← The CPG Guys
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- [00:01]
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For over 50 years, mass market retailers, MMR has been the definitive media authority across key retail channels including discount, grocery club, e commerce and specialty. Now, Retail MediaIQ, MMR's parent company, is building on that legacy by integrating the trusted editorial insights and extensive reach of chain drug review into the MMR platform. At the same time, Retail Media Iq is expanding its editorial focus to include the fast moving convenience store channel. The result is a powerful, unified media platform that reflects the full scope of today's retail ecosystem. Backed by decades of expertise, deep industry knowledge and editorial excellence, the new mmr, which debuts in October, will deliver the most comprehensive view of retail and reach the largest, most influential audience of decision makers across the retail and consumer packaged goods sector. The strategic expansion of MMR mirrors the challenging dynamics of the industry and affirms the publication's mission to be the go to source for insights, analysis and access across every retail vertical. Check out the link in the digital liner notes to this episode. To reach mmr, make sure you're subscribing to their newsletter.
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Hello and welcome to episode four of the Commerce Shift with the CPG guys. I'm of course your co host Sri and AKA Papa Raj, co founder and CRO of Think Blue Consulting. I'm joined by my co host and co founder of The CPG guys, pvsb aka pwsbahn. How you doing man?
- [01:42]
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Episode 4 Sree I'm doing great man. We're getting a lot of love from everybody. Three episodes in the in the can. We're producing number four right now. Of course we're sharing our opinions on what we think are some of the most important news items from our great CPG and retail omnichannel industry. Do follow us on other platforms including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. All of them are easily found. In every case they're all CPG guys. It's that easy. So let's get to this week. We're going to take a little bit of a departure. Sri, I believe you were in Seattle this week at Amazon Accelerate. What is that and how was it?
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Peter Amazon Accelerate, for those who don't know, is the annual Sellers Conference on the third party platform hosted at the Seattle Convention center by Amazon. So it wouldn't have been your first time, but it was for me. Shout out to Hunter PR for having us the CPG guys there and for being amazing hosts. I was of course fortunate to be there. See the scale a first as I mentioned for me and little known data fact, Amazon's third party marketplace sellers business is larger than its first Party business and most of CPG and retail ignores it. You know why Peter? Because and doesn't even see it in the Nielsen and IRI circana market share because of the age old model of warehousing in cases. That's how most of our retail industry works. But what an event. Hundreds of sellers of all scale from, you know, startup 1 and 2 SKU sellers to establish 50 plus hundred plus SKU sellers. Millions of dollars of business. Exciting announcements by Amazon. You know for the three days I was there, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. From artificial intelligence to multichannel fulfillment and buy with prime. And one very important one on ads for sellers as well. If there's one retailer who can crush it with leadership in tech people and the customer, you know that is Peter. Want to guess? It's Amazon. Of course. I was impressed with the general sessions too. Andy Jassy, the CEO himself was in a fireside chat which speaks volumes to the importance that Amazon is actually paying to sellers.
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Sree, it sounds like you had a blast. I'm hoping if we're going next year, maybe they'll set us up in the spheres across the street and we could do our interviews from that. Did you check out that venue? It was pretty nice. So Sree, let's talk about mcf, which is otherwise known as multi channel fulfillment. It's the ability for sellers to fulfill across other selling platforms but use Amazon Fulfillment Network for the reliable customer experience shoppers are used to. So I hear there was a big announcement around MCF. What's the deal?
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Indeed, Peter. Over 600,000 sellers move 5 billion products annually through Amazon's network of global logistics, domestic freight, bulk warehousing. These sellers, you know Peter, they're always looking for ways to attract new customers on other platforms like Shopify, Shine and Walmart. Third party marketplace Earth sharing. Groundbreaking noun. Amazon's actual multichannel fulfillment offers them the ability to take on the order in those specific platforms like Shopify, Shine and Walmart 3P and use the reliable Amazon fulfillment network to actually get product to the customer. Just think of all the pluses that come out, Peter. Reliable delivery everyone is used to as a customer. Easy returns, predictable inventory management. And of course the amazing part of letting Amazon manage the fulfillment movement through its network, which warehouse, which corner of the country probably for the most efficient and economical shipping as well. Whoa. What do you think this means, Peter?
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Well, it means it's crazy impressive, Sree, but it also means Amazon is not just a retailer, not just an advertising company, not just a web services company. It's now a Scaled fulfillment company. You know, how did sellers react to this? You know, I know what it's like at these conferences. Very different than going to unbox, where you get the polite little golf claps for announcements. How was the reaction from the audience?
