#711 – What It Takes to Start on Amazon in 2025

Scale Stories Mentors and Amazon selling veterans Leo Sgovio, Melisa Vong, and Clarence Cheang take center stage, sharing how they collectively amassed tens of millions in sales and offering a roadmap for aspiring Amazon and TikTok Shop sellers aiming for success in 2025. Melisa is navigating the launch of new brands with groundbreaking marketing strategies, while Leo’s expertise in SEO and influencer marketing sheds light on connecting with audiences like never before. Clarence, with his knack for product research and algorithm mastery, underscores the evolving landscape of Amazon selling and the endless opportunities for those ready to innovate. Together, they paint a picture of a marketplace ripe for those who can harness its potential.

The conversation takes a deep dive into the transformation of Amazon’s product launch strategies from the days of Project X in 2019 to now. The discussion emphasizes the significance of reliable data and the efficiency brought by AI advancements in research and A/B testing. With the ever-changing dynamics of e-commerce, the trio stresses the need to extend reach beyond Amazon, exploring platforms like TikTok and Google Ads to gain a competitive edge. They share insights on avoiding pitfalls like patent issues, underscoring the critical role of data-driven decision-making in successful product launches.

Shifting gears to brand storytelling, the episode unpacks the art of building engaging narratives that captivate customers and drive sales, even with limited budgets. The guests dive into the nuances of selling subjective products, such as perfumes, and the challenges of standing out in competitive spaces like supplements. They highlight strategies for differentiation, rapid market entry, and sales channel diversification, exploring platforms like TikTok Shop and emerging technologies like OpenAI’s Instant Checkout. As the episode winds down, listeners are invited to connect with the guests across social media platforms, offering a chance to learn directly from their experiences and stories, adding an inspiring touch to the episode’s conclusion.

In episode 711 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Clarence, Leo, and Melisa discuss:

• 00:00 – Launching a Successful Amazon Business in 2025
• 01:32 – Amazon Industry Experts on Scaling Stories
• 04:56 – Launching on Amazon in 2025
• 08:10 – Starting on Amazon
• 14:15 – Evolving Strategies for Amazon Success
• 16:09 – Evolution of Amazon FBA With AI
• 23:08 – Analyzing Competitors for Private Label Launch
• 28:14 – Building Brand Stories for Success
• 31:24 – Struggles With Perfume Sales
• 33:40 – Diversifying Strategies for E-Commerce Growth
• 36:00 – Marketing Strategies for New Products
• 39:34 – Optimizing E-Commerce With AI Recommendation
• 44:05 – Maximizing Visibility With Shop App

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we are talking to three expert sellers who have combined, sold millions, tens of millions of dollars on Amazon, about what it takes to launch a successful business from scratch on Amazon in 2025. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our special edition of our Scale Stories. Ask Me Anything, and first question you might have is Bradley, why do you sound like garbage? I am deathly sick here, but we’re going to see if I can get my voice to last at least one hour here. Welcome everybody to the show. Let me know everybody out there who has seen episode one of Scale Stories. All right, so for those of you who haven’t seen the episode yet, make sure to check it out on YouTube. All right, it’s a really great episode where we go in to being able to see hey, can we start a business in 2025? And to help us with that episode, we have three experts that we flew in from around the world, so let’s go ahead and invite them on now and meet them. Let’s first meet Leo, Leo how’s it going? Good morning.

Leo:

Good morning, Bradley man. I’m sorry to hear that you’re not feeling well. I’ve been under the weather for the past few days too, so you’re not alone. Thank you for everything.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, this is the worst my voice has been, of course, exactly when we go live or maybe I’m just going through puberty. I’m getting on a deep voice. Finally, Leo can you introduce yourself and tell us your background?

Leo:

Of course. Yes, my name is Leo guys. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been in the Amazon industry since 2015. Background goes a little bit even beyond that. 2007 is when I started my SEO journey in the travel industry, actually and then specialize in different disciplines like PPC and analytics. Today, I love spending time on the researching how the algorithm works on things like influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, so I’m very honored to be one of the mentors here on Scale Stories and you guys can ask me anything today.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Next up, let’s welcome Melissa to the show. Melisa, how’s it going?

Melisa:

Hey guys. Doing awesome. How are you? Sorry to hear about your voice, but it is kind of raspy. It’s giving you know, read me bedtime stories.

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. I have to do some ASMR after this, but, Melisa, can you introduce yourself and your background?

