarah for that question. Um, lots of other people leaving comments over here. Um, Simon or Simone, one of the other, um, saw he didn’t, sorry, I’m probably butchering that. Jerry. Um, Phil, the loop is in the house as well. Uh, J Willis, James Anderson. Thank you everybody for joining me here. Uh, let me scroll back up here and see, uh, Santosh at a question here, how our websites should be.

Todd (11:44):
If we are new to the Amazon business, I mean, the website will show to a wholesaler brand for account approval. So you’re talking about just a, like a value added type of website, which I’ve talked about before. Um, something that you can put in like your email signatures and just give you a presence on the web. So if you’re brand new to this, I wouldn’t even worry about a website necessarily. A website is more of like a nice to have kind of thing. So don’t let that stop you from getting started. I didn’t have a website up front when I started contacting brands and stuff like that. It’s nice to have but not something that you absolutely need to have. Um, so don’t let that stop you. Just get going, move forward and start opening accounts. And if you’re not comfortable building a website yourself, then hire someone eventually, once you have some money coming in from the products that you’re selling and have them build you, excuse me, have them build you a website and it’s just going to be something basic.

Todd (12:55):
You know, something that looks nice but is a value added website. You can check out some websites out there from some of the big Amazon companies like by boxer.com [inaudible] dot com are a couple of them. Net rush.com is another one. If you check out those websites, you can get kind of an idea of the websites that they’re building and base yours off of. There’s, you know, there’s, there’s no reason to recreate the wheel. So look at their websites, see what they’re doing, really work good and copy what you want onto your website, but nothing too crazy. Just keep it basic, a basic value added website. Basically you’re telling the brand or the distributor what kind of things you can do for them. So hopefully that answers your question. Santos. Um, let’s see. We’ve got another one here from Brent says, hi, I am from Australia.

Todd (13:52):
Should I start with Amazon Australia or rather USA as it is much, much bigger. So I don’t have a lot of experience overseas except for a little bit in Canada, but I don’t see any downside to starting in Australia. Australia is a growing market so that you can get in in the beginning of Amazon Australia where a lot of us here in the U S wish we would have got started 10 years ago when it was a lot easier to be ignoring. You have the opportunity to get into Australia, get your feet wet, start learning and figuring it out there and then expand out to maybe the UK or to the U S and grow from there. You could even take the opportunity of bringing products from Australia over to the UK or the USA. So there’s a, that’s an opportunity there. You know, a lot of people don’t necessarily look at that.

Todd (14:52):
They’re just looking at selling the brands that are already on there. But you could potentially work with a brand that’s in Australia, um, and they might be more hungry to expand their market and grow to maybe the USA or the UK or something like that. So that’s something to think about as well. That’s a little more of a longer game because it’s going to be more work. It’s kind of like you’re building your own private label product. Um, but that’s an option as well. But personally I would start where you live in Australia since you have a market there, get going, learn the system and then expand out from there. So hopefully that answers your question for that. Um, breadth. I appreciate it. Um, next one here. JCB. Hi Todd. When you are going to open enrollment for your course. So I am not creating a course.

Todd (15:49):
Um, there’s lots of really good courses out there like the wholesale Academy. Um, that’s one that I’m a part of. So I’m not looking to create an entire course. What I’m looking to do is just to take a small group of people who have already started selling and kind of know the ropes because I don’t want to be, you know, just showing you know, how to put on a sticker, how to send product in Amazon. So I’m going to work with some people who have basic knowledge and take them from where they’re at to the path to six figures and we’re going to go through that over the course of three months. Just kind of walking through how I’m doing it, how others are doing it, and we’re going to work together because there’s power of working together in a group, likeminded people who are trying to do the same thing.

Todd (16:41):
So that’s what I’m looking to do. But uh, uh, I don’t have a solid start date yet. I was hoping to do it sooner than what I’m doing it, but I decided to open this warehouse and that’s kind of eating up all of my time at the moment in plus Amazon is just exploding like crazy. Um, the sales on there. So I’ve just been trying to keep up with all of that. That’s why I’m here live with you guys today because I haven’t had time to record, uh, episodes for the podcast and didn’t want to leave you guys hanging so I can’t give you a solid time, hopefully sooner rather than later. Um, if you want to get on that wait list so that you’re one of the first people to know about it, entrepreneur, adventure.com for slash group and you can jump on that waitlist.

