Podcast: Beyond Shopify: How to Win on Amazon, Walmart & Target
Episode Summary
This week on the Free to Grow CFO podcast, we welcome back Tana Cofer, co-founder of Glitter Faced and RosieRai, alongside her husband and business partner, David Cofer. Together, they dive into the realities of launching a brand on Amazon, navigating Walmart, and leveraging emerging marketplaces to drive profitable growth.
With DTC brands facing rising CAC on Meta and Google, alternative channels like Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop offer a compelling way to reach new customers—if done right. Tana and David share their firsthand experience in scaling their own brand and guiding clients through marketplace strategy.
Key Takeaways
Defining a strategy is crucial for measuring success in marketing efforts.
Best practices for launching on Walmart include simplifying the process and leveraging reviews.
The competitive landscape of e-commerce requires intentionality in spending.
Episode Links
Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/
Tana Cofer- https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanacofer/
David Cofer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-cofer/
Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/
RosieRai - https://rosierai.com/
Glitter Faced - https://www.glitter-faced.com/
Meet Tana Cofer
Tana Cofer is the founder and CEO of RosieRai, an e-commerce growth agency focused on helping small to medium size businesses launch and scale profitably on any online Marketplace. With a passion for driving online business success, Tana leads her team in creating innovative strategies that deliver remarkable results for their clients. She is also a wife and mother of 3 children and enjoys spending her weekends in her jeep out in the Utah mountains.
Learn more about RosieRai and request a free Amazon Account audit here: https://rosierai.com/contact
Meet David Cofer
David Cofer is the CRO and Co-Founder of RosieRai, a marketplace growth agency focused on helping small to medium size businesses launch and scale profitably on Amazon, Walmart, Target and many more. David focuses on building great teams. He has built out the RoseRai team and many of their partnerships, working to create powerhouse relationships that work to propel RosieRai and their partners forward. He also loves reading and playing games with his family.
Transcript
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00:00 Introduction to DTC Finance Myths
02:33 The Journey of Glitterface and RosieRai
07:08 The Value of Operator Experience in Consulting
11:00 Strategies Tested on Glitterfaced
15:05 Walmart's Growing Marketplace Opportunity
18:34 Best Practices for Launching on Walmart
24:00 Exploring Other Marketplaces Beyond Amazon and Walmart
26:51 Challenges in Brand Growth on Marketplaces
27:42 Target vs. Walmart: Market Positioning and Strategy
30:47 Understanding Acquisition Costs Across Channels
36:32 The Importance of Strategy in Marketplace Decisions
39:52 Navigating Business as a Husband and Wife Duo
43:00 Closing Thoughts
Jon Blair (00:01)
Hey, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I've got my first ever duo on the show husband and wife duo so a couple of firsts Tana's been here before her husband David hasn't but i've got David and Tana Cofer co-founders of Glitter Faced and that run an amazon growth agency RosieRai together Tana welcome back David welcome how are you guys
David And Tana Cofer (00:45)
Pretty good, pretty good. Thanks for having us on. Yeah, we're great. Doing well this morning.
Jon Blair (00:50)
So I'm excited for our conversation. You know, those of you who follow the show have probably heard Tana talk all things Amazon growth several months back, which is a great conversation. Today, we're certainly gonna talk about some Amazon, but we're gonna be looking at this from the perspective of launching a brand on Amazon. And I also want to get a little bit into...
talking about some of the opportunities and some of the other emerging marketplaces. Obviously when we think about marketplace channels, Amazon's kind of the big behemoth, the one that everyone knows about, but there's definitely some interesting emerging opportunities in other marketplaces that are growing. And I just wanna like set the stage for why we're having this conversation, it's so important. In the DTC world that Free to Grow CFO operates in, one of the common challenges that all brands are facing, are increasing marketing costs on channels like Meta and Google. And so in the face of increasing customer acquisition costs, one of the kind of profitable growth levers that you can lean into as a growing DTC brand is adding on Amazon and other marketplaces to your strategy. It's not the only one, but it's certainly a big one, right? That if done well,
David And Tana Cofer (02:07)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (02:09)
can continue to launch your growth and maintain profitability in the face of increasing customer acquisition costs. So before we get into this, Tana, David, I don't know who should dive in first, but I'd love to hear about your journey to first co-founding Glitter Faced and then how you guys decided to join forces running your agency called RosieRai
David And Tana Cofer (02:16)
Thank
Yeah, great questions. To try and make it short for the podcast, I'll start with the beginning. When I left the agency world to stay home with the kids in freelance, I was helping brands launch and scale on Amazon.
And this was early 2023. And then I just, I've always wanted to be, I always wanted to be the CMO. That was kind of like my dream was like, I want to run the marketing strategy for like a super cool brand, right? And I was like, man, I don't think I'm going to get this opportunity with all of my e-commerce knowledge with marketplace growth and strategy. I just, not sure I'm going to get this opportunity for quite a while unless I make it for myself.
