James Thomson

In today’s world of retail, most brands:
● don’t know the identity of retailers selling their products in online marketplaces;
● don’t know where these online resellers sourced inventory of the brand;
● don’t know what proportion of inventory going through distributors is redirected to online channels;
● don’t adequately police activities involving resellers that offer the brand’s products in new multipack quantities defined by the reseller (rather than by the brand);
● can’t… Show more

In today’s world of retail, most brands:
● don’t know the identity of retailers selling their products in online marketplaces;
● don’t know where these online resellers sourced inventory of the brand;
● don’t know what proportion of inventory going through distributors is redirected to online channels;
● don’t adequately police activities involving resellers that offer the brand’s products in new multipack quantities defined by the reseller (rather than by the brand);
● can’t figure out how its brand is sold in countries where the brand doesn’t yet have a distribution program of its own; and
● aren’t managing the branding, packaging and UPC labeling of online products adequately to ensure consistency between online and brick-and-mortar inventory.

What does it take for a brand to survive in this new environment? What controls need to be put in place? What existing sales and operational processes need to change? We answer these questions on this book from a combined business and legal perspective. Our book focuses on brands selling on marketplaces in the U.S. and the European Economic Area. As legal protections for brands differ around the world, we have chosen to focus on these specific markets where legal protections for brands are well established. For readers interested in applying brand control worldwide, we encourage them to seek legal guidance for each and every country where they plan to incorporate some form of legal enforcement into their brand control efforts. Show less

Far too many brands appear to think that when Amazon Retail reaches out to buy their product, a partnership is being formed. However, according to James Thomson, Partner at retail consultancy Buy Box Experts, in fact, Amazon’s incentives rarely align with the incentives of the brand. The following are his five tips for successfully selling on Amazon in what can actually be a hostile environment.

Since the beginning of this year, Amazon Retail has notified thousands of small to medium-sized brands to inform them that it will no longer make available a Vendor Manager to interact with the brand. Now brands are expected to use the new Vendor Success Program (VSP), a self-service option where there is no opportunity to negotiate directly or discuss with someone at Amazon. This shift certainly leaves many brands scrambling to figure out how to proceed effectively with the Amazon channel.

As one of the tens of thousands of private label companies that sell through the Amazon channel, you know it’s only a matter of time before your successful private label brand gets mimicked by other sellers. The ease with which companies can find one another’s products on Amazon, and then create their own versions, has shortened the expected Amazon lifecycle of most private label products to less than a year. New competition quickly eliminates most of the available margin through increased… Show more

As one of the tens of thousands of private label companies that sell through the Amazon channel, you know it’s only a matter of time before your successful private label brand gets mimicked by other sellers. The ease with which companies can find one another’s products on Amazon, and then create their own versions, has shortened the expected Amazon lifecycle of most private label products to less than a year. New competition quickly eliminates most of the available margin through increased competitive alternatives. Show less

More than 300 million customers shop Amazon today -- surely such an opportunity to access so many new customers would be enticing to most brands. Yet, for leaders of recently launched brands, there is usually consternation around what to do with the Amazon channel. Common questions include:
"Should we sell on Amazon?"
"What happens if we don't sell on Amazon?"
"Won't selling on Amazon hurt sales on our own website?"

It’s important to understand how Amazon looks at situations involving gray market sellers or resellers not authorized by the brand to sell on Amazon. The Amazon marketplace is an open marketplace and just about anyone can get a third-party seller account.

Amazon has been struggling to recruit luxury brands to sell their good on its platform, but there is one way that it could make its marketplace more of a destination for shoppers looking for certain tiers of luxury products. Amazon could launch vertically integrated, mass-customized brands of its own that use technology to smooth the customer shopping process, similar to Indochino.

All the changes Amazon implemented in 2017 should serve as a wake-up call to brand executives. If you don’t have an Amazon strategy, you don’t have a business strategy. One way or another, your brand will end up for sale on the online channel.

Joseph Hansen and I wrote “The Amazon Marketplace Dilemma” to help brand executives make sense of the challenges, options and tradeoffs of various distribution models successfully used by brands selling on the Amazon marketplace channel. We provide executives with a clear path to addressing concerns on how to grow profitably on Amazon while maintaining control of brand content, pricing and distribution.

Do you remember when Amazon was small enough that brands could safely ignore the channel? Those days are long gone, of course, yet too many brand executives are still playing catch-up.

Brand executives face two key questions when addressing the Amazon marketplace:
1. Will their brand be sold on the Amazon Marketplace?
2. If yes, then what distribution approach makes most sense for the brand to it can retain profitable control of what happens?
This decision on whether the brand will be sold on Amazon is rarely solely within the brand’s control.

When a seller uses Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon program to store inventory in Amazon fulfillment centers across the U.S., that placement of products can create a tax “nexus” — a connection — which requires companies doing business in a state to collect and pay tax on sales in that state.

The increasing dominance of Amazon has many merchants scratching their heads, wondering how exactly to work with that company, and how that company will impact their own businesses.

Being a successful Amazon seller most likely will require partnership with a variety of external providers. This directory provides sellers with an overview of dozens of categories of providers, how they help the seller, and how to reach them.

