#536 – From Sinking Ship To A Thriving Amazon FBA Business

41 minute read

Published: February 17, 2024

Modified: May 27, 2024

Cara Sayer’s entrepreneurial spirit shines brighter than ever as she recounts her nail-biting journey from the brink of closure to soaring profits. Her candid discussion with us offers a lot of wisdom on the critical importance of keeping a keen eye on business metrics. As an e-commerce maven, she underpins the conversation with her own blunders and breakthroughs, ensuring that our listeners can sidestep the pitfalls and replicate her success. And for those with a penchant for cultural quirks, our banter in British slang adds a hearty dash of charm to the mix.

Our talk takes an exciting turn when we unlock the secrets to mastering keyword research and making data-led decisions that skyrocket sales. Cara and Bradley dissect how tools like Helium 10 can revolutionize product listings and why a stale strategy could be your downfall. We also unravel the complex web of inventory management and the savvy approach to just-in-time shipping, a must-know for Amazon sellers looking to conquer international markets. Plus, don’t miss our exploration of the monumental impact that solid branding has on weathering the competitive storm and securing consumer trust.

Wrapping things up, we navigate the art of standing out in Amazon’s vast marketplace. Cara shares her playbook on crafting a unique narrative and engaging brand backstory that can mean the difference between blending in and breaking through. We spotlight the strategic edge of maintaining your website for direct consumer rapport and a sneak peek at new products. With a nod to the upcoming changes in EU regulations and the significance of a diversified sales approach, this episode is jam-packed with actionable insights. And as we close, Cara and Bradley reflected on the delicate dance of work-life balance, ensuring our listeners remember the heartbeat behind the hustle.

In episode 536 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Cara discuss:

00:00 – Reviving and Growing a Struggling Amazon Business
02:53 – Origins of Common UK English Phrases
07:59 – Amazon SKU Economics and Tracking Sales
11:05 – Keyword Optimization for Sales Growth
14:45 – The Importance of Branding in Business
16:29 – Brand Marketing on Amazon
20:17 – The Benefit of Having a Website
28:29 – Favorite Helium 10 Tool
28:43 – Selling Tips for Amazon
30:42 – Importance of Websites Beyond Amazon

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got listener favorite guest car back to tell us how she came close to having to shut down her business since she wasn’t looking at the right metrics, but she’s going to show us how she was not only able to save her company but grow it. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you a 6, 7, or 8 figure seller and want to network in a private mastermind group with other experienced sellers? Or maybe you want to take advantage of monthly advanced training sessions with Kevin King, an expert guest? Do you want to come to our quarterly in-person, all-day trainings at Helium 10 headquarters? Or do you want the widest access to the Helium 10 set of tools? For all of these things, the Elite program might be for you. For more information on Helium 10 Elite, go to h10.me/elite.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And to continue in my series of me being on the other side of the world here in Germany, the next guest that we recorded here in Frankfurt is none other than the amazing Cara. Welcome back to the show.

Cara:

Thank you, gorgeous one, thank you for having me.

Bradley Sutton:

This is actually the fourth time, believe it or not on the podcast.

Cara:

Am I approaching a world record for the most interviewed person?

Bradley Sutton:

You’re in the select top 5% of people who have made it to four episodes.

Cara:

There you go I love it.

Bradley Sutton:

So we’re not going to go too much into her backstory. Mhel here prepared some of the numbers where she’s on, so if you want to find out her origin story, that’s episode 117. She came back on episode 246 and we were talking pandemic stuff and then most recently back in 2022, she was on episode 378. And that was interesting, talking about some of her struggles that she started seeing with her business, and we’re going to talk a little bit about that today. Hey, we keep it real on the podcast, but before we get into the stuff we. Every time Cara is on the episode, she teaches me a little bit more of British English, all right, and I’m sure it’s going to come out like, like she, the way she talks. She always says stuff that I’m like what, what did you say? So we’re all going to learn some more British slang here? My first question is wait, what is this one phrase? That was something.

Cara:

Yeah, so we were talking about something. I said oh, that’s just piffling, and piffling is when something’s really inconsequential, so it’s just like so little, it’s like a piffling thing, okay. And then the other one was put some Wellie into it.

Bradley Sutton:

Put some Wellie into it.