Like that was at the end of the day. Like I just need to make the opportunity for myself. And so I kept, and I, like other entrepreneurs kept writing ideas.
for years in my notepad on my iPhone, like my list of product ideas, right? And I was finally going through it and then doing some research with the tools that I use. And I realized there was quite a gap in this edible glitter space. It was really hot and trending, but there were so many negative reviews because of the messiness or the dyes or just questionable, where does this product come from? Can I really digest it? What's gonna happen to me? And I just felt like that was an area.
that I could come in with my expertise and I could learn and grow and I could launch a really fun brand. And so I actually reached out to one of my great friends, Zach, who is also a co-founder of Glitter Faced. And he and I were kind of the front of it actually before David even got involved. And we were like, let's go. And this was end of 2023.
And so that's kind of where it all got started. And then I would say middle of last year, when we realized the growth potential, we needed another person, but we couldn't afford that other person. And so naturally you then think, well, my spouse, like I got someone here who's supporting me. it was like, okay, we're going to get free labor. That's like totally legit. It's your spouse or your kids, right?
Jon Blair (04:34)
My spouse is free.
Yeah
Yeah,
I love it. I love it.
David And Tana Cofer (04:47)
And so that's what we did. I was like, okay, my kids are old enough that they can come to activities, they can come to events and such. David, you're going to help me set up the booth. David, you're going to help me make this product this weekend. David, I need you to go approve the label with the manufacturer. David, go to Salt Lake and grab the glitter. I just had him as the person kind of going and then it just naturally he was involved in the everyday conversations. And that's kind of how I would say that got started. Do you want to talk about how you got involved with RosieRai?
Yeah, I mean, for me, both of these were kind of a spectator sport for a long time. I watched her build all these ideas. She bounced a lot of them off of me and was like, sure, honey, you know, that all that sounds great. Like this just wasn't what my world's at all. And, you know, I was just I did a bunch of different things. I just kind of looked for what kind of new skills I could learn. And then Tana in the middle of 2024, kind of said, all right, you know, these things are picking up some steam. I had been helping out with Glitter Faced, you know, just cause I was around, but middle of 2024, things are kind of picking up steam and she asked me to step in and leave my thing full time and to work on RosieRai. wasn't specifically Glitter Faced. It was more RosieRai.
But naturally because I had more time I kind of started stepping in more on glitter face as well But with RosieRai that what we've started telling people is I'm just the first hire at everything So I'm the first salesman. I'm the first bookkeeper. I'm the first, you know, whatever so and doing it badly and figuring it out and and She basically she hands me projects that are gonna take her too much time and says to go figure this out Yeah
Jon Blair (06:24)
Hahaha
I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah, the first employee for anything early stage, it doesn't matter if it's a brand or it's an agency or whatever. It's literally just like, you have to wear whatever hat needs to be worn that day. And there's a lot of ambiguity and vacuums, like leadership vacuums, process vacuums, all the vacuums, and you just have to figure it out, right?
David And Tana Cofer (07:08)
We will.
Jon Blair (07:09)
I love that, well okay, so a couple things. I'm a big, and Tana I think we talked about this the last time I had you on the show, but when I think about service providers that provide a service to growing e-comm brands, one of the things that I see again and again and again is the service providers that have a background as an actual operator themselves have the ability to, really understand what it's like to be in the shoes of their clients and they're actually far more valuable than the career consultant will call it, right? So walk me through a little bit of what comes to mind when you think about how having your own brand in Glitter Faced has helped you be that much better of a consultant at RosieRai on the Amazon and marketplace like ad buying and growth strategy side of things.
David And Tana Cofer (08:04)
Yeah, it's a good question. One of the things that I always saw when I worked in the agency world before was even though we had access to all the same data, the account, weren't the admin over it. We weren't the main email. So sometimes the brand from Amazon, again, I did most of my Amazon work, would get an email about a listing issue and we wouldn't see it immediately. And so then they...
Jon Blair (08:32)
Mm.
David And Tana Cofer (08:33)
would maybe not inform us because they assumed we knew, but we didn't get that email because we don't own the account. There are different things that happen when you're in the agency world where you don't see those. Another one is when the placement fees for Amazon increased or when fees change, the head, the owner of the account gets those notifications, not always the agency, right? And so there were things like that that I would say previous to me launching my own brand,
I, it would take me several days, if not weeks to have found that issue, caught it and made the change. and whereas as an owner, I would get those same emails. Okay, the placement fee is changing for all accounts. Here are the details. But as opposed to waiting or finding in a LinkedIn, like I got the email the same time the brand did. So I was immediately going into my account, Glitter Faced, how is this going to affect me? How do I make a new shipment? And within like an hour I was emailing all of my brands saying, okay,
Jon Blair (09:08)
Mm.
Interesting.
David And Tana Cofer (09:33)
with this email that you received and this new change, here's how we're gonna go about this process. And so I felt like I was much faster to changes or I have been much faster because I'm getting those notifications and I'm seeing how it will affect me. And although I wanna say I was a very passionate consultant before and I loved the brands I worked with and I was very involved, it's another level when it's your own money going into the brand.
Jon Blair (09:59)
Absolutely.
