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- [00:00]
PVSB
Hey, it's PVSB with the CPG Guys. You know, we talk a lot about this on the show. For CPG marketers today, it's not just about reaching consumers, it's about connecting with them meaningfully at every touch point. Here's the reality. Shopping isn't just an event anymore. It's woven into daily life. And with consumers spending over 90 minutes streaming content, daily entertainment has become central to the shopping journey. Amazon ads unifies commerce, entertainment and open Internet to reach 86% of US households, turning trillions of consumer signals into powerful results both on and beyond Amazon. So visit advertising.Amazon.com to learn more. Welcome to the CPT Guys Podcast. Your host, Sree Rajagopalan and Peter Vs. Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.
- [01:12]
Peter Vs. Bond
Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. This is one of several episodes I shot while up in Seattle. I was invited to Amazon Accelerate 2025. Thank you to Hunter PR for inviting us and shepherding us through several interviews and podcasts. Of course, sri, your co host and also CRO and co founder of Think Blue Consulting, your trusted partner on your omnichannel development journey. Get in touch with me at sri@thinkblueconsulting co. Please will listen to my older daughter's music at www.rearaj.com and follow laraj. My younger daughter is a member of the world's fastest growing global girls group, Cat's Eye Now. Winner of an MTV vma. Excited to be here and recording live today with our guests or guest Unable to join me today is my co host and co founder pvsp who also moonlights his head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the E Commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on our preferred listening platform where you can get our latest episodes and even go back to consume some of the 530 plus episodes we've already published. You know that the CPG guys have had a great relationship with Amazon, what we consider one of the best e commerce retailers we have ever seen. So we're excited that we were invited to Amazon Accelerated. And here we go. Please enjoy this episode.
- [02:25]
Sree Rajagopalan
Thank you Wayne. It's been awesome man. Three days over here at Amazon accelerate 2025. How you doing? Welcome to the CPG guys.
- [02:34]
Wayne
Oh yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a busy three days. I agree.
- [02:37]
Sree Rajagopalan
I can only imagine, especially given your role. Speaking of which, what an exciting announcement today and earlier this week. There are several new partners. Not one, but several new partners whose orders. Now sellers have a choice that they can fulfill on Amazon. Our audience is waiting to know who are these partners? This is groundbreaking, man. So tell our audience why this is sensational and who are those partners?
- [03:04]
Wayne
Absolutely. We are for sure all about giving sellers more choice and we're always on the lookout to make multichannel fulfillment more multichannel indeed.
- [03:15]
Sree Rajagopalan
Multi channel indeed. Mcf.
- [03:17]
Wayne
It's all in the name. So the three announcements we shared this morning and I'll just go through them one by one. The first one is that Amazon MCF Multi Channel Fulfillment is now part of the Shopify Fulfillment Network.
- [03:29]
Sree Rajagopalan
Shopify Fulfillment Network, that's right.
- [03:31]
Wayne
So it's a part of a curated list of third party logistics providers that you can use and trust on the Shopify platform. The second announcement and Amazon backs that up. Yeah, it was a.
- [03:42]
Sree Rajagopalan
Your trusted partners, right?
- [03:44]
Wayne
Yeah, we are a trusted partner of Shopify for sellers on Shopify. We also announced today that later this year we will be introducing an Amazon MCF app for Shein.
- [04:00]
Sree Rajagopalan
I saw that. Congratulations.
- [04:02]
Wayne
Yeah, thank you so much.
- [04:02]
Sree Rajagopalan
Big deal.
- [04:03]
Wayne
Yeah. Sellers on Sheen can make it more easy for them to discover MCF and then use it for their day to day operations on that platform.
- [04:12]
Sree Rajagopalan
I gotta imagine given all the regulatory change that's taking place, the de minimis, stuff like that, having logistics in the US has got to be a big deal, especially leaning on the backbone of Amazon.
