Last month, Forbes wrote an article describing how smart Amazon is when it comes to capturing the top spot and staying there, or essentially how to win customers and beat its competition. And it’s not a new concept for them, either: they’ve been successful at doing this since the day they entered the online retail game—and part of that success has been to enable third party sellers and FBA merchants to sell on its marketplace. Amazon has been very good to recognise that succeeding in business is not about doing every yourself—it’s about choosing the right services and partnerships with others to gain an edge, and so the Amazon FBA seller extends this philosophy by effectively standing on the shoulders of a giant to grow his business….
Amazon, a Giant in Every Respect
There are three kinds of online retailers in this world:
- Mom-and-Pop Shops: With this model, people are content to sell a small line of wares and don’t usually have an overriding desire to turn their business into a sole source of income.
- Small- to Medium-Sized Businesses: These “shops” tend to pull in at least six figures in sales each year, and occupy the middle level of having grown to a solid point and continuing to expand.
- Big Time Players: These are your Amazons, your Apples and your Walmarts. Their brands are recognizable in more countries than not, and it’s pretty darn hard — if not outright impossible — to bat with these players.
Infrastructure
Amazon most definitely occupies the third category, but where they’re pulling ahead of the pack is with their expanding infrastructure and joined-up approach to services. We recently wrote a post that talked about Amazon’s revenues versus profits, and how Amazon has continually invested everything in ‘the future’. It continues to innovate in delivery, fulfilment and extend that infrastructure to its third party sellers and FBA merchants. Where else could those businesses access such a technologically advanced and joined up system for such a relatively small outlay to grow their ecommerce business?
A Numbers Game
Another aspect where the Amazon FBA seller stands on the shoulders of this giant is through the ability to put products in front of over 180 million customers in an instant. Whilst many businesses attempt to enter ecommerce via their own webstores, we have long argued that a much less risky approach is to sell some stock via Amazon, find your best sellers and move these to the FBA programme to help sell more whilst keeping logistical requirements to a minimum. Many will argue that margins are smaller after fees and competing with other sellers, but using repricing software and deciding upon your own business strategy can provide profitable routes to success on Amazon, and with the ecommerce giant opening its platform up for more cross selling, through programmes like Amazon Product Ads, sellers always have the potential to use the marketplace to drive more sales to their own sites to expose their brand.
It Looks Like Amazon’s Been Reading Sun Tzu
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote something incredibly important: “If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” How does this apply to Amazon? Simple: Amazon knows both itself and others, and uses this knowledge to deeply customize the experience.
Amazon keeps track of what you read, whose albums you listen to, what movies you check out, if you’re a shoe-aholic or not, and pretty much everywhere else your money goes. But more than that, Amazon is also super shrewd at being able to hone in on customer loyalty by doing what they want most, such as shopping anticipation and really speedy delivery.
As corny as it sounds, it’s this attention to detail that makes Amazon not only a winner, but a giant heading for even bigger territory. And the good news is that smaller sellers don’t have to re-invent the wheel or try to out-do them in any way—the platform is right there, with all its infrastructure, knowledge, expertise and technology to enable third party sellers to create profitable businesses.
Instead of looking at yourself as not being in Amazon’s league, think of yourself as being part of the big team. They may have ridden the wave of a new digital age and capitalised on it smartly, but there’s no reason you can’t stand on that success to reach new heights for yourself. And don’t tell anyone, but here’s one of the most successful tips Amazon uses that you can, too: repricing. Just to make it even better, RepricerExpress has a 15-day free trial of our repricing software so all third party sellers, including the FBA seller, can start landing more sales today.
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