The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] CIS-Intro: This is the e-commerce leader. I show for you the owner of a thriving online business. In this shorter episode, we bring you our hot takes on topical and central e-commerce subjects. Fresh from my expert panel, Chris green, Jason Miles, Kyle Homer, and myself, Michael VZ. Let’s jump in.
[00:00:20] Jason: Hot topic for today is Q4 2021. Obviously there’s been a ton of trepidation concern, worry about what’s coming down the pipeline or whatever conveyor belt for Q4 2020. Well, she want to kick us off. Give us your point of view on Q4 2021. What’s going to happen, whatever.
[00:00:46] Chris: I would love to, and hopefully, um, my experience in the past and what we’ve gone through, we’ll kind of get people I, to say confident and on the right track.
[00:00:54] Cause there’s a lot that we don’t know about Q4 2021, because for even if we didn’t go through COVID and a pandemic and all the supply chain issues and everything that has happened regardless, Q4 2021 is going to be the biggest Q4. Of all time and it’s going to be that way for the next, for the foreseeable future.
[00:01:11] Uh, that each Q4 is just as be more and more online shopping. All the trends are pointing that way, but I do want to warn people about going on social media and seeing things about like, oh my gosh, this is going to happen. Like it. Be true. So if you are an e-commerce seller and you’re worried about the lead times for your containers from China, go to the source.
[00:01:28] Okay. Go to the people that are actually shipping and please don’t believe something that you just read on the internet or on Facebook or something like that. Or that’s kind of like tip number one. Um, but based on what we’ve seen as the pandemic started, and I’m speaking from more of a print on demand, KTP self publishing books kind of aspect to this, the lead time.
[00:01:46] On KTP book books, which were normally used to, Hey, it’s prime eligible. You buy it today. It’ll ship today. You might even get it tomorrow. That’s what I love about KDP that went to 10 to 14 days to ship for your KDP self published books, which as an author, you might sit back and be like, I don’t have to worry about Q4 orders going to come in.
[00:02:03] Amazon’s going to ship them all out. It’s going to be great. Uh, they may not ship in time where your customers to get them for Christmas. If it’s a very, uh, date important purchase that they’re making through Q4. So what you might want to do about this and say, look, maybe I want to buy a bunch of author copies now.
[00:02:18] Right? If you’re like, you know, we’re here in October and say, look, it’s October, but I’m going to buy 500 copies so that I can ship them myself to my customers if need be right. Maybe merchant fulfilled. If you’re going to send them FEA, send them early, but just think ahead, think worst case scenario. Not that like, you have to be negative and doom and gloom, but like, Hey, if my products don’t get there, if the lead time on my books was to 14 days, if I can’t get more boxes from you line, yes, my polybag guy is sold out.
[00:02:46] What am I going to do? And start preparing now. And maybe you buy more poly bags and books and boxes and packing supplies and tape because Hey, if you don’t need it for Q4 20, 21, That stuff’s okay. Cause 20, 22 is coming. You’ll be able to use that stuff. But plan ahead, there were so many industries that have been disrupted by supply chain issues specifically related to COVID and it’s going to catch up, but it’s not going to catch up right away.
[00:03:09] So be prepared.
[00:03:11] Jason: Yeah. Yeah, love it. Kyle, what are your thoughts? Yeah,
[00:03:16] Kyle: my, my biggest takeaway for Q4 for 2021 is that it’s going to be a, it’s going to be happening earlier and earlier. We’ve seen this trend occur, uh, where it starts on black Friday, then it’s cyber Monday and it goes through the Christmas season.
[00:03:30] Right? Did it start? Yeah. Amazon made an announcement that basically said they’re launching a new page called epic deals. And so the epic deals page are black Friday level deals. That’s the less than language that they’re using. And what they’re trying to do is essentially extend and make it earlier in the buying season to help solve for the logistics issues, the supply chain issues.
[00:03:56] If you order it now in October, you have a much stronger chance of receiving your packages and your, your gifts and stuff before. If you, if you wait, you may miss it, it may not be available. They might be out of stock. And so Amazon’s making that push. And I think it’s just wise for us to be thinking about that in our own business.
