#592 – Tips To Save Money On Your Amazon Product Shipment and Logistics

Is your Amazon product logistics strategy ready for Q4? Join us as we sit down with Burak Yolga, Co-Founder & CEO at Forceget, a leading expert in global supply chain and logistics, who reveals crucial strategies that Amazon sellers need to thrive in the fast-approaching holiday season. Burak unpacks how to save money on logistics and explore new marketplaces amidst the rise of new players like TikTok Shop Temu, and Shein. As a special treat, Burak shares his favorite restaurants in Istanbul, just in time for Bradley who is heading to the upcoming conference in the city.

We break down the factors driving up international shipping prices, from reduced vessel schedules to container shortages and shifting market demands. High inflation and the growth of platforms such as Temu and AliExpress are reshaping e-commerce, creating new challenges for Amazon sellers. Learn how to navigate Amazon Global Logistics’ practices, adapt to the new fees, and optimize your shipment strategy to stay competitive in today’s volatile market.

This episode is a goldmine of insights for those grappling with the costs of selling large items on Amazon. Discover why more sellers are turning to third-party logistics providers and exploring multi-channel selling to maximize profitability. We highlight the benefits of early inventory planning, the impact of Amazon’s new delivery rules, and the critical need for flexible fulfillment options. Plus, find out how expanding into physical retail stores like Walmart can be a game-changer for your business. Tune in for expert strategies that can transform your logistics approach and boost your bottom line this Q4.

In episode 593 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Burak discuss:

• 00:00 – Global Supply Chain Insights and Tips
• 04:11 – Impact of Rising International Shipping Prices
• 07:20 – Impact of New Amazon Fees
• 12:26 – Amazon Global Logistics vs Independent Freight Forwarder
• 16:38 – Maximizing Amazon Seller Profitability
• 17:31 – Expanding Sales Beyond Amazon 
• 23:00 – Diversifying Sales Channels and Maximizing Profits
• 24:03 – Saving on FBA Fees and Freight
• 30:11 – Benefits of Investing in Your Brand’s Website

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got one of the world’s leading experts on global supply chain and logistics and he’s going to talk about a wide variety of topics, like things Amazon sellers can keep in mind for Q4, how they can save money on logistics and expanding to other marketplaces. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Black Box by Helium 10 House is the largest database of Amazon products and keywords in the world. Outside of Amazon itself, we have over 2 billion products and many millions more keywords from different Amazon marketplaces, from USA to Australia to Germany and more. Use our powerful filters to search through this database for pockets of opportunity that you might want to get into with your first or next product to sell on Amazon. For more information, go to h10.me/blackbox. Don’t forget you can save 10% off for life on Helium 10 by using our special code SSP10. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for Serious Sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.  And we got somebody who helped Serious Seller all over the world, I think the third, maybe fourth time he’s been on the Podcast. Burak, how’s it going? Man? I’m great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again.

Burak:

I’m great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you in Miami right now?

Burak:

Yes, Miami Florida.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, I’m wearing my Miami hat. This is, like, I think, an older minor league baseball team or something. That’s why I’m wearing my Miami hat today in your honor. But you’re originally from Turkey. Did you know that I’m going to Istanbul in a little bit?

Burak:

I think you mentioned. Yes, I’m very excited. I wish I was there to take you to the best food restaurants, you know.

Bradley Sutton:

You’ll have to tell me what the good ones are. Are there any in Istanbul that for sure I need to go to so I can maybe even by myself I can go?

Burak:

I think you should definitely visit Galata Port. It’s a new place. It’s right by the water. There are some good Kebab places and also definitely Baklava. You should try Gülolu, the best Baklava in the world.

Bradley Sutton:

Perfect, all right, I’m going to those places. By the way, I’m not sure when this podcast is going to go out, but if anybody is in Turkey and is down to meet me on September the 4th or 5th and you want to go with me to one of these restaurants or take me there. Conference I’m speaking at, you can get a link to it at h10.me forward slash Istanbul. H10.me forward slash Istanbul. It will forward you to the conference I’ll be speaking at. So, I’d love to do like a little mini-Helium 10 meetup over there. Now. We’re not here just to talk about Turkish food and Turkish delights. I’m sure we could spend a whole episode. You know as much as I love food to talk about that. But you know you’re one of the leading experts in the world about, you know shipping and logistics and things like that, so let’s just hop right into it. You know the last time you were on this show was episode 457. So, by the way, if anybody wants to get Burak’s more of his backstory, actually go back to the very first episode he was on, which is episode 324. You can learn about his origin story. And then 457, we talked about some other topics, but what was 457? I think it was around, like you know, May, June of last year. So obviously you know things in logistics change month by month, even. What are some of the biggest changes that sellers should be aware of, just in general? First of all, in the logistics world, whether it’s about pricing or taxes, what can you tell us has been different since the last time you were on the show?

