Episode 83 – Here’s How to Successfully Create an Amazon Private Label Partnership

Think for a moment of the friendships that you have that date back to your high-school days. 

These are the people that knew us when we were becoming who we are now.  

It’s like a secret handshake.  

They get us.  

But . . . 

How would you feel about going into business with them?

Thought so.  

In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Customer Success, Bradley Sutton is speaking with Ryan Ebel, an 8-Figure Amazon seller who has successfully navigated those potentially treacherous waters.   

Ryan was born in Las Vegas but came to Malibu, California in order to go to college at Pepperdine, where he later graduated with a degree in International Business.  

Afterwards, he rejoined his family’s business and after agreeing to help run their operation in Alaska, traveled all the way north to Juneau for as he says, “365 days, exactly.”

It was while he was still in college however that he first became aware of selling on Amazon. A college friend had an operation that simply involved a cardboard box where he encouraged students who couldn’t be bothered to try to resell their own books to drop them in his box. 

Presto, instant inventory.  

That started his entrepreneurial fires burning and he soon completed an Amazon selling course.  He did have a leg up on many new Amazon sellers because in addition to his International Business degree, he also had a proficiency in Chinese, which he put to use in his sourcing efforts.  

He quickly executed the full tour of selling on Amazon possibilities from arbitrage to private label, settling there as many do, because of the incredible flexibility that it offers.  

It was when a group of college friends saw his garage full of toys from his retail arbitrage efforts that they decided to join forces and create an Amazon partnership.   

After a brief accidental hijacking incident on Amazon, the group of friends quickly found their stride, and success selling on Amazon.  

They’ve come to understand that bundling goods on Amazon is a great way to both know your buyers and increase sales and are now looking into licensing as the absolute best method to receive a seal of approval from an established brand and gain instant sales velocity.  

As many Amazon sellers do, they continue to reinvest their profits back into their business, allowing them to scale their business and establish solid “families” of linked private label products.  

What has proven more challenging is managing the friendly “family” relationships they’ve shared as a group of friends, and now business associates since college.  

Ryan counsels that this sort of business association is “like a marriage,” in that it is “incredibly important to take the time to develop the relationship first” in order to make sure that as the financial status of the “marriage” changes, there’s a solid foundation to draw from. 

Whether it’s business or personal, who couldn’t use a little bit of relationship advice?

Listen in today and get a bit of both. 

In episode 83 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Ryan discuss:

• 01:40 – Surfing and International Business at Pepperdine
• 02:30 – Exactly 365 Days in Alaska
• 03:11 – Lazy College Kids and Their Books Give Him a Start on Amazon
• 05:05 – Speaking Chinese and Studying Abroad  
• 07:10 – Making the Move to Pets
• 08:35 – A Partnership’s Growing Pains
• 11:48 – Amazon is Breaking Up (Product) Families
• 13:15 – The Biggest Takeaways from His Pet Brands
• 15:30 – The Recent Tariffs are Giving Him Reasons to Look Around  
• 16:25 – Like Many, Private Label Simply Offers Him the Most Flexibility
• 18:00 – Bundling Secrets
• 19:45 – What’s His Product Sourcing Method?
• 22:30 – Ryan’s 30 Second Tip
• 25:17 – How to Get in Touch with Ryan   

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today’s guest can credit a random conversation during a bachelor party for the start of his main journey on Amazon and now he’s been a part of a couple seven figure businesses and is going to let us know some of his unique insights into things like bundling and partnership.

Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody. 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 eCommerce world. And I have got a serious seller with me right here in studio today, Ryan how is it going?

Ryan Ebel: Hey, I’m great. How are you?

Bradley Sutton: I’m doing just delightful here. You are the first one that we’re actually recording video and audio on here at our office. Let’s see if you might be our first YouTube episode here. No pressure though.

Ryan Ebel: Sounds good.

Bradley Sutton: All right, so anyways, Ryan, when did we first meet?

Ryan Ebel: We met back in 2016 on that famous day that you said was the first day of your Amazon private label journey. At the ZonSquad live event in Chicago.

Bradley Sutton: Yup. Yup. ZonSquad live. I met tons of people that day and that weekend that I’ve remained friends to this day. And it’s, it’s kind of cool to be a have keep in contact with you. Now what I always like to start out the episode with is the origin story. I know you currently live in Vegas now. Were you born and raised in Vegas?

Ryan Ebel: Yes, I was.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. And did you go directly to college after high school?

Ryan Ebel: Yup, I went to Pepperdine in Malibu.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, Pepperdine. You came out here to college.

