$30,000,000 a year Amazon account. How do I grow it more?

[Kingmaker]

I recently got a job managing ecommerce for a company and feel a bit out of my depth. I also have a cart blanche in terms of what I can do, they specifically wanted to hire a person not to do a specific task but to "grow sales", as vague as that sounds it gives a lot of freedom to me.

Current situation:
Company sells shoes. Not their brand but returns from big box stores.
Marketplaces: Amazon (70% of sales), eBay (20%), all other (10%).
Zero ads on anything.
Zero social media.
Shopify (own store) does ~$3k/mo and is neglected completely.
Company's priority is Amazon because of the numbers on it.

Software used:
ChannelAdvisor

I've managed $1m/yr and $4m/yr Amazon accounts before but the typical stuff I did there like getting reviews, PPC etc doesn't really apply here. I feel like more massive scale moves are needed or out of the box ideas so wanted to see if the forum hivemind or the forum heavyhitters whose done these kind numbers before have any ideas. Thanks!

 

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[AgainstAllOdds]

1. Make your own e-commerce site/instagram/etc selling their products, but hide your ownership of those assets.
2. Whenever you get a sale, find a way to pay the company and make it seem like this "affiliate" is getting them so many sales. Their sales numbers will grow based on your efforts. They'll be happy regardless.
3. Figure out how they buy the shoes. If you can't figure it out, make friends with the procurement individual and get a feel for how much money you'd have to pay them to leave.
4. Break off. Buy your own shoes. Own the distribution.
5. Ignore everything above if you have an enforceable non-compete (which in California good luck enforcing).

 

[Fastlane Liam]

1. Make your own e-commerce site/instagram/etc selling their products, but hide your ownership of those assets.
2. Whenever you get a sale, find a way to pay the company and make it seem like this "affiliate" is getting them so many sales. Their sales numbers will grow based on your efforts. They'll be happy regardless.
3. Figure out how they buy the shoes. If you can't figure it out, make friends with the procurement individual and get a feel for how much money you'd have to pay them to leave.
4. Break off. Buy your own shoes. Own the distribution.
5. Ignore everything above if you have an enforceable non-compete (which in California good luck enforcing).

Bastardy

 

[The-J]

I recently got a job managing ecommerce for a company and feel a bit out of my depth. I also have a cart blanche in terms of what I can do, they specifically wanted to hire a person not to do a specific task but to "grow sales", as vague as that sounds it gives a lot of freedom to me.

Current situation:
Company sells shoes. Not their brand but returns from big box stores.
Marketplaces: Amazon (70% of sales), eBay (20%), all other (10%).
Zero ads on anything.
Zero social media.
Shopify (own store) does ~$3k/mo and is neglected completely.
Company's priority is Amazon because of the numbers on it.

Software used:
ChannelAdvisor

I've managed $1m/yr and $4m/yr Amazon accounts before but the typical stuff I did there like getting reviews, PPC etc doesn't really apply here. I feel like more massive scale moves are needed or out of the box ideas so wanted to see if the forum hivemind or the forum heavyhitters whose done these kind numbers before have any ideas. Thanks!

You know your answer: diversify. 70% on Amazon is just asking to be destroyed in time. If you don't improve that ratio while also growing the total sales volume, the business is going to die faster than you think.

If you're going to do anything like paid social, paid search, etc. you are going to have to optimize for those platforms in as many ways as possible. This may even include line expansion to do so.

Your job, I assume, is to manage the Amazon bit. Do your job there, do what you can to build numbers there, but open up projects to expand in other ways.

Run some tests on the typical visual-based social media platforms like Instagram. Do what you can to make the numbers work there. Instagram and Pinterest are probably the biggest opportunities for shoes, especially discount shoes. You've got the ability to really move some product there.

Run some Google Shopping tests. Shoes is a difficult one but at the very least you'll be able to get some branded search volume. If the prices are right, you'll be able to compete there decently well. Some brands will work better than others.

You're not alone in this, either: use the company's resources to spearhead your initiatives. I assume they've tried all these things, and haven't had success. Come from an approach of optimizing for the platforms, and explain that just running the business as they do on Amazon for every single platform will hurt them.

My experience is working with a single brand ecom company doing 8 figures on a single platform: Facebook. Their ratio was more extreme than yours and they did their best to diversify, but weren't able to do so successfully, and coming from the inside I believe it was because we didn't focus on changing our processes and offers to be most successful on those platforms. We just wanted to sell our product as it was selling on FB. It didn't work, and I don't think it could have worked no matter how many millions we threw at it.

Hopefully this helps