In this episode, we're joined by Andrew Dragotta and James McMath, from HPE Aruba Networking, a worldwide channel-led organization, to discuss how they successfully leveraged the Amazon marketplace to sell their commercial products, particularly the Aruba Instant On.
Many people assume that Amazon is only for consumer products, but our guests explain how it's also a fantastic platform for commercial customers. Amazon's constant availability and awareness enable SMB customers to purchase products 24/7, which is particularly beneficial for businesses that need, in this case, to purchase networking switches and access points at odd hours.
If you're interested in learning more about how to successfully sell your commercial products on Amazon, tune in to this episode! For more information on HPE Aruba Networking, visit their website at https://www.arubanetworks.com/.
Want to chat with us about this podcast? Send us a text message here
In this episode, we're joined by Andrew Dragotta and James McMath, from HPE Aruba Networking, a worldwide channel-led organization, to discuss how they successfully leveraged the Amazon marketplace to sell their commercial products, particularly the Aruba Instant On.
Many people assume that Amazon is only for consumer products, but our guests explain how it's also a fantastic platform for commercial customers. Amazon's constant availability and awareness enable SMB customers to purchase products 24/7, which is particularly beneficial for businesses that need, in this case, to purchase networking switches and access points at odd hours.
If you're interested in learning more about how to successfully sell your commercial products on Amazon, tune in to this episode! For more information on HPE Aruba Networking, visit their website at https://www.arubanetworks.com/.
Want to chat with us about this podcast? Send us a text message here
Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam Schaefer, where we explore the world of Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces. Join us as we delve into the latest strategies and tactics for successful selling on the world's largest online marketplace. Hello everybody. I'm Adam Schaeffer and welcome to Planet Amazon where we talk about all things Amazon. I'm really excited for today's podcast because we have some great, great people that'll be on the show. Really from a really important brand. And we've talked in the past with other brands, almost always smaller. But in this case, we have a worldwide brand that is pretty much a household name. in the commercial space and it's Hewlett Packard Enterprise Aruba, the networking arm of Aruba. And I'll let them explain their business a little bit more and a little bit better than I could. So let's bring on Andrew Dragota and James McMath from HPE Aruba. And if I'm butchering the name because it's Hewlett Packard Enterprise or HPE, I'm going to let you explain the name of your company and really what you guys are focused on. Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you very much, Adam. And thank you for hosting and having us today. We are very excited to be here. And just to clear up the name because we've gone through a recent rebranding. It's HPE Aruba Networking. Awesome, man. Thank you for sending me straight. No, no, no problem. And you know, for a little history and perspective, we back up a little bit. HPE Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquired Aruba probably about seven, eight years ago. And over that time has migrated Aruba into the larger HPE organization and thus has gone through a couple different rebranding strategies around name, colors, and so forth. So HPE Aruba Networking is the new brand name. So inside of that, of the great Aruba brand is the Instant On brand where James and I work. And that is defined by our small to medium size focus. zero to 250 seats, only selling the instant on category, which is very purposely built for small to medium sized business. And that's what we're here to talk about today and talk a little bit about how we've had some success on Amazon the past couple of years. So inside of that, I am the North American sales director for the instant on business unit, focusing on zero to 250 seats. And then James, I'll let you go ahead. Yeah, please. Thanks, Andy. Adam, thank you for the invitation. Pleasure to join you today. James McMath is my name. I'm the worldwide business development manager for our e-commerce Roots to Market. So I support our sales teams for the Instant On brand and support our channel programs to help grow our Instant On portfolio for the SMB. What's interesting is that you can hear from James's accent. He's not a transplant in the US. He's actually in London right now. And it's because HP Aruba is a worldwide brand and he's managing it worldwide, not just in the US, but in all the countries that they focus on. And he'll talk more about that later, which is really makes it much more complicated, but makes it that much more interesting for people to understand the benefits of Amazon and the reach that Amazon has because they're in multiple countries. So... So guys, can you just tell us a little bit more about Amazon and Aruba? Like you would think Amazon's such