018: Yoni Mazor's Journey from Military Intelligence to Profit Protection in E-Commerce

Embark on a thrilling exploration of e-commerce with Yoni Mazor, the insightful co-founder and chief growth officer at GETIDA, as your guide. From the tactical precision of Israeli Navy Intelligence to the forefront of the Amazon marketplace, Yoni's narrative is a captivating blend of strategy, growth, and the unyielding pursuit of excellence. His story unfolds like a map, charting the course from a budding eBay store to a towering $20 million fashion brand empire, providing invaluable lessons and strategies for every entrepreneur looking to conquer the digital sales domain.

Tune in as we dissect the financial savvy required to maximize reimbursements for Amazon sellers, turning lost units into a windfall of recovered profits. Yoni's expertise shines as he lays out a blueprint for business valuation enhancement, crucial for any seller aiming to draw the eyes of aggregators or investors. He further illuminates the hidden margin killers that could be stealthily draining your profits and shares proactive strategies to maintain a competitive edge in the relentless Amazon marketplace. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for those dedicated to protecting their margins and optimizing their operations.

As we wrap up, the conversation shifts to the transformative nature of e-commerce for consumers and sellers alike. Yoni and I examine the implications of innovations like Amazon Wardrobe on consumer behavior, and the influence of social media on modern-day purchasing decisions. For sellers poised to leave a lasting impression, we underscore the power of incremental enhancements and the profound impact of a professional brand presence. This episode is your compass to navigate the dynamic currents of e-commerce and anchor your business in the harbor of success.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast. I'm your host, John Stogen. Today I'm thrilled to have Yanni Mazur, the co-founder and chief growth officer at Gattida, with us. Yanni's been developing Gattida after successfully operating a $20 million a year brand on Amazon selling fashion brands internationally. Gattida specializes in Amazon discrepancy analysis and consulting by utilizing data visualization technology. Gattida focuses on discovering and managing financial and inventory-related discrepancies, with billions of dollars of transactions managed daily. Yanni, thank you so much for being on the podcast A pleasure, yeah. For folks that aren't familiar with you, can you tell me a little bit about your background?

Speaker 2: 0:46

Yeah, so background in the industry or background in life? Which kind of background do you?

Speaker 1: 0:50

want. I always like to start with background in life because I think that that kind of informs the unique perspective that people bring to e-commerce in Amazon.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Yeah, so background in life is I was born and raised in Israel, actually a small town north of Tel Aviv, so kind of the shore area, and then when I was 22, I moved into the United States. After I finished my military service, I was actually in the Israeli Navy Intelligence in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces for about three years. Nothing special, everybody goes.

Speaker 1: 1:22

That's kind of the way the country goes, Although I did see it in my notes that it says that you speak five languages.

Speaker 2: 1:30

That's correct. Yeah, hebrew from native language. In the Army I did intelligence so that we had to kind of pick up on Arabic, english. Obviously I live in the United States now After the Army. Actually I did go travel South America for six months and I picked up Spanish, at least the fundamentals, and then when I moved to the United States, there's a lot of a large, pretty large Hispanic in Spanish community speaking people here, so I picked it up more and more. So Spanish is pretty stable.

Speaker 2: 1:59

I love that language, by the way. And then that's the fourth and then the fifth is Russian. Actually my wife is originally from Russia, from Moscow, so I speak like a two-year-old because she talks to all my children, our kids, when they're born. Then she talks to them in Russian. So I absorb all those take a shower, go clean up, eat something, stuff like that, so I can speak like a two-year-old. So all in it's like five. The past few years somebody told me that not just me, everybody speaks another language, whether they like it or not. They can talk more languages. In the six languages I can talk bullshit.

Speaker 1: 2:34

I don't know if it's R rated or X rated or G rated show. I think you're perfectly fine with that. Yeah, I think, and I can see how that can, so that can come in handy as well. So there you go Six different languages. We'll have to make sure that that gets updated. It does get upgraded officially. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, very nice. Starting out with intelligence and Israeli defense forces, how do you go from that to growing a $20 million business on Amazon and then into what you do today with Katita?

Speaker 2: 3:13

Yeah, so let's fast forward a few things. So yeah, I got to the States, I went to school, I met a girl, I fell in love and got married and basically what happened was I was working for a sales and distribution company in the New York Tri-State area. Tri-state is typical New York, new Jersey and Connecticut. We're selling supplements and brick and mortar, but we're also selling supplements on our own website and then we're selling two Amazon right, venda Central, and then also on eBay and other marketplaces. And that was my early dabbling into e-commerce because of the company that I worked for. And then, on the side, what happened was I met a guy that I was doing the sales and distribution for the supplements company. He was actually doing accounting for a furniture company and we're both kind of young, passionate, newly married and we kind of felt like there's a lot of more in e-commerce. So we start selling stuff online, even though so we both had experienced a little bit of experience selling stuff online.

Speaker 2: 4:20

But we started kind of selling stuff together whatever we could get our hands on. We first started on eBay and then, in 2013, we started selling on Amazon, and then that was like a boom effect. Very quickly the business grew from zero to 20 million in annual sales and then we became a large a part of a larger group that together as a group we're selling about $100 million in FBA revenue. We always kind of kept selling on other marketplaces like eBay, walmart and our website. That was always kind of the case on the e-commerce level. But Amazon really ballooned, mushroomed, exploded. It was just. It's like a big beast that doesn't matter how much you feed it. It keeps telling you I want more.

Speaker 1: 4:59

So just a quick question, just to maybe take this down a little bit on the side. Bro. That I'm curious about is talking about being that beginning experience in like vitamin and supplements, like that is a very competitive area even before the days of Amazon. Do you feel like that gave you kind of a little bit more of an advantage in the sense of like you pretty much have to have sharp elbows to be successful in that particular niche, and so so it's funny because I started, you know, my early dabbling.

