Principles of Building Your Empire - Evan Hackel - Amazon Legends - Episode # 162

11/10/22 • 61 min

Our today’s guest is a seasoned company leader and consultant to some of the largest business organizations in North America. He inspires companies to build cultures of partnership, common purpose, and commitment to success.

Evan started the member owned non-profit Empower eCommerce Cooperative, and is also the Founder and CEO of Ingage Consulting, having worked with over 20 cooperatives in that role.

Takeaways:

The key for hyper growth, is to learn from other people's mistakes, and to learn from other people's successes.
Key to hyper growth is not just to improve sales, but it's also to improve profitability.
You need to hire people who have personalities and skill sets that match what you need them to do with the job.
It's important to invest and build a staff and build a team, which by the way, adds value to your company.
Take the same product in one product, package it and sell it upscale, and take the same product, another brand and package it as a value item and sell both.

Quote of the Show:

People that are really good entrepreneurs, who are good at launching or starting businesses are rarely really good at managing businesses at scale. They are very distinctly different skill sets.

Links:

Personal – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanhackel
Personal – Twitter: https://twitter.com/ehackel
Empowery – Website: https://empowery.com/
Empowery – Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/club/empoweryecommercecooperative
Empowery – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/empowery/
Empowery – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/empowerycoop
Empowery – Twitter: https://twitter.com/empowerycoop
Empowery – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empowerycoop/
Empowery – YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9KH9HUSiznHDItkSeqeWwg
Ingage Consulting – Website: https://www.ingage.net/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Legends is sponsored by Argometrix, the authority on, and leading supplier of, competitive intelligence for online retail. To learn more, head over to https://argometrix.com/

Evan started the member owned non-profit Empower eCommerce Cooperative, and is also the Founder and CEO of Ingage Consulting, having worked with over 20 cooperatives in that role.

Takeaways:

The key for hyper growth, is to learn from other people's mistakes, and to learn from other people's successes.
Key to hyper growth is not just to improve sales, but it's also to improve profitability.
You need to hire people who have personalities and skill sets that match what you need them to do with the job.
It's important to invest and build a staff and build a team, which by the way, adds value to your company.
Take the same product in one product, package it and sell it upscale, and take the same product, another brand and package it as a value item and sell both.

Quote of the Show:

People that are really good entrepreneurs, who are good at launching or starting businesses are rarely really good at managing businesses at scale. They are very distinctly different skill sets.

Links:

Personal – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanhackel
Personal – Twitter: https://twitter.com/ehackel
Empowery – Website: https://empowery.com/
Empowery – Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/club/empoweryecommercecooperative
Empowery – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/empowery/
Empowery – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/empowerycoop
Empowery – Twitter: https://twitter.com/empowerycoop
Empowery – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empowerycoop/
Empowery – YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9KH9HUSiznHDItkSeqeWwg
Ingage Consulting – Website: https://www.ingage.net/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Legends is sponsored by Argometrix, the authority on, and leading supplier of, competitive intelligence for online retail. To learn more, head over to https://argometrix.com/

Previous Episode

How to Pick A Good 3PL – A MUST For Amazon Sellers - Marshall Taplits - Amazon Legends - Episode # 161

Marshall Taplits is the owner of ShipItDone 3PL Warehouse in Pennsylvania and a co-founder of 3PL Max, a SaaS warehouse management system for 3PL's. He is a highly qualified business and technical leader, with a passion for all things supply chain, economics and cryptocurrency. Marshall is an expert at systems integrations and sees that as a main competitive advantage in the 3PL space.
Takeaways:

Try to find where to put the money in terms of the PPC. And I think if you look at 3PL's in a similar way, it's like, if you identify the products that a 3PL can put you in another class, by having, then it's not just a cost, it's actually a revenue driver.
Figure out how to increase your skews and increase your value that you're bringing to the customer.
Whoever is fulfilling the order, they have to pick the master item, and then log into Seller Central, and then pull down the customization info, and then customize accordingly and then ship it.
Make sure that your 3PL is able to handle these complexities and keep being accurate.
Look for operators that are running the warehouse where multiple customers can log in and have their own portals.
If you have an order management system or inventory management system, they usually come together, make sure you start looking in there integrations of the 3PL that they are integrated with.

Quote of the Show:

If you find a 3PL and consider them like a supplier, you should ask what value add they can bring to the table. That is what you are looking for in a 3PL as much as you can not just a warehouse that can move pallets in and out.

Links:

Personal – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshalltaplits
ShipItDone – Website: https://shipitdone.com/
ShipItDone – Twitter: https://twitter.com/shipitdone
ShipItDone – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShipItDone/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Legends is sponsored by Argometrix, the authority on, and leading supplier of, competitive intelligence for online retail. To learn more, head over to https://argometrix.com/

Next Episode

Juggling Online Arbitrage -vs- Private Label of a Major Brand - Corey Lawson - Amazon Legends - Episode # 163

Today’s guest is the President & Co-owner of All Volleyball, Inc., a family-owned business started by his dad nearly 27 years ago. Corey is also involved in various philanthropic initiatives, raising money for social causes on multiple occasions.
Takeaways:

A pricing strategy and assortment strategy and inventory strategy is really going to set us up for success.
Figured out ways to continue being a reseller on the platform and winning, it gets harder every day. And that's part of a longer-term Amazon strategy that had that surrounded private label.
Tell brand owners forget about selling, building your listing, listing optimization, it's gonna go that's a whole different path that you have to go if you want to set up a private label sales operation, established the brand presence.
Make sure that you have a plan and have a vision for how you want that to work. Even if it means just you want to product, you're trying to do a product market fit for a product, I think it's just really, really important to have a set of clear expectations that you need to go in.
We were one of the very few sellers that concentrated on the volleyball category with access to those brands. And so when we started on the marketplaces, we were a reseller, but our competition was probably 90%, less of what it is now. So we were just taking advantage of greenspace that we saw, and we had access to the product.

Quote of the Show:

We are in this for the long haul and if we think we can figure out a true multi-channel both for our B2B market, a team, a club and our individual customers, it would a big opportunity for us. We are a small company and we take small steps.

Links:

Personal – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreywlawson/
Personal – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corey_w_lawson/
All Volleyball – Website: https://www.allvolleyball.com/
All Volleyball – Amazon: Visit Store
EOS Implementor – Corey Lawson: https://www.eosworldwide.com/corey-lawson

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Legends is sponsored by Argometrix, the authority on, and leading supplier of, competitive intelligence for online retail. To learn more, head over to https://argometrix.com/