- [04:23]
Wayne
Yeah, I think we're very excited about giving sellers that opportunity for sure to use our fulfillment network for any sales channel that they might have. I was excited about these two for sure. But I'm also very excited about the third announcement we shared which is that starting this year you can now use Amazon MCF to support your orders on Walmart. Now the reason why I'm that is earth shattering. Let's just declare that I know. Yeah.
- [04:50]
Sree Rajagopalan
And I have lots of friends at Walmart. Said delay is a personal friend. I'm saying it. That's earth sharing. Walmart needs to pay attention.
- [04:57]
Wayne
Oh gosh. Well, you know, this is probably why it's earth shattering. But just let me just put it into words. Maybe you know, for Shopify and Shein, you know, you could already use MCF in these channels before. We're just making it a lot easier for sellers and we're always going to be looking for ways to do that. But prior to this year you couldn't actually use Amazon MCF on Walmart before. So this is like hopefully the first step of many steps of making this better for merchants. And is it okay, Sri, if I, you know, preempt maybe a question you might have or maybe your.
- [05:29]
Sree Rajagopalan
Absolutely, Wayne. That's why you're here.
- [05:31]
Wayne
Yeah. So one question we often get or we predict people have in our heads at least is why, you know, oh, go for it. Yeah. Why are you doing this? And even if you were doing this, like why are you so excited about it? I think is the question. And so I'll give you two reasons for this. The first one is that we really see Amazon as more than just a sales channel. Obviously it's a great sales channel. I personally love shopping on Amazon. But over the past 10 years and a little bit more than 10 years, we've really shown that Amazon can also be an exceptional service provider. And perhaps the best example of this is Amazon Web Services, which is one of the top cloud computing technology providers in the world. And so if you shift your mindset from Amazon to sales channel only to an Amazon to sales channel and also an exceptional service provider, then you shift the way you think about these relationships with these other parties from one of competition to one of cooperation. And I always say one of the best things that can be the foundation of a good cooperation is where each party brings to the table something that is a unique strength of theirs. And I think the strength that Amazon brings in this case is really the fulfillment network that we built over the past few decades.
- [06:47]
Sree Rajagopalan
Services.
- [06:48]
Wayne
Absolutely. So we're excited about that. The second reason is really just the classic thing that drives people working at Amazon is working backwards from the customer need. And merchants over the past five years I think have found that selling across multiple channels is not a nice to have anymore. It has moved from nice to have, non negotiable to must have. And we're just excited to be there for merchants as they make that transition. That'll make it easier for them. And if I can take a few more seconds here, I've got one statistic I'd like to share which we're very happy about. We looked at merchants who are using Amazon's fulfillment network for their on Amazon order. So FBA basically and then they used MCF for the first time, meaning they're starting to use the same pool of inventory for their off Amazon channels. And we found that their out of stock rates go down by 19%.
- [07:40]
Sree Rajagopalan
How much?
- [07:40]
Wayne
19%.
- [07:41]
Sree Rajagopalan
19%. 19 basis points?
- [07:44]
Wayne
Yeah, 19%.
- [07:45]
Sree Rajagopalan
That's a big number, Wayne.
- [07:46]
Wayne
It's a big number. Yeah.
- [07:47]
Sree Rajagopalan
You're talking to a guy who comes from the CPG world. 19%?
- [07:51]
Wayne
Yeah, it's 1%. Almost to 20%.
- [07:54]
Sree Rajagopalan
Wowza. That's a big number for. Because out of stock is what kills business. They don't come back the customer. If they see you're out of stock, they go somewhere else.
- [08:03]
Wayne
Yeah, that's a. That's.