Speaker 2: 5:29

It was, you know, supplements, but this is the before the supplements are today, which is so hardcore.

Speaker 1: 5:34

So it's hyper competitive.

Speaker 2: 5:35

That's one thing, but that was when I was working for the company or working for the man college. But when I started working for the man, I started working for myself. We didn't really touch the supplements, to be honest. So when we started, we started actually in watches, then jewelry, then sunglasses, then travel, and then apparel, then toys, then everything. When we peaked, we were pretty much kind of like a little mini department store. We had four of our brands. Our brands were mainly in travel, a baby and a fashion jewelry, and also we did reselling. We also did reselling of other brands. So we're like kind of like a Macy's, you know a Macy's department store. You have a multi category. They're reselling brands, but they also are the own brands that they make. So we're kind of like that on the digital front and Gattita was born from that, from that, from those challenges.

Speaker 2: 6:25

Basically, what happened was, you know, we created the solution for ourselves. We discovered that on an annual basis the discrepancy rate ranges between one to 3% from revenue. So when we're doing like a million dollars here on Amazon, we had 10 to 30,000 here that we needed to kind of recover right and discrepancies and reimbursements. But when we're kind of part of a larger group one to 3%, one to three million here.

Speaker 2: 6:49

Then we need to kind of recover and the problem was that, you know, we were not able to use spreadsheets anymore to reconcile all the transactions because too much data there was too much data, so the spreadsheets were just breaking down. So that kind of pushed us to do two things. The first thing was to set up a software technology to audit all the transaction on a commercial scale, let's call it, or a master scale. That was the first element. The second element was to create a dedicated team to constantly, constantly, you know address the discrepancies with Amazon and do all the back and forth until everything's resolved. Because once again, on an annual basis, when we're doing 100 million, that's one to three million that we need to recover and that is material enough for us to apply resources such as software and development of software and a dedicated team to have an airtight solution for us to solve this issue, because it's material.

Speaker 1: 7:36

Right, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2: 7:38

Yeah. So we just, you know, we had our needs, we created the solution and that was fine. Well, what happened was, over time, we kind of told our friends from the industry that we have these capabilities. So they told us help us will pay you. And that was early genesis of Gattita back in 2015.

Speaker 2: 7:54

And then for like three, four years, they're just kind of growing organically because the value proposition is very simple and straightforward, it's very comfortable, it's it's a performance based solution. So we only charge a fee based on recovery. So, just like that, it's free to join Gattita, it's free to stay with Gattita, there's no subscription. You can cancel at any time. We only charge a few if we're able to successfully recover anything. So three, four years is just going organically.

Speaker 2: 8:18

And we had kind of two businesses, we had the retail and then we add, you know the solution, you know, with Gattita, and then in 2019 we kind of made a strategic decision to cash out a retail and, you know, take all the profits that we, that we made, and just kind of, you know, invest in the Gattita and put all of our attention, motivation and creativity focus In one place, which was Gattita and helping sellers worldwide.

Speaker 2: 8:43

And really, once we pivoted, that we made that strategic decision. From that point, really, kind of, um, we I would say we kind of maybe took leadership on this niche and today we're the largest organization in the world Exclusively focused and dedicated to one thing, which is Amazon FBA auditing and reimbursements. We have a team of about 240 team members in 12 countries. We're also backed up, you know, by private equity and that's kind of the you know, I guess you know high level from all the way small town in Israel fast forward to, you know, I guess e-commerce selling on Amazon being challenged, on Amazon Solving the challenge and then kind of helping, you know sells worldwide also solve, you know, the similar challenge.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Yeah, and that's. I can see definitely some, some leaps there. So let me you know, for folks that are listening, you know they probably have they're selling on Amazon, have some traction. You know they're probably at least a little bit familiar with this process of reimbursements from from Amazon. Walk me through Maybe some of the things that aren't so obvious in that process where they go. Well, I could just open a case myself.

Speaker 2: 9:49

What? Yeah, so yeah, let's just dive into this. So how can I share some context about the whole Opportunity, call it, but also maybe give some advice here so you can take your own action and by all means, get money yourself. We highly support that. So let's let's the back a little bit said.

Speaker 2: 10:05

All really starts from the first in memory ship products, amazon. That's when the whole chain of events start to happen. So, john, you yourself, you want to ship to Amazon a thousand units, one thousand units, and you ship it to their fulfillment centers. And Amazon, instead of receiving One thousand units, they only receive, let's say, nine hundred, ninety units. Ten units are missing, mm-hmm. So If you never heard of this situation or never thought about this, this is all new to you listen carefully, because it means You're gonna have more money in your pocket at the end of it. And if you already heard about it and kind of know, hopefully this will sharpen you up. So, those missing ten units, amazon not just gonna give you a refund or a reimbursement right away, it's up to you.

Speaker 2: 10:44

The onus is on you, a responsibility is on you, the seller, to log into cell central and I'll tell you how to get there. You go to cell essential inventory, manage a bit shaman to click it and you're gonna see the shaman's log. So you see all I ship this. You know a bit shaman. I see a thousand units. They only receive nine hundred ninety. You log into the shaman inside the shaman You're gonna have a drop that menu. It was good because they're gonna show you minus ten units Now, job top menu. We're gonna click on. You know missing units.

Speaker 2: 11:09

Please research Okay it's up to the cell to do this, as they can start the research. Now, when they start the research, it's not that simple. You know used to be that. You have the button. They can start the research. Today it's not so simple. You need paperwork.

Speaker 2: 11:21

Okay, now they're gonna ask you for a proof of ownership or proof of purchase, and that gives you could be an invoice. Or, if you have, if you have your own brand and you have brand registry, instead of an invoice, you can give them a packet slip. So you have that. You're gonna have to upload that document. And if you shipped it outside of Amazon In any unit in other words, you didn't use Amazon's platform to buy the shipping to ship with Amazon, use it from an outside provider You're gonna have to give them a proof of delivery document. Hmm, okay, but if you buy the shipping from Amazon, you won't have to give him anything. He's just gonna have to give him a proof of purchase.

