Easy steps can be taken to find things to sell on Amazon. But it can be hard if you want to sell products from another brand. We recently talked to an official Amazon representative for a big music brand about what it’s like to resell items from big brands on the site.
His name is Amar, and he started and runs a consulting company in the Indian city of New Delhi. Since 2006, he has worked in the eCommerce industry.
His business started out by helping companies in the United States that sold more than a million dollars worth of goods every month. Some of the backend consulting services that his company offers to sellers are:
- Where to shop for
- How much to spend
- When to look things up
- When to look at prices
- Designs for graphics
- Making lists of products
- Keeping the books
After four years of helping successful companies in the US with these services, Amar’s business started its own eCommerce business in India. Since then, they have teamed up with some big names in the Indian eCommerce space. Now, they are growing even more, and soon India will have about 20 warehouses.
What Amar did on Amazon
Since 2006, Amar has been selling on Amazon. His company is an official online retailer of major brands. They buy from these businesses and their online partners directly, so there is no middleman.
Amar does more than just sell on Amazon. He also offers a lot of services to help companies sell more on Amazon and stay competitive. Their company has a group of educated, well-trained eCommerce professionals on its staff.
What kind of things does Amar sell?
When Amar first started selling in the U.S. market, the main things that his business sold were musical instruments. Over time, the company’s catalog started to include more and more toys.
Amar worked with major brands and manufacturers to find musical instruments to sell on Amazon. He then resold their products. Yamaha, Casio, JBL, Pioneer, and Denon are just a few of these companies.
They became the official sellers in India for all of these brands. This meant that their Amazon business could buy these branded items at wholesale prices and sell them on other third-party marketplaces, as long as they followed all the rules set by the brand.
How does Amar find vendors and get things from them?
Amar does things himself to find suppliers for his business of selling things on Amazon. He says that many of the brands that his business works with now are ones that he met in person.
The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) conference is one of these events. It’s a big trade show that happens once a year and draws people from all over the world. All the big names in music instruments show up and take part.
Amar says that they would go to NAMM to meet people and talk to brands. This is how he grew his business and met his most important contacts, like Yamaha.
He says that working with those brands has been good so far because they are very professional. They are very strict about minimum advertised price (MAP) and other policy violations, which can be hard.
How to get in touch with big brands
Knowing how to talk to brands is one of the most difficult parts of finding products to sell on Amazon. Major brands need to keep up their reputations, so they only let the right people sell their products.
Amar says that if your business knows how to talk to brands, it can get the partnerships it needs for its products to do well.
Here are some ideas on how to talk to brands:
- Have A Face-To-Face Conversation: If possible, try to meet in person or through Zoom. It makes you look more like a pro.
- Find The Right Person: Getting in touch with the right person can help your business.
- Plan What You’re Going To Do: Your business can stand out if you show the brand.
- Find Out About The Business: Learn as much as you can about the brand before you try to reach out to them. They will be more likely to work with you and take you more seriously.
- Find Ways To Make The Process Go More Quickly: Ask the brand if there are any ways they can help make it easier to find products. Check to see if they can send things straight to Amazon for you.
By taking these steps, your business will be more appealing to brands. Don’t give up if you get turned down by one or more brands. It’s part of the way things work. If you talk to enough businesses, you’ll find good partners for your business.
How to sell name-brand items on Amazon
Research on the product and estimates of sales
Amar’s first piece of advice for people who want to sell on Amazon is to do research on your product and estimate sales before you launch it. With careful product research, you can make sure you know everything there is to know about your potential market.
Estimates of sales help you get a good idea of how profitable your business can be, which lets you make better plans.
Amar uses the different AMZScout tools to estimate how well his products will sell. Using the Pro Extension, he can look up the statistics for any product or niche to find out how many sales it is likely to make each month. He can then use this information to estimate how many sales he will make if he gets the same share of the market.
Use Amazon FBA to make getting things done easier.
Use the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) service to have your Amazon orders shipped and delivered. Amar says that when he first started selling on Amazon in the United States, they had the products they were reselling sent to their own warehouse. When customers bought something, orders would be filled from their warehouse.
Over time, he says, they started using Amazon FBA to handle some of the orders as part of their fulfillment operations. The FBA model is used to fill all orders for their India business.
With FBA, you can ship your items quickly and reliably to your customers without having to worry about the details. Also, you can make your products eligible for Amazon Prime, which will help you get more customers.
Advertise your goods
A great way to get more people to look at your listings is to tell people about your products. Amar says that his business spent a lot of money on advertising when it sold on the Amazon marketplace in the United States. In a competitive market, this helped him make more sales and get more attention.
He says that his business does not need to rely on paid ads as much in India. Instead, they have focused on selling more of their best-selling items and getting more visitors through organic traffic.
From what Amar has done, we can see that both paid and free marketing can help you sell more products on Amazon.
Automation in business
Amar says that one of the hardest things about selling on Amazon in the beginning was how much work he had to do by hand to keep things going. He says that if they wanted to grow the business, it just wasn’t a good idea.
So, he decided to use as much automation as he could. When they did this, business went more smoothly. Everything used to be done by hand. Now, they use automation software and other new technologies to make online processes more efficient.
Amar’s tips for beginners as he leaves
Innovation is important to Amar. He says that if you want your business to grow and do well, you should keep coming up with new ideas for everything.
He says that it’s not good for your business to do everything by hand. It takes up a lot of your time, leaving you with no time to make money. Instead, you should automate as many tasks as you can so you can focus on what’s most important: finding new business opportunities and solving any problems that come up.