- [08:04]
Sree Rajagopalan
If you can reduce that by 19%, that's 19% better business model to do. You don't have to convince me that Amazon is way beyond a sales channel because I have this discussion with Paul Kotis and Tanner Elton from Amazon Ads as recent as can lion when we interviewed Tanner down in France. You know the reason why Amazon Ads is the number one ad retail media engine today by leaps and bounds over Walmart Connect anybody else in the industry gaining fast on Google Meta, et cetera. Simple reason for that is because consumers come to Amazon first, even if they're not buying. They're coming to browse, they're coming to learn services, fulfillment. There's a million. And the list can go on. But this is a discussion I have with Paul and Danielton all the time. So when you tell me the why, there's nothing to convince. It's just, yes, these are the reasons why. But the answer's already there, of course. And if there's any one person I would have one company that I would have expected would be the logistics king for third party sellers, Sellers, it would be Amazon. So congratulations. And here at this conference, y' all have announced it loudly with the sellers and the fact that the sellers were cheering and happy, that's testimony to it makes such a big difference. So now let's wear the hat of the seller. Right? I just said the sellers are happy. If you're a seller, how game changing is this for your business? 19%. Let's set that to the side. I said that's a given.
- [09:31]
Wayne
Yeah. I would say if you've been a seller over the past few years, there's been a lot of challenges and one of the things that everybody's looking to do is grow their business. One of the ways that you can grow your business is to some folks are looking to expand to new channels and it's really hard to tell sometimes which channel will be the one that's the top of your list next. And one of the ways Amazon MCF helps sellers is it makes it very easy for you to try it because.
- [10:03]
Sree Rajagopalan
Sure, yeah.
- [10:05]
Wayne
And then you can see whether it moves the needle.
- [10:08]
Sree Rajagopalan
My happy worry there is if you're going to try you're going to love it so much that you're going to say, I'm signing up for MCF and running the play here. Good for you guys.
- [10:19]
Wayne
That'll be great. Well, the other thing that's been a challenge, I think, for sellers is something that's successful today, may not necessarily be successful tomorrow, and then the next day changes again, and the world is constantly changing. And so being able to predict which channel is going to be successful is also a really hard task. As we all know, one of the challenges with supply chain is it involves forecasting. And one of the challenges with forecasting is you're always wrong. The only thing that changes is how wrong you are. And so MCF allows you to forecast less because you're putting your inventory into a single pool. You're just forecasting for that one pool. That's where out of stock reductions come in and so forth. So as the quarters go on, as peaks and holiday seasons come and go, sometimes you don't really know which channel will be the big one for you now. And so we make that a lot easier as well.
- [11:12]
Sree Rajagopalan
I take it as two things, therefore, improving business via the reduced out of stock, making it easy to do business. So it's like Amazon mcf improving business, making it easy. There's your tagline.
- [11:26]
Wayne
You like it? Yeah. Oh, yeah, love it.
- [11:28]
Sree Rajagopalan
Just kidding.
- [11:30]
Wayne
We haven't talked about the shopper so far.
- [11:32]
Sree Rajagopalan
I'd love to know, but let's go. Let's go straight there.
- [11:35]
Wayne
Yeah, we, we.
- [11:36]
Sree Rajagopalan
I mean, yeah, Wayne, if you're the shopper and you're 19% better out of stock, you're already happier, end of story.
- [11:43]
Wayne
Well, just because you can buy the thing you wanted to buy, Right? Yeah.
- [11:47]
Sree Rajagopalan
Without disappointment. But what else would you add?
- [11:49]
Wayne
I would add that similarly, over the past five years, the other thing that's changed is that shopper expectations on speed have changed. People are expecting things to be faster now than what they used to expect. I'd say it was maybe at five days, five, six years ago. It's definitely faster than three days now. And not only that, I think when we've worked with sellers, we found that sellers can sometimes actually have the capability to deliver faster with our current solution, but they can't do so predictably. And so what happens then is the delivery date they put on their site, they make it slower because they're not exactly sure they can deliver it on that date. They can probably do it, but they're not sure. And so one of the things that I'm excited about with Amazon's investments in fulfillment and supply chain is we combine technology and the physical network together. So in this case, we're combining not just our physical ability to deliver the products faster, we're also combining the ability for us to know in advance that we can do so, so we can tell the shopper with confidence it'll arrive in time, which is great for many reasons.
- [12:57]
Sree Rajagopalan
Making business better. Here we go again, making business better. So let's talk about your role as GM for Amazon, MCF and Buy with Prime. Right. What are your goals like? A lot of those you've already highlighted with outcomes. Sometimes you talk about goals that are ethereal, but you guys have outcomes behind those goals. But what are also the biggest opportunities you see in aligning these two services for brands and sellers in the future?
