An Amazon Seller's Blueprint For the Mexican Market with Ramiro Vlasco
Dec 19, 2023Season 1Episode 208
Firing The Man
Picture this: a Mexican engineer turned marketing guru, who's also a seasoned Amazon seller, sharing his insights on cracking the Mexican market. That's exactly what you're in for as we welcome our guest, Ramiro Vlasco, to the show! Ramiro's unique journey from the world of engineering to the echelons of Amazon entrepreneurship is sure to inspire. His remarkable acumen, coupled with his Mexican roots, positions him as the perfect guide to offer invaluable insights into the potential of the Mexican market.
As the conversation unfolds, we explore the tremendous potential of selling on Amazon Mexico, especially for US-based sellers. With Mexico's robust post-pandemic recovery and its growing trade relationship with the US, there's a lot to unpack. We delve into the rise of online shopping in Mexico, and how this shift in consumer behavior is fueling market growth. If you're a US seller, take note. We predict a significant uptick in the Mexican market's potential, making it the perfect time to consider expansion.
However, every marketplace comes with its own set of challenges. In our final segment, Ramiro takes us through the intricacies of Mexican bureaucracy, regulations, and tax implications for foreign businesses. It's complex terrain, but with Ramiro's guidance, we see these challenges not as deterrents, but as opportunities. We also get a rare glimpse into Ramiro's personal life - his love for music, chess, cooking, and his favorite book, Dune. Ramiro's unique insights on entrepreneurship, strategy, risk management, and the role of luck in achieving success round-off an unmissable conversation. Tune in and get ready to expand your horizons.
Picture this: a Mexican engineer turned marketing guru, who's also a seasoned Amazon seller, sharing his insights on cracking the Mexican market. That's exactly what you're in for as we welcome our guest, Ramiro Vlasco, to the show! Ramiro's unique journey from the world of engineering to the echelons of Amazon entrepreneurship is sure to inspire. His remarkable acumen, coupled with his Mexican roots, positions him as the perfect guide to offer invaluable insights into the potential of the Mexican market.
As the conversation unfolds, we explore the tremendous potential of selling on Amazon Mexico, especially for US-based sellers. With Mexico's robust post-pandemic recovery and its growing trade relationship with the US, there's a lot to unpack. We delve into the rise of online shopping in Mexico, and how this shift in consumer behavior is fueling market growth. If you're a US seller, take note. We predict a significant uptick in the Mexican market's potential, making it the perfect time to consider expansion.
However, every marketplace comes with its own set of challenges. In our final segment, Ramiro takes us through the intricacies of Mexican bureaucracy, regulations, and tax implications for foreign businesses. It's complex terrain, but with Ramiro's guidance, we see these challenges not as deterrents, but as opportunities. We also get a rare glimpse into Ramiro's personal life - his love for music, chess, cooking, and his favorite book, Dune. Ramiro's unique insights on entrepreneurship, strategy, risk management, and the role of luck in achieving success round-off an unmissable conversation. Tune in and get ready to expand your horizons.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. On today's episode, we have the honor to interview Ramiro Vlasco. Ramiro is a Mexican national and veteran Amazon expert. Ramiro believes business is about the people and align incentives to create win-wins. Ramiro once helped grow sales for a brand by 40,000%. Now he is on a mission to give Mexican and Latin America consumers access to the world's best brands. Ramiro is the president and co-founder of Go Advance. Welcome to the show, ramiro.