[00:04:16] What can we do to be early? How do we think about our supply chain? I think if COVID taught us anything about supply chains that have a backup plan, And this, this Q4 is only going to reinforce that position, be thinking about your supply chain. We even where it’s coming from. I think that, uh, you know, the, the, getting the delays out of China and the shipping out of China.
[00:04:38] It’s a worldwide logistics issue, but I do think it also forces me to think about, well, what if supply chains in China or disrupted for any number of reasons? And there, there could be a bunch of them. Um, how does that impact your business for the longterm? So I kind of look at Q4 as a microcosm of what can, could happen in the future and, and from a business planning and business continuity perspective.
[00:05:01] What’s your plan? How, how do you get your, your inventory? Where would you be getting married? Facturing done where people shipping to you from? So in my business, that’s what I’ve sort of taken on over the last, even few months of thinking through what that was.
[00:05:19] Jason: So that page, you’re talking about this live right now. We’re recording this on October.
[00:05:23] Kyle: It’s like amazon.com/pages/epic deals. I think that’s the Euro. Um, and it’s, it’s live right now and they’re, they’re putting in deals. They have live video streaming on there, which, yeah, that’s a whole other conversation, but
[00:05:35] Jason: yeah, hot topics.
[00:05:37] And so the moral of the story is it’s already started 10. It’s not really black Friday cyber Monday. It is. It’s the four and it’s
[00:05:44] Kyle: literally Q4 the entire
[00:05:46] Jason: yeah. Yeah. So go for it. All right, Michael, what’s your hot take on Q4 2021
[00:05:52] Michael: loving Chris’s and Carl’s points by the way. Um, my big take is this, that there’s a few things that people.
[00:05:57] The kind of panic reactions and some other things, which to Kyle’s point that we get into bad habits anyway, but Q4 sometimes shows those up more intensively. So for example, pushing for ranking and Q4 is a bad plan when everyone is selling a lot of stuff. If it’s not the time to do that, and you’ve got to take the, the, the rank, you’ve got to make the most profit from it, pushing PPC and Q4.
[00:06:17] Again, it’s getting more expensive anyway, but it’s going to be hyper expensive this year. And again, if you’re looking at. Long-term trends, Amazon ads, for example, but not only that Google ads, everything else is across the platforms are going to be more expensive. And the other thing is obsessing about sales rank, particularly at Amazon disease, I think, but it’s not only limited to Amazon sellers.
[00:06:34] And that is it. Doesn’t actually matter. Once you’ve launched a product, what the sales rank is, what matters is the profits and how quickly you turn your stock into cash and cash into stock? I would say so a couple of very, very simple sounding points, but people don’t actually do this, et cetera. In case of one eight figure salary in the mastermind, I’ve got.
[00:06:51] Is doing this and it’s really, really helping our bottom line, which is price for profit. Remember, there are two upward pricing pressures going on right now, internally we’re getting massive input, cost rises, 10 X, a freight costs from China to us, crazy things, but also that is feeding through now into consumer inflation.
[00:07:08] I think that’s going to really hit like a tsunami wave, um, across the, the newspapers and the internet and social media. We’ll be chatting about it forever. So we have an investment. Which will be more forgiving and rising prices. Then we’ve, most of us have experienced in our sort of Amazon seller lifetimes, really.
[00:07:22] And the other thing is this, that stock, management’s a heck of a thing right now. And trying to import from China is really difficult to lead tons of super hard, not just China, but wherever it is. Um, and therefore running out of stock is the biggest danger to your business. And I would say that once it’s gone, it’s gone.
[00:07:37] You can go from whatever ranking you’ve got is going to go. Overnight once you’ve lost the stock and no revenue, no profit. So the thing is to use price as a stock management tool and really price for profit, more than ever. Don’t worry so much about, um, you know, trying to keep your stock moving, uh, to keep up with the Joneses.
[00:07:55] Just make sure you’re maximizing. The ability to turn that stock into cash, and sometimes you’ll end up doubling your price in order to manage your stock. It’s not really about trying to maximize your price to a crazy degree, but if you went out and stopped, you’re out of everything. So that’s the main thing I would say pretty simple stuff, but very, very effective.
