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Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, here with my co-hosts Monica Watress and Mike schneider.
If you're enjoying the show, please follow and review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
Monica, I haven't had you here in a little bit, so we're so excited to have you back as you've been out and about and doing all of the things.
Are there any notable summer trends, summer news, summer happenings that are kind of sticking in your brain as we roll towards fall?
Oh, that's a great question.
Well, I just returned from Newtopia now, so I'm thinking about some of the trends that I saw on the show floor there.
In addition to contracting COVID while I was there, I was able to sample some delicious-
Fluetopia.
Fluetopia.
I know.
I might have gotten it on the plane.
I don't know that I got it at the show.
Too many huggies.
A lot of huggies.
Not diapers, but embraces.
Because my favorite part about industry events is seeing all my friends, and I only get to see a couple of times a year.
So, yeah, lots of hugs transpired.
If it were diapers, I was going to ask you about your sampling strategy, but that makes a lot more sense.
Well, it's actually a good idea to have diapers when you're sampling so you don't have to take any bathroom breaks.
That would be a pro sampling strategy.
I've been doing this for years.
Bathroom breaks are really what trip you up at trade shows.
Nobody's got time for that.
Well, certainly, we hope you are feeling much better soon.
I'm sure everybody has been watching the Kroger Albertson's murder hearing.
The FTC, of course, is trying to block it in a time when prices at grocery stores are at an all-time high.
I read that the Kroger and Albertson CEOs are saying this would allow them to bring prices down, which I'm not so...
I don't know.
That seems like something you'd argue in court only.
I would like to believe that.
But Monica, this is something that we've been covering in our news as well.
That's right.
So we've been posting updates throughout the hearing on NOSH and BevNET in our newsletters.
And the latest, the Albertson CEO took to the stand recently and basically said if this deal doesn't go through, then Albertsons will have a hard time competing against Walmart, Amazon and Costco.
And it claims Kroger is, yes, a competitor, but not a significant competitor, not its most important competitor.
The CEO also said that if the deal is blocked, they will have to shutter stores and lay off employees.
That will be hired by Walmart, Costco, and Amazon.
So in a way, it all evens out somewhere.
But I mean, retailers aren't the only ones that we're watching take a payday as I mean, inflation has certainly cooled off.
But in the last four years, certainly big food brands have done even better than retailers and distributors.
We talked about this on Taste Radio a couple of weeks ago.
This was in response to a post that Peter Gialantis from Pod Foods posted that Pepsi's, Ibita is up 15 percent, Kroger's is up 5.2, UNFI's is up 1.4 percent.
So also the big food companies are a big problem here as well.
But it'll certainly be interesting to keep an eye on the trial and you can all keep updated at noshandbevnet.com.
Well I had the opportunity to chat with a new Slack Community member, Leslie Danford.
She is the founder of Vitamins.
You can all join our Slack Community at slack.bevnet.com.
You can reach our entire NOSH and BevNET team.
You can send us samples and we'll try them on the Community Call podcast and give you a shout out.
So slack.bevnet.com.
Join all of us there.
Anyways, Leslie Danford sent over some samples of Vitamins.
These are shots that help with immune support and gut health.
Mike, I think we need to try these.
Are you feeling more immune deficient or does your gut need more help right now?
I'm going for gut health in berry banana form probiotics.
It says gut health, probiotics and fiber, berry banana, berry banana, reconstituted juice drink, 50 calories, water, pear juice from concentrate banana puree, soluble corn fiber, some other good stuff.
How much fiber am I getting here?
Five grams of fiber, seven grams of sugar, here we go.
Hey, not bad.
Immune support, I've got vitamin C, zinc and magnesium.
I love magnesium so much, as well as of course vitamin C and zinc.
Orange pineapple, here we go.
84% juice.
Ooh, that's a tasty little treat.
Tasty stuff.
I did notice that yours is half the calories of mine.
Mine has 25 calories and 5 grams of sugar.
50 for me.
Interesting.
How much sugar in yours?
7 grams.
Not bad.
My gut's already happier.
Really tasty.
Leslie Danford, thank you so much for sending these over.
Leslie is selling on Amazon, D2C as well as retail.
She's in 80 Doors, Fresh Time, Fruitful Yield, and a few other Indies.
So definitely a tasty little treat and hopefully something that's going to help our guts and our immune health.
This is my favorite part of the label.
We created vitamin E's as a way for families to share healthy moments for ages 4 and up.
Limit one per day.
It's really tasty.
I just finished mine.
Yet Leslie was saying that she was looking for a way to consume supplements and nutrients in a more enjoyable way than just popping pills.
And this is certainly more enjoyable than that.
Monica, what have you been doing shots of?
Lemon cello.
Lemon cello.
That was more of a sipper, really.
I couldn't really shoot that.
It was really good.
Yeah.
I've had some good lemon cello shots.
That could be immune support.
Doesn't it have vitamin Z?
Oh, Melissa.
Come on.
Lemon.
Yeah, I have to think that would be good for your gut and your immune health.
No, but I do have a new snack here that I just received in the mail today.
Oh, oh, I would like to hear about that.
Snack, snack and tell.
Snack and tell.
So are you familiar with Mina?
Oh, yeah.
Have you seen this product?
No, we've only seen the cookies.
The cookies are bomb.
