#269 – 3PL Warehouse Strategies, Wayfair, Selling on Walmart, and More!

It’s a big world out there, if you’re involved in e-commerce, why not sell to as much of it as possible? In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Chief Evangelist, Bradley Sutton welcomes back Sean and Peter from Kreassive to talk about how to take full advantage of the global nature of business in 2021.

As CEO of Kreassive LLC, Sean Chang says, “Now that you can sell successfully anywhere in the world – there are almost seven billion potential customers out there, what are you waiting for?” His company, Kreassive partners with businesses and implements their strategies to grow sales on both online and offline channels.

In this conversation, Sean and Kreassive’s Marketing Specialist, Peter Bouris talk about the increasing importance of 3PL (third-party logistics) warehouses in the US and in Europe as well as strategies for selling on Walmart and Amazon. Sean also goes into depth about how they’re grossing over 5 million a year on the Wayfair marketplace.

There’s something in this conversation for everyone!

In episode 269 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Sean, and Peter discuss:

• 03:30 – E-Commerce Growth Around the World
• 04:30 – The Latest from Wayfair
• 06:00 – How Does Wayfair Differ from Amazon?
• 09:15 – What’s the Wayfair Sign Up Process Like?
• 12:00 – How Does the Wayfair Pricing Structure Work?
• 16:00 – The Latest on WFS (Walmart Fulfillment Services)
• 22:00 – The Major Differences Between Walmart and Amazon
• 25:30 – Using Local Knowledge to Get a Head Start
• 27:30 – Kreassive’s Global Reach
• 29:00 – The European Market’s Amazon Shipping Limits
• 40:00 – Sean’s Wins and Losses from the Last Year
• 37:15 – What is Kreassive’s Path to Page One? 
• 40:15 – How to Find Out More About Kreassive

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcast or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today, we’re going to talk to Sean again, who runs 3PL warehouses in the US and Europe. He’s also going to be talking about strategies for selling on Walmart and Amazon; and also talk about how they are grossing over $5 million a year on Wayfair. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton: Do you want to see how your listing or maybe competitors’ listing rates as to best practices for listing optimization, or maybe you want to compare a group of ASINs or Amazon products to see how they compare to each other? Maybe you want to see within seconds the top keywords for a single listing or a group of listings. You can do that and more with the Helium 10 tool listing analyzer for more information, go to h10.me/listinganalyzer.

Bradley Sutton: 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’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, with organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon world. We’ve got a serious seller back with us today, Sean, from Kreassive. Sean, how’s it going?

Sean: Hi, Bradley. I’m good. How are you?

Bradley Sutton: I’m doing awesome. We might have somebody else join a little bit later, your colleague, Peter, but for now it’ll just be you. Alright. We’ve talked to you in the past. If you guys want to check out the episode that Sean was on to get a little bit more about his history, go back to episode 154 of the podcast. It was back in 2020, and we talked about the kind of businesses that you had started on Amazon. I remember at that time, in that episode, I had asked you about all the accounts that you were managing and your own brands and everything else, and the different marketplaces between Amazon and Wayfair and this and that. I think you were doing about 20 to 30 million in gross revenue per year. Since it’s been a year, has it gone up? Has it gone down? What’s your projection for 2021?

Sean: Oh, definitely overall sales transaction volume went up maybe 20% or 30%, compared to last year. Another thing is we got a lot of inquiries for the 3PL service or 4PL. So Amazon FBA, FBM, Shopify, and all those e-commerce fulfillment services inquiries. We’ve been getting them from many different countries. To fulfill those we needed to move. This year we moved the US headquarter office to a three times bigger space.

Bradley Sutton: How many square feet is that?

Sean: About 55,000, yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, wow.

Sean: Also the ceiling is higher than before, so we can stack up like 30% more than the previous one.

Bradley Sutton: You opened up some other warehouses too, not just your one here in California, right?

Sean: Yeah. And also, Europe, because of Brexit in Europe. So, we’ve been preparing, launching about the German office and warehouse. Now our Frankfurt warehouse is operating. We’ve been providing our Amazon and e-commerce service to our existing clients and we’ve been expanding that business as well. Actually, we are getting a lot more inquiries in Europe than in the US.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, wow. Interesting. Let’s just talk about some different marketplaces. We talked a little bit about that last time. You’re involved in different marketplaces that I’ve never even sold on. So let’s take some of these one by one. We just mentioned Wayfair. Let’s talk about Wayfair. Didn’t you have some issues with your Wayfair account? I think you were saying before, or what’s just general and going on in Wayfair, is it still more lucrative to sell on Wayfair for some categories such as furniture or has that changed in the last year? What’s going on?