David And Tana Cofer (10:00)
Right? It's another level when the fees get changed from 15 cents to 50 cents a product, right? It might seem small, but when it hits my bank account, like, it feels different. And so I think I have way more empathy because of that. And then on all of my sales calls now, we can answer questions, I would say, better. We can answer them differently. And we have that natural, like, I totally get it. When that happened in February, that really hit me hard or...
when I launched in this space, here are some of the things that I learned. So I would say now we're signing more brands that are similar to ours, like in grocery, for example, because we get, that's the space that we launched our brand in. So they trust us in that space, if that makes sense.
Jon Blair (10:45)
Totally.
Yeah, I'm curious, are there any like strategies that you tested on your own brand before applying them to clients that you found like especially insightful or powerful?
David And Tana Cofer (11:00)
Yeah, there's a lot. Let me think of a really good one to share. I would say the one that impacted us the most was, and again, we're mostly an Amazon business, so I'll stick to an Amazon example. Every category has different, are called referral fees, which means how much you pay Amazon. So every category pays Amazon a little more or a little less based on the category that they're in.
things that we, well David actually figured this out. When we launched into grocery and gourmet, we learned that if you were at $14.99, you actually only paid 8%, but we launched at $16.99, so we were paying Amazon 15%. So that's almost like a double jump in how much we're paying Amazon based on that price. There's a similar thing in shoes and beauty. There's this different, there's different levels that I wouldn't say there's necessarily like a PDF file for.
Jon Blair (11:44)
Interesting.
David And Tana Cofer (12:00)
or you can just see, you have to kind of learn and test. And so once we figured that out, our brands that were in that category, I immediately was on the call, hey, how can we adjust your pricing to get you more money back? Because we've just learned this, do we need to go from a two pack to a one pack? Do we need to run a sale and see if it works? Yeah, that was a big one I would say. We immediately were able to test on brands and they were really happy with our ability to do that.
Jon Blair (12:29)
interesting.
David And Tana Cofer (12:30)
Another one actually is within Walmart. We learned that you can actually, if you know the right way, you can actually upload your reviews from your DTC site, your DTC site to Walmart. They have a syndication that is free and approved. So I had one brand who wanted to launch on Walmart, but was so nervous because the competitors had a thousand reviews. And I was like, what's your DTC? And they're like, well, we have like 3000. And I was like, download that. I'll upload that.
Jon Blair (12:44)
interesting.
David And Tana Cofer (12:59)
and they were like, the previous three agencies we tried never knew that. And I don't think I would have, unless I had my own brand, that I was scrolling for days trying to figure out how to amplify my reviews to find that hidden gem. Does that make sense?
Jon Blair (13:15)
Yeah, no, I love that. It's another example of this concept I talk about a lot on the show, which is that when you find a good consultant, a good service provider, they help you go further faster. Their fees are not just for clicking buttons and buying ads in your case. You're actually paying for many years of experience that you don't maybe have on the brand side. And so you can go further faster because of these little nuggets.
David And Tana Cofer (13:28)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (13:45)
That's a big value add that Free to Grow brings to the table. It's like our CFOs, including myself, like we are former e-comm operators. We've been running businesses on Amazon and Shopify for a decade plus each of us. And so there's just, there's a lot of insight we have into things that you can do and you can't do or you should be concerned about or that we've seen work.
David And Tana Cofer (13:59)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (14:14)
And again, and additionally, when you're an agency like ours or yours that's working with a bunch of eComm brands on the same platforms all the time, you can also share learnings not just from your own brand, Glitter Faced, but what's working with the other brands that you're working with, right? And that's worth its weight in gold as well. So I love that. I'm curious, you brought up Walmart and I have heard from you guys and from others in the space that,
Walmart has got some momentum in terms of marketplace opportunity. What is your sense and experience from actually being out there and buying ads and whatnot, what is your sense on the marketplace opportunity in the Walmart channel?
David And Tana Cofer (14:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, I would say I would say with with Walmart. It's the hardest one to start building momentum. So like if you're if you're a newer brand, it's the hardest one to to gain momentum off of just that channel alone, if that makes sense. But if you're a brand that's coming on to Walmart with some momentum, we've seen we've seen some pretty explosive growth with different brands that we've been able to bring on in different categories. So
It's just, it's growing a lot better than it used to in the past. And in the past, it was something where you just kind of, it would just be another channel. You'd just kind of be on there to be on Walmart, let's say you're on Walmart. And now it's a real growth channel and that's really exciting to see. Yeah, I would say, you know, getting into more specifics, Walmart has done a lot of things to mimic Amazon. And so it actually has made it a lot easier now when you're live on Amazon, have momentum to move a lot of that content over.