Speaker 3:
Thank you so much, david. I was really happy to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. We're excited for this podcast. So, to start things off, can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your background and your path to becoming a marketer, an Amazon seller and a business owner?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, my god, and this is a little bit of a longer story than probably you're used to, but essentially I grew up all around the world. Two and a half years old, get sent away, have to do some smoke, follow my dad to his job, and we were functionally expats our entire lives. Right, studied in Romania, did a bunch of things, and then I did a university in the UK where, mistakenly, I went into engineering and I say mistakenly, because I am not an engineer, like I don't. I was talking about this the other day about how. So how did you like get through? How did you get your degree? I'm like I learned how to answer the questions but, like you know, I'm not. I'm not wired in that way. You know, excuse me. So I finished my engineering school and I'm like you know what? I want to go back to Mexico. I want to live in Mexico. I miss it. I haven't been around Like at that point. The last time I had visited was five years ago. Right, I'm like I want to go back and I want to just make a life there. My entire family's against it. They're like are you kidding me? It's dangerous. Oh, my god, it's like the opportunities aren't there. Like all these things, I'm like no, like I want to get tacos and the like on the quarter, you know. Like that's, that's the life I want. So I come back and I start applying for engineering jobs because that's really all I know At this point. I'm 24, maybe. Like I have my degree. I worked for a year in Indonesia and then I was like as a writer, like nothing. I'm like what, what can I offer to this world? Engineering jobs in Mexico just weren't very well paid and I said you know what? I'm just going to apply to any clothes. My eyes made a generic CV and just shot it out. I think we've all been there Just shot it out. One of the first interviews I landed was with a marketing agency for Amazon. I show up and the five is good and the coffee's great. I this is honestly. The coffee was everything. I was like I think I could do this. And when I started doing marketing on Amazon, I was like wait, this is exactly this is exactly my vibe, this is exactly what I'm good at, because it's got problem solving. Like maybe engineering school you have, but it doesn't have. Like you don't have to know how to do any calculus. Right, like it's. It's it's sort of like the basics of things. So what you? What I found was that it's it's functionally a mix of problem solving and creativity, which I have this music background. I was doing a singer, songwriter stuff for years and some of the creative stuff stuck, some of the engineering stuff stuck, some of the Excel stuff stuck. I'm like, oh, this is exactly what I want to do. So I worked there for about four years and about a year and a half ago I was like, all right, I can do my own thing. The hubris of going, I can do my own thing. As a Mexican consumer, by this point of living in Mexico for several years, the Amazon selection isn't great, like that's. That's just to the point where and we'll talk about the the sort of macro lens aspect of it but I was like, wait, we can just help brands get into Mexico, because this is a niche that no one's doing and I can help. I can bring value directly, not only to clients which cool, like bringing value to clients, ultimately what makes a business run but bring value to consumers, make the Mexican market seem more legitimate. Or like, make it more legitimate and give a broader product selection at fairer prices to everyone. That's shopping in country, that is direct economic stimulation. That was so exciting to me and I was like I'm actually doing a good for my community and I think that's what's ultimately driving this entire thing, and the 12 hour workdays and the you know sleepless nights and everything that goes into owning a business is this feeling of all right, at least I'm doing something that's moderately useful for a lot of people.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, now that's awesome. Yeah, welcome to Shoromiro. And got a very diverse background marketing, engineering and you had mentioned singer songwriter. So it's kind of cool that you've kind of smashed them all together and like figured out what drives you and what motivates you. I really like that. So what part of Mexico you're living in Mexico now? I'm living in Mexico right now. What La Jara?
Speaker 3:
La Jara Okay, yes, and it's the second biggest city. We've got a big tourism sort of vibe, but not as much as Cancun or beaches places. It's a weird mix. We also have financial districts, we have. It's just a regular like big city.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, no, that's interesting Before we get into some in depth questions. Are you a football fan?
Speaker 3:
I wish I was yeah, I wish I was. All of my cousins are, all of that family is, and they're just upset. I'm like I don't want to be upset when, like something I have no control over, like I love light football but like I'm going to sit down on a Friday night to watch it.
Speaker 4:
Probably not. You know, that's it. Yeah, no worries, we had a team come from Latin America to. So David and I are both from St Louis. We just got our first soccer team this year and we played against in a tournament against a club from Club America, which is big from Latin America. I think they're one of the best clubs there. They came here and it was not good for us. I can tell you that much.
Speaker 3:
They are simultaneously the club with the most fans and the most haters by far, so they are literally known for being the club that says, yeah, hate me more. And their fans will wear the jerseys knowing that they're going to get booed on the streets because it's like the thing for them, so that's awesome.
Speaker 4:
Awesome, so let's dive right into it. So my first question for you would be you know a lot of people listening now on this show, or they sell primarily Amazon, and so why should a third party seller selling on Amazon US consider selling into Mexico? What are some, you know, pros, cons, benefits, all the thing I talked about the most recently Within country.
