024: Dano Falk Mastering Amazon, Brand Identity, and Global Expansion

Speaker 1:
0:00

Welcome everyone to the Brandfortress HQ podcast. I'm your host, john Stojan. Today, I'm excited to have Dan O'Folk on the podcast, and Dan O is the founder of DevDevDevice, where his team specializes in creating tailor made online marketing strategies. He's a self taught entrepreneur with decades of experience in online marketing and sold his Amazon business in 2019, has plenty of experience in the Amazon space and beyond. Dan O, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Speaker 2:
0:26

Hey, oh yeah, thank you for having me, John. It's a new experience kind of to me to be on the side of the podcast, Because normally I'm on your side Because, as you know, I also have two podcasts actually and, yeah, I'm taking notice how you're running the show, man, and I'll be, I'll be learning from you. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:
0:47

Well, yeah, and I was on your podcast probably about six months ago and definitely learned a lot from the experience and that was fantastic to get a chance to kind of share, you know, my journey on Amazon, so I would definitely encourage listeners to check out that episode if you're interested in kind of you know my origin stories, but also to hear, you know, listen to the other amazing people that you've had on your podcast. So, yeah, so for people are listening that maybe aren't familiar with you, can you give a little bit of background about yourself and kind of you know how you got to Amazon?

Speaker 2:
1:24

Sure, well, it's been a long story. My life after school started as studying jazz, saxophone, just you know, to give like a starting point. But from there I venture into those days. It was called desktop publishing. Like in the early 90s, there was this thing where you could like create layouts on a computer and print them. So that was a big thing. And a guy I met at the actually at a film set suggested hey, let's, let's do a desktop publishing company, and that was the start of my clicking time. And internet and digital, I would say. Then I learned, I picked up a lot about multimedia from those agencies where I started as an intern. I created my own agency in Munich in 2000. And we were lucky enough to get like really big clients like Siemens and then Finian and the EDS, and work with them on their interactive media. Then I had a. So in 2009, ish, I started to like the idea of living in Malaysia, so I moved here in 2011, started to live here permanently. At the same time, I visited a webinar or seminar, actually a conference about like business in general, and there was this thing, this guy on stage, saying that you could actually sell on Amazon yourself. I think that was in 2014. And that was new to me. To me, amazon was a bookstore and I didn't know, like, like party people could just open an account and sell stuff. So I thought, huh, well, I have all this digital design background, why not? We tried this one? So, yeah, I started, I opened my private label accounts. Of course, there was a. It was a long journey to learn all the you know things you need to know to sell on Amazon, build your brand and import stuff. So I think selling on Amazon kind of involves almost everything. So you have to find a supplier, you have to take care of logistics, of packaging. I mean, I don't have to tell you guys, like, what it's like to sell on Amazon. But it was a long journey. And in 2019, I decided to sell my business, which was another very interesting journey as well and an experience I recommend every entrepreneur to go through. It's, it's very unique and it's yeah, you're again. You learn a lot when you, when you actually sell your business on one of these online market platforms. And after that, I decided to to go back to my agency work, because I enjoy helping other businesses to grow, cooperating with humans and with companies. So, yeah, this, this is what I'm doing with my agency dev device since then, yeah, and today we focus on building strategies, consulting and bringing and helping brands to start on Amazon Japan, which is kind of in our neighborhood not really, but, but yeah, it's one of the things that turned out to be like not very familiar to many Western brands, or there was like a lot of hesitation and a lot of like questions around this, like expansion to Amazon Japan and we we helping brands to answer these questions.

Speaker 1:
4:46

Okay, yeah, and I definitely want to jump into and ask you a lot of questions about Amazon Japan, because I think that's such a unique opportunity for Amazon sellers that really doesn't get a lot of attention. But before we go there, I'm just really curious. You know you talked a little bit about selling your business and I think that's one of the things you know for any business owner that's listening to this, and you know Amazon focus brand is one keeping the end in mind, as far as, at some point, you know you're going to either sell your business or you're going to shut down your business. Hopefully you're going to be successful and sell that business. So, as someone who's been through that process, you know you set a couple of interesting things, at least to me, which is, you know, first of all, selling. You know what made you to decide to want to sell or to sell your business in 2019? And what did that process look like at that time selling on a platform.

