In this episode I speak with Ryan Mulvany ($100 million in Amazon Sales) and founder of Quiverr about why he considers himself an Amazonaholic, Amazon brands effects on others, trend tracking tools, and more. Don't miss this interview with a seasoned Amazon CPG & PE Marketplace Strategist and the founder of Amazon's 2nd Largest Ads Partner.
In this episode I speak with Ryan Mulvany ($100 million in Amazon Sales) and founder of Quiverr about why he considers himself an Amazonaholic, Amazon brands effects on others, trend tracking tools, and more. Don't miss this interview with a seasoned Amazon CPG & PE Marketplace Strategist and the founder of Amazon's 2nd Largest Ads Partner.
You are listening to the ingredients for success podcast where you can consume dietary supplement industry best practices, trends, recent news and other insights provided through interviews and discussions with members of the stratum team and seasoned industry.
Speaker 2:Jack,
Speaker 1:welcome back to the ingredients for success podcast. I manage your rice and meet today is Ryan Mulvanny. I think I said that right. I'll ask him here in a minute. Ryan's official title according to the most official sources for titles, Linkedin is a hundred mil in Amazon, sells at quiver a Amazon, second largest ads partners, CBG and PE marketplace strategists and investor, which I may need to talk to him after this about that. Uh, so yeah, uh, we're going to be discussing trends of supplement supplements on Amazon, how it's changed over time and where it might be headed. Um, so Ryan, thanks for coming on, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Pleasure. You got like 90% of my name, right.
Speaker 1:Okay. How would we say the last name
Speaker 3:now? It's more veiny. Mulvaney Dang. And you said most of the knee, and you actually said it a lot closer to the way that it's supposed to be pronounced. I had to like adorable Irish people, correct me once on how it was supposed to be pronounced really well.
Speaker 1:Okay. And it's mold Mulvaney Mulvaney
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah. That's how we say here in America.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. But move on[inaudible] or[inaudible] is something like the Irish guys corrected you on. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. Well I've got an easy one. Rice, nobody really screws out up, so I haven't ever had that problem in my life, but, uh, and I'm glad I'm having, you know, last names can be tricky. Um, well great to have you on man. Um, I've been, uh, looking at your stuff on linkedin for some time now. I don't even know how I found you. I think it was like a, I don't know, maybe it was just, it was serendipitous. I have no idea how I found you, but I did. And I enjoy your content and your videos and, and uh, love, love everything I see that you're posting on Amazon's great. So, um, cool man. Well thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's funny you pull the title off of there. I was joking yesterday that I'm just going to change my title to doing it for the likes.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah, yeah man. I agree. I've heard it for so many likes, like, like actual likes and then like, cause you love to do it. You like to do what you do cause and that's actually, that's, I'm glad you mentioned that. That's what, that's how I'm going to like bridge the gap between intro to, um, to kind of like getting some info from you. So I did see, um, you consider yourself an Amazon a holic, which is funny because I consider myself a Digi brand strat Tgo Halach, which is, there's a little bit of difference. Um, and so I feel like they're both healthy addictions, um, kinda and probably two of the greatest of our generation with our respective industries. So in spirit of these addictions, instead of the normal intro, so we can get to know you a little bit. Uh, I, I'm going to do this AA style like, okay. So, so I'm going to say, hello, my name is and I'm a whatever. Right. And I'm going to have like a 22nd rant and then you're going to, you're going to follow that up, right. Okay. So I'm going to go first. Hello. I'm Andrew. I'm a Digi brand strategic holic and I think I'm going to talk about, I'm not going to talk about anything too painful. Um, I think, I believe being a Digi brand strategic Halach, uh, is healthy because I'm the guy who gets home from work and instead of hitting the bars, like going streaking or waking up in jail, I'm actually working on like a freelance app, Ui design as a hobby because I still do that. I geek out on that still. Um, and then, uh, and I am an a partner in a web and APP company, so I kind of do that thing and, and uh, yeah, that's where I think the, the brand strategic halach thing comes in because that is my hobby and it is a, an a, an addiction of mine. I think. I'm kind of proud of it. My wife, my wife may disagree, but anyway, so now it's your turn. They knew a little bit about me anyway. Already. Now do you returned and I'm going to let you go. Aa style
Speaker 3:background. Hi, my name is. Okay. Hi, my name is Ryan. I'm an Amazon a holic. Uh, and that means that I'm addicted to selling stuff on Amazon. Um, it's gotten me in trouble before I've sold things that I didn't have possession of. Um, I've sold things that weren't mine. Uh, but ultimately I learned a lot and was able to apply those tactics to sell things that I did have possession of and that were mine now. Um, and as the market place sort of grows and evolves, uh, the addiction grows along with it. And so the funny thing is though, that I'm addicted to Amazon in the sense of selling things, but not buying things. I buy very few things like in general nutrition. Just one place that I actually spend quite a bit of money in, uh, in food. But a lot of those things I don't get on Amazon. And so, um, I like selling things, but I don't like taking things in myself.
