S3 E7 The future of live selling and scaling retail brands

In this episode of the Online Hustle podcast Chris Dawson, founder of ChannelX
shares his extensive experience in the e-commerce industry, starting from the early days of eBay in the 2000s. He breaks down how online selling has evolved from simple bedroom operations to complex multi-channel businesses facing rising marketplace fees and new operational challenges.  The conversation provides a deep dive into the strategic decisions modern retailers must make regarding inventory, international expansion, and platform selection. Chris also explores the massive upcoming shifts in retail, detailing how artificial intelligence will change consumer search habits and why live selling is rapidly capturing the Gen Z market.  

Key takeaways from this discussion:

Why new brands should perfect their operations on a single marketplace before expanding everywhere.  

The three upcoming stages of AI adoption in retail, including automated purchasing agents.  

How eBay Live and TikTok are actively reshaping the future of online shopping.  

Using Amazon's fulfillment network to safely test international markets like Germany and France.  

TIMESTAMPS  - 
00:00 Introduction and starting an eBay business in the early 2000s 
03:15 - How the Tamebay blog started and evolved into ChannelX 
08:01 - The rise of high street retailers joining online marketplaces 
10:48 - Understanding the massive shift in e-commerce marketplace fees 
16:24 - Rebranding to ChannelX to reflect the modern retail ecosystem 
20:58 - The three stages of artificial intelligence in online shopping 
29:35 - How Gen Z is changing e-commerce through Depop and TikTok 
32:22 - The explosive growth of live selling on eBay Live 
34:16 - Why new brands should master one channel before expanding 
44:41 - Bridging the gap between marketplaces and retail sellers 
50:38 - Managing inventory storage and marketplace fulfillment costs 
54:24 - Strategies for testing and entering international markets 
01:03:37 - Why live video selling is the top recommendation for new sellers 
01:04:39 - Upcoming retail and e-commerce events from ChannelX


Get in touch today: https://avask.com/find-your-plan/

ChannelX: https://channelx.world/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are tuning in from. This is another episode of the online hustle podcast sponsored by Avast. Today we have Halled to my right, and we also have Chris Dawson, who is the runner and who is Channel X himself, uh, who's joining us in the studio today. So Chris, go ahead, thank you very much for inviting me down to Avast Studios for my shirt podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

I'm excited. Thank you so much for joining us. And we want to go straight into it, we want to dig deep because I know you have a lot of stories to tell, uh, all based on your vast experience in the e-commerce dating back to early 2000s. Am I right?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Yes, um uh I I was uh what one of one of the early sellers on eBay UK. Um, not when it launched in the UK, but a couple of years later in the very early 2000s, I started a business selling.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

And what drove the beginning of the what it used to be called back in the day, the blog.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Well, the blog came a few years ago, but let's go right back to the beginning when I started selling on eBay. I was working in a full-time job. I bought a house, or I was in the process of buying a house, and two weeks before I completed and moved in, I got made redundant, which meant I was very quiet to the mortgage company and didn't tell them I was unemployed because technically I was on gardening leave over that period. But two weeks after I moved into the house, I no longer had a paycheck. Now, fortunately, I had a friend shout out to Sally, um who I haven't seen for years, but lovely lady. She said to me, I found this new site, it looks good. Do you think I could make money on it? And I looked at it and I thought, Sally, you might be able to make money on it, but I know I can make money on it. So I started selling on eBay because I had a mortgage payment coming up in a month's time and no more income. And I kind of pretended that I would look for a job, but it kind of this was in June and it got to Christmas, and I still hadn't started looking for a job because I was too busy doing the house up and selling on eBay, and I just carried on doing that for quite a few years and forgot to look for a job because it was so successful. Um, and eBay pretty much ate my mortgage in the early days. After a few years, I started doing um charity auctions, and I was a bit of a specialist in them. So I worked for people like eBay themselves for Arsenal Force for 20th Century Fox. Um, 20th Century Fox is a great example. There was a film that came out, 27 Dresses, and they got a whole load of dresses from celebrities, and it was a Kylie Minogue dress, a Danny Minogue dress, and a whole load of others that I auctioned on eBay on behalf of 27 20th Century Fox. And I got paid for running a charity auction, so I really enjoyed that because it's something a bit different and a bit fun. Yeah. And then I kind of wanted more of this work, and I was with a friend Sue, and she said, Well, I do website design, and I'd quite like to design a few more eBay shops for people and get paid for it. A third friend of ours, Dan Wilson, was there, and he just said, Well, you keep saying you want to do stuff, why don't you do something? He said, I've got a blog, why don't you two have blogs and promote what you're doing? And I said, I think honestly nowadays, I said, not really sure what a blog is. And Sue said, Oh, don't be silly, I know how to do that, we'll do it together. And that was how what was then Tame Bay was formed. And we started writing about selling our experiences on eBay. I don't think Sue got a lot of web design work. I certainly not get any charity auction out of it, but the momentum grew, and when people on the then eBay PowerSeller board found out what they were doing, they were like, Oh my god, have you seen what Chris and Sue are doing? They've got a blog, let's go and read their blog. And the audience built. A year later, channel advisor approached us and said, We love what you're doing. Could we have an advert on your blog? And I rang Sue up and I said, Can we do adverts? He said, Don't be silly, it's a picture with a link. Of course, we can do an advert. This is how naive I was in those days. So channel advisor became our first advertiser. And once we had an advertiser, lo and behold, other people wanted to advertise and become involved in the blog. And it just grew and grew from there. And after a few years, it got so busy I had to decide do I want to be a full-time eBay seller or a full-time journalist? And um, because like today, I'm here doing a podcast, I can't be at home shipping orders, so I had to make the choice. So I transitioned into doing journalism full-time and I've been doing it ever since. So that's how the blog started. And then we obviously rebranded them a few years ago to Channel X.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Oh wow, amazing! So you went from losing your old job into a house with no sort of stability to be a mortgage into running the successful. And I can honestly say I had no savings because they all went on the deposit. See, and how did you gain credibility in the beginning? Everything was new, so even the commercials were new on blogs back in the days.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

So everything to do with the blog was based around our own experiences of selling on eBay. So when eBay did something we didn't like, we said we don't like what eBay have done here. When they did something we did like, we say we'd like this. But importantly, for credibility, the one thing we were always careful to do is when we say eBay have done this, we don't like it, we wouldn't stop there. We'd say, but this is the best way of working with it. So we it was things like when eBay stopped you leaving negative feedback for a buyer, or when they brought in detail seller ratings, and things which frankly made trading on eBay more difficult. Well, not necessarily more difficult, but different. We'd say we don't like this, we don't agree with it, but it's done. So here's the best way of dealing with it to ensure your business carries on growing, you'll carry on successfully.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

So was there a lot of people that were originally coming to Tambay because they wanted sort of hacks, maybe behind the scenes knowledge of how best to exploit eBay for their own, you know, for the profit?

