#666 - More than $100 Million Sold Tariff Free!
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Today, we're talking to a seller who sold over a hundred million dollars on Amazon in his time. And he's going to talk about why tariffs actually haven't affected him at all. What's more important to him than initial reviews and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we've got, I think for one of the first times, a live recording from, are you in Estonia right now? Yes.

Alright, live recording from our show. You know, we've had Estonians on the show before, but not sure if we've had live here. But Neme, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Yeah, thank you for your invite. Yeah, it's going great. Excellent, excellent. Now, I'm going to Estonia for the very first time. We're going to talk a little bit about why in a little bit here, but I'm very much looking forward to that. I assume you were born and raised in Estonia. Well, technically, I was born and raised in Soviet Union. In Soviet Union? Until when? Part of Soviet Union. Until how old?

Yeah, I was 12 or 13 when we got independence back. So yeah, being both... No, but geographically in Estonia though, right? Yes, yes. Same place. Okay, because you definitely have that Estonian accent that I've come to distinguish now. Did you go to university after graduating school?

Yeah, I did in here in Estonia, I did a business degree and then like five years later I did one degree in the Netherlands in Rotterdam. Okay, and then after graduation did you go into that field of what you studied or what did you do for work? Yeah, I was some part of time I was working in investment banking and then I

I was in some bigger project where we gave internet basic education for like 10% of Estonian population. So that was like 100,000 people. We got trained with internet and computer and it was like within two years time. So it was like, sounded really crazy project, but when we were doing it and running it, it was like actually...

everything what sounds crazy and stuff is actually if you put it in a smaller pieces it's like just some action steps you need to do and it was like really sometimes easier to do bigger things than smaller things that I learned from there okay and then when did you discover the opportunity of e-commerce yeah it was first it was actually my wife who started doing some of the learning something about the google ads and some websites to kind of do some quality websites and the

and putting Google advertising there. So she started following some of the courses online and started doing, but that led to kind of the opposite. We took some other course, which was actually built up on a quantity level. So I think in a top time, we had like about 5,000 websites in the internet, driving traffic to

eBay and Amazon as affiliates mostly. So this is where I got towards to kind of some point of time we saw another episode by there was Matt Clark and Jason Katzenbach on that call and they say like you know you are in affiliate side earning you know fighting for this 3%, 5%, 10%. Why don't you you know shh

shift to another side where you have the other, you know, 60, 70% of the kind of revenue where there's some other chances of doing. So this is where we kind of hopped into the private label world. So at that time was like affiliate marketing and things your entire income or did you also have a day job as it were? We actually had...

some other kind of projects with our friends and we got some income from there, some of the consultancy here. But we were by that time already more concentrated on how to

how to do something like online or on a bigger market because estonia is fairly small we have like one and a half million people so yeah we had some businesses for our local market as well and realized that okay if you want to do something bigger you need to go on a bigger market and then yeah making this all the online things that came along that really

kind of widened the world how to compare to what we learned in a university. It was like the opposite things you were able to do. Like you didn't need to build a factory, invest like a $2 million into building a factory and stuff like that. But you were actually introduced to a private label model where you kind of really can start with like a couple of thousand dollars and then work it up from there. And you don't need to, we don't own any

any manufacturing piece or manufacturing units till the date but we have lots of physical products that we sell. What was the first product you launched and what year are we talking about? The initial brand we did with one of my friends that was 2013 November or December where we launched a couple of first products. We did something in US and something in Europe and

ended up, I think the first product was Argan oil. Okay. In an essential oil kind of body oil field. How did you do on that product? Yeah, actually that product was doing like not that good, but not bad as well. But it was like, it was doing better than the products we did for Europe, which like made in China stuff. So, but when we started launching second, third, fourth product on that kind of areas, then we were more knowledgeable. We understood that, okay,

that argan oil was one of the obvious products that many people chose and it was like so many people came to that but then when we took another set of products it kind of

there was different or less competition, different opportunities. So we started going different essential oils and stuff like that. But then again, after one year, we realized that, okay, it's becoming still fairly competitive. And then we actually did our first exit back in 2015 or 16, like end of 15, beginning of 16, just like a small level of exit in a time where it was just, you know, even the broker we used was like,

kind of dealing with flipping the websites more like not as an Amazon type of businesses. So there wasn't too many of those on the market back then. But we kind of got a good lesson on that stuff. Like how much is our value actually, if you put it back that you only work for that brand, maybe like in total it was like two years.