- [13:24]
Wayne
Yeah, I'll cover the goals first. From a goals perspective, we're really looking at helping more merchants, helping more merchants with more of their selection and then helping them with more of their sales channels in more places that they sell around the world. That's the primary goal.
- [13:42]
Sree Rajagopalan
So reach.
- [13:43]
Wayne
Yeah, just if you feel like you're adding value, then you want to add value in more places with more people. And from a shopper perspective, we're also like, as we help those merchants, we're also helping those shoppers get a better shirts.
- [13:55]
Sree Rajagopalan
So let's go into that customer, AKA shopper journey. Right. How does Amazon view the role of fulfillment? I know this is very important. It's in your DNA. So how does Amazon view the role of fulfillment and seamless checkout experiences like Buy with Prime in that customer journey and keeping them satisfied, happy and for them to come back.
- [14:14]
Wayne
I would say that you're touching on an important point, which is that the reason why we've invested so much in supply chain over the years is because we've always seen it as a core part of creating a good customer experience. And that's been a really important assumption which has proven not to be true. I can give you examples from MCF and give you examples from Bioprime. Maybe I'll start with one for MCF and we'll cover Bioprime. So the one for MCF was the one we were touching on earlier, which is a shopper facing promise. So if you have a fulfillment capability that not only is fast, but predictably fast, then you can, with confidence, tell your shopper when that thing's going to arrive. Sure. Buy prime also has that. But in addition to that, Buy prime allows you to have a really the prime returns experience, the Returns experience you.
- [15:03]
Sree Rajagopalan
Get on Amazon that is special unparalleled.
- [15:06]
Wayne
Yep. I think that gives customers a lot of confidence that we ask that question.
- [15:11]
Sree Rajagopalan
On the show all the time. People tell us unparalleled. So that's our benchmark at this point.
- [15:15]
Wayne
Yeah, yeah. So talked about predictable promises, easy returns. Customer service often comes up as well. If you're a merchant using Buy at Prime on your site, the shopper, your shopper can call Amazon if they've got questions about their order. We also.
- [15:31]
Sree Rajagopalan
Which is a big deal in itself. Yep. Fast, quick customer service for sellers.
- [15:35]
Wayne
You just want to know these people.
- [15:36]
Sree Rajagopalan
Are here to do business and grow their own lives. So.
- [15:39]
Wayne
Right. You just want to know as a shopper, if anything goes wrong, I'm going to be cared for. I'll give you one more example on the buyer prime area because we're really trying to cover the full customer.
- [15:49]
Sree Rajagopalan
You know, Wayne, you just brought back a quick point through this conference. As I talked to some of the informal interviews, like the one minute interviews that I did, most of them calibrate by the number one thing. I asked them, why are you here? And most of them said because of the customer service. To meet with the teams that help me out to engage with them. The rest of the stuff that you and I talked about, they look at Amazon and they expect those things. Like they expect greatness in the system and then they came here for the human touch.
- [16:20]
Wayne
Nice.
- [16:21]
Sree Rajagopalan
Which is customer service. But what were you saying?
- [16:23]
Wayne
Yeah, no, I was just about to say one last thing. If you're a merchant trying to build your own direct to consumer website business, the other challenge you often have is just traffic. How do I get more people to my site? So even there we have a product that's in our portfolio that allows you to show advertising within a network of advertisers, using signals for your listing on Amazon.com to help you improve the return on ad spend.
- [16:50]
Sree Rajagopalan
So I want to try and understand that one better. So you said D2C.
- [16:53]
Wayne
Yes.
- [16:54]
Sree Rajagopalan
Which means it's on your own website you're selling via. How does that connect back to what you're selling on Amazon, though? I didn't get that.
- [16:59]
Wayne
So let's just say if you're an FBA seller and you have items you're selling on Amazon, you also have your own DTC website. You're getting this really rich data on which types of customers are interacting with your listing on Amazon. And now you can use that data for targeting to inform your ads off Amazon.
