Podcast: Networking Your Way to eComm Success
Episode Summary
In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with Tim Clark, founder of The Retail RX, to chat about scaling D2C brands with a profit-focused mindset, particularly in the realm of Amazon growth strategy. Tim shares his entrepreneurial journey, insights on transitioning from Vendor Central to Seller Central, and the importance of leveraging tech tools and networking to drive growth. The conversation emphasizes the need for brands to adapt to the evolving e-commerce landscape and highlights the role of RetailRx in helping brands optimize their operations and profitability.
Episode Links
Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/
Tim Clark - https://www.linkedin.com/in/theretailrx/
Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/
Key Takeaways:
Leveraging tech tools can save time and improve efficiency.
Networking is crucial for staying updated in the e-commerce space.
Building relationships can lead to valuable business opportunities.
Businesses exist to turn a profit or else they're
just hobbies.
Meet Tim Clark
Tim has 25 years of experience selling products online across digital platforms including 15 years selling on Amazon. He has worked at startups helping them fuel profitable growth and has helped enterprise brands implement tech solutions to scale while streamlining efficiencies. Outside of revenue generation, Tim loves networking with good people and seeing young professionals grow in their careers.
Transcript
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00:00 Introduction to Profit-Focused Growth
02:11 Tim Clark's Entrepreneurial Journey
05:57 Transitioning to Amazon Growth Strategy
09:59 Scaling Vendor Central Business
12:35 The Shift to Seller Central
19:37 Navigating Amazon's Complex Structure
25:54 Leveraging Tech Tools for Efficiency
34:41 The Importance of Networking
45:36 RetailRx: Helping Brands Thrive
55:37 Final Thoughts
Jon Blair (00:00)
Yo, yo, yo, what is happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where if you listen to us, you know we're diving deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand, but we're talking about doing it with a profit -focused mindset. Why? Because businesses exist to turn a profit or else, as I like to say, they're just an expensive hobby. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go -to outsourced finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And as you can see, today I'm here with my buddy Tim Clark from the RetailRx. Tim, what is happening, man?
Tim (00:38)
I just want to know on your podcast are you usually just talking are you using like throwing words out like EBITDA and in the red, in the black, you know, I'm, don't know all the cool like CFO kind of words, but I feel that you have some real good flex ones that you might drop today.
Jon Blair (00:45)
Hahaha
Yeah man, you know what, I'll be looking for opportunities to drop any of that stuff that we can. But you know what, tongue in cheek or not on that, we're all about growing a brand, right? gonna be talking about the connection to growth strategy and profit, right? Because you can't have one without the other. But we wanna be a resource to help brands scale, right? And there's all this,
crap out there about all different kinds of, hacks and tactics. We're trying to get real here. We're here to talk with real entrepreneurs like my buddy Tim and get the real nitty gritty of like what it takes to get in the trenches and scale a brand. And I couldn't think of anyone better to chat about this in the realm of Amazon growth strategy than you Tim. So before we dive into chatting more about I want everyone to hear a little bit about your background and your entrepreneurial journey because quite frankly, before I hit record, I was like, hey Tim, what do you want to talk about? You've done so many different things. You have your hands in so many different areas. What do you want to talk about, man? I feel like we probably have five or six episodes we could possibly do. So let's start a little bit with your background and your journey and then let's go from there.
Tim (02:11)
Yeah, background born and raised San Diego. And I'm 44 years old, which is pretty like I became the older guy recently. Like I feel I'm older guy in the company. And in some of these brackets you fill out, I'm now like bumping up, not a level up definitely, but like.
Jon Blair (02:26)
Yeah
Tim (02:28)
Dude, coming up, I loved video games and I would be playing, you know, Nintendo. I'd go over to a friend's house, play Sega and there was Nintendo Power, the magazine that you could pick up and you can read how to do secret moves that maybe people didn't know. And then there became like this joystick. mean, you would be playing track and field and you would get a pencil and you just like to go really fast.
Jon Blair (02:44)
yeah, I remember that, man.
Yeah
Tim (02:58)
Then they came out with this thing called the NES Advantage and you would hold the button down and it would be turbo and it would just be a game changer.
Jon Blair (03:06)
You
Tim (03:08)
Okay, that little button, a turbo button, that changed my life. I love video games in the arcade sense, which now they're coming back a little bit, but I've always enjoyed finding cheat codes in life that help me, you know, destroy an opponent if you're talking Street Fighter II, but also kind of, I don't know if game is the right word, but all of these platforms.
The eBay's the Amazon the Poshmark the Shopify all of I don't know if they call them Shopify the Amazon but you know, it's it takes a lot of hours they say 10,000 hours to master something and I know anybody in the digital world
If you are truly great at your art, you are putting in that amount of time. And a lot of the Amazon people you meet, a lot of the Shopify people, they're going to be highly ADHD with their minds going all over the place. But that is the way that you need to be able to react to the changes and pivot as necessary and go an entirely different direction. Yeah. Born and raised San Diego, video games, hip hop.
Sports I was always Playing baseball playing soccer playing basketball I was never the best on the field But I took a lot of pride in being a captain and being like yo yo yo come on or a hype man So I've always been that within a company as well if there's Tracksuit Tuesdays going on Like I'm coming when the flyest track suit you know what I mean, so I believe in
Jon Blair (04:36)
Hell yeah.
Yeah
Tim (04:48)
I'm 44, but in my mind, I'm still 15, 16, 17. And dude, haven't stopped, I haven't stopped, monstering up. And it's really cool in e -commerce to actually look at numbers. Top line revenue, always going to be a big thing. But once you get an understanding on your profit dollars, after everything has been clawed away and you see that growing and you see the business owners that you're working under like.
be super stoked and want to give you more budget to grow your business. I love that. And that's the success I've been able to see with Amazon going back to when I started in like 2009, 2010.
Jon Blair (05:28)
2009, 2010, man, I got on Amazon with Guardian Bikes in 2016 and that feels like looking back to 2016, like eight years ago, I feel like that was like the early days. Because in many ways it still was the early days, right, of Amazon. It was such a different platform. But like, going back to the very beginning of you getting on Amazon, like what was Amazon like then that might be surprising to people relative to how it is today?