Burak:

You know you’re right, things sometimes change its daily base and you know, when we started ForceGet, it was probably five years ago, we were mainly focusing on international shipping, but we became more like a supply chain. Now there has been a lot of changes within our company as well as in the world. In the industry, with the e-commerce, especially with the Amazon FBA plus, the new players are coming into the market TikTok, Teemu, Shein and Shopify. According to the reports, they have lost some revenue. However, a lot of companies they’re trying to enter omnichannel. That’s something that I mentioned before we start recording. When it comes to international shipping, actually, international shipping prices increased. Compared to six months ago. I think we have seen the lowest shipping prices last probably a few decades. Full container price was almost uh 1500 dollars from China to Los Angeles. Now it went back up to seven, eight thousand dollars. Now we see the range of five thousand, five thousand, five hundred dollars, which is, I think, a hell to range for both um shipping lines, freight forwarders, as well as for f the um e-commerce and amazon sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Prices went down but then prices have been going up again for different things. Obviously, there was that thing that happened last year in the Red Sea and things like that. So obviously there’s always random things COVID, or there’s a container ship blocking the whole Suez Canal or something like that. Those would obviously have an effect. But the recent price increases in shipping, like what is that attributed to? Because, like, is that because of the, the war that that’s happening, or is it something else?

Burak:

Actually, this was uh sort of uh happened, I would say, inorganically. Uh, one of the reasons was the shipping lines. Uh, you know all these worldwide companies like Hyundai, Zim, Evergreen. I’m sure everybody’s familiar with that big logo block less US channel they have canceled a lot of scheduled vessels because maybe 30%, 40% of the container vessel was not 100% fulfilled, vessel was not 100 percent fulfilled. Basically, they were losing a lot of money so they decided to roll over one of the week’s shipping schedules to the next one. So basically, there was not enough demand but there is a lot of supply. Obviously then the prices start going down, basically in order to save money on the fuel, maybe the crew, maybe the insurance. So, they started to cancel a lot of scheduled vessels and obviously this caused a big chaos in the market. A lot of containers went, uh from China to other places like Europe, us did not come back. Then we start having container shortage. So, this is something uh started organically. Uh, there was not enough demand in the marketplaces, like in the US, like North America, USA, Canada, because of, I would say maybe, high inflation, or companies like Teemu, AliExpress start to do very cheap price Drop shipping from China, which is something interesting that we maybe talk later. Teemu is start entering US market. Start working with local 3PLs to acquire Amazon sellers to start selling the ones which are qualified OEC. Start selling on Teemu so they will start doing local deliveries with a shorter period of delivery times, which I believe they will try to attract Surplus. What is Surplus? The product that already has been sitting in the US for a long time. Amazon sellers or their wholesalers they cannot sell it, so they need to liquidate the product. So, Teemu was basically saying that hey, use our platform to liquidate them, not on the retail price, but heavily discounted price, maybe 60%, 70%. So, I think all these things happening last two years after COVID, when we saw a very big peak when the Amazon sellers were making really good money but then the sales dropped a couple of different reasons, and I see that it’s the same thing is affecting the international shipping prices and fulfillment prices. Things are really very different right now compared to even six months ago.

Bradley Sutton:

Obviously, this has been the year of crazy Amazon, new fees and new announcements, you know, be it inbound, placement fees, and so I want to talk just a little bit about that. First, like in your you know you’re handling both sides, you know, be it. You know shipping side, be it logistics side, warehousing and things. What have you seen as far as how this has changed, what Amazon sellers are doing, like, for example, me, I’ve got my own warehouse, but still now I’m being very mindful of how many you know, like, how many, you know what kind of boxes I’m putting in. Like, like, maybe before I was only trying to do you know a certain number of shipments, but now I’m like, no, I got to have minimum five, you know of one box or, oh, I need to try and increase a 15 because I got to avoid that placement fee. But what have you noticed as far as your clients? How are their practices different because of some of these new fees?