Speaker 3:
It's become a political debate. It's become a well, the country actually looks really good and then people that are opposed to the governor, to the governing party right now, will say, yeah, but that doesn't matter because it's going to crash. So it's currently like this heated debate has become politicized. I can only look at the numbers. You say. I have a diverse background. I also traded for about two years for a living, which is something I'm not proud of. I don't again like if I'm, if I like bringing value to people. Maybe when I was trading for two years I wasn't bringing value to anyone. You know we look at every macroeconomic sort of measure and it looks fantastic. The handling of the pandemic, for example. Mexico didn't print extra money. Mexico didn't go into debt with the IMF as so many countries did. Mexico decided we literally just tightened our belt and went all right. Well, we're going to tough it out, which means we saw a really good recovery post pandemic. On the other hand, we see we saw during the pandemic, every single port on the West Coast completely backed up. In the US, it was impossible to get products in from China. Sometimes the message would be yeah, the ship is, but they can't get an appointment for a month and a half. So what happened was a lot of the third-party sellers started looking to Mexico for manufacturing alternatives. So we're seeing this direct trade relationship grow. Mexico recently within, I think, maybe six weeks ago surpassed China as the US's number one trading partner. So macroeconomically we're seeing so much, not only direct growth, but setting the seeds for the next 10 years Tesla building a gigafactory in Monterrey. We have near-shoring companies AYR for just because they can't keep up with the demand of manufacturers looking well, sellers looking to manufacture in Mexico. We're seeing, thanks to all of this, a very strong peso, which means that we can hit lower price points that still make the same margin in US dollars. And to add, on top of that, you have things like a remote work that has just sent jobs all around Latin America, not just Mexico, which is leading to dollars flooding into the country and expanding the purchasing power of the middle class. What we're seeing, and then, on top of everything like that's just the macroeconomic aspects of it. On the other hand, you have 700 million people across Latin America, 123 million in Mexico, being slowly digitized in their shopping behavior. I mean, I got here seven years ago, and seven years ago, 10 years ago, I was doing all my shopping on Amazon when I was in the UK. So seven years ago I get here and there's still distrust. There's this wait when you order, does it actually get to your house? And you go yes, I've been doing this for years Like this is what I, you know. So that is slowly being eroded away. There's distrust. Payment solutions are being brought into the fray. So Mexico is a cash-based economy. For a lot of people don't run credit cards. We don't have the debt culture that exists in other countries, so for a lot of times it's like okay, but how do I pay? Well, payment solutions were implemented. You can actually I can order on Amazon and pay at the corner shop. Like that's crazy. I can go there, pay in cash and they'd receive it and I get my Amazon product. The solutions are being taken, the steps are being taken, the solutions being devised on top of the macroeconomic sort of flow Lad scape also digitize all these shoppers. So what we're seeing is a growing pie and we're seeing the US West, maybe eight years ago, when you could pull out the 18,000 review garlic crusher and it was just put SEO. You know what I mean. Put SEO, put on your image like really nice gallery image from Fiverr off you go. So it's just this mix, this swirl of things that made us gamble in going wait, mexico's gonna go crazy for the next 10 years. Mexico is the place to be to have that gold rush. Is it an immediate like? Hey, I just put it in, I'm now selling hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, of course not. Like, that would be false advertising. But it is. Hey, you can come in see, functionally like a 10 to 15% bump in total sales, because that's the volume that we're going for, about 10 to 15% of your total US sales, with some caveats or sometimes that it actually matches, depending on we'll get to talk about that later. But and they wrote, with the market, we saw 30% growth 2019 to 2020, 2020 to 2021, and then 140% growth, 21 to 22 in traffic. It's ridiculous. So, and every single time, like I traded for a living, every single time I go, I've thought in the past oh, this is the peak, it's never been the peak. I thought $17,000 Bitcoin was the highest, it would ever go. And then you know what I mean. Like this is.
Speaker 4:
I think like it's gonna slow down. It sounds like it. I mean, everything you just went over was a lot to digest. So a couple of things I wanna dig into is one you had mentioned. So it's about 10 to. You're saying if a US based seller who had been selling in the US for a while, if they started selling in Amazon Mexico, they should see about 10 to 15% of the volume they see in the US. Yeah, it's to me it sounds like all of this stuff you know you're a student of the macroeconomic and kind of like analyzing all of this it looks like getting into Mexico now would be great because it's kind of like very strong and it sounds like, you know, seven years ago there were some distrust nobody in this cash-based economy. So it looks like there's a lot of runway getting out and over the next decade, as you know, the Mexican shoppers transition to digitized and they trust Amazon more. It'll kind of increase. So I think that's a pretty strong argument for selling there.
Speaker 3:
I mean, yeah, ultimately it's. I think there's a lot of sellers there will be like, well, I need the return right now. I will be like, all right, then maybe this program is good for you. But if you can invest and be ready to dominate the market from now so you can dominate the market as it grows I mean, we've all seen the protein market or any supplement market. We've seen like these hyper competitive markets. You're like, oh, if I had gotten in, if I had gotten in five years ago, like this would have been mine, and now I can't. You know, now I don't have million dollars a month to spend on advertising. Right, look at.
Speaker 4:
Mexico. One other one quick follow on, then I'll kick it over to David. Do you know how many fulfillment centers are in Mexico, Like is Amazon? Are they spending capex or are they spending dollars to expand?
Speaker 3:
Yes, we have three primary fulfillment centers and our three biggest cities Mexico City, guadalajara and Monterrey. They have fulfilled the entire country within city. Very often you have same day delivery. To surrounding areas you have next day delivery and only the most remote areas you'll see today delivery. So for the most part the country operates under same-day delivery. Sorry, next-day delivery.