Melisa:

Yeah, so I am from Canada. Leo is also from Canada. We actually met a while back in China. So great to see some smart and brilliant minds join us for not only the episode, but also this Ask Me Anything. I started my journey about 2015, 2016, similar to Leo. We have a lot of overlaps there and I have successfully exited two companies now. Both were solely focused on selling on Amazon and, for the most part, most of us sell on Amazon, but now we’ve been also focusing off of Amazon and that’s kind of where our strategy has pivoted, obviously becoming more omni-channel and we live in a day where it’s so much easier to launch now cookie cutter brands. So really focusing on that marketing and doing things that are scrappy. So that’s my specialty thinking of unique ideas and angles to bring things to market.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right. Last but not least, the reason why we’re doing this at 8am Pacific Time is because we’ve got Clarence, who is coming to us from Singapore. Clarence, go ahead and introduce yourself too.

Clarence:

Hi good morning everyone. Yes, but this is Clarence and I love it for what Janice was mentioning about spooky video ads for your coffin shelf just in time for Halloween man. So, yeah, I’m from Singapore, so thanks for tuning in early and yeah, I’m just very excited and honored to be part of these amazing scale stories. I’m madly passionate about product research. I launch products day in, day out as much as I can with my team, and we really do test the Amazon algorithm as much as we can, so we have the data to back up whatever we do, and I’m excited to share that with everyone here. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Okay. So first question, just in general, not necessarily specific to scale stories, is let’s just talk about launching on Amazon. Is it too late in 2025 to do so, or do each of you think that, hey, you can still? You know, Melissa, I’m going to start with you, because you have started and exited multiple businesses over the years. There are some who might say, nope, the gold rush of Amazon is over. Would you start again if you had the chance in 2025, 2026?

Melisa:

Absolutely. I mean, I am in the process of launching a new brand, so I think that goes without saying. We are actively in the trenches launching new brand. So I think that goes without saying. We are actively in the trenches launching new products. Literally every couple of months we’re always launching new products. So it is very much possible. But long gone are the days where you can launch generic products. Now, or even just because we do specialize in a lot of consumables or even supplements. It has become a very saturated not saturated, but like a competitive space. It always has been, but that’s more for products that are like single ingredient products. So you can’t launch like I know.

Melisa:

Bradley’s example is always the collagen right. So if you go in thinking you can launch a new collagen on Amazon, then you are in for an uphill battle. But if you are launching off of Amazon, even there is a way for you to basically sell anything, as long as your marketing is on point. Like you have people rebranding water right, Like liquid death, you can. It’s now a billion-dollar company selling water. Like it’s not a new product, it’s not. They’re not reinventing the product, it’s not. They’re not reinventing the wheel, it’s not rocket science, they’re just literally rebranding something that people are already drinking or already using, and that’s still very much doable today. But on Amazon, it’s a very different approach and that’s where differentiation is super important. So, yes, I still think it’s very much possible to launch new products. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be in the business of selling on Amazon and even considering launching new brands.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Clarence. You work with a lot of people in the community, especially newer sellers, actually probably more than experienced sellers. So what’s it been like for those launching from Asia but in Amazon USA, who have been launching businesses here in 2025?

Clarence:

Yeah, I’m so proud of them. In fact, just literally last week I had three of them who launched on Amazon and within a week or two they got like number one new release badges 40, 50 units sold a day in a really not so competitive niche. So, yes, definitely viable to launch a new brand starting from scratch in 2025. Still, as long as you enter into a market that you know you can conquer with great differentiation, make sure you’re not entering into like a collagen peptide market like what Melissa has mentioned. Just know your competition and, hey, you can choose your battles wisely.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome Leo. Thoughts on is it too late to start on Amazon.

Leo:

Brother, you know, my answer here is absolutely not, and I think the reason is that well, one of the reasons that today we have access to people like yourselves, which we didn’t have access to 10 years ago. You know a Clarence here. You can pick up the phone, call him, he’ll be the you know your guy in China to make sure that you get the right product and you don’t make mistakes. You have experts like Melissa, you guys at Helium 10, which is an awesome tool, so there is no reason why someone today should fail. So that’s obviously a huge advantage that we didn’t have before. Number two, we have AI. That I didn’t have in 2015. AI today allows you to streamline the process from the prior research, the validation, to the persona, like everything that you really need to understand. It’s there, just done for you. And, number three, we have the power of influencers and affiliates through platforms like TikTok or Instagram. So I think it comes down today to the strategy. If you have a good strategy in place, I think you can. You know I’m trying to not push people towards, like, the competitive niches, but I am personally working on a new supplement line and, yeah, okay, I’ve been selling for a while, but I think, Melisa, you can, you know, speak about this way more than I do or than I am right now, but the truth is that if you know what you’re doing, I think you can pretty much go in any niche. I see supplement sellers recently sending outside traffic to Amazon, so controlling a little bit of funnel instead of relying necessarily on ranking, let’s say top eight, which is the first two rows on Amazon. So I think it’s not too late. Uh, we with uh Natalie, are obviously a focused on a product that um allowed us to get into a market with a definitely tight budget. So it depends on your budget, but, um, the opportunity is still there .