Speaker 2:
5:40

It was a very scary decision, but I mean, one of the things I realized that as long as you grow your Amazon business, it's very difficult to take cash out of it. Actually, you know you have a, you know you hit the new sales record in a month and you're very happy you see all the sale, but at the same time your inventory is gone. So now you have to order more, and it's kind of this cycle where you know, whatever you make, you have to kind of reinvest into the next batch of inventory and do it in the next batch of marketing and stuff. So I found it quite difficult to actually, you know, get to keep some money from this. So and of course, one of the ways is to monetize on this venture is to simply sell it, and that's what I did. And the process was to to check out some marketplaces. I mean, I had some personal connections with the guys from Empire Flippers. I joined one of their masterminds in Pocket, which was amazing. It was such a cool event, like you know, overlooking the ocean on a, you know, in a villa and networking with all these Amazon guys, and so they run one of the most professional marketplaces for online businesses. So they do the vetting. So you can just, you know, talk to them and they will bring your listing onto their platform and they will also do the, you know, they will check, you know, if what you say is true. So that was one option. And then I also spoke to another agency called Quiet Light Brokerage and I ended up actually selling through them and, yeah, so the process is just to find the broker you want to work with and then there will be like an exclusivity. So when you decide to, you know, to work with this broker, you have to kind of stick with him and you cannot have like multiple things in the oven. We have to really limit yourself to just working with this broker. And then they list it, they talk to the existing clients and then you know, you get the first requirement inquiries. You start getting on calls with, you know, potential buyers, which can be really scary because at the back of the head you're thinking like where this guy could be my competitor, you know, so he could be just like digging deep into what's happening in my business and there's no way, you know, stop it. I cannot like not tell him, like you know, what are my sales, what are, what is my who's, my manufacturer and all that. So you have to be like completely pants down about your business, which is a very scary experience, but eventually it was okay. So, yeah, so you go through this a few times and then, and then, as soon as somebody's interested, they, you sign it an LOI like a letter of intent, and then you go to the next level of sharing all the information and sharing you know your sales history and how your business works and all that. So, and then when, after everything is checked off and you agree on the price, of course that's one of the biggest issues to actually go to the actual sales process. So, as the price is agreed upon, then you go to the purchase agreement and then the takeover starts, you know, starts to happen. So then you start kind of there's an escrow, you know the money goes into an escrow account, and then you kind of pass over the business you give them access to to your seller account, which can be really messy, by the way. So you know, I'm still have some email address stuck in my old seller account which gives me headache, because as soon as you just want to open a new account, then this one email address you know that is linked to you will still kind of put this red flag and in Amazon saying, oh, you have another account, so just a heads up on this console. You have to make sure that you really kind of take out everything personal connected to you. When you sell the business and the like, somebody else take over your cell account, which is, of course, much easier if it's easier to run by an lc of a like, by an entity, by company, so then it's, it's been done, the buyer would take over the company and your personal details are not really involved. But if you're running this as a personal account, especially when you're outside of the US, yeah, then you have a new also need to delete your, your customer account, like your Amazon buyer account. That's also something that's linked to it. I realize that, like all my audio books suddenly went missing, I didn't have access anymore to my whole collection of Audible. You know, like five hundred dollars worth of books were gone because I didn't take care of it. So yeah, it comes with a few, you know, unexpected consequences. But yeah, if we do it right, then, yeah, after some time you see the money in the bank and that's kind of a nice experience to have.

Speaker 1:
10:28

Yeah, yeah, and I want to double click on you know one of the things you said there, because I think it's so important for a lot of Amazon sellers to recognize which is a good portion of the value in your business Is gonna end up in your bank account when you sell it, and up into that point, sometimes it can be really hard to actually, you know, have profit being put into your pocket as opposed to, like you said, once you start looking at making sure you've got enough inventory and then taking into account that you know if you want to continue to grow, that you need to be launching new products. So that's product development and inventory for new products and you know, ppc. Everything else that's involved is that you know I a good portion of your profits from the business are gonna come when you essentially at the end, when you cash out.

Speaker 2:
11:20

Yeah, yeah. So my, the kind of summary of this which came to my mind is when you grow, your broke Definitely exceptions to this rule, but, as you mentioned before, all these things that you need to do while you grow, they all cost money and they easily take up all your profits. So, yeah, so you're always kind of at the edge, you know, with your finances, because everything that's coming in needs to be like reinvested. And yeah, and that's one of the reasons why. And then, of course, when you, when you cash out, you get like three years of profits, you know at once which is can be very nice amount of money.

Speaker 1:
12:02

Yeah, absolutely so. Is there anything you know kind of thinking back on that process that surprised you about it? Or you know you kind of talked about the difficulties of switching Amazon accounts, but is there anything that you you can think of the wish you had done differently?