Speaker 2: 11:53

Anyways, you provide all these documentation and the open the case you start investigating. If Amazon find found the ten missing units, now you can sell it, make money. Know, I'm done, it's all good to go. If they didn't find it and it's eligible for reimbursement, they're gonna pay you a reimbursement for that, for that financial loss, right? Because you ship the thousand and they got 990. Ten years are missing. They're gonna ship, you know they're gonna compensate you for that.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Sorry, just to interrupt real quick it now. Is that reimbursement still the retail rate of that?

Speaker 2: 12:23

exactly exactly what about to say, yeah, okay, same wing, like. So what's, I guess, interesting, was very, very nice about it. What's Amazon is doing is that they're not paying you the cost of the product, appealing you the retail value as if you sold it on Amazon. And what's nice about it is that if he sold on Amazon, no PPC cost, no advertising cost. So if you bought the product for $2 and you expect to sell on Amazon for $20, you're gonna get that $20 back. Right, so you're able to recover. Your cost of goods was $2, and then the markup of $18, minus Amazon selling fees and the fulfillment fees. So if you sell on Amazon, after fees, you keep $13, you're gonna get $13, which covers a $2 or cost, and the rest is profit, let's say. And no PPC in between costs or advertising costs in between. That's why it's very so.

Speaker 2: 13:05

That's why our mission is to help sellers get the maximum reimbursement, because if you don't maximize all the reimbursements that you're eligible to receive, you're losing two things. The first thing you lose is your cost of goods and the second thing is your profit because, exactly like I mentioned, we're shifting a double negative to a double positive, where you, instead of me, you know I'm missing your cost of goods in the profit. You actually get it all back. You're gonna your cost of goods and it turned up a nice mark. You know profit margin markup For that. So in our whole holistic approach and focus that you get the maximum because if you do you set up a double loss, you get a double win. It's kind of a nice pendulum that we're swinging and that just the first entry level Top of discrepancy, the more cells can relate to, because it's very intuitive I ship something to you, I want to make sure you got everything right, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:51

And so for brands out there that maybe are, you know, shipping in a palette a Week or a palette a month, like that process, you know, can you know? They're probably like, well, I could do this myself, and there's a certain amount of that that you probably can, but you get to a certain point where you know You're just not gonna stay on top of it. That's just the reality.

Speaker 2: 14:09

Like you there comes item number 50 plus on the list. I do exactly because it's ellipsoid.

Speaker 2: 14:13

Typically they don't want to look back, they want to constantly look forward. You know you're sourcing, you're launching advertising and marketing it so, and so you got to stop the whole train. And then let's look at the past. Let's see what happened for this and also other issues that happened with in the FBI in the past 18 months. So the, the, the shipment, is the entry level issue. And then keep in mind that once the units, the inventory, is inside Amazon's fulfillment centers, all of a sudden inside the centers inventory, all of a sudden it might get lost, damage, destroyed or disappeared or disposed and you, the seller, constantly have to order for those issues. Okay, inside the whereas, but also between the whereas, because Amazon might shift your products from Kentucky to California to Nevada to have a spread you know prime shipping spread for a dear to. They might do that same thing, have same types of issues happen there.

Speaker 2: 14:58

Also, from the fulfillment centers to their consumers wants to. You know the orders come in from the marketplace and Amazon fulfills them. You got to look into the discrepancies over there. Not all orders come in perfectly to the consumers. Also, from the consumers back to Amazon with all the beloved refunds and returns, customer refund returns that can be discrepancies there, and also from the fulfillment centers back to you, the seller, if you do a removal order. So all these logistics friction points, that's what we, where we live in and Our technology is built like a bodyguard that constantly Tracks every single unit that goes into the fulfillment center. It tracks the life cycle of what's going on. So, and within the life cycle, all these variations of issues that can happen all over the place, you know can equate to between one to three percent from your Amazon Revenue, fba revenue. Or in other words, for every hundred units shipped, amazon, between one to three units is gonna get Affected with an issue, with the discrepancy through its life cycle with Amazon's fulfillment centers.

Speaker 2: 15:51

So our mission is to be in that world, in that moment, to make sure that this full recovery when there's an eligibility for recovery, and by doing that, shifting double negatives into double positive is really going back 80 months and flushing the sellers with cash that they never imagine that's even available and Hopefully, if the sellers are able to take this cash but once again has built in profit for you. You reinvest into the business. Now you have more money to spend on advertising. Yeah, now you have more money in cash flow to source and launch another product and keep Reinvesting it. So the sellers, who are the most optimized and the most sophisticated, that maximize on this recovery opportunity and reinvest it to the business, they're the ones who are propelling up down the flywheel and the ones that lag or they don't even know about it. They're just. You know, they're not fully optimized and they can get up a form over time. Keep that in mind.

Speaker 1: 16:38

So and I want to double click on something you said there because I think it's so powerful and I think it's, you know, for people that are listening I think some of them probably picked it up, but I just want to make sure that everybody gets it which is, you know, like you said, say that you are doing a million dollars in sales and the average, you know, your recovery is, you know, between on ten to thirty thousand dollars. That's kind of you know, just kind of ballpark.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Especially yeah yeah, and I think it's just important for folks to realize that we're not talking about ten to thirty thousand dollars of revenue that you know Got to go with the cogs and that type of stuff. This is essentially like adding, you know, ten to thirty thousand dollars in profit to your bottom line, because those, those, everything is already spent. So you know that could be a huge difference when you look at your net profit at the end of the day Of if you added, you know, thirty thousand dollars to your net profit on a million dollars in sales. So I think you know just, I just want everybody to realize that's listening to, this is, you know, to understand, but that is going to, you know, not just revenue but your actual bottom line of that additional ten to thirty thousand all goes to profit.