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Now, going back to scale stories, uh, somebody you know there’s even somebody out there who mentioned Project X. He’s been using it as a name here. I’m not sure who this is, but they said Project X. But Project X was a series that we did a few years ago and that was, I think, we started filming in maybe 2019. Hundreds of thousands of people have launched businesses on Amazon since 2019, but not really, you know, shown the step-by-step, because it’s definitely a lot of steps are similar but a lot of steps are different, and so we wanted to do something new where we can say, hey, instead of just some experts like Tim and Bradley from Project X launching a product, let’s take a complete newbie. So, we actually had a casting call of sorts that went out and we saw a lot of videos, and then we were really moved by the story from Natalie, who became our contestant. Who we’re going to help launch a product live, help launch a product, uh, live. And so, uh, sticking with Leo for a second. Um, what, what inspired you or what what was? Uh drew you to Natalie’s story when you first learned about her. Uh, met her. Um, your your initial impressions?

Leo:

Well, you know, if you um have watched the, the first episode, you can tell how much um that story touched me, like when she was explaining that she failed multiple times. She was diagnosed with, you know, bipolar disorder. Like those are things that make you think, first of all, how lucky you are. In general in life, you know to be doing what you do, but also you know people like that. You realize that they need help and they need our support and they can do it. You know she was very motivated. She said I know I can do it, I’m just one step away. But she just, I think, was, you know, she got lost in the process because of the previous failures, and so that, you know, for me was the main motivation. I love to help people, you know. You know that I share a lot of content, share a lot of things for free. I don’t charge people. The other day, I did a webinar where I showed people how to generate unlimited UGC content with AI in 810 flows and that was totally free. So I just love seeing people succeed and that was my main motivation when I heard Natalie’s story. So, yeah, I’m excited to help her along the way and see her getting the first sales on Amazon and eventually call us and say, hey, I made my first 10K this month.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, Melissa. What do you think of Natalie?

Melisa:

Natalie is so sweet. I mean there were definitely tears flowing when she was telling her story and you know I was trying very hard not to let my makeup run down my face, but yeah, she, like like Leo was saying like she is very motivated and I think that’s super important. I mean you can? You know you can’t help people who don’t want to be helped, and Natalie does want to be helped. She took the effort to apply to be on the show. She took the step to even show up and anyone who maybe was accepted into the program it takes a lot of guts to be able to show up and do this in front of thousands and thousands of people too. Right, this is going to be publicized all over the internet”. And she was okay with that. She was very vulnerable with us and I think people like that deserve the world, because she’s willing to not only share her past failures but also work through all of this in real time with people so they can see the inside scoop and what the process really takes. So that alone she’s a very strong human being and I’m so excited that we get to work with her.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Helium 10’s got over 40 tools for e-commerce entrepreneurs. I know how overwhelming it might seem to try and figure out how you’re going to learn how to use everything, or maybe even to know which ones you want to get started with. So, for a completely free course that’s going to guide you through learning everything you need in order to become a Helium 10 expert, visit the Helium 10 Academy. That is h10.me/academy.

Bradley Sutton:

Now sticking with you, Melissa. We mentioned how project x was in 2019. Some things are are the same, some things are different. Pick one of those which things like pick either something that’s the same or something that’s different. But, um, you’ve launched products back in 2019 before, maybe even a little bit after. What would you say is either something that’s the same or something that’s different that that we kind of went through on this process with Natalie?

Melisa:

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the principles are the same. So, business principles, obviously, um, things are a little bit simpler. I wouldn’t say they’re easy, but I think things are refined now. But it always goes back to the basics, which is finding your product research, which is something that we focused on heavily on the episode. If you feed bad data or garbage data into your searches, you’re going to get bad results. So that’s where finding reliable data sources like Helium 10, we are confident that the sales volumes or the keyword volumes are all accurate, right, and that’s something we rely on to make these decisions. So if you use good tools, you’re going to get good data to help you make good decisions, and that’s always going to be remain the same in launching on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Clarence, what’s something that’s very different, would you say, from like around the time of the original Project X compared to now.