Speaker 2:
12:21

I think not really. I think I did it right, except for the you know, for the glitches with the you know what, leaving behind some of my details and not removing myself from the account. Other than that, I think I did a good job. Yeah, they're listening.

Speaker 1:
12:38

On the back for that. Who else is gonna do that? True, very true, okay. So I think that's a good transition, because you talk about selling the brand, but you know, I think transitions really well into one of the topics that we were kind of discussing before we hit record here, which is Talk about brand identity. And you know, both on and off Amazon, you know what are you seeing now with the brands you're working with as far as having to develop that brand identity.

Speaker 2:
13:19

Yeah, that's a good question and, of course, if you want to increase your business value, this the lot of moving parts in this, of course is a progression of your profits and and how automated your business is. But then, of course, the to be present Of Amazon, I think, is one very essential part of it, and not only if you want to sell your business, but also if you want to grow it and grow your brand and if you don't want to be in the cheap category, which I personally Would not recommend to anyone, to be the cheapest guy on on page one. I would rather be, you know, the best guy on page one, and for that we need more than a listing, because Amazon is not a branding platform, it's just a selling platform and the first thing that you see on Amazon is price and reduce. So if you want to sell at a higher price, if you want to sell premium product, then the off Amazon presence becomes super essential. So People, before they spend double of what the cheapest guy is asking, they would like to know who you are and then they will look you up on Google and then what shows up on Google better, you know, be solid and legit. So that's why the off Amazon presence is. So I mean, I just did a study for a client yesterday and one of the ways I do that I simply like collect like five competitors. I just put the asians into Google and see how many search results come up Of course, including, you know, my clients a sent and see like. It's very simple, you know, google will tell you how many times this is and has been, you know, shows up in any online platform or any website and it can be quite amazing. You know, when you, when you see, like, if one is in the showing up three times and the other one is showing up four hundred times, it gives you a very good clue about, like what these guys are doing off Amazon and, more often than not, the one the guys who are showing up four hundred times also have like a significant higher amount of sales and rankings on Amazon. So, yeah, so to do stuff not just with your brand website, but also to cooperate with affiliate partners, with, with new I mean with with news websites, with blocks. I remember having like the biggest sales day ever. I had it when I was selling on Amazon came actually from a magazine, from an online magazine which picked up a press release that I submitted. Yeah, so this is one of our services, by the way is submitted press releases which go out to news websites. And these guys, they saw this press release, they kind of Took note of some unique features of my product and then they wrote an article about this product and link to Amazon and suddenly my sales went from, I don't know, from ten units per day to one hundred. So that was one example like how of Amazon presence can make a big difference. And, yeah, in the long run, I think we know one can kind of go around this. I think we need the Amazon presence and the second option of that is, of course, to expand to other Amazon marketplaces and which we have. I don't know how many have do we have now 24, something like there's a lot of yeah and just you know, take yeah.

Speaker 1:
16:55

Yeah. So before we dive into that, let's, you know, kind of ask. I want to ask some questions about this because I that is the theme that I'm hearing over and over again. As you know, amazon matures is that it means that in order to compete, you really have to have a very cohesive and strong brand. The days of just, you know, going to Alibaba and finding a product and buying it from Alibaba and selling on an Amazon Are pretty much over, along with the days of, hey, I'm going to take, you know, find a Product based on keyword research on Amazon that I'll find in Alibaba and I'll add, you know one little feature to it and then, you know, sell that on Amazon. That is becoming a much more difficult route and really the people that are, you know, still seeing strong success on Amazon have this kind of, you know whole brand concept. That includes on Amazon but also, like you said, off Amazon. So for you know, the sellers that are listening to this and you know, maybe, the folks that even have, you know some some of those off Amazon branding pieces, what recommendations would you give as as starting places for Building that brand to be, you know, more of a traditional brand than just somebody who's selling A collection of products, any Amazon.