SPEAKER_02 6:34

You've got to remember these were the very early days of eBay, and these were the days where it it it it sounds bizarre nowadays, but you didn't even get a picture on your eBay listings. You could put a picture on your eBay listings, but it would cost you 12p a picture. Yeah. So it's an uh early days was should you pay 12p and have one picture, should you buy a picture pack and have six pictures, or should you not have pictures? And it it was like, what's the best way of working with eBay? There were things that have disappeared in the in time, like shop inventory format listings on eBay. So there was auctions buy it now and shop inventory format. Auctions and buy it now appeared in search, shop inventory format didn't appear in search, but the fees were a lot lower. So, how can you drive traffic to your shop inventory format listings? And you might call them hacks or experience or whatever, but we were writing about what we were doing and what we were finding out on eBay, and when we were finding it out, we were some of the earliest people finding it out, or other people would find it out and say, Hey, Chris, too, have you seen this that we're doing? This is working really, really well. And we're like, Oh, thank you for that. We can share it with everyone. So it was right at the beginning of e-commerce when I would say it was before the high street got involved, it was literally people working from their bedrooms and small businesses and small lockups and growing independent businesses. You wouldn't find nowadays, you can go on to any marketplace and you'll find Robert Dyer. Well, half of the people you find on marketplaces now run marketplaces like BQ and Debanham's, and actually Robert Dyes is a marketplace, and so's John Lewis, and so is Curry's. But these people weren't even on marketplaces. In fact, one that made me smile was um co-op decided to start selling electricals on the marketplace on eBay. But they opened up their eBay ideas one to three electricals because they wanted to sell on eBay and get the sales, but they didn't really want the co-op name on there in case it didn't work.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

But if you looked at the seller details, it was the co-op's telephone number and address and everything for customer support. But so this was the the early Wild West, if you like. If it was the pioneers, that the people that discovered eBay and found they could make money on it, whether it be as a sole trade or small business, or whether it be a larger business that grew, and some of the businesses that are still around today are doing tens of millions of power's turnovers. I mean, um railways, for example, was there in the early days, they're a 70-75 million pound turnover business today.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah, it's a huge change, isn't it? And it's it's funny that some of the original businesses that started out like that may have just faded into insignificance, maybe because they haven't kept up with the times, or maybe they just put all of their eggs into one basket with eBay, and now that's not the most popular platform in the UK.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Well, very quickly along came Amazon, yeah, and then the the Etsy and not on the high street were bubbling away in the background. But nowadays there are so many marketplaces, and I named a few that uh Tesco's Argos are up there marketplace this year of BQ, Debanums, Robert Diois, Curry's, John Lewis, there are so many retailer marketplaces, and then there's some great uh newer marketplaces that weren't around that back then, uh like OnBuy, for example, or Trugo, and then there's international marketplaces. You go to France or Germany, um that we'll talk of marketplaces like Allegro or C Discount or Larado or specified for specific types of products as well. Yes, so you you've got the specialist marketplaces as well, where they are um very focused. It might be a consumer electronics marketplace, and then you've got the more generalist marketplaces where it could be everything from fashion to home and garden to computers.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

So you set up this community for new sellers that were starting out, and you're pretty much answering their question. You were a hub for finding out how to do things or to make suggestions to them. Back in the days, what was an sort of an algorithm update or a change that impacted everyone that maybe it is an issue to this day? Do you remember? I think it's fees.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

And there have been so many fee changes over the years. Like when I I used to be able to run my eBay business, and this will shock people, on about six to seven percent uh fees, and that included everything from eBay fees to PayPal fees to every fee that I was charged by a marketplace, because I used a shop inventory format that was like 2.8% fees plus PayPal fees. But over the years, fees have gone up enormously. So now a base for most marketplaces, you're talking around the 10 to 12%. I mean, TikTok's nine percent, eBay's 10 or 12%, Amazon's a bit more because it includes the payment fees. Um but generally nowadays you can't possibly run a business without sort of 12 to 18 percent of your sales being taken in marketplace fees, and on top of that, then there's what we'd call retail media or eBay call it promoted listings, Amazon call it sponsor brand, sponsor product, but there's promotion fees on top, which could be pushing your fees up to 20-25% nowadays. So that's a huge difference going from six percent to twenty-five percent. But every time a marketplace changes their fees, it always causes disruption because it effect it's effectively a structural change for the retailer's business. That if you're running on six percent fees and it goes to ten percent, that changes your margins across everything. That might be if you're only making four percent margin, that might be you out of business. Um but and then if you get up to sort of twenty percent, that whole on load more people out of business. So that structural change of fees is critical, and if the one thing you need to keep on top of and understand the numbers, understand your margins, uh everyone will tell you whatever you're selling, you make your profit when you buy the goods. And so it might be you need to look at different goods that you're buying or different margins when you're buying, take into account other fees, but it it's it's it's got tougher over the years.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yes, and I feel like it's something that still gets overlooked because apart from the marketplace fees that you're talking about, there's all the other fees that go into the background actually running it up until we there's carrier fees, there's VAT, there's different regulatory fees.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

I mean, the the fees are coming out of the woodwork all the time. Things like packaging regulations. Oh, we're gonna charge you for the packaging use, there's always another fee coming out. And I think um governments have cottoned on to the fact that e-commerce is a really right target for putting new taxes on. And uh don't necessarily disagree with that, they've got a different cost base to a retailer on a high street, for example, who are paying huge fees in effect, um, but we call them business rates. Whereas e-commerce don't have so high business rates, but hey, let's charge them for other things.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yeah, I suppose you've not got the the rent of having a physical store, a physical location if you're selling online, but then you've probably got a warehouse rent there. Well, exactly. Yeah. But then there's all these other sort of uh schemes that people try and get into, specifically with Amazon, where they can store their products in like Poland or Czech Republic, for example, where the warehousing fees are less and the storage fees are less, so that you can make up some of that uh lost margin rather than storing in Germany. So there are little sneaky tactics, and maybe that's something the term there used to a lot as well.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