- [17:17]
Sree Rajagopalan
Sure, sure, I got you. So you can make your ads much more personalized, which is what they do on the one piece side. So now I'm going to jump into the While it's hard sitting here to predict what the Future will be 12, 24 months out, I'm sure if we came back next year there's going to be some more sharing announcements you will make. So if you look out 12, 24 months, what are some big ambitions that you have to deliver for Amazon? What are you looking at from seller perspective, customer fulfillment perspective?
- [17:46]
Wayne
I would say that we're always looking to improve our speeds and reliability for customers. There's certain things you do as a company that'll be a never ending journey and that's one of them. And the other one, how faster can you get though? Well we could have asked ourselves that question five years ago and you might have gone very true, very true. You never know how high is high until you get there.
- [18:11]
Sree Rajagopalan
Agreed. I think the average customer now I won't say everybody, most people are rational about this but click and collect is causing this urgent desire in the customer to want things within two hours or same day as fast as possible.
- [18:25]
Wayne
Yeah, absolutely.
- [18:26]
Sree Rajagopalan
Especially non perishable.
- [18:29]
Wayne
And the other thing is what we talked about earlier, we just want to be where customers are and I think that that itself is also an ever.
- [18:35]
Sree Rajagopalan
What does that mean?
- [18:36]
Wayne
So more deeper integrations with more sales channels working with brands across multiple categories, industries and understanding their needs for their specific category and serving that better working across geographies and marketplaces. So there's various vectors in which we can, we can expand the value that we're bringing.
- [18:56]
Sree Rajagopalan
One thing we know from the flywheel, the customers at the center of that flywheel. So if we sit here and we forecast a year out. Yeah of course you're always going to put the customer at the center of it and try to get them what they want. So for a CPG brand considering multichannel and buy with prime, remember a lot of them are 1p already. They test the third party marketplace out. What's your advice to them? What's the compelling benefits? Is it conversion, retention, logistics, savings? And what are the trade offs they should be thinking of?
- [19:26]
Wayne
Let's start with mcf. I think the three and there's many benefits depending on the length you come in as a seller, as a brand because your specific category brings with it unique challenges and opportunities. So it differs by customer. But the three overarching things we hear about are the following. One is the agility that I can test out new channels easily. That I can. If I see my campaigns on a certain channel, you know, go viral, I don't have to worry about having enough moving it over for that channel. So that's a big deal, like being nimble and agile. The second one is scalability. And we really actually hear a lot about this both on the small seller end as well as at the large brand end where at some point, for example, on the large size side you might start to think about if you have your own buildings or running your own fulfillment operations, should I invest the capital to expand that network or should I look at other options? And often they think about should I just use Amazon?
- [20:28]
Sree Rajagopalan
That would be a no brainer to me. Even if you're large scale, it would never make sense to invest your own capital when you guys are doing MCF now in such a scaled way.
- [20:36]
Wayne
Yeah, yeah. So that's the second reason we often hear and the third reason is a lot of the stuff we talked about with the shopper experience. I think many brands are finding that they want to create that premium shopper experience for customers on their sites as well.
- [20:49]
Sree Rajagopalan
And then when should a CPG brand opt out to use buy with prime vs lean on typical D2C channels or even traditional wholesale retail?
- [20:59]
Wayne
You know, we don't really see this as a, as an either or choice. I think the way we see it is we want to serve brands. We think brands should actually maximize the number of sales channels that they're selling. And in fact, that's what, that's exactly the value proposition that's today's customer. Absolutely. And we also are willing to work with, we are working with sellers who use us for maybe a small part of their business. And we're also working with sellers who give us 100% of their business.
- [21:27]
Sree Rajagopalan
So talk to us about, we've talked about mcf. Now let's talk about services, how you support sellers outside of all the gifts you're giving them in terms of actual tools and capabilities. MCF is one such capability. But talk to us about that human element, the customer service element, engaging with people. How do you back up all these ecosystems you're bringing, which are legendary themselves, with the human capital to help sellers understand how to leverage this.
