← The CPG Guys
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- [00:01]
Peter Vs Mulland
Hey, it's pvsb with the CPG guys. Sri and I are going to be in Las Vegas, Nevada January 6th through the 9th for the 2025 CES conference. Monday evening we'll be hosting an invite only party at the Aria. On Wednesday morning, we'll be emceeing a breakfast briefing on 2025 Retail media investments that's sponsored by CVS Media Exchange. That's over at the Park MGM Tuesday appearing over at the OMG Commerce Experience at the Cosmopolitan. And we'll be seen mostly around the area space. Expect to see us going into a lot of the area sky suites for individual meetings. We'll even be recording some content there. If you see us, stop by, say hello, take a selfie, whatever you want. We love speaking with people. We look forward to seeing you in January. Happy holidays everyone.
- [01:04]
Michael Mosser
Hi, I'm Michael Mosser, Vice President of categories for the Walmart Marketplace and you're listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.
- [01:10]
Sarah Ray
Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm with Arbitrage Avenue.
- [01:12]
Charles Leslie
Hi, I'm Charles Leslie and I'm with side Hustle Network and you are watching the CBG Guys.
- [01:17]
Peter Vs Mulland
Welcome to another episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. Our hosts, Sri Rajkapalan, Peter Vs Mulland and Brian Guildenberg explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.
- [01:38]
Sri Rajkapalan
Hello and welcome to this special episode of the CPG guys live from the 2024 Walmart seller third party marketplace conference.
- [01:46]
Brian Guildenberg
I'm of course your co host, Sree.
- [01:47]
Sri Rajkapalan
And also co founder and partner of Think Blue. You're key to unlocking your profitability potential. As builders, connectors and amplifiers, we shape.
- [01:54]
Brian Guildenberg
The future of commerce to drive your growth. Please do listen to my older daughter.
- [01:58]
Sri Rajkapalan
Rhea Raj's music and my younger daughter, Lara. Raj is a member of the Geffen Records Universal Music Group, Katseye, while my wife Kavira Raj has her own podcast, Lights, Camera, Convo on iheartradio and all streaming platforms. Katseye, of course, has debuted and done their first fan event, crossed a million followers on TikTok and a million on Instagram, so please do check them out.
- [02:18]
Brian Guildenberg
That's Katseye with a K. Before we.
- [02:20]
Sri Rajkapalan
Get to our guests, we want to ask you to help spread the word about this community that we've created in the CPG Guys. Beyond sharing a podcast with your friends, if you're using Apple Podcasts or Spotify is your preferred platform, please leave us a rating as it helps feed the algorithm that makes us easily findable by CPG retail people like you looking for education and entertainment. We're happy that the CPG guys is part of an impressive collective of highly rated podcasts including CPG Scoop with Risa and Jennifer and the FMCG Guys with Daniel, Finn and Christine. Links to our podcast our sister cast on the social media profiles of my daughter Rhea and Lara. My wife Kavita's podcast may be found in the digital liner notes of this episode.
- [02:53]
Brian Guildenberg
And now onto the main event.
- [02:55]
Sri Rajkapalan
So as mentioned, we are recording live from the Walmart Seller Conference and we have a special two part episode. First we will discuss the leadership of Walmart in this space with Michael Mosser, VP of categories at Walmart Marketplace for about 15, 20 minutes and then we'll talk to two sellers about their experiences of selling as a third party seller on Walmart Marketplace. Rachel Ray of Arbitrage Avenue, Charlie Leslie of side Hustle Network.
- [03:19]
Brian Guildenberg
Michael, what a pleasure it is to have you on the show, especially in the middle of a busy seller summit. You made time to come on the show. We're extremely excited to have you. So I'm going to jump right in if it's okay. And you know I was trolling you last night on LinkedIn, looked up a lot of articles about you. Your journey of course has been through HSN, the great eBay and now Walmart. Right? Take us through the years. How did you get from when you graduated and now leading categories for Walmart in this Marketplace role?
- [03:46]
Michael Mosser
Yeah, for sure. First of all, thank you guys so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to speak with you all this afternoon. So thank you for that. But yeah, it's funny, I actually began my career as an in house transactional lawyer, if you can believe that. So I did in house transactional work for about a decade starting in the entertainment industry and then I went to hsn. I had the privilege of working with a leader there, Mindy Grossman, who saw an opportunity in me to move out of the legal side into the the business side. And I transitioned into business development for HSN and then ultimately went to ebay where I worked in business development and then category management. And then I heard a podcast actually around with an interview with Doug McMillan and he was talking about Walmart and I have been following Walmart in the industry and looking at a lot of the innovation and ways that they were changing the ways that customers shop and was just super interested in his story and the culture at Walmart and the opportunity that I saw there and learning that they were building this marketplace business was super exciting for me and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to come and join the team and be a part of that.
