On this bonus episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Scott Ohsman. Scott is the VP of Digital Commerce at Quickfire and Co-Host of the Always Off Brand podcast. We talk about supporting small brands in a tough market, recognizing signs to branch into Amazon, pushing organic content to stay competitive, and so much more!
Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 29 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon.
Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC.
Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Scott Ohsman
“Hey, I got a great idea.” Boom, you put it up there and all these great stories. Those days are done.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce.
Today, I’m welcoming to the show a good friend of mine. I met him at eTail West. And we had a great conversation about microphones.
Scott, welcome to the show. Scott is the VP of Digital Commerce at Quickfire. He's also the co-host of the Always Off Brand podcast. Welcome, welcome.
I was. Yeah. We had a very impromptu discussion at eTail and it was fantastic.
Scott Ohsman
It was great. You're my inspiration. My microphone, you're my equipment inspiration, Chase. I went out, I ran out and purchased the exact same cool stuff because you were the cool kid and I wanted to be like you.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And just for anyone that's curious, I guess, a little inside baseball here. We're talking about the Rode wireless setups. The wireless pros are what we have. So for podcasting on location, very, very awesome. Great sound quality. You can sync it to a laptop or you can just record directly to the devices.
Technology is cool.
Scott Ohsman
It's very cool.
Chase Clymer
Also, comparatively with sizing, I'll let you explain the difference in size between my setup and yours.
Scott Ohsman
Yeah, I had an old style and I still do. I have a 2-channel mixer and I got all this equipment. And the setup isn't 5 seconds. I got crap everywhere. Wires are everywhere. I was a train wreck, Chase. Let's just call it like it is.
And then you breeze in with this just little pocket of killer little great audio production tools. And I was just a little... I was jealous. I was jelly, as the kids say.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. You had basically a carry-on bag full of gear.
Scott Ohsman
Yeah, I did. And I'm going to eTail Boston. This is probably... I don't know when this is coming out. But anyway, I'm debating... I'm probably gonna have both.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. Old habits.
Scott Ohsman
Because I'm pathetic. I don't trust myself.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. Old habits die hard. Absolutely.
Well, other than podcasting, everyone go check out his podcast, again, Always Off Brand podcast. You guys do a lot of work with Amazon. You worked with over 300 brands in a bunch of different categories. You've been in the Amazon space for almost 18 years. Is that real?
Scott Ohsman
Yeah. So I've been in retail for almost 30 years. I got sucked into Amazon in 2006. I was an independent multi-brand rep essentially. So selling in the Northwest, selling all kinds of national retailers, independent specialty retailers, retails of all kinds of safe sizes and shapes and types. And then we started selling brands to Amazon in 2006.
And then it just took off from there. So yeah, I had my own shop, had my own Amazon agency and all that stuff.
And now, Quickfire, we're just a little small digital agency now. But over the years, I actually counted… And sometimes I was working with big conglomerates who had, like, 12 different brands and we were managing everything. So the 2,300 brands sounds real, real bougie and gaudy. It sounds a little humble brag-ish, but I've also been doing this forever. So you have to keep that in mind.
Yes. So yeah, I'm an old school, I'm an OG Amazon guy.
Chase Clymer
What was Amazon even like 18 years ago?
Scott Ohsman
Well, do you do any business on Walmart, Chase?
Chase Clymer
Personally, no, but I know what it is.
Scott Ohsman
So if anybody out there listening sells to or sells on walmart.com, it's very similar to how it was in 2006.
It was mostly... The FBA hadn't really come to fruition yet. It hadn't been fulfilled by Amazon in the marketplace. It wasn't really a thing yet. And so you sold it as a traditional retailer.
It was great. In so many ways it’s so great. We actually had buyers. We had humans. I was on campus. I live here in the Seattle area. So it was a local thing. We had a great time. We built great businesses. It was fun.