Cara:

So, which is, I suppose, a translation, would be put some oomph into it.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, put some oomph in it. All right, so I’m wearing my office the office t-shirt Dunder Mifflin here, because you know that’s one of our exports that we got from, from Britain, is the office. You know, one of our most popular shows. I know how it’s used, but when people say Bob’s your uncle, like, like, where does that come from? Though that’s the most ridiculous phrase I’ve ever heard Bob’s your uncle, how does that?

Cara:

I actually have no clue. This is half the problem. So when I talk, a lot of the time I’ll use these phrases and I have no clue. I haven’t got a Scoobies where it came from. That was one, and I thought maybe that had something to do with Scooby-Doo, but apparently it doesn’t, because I Googled it last night and it’s got something to do with the Scottish word that’s got to do with Scooby or something. So that’s the thing is a lot of these things I have, and in fact, what’s the other one? There’s one oh, I’ll have it, it’ll come back to me. But there’s one that I use quite a lot and I actually had to Google it because and it turned out was something to do an Australian runner or something. Oh, Gordon Bennett, that’s right, Gordon Bennett, have you ever heard of that one?

Bradley Sutton:

I have not.

0:03:49 – Cara:

Okay. So you know, instead of being really rude and throwing out an F word, you go oh, Gordon Bennett. And I was like who is Gordon Bennett? Why do we say him? And I’m quite interested in these things and I think he’s. Either he was either an Australian pilot or an Australian runner or something like that. I have no clue why we use it, but we do and I say it quite a lot.

Bradley Sutton:

Now the first. You know like you know how I roll here. I usually don’t like trying to get our topics before I don’t really think about it. But you know, we went out to dinner last night and you were talking a little bit about some of your struggles and how you were taking one aspect of your total business and we’re kind of like not giving it the attention it needed. And then when you actually did, you were just like, wow, this is I’m in such bad shape, why have to close? You know, shut the business. So talk about what you were neglecting, how you put a stop to that neglect and then the steps that you took to rectify this situation.

Cara:

So I think a lot of it comes from the fact that when I started my business I had no clue what I was doing, and I suppose a lot of Amazon sellers are like that, in that you just sort of go yeah, this sounds like a good idea. So I’m going to start running a business and I used to work in a corporate environment and had budgets and all various other things, but in my own business I didn’t. I just kind of ran a lot like the seat of my pants and I think maybe that’s just because, also, my I’m more of an intuitive person versus a data driven person, because I know a lot of Amazon sellers are very data driven and maybe less, you know, intuitive. You know, as in like everyone has different skill sets. And I think what happened was the business grew and grew and grew and I basically broke my own golden rule, which is that at the end of the day, the whole thing about turnover is vanity and profit is sanity. So what I was doing is I was just looking at the big numbers and not really focusing on small numbers, and I sort of came to a point in July where I realized that basically what happened was I used to use the software Sage for my accounts and I knew Sage inside and out. And then I changed accountants and they started to use zero and I didn’t know it as well. So, if I’m honest, I should have been more involved, but I just kind of let them like run it. And so when I went to look at my accounts I was like, oh God, I don’t seem to have made very much money. I’ve got really quite a good turnover, but I haven’t actually made much profit. I’m thinking like, what am I gonna do? So I started looking into it in much more depth.

Cara:

So, first of all, what I did and I would suggest every Amazon seller does this. But, to be honest, as you know, I don’t really talk about Amazon sellers, I talk about businesses and brands. But every company that is selling products, you 100% need to really make sure that your profit and loss, your PnL, reflects what you’re doing. So mine was literally sales, pretty much as a big picture. Well, I sell in four countries. I’ve got four websites, four marketplaces. I’ve also got retailers and distributors and various other things. So to have all of my sales information in one place was a bit stupid, frankly, because how am I gonna get any clarity on what’s doing well, what’s not doing so well, and pretty much all my costs, like all my Amazon costs, were all bunched in one place. And yes, I could have separated them out if I’d done it by area. But actually I then had an issue with my bookkeeping and so actually it turned out that hadn’t been done properly, so I wouldn’t have been able to do that, so I then separated my costs out. So again I had like eight different cost centers for well, not eight different cost centers, sorry, I did four different cost centers, but by country, so I could at least see what I was making in terms of turnover and then see what the costs were for those countries, looking at a lot of detail. And then I started looking like then I went into and this is a really really super useful and I don’t think I certainly haven’t used it before the SKU economics level of reporting, where I mean, obviously it’s easy for me because I’ve got only 13 SKUs and I know I’ve spone people today and they’d like two and a half thousand. But you can actually see although it would be really good if Amazon could do or actually I don’t think Helium 10 does it do they Like, an ability to export SKU economics reports?