Sean: With Wayfair, it’s mostly furniture stuff plus in the home decoration product and Wayfair sales volumes and transactions actually it’s been going up at the same time, similar to FBA, Wayfair also, they provide a Castle Gate program. It’s like FBA . If we were sending on Wayfair and if it’s selling good, then you can send some inventory to Wayfair warehouse and prefer the Wayfair type of thing. So we’ve been doing that type of service too.

Bradley Sutton: What would you say was your gross revenue there on Wayfair last year? Or what’s the projected, like, are we only talking like a hundred thousand dollars overall or 1 million or what?

Sean: So, I would say just the daily transaction volume I spent about, when we started Wayfair the first time, it’s less than 10 or older, but they, but it’s been like two years and now we are hitting 150 to 200 orders.

Bradley Sutton: 200 orders a day on Wayfair?

Sean: Yes, yes.

Bradley Sutton: And like the average item is what? $50, $100?

Sean: 100 to 200 between interiors and home decorations.

Bradley Sutton: Oh my goodness. So we’re talking like five to $10 million a year you’re doing on Wayfair? Good grief. I didn’t realize that that was such a big income stream for you guys. So I bet you, guys that just got a lot of people’s attention right now. So, how is it different than Amazon, like with Wayfair, is it almost like a vendor account? Like you’re really selling the products to Wayfair. It’s like vendor central on Amazon, and then it’s not like you’re dealing directly with the customers or what’s the difference between Wayfair and Amazon?

Sean: Yeah. I think the major, big difference is exactly what you just mentioned. Like, it’s not like you’re selling on the open market, but it’s like selling it to Wayfair. Yeah. So even though you keep your inventory in your warehouse or when a trend occurs in Wayfair, then Wayfair pays for that. Yeah. So it’s like, also you have no control ability about advertisement or selling price control.

Bradley Sutton: Are they charging you for advertising then? Do they like doing their own PPC?

Sean: No, it’s just like how [inaudible] just to review about your product. And we decided about their purchase price and that’s it. So once an order occurs from Wayfair, then from the Wayfair system, you can download the shipping label, like FedEx, ground and stuff, and then fulfill it to the customer. That’s the process. So, it’s not really selling your product under your brand name. So since the Wayfair thing, or even though you beat up the sales, you’re not really beating your own brand. So that’s the major advantage compared to Amazon or Walmart or the marketplace.

Bradley Sutton: But does that also mean that Amazon is not checking that website for the price? So like, you know how if you have something for $50 on Amazon and it’s $45 on a Walmart, Amazon will find it. And then they’ll take away the buy box from Amazon, but because this is a different brand and everything, you could have the same product and maybe it’s cheaper on Wayfair, but it’s not going to affect your Amazon buy box. Or have you ever seen it affect your Amazon buy box?

Sean: It doesn’t affect the buy box because it’s really difficult to match Amazon listings and Wayfair listings. Yeah, we cannot put the brand name on Wayfair and also descriptions and images can be a little bit different too. So there is no buy box issue and usually Wayfair since Wayfair purchase and sell under their own name. Also the shipping costs thing. It’s all coming from– I mean the shipping label thing is all coming from the Wayfair account. So usually I think Wayfair is a little bit cheaper than Amazon too. I think that’s why the furniture category in the furniture category Wayfair does better than Amazon.

Bradley Sutton: Interesting. So, let’s talk a little bit more about it. I wasn’t even planning to talk too much about Wayfair, but I was like, as soon as you said, that’s $7 million. I’m like, oh my goodness, this is– we need to, I’m sure everybody’s curious about this. So let’s say, the average person who’s listening right now, they’re interested in signing up for Wayfair. I mean, it’s obvious there’s obviously something wrong with it. Otherwise we would have done it before, but what are some of the differences, it’s not like Amazon where you apply for a seller central and you’re there in 30 minutes. So do you remember what it takes to get signed up for Wayfair?