It was maddening because you're doing business with a machine. That was a whole different thing. But some really smart, great people who I'm still close with today. It was just like selling to any other major retailer in some regards. So it was fun.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
And then obviously, over the years, Amazon evolved into the 800-pound gorilla that we know today.
Scott Ohsman
Yeah. In 2006, and then in 2012-13, we had an independent rep agency that covered Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and the sporting goods outdoor specialty business.
And that's when I'm like, “This Amazon thing? Yeah, I think this is going to be bigger than I had even imagined.”
So that's where we created a whole Amazon agency and then merged and blah, blah, blah. And it got big. It got huge.
And so even though there's... Well, the reason I still have a job and I kind of handle most of the Amazon business at Quickfire is because they're a nightmare to do business with. Thank goodness. So even though it's a love-hate, Chase, I love them, but doing business with a machine and now AI is challenging, but it's job security because people have to have people like us. It's hard to do on your own.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
So tell me about the types of services. How are you actually helping your clients at Quickfire?
Scott Ohsman
So we really specialize in small, medium, challenger brands, newer brands. That's our cup of tea. We don't charge a lot because I did all the old fancy stuff with the reporting and all this, the big deal. I did all that. And so Quickfire is really meant for that small, medium challenger brand.
And we just guide them. We do all the work. We just do the work.
So on Amazon, we create the listing for them. All the different stuff that you have to do. And what's becoming bigger and bigger is advertising. So we run and strategize and manage and do the work at all their ad campaigns on Amazon. But we're not big enough. We still do it manually. We do it old school, baby. We pay attention.
I got a guy, Alex Skillethani, who I hired in 2017, who I've worked with forever, and he's terrific. He does our listing optimization. He's a super keyword nerd. He's now getting into all the AI stuff happening.
And we help little brands just grow and sell on Amazon, which is becoming harder and harder, Chase, every day for the little guy.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Now let's set some expectations. Little and medium are dumb words. Let's use numbers.
Scott Ohsman
I mean, 2 to 20 million a year. Sometimes they're just single DTC, native DTC brands. Honestly, 2 to 20-30 million is where we sit. And we have a couple unique situations that are bigger than that. But those are unique. Those are one-offs.
Chase Clymer
Gotcha. And so that falls in line with my idea that you shouldn't branch out into a new channel or marketplace until you've really hit that million plus on your dedicated channel because you still have... Going from 0 to 1 million is so hard.
And everything you do there is together with duct tape and string and it's going to break and you're gonna have to rebuild. What takes you from zero to one isn't going to take you from one to 10 million.
But adding in Amazon, once you get that first hurdle out of the way, I think that's definitely where a lot of our listeners out there are probably at. Most of our listeners, I would say, are on a Shopify store and they're getting into seven figures.
What should they be looking for or what are some telltale signs that maybe it's worth branching out into Amazon?
Scott Ohsman
Well, you make a great point and it's one of the hurdles you have to get over because it's no longer the days. I mean, I was joking about it, “Back in the day.” You could just load them up and everybody was making a zillion dollars. Just, “Hey, I got a great idea.” Boom, you put it up there and all these great stories. Those days are done because the competition, remember, over 50% of the sellers there are Chinese direct.
They have margin advantages and they're getting really good at advertising and the marketing part and the listing part. So you should really think about building your brand, like you said, on your D2C, whether it's through, again, just a pure Ecommerce place, or you have small brick and mortar distribution or distributorships, because the truth is…
And that's what I like about Honest Ecommerce. That's what I like about this. This is what brought us together, Chase. Because in Always Off Brand, we try to cut through the crap and tell it like it actually is. There's not a lot of fluff on our show.
Because the truth is that these little brands, medium brands, million dollar brands on D2C, on Amazon, it's an item business in a box. You can't afford to go high funnel and build a brand. You can't afford it. That's the truth. Everybody wants it, but they can't afford it.