Ryan Ebel: I did, yes. Took some surfing class there. It’s pretty fun.

Bradley Sutton: Now surfing wasn’t your major though, right?

Ryan Ebel: No.

Bradley Sutton: What was your major?

Ryan Ebel: Major was international business.

Bradley Sutton: Oh nice. That was one of my majors in my junior college. Cool you might be one of the first people who kind of has a major that applies a little bit to the Amazon and e-commerce world. So that’s kind of cool.

Ryan Ebel: Definitely.

Bradley Sutton: Graduated with a bachelor’s degree from there?

Ryan Ebel: Bachelor’s. Yes.

Bradley Sutton: And then upon graduation, what was your first entry into the job market, I guess?

Ryan Ebel: Well, you know, I went to work for my family’s company. My stepdad has some office supply companies in Las Vegas, Reno in Juneau, Alaska. And incidentally, the week that I was graduating, the managers in Alaska quit. He offered me the position and I thought it would be a great opportunity to get some management experience. I accepted on the condition that I can go up there for one year and I was up there for exactly 365 days

Bradley Sutton: In Alaska?

Ryan Ebel: In Alaska. It’s pretty crazy up there.

Bradley Sutton: Man. I can, is it true that like there’s some days where the sun doesn’t come out or something like that, but some part of the year?

Ryan Ebel: Right yeah. In the winter it’s pretty dark. We really only had some, I wouldn’t call it sunlight, but some light from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. It was overcast pretty much every day of the year. I think it rains about 280 days there.

Bradley Sutton: One year working in the darkness of Alaska upon graduating. And then came back  to the West coast. And then what was the next for you?

Ryan Ebel: I first learned about selling on Amazon from a friend from college. At the end of the semester, he built a donation box that he put outside the bookstore. And at the end of the semester, the kids all go to the bookstore to sell back their books, but there’s a number of books that the bookstore won’t buy back. And so the kids get a little lazy and they toss those books in those donation bins. Just so they don’t have to deal with it anymore in any ways. My friend got a large amount of books over that semester and he sold them on Amazon that summer.

Bradley Sutton: What year were you talking about? Really?

Ryan Ebel: This is 2012.

Bradley Sutton: Okay.

Ryan Ebel: He sold those books on Amazon over the summer and made about $3,000 and of course he donated a portion of those proceeds to charity. But that really got me thinking about Amazon and the opportunity there.

Bradley Sutton: All right, that’s interesting. Now we’re talking about 2012. You stuck with your stepfather’s company. Now. At what point though, did you really start thinking about a lot Amazon, like starting it for yourself?

Ryan Ebel: Yeah, I mean I started right away in 2012 but, that was more like white labeling.

Bradley Sutton: All right, so what’s a white label for those who are our listeners who might not know what that means?

Ryan Ebel: White labeling is basically just buying a generic product from China and shipping it in selling it on Amazon. You’re using an existing listing at that point, which you could get in trouble for these days. And known as hijacking. Essentially in 2012, I guess I’d say I was a Hijacker. Well, yeah, in 2014, I went through one of the popular Amazon seller courses and that’s really where I learned about private label and I decided to take this to the next level.

Bradley Sutton: All right, so in 2014 now I’m assuming that this time you’re still working for your company and if so, what were you doing? Like what was your position there?

Ryan Ebel: I was the operations manager. I’d purchase materials and procure customer orders from our suppliers and he’s also in charge of making sure that everyone was doing their job up in Alaska and I have to go up to Alaska every now and then to oversee things.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Now at what point though did you learn, cause I, if I’m not mistaken, and I talked to you before, you actually speak Chinese. Like how in the world did that come about?

Ryan Ebel: Yeah, so in college I studied abroad. In China it was one of the requirements for the international business degree, but so I went off to Shanghai for a semester and that’s where I took a couple of language courses and really immersed myself in the language.

Bradley Sutton: All right. That’s pretty impressive. Did that help at all when you, when you started on Amazon, like I’m just assuming that your product that you started sourcing, you had manufactured in China. Do you feel that having a grasp of the Chinese language helped in a negotiations or did it help you converse with the factories over there?

Ryan Ebel: Honestly, we mainly conversed in English. When I tried using Chinese, the rep would usually switch over to English.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Now in 2014 hopefully your hijacking days are over, you took the, the Amazon course. Now you’re starting private labels. What was your very first private label product?

Ryan Ebel: It was a tea infuser.

Bradley Sutton: A tea infuser. Are you still selling that product today?