Here are the specific steps you will need to launch and operate an Amazon seller business.

Consider that not all Amazon sellers are setup the same way, yet a handful of specific skills repeat themselves with the most successful sellers. We outline the specific skills sellers need to develop skills in order to create long-term survival and growth potential.

What parts of your ecommerce business can be outsourced? How do you make that transition smoothly so you can keep growing, and focusing your time on what you love – finding and developing new products and business opportunities?

When a brand owner contemplates selling on Amazon, they have a big choice to make:

1P: Sell first-party, wholesale, directly to Amazon Retail, using the Vendor Central interface.

3P: Sell third-party to consumers through the Amazon marketplace, using the Seller Central interface (whether the brand sets up its own 3P seller account, or works with partner 3P sellers focused on the brand).

Given the complexity of the Amazon marketplace, and the desire of brands to control… Show more

When a brand owner contemplates selling on Amazon, they have a big choice to make:

1P: Sell first-party, wholesale, directly to Amazon Retail, using the Vendor Central interface.

3P: Sell third-party to consumers through the Amazon marketplace, using the Seller Central interface (whether the brand sets up its own 3P seller account, or works with partner 3P sellers focused on the brand).

Given the complexity of the Amazon marketplace, and the desire of brands to control their own destinies, we are seeing a significant move towards brands either setting up their own third-party seller accounts, or working with sophisticated third-party sellers who will manage the brands’ brand equity and product feeds, while respecting pricing and ensuring constant availability of product through the Fulfillment by Amazon program.

In this paper, we discuss the key issues and trade-offs of selling wholesale to Amazon Retail vs. selling through third-party Amazon sellers, and outline the risks involved in each approach. Show less

There are rich opportunities to capture new customers and generate revenue in Amazon’s ten international marketplaces, but new sellers should consider the following operational, legal, and financial issues before diving into global commerce.

Every week, Amazon Seller companies change hands, with excited new owners anticipating big things from their newly acquired businesses. With more than 160 million active customers, 2 million sellers, and $100 billion in worldwide sales happening yearly on Amazon marketplaces worldwide, there definitely plenty of opportunity for upgrading a newly acquired Amazon seller business into a bigger company. We have seen far too many newly acquired companies stumble very quickly under the new ownership.… Show more

Every week, Amazon Seller companies change hands, with excited new owners anticipating big things from their newly acquired businesses. With more than 160 million active customers, 2 million sellers, and $100 billion in worldwide sales happening yearly on Amazon marketplaces worldwide, there definitely plenty of opportunity for upgrading a newly acquired Amazon seller business into a bigger company. We have seen far too many newly acquired companies stumble very quickly under the new ownership. In this discussion, we examine mistakes made by acquiring sellers, splitting the issues into those made before the sale, and those after the sale. Show less

With Amazon’s recent announcement that it is recruiting sellers into the Seller Fulfilled Prime program, much of the discussion has been around how much simpler this may make the lives of Amazon sellers.

Yet, the key implications are likely far more extensive than that. I’d like to take a few moments and outline those issues here so as to spark discussion among sellers, investors and solution providers.

Every seller on Amazon has the responsibility of paying sales tax in those U.S. states where it has tax nexus. When the tax isn’t paid, that seller builds a tax liability that can be costly down the road. So why are so many Amazon sellers getting the sales tax process wrong?

To get sales tax right, there are three issues to tackle.

Where does a seller have tax nexus?
Is the sales tax being collected properly?
Is the sales tax being properly remitted to the appropriate states?

Most Amazon sellers have enough on their plates keeping their businesses running and maintaining sales and profits. But no matter how long a merchant lasts on Amazon, there may come a time when that seller wants out: no more purchase orders to replenish inventory, no more customer returns, no more customer emails.

Selling on Amazon’s marketplace can be challenging. There are, to be sure, millions of prospective customers. But there are also many competitors selling there, often at prices that are difficult to match or compete with.

James Thomson is a former senior Amazon executive. He recently spoke with me on how ecommerce merchants can best use Amazon’s marketplace.

Say you are shopping on Amazon and you find the perfect product to buy. But you notice that the seller offering the product has 90 percent positive feedback. Yes, 1 customer in 10 leaving feedback for this seller is frustrated, disappointed, or upset at the seller for some reason. Do you hesitate to make that purchase, and seek another seller or product instead?

Now imagine you are that seller with 90 perfect positive feedback. What are you doing to manage negative feedback? One of the… Show more

Say you are shopping on Amazon and you find the perfect product to buy. But you notice that the seller offering the product has 90 percent positive feedback. Yes, 1 customer in 10 leaving feedback for this seller is frustrated, disappointed, or upset at the seller for some reason. Do you hesitate to make that purchase, and seek another seller or product instead?

Now imagine you are that seller with 90 perfect positive feedback. What are you doing to manage negative feedback? One of the critical aspects of being a seller in good standing on Amazon is having an overwhelming level of positive feedback. To address the issue of how to handle negative feedback on Amazon, it is important to understand first the broader importance of feedback to the survival of the Amazon seller. Show less

For many ecommerce merchants, the holiday shopping season is the busiest, most critical time of the year. On Amazon, things can get crazy for sellers, even if they have been through a holiday shopping season or two.