Speaker 1:Okay. That makes sense. I not, I could not. Um, well I, I could agree with why you do that and I wish I was in the same boat and I really wished my wife was in the same boat. Um, but I feel like we are Amazon by like w we were addicted for sure. I by just random crap all the time. Um, but anyway, um, so yeah. Um, I think we're also going to do this a little bit different today. I feel like we haven't, we haven't really officially met until we, the call right before this, so like five minutes before this. Um, but I could tell from your posts and your videos, you probably, uh, you're, you're, you're a fun guy. Um, so I wanted to try something a little bit different am with this one and just see where it goes and see if this is something that makes the podcast a format later on. Um, cool. But, uh, the podcast is ingredients for success. Obviously this, this is a podcast in which we're trained to, to, um, provide useful information, um, to finish brands within our industry. Um, and so I feel like if I feel like I need to shut up sometimes and then like, like let you talk more probably. And so in order to do that, what I plan on doing is just giving a little bit of brief Info around the question I'm about to ask, but I'm, I'm just going to state it, I'm going to say ingredients for success. You're going to provide me the ingredients for success for that particular category within this discussion of Amazon. And we're just going to go like that. That are we good with that? Yeah. Lightning round. Let's go. All right, let's do it. Okay. So, um, startups, um, they really, uh, you know, in our industry that got started on on Amazon had a huge advantage, right? Um, and utilizing Amazon kind of as its business or startup accelerator, they had lower lower capital going into other places. The, they just had a lot of low, lower overhead. They could, if they really understood Amazon, they could really, they could get started on it, on Amazon. I feel like it is gotten, it has gotten a bit more difficult and challenging, especially within our space. And I think listeners out there would agree, especially with the Amazon, the Amazon brands that are out there, whether its elements or whatever. There's, there's many right within the supplement, uh, within the supplement space at this point. And they're doing some tricky things. I saw a post of yours recently, there's doing some tricky things with like how they're showing up in, in feeds and in searches and stuff like that. So I feel like it is a bit more difficult now for that same model to work. Cause I know brands that just knew Amazon really well and they killed it and they're still killing it because they were able to gain that revenue, um, to really push into other channels and whatnot. So effect on Amazon brands, um, on the natural supplement human pet brands selling on Amazon today. So the effect of the Amazon brands to them, what are the ingredients for success there?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think the ingredients to success, um, stem from looking sort of to the past. And I think the rezoning thing that I hear quite often is it just feels crowded. And if you look at sort of the course of, you know, evolution of how products are sold on Amazon, there's now been about five years of solid information about how to do it. Um, and like you said, linking up with companies that have been been doing it for quite a while, they've gotten moats. Now from a review standpoint and from a visibility standpoint, I'm into some degree from an expertise standpoint, but I always say that, you know, about 90% of what we know in our business, you can learn on youtube, maybe there's about 10% that we have that secret sauce. Um, and then the x factor is the people and the gumption and the tenacity to actually see it through. Um, and that's the thing that you can't really replicate, but in the same breath, we can't replicate what they have as well. Um, and so today to me is it stands knowing that, you know, supplements is one of the sort of hottest categories on Amazon. Uh, you know, you've got a small product that can carry a decent margin on it. If it's in the pill form, obviously that gets a little bit differentiated if it, you know, if you're talking about proteins and that sort of thing. Um, but at the end of the day, what we did see through that sort of crowdedness was a commoditization of a lot of categories. Um, so what happened is everybody sorta jumped in, let's say we're doing omega threes and we all went out where like, all right, it's going to be organic Omega threes and we're going to sell 180 caps and they're all going to be at 1999 or whatever. Um, so they went out and started sourcing those types of products, got pretty branding, all that stuff, put it up there. Over time what happened is more and more people would sort of jump into the marketplace for the exact same products. Um, and really the one that was going to sell the best had the most