Scaling an Amazon Business to 8 Figures with Fernando Campos of Marketplace Ops - a podcast by Michael Veazey

Scaling an Amazon Business to 8 figures with Fernando Campos of Marketplace OpsScaling an Amazon business to 8 figures is something Fernando Cruz  and his partner personally achieved. Fernando works for Marketplace Ops, which superchargeas Amazon sales for brands by managing their accounts.Scaling an Amazon business - the backgroundFernando and his business partner had a tech backgroundEach put in $20K into the business.They tried to build Shopify store for 5 months. It was really hard!What was hard about Shopify compared to Amazon?At the time they were thinking in a very binary way.They came from tech - which means raising a lot of money and you dilute your own equity in response.They had mixed feelings around that.You start to get freedom. But by raising venture capital you now have a boss!So they decided that they didn’t want equity funding but were comfortable raising debt.SEO is slow Shopify traffic The issue was that they weren’t comfortable with spending money on ads.They had built partnerships - Fernando had been head of sales - and blogs.But because they were boot strapping, they found that the time to go from zero to customers on a blog is too long and they were full time with it.If they had had a hybrid strategy with paid ads, that might have worked.Pivoting to Amazon from ShopifyIt was originally a passion project and then they shifted to making money!Found a course online and downloaded it and pivoted completely.They started with 4 products at the same time which helped them learn a lot.Hired a coach right at the beginning which was useful.He was already doing $45K a monthGet used to giveawaysget more inventoryHome run Amazon Product6th-7th product was a home run. Had to borrow lots of money from family and friends.They found some niches that were pretty competitiveOne that was a reasonable success that died after a few monthsDid more in 1st month on amazon than 5 months on Shopify.Over $2M in 1st year then started expanding the home run product listsBorrowed a lot of money in the first year!Borrowed maybe $200-250KWent to everyone from high net worth$30K from a friend and $30K from a parent.If your products take off, you need more cash. So they refinanced one of those for $100KPushing for terms is a better move but they didn’t know that then! SBA loan In the second year, they went for an SBA loan - but you need 2 years’ financialsNow Fernando is a little more wary of debt but was very aggressive.Some of the stuff they started tracking wasSuccess rate - how to define successOver $2000 profit per monthby end of 1st 90 daysFailure rateWhat counts as a neutral product - breakevenThey realised neutral and successful products represented 90% of products after became successfulWhat else did you do right to get explosive Amazon sales growth?They focussed aggressively on Amazon only on private label.Some people want to do RA, Merch, wholesale and then diversify onto Shopify all within one year!Surviving in hard times - how do you protect your existing Amazon business?Now is a great time to get good at finance!Get really detailed about book keeping.Slow down and consider diversification.Amazon was the arbiter of your product is “essential” or notSet up Systems and team to be really quick and nimbleCheck daily have our products moved from to non essential to essentialProjecting sales figuresAre we above or at breakeven?Put yourself in a position where if things get worse, you’ll be okay.If you’re doing well on Amazon- focus on and dial in:inventory planningSupply chain planningFocus on air shipments, not too much ingnvoety on hand. Focus on essential categoriesSet yourself up to take advantage when things normalizeLessonsKPIs that Fernando focuses on financiallyFederal assistance programmesDealing with categories not doing wellExample of repurposingFernando has the brand management agencyA ton of people were planning to go to market in retail brick and mortar stores and are now looking at AmazonA lot of brands don’t bot...

Further episodes of Amazing FBA Amazon and ECommerce Podcast, for Amazon Private Label Sellers, Shopify, Magento or Woocommerce business owners, and other e-commerce sellers and digital entrepreneurs.

Further podcasts by Michael Veazey

Website of Michael Veazey