Tim (05:58)
Yeah, I went to go work for a company called Skills. So Skills later got acquired. They're owned under the Inplus umbrella right now.
and working at Skills We didn't have a lot of people there and there was just kind of this, hey man, if I don't know how to do it, I'm going to learn how to do it. I'm going to figure it out. Sometimes I'm going to completely blow it and make a mistake, but I'm never going to make that mistake again. And there I had an entry level job. I was a logistics coordinator. I never knew what the word logistics meant. I had always worked in warehouses and mail rooms and worked on the flow of goods from
kind of manufacture to the distribution center to end customer if you're talking mailroom. And that was like the early stages of DTC people ordering and then shipping it to customers. anyway, yeah, over at Skills
Jon Blair (06:39)
Mm
Tim (06:50)
It was just one of the many customers that I was helping out the sales team on so my buddy Jeff Shade He ran the sales for some of the big accounts like Sports Authority Kind of wild to say that they're no longer around but Sports Authority Academy big five Amazon that made up kind of Western to Central region which Jeff covered and
Jon Blair (07:04)
Yeah.
Tim (07:14)
I just helped him out and as I was helping him out, I'm like, dude, this is crazy because Amazon carries every single item. Like it's not, know, Walmart might take an item or two, but Amazon carried everything. And then from my days of, yeah, let me stop there before I go on to 17 tangents.
Jon Blair (07:28)
Mm
so how did you transition from that initial role into Amazon growth strategy?
Tim (07:41)
Yeah, yeah, so I was helping out with Amazon and I remember when I started it was $250,000. Probably a top 20 customer of ours as Skills I jumped in, was helping my buddy Jeff and yeah, eventually I took over ownership and I would work with him on it too, but I worked with more teams internally and.
We ramped that business up to 17 million in five years. And I don't have an MBA. There was no Amazon school. There was nothing like that. I was just, I loved relationships. I've always built relationships with vendor managers, with buyers, and I always took.
Jon Blair (08:11)
Wow.
Tim (08:26)
chances, which are really gambles. And it's hard to justify that to a CFO, to a president and things like that. But in order to win on Amazon, yeah, you need to take some gambles.
Jon Blair (08:30)
for sure.
So you guys are selling vendor central. So for those of you that don't know, so it's interesting, there's still plenty of brands that are on vendor central, but I feel like it was bigger back in the day. Like it was more common back in the day. Guardian Bikes.
Tim (08:41)
Yep.
Dude, I remember the days before there was a marketplace. That was just crazy. Yeah.
Jon Blair (08:55)
For sure, yeah, before there was third party sellers, right? Yeah, I know, so like Guardian, when we got on Amazon 2016, both of them were prevalent, but obviously like the third party marketplace or what people know as Amazon Seller Central was starting to grow in popularity. We had a stint with Vendor Central where we sold direct to Amazon. They stock the goods, they're the seller on the listing, right? They take the inventory risk, they buy like big POs at a time.
But I've heard, I don't know if this is true or not, it would make sense based on seeing how few vendor central opportunities I see out there in the marketplace, but that seller central's actually vastly more profitable for Amazon, because they don't take on the inventory risk. It's like they're basically making advertising and service revenue basically for FBA. walk us through really quick
that business that vendor central business from 250k to 17 million like how did you do it? What were some of the mistakes you made like how did you guys pull that off?
Tim (09:59)
Yeah, mistakes we made. I don't know how to forecast anything. Like, I like selling things and knowing, I remember we had this item, it was a weighted jump rope.
Jon Blair (10:05)
Yeah.
Tim (10:11)
Walmart had the item in their stores like every door at Walmart and then all of a sudden they stopped ordering it from us So we had 30,000 units. We didn't have a channel for it. And I said, okay 30,000 units. Can I take some chances on it Tim? What does chant? What do chances mean? Okay. Here's my spreadsheet. Here's my plan This is what I do want to do across promotional dollars then it was that was when PPC was coming on Amazon So like an early mover on that spot
Jon Blair (10:39)
Mm.
Tim (10:41)
where somebody at my company now, shout out Kelsey Olenoff, like she got involved on the advertising side. So at first it was me and my buddy Jeff just kind of figuring it out, talking with all of these people, but as the business grew, you brought in marketing teams. I was sitting with the CFO at all times talking inventory levels, dollars, and different things like that. So it was very fast growth.
and you're not gonna be given like, Tim, go hire four other people right now. It's more, you have these people on your team, how can you get them to help you out? And so that was cool back in the days, know, I'd have different people helping me out on different things. Like I think about Scott Stroman, like he was helping me out on detail, he was a product guy.
Jon Blair (11:22)
Mm
Tim (11:35)
and he was doing product marketing things, getting information for me to build out my website. So now it wasn't me writing all the bullet points, it was Scott, give me some information on the product. Okay, let's figure out a cool way to write this. Now SEO comes into play. we better get the right keywords. And so there's all of these in the digital space.
There are so many shifts and transitions that can literally come out of nowhere. In the early days, man, like there's people that aren't ready for it and they lose market share and in order to get that market share back, you're gonna lose a lot of profit dollars in discounts and advertising. So with Amazon, was promotional dollars and am I getting off here?
Jon Blair (12:05)
for sure.
No, no, no, what I was actually gonna ask is at what point, so at what point did your experience personally start shifting towards seller central or did it?
Tim (12:35)
Yeah, so, you know, there was all of this chatter going back and you mentioned it before that that FBA is more profitable than 1P. I would totally disagree with that because I would run it on some depending on what categories you're in. You're absolutely right.
Jon Blair (12:43)
Yeah.
Well actually just to clarify, what I was talking about is I heard that for Amazon it's more profitable, that they make more money on the third party don't have to buy the inventory, right? Like they don't have to place these big POs and if you think about it, like it's kind of genius in my opinion, right? Because they don't buy inventory, you pay them 15 % as your seller, like listing fee, right? So they just get 15% and then,
Tim (13:01)
boom, boom, Yep. Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Jon Blair (13:19)
On top of that, you're paying them for storage, for all their warehouse operations, basically paying them as a 3PL. They're arbitraging their shipping rates where they're getting ridiculously killer shipping rates, but they're marking them up and charging them to you. And then you're spending your ad dollars on their platform. And so it's like, it's this like amazing bit. So I've heard that they're trying to get less people on Vendor Central and push them to Seller Central because they make way more money.