reviews, um, at the lowest price in the beginning. Now, the one that has the most reviews can carry a higher price because it's so probably far ahead of the other ones. Um, but that doesn't mean to say that you can sort of rest on your laurels and say, all right, we're always going to be 2,999 when the rest of the market's at 14. So to me, a success today, the ingredients for success today is sort of looking at the marketplace. Um, objectively, not saying like, I have to do Omega three because I've got a family connection to this. I would say, do you want it to get into that space? Look at what's currently on there. Look at how you can differentiate. Um, and maybe in terms of, you know, supplements in particular, is there a unique formulation or unique ingredient that I'm only you have access to or that's going to provide some form of real incremental value over the rest of your competition? Because that's the thing that your competition is not going to be able to come in and replicate, or Amazon says we're going to just spin up our own brand underneath it. Um, you know, we're still seeing some of the early movers on Amazon selling really well because they've now got an actual brand and they have equity in the brand. And that's the thing, you can't pull away. Like if you want a Pepsi, you're not going to buy a coke, right? Unless you're at a restaurant that sort of swaps you. But if you're going to Amazon to buy Pepsi, you're going to buy Pepsi, not coke, probably. Right? If you want an Oreo, you're going to go to Amazon and buy an Oreo, not their knock off brand of Oreo. And so I think it, you know, I think where people get a little bit of frustration is five years ago when we all started jumped into it to sell the Omega threes, like, it wasn't that hard. You just put it up there and it would sell. Today you have to, you have to think more creatively about bringing a product to market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, great point. I mean I think that will always be a part of this branding. That is my background. Um, the, the branding and strategy side of things and, and um, you know, you're right in the beginning you could, it was shotgun man. It was just like, it was the wild west. You could get out there with, I mean something that looked like the old like always save brand yellow. You remember that brand and the yellow packaging, black, yellow and black. Always save brand. Like you could get out there on Amazon, throw it out there, hardly any information. Like you said, if there was just a ton of reviews, probably get a lot of sales. But I think it has come a little bit full circle to where it's gone back to where a lot of the different spaces are. And that's brand. I mean you build a following, you build your brand loyalist and those that are going to follow you and really engage with your brand and believe in your brand. And that comes down to, that's a whole nother podcast. But, and we've talked a little bit about that in the past, but, um, so yeah, I do. Good point man. Um, so yeah, so with what you just said, I would say like a, yeah, so it is crowded, uh, but uh, doing things to help your brand stand out. I think that kind of moves into really my next question. If you're going to do that part of figuring out where your brand needs to, uh, where it needs to lie in the midst of its, uh, of its competition is a big part of that is understanding your competition and tracking your competition and also where your brands at and what products you're going to launch and those types of things, um, that are going to resonate with your brand's loyalist is going to lie. I mean, so what's trending right there? So I'm going to get into tools. There are some tools that we have utilized in the past. We still use, some of them were not near as proficient as you, man. So I'm sure that's probably why I'm asking. I'm really for myself to see if there's some tools out there that I could use other than just calling somebody like you were a company, like you work with or started. Uh, so we use Amazon tracker, Unicorn Smasher to kind of just quickly understand competitive landscape of, of both product. And then the company's pushing them. If something spikes were able to go look up the company and be like, Oh, who's that? Get to know them a little bit more. Or the products. There's some information that's pretty valuable. Um, with those tools. Is there, are there any other tools? So trends, tracking tools, what are the ingredients for success there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the ingredients for success, especially if you're in a startup is finding free tools. That's always my ammo. We obviously pay for quite a few tools nowadays to actually run our business. Right. Um, but that's usually in the replacement of employees. So that's always a good thing. So the tools I like using, um, two of them are, well, there's actually three. So the first one I love using is a jungle scout, which