In this episode, we sit down with Carlos Alvarez, the mastermind behind Wizards of Ecom and a nine-figure Amazon seller. Carlos shares his journey from selling cigars to becoming a top Amazon seller and offers insights into differentiating your products in a competitive market.
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How to Win on Amazon with Differentiation
Carlos explains the importance of differentiating your products on Amazon to stand out from the competition and increase sales.
The Power of Technological Differentiation
Learn how adding an app to your product can dramatically increase its perceived value, boost your profits, and give you a competitive edge.
Managing Reviews and Rebates Effectively
Discover strategies for managing customer reviews and using rebates to improve your product’s reputation and increase sales.
Tapping into the IKEA Effect
Understand how reengineering your products to include assembly can increase customer satisfaction and lead to more positive reviews.
Resources From This Episode
- Wizards of Ecom
- Carlos Alvarez on LinkedIn
- GoodBarber – Service to create and manage your app
- Eunleash – Service to help set up your app with GoodBarber
In Conclusion
Carlos Alvarez provides invaluable tips on differentiating your products on Amazon and leveraging technological differentiation to increase your profits. By implementing these strategies, you can stand out in a crowded marketplace and grow your Amazon business. Explore the resources mentioned to further enhance your Amazon selling experience.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: To get positive reviews at the end of the day, where humans and this law of reciprocity exists, if you got a rebate. From me, the, the percentage of people that do naturally convert into a positive review when they’re given an easy opportunity to do it are much higher. Okay. You don’t need to go out and ask and tie it, but we’ve tested this.
It’s just significantly higher
[00:00:23] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: all right. What’s up everybody. Welcome to another episode.
I’ve got my friend Carlos Alvarez today. He’s the founder of. Wizards of Ecom, which is the largest Amazon meetup group in the world. He’s also a nine figure seller, which if you don’t count the zeros there, that’s nine figures over a hundred million dollars in sales on Amazon. So he is an expert and we’re looking forward to diving into how you can differentiate your products on Amazon to really stand out.
So, Carlos, I appreciate you coming on the show.
[00:00:58] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: I appreciate the invite, man. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:02] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Absolutely. So, why don’t you give us the, uh, few minute intro of your background, how you got into Amazon, and how you worked your way to being a nine figure seller.
[00:01:14] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Mostly by accident, a little bit of desperation, but been doing it for 15 years.
Had a, had an expensive, expensive ex girlfriend. And I just was trying to have side hustles to make some extra money while I was working as a public’s dairy clerk and selling cigars and a lot of other odd jobs. And 15 years ago, it was in some respects easier to sell. So we were crushing it on eBay. And then I just started dropping these other jobs and found myself doing it full time.
Amazon used to pitch us over there when we sold on eBay on our auctions, try out this FBA thing. And with a whole one day, just with a whole bunch of inventory that wouldn’t move on eBay, I just said, well, if they’re willing to hold it in these FBA thing, like, let’s just send it and we sent it, we meaning your business partners, I’ve, you know, I’ve done book sales, garage sales, and, you know, evolved. I like to play for the word evolved, but evolved into, uh, Wholesale, which is what allowed me to really break out using the Amazon wholesale model. And then I would say now I’m predominantly private label, but I’ve never completely abandoned the wholesale model because it’s just a, just a great cash flow machine.
Um, started a community, the podcast you mentioned Wizards of Ecom and yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s it in a nutshell.
[00:02:27] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Awesome. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s definitely cool to see the different ways that, uh, people take on Amazon and you didn’t mention the, one of the coolest things that I think that you do is selling the bugs and the cricket live
[00:02:40] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: insects.
Yeah. That’s my
[00:02:41] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: next, which is pretty
[00:02:42] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: cool
[00:02:42] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: as well.
[00:02:43] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: First brand I exited and then, and also ironically, the only brand I have left after restarting it again.
[00:02:48] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. It’s one of those things that’s hard to replicate. Chinese sellers can’t come in and do it because you’re shipping these insects, uh, locally and everything.
So it’s a pretty cool thing to kind of set yourself apart from other sellers.
[00:03:04] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Yeah. And it’s a pretty safe product to put out there and kind of show what you sell. Because. It’s hard enough to start a new brand, but with this one, I think there’s the added thing of a lot of people don’t want to let their peers know or their business partner.
It sounds crazy that we’re going to breed alive insects. We’re going to breed. Obviously, they’re live. If they’re breeding, we’re going to breed insects and sell them online. And then you have the barrier of like your significant other. Like, like, Hey babe, I’m going to get into insects. That’s usually a, that’s usually a kill card right there.