- [21:53]
Wayne
Yeah, it's not that dissimilar from the type of support you might see in fulfillment by Amazon or fba, where depending on the size of your business with Amazon, you might have a tier of support where you have a specific human who supports you as a seller.
- [22:11]
Sree Rajagopalan
Let's say you're small. I met many Sellers who are maybe selling $600,000 a product, $500,000 a product. And I met scaled ones who are doing 60 million. Obviously the 60 million are going to need a lot more help, but the 600,000 people, on the surface, it may sound they don't, but they need the most help. So what would you do for them in that case?
- [22:30]
Wayne
Yeah, we're very focused.
- [22:31]
Sree Rajagopalan
We made an AI announcement. I'm trying to go there.
- [22:33]
Wayne
Yeah, we are very focused on scalable ways of supporting these sellers, and we're also very focused on improving the quality of that service. Which is where you're going with this question. Absolutely.
- [22:49]
Sree Rajagopalan
And so what does that mean, improving the quality of the service?
- [22:53]
Wayne
It means things like response time.
- [22:55]
Sree Rajagopalan
Gotcha.
- [22:56]
Wayne
How quickly do you get response, response accuracy? If you get a piece of advice or piece of information, does it solve your problem or not? And reality is, we've always been focused on those specific metrics. A lot of the tools that we have lately are just helping us solve those problems in a new and better way.
- [23:12]
Sree Rajagopalan
Gotcha. And how does it feel for you as GM of the space, when you come to a conference like this? Do you personally engage with sellers? What do they tell you?
- [23:19]
Wayne
Absolutely.
- [23:21]
Sree Rajagopalan
Other than the fact that they're thankful, what do they tell you?
- [23:23]
Wayne
You know, we get a whole range of feedback and it's not. It's not uncommon to come to a conference where some sellers don't even know this exists yet. Yeah, happy to. I didn't introduce you to this today. And some sellers have. We've been working with for. For a long time, and they might. They might be, you know, they might have specific requests or specific ideas for things we could do with them in the future. So it ranges quite a bit. But I definitely love spending time with sellers in conferences like this and throughout the year.
- [23:53]
Sree Rajagopalan
So you get to do it at other forums and venues. Is it like an established forum you have or how does that naturally happen?
- [23:59]
Wayne
It happens through a number of ways. In some cases, we have regular meetings with sellers on a regular occasion throughout the year. In some cases, we might have KNOW products we're developing and we want to go secure feedback sellers.
- [24:11]
Sree Rajagopalan
Oh, so not only are you developing these products through the knowledge you have, but you're also getting sellers to voice their opinions?
- [24:17]
Wayne
Absolutely. That's a critical part of product development for sure.
- [24:20]
Sree Rajagopalan
That's awesome, man. So I want to go back to brands for a second. What criteria operational readiness should brands evaluate to ensure they get the most out of MCF and buy with prime is It I have to have a certain level and threshold of inventory, a certain amount of customers. My forecast has to be at X percent with errors. My returns has to be a certain amount. And below that threshold, my customer service is 96%. What are those benchmarks?
- [24:46]
Wayne
Yeah, I would say, the way I would answer this question is to think about what are the boundaries of what the MCF and Bioprime service does for you and then what are the things that we don't do for you that you would have to do for yourself as a seller? Of course, as you know from the many announcements that have happened at Accelerate this week, we're trying to provide more and more services that take even more of those things off your shoulders. But just assume for now we're looking at the boundaries of MCF and Byte Prime. So things for example, like how much total inventory you want to put into the network, that is something that the sellers need to decide. Amazon does decide though, how to spread that inventory within the network, across the network, which itself is a hard problem. But the initial sort of inbound quantity is up to the seller we do support.
- [25:32]
Sree Rajagopalan
But do you advise, for example, knowing the category they do business in as they list the SKUs, et cetera, and bring it onto the system, do you advise and tell them, hey, our history would tell us 1000 units is what you go with, a thousand cases, whatever the case might be.