a lot of people probably heard about. Um, it allows you to track the sales velocity of products, um, sort of in a snapshot format. So it says, based on its sales rank, so this is a number that Amazon assigns to a product and it tells you how well this is selling as compared to every other product in its category. So number one would be the best 10 would be the 10th best hundred would mean a hundred best based on that number. You can correlate, you know, sort of a projected amount of sales. Um, and so from that you can start sort of, you know, telling him, you know, telling a story. And so if you want to just sell protein powder, let's say vegan protein powder, you could run that search and you can very quickly see the ones that are the best sellers and then sort of dive into those listings to figure out what they're doing, how they're differentiating, how many reviews they have in that sort of thing. So John was, Scott's a good one. Um, okay. Uh, probably my favorite, favorite tool I use, it's a chrome plugin. It's called[inaudible], k e p. A. And, um, this tool actually allows you to click into a products page and see the historical sales rank of it over time so you can see, you know, they come onto the marketplace. Um, does it trend up during holiday? Does it trend up during certain times of the years? Um, you can also track its price so you can look at its price and its impact on that sales rank. So when they were carrying a higher price point, um, you know, what did that do to their sales rank when they will carry it a lower price point, did a drop, that sort of thing. Uh, it attracts their reviews over time. It tracks their actual rating over time and so you can look at all of that and really like dive into a product on sort of a data level, which is sort of unfair out in a lot of immuno camel. Camel camel is another one that a lot of people use. Yeah, I just like, yeah, I like the granularity of a of Coupa. Okay. Um, okay. Then the last one that I like using is a, it's sort of a quick snapshot. It's called Ds Amazon quick view. It too is a chrome plugin. And what it allows you to do is from the search result page is see the sales rank of an item. So what I can do is I can sort of run a search for protein powders if I don't feel like running the jungle scout scrape, I just want to do something a little bit lighter. But I want to get a quick snapshot because maybe I'm talking to a client or that something like that I can fairly quickly on the first page to tell you which one's going to be the best seller, how it's being sold. Um, and some additional info. Yeah, that one too is a, a free chrome plugin. So yeah, those are, those are sort of my, my favorite, favorite ones.
Speaker 1:Cool, man. Yeah, dude, thanks for sharing. I, I had heard of the jungle Scout, um, and I hadn't heard of any of the others, so I'm, excuse me. I'm hoping that, uh, some of the audience had an, uh, either and so it'd be good for them. Um, I know that it can be a little bit, um, intimidating. One of the reasons why I wanted to have you on it. It can be a little bit intimidating even for the larger brands out there to really try to understand, I think within this space still, unless you're, you know, one of the ginormous companies out there which do a really good job for the most part, um, on Amazon or different channels selling, um, is, is just like, it's, it's intimidating and there's a lot to, you know, if you've not got a huge, if you've not got a huge department just solely focused on Amazon or whatever with the, you know, all within their own proficiencies and experience and the levels and things like that on Amazon, I think it can be daunting. So I'm one of the reasons why I wanted you on here. Thanks for sharing those tools. I think that could be really helpful. Um, so then, you know, you mentioned, um, you know, you mentioned, you know, pricing in some of those things. I think one of the things that, um, we can tend to forget about a little bit, um, is, um, some, I think we can, it can get lost in the shuffle, especially when we're so busy trying to, trying to figure out Amazon and launch products and in brand and figure out that kind of thing is so we all know promotions work. I think some platforms can be a little bit more difficult than others. Um, I think we can always traditionally like look at, you know, metrics and results of, of a campaign with and without some sort of promotional element to it. Um, and I think nine out of 10 times, maybe more that, you know, the campaign with the promotion behind it, this is gonna work better. Um, there always the Unicorn smasher out there, right? There's always that thing out there that can smash it. But anyway, so that's the next topic here. Uh, Amazon sponsored ads and promotions. It can be, you know, I think there's a little bit to learn, um, with that. But anyway, so within Amazon sponsored ads and promotions, what is the ingredients for success that, that you might offer?