Todd (17:31):
And I will let you know as soon as I know. So appreciate the question though, JC. Um, let’s see. We’ve gotten Nelson, he says, hi, I’m in the UK. Do you do your one on one coaching calls with followers from the UK? Um, first off appreciate you from listening from the UK and uh, breadth as well from Australia. That’s awesome. Um, but yeah, for sure. I’ve done coaching calls for people from the UK before and just keep in mind that my, most of my knowledge is here in the USA. I’m definitely not an expert on international selling as much as I would like to be. Um, I’m expanding to Canada and hopefully the UK next. So just keep that in mind. But if you’re looking for more general advice or advice in the USA market, that’s where I can really help you with. So definitely though I’d be more than willing to jump on a call with you and help you out in whatever way I can.

Todd (18:40):
Um, let’s see. Scroll down here. We’ve got a question. Oops. Um, fill up like, Whoa, Woah, nice name. Alright. Says, Hey man, love your info. When I opened my Amazon FBA account, can I use a debit card also, how long does it take to get a bank statement? Do I need to wait for a billing cycle? So both really good questions that I don’t have a hundred percent answer to for sure. Um, I would assume you can use a debit card because most debit cards have like the visa or the MasterCard symbol, so they are like [inaudible], uh, credit cards. Um, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to use one if that’s all you have available. Um, if for some reason when you’re going through the process, it doesn’t let you accept it. I don’t see why it wouldn’t. But you know, there’s tons of credit cards out there that you can open.

Todd (19:41):
If you go to a website like NerdWallet, N E R, D wallet.com, they’ve got categories in there for all types of different credit cards. So even if you have like bad credit score or some other issue or something like that, there’s usually some kind of credit card that you can open in use. Um, so look at that. But I would try the debit card. I don’t think there’s any reason that they wouldn’t take it or that you’d have an issue. Um, but let me know if you go through that process. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone through and created my account. So, and I’ve always used a credit card so I don’t really know a hundred percent answer to that. But my logic would tell me, I don’t see why they wouldn’t take a debit card. Um, just keep in mind though, with a debit card, you don’t have that protection like you do with a credit card with a credit card.

Todd (20:32):
If something goes wrong, you can dispute that charge and potentially get that money back. But with a debit card, it’s more like writing a check. You know, once that money is out, you’re pretty much out of luck. For the most part. It’s a little bit better than writing a check, but not as good as the protection that a credit card provides you. Um, and how long does it take to get a bank statement? Um, usually 30 days. Um, if you talk with your bank, uh, whoever you’re opening a bank account up with, they may be able to get you one sooner, but definitely after that first 30 days you’ll be able to get that bank statement to open, open your Amazon account. So if you’re looking at doing that, then just open up an account with whoever your local bank is. Um, somebody who’s like a regional bank, um, you know, not a real small local bank but not a really big bank.

Todd (21:28):
They’re going to be more personable and you’re able to talk with them and make that connection and build that relationship. Just like we’re building a relationship with a brand. You want to build a relationship with a bank because you may need to borrow money in the future and having that relationship is going to be helpful. All right, so hopefully that answered your question. Um, let’s see. Jerry says, I have multiple spreadsheets and I have the basic down on how to go about it, but very time consuming going through thousands of product lists. Um, yes it is time consuming, that’s for sure. And that is the grind part. I’m going through thousands of products and figuring them out. I had one that I recently went through and it literally took me like a week to go through all of the products because first I go through automatically.

Todd (22:25):
Um, and my virtual assistants do a lot of this for me as well, but they go through it automatically either using tactical arbitrage or AMZ analyzer. I’ve been using tactical arbitrage a lot lately and uh, uploaded in there. It matches everything to Amazon. We look through that, find potential products and then do a deeper dive into them. Um, so that’s kind of the quick route. But then we go through it manually as well because you’re going to find a lot of products that maybe didn’t show up in the automated software because maybe they’re a combo pack so they don’t have a UPC that matches up. Um, maybe they’re a package of multiple different types of products that you can bring together and create that bundle or maybe somebody just entered the wrong UPC when they created that product on Amazon. And so you miss a lot of stuff with the automated system.

Todd (23:19):
So from there, I’m basically just going through that list, sorting it by brand, searching for that brand on Amazon and trying to find those low hanging fruit, uh, are not low hanging fruit, but products that are missing that are harder to find. So the opposite of low hanging fruit actually. Um, so it just takes time. You’re going to have to go through it. This recent one I went through, like I said, it took me like a whole week, but I literally found around a hundred potential products that I can sell and ordered about half of those tests, orders, which are just now arriving into Amazon. So we’ll see how many from that end up being good products. But, uh, I’ve been going really low on the order numbers lately. Um, the order numbers that they’re selling on Amazon, so the number of sales, um, because I’m looking for those products with really high ROI, maybe 50, 7500% ROI.