Speaker 2:
That's awesome. That's awesome. That's better than in the US. We're pretty standard two-day. I would say some days you get it the next day, but I'd say we're pretty standard two-day. So when we're looking at market share in Mexico and Latin America, out of these marketplaces what has the largest market share or where do you feel the most opportunity is?
Speaker 3:
Right now it's still Mercado Liberty. Mercado Liberty is an Amazon competitor that started in Argentina because Amazon wasn't here Again. That's part of why it took so long to ramp up. It was a couple of Argentinian guys went hey, we should start a marketplace, and they made it Latin America-wide. Each country has their own subdomain, like the US wood, like Amazon wood, and it still accounts for about 43% of all e-commerce per year. So this includes Shopify websites, amazon, everything. It takes 43% of the pie. It does have more consumer trust, also because people have been using it for longer and it operates a little bit differently, because who sells it like eBay, who sells it really, who sells it, matters for organic ranking, as we think it is because we all think about it. On Amazon terms, they get shown higher. If you have a good reputation, amazon is catching up quick. Though At some point in the past two years, amazon looked at Mexico. Jeff Bezos looked south and went hey, we want that, we want that back, we want that pie, and they're making a huge push. Right now, numbers suggest that under 10% of Mexican shoppers have prime. Play around that. How do you optimize this? But that's sure to change and that's going to change your time and you need to be keeping up with this to sell to the people you're selling to.
Speaker 2:
I'm sure we have a listener who sells on Amazon US and they're listening to this podcast and they're thinking I want to expand it. One other marketplace Would you recommend Mexico, or are there other Latin American countries that you would recommend first?
Speaker 3:
It depends on what type of investment you have. I'm not one marketplace to expand to my first stop and I have the time and the brain power and the capital to go through with it. Europe is probably if you get access to what, eight marketplaces in one, I'd go there first. If you're going just like hey man, I just want something that's going to be easy and going to get me results real quick and requires less of a time investment, and everything 100% Mexico. There is no doubt about it. I would compare it with Brazil. Brazil has more volume. Brazil is impossible to get into. It might impossible. I mean just really hard, tariff wise, setup wise, whatever. Colombia seems fantastic, chile seems fantastic, but those are mostly a Mercado Liberty based Mexico. You can test with remote fulfillment. You're not going to get great results with remote fulfillment, but you can at least see how that works and then it's a no brainer.
Speaker 2:
The remote fulfillment. Just to dive into that a little bit to any of our listeners that are US sellers. There's a program called North American Remote Fulfillment and it's a way to sell in Canada and Mexico with your US inventory and it's a good way to dip your toe into the water. But you're right, when we expand it into Canada we have tremendously better results when we have inventory in Canadian warehouses. We saw a huge increase there and I would imagine that you should not judge Mexico based on your North American remote fulfillment results. You need to send inventory there, I think, to properly test that market. What do you?
Speaker 3:
think I shop here and I hate when it says importación. It says like, hey, it is going to take six days to get to you and you have to pay a couple 10, 15 bucks to get it through customs. What happens is, with Narf, a bunch of things go wrong. The delivery time is one. The other thing that I think really hurts is when either sellers don't make money or they're putting their prices up. Anyone that's listening to this podcast and that's selling on Narf, go on seller central and look at your. Go into the Mexico Mexican marketplace within your seller central and look at the fees you're paying and you're going to be like wait, hold on. That's not what I signed up for, because Narf will take like three extra dollars on top of your regular FBA to be shipping it down and a lot of sellers just go. You know I'm going to just make that into the price and then they're going to go a little bit higher. You're suddenly priced out of the market. It no longer makes sense. We had a case recently with a client that was like oh, we're actually already drop shipping. I'm like, okay, how much are you paying for a drop ship? They go like $35 per unit. How much does it cost you to ship me a case? Then they went oh my God, $80. I'm like, yeah, so we're going to pay a dollar per unit instead of $35 per unit. Do you not think we can make that into the price? So, and it was very easy to set it to. Now come in next day delivery. You know, good, comparable prices start taking over the the category. This is there's too many barriers to entry. I already don't trust the market. I already don't know, like, if I can return it, because, again, I'm a shopper. That's new to this. You're also telling me it's going to take six days and I have to pay extra delivery and the price is higher.
Speaker 4:
Most of the Narf listings are dead and this is why people think that the volume isn't there right Couple follow on questions just to kind of take a step back and look at the entire Latin America like market space. And so you had mentioned Mercado Libre, right the now sorry, my Spanish is no bueno, but that one, hopefully I didn't butcher it too, too bad.
Speaker 3:
I say no bueno all the time. I know a native Spanish speaker is so funny. I'll be sitting across like the the table for my part of my part of summer, like all my partners in this are American. I just got this email. That's no bueno.