Sean: Unlike Amazon, Wayfair is very selective in choosing their vendor. So even though you apply to open the account, you will take a wrong to review and they will ask you about your product categories and your company information and et cetera. So, my impression while we’ve been doing the application process, unless you’re like, someone established a furniture factory or brand in, for example, in China or US, they are not going to approve your Wayfair access. And already, Wayfair got big. Also, they have a lot of vendors and a lot of product inquiries, they are getting in also automatically, though, since they are purchasing inventory and selling. So, it’s all more selective and picky to launch Wayfair. So, if you are serious about launching Wayfair then I recommend setting up the full catalogs and maybe the Shopify website, and also the competitive– their opening price too. So all those things got to be ready.

Bradley Sutton: Just because you get approved on Wayfair. It’s not like you can be completely approved for every single product. Like don’t, you have to like, kind of submit a product. And then they say, yes, we want this on Wayfair or no, we don’t.

Sean: Yes. There is a review process too. Also at the same time if they are buying price too. So, yeah, there is a room to negotiate, like selling price and even once you beat up the sales for you, then that process is getting easier. You’re getting close to the vendor representative rep. Yeah. So, if you want to launch a certain product and test it, then there’s a room that you can test it on at Wayfair.

Bradley Sutton: What’s your success rate with getting things approved? So like, do you have a hundred percent of whatever you wanted to sell on Wayfair they approved, or some of them they rejected?

Sean: So I think 70, 80%,

Bradley Sutton: Okay. That’s not bad. Let’s talk about what you just said about the purchase price. I remember you were trying to explain it to me before. I couldn’t quite understand it because it was kind of weird. When you submit a product to Wayfair, you are not controlling nor suggesting the retail price. You’re just suggesting to them what their buy prices are, and then they decide the retail price or how does it work?

Sean: Yeah, exactly what you just said. We just decide with Wayfair about their buying price and on the way for your selling price, they control also, if it doesn’t move then doing discount promotion or that it’s on their side.

Bradley Sutton: So then like, do you then kind of like base it off of what their history is of their markup? Like, do they have some kind of consistency where if they accept the price of X, usually they mark it up 20%. So then you guys kind of like work your way backwards because you know what kind of retail price you’d like, and then you give them a price based on that, or you’re just giving them a price based on what you want as your margin to be based on your cost?

Sean: Yeah, because in most cases, on Wayfair, there is a similar product that they are selling. So, if we offer too much of our margin, like then it will affect the selling price. So definitely, when we offer our selling price, we look at the market competition and offer. Yeah. So, while we’ve been doing this, we kind of have that logic now. So, we only offer them that it can compete with similar product lines that Wayfair already have. But if it’s a really unique product and a well developed concept, then it might be a different case, but for pretty much most of our products, it needs to compete with different products.

Bradley Sutton: Hey, it looks like Peter joined us here all of a sudden. So then Sean, like if let’s say somebody just doesn’t want to have to go through the process of applying on Wayfair or maybe they were rejected as a company, people can go to companies like you or somebody who does have a Wayfair account. And then you work something out where they use your account or does it always have to be under the same brand or the same company.

Sean: So, because selling on Wayfair, our brand name, it does matter. Yeah. So if there’s any good product, then our team will review and decide whether we are going to launch it or not under our account.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Okay. Cool. All right. So, there’s Wayfair. Now let’s talk a little bit about some other marketplaces. Like, how is your guys’ Walmart business doing? The funny thing is I was just realizing that when you guys creative started at Walmart, I was still with the company, like, woof, that’s probably like five years ago and I’m still getting, I think it’s my email address that is the admin accounts. Because I’m still getting all these emails randomly from Walmart, like, Hey, thank you for your support. So, yeah, it’s been like five years. I think you guys have been on, or six years since you guys have been at Walmart. What do you project your gross Walmart sales to be this year?

Sean: So, volume wise, about [inaudible] is about 2 million. Yeah. 1 million to 2 million. Yeah. But it’s still full of training because like this year we got the invitation for the FSN. We’ve been launching our all like main product through the WFS the Walmart plus.

Bradley Sutton: Hold on, let me ask you a question about that, because that’s very interesting to me. I’ve never done that. I’m assuming that some other products you got to WFS you were already doing before, but just fulfilled by the merchant?

Sean: Yes.

Bradley Sutton: All right. So can you guys talk, I mean, obviously you probably don’t have any numbers here in front of you, but in general, when you made that transition from just being fulfilled by a merchant for this product, you were already selling on Amazon and you transitioned to WFS, did sales stay the same? Did they double, did they increase by 50%? What would you guys estimate?