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, I don’t know what SKU economics means. I mean, we have-.

Cara:

Oh my God, right. Well, in which case, I’m giving you a whole new thing that Helium 10, a thousand-.

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, I probably do it but I just don’t call it that. You know like it’s called.

Cara:

SKU economics.

0:07:58 – Bradley Sutton:

There’s no other right.

Cara:

So basically I saw it for the first time on the app because I’m quite a regular app checker. So I go in and I have a look and it’s in the manage inventory. You go to the SKU and then on the top it’s got like pricing and this and that and then it says SKU economics and you can actually You’re talking about seller central.

Bradley Sutton:

This is Seller Central

Cara:

Yes, sorry, do translate. So I go to SKU economics and basically you can do it like the last seven days, last 30 days, last six months, last 12 months, and it’s the only place I’ve ever seen where you can literally see what your total sales are, what your net sales are, what your Amazon costs are, and they break it down to a level of detail where it’s literally like you spent this amount on a deal coupon code, this amount on a sponsored profit by SKU.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, yes, helium 10 has that. We don’t call it SKU economics, but it’s just in profits. You go to your product performance and then you could look at it at the ASIN level or you could look at the SKU level. Okay, well, you need to show me how to do that then, okay, we’ll do-.

Cara:

But I did this myself, just went in Sure, and then I started transporting all the information over and then I broke it down by country and I started looking and I realized that actually, like in Canada, when you actually put in the cost of my product, excluding shipping in or any other costs, I had running a business in Canada I was pretty much not even breaking even. And then I started looking at the US and I was like, oh same thing, not good UK, really healthy Australia, healthy so. But at the time I was before I did all the analysis and there was a lot of work to do on it I was literally like, oh my God, I think I’m gonna just have to shut up shop because I’ve got an issue with the Chinese sellers who I think were impacting before, but they’re really kicking off now because obviously my product was launched over 10 years ago, so they know there’s no patent on that product. Therefore, they can go for it. So at the moment they’re selling the product that looks like mine it is not the same but it looks as similar enough to the consumer for $5. Well, it cost me $25 to manufacture the thing. They’re selling them for $25 on Amazon and I can’t compete. Now I don’t want to compete, but the issue is what it’s done.

Cara:

And again, this is where I wasn’t paying attention and should have, like, pulled myself up sooner. I didn’t see the huge drop in the sales and therefore my storage costs at 3PL level have gone up hugely and therefore I’ve got huge, big overheads on the fact that I’ve got all this stock and it’s not selling. And if I sell it at too low a price then I’m almost not even, I’m not gonna break even at all. So anyway, I started doing a whole lot of analysis and I literally I’ve probably had my head in spreadsheets for close to four months, something like that. But I tell you what, once you’ve done that sort of work, the clarity you have and the decisions you can make. So, for example, I actually decided, normally I’m all about trying to give my customers the most range possible, the widest, and I’m like excuse, my French, fuck that.

Cara:

Literally I’m just gonna give them this product, this product, this product, this product. You don’t need the variations, because the variations are costumey, extra. They often get returned because they may be by the wrong one thinking they didn’t realize it at a pink trim and they bought that one. So I’m like actually that one I know they’ll like they either have that one or nothing, and so that’s now my more my approach. And then the other thing I was doing as well is looking more into the keywords and looking more into making sure that the listing was actually really reflecting the keywords that are out there. So I was doing a lot of helium 10 research into that and actually updating the listings. So they’d probably been around like one of them particularly had been around for about two or three years and I probably hadn’t really ever done that much work on it and already I only updated it like middle of December. It’s not my peak season and I can see the sales coming up. And that’s from literally looking at what are the terms that we should be using. Because, it changes over time.

Bradley Sutton:

It can change the same product, but the how people find it are searching for it to change over time.