I don't even know if people say that anymore, but I tried the cookies outside of BevNET Live this summer.
They were handing out samples in front of our event.
Oh, wait.
You know what?
They don't say bomb.
They say sigma.
Oh, yeah.
Skivity Sigma.
No, no, no, no.
Skivity is the opposite.
Oh, no, no, no.
Ohio is the opposite.
No, so is Skivity.
Ohio is bad.
Yes.
I thought Skivity was like an emphasis.
Skivity is also bad.
You could say they have Riz.
Stop.
There's so many J&A people cringing right now.
I am learning all about it from my nieces.
No, but back to Mina snacks.
So I tried their cookies, and they just came out with a savory skew.
These are pizza crackers, and they're made with real cheese, Italian herbs, and seasonings.
Almond flour.
So I believe it's a gluten-free product.
And yeah, egg whites.
So not vegan, but definitely not vegan.
It's got cheese too.
But anyway, they're really tasty.
Are they high protein?
They're seven grams of protein for 11 pieces.
Yeah, I would say that's pretty high protein.
I would say that's high protein for a cracker.
Also, just so we're all level set here, skibbity can mean bad or good.
Really?
It's about the context.
Yeah, you were right.
It depends on whether it has two toilets after it.
It's an adverb.
It amplifies the adjective, whether you're saying Sigma or Ohio.
My 11-year-old niece came back from space camp with a whole new vocabulary.
So I've been doing Duolingo for Gen A for the past two months.
Yeah, try dropping some of the terms in, like just you're going to hear the word chuggy if you do.
I don't understand why Ohio is synonymous with like bad or looser.
Oh, I do, I do.
Mike is from Ohio.
I can tell you why.
Let's have a chat later offline about that.
But it's no implication for the state or the people who live there.
Sorry, Cleveland Kitchen.
Sorry, my house.
Sorry, Kroger.
Sorry, Kroger.
Yeah, we didn't invent.
Sorry, all my friends from-
Blame Jen Alpha, not us.
All my friends.
A couple of Gen Xs and a millennial.
Yeah, right, exactly.
Oy vey.
Well, those sound absolutely delicious.
Do you know if they're on Amazon?
Good question.
All I know is that they were on my doorstep when I got home from the coffee shop this morning.
But I just saw them on Instagram yesterday.
I'm sure that they are just getting into Amazon or online, DTC, minasnacks.com.
That's M-Y-N-A.
I don't know.
I don't even know who sent this to me.
I just know that it appeared on my door and I opened it without question.
And that's the beauty of our jobs.
Just some snacks just show up.
Well, I see that Mina is on Amazon.
Also, Vitaminis is on Amazon, like so many other food and beverage brands.
In this Community Call, my guests were Derek Majewski, Senior Partner Development Manager at Amazon, and Robert Principe, president of eTail Advisors.
We discussed Amazon's Buy with Prime feature, which allows brands to integrate the Prime button on their own websites, enhancing buyer confidence through shipping guarantees and review consolidation.
We explore how Buy with Prime integrates with other Amazon services, its associated costs and benefits, and the overall seller experience on the platform.
Please enjoy.
Today on Community Call, we are talking to Derek Majewski, Senior Partner Development Manager at Amazon's Buy with Prime, and Robert Principe, Amazon Expert and president at eTail Advisors.
Super excited to have you both here talking about Amazon's Buy with Prime.
Buy with Prime allows sellers to use the Prime button on their own websites, and help sellers with logistics, inventory and fulfillment.
But it's very different in some senses from FBA.
So we're going to be going through all of the intricacies today.
Again, Robert and Derek, thank you so much for joining us.
Why don't we start with a little introduction so we can learn a little bit more about you.
Robert, let's start with you.
You spent a good deal on the brand side, and now you're helping brands navigate their own e-comm experiences.
You have a focus on Amazon.
That's exactly right.
So I've been in e-comm for 11 years, and I've almost spent that time evenly between the brand and the agency side, which has given me a unique perspective on how each unit works and how they could best work together.
Earlier this year, I launched eTail Advisors with the mind to help small to medium-sized brands find their best-suited service provider.
And in that journey, I met Derek, and we started exploring the Buy with Prime option.
And it's really become clear to me very quickly how it could benefit brands, especially CPG brands.
And I'm focused in health and wellness and PET.
So I've referred quite a few brands to Derek and the program, and I'm super excited about speaking about it more today.
Derek, you've been with Amazon for over seven years, and you sort of worked in a number of different areas.
Can you talk a little bit about how you help brands grow their Amazon business?
Definitely.
And thank you, Melissa and Robert, for having me today.
It's fun to be in front of this group and getting to talk about what I do every day.
As a partner development manager with Buy with Prime, my job is to help brands figure out the best way to implement this offering in a way that makes sense for their business.
And so, when we look at our programs like Buy with Prime, this allows you to put some of the power of amazon.com directly on your direct-to-consumer website.
So, for the first time, we are helping you boost up your direct-to-consumer website, improve the engagement experience with customers there, and ultimately drive more sales across both channels.
So, that is what I'm focused on in the day-to-day, and we're excited to tell you a little bit more about it through our conversation.
Let's talk about the available marketplaces with Amazon.
There are a few different options, and I think it would be helpful to sort of carve those out at the beginning of our conversation.