Speaker 2: 17:38

The beautiful thing about it Go back a team on to recover ten, twenty to thirty thousand dollars. If you do a millionaire, for example, and all trickles to their bottom line, it's all juice at that point because everything else is kind of paid for and you're absolutely right. And then you know, during the the exit boom of all the aggregators coming in and buying all these businesses, it was amazing to see how, with one decision, they're able to increase a bit the their bottom line profit and Then get get a multiple on that, because when you sell your Amazon business they're buying your profit and they're paying a multiple for that profit. So let's say your multiple is a 3x, right, so your profit is a hundred thousand there. Whoever's buying it, they're willing to buy for three hundred thousand. But all of a sudden you're able to add, let's say, ten percent. So sorry, ten thousand dollars from a reimbursement and that goes straight into your bottom line. Also, you're getting thirty thousand dollars, a thirty percent bump. Oh, sorry, I'm ten percent bump because you're paying your three hundred thousand to cash you out. They're gonna pay you three hundred thirty thousand dollars because it decided to use get you, don't we go back a team on Plus you with another ten thousand dollars extra to your profit.

Speaker 2: 18:36

You know bottom line and boom, you have a nice multiple on it. So it's a nice multiplier effect. That's if you get a 3x multiple of what. If you negotiate a four or five X and your profit is not a and your revenue we're able to recover. You know you're not doing a million, let's say doing 10 million here and we're recover a hundred grand and your multiple is five X From one decision, able to add half a million dollars to your exit because you decided one thing I'm gonna use a solution to maximize I'm a reimbursement and maximize on my earnings and my profits and then somebody will pay me a multiple on that. That was very strong days for us still is. But especially that boom where there's a whole frenzy and the multiples were going up and up. You know we saw the multiples kind of From 2019.

Speaker 2: 19:15

Early days they were like 2x and 2 and a fx all the way to 7, 8x, because they're all competing with each other. Now they're kind of balancing in 3, 4x, kind of relaxing still better than the beginning. But that was. That was an amazing thing to see how we affected the lives of the low sellers and there was brands of men in exit but making one decision. But it just kind of emphasis and highlights where you're once again you can become a healthy long-term business if you optimize, not just on because most of the sellers want to optimize on sourcing, launching Advertising a cost great, that's good.

Speaker 2: 19:46

There's another universe where you can optimize and they really make incredible results, not just to the top line, which you know you want to sell more right, but how it changes to the bottom line gets very fuzzy because so many things in between when it comes to reimbursements, not too many things in between, and it's trickles down. You know, down to the bottom line, especially when you don't expect it Right. You go back a team much and every year I'm expected to return it Also. You're gonna all these tens of thousand dollars back. That's usually a such a sweet moment for a lot of the sellers. And then when they start reinvesting it, that's when they really go nicely on the flywheel and that's kind of the the, the Purpose goal mission that we live within every day. For, you know, since 2015, we take a lot of pride into it and you know, even our slogan today is you know, our slogan is more than money back, it's a way forward.

Speaker 2: 20:29

Yeah because we the effective, we get your money back. But if you really reinvest into the business, that will probably propel you forward. So it's a lot of you know that's what we've seen the sellers do with smartly over the years and have long-term Success. And if you have a long-term success, by the way, with your business, that's where you anybody would want to buy this business. So you don't have to kind of Start a business to think about selling it. Yep, you want to start a business so you have a good income and a good profit-making machine for yourself. And if you have that, by the way, anybody else would want to have that and they'll pay you handsomely for it. So you have something that is, you know, it's a real asset. Keep that in mind, whoever's out there selling.

Speaker 2: 21:05

Now I do want to add a few more things. You know it's pretty drunk, it's pretty stay away to get here. We only charge a fee based on recovery and you know our mission is to help the sellers get maximized on all the reimbursements that they're eligible to receive. But high level is very important for me that the sellers understand that we kind of fulfill our mission. It's three ways. One way it's through education, meaning we go. We, over the years we probably educated tens of thousands sellers how to do it themselves. We never see a penny out of that. They go, they take action, they do it. It's all good, all right, but this way we're helping them get to the maximum levels because we hold this banner saying FB auditing is important to your business. It can really impact your business in the bottom line. Do it and we go out and you know. Masterminds, conferences, webinars, it's all we. You probably find our content all over and we kind of teach you, do yourself.

Speaker 2: 21:49

We encourage the sellers to do the maximum they can do on their own, all good. The second I know there's three ways we do right. This first one, like, is an education. Second, our way is that you know, of course, we, anybody wants us. We can do everything for them. They can sign up to get you know. We do all the work for them. We do, you know, do the maximum recovery for them and we're good to go.

Speaker 2: 22:07

The third option is in between, meaning the seller. We're very customizable. So we do encourage the sellers to do the maximum they can do on their own to get all their investments that they can, and then they Can plug in gaitira so we can come in as a backup. So any issues you missed out on for whatever reason, we could come in. Grab that for you, bring it back to your pocket, and only for success. Only then we get rewarded. So it doesn't have to be us or you, it's together. We have a holistic approach, we're together Partner. We can once again help you get to the maximum level. So that's high level of important for the sales to understand that it doesn't have to be us or you, it can definitely also be together if needed, not a problem.

Speaker 1: 22:41

Yeah, and I think that's an important piece. And let me ask you this question because I know that there's other tools out there, like Helium 10 does a lot of different things and that happens. They do have a tool that does that, and so if I'm hearing you correctly, is that you know someone could use, for example, that tool out of Helium 10 to probably get kind of the?