Cara:

Exactly, and also, I mean, I do have a tendency to kind of invent keywords as well.

Bradley Sutton:

So words, that I use in my speech and also in my listings.

Cara:

So I find that things like there are certain keywords that I use in my listings, that because people are copying my listings, they’re copying my wording and therefore then that wording is then getting picked up in like brand analytics, et cetera. So it’s quite fascinating, but the thing is is at the end of the day, I think it does. You know, I’m all about the marketing, I’m all about the intuition, but also you have to be about the data as well and the numbers, and you know there’s a difference between taking some risk and investing in something that your business needs in order to grow, versus just sort of sitting there and maybe not paying attention to what you shouldn’t really be spending, and that’s what I was doing. So bad me, bad me.

Bradley Sutton:

So, you know, instead of having to shut down the whole business, you were able to, you know, maybe shut down some unprofitable SKUs. Well, I shut down Canada, shut down, you know, marketplaces, and that might be a scary thing. You know, some people, they go to extremes. They’re like I got to, just I’m just going to quit everything, and that’s not good. Or they’re like no, like I have to succeed in Canada, like I know it can work despite all the numbers. Screw the numbers. You know I’m going to make this work. You know you got to be able to not easily give up by the same time, understand that you’d have battles, or if you want to win the war, you might need to like. So it doesn’t always have to be permanent. That’s the other thing, right?

Cara:

So just because I’ve shut Canada down for now doesn’t mean I can’t come back to Canada. But right now the numbers don’t work in terms of getting the product over there, the various other things that are there, the pricing structures, etc. The percentage of the particular products that will sell and the ones that won’t it. I literally just was like no, okay, that doesn’t make sense. And, like you say, there is a bit of ego in there in terms of like oh well, I sell on, you know, for marketplaces. Well, who cares? If you’re not making money, don’t sell on any, you know. So I did. And then I actually had a chat, the reason I was gonna shut the US down. So I had another a chat with another friend of mine who she’d exited a business, an eight-figure business, and she was saying the US is really tough and particularly because, like Amazon, are doing all this now Penalizing you for not having enough in as well as penalizing you for having too much, and it’s like God, Gordon Bennett, like give us a break, right, seriously, give us a break.

Cara:

And I was like you know what the thing is that in my home country it’s a lot easier to manage that sort of thing, which obviously, you know it, the US is not my home country, so I’m gonna have to pay more for storage and 3PLs and all the rest of it, managing that constant fluctuation. So I did the numbers and it is actually cheaper for me to fly it in on a sort of just in time basis, at least for the short term, because that’s the other thing. Sometimes it’s not about always doing things, for I’m never gonna. I’m gonna do that forever. It’s more, let’s just have a breather and Monitor the costs and then see whether you’ve got something going on that works.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, now, I didn’t get to see your presentation right now because I was recording some podcast in here, but I know like one of the things you talk about a lot is is branding, and I imagine Actually that’s one of the reasons why you don’t have to shut your business down and why, you know, some people might have been listening right now and thoughts themselves wait a minute, if she has very close knockoffs who are selling for $25 and her price is $90, you know it’s not a matter of oh, maybe us is just a little bit more profitable in Canada. You know, like that that’s a huge gap, you know right there. But you’re obviously not fighting on price and I would imagine one of the main reasons why you’re able to Succeed is because of your strong brand 100% because we grew in the UK.

Cara:

30% Grew, even at that price..

Bradley Sutton:

You know it’s not like the Chinese sellers are not selling in the UK.

Cara:

I’ve got loads of Chinese sellers chasing me in the UK, but the difference is that the brand is better known and is better trusted and therefore you know they, they and also I think there is an element, you know, there is an element of the fact that you know whichever country you’re based in, you know People like to support a more local business, so there is an element of that. So, if you’re a US seller in the US, I do think sometimes you know you need to make more of that because actually you know US citizens are gonna want to support a US business.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, so talk, talk a little bit more about that. It’s about you know the all of this can be considered part of your branding. You know where’s it manufactured. You know, like, are you really targeting your, your target avatar? You know, what did you talk about in your presentation today that you can maybe share with the audience About some things that will help them to one of the one of the one of the biggest things was the fact that I do think a lot Of Amazon sellers don’t really have a brand.

