Crossing the Threshold in the Internet Marketplace

I have enjoyed an active role in sales, marketing and management as it relates to the Gift / Décor / Stationery marketplace for well over thirty years. With the evolution of the broad scope in the retail marketplace in recent years, our team at Interpersonal Management has developed an Internet Marketing Agency with the sole focus of assisting Manufacturers activate and optimize their presence on Amazon and its internet affiliates.

We work closely with Amazon managers and buyers to secure a presence with consumer products that currently do not have a measured and or optimal existing presence. As you’re likely aware, the growth for Amazon in recent years has been nothing short of exponential; existing models suggest that this trend will continue throughout this decade. It’s become clear that this market segment can no longer be under-managed, let alone ignored. Independent research now suggests that Amazon is near if not the very top in Consumer Confidence, presence, visibility and perception by their 158M active Amazon consumers.

As is common, there are third party providers currently presenting many, many manufacturer’s product offerings on a piecemeal scale. In most cases only a limited number of products SKU’s are available from Amazon and at the total discretion of these providers. Is it now time for these manufacturers to proactively manage their presence?

In these thirty plus years I have rarely been as excited about the current and future opportunities at hand. With this letter I’m suggesting that it’s become essential for our client organizations to assume a Primary Role in executing a manufacturer’s presentation branding and presence with this highly regarded and Primary Internet Group.

The home décor accents, stationery and fall seasonal segments have been very strong growth categories for Amazon. This is also an evolving area of priority and focus for Amazon’s ancillary internet brands, including Quidsi.com, http://www.quidsi.com/Brands.qs. The home classification currently promoted by Amazon is being purchased by a number of different buying groups/stores. Those manufacturers that we recommend to Amazon will have the ability to present their full range and complete catalog of products to be warehoused and shipped directly from Amazon Fulfillment Centers. Currently you will find numerous alternative and competitive brands to have engaged with a significant presence on Amazon. We encourage you to search your and alternative brands on Amazon to determine the scope of the current presence both as Primary and from third party providers.

A few but not all of these advantages in assuming this Primary Role include:

  • Sustaining a measured, controlled and optimum presence on Amazon
  • Creating consistency in branding, imaging, presence and fulfillment
  • Managing transcription relating to Brand/Product features and in depth product descriptions
  • Access To:
    • Consistency in retail pricing management
    • Highly successful Amazon Prime and $25 free freight buying opportunities
    • Amazon site wide promotions and consumer visibility through Quidsi, Amazon.ca (Canada) and their entire stable of internet brands
  • Insure that new product launches are introduced in their entirety thus enabling your management team unprecedented and timely retail analytics, SKU by SKU.
  • Provide sustainable margin opportunities for products being phased out and or discontinued

We’d like to proceed and engage with discussions and formalizing an Interpersonal Management (IPM) agreement as your Amazon representative using our Standard Operating Agreement.

Interpersonal Management would act as your exclusive primary agent although other providers would continue to have the ability to act as third party providers should they choose to do so. The front end of uploading a significant range of products from an editorial, data entry, imagery and optimization perspective is a daunting undertaking. Amazon’s portal requires a thirty-seven column spread sheet to be submitted; each SKU needs to be detailed out providing in-depth product features, dimensions, special features, package type, descriptions and imagery. This would be provided by our IPM Team.

The IPM Team will also provide you with the following expertise and resources:

  • We maintain an ongoing and productive working relationships with sixteen Amazon buying groups/stores and divisional managers. This allows client products to be purchased by multiple buying groups/Amazon Stores as product type dictates.
  • With our offices located in the Pacific Northwest we enjoy significant access and visibility on the Amazon Campus
  • Evaluate and execute consistent high quality branding imagery site wide
  • As Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Specialists we have the ability to cross market/merchandise and tag product visibility with companion product offerings. i.e. creating visible in tandem product searches with complimentary accessory product searches, for example

We pride ourselves on our System Optimization Expertise to insure maximum visibility on the Amazon site. The effective individual merchandise features and detailed “product personality driven” descriptions are essential to the success on Amazon; for this reason we have become a preferred vendor provider. Additionally, we would work with your art and technical departments in retrieving and uploading primary and secondary images for each of the products to be uploaded. As this process is very much front loaded on our part we require an extended contract length to insure that we will be sharing in the long term rewards.

There are so many additional aspects and opportunities that we review in further discussions. This includes developing and possibly providing full consumer case packs, product assortments, product promotions, closeout opportunities and much more.

Elements:

  • Discounts provided to Amazon are negotiated and based on customary industry standards. These discounts would be negotiated by IPM (while asking for the lowest competitive discount structure available from Amazon) with the full understanding that these would need to meet your full approval.
  • IPM requires a reasonable but extended term of engagement to be reviewed and based on performance
  • IPM is compensated through our Standard System Optimization Fee as a percentage of sales

Our organization provides day-to-day product management for our clients Amazon Portal. This would include: work and meet with their buyers and divisional managers to insure timely and effective execution of your initial launch, expansion opportunities, long term maintenance, price adaptations required updates and system optimization. We would also act as our clients intermediary relating to negotiating promotions, shipment and or credit issues as they become necessary. We will work closely with client customer/credit support teams throughout the initial introduction and all aspects of training: order confirmation, shipping, invoicing, etc. as it relates to Amazon long-term.

We look forward to further discussions, please contact us at: Keenan@interpersonalbiz.com