To Walmart so it's a slightly faster launch and then of course they have this review feature So you can you know amplify your reviews pretty quickly? And I would I think that the stats for from last year to this year like the search Starting your search on Amazon actually went down like five to seven percent and starting your search on Walmart actually went up over seven percent So that doesn't mean Amazon's still growing massively, but it's a matter of there's actually more brands considering Walmart. For me, I consider it for that immediate delivery. When my kids are sick, I go to Walmart because there's a Walmart right here and they'll deliver to me in an hour or I can go pick it up because it's right there and I can see where it's at. So like for me, it's the urgency of the item and that's where Walmart will win that and in grocery. And again, a lot of our brands that are coming are interested in grocery because it's the same category our personal product lies in.
Jon Blair (16:49)
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (17:00)
So we see a lot of brands who want Amazon, Walmart, Instacart because they are more of that consumable, want it right to your door with their bananas and their eggs type brands.
Jon Blair (17:12)
Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of, a friend of mine named Matt Ezyk was on the podcast a few months back, and we talked about the marrying up of the kind of digital ad experience with physical delivery or physical retail. And so it sounds like there's a bit of an opportunity there with Walmart that you're advertising online digitally.
David And Tana Cofer (17:36)
Absolutely.
Jon Blair (17:39)
but you can kind of blend the experience with physical retail a bit in the way of either like in-store pickup or the like, you know, one hour delivery or, or, you know, like few hours delivery within a few hours. So that's, that's pretty cool. What you mentioned, like the start, I know that one blocker or concern or challenge that we see with a lot of DTC brands going to get Amazon set up is like, just like the uncertainty around the effort it takes to launch and launch well and all that. You mentioned like the barrier or the kind of effort for launching on Walmart has been kind of reduced relative to Amazon. Besides the reviews, there any other kind of like, you know, sort of like launch best practices that you guys are learning with like how to launch well on Amazon, or I'm sorry, on Walmart?
David And Tana Cofer (18:34)
Yeah, it's a great question. would say each platform has their own master file where you upload all the data. Amazon's is like 27,000 columns, half of which or most of what you need. And it gets more complex every single week. It's a new download. It's very complicated. Walmart's is super simple.
Jon Blair (18:48)
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (18:57)
and it works really well, their master file is, they've really thought about the consumer first. I think that's where Walmart always kind of won, is they always think about the consumer first. Amazon says that they do because they have the lowest price. Good for you, that's awesome, you can have that. I would say,
with my experience with the Walmart interface, they've kept things fairly simple and clean. So there's only a couple buttons you have to click, only a few permissions. For us, we have a Walmart rep, we have an Amazon rep, we have a Macy's rep. For all the channels we launch brands, we have a rep for. And I would say Walmart's, I have the most response from them and their reps. And I think it's because of this massive need for growth, and so they're always taking feedback and such. So I would just say overall the experience that agencies, at least I'm getting from Walmart, clearly showcases that they're gonna grow, they're willing to grow. They will within 24 hours give me a lot of data on the category I'm trying to launch a brand in to help accelerate that. Like, here are the keywords that were all trending. Amazon has some of this information available, yes, but they don't have the same competitor insight data and Walmart will hand it to you. They won't tell you what the competitors are doing, but they'll tell you the average in your category is X. Here are the things to emmulate.
Jon Blair (19:58)
Hmm.
David And Tana Cofer (20:14)
I just think there's a lot more hands-on experience with Walmart where they really want to help you launch And I think it's because they really do want to compete and beat Amazon and so for us we're like we're taking advantage of that We're like, okay, you know what else you got? What else you got to help me and my brands grow, you know, I'm not sure When I jumped on here, I'm not sure I was expecting Tana to get spicy and just call out Amazon like that
Jon Blair (20:34)
I'm curious.
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (20:43)
I've had some brands with very unique issues over the past couple of weeks on Amazon and Amazon is not budging. I do feel, yeah.
Jon Blair (20:50)
It's hard. It can be hard. mean, at Guardian Bikes, when I was scaling Guardian Bikes, we were on Amazon and there was a season where we were on Vendor Central, a season where were on Seller Central. Now, Guardian is not on Amazon anymore. But like, we had several different challenges and issues on each of those sides, both the vendor side and the seller side. And getting to the right person, first off, just getting to the right person.
David And Tana Cofer (21:18)
I know. Yes. Have a person.
Jon Blair (21:19)
is very challenging. Even if you have a quote rep, we've
had a rep before. We've had many a rep and not gotten anything out of it. And honestly, sometimes it can literally just be person specific that like, we've had a rep who's like, I know how to solve this issue. And then we've had another, they get swapped out. People are changing seats all the time at Amazon. Then you get another rep and you have the same problem and they tell you there's a different solution.