So to your point, not to get me, yeah, you triggered me, Chase. I'm getting all fired up here. But the better shot you have is to do exactly what you have prescribed. Build up your DTC, build up your business, build up that volume and build the brand and get all the other channels going.
Now in social, I scream at the top of my lungs and this is big, big brands and little brands of organic. content. Hello? Hello out there? Hello? Organic content. Work your ass off on that. Get that really screaming because the new Amazon is off Amazon.
That's the new Amazon, Chase. Because the competition in real estate is so tiny on Amazon to get in that little tiny box. You better drive some serious traffic outside because, like I said, I'll end this sermon here.
I do some consulting stuff. I know, again, humble brag, bougie, pat myself on the back. It's where I've gotten. My dream in my career was to get to tell people what to do and not have to do it. So I got a couple of those.
My point here is whether you're a mature brand or you're a small brand, you typically have a traffic problem. You have a traffic problem and the big guys you're competing with, they could go buy you out. And that's the problem.
So social and organic content is a way around that. And there's so many great case studies, brands that are now widely distributed, super popular. They drudge down on the ground with organic content for years. Everyone thinks they just became a trillion dollar brand overnight, but they didn't.
Does that make sense? Did I just go on a wandering trail that has no ending and no beginning?
Chase Clymer
No, it makes sense. It didn't answer the question though. So I'll ask again. Oh, this is a fun one, Scott. Alright.
So if I'm a listener out there of the podcast, and we're doing a couple million a year, and we planted our flag and we're only doing Shopify stuff, when does it make sense to explore Amazon?
What are some factors within my business that I could recognize as, “You know what, maybe this is a good avenue to explore”?
Scott Ohsman
Yeah. Okay. Sorry.
You got to have all the other stuff I just talked about, number one. Number two, you got to look at your... And this is the fun part. I love this. You got to look at your gross margin. You have to look at your landed cost because the reality today, and look at this: If you could start with your gross margin at an 85 to 90 plus points, landed cost to retail, you got a shot.
You got a shot because you have to be prime. And it's going to cost you some money to get going on Amazon.
But there's always outliers and every brand has a situation, Chase. But I would tell your listener, if that's the scenario, you got to go on Amazon. I mean, my God, 60% of all humans in the United States are freaking buying stuff. You have to be where the customer is. You got to go play the game. I'm sorry. You just do. So that's going slowly.
And the other big advice is focus. Focus and get into a bigger thing, which we didn't discuss and you probably didn't want to bring up. Next year in 2025, if I'm a Shopify, I'm just a direct-to-consumer and I've got a nice business, I am telling you and now you build out and you start out and you play around with Amazon, Buy with Prime is a game changer on like 100 different levels for direct-to-consumer brands.
Chase Clymer
We'll get into that a little bit later. Yes. Or maybe we do a whole episode about it when it is pushed a lot more. I know there's some stuff that we're not allowed to talk about yet.
Scott Ohsman
Ooh, hey now. It's not... I just want to be clear about my position because I've been on this early. Quickfire is an official, quote, official Buy with Prime agency. Because I am so into this. It's not fully cooked. It's just not 100%. We've tested it with clients. It's almost there. It's very close, but it's just not fully cooked. And until it is, I'm not... We're not suggesting it to our clients.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Now you mentioned gross margin is a huge consideration for whether or not Amazon would work out for you. And so when you are thinking about the types of businesses that work well on Amazon, would you say something that leans more luxury versus commodity maybe makes a bit more sense?
Scott Ohsman
Yeah, commodities are tough, tough, tough. I mean, the competitive set, depending on what the category is. I'll tell you right now, footwear is tough because the way that Amazon organizes it, they produce it.
Footwear and apparel are very tough. In fact, they've just recently tried to make more incentives. They've reduced your pick and pack fees essentially to go fulfilled by Amazon. So it's a prime offer.
They just released again, they're trying to fight Temu. So they have this direct from China program. So apparel is tough. I'm going to tell you, footwear and apparel, I'm doing it right now. It's tough. If you have hard goods, you have...