Cara:

They just have a name for a business or a name for something that they use and they don’t really have a what I’d call a true brand, and they don’t always. I think sometimes also, existing only on Amazon makes you lose perspective on you know how normal businesses work, like businesses that aren’t based on Amazon, and so you know a lot of businesses. I mean, I think throughout life, people buy from people and I think that’s so important to remember that, even on Amazon, one of the reasons why Amazon focus is so heavily on a plus listings and now they’re bringing in the premium, a plus and all the rest of it, because Amazon knows right. I, you know, you’ve known me quite a few years now and I’ve always banged on about brand. I’ve always banged on about having a story.

Cara:

Tell your story. It doesn’t have to be your story necessarily. It could be the product story, but you need to have something that differentiates you and and even then I was chatting to someone the conference earlier on and I was saying the thing is that sometimes it’s not even the fact that you’re you’re selling different products. It’s the way that you curate them, right. So it’s the collection of products that you’ve chosen to sell it under your brand name Says something because, like, if you check, if I said right, bradley, like we’re both gonna do kitchenware, I guarantee you that both of us would choose different products. If you said right, you’ve got to choose 10 products and you know, off you go, I would choose 10 different or we might have some crossover, but you know, we might both have a garlic crusher, for example. I used a garlic crusher as an example in my talk about how even a garlic crusher can have a story.

Bradley Sutton:

We call that garlic press.

Cara:

Thank you for enlightening, but you know. But the whole point is that you know, even the fact that individual people are actually running these businesses means that there will be something individual about that business. So it’s finding that story effectively and finding the why. I’m always really quite fascinated by the whys of business. So, for example, you look at things like Airbnb and Uber and things like that, and the why was because people didn’t want to pay the stupidly high taxi rates. The why was the two guys who did Airbnb was because, of fact, they didn’t want to. They didn’t have enough money to rent a hotel room and they needed somewhere to stay and they couldn’t afford all the other options. So they came up with a concept of Airbnb.

Cara:

Even things like Ring, you know, like the doorbell company, you know that originally came that that wasn’t the story there is. It’s a reinvention of something traditional, but they’ve used technology that’s available to revolutionize an existing product. It could also just be the way in which something is communicated with or handled like with the customers, so making the customers more engaged with the product. So, for example, one of the things I’m doing this year is I’m going to be doing an app which helps baby sleep through the provision of white noise, and you know that’s an add-on product, but I won’t be selling on Amazon, obviously. But the thing is, is it’s kind of something where, again, it can become a marketing tool. It can become like something that you can, you know, give to people. You know there’s other. I’m all about added value, like where can you give added value? And hopefully try and give added value where it doesn’t cost you very much.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. One thing I think that helps you expand also to different market places. Be it, you know, like when you, you know you started in UK, then went to US I know we were talking about the potential of UAE and you were saying, oh yeah, I’ve got. You know, I’ve got some customers down there and stuff, so talk to you about that. Like how can you say something like that Is that because you know people from social media who have bought your product? Or you look at the addresses of where people buy your products. But how can you say, oh yeah, I’ve got customers there. When I’m ready to launch there, I can hit them up and they’ll promote it. Like how can you do that?

Cara:

Okay, so yes, yes and almost yes. So, fundamentally, one of the other things I always bang on about and I banged on about it in my presentation is I do believe that any real brand or product business should have a website. There’s two reasons for that, so I’m going to just go off on one tangent slightly, but the main reason for it is that, for example, I’ve been out of stock for two of my best selling products for the last couple of months because we’ve had issues getting stuff in from China, blah, blah, blah, and we had delays on the line, etc. Etc. So what I’m able to do with my websites, take pre-orders. You can’t do that on Amazon, because if you don’t have the stock, you can’t sell. Literally, that’s it, you’re done. So I’ve generated, I’ve lost. My sales are down for the month in comparison to last year on Amazon and they’re up not as much as they would be, but they’re still significant enough money coming in on people who are prepared to hand over their money on the basis that the product will come. We tell them the dates and then we ship it.

