#758 – The Low-Price, High-Volume Amazon & Wholesale Strategy

Can an Amazon seller build a profitable business around products priced under $10? In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley Sutton sits down with Ivan Komashinsky, the entrepreneur behind the U.S. distribution of Pedag Insoles and the Meltonian shoe-care brand. Ivan shares how he went from working at Microsoft to acquiring an established seven-figure e-commerce business—and eventually tripling its revenue.

While Amazon remains Ivan’s largest channel, his company has built a much broader operation through its own websites, independent retailers, regional distributors, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop, and Faire. Ivan explains how wholesale volume, strong supplier relationships, and European manufacturing allow Meltonian to maintain healthy margins on products selling for as little as $7.99. He also breaks down why managing inventory in-house makes sense for a business carrying thousands of SKUs across multiple sales channels.

Ivan also reveals how his team uses Helium 10 tools such as Cerebro and Magnet to rank for valuable non-branded keywords and develop new products based on customer demand, competitor gaps, and search behavior. More recently, he has been using the Helium 10 MCP through Claude to investigate declining product sales, analyze trends, and explore profitability, traffic, conversion rates, keyword rankings, and advertising performance through natural-language conversations.

From building authority on Reddit to getting started with wholesale through Faire, trade shows, and industry associations, Ivan offers a practical roadmap for creating a more resilient e-commerce business. His story shows that success does not always require expensive products or a business built entirely around Amazon. With the right sourcing, volume, distribution strategy, pricing policies, and willingness to adapt, even a traditional brand can unlock new growth opportunities.

In episode 758 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Ivan discuss:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 03:27 – Buying An Established Seven-Figure Online Business
• 06:22 – Growing Pedag And Acquiring Meltonian
• 07:33 – Building A Diversified Multichannel Sales Business
• 09:59 – Expanding A Traditional Brand Into Sneakers
• 11:05 – Finding New Products Through Market Demand
• 12:25 – Making An Eight-Dollar Product Highly Profitable
• 15:29 – European Sourcing And In-House Inventory Management
• 20:01 – Ranking For Valuable Non-Branded Amazon Keywords
• 22:26 – Using Helium 10 Tools And MCP
• 27:00 – Building Brand Authority Through Reddit
• 28:26 – Expanding Into Wholesale Through Faire
• 31:24 – Protecting Retail Margins With MAP Pricing
• 32:38 – Live Meltonian Sneaker-Cleaning Product Demonstration

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we talked to a seller who’s going to bring some unique strategies about wholesaling your products, if you haven’t thought about that. But he’s also going to talk about how he’s been successful with high profit margin products, even though the retail price of his products is eight dollars per unit. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. 

Bradley Sutton:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And kind of a rarity on this show, I’m actually talking to somebody in the same time zone as me here on the West Coast. I’m not I’m here in my home office. A lot of the next few episodes are going to be me on the on the road. But we’ve got Ivan, who I believe is in Seattle, right?

Ivan:

Yes, that’s right. Seattle, Washington, has been my home for twenty-nine years.

Bradley Sutton:

Twenty-nine years. That’s why I broke out my Seattle Mariners hat. And I also have an Amazon Accelerate shirt today, kind of representing the Seattle here. But anyways, this is your first time on the show. So we want to get your backstory. You just said you’ve been in the Seattle area for twenty-nine years. Where were you born and raised?

Ivan:

I was born in Russia on the East Coast. So basically in Asia, city of Vladivostok. 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Ivan:

It’s about an hour flight to Japan, Korea or China or.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah. I know it’s about very close to to, you know, Japan area. I knew some Amazon sellers who were actually moved to they had like a car business in like the northern island of Japan, but they would come from Russia and it was pretty, pretty nearby. Okay, pretty cool. And then where did you go to university in Russia or in the United States?

Ivan:

Oh, well, both. So, I was exchange student at the University of Washington in ninety-five, ninety-six.