[00:08:13] Jason: Love it. Yeah. Okay. So here’s my hot take. Um, uh, it might be contrarian, uh, but that’s all right. Um, you know, cinnamon and I in our business gave up on high volume, low. Operations a long time ago in a way. And that’s what physical items we, we optimize. We want to optimize. Profit, not for velocity, but we also have a digital goods business where we actually do the opposite.
[00:08:39] We optimize for insane velocity through our own Shopify site. We’ll do you know, uh, 30 to 70,000 transactions a month through our site, but many of them are free. They come in, they flow through it’s free transaction. So, so we play with this. This two ends of the spectrum. Super high velocity was zero profit and low value, low volume.
[00:09:00] Uh, management for PR for profit. And, and I would just challenge everyone to think through, um, what Warren Buffett has wisely said, which is a good business gets better over time and a bad business gets worse and your Q4 should be an expression of the quality of your business. And it, Q4 should not be a dumpster fire.
[00:09:21] It should be a profit. Yeah. Uh, the successful outcome for your business. If you’re managing for Michael, as you said, uh, you know, profit and you’re managing your stock for a profit outcome, not just for a high velocity outcome. And then, you know, throw in the books at your CPA and saying, did I make any money?
[00:09:37] I just not a fan of that approach at all. So that’s my, my hot take is. You know, don’t try to bet the farm. Don’t try to do anything risky. Just manage your business, uh, in a smooth and a reliable way possible one. I’ll save it. I have one other hot take, but let’s just go around the table. One more time.
[00:09:57] Let’s do another one. Maybe just drop it in a, you know, two or three, four sentences. What’s your second hot take. Chris, what do you really want to piggyback on what
[00:10:04] Chris: Kyle was saying? I would sum it up as saying follow
[00:10:08] Jason: Amazon’s lead,
[00:10:09] Chris: right? Like if Amazon is saying, Hey guys, we’re not going to be able to ship all this stuff in the last week of December.
[00:10:15] Let’s maybe we can get people to buy now in October so they can get their stuff. It’s not this, you know, conspiracy to Amazon, just trying to push stuff and boost their bottom line. They’re like, no, how can we keep our customers happy? Honestly, the best ways for them to buy their Christmas gifts in October.
[00:10:30] Right. So Amazon knows that based on all the data points. We can follow their lead and be like, Hey, you know what? I’m going to contact all my customers and say, Hey, just play it safe. There’s a whole bunch of crazy stuff going on, guaranteed. You’re going to have your stuff by Christmas, by buying from me right now in October and locking your order.
[00:10:45] It’s the simplest way. Like, it seems so obvious and I hope more people do it because I’ve been guilty of coming back from vacation the week before Christmas and saying I got prime. I’ll just order everything. It’ll be here until. Nope. It doesn’t work that way two days before. And I had to learn that the hard
[00:11:03] Jason: way your daughter’s crying
[00:11:05] Chris: your kids hardly once and now I buy them.
[00:11:09] Jason: Yeah. Awesome. Kyle, what he got second hot take
[00:11:13] Kyle: that. Just kind of echoing what Michael was saying about inflation and raising prices, obviously price for profit. Um, but also be aware of that. Um, there’s money in the market. Like we’re not facing a shortage of cash. Like the, the money that people are sitting on.
[00:11:29] Uh, is there, you know, because of all the, at least, especially the U S with all of the quantitative easing and money that was printed in sort of flooded into the market and different stimulus things, people, people have that. Now, whether they’re going to feel confident up to really spend a lot over this Q4 is a whole other point of conversation, but there’s money there it’s really supply chain constraints.
[00:11:50] That would, would be the limit in terms of how much sort of Q4 growth and spending that we ended up with. So if people though now are willing to buy and they can get the products now is the perfect time to, to make those marketing pushes, to have this sort of early Christmas, black Friday cyber Monday offer exactly what Chris was saying.
[00:12:11] So get it in front of your getting in front of your people. Change, change, maybe think about that from the holistically in your business. What’s your marketing angles? Like what are your ads saying? What is your homepage? Talk to you? You know, can you run a, an entire black Friday special? You need to start marketing it now.