David And Tana Cofer (21:25)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (21:48)
Than what you've actually implemented before in the past because they don't actually know and so it is it is a challenge and it's it's kind of part of the catch-22 of like being on the big platform Right with all the volume because they're this large company and it can be hard to navigate but I mean, know, it's it's interesting because I would say in all realms of Business strategy at least in my experience the up-and-coming like the channel
David And Tana Cofer (22:01)
Thank
Jon Blair (22:17)
that like five years from now we're talking about is like made a name for itself and is like a staple doesn't feel like that in the early days, right? And so as a brand you have, whether you're talking about like, know, ad channels like Meta or like TikTok shop or whatever, like, and the brands that when that channel really gained steam and like has respectable volume going through it, like the brands that are a lot of the brands that are doing a great job at that time, when everyone finally realizes is like they got in it on in the early days and figured it, you know, spent the time to figure that channel out. And so I'm sure that we're gonna continue to see more of that kind of stuff with Walmart over time. that like, maybe it doesn't feel like it's near like Amazon eclipses it in terms of volume, right? But like, I'm sure five to 10 years from now the brands that figured out Walmart and that Walmart is a good channel for. The ones that were diligent and figured it out will be reaping the benefits many years from now. I'm curious because Walmart, would say in, you know, at Free to Grow, that's like when we look at marketplaces, the brands we work with primarily start DTC, then they usually generally go to Amazon Next, right? And then Walmart's like generally the next most popular one. Other platforms and marketplaces like Macy's, Target, Wayfair, what are you observing there and what are your thoughts on the opportunities now and kind of over time in some of these other marketplaces?
David And Tana Cofer (23:51)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so I want to say I feel like Amazon and Walmart will most likely always be numbers one and two in terms of marketplace expansion off of a DTC. And I think that that's smart. You know, they are the ones that are seen for most growth. I would potentially argue you should consider TikTok Shop as your third. We'll wait and see what actually happens with all of that this year. But I would...
Jon Blair (24:22)
Yeah, yeah for sure
David And Tana Cofer (24:26)
Right, I would likely say that would be the next step. For the other channels, we run brands on them. And I will say, in my experience, Target usually is that next one. And then it's the Macy's, Kohl's, Nordstrom, like, it's in that line. We do quite a few apparel and beauty brands though, so I could be a little bit biased there. But one of the reasons why I would say it kind of goes in that order is Target is considered one of the other bigger names.
Jon Blair (24:41)
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (24:55)
However, in my experience, Target, their API doesn't sync with a lot of the other tools that are out there to help with growth. So for example, we're considering moving from our current tech stack to a different one, and they will take all of, they take Amazon, Walmart, and all these little smaller marketplaces, but not Target. And they're like, we can't take Target. And it's true, a lot of other ones I looked at, they can't take Target. So unless that changes,
Jon Blair (25:03)
Interesting.
interesting.
David And Tana Cofer (25:24)
That may go down and target you have to still apply and be accepted online right now. Whereas other channels you don't have to. So I think that that's the barrier, but that I would say is the next one everyone wants to do. And then last would be all the, I would say all the others are kind of secondary. If you're in apparel, it'd be that Macy Nordstrom Kohl's, which we do. And if you're not apparel, it would probably be the eBay or the Instacart if you fit one of those demographics and most of which all have an API that is common within a lot of tech stacks. Would you agree? I definitely agree. I was just thinking while you were talking about that, and I was thinking about what you were saying, Jon, about brands figuring out Walmart and reaping those benefits over the next few years. I was thinking about the target strategy from Target's perspective, and I just don't think I understand it.
They're trying to play like an exclusive game where they try to keep everything. They're trying to be like an Apple, I guess of the e-commerce world where like you have to, if you're going to be with us and you have to play like us, you have to use all of our stuff and it's exclusive. Like you have to apply to be with us and everything. But then they're like the products that they're selling are not any different or any more premium or anything. So there's nothing that sets their marketplace apart as far as like quality, but, yet you have to jump through way more hoops in, and they put active like roadblocks in the way of growth of a brand's growth on Target. I just, I don't see Target doing, not to call anyone out, but I don't see Target doing well, like 10 years from now, if they don't, if they don't change their, like their practices.
Jon Blair (26:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting. I actually didn't know. I learned some, one of my favorite things about this podcast is I learned all kinds of crazy stuff from the people that I'm interviewing and like I feel like I keep up with e-comm by having this podcast and talking with all my friends, you know. But yeah, it's interesting because when at Guardian Bikes, I use Guardian a lot as an example because that's where I cut my teeth in scaling a brand and I learned a lot about both Target and Walmart because
David And Tana Cofer (27:21)
What?
Yeah.
Jon Blair (27:42)
Target and Walmart are the biggest bike retailers to the mass market for kids' bikes, right? And Walmart's way bigger than Target. Target is number two and they're not even really a close two. But they do, Target does fancy themselves higher end than Walmart. They do, like internally, I know that for a fact. they, at least then, because we did a lot of research and talked with Target buyers and like,
David And Tana Cofer (27:53)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (28:12)
the Target buyer for bikes claimed that the average customer at Target has like a 30 % higher disposable income than the average Walmart customer. How true is that? I don't know for sure. And I don't know how that plays into kind of this like closed ecosystem strategy that you're talking about, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing it to try to kind of set themselves apart.
David And Tana Cofer (28:33)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (28:40)
quality wise and say that everyone who sells on Target.com is vetted by us. Probably trying to keep, this is just speculation. But I'm sure there's plenty of, one problem Amazon has and probably Walmart has by it being kind of this open ecosystem. There's a lot of these like Chinese brands, right? That just like, they have no physical presence in the US. They,
David And Tana Cofer (28:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Thank you.