Speaker 2:
18:24

Yeah, I mean your own brand website is the obvious starting point which nobody should miss. So you should have a really well-built website and Ideally combined with an online store when people can choose if they want to buy from you on your web store or if they want to go to Amazon, or you can have both. You know you can have like a different domains. One is just you about your brand and then you can have it in you come store. So that is definitely like the cornerstone of your off Amazon presence and no serious brand will ever miss out on that. And the second layer is, of course, how you cooperate. How, how do you network? How do you create like meaning, feel a meaningful Connections and relationships with the, with people with like joint venture kind of thing? Yeah, so you know if, if you selling dog leashes and and you can find a guy who's selling dog food and and you can kind of in high like support each other's products, that makes a lot of sense. So you know if you're catering to the same audience and Providing different products. I mean this is where I would look for cooperation opportunities and to engage and reach out to people you know who are kind of catering to the same audience and then Create corporations. I mean you can put inserts into your packages and and also promoting like other people's products. Or you can, of course, cross promote on your websites. You can, you know, you can do YouTube videos, you can. You can, of course, work with influencers. Tiktok has become a big thing now. I mean I just Attended the webinar yesterday the Tiktok shop the topic is something nobody should ignore at the moment and, yeah, but, but eventually it's all about networking. To me, it's all about, you know, building your presence on many different websites and magazines and blogs Out there. I mean there's reddit, there's all. I mean I don't have to list them down, but to be present like multiple times, like a Ideally hundreds of times. When I look for your essence and it shows up like a hundred over times in Google, I think that's when we have done a good job.

Speaker 1:
20:42

Yeah, yeah, and one of the things I just want to point out there, because I feel like there's a huge opportunity that gets missed a lot, which is the joint ventures that you mentioned, and I feel like Amazon is such a unique place where, because you can see somebody's brand and product, you can very easily find, you know, complimentary businesses to your own, like you said. Oh yeah, you're an example of the dog food and the dog leash, and the nice thing is is that now that Amazon Well, I think it's been there for about a year now has a requirement to where every business has to have, you know they're official business name and they have to have an address and those types of things, it's actually easier than ever in order to actually figure out who's selling that product. So, you know, even if the brain maybe you can't find the brand name because maybe they haven't gotten as far as you know what you're suggesting, they don't have that website yet, you can still find their seller name and usually in a lot of those cases, you can find some contact information and, like you said, you know reaching out to brands that are on your level. They're already. You know they might be selling, you know, a thousand units a month On a very small scale, and even at that, that's you know a thousand customers that are the same customers that you have, and so you know you can benefit your business a lot. You can benefit their business and and you know, ultimately, the customers that you have in common by working together, and there's you know a million different ways that that can be done in different promotions. You can do with that. Are there any promotions or anything that you can think of off the top of your head that you've where you've seen that joint venture done well recently?

Speaker 2:
22:27

Yeah, the one that the one that I mentioned to have Content posted in a magazine that has decent traction was was one of my best experiences. The other ones is just creating content together. So you know, a swapping Content. So I write the blog post for you, you write a blog post for me, so you know, you're on your dog food sites now people can read about, you know, the special dog leash, and the other way around. So this content swap to me is one of the most important parts and, of course, if it can happen in video form, it's even more effective. You know, what we're doing here right now is if kind of a content swap. You know, you, I do a Podcast with you, you do a podcast with me, you know. So you know this is, of course, we have to be creative, depending on the niche and the product. But, yeah, to have to kind of support each other's content, I think is the name of the game and what Precisely the content is and what's the format. So that, of course, depends on what, what we have available. Now the two of us have both podcast available, so you know we can do that if we just have websites or YouTube channels, or, you know Instagram or whatever, then we would use use those channels to swap content. But I think that's basically what it is and Amazon tells you, you know, frequently bought together. You know that's as easy as it gets, you know if you just check those out.

Speaker 1:
23:57

Yeah, yeah, and there's, I mean Within Amazon. There's a ton of opportunities there. But then even you know if you have your own customer list too of oh yeah well, that's a big one I go to mention that yeah.

Speaker 2:
24:10

Exactly see that, yeah, so, yeah, thanks so much. I mean that is also. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have your own email list and your old customer list. I mean, yeah, that is a really, really important part. And, of course, as soon as you have an email list, yeah, you can send an email like promoting your business, your joint venture partner and the other way around. That also can be very massive.

Speaker 1:
24:36

Yeah, and especially with how much. And I think this segues really well into the external traffic conversation. You know, we all know, that Amazon absolutely loves external traffic when we look at ranking and giving more visibility to products. So how do you? How do you? You know, I think external traffic has become one of those kind of buzzwords like optimize your listing where it is really important, but Sometimes people have used it when it's just a kind of a generic term, but it's super important when you get into the detail. So how do you think about Using external traffic effectively and what strategies have you seen work well?