Clarence:

I think it’s the use of AI in our space compared to back then, 2019, 2020. AI is like non-existent at that time and we just launched an old school method of Excel sheets just crunching in formulas to do the data research, et cetera. But now with AI wow, it has changed and completely changed the game. You can literally use AI to help you in product research with differentiation ideas, helping you vet the competition level even, and in fact now we also tested a tool to help us do A-B testing for our main image and, instead of using the normal brand experiments to wait eight weeks for results from Amazon, I roughly will know in less than one hour which main image will work better based on this AI tool. Right, so I think it’s completely changed the game and now using more of AI will really help us to advance our Amazon FBA business.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, Leo. Differences, similarities now versus then.

Leo:

Well, I agree with both mentors here and I think, like what Clarence just said, the power of AI is probably the biggest weapon that we have today. Yesterday I wanted to work on I was working on this new funnel. I know you guys know about insert funnels and you know ways to potentially build your own list right. Once you sell on Amazon, because that’s obviously sometimes seen against the TOS, especially the way we were doing it before. But I wanted to be very creative obviously sometimes seen against the TOS, especially the way we were doing it before, but I wanted to be very creative and so I used the AI to build an app quickly that allows me to still leverage, for example, inserts, but instead of asking people for reviews, we ask people to sub in their UGC content, and so that’s an incentive. If you think about companies today, they provide you with UGC content. They charge anywhere between $30, $40, $50. Right now, we can leverage our customers, get UGC content, build social proof, post it anywhere, and then, in exchange, we still give away a free product. So this is not the exact answer that you’re looking for. What’s the difference between before and now? I think today we just have a lot more access to so many different tools and so many different resources that we are. We can compete with enterprise level companies.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, yeah. Agreed, agreed. You know there’s actually somebody asked a question in the chat. Daphne said hey, do you need to do marketing outside of Amazon? You know 2019. The answer was not necessarily. Like could it have helped back then? Sure, did we do it in Project X? No, because we didn’t have to. Nowadays, I think it’s different, like the answer to Daphne’s question is you know you probably should be putting your product on TikTok shop and trying to get traffic from there. You know you might need to look into Google ads. You might need to look into getting your product on Walmart or having a website. You know, all of these things we didn’t need to do in the original Project X, arguably it could have helped, but it wasn’t necessary. Nowadays, yes, a lot of these other things are potentially almost on the necessary status. So that’s something that, if you’re launching a brand in this day and age, you’ve got to keep in mind. The world is definitely different, but, talking about scale stories, one of the things we went through and that is the same about launching a product back in 2019 compared to now is the need to make data-driven decisions, like, not just oh, what does my gut tell me that we should launch? And Clarence, what are some of the data points that you’re looking at and what you looked at with Natalie, too, in trying to find some products about? Hey, is this a good opportunity to sell on Amazon?

Clarence:

I’m very glad that we have pointed out for Natalie that there was a pay turn initially with our original product idea that prevented her from entering. It’s as simple as a pay turn will shut that whole product down. So, hey, let’s just avoid the headache and let’s move on to another product idea, right? So that’s just one of our criteria’s to look at in terms of launching a good product on Amazon. Of course, we have many other pointers, like what’s the seasonality right? Is the trend dying or is it going upwards? Is it a trendy product? Is it seasonal? How about the competition level? Is there even a market demand that you can build a niche in Not just one product, but can you grow your brand eventually to a multi-product brand in that niche? Yeah, so many data points to be able to choose a product, and now we have that ability to really do it at scale with AI, right, and that’s the main difference compared to 2019 or 2020. So I think right now, the skill gap has really should I say collapsed, because now anyone can just use AI to really do the product research up to a certain level.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, absolutely. So, now has a question, says hey, I’m having issues with FBA inventory. They recommend sending 1,400 and only let me send two hundred. So probably what you’re running into for some newer sellers, or even, if your experience they throttle how much inventory you can send in at once based on your trailing velocity of Amazon, and especially for those who are in in seasonal niches, they’re having some some trouble, like I had some one of my brands it was actually for another case study that wasn’t so popular, like project x. I had a case study called project 5k where I launched a whole bunch of cheap products and a lot of straws and there was some like Christmasy type of straws that this brand had and they’re like no, you can’t send any more into Amazon because your sales velocity has been like less than one per day for months and so, like now you have too much and it’s 50 units and so, yeah, that’s something that you’re going to have to deal with.