So yeah, it’s been, it’s been crazy. And I’d say out of all the accomplishments I’ve done online, that seems to be the one that if I go to a conference, you’re like, Oh, that’s the insect guy. And I feel like saying I sell other things too, you know, but yeah, yeah, definitely.
[00:03:46] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: It’s impossible to forget and it stands out so I get it for sure but talk about differentiation in a market like that right from other sellers and stuff so now your main focus is like private label and things like that and of course the meetup group as well but you want to go into technological differentiation and differentiating your products to really stand out in the market.
So what does it take to actually win in the private world private label world nowadays.
[00:04:16] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Yeah. I love how you add it nowadays because it has changed so freaking much. I think it’s changed more in the last year than it’s changed in the preceding 14. Did I say that right? Like the 14 before that, like it’s changing that rapidly.
A lot of it in the logistics world. I was just on a call with Yanni Mazur from Gatita and he brought up an acronym I never heard of called FACOS. Like we know tacos, like. Uh, total average cost of sale, but he’s got FACOS, which is FBA added cost of sale, kind of like all those extra fees that come into there and the PPC, everything in there.
It’s like really forced people to look at private label differently. And I’m going to throw this out before I get on my soap boxes. I’m super passionate about this topic is obviously whoever’s listening to this, you can, and maybe even you Todd might disagree with me, but like we could all approach private label differently and I’ll be wildly successful and I’ll be right.
So I’m not sitting here saying like the only way you can be successful or a real private label seller is to do what I’m saying on the contrary, for sure. A drum that I’ve really beat on for the last decade has to do with differentiation. And I guess tapping myself on the back lately with all this extra, you know, fees and everything else going on, it’s looking more and more like I might have hit on a winner and not have just been some, you know, weird contrarian passion project of mine is, is differentiating now seems to be the key.
It seems like. The recipe for failing on Amazon right now is a me too product from China. A hundred percent. Yeah. You’re just, you’re not going to have the margins. If I had to just jump out there and say, what is a sweet spot? Everything else being equal on Amazon right now that you could do good, it would be like the a hundred to 250 range.
If you’re getting into a me too product, you just have a lot more margin, but most people are not going to be able to do that. So a me too product, some Alibaba ready to ship, uh, me too product on Amazon is kind of where your profits go to die. And it’s sad because there’s a lot of information out there, some new and some just outdated that is still still beating that drum.
So when I’m talking about differentiation, I’m for the purposes of Amazon, I’m talking about a differentiation to your product that is very obvious in the main image. And I think this is important to clarify is going to tie in really well. With, um, the technological differentiator that, that I was speaking to you about and, and feel free to cut me off on this ’cause I will just go , you know what I mean?
Yeah, go for sure. Okay. So a differentiator that is very obvious in the main image. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try to improve, you know, the, the inner workings of your product, but the example I like to share. Let’s say you have a coffee grinder and I used to be, I used to have some brands in the coffee space and there’s this like higher level of coffee grinder that uses a ceramic burr.
To, to really grind your, your coffee. If you were to add extra ceramic burrs inside of your coffee grinder, yes, it would grind your coffee better, I assume, but you wouldn’t be able to see those extra coffee grinders in the main image when you’re scrolling. So for Amazon purposes, that’s not going to have the same impact, right?
So that’s, I think that’s pretty critical when we’re talking about differentiating to succeed on Amazon. Nothing wrong with differentiating to add value to the world, but for Amazon, it needs to be if you want to reap the rewards, it needs to be different in the main image. I like to go with this like, um, defensibility chart where on on on the low end of defensibility, you you change the color of a product, right?
Anybody can do that. So it’s not very defensible, and it’s very easy to do. It’s rare that you find someone like like an angry orange. I think you’re familiar with that case study. Yeah, that Braccio purchased brand that was able to really break out because they changed the branding, the color. But it’s so rare that that can happen.
The next one would be multiples, if you will. So multiples or specifically, yeah, let’s go with multiples. The next one, like maybe number two, three ish on this defensibility chart would be. You put multiples of a product together, but instead of just like sell a feigning them together, like you see a lot, maybe you created custom packaging that made for those multiple products.
And maybe even the packaging itself is functional with the product. Um, Dave, Brian, Mike Jackness, they have a really good one. They talk about what this, which is that toe rope and they put two toe ropes together, but then they created some packaging that actually goes with the toe rope and makes it visible at night.