- [25:47]
Wayne
We do not do that currently. But we have heard that as a feature request by many sellers.
- [25:51]
Sree Rajagopalan
12, 24 months, we know what's coming.
- [25:54]
Wayne
I'll give you another example. So with Bybit prime, you can use Amazon's returns experience to support those orders.
- [26:01]
Sree Rajagopalan
Got it.
- [26:01]
Wayne
But on mcf, that is currently not available. And so you would need to handle.
- [26:05]
Sree Rajagopalan
The returns, the returns process. Gotcha. Understood. Fast free delivery promises often increase consumer expectation. Surprise you. And I as consumer have those expectations as well. How does Amazon ensure reliability and consistency for brands using Bry with Prime across, you know, your network is so vast, so many fulfillment centers, so across different geographies and so many fulfillments networks, especially mcf.
- [26:33]
Wayne
You know, here's the thing, I would say first of all, the MCF or Bybit prime order is handled in our network just like any other Amazon order is. And one of the things that's been amazing to see as Amazon has grown as we've taken customers through our network, as we do fulfillment center tours and they've taken customers through, they've given us one of the common reactions is just the level of scale, not just in terms of Total numbers, but the number of listings, the different sizes, the different weights, that is truly one of the places where Amazon's been able to innovate over the years. And so the complexity that MCF brings isn't that different from the complexity Amazon has been able to handle with its current Amazon store. And so it's just been really great to be able to leverage the capabilities built over the many years for sellers business off Amazon as well.
- [27:27]
Sree Rajagopalan
You know the wickedest challenge I had to figure out with Amazon, I worked for Frito Lay back. This is a 12 year old story. Because of nitrogen flushing in the bags to keep product fresh chips fresh for 28 days, you can't fly product over the Rocky Mountains because they burst. So we had to figure out how to get in a truck, which means you're adding five, six days and yet be timely. And Amazon helped us do that back in the days using the network as opposed to even our own. So if you're a budding seller and we've got lots of listeners here and our audience just exists of a lot of people who are budding sellers, they've just started their business. These are like industry veterans usually with 30 years in the business who have decided, hey, I want to start my own brand. So their marketing experience is extraordinary, but their fulfillment experience doesn't exist. What would you tell them? Two or three things compelling. Why don't waste time, just get on the Amazon fulfillment experience.
- [28:22]
Wayne
I think you might have just said it Sree, which is focus on.
- [28:30]
PVSB
The.
- [28:30]
Wayne
Unique strength that you as an entrepreneur bring to the table which is building great products for your innovation and marketing. Absolutely. And leverage other providers like Amazon, MCF and by with prime and Amazon Fulfillment Network to do the parts that might be less differentiated for you as a business.
- [28:50]
Sree Rajagopalan
Let's flip the switch. Let's talk about big companies, big brands. These are the multi billion dollar market cap brands. Pepsi, Coca Cola, Nabisco, Mondelez. Would you ever tell them to get on Amazon's fulfillment network because they run hundreds and thousands of trucks every day for a living to fulfill product into retail warehouses. Is that in the future?
- [29:13]
Wayne
You know, we talked a little bit about this earlier when we talked about the scale. And even the largest brands do hit a point where scaling becomes a challenge. We do actually already have large brands using Amazon, MCF and Bioprime today.
- [29:30]
Sree Rajagopalan
So these are some of the big market cap brands. Yeah, CPG.
- [29:34]
Wayne
Here's an example. Adidas.com launched BioPrime and MCF earlier this year. And we're collectively both very Happy about that relationship.
- [29:41]
Sree Rajagopalan
So the outcomes so far are keeping you both, please.
- [29:44]
Wayne
Absolutely. Yeah. We've got other brands like Laura Mercier as well on the network, so.
- [29:48]
Sree Rajagopalan
Yeah, we didn't know that one. Yep, that's huge.
- [29:50]
Wayne
We work together with brands large and small.
- [29:53]
Sree Rajagopalan
Awesome. So when my younger daughter and older daughter both are musicians, they launch their own brands eventually. And the Raj family gets. Since we should rely on Amazon's fulfillment.