Derek, do you want to start, and then Robert, I'm sure you'll have some thoughts to follow up with.
Yeah.
So, when I think about amazon.com, most brands are selling on Amazon, either as sellers or vendors.
And so, you probably know which group you're in at this point.
But those are the two main ways to sell directly to customers through amazon.com.
amazon.com is available in a variety of different countries, including the US., Canada, Mexico, EU, etc.
Then when we look at the other programs that Amazon supports for e-commerce in general, one of the big ones is multi-channel fulfillment.
And so, we're able to use your potentially on Amazon inventory to fill orders to your website customers around the globe.
We currently have 11 countries available for that, but that is separate from amazon.com.
So, it's a separate marketplace because it's your direct to consumer website.
Could you explain the difference between a seller and a vendor?
Yeah.
So, if you're a seller, you are selling your items directly to customers on amazon.
So, you maintain ownership of that inventory the entire time.
If you're a vendor, you are selling the items to amazon, and amazon sells it to the end customer on upcom.
So, slightly different ways of going to market, but still to the same end customer on amazon.com.
Robert, do you have more color to add there?
Not so much to that, but I do have a quick question.
So, if I was a brand and I wanted to use multi-channel fulfillment, would multi-channel fulfillment be able to fulfill my orders if I'm on like a target.com or an ebay.com?
Good question, and thank you.
So, yes, multi-channel fulfillment.
One of the benefits of that is that we can fulfill your orders to your own website, as well as other e-commerce marketplaces like the ones that you've mentioned.
So, there are a variety of different places you can sell.
Amazon will support with obviously Amazon, your website and then the other e-com as well.
I think that speaks volumes to wanting to make sure that customers have a seamless experience and you remove as much friction as possible.
I think you're spot on there.
One of our leadership principles here at Amazon is customer obsession.
And so with the e-commerce industry growing, we really do want merchants like all of you to be able to use our services to be successful, whether that's on amazon.com or not.
So that's why we created Buy with Prime and Multi-Channel Fulfillment as ways to grow your online store and all of your channels.
Again, Buy with Prime helps you engage Amazon shoppers with the trust of Prime, offering that fast free shipping, transparent delivery times and check out experience that millions of customers have grown to love.
Could we talk a little bit about FBA and Buy with Prime?
What some of the differences are there and how they tend to intersect?
So when you think of FBA, that stands for fulfilled by amazon and it's exactly that.
So if I'm a third party seller and I have Rob's t-shirts, which I love this t-shirt so much and I'm selling those t-shirts, but I want to be the seller and I just want to use amazon as a platform, but I want that two day prime shipping, then it would be fulfilled by amazon.
So I would inject my inventory into an amazon warehouse and then what they would do is prep it once Derek bought the cool Rob Principe t-shirt that he loves so much and then amazon would handle getting that product from their facility to Derek's front door, whether it's with other carriers, whether it's their own carrier, whatever the case may be, they take care of all of that.
Buy with Prime is going to occur from my own site.
So I also want to sell from my site, but I want people to be able to utilize their prime membership and get that two day shipping.
So when you put this t-shirt in your cart, you will have an option to buy with Prime and it'll take you right through the purchasing slash payment process that we're all sometimes too familiar with.
So you get that same seamless checkout, which again removes friction and makes for a better customer experience and increases your conversion rate as a seller.
So you would have sellers and vendors, of course, doing business on FBA, whereas Buy with Prime, it's the button on a D2C website and how the brand decides to interact with Amazon can sort of depend on how much they want to work with Amazon, is that right?
Yes.
So and that's a question that comes up often is, do I have to sell my items on amazon.com to be able to use Buy with Prime?
And the answer is no.
So you can use Buy with Prime even if you're not selling your products on Amazon, or if you have some selection that's on Amazon, but some that is exclusive to your website, we can make that work as well.
Ultimately, we do end up using our fulfillment centers to pack, pick and ship the item to the end customer.
So you have to get your items into our fulfillment centers, but then from there, we can fill that out for your customers.
You do not have to sell it on.com if you do not want to.
We have a question from Brad Lerman.
Brad wants to know, can you fulfill SKUs that don't have an ASIN if they want to sell unique bundles between Amazon and other channels?
And are the fulfillment economics of MFC the same as what they'd pay for FBA?
Okay, so two questions.
The first, can you have products that don't have an ASIN that are not sold on Amazon?
The second, how do the economics work?
Right?
The first one was he specified MFC SKUs, I missed that.
So for multi-channel fulfillment, you do not have to have an ASIN for that product.
ASIN is the Amazon SKU identification Number, so it's very specific to amazon.com.
If you were to send your items into multi-channel fulfillment, that warehouse system, Amazon's warehouse system, the biggest and fastest in the world potentially, we would create a basically a listing, but it would not tie over into amazon.com.
So you wouldn't have an ASIN per se.
So that is something that we can set up for you through what we call Supply Chain Portal.
On the second part, the economics.
So multi-channel fulfillment economics look a little bit different than fulfillment by Amazon FBA economics do.
The kind of overall picture here is that multi-channel fulfillment and FBA are both based on weight and dimensions of a product.
So depending on how you box it up and how heavy it is, impacts the cost there.
But the models are different, basically rate cards.
So I'd be happy to share both of those with you if you want to dive in deeper.