Yeah, we earned still like a decent money out of that and then kind of made some clarity on, okay, we need to even build like bigger brand or bigger. Looking at, you know, you've been selling now on Amazon for over 10 years. Which year was your best year of sales, would you say?

Our best year of sales was last year. Also always growing. Okay. And how much was that? We are past like 30 million revenue level in US. Just US. What other marketplaces are you selling in? We are also in Europe. We haven't focused for like

There is only a couple of bestsellers are here. So it's just in some point of time, we discovered that since we are producing in the US and we are that kind of people who want to keep everything as simple as possible. So that's why we saw that everything we did on that market and mainly on Amazon as well there was really was kind of easiest ways to grow. And there is always the other steps that you can take.

And those layers and steps are still there to use when we see that, okay, now we are done with the US kind of, we've done with the US growth or US Amazon growth or some parts. And we definitely in US as well, we've been kind of getting to other marketplaces as well, but still

pretty much dominant on it if you take like where the orders are made then yeah still like amazon is a big part of what what are some non-amazon marketplaces are that you're doing are you doing shopify are you doing tiktok shop walmart yeah yeah all that to mention and a couple of other other sites as well and we are going to have first product on a walmart retail as well in in july so oh wow that's big uh did you get it to all the stores or uh just some of it or just one region

pilot project that we were actually invited to. We didn't want to go to retail yet. We thought we're going to want to go to retail after two or three years from now or even further when, you know, when we really we want to go to retail with the products where we are

kind of dominating the market on online and where you can see that online you can't anymore expand and then then it makes sense for us at least to kind of take a step towards the retail but there was just a very interesting offer came back in November that they have like a pilot project where they are reinventing a couple of shelves and putting like

putting some other products there like a bigger selection to their customers in some of the space and one of our best selling products were kind of really good fit to that and then we were okay why not if it's you know and then

Was that product already selling on Walmart.com or was it only an Amazon product? Yeah, it's on Amazon and Walmart.com, but technically we made like a different size for their retail because we don't want to mess with all the buy box issues and all that kind of part. So, but yeah, I mean, with that product, we are market leader on Amazon and

And yeah, it makes sense to use that product to expand in a retail as well. So it would be interesting. And yeah, it will be like more than 900 stores to start with. Are you browsing a Shopify, Walmart, Etsy, Alibaba or Pinterest page and maybe you see a cool product that you want to get some more data on? Well, while you're on those pages, you can actually use the Helium 10 Chrome extension demand analyzer to get instant data about what's happening on Amazon for those keywords on these other websites.

Or maybe you want to then follow up and get an actual supplier quote from a company on Alibaba.com in order to see if you can get this product produced. You can do that also with the Helium 10 Demand Analyzer. Both of these are part of the Helium 10 Chrome extension, which you can download for free at h10.me forward slash extension.

I think people don't understand that, or some people, a lot of people do, but when we talk about Walmart, once you get into all stores, even just 900 stores, and let's say they're only going to take 20 units each, we're still talking hundreds, thousands and thousands of

on one order. You know, like you can never match this kind of, you know, gross sales on Amazon in a certain time. And they imagine 4,000 stores. You multiply that by 100 units or even 50 units or something for every store. And then now people can understand the possibilities of Walmart. So that's going to be really interesting. Now,

What about cash flow though? Because one thing Walmart needs is terms, right? What's the terms that they're going to pay you on that? It took whatever terms are there. We have agents who are in between who are actually responsible for that pilot project for both sites actually. But anyway, since we didn't go with the full catalog, it's just one SKU and stuff, so we more or less now produced...

already the units for like next half a year. So it's just sitting in our warehouse ready to ship whenever the order comes. So we kind of took that cash flow and just wrote it off in our mind. So technically, yeah, we can sometimes approach some parts differently then. But yeah, definitely it would, you know,

If it would take off really in high numbers, then of course it's kind of... But then it's still the good news, you know, if you start selling a lot. But in retail, it's like totally different parts. It's like, you know, in online, you have the way to kind of educate people, why is that product good and stuff. But yeah, on a shelf, we didn't want to go initially there at all anyway. It was...