Jon Blair (29:07)
drop ship from straight from China and Amazon's their storefront or probably Walmart's their storefront. So I'm sure they're trying to keep some of that stuff out as well. But it is, it's a good point, know, that like, if you can openly as a brand get on these other marketplaces a whole lot easier, you know, then it opens up the opportunity to scale those channels and maybe never even utilize Target, you know.
David And Tana Cofer (29:36)
And the brands that do get approved on Target, I've had a brand tell me just a couple of weeks ago, they got an email saying they were pre-approved. I was like, oh, okay, interesting. That's new to me. I didn't realize you could be pre-approved for a marketplace, like a credit card. No hit to your credit score. And so I was like, oh, okay, well then you're probably going to be one of the only ones selling your product on there. That is amazing. That's great.
Jon Blair (29:50)
It's like a mortgage. It's like, it's like a mortgage. Like, yeah, exactly.
for sure.
David And Tana Cofer (30:03)
I think Walmart, if I remember correctly, Walmart was a marketplace before back in like 2019, 2020, where I want to say to do the Walmart marketplace, you had to be approved. And then they opened that up. That could be a total lie. I want to say that was the case. But as they've opened it up, I'm sure they're having similar problems that Amazon does where you need brand registry so that no one else sells your product. I'm sure they're facing those same things, but they still have way less brands within every category online.
Jon Blair (30:25)
Sure. Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (30:32)
it's easier to rank number one. It's a little bit easier to be top of mind and top of the page on Walmart. There's just less search volume in general. So there's less right now money to grab there.
Jon Blair (30:46)
I'm curious to get your thoughts generally on like a very common challenge that the brands we work with face on marketplace strategy is like, okay, this is kind of the sequence. It's like they've scaled to a certain level on DTC, they're feeling that they strategically need to open another channel to reach more eyeballs and help kind of bring down the...
David And Tana Cofer (31:10)
Yep.
Jon Blair (31:14)
multi-channel, full funnel, blended marketing cost, right? When you guys look to Amazon and these other marketplaces relative to DTC, I know it can depend on the brand and like categories and stuff, but like generally, should brands be expecting like lower acquisition costs than DTC about the same?
What are the ways that from your perspective brands should be thinking about acquisition costs on these marketplaces relative to what they're used to on DTC?
David And Tana Cofer (31:49)
Yeah, if we're removing the advertising dollars at first, let's remove those and just say like dollar for dollar. I would say it is about the same if not Amazon's a little more expensive. And that's if you leverage Amazon's.
When Amazon takes it just naturally they take 8-15 percent. So even though you could see more velocity they're going to take a little bit more and then it depends on the size the weight of your product whether or not using Amazon FBA like their fulfillment system will be cheaper for you or more expensive. A lot of brands think it's more expensive for them but it actually is cheaper because they get the prime one day.
Especially if you're smaller, you can literally be in a box this small, right? And so I would say it's pretty close. When you add in the advertising costs to that, I would say that Amazon is a more expensive pay to play space as opposed to some of the more scrappy options. From a DTC perspective, I mean you have email marketing, which is a fantastic opportunity for DTC. You don't really have that same option for Amazon.
You have a little bit of retargeting, but have to pay for that more so than email marketing, right? It's just for retargeting, for subscribing, save, things like that. Where I would argue is I would say Meta's cost per acquisition costs are higher than Amazon. So when we think about like a dollar for dollar, like PPC ad cost play, it depends on the channels that you're using and how scrappy you are. You have millions of opportunities of how to gain customers through DTC and through Amazon.
I would think you have a select few options. And so that's kind of where I would say when you're talking about scale and cost, that's why it makes sense for a lot of brands to start DTC. For Glitter Faced, we started Amazon. And it's because one, it's what we knew, but we knew, also that's where the search volume was. That's where the people were looking for it. And we wanted to test the market, test our product, right? We had
Jon Blair (33:48)
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (33:55)
where our first product was a failure, had to relearn right with our second. And for us, we didn't want to spend a bunch of money to drive traffic at the beginning, we wanted to go where the traffic already was.
Jon Blair (34:07)
That's a good distinction.
Like that's important. Like, I think one thing I want to draw out here for listeners is that like the way that we used, I think Amazon well at Guardian Bikes was deciding on a specific strategic use of Amazon, right? You just mentioned like quick go to market, cheaper, quick and cheaper go to market. But most importantly, a part of that is like
getting the product in front of actual legitimate customer eyeballs cheaper and faster to then figure out and iterate like on the product side and make sure that you have tight product market fit. That's a great way to use Amazon. Where we did Amazon, I would say poorly at Guardian in the early days was just offering all the same, just doing the exact same thing on Amazon as we did on our DTC site. And that was cannibalistic, we found out. And it's not cannibalistic for every brand, but it was for us, right?