Speaker 2: 22:59

Yeah, it's called Refundgini. It's a really good tool and we're partnered with Helium 10. You know I give this analogy. You know that's a good tool. It covers kind of two or three issues out of 30. It's a good thing. It's like a toothbrush. I use a toothbrush, you clean it, but we're like a dentist. The dentist recommends, highly recommends, they use a toothbrush, but the dentist you come in, it goes. You can do tooth extraction, I can do braces, I can do implants, we can do cleaning, deep cleaning. So that's kind of the analogy between tools and a specialist or like a dentist, if you like. That kind of does the full impact.

Speaker 1: 23:35

Yeah, and I think that's just important for people to hear that are listening, is that it's not you know, oh, I have to use Skatida, or you know they have to do it all for me, or you know or something else. Like, like you said, you know, usually it can very much be a combination of those things where you know letting you guys handle kind of those cases that are more complex, that, quite frankly, as a seller, your time is better spent doing other things and, like you said, pushing that you know your brand forward, growing your business, doing all those types of things, and you know getting kind of the easy, if you will, kind of the basic reimbursements done.

Speaker 2: 24:14

Yeah, any line of food we highly encourage the sellers to go for it. Whatever is complex, hard, treacherous, we can come in and be that agent that you know grabs up for the sellers. And once again, only for success we got awarded. So I would say it's pretty much almost you know brainless. It's just a, it's kind of a one more proposition where it's really zero risk for the sellers to do everything you do above and beyond. Get everything that you can, we come in and get you another 5,000, 10,000, 15,000. Only for successful you we get rewarded. If we do all this work and you got you nothing, you pay nothing. So really kind of an O-brainer.

Speaker 1: 24:51

Yeah, Can you give me an example maybe, just so that way you know people that are listening can get a better idea of like what maybe those more complex cases can be that you guys do kind of specialize in tackling for sellers.

Speaker 2: 25:05

Yeah, so the data first of all. If anybody ever tried it, it can get a very convoluted very easily. I'll hit this one. There's just one example. There's many others, but okay, let's start with the fulfillment fees.

Speaker 2: 25:19

You sell on Amazon, you sell your products at FBA and Amazon will store units on FBA and then, once the order comes in from the marketplace, they're going to pick the unit from the bin, they're going to package it in a box and they're going to ship it out and they're going to charge you a fee for that fulfillment, or call it fulfillment fee. The fee is based on the weights and the mention of the product that you have. So, for whatever reason, they have wrong data about your asin and they think the product is larger and heavier than it actually is, they're going to charge you mistakenly more fees or fulfillment fees. So let's say your product is only you know it's a foam cover, it's only six inches and six ounces, you know, in weight. They're supposed to charge you only $4 per unit. For whatever reason, they have the data that makes it look like it's the size of a football. So instead of charging you $4 per unit, they're charging you $10 per unit, so they're financially overcharging you $6 every time you sold the unit. Let's say you sold a thousand units, they overcharge you $6,000.

Speaker 2: 26:14

Once again, if you've never heard about this, what did it just say? You know it sounds like a foreign language to you. Don't worry, you know the solution's out there that help with this. We happen to be one of them and we do all the calculations. See, you know, if there is a discrepancy a wedding dimension or fulfillment fee or pick and pack fee discrepancy and if we do find that discrepancy, we kind of do two things, or the cell actually needs to do two things, which we can do as well Open a case and then fix it. So, going forward, they stop overcharging, so you stop the bleeding, and then, of course, get the reimbursements. You know the recovery for the past 90 days.

Speaker 2: 26:50

Unfortunately, this discrepancy type is limited to 90 days or three months to recover the overcharges. It used to be that it was open for 18 months, but in 2019, amazon narrowed down from 18 months to three months and the logic and reasoning was because from time to time, from season to season, packaging of products might change. It could be that you have one kind of packaging for the year, but then for Christmas or Valentine's Day or for the summer or whatever season you're in, you might have a different kind of packaging. So they don't want to kind of pay you for 18 months. They kind of narrow down the opportunity to reconcile this for 90 days. So, in other words, what I'm saying is that over these we see how Amazon is making things more narrow and more challenging for the sellers to handle this in a timely fashion, and it becomes very taxing for the sellers to be able to constantly focus on all the changing regulations and all the types of ration and claims.

Speaker 2: 27:38

Another example is the inbound shipments. By the way, when you shipped to Amazon, it used to be 18 months. Now it's only nine months in the United States, but in Europe, if you're selling in Europe, it's only six months. So for whatever different regions, different town frames for the same issue, it just you have to kind of go into all the ins and outs of it. Sometimes I compare our world to the advertising with PPC world. You constantly Amazon constantly changes everything. Whatever PPC is now, it's not what it was a year or two or three or five ago. It's constantly advancing and changing. It's all these nuances and the sellers don't have enough resources or time in the day to constantly keep up to all the changes. But we do, because it's the only thing we have to do. So you partner with us and you constantly head of the curve, because that's all these focused emissions.

Speaker 1: 28:19

Yeah. So, and I want to come back a little bit to talking about those measurements, because I think that's something that a lot of sellers probably aren't aware of. So I just I've noticed it. You know, with clients that I've worked with, where I don't know if sellers are aware of this, but I mean Amazon does, and I'm using audit and air quotes because this is what I've seen, as they do an audit and they'll change your dimensions on your product and you know, without getting into all the technical of it, essentially what it boils down to. It's not necessarily how much your product weighs. It's based on a dimensional weight that Amazon uses. So even if they show you know the same weight by changing those dimensions and sometimes it's only a quarter of an inch it bumps you from you know one exactly from one tier to another and the difference there might be an extra dollar, two or three dollars in order to ship your product, and they make that.

Speaker 1: 29:10

You know. When they do again audit and air quotes, they make that change. You generally don't get a notification and I've seen these. You know errors on a fairly regular basis where you know they don't get that.