Speaker 4:
I don't know about the exact order now. So there's Mercado Libre and Amazon, and then so those are the two big players in Latin America, correct? Okay? And then, in terms of countries that are viable, that Amazon is in in Latin America, which, which countries is Amazon operating in right now? Directly Brazil?
Speaker 3:
and Mexico. And if I live let's say I live in Uruguay I'm either ordering from amazoncom and paying the delivery fees, or from Amazon Brazil.
Speaker 4:
So the two countries there and then you had mentioned Mexico is the better option versus Brazil.
Speaker 3:
Yes, cost benefit wise, you'll see a lot more like. Brazil has about 50% more volume. I mean, they're a bigger country. They have about 100% more bureaucracy than or at least no one's doing what we're what we're doing. If I had someone else already doing it there, then I could go there. It's just a very difficult space to get into. But, truth be told, I'm saying that because I know how to do it in Mexico. Perhaps if I didn't know how to do it in Mexico, I'd be doing this. I would be saying the same thing right.
Speaker 4:
So Brazil has a higher volume, but the barrier to entry is harder. It's starting to get into Brazil. Okay, now market share Mercado Libre versus Amazon for for Mexico and Brazil. Like what do you think the, the market share is between those two? Who owns what?
Speaker 3:
The latest results are Mercado Libre it's about 45% and Amazon about 30. So Amazon will still be, but that's another problem with Narf is you're not exploring Mercado Libre and a lot of products, for example pet products. You know, if you use typing dog leash, you'll see a lot more volume on Mercado Libre. So even pet product sellers that are on Narf are missing out on the volume.
Speaker 4:
Now my next question is for US based sellers. What are a couple of the challenges? Obviously, there's a language barrier. Besides that, like, how are shoppers in Latin America different from US sellers? And you know how can we overcome that?
Speaker 3:
One big difference is what stage, let's say, like the familiarity people are at with the digital shopping. A lot of the time it's very difficult to launch non-generic products on Amazon because your average shopper right now isn't going in and typing like problem solutions. I am not going in and saying I don't know a dog hair remover, I don't know that there's a solution. I'm not used to going in and seeing if there's a solution on Amazon. So we actually have to leverage off-platform traffic for some of these products to just get the visibility out, because it's very hard to break those markets natively. Also, because we're doing the two different marketplaces, we're breaking the same market twice, so it's very rough to just depend on Amazon as a traffic driver. On the other hand, we've seen the Amazon algorithm has changed, even within the US, and I think everyone that's an active seller on the US has felt that change where maybe we're moving away from let's hyper pack copy with SEO to try to get ranking. The algorithm has become advanced enough that it's like listen, you convert, I'll get you the people is sort of the new, the new style that we're working. So working on Amazon has become a lot more creative in the sense that we're going all right. How are we optimizing for conversion? How are we presenting the product in such a way that we're addressing the pain points that our consumers are going to be looking for to get them to convert and then Amazon will take care of the rest of the make? Like, of course, we still want to SEO, but it's not going to be as robotic. This algorithm change also is coming to Mexico, like that's something that doesn't have any delay. So what we're seeing is you need to understand the right words and the right problems that your consumers are going to be looking for. If I'm selling shoe cleaners, I have to not only understand why you want to get your shoes cleaned, but explain to the consumer in a very subtle way why this is better than your shoe. Other shoe cleaning alternatives. What are the added bonuses that we're giving you for you to click that buy out, that checkout button? And that can't happen with just a regular you know, a regular Amazon translation from your Amazon listing. It requires like a lot more strategic thought behind it and ultimately, I mean I don't really want to get into this, but that's why we set ourselves up in the way that we did, because it's like listen, like if you're not growing, we're not making any money, like we have to be aligned on these processes, on these like incentives, because there is the market's here. Man, I just got to be incentivized to catch it, you know.
Speaker 2:
I really enjoy this conversation and, prior to this conversation, have not seriously considered Mexico. You've made a very good, a good pitch for it, and so what are the steps Like?