So, so that would be an example. Um, beyond that, you’re getting into like your, your four and your six range. Your four and your five, maybe low six range. And that’s going to be your changing the dimensions of the product. And this is pretty, this is awesome. Like, imagine you’re looking at a, I guess let’s use the jungle scout one.
If you remember that one, the jungle sticks. So I got these jungle sticks, right? And like marshmallow sticks, they call jungle sticks and they get these jungle sticks. Well, imagine you just decided you could add more jungle sticks. So that would be multiple. You could add colorful jungle sticks and make them multiple.
So now you’ve tapped into the two we just mentioned. Or you could make them longer. Now, if you make them longer, you might be looking at a mold. So that a lot of your competition drops off at that point, you know, that, that motivational weekend webinar they saw made it said like really quick, we can do this and not a lot of risk.
And when you get into molds, you got to invest money for some people that means risk and they back off. That usually means less competition. Now with the case of jungle sticks, you’re probably not looking at a mold. It’s like, it’s like wood or whatever those things are made out of. And it’s easy, but imagine if it was a stainless steel.
Jungle stick for you to extend the length of that. That’s a pretty pricey mold, but you start getting into the area where not only getting the mold, does it help? But imagine if you got an 18 or 20 inch jungle stick or marshmallow stick out of stainless steel, and then you also made it collapsible. So you didn’t fall into the oversized category, right?
So that’s that sweet zone you can get into. And it’s technically differentiating. After that, you start getting into IP. Licensing as ways to differentiate, you know, getting your product components made from multiple factories and having it assembled in one factory and then patents and trademarks. Okay.
But number eight on that list is something that I call technological differentiation. And hopefully everyone’s rode with me through that list to see why it’s important and other options. But this one is just killer on Amazon. So remember the differentiation needs to be obvious in the main image. So I want you to kind of like listeners to this, like I want you to try to envision a.
A baby monitor that you might buy like a baby monitor on Amazon, or if you don’t have kids, then let’s just say wearable technology. Like imagine this, those sports watches, whatever your brand, when you see that product or an alarm system. Right. Floodlights outside. When you see those products on Amazon right now, one thing that they all have in common is they all have a phone sitting right beside them.
Like the outline of a phone and an app that is open on the main image and what it communicates is this product works with an app. This product has a companion app and that’s It also usually means if you see a list of these products and one of them has this phone app and the other one does not in the main image, we automatically assign greater value.
To the one that has the app, right? Kind of like in the old days, like there was a period of time where you could pop a book out on, you know, using Amazon self publishing or Kindle. And everyone’s like, Oh my God, it’s an author. They thought you went through the same process as Stephen King and you came out the other side and you were published.
But now that most people know, like. You could just submit a word dot, like it’s kind of known now. So the, the, the oomph that it had is much less.
[00:11:59] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yes.
[00:12:00] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: You know, you know what I’m saying? You with me on that? Yeah. Yeah. Everything
[00:12:03] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: is going that way a lot. Right, right. So like, uh, sales calls and stuff are you used to be.
Really good sales calls. We’d be able to get people hooked and bring people in. Now it’s like, hello. And you hear like one word and you’re like, click. Yeah. Yeah. So
[00:12:22] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: just like that, well, for everyone on apps still has that oomph. Like even amongst some business people, um, I was pretty shocked when I first started, I was like, yeah, I’ll get an app, but that’s, that’s going to be like an arm, leg and a kidney.
That’s going to be cost prohibitive for me to do. You got to get developers, you got to do all this different stuff. So. I was pleasantly surprised and I’ll get into that in a second on how that’s done. But these products have that higher perceived value because of that app. And I think the reason it has to do with is the other products that we immediately say, Hmm, what other products do we know that have an app?
And we probably think of like Samsung and Apple and all these massive global players that we know have a lot of money and are high quality products. So what happens now is Amazon does not have a rule that says that. Only those types of products are only certain types of products can have an app and what happens.
And because of that, that opens up a lot of possibilities. So if you check out, um, I don’t know, I’m going to mention a brand and it’s totally cool that it comes online. It’s a, it’s a friend, it’s a friend of mine’s. I helped them start it. And, um, but if you want, if someone watching this wanted to kind of pause or afterwards, go back and look at a brand as an example, if you look at a brand called leaves and soul.
It’s a buddy of mine’s brand, amazing, amazing brand, and he, you’ll see the app in play, if you will. And it’s done wonders and it’s backed up everything that I’m going to say, you know, share here on the show. So you can, you can add an app to any product you have, and it has a lot of benefits, which I’ll share in a second.