Burak:

Man. It’s a really, really long topic actually when it comes to make it shorter version. When Amazon came up with this, the idea was start charging sellers for all those distribution fees that they need to ship to many small warehouses across fulfillment centers across the nation so the end user can receive the products not in two days but one day, even maybe sometimes half day. But we have seen a lot of case studies actually our customers. They created five shipments and when, let’s say, 100 cartons, Amazon asked you to ship 50 cartons to Texas, we saw that the final delivery address Amazon distributed these products were still Pennsylvania or Florida or still North Carolina maybe. So what? Amazon was actually telling sellers in theory hey, split the shipments to five locations because that’s going to be closer to the buyers. That was not really the case. Yeah, I guess they’re still working on a lot of Optimization, uh structure. Obviously, this was like a new project for them. But there has been a lot of confusing for sellers. A lot of seller’s kind of felt like they have to use Amazon Global Logistics to avoid those uh placement. But then when they tried to book the shipment, amazon Global Logistics did not arrange to pick up. Three weeks, four weeks’ time Then they have charged people wrong HDS code. So, a lot of sellers they paid very high tax and duty instead of some other lower charges that they’re supposed to receive. I mean, obviously we talked to a lot of people, some people they have good experience with Amazon Global Logistics, some people have bad experiences. But in my opinion that was not really fair for Amazon to tell people, hey, if you use AGL, then you will not be paying any of these fees, but then if you don’t, then you have to pay for it. I guess I understand they have invested billions of dollars into this fulfillment center supply chain logistics, so they want to leverage the power of their seller the seller power, I would say. But I think I would not put all my eggs in the same basket, so I would not just use AGL and AWD, you know AWD also a new program Amazon has launched like two years. But since they’re pushing a lot harder right now and I think the fourth quarter will be very tough uh test for Amazon with all the check-in processes, transferring uh products between the fulfillment centers and making sure that they become available and one of my I believe most of our customers now start looking into FBM options. Number one very high FBA fees. Number two all these delays with AGL, AWD, fulfillment center transfers. Obviously, amazon is going to prioritize. The products are already sitting in the fulfillment centers. They will prioritize to ship the products first, not receive the products first. So that always has been the case. So, if you ask my opinion, it’s going to be a tough year for a lot of sellers to get and understand these FBA fees. But also try to be profitable. You know that’s something that we’ve been talking about. It doesn’t make sense anymore to say, hey, I’m seven, eight figure seller, but how much profit I’m making? So, I believe to make plan B, plan C is very, very important, Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

Me having my own warehouse and obviously I can repack things and I do smaller quantities. I can easily make sure to send to four or five locations to get that, you know to skip the low inventory fee. But if I’m sending in containers and before I would send to Amazon directly, I pretty much have no option, right, like I am going to get that low inventory fee no matter what unless I send to a 3PL first and they divide it. Or am I thinking of that wrong, since I don’t send containers directly to Amazon? I don’t know, but is that correct? Like pretty much anybody who’s sending full containers or containers that can’t be broken up or shipments that can’t be broken up, they’re forced into this fee.

Burak:

