Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies

067: Tactic Tuesdays: Tariff Impacts: Finding Brand Opportunity in Crisis

• Brand Fortress HQ

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The business landscape has shifted dramatically with the introduction of new tariffs, creating significant challenges for e-commerce brands selling on Amazon. But beyond the immediate financial strain lies opportunity for those willing to think creatively and act decisively.

Mike from ProTuff shares his brand's raw, unfiltered experience with tariffs, revealing how compounding factors created a perfect storm for their business. When tariffs hit amid inventory and cash flow challenges, they discovered the true value of their 40,000-person email list – generating $125,000 in just two days when they needed it most. This real-world example demonstrates why building direct customer relationships matters now more than ever.

While many brands focus solely on the obstacles, this conversation explores actionable strategies for not just surviving but potentially thriving during this disruption. From investigating Section 232 tariff exemptions to exploring bonded warehouses, diversifying manufacturing to countries like India, and capitalizing on competitors' stockouts – we examine tactical approaches to navigate these choppy waters.

The most valuable insight might be the mindset shift required: successful entrepreneurs acknowledge challenges but quickly pivot to solution-finding. As Matt aptly points out, "Today it's tariffs, tomorrow it will be something else." The brands that build resilience through diversification – multiple manufacturers, various countries, different sales channels, and direct customer relationships – gain protection against whatever challenges emerge next in the e-commerce landscape.

Whether you're currently feeling the pinch of tariffs or preparing for future disruptions, this episode provides both immediate tactics and strategic perspective to strengthen your brand for the long haul. What opportunities might you discover if you look at this challenge through a new lens?

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Speaker 1:

Welcome everyone to another episode of Tactics Tuesday with Brand Fortress HQ, and today we're talking about something that is very timely, as far as you know what's happening for a lot of brands that are selling on Amazon and beyond, and that is kind of what's become the dirty word, which is tariffs, and rather than talking about you know how terrible they are and how unfair they are, and you know how challenging they are for the business, which all of those things are true for many, many brands that are selling on Amazon and beyond.

Speaker 1:

Really, we want to focus on what impacts are they having and what can we do about it and where can we find some silver linings in this, so that way we can build a more robust business beyond, no matter what happens with the tariffs, and whether it be in 2025 or whatever challenge happens to come in 2026, 2027, and down the road, as you're building a business for the long term. So with that I'm actually going to Mike. I guess I'll hand it over to you and if you'd be willing to share a little bit about how the tariffs have impacted you guys at ProTuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no for sure. And my cough's still just getting better. So if I make it into a coughing fit, I'll let you guys carry the conversation for a minute. But so tariffs would have been bad enough for us had there not been for a couple of other mistakes. But realistically, we stopped shipments completely probably three weeks ago, stopped shipments completely probably three weeks ago, and we had so a few things One we knew from a cashflow perspective and I'll get into kind of some of the other mistakes that were made that kind of put us in this position, which had nothing to do with tariffs, they just compounded with it.

Speaker 2:

But as a result of those mistakes, we ended up with a lot of inventory in China that was supposed to be here and, as a result, when the tariffs really hit, I so I was on, well, I wasn't really on vacation, but I was overseas at some conferences. So I didn't, you know, I wasn't watching the day-to to day of things, you know, while we were gone and whatnot, and so I didn't know that we really had any specific, you know, larger issues to deal with. All I knew was okay, yeah, tariffs are here, it's a higher price, like okay, we're gonna have to figure out how to pay for that or what to do. And then of course they just, you know, skyrocketed, you know, to 150%, you know, reciprocal tariff or whatever, it was 145. And then I found out we don't have inventory here in the States, like shipments weren't going through, and that was an agency issue, and that's a topic for another Tech this Tuesday probably, where we can talk a little bit about agencies and how to navigate those waters better and how to navigate those waters better. But the end result is we're in a space where we have minimal inventory here in the States.