Speaker 2: 29:22

These are silent margin killers. That sellers once again, when you look into the world of selling on Amazon, it's it's super down in the curriculum call it of selling on Amazon, if at all, most of them don't. That's what we hold a big banner educating and educating. So sellers get down to those resolutions and have the least opportunity to do something about it if they can. If not, we're happy to do it for them and yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 1: 29:44

Yeah, well, and I think the other and I didn't realize that it was only 90 days. So if you've had something like that and you don't catch it and it goes on for you know, a year, I mean it kills you, it emerges, I'll tell you.

Speaker 2: 29:57

Let me tell you too, for this specific type of discrepancy. I'll tell you two examples that we found over there, as many others, but why this might happen. So one example is that it could be an honest mistake where, let's say, you're selling a handbag, that's your product, and then you sold it, and then somebody returned the handbag and the customer that returned the handbag they added the strap.

Speaker 2: 30:15

Right Now, sometimes, the handbags have straps, so that strap can add 30, 40, 50 inches to your product. What's going to happen is, when it comes back, amazon will scan it through a big machine called Cubic Scan Machine and all of a sudden, this strap that it was added by the customer gets re-scanned and it back into your inventory, adds 30, 40, 50 inches, whatever. And then Amazon re-measures and recalculates the winning dimensions of the product and boom, it throws you to another tier and from that point on they start overcharging you. So we shipped it out to Amazon. It was all packaged, all good, it was exactly the winning dimensions.

Speaker 2: 30:45

But along the way, when a guy returned by a customer, something happened and by Amazon's machine recalculated and boom, all of a sudden you're struck with all these fears and you're kidding, it's killing your margin. That's one, one top of error that it's an honest mistake. Another top that we actually seen over the years is that maybe you're being attacked by another competitor. So, yoni, myself I'm competing with you, john. We both send this, sell the same exact product, you know, but we're different, two different brands. I want to attack you. So what I do? I go to my cell essential, I take your race and I add it to my Cell essential. I never actually offer it. I never actually sell it. Only thing that I do is I change manually the wedding dimensions and reported to Amazon incorrectly. I say, hey, your product is not six inches. I add a zero, sixty inches and your product, not six ounces, is six pounds. Once again, never offered out. But the data got updated, recalculated. I'm selling the same thing. As you worry, it might be even selling the same price head-to-head and finding other keywords. I'm selling making margin. You're selling. You actually either making less margin or, even worse, might be even losing money and you don't even know it Right. And then they happen for six or nine months and Amazon maybe overcharge you for that specification, $100,000 and the past, let's say, nine months. So in the past 90 days only charge you $30,000. You're gonna get that $30,000 by the $60,000. You're never gonna get it back because you didn't do it on time. So you lost $60,000 a margin worry, while your competitor Didn't.

Speaker 2: 32:10

And there's the ones that you know credit this problem to begin with, but of course, if you never check on it, you know you might be there all the time. You say it is not a good, profitable asin for me. You get, get out of the game not even knowing there could have been much more. It's more because you could have optimized your. You know FBA, you know discrepancies and auditing and and fix it and actually realize that this is an actually has a long-term potential To to make a margin. But it didn't because there was a change or somebody attacked you and every. You're not professional enough to understand the numbers properly, so you got out of the category, out of that asin or you still want to stand it, but you lost so much money for so long you didn't recover your funds on time. You're in a hole where your competitor is killing it, for example.

Speaker 1: 32:50

Yeah, yeah and that's yeah, without even going into the black hat stuff. I mean, that's just one example. Is there maybe another? So I think that's a great example. And for folks out there, if you haven't checked your what you're paying an FBA fees and again, this can be really hard if you've got, you know, 100 skews, a thousand skews can be very difficult. But if you haven't checked those you know in the last six months and you don't have Something monitoring those, that definitely you're you're a sitting duck.

Speaker 2: 33:20

Yeah, you know, if you have a lot of asians, I'm afraid to control these asians and somebody else's that you know they compete with you and for them it's one of the only few asians they do have and they're gonna do every single element to optimize it and murder you along the way. They'll do it. I'm no, I'm no doubt that they will, because they let you know they're dependent on it. So it's as we all know, it's a very. The terrain of selling on Amazon is hyper competitive. It's just gonna get more competitive over the years. Of course we have the Chinese base sellers, who are hyper competitive, very disciplined, very into the mathematics, very into the margins. I mean one thing is for sure things this is gonna get more complex, more professional, and this you know. So many times I'm asked oh, what's the best tip, advice or best hack I can, you know, I can offer the Amazon sellers this is never one thing that I can tell you that can also, you know, make a business slash for, for for the next few years, with the best margins. It's more like understanding that you are professional. That's the best tip I. So that means that you know if you go to medical school right and you finish your. That's your profession.

Speaker 2: 34:20

You're a doctor now because a lot of cells they're gonna start it, or some of the sellers, or many of the sellers start on the Side hustle. There are actually doctors or lawyers or whatever and they kind of on the side swinging it. They saw a core, they took a course. It's a YouTube video. They start a brand they have a passionate about around. So there's semi pros or just amateurs. But then the business goes all of a sudden oh, you find all this success and you're talking to make that switch, saying no, no, no. I, for the past few months or for years, I sold, I launched, I made some six figures, seven figures, eight figures, whatever it is, and I stopped doing my regular work. But now you the only thing you need to know realize that you're professional. You're gonna have to do every little thing you can to be the best way to do it, something like a doctor, lawyer.

Speaker 2: 34:57

When they're in the profession doctors they constantly learn and adapt to new realities. Science keeps on moving and progressing. If your heart surgeon, brace surgeon, you got to constantly adopt the best tools, the best you know Environments or setups that you can to offer the best care that you can as a professional. So the best advice is you're a professional, this is your profession. As a profession, you and your whole team have to become professionals and Embrace and a immerse yourself with all the shifting elements and whatever of course you got to recognize your strength, your best strengths and your core strengths as professionals, what you do really best, that separates you from the competition and your bit, your, your partnership, alliance, call it.