See, see my mind’s like racing and I want to do say so many things at once and I want to make sure that like this is in the most digestible ways. I truly believe like every private label seller should be doing this. Um, so let me get into now one, let me, let me share one other example about a product that I think everyone can visualize and that is yoga blocks, right?
Like yoga blocks or a yoga belt. That’s another area where profits go to die, right? It’s very easy to order these things, but they’re so freaking competitive. Most people are not brand loyal in this space. So now imagine you’re searching for these yoga blocks, and if you don’t know what they are, they’re these blocks you could stack and they kind of assist in these exercises.
So if you’re like this, you know, sit at your desk warrior, e comm warrior like me, and you can’t do downward facing dog and you want to get some blocks to help you like cheat and get in that position, these blocks will assist. And imagine seeing these blocks and this, you, you search yoga blocks and the page has this like dizzying list of blocks, all looking the same, all stacked in the same positions.
You choose the one that is the cheapest and that has the most reviews. That’s what you do. Now, imagine you’re doing that and one of them has an app silhouette, phone silhouette on the main image and the splash screen, kind of like the screen that you’re seeing displayed on that phone in your main image says something like, you know, free weekly sun salutation classes.
Not only are you getting the, wow, this company’s really legit. You’re also in a sneaky way being told there’s added value here. Now you’re not allowed to say in your listing. That buy this and we’ll deliver this other thing extra. Like you can’t bifurcate the sale, but, or the deliverable, but you, you can have it written there if it really is your splash screen so that people see it and it dramatically increases conversions.
So what do you
[00:15:58] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: mean, what do you mean by your splash screen?
[00:16:00] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: So, you know, when you open an app, there’s that initial home page. Yep. So, that’s kind of what I’m calling a splash screen. And it might be the wrong word. Like, imagine when you open your app, what is the home screen? So, let’s say your home screen.
I
[00:16:11] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: guess I would call it.
[00:16:12] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Huh? Home page, I guess. Home page, yeah. That’s a better one. The splash screen is actually the thing that flashes on there until the home screen loads. So, that’s a good point. So, your home page is what’s being shown there. And on the homepage, you’re going to see that it’s usually for your app.
It’s going to have the navigation either on the side or the bottom, and then it’s going to have your like main hero image or thing that you want on your homepage. In this case, it could be that example of, you know, free sun salutations or, or any, or anything you want. Um, now your justification for having the app, right?
So hopefully everyone’s sold on how that helps. Oh, backup. When you have an app, I find that you can sell your product. In most cases, there’s gotta be exceptions. But in most cases you could sell your product for an additional five bucks more. Now, if your goal is high volume, low profits, I’ve been there.
I’ve done that. Hopefully you get out of that mindset, but profits are everything. So yes, you boost your product by 5. You’re going to sell less, but you’re going to profit a quarter. Oh, load more. And it’s not that much less because there are some people that just like, I use that filter. I want quality.
Yep. For sure. Well, a little more, but you’re going to get a lot more profit. You can usually boost your, the cost of your product by about your selling price of your product by about five bucks. The side benefit you have from doing that a few, a few one, you have more money to, You know, to invest because more profits allow you to invest greater in R and D and coming out with more products or a 2.
0 version of this product. The other thing you get to do is you get to starve out your competitors with pay per click advertising. So we’re like, if we all have the same product, we’re pretty much working with the same margins and it becomes this game of chicken, like how much am I willing to spend on ads or how much of a hit am I willing to take on my people on my profits?
To rank on to make even more or less profit. But in this case, what happens is if you’re selling for five bucks more, you dominate all the spots. For all of your major keywords and you still make more profit. Yep. Yeah. It makes a big difference. Huge, huge, huge difference. And then there’s just a higher perceived value.
So, so that’s hopefully people are sold on why you should do it there. Now, some of the added other benefits, again, these are secondary benefits for me. If, if someone, if you try to lead with this one, I kind of think someone’s head might not be in the right spot. Although I get it because my head’s not been in the right spot sometimes too.
No judgment, but secondary benefits here are. When somebody receives the product and first of all, on your packaging, it shows that, you know, Apple app store, you know, I app store and the Google play store or whatever. When they show those icons on it, it’s huge added value that you’re allowed to do because you are in those stores.
It boosts the perceived value of your packaging. But there’s an app there for someone to scan. And Take them to your, you know, there’s a, I’m sorry, there’s a QR code there for people to scan to take them to your app. Um, anything you’re spending in fancy insert cards, you don’t need to spend anymore. So that’s savings per unit because everything you were going to put in that insert card now lives in your app, your warranty, registration information, your FAQs for the product.