Sean: So, it’s kind of a little bit to assess all the stage, because we’ve been launching WFS in the last two, three months, and we just started doing the PPC campaign too. Compared to fulfilled by merchant Walmart, it sells better. And from there, even customers or look at the listing, it says the second day shipping mark on it.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. That’s what I was thinking that I would think that it would– people would really like that a lot more. How about profitability, obviously you were paying your own, I don’t know, what do you guys use for shipping? Like do you just use UPS or do you have one of those third party aggregators ship on your companies?

Sean: For fulfilled by a merchant?

Bradley Sutton: Yeah.

Sean: The majority of the shipping that we do directly to customers is either FedEx, UPS or USPS, it just really depends on the actual product and the type of delivery we’re doing. We have some clients who use FedEx Smart Post. We have a lot of different options that we use, so it kind of varies from brand to brand, product to product.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. But obviously you guys do a volume, so I’m sure you have some nice discounts. Like for me, I don’t even have that great of discounts for my shipping. I’m only shipping, like from my warehouse, like 10, 15 things a day, but still what I found on Amazon is my profit margin is very similar when I ship fulfilled by merchant order, as opposed to the same or the same ASIN where it’s on Amazon. If I consider, obviously Amazon can ship it for way cheaper than I can, but with Amazon, I’m paying them a pick pack fee. And then plus I actually have to ship the product to Amazon from here. So it almost comes out even. Do you guys see that similar on Walmart where your profit margin is similar compared to when you were fulfilling it by the merchant? Or is it better or is it more expensive with WFS?

Sean: I think Amazon and Walmart, the logistic fee structure is pretty the same. And they’re also the [inaudible] feeds also saying like 15%. So, when we compare it to eBay or other open markets, it’s somewhat different, but Wayfair, I mean, Walmart, Amazon shipping fee, or other phases are almost identical.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Now, you’ve mentioned how Wayfair furniture seems to work really well. Are there categories that have worked better on Walmart for you as opposed to others?

Sean: So, Walmart or, I mean, furniture wise or– in my personal opinion, Wayfair is number one in Amazon or overstock house. Those are the good one, the big ones. And definitely also your Shopify store wants to have brand name, established brand name, then that will help on sales too. And wave a Walmart home furniture side. I don’t know, in my case, not too much.

Bradley Sutton: So, there’s nothing where it’s like groceries work way better on Walmart than your electronics or something like that?

Sean: Yeah. Cosmetic or grocery, like food. Yeah. Those things at Walmart work better.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Interesting. Interesting. What else have been some obstacles for you guys selling on Walmart? Like I would assume that there’s not that much hijacking, like it used to be are piggybacking, like in the case of Amazon back in the day, or, or I’m not sure about suspensions or bad, fake reviews or like what kind of obstacles have you guys come up with as you’ve scaled on the Walmart?

Sean: Actually, many of our clients, our customers are trying to launch it at Walmart too. Walmart is definitely one of the fastest growing, open markets now. But the thing is also the same as Wayfair, all that they have also strict selective or the partnership process. So, to participate in the Walmart open market program and especially WFS that is really selective. I think it’s, fendering invite only at this time.

Bradley Sutton: For WFS? You guys got that, but you guys had that invite. Okay. All right, cool.

Sean: Because you opened Walmart like five years ago, so definitely that history and so was helped with, to get that invitation. Actually, we got it last year.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, from like one of the other brands?

Sean: Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Cool. Any other obstacles that either of you can think about, or, or just maybe main differences between selling on Walmart and Amazon?

Sean: Also, like Amazon it’s like if you do listing properly than most of the time, so your listing will go live and start selling it. But Wayfair, I mean, Walmart, yeah. There’s a more limitation. So, sometimes Walmart will reject the listing and if it comes to WFS, then it’s actually getting more difficult to get live. Walmart will offer your product for free. So, no fees to your product, they will deny.