Speaker 2:

And then you've got the questions of do we raise prices and try to extend out our inventory and wait out the competition, in a sense till? Maybe they stock out because many other sellers are going to have to, you know, stop or restrict their shipments as well? You know, do we not do that? Do we go hard on it and sell through what we've got for cash flow? Because we also ended up it's also kind of a cash flow conversation because we were launching some new products this year, the new two-year version of our lifetime products, but in so doing, the new two-year version of our lifetime products, but in so doing because the two-year version was going to be a much higher volume product than the lifetime, but also, realistically speaking, the cogs on that product weren't really much different. So we ended up having to steal a lot of cashflow from our other product lines that were already running, plus leverage ourselves a bit to get ahead of that, because we need a lot of inventory on that two year you know product. Well, now all that inventory is sitting in China so we can't launch it, but we've already paid for it, you know, with our suppliers, and so the cash flow issues are pretty significant.

Speaker 2:

Issues are pretty significant, but I think the bigger thing here is it has reminded me that really big issues like this you know ones that are industry-wide, e-commerce-wide, you know, whatever, economy-wide you always have to step back.

Speaker 2:

You know, after the initial shock, after all of the oh my gosh, what are we going to do?

Speaker 2:

Right, you have to step back and look at how can we benefit from this, how can we navigate it well enough that we can make it to the other side, and what are the benefits if we can manage to do that? Because anytime there's a difficulty like this, whether it's Amazon sellers, whether it's just e-commerce in general, whatever it is, there are going to be a lot of businesses that don't make it through those waters, like they're going to capsize, they don't have much profit margin, they don't really know how to manage their business, they have no idea what the numbers are and they're going to go under, and then that presents an opportunity for the businesses that can make it through. I think that's the biggest thing right now is just you know how do you properly navigate those waters in a way that at least you're still a brand that exists on the other side of this, and then you can take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves at that point. So I think that's kind of where I'm trying to keep my head right now, yeah, yeah, and I did.

Speaker 1:

I just want to reemphasize that. You know I've talked to a number of brands over the last few weeks that are, you know, some of them are clients, some of them are just, you know, relationships that I have, and I think a lot of brands are in the same boat, where you know they're looking at strategically how do you, how do we navigate this? And and what are you know, how can we translate this into upside? But also looking at it from a perspective of you know what, what do I need to survive today? And then how do I leverage this into an opportunity later? Because I mean, there are some pretty massive impacts.

Speaker 1:

As far as you know, there's certain products that are just not profitable, and so I think that's where it comes down to. You know those conversations that I'm having. Some of it is around like, hey, if you have products that you know aren't critical to your business and, with those tariffs in place, are not profitable, then maybe you know, maybe that strategy is, yeah, you run out of stock on that product for a while until tariffs are figured out, or there is a way to adjust those prices in order to make it make sense, rather than trying to put a lot of time and effort into a product that, until tariffs change, just isn't profitable. Time and effort into a product that you know, until tariffs change, just isn't profitable. The other thing that I know a lot of the brands that I spoke with of what they're doing is they are, you know, really slowing down a lot of their product developments Because if, especially if they're, you know, manufacturing in China, hey, it doesn't really make sense to put a lot of time and money into developing new products right now, at least if you know, within China, if you know there's no certainty around what the margins on those products are going to look like. But then the other thing on existing products is really, you know, I think you know looking at, hey, okay, if there is a window that opens up where you know tariffs drop dramatically, like what we've seen with other countries, kind of overnight of making sure that those products for your best sellers are ready to go.

Speaker 1:

Because my understanding you guys correct me if I'm wrong because import, export and duties is not my area of expertise, but talking to a number of people on this issue is that that tariff is determined by when those ships hit the water. So if you start shipping a product, whatever that tariff rate is of when you start shipping that from China is going to be what your tariff rate is when you import it here in the United States. So those brands are looking at hey, we've got X number of products at the manufacturer in China and they're waiting until, if those tariffs do drop, they've got to plan a place in order to move very quickly to get that inventory onto a boat so that way they can take advantage of a lower tariff rate that may be long-term or that window may be very, very small. So I think taking advantage of those things, of looking at what you can do in these types of situations, is helpful for some brands in kind of navigating these waters.