Tim (13:39)
it's.
Yeah, and there's been some big developments lately. I don't know if you've you've been up on Amazon 1P news or just Amazon news in general, but There were a lot of brands smaller tier brands Let's say and probably the three one to two million up to ten million vendor central accounts They got an email last week telling them you're not gonna have a buyer anymore. You need to shift over to seller central and that's that's
Jon Blair (14:04)
Mm -hmm.
I heard that.
Tim (14:14)
That's major. Now, the thing is, a lot of these same brands, they didn't have a vendor manager the last couple years to, you know what I mean? if you are wise, you would have been running a hybrid account. A hybrid account meaning you have a 1P vendor central account, and then you have a 3P seller central account. Here's the problem. Amazon doesn't want you doing both. 1P and 3P are siloed.
Jon Blair (14:24)
Mm
Yeah.
Tim (14:42)
They don't work together on a team for Amazon. They are completely siloed. 1P accounts want 3P business. 3P business wants 1P accounts. the other, yeah.
Jon Blair (14:45)
Totally.
Well, hold on, I want to riff on this a little bit more, because you brought up some things that I think a lot of people don't know about. I have experience with this because we did both at Guardian, and we ultimately moved to Seller Central, and then eventually moved off of Amazon a number of years later. But let's dive into this, because I think this is actually something that a lot of people don't, they don't know the inner workings, right? And so, back up really fast. One, just to clarify for everyone, 1P meaning first party.
Again, analogous with vendor central, you're selling direct to Amazon, they're the seller, right? 3P, meaning you're part of the third party marketplace, analogous with Amazon seller central, you are the seller, you as the brand are the seller, you're just using Amazon's site and you're using possibly FBA because you can't get Prime, generally speaking, because seller fulfilled Prime, whole other thing, but that's been largely decremented, right? It used to be a thing, but let's talk about what you were just mentioning with Amazon's structure.
Tim (15:35)
consignment.
Jon Blair (15:51)
and like as an org, right? The seller central, it's like the right arm doesn't know what the left arm's doing. We experienced this at Guardian. Like the people who run vendor central, accounts have nothing to do with the people that run FBA and run Amazon seller central. And they couldn't know less. They don't even know who each other are and getting them connected is next to impossible. Like, can you riff on that a little bit more so people can understand how this all works?
Tim (16:18)
Yeah, so you know originally what was happening on the one piece side is if
You know, over my career, I've worked at several different brands and some of them I had SKU counts from 200 to 300. Okay, it's very easy to lose sight of a SKU or two that goes out of stock for a particular reason. You can have the craziest back in the day, you could have the craziest spreadsheets ever, but a lot of this, unless you're looking at every single detail page often, you're not gonna know what's happening. So as you get better tools to track
Jon Blair (16:38)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Tim (16:54)
all of this going on, you might find out in the 1P world or the vendor central world that an item is CRAP out.
can't realize a profit, C -R -A -P. At that point, a vendor central or a vendor manager is going to work with the vendor and they're gonna get, they're gonna say, hey, we have a bad price match in the marketplace and in order for us to be profitable, we're gonna need $2 .11 per unit in funding while this item's at this price unless you can go update the price and work on it yourself.
Jon Blair (17:31)
Mm
Tim (17:32)
So.
from there you have some items that go out of stock or maybe items, you know, Amazon's ordering system is not picking them up. You are losing revenue because of this. So a lot of accounts, 1P accounts would have a 3P account under a different name and just kind of not a shell company per se, but you know, operating kind of on a hush hush independently. Then you're able to ship some units in of this item that Amazon 1P is not ordering. So 3P
Jon Blair (18:02)
Yep.
Tim (18:03)
ship in to FBA, fulfillment by Amazon, now you're starting to ring up some sales at a price point that you control. Boom, you lift.
Jon Blair (18:12)
Yeah, and you're competing with Amazon's 1P listing.
Tim (18:18)
But if they're out of inventory and now you have the buy box, meaning you're the one getting the sales and you're making more margin, now you got something. But then what Amazon's algorithms, they say, we're selling this unit, we don't have inventory, boom. Then you get the order all of a sudden for a lot more than you expected. And what you could do on the 3P side is play some games. I'm not gonna talk about those games.
Jon Blair (18:39)
Yeah.
Tim (18:47)
So then you you're ready to move 3P where 3P they've always had more tools. They've always had reporting They've always had more capabilities to get things done, but 1P vendors Every Sunday night you get all of those replen orders every single week You're going it's nice man. We're on the three peas. Yeah
Jon Blair (19:10)
Okay, okay, hold on. So you just, I literally had this exact experience at Guardian Bikes. So I know exactly what you're talking about. Just like, I know it too well, unfortunately. Because it's a challenge. So like, let's take a step back here. Let's talk about your scaling. You're scaling a brand, right? You have this opportunity to sell direct to Amazon on Vendor Central. What's the beauty of it? Like Tim said, you're getting bulk orders, right? And if you, eventually, this is probably like, we're gonna...
This would take us on a tangent, maybe I just say this and then we shut up about it. But like, if you get really good, which you did at Guardian eventually, we're like, hey, direct import orders, you buy containers straight from the factory. But let's leave that to the side, right? But so let's say it's all domestic, so you're just getting orders like Tim said, weekly, right? And you're fulfilling those, but it's not onesie twosie like on DTC, right? Or even just on Seller Central, where you're one consumer order at a time. You're getting bulk orders. That's nice, right? Because...
for a multitude of reasons, but you have invoices that you can invoice to Amazon that are tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can go factor those and borrow against them if you want cash flow immediately. There's all these different things you can do. It's nice to get those bulk orders, right? But what's the downside of all this? We used to get told this all the time, and I know you're gonna probably laugh when I say this, so the vendor manager, how many times did I hear like, yeah, the algorithm's just placing those POs?