a consumer type of platform, yet you guys spent some time to really think about this and you're quite thoughtful before you actually jumped onto the platform and said, hey, this is an important platform for SMB and the commercial space. So kind of tell us about your journey about what got you to... you know, get participating in Amazon. Yeah, I think I could start us off here and then pass it off to James. But the journey started about three years ago. So the instant on business unit is about who three and a half years old. And to back up a little bit further, we are an overlay inside various channel organizations. So James, when he said worldwide, we are both on the worldwide team reporting to the worldwide SMB general manager and vice president. And inside that, there's different business unit leaders inside of Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latam. Obviously I'm in the US, so we are an overlay inside of the US channel organization. So we identified Amazon as a great route to market, and obviously a marketplace for the instant on category of product, because it is very prosumer-esque. and very suited towards zero to 250 seats. And we really find our sweet spot is between zero and 50 seats. And there is a great propensity that we found for partners of that size and end users of that size to utilize the Amazon platform to purchase products. Yeah, I think to add on to Andy there. So our products is focused at the SMB marketplace, but SMB customers purchase how consumers purchase, right? And everyone wants always on availability, right? People don't want to have to limit their purchasing hours between nine and five, right? A coffee shop might need a new wifi. access point or a switch and they need to buy it now. And it might be 7 p.m., might be 10 p.m. at night. And the online route to market enable that 24 seven purchasing. And then when you look at Amazon specifically, Amazon is renowned the world over as constant availability, constant awareness and constant purchasing routes to serve those customers. What I don't think a lot of people really understand is that Amazon is a really good platform for commercial customers and that Amazon business in general is a very large part of the business there. So again, I think people think, oh, Amazon, I'm going to buy consumables and consumer products there. And they don't realize that it's such a great platform to have your commercial products. And we try to educate a lot of the brands on this all the time. Aruba products. These are networking switches and access points They don't necessarily just buy one I mean, you know, we see sales for 15 20 units at a time Which is pretty substantial on a platform like Amazon. We think everything is gonna be you know, one at a time It's not at all. Yeah 100% and and it's unbelievable You know the marketplace that the consumer has access to right, you know, they they probably traditionally went on Amazon consumer looking for a certain product and realized that, wow, there's this great business platform where I have access to product I might not have had before. So it's truly a win-win for the consumer as well as the vendor, right? Because they're getting access to both entities. So let's talk more about three years ago, you started with Instant On and you've been thinking about how do we go to market? You choose Amazon, but then what's been now the journey to get onto Amazon and figure out how to navigate Amazon? Because we've been living Amazon for years and years and it's not simple. It's quite complicated. They give you this great platform, but nobody really, really writes the rule book on this thing. And they want as much competition as they can get with the hopes that maybe prices come down, but at the same time, you know, brands are trying to maintain their price integrity. And so it's got to be complicated for somebody that's got a sophisticated distribution channel like Aruba to participate. So, you know, you don't have to give all the secrets sauce, but, you know, what's it been like to get involved in Amazon, get your products on Amazon and start really trying to protect your brand on Amazon? It's certainly been a learning, that's for sure. There's a reason why I have gray hair, Adam. It's up to your point. It's, it's not an easy journey for a, for a, for a vendor like, like ourselves, we're a channel led business fundamentally. Um, and there's kind of two trade threads of thought with Amazon, right? Firstly, it's brand awareness. So Amazon is a huge opportunity for us to grow our brand fundamentally. Our brand is. just over three years old now. So it's not 100% known within the SMB market. So it allows us to have a presence and to educate potential customers about our brand, about our products, about the value proposition our products can bring to them. But then as a route to market for us, we are obviously, well maybe not obviously, but we are very conscious that we are channel-led business. And so we do have resellers all around the world that purchase from our distributors. want to maintain a channel parity in there, that no one has a benefit over another one. And going through Amazon, we work in a 3P model to maintain that channel parity. And we have partners