- [04:46]
Brian Guildenberg
So, Michael, listening to you, is it fair to assume that you guys, merchants actually interact with each other because. And you do some Catman planning together as well?
- [04:54]
Michael Mosser
We actually have a very similar goal, which is to have all of the products our customers need, want and love all the time. So we think about that through the marketplace lens as well. We have category teams that are actually within Walmart, aligned to our 1P category teams. And the team is working continually on the overall assortment strategy, making sure we have those in demand products when we have those cultural moments and our team can go out and source products quickly. I think the big difference that you would say between 1p and 3p is the 3p sellers are the lifeblood of the marketplace. We're dependent on them for the inventory. We're not purchasing inventory. It really comes down to the relationship and Walmart's personal connection with the sellers and the seller community to source that inventory, ensure we've got a great selection, broad spectrum of value and great items for customers. So a lot of similarity in terms of how we think about having that assortment for our customers. I think the big difference is we're not writing a purchase order at the end of the day for those. We're working with our seller community to bring that assortment to life for customers. Yeah, we do. We work very closely. It is a critical partnership between 1P and 3P. And as you might have heard during a lot of the presentation today, I think that really comes to life. Right. We had Latrice Watkins talking about the overall merchandising strategy for Walmart and our teams work very closely together. We have a lot of merchants here at the show today talking to sellers, having conversations with sellers, and our teams are partnering very closely on how we bring this assortment to life for customers. Whether it's creating new experiences like the premium beauty experience that we talked about on launch today, or other experiences across the platform and other categories. You know, another example would be automotive, where we enabled marketplace sellers to ship tires to auto care centers and have them installed on customers vehicles. This is a lot of collaboration between the marketplaces and our merchandising teams and even our store operations teams to bring this to life for our seller community and bring great value and assortment and selection for customers.
- [06:41]
Brian Guildenberg
How awesome is that here on the cpg, guys, Peter and I strongly believe that the third party marketplace has a huge role to play in growth. Go forward, especially for brands that are struggling with volume in these crazy inflationary times. So naturally I'm going to jump to that as my next question for sellers on the marketplace. What tactics come top of mind for you like what makes a five star seller and how do you help them scale?
- [07:06]
Michael Mosser
Yeah, I love that question. I think it's critically important and it takes, you know, you need to look at your listings for customers. You need to make sure that the items that you're listing on the site are following listing best practices in terms of the content quality that you have, you know, great pricing for customers that you have ratings and reviews that you have fast shipping, whether you're leveraging Walmart fulfillment services, taking advantage of capabilities like that. So that's part of, I think the very fundamental is making sure that you've got very strong listings so that when customers come and they're searching for your products, they're easily discoverable on the platform. Then I think the other part is taking advantage of the opportunities across the site for exposure. So whether you're working on events like Holiday or participating in our flash deals program or other programs that we have like that to bring visibility for sellers and sellers inventory in front of customers provides those opportunities to drive volume or sell through. So I think that really is taking that hands on the wheel approach to charting your course in the marketplace and then having those really strong fundamentals in terms of listing quality and right price and fast shipping. Those are ultimately the most important. Walmart Connect is a very critical tool in our sellers toolkit. You know, we work very closely with Brian and his team on, you know, finding the right items to bring visibility, you know, to the seller's items on the, on the platform. And it's one of those great tools that sellers can take advantage of. In particular, if they've got items that are new to the platform, how do they try to drive discoverability and visibility for those items in the platform? Walmart Connect can play a critical role in that. It also helps bring visibility to their assortment during the non peak periods where customers are just coming and doing their everyday shopping. So we work and we do a joint account planning with Ryan's team on working with our sellers. We meet with them jointly frequently so that we can have a conversation around their overall strategy, understanding the items and the volume that they're looking to drive through those items and partner with them on a, on a investment strategy with Walmart Connect that's going to have the right level of return and help them grow their business the way they're looking to with Walmart.
- [09:06]
Brian Guildenberg
Awesome. A reminder to audience that we're speaking to Michael Moser, vice president of categories at Walmart Marketplace and he's live at the 2024 Seller Summit. So again, thanks for joining us. And then, you know, scaling is one thing, recommending the right tactics is one thing. But how do you quantify success in the marketplace and what metrics do you make available to sellers so that they can, you know, I used to be a third party marketplace seller once upon a time and I had this obsession and fetish to watch the number every half hour and look for the next unit of sale. But that's probably not the right attitude. So how do you quantify success in the marketplace and what metrics do you share back to sellers to make sure that they can actually focus on the right things?