There’s a way to appeal and send something where you say, hey, no, this is a seasonal product or this is why I need more space, but definitely look into that appeal because that could and then send in the 200 for now and then, as your sales velocity increases, they should open it up where you can send more in. Now, who can answer this question from Andrea? Here we’re getting ready we’re analyzing competitors to launch private label. What are the action steps, simplified that um you guys can talk about, and so so as far as the analyzing competitors, Leo, what are you looking at from competitors about, kind of like giving you a maybe green light or red light as to is this a niche worth getting into?

Leo:

Yeah, I would say. First of all, there are a few things that we’ll look at the size of their catalog, which tells me how experienced they are, how long have they been selling, and so who am I really competing with? Do they have a few ASINs, do they have 10, 15, 20? Also, if I can find out where they’re from, that tells me a little bit more who’s behind the brand, because that’s important to understand. Also, if I’m going after a specific product, I want to know how they are driving sales. So how many reviews, first of all, this product has. Can I? What’s the review velocity? Can I catch up? Do I have a chance to compete with them? And obviously still, market share. So brand analytics helps obviously to understand what the click share is, what the conversion share is for. Let’s see the top keywords they rank for. And also, can I come up with something that allows me to compete with these guys, also from a price point perspective, because that’s important. If you’ve been selling for a while, you probably have already better deals with your manufacturer. So can I compete with my top competitors If I feel comfortable that they don’t have any specific strategy in place? So I go beyond just Amazon. I see if they have a website. I see if they’re driving traffic from outside sources. I Google the product to see if they’re running Google ads, for example. There are some spy tools that allow you to see if they’re basically bidding on some keywords on Google and where the traffic is going. Are they advertising on TikTok? Do they have influencers promoting the product? Do they have influencers promoting the product? So, I need to understand the full landscape of the traffic sources. That gives me a more realistic understanding of who I’m competing with. Can I just play the Amazon game or I have to play the omnichannel game, because playing the Amazon game is totally different, especially if you have competitors that are not super sophisticated. They’re probably just relying on the Amazon traffic as a source, and so if I go in there and then I deploy my full 360 degree strategy, I can definitely beat them, you know, down the road. But if I know that they’re already doing a lot of influencer traffic campaigns, they’re also have a bunch of videos from clear connections, so they’re tapping into a lot of influencer traffic campaigns. They also have a bunch of videos from Clear Connection, so they’re tapping into all these new channels. Also, they have a website. They’re driving outside traffic. Perhaps they have already a list Some people you can see.

Leo:

Even if you open, let’s say, Helium 10, right, and you analyze their traffic BSR traffic pattern, you see that they do a lot of lightning deals every week. That gives you an understanding that these guys they know what they’re doing, like a lot of Chinese sellers right now. For example, they hack the system. They know how to get lightning deals every week, then they swap it with the best deals, then they keep the price. So the reason they do that is because they want to keep the price always competitive and then get always the strike through. So that alone is a huge competitive advantage because you can always look like you got a discount and then you can go into the Black Fridays everyone is discounting by $2, even like and looking like you have a good deal, but you’re actually just discounting by two dollars, you’re not like 50 off. So when you look at that, at that data, and you see that you see a lot of movements from a price point perspective, a lot of deals. You know these guys are very competitive, they know what they’re doing and I’ll try to stay away from that unless I feel comfortable that I can deploy the same strategy.

Bradley Sutton:

Melissa, here’s a question about supplements from Lindsay. It says if you had a very limited advertising budget for a supplement, where would you use it? I would almost say, if you’re trying to get into supplements and you have a limited budget for advertising, maybe you shouldn’t get into supplements. I don’t know, that would just be my gut reaction. What’s yours?

Melisa:

I would echo that sentiment, but obviously, if you are strained for cash but you have time on your hands right, so it’s the thing about okay, do you have money to buy back time and get the results quicker, or do you have time on your hands but less money, then you should be doing these steps. Basically, I would find ways to not only just create more content organically so you’re focused more on organic brand building rather than paid brand building. At this point, if you have very little funds, I would work on like Leo mentioned, there are ways to create flywheels that will create you assets pretty quickly and very, very cheap using AI. Nowadays they’re getting very good. You can actually create AI avatars as well and it’s getting very consistent. So using things like Higgs field is actually a really good tool to help you build out assets. N8n is a really great tool that Leo mentioned as well. We use it as well in our flow for creating what we call viral stories that we post on TikTok. So essentially, the strategy behind that is we look for, or we create and write and script our own kind of stories, or we find inspiration from Reddit threads that have gone viral and then take our own spin on it and then turn that into like a voiceover, and then usually the background is something like Minecraft jumping parkour video or something that basically changes a lot, because people have ADHD and they have a hard time with their attention span. So having something in the background that gets people almost stuck to watching the entire video and then essentially crafting in a way to drip out and tease your product in that video and offer it as a solution for whatever the problem is. So it’s not just that, but if you want something that’s more sustainable, you want to create a hero story for your brand.