like yourself that sell a product on Amazon that are on an equal footing. So we don't sell directly to Amazon, who then sell themselves on their marketplace. We do it through a 3P model. That's great. I'm glad you explained that you guys are really and I should have said that earlier Your 3p focused and your channel focused which is quite different and and and it's because You have loyal sellers for years and years and years And you're trying to keep the playing field as level as possible where other brands don't necessarily do that So it's really good that you guys have a program and are trying to be fair to your You know your loyal channel supporters changing the topic a little bit. So you're on Amazon, and you have some sellers on Amazon, and then boom, something happened. So give me your boom, something happened story, if you can, you know, some of the obstacles that maybe you've run into. Well, so kind of linking to the fact that we are a 3P seller, or the 3P model on Amazon. Unlike if you were to sell directly in a one piece site, you have very little access to Amazon escalation points and Amazon management support where, especially in terms of content, it's very difficult to manage our content because there are, there are lots of, um, contributing factors to who owns content or the Asians that you have on the marketplace and Contributors to changing content or editing content or uploading new content can be many people. It can be the vendor themselves with brand registry. It can be a transacting seller that's on there. And it can be any seller, anyone that's selling the product on Amazon can contribute towards the content. So it's a kind of a hidden dark magic. making sure that you get our content how we want to see it because fundamentally one of the reasons we went Forward with Amazon is to take control of our brand there were sellers on Prior to us engaging with with the MR Amazon model that were selling our products on there and they were putting up really poor image quality incorrect descriptions bad bullet points zero a plus content and so we were like While Amazon represents a new revenue stream for our partners selling on the marketplace, and also we want to take control of our brand. Because unless we control our brand, we can't educate customers correctly for our portfolio. And I suppose one of the gray hairs that I have was, I remember waking up one morning and looking at one of our Asons and the set of a Wi-Fi six access point image. I'm seeing a packet of Maltesers. I don't know if you have Maltesers in the US. It's a chocolate brand. And you just see a packet of Maltesers as the image on your product against a networking description. And so that's one of the biggest challenges we have, is managing our content on the platform. Wow. I mean, I've seen some cases, somebody clicking through to the brand store. and going to beef jerky and you know, I've seen that before. But solving that is no easy task. I mean, you have to prove that you're the owner. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we as a vendor, we have brand registry with Amazon, which on the face of brand registry is essentially meant to lock your ASINs down to your specific brand so that there are less. potential conflicts of contribution of content so that we can really lock it down. But in reality, that doesn't necessarily happen. And we are constantly viewing our racings and trying to keep on top to make sure our content stays exactly how we want it to make sure it's a good buying experience for our customers. And I suppose being very honest, it's a frustration for us because if you think from an Amazon perspective, they're all about wanting to serve customers the best possible way they can. And from our point, we want to give the best possible customer buying experience from visibility of our products, what they do, all the content that we create and publish to our ASINs. And then when you have these conflicts of content on there, and from a 3B perspective, we don't have an Amazon account manager, we don't have AVS services. If we have a content issue, We work with our three P's like yourselves and we try and resolve content on there. But from an escalation point, we have the Amazon support case portal, which as anyone that has dealt with the Amazon case support portal before knows that it's, sometimes it's great experience and you're resolved within a day. And sometimes you're creating the same case over and over to try and get that. We call it a crapshoot. Yeah. Yeah. It could be so, and it could be frustrating, but, but with the content, you're dealing with it in multiple different countries. So is it the same experience in every country over and over? Or once you do it, it's much easier. I'd love to say it was easier, but it's not. So Amazon is, and this was a learning from, from, I suppose, six years ago, when I started my, um, Amazon, um, uh, experience or education, but Like for Aruba specifically, we are in the US, Germany, UK, just launching Canada and also Japan as well. So we are in multiple countries, multiple languages. But Amazon isn't a single entity. It is every marketplace is its own entity with its own asyns, its own content, its own lifeblood. If you