This is like, okay, with some products, if it's like, you know, product, but people know, like we have also like aloe vera gel, which is like, okay, everyone kind of know what it is, but the product we are going with is magnesium spray. And it's like, it needs a bit more kind of knowledge and education. So yeah, we'll see how we can pass on that benefits and the good parts of

to the Walmart customers along the next half a year, then yeah, hopefully we'll figure it out some ways to kind of... Now, you know, we'll talk about tariffs in a little bit, but aside from tariffs, obviously selling on Amazon in the last 10 years has changed a lot. You know, you can see it more than most people. You know, some people have been only selling two or three years. Maybe they don't think it's changed too much, but even they know even in two years it's changed, but you are more dramatic probably. What's

are the biggest things that have affected your business? Again, not talking about terrorists, but like, was it the big change of no more incentivized reviews? Was it some policy change like no more search find buy? Is it the influx of sellers from China? Is it the increased Amazon fees? What has caused you and your team

to change your tactics and strategies the most or, or made you worry the most, you know, uh, since Amazon, since you've been selling on Amazon. Yeah. I mean, definitely the fees are one part because most products we are still selling with similar prices that we kind of started off. We haven't risen too much of the prices ourselves, but, uh,

But yeah, the fees have definitely been increasing and the advertising part has been increasing in some extent. But then again, also the economies of scale have kind of increased. So there were some products where we saw that, you know, market leader was selling, you know, 100 units a day or 150 units a day. And now with some or same, like basically same products, we might be selling like 1000 units a day nowadays. So it's also like economies of scale that kind of helps to offset some of these costs.

parts, but the

I mean, there are always those changes. How did that happen, by the way? Like, how do you go from 150 to 1,000 units? No, no, I'm just saying that 10 years ago... Oh, 10 years, okay. Yeah, the whole market was, you know, maybe 500 units a day, and now that market is like maybe 5,000 units a day. Yeah, absolutely. And we haven't done ourselves that much to grow. Of course, every 3PL, that's three-party seller who've been kind of...

going and helping this Amazon wave to happen is of course, helping to grow the Amazon itself. But I mean, well, we didn't do too many like dodgy stuff back in the days and along the way as well. Like, of course, some parts, whatever was the kind of norm, we were partly doing it. But I've always told that at least with our brand that we are at this

we evaluate the product's success after like half a year or one year or two years. We don't evaluate it after like two weeks or one month. So that's why we haven't been and still are not so dependent on it if the launch goes well, what tricks to use to get it ranked and stuff. So we more like believe in a longer term strategy that if you make a good product and if you make something to stand out with your product, which is

better than the others, then you'll find the customer base. And yeah, with some products you'll find, with some products you don't. But if you fake your way to the top, you are as quickly as you go up, you as quickly you get down as well if you don't really, if you don't have those qualities entered to your brand or your product. So in that sense, I would say we are still, when we are selecting product, when we are launching products, when we are designing products, we are

doing pretty much similar stuff that we did maybe five or six years ago. So it hasn't so drastically changed for us. Of course. Yeah, I think that's a good point because that's something that I speak about at conferences is that the underlying thing of what works on Amazon is not really changed. And then even the things that do change on Amazon, the underlying principle is the same, that it's focused on the customer, focused on unique. Like if your strategy five years ago was,

just massive keyword stuffing. Could you have been maybe successful? Maybe, but, but that's not, that never was the way to go. You know, the way to go is build a listing that, that converts. That's good for the algorithm, but also good for the customer. And then because Amazon is always changing about the customer. And so maybe some, some minor tactics here or there change, but, but,

not overall huge shift in strategy. You know, like you shouldn't just take a product from China and put your label on it. You know, you should, you should be doing things that are unique that, that have a moat around your product and that, you know, make it so that it's harder to compete. And so these things kind of things have always stayed the same. Now,