Melisa:

So what you’re doing is you need to find a way on how to tell your story over and over again in a way that’s not boring, that people are interested in learning more about you as a person, whether it’s a founder story or the brand itself. Why did it come to be? Usually, those who have some sort of founder story are going to be more successful than someone who doesn’t, because you see the passion behind it and there’s a reason behind starting the company. So, for example, like my first brand started out of a personal need, right? So a lot of founders who start brands out of personal needs, they will have a better time or an easier time, being able to not only craft a story around that, but also deliver a story that pulls on people’s heartstrings.

Melisa:

So I’m not saying to you know, we’re not using this in a bad way, where we’re trying to like, manipulate people to buy things because of our sad, sad story. No, it’s not about that. It’s about you know you want to help people. Your way to help people is by making sure that you are shouting from the rooftops and sharing your story to the masses, because that’s the only real, true way that you can reach people at scale. So the way that I look at it is you have to treat posting videos like buying lottery tickets right, it’s free to post, you just need to keep posting and one of them is going to hit and that could ultimately change your life. So if you’re consistent and you are consistently posting, testing, trying new things, you eventually will get traction, and that’s the story for any successful youtuber, any content creator, any brand. It’s just about consistency, showing up and doing the work. So if you don’t have the money, you better be putting in the sweat equity.

Bradley Sutton:

Anil says hey, we sell perfumes. Haven’t been able to make profit in scale. We’re we’re losing money with a row as of one, or maybe 0.4, or even 0.4. I’m not sure what to do. Uh, Leo, what would you say to anil?

Leo:

I think the issue here is that he’s perfumes like that’s such a subjective item, like it’s like anything that contains a fragrance. I’ve had the same issues even in the when I was selling beauty products. We spent so much time trying to always figure out the best fragrances, whether it was rose scent or just lime or anything that you believe that people might like the most, and then there is always someone that complains that the fragrance is too strong or it’s not what they expected. So I’m not sure if that is one of the main reasons that you’re not selling. Well, I don’t know how many reviews you have. What’s your average rating year. You just say that you’re not profitable.

Leo:

So I will look at your listing and see if there is maybe anything else going on there. Maybe it’s not attractive enough, maybe you don’t do a good job explaining these different fragrances and I’m assuming that this is your own personal brand or unless you are reselling some other kind, like I see people reselling like white label of known fragrances and they’re like different brands or they’re like clones. So I know, maybe you can provide more info and I’m happy to answer that question, but I think here the issue is the niche itself, unless you’re a big brand, people know, because you’re on a retail course and people know that you are selling. Yeah, it’s a personal brand, I’ll you know. Do people know you know the fragrances? Yeah, I understand you make them. So if I have to buy perfume, I either know what I’m buying, um, because I’ve already smelled it at the airport, um, you know, duty free, or maybe some other retail chains, um, or I won’t buy it online, right? So that’s probably why you’re not selling. Well, that’s my honest opinion when it comes to this specific niche.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, excellent, excellent. All right, Melissa, when you have a lot of experience, all of your products. When you’ve launched them, your competitors had way more reviews than even 400 and a lot in the supplement space. Unless somehow you just happen to catch a trend that is just starting out, how do you compete in very competitive niches, as you have successfully done?

Melisa:

I think the biggest thing is the differentiation aspect. Obviously, we have created brands where packaging is consistent, so people recognize the brand at this point. So there’s that trust factor. But if you were starting from scratch, you don’t have any brand equity. You are literally competing against people who have a headstart and it’s just about the time that they were in the market. Speed to market is super important, so you want to make sure that your manufacturing relationship is dialed in and that they can deliver a product in a short turnaround time. I know a lot of people are sourcing overseas for certain products, but in categories like supplements, because we are in the US and we manufacture in the US, we can turn around a product pretty quickly. So that’s kind of our secret weapon is not only do we have good relationships with our manufacturers, we have some insight on popular products that are popping up and always doing research on products. I almost have a separate TikTok account that I use that I will engage with specific types of videos that are all about either business building or about new, hot, trendy products, and because I interact with those types of videos, I get shown it all the time and then every time I see it, I’m just going to keep on liking them. So it teaches the algorithm to show me these things, so I’m almost ahead of the trends. So most of the time, a lot of stuff that you see on TikTok will then in a few months end up on Instagram, if not sooner than that. So you can almost find trends on TikTok and then translate it and do research on Amazon, figure out okay, this is doing really well on TikTok shop.