see. So if you're having the same problems you're having in the US, you're going to have in Germany, you're going to have in Japan. Um, on the flip side, once you make learnings and you understand best practices that you can then take from marketplace to marketplace. So as we, we launched the U S first for Aruba and then Germany and then the UK and now Canada, then Japan. So every time we launch a new marketplace, it gets easier because we can take all that learning, uh, from, from the first, for the first marketplace and roll them out. But they are separate entities and you do have the same issues in. in each marketplace, in each country. And so you have specific inventory in all these different countries and your 3P partners buy locally for all these different countries, correct? Correct, and we have localization codes by different regions of the world. So product technically will not work if you try and sell a US product into Europe or vice versa due to frequencies, it will not work. So it's super critical that descriptions are correct. and that product is being disseminated from the correct distribution centers in the correct regions. Cool. So, obviously, James and Andrew, product content is pretty important and you spend a lot of time on this, I imagine, correct? Oh my goodness. We scrape Amazon daily, minute, to double check to make sure that the content is A plus, to make sure there isn't any unusual arbitrage occurring. to make sure our images are correct, to make sure there are no rogue postings. It is a constant effort. And it is definitely not a set it and forget it business because items pop up by the minute, by the hour, by the day. That's pretty cool. And to grow the business, so obviously you're adding the markets and you're adding products, but are you spending money on advertising and are participating on advertising on the platform and how is that working out for you? Yeah, you know, we advertise and market via two different routes, right? So we have our channel MDF led motion through our three P's. And then we have our direct model marketing that is DSP online. We have our dedicated marketing team that is managing that piece for us. And we've had a tremendous amount of success on DSP. We also utilize analytic firms to look at how we are tracking sales by category, which has proven to be very successful for us in terms of pivoting and making the right decisions around how we advertise and where we advertise and when we advertise. We also employ a third-party brand protection firm, which analyzes pricing across all of the Aruba postings. analyzes all the different descriptions to make sure there isn't any funny business occurring. And if there is, then we want to address it as quickly as possible because again, we are a channel led organization and that motion has to start at distribution. And so to make sure everybody understands, like when you talk about MDF, you're talking about funding that your third party sellers are earning so they can advertise on certain products. And in addition to that, you're doing... advertising through agencies or something and you're doing beyond the stuff that the third party guys are doing? Correct, 100%. So, you know, the marketing discretionary funds from a 3P standpoint, 100% channel through that organization, and then our direct marketing efforts through digital, various digital ads, utilizing a third party to advertise directly on the Amazon platform. Now that you're on and you got a few years under your belt, where do you think this thing is gonna be going for you guys? I mean, I've been seeing, you know, the sales have been great and have been growing. You know, obviously you run into some obstacles along the way, but you continue to plow through it. You learn a lot and you keep on going. So, you know, where do you see this thing going for you guys? Well, we see it continually going up. I know the organization is extraordinarily bullish. The investments are still at a rapid rate and we don't see it slowing down at any point. And I can certainly speak for myself and what our quarters look like. The leadership is definitely feeling very bullish about it as well. That's awesome. I mean, it's great to see Aruba on the Amazon platform. It's such a great brand. And so, you know, changing it up a little bit, you know, we talked about some of the obstacles. What about some big wins? Let's just call them successes, things that you said, wow, this is going to be really painful but we figured it out. Do you have any of those at top of mind? For me, I think Vine was a big win for us. The Vine review program that Amazon provides, when I look at our worldwide e-commerce roots to market, so not just at Amazon. that is potentially missing from online resellers in general is the ability to see what other customers think of the products that they've purchased, right? And that's where with Amazon, and they have their own specific Vine program, where they have Vine influencers that we seed units to those influencers. We don't have any control about... who picks up those units, who reviews it. We can't edit their reviews, so they're completely unbiased. But what it does is it allows other customers to see other, their own views of the