Um, if you’re into rebates, which again, I think you’re, you’re playing with a little bit of fire there, but if you are into rebates, Have somebody register their product. And when they go to register their product, if you’re using a smart form, like Google form or like type form or something, you know, the first thing they got to do is input the product.
When you see what product that is, have the next field be, where did you buy it? And then list all these different marketplaces, even though you don’t sell in them, right? And when they click the one that says Amazon, ask them if they’ve claimed their rebate yet. Mm hmm. You know, and this is automated by the way.
So
[00:20:00] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: on rebates though, what, uh, what, what is the risk there with the rebates that Amazon is going to think that you’re doing something for reviews or.
[00:20:11] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: So
[00:20:11] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: there’s, there’s nothing wrong
[00:20:12] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: with the rebate as long as you’re not saying, you know, maybe on the immediate page afterwards, you know, have you claimed your rebate?
And they’re like, uh, and you have the button that says, yes, send me my rebate. And when they click it. It says show proof that you left a review. So, so now you’re in, you’re in foul territory. Um, like you’re not allowed, now you’re getting into incentivizing reviews, no matter how fancy your copywriting skills are.
Like that’s, that’s where you’ve sort of left yourself at. Now, if you’ve, I find very valuable to, to maybe if you did want to tie the rebate to something, which by the way, if you do just give the rebate. The likelihood that they do leave a positive review is significantly higher, and you can now follow up with them off Amazon, checking in to see whether they’ve left that review, but the
[00:21:03] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: goal of the rebate, then what you’re talking about is using that as like bait to get the Their information, get them the register and give you all of their info.
[00:21:15] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Yeah. And to wow them for whatever experience you do wants. It could be to short circuit, a negative review, or I’m sorry, short stop, a negative review. It could be to get positive reviews at the end of the day where humans and this law of reciprocity exists. If you got a rebate from me, the, the percentage of people that do naturally convert.
Into a positive review when they’re given an easy opportunity to do it are much higher. Okay. You don’t need to go out and ask and tie it, but we’ve tested this. It’s just significantly higher. Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, the, the other one is just, you get to sell to the people now. So when they have the app, you know, we talk about emails.
Amazing. I love email. Um, we talk about how powerful SMS is and in the right circumstances, I think it is. But when someone has your app on their phone, you’re now allowed to send push notifications. So when you have a new product that’s out, you could send a push notification, a reminder to do blank. Um, PR that your company has going on.
So again, all those other ones to me are secondary. They’re still major ones. You save money, you know, getting the no more needing to invest in all these like crazy, fancy insert cards that really just Are measured by what’s not as bad as the next one, but no one’s like saying, this one is just amazing, right?
If it’s white hat, um, and you, you get to get your customers, anyone that goes on your app, you now have them, you can get them in your CRM, you get access to send them push notifications, SMS, anything you want. And it’s a better customer experience and you get more profits. So that’s a huge list of things that are amazing.
Now, the app itself, I don’t know if you have any questions on that before I get into the app itself.
[00:23:00] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, I guess the, the big thing for me is, you know, are we going to get into the territory pretty quick of like app fatigue? And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got tons of app apps on my phone that I never open, right?
They just sit there until eventually I uninstall them. So do you have stats on that? Like how often people are actually using these apps?
[00:23:25] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Yeah, since I’m the same way, but I do have a handful of apps that I use regularly. And to me, what it comes down to, and I hate to just give you a general like marketing response, like digital marketer response, but this is what it boils down to.
Like whatever the means of communication that there is, if I tell you. Like, are you an, are you an early morning person or are you late? Yeah. Like what time do you get up? Usually about six. Okay. So let’s say that I told you that at 2 45 every morning, if you open the email that I sent you within the first two minutes, 500 is going to be put in your bank account.
You all of a sudden would never miss that email. If I told you it was five bucks, you might do it the next day out of curiosity, but you’re probably going to say, I’m going to get my sleep so I can crush it today because the 5 didn’t overcome that barrier. So these other options that I mentioned about communication with the app, they are secondary, but if you were to treat them as primaries and you’re like, I really want to go all in on this, you just need to make sure that when they get in that app for that initial reason for the warranty.
Or better how to, how to assemble your product or whatever it is. You just need to make sure that the value you’re promising them equates to whatever that number is. That’ll get them up at two 45 in the morning. And when you do that, there is not an issue. You’ll all of a sudden be on this person’s list.