For multi-channel fulfillment, as the number of units goes up, the rate per item goes down.
So there is a multi-unit discount that's built into the rate card.
So again, if you're bundling those items together or you just know that, hey, customers buy this flavor and this flavor, and it's almost always a two units per order or higher, there is a discounted rate as customers add more items to cart.
Thanks for the question, Brad.
Is that a question that you get a lot, Robert?
Yes, yes.
And there's two callouts right there I really want to stress.
One thing that was said was if you want to take some of your SKUs that are on Amazon and some of your SKUs that are off Amazon and kind of break up that strategy, I think overall for brands, it's something that they should focus on is how they curate their SKUs, meaning what is available on Amazon and what is not.
I think a lot of brands, if they have a larger SKU set, and when I say larger, I don't know, 200 SKUs, 300 SKUs and up, they feel like that they just have to dump everything on the platform and you really don't.
You could have some for off platform and some for on, but what I love about the Buy with Prime option is that you could have the same fulfillment with both of them, not just the ones that are on Amazon.
So you get the same customer experience, which is obviously best in class, at least here in North America, and you don't have to put all of your skews on Amazon.
I think that's very, very important.
And what else is for any brand who has hired A3PL before, the rate card and how things are priced and the process of it is not very different with multi-channel fulfillment, right?
The prices may be different and the process may be, but we all know if you do more volume, you get better rates and if your item is bulky, it's more expensive than if it's small or whatever the case may be.
So the process of evaluating multi-channel fulfillment is not going to be alien to most folks.
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Robert, that's a great point about what kind of strategy you use to decide which cues you offer on the Amazon platform versus the ones that you don't.
Are there any overarching considerations that you tend to share with your clients in that regard?
This is where I really geek out, so we probably need another podcast on this.
But...
This is it, this is the right place.
But in general, being that I work and have worked with mostly supplements and health and wellness brands, that pricing is a big consideration and they want to have a certain level of price point be maintained.
Having items that you're focused on having a set retail price point may be not on Amazon, or if you're on the launching phase of an item.
For example, if you want to launch a product and you want to get some sort of demand slash awareness prior to launching that on Amazon, don't put it on until you have it on shelf at X amount of retail stores, or you've done a big push on social media, or whatever the case may be, because then there's built-in demand, and when people search, then it's available.
As opposed to doing it all at once, and you're paying to get that traffic through ads, whatever the ad unit you choose, and then you're going to pay a little bit more because there's no organic traction.
So that's just one consideration that I would make if I was still at a brand or when I'm advising brands.
While we're launching this product, should we put it on Amazon first?
Should we launch it at the same time?
Should we do it off-platform first?
And again, having that Buy with Prime option, you don't have to forego that two-day shipping and that customer experience, even if you're not ready for whatever strategic reason, or not strategic reason, right?
Maybe you just don't have enough inventory, and as soon as you put it on Amazon, it's gonna be gone.
Is it a common trajectory for brands to perhaps put the Buy with Prime button on their DTC site first, gain some of that traction that you're talking about, and then move it over to the Amazon platform?
I think we see a lot of brands that have a presence on Amazon, and they want to bolster their off-Amazon presence by using Buy with Prime.
Often, they'll start on.com, they'll have the catalog built out, all those components.
But then they realize, hey, we would love to increase our conversion rate.
The general stat that the group should know here is that when you add Buy with Prime to your website, on average, we see that merchants see an increase of up to 25 percent in the conversion rate on their website.
It's because shoppers, especially Prime members, are very familiar and comfortable with shopping through Amazon.
The nice thing, though, is that they're going to stay on your site, but use that Amazon flow.
So that's why we see that higher conversion rate there.
So I would say most are probably starting on.com and then moving over to their own website.
There are definitely, though, some instances where a brand says, hey, I just, let's say like you're going from small to medium, right?
I'm fulfilling things out of my own house right now.
I can't do that anymore, and I need a really reliable 3PL.
And that's a place where Amazon can step in and support.
Through multi-channel fulfillment.
To brag on our warehouse network for a quick moment.
So we have a global network, over 2,000 facilities and 200 fulfillment centers, 120,000 trucks, vans, planes, and 1.275 million associates and partners.
So we're able to ship items 7 days a week.
We have an average clicked door speed of 1.9 days for multi-channel fulfillment.
And over 97% of our deliveries are made on time.
Derek, I'm glad you brought up the 3PL aspect.
So if a brand is just using the Buy with Prime button on their website, can you explain again how the 3PL aspect works?
So a brand will get an order, you know, that somebody, a customer placed on that Buy with Prime button, and then what happens?
Yeah, so it's a good question.
Let me kind of walk through the overall Buy with Prime flow, because I think it will help contextualize where and what the brand needs to do.
So when a customer comes to your website, they are going to kind of click on that product detail page to learn more about the product.
Standard shopping experience.
As they scroll down on that page to look at your, you know, add to cart option, typically you'd have add to cart and Buy with Prime side by side.
So we encourage you to have both on that website.
And the customer then decides which option that they want to move forward with.
In the case of Buy with Prime, we're highlighting a couple things that are really key to shoppers.
So one, that there's fast free delivery.
Two, get it as soon as XYZ date.
Here in Seattle, where I live, things are often next day or within two days for Prime.