[00:12:28] And I think if you start taking those actions, you’re going to be pretty happy.
[00:12:36] Jason: Yeah. Um,
[00:12:36] Michael: and kind of said, I think, um, If the constraint to system is supply side, then we manage the supply constraints, right? And we’ve been in an environment where we’ve had low inflation and great supply, by the way, those two things, not coincidentally, the ways of China and globally low inflation for two decades is not a coincidence.
[00:12:52] And I think, um, simple economics, one at one to echo what Kyle was saying, you know, if supply is constrained and demand is still high, then price goes up. At least if you don’t put your price up, you’re going to run out of stock super quickly. The other thing is really. Yeah, just make sure you’re ready for the stock management problems.
[00:13:08] That’s going to be the enemy to your profit and your sales this year. So if you’re selling on a marketplace like Amazon, or even ball, various places offer their own fulfillment and you don’t have a third party. Logistics warehouse get one right now is probably way too late, but it might just be one you can find and do inbound drip feeding, because otherwise you’re going to find even if the stock constraints haven’t hit you yet, they’re going to those just to given that the warehouses all over the world and all e-commerce.
[00:13:33] Fulfillment centers of any kind are going to be full and kind of art, you know, and stand still at some point. And if you can have an alternative to FBA, um, trying to do seller fulfilled prime alternative is really, really hard to replicate, and you’ve gotta be careful with your Amazon seller account metrics.
[00:13:49] I’m sorry to be a big seller, Amazon seller central centric here, but it’s got to be dealt with, so do your best to set it up. And by the way, Too. You’ll find that ETL point. I like Q4 is an asset test for your business. If your business is, has a single point of failure, such as FDA’s your own fulfillment channel, then now is the time to recognize that even if you haven’t got it sorted for Q4, at least take that learning for your business.
[00:14:11] So that 20, 22, you have the option to, to have your own fulfillment channel. That’s going to stay open.
[00:14:18] Jason: Yeah. I love that. Okay. Here’s my final hot take. And then maybe I’ll kick off one final, just a closing thought. I think it’s a beautiful opportunity right now to. Via buyer of anything, be a buyer of inventory, be a buyer of other people’s businesses, be a buyer of new media companies.
[00:14:38] You have an opportunity to, if you’ve got your systems in place for sales, like I guess this commentary is for people who maybe have a bit bigger business who maybe have a sales channel strategy sorted out. And they’re not really that concerned about will we sell product in Q4? Will we do well in Q4?
[00:14:54] They’ve got that bolted down. The bigger opportunity then is to say, Who’s putting their stuff on such a crazy discount right now in my category of space that I should actually be a buyer and, um, look for insane deals. Cause we all know you make your money when you buy. And so that would be one commentary.
[00:15:12] And then my final just, uh, bonus comment is, um, you could always Zig when people’s ag, uh, cinnamon and I are working on a project for her where we’re just going to start selling it right. But the actual delivery of the it’s a big course, won’t start till January 10th. So, you know, people aren’t distracted, so you can, you can avoid Q4 strategic.
[00:15:34] If you want. And our biggest time of the year for our e-commerce operations, actually January every year, um, because of the nature of our product lines. And so, you know, you don’t have to be all in on Q4 when other just because everybody else is. And I think that’s the more thoughtful thing to do is to think to yourself, how does this benefit me most strategically and maybe a Zig when everybody else has ads or maybe I’m a buyer when everybody else’s is.
[00:15:58] And they flip it all around, uh, to do well when other people have maybe made mistakes. Um, so I think that kind of thinking is in order. All right, let’s call a wrap on this hot take, uh, any final comments for the good of the order of final ideas you want to pop in real quick.
[00:16:13] Chris: I want to throw in one more thing.
[00:16:15] This is what I love about this type of format. Like listen to Kyle, listen to Michael was like, oh, wait a minute. More ideas, kind of pop it up all. I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think of that. And honestly, I mean, I’m a, I’m a digital product seller, a print on demand, product seller and a physical product seller.