Everything's tough. It's stupid to say it's not. Everything's tough. But remember this, it's an item-driven business. And 90% of sellers out there or even vendors, it's the old 80-20 rule. They got 20% of the items of the portfolio, of the SKUs, driving 80% of their business.
You got to be focused and it is such an item business. So that's what I would do on Amazon. Don't put your whole catalog up there. That's crazy.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. No. So you brought it up. So if I am going to explore Amazon, go with my flagship product, the best offer, not my 120 SKUs. It's going to be, “These are the top 5 products.”
Scott Ohsman
Absolutely. Focus because now on the advertising side inside the platform, it's at a premium, right? Every dollar spent is a premium. So you got to focus on that. Focus on one item and just look at your phone. If you have the Amazon app and look how people shop, it is literally a picture in a white box. And the sponsored ads and all that are the same thing.
Real estate is so tough. So I would focus on very select hero items and drive that. And you're going to probably have some good success there.
Get reviews. Make sure of the product detail page. Follow all the rules you followed on your D2C. The same thing applies across all platforms.
Chase Clymer
Is a price point a consideration?
Scott Ohsman
Sure. Depending on the category and competitive set and all those other things. Sure.
You can get a free trial. They got all these little scraper softwares, Jungle Scout. I know no free ads but Helium 10, Jungle Scout. They're little browser extensions you go in if you have a catalog or a category or a competitive set for your item.
You can go in there and they can tell you basically who's selling what for how much, how much are they selling. So you get a good sense of the size of the prize, so to speak.
Chase Clymer
And the velocity you could potentially expect?
Scott Ohsman
Yeah, but don't get disillusioned with that because a lot of people look at these: “Oh my God, I looked at Jungle Scout. I looked here and there and this is a trillion. They're doing 20 million a month in this. If I just get 1% of it…” Sometimes it doesn't work out that way because you got to be found.
And how much money with paid and organic, how much are you willing to do and spend to get to leapfrog up into so when somebody searches it, they can find you.
Because new stuff on Amazon, you're on page 8 trillion. I mean, you're just buried deep, deep. You got to spend money to get there.
Chase Clymer
Now you mentioned don't see stars when you see the sales that some of your competitors are doing. What are some other mistakes that brands are making when they're getting on Amazon or even just on Amazon?
Scott Ohsman
Oh my gosh, how much time do we have? How many mistakes? And by the way, I raised my hand. I've fallen through so many trap doors, believe me. And the fun of it, because I've been doing the same thing for so long, people are like, “Aren't you bored?” Sometimes I am bored, Chase. I'm going to... True confession.
But the reason that it's interesting is because Amazon keeps changing. It's constantly changing. So the mistakes made are: They put way too many SKUs up there. They just let her fly. They just put the entire catalog up there.
The other thing is they think they can just, “Oh, well, I can just have an offer on this particular product because my product is similar,” or they're trying to resell other people's stuff. Don't do that. That doesn't work anymore.
The other thing is, they go out and they get all their friends to get reviews and Amazon's actually caught on to that. So then they get the listing actually suppressed and they get in trouble. Don't do that.
What other mistakes do they make?
If you have a product that is in a category in beauty, beauty is handled completely differently on Amazon than many other categories.
You have to get permission. It's gated. They call it the gated category. They got all kinds of rules and everything. So if you're going to go into topicals, lotions, any type of health and home beauty product, be careful. That is my word of wisdom.
Be careful because you can create a listing and it's great. And then the little bot finds that you have some type of claim, some type of, you know, that a huge lawsuit with the EPA. So you have anything to do with all kinds of weird stuff that has nothing to do with your product, boom, they'll slap you and they'll flag you and you get off.
So you got to be careful with all your keywords and all those other things.
Advertising, everybody thinks they're just going to go and set up campaigns and they can understand the process and their return on ad spend is going to be huge. No. It's just like on Google, paid SEM. Don't get illusioned that all of a sudden, this is different. It's not. It takes at least 60 to 90 days to figure out where the traffic is and what conversion rate you can get.