Speaker 3:

Taking a step back. I think the biggest thing being involved in ProTuff and seeing you know what things we've done to kind of navigate those waters I think the biggest thing to take away from this is that, first of all, what we know is that the one thing that's constant on Amazon is change, and something changes, whether it's increased fees or inbound placement fees or things change all the time and even though this is bigger than just a new fee on Amazon, sitting around and complaining about it. I know that it hurts and, yes, there's a lot of businesses that aren't going to make it. But I think the businesses that are able to pivot and not just whether it be tariffs or whether it be a problem with the manufacturer or something went wrong with one of your products and you're getting a whole bunch of bad reviews being able to pivot and not sit and dwell on the actual issue that you can't control, but figuring out a way to navigate those waters I mean, mike said it, he mentioned it and I think John you did also you know there are going to be brands that don't make it on the other side, and if you are able to be one of those brands that are able to navigate these waters and make it to the other side, like at ProTuff, for example.

Speaker 3:

I mean, we deal with a lot of cheap Chinese manufacturers that are selling a pole for 40, 50 bucks and those, like, with this whole de minimis exemption going away at the beginning of May, like I have a feeling a lot of those are going to either go away completely or they're going to have to raise their price pretty significantly because now they have to pay tariffs and reciprocal tariffs and all of this stuff.

Speaker 3:

So that's one of the things that we did early on is, yes, it sucks, yes it's going to be painful, but what can we do?

Speaker 3:

And for us it goes back to a lot of the principles that we've talked about in this podcast for over a year. We have a decent sized list that we were able to send an email to be honest and transparent and we did a little bit of a promotion that we haven't really done catalog wide, and it generated a lot of cashflow that we needed. So, like because we had that list and because we had the foundation, we were able to generate some much needed cashflow to help us get kind of navigate those waters. So I think that's really the biggest thing is that things are going to change on Amazon. Things are going to change in the world of e-commerce. Spending a little bit of time letting the pain hit but then deciding how you're going to pivot, I think, is the most important thing to take away from this situation, because tariffs, yes, they suck, but there's going to be something else in a couple of months from now that's going to suck too.

Speaker 2:

And so one thing, just to put some numbers to paper for people about the value of having that list right. So we have about 40,000 people on our list. They're pretty active, and of course, we do cross-sell and we do whatnot, but most of us soft-sell, you know, it's like we're not really hardcore about it. To be honest, we probably should be a little bit more hardcore about our cross and upsells, and I think that's one of the things, quite frankly, that I think I've probably learned from this process is that we'd probably be in a little better shape if we were doing that more. But setting those things aside, because our inventory was in such rough shape, we ended up stocking out on three of our hero products at Amazon. Now, fortunately, we had FBM backup, and so we were able to use that to at least be able to fulfill those Amazon orders. But obviously CTRs are worse, cvrs are worse, because your delivery times aren't nearly as good, right? So our sales went way down. And here's another piece of information Although it's really useful to have FBM backup so that you don't completely run out of stock, volume of sale is going to decrease significantly. We literally were able to track it out and we were selling a third of the volume in terms of number of units that we would have been selling had we had FBA. That's how precipitous the drop in sales was. So don't run out at FBA. Have FBA on backup, but make sure you got stuff at FBA.

Speaker 2:

But beyond that, if we talk about the list, even with those struggles, the nice thing about the list is they already trust us, they know us and they are much more willing to put up with an extended delivery window or something right, because they want our brand. They don't want something else. So our volume was down so low that we were only doing I think we were hitting maybe 10 to 12,000 a day would have been essentially our kind of our baseline, right we, when we sent out that message, essentially over a span of just over two days we put through an extra one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in sales from that list and that was a huge cash injection for us, which we really needed from a cashflow perspective. So if you don't have a list, like I mean, I know we hammer this and we hammer this and we hammer this, but I'm telling you like you need that list because one thing it gives me a little bit of comfort because even if this whole thing was to fall to pieces, right, and you know, I could rebuild off of that list because I have 40,000 people who trust me, who trust my brand, who trust my business, right, so I could rebuild a new business off of that list. It might not even be in the pool products, you know business. Maybe something completely different. If I find something that the majority of that list would be interested in and they know me and trust me, they would buy it. So, you know, don't underestimate the value of that.