Speaker 3:
how do you do it. Let me go into first what most people's experiences have been, because I know how incredibly frustrating it is. Listen to this day. I'm frustrated every single day with either a different agency, a different importing partner, a different logistic. There's something that I love my country, I love my countrymen. I have nothing but love. We have some attitudes that make business very frustrating. Sometimes we're prone to saying yeah, sure, and then not following up. We're prone to saying, yeah, that's totally the way, and then that's not the way. I recently went through this one. We expanded our business into supplements. We figured out how to do the entire supplement process the approvals, the everything that needs to happen. Here's what ended up happening. Every single person along the way was giving us different answers, because everyone's trying to sell something and it makes sense. This is the business world, right? If you're a hammer and I'm asking you what the solution is, you're going to say, hey, like bang on it, right. And then, if you're a screwdriver and ask you what the solution is, you're going to say, twist it right, like it makes. But it was incredibly frustrating. So a lot of the people that are looking to do this in-house are like all right, I talked to a lawyer. I need this. And then someone else goes no, that's not what you need. You need this. Fact is it's all pliable and it says that they were both probably right. But having this conflicting information, oh my God, it drives you nuts. You want to import it to Mexico. You need to have a Mexican business. You need someone that's going to be legally the owner of the product. You can't just have something in here that's no one's right. So, and it's to happen A lot of people run into this when they're going, when they're trying to ship to Mexican warehouses, like, oh, you know what, this isn't working. Let me just ship it to Mexico City. And Amazon goes sure, what's your tax ID? You're like what do you mean? What's my tax ID? Like, just take this stuff. They're like no, no, someone needs to be liable for this product. What's your tax ID? And that's where people run into their first roadblock. Ultimately, mexican regulations have become strict in that sense where it's no longer just anyone can sell. It's like no, okay, you want to have product in the country. You're paying taxes. Someone's owning the product, you're being responsible for it. You need a legal representative to be liable for it and actually any business that you make has a legal representative, that if you're breaking the law, they're the ones that legally, are responsible for it. So if you manage to get through all the bureaucracy, then you have to get the importing. If you sell a supplement, if you sell food, if you sell cosmetics, if you sell even pet products anything that NARF won't let you sell which, by the way, is a lot of categories there's ways to get it in. You have to figure out your harmonized system codes the HS codes for international and, based on that, find out the regulations labeling regulations. You have to build a label and they have to slap it on the product, because if you're selling something, the consumer, by law has to be able to know what they're buying. So they pick it up and they go oh yeah, this is in Spanish. And once you have that, then you work with an importing partner to get it across the border, get it to Mexico City. We actually, when we were just starting out this was maybe a year ago we had an issue where someone shipped down like one of our first shipments that we received. It was received in Mexico City. They didn't receive it at the warehouse because they delivered it after hours and they wouldn't re-deliver. It's like no, you have to come pick it up in person. I'm in a different city. We're talking about taking a whole well. Either that or we're sending it back. So I had to fly to Mexico City for literally flew out on the 7am flight, got out the boxes, drove them to well, took an Uber to the warehouse and then got on the plane back here. It was ridiculous. Some of this bureaucracy doesn't isn't very friendly. Honestly, when you hear all of that, are you really going to be carrying it out? That's insane. That's why we have what we have, which is we'll be the legal importers, we'll be the owners of the product, we'll be the like marketers, and we'll be everything every step along the way. Man, like I get it. It's a small market. I get it. It's unproven. I get it. It's a nightmare to get set up. I'll take all of that Like we're mostly a headache solver. Give me that and we'll ship it in. One final thing, though, also if you're trying to set up a business in Mexico and you don't speak Spanish, you're going to pay the foreigner tax, which means everyone's going to upcharge you every step along the way. It's, it's we're just trying to get around all of that because we realize that we can make it Cheap on our end. If we can be cheap and accessible and scalable, we can pass on the saving to our clients, to the consumers. Right, we can pass those things on to the consumers. They get a better deal. We have more shoppers to win win.
Speaker 4:
So one follow on to that and then we'll, and then we'll talk about go advance a bit and get and get more into that. So so what are some mistakes? So I'll just do a refresher and so remember you mentioned the listings have to be dialed in, obviously in Spanish, and obviously you have to solve, you know, to cuss the shoppers problem, what they're looking for and why yours is better. The second one you mentioned would be you have to have a registered business in Mexico. And then, third one is the bureaucracy and knowing how to import and how to do all those things. And so I like barriers to entry. Barriers to entry or are good in my mind, because lots of people are not gonna Choose to do that, and so that means that to me it spells opportunity, right. And so what are some things that some people that, if a seller from Amazon US wants to, they tried to get into Mexico. What are some things where they, where they stumble, what are the biggest like mistakes that you've seen? So anybody listening that they're experiencing those. We can, we can help them out.