Now coming to tariffs and other fees and things, but this kind of thing changes every day. Who knows? By the time this podcast comes out, maybe there's something completely different. But are you mainly manufacturing in China or what countries are you manufacturing in? Yeah, in the current lights that are happening in the US, I would say we are really...

kind of fortunate or lucky in that part that the brand, our main brand, what we are, we actually do manufacture in US all the products we manufacture in US. Oh, really? So almost for the main brand, most products are in the US. Is it because it's like a beauty brand or like supplement or something like that? Beauty, skincare, health. Okay, yeah. That makes sense. Actually, yeah, it's part of the quality as well. Back in the days already that, you know, if it's, you know, made in some

other country that doesn't have so big, you know, quality label, you know, mentally on, then, you know, it's much harder to sell like a natural, like what we are stressing. We are like, you know, we are natural alternative to kind of harsh chemicals or cosmetics and then, yeah, use, you know,

And then also with a couple of our top products, even the raw material comes from the US. So we are like double lucky in that part. - Have you been affected at all in a positive way because of the tariffs or have pretty much all your competitors are probably also manufacturing USA? So it kind of doesn't matter what's going on. - Yeah, the effect is hard to measure, but yeah.

In the same time when those tariffs and stuff are happening now, what we see at least, the customer confidence is not that big. So I think people are a bit cautious in spending too much money because they are worried about, what if I lose a job? I feel like that, that

Currently, our sales are okay. We are stable, but we definitely, yeah. But we also haven't seen any, none of the competitors also kind of increasing prices, even though those who import from different stuff. But okay, none of these are, or like very few are from China directly. And then tariffs just came along, you know.

less than a month ago. So that effect is still, you know, need to be incorporated into that. And everybody, you know, hoping probably that, you know, that huge stuff will, you know, normalized in a couple of months. So they, you know, are in a waiting position, not really, I don't know, too many brands who are really increasing their prices accordingly that much faster.

Only those whose model was directly shipped from China. So they immediately get that effect. So when's the last time you launched a product or launched a new brand? So either launch a product in your existing brand or have you launched any new brands? When's the last time for either of those situations? Probably, I mean, we are launching one now, but the previous one probably was beginning of the year. Okay. For your existing brand? Yeah.

Yeah, existing. What's your strategy? Since you have such a big brand that's been going for a while, are you relying a lot on your existing audience and community at all? Or do you just launch it as if it was a brand new product? What's your basic launch strategy these days? Yeah, we do. The initial part of the launch definitely we'll do to our own list. At least we'll kind of let them know that this opportunity is there and...

and maybe give some discount codes and stuff like that. But this is just, you know, some part of the beginning stuff. But in the end, it comes down to kind of getting those first, you know, 20, 30 reviews, maybe using also like Vine reviews. And then you already get the feeling for us, actually.

to get like a good keyword rankings is like less important to get the feedback is our product actually, you know, is it like a four and a half star product or is it 4.3 product or is it 4.1 product as a review? So before we really put like too much money behind any of the products we want to have, you know,

feedback from the harshest reviewers that, you know, then we know, like if the wine reviewers are giving, you know, four and a half, we know, okay, we can keep that review kind of rating for next three years, five years. If, if you get about 4.2, 4.3, then it's like, okay,

that might be like a tough product to kind of sustain. So then what do you do? Do you pull back or start over or do you just like try and try and figure out what they're complaining about? Yeah, we'll see what they're complaining. Like sometimes they're kind of maybe some of the expectations are too big. So we might even, you know, amend the listing to be less promising. So we actually kind of, uh,

get less people buying our product but those who buy they you're big fans or sometimes when we are targeting like so some might be with the hair growth for example so we might go like specific keyword for that that product which is you know the product type it can be you know i don't know castor oil rice water whatever and then it's like are you within that you know

keyword range or are you going outside? Are you going, you know, hair growth for women or like some bigger keywords? So with some of the products where we see that we are borderline with our reviews, we really put our whole strategy just

for the really narrow specific keywords which are related to that product origin or the name type of stuff. So then we would know that those people who are purchasing, they have read a lot about that before they purchase. So they are kind of already decent fans of that type of product. And then they won't leave too bad reviews in that sense. But if you go really wide that you have no idea about the product itself, but okay, it's a hair growth. Okay, I'll try it out.