Bradley Sutton:

So you were a Husky?

Ivan:

Husky, yes.

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. All right.

Ivan:

And I went to school and I graduated with a degree in economics in Russia. I also have MBA from UCLA and the National University of Singapore. So it’s a joint program of three.

Bradley Sutton:

So you were a Husky, then a Bruin.

Ivan:

A Bruin. Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

What was your major there?

Ivan:

Well, it was a master of business administration and MBA.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, okay. And did you get into that field right upon graduation?

Ivan:

Well, I’m in that field right now.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, kind of.

Ivan:

So I was at the time I was working at the Microsoft and I thought it would better my career. And, you know, it’s always good to have a degree-

Bradley Sutton:

Sure.

Ivan:

In business since you’re doing business. I my job at Microsoft was international project manager. So it sounds more posh than it actually was. But it was really, really cool job, of course.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. And then at what year and how did you discover e-commerce?

Ivan:

So I was laid off from Microsoft just over a decade ago. I was thinking what to do next, did some consulting. And during that soul searching, I decided to purchase a business, which I’m currently running. And this is basically an online business. So I purchased this business and that’s how I’m running online. So it was Amazon and still Amazon heavy. It was a vendor central business, which now the orders have dried up a few years back. So now it’s Seller Central. And in the process, we stumbled upon a couple of other businesses.

Bradley Sutton:

So are we talking about the brand that is in the background right now, the Meltonian, that banner we see there on YouTube?

Ivan:

Yeah. So that is our brand that we own. Let me backtrack a little bit. So the business I purchased is a distribution of Pedag brand. It’s a German brand. So this year it celebrated 50 years in business. The company actually is over 70 years old, but the brand Pedag is 50 years old. And it basically is centered around insoles and orthotics. So this is our flagship product, VivaSport. It’s great for sneakers. It gives you arch support. It’s nice and cushy as a heel cushion to nest your heel bone, has a metal tarsal arch support.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, that’s the brand that you’re saying was the first one that you brought or that you bought, or that’s what you expanded to after buying the brand?

Ivan:

That’s the brand that I bought. Well, we didn’t buy the brand. We bought the right to distribute it.

Bradley Sutton:

Ah okay.

Ivan:

We don’t own the trademark. We have a licensing agreement with the company that owns the brand.

Bradley Sutton:

So here we can see your Amazon store for at least the Meltonian brand. It almost looks kind of like a Monopoly character as your mascot there.

Ivan:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

I was like, oh, there’s definitely an older brand here. Here’s your website. And I saw some of the products you were showing. And guys, for those who stick to the end here on YouTube, Ivan sent me some of his products. So for the first time ever on one of our shows, I’m going to be maybe using some of our guest products or giving a little demo on how to use it because I’m a shoe person myself. And so I’ve got a lot of shoes. So he was kind enough to send me some products. We’re going to try it live here. But anyways, what year again did you start going live on Amazon with these different brands?

Ivan:

The Pedag brand that the rights distribution repurchase was already online. Meltonian, I mean, is the brand that we ended up owning later. And so to answer your question is 2017 is when I started operating the online business. So-

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Now, at this point, right from when you bought this brand, was this now your sole income from day one of operations? Or was there some kind of period where you were still doing other ventures while you built the business up?

Ivan:

No, well, fortunately, this business was already built up substantially, so it was already a seven-figure business that I purchased. However, I did build it up, so I tripled the revenue for Pedag.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. If you were to break down the revenue across different channels, you know, we’re talking 60% Amazon, 35% .com, and 5% others, or how would you call that breakdown?

Ivan:

We are a very diversified business when it comes to channels. So Amazon is our biggest channel. It’s probably about 60%. We also…

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, I got it right. I just pulled that number from nowhere.