Speaker 3:
And I saw what the worst mistake I've ever seen. I spoke to someone and I hope he doesn't listen to this because I'm kind of calling about it was so selling. He reached out to us. We never worked to them. He reached out to us asking for help because what he did Mexico went. What's your, what's your tax ID, what's your business, like you know. You said, oh, I'm an individual living in Mexico, don't worry about it, and place address as an individual seller from within Mexico and just drop ship this products. He got hit with a yearly tax bill for more than what his margins were. I just like amen, like how can I, how can I solve this? I'm like you go back in time and you don't lie. It was so bad because Amazon retained it. I was like, well, these are your taxes, so you're not. I guess he just got a completely, you know, crude and it was because the weight, like you, there's a fiscal strategy to all of this, where I this is how much I sold, this is how much I paid for the product only charge me on the, you know, on the profit. Well, you can't like deduct anything when you don't live in country, when you don't know how to do out of it. The dude just got absolutely destroyed. He's like this is literally more than I made in the year I lost my name. He's like I already spent the money too. Oh, that's a tough lesson. Oh, it was bad. No, but most people aren't gonna mess up like that. The biggest mistakes would probably be just going gunko and setting it in anyway. It's gonna get stuck that customs not accounting for Tariffs. Very often that'll happen. Chinese products, for example, are subject pretty much across the board to 15% tariffs, and what you see there is you paid tariffs on the way into the US. If you don't know what you're doing, you're gonna repay those tariffs on the way to Mexico. And now you're at 30%, and now no one's happy. Another big mistake is thinking that an RF is the full picture. We recently onboarded a client, like very recently, like where the conversation was all of your Competition literally all of your competition is nerf and they're selling okay, let's test it out. And we brought them on and they just skyrocketed. It's like alright, you're like 25, 50 peso more expensive, like two or three dollars more expensive, but hey, like you get it to me next day, like, let's go, like, yes, you're the person that I'm buying from. Just thinking that nerf is a full, the full picture is is so detrimental. And I think the biggest and this is stepping away from just Amazon e-commerce. The biggest mistake that everyone ever does is look at margins and go, oh, we make more money if we do it ourselves. Because I think everyone stumbled into that trap. Every single business owner has gone. Do I need to hire someone if I do it myself? I can save that saying no, your money, your time spent much more Valiably right doing things that you're really good at bending time Learning how to sleep, spending the next six months figuring out how to do this. Are you silly? Like you could have been selling for six months. And also, this is think of all the opportunity because of all the things you didn't right. It's like everyone that's ever worked in an hour as an agency goes knows what that's like when the client goes. Well, isn't this something I could do myself? I mean, go ahead right, like the whole. That's, that's up to you, but I'm telling you, like you don't have the experience you haven't been doing this for a long as I have. You know, like you do you. But, man, just let let the experts or we do it, we do it. We work with agency like a. Can you get the approvals? Yes, I mean, we take care of it, we take ownership of the process before we let the experts do it. You know absolutely. So. I think that's the biggest mistake just across the board.
Speaker 2:
Let's get into go-avance, and what type of client see you guys work with?
Speaker 3:
for some reason I'm still at, versus talking about my actual business. I just really like everything else. We're working primarily right now with anyone that's having issues on the restriction side cosmetic supplements, pet supplies, anything that's a little bit more regulated. Look, our biggest success stories are we used to be on NARF and now we sell, you know, 10 times more. I love that, but we're seeing a huge potential for the future to build out full-on Supplement markets full-on, you know, cosmetics markets from brands that trade Traditionally, and I think this is where we're really proud of what we're doing. Traditionally, international expansion is something reserved for very big companies. Your average Seller has a very difficult. I mean, have you tried to expand into Europe through Amazon? Where's your 17, v, 18 numbers and you're like, and so traditionally it's. It's opened up. The office opened it or the Ecommerce in general has opened it. Even drop shipping has opened it. But to be natively within a country selling has been just reserved to your Coca-Cola's and your, you know, head and shoulders or whatever it is that you used to get at the supermarket. So us, like, what we're really proud of is that we're opening this up to medium-sized enterprises. Obviously, for most really small enterprises, is it worth it dividing your inventory, like if you're buying a pallet at a time. You know, like let's be clever about this before the medium enterprises and even the like, the small, large enterprises we're just opening that door and that's what we're really proud of. You know, of saying these are products that I saw on tiktok and now I get access to them. These are shark tank products that I only saw on the like subtitled version of shark tank us that are we're now getting into the country. We're really focused on restricted products, products that already have some demand, or just interesting solutions. But look, if you're having trouble expanding, like the way we work is I'm going a little bit circle but the way we work is it has to make sense for you. They have to make sense for us, of course, but like it has to make sense for you, you're you. Everyone that's ever worked on Amazon marketing has had an experience of I'm not sure I can help you and that feels Awful. I don't. I don't want to go through that again. You know, I don't want to. I don't want to get the hey, this isn't working email. So I'm like look, let me just I anti sell people. I'm like hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me do the market research, let me see if there's a space for your product. Let's just make sure that, like we're setting ourselves up as best as we can for success and then if it really is a market, then like let's launch. So we put in that legwork. You know, come talk to us and then we'll, we'll see if it works for you now.