Todd (24:24):
Um, but maybe they’re only selling 10 or 20 units per month, but the listings are really bad and I can do a little bit optimization on those listings and maybe turn that 10 to 20 sales into 50 to 100 sales and I could potentially have that buy box all to myself for quite a while getting that high ROI. So I’ve been looking for a lot of those lately. Um, but yeah, it just takes time. That is the grind part of it. That in opening accounts, um, building up your catalog or products, it takes a lot of time. Uh, so Jerry, hopefully that answered your question. Uh, let’s do one more here from the chant and then I’m going to do the second recorded question that we have here. Get a drink of water.

Todd (25:13):
And so J Willis or yeah, J J wills nine 12 says, Hey Todd, what is the best way to know if a site is a distributor? I’m finding sites that say distributor, but then when I contact them, I’m finding that they are retailers. So I haven’t had a lot of that where a distributor, they say they’re a distributor but they’re actually a retailer. Um, you do find that sometimes they say they’re our distributor, but they’re actually a wholesaler, so they’re like a third party distributor. They’re getting close outs and things like that. I’m usually you can tell for wholesale or from a distributor because the account is extremely easy to open. You just fill out a form and they opened the account for you. And then they have like a never ending rotating product list. Those are usually wholesalers and usually they’ll have like a limited quantity of something and they want you to buy all of it or something like that.

Todd (26:17):
Um, those are usually wholesalers versus distributors. So sometimes I see that, but I haven’t really seen distributors posing retailers just posing as distributors as much. Um, usually you can tell a retailer from a distributor because a retailer is going to have products for sale on their website. Like you’ll just be able to go there and click add to cart and buy it. Some distributors will have that as well, but they’ll require you to create an account and log in either before you see the price or before you check out. And they’ll also usually have like a minimum order quantity of a certain number of products or a certain dollar amount. Um, so I haven’t really seen the retailers as distributors, but yeah, you definitely need to check that out. And just by how you did it, you probably called them and figured out that they were a retailer.

Todd (27:17):
That’s just kind of the path that you got to go through to kind of weed these out. Uh, so just get a look into it. That’s pretty much all you can do to figure out if a distributor is actually a distributor. Um, and I talked about it in a previous podcast as well. You can dive into things like hiring a private investigator to go and look at uh, actual business. Make sure they’re a real business. Call them up on the phone, make sure they’re answering the phone like a business actually would. Um, and maybe check them out on Google maps, make sure their business looks like an actual business. A lot of times you can do the street view and see if maybe they have, excuse me, an actual name on the side of their business and things like that to make sure that they are legit.

Todd (28:09):
But if you’re really worried about it before you make a big order, you just have to dive into it in all those different ways and make sure you feel comfortable ordering from them. Um, I have not had a problem ordering from a distributor or a brand yet. Um, it’s definitely a potential issue that you could run into, but I don’t think it’s a huge issue. If you do a little vetting upfront, talk to him on the phone, make sure they are a legitimate business. I think you’ll probably be okay. All right. So let’s do the other recorded message that I have here and that is from Hillary holiday. Let’s go ahead and listen to that one.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
I taught. This is Hilary according from Perth, Western Australia. I want to, first of all, thanks very much for all your videos and things that are fantastic. I’ve been doing private label on Amazon for quite a while now and decided to look at wholesale. Couple of questions. Um, the first one is I’m wanting to do it in the UK because the time difference makes it easier for me to speak to suppliers over there. Um, I’m trying to find good products, but most of the things I find seem to be from major brands and I’m wondering how you go about approaching major brands or finding the distributors from major brands or whether you just avoid them altogether. The second question is about PBC. Obviously having done a lot of private label and quite experienced with Amazon PPC, but obviously you want to know how it applies when you don’t always have the buy box because I’m pretty sure that ads only run when you have the buybacks. So, um, if you could tell me a little bit about what you do for PPC, that would be fantastic as well. Okay. I’ll wait to hopefully hear an answer on an upcoming podcast. Thanks very much Todd. Take care. Bye.