Peter: The limitations that we have been kind of dealing with, I think is more along the lines of Walmart’s kind of starting out. So they’re, I think, modeling a lot of the way they’re doing their WMS program after Amazon. So, it’s kind of like Amazon was several years ago and some of the limitations you had with Amazon, we’re experiencing those with Walmart as well. The good thing is we’ve already had those experiences with Amazon, so we know a little better how to handle them. And it’s the same thing now Shawn mentioned, we just recently got approved to start doing PPC marketing through Walmart. It’s kind of a new thing where they’re allowing sellers to actually do their own PPC marketing before it used to be something that you had to just pay a lot of money to their team to handle it for you. Now we’re able to do that, but it’s still kind of, we’re noticing it’s a little bit of a limited process. It’s not the same as doing Amazon PPC. There’s still kind of a few years behind, but I think it’s something that they’re probably going to catch up fairly quickly.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Cool. Real quick. I’m just completely off the subject here, but this is how I roll my brain doesn’t work normally, but I just happened to check out your account, Sean. And I noticed you guys are still selling the [inaudible] ginseng. Now, you and your wife have introduced to me so much Korean drama lately. And so I’m watching Korean dramas for like two hours a day, but this product I have seen all like in every Korean drama, they’re always having this. So, I’m going to make a suggestion for your listings. I think you guys should re-optimize and do something like on one of the bullet points or something like as seen on K-drama or Korean drama because this exact product, like I was just watching a show yesterday and I’m looking at your, what is it? It’s the one that you like, it’s like a jelly where you rip it open and then you like suck it out of the package. Like I literally saw that in a show yesterday. So you guys should put some Korean drama keywords in your listing because you might find some people interested.

Sean: Yeah. It’s a good idea.

Bradley Sutton: All right, back to the serious stuff here, speaking of that, that is a huge Korean company. And I know you’re even when I was working with you guys, you onboarded a huge companies, like with LG or Samsung or some of those Korean beauty companies, Facia. There’s another one though. It’s funny, it’s a funny word about the face or something like skin food. There we go. Skin food, like huge known brands. So are you still doing that business model a lot since obviously, Sean, you’re from Korea, you’ve got a huge network in Korea. Are you still going out there and actively searching like big Korean brands and then bringing them to the United States via Amazon?

Sean: Yes. Actually last week I was in Korea and had a meeting with them to actually, to US Amazon or a Korean company already tested. Tested it through also directly by themselves. So, now they are more focused on launching Amazon in Europe. In Europe Amazon is like 80% of the market size of the USA. So now there’s a huge entry barrier, but since we have a UK and German office where we can help them to launch it and operate it.

Bradley Sutton: So you ship products directly from Korea to the US, and then also from Korea to Europe, as opposed to Korea to US and then US to Europe, right?

Sean: Yes, yes. Korea to Frankfurt or the UK directly. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. So guys, after– I believe we did talk about this in the last episode, but this is something that those of you who you don’t even have to be based in other countries, but even if you’re here in America, if you have a network in a country, be it Korea, Japan, Pakistan, or some other place where there’s manufacturers, there’s still a lot of companies who aren’t on Amazon and they don’t know how to get started. And so you can leverage your knowledge and do like Sean has built kind of like a side business here about, launching brands and then taking a percentage of the sales and then managing their Amazon accounts, or even having it on your Amazon account. It’s a great business model, an easy way to make money because you’re not having to worry about the product development and the branding and things like that. These companies have taken advantage of it. And also there’s always people in America or in Europe or wherever who are expats from these other countries. And like this ginseng brand, I just mentioned, there’s tons of Korean people here in the United States who all know this brand. And so as soon as they see it on Amazon, like, wow, this is so good. And maybe find a brand from Turkey. There’s a lot of Turkish people here in the United States and maybe there’s some kind of food brand or something they used to get in Turkey and they haven’t been able to get it. Well, you instantly have an audience, or you instantly have a customer base for some of these products. So I really love that business model. Now, we’ve talked about Wayfair, we’ve talked about Walmart. Let’s talk a little bit more about Amazon Europe. So you mentioned Amazon Europe combined is about 80% of the US sales, is Germany still number one and maybe UK number two for you guys over there?

Sean: Yeah. Germany, number one. And the UK, number two then France or Italy, Spain, also recently like Amazon Netherlands and Sweden and Poland open to it and it’s growing fast.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, of those new ones, I know those all opened up pretty small, but of those new ones, which one do you see the most growth in?

Sean: Netherland.

Bradley Sutton: The other ones, okay. All right. What other marketplaces? So we’ve talked about the eight marketplaces in Europe. I’m assuming the three in North America between us Canada and Mexico. Did you guys stop at Amazon Japan, or are you doing Amazon Japan or Amazon Australia, or any other Amazon marketplaces worldwide?