Melisa:

How can we translate something like this to Amazon if there isn’t already a market for it? And what can we do? That’s a little bit different whether it’s adding specific ingredients that have specific properties that we can use as a marketing play. So if there’s a specific ingredient we know already that is good for stress relief, we’re going to add that into the formulation. So, yes, you can start with very little reviews and still make traction, especially if it’s a more targeted niche. But I think the biggest thing is when it comes to going against people with 400 plus or hundreds and hundreds of reviews already. You have to have a good product, and then that’s where we go aggressive on our subscribe and save. So we’re willing to lose money on the initial sale, if not break even and offer 30 to 50% off on the subscribe and save coupon so that their first purchase is a heavy discount. But then obviously every subscription after that is at full price. But we’re willing to lose money on that first sale, knowing that our product is superior and that it works it tastes good or it’s you know it’s a good product. That’s the biggest thing. If you have a good product, people are going to gravitate towards leaving reviews. So I know Leo is also the master at crafting customer experiences. When you first, you know, receive the product, that’s also going to be a big factor as well. So making sure that you have a good first experience when they receive your product?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. There’s a question that I don’t think is realistic, but it kind of leads me to another question. For example, this is Santiago here says hey, if Amazon’s marketplace disappeared overnight, what would be your plan? Like what global marketplaces would you pivot to? So, no, I don’t think in any scenario, there is ever a situation where Amazon marketplace is going to disappear, so I don’t think we need to reference that. However, that being said, regardless of that, you should be looking at other marketplaces, and so we’ve already mentioned TikTok shop. But, Leo, what are some of the other marketplaces, both domestically, as in United States and in other countries, that we should be diversifying to? Because, as we found out during COVID, you know, all of a sudden Amazon’s marketplace didn’t go away, but there were some niches where it was completely locked down. You couldn’t even send inventory in and you couldn’t sell it. And if you were only selling on amazon, um, you were kind of screwed, uh, there for a while. So so what are some uh, domestic and international marketplaces, Leo, that uh, people should be diversifying to you, do you think?

Leo:

I think, more than a marketplace, I would probably, uh, look at this opportunity today that we have with instant checkout by open ai. So, you know, there is no point of I I guess, reinvent the wheel, like the wheel is being already invented and there is an innovation happening as we speak. I think that’s probably the biggest opportunity in the next few years. I think at some point these marketplaces will be unified, for example. Well, I agree, amazon is not going anywhere, but I think there’ll be some sort of integration. And that’s also what I’m kind of spending some time on figuring out how to start selling on Instant Checkout as well, leveraging what I know about Amazon and TikTok and seeing if there is an opportunity to put it all together.

Bradley Sutton:

And Clarence. What about you? What other marketplaces would you suggest people to go to outside of making sure you’re searchable in AI, TikTok shop, et cetera?

Clarence:

Yeah, I’m not sure if you guys seen the update from OpenAI, literally like last week, where you can literally have a checkout button inside ChatGPT after you search like, let’s say, best perfume for men right. Over 50 years old, and ChatGPT literally say I found five products like this, choose one you can check out instantly it will reach your house. And it’s revolutionary. I think that is like the future of how probably e-commerce is going to go towards, where they’re going to interact with a large language model like ChatGPT in between serving the end products to the end customer with the help of AI right. So more I think, going forward, we need to optimize our listing from AI right. Thankfully, how ai works today is still large language model, which means they scrape our websites. They scrape Amazon’s website with relevant keywords. So let’s say, if the search term that the initial customers say perfume over 50 for men, make sure you have that exact keywords right in your listing so it will help with the promotion of with ChatGPT, for example, recommending your products to that customer. Yeah, so right now you’ve really got to drill down to really know your audience. I would definitely focus on definitely making your listing more targeted in the audience side of things. So the large language models can recommend you.

Leo:

Yeah, yeah, for that you need to submit also feed to OpenAI so you can create a feed and make sure that you fill all the attributes that the feed requires and you can submit that to ChatGPT. But that’s different from the instant checkout. So that allows ChatGPT to recommend your product. But then, if you want, right now the only, I think, out of the box compatible marketplaces are Shopify. So if you sell on Shopify, they automatically created the feed for you and submit it to Instant Checkout so you can be featured there. And then I think TEMU is also one of them. But if you do sell on your own website, you can apply to become a merchant.