Todd (30:15):
Okay. All right. Hillary from Australia. We have Australia is in the house today, so that is awesome that people are listening all the way from Australia. Um, really appreciate the question, Hillary. A two part question there. So number one, you’re trying to open accounts and all of the good products that you’re finding in the UK seem to be big brands. And then number two, how do we deal with PPC in a wholesale, since you’re used to more private label? So big brands are going to be a lot harder to open up accounts directly. So like here in the U S if we’re talking about Nike or a Panta Gonia or Reebok, I don’t know why I always think about shoes when I’m trying to come up with brands, but I do, um, those are big brands, right? You’re probably not going to call up Nike or Reebok and say, Hey, how’s it going?

Todd (31:16):
I’d like to sell some of your shoes. Could I open up an account? It’s going to be very difficult. So same thing with any other big brands in the UK or wherever else. Um, it’s gonna be hard to open up that account directly. Um, and it’s only getting harder as they get less likely to want to sell the Amazon sellers because there’s so many bad Amazon sellers out there that make us all look bad. Um, so don’t be one of those bad Amazon sellers that says you’re going to do something and then not do it or say you’re going to make a big order and then make a small order. Um, makes it harder for all of us. But opening those accounts with big brands, you’re probably going to have to go the distributor route more and to find those distributors. Basically, as I’ve taught in some of my videos for searching on Google, you could just search for Nike United Kingdom or Nike great Britain and you’re going to come up with uh, or I’m sorry, Nike distributors, great Britain or Nike distributors United Kingdom, and you’re going to find distributors for those products.

Todd (32:28):
Now you’re going to have probably hundreds of pages that you’re going to have to weed through, but you’re just going to want to keep going through all of those pages. Look at those titles. If it looks like it could be a, open it in a new tab, just keep going until you get like 20, 30, 40 tabs open and then go through each one of those tabs and dig into their website, check their about us page and see if they look like an actual distributor. If they do, see if they have a way to open up an account right on their website. A lot of distributors do now, um, if not, then you can give them a call, shoot them an email. A call with distributors seems to be really easy. Um, nine times out of 10, that conversation is just, yeah, hi, I’d like to open up an account with you guys, uh, to buy your products wholesale.

Todd (33:21):
Uh, how do I go about doing that? And the person that you’re talking to, usually it’s going to be like a secretary or the operator, whoever answers the phone, they’re going to direct you to someone else or they’re just going to say, well, what’s your email? I’ll send you the applications that you fill it out and send it back to us. And that’s going to be about the end of the conversation. So it’s normally really easy, really quick conversation. Uh, remember distributors are much more transactional, so they’re just trying to open up accounts, sell more product. Um, now the brands are going to a lot of times put restrictions on them that no, we don’t want any Amazon sellers. We have to follow this map pricing and things like that. But in general, opening those accounts a lot of times is a lot easier. Now, some of them are going to require retail stores, um, with this craziness with coronavirus and pandemic that we’re going through.

Todd (34:15):
I think that is going to become less. Uh, there’s gonna be more opportunity for e-commerce sellers because a lot of these companies are finding that all of my brick and mortar stores are closed. They’re not buying from me, but my e-commerce sellers are buying more because I’m selling a lot more. Most people I’m talking to are selling a lot more online. eCommerce sellers are doing really well. I think distributors will see that and open up their doors for more e-commerce sellers in the future going forward. So the opportunity is definitely growing. Um, some won’t, you’re just going to have to find out and see what they say. Um, but that’s how I would go about it with big brands. And don’t be afraid to call those big brands. You might be surprised and they might let you open up an account directly. So I always do both.

Todd (35:07):
You’re always calling the brand, trying to open up directly, but also finding distributors. And remember those distributors that you find, maybe the pricing is no good for those Nike shoes, but they’re going to have a hundred or a thousand other brands that maybe many of them you’ve never heard of but are selling well on Amazon. And those are going to end up being the ones that you sell, not necessarily the one that you’re going into looking at it for. So keep that in mind. Just cause you’re looking for a Nike doesn’t mean you’re going to end up selling Nike. You’re just looking for a Nike to try to find those accounts to open and then you’re going to be looking at all the products that the distributors are, uh, having available. So that’s how I would go about that. As far as the second part of your question, let me get a drink with the PPC.

Todd (36:03):
Uh, you, it’s debatable on how much you actually want to do. Some wholesale sellers. Don’t do any PPC. Some do a lot, some are in the middle. I’m kind of in the middle right now. Um, and the way it works as a wholesale seller since you are sharing the buy box is Amazon is just going to run your ad when you have the buy box. So you’re not going to be spending any money getting other people’s sales. When you are in the buy box, that’s when Amazon is going to show the ad for you. And what I like to do a lot, uh, especially with products that have a little higher ROI, like 50% or higher is at a minimum, I do a 25 cent auto campaign. So basically I create a campaign, add that product in there, just set it to auto. So Amazon is going to get the keywords and try to figure that out for me.