Maybe it doesn't work that quickly and then it's easier to get those bad reviews. So basically, from reviews we learn what can be improved. Maybe sometimes there is some defect in a pump or something, so it's easier to change and then maybe relaunch another SKU or ASIN under that and then switch it over to that. But yeah, we try to kind of, whatever we come on a market, we'll try to listen to

and make sure that people are happy or try to understand what kind of people are happy with that and then direct kind of advertising towards

that part. All right. So that's, that's interesting. Now, are you, before you even launch, are you using, you know, services like PickFu or, or doing like your own customer research, uh, even before, or you kind of wait to see on the actual product once people are, are getting it and that's how you get your feedback. We would use a service like PickFu or IntelliVay when we are already want to have like a second, uh, kind of edit of, of the listing, but with the first listing or, or the product itself, it's,

Usually we just, you know, see what product kind of fits to our brand and if there is a decent potential in Walmart or on Amazon or we see something happening in TikTok. So we might just launch those products to be on a market and then kind of

learn and fine tune along the way. And then, yeah, we see that our product is in on a top 10, like maybe 10th position and we want to go to top five. We actually like kind of we consider immediate competitors are those who are on the positions between five and ten or five and nine. So we see, okay, how our product is better than those and we'll try to maybe there is something which kind of

something that we can put on our listing very visibly that we are better than those at least.

And then, you know, once you are in top five, you'll see, okay, how to get to top three. And then you work your, and those, some of the messaging and some of the highlights might be different. And we usually, yeah, we don't dream to get from, you know, if you're in a 10th place, we don't dream to go right away to, you know, top one or top two. We just take step by step where we are building and, you know, building our kind of

way up in a step-by-step. Sometimes it happens quicker and then with some products we come, we immediately get to kind of top three and then we are able to kind of stay there and then find our way through. But yeah, when we do our initial listings and stuff like that, we are like a family company. It's me, my wife, my wife's sister and her husband. So four of us.

So plus team members as well. So when we are building a concept of initial product, then we already have like a mini audience of different views and stuff. So we are, we are, you know, tough audience ourselves to kind of make this initial, initial listing up and running. So I think usually the listings come out fairly good. So we don't need to do too many edits along the, along the way. Sometimes we don't do any edits in a first year even. So.

I just tried to keep it simple and stuff. What has changed, if any, of how you build your listings, like your keyword research? Are you spending a lot of time optimizing for AIs or has the way you built listings like this year compared to maybe last year or two years ago and how you find keywords, like has that changed drastically at all for you or you're kind of doing similar things or somewhere in the middle? Yes, they're doing.

same or similar things let's say if you are just looking on a keyword like or the regular shopping experience that people are still doing it's still very heavily dependent on a particular keyword search for us we really want to be very relevant to the searches that people are doing on amazon and we might even if you see that some keyword is quite broad and you know is for

different areas. We might even launch another variant of that product, kind of tapping exactly some of the bigger keywords. And we still tend to focus on the bigger keywords because again, on a keyword level with our products, what we see there is always this top three, top five keywords maximum, which is like, I don't know, 80, 90% of sales or like a sales intent

with our products and we as i said before i don't want to go really broad i really want to be more focused and then what when it comes to the like a rufus and some ai stuff i i think yeah i mean we build our product to be relevant for those keywords and and then that kind of shows some of the audience thing as well and we also the the listing copy we use is is kind of

very often captures those parts. And once you've been selling that product for, you know, already three months, five months, or maybe past, you know, thousand units, then Amazon already has really much data about it as well to feed their own algorithm about demographics and stuff. So we are not in control of

any demographics or any habit or like that kind of part. So we are not really tricking that part of the system to get some extra sales. And once we see that someone is telling it kind of has a big effect, we will might do something more, but we basically,

make sure that the basic stuff is there and that we sell enough units. And once we sell enough units, Amazon has the data itself. So we believe in that part. 100%. Things change on Amazon. You can't do the same thing. But wait until it actually changes drastically. Optimizing for Rufus, I do it. I'll check, hey, is there a question my product is not answering in my listing? And okay, let me do it. That's the same thing as we did before. We used to do that for years because of...