I mean, there's always been the argument over whether you do you fulfil the goods yourself from your own warehouse. Do you use a service, a marketplace service like FBA from Amazon or eBay fulfillment, or do you use a third-party warehouse? And often a third party can offer huge advantages, as in because of economies of scale, they've got a bigger warehouse and their starving cost is lower, they can do things like later shipping cutoff times because they can get a career to come in at 8, 9, 10 o'clock at midnight to collect, whereas your cutoff might be three o'clock in the afternoon because that's where you are on the career run. Um, but there's also disadvantages that as soon as you start splitting your stock, it gets more expensive. Because if you've got some in your own warehouse and some in Amazon FBA in the UK and some in Amazon FBA in Europe, then you've got three stock pools. Um so potentially you need three times as much stock to keep them all supplied. And even if you're using a 3PL in the UK, um advantage it's probably going to be somewhere in a motorway hub, maybe in the Midlands or something, close to the M5, M6 corridors. Um but then do you take the goods into your warehouse and then ship them to the 3PL, or can you get your manufacturer to prepare them and ship them straight into the 3PL and save costs that way? Um the the the the and and and then if you're doing that, how do you get hold of them to photograph? You still need some stock in your own warehouse or to get hold of at least one unit at some point.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

I feel as though the conversation's moved from obviously early beginnings and how you got started, and now we're sort of talking about what's going on in uh e-commerce industry on the whole at the moment. So before we get any further with that, tell us about the rebrand between Tambay and Channel X and and how you've sort of incorporated that X branding across everything that you do.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

So a few years ago, well about a decade ago, we were acquired by the Internet Retailing Group, who were really, really strong with their internet retailing brand on the effectively the top 500 retailers in the country looking at their online presence. Tame Bay at the time was totally focused on marketplaces. Yeah. And at the time we wanted to rebrand at Tame Bay to become more reflective of what we were talking about at the time. And at the time we've moved from being pure marketplaces to selling on different channels. And there were more marketplaces than ever before, but there were channels coming along like Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok that weren't really marketplaces. TikTok operates quite like a marketplace, but they're an entertainment channel, they're more like QBC TV than they are like an eBay or an Amazon. So we picked on the name channel because that kind of described what we did. And Internet Retail already had a research on RetailX. So I said, why don't we have Channel X? And we can rebrand our other platforms as well. So today, um, as well as Retail X and Channel X, we've also got Retail Media X and Subscription X and Commerce X and Customer X. So everything we do has got an X, which kind of signifies sort of the the the the expertise, but also the kind of the mystery of selling on these channels, and the the the X is that that X factor, what do you need to do to succeed? So I think it's a nice group of family names. It's kind of integrated uh what was then tamed by as Channel X fully into the Retail X um uh ecosystem and our flagship is now Retail X events, um part of which is Channel X um conference, which is coming up in June this year.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

It's nice to see that you've put all these subdivisions of the brand and got them together into a big family, making sure you can touch on every single topic that's of interest for the same. And we talk about very different things.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

So um for some retailers, their entire business is on marketplaces, so eBay, Amazon, Debian as being Q. But for other businesses, is that just a small subset? So if if you take a a larger retailer, they may have their own stores, they may sell on marketplaces, they may sell on TikTok, they they they'd probably worry about Google advertising. Nowadays they're probably worried about AI and a genetic commerce and how they're gonna cope with that. So all of the different brands under the Retail X umbrella, we've got the retail media brand. So if you want to know about marketing, you can. We've got a connected TV summit coming up later this year. So if you want to know more about TV advertising, um, which isn't just linear TV nowadays, it's things like Amazon Prime and the Rocco and the so many other channels on TV. Um, if you want to know about AI, we've got an AI summer. If you want to know about subscriptions, which is a whole different game in itself, but everything from we always think subscriptions as being sort of our our Netflix and maybe our razor blades, and but then maybe we have tech foods on subscription, our toilet roll on subscription, and this the the gym membership on subscription, and so many subscriptions we sign up for nowadays. Um and it it it's almost like product as a service, we sign up for it just in the same way as we sign up for Netflix and TV, we'll sign up for our razor delivery from some like Harris.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

It's definitely something that's growing, and I see a lot of retailers touching based on that offering great deals if you actually subscribe and just sort of sign up to be uh on Amazon they've got subscribers they've been begging me to sign up for regular deliverance.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Have you? Not on many products. Um I I I I I I tend to be old fashioned, I still like to order stuff myself. Um but if you've got um things that you do use on a very regular basis, it kind of makes sense for things like if you've got a cat or a dog, you're probably gonna buy cat food every week or two weeks. Yeah, I do it in coffee in deodorant. Yeah, yeah. Um you you know how long it's gonna last. You know the cat has two meals a day and there's 12 sachets in a box. That's gonna last six days. I've got three boxes at a time or whatever, that's 18 days. So every 18 days, uh just have it delivered to me, why not?

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah, it saves you the hassle of having your cat roaming around the house hissing at it. So you know that it's always gonna be that.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

And I'm gonna be fascinated as AI comes in to see how that impacts shopping and in particular subscriptions, because there's a potential. I think there's three stages of AI that we're gonna see in retail. Stage number one is AI tools, things, internal tools effectively, to make my life easier. And it'll start in places like data analytics and potentially customer services, replace chatbots with much more intelligent AI bots. Then we'll start to see, which is already happening in the US, the ability to shop on things like Perplexity or Chat GTPT. So I'm either typing away or I'm talking to an AI, and I say, Oh, you know what? I'm having some friends around at the weekend. What would you recommend for a recipe? Oh, can you just order that food for me and I'll order it? And then the next step of AI is gonna be autonomous purchasing where it just goes out and buys stuff for me that I didn't know I wanted, but it's decided I need. And that might be like it notices my bank account. I've not bought cat food for three weeks. I had four weeks in stock, just gonna order another four weeks worth of cat food for me. Or, like you say, but the deodorant, um, you've got a deodorant subscription. You've gone on holiday for a month, so it just cancels it for a month and then restarts it for you. And I think it's going to be fascinating that when you book a holiday on AI, it puts your milk delivery on the hold, or it it books a Tesco delivery for the day you're coming back, or it knows you've got a subscription that arrives on the 5th of every month, it knows you're on holiday, so it just switches it to the 15th when you're back.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

There's there's two ways of looking at that, because initially when you talk about it, it feels a bit insidious that I don't really like the fact that it has that control. I don't even like subscription, but you like I'm too old. But on the other hand, I'm excited. But it is it's like having a personal assistant. Yes, but it's somebody seems a weird call it somebody, but like something that knows you in a way that so when you're at work or when you're out seeing your partner or walking your dog, you forget about these things and they go by the wayside, and then you get back in and you go, I haven't made you a drink, or you come back there isn't anymore. Wouldn't it be great?