Yes, kind of. But we have done some case studies to see what really makes sense, if it makes sense to ship, because Amazon Global Logistics is also not charging sellers the market fees. They’re charging actually higher, a lot higher. So, if you’re looking at door-to-door shipment from China to one of the most popular Amazon FBA fulfillment centers, let’s say ONT8, which is in Los Angeles, California Riverside, if you use us it’s going to cost $6,000, but with Amazon Global Logistics they’re charging $8,000 or $9,000. So basically, they’re kind of charging a little higher so that they can use probably that money to distribute the products within three to four different locations. And if it is LCL, then less than full container. Yes, you can actually choose to use your own freight forwarder and price is very similar. But one of the things that we realized; their FC transfer times a lot longer than using an independent Freight Forwarder. So, which means if you ship with AGL it will maybe be fully delivered to Amazon, fully check in, all received 90 days, versus you use your own Freight Forwarder, probably it will be delivered and checked in 45 to 50 days. So, does it matter for you? Maybe it doesn’t really matter because the sales are not that fast right now, unfortunately, I don’t see really much Amazon sales recently saying that, hey, I’m running out of inventory all the time. I hope it’s a good problem. I hope some of the people having that problem. But majority of the people are saying, hey, I’m not in the rush, so I’m okay to take these fees. But then you should really understand the cost of actually paying everything in advance and your cash tied up to. If you’re using a loan, if you’re not using just cash, if you’re, you know, withdrawing some money with, I don’t know, amazon financing or third-party money, you get funding. So, you need to understand you may be paying monthly two to 3% because these are short term funds, so probably charging 20, 25% annually. So, every month you’re paying two to 3% something that you’re not selling. So that’s basically three percent minus from your actual margin. So, there are so many things to consider. You know trying to explain as basic as possible. So definitely understand and see what is better for your business. And if I were a big seller, I wouldn’t send all of my inventory FBA. I would keep some of my inventory in a 3pl close to amazon and send it in a you know, smaller batches and more frequent. This way I’m not going to be paying high inventory fees, the storage fees and, more importantly, I can test other marketplaces. You know, I can try to drive traffic. I will do FBM, I can do Tic Tac Shops or maybe even Walmart. So, it will give you more flexibility instead of sending everything to Amazon, FBA. And if one day somehow your listings get suspended or hijacked or your sales is down for some reason, then you’ll be like, oh my God, what I’m going to do versus you have some inventory in a different location and you can start considering some other options.

Bradley Sutton:

We talked about new inventory fees that Amazon sellers are having to do, and then the question about whether to go AGL and things like that. But you also mentioned Fulfilled by Merchant. Now, for me, I do all of my products both. I have two SKUs for every product. I have FBM and FBA, and I always tell people to do that. Not necessarily anything to do with logistics, but just because there’s still some people out there who don’t have Amazon Prime and then, especially if we’re talking about products that are priced below $25, they actually prime prices them out of it. So, like, if you’re only FBA and you’ve got like a $24 product, when that person checks out, it’s going to add like $8 shipping and now that $24 product became $32 product and you just lost that sale, probably you know, to somebody else and then so for, for that person, I can. I always have a skew. The buy box is actually the FBM skew, because it’s only I’ll do 2497, you know, with shipping, free shipping, I can, I can fulfill, uh, for almost the same as Amazon, considering that I don’t have to pay, I don’t have to send it to Amazon. I have to send Amazon pick and pack fees, but that’s my reason for doing FBM, but are you saying that you’re actually seeing some sellers go to Seller Fulfilled Prime and not do FBA, or you’re just saying they’re just forgetting Prime at all and having a listing that’s strictly FBM?

Burak:

For larger items. We see sometimes only FBM, because some people say that, hey, Amazon is taking 50% to 55% of my sales price for large items. FBA is extremely expensive and I feel like a lot of people, a lot of buyers, are more price sensitive recently compared to two years ago. That’s real. Most of our customers, they have both FBA and FBM. They do most likely what you do. Because you’re right. I mean, some people they don’t need the product in one day, they want to do the cheaper version. So why wouldn’t you add an additional strategy to your listing? And it’s your own money versus paying Amazon and 3pl will handle that a lot cheaper and then, if it is not a big item, your shipping price is not going to be that expensive. You can still buy the shipping within Amazon, which is great. You don’t have to have your own ups FedEx account. But majority of our customers, they want to test new marketplaces. I  know that our some of our customer they’re investing into their own websites and when they get the order, they drive traffic, they convert. Then it’s much easier to launch a product with your own email marketing, like with your own email database which you’ve been talking about. You know how to launch a product, like all the honeymoon period, amazon changing the algorithms, a lot of our customers also they have problem with launching a brand-new product on Amazon. It’s not that easy as it used to be like a few years ago. So, people are testing different marketplaces and different channels to see if they can get a better ROI. Obviously, amazon still has. It’s very interesting actually, when we see the Amazon’s quarterly earnings report, we see that Amazon is keep growing their profit, number of buyers, their revenue. We see a big part of it from the seller’s fees revenue. But there is a fact that Amazon does not want to leave the market share to other players that aggressively come in, especially out of China. We see that a new Amazon program is going to roll out which is Dropshipping from China. I don’t think that’s a great idea, but I think just Amazon wants to keep it.