And you're like, so there's like this mythical, it's like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, right? Everyone's always like, the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm. And you're like, hey listen dude, you guys keep buying, the algorithm keeps buying bikes that we know are not good sellers. They're colors, we know this from our DTC site, like why are you buying so many of that color, but the color that crushes it and is already stocked out, because it's already crushed on your Amazon listing,
You're not placing any more POs. And so we would start freaking out because the listing starts losing momentum. We're losing sales, right? People think the bike doesn't exist. And so we started our own Seller Central account and we would just have stock available. We wouldn't have the buy box when Amazon was in stock, but as soon as they went out of stock, we got the buy box, right? And like, quite frankly, we weren't at the time, we weren't necessarily trying to game the system. We were just trying to keep the listing from going down.
But we would be trying to like bang down the door. I'm actually not lying, one quarter, because we ran the company on EOS, we did quarterly planning. We did our quarterly planning in freaking Seattle, and didn't even tell our vendor manager we were showing up in Seattle. We were gonna just try to find him. And we like, we got there, we got there, and we had some meetings with Amazon FBA, the global team, I forget their name. Again, they don't know anything about our vendor manager. Completely different team, right?
but we just emailed our vendor manager like, dude, we're in Seattle, any chance we could meet up for lunch, right? And we had to do that because the freaking algorithm is like, it's just buying all these quantities that make no sense. We're getting forced to have to put up these seller central listings, right, just so that the listing doesn't lose momentum. Mind you, we're spending ad dollars on the vendor central side and on the seller central side. So we're trying to keep momentum and it's just like, it feels like a game of Whac -A -Mole sometimes.
And like no one's actually running the listing. It's just this Wizard of Oz algorithm, you know?
Tim (22:27)
I got a good one.
yeah, yeah, no, but some of the things that I love with Amazon, and this goes back to when I would play Street Fighter II back in 91, 92, there were these moves you can do. Guile could do a touch of death where he threw you without touching you. Doll Seam could turn invisible. Like you could turn off the, different things like that. So what is nice is, all right, let's say you have...
Jon Blair (22:50)
Yeah
Tim (23:01)
used to be able to do some bulk buys with Amazon and I'm trying to think what the program was called. Anyway, you ship in units to Amazon. They're sitting on a lot of stock. After 90 days it hits their aged inventory report and if they haven't been selling anything, they have auto -generated discounts that go.
So then what I would do is I would track that because now all of a sudden you're starting to sell more units. Then I would add a coupon on top of that. Then I would run advertising. Then I would discount it even more. Then all of a sudden this item that was just complete dead stock in your warehouse and their warehouse has finally gotten to a price where consumers want to purchase it. Me on the brand side, I'm literally going, you know, brand store.
Right there, smack on the front. You have an influencer talking about an item, direct them back to Amazon. Loves that external traffic coming over to Amazon. Now what happens, Amazon is moving through all that overstock.
at a crazy rate, but their system's not going, we have it discounted. So then Amazon, who was just completely effed with inventory, they come in and buy a ton of units off full wholesale, knowing that you're never gonna have to fund taking them back as an RTV. So I remember sometimes we'd be in these meetings and I'd say, they're ordering a year and a half supply of this product.
Jon Blair (24:37)
You
Tim (24:39)
And we were like, ship it, ship it, ship it. Get it out, get it out, get it out. And we'd be like, my God. So then it became, how can we get more of these deals placed? And that was like, that was the game, the advertising game. you have so many levers.
Jon Blair (24:53)
Yeah.
Tim (24:57)
You talk about your photography, your hero image, your secondary image, the advertising copy, the brand store, like all of these things can be A/B tested and tweaked till you find that right velocity. Then you get moving. Then your advertising game, it better be on point and you better have the right automations and you better have the right rules set up or else there's going to be a ton of wasted cash. Ton of wasted cash.
Jon Blair (25:24)
Okay, so I wanna drill into that. You've mentioned a couple times tech tools. You just mentioned automation. like, again, to set the backdrop for everybody, you have a big product catalog. You can't police. It's like, know, at Guardian Bikes, we didn't necessarily have this problem. We had like six or seven SKUs, maybe eight SKUs on Amazon. That's one thing. You've got several hundred SKUs. You're cranking on volume. Like, it's becoming more more complicated to like police things. Maybe you have vendor central as well.
Tim (25:29)
Yep.
Sure.
Jon Blair (25:54)
vendor and seller, even if you're just on Seller Central and you have several hundred SKUs. It's a lot to manage. What are some of the, I mean just run through some things that come to mind in terms of tech tools or automations or whatever that have been super, super helpful as you've grown these different brands on Amazon.
Tim (26:15)
Yeah, well, my experience going back to 2009 and 2010 really up until now is I've done the operations side. I know all of the pain points there and there's a lot of pain points and I've served every role on the Amazon side, including brand owner, because I have an additional brand called Second Childhood that's over to the side that's on 3P. But then, yeah, with that...
tools. You're growing a business. Okay, if a brand is growing itself, then you probably have other retailers are growing. Maybe your Dick's Sporting Goods business is growing and everybody's battling for advertising budget. Everybody wants headcount. you know, I would ask for headcount. And a lot of times it would be met with why can't you just do it?
And at first I'm like, dude, I'm already doing this, that and the third and things like that. And then I don't know. I've always had business leaders that would throw challenges on my lap to see how I'd handle it. And what I started to do is learn that I don't need to be inside of every single advertising campaign. I might have 200 advertising campaigns open that I'm going in manually. Okay. You bring on the right advertising tool.
They collect all that data. Then you set up rules for every ad campaign. Hey, if you have seven clicks and no sales and you've spent $10 over the past seven days, I want you to bring that bid down by 30 % or maybe I want you to negate it. And so you're now applying these smart logics to a portion of your business. But then...
I mean, I remember I used to have somebody that would help me every single week go to every ASIN, every Amazon detail page and mark what the price is so I could find out what had dropped and I could sell more.
Jon Blair (28:22)
Mm.