Ryan Ebel: No, I’m not selling that same one.

Bradley Sutton: I always ask that. You know, it’s funny, I think, you know, Paul Miller or something and I believe it was him and maybe a couple other people, they actually still are selling their first product that they sold on Amazon. But most people don’t because usually the first product fails, you know, or just kind of dies, you know, with time. That’s how I was on goes. But tea infuser, how did that tea infuser launch go for you? Are we talking 2014 2015?

Ryan Ebel: Yeah, this was around 2014 2015 the launch was a little botched cause I got in trouble with Amazon related to the past activity with the white labeling. And that just coincidentally happened, right before I was supposed to launch.

Bradley Sutton: Then I’m assuming you were just looking to sell a product, you weren’t planning to be a tea infuser mogul and build some big brand on that. Where did you go from there? Like did you, I mean you didn’t stay in the tea infuser niche or anything, did you expand or what was?

Ryan Ebel: I did expand. I mean I came out with a couple of more teen infusers and I’m onto 150 left today that I’m just liquidating. This is years of selling, but I’ve kind of branched out. That’s where I joined a partnership to do develop at products

Bradley Sutton: Okay.

Ryan Ebel: That I was a little more passionate about. Cause I had some two cats by the time. Yeah, just thought that it would be a much better market cause people love animals and spend all kinds of money on pets.

Bradley Sutton: And what year is this now?

Ryan Ebel: This was 20 the end of 2015.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. End of 2015 you took on a different partner. Started a pet brand. And what was the, I know you mentioned you kind of felt that you had to, but like what was, what was the relationship or the nature of the partnership? Was it like one person was bringing the Amazon knowledge, one person was bringing the money, one person was bringing the manufacturing or what were the motivation behind starting a partnership?

Ryan Ebel: Well, yeah, I had some friends from college that came to my bachelor party and they saw my garage full of toys of retail arbitrage and that’s where they kind of got the idea that maybe they wanted to get involved in this and learn. We kind of formed pretty quickly. You know, I would put a little more thought into joining partnerships. You really have to plan for a lot of things from the start as it can get a little dicey future. Some things can happen. You really have to plan these things out. Initially we thought that each person would kind of pitch in and develop their own brand of products.

Bradley Sutton: How many of the, I thought it was just one person who, it sounds like there’s more than just you and a friend.

Ryan Ebel: Alright well there was four main people,

Bradley Sutton: Including you.

Ryan Ebel: But then including me yeah

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Then the plan was you are each going to kind of like start an own brand or kind of thing and what happened with that?

Ryan Ebel: Well two out of me and one other have dedicated our time to doing so and creating our own companies. But the other two were invested in their normal day jobs and didn’t get as involved as well thought they would.

Bradley Sutton: Then when you set up this partnership, like was it Hey, each person’s going to run their own thing and then kind of get the proceeds from their own venture or everything was split equally and all the work was split equally or how was that set up?

Ryan Ebel: Yeah, everything would be split equally. We kind of set up a main partnership company and then we had each brand have its own subsidiary company. It’s not necessarily the right way of doing things. It complicates things a lot. Definitely

Bradley Sutton: What would you goes on differently then? What would be what you consider the right way?

Ryan Ebel: I don’t think it’s necessary to have those multiple corporate levels. It gets really complicated in terms of taxes and filing registrations with certain States and keeping track of all of that.  I would probably just go with the one entities.

Bradley Sutton: You literally had four companies and then there you had to set up there a CEO of this company had to file taxes for four companies

Ryan Ebel:          Yeah

Bradley Sutton: And everything. But yeah. In reality you were all one kind of conglomeration cause there was a partnership.

Ryan Ebel: Right? We had the partnership and then we had the two subsidiaries created so far. The other two subsidiaries were never created because we didn’t get past the ID.

Bradley Sutton: Okay.

Bradley Sutton: Then how is that pet company still doing today?

Ryan Ebel: It is going today, yes. Seven-figure brands for the last couple of years.

Bradley Sutton: Oh wow. Okay.

Ryan Ebel:          Yeah

Bradley Sutton: Was your partners who was mainly managing that?

Ryan Ebel: That was my idea.

Bradley Sutton: Okay.

Ryan Ebel: I done all the work on that.

Bradley Sutton: How many products?

Ryan Ebel: We have right now, we have out eight that are live right now, but over the years we’ve discontinued a couple just because the market wasn’t as well we expected it to be.

Bradley Sutton: When’s the last time you launched a product under that brand?