product and is it serving the purpose. Because as much as we can create fantastic content, create A plus content, create brand stores, evolve our product descriptions, bullet points, everything to try and. paint the picture of what it's like to utilize this product and the value proposition that will serve those customers. When it really comes down to it, people wanna know, okay, is a customer similar to me? When they bought it, did they like it? Did it do what it says on the tin, essentially? And with Vine, that really helps brands to convey that message. And so we've seen a huge pickup from when we've... enrolled in our vine programs and we've had those reviews hitting the ASINs. We've seen our star ratings dramatically go up. We've seen the reviews come in there. And then what we've actually seen trigger is not the verified purchase reviews. So where you kind of see in its flag, if it's a vine review and essentially a vendor seeded program, but we've also seen when we've done the vine reviews, It's also accelerated just non-vine reviews coming on those ASINs. And we've seen then the conversion rates of our ASINs, especially when you tie that to our advertising or potentially competitive advertising when people come to purchase. And they've really picked up on it. So for me, I've seen that as a great success story for when we've kind of rolled out that program. And that kind of has to be the... One of the last steps in when a brand launches on Amazon, there's many steps before you can just sit back and potentially watch the money come in, right? I mean, people that maybe are not familiar with Amazon kind of think, oh, like you might be around like having dinner with your parents one day and they're like, oh, you might say like, oh, we're working with Amazon at the moment. And they think I could build like bracelets in my kitchen, put them on Amazon and in two weeks time, I'm gonna be a millionaire, right? It is definitely not like that. There's a whole kind of guide or steps that you need to do to launch on Amazon. First, obviously is creating those ASINs, understanding the, the routes to market that you want to do is it one P is it three P is a hybrid, but then you need to get your content, right? Make sure that's perfect. You also then want to get your vine programs put into those ASINs because you kind of want to have everything retail ready. before you start heavily pushing on the advertising. You can start the advertising once you have kind of your base content and A plus, everything done there. But you really want, before you kind of step on the gas, you want to get things on. Because you want to get some reviews, right? Absolutely, yeah. So get some reviews before you start pushing a lot of money onto the advertising. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, that was a huge part of the learning for us. Right? You know, think of Aruba. We are traditionally an enterprise. commercial entity focusing on large B2B end users, right? So this is this was a brand new entity a brand new market for us and we learned along the way and I think it takes a great deal of commitment and perseverance Because it just the road just doesn't open up in front of you and fall into place There are bumps and cracks along the way and you really have to be committed to seeing it through Because it could be arduous at times That's this I can't James I cannot believe you said the bracelets because my daughter makes these bracelets and No, but you know We told her you know, maybe you should open an Amazon store And you know, you're right it would definitely be difficult a very competitive and very difficult So she sold them, you know through like a lemonade stand kind of thing and so we we we didn't do the Amazon store, but she It was funny because it was a conversation, I'm telling you, like a week ago. So I can't believe you brought that up. I see. But I'm not saying like, like you don't have to do every single step. Um, like, like I was saying earlier, before you start doing advertising or just to sell on Amazon, but you've got to appreciate like, there's a lot of brands on Amazon, right? Amazon is the new Google. When, when customers, uh, when our SMB customers looking to purchase, like I said earlier, they purchase like consumers do. And I remember reading a stat like a few months ago, but Amazon is now overtaking Google for how people research purchases, right? So, and that kind of ties into how important it is that your content is on point, right? If people are searching for access points or switches or bracelets, right? You're competing with everyone else on there. And you can do things like sponsored search to push your Asus at the top of that tree. But when it comes down to it, people are gonna click on your ASIN. And if you've got grainy images, if you haven't got great descriptions, if it doesn't describe what the product does, you're gonna lose that potential customer very, very quickly. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, great stuff on the Vine. I'm really psyched at that work for you guys, but you have to stay committed to that and you have to follow it through. And it's not always a slam dunk that you're gonna get great reviews. So you gotta keep an eye on. You know, for that, it is unbiased, right? Um, and then that, and that's Amazon's beauty to its customer base, right? It's w while they may be seeded from a vendor, they're completely unbiased reviews. So, um, and, and there is frustrations with that, right? Um, we've seen in the past where maybe a customer has, has, um, or a Vine reviewers said this, this product didn't do this, or they couldn't figure it out. Um, and. Yes, you could argue maybe that's from our perspective, we haven't really made it as simple as we to cover every single eventuality, or it could be that, like that person's just a mistake, right? But from a vendor, we cannot reply to those vines, we cannot correct them, we cannot. So even if a vine review says something that isn't true, we can't correct them. So there is frustrations and cons as well to the pros, but the pros far outweigh the cons for that program. And I think from the market that we're trying to serve here, you know, SMB, I think that honesty and authenticity goes a long way, right? And I think SMBs really appreciate the ability to share an unvarnished best practices model and Vine and Amazon helps us with that. That's great, great advice. And I'm thrilled that that was a big win for you guys because what I definitely noticed is that it's much more difficult. to get reviews for commercial products than it is for consumer products, because commercial people, they buy it, they don't wanna deal with any of the aftermath. They don't wanna have to go back and put reviews in. They're busy working or using it for work where consumers are a bit more social and more comfortable with that. So I think trying to get positive reviews or reviews in general from commercial users is not a simple task either. So congratulations on that. That's awesome. So, you know, What I love about the brand is that it is known, but the brand itself isn't the selling feature and it's all these other things that you say you bring together. You got to have great content, you have to be advertising, you have to understand the keywords. What about video? How important is video to you guys? I think it's a great complementary asset. for your ASINs in a world where people want things now and they don't have a lot of time. I suppose when you look at like your ruba from an enterprise perspective, our old buy well, the enterprise buying model is reading data sheets, right? And doing proof of concepts that doesn't exist online. And when we go through here, so where we have our A plus content and we images we have there and people can kind of read through. There's nothing quite like a video asset that brings the story to life and can convey in 30 seconds to a potential customer, is it the right product for them? So I think it's not a necessity in video assets, I think, but it's definitely a nice complimentary thing to bring to the customer's researching experience. Yeah, and if you take a look at the Instant On product category, it's designed to be very simple to use, very simple to set up. So quick videos for the prosumer to digest and understand, I really think is critical. Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it helps. And people are kind of ADD, you know, they try to just quickly scan and look. And when there's a video catches their eye and helps them understand and they see it in use, they go, OK, that's for me. So I do think it's. pretty hot and pretty important to do. So. And think about it from this regard too. How often, you know, are all of us from a consumer standpoint outside of networking frustrated with some of the instructions we receive from a product and just go right to YouTube to see how to put it together. I do it all the time. I build a lot of doll houses. Yeah. So I am, I'm always looking for the videos or how to fix something, how to replace something. So for sure, really important. So there's a lot of different skill sets you need. Does Aruba have a big team dealing with this? Because Aruba, we deal with a lot of companies that have a couple of people, but people think you must have hundreds of people working on this. What's the reality? Is it a few good men or is it like? The reality is we do not have hundreds. No. We are a few good men and women. But the beauty with Amazon is, from Aruba's perspective, is everyone is very passionate. We're very passionate about our product. We're very passionate about the customer market that we can serve, that we can provide a far better networking experience for those customers. And Amazon is seen as a fantastic way to serve those customers. So the guys and girls that we have in managing our... and creating our content and managing our storefronts, to working with our three P's, to working with distribution, to stock availability. They're all very kind of, we're all in one family and one train of thought of supporting that route to market. But yeah, which does make it easy, right? And not having hundreds of teams of people to support. But what it does make is that when you do have those little wins, it makes it even sweeter. And so with the small team, are you finding in some cases you're using outside help? Like you mentioned, you use somebody on the outside for advertising. Do you have