Speaker 2:
25:19

So one that worked well for us and is press releases. They can make a big difference. It is a lot of like Chance and and it's can be a bit random, like how much traffic exactly comes from these press releases, but this can be a significant source of traffic and they are like forever, I. So when we publish a press release about the brand, including the, you know the ace in URL, it goes out to 400 news sites and this article will be there for years. So you know it's, it's gonna be an ongoing traffic source for people who search for these long-term, you know keywords, which we include. That's one. Then, of course, as we just mentioned that, the email blast. You know If, if you have a partner with a big email list and then you know they can send a link to your listing from that list. That's, that's huge. Beyond that, of course, we have the classic ways of running Facebook ads. So, which I would also do, like you know, on a, on a, in a humble way. You know I wouldn't expect, you know, to make a profit from running Facebook ads to my listing, but it still is, still can help, you know, with with external traffic as well as Google ads. So you know, the classic platforms running a little bit of paid advertising which you know, which brings people to the, to my listing. Yeah, these would be like the basic four channels I would start with and then, of course, we can get creative about, you know, youtube and and whatever else is happening in our niche.

Speaker 1:
26:54

Okay. Yeah, and I think it was something that's related really closely to this that have been our notes as well is Talking about, you know, building and engaging that audience. So I've seen a number of different brands that I've worked with that have done really well at you know, developing a good process to Collect email addresses from their customers, to get them on a list, and then what happens from there is they never email them. You know, before we get to kind of my pet peeves with that, maybe you know again, this is one of those kind of cliches is like build, engage your audience. Well, talk to me a little bit about, from your perspective, what do you see work really well in order to build that audience, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about you know engagement and what you're seeing work well.

Speaker 2:
27:52

Yeah, I mean building your audience. The obvious route for an Amazon brand or somebody who's only selling on Amazon for now is to have some kind of inserts. I mean the you know the value proposition of we extend a lifetime warranty for your product. I don't think that's working anymore so well. I think it used to some point in time, but I mean, these days we just have to, we have to include an offer that that is just too good to not be taken upon. So we have to include some like a QR code, some kind of coupon, some kind of yeah, like several propositions of value before people actually sign in and leave the email address to join your list. Another great way to build your list of crosses you have an online store, so then you know there is no questions asked about whether people leave the email address or not. So as soon as you sell something on your e-commerce store which is another huge reason to have one is that you know you're building your list automatically, so there's no question about if you get the email address or not. Yeah, and then, of course, there would be other lead generation sources. I mean you can. Again, it really depends on your kind of product. Is it B2B, b2c. It's more rare to have B2B products on Amazon, but you can still like you can, reach out to your potential audience and one of the systems that we have is actually to. You can actually capture your website visitors, email addresses and names. So that is, that's another system. We call it the VLC, the visitor leads conversion system. So if you have a website and online store and, as we know, 2% of them convert into customers or subscribers, but we can capture on 15%, so you can kind of seven X your conversion rate in terms of lead generation from your existing e-commerce store and build your email list pretty fast.

Speaker 1:
30:07

How does that so? The technology behind it makes sense as far as you know cookies and identifying people and the reality of it is there. You know, I know my email address is out there in a number of different places, so I get email from all kinds of people and that's just you know kind of the world we live in. But what does that look like? What is an effective approach? With somebody who maybe visited your website, you're able to have, you know the data and the background through the system you talked about in order to email them. What does that warm up sequence look like? Because I got to imagine customers, kind of out of the blue, if they didn't give their email, might be a little bit alarmed if they get an email from a company that they didn't necessarily provide the email to you.

Speaker 2:
30:47

Yeah, of course we have to be super polite and super slow with our. I mean slow in terms of not aggressive, but the sequence normally looks like that that we send the first email within the first 10, 15 minutes and people are surprised and most of the time in a good way that you know. We say, hey, you visited our website and you know, you saw, you showed interest and this and that, and then we just provide a bit more information and maybe a special coupon for people who are looking around to want to buy a dog leash. And you know we just like took note, our system took note that you, you know, want to buy a dog leash, so here is a special promo code. So this is normally the first email we would send. And then after that we do like a bit of a brand introduction. So the next emails will be more about you know what is behind the brand, why is this brand trustworthy, what is the brand story? We send pictures of the founders, stuff like that, and then so it's a basic like a five, five step email sequence where we do a mix of introduction, of connection building and sending some special offers, and more often, I mean, of course people can unsubscribe. So if they're not comfortable, they can always unsubscribe. But more often than not we see that people actually appreciate this, and I mean, they're looking for our product and of course they know they're looking at other websites and but and but if you are the one who stands out because he follows up and gives them like a special offer, they see that as an opportunity, as a value, more than something that they are, you know, uncomfortable with.