Tim (28:22)
Then all of a sudden you get these dashboards where it's like, you're tracking my BSR, my best seller ranking. When I see a best seller ranking improve, I'm literally, I'm going back to Street Fighter 2. I'm hitting the button because you have to move quick. Once you see an opening, you go hard because then you have the chance to break a bank. When you break a bank in the Amazon world, it feels amazing.
But these different tools, like I learned that I could do a lot of it myself. And then I started taking things like advertising that was taking me 15 hours per week. I got it down to 30 minutes a week. Just think all that, yeah.
Jon Blair (28:56)
Mm -hmm.
Wow. I know these tools are changing all the time, but what were some of the ones that you've used over the years that really were the most impactful?
Tim (29:12)
Dude, I mean,
Jon Blair (29:13)
just thinking about Pacvue from back in 2016. We were using that on our Amazon. Is Pacvue still around?
Tim (29:20)
No, I got I No, it was funny man. I got I Got to go to a conference. It was the IRCE show In Chicago internet retailer conference. I don't know what it stands for. I literally went to every single booth
Jon Blair (29:27)
Mm
Tim (29:38)
And talked with these people and they all gave me their pitch and I took away brochures I went back to my hotel at night. I had the craziest amount of imposter syndrome I've ever had because I'm like, how am I gonna learn all of these tools? Then when you kind of figure out how to use a fool it was Okay, then let me go back there. I got all these brochures. I'm trying to figure it out. my god, they all cost money What am I gonna do? I developed an early relationship
Jon Blair (29:52)
Mm -hmm.
Tim (30:07)
with Intentwise Intentwise on Amazon advertising side but me and Sreenath Ready yes
Jon Blair (30:08)
okay.
Yep.
that's their CEO, right? Isn't Sreenath their CEO? Yeah.
Tim (30:17)
Sreenath and I, we sat at a table at the IRCE and we sat and we talked about life, man, because I was on his platform and I bailed to go to Teikametrics, take a metrics, whatever it's called. You do that. You jump into new software because you want to see what can help you. Then I eventually came back to Sreenath.
Jon Blair (30:35)
Mm
Tim (30:38)
And Sreenath's always been a homie of mine. Like that dude looks out for me. I know what's going on in his family. Now ask me about my family and it's a real relationship. And so I worked with him very early on him and Raghu like building the platform. I would help them close customers and different things like that. But I learned how you can use this tech tool to save a lot of time. So it really started with Sreenath Ready And then from there.
Jon Blair (31:04)
How long has Intentwise been around for? I know who they are and I know them through Straight Up Growth, but how long have they been around for? Like how long have you known them for?
Tim (31:07)
Dude.
I would say like seven, six, seven years or something like that. And then I honestly, my whole hustle was I would see who was gonna be on Sreenath's podcast. And I would listen to these people just like you're doing and I'd say, wow, I wanna be friends with this guy. And I'd hit these people up and form relationships.
Jon Blair (31:18)
You okay?
Tim (31:36)
So along the way, there used to not be as many tools. Okay? But when you can take Daniela Bolzmann do you know Daniela?
Jon Blair (31:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, from, why am I blanking on her? The name of her company. Yeah, Mindful Goods, yeah.
Tim (31:48)
Mindful Goods, expert level, okay? Like what she does to a detail page. All right, you give them an ASIN. Then she shows, yeah, yeah, we can do new hero images, new secondary images. We're gonna do this. We're gonna update your copy. Then on your brand store, we're gonna do this.
For me, sometimes working at brands, you don't have those resource available to you. So somebody like, somebody like Daniella can give you amazing feedback on your detail page you never would have thought of. Then all of a sudden you have a tool. If you have an ASIN that needs a lot of love and you don't have the resources internally, you work with somebody like a Mindful Goods. There's ways where you can get money. I don't know, there's all of these hacks within the business, yeah.
Jon Blair (32:13)
Totally.
Mm
Totally. Well, no, I think you're bringing up a good point, which is that you don't have to bring, you don't have to do all these things yourself. You don't have to staff them all up with internal employees, right? Whether we're talking about, just to summarize a few things that you've mentioned, like going through all of your ASINs or like dealing with all of the campaign like bid strategies one by one, right? Or, you know, Daniela, we actually have a few mutual clients. Her company's been fantastic on,
getting listings optimized, which optimized listings both from a content standpoint, like creative slash content, and an SEO or keyword standpoint, super important for Amazon because it's so pay per click driven, right? And there's so much competition and it's not the same. When you drive someone to your Shopify store, they're not looking at another brand, right?
next to it on the same page, right? It's not the same strategy on Amazon as it is on your DTC store. And so I think the point that you're making that's super important is that like you don't in today's world, there's tech tools and there's outsourced service providers who can specialize in that thing that you need support on, right? And like, I mean, I I know brands that have a 10, 15, $20 million Amazon business
And their Amazon team internally is very small. It's either one person who's just like the director of Amazon or VP of Amazon or their VP of growth. Amazon is just one of the things that that person oversees and it's literally all tech tools and agencies or outsourced service providers that basically run that channel. It was a bit different in my experience 10 years ago.
You saw a lot of huge Amazon brands before Amazon got even more competitive that maybe like built a business to like 50 million a year on revenue or in revenue on Amazon and they had like a little Amazon department, but you don't really need that anymore. At least in my opinion. Do you agree?
Tim (34:41)
Yeah, I agree and I just, you you have some shared resources. Normally, I don't know what the brands I'm working at were in Amazon businesses anywhere from five to 15 million. You probably have maybe two people working on it and those people literally know how to do everything top to bottom. Now,
Jon Blair (35:00)
for sure.
Tim (35:02)
Then when you start scaling, you have more cash flow to operate out of as long as you're keeping your A cost down on the advertising and things like that, which is a challenge because there's more competition than ever. But.
was just always open to free audits. Anybody who wants to audit my business and give me feedback, I would take all the constructive criticism and I could wear it. I know there's a lot of people internally though, is they don't want their higher ups or they don't want these audits run because if somebody comes back and says, hey, you have 10 ,000 wasted dollars on this ASIN the last 30 days, somebody gets like super defensive. I just wasn't like that and I was able to
Jon Blair (35:41)
Mm -hmm.
for sure.