Cara:

And so, therefore, the benefit of having a website, for example, is I know exactly how much traffic my website gets from the UAE. I can literally see it down to the almost like city level because, like the analytics now on things like Shopify is absolutely fascinating. So I did a breakdown of breakdown of, like, all the visitors that come from outside of the UK and you know there’s some significant numbers Also. Yes, the other thing with the UAE is that you have a lot of expats. Now, the one thing that expats lack is family, because they’re living outside of their home country. So when they have a baby, they’re much more reliant on external sources. So they’re much more reliant on things like baby sleep experts. They’re much more reliant on gadgets and things that can help the baby sleep. And, yeah, we’ve got influencers. There’s actually a few baby sleep experts starting up in the UAE and at the moment I can’t, I can’t. It’s really frustrating.

Cara:

The most frustrating thing for me is when someone says they can’t buy my product at a reasonable price, because I don’t want to be like charging 25, 30 quid for a courier, which I do, and people will pay it, but I don’t really want to be. I want them to get it at a price that works for them and in a time span that works for them. So the reason the UAE I’ve been sort of thinking about it for many, many, many years and in fact, I had way back in the day like 2010. I had a distributor in the UAE and I’ve had retailers in the UAE before, and I think the main issue is that they don’t do any marketing, whereas I’m happy to do the marketing. So we’re happy to make contact with the influencers, we’re happy to, you know, and the good thing is we get people contacting us because it works both ways, and then we can say, oh, actually, yes, and we’re selling on Amazon, so it gives us the opportunity to say, yeah, we can help you, sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Really interesting. And another thing that I found or I probably knew this, but you know my memory is so bad but that you are an unexpected expert in things that have to do with, like trademarks and stuff like that. So what is something that you think the average listener might not know or might wow them like well, I didn’t know that.

Cara:

Well, one of the issues I think that people in fact I was chatting to someone at dinner last night about it is that quite often people worry about the fact that a particular brand name may have been registered already. Now, that’s not necessarily a problem because, for example, McDonald’s farms now this is a slightly like random, not realistic example, but the principles are the same. So you’ve got McDonald’s restaurants and then you’ve got McDonald’s farm. Now we know, obviously McDonald’s restaurants probably have got their own farm. But if they didn’t, then there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t trademark McDonald’s as a farm, because it’s a different category and those categories are actually quite important. So, for example, if you’ve got a rubber duck company and you wanted to call it, you can’t call it rubber ducks, it’s too generic. But say, you wanted to call it sort of yellow ducky or something like that, right, and then somebody else was doing you know you’re making toys and they’re called yellow ducky, and then someone wanted to do a swimwear brand called yellow ducky. Well, actually you could have the two existing, like you wouldn’t necessarily want to. This is the other thing. Sometimes it’s not advantageous to actually have a similar brand name to somebody who’s already established. But if they’re in a completely different like industry. So if you had a yellow ducky, that was a truck company, right, and you’re doing yellow ducky toys, no one’s going to confuse the two, like you know. It’s really not going to be like a case of someone’s going to go to the yellow ducky truck company and think, oh, my goodness, where are my ducks, you know, or toys, or whatever. So there is that and there’s also.

Cara:

The other thing is, I think, is that you know, people don’t really know how to search for that sort of thing and it’s not that hard. The USPTO, the US Patent Trademark Office, has actually got some really good search functionality. There’s also the WEPO, which is World Internet, because I’m always suggesting the other thing you need to do is you need to make sure that your trademark isn’t taken in another country. So we have it quite a lot. I tend to talk about it in reverse, which is you might have a brand in the UK and then actually someone may have already filed for that trademark in the US. So there’s no point really building up a brand in the US, in the UK sorry if you’re then hoping to go to the US, because it’s going to be too difficult, especially if they’re in a similar sort of environment.