From there, the customer, if they were to click on Buy with Prime, would authenticate themselves as an Amazon Prime member.
So they sign in to that Amazon Prime account.
From there, the checkout menu will automatically fill in the shoppers' information including the payment information they have set up on Amazon and all the shipping details.
So let's say I want to buy an item, send it to my house this time, but I want to send it to my grandma next time, I can toggle between all the addresses that are set up on my amazon.com account very easily.
From there, I would decide to place order.
It's literally three clicks for the customer between deciding to buy with Prime and it being on the way to their house.
When they click place order, there's a couple of things that happen automatically on your behalf as a brand.
So the first is Amazon sends an order confirmation email that is branded with your information to the customer, and as the item is shipping to the customer, they will continue to get updates.
The order is out for delivery, the item has been delivered.
So it's the same as that Prime shopping experience that you have on.com where you're getting updates along the way.
As far as the brand goes, because Amazon is holding your items in our warehouse, we manage the pack, pick and ship for you.
So the item would be sold, and then on the back end, feed into your e-commerce platform, whether that be Shopify, Salesforce, BigCommerce, Magento, et cetera.
And then you can do all the things that you would do as a brand to remarket to them, to build that relationship, all those components.
But Amazon manages the pack, pack and ship to the end customer for you.
And in terms of making sure that you have the right amount of inventory in Amazon's warehouses for Buy with Prime, what's the best way to go about that?
How often are our sellers shipping product?
How do you manage that inventory?
High level.
We do expect that brands that use both Buy with Prime and sell on Amazon will have better overall increased, better in stock rates.
So the actual stat when we look at our customers is that brands who use both FBA and MCF have increased their amazon.com sales revenue by up to 38 percent.
And they've reduced that out of stock rate by 13 percent and improved inventory turnover by 24 percent on average.
I can put that in writing so you guys can see the stats, but generally having one pool of inventory means that it's healthier across both the channels that it's selling through.
As far as how much you need to send in to amazon, it's up to you as a brand.
So it could be as few as five or ten units of each item, but you could definitely go much larger depending on what your need is.
Robert, how do you typically advise brands in making that first shipment to an amazon warehouse to make sure that they have enough coverage for the channel that they're opening up?
A forecasting question.
It's going to depend on where the brand is and where the specific product is at its maturity level.
Are you launching a product?
Have you have it on the platform forever and anything in between?
What else should really go into it is, how much product do you think is available?
Then how much are you investing as far as advertising either on platform, which I mean on amazon.com or off platform, whether that's social media, Google Ads, whatever the case may be.
What kind of demand are you attempting to generate?
If you're setting up an ad strategy, you have the front end and you have the back end.
So you should have some sort of idea on what return you want on that ad strategy and you should transform that number into units.
So you can estimate how many units to sell in.
I want to go back and really harp on something that Derek just said a couple of minutes ago, as far as the increase in conversion rate.
When a brand is building out its economics and it's planning on using Buy with Prime, the potential increase in conversion should have a big part or should play a big part, excuse me, in their planning.
And what I mean by that is this.
If you typically have a 2% conversion rate on your direct to consumer site, which is relatively average, and you could increase that 35 percent, well, then we're looking at a 3% to 3.5%.
That may not seem a lot, but depending on your volume, it could be a large number.
And then what you have to choose as a brand is what are you going to do with that additional conversion?
Are you going to spend more on ads and drive more volume?
Are you going to take that added revenue and just drop it down to the bottom line?
Are you going to reallocate it?
Depending on what you are going to do with that additional revenue based on your increased conversion rate, that will also have a large influence on how many units you depend on injecting.
But at the end of the day, whether it's Buy with Prime, MCF, Shopify, Amazon, whatever the case may be, forecasting is forecasting and it's really up to the brand on how much they inject.
I think the benefit here is, if you're doing Buy with Prime and you're doing Fulfilled by Amazon, you could have those units in one pool.
So how I would look at it is like a buffer.
So if I oversell here and I undersell here, then Amazon's still holding the inventory and they could shift inventory.
As opposed to if I have a 3PL, then I have Amazon, then I have my own warehouse and I'm trying to inject from different points.
It gets very complex and it's very hard to manage.
Robert, you just mentioned that sort of combining your warehousing options, if I understood your comment correctly, can make things easier.
How do you typically see brands doing that?
Are they condensing everything into like an Amazon 3PL?
How does that work?
If they take my advice, they do.
And it's only because it's so much simpler.
Think about it.
So if you're a CPG brand and chances are, Amazon is number one or number two as far as your volume online, chances are, I'm just going out on a limb.
So you're sending a lot of inventory into the Amazon warehouse, whether you're a seller or you're a vendor.
That's where your product is going.
If you use Buy with Prime, then you can allocate that as well.
So now you have your pool of inventory.
And if you use multi-channel fulfillment to fulfill other marketplaces or other third-party websites, then that could be sitting there as well.
So would you rather set up three different transportation deals, have three different inventory levels in three different places and have to manage those three different outputs?
Or would you rather have it all in one place?
Where, I mean, it's Amazon.
You don't have to be an Amazon expert to know what it looks like when they get you products.
We all buy stuff on Amazon, right?
So if all of that could be sitting in the same place and you and your team have that state of mind where we're okay because this inventory is there and if we oversell or if we undersell, we can move that product around.