Tim (35:47)
get these software tools implemented, not all of them, but you get a few implemented and you can actually show how much time is being saved. And then you say, hey, with these seven extra hours per week, this is where I'm dedicating time and this is how I'm growing the business. And then it just becomes, the software tools can, you don't want them to be interchangeable. It would be nice that you could set it and forget it, but.
On the advertising side, you you mentioned PacView, there's IntentWise, there's literally Tenuity can manage your advertising. Straight up growth like Daniel. Daniel's a wizard when it comes to all of this. When I had him audit my business at CleverMade, I was like, dude, man, and Mark was, you know what, I'm like, you know, cause I'm like, he's gonna find a, here's the thing, man, you're never gonna be the best at anything.
Jon Blair (36:24)
Yeah, yeah, he is
Tim (36:40)
You gotta lean on other people that have these niches that they're amazing at. What Daniel was able to do on the advertising side. What Daniella was able to do. What Sreenath's been able to do. What Rohan's been able to do. Like if you're talking revenue recovery, all these different businesses. know, Rohan, what he's done with DimeTide. The technology, it's really the tech players that are involved.
And when you see rapid growth in a tech space and you see the maintenance on the tech improving constantly, it gives you that confidence to keep using it for your business.
Jon Blair (37:15)
I mean, I think there's a really important lesson for everyone to draw out of all of this, right? Is that the eComm brands of 2024 and beyond are scrappy, right? Like there is a period during COVID where brands got fat because honestly, because venture capital was chasing eComm because during COVID it was like, man, that was an asset bubble that was popping off, right? And during asset bubbles,
capital, outside capital gets attracted to that asset bubble. The people who are operating businesses in that asset bubble get fat, right? Their businesses get fat with overhead, they get lazy, they don't have the constraints of being profit -focused, right, and being capital -efficient. But those days are behind us, right? That bubble has burst, and now we're back to running scrappy e -com brands, right? That enlarged.
Tim (38:07)
I love it man. I love it and and you really like the LinkedIn game say what you want about LinkedIn but I go on to the feed and I read Martin Heibel I don't even know if it's Hubel or Heibel it's this dude out in UK the dude drops absolute gems about Amazon with fire emojis and all of this and you know if you're following him
Destiny Watson, I think that's her name. Like she's, you follow these five to 10 influencers in the Amazon space who drop knowledge. dude, when they would talk about Amazon, I would just be like.
Jon Blair (38:38)
Mm
Tim (38:51)
taking notes, learning, then going into vendor central groups on LinkedIn, seeing what people are talking about. You can't just kick it and do the same things you were doing a year ago. You have to go to these conferences. You have to listen. You have to talk to people. It's exhausting to network, but guess what, dude? You're gonna meet new people that are doing different things that you're not doing that you're gonna have to apply to your business. If you do exactly what you did last year, you're losing the next year. You're losing and somebody's coming to eat your lunch.
Jon Blair (39:19)
You know what, it's interesting, you know what I'm realizing right now, Tim, as we've just been riffing on various aspects of scaling an Amazon business, one thing that you've said in basically some area of your response to every question I've asked, you've talked about the relationship and the networking aspect of that thing,
whether it's like seeking out the tech tools or it's seeking out the right service providers or you're saying like following influencers or going to conferences and like trying to consume content, the bottom line is if you're scaling an eComm brand on Amazon and or your Shopify store, things are changing all the time. eComm is a hard space and it's always changing. And one of the ways that you keep up with the game,
is consume content and stay active in your network. What I always like to say is like you as the brand founder, you have got to create the space to get outside of your business, right? You've got to have the right systems, processes, and people in place to get outside of your business and get out into the marketplace to hear the chatter about what's going on. That's how you see around corners. That's how you stay up with the evolution and the thing about eComm.
is the one thing that's always gonna be the same is it's always gonna be evolving and it's always gonna be evolving super fast. so definitely take some of these stories that Tim has told here today and internalize that and go like, man, here's a guy who's been hustling to create a network and in that network gone like bam, here's all these resources that I can use to scale this Amazon business.
And you should be doing those things in your eComm brand as well. Don't ever underestimate the power of getting out into the marketplace, forging relationships, and drawing on those resources because it's gonna serve you super well. And I would even say it's 100 % necessary if you're gonna scale successfully over the long term.
Tim (41:25)
How crazy is this? Like, do you know what's, okay, so when I say revenue recovery, do you know what revenue recovery is? I don't know, like to me it's...
Jon Blair (41:32)
I -I -I -I do, but can you explain it for the audience?
Tim (41:37)
Yeah, you know, okay, Amazon's remittance process.
Okay, you got Cathy in accounting who's trying to make sense of however many Amazon fulfillment centers there are. Then when you have the weekly replen orders, you're sending out sometimes orders to every single distribution center that Amazon has. Then if you have 100 to 200 SKUs, think of how many line items are getting processed. Then Amazon takes their various backend deductions.
but they do it off a deduct from payment. So it's a chaotic remittance process where you're unable to tie things up from a cash application process. So you no longer can go after these, you know, on 1P you have backend programs. have co -op, have defective allowance, freight allowance. On the 3P side, you have FBA fees. Then you have like in -boundship. And so there's all of these things where Amazon,
takes money from you, but it's not, they're not doing it in a malicious way by any means. Like, dude, look how much Amazon scale. Do you think they're having the same issues that brands have as well? But there's these automated tools, some automated, some manual, some a mix that'll audit. They'll go back.
Jon Blair (42:36)
Mm
Totally.
Tim (42:57)
18 months they'll go back a few you know all the way up like three years and they'll go try to find dollars for you that you haven't been able to get with no work from your team Hey, what if I say hey Jon, do you want some free money right now? What would you say?
Jon Blair (43:14)
Yeah, I'm in. I'm in.
Tim (43:16)
Okay, now the people below you are saying, hey, if I show you that I'm gonna give you free money, then they're gonna look like they're not doing their job right. That's not the narrative. The narrative is, dude, you can't hire 15 people in accounting. So if you use these revenue recovery tools to audit back business, you go find money, you don't have to do anything. Literally all the disputes are filed, and you get money back directly from Amazon.