SPEAKER_02 22:58

I'm thinking of a lady on a night out in high heels, she slips and breaks the heel of her favourite shoes. Yeah, and when she gets home, the AI has ordered some replacement pair. There's so many things it could be useful for. Um the AI hears me say, I've been at a vase today. Oh no, I've left my laptop charger at a vase. And I don't know if I do anything. It maybe within an hour with something like Amazon or a local retailer or a a a deliverer or an Uber goes to carries and buys one and delivers it to me, knows what laptop I've got, knows I've lost my laptop charger, knows I need it, because otherwise in about six hours I'm gonna run out of charge, does it for me? There's so many possibilities that happen.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

There's there's another way of looking at it as well, where obviously when we are shopping as humans, that listings are attractive to us from the human eye. But and then maybe through the keyword search, obviously when we type something, when we type something in, the products come off based on those keywords. But then are the same keywords being seen in the same way by an AI agent as well? Or are most of all currently no one knows.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

And secondly, that's the tricky part. Secondly, everyone that does know it's changing on an almost daily, if not hourly, basis. But what I can tell you is um the SEO game is going to change. So in the past, um I remember when do you remember white on white text? So in the past, you would you would put a whole load of keywords at the bottom of your webpage for the search engines to pick up, right? But it looked awful for humans. So what you do is you just change the colour of the keywords to white so that it was white on a white background. Computers saw it, humans didn't. And SEO search engines have got so much smarter over the years that they kind of penalise you for doing things like that. Absolutely. But at the moment with AI, we're still in that game of trying different things to see what works. But there are two things that are gonna be ultra important. Number one is data data data. You are gonna need data on every single product, but the AI engines, the LLMs, need to identify the product and be absolutely certain what the and the other thing that's gonna happen is that AIs want different types of information. So when people type into a search engine, they tend to type in two or three words like whiskers cat food. When they're talking to an LLM, they'll be much more expensive. And they might say, I'm going on holiday to the Bahamas and I want some new sunglasses. I'm not sure what the weather's like or what UV protection I like. I like metal rims, but will they get too hot in the sun? So should I have plastic? What would you recommend? So when you're selling your sunglasses, you need to say these are plastic rimmed sunglasses, so they won't get hot in the sun in your FAQs. You need to say these have got UV protection, which is great if you're going to the tropics or the Bahamas. Because the LLMs will pick up on all of that. So you need to be a lot. Not just descriptions, but also FAQs are going to be really, really helpful. Because if I'm asking for something very, very specific, and the LM can see it in my FAQs, but please don't take this for the gospel because I said everything changes almost hourly with LLMs and AI. So what I'm talking about today might might well be wrong tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

That would be a good change, actually. I mean, it would be nice as cleaners for us as individuals to get information to be able to compare rather than just be drawn to a picture or something that we know.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

But the difference is when we go to Google or a Bing, we're searching for a product. We've decided we want something if we're in shopping mode and we're looking for it. We might be on a Pinterest and wanting to be inspired and put collections on our pinboard if we're having events, especially something like if you're decorating a room or you're planning a wedding or some sort of birthday party, you might want to be inspired, but you're still looking for things. When you're talking to an AI, it's much more like saying to a friend, I want one of those things that does this that you've got, I can't remember what it's called. And the AI will figure out what it's called and find it for you. And that's that's I think the difference. It's hard to go to Google and say, I want the thing that does this, what is it? It's very easy to go from an AI engine and say, I want the thing that does this and this, and it looks a bit like this. Can you get it for me? And uh oh, I know what that is. I've uh you said some keywords, I know I've searched loads of websites, I've found this widget on whatever site it is. I view it a bit like do you remember when the old hardware stores were around and you'd go in and say, My tech's leaking, I need something to stop it. I unscrew the tot and something, and he's like, Oh, you want a washer, I know which one it is. You might not know the name that it's a washer you want, you might not know what size it is, but the person behind the camera would always know what it is. And that's what AI is gonna be like, they're always gonna know what you want.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Yeah, I think this is a good change, but when it comes to like sharing our, as you said, like sharing our schedule, sharing our habits. I think this is where where I would struggle personally, like letting the N just know exactly what I'm doing or everything about me. And I think this is where brands who are more classic, if I may, would still win until those changes obviously will become dumbly normal.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

I think you've got to look at two different things. There are people like me, basically old people, who will carry on why, you know, who will carry on going to your website and using search engines in a more traditional manner, just the same as there are people even older than me, like my mum, who goes to the shops or wants a catalogue. She doesn't want to shop on the internet, she wants physical retail. I'm quite happy on the internet, I buy everything online, I hardly ever go to a shop. But then there are younger people, and there is a cohort growing up today in their late teens, early twenties, that if you say to them, say, Do you shop on Amazon? They're like, Nah, really. Do you shop on eBay? That's fallen out of favour quite a lot, I say. Well it hasn't, but it's coming back a big time. Well, uh hoping we'll get on to that on a in a minute, but go on. These people are shopping on Deepop vintage TikTok. These are the people that are spending two, three, four hours a day talking to LLMs. They're going to be the shoppers that you're approaching on LMs. And it's the same as the story that it's always been. Why do people sell on marketplaces? And the answer has always been you need to be where your customer is. If it's my mum, you need to be on the high street or have a physical catalog. If it's me, you need to be online and either have a website or be on a marketplace. If it's the 18-year-old, you need to be on vintage and Depop and TikTok. And very soon it'll be you need to be on the LLMs, on the AI for genetic commerce, to take account of the cohort that is doing that. But the people like my mum and myself, we are kind of the dying outbreed as we're getting older. What you've got to be thinking about is where do you want to be in 10 years' time when those 20 somethings are now 30 somethings and they've got the largest incomes and the greatest disposable spend. And if they're growing up with AI today, that's where you want to be tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

Well, I read something the other day, and I I won't be able to quote the source because I can't remember. I see too many stats, but they reckon now that by 2029 the market share for e-commerce sales of Gen Z specifically, that's anybody born 1996 and after, yeah, will be larger than that of the boomer generation. Which is me. That is it. We're dying read. So even seeing that shift now, I mean, some of these I think you can be still be like 13 and be part of Gen Z, but that shows a huge shift towards people that are, you know, like that you mentioned with your mum, yourself, you know, a lot of people in that age bracket would still be shopping in retail. Whereas now e-commerce is really the the the main.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

And I am for guys who there are some people in their likes who are great online, and there's others that that in my age that still don't do online and prefer to go to the shops. And there are still some Gen Zs that like getting to the shop, but there are some Gen Z that have never bought anything in a physical retail outlet.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