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, it's a great question. Uh, you know, a lot of brands, especially if you're pretty established, you traditionally have sort of a, a PPC maybe agency that you work with or maybe somebody in house that is managing, you know, let's call it your Google spend and that sort of thing. Um, I think the first thing is don't assume that they know how to do Amazon. Um, because we've seen quite a bit of, um, misuse of budget when they're sort of shifting and learning sort of on a client's behalf. Um, and so really like having that skill in house or outsourcing that skill to an agency, I think it's just going to set you up for more success. Um, the Amazon platform, you know, well, it's not rocket science. It is fairly dynamic in, in rudimentary from a reporting standpoint. So I think it's key to, you know, make sure that you're, you're, you're working with somebody that's gotten knowledge there. Um, I think the other piece of it too with, with, um, with the Amazon, you know, ad platform is, there's just various types of placements that you can get. It's just, it's going to be a little bit different than, you know, a traditional Google, you know, Google ad. Um, and we're, we're hearing from so many companies that, you know, we, we always sort of joke that, you know, people go to Google to browse, they go to Facebook to see what their friends are doing, they come to Amazon to buy. And so we're seeing so many companies now shifting budgets away from Google, bringing him over to Amazon. Um, and I think it's something that you're going to continue to see, you know, sort of into the future. Um, I think the important thing when you're considering promotion is to sort of ask yourself, why are you promoting, um, and then back into what an expected sort of Roi is going to be. Because if you're a new product, you're going to be promoting to get exposure. Uh, and so maybe you can carry not such a good Roi, um, because you're just really just trying to get it out there. Um, and let's say on top of that, it's a consumable product, so the exposure actually can create a lifetime value. It's for use. And so you could potentially, you know, not even break even and you could lose money on that. Um, and so based on that sort of headspace, you can then back into sort of the right campaign. Um, and what you like to see too is no, you can marry, um, you know, a coupon with an advertisement, you know, with, with, with an ad campaign on Amazon or you can run a lightning deal and marry that with a, an advertisement on Amazon. And those two things play together. Obviously you're going to generate, you know, more exposure, more sales, that sort of thing. Um, but then again, you, if, if you, if you're trying to be mindful of profit, you have to sort of take a step back and make sure that those types of things are profitable. Um, and I think sort of the larger overarching piece that a lot of, um, brands, you know, neglect is they get into the APP, they get it on to Amazon, they started exploring advertising because maybe sales aren't going so good, but they don't take that moment to pause and actually look at their listing and see if there's anything they can do to improve it to see if that's the reason why it's not selling. Because what you don't want to do is spend a bunch of money. Uh, so I've got a call coming in here, can we declined that? Um, once you don't want to do is spend a bunch of money pointed to a product listing that isn't going to convert. Um, and so we've seen so many brands sort of go down that path as well. And it's like, take a moment, pause, optimize, and then, and then go after it. Yeah,
Speaker 1:no, that's it. Dude. That's a great point. Um, there's actually several good points there that I wanted to touch on. So 100% when we work with the, our brands, those that we sell our ingredient too for the finished product, um, we, we actually offer, we offered consulting to a point, right? And really it's that foundational piece that you were just talking about. Like, well, a lot of times we'll get the question of, well, how can I, how can I sell more on Amazon? Well, the first thing I do try to tell them it, like I'm not an Amazon expert. Uh, I have a lot of experience with brand, um, within the digital space, within marketing strategy, those things. But I am in no way an Amazon expert, but what I can do is give you some tips and pointers. And most of the time when I get where we get that question, we will see that there, there Amazon pages need a ton of work, right? Like they haven't, I mean, they have an optimize them. Maybe they're not, you know, and I don't know what you know or what you think about Amazon plus and those types of things, but there are things that they can do to help optimize the effectiveness of their pages and a lot of them very fundamental and foundational and they haven't done them. So I, I'm the same way I start there. What I would say too is like your other point behind, um, look, we've all gone to agencies. Uh, I owned an agency at one point, so, um, we took on sometimes too much and we had to be very mindful of what we were taking on because if we wanted real effectiveness for our customers, we just have to be self aware enough to say, we are not the expert in this. Now we may understand ad words, we may understand branding, messaging, how to impact, you know, create engagement with a customer. But Amazon, dude, it's a different animal. Um, and I would, I would hope so. To your point, I would hope more agencies out there, especially those catering to our industry, the natural supplement nutraceutical industry. I would hope that those agencies, um, would understand that if you don't know what you don't know it and hire somebody like you and we'll get into, actually this is a good, this is a good pigeon tail over into to asking you a little bit more about you and your company. But, um, like literally if you don't know it, don't pretend to know it. You're just hurting your customer. You're not going, you know, you may be able to drive engagement on social, you may be able to create some effectiveness. But like to your other point, what's the Roi you're trying to generate and the why behind that Roi? Is it a new product? If it's a new product and I don't need to make a ton of money, I want to get, I just, I really want to get awareness out there about the product, so I need to know that. Right? So like those things, I would just, I want more agencies to be able to say, okay, hey, we can develop the strategy, but dude, we need to pull this company in or this person in. And we can talk to them about what the Roi is, how we want to measure it, what the results were trying to achieve as a new product. Is it, you know, what are we trying to do with this and working together, uh, for the, for the common good of that, of that, uh, of that brand or that, or that company. So good points, dude. Anything you would like to add to that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, there's, and it's not to say they're not gonna learn it. Um, it's just so dynamic. And so until they've got that team, like what you want is like, you want an agency, like if, let's say it's traditional Google place and now they're going to be doing Amazon, like, okay, you'd have a couple of people dedicated to that team because if they do, they'll probably figure it out and they'll probably be okay. Um, it's just that sort of awkward period where it's like, actually, we're still doing this, but now we're going to do a little bit of that. And um, you know, it's just a matter of time. They'll, they'll, they'll catch up.