other third parties that you use to help with, you know, augment the skill sets? Well, we mentioned the advertising piece. We have a data analytics firm, which we use to track our sales by skew and category. We also use a third party brand protection organization to scrape pricing across the platform. as well as identify any other potential areas of leakage and arbitrage. So those are the three main third party entities we work with. And the content you actually got, Aruba creates it? 100% created by our marketing team and constantly being enhanced. So it is definitely a process that is not a set it and forget it. We're constantly evolving and looking to make improvements wherever we can. And today, logistics-wise, you're leveraging your 3P partners to get the products, right? So for you to have products prime, it's really you're betting on the 3P partners that you choose, right? Absolutely. It's their capabilities that brought us to partner together, right? Their ability to advertise and obviously manage some of our content and promotions. One. And then two, the ability to fulfill through a FBA is super important, right? So their ability to stock our product in an Amazon location is very critical to having product in a timely manner for the consumer. No, I mean, and having product and stock is everything, right? You know, sometimes it's beyond our control, but you need to have it in stock to sell it, right? And, you know, not having it just opens the door to competitors. zero sales. So important, always have stock. And that was critical in the past two years, obviously, right? With all the supply chain constraints happening across the world, it was the organizations that had stock were the ones that were winning. For sure. So, so guys, on Amazon, you've been successful, definitely some obstacles, but you learned a hell of a lot. How do you stay on top of what's happening at Amazon? Because I think things change on a daily basis and maybe I'm embellishing, but it happens on a regular basis and it's not like it's a big advertisement coming from Amazon, we're changing this today, we're doing this today. They don't really tell you all this stuff. So how do you stay on top of it all? What do you do? Well, I mean, I don't think you are embellishing, Adam. I think it does change every day. But And you're never going to know everything. You're never going to know all the change that Amazon done or know or know what obstacles you're going to come up against next. One of the great roots of education that we have is our third party partners, our three piece. And they say, OK, look, this is changing on Amazon. We need to do this. This is where we need to upload content. Now there's new formats that we need to create for MPIs. we might have created an eight port switch ASIN last week. And this week we're creating the 24 port switch and the NIS file uploads, the categories completely changed. So all the mandatory information that you have to upload, those templates have changed. So you then have to go, we have to then go back to maybe our product team and go, okay, we now need to specify this item in those uploads. So. Everything kind of changes, but our 3P partners really help keep us educated on that respect. And one example of a change that happened, and it actually links back to Vine that we had before. And maybe a story for you as well. When I first was working with Amazon and launching products on Amazon, Vine was delivered to a specific Vine warehouse. where nowadays it's actually filled out of FBA stock. But in the past it was where a vendor, you had to enroll in Vine, you had to download all of these barcodes and then cut them out and sellotape them over the barcodes that are on your box because they weren't meant to go into general consumption. They would have go to specifically to a Vine warehouse to be shipped to Vine reviewers. And I remember I must have had maybe 120 boxes on my living room floor one night. And then I was cutting all these barcodes off and sellotaping them and then getting in a car and delivering them there. And so, but then when we were trying to do Vine in the UK, um, a little while ago, and it was like, no, it gets filled out over FBA now. So it was like, okay, I'll put the scissors and sellotape down. I didn't have to do that, which was fantastic, but there's constantly changes on Amazon. And our three Ps really help us in that regard. As well as the agencies that Andy was speaking about. Obviously they are constantly being with Amazon on a daily basis and they see things that change that we need to be aware of that they need to work with us to help in what area they work in. No, and you said it earlier, like people think, oh, I'm gonna go get a couple of products on Amazon, I'm gonna make a million dollars, but it's not like that. it from the outside is quite simple, right? But once you get into it, it's very complicated. And we try to explain that to our partners all the time. Like this is not just, you know, a simple thing where you get a list of product and people are gonna come and buy it. It's really not like that. You have to do a lot of work and you have to navigate a lot of systems to make sure that your product show well and that your