[00:16:28] Right? So physical product, if it’s sold out, I can’t ship it. It was printed the man and the printers aren’t printing for another 14 days, it’s going to be delayed, but. Well, I can sell digital all day long. And I think like the idea that I want people to really think about it and say, okay, yeah. If worst case scenario, if I’m sold out, if I can get it, but it’s not going to ride by Christmas, what can I sell to my customer?
[00:16:48] What can I give them that might kind of hold them over? Because they might really want to buy from Jason or Jason. I want them buy from you, but like, I can’t get it in time. I know, man. I know there’s no other alternatives out there and I want your business, so Hey, can I give you this? I can give you some digital.
[00:17:00] I can make this amazing looking gift card. Some something that you can give on Christmas day if that’s what you need. And then when it’s back in stock. Everyone else is out of stock too. So it’s not like they have like an instant competitor go through like, oh, if I don’t find Jason’s I was by Kyle’s it’s not a big deal.
[00:17:14] It’s like, no, sorry. That’s life. And I think customers are understanding, especially if you go above and beyond and say, look, I know you can’t get this. I know you really want it, but I can give you this. And when it comes in, I’m gonna give you this. And I’m a double your order. And I’m going to give you this extra stuff.
[00:17:27] I’m going to give you this bonus and just put your customer first and get a little bit creative and all of a sudden got all these orders coming in and then, yeah. Boom. It is. And you’re shipping all of these products and your customers are thrilled that you went above and beyond trying to put their needs as high as they, as you could given the circumstances.
[00:17:41] They’re going to remember that they’re gonna come back to you for 2022.
[00:17:46] Jason: Yeah. Yep. Love it, Michael or Kyla. I love that idea. I do
[00:17:50] Kyle: Chris. I think. Is a amazing action plan and exactly how that’s the mindset you have to take any matter what you’re dealing with Q4 in your business. It’s always like, how can I put my customer first?
[00:18:05] How can I give them a great experience regardless of the external circumstances that I can’t control? There’s there, you have to focus on the things that you can. And what you can control is you can create a digital products. You can create an amazing customer experience. So focus on those things, be aware of the external things and try to plan for them, but even the best laid plans, right.
[00:18:29] Go up and smell crash. So you still have to control what you have to
[00:18:34] Chris: it’s mindset, there’s problems. Find solutions, find creative solution. Don’t sit there complaining about all the boats are too slow. No one cares. We all know, we all know what can we do? What can we do that competitors are doing? And yet it’s an Amazon thing.
[00:18:48] What can we do to put our customer first and provide them the most value
[00:18:51] Jason: if we think like that day in and day out, and you’re going to
[00:18:53] Chris: win
[00:18:56] Michael: final thought for me. Yeah. So what you were just saying, there’s a book by Ryan holiday, um, who, which is called the obstacle is the way, and that’s basically a rewriting of the Marcus Aurelius, the, the Rome floss from racer who said.
[00:19:07] Um, you know, the thing that stands in the way becomes the way. And I think, um, to your point, Kyle, really, if you’ve got to look at your business, Q4 is just a symptom. It’s not the end of the world. If you prepaying for Q4 and this Q4 doesn’t work and you still pre-paying for Q4 is just keep for 20, 22 and Q4 2023.
[00:19:23] And if you’re serious about creating a business, even if you’re going to sell it to somebody else, so they have the headache of running it and you still can’t sell it unless it’s gonna have a future life. And if you’re looking at key four as a symptom of what’s wrong with your business and you’ll depending on physical goods only, it’s a great wake-up call to make sure you create those digital goods.
[00:19:40] And the fact that you’re forced to create those digital goods to your point, Chris, fantastic point could be a complete transformation of your business. I think of Jason and a sediment. Obviously the reason you stopped selling physical goods is kind of burnout from your producers, Hayes, Paul cinnamon, but that forced you to pivot to a business that has turned out to be a fantastic business model.
[00:19:59] So. The obstacle is the way I think is, is absolutely right.
[00:20:04] Jason: Yeah. Love it. All right, guys. This was a great hot take on Q4 2021. Thanks everybody for listening to the show and wherever you’re listening from, feel free to give us a subscribe or a like, or leave us a note. If you can share this with a friend and, uh, we’ll go from there.
[00:20:19] Thanks everybody CSUN.
[00:20:21]