Speaker 1:Well, the problem I find with that is like, even like, you know, coming from have, having been an agency owner to now like working with and trying to find agencies to do work for, for our company here, we'll develop the strategy and then we'll kick it out for production work and those things. But man, you're going to pay for the experimental, uh, production work, right? Like, let's not lie about it. Like it's, that's going to happen. Like the bills, I'm like wait, account management and the like, what are all these hours? Like? I mean, it's because they're trying to learn on the fly and I'm getting charged for it. Right? I mean, that's what's happening. And so I think it's another thing we gotta be careful about. Uh,
Speaker 3:yeah. So you're getting charged for the time and you're getting charged on the budget. Yeah, that's right. It's it. That will double edge sword, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. So anyway, um, okay, so in looking at your profile and then I went to the website, um, I did some stocking. I mean any more stockings, not a bad thing. It's like the thing you have to stock people, right? The research, right. That's right. That's right. So, um, went to the website, found out, so got to know quiver a little bit more. Like I said, I love, love your posters and your contents really good. Always. Um, but uh, looking at, uh, looked into quiver and so I wanted you to talk, so we are talking about connecting and this is, this is not a shameless plug. I just want to caveat this with Ryan told me, let's not get into this cause I don't want to, I don't want some shit, you know, plug and make it seem awkward. So I'm gonna try to not to talk too much about this because I feel like it's already getting awkward. Okay. So Ryan told me not to talk about this, but I wanted to, because I think it perfectly went to this, right? We're talking about agencies were talking about, uh, Amazon, uh, specific, uh, agencies. And so quiver you are founder and partner at quivers that crap. Okay. Correct. Yeah. And so I kind of get you, so I kind of get what you do, but I don't want to misspeak. So I'm going to, I just like briefly if you could explain what your company does. And I had actually some questions about about that because, and I think it would, it would really benefit the audience to, to probably work through this a little bit, so, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. So we, we started quiver about five years ago, um, spawned out of a digital agency, so digitally native, um, in the sense that we were doing SEO pay per click, you know, Facebook marketing, conversion rate optimization. Um, and before that I hadn't experienced in selling things on Amazon, like ran, like books and toys and all sorts of crazy things. And so when I landed at this agency and started working there as a client manager, I would ask the clients about Amazon and what they were doing there. Um, and they really didn't have a good answer. And really didn't care about paying attention to it. So I went to the owner of the business and I said, hey, let's spin out a new new sort of model where we actually, um, take an inventory position on behalf of these brands because they don't want to take you, they don't want to do it. Um, private label at that time was sort of bubbling up and I'm like, look, we can apply all the things that private label is doing over here, are doing over here. We can apply those to brands. Um, and he's like, cool, let's run with it. And so we launched quiver, um, and um, you know, today we're a platinum seller for Amazon, so we're in their top tier of all sellers across the, the, the, the marketplace. Um, and then about a year and a half ago, we sold the business to a company called advantage sales and marketing. And they're a strategic partner that, um, are the largest broker for consumer package goods in the u s so they work with like, um, the very big, like top, top 20 CPG orgs and beyond. Um, and they facilitate distribution into brick and mortar, like, you know, Walmart and Costco and target. Um, and, uh, they looked at sort of how the, you know, the shopping experience was changing and a lot of it was shifting online and Amazon was taking up the lion's share of that. Um, and they wanted to bring in an asset to help their clients and help them stay relevant. Um, and so yeah, we've been, we've been in that fold since July of 2017 as you know, today fresh. Yeah. Yeah. So it, so today what we do is we facilitate Amazon strategies for brands that could mean us taking an inventory position on their behalf. That could mean as helping them set up a seller account. Um, really it's all about, um, you know, taking control of the marketplace, uh, and then sort of building upon it from there. And so we work with all types of clients. I'm sort of aside from a peril. Um, we don't really touch that space, but we sort of cut our teeth in health and beauty, um, and dig it.