Bradley Sutton:

I don’t think any Amazon seller is based in the US thinks that’s a good idea.

Burak:

Not only Amazon sellers, but I think it’s also not fair for other traditional importers who have, like a warehouse people in here. They’re paying tax and payrolls. That’s my personal opinion. Obviously, it’s not a yes or no, white or black topic. A lot of people have their own opinion. But eventually I know that we have some importers, like traditional wholesalers, that their business is down 30 to 40% just because a lot of people buying products directly from China and those companies. Of course they have a cheaper price. They don’t have local expenses, all these utility fees, the warehouse rents and et cetera. We all know that it all adds up. So, I think it’s going to be a tough uh year for next year for a lot of amazon sellers. That’s why I think it’s a really good idea to start considering uh different strategies and different plans for uh increasing the revenue and profitability..

Bradley Sutton:

We’re heading close to Q4. Um, amazon’s made different announcements as far as hey, have your inventory in by. I think one of them was like, if you want it for Black Friday, you got to have it in by October 19th, or something like that. They had said what are your predictions as far as like? Is this year the same thing as every year, where Amazon has a deadline and you got to kind of stick to it, or do you notice anything from some of these announcements where you think there’s something that sellers need to be aware of going into this year’s Q4?

Burak:

I think last week they announced a new Q4’s delivery structure and delivery rules. Some of them are the restriction with FBA delivery appointments, reduction in capacity limits, holiday peak fulfillment fees. So, all these are basically saying that the amazon sellers uh, need to plan better when they’re going to send their inventory, how they’re going to send it. And you know the thing. What amazon wants you to do is actually send your inventory as early as possible. So, this way they can charge you a lot higher for the fourth quarter, with the maximum amount of, you know, the low inventory fee. Because even if you don’t ship it to Amazon, you still pay in that inventory because inventory fee, because Amazon thinks that, hey, I, I allocate some space for you according to your sales history. Now, whether you ship it or not, I’m going to still charge you that. So, we have a lot of sellers. We I think they still don’t know exactly how this fee structure is going to work for seasonal products. We had a client they shipped like four or five containers for Christmas lights, Christmas tree decorations. So, they don’t have enough space right now in Amazon FBA. So, I think that is a problem for sellers, like they sell seasonal products. So basically, like what amazon is saying versus what they are doing. I think it’s a little bit opposite, um, because you cannot really ship as much as you want, but then amazon is saying, hey, send me all this product. I want to charge you more, but same time you cannot do it. So, I don’t think there’s going to be a big solution for these people. The best to do is create an FPM auction to make sure you don’t get charged all these high FBA fees, especially for the long term, and, God forbid if you miss that season. You can’t sell out everything and you have some inventory left over. In January you definitely need to take the product back, otherwise your fees are going to be very high.

Bradley Sutton:

In the past you’ve talked about ways that, without even doing anything, major Amazon sellers can possibly save money, like they’re probably doing something wrong or not taking into consideration the right tariff and or you know they’re letting their freight forward or take advantage of them in a certain way. Can you remind everybody out there what are some easy steps they can take to save money? You know, without having to completely overhaul their entire system of where they could save a little bit of money potentially here or there, just by maybe doing a little mini audit on their SOPs or something like that.

Burak:

You know, I really think that they should go download their FBA fees and to see how much they’re spending on their storage. That’s one thing that Amazon is going to hit everyone really bad this year, especially in the fourth quarter. And what is the average age of their inventory stays in the FBA before they sell out. I know that there are a lot of people their sales decrease. I think one of the best ways to do is have a 3PL option. Ship everything to your 3PL and then ship it frequently to Amazon FBA. Because, yes, you will be maybe paying that placement fees but at the same time you can manage your listings somehow. We have seen last year, last quarter, that a lot of shipments delivered to Amazon but Amazon took way longer to check them in. So, we had some clients that they ship product to Amazon FBA. It’s delivered but Amazon never checked in. They waited the busy season to pass. So that was pretty bad for some people and they were selling like toys or I remember we had a client that we shipped for them puzzles but Amazon checked them in like very late, so they had to like sell it for a cheaper price. So, you should plan it. Send in your inventory as early as possible on FBA and keep constantly shipping to Amazon FBA to avoid the fees. I think the big saving this year can be from the FBA fees. Obviously check the Freight prices. Compare AGL with other Freight Forwarders to deliver the products instead of one place to five locations. That’s a good way to do it. HTS code is a great way to check that. But I think this year’s big jackpot is going to be FBA fees.