Ivan:

Yeah, yeah. So the websites are about 10%, and the rest is divided between our wholesale business, where we sell to retailers. Usually, it’s what we call an independent retailer who has a physical presence, like a mom-and-pop shop, right, or a small chain. We also sell products to regional distributors. We ship them ballots, and then they service their regional network of retailers. So we are a really multi-channel business, diverse, which is great. We’re not just Amazon. We’re not just a website. We sell to retailers. We sell to wholesalers.

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon dominating online sales, especially if second place is .com and it’s 10% or less. Any other one, two, three percenters out there that you’ve been on, like Walmart, TikTok Shop, eBay?

Ivan:

Yes. So we are on TikTok Shop for all the brands, and we are on Walmart for all the brands. We even sell on eBay. The sales are very small. Our TikTok, actually, we believe it helps more Amazon sales than, I mean, our TikTok sales are really almost non-existent. But, I mean, the traffic is there. So those channels we continue selling. We also actually sell on Faire. So for those folks who want to reach out to other retailers, Faire is a really good marketplace. We sell to other retailers through Faire.

Bradley Sutton:

How many products have you launched since the purchase of the brand? Like where, you know, obviously the brand came with existing products that had history. Approximately how much have you been like, hey, I’m going to take advantage of the brand recognition on Amazon. And I see there’s demand for this other lane of a certain product. Like how many of that type have you done, if any?

Ivan:

Dozens, dozens of brands.

Bradley Sutton:

I was like, man, this guy’s a tycoon. I’m starting brands.

Ivan:

The Miltonian brand that we own, it is known among people who wear traditional footwear. So basically leather shoes, right? It’s been a really big push for us to introduce a sneaker line because the footwear has evolved over time. Mostly people wear sneakers. So we have a sneaker cleaner, we have a shoe whitener to make your shoes look beautiful again. Right. But this is what people know for. This is what we’re known for. It’s a shoe cream to take care of your leather shoes or leather boots. So in this brand, we’ve launched about a dozen products as well.

Bradley Sutton:

What has been your process? You know, just like customer feedback, you’re doing research in Helium 10 about some demand that goes with one of your brands, a mixture of the above, or just you have a dream one night and come up with a product. How do you decide?

Ivan:

Yeah, well, it’s all of the above. Some products we brought in because customers ask us whether we want to carry it. Other products like a sneaker line and the Miltonian brand, there was an obvious market opportunity because we only service those who wear leather shoes. And those are very few, to be honest. I mean, there are still a lot, but mostly, I mean, the sneaker market is enormous compared to the leather shoe market. So that was a kind of a no brainer to enter. And then also looking at competition, what competition is selling and what we are not selling. So for Pedag brand, for example, we have one of the most successful launches. The product name is plantar fasciitis. Plantar fasciitis is the most common food disorder. So we have a product that carries the name of the disorder, but it also has the solution to alleviate symptoms. But this product will work for plantar fasciitis as well. But when a product carries the name, then it must be good.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. Yeah, that’s really good. When you can get the number one keyword into the actual product name and obviously it’s in the title, you know, at the beginning of the title, that’s pretty good. Now, a question I have for you, I can see one of your top products or lines is this Miltonian cream shoe polish. I see this one SKU. Amazon says 500 in the last month across a lot of the different variations here. The Helium 10 data says, you know, thousands of units, almost 5000 units in the last month. If we look at the price point here, this number one SKU $7.99. I see all these others $8.99 and things, you know, a lot of people tell others out there, hey, stay away from Amazon products like under $20 or something, you know, it’s so hard to, to work with, with, with profit margins and things like that. And fees are so high. What kind of profit margin, you know, if you’re, if you’re willing to say, do you have on this and how in the world have you been so successful? You know, you know, some people, I think I might think, I think, oh no, it’s, it’s only Chinese brands that sell stuff for under $10 or something. How can you as a US brand or US based brand sell products so successfully at this kind of price point?