I believe that. Yeah. I think it's interesting as well, though, when you were talking about TikTok shop in particular, a lot of people might not even go on there thinking that they want to buy anything, but maybe people just get like TikTok made me buy it. Yeah, yeah. You see these videos, and it's like people get uh people will view a product and the way it's described and the way it's shown and what features it has, what benefits it has, and they just get wrapped up in it all and they go, I must buy it now. But maybe you just went and the the app to have a look at the silly dancing video. Really, really excited.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

You would say oh, eBay, that's died away a bit. eBay are coming back so big time with what they call eBay Live, which is the kind of the QVC TikTok and live selling side of eBay, and it is growing so fast, it is unbelievable. And the sale through rates on eBay Live, you might be selling an item a minute, whereas on the main eBay search, you might sell a hundred items a day or something. On eBay Live, you could sell a hundred items in two hours, and that is definitely one to watch. And for anyone that is active on TikTok, you should be looking at eBay Live. They're opening up more categories now, recruiting more sellers, and it is going to be an absolute game changer for eBay. But they've done some interesting things because they also bought Deepop off Etsy at a pretty knockdown price, which got them a whole new range of Gen Z buyers, um, who frankly I think should have been eBay buyers in the first place, but eBay dropped the ball. But now they've got Deepop, they they can have some cross-pollination and expose eBay listenings to Depop and Depop buyers to eBay. And I'm pretty sure that the eBay Live is going to be exposed on Dpop at some point because it it's just growing so well.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

It's all based on like whether you're used to, as we were talking earlier about like Gen Z, just like buying all everything is online, is like this is everything they knew of. It's very rarely when they actually go physically into a shop to buy something, and obviously, as you were saying, this is the future generation, and sellers and retailers have to appeal to that. But thinking of like how many marketplaces are there, like Instagram, Walmart, Amazon, Shopify. Based on your experience, what would you advise a brand who's looking to expand? Should they be everywhere or should they just focus on a primary marketplace and what to look at? Ideally, you should be everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

In reality, that's not possible. But you should be everywhere that you can be, and it has got so much easier over the years, um, because you can almost be on the marketplace as a click of a button. So there are technologies out there, like if you're thinking about going on Debonim's, there's no reason you couldn't also be on BQ and Tesco's and Argos because they all run on the Miracle platform, and with Miracle Connect, it's very, very easy. Once you're on one miracle marketplace to sell on multiple miracle marketplaces, it's so much easier to sell on Debnams and then adopt BQ compared to 20 years ago if you sold on eBay and then started selling on Amazon. That was totally different. But the other thing is there are so many multi-channel solutions available nowadays. I'm thinking like the bass, the limbworks, the rhythms, the volos, channel grabbers, etc., that will store feeder, the non-limited numbers, that will, if you're selling on one channel, it can make it very, very easy if you just sell on the second or third channel. I think the real difficulty comes not in how many channels you're on, but in the structural change for your business. How much inventory do you need? Do you need a separate inventory pool for each channel, or can you do it out of one, 3PL in your own warehouse? Um, but also pricing. So we all know that Amazon wants to have the cheapest prices on the web, and if you're selling at a significantly lower price on another platform, then Amazon will probably take the buy box away from you and kind of hide your product because they'll say, Well, we don't want to promote, it's not it's not you we don't want to promote, we just don't want to promote a price that isn't a market leading price. We want to offer great value to our buyers. So if the same product, even if it's someone else selling on another platform that quarter the price off, then Amazon don't really want to promote that as a product. So selling on one platform can impact another. And actually, interestingly, Amazon is so big that it's kind of baked in a margin into products that you kind of bake in, okay, to sell on Amazon, I've got to pay the the these fees for selling fees, and uh I've got to pay these fees for FBA, I've got to pay these fees for advertising. So having to say my cost of product the minimum, I've got these fees, and that's kind of set my base price for Amazon. And then I don't really want to be cheaper than Amazon on other platforms, so even if the fees are lower, I really want my price parity, and that makes it really complicated because you then have to make decisions. Do I want to sell on Amazon or do I want to sell on Team? Do I want to sell on Amazon? Do I want to sell on eBay? Do I want to sell on Amazon? Do I want to be on BQ? Where am I going to put my product? And also, what product price do I want on my own website? And then it becomes even more complicated because um if you are a brand that has retail partners, then you might be baking in prices with your retail partners. The the buyers will say, Okay, well, we'll stock this product, what's the price going to be? And you say, Okay, this is your price, and they say, Great, we're putting on our website, we're putting on our printed catalogue, this is the price for the next six months. Well, we've seen some huge shocks in the world recently with um Iran and prior to that Gaza and prior to that Ukraine, where energy prices and shipping, when the Suez Canal was blocked, cost of containers massively changed. Now, if you fix the price with a retailer, you can't then put the price up even on your own website. Because why would you be massively more expensive than one of your retail partners? And if prices go down, you don't really want to undercut your retailers by suddenly like they're selling it at 50 quid and you're now selling it at 30 quid because prices have fallen. So it's always been a complicated game and it will remain complicated. So I think the biggest problem nowadays is not how many channels can I sell and do I have to tech, it's what structural impact does it have on my business, how will it affect my pricing policy, how will it affect my existing channels?

SPEAKER_01 38:35

I see. So it all comes down in essence to like being informed, obviously, what does it imply to going on those channels if you do want to expand and uh doing the research?

SPEAKER_02 38:43

Apart from that, you should be everywhere, you should be where your buyer wants to be, and that's what we've said for 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

That's the message that we're putting across there.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

You should be every noticed, do your research. Would would that be the same, do you reckon, for a brand new starter? Do you think if you were just about to start a new company, would you go, right, let's spread myself really thin, let's go across everything. Spread yourself really thin.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

The first thing a new company needs to do is prove the appetite of the consumer for their product, make sure they've got the presentation right, the pricing right, that the entire proposition. Um do not go everywhere until you've proved your operational base. Make sure that your warehouse or your DC that's doing the deliveries are operating, make sure that the orders are flowing, get everything right, make all the mistakes on one platform, and only when you've sold all the mistakes, think about going everywhere. Yeah. Um, you you can't launch a new product on your own website and Amazon and eBay and DevLims and being here and TikTok and everything today, because that is just asking for trouble. So absolutely proof of concept, keep it really, really simple. Um, make a success of one platform and then add a second and then add a third.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

And if things start to go wrong, start pulling back until you've got everything right. But don't think I'm gonna open up a new business, I'm gonna start selling on 10 different channels today.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Yeah, that's good. Because I I agree with that as well. But you do that's a big debate within the industry. It's like, do I just go Amazon and then once that works, then go Shopify, then move on to Etsy, depending on what the type of product is, because obviously some platforms are more specific to certain types of SKUs, and but it's always omnichannel or not? Do I just go everywhere and be as visible as possible?