Speaker 2:

But then the other, really, really thinking outside the box in terms of how to solve this, you know the problem that you're running into like, try not to look at it simply from the position of which of our levers can we pull harder or not pull or whatever? Like we've got, we have these 10 levers that we're working all the time right, which of them you know and what combination should we pull? That you know solves this problem right Instead, not that you shouldn't look at that, obviously you should. But I think we sometimes end up in a space where we get very narrow-minded and those are the only 10 levers that we know and so we don't think of any other levers and there's some major levers that you might be able to pull outside of that that you haven't had to previously because things were kind of sailing along but that could have a drastic impact, for instance. I'll give you an example Now, unfortunately this is not going to work for us, but it was an avenue that we considered and for another brand it might've been absolutely a solution. So we sell pool tools.

Speaker 2:

Australia is also a very big market for pool products and essentially it's pretty open because there really aren't any really good products on the Australian market. We haven't gone that road because there's a little bit of a learning curve there. And we know Amazon, our D2C wasn't really fleshed out very well and Amazon Australia is not really that well fleshed out, so it's not like that's a big volume play for sale, but D2C is. And if you could spin up D2C, you know, fairly quick, like if you already kind of have it and you spun it up for Australia, you know for us that would have been an immediate win because all of that inventory that was in China could go into Australia tariff free and all of a sudden you know we can sell product. Right now it doesn't work for us because Australia is an opposing season, so it doesn't help us right this moment, but it was an idea. And for another brand, where it wasn't a seasonal thing like that, taking that product moving into Australia that's an English speaking country that probably uses many of the same products that we use over here and taking advantage of that opportunity to at least start pushing some product through could be a solution. But you might not think of that normally.

Speaker 2:

The other thing is China. Your products are already sitting in China. You're like, if you don't want to bring them in because of the tariff, where is it that means they're in China? China is a huge market. So, depending on your product, maybe live sales, like the social media, like live selling that's massive in China. You can hire a live influencer in China to do live sale events for your product, and there's some of those influencers that do millions in just hours. So, again, not something that you would normally think of if you're generally focused on the US market, but if you can't bring the product here, why not sell it there? So just make sure that you're actually looking at some of those other levers that you might be able to pull that ordinarily you might not think.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think also just thinking about the other opportunities that it presents too is if you can take advantage of them. So if you happen to be, you know cause I've talked to a couple of brands as well that you know some of their products are not manufactured in China, and so for them, I'm like this is the time when you need to, like you know, not double down like triple and quadruple down, and really look at which of your competitors are out of stock and which of your competitors are low stock, because even if you just look at that single tactic right there, there's huge opportunities for you to gain market share. Because, yeah, maybe they like brand X and they went searching for that brand. Well, if that product is out of stock and you're providing a very solid alternative that, again, if they're on Amazon that they can get tomorrow, chances are they're going to go with your product if there's nothing else available. Most brands aren't so strong that somebody will be like, well, it's got to be this or nothing. They're going to say, well, this is what I wanted, but if there's something that's comparable, especially on Amazon, give that a shot. If I don't like it, let's be honest, their return policy is very generous, so customers feel a lot more confident with it. So looking at those types of opportunities of just looking at low stock and out of stock for your competitors is a big advantage. And then I haven't seen the numbers for Amazon yet, but I did find it really interesting.

Speaker 1:

I was reading through something the other day where I was talking about how Timu and Shien were like 20% of the ad spend on Meta over the last year. So if you look at, you know those two companies well. First of all, you know and I've talked to a couple of brands where they had knockoffs that were being sold on Timu for 25% of the price that they were. Well, as of yesterday, timu is now charging 145% tariff fee. So most of those knockoffs are no longer competitive.

Speaker 1:

And some of these brands especially that have kind of a premium brand and have invested in the patent and basically been ripped off by a lot of these Chinese sellers, that they're able to get some of that back. And the same thing with Amazon You're talking about a little bit with the pool polls of hey, there's a lot of Chinese competitors. They're selling a product for 20, 30 bucks if you've got, you know, the inventory and capacity like now, is an amazing time to grab market share If you're in a position for your brand in order to do it, if you've got the inventory and the cash in order to do it. I think this is one of those you know instances that comes up, you know, every few years to where, if you can figure out how to pull the right levers right now, you can make some massive progress.