Ivan:

Well, if so, it’s go big or go home. So you must have volume. If, if your margins are small, you must go, but still, you know, a product like this costs about a dollar. I mean, we’re selling it for $7.99. All right. Well, minus Amazon fees and all, everything else. I mean, mark, you’ll have still a decent margin. We also sell, keep in mind, we sell this product to distributors. We ship pallets to regional distributors who sell to other retailers and comblers. So the, the volume is there. We, we, we command volume. We also, because of the volume, we have volume discount. When others may not be able to source this product at the prices that we are, but because of the volume, we are able to do that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So it’s like a, it’s like a numbers game. I mean, I mean, if you’re, if you’re starting a mom and pop brand, no, you know, like, or, or, you know, like, where are you going to sell 50 units a month and, and your price point is at $8, probably not going to work. But when you’re, you know, selling thousands and maybe even more across the board, now the, the, the numbers, you know, the, the, the, the numbers make sense.

Ivan:

Yeah. Also keep in mind right now, everyone is wearing sandals pretty much. So the, this product is seasonal and this is like the worst season to sell this product. So the numbers you see is very low. Like in November-

Bradley Sutton:

This 5,000 units a month for it’ll hop up in the in the colder months. You’re saying?

Ivan:

Yes. Hundred percent. One percent. Yes. When people wear shoes again.

Bradley Sutton:

What is your logistics look like for this?

Ivan:

Uh, yeah. So inventory is, is always a challenge and will always be a challenge to forecast and stock, uh, we do not source from China at all. So we are very new company, but we do buy mostly from Europe. So this, this product is made in France and we have a good term with the manufacturer. When you source from China, for the most part, I mean, I am sure there are exceptions, but you, you will have to, you know, pay your invoice 100% before it ships. Uh, we have terms, uh, we have terms for, uh, business as well. I mean, you can get terms, uh, from your supplier and it depends on certainly your situation, your business. Uh, but that helps us, uh, finance inventory. When you have terms, we don’t use trip, uh, 3PL at all. We, we handle everything here at the warehouse.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, so we have, I imagine that because of your wholesale business, you almost have to be like, maybe if you’re only Amazon or, or online, maybe, you know, maybe just leveraging Amazon inventory or, or, um, you know, 3PLs might work, but, but yeah, I guess you’re, and you fulfill your, um, like for example, I ordered something from your website that came from your warehouse. Yeah. You’re not like dropshipping that from Amazon or MCF or anything like that, right?

Ivan:

We, we, we could drop ship if we run out of inventory, uh, let’s say, uh, an order on, I don’t know, eBay, that’s very rare. Usually we have a product in stock. Uh, we also currently, I don’t know what the rates are from China, but the air, air freight from Europe, the cost per unit is almost the same as a container. And it comes in a few weeks instead of a couple of months. 

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, wow. 

Ivan:

So for us, we can restock quick. We have terms that allows us more flexibility when it comes to, and we have thousands of several thousands queues to have it all in 3PL. I think they will, they will think it will be very complex. Uh, but they have friends who don’t touch and they don’t see inventory. They ship from China to, uh, Amazon directly. And they, I mean, it’s, it’s very easy. So our business is not as easy from that standpoint.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, by the way, guys, if you guys are interested in, in the products, uh, you have a 10% discount code, uh, that you’d like to give out for people who go to your websites, 15% code, actually 15% code. Oh my goodness. Breaking the bank. Uh, what is that? What is that code? And what websites can people use that on?

Ivan:

So if you go to meltonian.com, uh, pedagusa.com, let me spell that out for people because sometimes people put melatonin and that’s all right.

Bradley Sutton:

So it’s M E L T O N I A N.com.

Ivan:

And you can get 15% off. Uh, the code is H10.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m going to start trying to do that more with our guests. Like, like the ones who talk about their product, hey, let’s send them some love and buy them some other product. I literally did. I bought a few things here. Now you mentioned that there’s multiple brands. Do all, are all of these brands on one Amazon account, have you separated them out and whatever you answer, why did you choose, uh, why did you choose to go that way?