Speaker 2: 35:36

Where you're gonna put must like a hospital or clinic. No doctor can just come in and take care of every patient without the right tools or our facility that he partners with the bike. Because when even the tools that you use as doctors you have to choose which brands or solution providers you're gonna write use right to treat so much, much like that profession sending as a seller, you can't, you know, sell without the right tools. You need the market research tools. You need pricing tools, inventory management tools, advertising tools or solutions. Right, something for auditing. You got audits. See what's going on on the FBA side. So we're living that element of the base side and we're an available partner if ever needed. But once again, through the whole Ecosystem that you create, you have to think in those realms. I'm a professional. I'm gonna create a professional team that will separate and be better than the competition. I'm gonna choose best of breed agencies, solution providers that I can't constantly learn it, by the way, by having this Content vehicle, john, that you're creating, which is a podcast.

Speaker 1: 36:34

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 36:35

It's a platform for sales to learn, understand, and this is part of that coming of, you know you helping them become more professionals. It's even for itself. I'm so. When you started, you didn't never dream, maybe, that you're gonna have a podcast or not, but you realize how much the whole thing is a learning game.

Speaker 1: 36:48

Yeah, listen, there's many other in fact, this podcast is, you know and I'm glad you brought that up because it's such a good point Is the Genesis.

Speaker 1: 36:56

This podcast is actually, you know, me and two other gentlemen that I have, you know, own brands.

Speaker 1: 37:01

We've helped other brands grow and you know we've been meeting, for, you know, a Over a year now, where we meet on a weekly basis and we say, hey, this is what's working well in our brand, here's what we're interesting, a testing, here's what we did and it didn't work, and so kind of providing that knowledge because and I mean it's, I think you are, you know, doctor, analogy is is so on point, in the sense of you know, it's no different than if we were in the same kind of you know medical field and we were, you know, sharing something with colleagues to say, hey, I tried this, you know, particular treatment, and it didn't work for this patient, but it did work for that patient, you know, or I tried this, I've yet to see this treatment work or this treatment works, you know, really, really bet, you know, really really good, especially compared to, you know, this other, this Best practice that we knew about before, like here's this new best practice, and to keep pushing that forward and every patient is a patient and he's yeah, yeah, think about that, and there's a whole science really it's, it's, yeah, the analogy is striking and it's it's, and it's vividness of Helping the cells and stand how it all kind of works in every asin, really as a patient, as all this care that it needs, it needs to be sourced, it needs logistics to be moved around and it's to be priced properly.

Speaker 2: 38:19

So that's pricing or projections of inventory, how much inventory is gonna need. And then when you sell it also you have all these fees, right, yeah, and within all these fees is also got to see there might be discrepancy. Them. It could be the selling free discrepancy, it could be a fulfillment free discrepancy and all these things. So you got a lot of that's part of the ordering that with we live in, or all the asins that are shipped in, are they all okay? All the units are they all okay? What happened the past eight times? They all got sold correctly or transfer correct, all these things.

Speaker 2: 38:46

So this is once again a treatment that they need to make sure that their health and you know the health of this asin is the best condition so it has longevity. You want to have a longevity and you want it to be Fruitful as much as possible. This asin, because he wanted to kind of produce and you know we produce children as humans, but this needs to produce, hopefully, profits. I'm trying to be more creative with my arm, with my, you know, might start adapting this analogy of every asin as a patient, is a color human, it has its own life in cycles and, as all, it needs all these treatments and something. And as you treat, you know, you give it all these treatments and you see a good result. You double down, you see the results are not good, you try others and that's really the game.

Speaker 2: 39:22

Honestly, this is kind of the game that the sellers and brands are in and it just gets more advanced. It's something like medicine, something like science, because we live on the digital front, digital and it's all digital and it's so much data. You know, if you are very data driven, your chances of success and survival are much higher than the ones who just got interesting. I think it'll be good. No, no, hold on. You could A B test. You can do all these things, you know. Create a budget, try it out. If you get a result, double down, if not, pivot, you know. So now all, just if you just know, I think this will be the best campaign, the best keyword. Put all the budget there. That's an option for you, but not so well educated, not so data driven, and that can cost you greatly and it, just you know, be a point of failure.

Speaker 1: 40:00

Yeah, and I think, like you said, you know getting more professional about that and especially, you know, I think we're seeing that transition and I think a lot of people that are gonna find success for the next couple years there's still a ton of opportunity on Amazon and beyond, but the people that are gonna see that success are those that take that mentality that you're talking about being. You know, this is my profession, which means that I'm building this brand in order to be a true brand, as if it was on as much as if it's on my the Shelf at my local store as it is on Amazon, and that that brand is cohesive, it speaks to the target customer and that you're continuing, continuing to evolve that brand. And for those people that are looking at, hey, I'm just gonna put up a product and, you know, see what happens, I think, unfortunately, you know just the way of the world most of those days are pretty much gone that Now they're not gonna.

Speaker 2: 40:56

If out success you and you don't understand exactly why. And then things started to change. That's we're gonna lose it. Sometimes people can throw the spaghetti and see what sticks, and sometimes it does, and they might work for a year Maybe too. But also there's a pivot of some kind. They got flushed away because they haven't made the switch. They're lucky. You know, beginners love college, whatever you want, yeah, even the casino. You might put the first Quarter in the machine. Boom, you get hit the jackpot.

Speaker 2: 41:19

It could be that the whatever product you launch at good demand, exactly the good timing, and, yeah, they write keywords and it's all good. But then market conditions change. It could be competition coming in and doing better than you, offering more value at less price. Or, you know, bidding all the keywords that are picking up because the way that you know consumers are looking for it understanding, you know wanting it is changing. It's a constant changing environment.