And if you don’t, you’re just being lazy. And then just, just enjoy the benefits you get from the first one that I mentioned, which is the differentiated or the main image, but you got to overcome that there’s, there’s a guy named Pat Flynn. You know, Pat Flynn, I do. So I’m in like some of his accelerators and stuff like that.
And when he, you know, he’s like a, a godfather in the podcast space, um, email marketing, all that stuff. So he had this one, and this, this is kind of where I’m, I’m sort of stealing this from, and I feel the need to give him credit is. He, when he first came out with an email list, it was about how to sell online.
And in the first email, he gave you a tip on how to save 40 bucks on your cable bill, nothing having to do with what he was selling or anything like that. But everyone there had cable, everyone on his list had cable. And he gave them a win and he gave them a reason to say, Hey, this person gives value to my life.
I opened all his emails after that. Sometimes I scanned right for the area. So it’s on us as business owners to do that. But I guess that’s a topic for like another, another episode if I get invited back. So absolutely the app itself, shockingly. So there’s a service. Again, you could do this yourself. I’ll mention, you actually know Andres from when he comes up with me sometimes with the Tampa group.
So Andres is who I’m going to plug here. He’s a business partner of mine, but in an unrelated business called Salsa Kings, I have no affiliation with the, you know, the agency or the name that I’m going to mention in a bit. But by the way, can I mention that? I don’t know. Yeah. So I have no affiliation there.
I get no kickback whatsoever. I, You know what I get? I get bragging rights. So anytime I’m across the table debating with my business partner, I get to remind him that I brought him business, you know what I mean? And that’s priceless to me. So what happens here is there’s a service called good barber. You just, anyone can go to a good barber.
com and with good barber. com. I think you can get on like a monthly membership of like 75 bucks or maybe 90 bucks and you get the app. Now the setup process is a bit complicated. To set up in my opinion to set up this, but also I’m the same person that would rather hire a service to fill out my resale certificate than do it myself, or I don’t file.
I hire people for that. Maybe you’re not. And maybe you’re one of the people that can do it. And then it’s fantastic. I also have no design skills. Anyone that’s seen me. I have no sense of fashion or what looks good. So I’m just like, let me hire someone who does. So what Good Barber does is it is sort of like think of it as Shopify and it allows you to connect to the web.
So this allows you to connect to the app stores. And now you just need someone on the Good Barber side to design your app. I leaned on my business partner, which, by the way, charged me full price. And I believe he charged me, I think it was like 500 one time to set this up. And then I think there’s like a nominal annual renewal fee of like.
A few hundred bucks, which breaks out. It breaks down to less than like less than like 30 bucks a month. After that, the benefit also of doing that with him is I don’t have to pay the 99 a month to good barber. All I got to do is the renewal with him. Like once a year of like 200 bucks, which means the app pays for itself in the first year, just in the savings on good barber, by going to someone who knows how to do it, like on this, uh, his, his company’s name is Ian leash.
com. So he, he sets this up. The most difficult spot is it takes like 30 to 60 days To get connected in the app store. And then while that’s going on, you’re designing your app. So I look at it like this, let’s just, it’s a thousand to 1, 500. I don’t remember which one, but let’s just go with the high number.
Let’s say 1, 500, 1, 500. If you get to sell your product for more money per sale, moving forward, because you have an app. The 1500 is a no freaking brainer, not to mention you’re going to save a bunch of money and whatever you were doing with insert cards, you’re going to crush it a lot more on PPC. You’re going to get more reviews because you seem to have a higher perceived value.
It’s really a no brainer in doing it and I recommend people go that whether you set it up yourself with good barber or you go with Andres. With the unleashed that you set this up and get it locked in on your on your listing. I call it a technological differentiator because it’s a bit of technology and it’s a differentiator because it’s showing up on the main image of your listing.
I guess you could pair it with a me too product, but I think you get into you. What would you call it? Like PL genius mode on is if you can do a differentiated product that gives you ability to boost in price. Like say you have a gravity French press. I don’t know. That’s a thing, right? But like you have this gravity power.
I guess they’re all gravity power. Like you have an anti gravity powered French press and that looks different in the main image and the technological differentiator. You might be selling it. For like 10, 15 more than everybody else.
[00:28:58] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. Differentiation is the more you differentiate, the more likely you’re going to stand out, get those sales.
But when it comes to the app, obviously, well, maybe not obviously to everybody, but you’re going to want to be building that around a brand, right? Just not. Random products all over the place, at least if you want to get higher value for the app, because then you could make it. Let’s take, uh, Zulai kitchen, for example, Eric Cordova’s brand, all of his stuff’s around the kitchen, so he could create an app with recipes and how to use all of their equipment and stuff like that.