Speaker 2:

Well, and like you said, John, like if you know, for instance, the brands that are getting ready, you know, and preparing for if the tariff number comes down, you know, if you've got the cash flow and the reserves to do it. You know, moving in, let's face it, I could tariff stay where they are. Yeah, is it likely? Highly unlikely. How long do they stay? I don't know Right, but but it seems highly unlikely that they stay at the at the rate that they are. And so if you've got the money to invest in some inventory and a place to store it, say, you drop over in China so you don't have to pay the tariffs yet Maybe you negotiate 60-day terms or even 90-day terms with your supplier, right, you might have a situation where you could get these orders flowing, have the inventory waiting at Skewdrop and as soon as that tariff number comes down, you're on the ship and ready to roll and everybody else is 30, 60, 90 days back because they got to wait for production.

Speaker 2:

Like you're on the ship and ready to roll and everybody else is 30, 60, 90 days back because they got to wait for production, like you said, now you've got the inventory here, they don't, you know, and you're off to the races Now. Not everybody has the cash flow or the capital to do that, but if you do, I would recommend that you consider that as an option. I'm not telling you do it, but you should definitely be thinking about that as an option to potentially get ahead of your.

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean similar to, like stock market crashes and, you know, the housing crash, like when something like that, a major event happens in the financial markets, it really is the best time to buy, and that's when. That's when true, like actual wealth, like generational wealth, is built. And that's really one of the reasons why there's a big gap between the you know, the one percenters and and the non, because that's what they do. They have so similar in this story. You know, if you do have those reserves and and if you have the infrastructure to be able to pivot during these times, I mean I'm confident that our entire market is going to change once. As long as the de minimis exemption goes away at the beginning of May, which is scheduled to, I mean, our market's going to change significantly. I firmly believe that and and so like that's that's the thing that we're talking about is having the foundation in place to be able to invest in times like this, but also, like you know, a lot of even though it was really stressful a lot of really good ideas have come from. Some of them are kind of off the wall, but, like those off the wall ideas, in some cases turn into something like we've been talking about like, being able to like. Can we put some of our parts together in Columbia? Can we like what about an Indian manufacturer, which we actually just went and visited last week? So like all of these things that were kind of brainstorming on how, how do we solve this problem, is going to make us stronger on the other side. So like that's again, that's being able to sit with it for long enough to be able to start making some solid decisions that are going to set you up for strength later on down the road.

Speaker 3:

I mean, that's what's going to happen at the end of this is I'm confident that once we get through this, our market's going to look a lot different and we're going to be able our conversion will go a lot higher, because now we're going to have a lot of those smaller you know, very cheap, like cheap made and cheap price products that are on the market.

Speaker 3:

Now they're going to go away or they're going to have to raise their price, which is going to put us more in line. We're already at the premium end of the price point, but I think this is going to kind of tilt those scale in the other direction, so we're going to come out stronger on the other side, and it's because of the foundation we built, but it's also because we kept level-headed instead of complaining and oh the world is, the sky is falling, we actually sat down and had some real honest discussions where we threw some really obnoxious ideas, threw them at the wall, and some really good conversations came from that. So that's what I really loved about how these conversations were happened, happened, and that's really when you have that foundation for that that solid foundation it allows you to make moves like that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think it's totally rational. And you know, I understand. You know, when things like this happen, for people to say, wow, that really sucks, this is really unfair, and that's a totally rational response. And then you go okay, what's next Like for me? Personally, I have to switch from that this sucks, to how do we, how do we figure out a solution? You know, the faster I make that switch, the better it is for everybody.

Speaker 1:

And I think in this case, again, a lot of creative solutions that maybe you haven't thought of before. And I think the other thing just to build off of what you said, matt, which is you're not in this alone as a brand. There's a lot of other people that you support. So maybe I know there's a lot of brands that are having conversations with their manufacturer to say, hey, you know we need to share the load on or the additional costs on these tariffs and maybe it's not going to be 50-50, but you know, even if they give you another 10 to 20%, you know that's far better than zero.