Speaker 2: 41:40

So those days of I've seen, I still see there, I go out to a lot of conferences, event masterminds, see the people like but mistake, they found success on Amazon. They still are those days, but the ones that I mean, luckily for them, they're the ones that I'm saying okay, now that it happened, I want to know why and get more of it, but the ones are not they. They get flushed away. So that that would be a shame because once again there is a lot of potential, a lot of opportunity. And if I have to look at the macro environment of why this opportunity is still around is because let's talk about macro right you know a hundred percent of you know United States economy or sorry, retail in. You know consumption in the United States about today, I would say it's probably of 16, 17% of is an e-commerce.

Speaker 2: 42:26

So 80 plus percent of retail. United States retail is still in brick and mortar and I can probably bet you know, my arms and legs that you know it's probably the 17% or 16% that we are right now at e-commerce. It's probably gonna go to 18%, 19%, 20 and beyond. The reason is because a generation, the generation that's now, it's much more digital, driven right and they're just much more in it just appear a shopping online is superior. You know, even for me. You know I started, you know I was born in the 80s. We're up in the 90s.

Speaker 2: 42:54

I still have the, the fond memories of, you know, going to the shopping mall and buying stuff like that. But less and less I found it to be an inferior way to shop. Because, you know, I want to buy a new wardrobe, I have to go, take a vehicle job all the way to a mall and then go to a store, try all these things on. If something fits, I like it and it's a good price, or maybe it's not a good price, I go to the other brand or store that has a similar and then maybe it's a better price, then I'll buy it. Then I put in my trunk in my car because I want to keep going to the other store and get a shirt and it just take.

Speaker 2: 43:22

You take your whole day right. Right, maybe when you kid it's it might be a little fun, but as you grow older, just it's a privilege that you really we, most of us don't, I believe, have. I At least don't have. Instead, I just going today on Amazon, I can. There's Amazon wardrobe. I just order things that I think I like and I wore, order them a few sizes. I try everything out in the comfort of my own home. I have to take my car and park it, anything like that. Whatever I like, I keep. Whatever don't, I send back and I'm done.

Speaker 2: 43:47

Right faster, superior. I see the best prices, the best looking things that are and much more selections that I can physically see in the Shopping mall store. So it isn't in a superior, you know, value proposition for consumers. The younger generation you know tick-tock, you know tick-tock maybe buy it all that stuff. So that impulse buy is digital driven. So the younger generation that today's in their teams, once they become the dominant buying force, they're just gonna be more, you know, e-commerce driven and that's 17 80 percent. We're just gonna keep going and going. So all of us in e-commerce are in that environment where that shifting, growing momentum. So that's why there's lots of opportunities there and it just built in and we just have to stay focused and steady on capitalizing on them.

Speaker 1: 44:31

Yeah, 100%, and I think you know, like you said, we're gonna continue to see that growth, just because, as people get more comfortable, amazon has done a fantastic job with this, where you know you can get a product. Most products now come in less than two days. Amazon's trying for one day and I mean you know, I think that there's again a lot of great things about Amazon. But when we talk about e-commerce, you know you can even look beyond Amazon and depending on what category and there's probably still opportunities In other places and in fact, those are growing if you look at, you know, walmart, you talked about TikTok.

Speaker 1: 45:05

Yeah, I mean there's gonna be more, more opportunity. So I think probably you know the biggest takeaway if folks are listening to this and they're saying, okay, you know, what is maybe one thing that they could do. I think I really want to come back to and just Double-click on what you said on thinking about how you can make your brand more professional, even if that's just 1%, because I think, especially as we think about competing with, you know, brands from overseas and China and that type of stuff is, at the end of the day, you have to be able to speak to your customer better than they can from a brand perspective. And you know, obviously you can't do everything all at once, but you can think about how to make your brand 1% more professional each and every day and over time. Again, it's not good, there's not gonna.

Speaker 1: 45:54

You know I haven't found a golden BB in e-commerce or Amazon, and it sounds like you haven't found it either, or that.

Speaker 1: 45:59

You know that one solution but if you start stacking all these things on top of each other and that's a nice thing about Amazon as well Is that you know, normally we think about things X, you know being. You know 1 plus 1 equals 2, and then we add another one and that equals 3. Well, amazon is actually more, you know, exponential in the sense of you know, you start adding or multiplying things and it really you get, you know, kind of it's not 3 plus 3 equals 6, it's like 3 times 3 equals 9, and then it kind of grows dramatically from there. You know, if you look at the difference in sales between 10th position versus 3rd position, you know it's not, you know, a slight increase, it's a dramatic increase. So, yeah, I think that's a great takeaway for folks, for people that Are selling on Amazon and they realize they're like hey, I know I can't monitor All this type of stuff, where can they learn? You know more about you and more about Katita.

Speaker 2: 46:57

Got it. So you know we're. We're pretty, I'm pretty Busy or active on social media so you can always look for. You know you can look for me on LinkedIn or Facebook. You kind of post about the whole you know market and industry Almost daily. So you just look for my name. That's why your name is over. If you're just listening to this in audio, it's a Y O N I M A Z O? R. That's Yoni Mazur, my first and last name.

Speaker 2: 47:21

If you want a little more about Katita how we can help, just visit katitacom, which is g et Idacom. You know we have a friendly team there. There's always a chat or available. You can almost, you know, you know head us up on the chat. There's a whole resource, you know, available resources available on the website. We have our blogs. You know every week we post at least one or two articles there to keep on educating the sellers about, you know, all the intricacies of the industry. Of course we have our podcast to check out John Stogen's episode on Primetalk. We had him, you know, on our show was a great experience to hear, to listen and learn about his experience, you know, from being a service man into into e-commerce and helping other sellers. So, yeah, that's in a nutshell how we make yourself available out there. All right, fantastic we audience. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 48:12

You got it. Thank you so much, everybody. Good luck.