SPEAKER_02 40:28

You go everywhere binge time, yeah, but you've absolutely proved the concept. The worst thing you can do is jump on a platform and realise your customer service isn't up to scratch and the platform bans you, or your operations aren't up to scratch, and you thought they'd ship out the day they got the order, but actually the warehouse is taking three days to ship every order, and everything's arriving late, and my marketplace metrics are terrible. Band of doing that on one platform, imagine doing it on 10 platforms all at the same time, and having 10 platforms saying, Well, we don't want you selling here anymore. So get everything operationally right, prove the market, make sure the products are sells to start with, but absolutely get that operational base in place and running TikTok for one platform, get everything absolutely as perfect as you can, and then start to expand.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

And speaking with a lot of sellers who are not necessarily hesitating, but they want to make sure that they're doing the right thing. Is there anything like a common mistake that you see them making when they're move from one platform to another? Like move. The biggest mistake is assuming the platform will be the same.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

They're not. So while you might think a platform like Amazon, for example, is huge demand because, for instance, Amazon insists you reply to every customer message within 24 hours. And even if the customers just sent you a message saying thank you, and you don't reply to it, that's a knock on your metrics. Whereas you'd think on eBay it was easier because they don't have a minimum response time. But actually, eBay buyers are even more responsive because especially if something's on an auction, they're sending you a message, it's because they want to buy it before you've run out of stock on the auction's ended. So even more critical sometimes on eBay, even though the metrics aren't being measured. So I think it's like every platform has its nuances and they're different, and it could even come down to silly things like how your picture's presented. So typically on e-commerce, we've always said, Oh, you should have the product on a white background. But that doesn't work for every site. In fact, if you're not on the high street, they want a lifestyle shot of the product of the main image. Um, others will have a very specific, like if you're selling shoes, they'll want front looking at the toe of the shoe to the back as the main picture. Others might want the shoe on the side for the main picture. Some might want the shoe just on a white background, others might want it actually on a mannequin or a human foot to actually see. Um so it m it it every platform will be different, and that's why sometimes it takes a little time to adopt them. You need to get to know the platform on what they actually want. And it's even silly things like do we have rectangular images or square images? Um and uh it's got so much easier though, because for instance, if you're selling on eBay, they've got a lovely tool as you're putting pictures up to just remove the background for you. So if you need white images, eBay will do it for you. And in fact, on eBay, they've got a tool they call a magical listing tool, where you can take a photo of the product and it'll pretty much create the whole listing for you descriptions, items, specifics, title, and everything, and you can just check it over. Um, so it's it it's amazing today compared to 20 years ago, what can be done. But I still think it comes down to knowing the platform and working out what's different to the other platforms I sell on, because there will be differences, and then if it's platform like TikTok is an entirely different way of operating to operating on an eBay or an Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

And you recently published an ebook on uh channel X about selling on TikTok.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Yep, it's free download. Everything you need to sell now about selling on TikTok if you want to download it.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

If you're listening or watching this, make sure you have uh you have a look through that as it's really uh it's really interesting and you have a lot of do's and don'ts so you can learn things of things that you should do and things you shouldn't do when uh when you're trying to transition into this platform. Going back to channel uh with channel X wanted to ask when you collect information and do the research that you're putting out there you're in my opinion at an intersection between retailers and marketplaces. How do you filter the noise to like actual updates and important pieces of show we speak to both.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

We speak to the channels and we speak to the brands and retailers. So the brands and retailers will largely want to complain uh not complain constructively tell us what their issues are and problems are and the marketplaces or the channels want to tell us what changes there are and what's coming so we'll speak to the senior people at the marketplaces we'll speak to the leading brands and retailers and our job is kind of to make sure that if you're reading channel X you're aware of what's happening on the channels what changes are coming that will impact your business but equally to be a sounding board for the brands and retailers and sellers when they're having issues to be able to go back to the marketplace and say hey our sellers are telling us this this huge problem are you aware of it do you know that this is a problem are you aware your sellers are screaming and and and and trying to work with this what can we do to help them and sometimes it can be something quite minor that's a very easy fix for a marketplace other times it's okay the marketplace can't fix it but they say actually I know they I know your retailers are complaining but have they tried doing this because it works so much better than the old way of doing things that they're still doing it it could be something like a marketplace changes their search algorithm and everyone complains that their products aren't being found in search anymore and the reason is um something like eBay did a few years back is eBay said you can no longer have decorations on your pictures so you can no longer uninject to say that you're from UK you can no longer put saying next day delivery it's got to be just the product and the reason for that is eBay want to share your product on Google and Google want plain images. So if you put decorations on eBay eBay are going to put your lists down the bottom and use someone that's got a clean image at the top and that might be why you're failing. So sometimes it's not just the case of oh all my traffic's gone on eBay or all my traffic's gone on Amazon what's gone wrong why don't they love me anymore? Well because you've not followed what they've asked you to do.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

Well I saw last year in particular a lot of people were being very creative shall we say about the images that they use especially on Amazon US because of all of the turmoil that happened with tariffs and everything a lot of people were trying to sneak in made in USA on their images so that people knew that they would still be port duty exactly yeah so people always try to find sneaky ways around that and then Amazon probably look at their listings and their products images and say we don't like those because they've got got flags on and everything and down to the bottom of search you go. But um I did a previous podcast episode with um Zesty Pause and they're a Amazon brand yeah and and they they their main thing they're featured in the TikTok ebook that you can have there it's come full circle. But their main change that they saw and how profitability increased for them was something that's so trivial it's just a fact of the supplements that they were selling previously were in normal white or black packaging I I I I forget exactly what it was but then changing it to bright orange made it stand out against that white background and people like what's this one? It has the packaging image on the on the Amazon hit picture.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

But I think that that that just goes back to the basic retail of like a hundred years ago of a product appeal on the shelf in the shop um if you don't stand out in a competition um they're not going to see you and I think it it it's just basic branding and it's something every brand or retailer needs to get right is to make sure their product does stand out where they can. And I think it's like um I'm all in favour of orange by the way channel X is kind of a ready orange logo um but I think having a brand colour that is always the same that people recognise it's like if you see a can of red drink with some slurly writing on it you probably know it's gonna say Coca-Cola before you even get near to it because it's so recognizable and that's what ZD4s have done. They they they they picked a colour at a brand that stands out on the shelf whether it be in a physical shelf or a virtual shelf.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

Yeah but if you see an orange airplane you know it's easy gen. Yeah or if you see um Tiffany and co they they've copyrighted that colour that's Tiffany blue or then trademark that colour so nobody else can use that Tiffany. You know the big swirl on it as well. Yeah so it's it's things like that where that that's brand recognition that's loyalty people oh that I knew what that colour is.

