Building a Memorable Brand: Tips from Death Wish Coffee’s Amazon Expert
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I don't think you have to be someone who you're not, but you have to be somebody because I think people are starting to not follow brands in the same way that they used to, but they're starting to follow people and the people associated with those brands. So the more you can be yourself, nobody else can be you. All right, so what's your name and what do you do in this crazy world of e-commerce? Yeah, my name is Nick D'Angelo and I am the Amazon director at Death Wish Coffee and I manage anything Amazon related for e-commerce.

for a decent sized coffee pan. So with your experience on Amazon and everything is changing this year, where do you see sellers struggling the most over the next 12 months in running their businesses? Yeah. So I've kind of been in a, in a coffee silo more or less. And,

Something I'm seeing, you know, at least in coffee is that brands are taking it a lot more serious. They're realizing, you know, this is one of our bigger channels. You know, we're going to invest into this. We're going to, you know, allocate, you know, money. And so as that happens, you know, bids rise. You have to figure out how are we going to compete in a world where, you know, a Starbucks has decided that they're going to take Prime Day serious.

And I noticed you drinking Starbucks. I know, I feel bad. He's with Netflix and I'm drinking Starbucks on the recording. I forgive you. But yeah, I mean, it's like bids are no longer in the range of like if you got your Ecom 101 booklets of, you know, you want to look for an A cost of 30% so then you can be profitable. Like it's just not a thing. So you have to figure out a more, I want to say complicated strategy or a way to, you know, build a brand or something.

longer term view because I think that's just going to continue that you know these easy wins are going to continue to disappear as people take it more serious. A lot of people are talking about expansion opportunities and people kind of segment those between other Amazon marketplaces maybe internationally and these other marketplaces the T-moves the TikTok shop

Where are you seeing yourself as probably spending the majority of your time in expansion, if at all? Yeah. So I think like everybody, I think we could do a better job. But, you know, TikTok has been great for us. I feel very strongly about like your gut feeling of when you see a brand, like does it resonate with you? Is it cool? Is there something to it that like on a, you know, a monkey brain level that, you know, you're just drawn to this thing. And so I think...

you know, as brand becomes more and more important, um, you know, being able to be remembered, being able to have people coming back, people being able to say, Oh, I saw that tonight. I remember it. Um, we'll make your marketing dollars go a lot further. So a good way to do that is to be on Tik TOK, you know, doing, um, short form content, if that is good for your brands, um, because then they get to see the personality behind your brands. And, um,

I don't think you have to be someone who you're not, but you have to be somebody because I think people are starting to not follow brands in the same way that they used to, but they're starting to follow people and the people associated with those brands. So the more you can be yourself, nobody else can be you, as a million people have said before me, but we're finding that to be true. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your e-commerce journey, what's the one piece of advice you'd give yourself back then that you now know? Yeah, relax. Relax.

Um, I think, you know, I was, I was listening to, I got in this space maybe six years ago and like the helium 10 podcast was like one of the only podcasts I was listening to that. I was like, wow, these people are, they're selling so much. They know so much more than me. They're so ahead of me. I don't think I'll ever catch up. Um, and you know, month by month I caught up and it's, it's not as complicated as it seems in the beginning. Um, you know, you just show up every day, you give it your all.

And, you know, you kind of take for granted, you know, years into the space, all the different things you've learned. And they come in weird times and they come in weird ways. But, you know, they sink into your brain until you just start to get this gut feeling of where I ought to be. And the only way to do that is time. So I would say, you know, relax and, you know, but move forward. Good advice.

