Since 2019, you’ve been the director of the successful bike accessory brand AARON. What motivated you back then to support this particular team? Tell us a bit about your vision.
When the founders, Hans Mina and Marco Mitko, presented AARON’s vision to me, which was “to become the most successful bike accessory brand on Amazon,” I initially chuckled, but it quickly made a lot of sense because both of them brought years of experience in core areas. Marco has 20 years of experience in the bike business and runs his own wholesale business. Hans is the co-founder of a successful marketing agency. They started from scratch and without the support of investors can already show impressive figures. So far, we are on a good path together – we were able to double our revenues in each of the last two years, and we are looking very optimistically into the next year, wanting to expand beyond Germany into other Amazon marketplaces in Europe, the USA, and beyond.
AARON sells products both in its own online shop and on the marketplace giant Amazon. What advantages and disadvantages do you see in each sales alternative, and what are your key learnings?
The danger of relying solely on Amazon is, of course, the dependency you get into. Nevertheless, it is very tempting for many brands to pursue a strategy that focuses heavily on Amazon because the platform has enormous traffic and visitors often have strong purchase intentions. Additionally, Amazon has almost perfected processes, especially in logistics, and it is a great challenge to manage this yourself initially. Nevertheless, at the top of our agenda is to expand our online shop and open up further sales channels to counteract this dependency.
The challenge in expanding the online shop is bringing traffic to the shop and converting this traffic. Here, we try to take cues from successful shops.
On other platforms such as eBay or Otto, it is much harder to generate significant sales because they naturally have fewer visitors than the marketplace giant Amazon.
Those looking to sell private label products on Amazon often face a myriad of guides, tips, and tricks. What topic would you take particularly seriously?
Around Amazon, a whole ecosystem has developed, which includes numerous providers with solutions to almost every challenge of the marketplace. But even with the support of these service providers and all the tips and tricks you find online—from both credible and dubious sources—you cannot avoid developing a functional product that best meets customer expectations. To achieve this, customer reviews of competing products should be taken very seriously, as they allow you to identify and avoid mistakes during product development and understand what customers want from a product. However, a good product alone is not enough. The visibility of a product and its presentation on the product detail page are core issues that sellers on Amazon need to master.
Once the products are listed on Amazon, further tasks arise: product detail pages need to be optimised and, if necessary, Amazon Sponsored Ads should be run. What should sellers pay particular attention to?
Many sellers make the mistake of running ads before the product detail page is perfectly optimised, spending a lot of money from the start. Customers click on the ads but then do not convert because they do not find the desired information on the product detail page.
Therefore, homework must be done on the product detail page before investing in advertising on Amazon. Particular attention should be paid to meaningful product images and A+ Content, as customers are looking for easily accessible information and do not want to read novels.
Higher brand affinity, more traffic, and the ability to provide more comprehensive content—sellers can benefit from these and more advantages by using an Amazon Brand Store. What should sellers keep in mind, and which benefits do you consider particularly important?
Brand Stores offer the opportunity to showcase a brand on Amazon and present the entire product range clearly. Besides the product presentation, additional information about the brand and the company behind it should be available here, as well as the brand message that needs to be conveyed to the customer. Brands should try to build a relationship with customers by telling their story and thus engaging customers and drawing them into their brand world. Until recently, it was hardly possible for sellers to engage in brand building on Amazon, but with A+ Content and Brand Stores, there is now an opportunity to present yourself to your target audience.
Earlier this year, you published the book “Amazon for Decision Makers: Strategy Development, Implementation, and Case Studies for Manufacturers and Distributors.” The book helps manufacturers and distributors develop the right Amazon marketplace strategy for them. Do you have any tips that readers can implement immediately to effectively use the Amazon ecosystem and successfully implement sales strategies?
Like all of e-commerce, selling products on Amazon is very dynamic, and new opportunities constantly arise to showcase or promote products optimally. One of the most important points we’ve taken on board at AARON is to immediately test all the new opportunities Amazon offers us. Even if the novelty is not implemented perfectly at first, we believe it is better to start with mistakes and optimise gradually than to want to do everything perfectly and therefore lose valuable time.
It is highly likely that Amazon’s share of the overall e-commerce market will increase even more in the future; therefore, the strategy should primarily include being present with an optimised appearance on Amazon and not treating this marketplace with disregard, as some brands—even established ones—still do.