because of the Q&A, because of the reviews and things like that. So that part of it hasn't changed. All right. So before we get into your final strategy, let's talk about

How we'll be able to meet again. And anybody can meet you soon in the Ambition. Is that the way they pronounce it? How do they Ambition or how do they say it? Ambition. Ambition event in Estonia. Like I said, I'm going to Estonia for the first time. Guys, if you want to get more information on this conference, it's going to be the first week of June. H10.me forward slash Estonia. H10.me forward slash Estonia. So you've been how long have you?

How long has this event been going on? Probably like seven years or six, seven years. Yeah, I've heard about it before. Okay, wow. So I'm very late to the party. I think last four years it's been like in English and international. So initially it was like for the first few years it was in Estonian language locally for the local community. But yeah, last four years for sure it's been international. It's always like good crowd here.

Nice speakers. Especially, there are always some pre-events happening as well. So conference is on Saturday, but on a Friday, there is always something cool stuff happening. So yeah, when you go to conferences as well, there is always...

Some parts is where you learn what people are telling there, but the other part is always building those relationships with people and making the connections. And then along the way, if you look two or three years back, you'll see, okay,

thing I was able to do now or some very valuable information I got now was because I met some person like three years ago in some random place or some other event or next to the pool after event or something like that. It's just sometimes those connections are really crazy to route it through. How did that happen? And I was just in a conference last week, a couple of weeks ago,

I had never been at Amazon conferences there before in Poland and Bulgaria and met a lot of people I never would have met otherwise, you know, even though as long as I've been in the Amazon space. And so I'm sure it's going to be the same in Estonia. So guys, if you want to get tickets, if you're anywhere in Europe, I'll be speaking at this event too. So you can hang out with Neme here and also me, h10.me forward slash Estonia. All right. Last, what is your 30 second tip or your 60 second tip? Like some unique strategy you're doing that you can share with our audience.

Once you are in a top five in the market or top three, I would start looking on what is your market share. Usually, you know it on your units based because you're looking BSR and units sold. But I would encourage you to look what's your dollar value, because sometimes you don't realize that if your product is actually, you know, you are selling for 15, the others are selling for nine or maybe it's like others are selling for 12 and you're for 19.

you and you are selling similar numbers, but then you discover that, okay, your market share is actually much bigger than the competitor you thought it's in your level. So yeah, I'm using Helium 10 market share tracker kind of on a, this is the main page where I'm tracking where I'm at with our top products. And it's been really eyeopening for me, at least when I started using it, that some of the competitors, I thought they're,

they are my main competitors. I totally re-evaluated to understanding that there are actually a couple of other people who are actually more of a competitor than some of these which I thought are. Nemi, thank you so much for coming on here. We'll definitely reach out to you in the future and see how you're doing on Amazon and how this Walmart retail launch went. But in the meantime, I'll be seeing you in Estonia in a couple of weeks and I want you to introduce me to your favorite restaurant

there because that's one thing I love when I go to new countries I want to try new food so I'll be looking forward to that and we have old town here which is like built in 12th or 13th century so US wasn't there even in you know US wasn't

you know, discovered by the time when half of the houses which are in Old Town were built. So it will be very interesting kind of fairytale looking walks in the evenings or days that this is really something you see in many, many countries. Love it. I'll definitely be there and I'll be recording my podcast introductions there. Last question. Favorite Helium 10 tool?

Yeah, I was saying Market Tracker. Market Tracker. All right. Sounds good. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We'll be seeing you soon. And thanks to everybody. We'll see you in the next episode.