Ivan:

Yeah. So that’s a great question. We, we have, uh, two Amazon accounts for three brands that we sell. Meltonian has its own Amazon account and Pedag has its own Amazon account. Uh, and we have a third brand in shoe care. It’s a luxury shoe care made in Japan for very high end shoes and sneakers. And that we sell on Amazon, uh, Meltonian. It’s the brand that we onboarded just two years ago. And it’s the best shoe care in the world. It’s not, not as cheap as Meltonian, but it’s, it’s fantastic. It’s the best shoe care in the world. If you have expensive sneakers, if you have expensive shoes, that’s the shoe care you want, they put black, uh, made in Japan.

Bradley Sutton:

Now I’m looking at, um, Cerebro on one of your, your main products. And I was actually expecting most, a lot of branded search being like your top keywords. But, but, but look, you know, I’m searching here for where you’re ranking the top 10. And yeah, like I do see, you know, uh, Meltonian shoe cream right here. Um, 859 search volume. That is a top keyword, but there’s only like two out of the top 10 keywords. Where you’re ranking highly for are branded. And a lot of these are, are just like generic terms, you know, like white shoe polish for leather, white liquid shoe polish for sneakers, uh, white sneaker paint, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So. You know, when we think of brands that have, you know, a lot of history and, you know, you look at some, some big college and peptides brands, a lot of their main keywords are like all branded search, especially the more known brands. So how were you able to be so dominant in just generic search terms to outside of your own brand?

Ivan:

Well, uh, part luck, part skill, I guess. We, we are avid users of Helium 10. We use Helium 10 to create listings and to enhance listings to make sure we are searchable for those important keywords that combines volume. And that’s basically a few sentence answer.

Bradley Sutton:

So speaking of which, when did you start using Helium 10, if you can remember, and how did you find it?

Ivan:

We were a customer, some Jungle Scout.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, no, nobody’s perfect.

Ivan:

You know, yeah, I know. Uh, so, and, uh, I mean, we were paying twice the amount we are paying for, uh, Elite, and then we heard of Helium 10, we got the demo and we were like, wow, this, this is an upgrade and this is a 50% less, I mean, this is no brain. I don’t remember how I heard about it, honestly, but, uh, you know, we always look for, uh, better, newer tools, uh, cheaper, I don’t know what the prices are, but at that point it was kind of like a bargain, a no brainer.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. What, what are your go-to, uh, tools that you guys are using from, from Helium 10 and how has it helped?

Ivan:

We use, um, Cerebro and Magnet. Uh, we use tools to create new listings. We, uh, I specifically like a new Claude skill, uh, which I connected a couple of weeks ago. I’m actually using that the most. I find it the new MCP and yes, yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, tell me, this is brand new. A lot of our listeners have not used it because, you know, Elite, I’ll talk about a Helium 10 Elite benefits too, but one of the benefits of Helium 10 Elite is you get stuff, you know, weeks, sometimes months before everybody else. Uh, so a lot of our listeners probably haven’t used the MCP yet. Um, how, what kind of processes are you doing with the Helium 10 MCP? Maybe it’ll give some of our listeners some ideas on how they can start using it.

Ivan:

Well, I use a Claude and ChatGPT daily, but both, but mostly Claude. And I use it just like I use Claude. I mean, it’s a almost human language, you can use it on your phone to check things quickly. And, uh, like currently I’m doing deep dive into one of our, uh, hero products that sales went down. So I’m using Claude to dive deeper into the reasons why, why sales are down.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s a, what’s a prompt then that, that you’re doing, um, to, to, to try and dive into that?

Ivan:

Just the human language to be honest with you. 