Ryan Ebel: Honestly, it’s been about a year and a half since we launched a new product. Although I am in the process of doing one right now from a current supplier, which makes it easy. They can just throw a couple hundred units on our next container.

Bradley Sutton: Is it still a seven-figure brand?

Ryan Ebel: It is, yes.

Bradley Sutton: That’s great to know because a lot of people think that, you know, the life cycle of Amazon products is pretty short. And you know, sometimes it is. But then here’s a company that’s still making seven figures on products that they launched over a year and a half, two years ago. That’s pretty cool. Well, what’s the number one seller as far as now what it is, but how much does the number one seller number one selling skew make a year?

Ryan Ebel: Well we do about 30 to 40,000 a month on this one. We have three really size variations in each one is pretty equal and about 30,000 a month.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Then of the eight products that you meet, eight different products or eight skews total?

Ryan Ebel: Well it’s more like 10 SKUs total.

Bradley Sutton: Okay.

Ryan Ebel: Products like a sec accessory for the products.

Bradley Sutton: Well, what, you know, this is a question a lot of people ask is Hey, I’ve got, you know, a pet product, I’ve got a sweater and there’s different colors or something like how do you choose whether to, put it in a family arrangement, in a variation so that people can see that there are other colors available or do they split it up so that you have opportunity to get multiple search rank positions. How did you guys make that decision?

Ryan Ebel: Initially we put everything together in variation relationships just because we wanted to pool all the reviews together. And it really helps when you add a new variation there. You’re not starting from scratch every time you add a new product. But somewhere along the line about two years ago, Amazon broke up one of my products the family, cause they said it was the improper relationship to size relationship. But once

Bradley Sutton: This is an incestuous relationship. Amazon said

Ryan Ebel: Right.

Bradley Sutton: Oh my goodness.

Ryan Ebel: One of the sizes. The design looks just a little bit different because the product is so big, it needs to be a little shaped, a little different. That was enough for Amazon to say, no, this can’t be a relationship. I was a little afraid at that point, but after they got broken up, there are three different listings showing up for the same keywords and actually sales increased on some of those variations.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, okay.

Ryan Ebel: It ended up being a good thing actually.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Yeah, that’s what I’ve always kind of taught that there’s no right answer. It depends on the situation. You know, sometimes it’s better to have it in a variation where you know, there’s going to be two or three that probably would never do well on its own anyway. But other times, like you just said, it’s good to break it up now. What was one of the biggest things you learned from the pet brand? Like either something that was really good or something that was really bad?

Ryan Ebel: Well, I’d just say overall in general, just being in a partnership, you really need to plan it out from day one, but more thought into it. People say it’s kind of like a marriage and in a divorce really if you need to break it up, things can get really ugly in the company. Likely we’ll close it store when you need to break off. Really plan it out from day one. If you’re going in, people jump into these partnerships really quick. Maybe you need to spend a little more time developing the relationship and thinking about it. You really have to think of, no one likes to think about the negatives from day one, but you really do have to plan out for it. What happens when something happens and just can’t get along anymore? Are you happy being friends? Like is your friendship and it continues or a lot of people wouldn’t. Oh, a lot of money gets on the table. People can change. Before you mix business with your personal life, you might want to, I think a little bit about that and plan for it.

Bradley Sutton: Well maybe a little bit better too to not plan big partnerships on when you’re hungover from a bachelor party. I don’t know. That’s just my point.

Ryan Ebel: I’d delay that a little bit.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Now how do you guys pay yourselves? Okay, so this is a seven-figure brand. Do you do, does everything get reinvested into the company? Do you guys pay ourselves salary that, that’s coming from that entity or how does that, how does that work?

Ryan Ebel: Yeah, so since I’m the operator of this pet brand, I would take a salary and a commission and then we reinvest all the profits. We haven’t done any distributions yet.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Reinvesting it, yeah, I mean, is everything, are you using everything that’s reinvested or is this like sitting in a bank account or?

Ryan Ebel: No, we’re using it off or larger inventory purchases.

Bradley Sutton: Now you do any of your own products yourself where everything’s with your partners?

Ryan Ebel: Yeah, I do have my own private label brand that I created two years ago.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. And how, how’s how many SKUs you have there?

Ryan Ebel: That one, we have three main SKUs.

Bradley Sutton: Okay

Ryan Ebel: And we’re developing a couple more.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. How’s your, what’s your, I mean we’re, we’re coming here in the fourth quarter. What do you project that two 2019 is going to end for you in sales as far as that brand goes?