Leo

I think everyone should be doing this today, guys, because, you don’t know, like Walmart I think I saw an article yesterday Walmart declared that 20% of their search traffic is coming from OpenAI, ChatGPT. So 20% is a lot of traffic for a website like Walmart.com. We’re talking already about millions of clicks and visits. So I think you know tapping into or riding the wave. We already know these companies have billions of dollars invested into their technologies, so they’re focusing on growth and driving traffic. So capitalize on what they’re doing and then still a little bit of that traffic that they are paying for or anyway generating and drive traffic to your own storefront. But now Amazon obviously is not part of that ecosystem yet, simply because they are competitors. But I think there will be either. You know, some sort of solution released by Amazon itself and I even wrote an article on Medium about this and what I think could be the Amazon checkout instead of the instant checkout by OpenAI. So we’ll see if that becomes a reality. But they have to definitely do something that to compete with OpenAI.

Melisa:

I just want to add on to that question some platforms and tools to keep an eye out on. So Gary Vee always talks about live selling and he usually is the king of finding trends, jumping on them early on, and usually when he mentions something is going to be big, it’s going to be big. So there’s an app called Whatnot, which a lot of people are now doing, and doing live sales through Whatnot, and there’s even studios that are set up where people can, you can contract out, or you can go in yourself and do live selling on TikTok or you know, on Whatnot, in store, in like I think it’s Santa Monica or LA, it’s called outlandish, but they literally have like these small cubicles where people can like rent out and set up, set up a spot where you can do live selling, and there’s a bunch of them. A bunch of them are going to be popping up all over the place, I’m sure of it. Not only that, if you haven’t already done so, download the shop app and then add it to your Shopify store and add your products to the Shop app. Like this is going to get you visibility like no other through Shopify’s marketplace. So Shop is like an app. That’s basically.

Melisa:

Shopify curates all of the brands that sell on their platform into one specific marketplace, so it’s like their version of Amazon, but for e-commerce and all brands in general. So you’ll see brands like even Kylie Cosmetics on there. There’s a bunch of big brand names that use Shopify as their backbone for their website. So you can run deals through the Shop app and sometimes you get credits towards deals too, so it’s like free advertising. And then shop also runs Facebook ads and features your products in carousels. So it adds sort of like that brand trust, because not only is your product being advertised by some of the biggest brand names in the world. Like that brings credibility to your product and your brand. So if I could have like an unlimited budget on shop, I would spend most of my money there. I think they cap it. It’s like 18,000 or something like that. So, yeah, definitely, definitely take advantage of that if you haven’t already done so.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. So we’ve talked about a lot of platforms today and a lot of ways to make money online, and that’s one of the reasons why we did scale stories. It was, first of all, to show, hey, it is not too late to start a business, um, and amazon is one of the ways that you could start a business, but it’s not the only way, um. That’s why we had a total of four different episodes with four completely different contestants. So, guys, make sure to watch that first episode. If you haven’t done so yet, go to YouTube. Type in Helium 10 Scale Stories. You’ll find the first episode and get into Natalie’s journey. Be watching that. We’re going to be following her, just like we’ve followed Project X over the years, and you can still see the coffin shelf and egg trays being sold right now. That’s the goal with Natalie’s business. We found her a product You’ll see it there in the first episode that hasn’t even been launched yet. Leo and I were even going through it a little bit this weekend about her first order, adding some little accessories to it. So it’s going to be fun to watch how this progresses. But look for the other episodes. Maybe you’re already selling on Amazon but you’ve plateaued or you’ve run into obstacles. Your sales have declined. Is it too late to salvage your business? We have a couple different episodes that we are going to be launching over the next few weeks that have to do with that. Can you launch a business starting from TikTok shop instead of Amazon? We’ve got an episode about that, so make sure that you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel. Get a hold of these episodes. If people want to reach out to you guys for their own scale stories, can each of you mention how you guys can be found on the interwebs? Start with Clarence.

Clarence:

Yeah, you can find us on the FBA Bros, on Instagram, YouTube and even TikTok. So that’s T-H-E. F-b-a-b-r-o-s.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome Melisa.

Melisa:

You can also find me on Instagram, which is just at Melisa with one S, and on LinkedIn, so just Melisa Vong.

Leo:

Awesome, and Leo, yeah for me, either on LinkedIn Leo’s Go Bio is my handle there or a website as well. I have leosgovio.com, so you can get in touch with me through the website.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, all right, thank you guys so much for helping Natalie on this journey. Thank you for coming on here and helping all of those listeners and as this progressed, my voice got a little bit better. So thank you for helping me and inspiring me. Gets me some positive endorphins going here. I appreciate you guys coming on here and giving everybody the inspiration hopefully needed to start their own scale story online. So thank you and everybody else. Hope you wish you the best.

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