It just removes a whole set of problems that you don't have to have.
This is a detailed question, but I have to ask, how do brands check inventory levels with Amazon's warehouses?
So you have access to look at your own inventory through either your seller central account or it could be in the case of Buy with Prime, your merchant console.
So you're able to look at product by product, how many items are sellable in amazon.com or in Amazon's warehouse network, and then plug that into your overall inventory system.
I think that that's the simplest answer and it really should be that easy for brands.
So we've talked about a lot of some of the nuances of Buy with Prime, FBA, and a few other options.
When is a brand ready for FBA?
And then how does that compare to when they might be ready for putting a Buy with Prime button on their own sites?
understanding that a lot of the folks in our community are just getting started, they might be a team of one.
How do you look at readiness, brand readiness?
It's really brand specific.
If I'm being perfectly honest, Melissa, if I'm launching a functional beverage, do I want to go to Amazon first?
Do I want to go to Shell first?
Do I want to do my own site first?
Whatever the case may be.
If you're a seller on Amazon, Amazon is ready when you are.
I mean, you set up your seller account, you start injecting product and you kind of go from there.
If I'm not mistaken, most of the members of BevNET are smaller brands, whether they're about to launch or just launched.
I think that that's a question that they kind of have to look in the mirror and figure out what their launch strategy is.
Amazon is going to be ready for them when they're ready for Amazon, whether it's Buy with Prime or, you know, being a third party seller and fulfilling an FBA.
It's whatever works for them.
And I'm more than happy to help them answer any of those questions.
I think you're spot on there, Robert.
And the things that I've noticed, when I first started Amazon, I was helping new brands launch on amazon.com.
And I think you're right.
We're here to help when you're ready.
Generally, when I see brands are ready, there's a couple different things that kind of come into play.
So first, the brand is ready for growth.
You know, you've done what you can do through your own moving product physically.
And you're looking for an option to get in front of many more customers, as well as scale up your performance capabilities almost indefinitely.
Another thing that has to be true for brands is they have to have e-commerce ready packaging and pricing.
So some brands want to sell, you know, an individual drink, and that's probably not going to work so great on amazon.com based on the price of the product and then the actual packaging.
So you have to make sure that you are e-commerce ready for that.
I see a ton of beverage brands specifically do multi-packs, you know, whatever their customer might drink in a week or two as that kind of e-commerce ready package.
A big piece of the increased conversion rate is with Buy with Prime, you have the ability to aggregate your amazon reviews to your site.
So you could see those.
And when I first learned this, that's when I really started getting jazzed about this program.
You know, it's fulfillment is two days, it's great.
But there's no other way for any brand to aggregate any reviews from amazon to anywhere else.
Amazon owns their reviews and we all know if you're a brand on here, they're very stingy with those reviews.
Those reviews are not going anywhere unless you're Buy with Prime.
And those reviews get listed right on your site.
So if you have 10 reviews for product X on your site, but you have 2,500 on amazon, which may sound crazy, but it's a pretty regular ratio.
You'll see those reviews on your site.
So if I'm a new customer and I can get it in two days, I could see the reviews and I feel like I'm participating with the brand, maybe more so than I would if I was purchasing off amazon.com, why wouldn't I buy?
I don't have to go anywhere else.
We are spoiled.
We're lazy.
Like go to site to site.
We don't want to do all this.
That's why social commerce is taking off as well, which we should do a whole other pod about.
And it's the fact that I could just buy because I see those reviews, I get it in two days and there is, again, I've said this like three or four times, the friction is removed so I could just purchase the product.
And I think that is what brands and sellers are always trying to do.
How do I remove friction and get that click as soon as possible?
And I think that's the best way to do it.
And with that, Derek, how does Buy with Prime or if at all, can that associate with your subscribe and save?
Would that subscription be attached to your Amazon listing or would that just go through your site?
How would that work?
Yeah, so it's a good question.
So Buy with Prime today does not have subscribe and save functionality.
So generally, we think of Buy with Prime as an opportunity to capture a first customer because you can do things like including a Buy with Prime logo in your advertisement, for example.
And the goal there is again, getting the customer to your site so they can learn about the product through the reviews and things, make that first purchase.
Multi-channel fulfillment is perfectly set up for your recurring and subscribe and save reviews, or sorry, orders.
And so, if you have multi-channel fulfillment, again, the same pool of inventory as Buy with Prime, as FBA, fulfilled a different way.
We can then fulfill on whatever cadence your customer selects through that pool of inventory.
The other thing that's really nice is that because Buy with Prime is a very fast shipping option, and MCF has three different shipping speeds that you can pick from, there's more flexibility with the pricing on the MCF side.
So if you know that you have to have a subscribe and save order to a customer every month at a certain day, you probably don't need to ship it overnight.
You could ship it at a three to five day speed and still get it there for the customer when they expect it.
That's a really good point, shipping feeds.
So with Buy with Prime, there's just the one shipping speed, is that right?
Yeah, because we are guaranteeing to the end customer a prime experience.
So we're going to get it to them in whatever their prime window is.
The brand doesn't have to manage the shipping speed.
Amazon does that for them.
And so they get to build and maintain that customer relationship rather than having to focus on the logistics that Amazon will take care of.