Bradley Sutton:

We’ve been going over some beginner strategies, some advanced strategy. But if some of this is a little bit over your head or you want to just get a nice overview for you or your team about logistics and shipping, Burak actually is in Freedom Ticket 4.0. So, if you guys want to have your team go over some of the basics and some advanced stuff, to go into your Freedom Ticket inside of Helium 10 and then click on the week or the group of modules called supply chain and logistics, and then you’re going to see some different modules here that Burak has done. That will help you with that. So, make sure anybody who’s a Helium 10 member make sure to go into Freedom Ticket and be able to see it. Do you remember some of the other things that you talked about in that module? Just to let people know what to expect in there.

Burak:

I think yes. One of the things that relates to FBA fees are the product size, whether you can make your product smaller so Amazon will charge you smaller tiers. I know that we used to do some free audits for the FBA fees that what we realize is actually customer products are a different size than what Amazon is actually charging them, so Amazon is supposed to charge them lower. So definitely, order your competitor’s product to see their packaging so that you can redesign your, maybe package. This is a little bit of my background. I lived in China eight years. I’ve done a lot of sourcing so I’m kind of familiar with like how to make things like lighter, maybe smaller, maybe if you’re paying too high for the duty and tax because your product has a different material. So definitely I would say, order your competitor’s product to see the size of the box. Maybe they fold the product, they maybe made it smaller. It’s definitely helping to see what are the product sizes, mustard cartons and maybe even labeling and maybe inserting some special cards from the competitors. Obviously not asking five-star reviews, but you could see some other maybe conversions that they are doing, maybe because you have other products in the same category. You don’t know whether your customers have them. You know they love your brand or not, but you can actually let them know that you’re selling some other products that can be related. So, I think it’s a good idea to order a competitor’s product to see if you can save anything on the size of the product which can save you money on shipping fulfillment in the 3PL as well as Amazon FBA. So, it could be up to 10% to 15%, which is going to be, when you look at it, annually. It’s a huge saving.

Bradley Sutton:

What else do you have for us? We’ve got sellers of all levels here and I think nowadays maybe people are thinking about some of these newer marketplaces, like TikTok Shop, which now you know, has fulfilled by TikTok and then, and then Teemu is now trying to recruit, you know, US sellers. You know I’m trying to get on the Teemu platform just to just to see how the process goes myself. But what are some things you think you know? When we think multi-channel, you know, gone are the days where people can just say, hey, I’m only going to sell on Amazon, and then maybe there are some days where it’s like, oh no, I only need to worry about Amazon and Walmart. So, 2024, 2025, we live. I think it’s the year of the many marketplaces trying to make a name for themselves. What are some trends that you’re seeing? What is some advice you have for other sellers?

Burak:

You know? I think the Teemu strategy is very different than Walmart. If I want my products because, if you think about it, Walmart has thousands of stores across US and Canada and even in Mexico. Now they’re trying to acquire sellers and they have been very active. You know we go to a lot of different events Prosper Show and others. You see that all the time Walmart’s booth there. They’re trying to acquire D2C brand events like a shop talk and stuff. What I see is, if you want your products to be in a long term, maybe one day a big brand acquires you because you’re in a niche category. Let’s say you’re in a cosmetic, you’re doing something maybe just special for lips or for some special type of skin. I don’t know. You could be acquired by a big brand if your product can be on the shelves like physical stores. We have so many customers in the past that they started only online but then they were invited to as a test run to start selling on the retailers. Like you know, it could be Dick’s Sports, it could be Walmart. If you’re in a sports category, you know those retailers are trying to get some good brands on their shelves which can add a lot of value to your branding and people who see you actually on the physical store. They can go and buy online, because I personally love to compare the price in a retailer versus online. It could be Target. It helps you to find and give your brand a big shout out and people can go and find you and then wholesalers can find you. Maybe, like a retailer chain can find you. So, there’s actually both options. I think you’re right. I mean, there’s so many options. It makes really sense to enter all of these platforms to have reached out the maximum amount of audience. But obviously you need to understand how to manage that inventory because different market channels require maybe different UPC codes, which one of our customers? They had an issue. What the UPC codes the factory is putting actually has not been scanned by the retailer. So, the UPC codes was not valid, so they had to bring the products back, relabel it.