Jon Blair (43:24)
for sure. Yeah.
Tim (43:46)
on the 3P side, on the FBA side, used to be able to go back 18 months. Okay, you're talking loss damage, you're talking inbound shipments, FBA fees, these disposals, different things like that. Because I worked on the software side. I worked for ThreeCult, so I saw all this. Dude, October 23rd, you can only look 60 days back.
Jon Blair (43:53)
Mm
that sucks.
Tim (44:11)
It sucks, dude, there's so many brands that go back and get the 18 months and they're like, no, they're asleep at the wheel. They're asleep at the wheel. And it's crazy to me. You literally have one month to go get money back that you're not going to get ever again. And people are like, no, we got Cindy who handles all of that. And I'm like,
Jon Blair (44:28)
No, it's way too much work. So you know, 10 years ago or eight years ago, we were doing all that reconciliation ourselves with Guardian Bikes. Before these, some of these tools existed, but it was like they weren't as prevalent. We did all this manually. And I'm gonna just say right now for the audience, it is a ton of work and it's not worth the effort of the team if you can just outsource it. And probably, I would say outsourcing get better results actually. Like these tools are...
they find way more money than your team could find and you just pay them a cut and you still net way more than you would net if you did it yourself and you don't distract the team, you don't distract your team from where they can really add value. like what Tim is saying is like a very good example of how to leverage some of these services and or tech tools to go a lot further faster on your Amazon business. And a lot of times they're,
they're little known to a lot of brands, which actually leads me to my next thing. What I wanted to ask you about, Tim, is the RetailRx. What do you guys do at the RetailRx, and how do you help brands?
Tim (45:36)
man, it's crazy story, you know, so I've been on the brand side forever, you know, running Amazon business, but also going and calling on brick and mortar accounts, going to Bed Bath and Beyond for line reviews or Sports Authority Academy like these different ones. so I've just gained a lot of experience. And as I've used some of these software tools, I just saw that. Wow.
These tools are something that nobody's really using. And so I started to use my network to tell them like, hey, you know, have you tried Intentwise for advertising? No, we don't do anything for advertising. do, you know, so then I started talking about these various tools. So then I set up referral agreements with some of the solutions that I thought were best. And then the way it would work is I just use my network. I talked to a lot of the same people I'm talking with anyway.
Jon Blair (46:06)
Hmm.
Tim (46:32)
We're sharing tips. Like that's always happening. But now I have these tools and I've just spent a lot more time. I'm 100 % software world. I'm like tech tools and all of that. And so now I'm not on the brand side like I was in the past, but I'm able to help so many brands with these tools that they never knew about. Herschel Supply Company. I wear Herschel Supply Company. Like I love Herschel Supply Company.
Dude, found them a lot of money and helped with processes and visibility where, dude, that's major. So I'm able to work with brands with The Retail RX that I really care about and help them. And I'm the guy who opens up a jacket and has six different solutions to offer you.
Jon Blair (47:22)
Hell yeah.
Tim (47:23)
But brands don't pay me a penny. I get my cut from the solution. So they get free agency like help working with me. And then I give them a prescription to a healthy bottom line. That's the Rx. Well, dude, what happened was like during the pandemic.
Jon Blair (47:31)
Yeah.
I love it, hence retail RX. I love that, man.
Tim (47:44)
I deal with lot of mental health stuff myself. I'm not on pills, right? I've been on pills, you know, struggle sleeping, all of this. A lot of people on the digital side, we got the same struggles. Just a lot of people don't bring it up. During the pandemic.
I was like a therapist to a lot of people working at the company and here I'm going to get help, but I saw a lot of other people needed help. And so it just became, yeah, let's be friends with each other. Let's gain confidence. Then I'll talk about ways you can help your business. And I'm not that sales person going, Hey, you need to do this, this moment. No, I'm going to be, dude, what's going on? What music you listening to? What's going on with the Mets? The Mets need to slow down because my Padres are going, you know, when you build these types of relationships,
Then it's a yo check this out check this out and so now I'm selling software, but I'm selling To be able to go to somebody at a business find them money that they didn't know about they get to bring it to their boss and say I just found X amount of dollars if their boss treats them, right
It's not a pat on the back. It's not a high five. It's a, I'm giving you some, I'm giving you other opportunities or I'm gonna give you more money to spend on your Amazon business and to double triple what you're already doing. So now when you see that you can empower a director of eComm an account manager or something like this, normally it took them 10 hours a week to build their reports via spreadsheet.
work with like a merchant spring and you just get all of that data coming over. You work with Serenath who feeds the data over. You got to have somebody that can do sequel on your side. You got to have somebody that can build reports. That's somebody like a Scott Kennedy who's a G in the space. And so you really have to know you're never going to be on top of your game. So just know that.
But no, if you leverage the right tools, you can get up ahead of things. And then if anybody up above asks you about your business, what do you need? A report here, advertising info here, stock levels here, boom, boom, boom. You know how many ad hoc reports I used to have to do working at the corporate level that would take, where I'm not good at spreadsheets? I can do a V lookup, like you want me to do, no, no. Now.
just use dashboards and then you do data dumps and you do some pivot tables you put it into a it's clean so if people can just people if just can say hey I can't do everything let me use software tools then maybe you get to go watch Suzy play your soccer game at 3 30 p or go to a soccer practice or something like that because I've long been that guy like no I got to do this no use some software tools
Jon Blair (50:17)
I love that.
love that. for those of you who are interested in what Tim can connect you with, well a couple of things. One, what Tim's walking through here is that like the reality is that there are things you should be doing in your business and there things you shouldn't be doing in your business. But it doesn't mean that just because you shouldn't be doing them, those things don't need to still get done, right? And you know, we're in the year 2024 in the eComm world.