Those are just a few. There are logistical mistakes that people make nonstop. It just depends if you are the only human in the world selling your product, Chase, in this scenario, or do you sell it to other people? Which one is it, Chase?
Chase Clymer
I would say most of our listeners are manufacturing their own products.
Scott Ohsman
So there's some logistical things you want on the back end when you ship to Amazon and they're fulfilled by Amazon and their network. They call them fulfillment networks that you got to do the right way when you set it up.
Okay, here's a big one. Here's a huge one. Oh my God, I should have led with this. I buried the lead. Get UPC codes and unfortunately, we all have to just bow down to one of the greatest monopolies, mafia systems in the entire world called GS1.
I call the UPCs. Now people can buy, and this happens to us all the time, they buy recycled GS1 registered UPC codes because they're a lot cheaper from sellers out there, resellers. No, no, don't do it because you'll have errors. You won't be able to list your product.
So I call them fresh babies. You got to go to GS1. It's expensive. I could go on a 17-minute rant of how I think they're the spawn of all evil. But the reality is, not only Amazon, if you want to go sell any major, even regional retailer in the United States of America, and now it's getting to Europe or anywhere in the world, you have to go buy GS1 registered fresh babies UPCs.
Chase Clymer
How is that not a monopoly?
Scott Ohsman
It is a monopoly. It's 100% a monopoly. And nobody talks about it, by the way.
Chase Clymer
Well, we're talking about it here.
Scott Ohsman
We are because it drives me crazy because it's expensive. And then you have to buy a yearly deal on top of the UPCs you buy. You buy a yearly thing and then you can't let them expire. If they expire, which is one of my favorite advertising commercials of Progressive or whatever: “Expired, expired.”
Then you go into relapse and all of a sudden the codes aren't good. And then you're like, “Oh, I got a new product. Here's my UPC. I already did it.” You go, boom, you try to load it. And it's like, “Error, error”. It's maddening. So don't do it.
I got a customer right now, an apparel client who tried to buy them. He bought recycled UPCs and I can't do anything with them.
Chase Clymer
And then re-tagging all your products is a nightmare to do it right the first time, is what you're saying.
Scott Ohsman
Exactly. Do it right. And now it's a pain in the ass. Believe me. It's expensive, all these other things. I get it. I feel your pain. But if you don't do it right the first time, it's going to cause all kinds of nightmares leading up to it.
Chase Clymer
I'm going to have you back on the show. We're going to talk about Buy With Prime in depth in a couple of months here.
But before you go, if people are picking up what you're putting down, they want to chat with you about Amazon, where should they go? What should they do?
Scott Ohsman
Go to me on the link, Chase, on LinkedIn. I call it the link. I'm cool like that. No. So obnoxious. LinkedIn, yes, you can find me there. Always Off Brand. You can find me there and go to quickfirenow.com. And you can get in touch with us there.
And we do a lot of things. We do full digital. So we do paid SEM, Google, all that, paid social. We do influencer management, creator management. We do the whole thing, which is really important.
I will leave you with this, Chase. If you just think you got a great business and you figured out the deal on a D2C business, super duper, like super duper, that is killer.
But all these other search funnels, all these other platforms are even more important today to having a good Amazon business than they've ever been before.
Chase Clymer
Oh, absolutely.
And something that I tell everyone. I don't know anything about Amazon. And Amazon is a completely different monster than your own direct-to-consumer experience like Shopify ecosystem. They are two different beasts and you need two different people or teams to be in charge of them.
Sure, there are unicorns, but they're rare. You probably need to be realistic and hire smart people for those different types of businesses.
Scott Ohsman
If you want an old crusty jaded veteran, call me.
Chase Clymer
We'll leave it with that. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Scott Ohsman
Thanks for having me, Chase.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
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