And some of the other things we did was like, let's offer certain SKUs on Amazon, like introductory lower price point SKUs, right? Where you're getting more eyeballs that we didn't feel like were cannibalistic based on what we could see in the data. So it actually was expanding our reach outside of like the meta advertising. Now, keep in mind, depends on how much you're spending on top of funnel. Like we have some brands we work with that are spending seven figures a month on meta.
David And Tana Cofer (35:14)
Mm-hmm.
Jon Blair (35:34)
And so does that mean there's no new eyeballs on Amazon that you're getting? Not necessarily, but there's probably less because you're just spending so much, right, in other platforms. People who probably aren't, the proportion of people finding out about you on Amazon's probably much lower. But we've seen that when you open up Amazon and you do a good job on the listings and kind of defending your own turf, that you can get overall conversion, you know, cross channels to increase.
If you're spending heavy on meta, you get some people to convert on Amazon that wouldn't have converted on your dot com either because of whatever, shipping lead times, or they just trust Amazon more and they already have an account set up, right? And so the point that I'm making is it's smart to have a reason why you're using Amazon at any given point in time, right? Or Walmart, or any of these marketplaces. Don't just blindly go into them.
David And Tana Cofer (36:17)
Right.
You're welcome.
Jon Blair (36:32)
It's about understanding what to strategically use these different channels for, right? And so that they're accretive to your business and not cannibalistic to your business.
David And Tana Cofer (36:43)
I'd like to call that out too, because like people hear the words. I feel like sometimes people hear the word strategic and they just kind of their eyes kind of glaze over because they're just so used to hearing it. But I'd to call out your use of that word because I think it's really, I think it's really apropos to this specific like business, type of this playground honestly is if you are, if you're thinking about being on
Jon Blair (36:54)
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (37:11)
Well, honestly, if you're a brand period, it doesn't matter if you're thinking about being on a marketplace or doing anything else. Strategies being strategic has to be like your number one focus. feel like because margins are so tight. There's so much competition. There's so many different places that you could be putting your dollars like every single dollar needs to have a very specific purpose and strategy behind it. There's no, there's you.
Jon Blair (37:36)
100%.
David And Tana Cofer (37:39)
people who do the, unless you've just got more money to blow than I know what to do with throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks is not going to get you through, you know? And so that, you know, if you understand exactly what it is that you're trying to do with this, you know, with this portion of your time and money, then
Jon Blair (37:46)
Not these days, not in this market. That's old school.
100%.
David And Tana Cofer (38:08)
Not only are you going to do a better job with that, but you're also going to know what the markers for success are. You're going to know when you should stop, when you should pour more into it. Like everything is just going to go a lot more smoothly if you really focus on that keyword there.
Jon Blair (38:24)
Yeah, no, mean that what you brought up is very well said is that when you go in, now your strategy is wrong sometimes, right? That's okay, but the fact that you defined it, which you just pointed out, the fact that you defined one helps you measure success and decide if you stop and pull back or if you keep charging ahead, right? You can't, if you don't have kind of like a strategic thesis or hypothesis going into turning on Amazon or any of these marketplaces, then, any decisions you make to go any direction while you're there is litter, I mean, you're just, they're disconnected, just kind of like, you know, spur of the moment stream of consciousness decisions, right? And again, the point, I think where people get hung up on the word strategy, in my opinion, is that one, it's used a lot, right? It's a buzzword. But two, it's that they don't use the word strategy for what it's meant to be used for, meaning that like,
David And Tana Cofer (39:23)
I agree.
Jon Blair (39:23)
When you're defining a strategy, you're saying a strategic decision is one that you are saying, if I believe that if we do this, this is the outcome that we'll get. And I believe that outcome is good for my business because this and this and this. And when you have that cause and effect relationship defined into your strategy, it breeds a level of intentionality.
with the moves that you're making. They're not random acts, know, random acts of marketing, right? And so, yeah, no, I think very well said. Look, I do want, before we get to the end of this episode, I actually wanna move away from your brand and marketplace growth, and I wanna talk about being a husband and wife duo, and that's what we're gonna end the podcast with.
David And Tana Cofer (40:15)
you
Jon Blair (40:18)
I grew up with a family business where my parents worked together. They've been working together for like 40 years. So you guys have some interesting parallels to my family. My mom also is a competitive bodybuilder, just like what we talked about Tana, yeah, which Tana is. But being a husband and wife duo, chat with me a little bit about like...
David And Tana Cofer (40:23)
So,
yeah, I remember that.
Jon Blair (40:44)
the ups and the downs, the good and the bad, and ultimately like what it means to your business and to your family to be at this together.
David And Tana Cofer (40:56)
Can I take the lead on this for a sec? Yeah. So I feel like it's been an interesting journey. I kind of got yanked into it. You're welcome. Very much so. I feel very blessed. And honestly, I think that makes a really big difference. There's no like...
Jon Blair (41:10)
Hahaha
David And Tana Cofer (41:23)
There's no like rancor on my side that, you know, I'm not doing what I was before or anything like that. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of effort on Tana's part where she says, she can, she can see, you know, the learning curve and the amount of effort that I'm putting in. And she can see what I, what I am bringing into the business. So there's a lot of.