Speaker 1:Okay. No, dude, thanks for sharing. I mean, um, for, for those out there that are listening with, you know, within our space, um, dude, I think there's just a lot of, you know, I've gone to a lot of conferences and, and, and gone to different events where they're going to, you know, they got speakers on everything ranging from Amazon to jet and then like what brands need to do. But I think they've been, they've had some difficult time getting their brand on jet and blah, blah, blah. So anyway, not to go into that, but there's a lot around this space. I think there's a lot of companies still within our industry that are very much, you know, there's still a, there's still very much, you know, mass retail, uh, or probably, um, you know, they're into the, the, to there in the smaller shops, uh, and they're, they're just, they're hesitant on getting in and there's, I don't know, I mean, there's a ton of supplement brands out there, but there's a still a ton of really good supplement brands that I feel like probably don't exist on Amazon or they don't do well. And they're probably, you know, teeter and with like a do I do, I stay on new, I get off Amazon, you know, Amazon elements and there's supplement lines and everything. They're just going to, you know, they're going to kill us all and, and, and we're not, you know, we're not going to have any, you know, market share, be able to have any success on there. So that's really what I want to talk to you about. I'm really glad that you talked about, um, branding, um, and the importance of that. Um, but the other thing I feel like that came out of this was like also, um, you know, the fact that, you know, really it's branding. So whether you're doing that or the agency is helping you, it's really making sure your agency has a 100% grasp on how to capitalize or how to be effective on Amazon. And if they don't, if you're feeling like it's fishy, whether or not they do work with a professional that really can, or pull them in and have them work with your agency and you guys fee, figure out a strategy together. So to wrap it up, dude. Um, one thing, if you could pick one, um, one ingredient for success, um, that you could live, that you could leave these, these finished brands with one ingredient for success within Amazon. If a less, just pretend they're selling on Amazon right now. Um, they've got a decent page, one, one ingredient for success that you would have them start today.
Speaker 3:One ingredient. Now I'm thinking of like one word, one ingredient,
Speaker 1:no. One topic. One topic. One topic.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Success. Yep. Uh, my topic is patients. Uh, and the, and the reason why I bring that up is if you think about this is a longterm play. I think a lot of people, when we sort of jumped into this five years ago, our holy grail was building a brand on Amazon. Um, and we didn't really think outside of that marketplace. Um, which was fine because you can build a business like that and have an exit and that's cool. But if you look at someone like sort of Rx Bar, um, who, who didn't start out on Amazon, they started out in gyms and on their own website they had patients, they didn't sort of just jump at the first thing that went. Um, you know, if you look at that in the context of what you're doing on Amazon, if you know your category, it can become commoditized or there could be a hundred other people, um, that are, you know, going to jump in and start selling what you're selling. Like have the to say, all right, if I don't need to do this, you know, tomorrow, like, I don't need to sell my company tomorrow. What are the things I can do today to really ensure that I'm going to be around for a long, for a long, long haul. And to me, we know what people do on Amazon, but if you're building a real brand, there's a lot of other things that you can do outside of Amazon, which is going to only bolster your effort within the channel. And so looking at things like social and running, paid social, um, or setting up your own.com, um, or leveraging your success on Amazon to get into brick and mortar. Um, that's gonna create more exposure for you. It's going to drive more sales back to Amazon, which is going to create more exposure for you within the channel, more reviews. And so I think that sort of having the patients to say like, all right, let me just zoom out a little bit and look at this thing sort of holistically beyond, beyond just the banks of Amazon. Um, I think it's a good key cause I, it's really easy to get caught up in like, all right, that competitors here, they're dropping price, let's drop our price. They just added this ingredient. They're doing this type of bundling that, let's go get that
Speaker 1:right. Reaction, reaction, you know, can kill us off. Right. Being reaction.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Guys, if you're just reacting to the competition, you're just going to start looking like your competition, which is never what I strive to look like at least.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, good point, man. Uh, I think it's a great way to wrap it. Uh, I'd love to have you on again and have maybe deeper conversation about one of these individual topics, but a dude, thanks for thanks for coming on. Uh, has been good getting to know area. So, um, and uh, yeah. Awesome dude. Well, I'll look forward to your posts on linkedin and if you don't follow him, go find him. Ryan Mulvaney so you'll find him on linkedin. Um, I'll be checking out like in your stuff commenting, I'm sure. Uh, so do, thanks again for coming on and until next time we will catch you later. All right. See you, buddy.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to the stratum ingredients for success podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time.