FBA: My Way

Charter: 

Our goal is to make our mid-range, cost-effective, quality products related to traveling, tourism and active life-style more reachable/affordable, but still serving the basic needs of active person and making the adventures more safe, optimal, comfortable, and memorable.

ePGes store on Amazon

Here is my Amazon store, which I was able to register and setup after I got mt trademark registered.

ePGes on Facebook

Preconditions in my case:

  • I already had US Bank’s Small Business account and appropriate Debit Card
  • Although I’m located in Israel, I have US-based post-address where papers from my different investments come and from where those redirected to Israel. So I was able to have an advantage of having same postal address on my Bank Account and on My Amazon account when was requested for that by Amazon.    

Seller Privileges

My seller privileges were removed for several times mostly for missing of proofs from my side of having real suppliers.

 

Suppliers and testing of the products

TBD – to describe the process. Insert pictures

New product addition and unique identification

  • UPC/EAN/etc. is required to define a new product on Amazon. Most china suppliers do NOT have any barcode on their generic products.
  • Those UPC/EAN may be purchased  at ebay or Amazon itself.
  • Conversion to Amazon’s ASIN happens automatically once I provided UPC at “Vital Info” Tab->”Product Id” field 
  • If you want you product to be identified quickly later in Amazon Inventory, set up a mnemonic name  at “Offer” tab->”Seller SKU” 

Note: While dealing with projects that have batteries, NOT all of hundreds/thousands of UPCs can suit the product. It took me some time to understand, that having my products redirected to Hazardous Materials inspection (during switching to FBA) is due-to the UPC. I didn’t find the information on where this is coded within UPC, but once I found UPC which didn’t switch my power bank to the Hazmat review mode, I started to look for similar UPCs for my other power banks.   

 

TBD: Logo (https://www.logaster.com/), Trademark and listing protection from lazy sellers (being binding to others’ listings) for private labeled products being selling in unique way with Unique ID.

Switching to a Pro Seller plan

After products went active in my listings and available for selling, I switched to a Proffesional Seller plan to experiment with Advertizing options (which are not available on a Individual Seller plan )

Attracting attention to your products (promotion) and getting reviews

  • I set several Amazon giveaways for my products and spread the links of my FREE products to my US-based relatives and friends. Expecting to have some reviews gathering on the products’ pages. Let’s see…
  • I set an Automatic (deciding on which search criteria matches for you) Ad-Campaign  #1 for just 1 day to learn which keywords are used for my products. I also lowered the prices 50% and set this note at the first line of my product description: “ACQUAINTANCE DEAL. Your feedback/review will be highly appreciated”. I also applied all the automatic bids. I seen lots of impressions(thousands), I seen tens of clicks (means high money spend), but NO related purchases. Then I lowered the campaign budget, waited one more day for full statistics being available and then stopped the campaign. Statistics showed, that many of clicks were triggered by irrelevant keywords (including similar ISINs). Two days later I got few buys, that probably relate to that first campaign. Then I created a Manual Ad-Campain, where I defined keywords myself from proposed and from my head, which turned out as having default bids (means used by customers, but weren’t proposed to me) . I also applied default bids for all, as seen than average is ~1. Then I seen lower amount of impressions, lower amount of clicks than before, but I started to see buys 🙂  Which means, that if you propose to people something they were really looking for (and for competitive/low-enough price) they will BUY it even with 0-reviews. So this give me an idea to continue with this campaign a bit longer to    try a build up some amount of reviews even when I’m loosing money initially. In parallel, I issued a request to a supplier to provide more units, but in more efficient way so that per-unit price will go lower due-too cheaper shipment (a bit more optimal amounts) and lower/fewer fees.  
  • First product reviews: My first product reviews arrived from US-based friend of mine, who tried the products I posted through my Amazon giveaway
  • To get more reviews, I decided to check if Amazon Top Reviewers are interested in reviewing my products.

Dealing with “US Exemption Sheet for batteries and products with batteries”

Described here

Understanding China suppliers/factories/traders

Seth Kniep visiting china: video1

Lowering per-unit spent

As Seth Kniep recommended (and as straight logic hints) , after my product started to sell and I needed to refill the stock, I tried to lower my per-unit spent. I opened my cards and my intention to spend less money per unit against my China Factory agent. She assisted me in understanding prices for amounts, shipment and transaction fees. So finally I was ordering x5 units than before in 2 shipments: 20% mid-urgent (5-7 days), 80% slow (7-15 days) so that my spent-per-unit dropped $1.01 for urgent and $2.07 for non-urgent items. I’m happy with that. This gives me an opportunity to  lose less money at the promotional phases and to come with more competitive prices later on.   

Lost inventory and reimbursements

I was reading/hearing about inventory that can get lost/damaged on FBA factories and of possible reimbursements. Ex: FMA Master: Getting Money Back On Your Amazon Seller Account (part1part2)

Then this happened right away to one of my first batches of units

Dealing with “lazy” sellers

Today I had my first acquaintance with so called “LAZY SELLER”, as Seth Kniep warned at one of his his videos. “Lazy sellers” are used to get themselves attaching to others’ listings and so benefit from others’ marketing efforts and expenses.

Product returns

As a result of me playing with prices I got a user who returned an item bought for higher price

B2B: Switching to a Business Seller Program

My sales expansion to business clients is described here 

 

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