Speaker 1:
32:37

Okay, what is the kind of the range of open rates and click through rates look like for those that email campaign?

Speaker 2:
32:49

Well, that's a very big variety, man. It really depends on the brand, on the offer, on, you know, on the type of audience, but but we see open rates somewhere between like 20 and 60%. So it's so there's a lot of. There's a big variety of how big it is in a particular for a particular client. But we do see, you know something, you know between 20, 60%, like that.

Speaker 1:
33:17

Okay, which I mean, from my understanding seems like it's pretty in line with what you would see from your regular email list.

Speaker 2:
33:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it is more or less. Yeah, it has the same engagement. Basically, like like a normal newsletter, I would say it's not much different.

Speaker 1:
33:39

Okay, yeah, and I think you know especially if you've got more than I really like about what you described in that sequence is it's not just sell, sell, sell, because I mean, obviously customers are there because they're researching some sort of product and interested in buying something. However, you know, I think having that telling the brand story behind it is is really powerful, so people can really understand and connect with why the brand exists, what you know, who it's designed to serve and is able to really tell their story, as opposed to, you know, just putting up an ad where there's not really, there's pretty limited context that you can provide. Yeah, very neat. Well, the next thing that I kind of wanted to wait till the end, but I did want to make sure that we covered it which is selling in Japan. So, you know, obviously Amazon US is the still the by far the biggest marketplace. We hear a lot about expanding into Europe and even, you know, a little bit into the Middle East, but Japan seems like one of those areas that is fairly new to the Amazon process. So tell me about selling in Japan.

Speaker 2:
34:57

Surprisingly so it's kind of new to many people. Well, it's, the market size of Japan is around 10% of the US and but it is the fourth biggest marketplace and most people can don't believe it. At least, I'm very surprised to hear that Japan is actually the fourth biggest marketplace and not Brazil or, you know, italy or whatever. So it goes like that it's US, uk, germany and Japan. Is not funny. So Japan yeah, it is. It has a very reasonable size. There's a big affinity to online shopping, to Western brands. There's a big affinity to China. So if your products come from China, I mean it's obviously saved like a lot in terms of shipping time and cost. So you know there's a lot of reasons to sell in Japan. But of course, there's also a lot of obstacles, which the biggest one is the culture, of course. So you know, japanese is not just a different language, it's. It's a compound of like three different scripts mixed with English in between. Sometimes when it goes, you know when people describe Western products. So it's it's quite a jungle to navigate and Google Translate is not really do the job, you know, to translate your listings. So you have to understand a lot of things about Japanese culture. You have to know that Japan consists of 98% of Japanese. So it's it's a very homogenous, homogenous English, homogenous yeah there you go.

Speaker 1:
36:45

Homogenist, I even said it wrong Homogenist, there we go.

Speaker 2:
36:48

Homogenist. Yeah, see, I'm a German who still learns English here, thanks, yeah, so you know, 98% of people have the same nationality. I mean, if you look at the US, the biggest nationality portion is 30%, which is Germans again, surprisingly so. So, yeah, yeah, so that's one. And of course they are important regulations, so they are super particular about anything that's food related. So even if you are selling spatulas, you know they have to go to a lab test because they would touch somebody's food. So there's this part to be aware of. And then, of course, you have to register your trademark in Japan, because you cannot just carry over. You know, like your USPTO registration, you have to register your trademark at a place called Platt Pot. And yeah, I know it's, it's a good name to it. Yeah, it's easy to remember. You just go to Platt Pot and register your trademark. So, yeah, there are a few things, you have to a few loops, and then you have to find a partner on the ground who would be your importer, so somebody who would handle, like, your customs clearance, who would receive your goods and send them to Amazon. But, yeah, we have all that taken care of, so we can help with all of that. Then you have to create your listings and there are two ways about that. So you can simply import your USASIN, for example, and carry over all your existing reviews, which has the big upside of you. You're starting, you know, with I don't know 100, 200 reviews with a new listing in Japan, which, of course, is great. On the downside, you have to deal with this localization of your images, which is supposedly easy, but to actually make it work, it has some very unexpected results. So Seller Central is working very funny in many ways. When you submit an image then it just gets rejected because suddenly it's another seller who's in control of the listing. Or then it shows up in the US and suddenly you have, like, a Japanese listing showing up in your US marketplace. So there are some unexpected consequences of this. But still, I mean it makes sense, of course, to do this. When you have a significant amount of good reviews in another marketplace, you can just carry over the listing and kind of localize the images and there you go. And the other way, of course, is just to start a new listing in Japan and then get some vine reviews and get started with and be in full control of that Japanese listing. So, yeah, that is all doable. The challenge again, as I mentioned, gets certified like deal with the cultural barrier. Of course we have to do our research first. I mean I would not recommend to just go and start in Japan without doing like a proper marketplace research, which we also can help with. So we have to understand how many units are being sold, at what price, what is the competition. So we just need to set the expectations right before we invest in this process, which is can come with a bit of investment and can take quite some time to make it all work and to put it all together. But yeah, but then again, it can be something very helpful to expand, to grow the value of your business, to grow your global presence as a brand. And some brands are really taking off and Japanese people love their products. So it can be, you know, you could end up selling much more than 10% of what you're selling in the US if it's a good product market fit.