Bradley Sutton:

So it’s almost like treating Claude kind of like one of your employees, you know, where five, six years ago, it would have been an employee. There was no AI then, and you’re just saying, Hey, you know, take a look at the profitability over two years and, and tell me how much it’s gone down. And then it answers and then say, Hey, look into the business reports, you know, my sessions and conversion rate and, and try to, you know, and then look at Helium 10 keyword tracker history and advertising and give me, um, an idea, some like ideas of where, you know, why my, my sales have gone, you know, is that like a, kind of like a sample conversation that you’d have something like that?

Ivan:

Yeah. I start with high level, uh, to identify trends and then, uh, the trends we want to dive deeper than we go deeper into that. You, you, you also can pull out a particular Helium 10, a tool to use. Uh, but I, I find that Claude is smart enough to, to use the tools themselves without you prompting it. It’s basically like an interaction with, uh, your assistant. Just as you’ve said. Uh, very cool.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. All right. You’ve been part of the Helium 10 Elite program, which in the old, old days, maybe before you were here, it was a lot of like tool-based things where only you could use Helium 10 Elite for certain tools, but now it’s more like almost community. Yes, yes. Everybody gets the, the, the first access in Elite, but we have a lot of like community things that you take advantage of, you know, like private calls and things. So what, what has been your, um, experience with Helium 10 Elite? Like, like what benefits have you gotten out of it?

Ivan:

Uh, it’s a great program. And, uh, the main benefit. It comes from network that you network with, uh, sellers and business people like myself think that’s basically what you pay the extra for. Uh, you don’t pay just like for an extra tools. You, you, you pay for an advice of somebody who lives and breathes the same air as yourself. So I, I think that that is very helpful. Uh, there are some unique trainings that the Elite members receive. Certainly you have access to all the tools and sometimes early access to you. 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Ivan:

Uh, also you can schedule a meeting with Bradley. 

Bradley Sutton:

There you go. 

Ivan:

That’s a bonus.

Bradley Sutton:

Only if you guys, if you give me a discount on products, no guys, any, any Elite member can, um, can schedule the, uh, can schedule the, uh, uh, the calls. Let’s talk some specific strategies now. Some things you think you’re very unique on. I mean, we, we’ve already talked about, you know, some things like your, your price point is very unique, but what are some strategies, whether it’s in advertising, inventory management, product development, uh, Shopify, you know, whatever you have, uh, what’s something you think that maybe most of our audience hasn’t thought about or, or doesn’t do like you.

Ivan:

Uh, we started posting on Reddit. Uh, we still yet to see the results, but we, we started, uh, six months later than, you know, here he come, but now we doing it basically almost daily posts.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, are you, are you trying to like see, uh, so that your, your products are more recommended in AI and things like that was, is that the goal of the strategy you’re talking about?

Ivan:

That’s exactly right. So we took a little bit of time to spread the ability as someone who knows the, the subject matter. And, uh, not every single post has a recommendation of our brand of products, but, uh, basically we go and, um, answer questions, uh, participate in discussion and then there is a product recommendation as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So, so yeah, let’s definitely check back later to see how that’s worked. Now, I think something that’s just unique in itself, as far as the percentage of Amazon sellers who do it is what you guys do in wholesale. You know, most, most Amazon sellers are not doing much offline. So let’s say there’s somebody out there who six figure brand, seven figure brand kind of been strictly online. They are interested in starting distribution wholesale. Where do we do suggest for them to get started in any kind of tips?

Ivan:

Uh, yeah, uh, I would recommend starting with Faire. Uh, it’s, uh, very, um, a low cost. Uh-

Bradley Sutton:

And how do you spell that website? Cause it’s not, it’s not F A I R. Isn’t it? Doesn’t it have a E at the end or something like that?

Ivan:

So it’s F A I R E.

Bradley Sutton:

dot com. 

Ivan:

Yeah. Dot com.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Perfect. 

Ivan:

So this is a wholesale platform.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s like, it’s like a marketplace or, or what kind of website is it?