Can you give a specific example of how community has helped you within the figuring out e-commerce landscape? Yeah, yeah. For Deathwish specifically, the community has been massive, absolutely rabid. You know, they're on forums and, you know, when we when we fuck up, they let us know.

um and that's great and um you know i think i think you should be held accountable by your community um and you're asking about like your brand's community you're asking about like an amazon seller community it doesn't matter i like your answer cool cool yeah i think i think if you um i think it's easy to start to think like you know better than your customer which in some cases might be true but at the end of the day you know it's it's a partnership if you have

Like we said, we've been talking about like if you're building a brand, you know, the brand starts to become less about you, even though it's centered around you and something has been resonating about you with people. At the end of the day, the people find themselves in you. And that's really what the brand becomes is how they relate to your brand, not really, you know, you and that you're so special necessarily. And even big brands like Sephora, you know, has built out giant community liaison programs and hire chief community officers, you know, brands like.

interacting and even creating community has been super powerful for a lot of reasons, for sure. Imagine you're standing on a stage and you're about to give one piece of advice to every Amazon seller in the world. What would that one piece of advice be? That's a great question. I think in consumables specifically, I still talk to so many people that don't track LTV and kind of with everything else we're seeing as it gets more competitive,

you're probably not going to be profitable on your first acquisition. And that's fine. And that's good. Because you want to be in a place where there's customers and there's competition, because that means, you know, there's money to be made. But, you know, if you're not tracking how many times your customer comes back to buy your product again and again, and you're not looking at ways to improve that, you know, your advertising is going to get

Your budget's going to be smaller than the next guy because you can't justify the spend that you need to compete in this crazy world. So somewhat basic answer, but make sure you're tracking LTV if you're a consumable developer.

What's the worst product idea that Death Wish ever had? That's funny. That's funny. I won't throw Death Wish under the bus, but I'll speak for myself. I was early on keto and I was in college and I got like third place. I went to USC business school, entrepreneur school, whatever. I got third place for like best idea for this keto product that keto wasn't even really a thing. So early.

And I had the science all the way down to like the bottom of like, this is the perfect thing a human should consume, you know, in my opinion at the time. And I was able to pitch it. I had my slides. I had like my percent of market share, all that stuff. Like, and people believe me. So they're like, yeah, that sounds good. You know, you get third. However, nobody liked the taste. And for good reason. It was just awful. And I was trying to convince them, you know, like, it's not about the taste. It's about, you know, science, you know, you're putting this in you.

And so that was a very strong, very early lesson of, you know, you got to figure out, you know, what's important to your customer. And there are certain things that you can't just negotiate, you know, with your title or whatever. Amen. What was the most exciting single moment you've ever had in your entrepreneurial journey? That's a really good question.

This was like my first, you know, few months out of college. And I was lucky enough to partner with somebody and we started an agency together. And one of our first clients was Death Wish. This is how I got my initial introduction to the brand. And I just remember I wrote a title. This is so fresh. I wrote a title and I looked at the impressions that this page had gotten. And it was like, you know, millions of people over X number of years.

And just the fact that I had written someone that was seen by that many people, you know, I got like a sense of awe. And so as basic as that was, you know, I think that was my first like dopamine spike of, you know, it's kind of fun. That's cool. Most important question of the day. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Oh, snap. Is a hot dog a sandwich? No, based on gut feeling.

So you can't really defend the answer with logic. No. Just gut instinct. No, no, no, no, no. A sandwich is a vibe, I think, more so than it is a physical instruction. So it's not the physical developed item. It's the attitude as you're eating it. Correct. Like if you say, let's get sandwiches...

And then I got like, I don't know, something that isn't a sandwich. I got some soup. Like, are you really going to be mad and be like, bro, what the fuck? Like, we were going to get sandwiches. But if you say hot dog and it's not a hot dog, like, you're leveling down. Yeah, exactly. So hot dog is like the party vibe food. I think so.

What a great answer. Awesome. If people want to see what you've got going on in this crazy world, where can they follow you? Where can they see the new stuff coming out with Death Wish? Yeah, yeah. We got a TikTok. We got Instagram. We got an email list. Shout out to Kelly who runs that list. And those emails are actually fun to read. So yeah, sign up. Amazing. Awesome. Thank you so much. Cool. Thank you.