- [05:36]
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These are sellers of all scale. Like I mentioned, they were thrilled. They clapped. These announcements were huge for them and we've barely gone through one multichannel fulfillment. But it's a game changer for sellers. Imagine, Peter, when you can do this and you can sell on any many other platforms other than Amazon, you can hold onto the data. They're collecting data across multi channels, which is what a seller wants to do to increase that penetration. Wait, there's more. Peter Amazon announced the arrival of agentic AI across the seller experience, transforming how sellers manage their businesses.
- [06:08]
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So from what you shared, Seller Assistant is a generative AI powered expert for sellers that provided immediate answers to questions and guided sellers to helpful resources. Last week they announced the next evolution of Seller Assistant enhanced with agendic AI capabilities, an important step forward that allows AI to not just respond, but to actually reason, plan and help take action with the seller's permission. I think this represents a significant advancement in how sellers can actually run their business on Amazon. Their agentic AI capabilities I think are designed to work seamlessly through the entire selling experience, which means sellers can go from handling every task themselves to to collaborating with an intelligent assistant that works proactively on their behalf around the clock, even when they're sleeping. Right. While always keeping sellers in control, Seller Assistant will be able to handle, I think, everything from routine operations to complex business strategy so sellers can focus on what they should be doing, which is innovation and growth. Right?
- [07:14]
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Sri Best part of this, Peter, is the fact that the seller assistant will actually monitor inventory actively. You know, that's, that's one of the most complicated thing for a seller. More on that On a podcast episode that I had the Fortune to record live while there, I actually recorded four individual episodes. So what was recorded? Two were with actual sellers who were awesome. Kind of told me the whole story of startup incubating, innovating and then growing on the platform. One with a global analyst in the sector that you had talked to two years ago. And then I got to record one spending time with Wayne Yu, the Amazon General manager of multichannel fulfillment and Buy with Prime. They selected CPG guys for him to come on the show. He explains in this to be released podcast how inventory management is going to be so much easier for sellers. For example, when a seller asks about timing a shipment to prepare for increased seasonal demand, Seller Assistant will actually analyze their entire catalog comparing historical data, current trends. Within moments it'll deliver a detailed inventory plan with recommendations for the best allocation between fulfillment by Amazon Fulfillment Centers and Amazon Warehousing distribution to optimize the fastest customer customer delivery speeds with a lower storage cost. He was so awesome to talk to. He talked to me with passion like it was his own baby and our podcast was therefore conversation style. Then on top of all this, the icing on the cake, there's proactive account health management for sellers Crazy Help Elite Elite Elite Seller Platforms all right Sree.
- [08:44]
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Let'S move on to innovation. New Product Launches by Sellers My understanding is Mary Beth Westmoreland, VP Worldwide Selling Partner Experience at Amazon announced some new AI powered tools to help sellers launch more winning products with greater speed. New innovations give sellers obviously unique insights to help them build sought after products, reduce launch costs and ultimately improve discoverability and conversion to drive new selection success, especially launching new inventory levels. Sree, what do you think?
- [09:16]
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Yep, lastly Peter, this would be incomplete. You know CPG guys episode is incomplete without a media or ads discussion. There's actually now a new AI agentic tool for sellers that can create for them professional quality creative for campaigns called Creative Studio. With access to a conversational AI powered creative partner that conducts product and audience research, brainstorms ideas, develops creative concepts in a storyboard format and produces compelling video and display ads. The new agentic AI tool is powered by Amazon's extensive retail insights which enable actually an in depth understanding of the advertiser's brand and products, including what features make a product stand out. By combining customer shopper signals with information from the advertiser's product pages, brand, store and website, this new tool, the AI agentic tools for sellers will actually generate ideas that truly bring a brand to life and design ads creative that will resonate with most customers. Peter, this is powerful stuff man. Using AI to tell you how healthy your account is for growth and then for ads. That's I'm just like we didn't do justice in 10 minutes but we needed to get it on the riff. That's our take on relevant e commerce happenings from so many announcements this past week we thought were meaningful, but we could not pass my trip to Accelerate to Seattle for a Rift and that's why we thought Accelerate is powerful. Get informed, be curious, don't be in Peter's favorites word that Luddite that still relies on the warehouse only platform. We hope you enjoyed it. Please do click like all our posts on all our platforms and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and soon to be YouTube. Thank you. See you for another week for another edition of Commerce Rift by the CPG Guys.
- [11:07]
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The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGuys LLC where the individual author, hosts or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGuys LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPT Guys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPT Guys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.