SPEAKER_02 49:33

And it's like Amazon if you just see that A to Z arrow that goes from A to Z, which stands for the A to Z guarantee but you see the arrow on its own you just know it's an Amazon arrow.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

That's what's on the packages isn't it yeah the box it doesn't say Amazon it's just got the the line the arrow I think it'll be nice for this to be translated to to our listeners if you're a retailer now there make sure you invest into branding and getting your customers to know you and to recognize you in a shelves full of another thousand products make sure you stand out because that's that's very important especially if you're touching bases with multiple channels going back to your previous question of should you want 10 channels at once on one this is why you launch on one channel because you've got to change all of your branding and you find that's the problem do it when you do it when you're relatively small and learning rather than being being on 20 marketplaces from day one. A lot of the people I'm speaking with they're telling me about obviously when they want to expand onto multiple channels they're talking about marketplace sort of charging them the rent as you mentioned earlier for storage and that's sort of a killer for cash flow do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02 50:38

You mean storage for products so that that is a cost that you need to absorb whether you are using marketplace fulfillment and they're storing your products or whether you're filling them yourself in your own warehouse in which you bear the cost or whether you're using a third party DC with a 3PL that are holding them distributing them for you. The problems come when your stock is not being controlled. So it may be better for you rather than having six pallets of kit arrive product arrive and shipping it all into Amazon is to ship it half a pallet at a time or a pallet at a time because if it goes over six months before it's sold you're going to get long storage fees which are higher than the normal storage fees but every cubic foot you take up in someone else's warehouse you're paying for it you're you're renting that space so if you've got your own warehouse hold the stock yourself and ship it into Amazon look at your sell through rates how many do you sell in 30 days after 15 days stock it up so you've got enough when it arrives and is in stock for the next 30 days maybe use a third party partner to do it so they hold the stock for you and they ship it into Amazon as it's needed. But if you if you if you don't keep an eye on your stock holding um and you end up with an absolute ton of production you're you're just paying storage for stuff that is not going to sell this month and it's the same cost if you've got it in your own warehouse and then it's just your problem to store it and it means you can't use the space for other stock that's coming in.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

I always advised on starting with a marketplace's storage facilities first then expand into your own especially if you're at the beginning because it's very hard to forecast it is but it it it it depends on the structure of your business.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

If you're buying stock from China and you're buying it by the container load do not send a whole container with the same product of course not we're talking about volume in I'm talking as well if on the other hand you're getting a box of 50 in and you send 50 to Amazon the problem then becomes if you sold 50 in 15 days you're then out of stock and how long's it going to take to get the next 50 you need to have that stock flowing through and as Amazon ramps up or whichever marketplace it is ramps up you need to make sure there's enough stock that can get there very very quickly and you never run out of stock on the on that that channel and there are ways of balancing it as well I mean you might hold some in Amazon and when you run out of Amazon stock you then start fulfilling yourself until you can get some more in Amazon or use a third party to fill before you get some more into Amazon. But it doesn't mean you have to stop selling but ideally if you're using FBA you will always have enough stock in Amazon but you will never have so much you're just paying to store stuff that is not going to sell within a month.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Of course especially in the beginning because I know there's some restrictions when you actually start as a as a newcomer on the market you will never be allowed to put a container into an MPA as a new business.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

No so it's that limitation as you're saying that's why having a backup option or a 3PL would uh would always work and there are three PLs that will specialise in doing Amazon prep and having it all ready to go and they'll make sure that it gets booked into Amazon and on the right carrier at the right time slot so that you don't get penalised for things like they'll they'll do it all for you but then again you're paying them for storage.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Just on expansion in general because we've been talking about different platforms and you know where you should go where you shouldn't go shouldn't you go everywhere all at once or not but in terms of specific countries or markets which are of interest at the moment um obviously Germany is the largest e-commerce market in the EU no longer in the EU but second largest and then France third but are there any in particular that stick out to you as like really fastly growing markets quickly growing markets I know Poland has got one of the best GDP growths in all of the EU so I hesitate to say that but I want to hear your insight on it.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

My first would be to go where makes sense for you and that might be Australia and the US because they're English speaking and frankly I've got no foreign speakers in my business so let's go to Germany and the US and keep the language simple um but even sorry not Germany Australia and the US but even Australia they use different words for things. Yeah so capital instead of still localization yeah I mean for instance what we call sweets Australians call lollies what we call flip-flops they call fongs and don't buy phones and think you're buying ladies' underwear in Australia because you're getting flip-flops so there's naming brands there's still localization but at least it's in English on the other hand um getting stock to Australia and the US unproven markets is going to be very very expensive to start with compared to getting stock to Germany which is the biggest marketplace in the EU and then France and maybe Spain and um and you can use Amazon's fulfillment network to do that. So once it's in one of Amazon's warehouses pretty much you can sell to the whole of Europe you've got the language barrier yes but it's a lot closer to home it's a lot easier to deal with just getting stuff across the English Channel than it is halfway around the world. Even on time you can get it there in two, three days as opposed to it could could be two, three months Australia if it's going by boat if it's flying it's expensive. And then countries like you mentioned Poland so in Poland you really need to look at two marketplaces. Number one is Allegro which is the homegrown marketplace and number two is Amazon and we're in Poland and investing heavily so an easy starter might be to go in using Amazon and using Amazon's fulfillment network but if you're not on Allegro as well you're missing out on a ton of sales so on Allegro everything's in Polish which I'm sorry there's you'll probably find plenty of French and German speakers in the UK Polish a little bit more difficult so you're dealing again with the language so it it really what internal resources have you got how easily can you get a Polish speaker because the website's in Polish the custom services in Polish the descriptions are in Polish the prices are in Polish it's a bigger change than dealing with France or Germany or even in Italy Spain where you'll find it a lot easier to find native speakers. But it's really also about opportunity Poland as you say e-commerce has grown magnificently so if you've already done Germany and you've already done France you've then got to choose do I want a smallest country like a a Belgium the the Netherlands or the or Sweden or do I want a big country like a Poland that the opportunity is huge.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

Yeah and even then when you mentioned about um Belgium is a really strange one in particular because you know you've got the the top part Flanders which is mostly Dutch Flemish and the southern part Wallonia which is mostly French so you've got even inconsistencies there within country and then you go to Netherlands and Netherlands obviously totally speaks Dutch really good English as well but Ball dot com is more popular there as well so there's there's all these peculiarities with each country that you've got to be aware of.

