Name your favorite family rivalry; Hatfield’s vs McCoy’s, North vs South Korea, Cane vs Abel, Serena vs Venus.  Most end poorly but Amazon’s famous Vendor (aka 1P) vs Merchant (aka 3P) divisional competition is one of the core reasons for their amazing online success.  That rivalry has taken a major pivot this month and if your brand isn’t on top of it, you stand to lose out.

Over 10,000 accounts that had been selling to Amazon suddenly saw their PO’s dry up this month.  Many then received an email from the 1P team told them they may not buy from them anymore and recommend they consider selling on the 3P side!  Was this a secret coupe?  A digital détente? 

Many were left scratching their heads as to what was going on.  We’re not. 

The Back…

Data, data everywhere, and nary a data scientist in sight. Or at least, not one you can afford. It's a classic Catch-22. To thrive, businesses need to pull financial, sales, predictive, social, and other data into a complete view of the customer. But big data practitioners with fancy degrees who can bring sophisticated analytics chops to bear on that effort start in the six figures, if you can even find one.

Academics and consultants pontificate on the crisis. McKinsey & Co. exclaims that advanced big data analytics, driven partly by the Internet of Things, could increase GDP in retailing and manufacturing by up to $325 billion annually and trim nearly as much from the cost of healthcare and government services by 2020. Too bad most organizations will never be able to hire that expertise.…

Yeoman is often asked by clients to help identify 'gaps' in their teams' abilities to be more digitally focused.  Most companies we work with often have great sales teams, a solid marketing group, and good business analysts but they still struggle with the best way to support their sales and distribution efforts online. 
 
Over the years, Yeoman has found most organizations have gaps in 3 key areas:
 

1. Online Product Merchandising:  The actual creation of product details online is often relegated to a junior buyer, marketing associate, (or worse) an intern. The thought of what product details will be often comes last and is rushed out as the product is shipping.  Big mistake.  Building up your internal content skills is…

What’s in a Name? In online merchandising just about everything.

Data quality online is one of the biggest problems manufacturers face. How good your product “looks” online (including not just clean photos, but also well-written product descriptions and titles) impacts everything from SEO rankings to customer preference to channel relations – so getting it right is important.

There’s a lot that goes into data quality. One critical element is the title. This is often the first and only information your prospect is going to see before making that all important decision to click or not to click. This snippet of text is also weighted heavily by the search engines, meaning a good title will get you in front of more prospects.

The biggest mistake we see manufacturers make is…

 Here are a few easy steps to get a new product to market and quick:  

• Design an innovative product and be confident in your ability to deliver this product at some point in the “foreseeable future,” actual date not necessary.
• Rock the marketing for said product and be sure to create a buzz. One way to accomplish this is to turn to You Tube.  Make a clever video, insert a hipster type, “Average Joe,” have him crack a few jokes, explain what your product is and hope this goes viral.
• Now you may need some capital to manufacture your product, try crowdfunding.   Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and Tilt are a few crowdfunding programs gaining popularity.

Sounds simple right? This process is actually happening, people. Products such as Navdy,…

Amazon opened its first retail storefront on Monday, January 22. The convenience store is located at 2131 7^th Ave. in Seattle, and sells grocery items, ready-to-eat meals, and quick-meal kits – and of course features items from Whole Foods, who Amazon owns.

What makes this store so unique is that there are no checkout lines. You scan the Amazon Go app on your smart phone at the door, which will open the barrier gates to allow you into the store. (No app, no entrance.) Once inside, you shop by taking an item off the shelf and placing it in your bag. The item is automatically added to the cart in your online account.

How? Hundreds of cameras around the store and weight sensors on the shelves can see and identify which products you pick up. And if you decide you do not want an item you picked up, place it back on the shelf and the technology will remove the item from your online cart.

When you’re finished, “Just Walk Out” through the gates and you’re…

Shoppers often will learn about a product, retailer, or offer from a mobile ad, then visit the bricks and mortar store to complete the purchase. 

But tracking the store visit back to the ad has been a challenge for advertisers.  Placed (www.placed.com) provides a platform that measures the impact of mobile advertising campaigns in driving traffic to your stores. 

Chief Product Officer Tim Barnes said “the ability to quantify consumers' offline behavior with digital touch points will systematically transform the way media is measured.”

How do you measure the effectiveness of mobile ads to drive in-store…