Ryan Ebel: It’ll be between 500 and 600,000 for this company.

Bradley Sutton: How’s your profit margin there?

Ryan Ebel: Well it was in the 30%.  Again, we’re looking at other countries and things around that.

Bradley Sutton: Wow. You use the these are your three main businesses are kind of income now you’ve got the brand that does the food, you’ve got the pet, and then now this is your own thing. Now this one, basically anything that’s profit is that you get to keep because you don’t have partners on this one right?

Ryan Ebel: Right. Yeah. That was the idea.

Bradley Sutton: And so like now that you’ve been kind of in both worlds or three worlds, kind of, you know, two partner worlds, but in completely different industries, you know, one with a drop-ship, bang and a heavy on the labor part where it’s a lot of packaging and kitting and stuff. You have one where it’s a traditional private label where it’s kind of, I would assume mostly hands-off but with a partner. And then now you have another private label, but just running it by herself. What’s worked out the best for you would you say?

Ryan Ebel: You know, I really liked the potential of building your private label brand because it is an asset that you could sell in the future if you do it right. I really liked that.

Bradley Sutton: What’s your goal for next year for your own private label brand?

Ryan Ebel: Honestly, I am looking to sell that next year just to take some money off the table and I can reinvest that money and maybe build a new brand.

Bradley Sutton: Because of the right now, the other two the partnerships you said you’re only getting salary on that. Right?

Ryan Ebel: Right. And I have small ownership of the entire company so it makes more sense to build up my own company.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah.

Ryan Ebel: And I own 100% and sell that cause I’d get the most benefit personally. Okay.

Bradley Sutton: Now  I know you recently joined a Helium 10 Elite, so what have you gotten out of those? You know the little works, I actually haven’t been to the in-person workshop. This next one’s going to be our first one. Right?

Ryan Ebel: Right Yes.

Bradley Sutton: But? Have you been listening to the virtual ones and been learning some things from there?

Ryan Ebel: Yeah, absolutely. There’s always little strategies. I love Kevin’s seven Ninja hacks at the end of every call.

Bradley Sutton: Yup. Yup. Awesome. That’s awesome. One question I had is you had some unique bundling kind of like suggestions for people. Like a lot of people don’t know about bundling bike. There’s bundling kind of in the wholesale or arbitrage industry where you take a couple of brand name stuff that by itself has some demand and you put it together, because you think that people would like it together or it has a tendency to buy it together and then people buy that bundle together and it’s unique in the private label. You know, maybe you’re in the, let’s say the pet industry and there’s a bark collar, but then there’s something else that goes with w with a pet and that you could bundle it together. Like what are some baffling experiences you’ve had and maybe some advice for people who want to consider that for other brands?

Ryan Ebel: Right. I like to bundle things that have a high perceived value. Whether it be dog bowls, like a dog bowl set that has a whole stand. I would like to include let’s say a couple extra dog bowls so that people can interchange them, maybe put them through the dishwasher. It’s accessories that you use with the product that with wear down over time, it might be useful to have a couple extras. I know a lot of sellers out there just bundle their products with a free eBook, but I feel like the value of that is been declining. People don’t pay as much attention to that anymore. A physical accessory that compliments your product, that is needed to use your product. You could also sell those accessories by itself as a standalone product too. For people that need extras or lose them or break it, whatnot. But you could see that it sells by itself for 10 or $12 or whatnot. You’ve attached that value to the product when you’re making your purchasing decision. When you decide between one product or another, you can really, you don’t, if I’m competing against another seller, I don’t have to lower my price if they lower their as a couple bucks because I’m adding that extra value.

Bradley Sutton: Interesting. That’s good. Now, just in general though, I’m just curious, you’re obviously very successful. Two times over now in the pet industry. Now in your new private label industry, what is your process on how to find opportunity? I mean, do you, where do you go for inspiration or, I mean, do you just use tools, you know, like Helium 10 and look for products or do you use the Helium 10 looking for keywords? Or do you just go do trade shows, looking for ideas? Do you just get ideas walking down the street? Like how have you been so successful with picking these profitable products?

Ryan Ebel: I started with the end customer in mind. Whether it be the pet owner or my other private label brand. Mothers and fathers so I take a look at those people directly and think about what they need and identify products that they commonly use and look for. Are there products out there that kind of failed that? I look at the negative reviews and get inspiration from that to see gaps in the market. And then I can use tools like Helium 10 to kind of confirm the research behind it, whether a keywords are good or not. In the competition. If I can enter that market successfully.