One of the great things is data availability, right? So there's like software tools out there that can help get all those things done, but give you the insights that you need to make really valuable scaling decisions, right? So it's just kind of like leveling you up to another level. you can go do that research yourself, or you can save a lot of time and a lot of money, and you can go to a guy like Tim at The Retail RX and you can just get the menu.
as he learns more about you and your business, you can get the menu of what he thinks can help you and why, right? So again, going further faster. like, Tim, like, before we shut down for this episode, where can people find more about you and The Retail RX if they're like, man, I'm like interested in learning more about these tech tools, right? Like, where can people find you? Where can people find more about The Retail RX?
Tim (51:57)
LinkedIn is going to be the main spot. Just LinkedIn, my own profile. Yeah, I post a lot of random stuff about tech, but it's all under Tim Clark. RetailRx, you know, I need to get some posts going on there, but I don't know. I don't want to say the wrong thing. You know what I mean? It's kind of anxiety posting different things like that. But yeah, reach out to Tim Clark and...
Jon Blair (52:00)
Tim Clark.
Nah, you just gotta go for it, man. You gotta just go for it.
Tim (52:23)
Another thing that I wanted to point out, I know as you're trying to end this, but like I met you through what Evan and Daniel did. They threw a happy hour. Like I got outside my comfort zone and started talking with Evan, started talking with Daniel, started talking with Sreenath, started like over and over all these names, but we were on that happy hour.
Jon Blair (52:36)
Yep.
Totally.
Tim (52:49)
There was 12 people. They gave us a DoorDash gift card so everybody got food. I walked away with like friendships out of there. Juran's my homie. Juran, everybody needs to follow Juran. That dude is hilarious, but it's not, it was Daniela, it was Juran, and it made people like normal at a time that wasn't normal. So like go to these conferences. Figure out who to watch. Dude, follow.
Jon Blair (52:55)
Yep.
Totally.
for sure.
Tim (53:19)
follow these people, watch the moves they're making, and then reach out to them. Because even if you think you...
Jon Blair (53:21)
Mm
Yeah, connect with them. real people, right? Look, I actually love this, Tim, that you're calling everyone to action here, like to wrap this all up, because again, if there's one thing that we've talked about over and over again in this episode, it's the networking, right? Yeah, we're talking about Amazon growth strategy. We're talking about how tech tools can aid you in going further faster. But at the end of the day,
Tim (53:33)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (53:53)
How did Tim find all these things? What has been a common thread in Tim's journey networking with people, right? And some of these other things we've talked about have just been the result of that. And Tim's exactly right. You're exactly right, man. I met you on that virtual happy hour. And actually I have got several people from that. That's how I know Daniela.
There's, you know, the other guys over at ATTN Agency who are down there in SD with you guys. We're super tight with them now.
Tim (54:19)
Bobby, whoever Bobby is, I saw these other.
Jon Blair (54:22)
Bobby, Bobby came to funniest thing a few months after that Bobby came to Austin where I'm at and was like, I'm gonna be in Austin. Like, let's go to dinner. And like we're good friends now. We have several mutual clients. They're a great agency. And I think what you're saying is important, which is that like, get out of your business, get out of your comfort zone, go reach out to people virtually and in person, go to these things.
Tim (54:46)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (54:47)
They're worth it and I will, here's how I'll kind of like tie a bow on this. At Free to Grow CFO, if you follow my content, one thing I talk about is our core values. Our first core value, it's first because it's most important, it's relationships. We're in the relationship business. We're not in the accounting and finance business. We're not in the scaling e -com brand business. We do those things but we're in the relationship business. Business.
is relationships. don't care what you sell, I care if it's a service, I don't care if it's a product, business is relationships. You study any, Andrew Carnegie, if you go back and you look at Mark Cuban, they all have very interesting stories around their ability to network and forge relationships. And so if there's one thing you can take away from this episode, it's that. Get out there, network.
connect with people, get out of your business, learn what's going on and take advantage of that thing that makes us uniquely human, right? Which is the ability to have real relationships. So, man, Tim, I love this. I'm gonna have to.
Tim (55:57)
I messed up that girl's name, can't. Dude, I don't even know. don't like I'm trying.
Jon Blair (56:00)
What was it?
You can't find it. can't find it. I'm gonna have to have you. You're gonna have to look that up. We're gonna have you back again in the.
Tim (56:08)
no, no, no, no, no, no,
Jon Blair (56:13)
Okay, you weren't that far off. think you said Watson.
Tim (56:17)
Yes, maybe her name used to be Watson. I don't know, but she's a good follow. Daniel Tejada, the guy Martin out in the UK. There's a guy named Don who drops gems. I'm trying to, Don Sullivan maybe. I don't know. Follow the right people. See what they have to say about Amazon. yeah, man, new pleasure to come on. Like I feel like we might have our own podcast after this. Like let's go.
Jon Blair (56:20)
Ha
Well, did you stop doing the RetailRx podcast?
Tim (56:46)
No, I'm gonna bring it back. it was, was my, know what I mean? Like it evolved probably more into like a mid 90s podcast, which is another one of my brand that's, you know, but.
It's really just somebody coming over shooting the shit and then showing some normalcy in everybody's life. And I think work life balance is a huge piece of this all. So all of these people working so hard, doing software hacks, different things like that also have some hobbies that are away from your work and not on your computer and things like that because it's only gonna make you better for everything that you're doing going forward.
Jon Blair (57:21)
I agree man, when you bring that back, hit me up, cause I'm from SoCal, I'll fly out to go see my parents for the week, I'll come down to San Diego and we'll talk about my days actually in San Diego playing in a signed thrash metal band. We played brick by brick, Jumping Turtle, Soma, the whole nine yards. that's, if you bring that back, I wanna be the first one back on that show and we're gonna be talking about my band that I...
Tim (57:28)
Yes. Yes.
Yes, dude.
I might grow, should we grow our hair out for it and just have like, okay.
Jon Blair (57:51)
Dude, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. But yeah man, I appreciate you coming on man, this is definitely not our last conversation. Check out Tim on LinkedIn. If you're interested in how he could help you, definitely hit him up. And you know, as you guys know, if you want any more helpful tips on scaling a profit focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow CFOs,
DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help you increase profit and cash flow as you scale. Hit us up, you can find us on our website, freetogrowcfo.com, and until next time, scale on.
Tim (58:31)
Scale on.