And then how are fees collected for the Buy with Prime option?
Yep.
So there are three fees that go into Buy with Prime.
So the first, and my thought is that two of these three are things that you are paying on your e-commerce site regardless of how you're going to market.
And then one of them is new.
So Buy with Prime is three fees.
The first is the credit card transaction fee.
We would transact for Buy with Prime purchases through Amazon Pay.
The rate is 2.4% plus 30 cents per transaction, which should be very much in line with your credit card transaction on your site now.
So that is a consistent fee.
The second is the shipping fee.
So the Buy with Prime shipping cost is different than both FBA and MCF, but it's in that realm, right?
You're looking at a consistent shipping cost, and we would give you a rate card so that you can determine, based on the weight and dimensions, what it will cost to get to the customer.
And that's something that if you're again, transacting on e-commerce, you have to ship the product.
So that shouldn't be a new fee.
The only new fee for Buy with Prime is the Buy with Prime service fee.
And this is 3% of order value, $1 per order minimum.
So generally, as you get to that $30 price point, it moves into a percentage instead of a dollar value, and becomes more cost-effective for brands.
And when you put those three fees together, generally what I've seen, and this is where I would lean into an expert like Robert to verify and help you calculate everything, but you'll see that selling on your e-commerce website, probably the lowest fee structure.
Buy with Prime is probably 3-ish percent more than selling on your e-commerce website on your own.
And then Amazon will typically be the most expensive channel to go to market in, because it's set up very differently than your e-commerce website.
So that is the kind of overview of the fees.
Robert, is that typically how you see the fee structures layout just the way that Derek mentioned?
Absolutely.
It's expensive to sell on Amazon, but it's expensive to sell on Amazon for a reason, right?
It's like real estate, you know, if we go back 20 years and you wanted a prime spot in the number one mall in town, it's going to cost you more than it is to get the end of a strip mall on the other side of the tracks, right?
So, you know, just kind of is what it is at that point.
And then when you're factoring in the roughly additional 3% cost, if you wanted to do a Buy with Prime, one thing that I would stress to a brand that I was working with is, yes, there's that roughly 3% increase, but how does your increase in conversion offset that, right?
Because you're paying for one thing, but your return should come from the other.
Are you okay with paying 3 points less, but only having a 1% conversion rate, or will you forego that additional 3% and increase it to a 2% or 3% or 3.5% conversion rate?
Not to mention, you're going to have happy customers because they're getting it in 2 days.
I read something that upwards to 65% to 70% of the reasons why shoppers are banning their cart on direct-to-consumer websites.
It's either the cost of shipping or the length of shipping, period.
I'm not going to wait 5 days, I'm just going to go to Amazon.
And hopefully, they'll buy your product from Amazon, but if I'm brand agnostic and I just want a multivitamin, I may get on Amazon and get served up an ad from a different supplement company and then you lost that customer forever, maybe.
They may never come back to you.
So whatever you can do to keep them within that ecosystem and everybody's math is different and there's definitely no one size fits all.
But I think more often than not, you could have the program at the minimum pay for itself.
And you get all those reviews.
Yeah, exactly.
And the reviews are critical, right?
If you want to kind of take a first stab at determining what the ROI might be, we do have an ROI calculator for Buy with Prime that's available on our website.
And so you plug in your product, we use the weight and dimensions to figure out what the cost would be to fulfill one unit order or two unit order, et cetera.
You tell us how many units you think you might ship through Buy with Prime.
And then you can toggle a revenue increase uplift.
It starts at 12 percent, it goes up high, low.
You pick, right?
And that's that conversion rate lift that you might see on your website.
And it very clearly tells you, hey, if you saw a 3 percent increase in your revenue, you would therefore ship X more units.
It's a really useful tool to kind of quickly figure out if this is something that's worth spending more time diving into.
We do have a question from Danny Mead, who wants to know in terms of GA4, does credit for the sale go to Amazon or your website?
I don't have the answer to that question.
Ready to learn the answer, Robert?
Yes, I am.
So I spent a lot of time on this.
Google Analytics 4 is for your website.
Buy with Prime is for your website.
We would set up attribution tagging for your website.
Now, there are ads offerings that are connected to Buy with Prime.
So once you have Buy with Prime on your website, for example, we're able to use the Amazon Display Ads Network to drive additional traffic to your website through those ads, and we would track attribution across both your website and Amazon.
But for Google Analytics, it will give credit to your website.
Danny, if that didn't answer your question, ask for clarification.
I'm happy to dive further in.
That's a good question.
Yeah.
Thanks so much, Danny.
Robert, you had a point about chipping alcohol and any other hazmat issues.
What do brands need to know about the fact that you can't chip alcohol?
Yeah.
Well, I thought about it because it's BevNET, right?
So there's a lot of liquids.
I've worked with a lot of supplement companies.
Several of them have herbal tinctures and those herbal tinctures have alcohol in them.
Alcohol is considered hazmat because alcohol is flammable.
So if you're shipping any sort of alcohol, I would find out exactly what is allowed and what isn't allowed.
And a lot of times there's additional handling fees associated with shipping alcohol.
And many times that's because in most cases, you can't ship it in the air.
Or it has to be ground.
So in order to meet that today is sometimes challenging.