products stay in stock and that you respond to customers' questions. and that you get high ratings and that you get the best reviews because it's a competitive world out there and you need to be at the best of your game and using outside help is not, you know, a crime. I mean, it's, it's kind of helpful. Absolutely not. Because it's hard to know it all. And it's not a simple thing. Because even from, from us internally, it's, it's, everything's a learning curve. You never know a hundred percent everything. And for Andy and I, it's also about educating back into Aruba, right? People are like, well, why do you need a hundred units of products that you're essentially giving them? They got to love that. Yeah. And so, but there's loads of different elements and you have to educate internally, depending on your company, as well as going through that. But obviously the payoff is huge, right? Amazon is the biggest marketplace for SMBs and consumers purchasing. And so it is worth it. You do get the gray hairs, but it's a hundred percent worth it. Yeah. I mean, so, so it's like for us, if you're not living it every day, it's impossible to know, and even living it every day, there's new stuff that comes at you, like what's going on. And you go ask the community, Hey, have you seen this before? Because there's a bunch of different Amazon communities out there that you stay connected to. And everybody really, although they're competitors in some aspects, everybody helps each other out. It's kind of wonderful, the ecosystem and the communities that are Amazon centric. And everybody loves to show you that they figured this one out. I don't know if it's a badge of honor, but people are quite helpful. You know, there's obviously the ones that will give you the bad info to mess with you, but not always. But I love learning about Amazon every day. And I'm... thrilled when we figure new things out that we didn't know. And just because you have somebody that you work with at Amazon, that's not always the secret sauce. I mean, it's doing it and finding out. And unfortunately, there's a lot of mistakes made to get to the promised land. So you have to be prepared to make mistakes. So I'm not inviting new competition for you, but for companies that are trying to start on Amazon, let's pretend they're small startups. What's your advice for somebody that's going to explore? Patience. And think about it. Patience. Patience is perseverance, right? You can't give up because there is going to be many obstacles along the way. You just have to keep motoring through. Yeah, 100%. You have to have that patience. And I think it's just very important to make sure you've got all your ducks in the road. Right. If you were starting up, have a look at your competitors, have a look at what they're doing, have a look at what their ASINs look like. Because you want to make sure you've got the best customer buying experience on there. And that comes from like getting the images right, getting the descriptions right, including keywords that people may search for in your descriptions, getting the bullet points, those quick snapshots. customers always go to going over K the product does this, this and this. I'm kind of interested, scrolling down and then they get into the meat of your product which shows that you can show via the A plus content, which is fantastic. Then moving into things like the review programs that Amazon now they also have like a Q and A aspect where customers can ask questions and you as a vendor can reply in it. And it will tag you as the vendor has replied to that questions as well as other. people can reply on there. But you need to keep constantly engaged in that and then you can push on to advertising to help push your ASINs up the Amazon algorithms to go there. But fundamentally, patience and perseverance, like Andy said, is kind of the best advice we could give. And I definitely think that that research before you go is a big deal. Like when you look at your competitors and you read their reviews, you definitely learn a lot of what people don't like. And hopefully you could get ahead of that. before you launch. So, you know, really important, I think you hit it on the research before you jump in. So with that, any final thoughts or comments, and then we're gonna kind of wrap things up here. Nothing from me, really just good luck for those that are starting their journey. And yeah. Yeah, no, I'm good as well. I just really appreciate Adam, you giving us the time to speak about our journey and our successes. And- We hope that it will help others like us in a similar situation, looking to grow their business on the largest platform in the world. Well, thank you both. I mean, it's great to hear from a very large brand in the real world how they've navigated Amazon, because being the biggest outside of Amazon doesn't make you the biggest on Amazon, and you have to earn your stripes every day. So, you know, you guys have worked hard to get there, and you guys are really smart about it. And... you keep on getting better and better and better as you learn more and more. So keep it going, we all appreciate it. With that, thanks for joining us and we look forward to talking again soon. Thanks Adam.