Sean: Japan, we paused at this moment.

Bradley Sutton: Why, what happened there?

Sean: Because a lot of our products are like cosmetics food, and which is Japan, FDA stuff is related to selling directly to the customer. So, before, when we’ve been selling, like more about the right accessory, those things, it’s easy to sell on the Japanese market, but our product catalog is now different. So, that’s why. But we are planning to revamp the Amazon Japan process again, and from next year we will re-launch the Amazon Japan service again.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Now me, I haven’t in years sold in Europe. So, what’s going on with the inventory situation? Like obviously in America last year, it was the COVID restrictions. And then, new products had the 200 limit and there’s other limitations. And then it changed months ago to the shipping tier ones where you can only have 1000 standard size and then 2000 oversize or whatever everybody’s account was different. And that one really has been giving people a lot of headaches lately. Throughout the last year, is it always what we see in us is also the same in Europe or?

Sean: Yeah, it’s similar. Yeah. So we have unlimited Amazon Europe accounts that have no inventory limit, but in Europe also, they start making those limited inventory, limitations too, and also if you open a new Amazon Euro account, then you will have only a total of thirty thousand units which will be a lot. And a bit of the inventory limit, or you need a set rate and account house, et cetera. So, the same situation is going on on Amazon Europe too, but the good news is that we have, like with Amazon, allowed us to have multiple accounts for different product categories since we’ve been managing multiple categories and trends. So, what we can do is we can help our clients or Amazon account if they showed him about the inventory or the capacity, and we can help on our account to fulfill those orders or send more inventory to our account to minimize loss of inventory discontinue.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. Because I could imagine like newer sellers, especially who have more restrictions. They can only send, you know, X amount of units in, but that becomes all of a sudden impossible to make profit, because if you could only ship from China or wherever you’re manufacturing, like hundred units at a time, that’s an impossible business model. So, like for example, you said you have a UK and a Germany warehouse now? So like how much of it is for your own brands or just for other people using you as like 3PL?

Sean: It’s a hundred percent our client’s brand. We really don’t have our own brand. So, yeah, it’s all like either they are using our service, which is from 3PL to marketing listing, translation, everything. Half of them use our turnkey service and the rest of it, they use our 3PL service. So yeah, already, those are our clients that have a Euro account and the VAT number is ready, but they need to warehouse and import or record a record type of in the service, then we help import and send their inventory to their Amazon account.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. So then, you know, I actually, it’s funny, like our project X account, somehow we got suspended for Europe, like before we even started, because they said we’re related to another account. So I don’t even know what the heck that is because I mean, our US account, which is the same email address is fine, but how one got suspended and not the other, I don’t really know, but once I get that opened up, I’m definitely going to reach out to you so we can do some business there because I have no idea how to get set up in Europe. And then also for the US, I think you had said, I have a 40 foot container coming into the Project X, and we’re actually, instead of sending to my warehouse, we’re sending it to yours because hopefully I can go out there with a video camera and just check out your new warehouse and see how it is. But like would you say you’re doing way more of that kind of business these days, like the 3PL warehouse because of what happened with all these inventory restrictions. Now people almost have to have a 3PL warehouse, huh?

Sean: Yeah. One is the Amazon inventory issue. And second thing is because of this COVID situation, the air crafts, like largest. Air shipment prices went up too high. So a lot of our shipments move through the ocean shipment vessel, which means our local warehouse needs to fulfill the FBA inventory management and storage too. So like in the US and Europe, that type of inquiries are coming a lot from overseas. So while we’ve been providing that service to our clients, especially this year, we expand that service a lot to other clients.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Cool. What else is new with you guys with Kreassive the last year? We talked about Wayfair. We talked about Walmart, Amazon, and shipping and things like that. What’s some of your wins and losses, I would assume the big loss is just how terrible it is to ship now and how expensive it is to ship. So maybe you can talk a little bit about how you guys are navigating that. Like, did you have to raise your retail prices? And then what’s something that was nice that happened to you guys in the last year?