Speaker 1:
40:29

Yeah, when I get you know, would imagine. I mean the competition in the United States is very intense, whereas, like you said, with those barriers in Japan, I would imagine that the competition used to be a lot less than what we encounter in the US marketplace.

Speaker 2:
40:50

Yeah, yeah, my friend Gary Huang brought up an example recently. Let me try to get it straight. He said what was it? I think yoga pants or something like some like really really popular product. They had, I don't know like 23,000 reviews, 4.6 star in the US, and the top selling product in the same category in Japan had like 260 reviews and like at 3.8 rating. So you know, just just. I mean, this kind of gives you like an idea like how different the competition can be. So you're not competing against the guy who had like 20,000 reviews, but you know, with someone who has 200 reviews, which so it's that can be can be much easier to compete in Japan.

Speaker 1:
41:43

So are there categories of products that you see, or that you would, from what you've seen, that work really really well selling in Japan?

Speaker 2:
41:56

I would say, like gaming related stuff can be quite big because Japanese people, they really like gaming. And then beauty products you know, like beauty brands which managed to get all the certifications and they managed to appeal to Japanese audience, they can, they can also be very successful. Yeah, it's Japanese people have you know, they have this, they like sophisticated stuff and you know you can, you can get their attention and you can get sell for much higher prices when you sell something like really special in a certain niche. So I think there is a big opportunity to to cater to like high, you know, people with high quality demands, you know who are willing to spend more. And it's a variety of niches and like, I would say like and, as I said, beauty electronics for gaming specifically, and then things that are related to ceremonies and to cooking. So I think there's a lot of potential there, okay, so with that said, I mean if we look at the flip side, you know you talked a little bit about.

Speaker 1:
43:18

You know some of the different regulations on products specifically. You know like a spatula needs to have some additional testing that it probably wouldn't have to have in the United States. Are there certain categories that you find to be extremely challenging when you look at the Japanese marketplace and trying to get that imported and ready for sale on Amazon?

Speaker 2:
43:43

Well, I wouldn't say extremely challenging, but I think the biggest challenge is like supplements, beauty products. These are the ones that that that need a lot of testing and where the testing process can take months. So, yeah, I mean, a spatula will obviously move faster because you know you don't have to go into the ingredients of it. It just has to prove that it's kind of clean. But but yeah, so, yeah, so everything people ingest like supplements and put on their skin, those, those take the longest to get approved.

Speaker 1:
44:23

OK, and do you see what are your recommendations around? Like certain business sizes for brands, at what point expanding in Japan, maybe 30? You know they're currently selling in the US marketplace and they're like OK, I'm thinking about expanding. Is there a certain you know kind of threshold or size where you see it being, you know, really an advantage of launching in Japan?

Speaker 2:
44:52

Yeah, I would say as soon as you are at the point with your that's a US business, where you're ready and you have the resources to expand to a new marketplace, you know which could be your, your Ecom store or a different country. As soon as you're ready to do that, I think Japan should be on your list, and of course it's different for every brand. You know when are they ready to expand? That I still like kind of make trying to make ends meet or do it ever like a solid amount of sales and some profit going on? So they have some resources you know to to expand. I mean that's given. But as soon as you are ready to expand and every business owner will know when that's the time, then I think you should consider Amazon Japan to be on your list. And and you know, the things you should check on are, like I mentioned before, like do your products come from China, for example? That would be a big plus to go there. If your products don't need certification, that would be another big bonus. So it could be a no brainer. You know, if you are in this category where you don't need to certification, where you're shipping from China, that's. I mean that that's where I would definitely start selling in Japan. If that's not the case, then then I would just do more research and do like proper marketplace research before I make a decision.