Todd (37:03):
Automatically add the product in there and set a maximum bid for 25 cents. Now you’re not going to get very many impressions. Some products you get more, some you get a lot less. Uh, but what you’re looking to get is the low hanging fruit. Like when other people run out of advertising dollars and Amazon is looking for an ad to throw in there. They’re going to grab your ad and throw it in that place. So usually your, your, uh, eight costs, your advertising cost of sale is going to be very cheap. So that’s the percentage that you spent on advertising to get a sale. So if you’re selling a product for $10 and it costs you a dollar to get that sale through ads, then you have a 10% a cost for that. And the lower, obviously the better, especially if you have smaller margins. But that’s kind of how I deal with that.

Todd (38:04):
Um, you’re just not going to get that advertisement if you’re not in the buy box. So a little bit different than coming from the private label world where you, you’re used to having always have the buy box with the wholesale. It’s just when you have it, that’s when your ad is going to run. All right, so Hillary, hopefully that answered your question out there. Uh, appreciate it. Coming all the way from Australia. Uh, let’s see. I’m running out of time here. Got to get to on some stuff here, but let’s answer a few more questions from the chat. Um, let’s see. J Willis has another question here. Hey Todd, what is the best way to know if a site is a distributor? Uh, Nope. Nope. Sorry, I already answered that one. James Anderson. Even when we work with authorized distributors, that does not mean that the brands you sell authorize you to sell on Amazon.

Todd (39:06):
In light of that, do you always contact brands to ask for permission? Um, no I do not. You’re absolutely correct that just because a distributor says, yeah, you’re cool to sell this, then that doesn’t necessarily mean the brand wants you to sell it and that the brand is not going to maybe issue an IP complaint, intellectual property complaint or something like that. I don’t contact all the brands in the less, I have a strong reason to. Um, so I talked about that plugin IP alert. Um, so if IP alert gives me an alert that says this brand is known to issue IP complaints, then I would either steer clear or contact the brand to find out if I could maybe get around that. Because if I’m able to get around that and other people are deterred by them, uh, issuing IP complaints, then I could potentially have a really good product there.

Todd (40:09):
Um, but also, you know, I don’t want to get an IP complaint on my account, so I’d probably contact the brand, see if I could get around that somewhere. Um, or if the brand is maybe the only person selling that product and then you probably want to watch out as well. But if the brand is selling it and there’s lots of other people selling it or a few other people selling it, then the risk is lower. Um, if you want to be really safe, you can definitely contact that brand. And like I said, you might want to contact that brand anyways. I typically do to see if you can buy directly and get the product even cheaper potentially. Um, but you can’t always do that, especially as you’re scaling and carrying hundreds of different products and adding new products all the time. Uh, sometimes you just buy the product and if the brand comes and says they don’t want you selling, then you have to decision to make.

Todd (41:04):
You can either sell out of the product, move on, see if you can negotiate to try to allow them to sell you a product or continue to sell it without the brand’s permission. Um, it’s really a gray area as to whether the brand has the right to stop you from selling on Amazon. Um, legally they may or may not. It depends on how their warranty and other agreements and stuff are set up. Um, usually they don’t have any legitimate claim to stop you from selling. But I usually don’t sell products. The brand doesn’t want me to sell because I often try to work with brands to better their listings and sales on Amazon to build that relationship. So I don’t really want to deal with that headache. So if a brand doesn’t want me to sell it, usually I take the opportunity to try to build a bridge there. If that doesn’t work, then I would discontinue selling it. Um, but that’s a choice that you kind of have to make and weigh your options as to what it’s worth and what kind of headache you want to deal with.

Todd (42:18):
Alright, so few more minutes here before I am going to have to cut out. Uh, let’s see if I can answer one more question here. The next one up we have, let’s see from Adrian, it says, hi Todd. You were saying something about three months training with you. Um, all right, so yeah, I answered that a little bit earlier. Adrian, if you weren’t in here, go ahead and check out the replay. You can check out that. But yeah, entrepreneur, venture.com/group to get on that waiting list if you’re interested in the small group coaching. Um, let’s see. James says, by the way, my question about pertains to when you are purchasing from authorized distributors. Yeah, I did give that James. Uh, let’s see if we have anyone who I didn’t answer yet. Here’s David newsy. I’m brand new at Amazon and hope to start wholesale soon.

