Hard to believe it's been 4 years since Amazon announced Launchpad a custom program that helps start-ups “launch, market and distribute” new products on Amazon.  The program is really a re-skinned version of Amazon's Vendor Express, but it's goal is to let smaller manufacturers sell directly to Amazon.  The reason for the re-branding?  Simple - it's cooler and let's them position it as an option for business that were funded by Kickstarter, Circle up, or just an old fashion invention.

Their pitch is that you get to tap into Amazon's massive presence to quickly build your brand leveraging their platform to grow. They are correct - Amazon is the largest online retailer with over 1.4 billion sessions last Christmas.  A recent Forrester survey noted that 50% of American's search for product on Amazon regardless of whether or not they're going to buy on the site.

Any Company needs a presence there and Amazon is positioning Launchpad as the way to do it for start-ups. But is it worth it?   H

Amazon took a dramatic step today help it quickly restock critical supplies.  Effective today all inbound FBA orders (except for groceries, household supplies and medical products) would be paused until April 5th.  In addition, Amazon has suspended all new purchase orders for all 1P customers, except for the same critical group of items.

This pause will impact brands across multiple categories; everything from clothing and office to sporting goods and electronics.  Grocery, base household supplies, and most medical products are unaffected.  

Yeoman considers this a smart move by Amazon.  We have seen a dramatic shift in consumables and grocery buying on the site, with some categories up 500% vs prior week.  Putting basics at the top of the list helps Amazon get products out to quickly and offset some of the stockouts that are being seen around the US.

"We understand this is a change to your business, and we did not take this decision lightly," Amazon said in its announcement, and said

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 using their 'own' terms for items, assuming that everyone knows what they mean.  It's call the 'Curse of Knowledge' and can plague everyone from industrial manufacturers to beverage Companies that insist on calling the

A recent Yeoman study of over 1,500 items sold on Amazon from a leading US manufacturer found a whopping 70% contained errors or did not follow Amazon’s best practice recommendations for providing product details. This study further showed the same level of inaccuracy on Google and Bing product searches. This is a maddening problem that plagues manufacturers in every industry. Once a product is “out there,” resellers, partners, distributors and reviewers end up shaping and revising the product details that your customers are going to use to make their purchase decision.

Products sold by Amazon definitely had better data quality, but less than 4% could be considered 'optimized' with the proven best practices for any item:

• Descriptive title at least 50 characters long (including brand, purpose, color, and set/quantity info)
• Multiple images of product
• Bullet/summary list of product features
• Complete description that includes product benefits, usage instructions, what's in the box, and

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 one of the best ways to improve your overall footprint.  This includes everything from best practice titles, product details, images, specifications, categorization, etc.  This isn't a one time task; it needs to become part of someone's role for three reasons:

• Optimi

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. Yep, the world's got big data envy bad, and a data scientist is the silver bullet we all need.

Here's an alternative viewpoint: You don't need them. Instead, bring big data analytics down to earth, tr

Update:  The long standing quesiton about whether or not Amazon will be happy collecting taxes on behave of 3rd party sellers is officially over. On January 1st, Amazon started collecting in 4 more states (HI, IL, MI, and WI)  Last October they added 9  (AZ, CA, CO, ME, MD, MA, NV, ND, TX, UT)

That brings the total to 38 states that Amazon collects and remits taxes for 3rd party sellers.  (39 if you include Washington, DC, plus there are 5 states that don't charge sales tax) The bulk of the other Marketplaces like Walmart and eBay have also complied with most of the rules, but not as fast as Amazon.  For Amazon, the logic is easy

• They have a physical nexus in all 50 states already (so they pay taxes on items they sell direct)
•  They already have an enterprise level merchant collection system that's been running for year
• Walmart, EBay and other competing marketplaces are struggling to move as fast

That leaves 13 states a seller may have to collection sales tax in.  This broader quest

Thanksgiving comes extra late this year (on the 28^th) which means there are only 25 shopping days between Black Friday and Christmas Eve. That’s almost an entire week less than last year, when retailers had a luxurious 30 days to woo shoppers. Now, harried holiday shoppers will have to accomplish all their gift buying in 4 weekends instead of 5.  Last time we had it this short?  2014

That time crunch will put extra pressure on manufacturers and publishers to get products into the pipeline early, and may prompt retailers to start running their holiday ads even earlier than usual. According to an Experian Marketing Services survey of marketing executives’ cross-channel marketing plans, 49% of retailers will launch their holiday campaigns before Halloween.

And this won’t just affect B2C sales. Fourth quarter is usually strong for B2B sales too, and now B2B purchasers will be rushed trying to get their orders in before year-end as well.

What does that mean for your Q4 planning? We predict

Amazon opened its first retail storefront on Monday, January 22, 2018. 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 done. Amazon will send an electr

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 Story

As most people know, when you buy an item on Amazon it doesn’t necessarily get shipped by Amazon.  3^rd party sellers (3P) make up 55-65% of Amazon orders.

In fact, the majority of items on Amazon have multiple sellers including Amazon and a hos