And then it becomes something really valuable when you start putting a lot more stuff in there.
[00:29:43] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: I 100 percent agree. I mean, I think what we’re, we’re both agreeing on there is that branding is important, niching down is important. I support that message when it comes to that. Unfortunately, I guess I would have to say based on the, just the data that I’ve seen.
Let’s just say we’re talking about a reseller. Actually, if you’re a reseller, you’re not going to be able to control the main image, but let’s just say you’re looking at a, this is a good one. Say it’s like a PL wholesale hybrid. Type of listing where you matched your gloves with some, some other product that you’re reselling and you can’t control the main image, but you sell a lot of different products.
Like you might have a peel wholesale chocolate thing and a popcorn thing. And then you might have a outdoor equipment and hunting, fishing, whatever, like, you know, So you have all these different things going on. If you can control what goes in the main image at the end of the day, that acts as a scroll stopper when some, like, let’s just say you like to, I’m just saying fishing basically.
Cause I think I’ve heard you like to fish before, but like, let’s just say, am I right in that? Like did I, am I okay. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. So you, you, you, you like to fish. So. Let’s say that you, where was I going? Yeah. So let’s say you have all, I forgot what was going to go with this, but like, yeah, let’s say you have your fishing stuff and it’s, uh, I don’t know, fishing for left handers.
I don’t know. Right. And somebody searches for like fishing rods for left handers and they’re seeing a whole bunch of different fishing rods, but one of them has an app. Which one, if you just scroll really fast on the page, which one stands out to you?
[00:31:05] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely seeing the app, you’re going to be like, Oh, what’s this?
[00:31:09] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Right. So now what happens is people. If somebody went to that listing and before buying said, I want to download the app and I want to vet this brand, then, then, yeah, I think you’re looking at an app now that might have your entire catalog of disparate products in there and that that wouldn’t have the same oomph,
[00:31:28] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: even
[00:31:29] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: though the person might say, wow, these people are very organized, you know?
But yeah, it might not have the same month, but the thing is, they’re not going to do that. They’re going to stop. You’re going to have caught their eye. And if your listing is great, you’ve just increased your conversion rate. Um, the other stop happens later. Are they going to download the app? See what I just described in the sound returning this, you know, I thought they had a niche app.
In reality, it’s no. So yes, as a brand. Extra powerful, but if you can control the main image of your listing, it works.
[00:31:59] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But then how would you get around it where, you know, you’re putting up there in the image, the homepage, you know, if you have lots of different variety of products, are you just, you know, making up that homepage for each product, which then you’re kind of in the gray area or how do you work in that?
[00:32:18] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: You could make it up, and I would say that’s definitely a gray area, but if you wanted to not be gray, maybe you just turn your home page into a gallery, so it’s constantly swapping the image and that your image is part of that gallery. Um, I guess if you wanted to look, Amazon’s not going to be the one that goes in and polices this.
What it’s going to be is your competitor when you start stealing their sales and smashing them on PPC, so they’re going to see it and then they’re going to buy your product and they’re going to go through your funnel. And they’re going to look for something that they can report. So if there’s a gallery view there, then I feel like you’re on the up and up.
And by the way, this is something I’ve been doing for years. It’s just one day randomly in a meetup group or, or, or on WhatsApp or something. My buddy, he he’s like. What do you think I should put on the outside of this product on this box? And he had a bunch of different stuff on there. And I’m like, man, it looks like an eyesore.
I was like, why don’t you just clean it up and put it, uh, put a download to your app. And then I realized, wow, I’ve, I’ve never shared this before. It was just something I did. So I started sharing it. And then I went to Tampa and shared it. It’s solid. It works. And when someone goes to register the product, you just give them a dropdown menu.
Like. Of the different products that you sell.
[00:33:24] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good idea with the, uh, with the carousel, because you could have 10, 20, however many images you want in that carousel, and then just screenshot each one for each product and you’re, you’re technically within terms of service then. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. A hundred percent. Very interesting. Okay. Yeah. So that’s kind of the, the big differentiator that you’re using in your products and teaching the people at the various meetups and such as well.
[00:33:52] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I don’t know, Mike, I might get bored one day and put together like a, a course, but, uh, I prefer to just stick to focusing on like selling products online and not some digital course I have to, to, to update.