Sean: I think though, like setting up the product, we had a UK branch for a long time over like five years ago and setting up a German branch was quiet. Like stressful walkers, it’s not easy. And they were like the fixed cost and stuff. But the reason we set up the Frankfurt office is this, or since Amazon, not just about time, I don’t, it’s not actually Amazon, but the European countries, because of Amazon, they had a huge VAT issue, tax collecting from each country created a lot of confusion between EU countries. And because of that, now Europe has become very passive about importing goods from overseas. So it’s almost impossible to sell your product without a branch or partner on Amazon Europe, just like custom, like German custom or France custom will be cut off if there’s no proper compliance or record, or like a responsible person, et cetera. So, which means that type of different situation made, imagine competition very low. So if you have good products selling well on Amazon US, it means, and if you can sell, I mean, if you pass this, like entry barrier and in Amazon Europe, since now, all the competition from overseas come, so you have better ROI and better chance to pull sales in Hamilton, Europe than Amazon US. So since we’ve been running none of this from PPC in the US and Europe because of this demand and supply issue on Amazon Europe, we see a better ROI in neuroscience. So what I would like to share with you guys is if you have a good product and selling on Amazon Europe will definitely be a good opportunity, and it will be for the ocean for awhile because setting up a Europe branch, we are also will be pretty difficult. And because of that, I think 95% of overseas Amazon Europe sellers are gone now.

Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Because I remember it was saturated with a lot of sellers from China before, but you’re saying now a lot of them have to go away because of these new rules, huh?

Sean: Yes. Yes. And also because of this COVID thing, like, or air parcel costs went up high too. So before you go to Amazon Europe shipping from China or Japan, via FBM, there were many different sellers, but a lot of them are gone because of the shipping charge issue. So, yeah. So if you, I mean, it’s a good opportunity.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah, yeah. Okay. What are you guys using for, like, how are you– for new products, how are you launching these days? Are you just doing PPC or using the company’s AZ rank or how do you, what’s your path to page one these days?

Sean: So, like Amazon, or like before there were a lot of different tactics, but it’s getting more organic and product yourself is the number one or so while we are also focused on trying to find the good product that we can compete on Amazon first page, right? Making your product on the first page on an important product or through PPC or different marketing push like Google or like this, or whatever it’s doable and possible. But the thing is, as you guys know, if your product is not good enough, then it will get pushed back. So we don’t want to repeat and mislead our clients about those. So, what we do is we focus on the product more. So really this product can be– if we push the first page, then they can be sustained on first page or so, which means our team nowadays more now deeply engaged to selling price et cetera, or selling points about the product or even product development part, we engage and we guide our clients to make better products. If so, then our marketing is a lot easier and ROI is a lot better than whatever product they just launch.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Makes sense. Makes sense. On this show, we always do like a TST, 30-second tip. So maybe one from each of you, like some kind of strategy, it could be about warehousing. It could be about shipping. It could be about launching. It could be about PPC. It could be about Wayfair, just like something that maybe 30 seconds or less each of you can give that’s a good, actionable strategy for our audience out there.

Peter: One thing I would say with a lot of the new clients that we’re dealing with, it really comes down to kind of figuring out all the different costs that you have between your manufacturer and the 3PL service like us and finding out the ways that we can really help you save the money with certain services that we’re providing.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. And Sean?

Sean: Before you launch your Amazon business, or even while you are running your Amazon business, I think business owners need to do the market research on Amazon too. Check your competition, they’re selling point reviews and market price too. And it really tells you whether to launch or not. So if it’s similar and there’s no strengths or edge, I think it’s better not to launch it, but instead you guys save them money and try to make a better product or unique product. And try again.

Bradley Sutton: All right, cool. Now, if people want to find or contact you guys for more help on any of this, obviously you guys are actually, you were one of the first in our directory, so you guys can see their contact information at directory.helium10.com, just look for Kreassive, but what’s some direct ways that they can find you guys on the interwebs out there?

Peter: Can visit our website, kreassive.com. And then also I would say if you want to send an email, you can email us directly at [email protected] and that’ll go kind of to our whole team. We’ll be able to answer any type of specific questions or requests that way.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. All right. Well, it’s great to see the progress of the company and your expansion, especially since I was there since day one to see where it started. It was so funny, the original, not even the original, but the second Kreassive office was actually in my house. I moved out of my house and my house became the Kreassive office and it was so funny. I had to move in with my parents way back in the day so that my house could become an office. And it’s just so funny to see how huge you guys are now. So, it’s great. Great thinking about those days and wish you guys all the best of success going forward.

Sean: Okay. Thank you so much, Bradley.

Peter: Thank you.