Cara:

So it is really, and that works both ways. So I would say, even in the US, if you’re thinking of expanding to Europe or to the UK or Australia or whatever, do a bit of due diligence, search online, because you will be able to find it, and make sure you use a VPN to go looking through on Google in local countries, because the other thing also you don’t necessarily know is there was one brand that I know of in the baby industry and if you Google it, it actually means it’s in Dutch, it actually means the bits of that hang off the back of a sheep’s bottom.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Cara:

Okay, so I’m not being funny, but I don’t want that as a brand name they have and I don’t seem to impact on them at all. But the thing is, you do want to see whether there’s any weird colloquialisms or weird slang and things like that. Plus, the other thing is people get very like oh my goodness, what am I going to do? What am I going to do about like, trademarking internationally? And there is something called the Madrid Protocol and the Madrid Protocol. Once you’ve actually trademarked in a country that follows the Madrid Protocol which, by the way, includes America and China, EU, Australia, all the big players, all the most of the places you would want to trademark and once your trademark has been accepted and obviously this is why the due diligence is really important, to make sure that you haven’t got like McDonald’s restaurants anywhere else is you can use the Madrid Protocol to register in those other countries within a six month period of your trademark being approved in your home country. And it’s a lot less and you don’t need to use lawyers because otherwise you’d have to literally go out to each country and then trademark it. So I always say to people sort of think big in terms of and think safe. So, for example, it’s super important to have a trademark in China, because trade in China. It is a first. I think it’s a first to file. It is it’s first to file, whereas in other countries it’s first to use. I think the US is first to use.

Cara:

So the problem is that you could have been using a trademark in, for example, I think in the UK we’re first to file, I think in the US it’s first to use. So somebody would not be able to probably register my trademark unless you know, because I would probably know about it and therefore it would come up and I’d say well, hang on a minute, I’ve been trading in the US for this amount of time and I also think I had to also do the same in Canada. I had to actually show how long I’ve been trading for. But in the UK you don’t have to have been trading at all. So if I wanted to, I could literally take Helium 10, and I could trademark that in the UK. If you haven’t done, you know, because no one else is using it. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t be, and you know so by thinking with using the Madrid protocol, especially in the early days of like, when you’re just doing your trademark. It’s expensive, but the thing is, if you think you’re going to go. Well, if you’re producing in China, you should definitely do it, and if you think you’re going to go into the US or into the UK or EU, it’s actually quite a cost effective way of getting a trademark.

Bradley Sutton:

So Edumacated me about a lot of stuff there. Now, before we get into your last strategy, a couple of questions. I’ve been asking guests, so you’ve obviously been using Helium 10 for a while and I remember from the very first time I met you. There’s just a lot of stuff that you don’t know how to do. But about from the stuff that you do know how to do and that you do use, what is your favorite tool in Helium 10 that you feel gives you the most value, and why does it give you value?

Cara:

It’s the one. It’s a Cerebro where you go in and look at the keywords put the ace in it and get the keywords yes, yes. So I love that one.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you know what language Cerebro is?

Cara:

Oh, is it Greek.

Bradley Sutton:

No, it might be, I have some Greek in it, but it’s. Oh, that’s so the literal translation or the literal spelling is brain yeah, for Spanish yeah okay, cool, so yeah, so that’s definitely one of my favorites.

Cara:

and then I also use I get the marketplace alerts and things like that, and I particularly like every time I

change my own or if a price changes. I love that coming in, because Amazon quite often starts selling my products in other places and it’s useful to know what they’re charging when they’re doing it. And also it’s a sanity check for me, like when I, for example, I messed up the other day big time. I’m launching a new product and I’m making a variation of another product and I accidentally put on the old product the new title. So I was accidentally selling the new product before it had launched because the old product was still live. So it was only when I got an email from Helium 10 saying my title had changed and I was like. So I ran into the back of, like Seller Central oh my god, I think it was only about 20 orders and then I’m like, trying to change the title, trying to change the title, trying to change the title, got it changed finally and that was yeah, that was a bit of a lifesaver as well.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So alerts is and Cerebro Wishlist for something that maybe we do it and you just don’t realize it, or something that you think that we don’t have. That would really make your life easier.

Cara:

Well, the SKU economics. I’m gonna be looking for that, okay, so I don’t know. We have to have a chat afterwards and we’ll have a look, because the problem is with the Amazon seller central version is that it’s not exportable. So I literally had to sit there and I was doing screenshots and then moving and copying, like a picture, into an Excel spreadsheet.

Bradley Sutton:

For you with 13 SKUs. Maybe not so bad, but imagine somebody else.

