Sell handmade on amazon with Konark Ogra - a podcast by Michael Veazey

How to Sell handmade on amazon for Profit

What does Rural Handmade offer Amazon Sellers  right now?



For Amazon sellers who want to sell handmade on Amazon,  there are two solutions: data-driven or designer-driven.

Data-driven

Rural Handmade has built algorithms that follow consumer behaviour eg Alibaba, Etsy, Amazon etc.

They share this with entrepreneurs who want to sell handmade on Amazon or other marketplaces and tell them key areas to focus on.

The system is still in Beta but Rural Handmade can advise in person.

How does that compare to eg Jungle Scout and similar Amazon research tools?

Those tools are based on BSR etc. solely from Amazon data.

Rural Handmade has replicated this kind of thing from different sites.

It’s not just for those who want to sell handmade on Amazon - it’s about different portals.

Rural Handmade is trying to rely on the global e-commerce markets as a whole, not just Amazon or any particular marketplace. However, if you want to sell handmade on Amazon, they are an excellent start, as they cut out the non-handmade Amazon data.

3Design for handmade items

Sellers then work on a basic design. Then Rural Handmade can make a professional design (if the Amazon seller doesn't have that capability in-house).

They then hand on work to SE Asia.

If an Amazon seller has only a broad design idea for a handmade item, can you give recommendations?

Yes, they can start from a very broad idea and they can do research.

If you want to procure 10-15 SKUs, you upload ideas and designs to the site.

There are catalogues in different segments.

They can help you

You could start building a brand with £100

Protection against copying/defensible

The problem in Amazon is a big fish consumes a smaller fish.

Whereas if it’s handmade, it’s hard to copy. It would be very hard to find the locations. So selling handmade on Amazon is a fantastic way to defend your product against being copied.

Suppliers or competitors who want to copy product have to go through the same supply chain.

There is basically no plastic in rural handmade goods so that rules out a lot of Chinese factories from easily copying the goods. And sustainable local materials - eg recycled metal, etc. are not easy to find.

For example, for hemp, you’ll need to go to Nepal, and the export of it is restricted.

Hedging risks when launching new Amazon products

If you buy one SKU for $5000 vs. 10 SKUs for $5000, you are hedging the risk of a product not performing as expected.

If you research and launch 10, you may see success with 2-3 of them. If you sell handmade on Amazon, you have the opportunity to spread your capital among multiple SKUs.

With the same money, you’ll learn a lot more - and you can build on the basics when they succeed.

Production Capacity/scalability with handmade goods

There are £120-200M people in SE Asia involved in handmade

The potential to scale is potentially there - but Konark isn’t looking at mass production of handmade. It’s about OPTIMAL production - price is so that consumers don’t have to take out a loan.

Then keep innovating - small, medium batches.

So it’s not a model built around mass production with "me-too" products.

A lot of makers are not as educated as many sellers and their vision is limited.

The first few iterations for them are painful because they’re used to making things quickly.

But 120-150 million people in rural SE Asia are now being organised by Rural Handmade.

You can get a capacity of 300-500, even up to 5000 units per batch, depending on raw materials.

Can you start with low MOQs with handmade products?

Anything between 300-5000 units of handmade goods is probably doable.

Could start off with a smaller batch - say 100 units.

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.

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