Bradley Sutton: What’s  your, everybody has different thresholds. You know, some people say, Hey wait, I want to go by the opportunity score. I want to go by a success score. I want to go by this score, that score, and I tell people, no, a score you see in a tool, it is just kind of a measure of certain metrics, but everybody has their own kind of internal score that they do. Like when they’re looking at page one of the main keywords that they’re like, Hey, I would like to have this money search volume. I would like to have these, the top products have this many reviews or maybe bad reviews. But what are some of your criteria? What’s the Ryan’s score for when you determine if something’s too competitive or not.

Ryan Ebel: I like to look at page one for the keyword and I like to see that multiple people on page one are making good size volume. I like to also see that the people on page one don’t have too many reviews. If everyone has more than a thousand reviews, it’s going to be very difficult for me to come in zero reviews and compete against these guys. Yeah, I look at the reviews. I look at making sure that everyone on page one has decent sales volume. Just to make sure that there is opportunity there. I also will look at the helium 10 for keyword suggestions. I can look at the keyword monthly search volume, but I know, I’m pretty sure that Amazon closed that loophole. You can’t really rely 100% on those numbers. It’s more useful for relativity. Can see if you have 12 keywords at minimum that have decent volumes. And that’s pretty good.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah.

Ryan Ebel: In my opinion, because if you don’t get good rankings on one keyword, at least you have others to fall back on and options there.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Now we come to a part of the program that we call TST. In other words, 30 second tip. In all your experience, you know, you’ve been doing private label for about five years now. What is something that you can tell our audience in 30 seconds or less, a 30 second tip from Ryan here that can help them in their Amazon business.

Ryan Ebel: I’m a big fan of licensing. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to enter a competitive for established market because you can rely on that brand name that’s well known. They kind of act as the ultimate influencer cause everyone knows that brand. I would recommend looking into the Paul Miller story. He’s had fantastic success with licensing and they have free licensing expose in Las Vegas every year. It’s a great place to start. But I feel like you can really get some traction on Amazon by leveraging a well-known brand.

Bradley Sutton: All right, excellent. Yeah, we have actually had Paul on the podcast a while back, so guys, if you’re, if you didn’t listen to that one, make sure to, to search for that on iTunes too, to see more about licensing. But that is a good tip. I think that’s something that almost any private label seller can look into and it’s something that can differentiate yourself even in a saturated niche. You know, there’s no such thing as saturation in the licensing because usually there’s only one, you know, like a famous brand will only give one license for a certain kind of product. By definition it’s not saturated. All right. I’m assuming Ryan, though the licensing isn’t something that you have actually done yet, but you’re definitely looking into it.

Ryan Ebel: I actually do have a licensing agreement with a graphic designer. We’re developing a product right now and I have some samples on the way to me.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. I’d love to hear back from you next year maybe to see how that licensing when and to kind of see, you know how it, where you’re at in your Amazon journey. Were you able to exit your private label brand like you had wanted, how your partnerships going? Because definitely you have an interesting story and one thing I hope the takeaway is that you guys can get from this episode is that most of you guys have probably never heard of Ryan. You know, he’s not some guru or influencer. He doesn’t have a YouTube channel. He doesn’t have his own course. He’s just a dude like you or me. Any one of you guys or gals coop could be Ryan. You know, Ryan didn’t have any special Amazon specific training from Jeff Bezos or anything like that. He took some Amazon courses and he studied international business and he took that course and applied what he learned and has grown from there. And as you can see now he’s in multiple businesses. One is approaching seven figures and another one is seven figures and another one’s approaching eight figures. I hope that having Ryan on here inspires you guys. You know, sometimes I know we have the Kevin King’s, the Lee Ron’s and the big heavies out there and some people are like, wow, that’s really cool listening to this story and I’m learning so much. But like sometimes they have trouble relating like, Oh I could never be Kevin or I could never be Lee, Ron, those guys are giants in the industry. But guys here at Ryan is proof that anybody with the right strategies, they can rise to the top. Ryan, thank you very much for coming. To our office States record this episode, and now I know you don’t have your own course or your own thing, but if people want to reach out to you, maybe get some advice on things you willing to, any of your contact info,

Ryan Ebel: You know, you can find me on Facebook. I’m in a lot of the Amazon seller groups, the Helium 10 group among another, probably 10 other groups. They’ll just look out for me.

Bradley Sutton: Perfect. All right, Ryan, we’ll see you in those groups and thank you again for coming today.

Ryan Ebel: Thank you very much.

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