Ivan:

Yeah. I think of it as a marketplace, uh, for retailers, um, small retailers who have maybe, um, a store, uh, front in the mall or in a strip mall. And, uh, they, they source products, uh, at wholesale prices. I think that’s, that’s a good. And easy entry. The other one is to go to trade shows. Uh, we go to trade to relevant trade shows, uh, business to business trade shows, and we try to open wholesale accounts with the retailers. We are a member of, uh, associations, uh, several associations. Uh, one of them, for example, is shoe SSIA shoe service Institute of America. That’s an association for cobblers. They buy a lot of our products, but, uh, for us to ship this would not be economical, so we mostly distribute, uh, cream, uh, for shoes and leather through, uh, distributors, uh, who are also members of the association. So look for a membership association that you can enter and make a network and open a wholesale accounts.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent points. Yeah. I think this is something that, you know, diversification of your channels is a big help, especially, you know, pandemics come and, and different, different things might come and then if all your eggs are in one bucket, it’s not going to be a good thing for your, your cashflow. Um, and then also, you know, the more your, your products get out there in the world with distribution centers, Hey, somebody sees it in a shoe store, somebody sees it somewhere and now they move somewhere else. Guess what? They’re now going to be looking online. And so, so it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s going to help your online sales too, when you have a strong offline presence. Would you agree with that?

Ivan:

Yes. Yes. Uh, there are certainly, um, there are always trade-offs, right? On, on the other hand, those retailers may compete with you on, on, on Amazon inclusion, right? They may retail your product on Amazon and where you also sell.

Bradley Sutton:

So how do you, how do you police that? Well, like, do you give them map pricing and things like that?

Ivan:

So you, as a business, you need to establish the strategy, what you want to pursue. Uh, we do have map. Uh, we also have authorized resellers. So there are retailers who we stopped doing business because of map violation. Uh, map is a very good policy, uh, against the race to the bottom where no one wins. Uh, for a good brand, this is essential to have map. If you have your product out there, if you have, uh, retailers also selling your products, uh, overall, it can be a good way to support those retailers, uh, that they don’t only sell in the brick and mortar, but also online it’s good for their revenue, but, uh, the map kind of levels playing field for everybody and make sure everyone has a good margin.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. So for those who stayed to the end, like I said, we’re going to have a demo here, a real life demo. I have not cleaned these shoes. I have tons of shoes. So these are some of my favorite Balenciaga triple S here.

Ivan:

Nice, nice.

Bradley Sutton:

And, and so I’ve got, um, you tell me what I use. I’ve got this product here. What, what is this product that I’m holding?

Ivan:

This is, this is Meltonian sneaker cleaner. Uh, so this is a very unique product. Uh, usually if you go on Amazon and you type like, uh, clean my sneakers, you’ll, you’ll find like a mishmash of, uh, kits. Uh, you have a concentrate in the bottle. You have a separate brush. You need to have a mixing bowl, which they don’t sell. You need to find a bowl with the water where you need to dilute that solution or, you know, uh, used to wash your brush. It’s very cumbersome. Uh, this sneaker cleaner is all in one. That’s all you need.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, it has a cream or something that comes out of, out of it.

Ivan:

Yes. So it has a liquid inside. Uh, you can, as you shake it, it becomes a little foamy. And then in the, in the middle of the brush, there is a valve. You just push on the valve and the cleaning liquid comes out and you rub it on your sneakers.

Bradley Sutton:

So, uh, this, you know, these Balenciagas have suede and then they also have just like regular section. And then there was like cloth here. Do I only do this on the white part and the, the, the cloth part, or also I can use this on the suede? Or do I use this other product here, this Japanese product that you sent me for the suede?

Ivan:

Yes. So I, you can use it anywhere except suede. Suede is a special leather, so, uh, I would recommend using something else on suede, but everything else is, is, can be used.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So I’ll, I’ll start on this just for the, the, the bottom, uh, part in the back part, and you guys can see how, how like dirty it is. So like, what, what do I need to squeeze on this one to, to like trigger it?