While there is much talk each year about just how much inventory an Amazon sellers should carry for the holiday shopping season, my focus here is on addressing those often overlooked issues that are root causes of significant lost opportunities and post-holiday pain suffered… Show more

For many ecommerce merchants, the holiday shopping season is the busiest, most critical time of the year. On Amazon, things can get crazy for sellers, even if they have been through a holiday shopping season or two.

While there is much talk each year about just how much inventory an Amazon sellers should carry for the holiday shopping season, my focus here is on addressing those often overlooked issues that are root causes of significant lost opportunities and post-holiday pain suffered by sellers every year. Show less

Amazon launched Fulfillment by Amazon ten years ago as a mechanism to help sellers scale their fulfillment and customer service operations. Yet, the single most important feature had nothing to do with operational effectiveness, but rather with the ability of the seller to win the Buy Box on Amazon.

Given that the seller’s ability to have its product show up as the “Add to Cart” seller is based on the Buy Box algorithm, it’s critical to understand that the use of FBA ahead of a seller’s… Show more

Amazon launched Fulfillment by Amazon ten years ago as a mechanism to help sellers scale their fulfillment and customer service operations. Yet, the single most important feature had nothing to do with operational effectiveness, but rather with the ability of the seller to win the Buy Box on Amazon.

Given that the seller’s ability to have its product show up as the “Add to Cart” seller is based on the Buy Box algorithm, it’s critical to understand that the use of FBA ahead of a seller’s own fulfillment services will significantly improve the seller’s ability to be that Buy-Box-winning seller. Show less

It’s easy for new Amazon sellers to get caught up in the excitement of 240 million shoppers. But, while Amazon recruits more than 100,000 new sellers each year to the marketplace, many will leave the site within six months, often for avoidable reasons.

In this article, I’ll review seven common blunders made by new sellers on Amazon’s marketplace.

Why is it so hard to get your pricing right on Amazon?

You want to win the sale, but you also want to make profit. Any decent MBA student will tell you that no matter how skilled a business owner is at building, marketing and distributing products, only those efforts around pricing will bring revenue (and hopefully profits) into your business.

Correspondingly, no matter how attractive the Amazon marketplace may look to a third-party seller, long-term success is not possible… Show more

Why is it so hard to get your pricing right on Amazon?

You want to win the sale, but you also want to make profit. Any decent MBA student will tell you that no matter how skilled a business owner is at building, marketing and distributing products, only those efforts around pricing will bring revenue (and hopefully profits) into your business.

Correspondingly, no matter how attractive the Amazon marketplace may look to a third-party seller, long-term success is not possible without a comprehensive understanding of how to price products profitably. Unfortunately, the vast majority of retailers/sellers – whether online or brick and mortar – under-invest in building effective pricing strategies. But we can fix that right here, right now.



Read more: http://www.webretailer.com/lean-commerce/author/james-thomson/#ixzz3qvVTHjFT Show less

For six years I worked for Amazon, most recently as head of Amazon Services, that part of Amazon that recruits 100,000 new sellers to the Amazon marketplace each year. During my tenure, feedback from sellers mostly involved two themes: (a) Amazon offers a huge opportunity to increase their sales, and (b) this opportunity comes at a high cost to most goals that sellers have in other channels.

If you start by recognizing that Amazon’s goal to become the destination where consumers can find… Show more

For six years I worked for Amazon, most recently as head of Amazon Services, that part of Amazon that recruits 100,000 new sellers to the Amazon marketplace each year. During my tenure, feedback from sellers mostly involved two themes: (a) Amazon offers a huge opportunity to increase their sales, and (b) this opportunity comes at a high cost to most goals that sellers have in other channels.

If you start by recognizing that Amazon’s goal to become the destination where consumers can find any product, always in stock, at the lowest price, then it is easier to understand why Amazon behaves the way it does. With such a marketplace so attractive to shoppers, each seller must ask if it is willing to deal with the impact of Amazon’s efforts to meet this goal. Show less

In 2007, James Thomson began his career at Amazon.com where he held such titles as Head of Amazonservices.com—Amazon’s third-party seller recruitment portal, co-developer of the original Fulfillment by Amazon program, and Category Manager of Sports third-party business. Since then, James has used his marketplace selling expertise to build his own third-party seller consulting business—Marketplace Accelerator—where he helps existing sellers hone in on better product selections and increase… Show more

In 2007, James Thomson began his career at Amazon.com where he held such titles as Head of Amazonservices.com—Amazon’s third-party seller recruitment portal, co-developer of the original Fulfillment by Amazon program, and Category Manager of Sports third-party business. Since then, James has used his marketplace selling expertise to build his own third-party seller consulting business—Marketplace Accelerator—where he helps existing sellers hone in on better product selections and increase profitability. With his years of first-hand experience inside the belly of the Amazon beast, James shares his thoughts on how sellers can make the most of their third-party businesses. Show less