Speaker 1:

The other thing is that I think, again, the logistics piece of it is not my area of expertise, but just on, what I'm reading right now is that the shipping fees are probably going to go down pretty significantly if these tariffs stay in place over the next month or so. Well, there is an opportunity in order to ship some of that stuff over here into a duty-free zone, and some people will say, okay, well, that's super expensive and there are some definite truths to that. But if you can make up some of that margin because you're paying 30% or 40% less on your shipping over here, maybe that makes sense. It's not going to be a fit for every brand, but kind of like what you were saying, mike, which is considering options that were outside of what you considered before, and getting creative and relooking at all those things that you know didn't make sense before to come up with something that maybe makes sense now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think I mean. So, actually, maybe it's a maybe it's a decent place to somewhat change gears on this a little bit, just because so there's a few things that obviously we've mentioned, you know, in this podcast in terms of, we'll say, potential solutions, you know to to the problem. One of them that people are talking about is bonded warehouses. You know, and I think that's something to investigate. If you don't know what that is like, look it up, you know, like this, this is not probably the conversation for an expanded understanding of what that is and why you might use it, but essentially it gives you the opportunity, you know, to at least bring the product over and wait it out, right, so that it's already here and you don't pay the duty. Yet you're paying to have storage in this bonded warehouse and then once the tariff comes down, then you release it. It's a little bit of a risk. You are going to invest a little bit more money because you do have to pay to get it over here and you don't know when it's going to drop, but it's an option. But something else, and this is a strategy that I'm going to say I'm not saying do it, because we don't even know yet whether we can do it or whether it's valid, but it's an idea that I have, that we're vetting and it looks right. It looks like it's possible.

Speaker 2:

I'm not going to give all the details of it, but I'm going to give the broad strokes, and that is that products that can be classified under Section 232 of the tariff code are exempt from the reciprocal tariffs. And the reciprocal tariffs are the ones that are really hammering everybody right, like yeah, there's some other tariffs that those are stacking on top of, but as a rule it's the reciprocal tariff that's really hammering people and putting them in a bind. So any way that you can exempt yourself from those reciprocal tariffs is a significant win. So the question is is your product eligible for Section 232? And the answer to that question is if it is within certain categories and if it is a metal product, then it falls under section 232. But also there's been an addition made to that, which is you don't necessarily have to be a metal product. In other words, I mean, for lack of any better way to say it a metal product is a product that is made up mostly of metal and the metal is the important part of the product. So, for instance, our pool pole essentially is metal product right, like, okay, it's got a handle that's not metal and it's got a locking mechanism that isn't metal but everything else is metal and the pole itself that's what it is right. So it would be a section 232 option. So we knew I knew probably a couple of weeks ago that the poll was in good shape. You know that we could be exempt from the reciprocal tariffs. What I didn't realize was the possibility that some of our other products, which are not really truly metal products, might also be exempt. So here's the addition to Section 232 that becomes relevant and you should investigate it like we are the addition to Section 232 that becomes relevant and you should investigate it like we are.

Speaker 2:

Section 232 now has a clause that essentially says that metal derivatives can also qualify under Section 232.

Speaker 2:

And a metal derivative technically is any product that falls within a certain category list, and there's a list out there that you can look at to see if your product falls in one of those categories. If you're in one of those categories and you have any metal in your product, you can be classified as a metal derivative and you can send in under Section 232. Maybe there's some other thing here that I'm not seeing. However, so far, chats with multiple deep reasoning models of AI have led to the same conclusion, which is that if you have a metal screw in your product and your product falls within one of those classification categories, you can be Section 232 and you can be an exempt from the reciprocal tariff. You can be an exempt from the reciprocal tariff. So I would immediately go and look and find out is your product within one of those categories? And if you don't have metal in your product, how can you swap out a piece or a part or something to make it metal so you can be section 232?

Speaker 2:

Now, before you do any of that, go talk to a customs broker. Go talk to the people that know what they're doing. But I am 80% confident that this is a strategy that we're going to be able to use to move a number of our products into the country without paying those reciprocal tariffs. It's not advice. I'm not telling you to do it. Don't sue me if it doesn't work. I'm just telling you investigate.