Speaker 1:
46:15

OK, well, and you talked about, you know, the big advantage, or at least the opportunity for selling in Japan and being, you know, the fourth largest marketplace which I think you talk to the vast majority of Amazon sellers in the United States. I don't think that most would guess that Japan is that large of a marketplace. What else do you think that maybe, that we haven't talked about so far? Is there anything else that you think that's really important that sellers know about before they consider, either before they consider selling in Japan?

Speaker 2:
46:54

I think one thing I haven't mentioned is external traffic, so that one can be another challenge in Japan, because the you know the normal things that we kind of a no brainer to have for a Western brand, like, for example, their own brand website, is, it doesn't come as easy because we have to, yeah, we have to do it in Japanese. That's number one. Then the social media traffic, and of course I mean the press release, the ones that we use. We cannot use them for Japan because you know they are in English and our network of news platforms is in English. So there's a lot of things that you suddenly you know that kind of you cannot do. Facebook ads, for example. I mean Facebook is one of the least popular channels in Japan. They all crazy about this thing called line, which where some people don't even haven't even heard of.

Speaker 1:
47:56

You're familiar with that.

Speaker 2:
47:58

Yeah, exactly. So you suddenly you know you want to do, you want to run your Facebook ads, and you realize that there is no one day on Facebook I mean not that bad, bad, but but it's it's Consider it to be like a very niche channel. Facebook. It still exists, but even then you know your ads have to be in Japanese and all that. But you know that the whole online media landscape works a bit differently in Japan. So to expand your brand beyond Amazon in Japan can be another set of challenges which, again, can be handled, but don't expect it to be the same as in UK, for example.

Speaker 1:
48:42

OK, so we've covered a lot talking about Japan, brand building, engaging audiences, all those types of things. Is there? Maybe you know one action item that you would leave listeners with that you think that they should consider looking at first before they dive into, you know, maybe some of the other topics that we've talked about today?

Speaker 2:
49:12

Another action item. Well, to me, if I mean, they're all these business action items, but I'm also a big believer in mindset and how you know how we live our lives. And if I had to bring up the next most relevant action item, I think it would be about how we think and how we structure our, our day, and then how we you know how we think about our business. I think that would be could be Much more relevant than any of the other techniques that I have mentioned just now. So I think to to sit down in the morning and to have this you know vision of where this business should be going, how we want to feed about it and what we can imagine in, you know, in our future. I think that would be the next action item on my list and it might be even more important than the other ones I mentioned. To have you know, to get our mindset straight, to get this To be in the right state, to to you know to run our day and to do our daily tasks. I think that is a very important thing to to consider as an entrepreneur, especially because we are in charge. You know we, it's about us. It's about how we do things, how we think about things most of all, and how we feel about things. That makes the all the difference, and so this should be definitely our list of things to take care of. Okay, but I like that answer details of that. Yeah, but the details of this would cover like another five webinars. So, yeah, this, of course. This is I just just to mention it.

Speaker 1:
50:53

Okay, well, I know that you know everybody kind of has their own approach to that, but I think you know, just having that perspective of you know, rather than diving into this tactical strategy on Amazon or external traffic or the other things we've talked about, of Having that intention and having a vision for what it is you want to build, like you said, especially as an entrepreneur, where we have, we're given this unique gift, where we get to create a good portion of our world and you know, we get to choose what that looks like and making sure that we're choosing what we really want, as opposed to what we think that we should have or think that our other people think that, how we should do things, everything that's kind of wrapped up in that. So I think I think I, for me, personally think about and I think for a lot of our listeners to, as they think about, the vision for their business. So, with that said, folks that want to learn more about you, dano, or interested in expanding in Japan or any of the other things that we've talked about, where can they learn more about you?

Speaker 2:
51:53

Well, there's a website called down or five dot com. That's the easiest one to remember. I guess it's simply my name, dot com. So this is my personal website when I cannot mention, like most, things that are important to me, and, of course, including my business. Dev device dot com is my agency and you can easily find my agency website as well, my main, my best email as darno at dev device dot com or darno at darno five dot com. So there are many dot coms you can use for my name and yeah, so there's a podcast. I mean, yeah, I have a dj website as well, but yeah, I think you don't know if you as a commerce email would do work best, and then the URL down. The fact will come.

Speaker 1:
52:40

Okay, yeah, and we'll make sure to put some of those into the show notes, that way people can find them easily as well. Well, dano, thank you so much for being on the podcast and walking us through everything from you know brand identity To engaging audiences to selling on Amazon. Japan really appreciate it.

Speaker 2:
53:00

What's the pleasure to be here. Thanks, man.