And again, I, I paid on this. To do it from eUnleash. I guess I could send you the link. And if you want to put it in the show notes or yeah, he’s super straightforward with it. It’s a rather fast process or attempt to do it yourself, whatever it looks, you know, but do it like, especially with these fees coming on, like that have happened, you know, you could just reverse that for you by adding this and you need to be, I, in my opinion, unless you’re a consumable, you really should be thinking about raising your prices.
Um, now in preferably like in advance of the fees raising, but at least in reaction to what’s happened. So why not use it as an opportunity to do this in conjunction with raising the prices? It’s more like. It was like less reactionary and more strategic.
[00:34:50] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Prices are going to be going up regardless.
You know, the inflation plus fees going up, so you got to stay ahead of that and increasing your profits about the only way you can stay ahead. Oh yeah. Very good. So any other differentiation tips or anything like that that we haven’t talked about yet?
[00:35:10] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Oh, man, we could, we could talk for days about ways to differentiate the technological differentiator, I feel is like is the easiest one that you can do and has the greatest bang for the buck.
I’m a huge fan also of different, like sort of reengineering oversized products and getting them into smaller categories. I think that’s a, that’s will always be an opportunity for sure. Uh, for, for people to do, which is, Yeah. You know, definitely look at that maybe even for products that you have now that have been doing good and you didn’t need to, but you want to find a way to be smaller or lighter or at the end of the day, if you can assemble the product, like I found that whenever I’ve reengineered a product for the purposes of differentiation and let’s say it was a tabletop hockey game, like a small Mini tabletop hockey game and you got it to where instead of being a one piece, it’s a three piece and it all like clicks together.
I find that those sort of products, even if you click them together or they have an element of assemble, they tap into something called the Ikea effect. And that is like the love and appreciation you have for building your own desk versus buying one that’s just plopped down in your office. There’s a lot there and the anytime you can tap into the Ikea effect.
As a brand or a private label seller, um, on Amazon, you will see that that product has a higher likelihood of getting positive reviews. So there’s a lot of side benefits of that, but no, those would be my, those are my top two.
[00:36:39] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, I, I really like the, the oversized and getting it down to the smaller. Like if we, if we go with the jungle sticks, right, let’s say you got a, a 24 inch, one of those, which is going to make it an oversize, but maybe you chop it off at like 10 inches and then make like a plastic connector piece that maybe makes it also look like a sword handle or something like that, you know, you got that 24 inch that’s.
[00:37:08] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: But yeah, you, you and I are thinking on the same wavelength because I gave this as an example. At first it was random, but I think I wrote a blog on it because I really liked where just like off the cuff it was going and say there’s jungle six and say we got into state that there is stainless steel sticks and then you made it longer and then you were like, Oh, I want to make it tell us telescoping, you know what I mean?
Or telescoping or collapsible, I think is the word. So you have collapsible And then you’re like, Well, you know what? I don’t want to have my hand anywhere near the fire. I want to kind of do it. So now you’re looking at having like almost a disc at the end
[00:37:38] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: to
[00:37:38] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: cover your hand. But wait a minute. If you have that, you’re almost looking at like a jousting stick at that point, right?
So now my mind goes to like, well, what about medieval? And like, you know, the medieval times, like, you know, I know it’s like, what do we have this like medieval times themed set of these jungle sticks? Um, and now you’re tapping into a specific niche and because you’re doing that, maybe you have a design on the sticks to like really embrace the fact that it’s medieval.
So now you have a very niche type of product. That you’re almost cloning from your original one. You can sell it for a lot more money. Is it ever going to be top of page one? No, but it’s going to crush on profits.
[00:38:15] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. And then you add in the app, of course, you got the show stopper. Heck yeah.
Awesome. Carlos. So this has been fantastic. Uh, where’s the best place for people to connect with you?
[00:38:29] Carlos Alvarez | Founder & CMO of Wizards of Ecom: Yeah, I, I dropped my number here because there’s so many different ways to do it, but anywhere on social media, uh, at wizards of e com, my phone number is three zero five. Uh, 965 5857. Nobody uses that, by the way.
Some people think I’m crazy for doing that. But, like, if you just call me blind, I’m not going to pick up. But if you text me and say, Hey, you know, I heard you on Todd’s podcast and you sucked, or you were awesome, like, I’ll respond. And it is me. And then, the podcast. Like, you listen to this amazing podcast, if you want to hear me, You know, ramble on on some, I think, cool topics.
Just check out Wizards of Ecom.
[00:39:00] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Absolutely. It’s a good podcast. I got it on my playlist for sure. And check it out from time to time. Yeah. Again, Carlos, appreciate you coming on. This has been great. Thank you so much, man. Have a great one. You too.