So I would speak with your Buy with Prime rep or somebody like Derek to get those specifics on a SKU by SKU slash ASIN by ASIN level.
But because this is BevNET, I think it's important to know that there may be some outline factors that affect your ability to use the program in totality.
Like any other 3PL, I really want to preface this, that this is going to be for anybody because it's the law.
Nobody wants to break the law, right?
No, certainly not.
That's expensive.
Let's quickly talk about returns.
How are returns handled with Buy with Prime?
It's a really good question.
I think it's an area that there's a lot more value for brands to tap into here.
So when a customer shops through Buy with Prime, they get the full Prime experience, but from your website.
And part of that is the ability to make returns within the standard Prime window.
And so if I reach out to Robert's t-shirts and say, hey, this shirt doesn't quite fit me, I'd like to make a return.
If that's a Buy with Prime order, Robert's team manages the customer service there, because it is his customer.
But he would then tell the Buy with Prime system, yes, this item is return eligible.
And he would send me directly that Prime return information.
And then I return it just like a Prime order.
It goes back to Amazon's warehouse.
Amazon will look at that item.
If it can be put back into stock, we will do that.
If it can not be put back into stock, we'll take it out.
And then you have options for what you want to do with it from there.
The thing that is very different from Buy with Prime and selling on Amazon is that on Amazon, you pay for the item to ship to the customer.
And if they return it to ship back.
Through Buy with Prime, you pay for it to ship to the customer.
But if the customer requests to return, it is free for the brand and free for the customer.
It's a pretty big value.
It's a huge value and guys, this is being recorded.
So you could hold this to Derek.
It's such a huge value add and like anything in life, nothing lasts forever.
So this may not last forever, but it's a huge value add right now.
That's a huge bonus.
Fantastic.
Well, in closing, I would love to hear from both of you what your kind of overall best tips are for brands who want to embark on their Buy with Prime journey.
Derek, let's start with you please.
Okay.
So I took a couple notes that I think will be useful for you.
So generally when brands use Buy with Prime, the ones that are the most successful are doing three main things.
First, they're adopting across as much of their catalog as possible.
The reason this matters is because customers want to have a consistent shopping experience on your website.
And so when they go to shop and they're able to see Buy with Prime on multiple products they might want to buy, that's just a better shopper experience overall.
It's also giving you a true test about if Buy with Prime is a good fit for your site or not, because again, you're putting it on a variety of products that a customer might want to buy.
The second tip I would give is to adopt reviews from Amazon.
And so this feature will allow you again to tap into the volume and authenticity of the reviews that you have on amazon.com and showcase those reviews on your site, either just the star rating or the star rating and the text.
And that's a really strong way to be able to help build customer trust.
We've seen that merchants who have reviews from Amazon set up on their site, see an average conversion lift of 38 percent.
So even higher than just having Buy with Prime.
And then the final tip that I would make for brands that are looking to really make sure that Buy with Prime works well for them, is that you want to build Buy with Prime into your marketing as much as it makes sense.
So Buy with Prime could be used as a get it faster or get it by XYZ date type of tactic.
It could also be a way to capture new customers by using that Prime logo, where maybe they're not familiar with your brand yet, but they are familiar with Prime.
So they click on the ad, they go and they make that first purchase.
The final thing is you're able to build Buy with Prime into your email marketing, for example.
So let's say they make the first purchase, but it's been longer than it should have been before they made that second.
Maybe you build Buy with Prime into your email marketing, saying, hey, we know that you liked it the first time, want to get it again in two days, here's an option to do that.
So those are my three tips.
And Derek, before you move over to Robert, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you and your Amazon team if they have any questions?
And what's your email address?
majderek, so majderek, at amazon.com.
Thank you so much.
All right, Robert, you're next.
Do the math and don't be afraid to test, right?
So if I was working with or at a brand right now, I would figure out what is it costing me to fulfill from my site right now, and what is it gonna cost me from Amazon, and then what is my perspective lift, and then what is the additional expense from Amazon?
Those are all the quantitative things, right?
And then the qualitative is your customer experience.
And then when I'm building out my budgets, compared to that is if I get that increase in conversion, what am I gonna do with that money?
And how much more am I going to invest?
And then I don't have to pay for returns, where if I have a Shopify site and I'm working with one of the big carriers, I won't name any names, I have to pay for those to come back to me as well.
And then I have to look through that return and decide if it could be listed again or not.
That is all done for me.
I think if you're looking at it as a math equation, I think you do it.
I don't see why you don't do it personally.
And if you have any questions, just don't be afraid to ask.
Ask around, see who else is using it.
But again, if you ask me, I don't speak in absolutes, but 85% of the time, I'm probably gonna lead you sooner or later towards Buy with Prime, at least.
I'm sure that so many folks do want to ask you, what is your email address?
It's Principe at etailadvisors.com.
You could email me there.
I am always on LinkedIn.
I'm one of those people, if you LinkedIn message me, I respond within minutes.
You can even give me a call at 813-892-6532.
I'm wide open.
Amazing.
I can attest to that.
You respond immediately.
Derek Majewski, Robert Principe, thank you so much for joining us today.
This is a fantastic call.
For everybody else, you can watch a recording of this call at bevnet.com/communitycall.
You can sign up for future calls there as well.
Thanks so much for joining us.
That concludes another episode of the Community Call Podcast.
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