Speaker 1:

Not legal advice, just a caveat there. But I think this is a great example, and I think this is probably a good place to wrap on this topic for today. But I think it's a great example of how, as entrepreneurs, we have to find creative solutions, the problems that come up. So today's problem happens to be tariffs, and I think, matt, you said it best when you said tomorrow's problem is going to be something different. But at the end of the day, it really boils down to being able to problem solve and being able to effectively implement solutions to those problems in order to build the brands.

Speaker 1:

And the nice thing about it is that, yes, these types of issues quite frankly suck Like there's no other way to put it. They're very challenging, they're very expensive, they're very stressful, all those types of things. That said, they are also an amazing opportunity to continue to grow your brand, while other competitors, whether they be in China or other places, are not willing to put in the effort and the time and everything else and the resources in order to solve these problems, to move their brand forward. So you know, I think there's a you know, a ton of opportunity for the brands who can figure out how to navigate these waters over the next few months and continue to grow. So that's that's kind of my perspective on it. Before we wrap up anything else that Mike or Matt that you want to add.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I think the biggest thing from my standpoint is and we've said it a couple of times in this conversation is it sucks, like you said, john, sit with that. It does, there's no question about it. But pivoting, having a strong foundation, having your list, having all these things that we talk about, there's a reason why we talk about it and why we hammer it, and this is a very, very real world example of the importance of building a fortress around your brand, which includes building an audience, and we've been able to leverage that and be able to kind of help us get through this. So it's the same thing that we talk about all the time. This is a real world example of why, why having that in place is important.

Speaker 2:

I think the only thing that I would add is there's a reason that people talk about diversification. Now, on the one hand, you know there are those conversations like you'll hear Alex Morales say this all the time, and I don't disagree with him. You know, like, as entrepreneurs and business owners, it's easy to get caught by the next shiny object. Like, as entrepreneurs and business owners, it's easy to get caught by the next shiny object and he talks a lot about. You know, like, no, stay focused on the one thing. You know that you're doing right, and I think that's valuable advice. I think it's easy for us to get distracted and whatnot. But it's also you know you have to. It's not just the next shiny object idea, it's how can I do things in my business where I diversify my risk, and so, for instance, if you have a single manufacturer in a single country, that's a problem, because any problem that that manufacturer runs into is your problem and you can't solve it. If the country becomes a problem, you can't solve it right If you know whatever that is. So the more you can diversify, the better off you are. So, for instance, we had two manufacturers in China. That's great, because if one manufacturer has a problem. We can get product from the other manufacturers, so that's awesome. But if China becomes the problem and they're both there well now I'm not actually really diversified anymore. So we've now got an Indian manufacturer that we're working with that'll be producing poles soon. I think there's a good chance that they could potentially produce nets if we needed them to. And so again, now we've got multiple manufacturers, but also multiple different countries. Anytime there's a way in your business, without over-complicating things, that you can diversify yourself to mitigate the risks of one pillar going down. Please pay attention to that.

Speaker 2:

And at the end of the day, one of the best ways to diversify, especially if you're an Amazon seller, is to have a list, because then with the list, it's not just I can sell anything I want to those individuals, as long as it's something they need because they trust me. It's not just having a list, but it's having a list of people that actually trust you and your brand and what you stand for, right. If you have that, whatever happens to your business, you have an opportunity, that you have all those people that you can sell something to and you can rebuild from the ashes, and that gives me a lot of comfort. You know I could. I could sell them an app. I could sell them some other physical product. I could sell them a service. I could. You know I could promote affiliate products I could.

Speaker 2:

There's a million different ways that I could potentially monetize that list if I had to. That don't involve selling them pool tools. And so if you don't have that list, please start building the list. And if you don't know how to build a list, then connect with us so we can help you figure out how to build that list. I mean, go back and listen to some of our podcasts, because we talked about it on a number of occasions. There's a lot of different ways to do it.

Speaker 1:

Please start doing it. All right. Well, I think that's a great place to wrap for today. Thank you everybody for listening and we look forward to having you again on another Tactics Tuesday.

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Jon Stojan

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Matt Atkins

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Mike Kaufman

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