There's lot of gratitude on both sides and a lot of humility where we learn to work together. So we really don't have any issues where we have to like fight things out or anything. There's things that she recognizes that I'm a little bit better at, even if I don't have some of that business training that she just kind of lets me, she understands, okay, this is a project you can handle. I'm going to step back and let you do that.
And she listens when I think that she's kind of, because the, I'd say that one of Tana's biggest strengths is that she's really passionate about her clients and the people that she wants to grow. And obviously she's extremely skilled in growing those clients. So she sees between the passion and the skill, she's like, I can do this. I can grow this brand. And when I'm looking at, you know, when I'm on the backside, looking at the numbers and like,
Also, as I'm watching her as a husband and seeing the amount of effort and stress that she's putting into one particular brand, for example, at some point it's time to back off. And at other times it's kind of that intentionality we were talking about a minute ago. So I apologize if I'm rambling a little bit, there's so many different points that I feel like we work so well together.
Jon Blair (42:59)
Yeah.
No, not at all.
David And Tana Cofer (43:10)
where I'm able to balance her and she's able to balance me. And obviously this is not my world. So obviously I've had to humble myself a little bit and step back and take a little bit of a supporting role to Tana. And again, I think that gratitude has been the biggest key factor for that because she's grateful that I am doing that, that I'm giving up what some of the things that I would like to be doing in order to be helping her.
Jon Blair (43:10)
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (43:38)
And I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn these new skills and be able to be with my family more and do all these wonderful things that I get to do now. And so there's that gratitude greases a lot of wheels in my opinion, as far as like things that could be fights that just aren't because we're on the same team. Like that's our mantra every day is we're on the same team.
Jon Blair (44:03)
I that. We're gonna do something fun right now. Okay, I've been wait I didn't I'm springing this you on you guys I didn't I didn't inform I didn't inform you before the show so normally we end with asking like about a like a Little known fact that might be shocking right to the audience Tana shared last time that she's a competitive bodybuilder So we're gonna do we're gonna do like the husband-and-wife game show version of this, right? I came over this like last minute. Okay, so So here we go. You ready?
David And Tana Cofer (44:06)
God.
That's
Yeah.
Okay.
Jon Blair (44:33)
And this was not pre-planned. is raw and unedited, right? So, Tana, if David were to share the most shocking little known fact about himself right now, what would it be?
David And Tana Cofer (44:38)
Okay, yes.
Shocking little known fact about David. man, okay. Do you have one in your head? Yeah. Do you want one? Man, I was gonna say something related to books, but that's kind of clear behind it. These are all his, so man.
Jon Blair (44:54)
David, get in your mind what you would be sharing if I asked this question, because we're going to ask afterwards if she was right.
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (45:15)
I am going to say that David wants, I'll say that if David could stop and do anything, like, you're on the right track, you're on the right track. Stop and do anything. was going to say career wise, maybe that's not it, but he would go and he would be a professor of something in politics, something like that.
Jon Blair (45:30)
here we go, here we go.
David And Tana Cofer (45:42)
You're close. The one I was thinking was my dream eventually would be to be a professor of philosophy. Something like that.
Jon Blair (45:51)
Nice dude, there we go, that was pretty good. There you go. We had to do the little husband and wife dating game show version of asking my final question. I love that. Well, unfortunately, we do have to land the plane. This was an awesome conversation. I wanna remind everyone, the reason we had this conversation today is because in the wake of increasing acquisition costs on the DTC side of the world, Amazon being the most quote famous marketplace, Walmart and some of these other marketplaces, they represent opportunities to get new eyeballs on your brand, right? Expanding in new channels to continue to accelerate growth, but enhance hopefully marketing efficiency instead of making it worse. So you know agencies like RosieRai, I highly recommend you check them out. But before we end here, guys, where can people find more information about your brand Glitter Faced and about your Amazon and Marketplace growth agency, RosieRai?
David And Tana Cofer (46:58)
Yeah, Glitter Faced you can find on Amazon or on Instagram. We're decently active on TikTok. You can find us there. And then I would say for RosieRai if you own a brand and you're interested in the kind of content and how we do things, you can check out our LinkedIn or our Instagram. If you're interested, you know, we have a website and really, I just like to chat with everyone. So if you just like DM me via Instagram or LinkedIn, I'll just check out your website, like give you my thoughts if you're ready.
Jon Blair (47:01)
Yeah.
David And Tana Cofer (47:28)
We happily run average fees for people to see if this even makes sense for you margin wise. But yeah, honestly, I think we're pretty approachable. So we're just people. So does the LinkedIn message us is what I would say. We'll reply. We're not making this up.
Jon Blair (47:41)
I love it. I love it. If you have any questions about Amazon growth, ad buying, as well as Walmart or any these other marketplaces, I highly recommend reach out to Tana and David on LinkedIn. And don't forget that if you want more helpful tips on scaling your profit-focused DTC brand, to consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're ever interested in learning more about how Free to Grow's DTC accountants and CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale.
Check us out at FreeToGrowCFO.com and until next time, scale on.