SPEAKER_02 58:17

But I would say if you're on a platform like Amazon that's a really easy way to test out a country and test the appetite for your product but then you should be going for the local marketplace be it a bolt com or an Allegro in Poland or and depending on the product if it's fashionable Larado in France or C Discount or there's there's there's so many different marketplaces out there it's picking the right marketplace for the country but Amazon once you're on Amazon Europe great way to experiment in multiple countries.

SPEAKER_01 58:48

So it's good to know that that can be used sort of as a an entry point yeah especially because they will a lot of sellers who are on Amazon in their home country they will be used with the process which pretty much just mirrors and then pretty much go from there.

SPEAKER_02 59:00

Yeah and Amazon of course great tools on building international listing tools that you can just like press a button and it'll prepare all your listings for you for the country um they make it as easy as they possibly can. And like you said earlier with Amazon your stock probably in the Czech Republic anyway rather than Germany so the the stock's already over that side of Europe ready to go. We talked about obviously those uh retailers would expand and they would be in the marketplaces that we're talking about if somebody was to come to you saying that they would like to test their vulnerability we talked about a lot of um retailers being internationally and in different marketplaces if a retailer was to come to you and ask about um how they will check their vulnerability on the market what would you say would be the first step to check or to look at the absolute first thing to look at is the data and there is so much data available nowadays um both your internal PL shapes on how the business is running but every marketplace has an absolute deluge of data available both for your own products on your your your your selling velocities and prices um data on any retail media you're doing whether you're doing sponsor products sponsored brands or promoted listings and importantly data on your competitors so often a reason your business might change is maybe a compressor's underpriced you or got a newer model or a slightly different offering it's really difficult to process that data though it's really hard to stay on top of it and the kind of 1090 model applies to retail that you're probably making 90% of a profit off 10% of your products and if you're only focused on that 10% even looking at the data on that is enough but look at the products just beneath those 10% if competitors came and knocked you off the top perch for 10% of products what about your sort of 80 to 90 products beneath your top 99 to 100 products what's the data on those looking like because if you can convert those into top retailing products as well then you're kind of building a a defensive buffer of my top seller goes then I've got these coming obviously it's hard to do it all the way down to your your lowest selling product but at the bottom you should be asking the question should I still be investing in the stock for these products? Are these the products I've got in FBA that have been there for six months never sold and then getting hit on storage fees for should I be getting Amazon to return or dispose of them? Are they just not worth having anymore? And it's all hidden in the data but huge bright spot AI can you imagine how AI is going to be able to crunch this data for us and make recommendations imagine spewing all of your Amazon reports into an LLM and saying which products am I losing money on? Which products am I paying storage fees on that outweigh any margin I'll ever make on the product and the LLMs will be able to just they love data they'll be able to crunch the whole up for you maybe they'll recognise that more people shop those types of products in a specific time of year and then you only not many people are buying Christmas trees at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:24

That's it yeah orbital sales are down by 300% yes because it's um so yeah maybe maybe they will just do more of adjusting time stocking where they will purchase products for you at a specific time because they got these these thongs that you're selling to Australia they're doing really well from October to February.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

I I've I bought all next year's Christmas cards in January when they're in the sales it's a great time of year to buy them because everyone wants to get shot. But yeah I think when AI starts to be able to process that data and in fact marketplaces are already introducing their own AI tools to make it easier. But I think when you can suck the data and combine it with your own data and your own real margins because only you know what margin you're making on the product and you can start saying okay where am I actually losing money? It looks like I'm making good margin forgotten about the long-term storage fees that's chewing it all up and making a loss but AI will be able to hopefully make huge recommendations that will make sweeping changes to your business but if you've not got the data the AIs will be no use to you because they'll have nothing to process so wrapping up um the final question that we always ask we always keep it consistent is if you were to start again today with next to no resources and you had to get involved with the e-commerce market in 2026 what would you do first? First thing I would do is change everything I've ever done in the past and look to the future which would be at the moment life selling whether it be on eBay or TikTok I would just go all in bro because that is where the biggest growth appears to be coming from so it's great having products on a shelf on an Amazon FBA ready to sell on Amazon it's great having products on eBay and BQ and Demonimes and Tesco but if you're looking for real growth look at life selling there you go that's it that's that's if you would skip right to the end of this video just take that away from it but yeah before we do leave you also mentioned earlier that you've got events that are coming up yeah so give us a rundown of of the summits that you have and where people watch three major events this year. We've got the commerce retail festival on the 14th of May where we've got um the sessions on retail media sessions on FMCG um connected TV everything to do kind of with the advertising kind of side of e-commerce then fast forward to June where we've got channel X World and subscription X and this is kind of the the channels and a lot of what we've been talking about today um expertise on selling the chat on the channels where you can come and hit direct from the marketplaces the TikToks the Amazons the eBay's the devil's being keys themselves and if you've got questions this is the place to come and answer and then finally on the 14th 15th of October we've got a new conference Customer X and that kind of brings the entire industry together it brings the the retail media and connect TV and all the channels but it's actually much wider than that because it includes things that aren't e commerce like hotel bookings and travel and gym memberships anything that is um to do with a customer spending money so if you think of um you you've got your essential bills like your You cast your lectures and utilities, but then you've got a pot of money. And think of it as in you're planning a Friday evening in, you might want your Netflix subscription and a pizza, and you might want some beer delivered, and you might want it some invites, or you might want some table decorations, but you don't think about oh, I want a new club new jumper because my friends are coming over and it's Christmas, and I want some you just plan a Friday night. And Customer X is kind of like planning the consumer's spend, and everything she's got to spend, that's what Customer X is interested in. So um 14th of May for um Commerce Media, 17th of June for Channel X and Subscription X, 14th, 15th of October for Customer X.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

Thanks again for joining us and for all the useful information and insights you have given us. I definitely feel like at some point we're gonna have a part two. It was very hard to squeeze everything into one time slot. And thank you for watching and for listening. Um, make sure you check Chris up on channel X.world and also check out the events he mentioned and make sure you get in, as they're definitely the places to be at um if you are part of this industry. Thanks again, and we'll see you soon.