Todd (43:23):
Thanks for being straight forward. There are so many fake gurus steering people the wrong way. It can be very hard to find your way. I appreciate that David. I’m glad I come across as not being fake. I try not to be, I try to be just genuine and giving you the information I have. I’m definitely not an expert on everything. Um, and if I’m not, I try to let you guys know that, but I’m really glad that I am able to help you out. Let’s see if we can get a question here. Um, from Vita, I started FBA three months ago. I’ve been able to open few wholesale accounts but still can’t find any profitable items. I just don’t know what am doing wrong. And also, are you open to coaching calls? Um, so yes, I’m open to coaching calls. Of course, entrepreneur, venture.com/coach I believe is the right link to take you there if you want to check that out.

Todd (44:19):
But what are you doing wrong? It’s really hard to say without knowing more about your situation, but opening wholesale accounts and finding those profitable products can be extremely difficult. Um, that is the big grind. Opening those accounts and just grinding through that, getting those, through those rejections and getting to the people who allow you to open up an account. And then once you open those accounts, a lot of the products are just not going to be profitable. Uh, but that’s where it comes into building those relationships with people and getting that connection so you can get discounts, um, on advertise discounts especially are really important. A lot of distributors will have a tier based system. Like you spend this much, you’ll get this much off, you spend this much, you get this much off. Those ones are easy. Um, but other ones will have on advertised discounts that you can potentially get.

Todd (45:20):
And a lot of salespeople, they work on commission, right? So they potentially have the option to sacrifice some of their commission to give you more of a discount if they see the potential for you to order a lot of product. So negotiation is the key to finding those profitable products and you may have to come down a little bit in the number of sales that you’re looking for. If you’re only looking at products that are doing three, four or 500 or a thousand sales a month, the profit is going to be really small lot. A lot of those, you might be looking at 10% ROI instead of a 30% or more that we’re normally looking for. And that’s why I mentioned earlier, I’m going to a lot lower or higher sales ranks and I’m even looking into maybe the one to 300,000 sales rank for those products that may be have a bunch of reviews but are not selling well for whatever reason, and maybe I can cut the price down.

Todd (46:20):
Maybe my ROI is at like a hundred percent I can bring it down to 50 or 60% and get that sales moving on that product. Or I can take a few new pictures or maybe there’s no bullets, the title’s really bad and I can potentially get that product and moving and selling well. So you might have to come down and lower, um, the standard that you’re looking for. Now that’s not to say you don’t want to go after those big selling products because those ones are always really nice when you can find them, right? But they’re also typically going to be more competitive. So your ROI is naturally going to go down. And some of those really big sellers that I mentioned earlier, like net rush knee tales, some of their models are potentially selling millions of dollars in products a year and only making that 10% ROI.

Todd (47:12):
That’s just their model that they’re going off of. So you’re going to be competing with those, with those higher velocity products. So just keep that in mind. You just have to keep digging, looking for discounts. I’m trying to find those products that are out there. There’s a lot of products out there still. Uh, you know, there’s a lot of people selling on Amazon, but there are literally hundreds of millions of products out there, new products all the time. You can even go down the route of finding products that maybe aren’t on Amazon and help that brand come on to Amazon and be their guide, so to speak and get an exclusive, you know, as you get used to seeing all these products, you kind of start getting an idea of what’s gonna sell well and what’s not going to necessarily sell well. So you can look at a product and be like, that one is not selling really well, but it should be and maybe I can make some tweaks and get it selling really well.

Todd (48:11):
So, um, yeah, that’s just kind of the grind that you go through though. You gotta find those products that are selling well or make products sell well, um, by doing a little bit of a work in getting that listing going. So that is going to about wrap it up everybody. I really appreciate you all coming on the live. We’ve got a lot of chat going on here. A lot of questions. If I didn’t ask your question, make sure you head over, or if I didn’t answer your question, I should say, make sure you head over to Amazon Seller School.com forward slash ask a S K record your question there and I will make sure that I answer it on an upcoming podcast. And this went really well. We’ve got a lot of people on here, a lot of questions. I’ve had a lot of fun doing this, so we might have to do some more lives like this as well. So let me know in the comments if you want me to do some more of these lives. Also, if you haven’t already, hit that little bell and subscribe button and get notified to more videos just like that one or this one. So with that, Todd, wealth from the Amazon Seller School, signing off, happy selling everybody.

Announcer (49:29):
This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow entrepreneur. And always remember success is yours if you take it.