- [30:03]
Wayne
Network, would love to be able to help.
- [30:06]
Sree Rajagopalan
Awesome. So I'll make sure that we tell Republic Records and we tell Universal Music. So what data. So this is a very important one now because what sellers are looking for is to constantly improve their business, grow their business. And just like fulfillment, customer service matters, returns matter. So does data and analytics. That is like the backbone of growth. Earlier you talked about the ads part. You know, being able to target, put the right ads in front of the right customers. Talk to us about what data and analytics they can access while using Buy with Prime and mcf. How can they leverage that data to optimize product, product mix, marketing, customer experience? Are there features or tools in the pipeline which will help brands better integrate with their external DDC sites? You kind of hinted at it.
- [30:53]
Wayne
Yeah. First of all, we hear a lot that one of the motivating factors why sellers want to have a DTC website is to really own that direct relationship with the customer. And so by selling on a DTC website, you get all this information. You know who the customer is, you can email them and cultivate that relationship over time.
- [31:11]
Sree Rajagopalan
I mean, the number one reason they do that is for AB testing.
- [31:15]
Wayne
Yeah. So MCF and Bybit prime do not get in the way of that. So we. We provide a fulfillment service or certain commerce capabilities for the seller on that site, but you still own the brand relationship and that's.
- [31:29]
Sree Rajagopalan
And the data.
- [31:30]
Wayne
Absolutely.
- [31:31]
Sree Rajagopalan
All right, I got room for one more question.
- [31:33]
Wayne
Yeah.
- [31:33]
Sree Rajagopalan
So let me. It'll be very unfair to have a conversation unless we talk about this most important word of the year. Do you know what that is? Artificial intelligence. So tell us about how technology AI is in your life right now. How are you looking at it? How are you leaning on AI as you build this out, as you build Amazon's fulfillment network, Buy with Prime in the future.
- [31:54]
Wayne
So I'll keep my answer on this one brief and give you a few examples. So the one thing we should think about is that Amazon, MCF and Buy with prime and FBA are all built on top of Amazon's fulfillment network. So all of the investments, both in technology as well as in physical capacity and capabilities apply to these services as well. So I'll give you a few examples. We talked earlier about inventory distribution, knowing where to put inventory so it's closest to the customer when the order comes in. That's an element of technology that applies to MCF just like it applies to your FBA orders. Robotics, like all of our fulfillment network, has significant investments in robotics that handle your MCF order as much as it handles your FBA orders. And then from a last mile capability perspective, we're always trying to improve the way we drive the routing algorithms to tell our drivers in what sequence they can go drop off the packages that they're trying to drop off to the customer store step and all those technologies also apply to MCF and by Prime.
- [32:55]
Sree Rajagopalan
Well, first of all, Wayne, I want to thank you. This is a busy week for you. You had some big earth shattering announcements, so I'm sure your head has been completely immersed in those, yet you made time to be on the CPG Guys. I'm thankful that you gave us time today. Thank you for joining us on the CPG Guys.
- [33:10]
Wayne
Thank you Sree. Thanks for having me.
- [33:12]
Sree Rajagopalan
As I wrap up this episode, I also want to give a shout out to Hunter PR awesome host and also for thinking of the CPG guys and having us do multiple interviews out here allowing us to cover Amazon accelerate 2025. What a great conference has been. If you missed it, we did a summary episode back on September 22nd as part of our weekly commerce Rift, both Peter and me. So go back and do check that out amongst our full listed episodes. That's a wrap of this episode of the CPG Guys.
- [33:41]
Peter Vs. Bond
Wow. What a terrific conversation here at Amazon accelerate 2025. Let me thank our audience for listening to this wonderful episode. Do leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite listening platform. It informs us how we're doing as well as if we're having the right conversations. To all of you, thank you from Peter and me. You make this show happen to all our sponsors, whether this podcast or parties at events, hosted dinners, having us speak at panels. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The show doesn't exist without you. That's a wrap. We look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CPG Guys.
- [34:20]
PVSB
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