Uh, baby steps are good if you’re a brand-new seller. Amazon FBA is very good way to start, but maybe it’s not that profitable as it, as it used to be. Definitely look for the fpm options and then whatever makes more sense. But I would definitely keep one more sales channel, one more marketplace. Teemu is not the great one yet, because either you need to have a special invite, we have so many people actually asking about the Teemu. Either you have to be invited by a friend or referred by Teemu team directly so you can actually send an email to Temu. But I think in the long term it will be great to invest into your own website because you can easily launch different products. Great to invest into your own website uh, you can do it on Shopify and you know you will have definitely better margins in that and some people they have their own website. They even never want to go to Amazon because they want. They don’t want to compete on the price. You, we all know that how amazon works, so it’s really a long-term plan. I don’t think anyone can really get rich that fast anymore through the e-commerce. I think it’s all about branded strategy and it makes more sense to invest in your own website and Shopify. Obviously, amazon has the traffic. It’s very hard to bring in traffic. It’s not hard but it’s going to be expensive in that converting. But, I know that Shopify is working a lot on how to convert more on the products they left in the cart how they can have better conversion. It’s very interesting. Recently, I see that installment options pops up on many websites If you’re selling an expensive product and I was going to buy a kayak for summertime, it was like $800. I’m like I don’t want to pay $800. Then it pops up, hey, you want to pay six times. I was like, okay, but I still didn’t buy. But it made me think about okay, that’s doable,

Bradley Sutton:

You’re a little bit more hesitant.

Burak:

Yes, exactly, you’re a little bit more on the fence, exactly so looking for different channels definitely is a good strategy and eventually it’s your own business. You know we have seen a lot of changes with Amazon algorithm. Maybe this new AI tool that Amazon is offering actually messes up a lot of people’s listings. Have you heard? Have you tried using Amazon AI? Did it affect your ranking on keywords?

Bradley Sutton:

No, I’m not touching that, I don’t want. I opted out of that immediately because I don’t want Amazon doing anything, because the Amazon AI is nowhere near where it needs to be. All right. So, before we get into your last strategy of the day, just heads up for everybody out there. You want to get some more information about what ForceGet does. Go to h10.me forward slash ForceGet. That’ll take you right to our hub website where you can open up a contact with them right there. How else, other than your website, can people find you on the interwebs like Instagram or LinkedIn you want to promote at all?

Burak:

Yes, absolutely, and they can subscribe to my YouTube channel. We are recording a lot of real case studies and scenarios, what’s going on and we’re going to a lot of different in-person events. We will be in Amazon Accelerate in Seattle. We will go to other events throughout the year so they can come and meet us in person at most of the events, as well as find us on forescan.com.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, what’s your last 30 or 60 second tip for our sellers out there?

Burak:

Be careful about your lending costs. That’s something that a lot of people they don’t really pay attention. Profit is everything. Bad profit means bad cashflow and bad cash flow means that you can’t be sustainable in your business. So, understand your lending cost. Look at your FBA fees, how you can save and what is the strategy. Are you paying too much for your international shipments? Are you paying too much for FBA fees? Are you paying too much for long-term storage? So, find out where you can make optimizations, where you can make savings. I believe this business is open to different optimizations and every different aspect you get closer you can find 1% or 2% saving, and if you find three to five different ways of savings, you can save up to 10%. So, talk to the experts. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Helium 10’s newsletter. I see a lot of interesting topics actually about that. So being part of the community, it’s the most important things and whenever you have a problem, ask the right people, get the right answer to fix your problems.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Well, Burak, thank you for coming on here. I’ll let you know what I think about those restaurants you told me and then I’ll see you at Amazon Accelerate in Seattle and hopefully some other sellers that are listening to this episode, and we’ll definitely have you back on in 2025 and let’s see what else has changed in the world of shipping logistics.

Burak:

Looking forward to see you, Bradley.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business. 
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• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
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