Ivan:

Push in the middle. Uh, I mean, just, just press with the brush and the liquid will come out. Oh, wow.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Ivan:

If it doesn’t do a gentle push, you’ll, you’ll see the foaming liquid will come, will be coming out.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh yeah. So I don’t know if you guys can see this, but, but here there was complete black marks on here and it’s already, it’s already coming out. Uh, and you can kind of see here, take a look here. It’s kind of a brownish. So let’s see what I go here.

Ivan:

Yeah. This sneaker cleaner is amazing. It does the job and fairly quickly. You don’t need the bowl. You need, don’t need to mix anything. You don’t need the separate brush.

Bradley Sutton:

You just, oh my goodness. It is completely white now, guys, right here. This was brown. I forgot it was white and look how it’s foaming. And this just came from the brush. I used to use those sneaker cleaners where I have to pour it into a bowl and then I mix it up and then, and all this stuff. So yeah, this is pretty amazing.

Ivan:

And then you can wipe it with like a paper towel and you’re done. That’s all you need.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, this is incredible. I just did a few, a few brushes here and it is already all these scuff marks and stuff are, are clearing out. Perfect. Perfect. All right. I have my work to do now for the rest of this. Now for the suede part, what do I use this spray? And this is the Japanese brand.

Ivan:

So for the suede, that Japanese brand, it’s, it’s, uh, as I said, the best shoe care in the world made in Japan. Uh, it’s an aerosol, uh, cleaner for suede. Um, you just shake it, then spray on your suede and gently dab the suede. It, it all, uh, and let it dry and your suede will be clean.

Bradley Sutton:

So I don’t need to brush off the suede or anything first. Just, just goes directly on.

Ivan:

Uh, you, you can do a general brushing of suede. If you have like a suede brush or any, any kind of brush, I think it’ll help. Uh, yeah, there you go. Uh, that brush that you’re using, it also can just clean suede. Uh, but the aerosol suede cleaner, uh, will clean almost anything.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, wow.

Ivan:

Yeah. On suede. Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So I don’t know, I mean, this is kind of hard to see, but you guys can see I sprayed this part here, but not this part. And you could see the difference right away. The shoe is almost becoming a new again.

Ivan:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. For, I don’t know if I even knew this, but before I used to buy and sell shoes, like when they would drop, I would be the ones to like, have like five iPhones ready and like going in and buying these like rare shoes, and then I would do that so that I can make enough money to buy, to have my own shoe. I mean, this is like an $800 shoe. I’m not a crazy person who spends $800 on shoes, but this used to be my business. And so I would like, you know, sell seven or eight of these and have enough money to buy my, my, my own. And so, uh, I have a, quite an extensive collection of, of shoes from before. So this, all right, I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’m using this, uh, boot black suede cleaner. I’m using the Meltonian, uh, sneaker cleaner, and now my ugly looking shoes are about to be made whole again, thanks to these products. So Ivan, thank you so much for coming on this show. 

Ivan:

You’re welcome. 

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, my shoes, uh, making my shoes great again, and, um, uh, appreciate, uh, your, your contributions also to the Elite community. And so guys, if you guys are interested, hang out with, uh, uh, Ivan in these, uh, Elite calls, h10.me forward slash Elite. It’s only $99 a month. Uh, you can book one-on-one calls with me, uh, hang out in our, um, you know, private session, sometimes there’s only one, two, three, four people in there where we can talk about what’s working and not, and, uh, look forward to, uh, learning from you and I’ll be seeing you at Amazon accelerate, uh, in a couple months, uh, Ivan?

Ivan:

Yes, 100%. It’s, it’s in my backyard.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. We’ll see you there. Thanks everybody for tuning in and we’ll see you in the next episode.

Ivan:

Alright. Thank you!

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