How to Grow Your Amazon Business in 2020 (E116)

John GhiorsoCEO of Orca Pacific

Bio:

John Ghiorso is the founder and CEO of Orca Pacific, a Seattle-based agency focused exclusively on helping brands sell on Amazon. He started the agency about 12 years ago and now manages over 100 top brands in a variety of product categories. After 10 years of studying Amazon, Mr. Ghiorso has earned a reputation for approximating industry reaction and forecasting shifts within the Amazon marketplace. His insights have been featured in prestigious publications like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Vox, Modern Retail, and Digiday.

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Links:

https://www.orcapac.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/johnlouisghiorso/https://www.linkedin.com/company/orcapacific/

Transcript:

Charles (00:00):

In this episode of The Business of eCommerce. I talk with
John [Ghiorso] about how to grow your Amazon business in 2020 this is the
business of e-commerce, episode one 16. Welcome to the business of eCommerce.
The show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce
business. I mean host Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with John Ghiorso.
John is the founder of Orca Pacific. A Seattle based agency focuses exclusively
on helping brands sell on Amazon. You started the agency 12 years ago and is
now managing over a hundred top brands and a variety of product categories. I
asked John on the show today to chat about how you can optimize your Amazon
listings in 2020 so, Hey John, how are you doing today?

John (00:48):

Good, good. How are you

Charles (00:49):

Doing well, thanks for coming on the show. I love the
topic. Kind of the all Amazon stuff right now. Lot of retailers are either on
Amazon or moving to Amazon, thinking about selling Amazon. So everyone's,
everyone's kind of somewhere touching on Amazon right now. So I love the kind
of top, Whoa, just how to grow that. So do you guys normally work with, so you
work with brands, but is this just brand selling their own products or what
kind of retail is typically do work most with,

John (01:22):

Yeah, sure. So you know, our, our, our primary client
archetype is a branded manufacturer, but we also work with distributors,
retailers, direct to consumer brands. So it, it kind of runs the gambit. In
terms of folks reselling other brands, products, reselling white label, private
label products or you know, sort of traditional national brands. So really, you
know, our clients are essentially entities that are trying to increase their
sales top line growth on the Amazon platform. And kind of the, the simplest way
of saying it.

Charles (01:56):

Okay. So if you're a white label brand [inaudible] white
label retailer you could still get some value out of, basically you should have
stopped listening at this point. They can get some value out of these types of
things. Yeah. Hopefully. All right. So are we talking when you typically kind
of start working with someone, are they already on Amazon? Are they competing
for the buy box or are they competing to shop at a search or where's a good
place to focus?

John (02:21):

Yeah, so primarily they're, they're going to be competing
in, in search. I mean competing to win the buy box is it's certainly a game
that we play, but our primary goal is to drive more demand for a given product.
So, you know, then there's kind of the secondary consideration. Is that demand
going to you? Are you the, the seller that winning the buy box? I guess the way
we look at the platform primarily is our sort of assumption is that you will be
winning the buy box. And then you know, we're really trying to drive demand for
the product. Overall if there's, if there's lost by box issues or competitive
by box issues, we see that as a problem that needs to be solved, but more of
kind of a shorter term consideration. And then longer term macro is, is really
how to,