Cara:

I’m thinking, feeling the pain, but also if I wanted to do regular updates like where am I now? I don’t want to have to go through that every single time. So I will be very interested to see. Because SKU economics honestly, I’m a bit obsessed with it at the moment because it’s so useful in being really granular, Like literally, like that SKU has spent X amount of money on sponsored ads, that bit has generated that amount of profit and it tells you all the returns, like everything, and so it really gave me some, like I was saying, some really good knowledge into what the business was actually doing versus what I thought it was doing.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, your last 30, 60, I know for you might be hard. So maybe 90 second tip of the day. It could be about trademarks, it could be about branding, it could be about the best pubs to go to in Britain. I mean any possible subject that you are an expert on.

Cara:

Okay, I’m not going to go down the pubs route.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, okay.

Cara:

But no, I think my top tip is have a website outside of Amazon. Have some way where you can sell, because we are all at the mercy of Amazon and all that needs to happen is we’ve got some new regulations going into the EU that’s going to impact on all the US sellers, which is new labeling laws, and if your product is not compliant, amazon will shut your listing down on December the 13th 2024. Literally, so it’s absolutely vital that you have another way to sell. That’s obviously in the EU, but like this, that could happen in any market. We just don’t know what’s going to happen. And the thing is, you know, if you have all your eggs in Amazon’s basket, then you’re not really giving yourself an opportunity to do anything other than be at the mercy of Amazon. And you know, whilst I do love Amazon, obviously, at the same time I don’t think it’s healthy to be that involved with any one person at all. So it is really good to be able to sort of spread the risk a little bit and, as I say, then that gives you the opportunity to do more things off Amazon, which then actually tend to drive more traffic. So my website increased by 30% last year. Amazon increased by 30% because I do encourage my customers to go to Amazon if that’s what they want to do.

Cara:

But and then there’s also a customer who doesn’t want to buy on Amazon because they don’t like the concept, they don’t believe in it. And there is, there is a there’s a definite movement. A lot of people. Unfortunately, they don’t understand how Amazon works and they think everything that’s being sold on Amazon is being sold by Amazon. And I often have to explain to them like hang on a minute, I’m selling on Amazon. So by you not shopping on Amazon, you’re actually not helping me.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah.

Cara:

You know, and they don’t get it. So, anyway, have a website and make sure you’ve got a really good, strong, like about us like page which sort of tells people why you’re doing this.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, Well, Cara, thank you so much. I have no doubt that you’re gonna be make it to five episodes next year. You’ll have some good stories and teach us some new vocabulary words as well. You know, one of the things I like about you is that you’re not here to sell something and then not the people who Nothing bad about it, yeah nothing bad. You know, I have influencers and people who have service providers and they push their website Great. You know, that’s why part of the reason why we’re all here, but you know, you’re just like helping people.

Cara:

I love it.

Bradley Sutton:

You speak and you have no agenda, so we’re not gonna say, hey, go to carasayer.com but I have nothing on there. But I’m sure people like to hear from you. So like do you know where the next speaking? Are you speaking at a Billion Dollar Seller? Somebody are going there or anything.

Cara:

No, I’m not allowed to, because my daughter’s doing her big exams this year.

Bradley Sutton:

So I’ve had it. This is the one year so no international travel until after July.

Cara:

But I’m going to the European Seller Conference in Prague Because I’m allowed to stay with it.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s in March, I believe.

Cara:

Yeah, march 13th to the 16th, I think it is, and I’m not speaking, but I’m just gonna go along as a participant and I’m really looking forward to it, actually, because I’ve never been before.

Bradley Sutton:

So I love that conference. I spoke at it last year. Shivali is going this year. I won’t be going this year, but make sure to go there If you guys want to go to Prague.

Cara:

It’s in March, it’s a beautiful city as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, oh, and there’s really great, amazing pizza place called Johnny’s Pizza. I’ll let you know where it works at.

Cara:

I’ll make sure I go out and make sure you’re Really great, me and Shivali can go out and eat some pizza.

0:33:57 – Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, Cara. Thank you so much for joining us and coming out here from across the pond.

Cara:

Indeed, a bit of a bumpy landing. It was yesterday, but yes.

Bradley Sutton:

That was a little rough here in Frankfurt. I kept me a little awake there, but anyways, thank you so much for coming and I can’t wait next year to see what you’ve been up to All right, take care.

Cara:

All right, take care. I’ll see you next time. Bye, bye, bye.

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Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
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SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get