Speaker 4:
I like that and and yeah, it's always a better business relationship when it's a win-win. You know, when it's a win for both sides that it just is better, better outlook. So no awesome. So, yeah, if anybody listening is getting excited about hearing about all you know Expanding into Mexico Amazon, well, at the end of the will happen. Show notes links it and all that so excellent. So, ramira, for all of our guests, we run everybody through the ringer and it's called the fire round. Are you ready? You know what I am?
Speaker 3:
ready. What is your favorite book? It's such a cop out, but I'm just now reading Dune and it is by far the best book I've read, like the far the most invested I've ever been. Oh my god, that book is.
Speaker 4:
That's it, yeah okay, you said doing like, do you any?
Speaker 3:
yeah, yeah, I watched. I watched the movie. I thought it was incredible, was the best cinema experience I've ever had, and I was like you know what, I'll wait for the second one. And when the second one got delayed, I started the book. I was like because it was supposed to come out in November and they're like, no, it's coming out March. I'm like that's it. I can't wait. I'm reading it. What are your hobbies? Music making, for sure. This isn't a podcast studio, this is a music studio. I've got like my guitar right there. I've got my little keyboard here. I've got like music making. I spend a lot of time on. I play a lot of chess in my downtime. I it's such a. I'm so bad at it, but it's just so fun and I'm working out, dropped it for a bit. I'm back on dying right now my biceps want to kill me. And cooking, I cook like an angel. That I will, that I will show off on. Oh my.
Speaker 4:
God, awesome, that's very adverse. I like it. And cool, tons of hobbies, that's always good. Yeah, what is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man? I'm freedom.
Speaker 3:
The idea, like I got to go to the bank, I'm just going to go to the bank. I'm not going to tell someone, hey, I got to go to the bank. Hey, man, is it cool, if I miss this meeting, to go to the bank? Bro, I got to go to the bank, I'll just go to the bank. And you know what's the best part? That counts as work, because I'm working like 12 hours a day, like it's just, it's nice that my whole life, like my work life, has expanded into the entire day. So that's productivity. I have to call it to cancel my cable subscription. This is work, because I got to, I got to put it sometime, you know. So, yeah, that time freedom, I think is the best part.
Speaker 4:
I agree, all right. Last one what do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Speaker 3:
Couple of things, strategy being strategic with your products and with your decisions. And this sounds very broad, but I think a lot of sellers will look at a YouTube tutorial on how to scan with helium 10. They go oh, that's a great idea. I'm just going to do this. One thing that I thought about and just try it out I was like no, there's so much more research I need to be done doing, on the other hand, there's also risk management. Understand that every single thing that we're ever doing in life coin flips, just with different odds is be setting yourself up for the best odds you can Right. So if you're being strategic, don't say and this was definitely how often these two restaurants fail because their math was, if we fill up every single day, will be rich, and it's like you didn't account for the fact that people sleep eight hours a day. You know like, flip, like. Understand that you're flipping coins and try to get the best odds you can. And ultimately and I know a lot of people don't like hearing this luck plays a massive luck plays a massive factor. So you have to understand the coin flips. You have to prepare yourself to be able to flip five, six, seven times before you're you. You have to hit the like before you're, you know, tapped out. It's risk management. Everything in life that really is risk management.
Speaker 4:
So I like that one and I like the analogy of coin flips. Your life is a series of coin flips and you have to get the better odds, and by strategy and experience, and they go like that. So that's, that's brilliant.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, Ramira. I want to thank you for being a guest on the Firing man podcast. If people are interested in getting in touch with you and working with GoVance, what would be the best way?
Speaker 3:
GoVancecom has my calendar on it, the hubris, hubris. To be like hey, yeah, I know what's a hit me up, hit me up. Oh my God, it got bad a couple of weeks ago. We slowed it down a little bit. Anyone can. The contact us goes to me, the, the schedule, a call goes to me. I don't feel comfortable yet because I'm I have a lot of this experience Then I have been so in the day to day. I haven't felt comfortable. This is my, my failing as a business owner. I haven't felt comfortable, let letting someone else handle the less college quality assurance to make sure, making sure that our minds are really happy. So I'm taking care of all of that. So for the time being, and possibly for the next at least three months, contact us, be it leave a message or be it get you a call. Both go to me and I think I am just absolutely the right person to talk to for this.
Speaker 2:
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today and looking forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:
Thank you Like. Honestly, thank you so much for having me Like I had such a good time. I know that I tend to talk too much, so I apologize if I got anyone really bored, but guys, honestly this was so nice. Thank you, appreciate it. Remember soon. Next Wednesday might be a little 왜냐하면?