- [09:50]
Michael Mosser
It's a great question and I could tell you success for me, and I think success is dependent for each individual seller. Ultimately for me, success is providing a platform that's frictionless for sellers, provides them a great opportunity to sell and reach customers and ultimately Walmart Marketplace is their marketplace of choice. When I think about success, that's what it means to me. It's helping the sellers fulfill their ambition that they have to grow on the platform. I think for sellers, you know, it comes down to that partnership with Walmart and how do we, you know, how do we grow together working with their account managers if they have one. In terms of metrics and data, you know, I think there's a lot of important information we can share with respect to like we talked about your listing quality and how are your listings, you know, are you checking all the boxes in terms of a high quality listing? Are there ways that we can drive visibility and discoverability for your items on the platform? So we provide a lot of information in terms of, you know, both opportunities from a marketing and you know, think about a marketing calendar, perspective, metrics on the actual items. We also provide a lot of information today you can find in Seller center in terms of what we're calling sort of in demand assortment. So what are the products that customers are coming and shopping for on Walmart.com and these might be items that maybe you've had or an item that we might think that you have a high propensity to be able to acquire based on whether you've acquired similar items in the past. So we want to provide our sellers with as much information as we can in terms of the types of items that customers are looking for to help them build their successful business. So it's, you know, for us it's truly in that spirit of partnership, the more information that we can provide in terms of, you know, recommendations, tools, services to help them grow. But certainly, you know, with respect to listing quality and the assortment that customers are shopping for, one of the things that's super unique for Walmart is this ability for marketplace sellers, or we call them sort of native marketplace sellers to ultimately end up with their merchandise in Walmart stores. And it is part of our overall omnichannel shopping experience for customers where they can find these great items. I think it's a great testing ground for one piece sellers to try new items, try them out in the marketplace, see what you know, what customers are responding to. Provides a great opportunity for one piece suppliers to add additional assortment, breadth of selection, really present their full brand story and full, you know, spectrum of value and product to customers. So I think it's very much an, and I think there's opportunity in both channels.
- [12:12]
Brian Guildenberg
You know Michael, how I used to think about that is even if you're a very scale brand with distribution and 4,500 plus stores and you and you, odds are you have a long tail. Rather than sacrifice your long tail, you should at least give it a shot on the third party marketplace platform and see if there's an audience for it. And you can always adjust your supply chain to work with that. And part of that supply chain should be a Walmart Fulfillment Services to make it easy and seamless for the consumer. So let's go there next. How do you partner, how does your team partner with Walmart Fulfillment Services? Is it part of the same team? Do you guys work together? Do you introduce them to a potential new seller on the marketplace? And what role do you recommend or does what role does Walmart Fulfillment Services play in the actual development of a seller? Is it a must have?
- [13:02]
Michael Mosser
Yeah, so it's a great question and not unlike how we partner with Walmart Connect. It is a very tight integration with Walmart Fulfillment Services as well. And what we're really trying to do is address the needs of our sellers as they're working on the platform. So Walmart Fulfillment Services has highly competitive rates on average 15% lower than the competition. So it's a very cost effective way for sellers to get their items in customers hands more quickly. We see a lot of improvement in conversion and when items are getting to customers in two days. So we want to ultimately make sure we're looking at this through the customer lens, getting products in customers hands as quickly as possible. Which will unlock the opportunity for the sellers. Then I think too, you know, we work, as I mentioned, we have WFS account managers who work in partnership, very close partnership with my team and account managers on that team to have those conversations with sellers, joint planning with sellers, figuring out, you know, items. We make recommendations to sellers and maybe they have certain items that they need to get in customers hands more quickly, other items they feel that they have other capability for. We can work with them even on an item basis to figure out like hey, this is the right assortment to bring in. We can try WFS out, see how great it's going to work for you and then ultimately move more of their assortment over. So it's a very close partnership between WFS account management team, the account management team on the, on the marketplace side, Walmart Connect. All of these pieces come together and contribute to the seller's success. The sky's the limit, right? I think, you know, ultimately it comes back to for me, creating this opportunity on our platform for the seller community to realize their ambitions and sales, help them reach more customers where customers are shopping. We have 255 million customers shopping across Walmart stores and Walmart online every week. Great opportunity to see that our marketplace has been on a great path of growth. As you might have heard, we've had four consecutive quarters of over 30% growth. So it's a great opportunity for sellers to come on and be a part of this momentum. But you know, the sky's the limit I think.
- [14:57]
Brian Guildenberg
You know, I have a special comment for you, Michael. You know, normally These episodes are 45 minutes long and they drag and we get a hunt for, you know, juicy items and to learn and be able to stitch together true answers. We got this done in 17 minutes and we got so much rich content it's ridiculous. I gotta say. Well done, Micah. My hat's off to you.
- [15:19]
Michael Mosser
Hey, thank you guys so much, really, I appreciate that. It's been my pleasure.
- [15:23]
Brian Guildenberg
I also want to say thank you, I want to say thank you to Walmart comms as well because this is. We've had 10 plus episodes from Walmart on our show. We're about 415 plus episodes deep at this point. And a reminder to the audience that episode 400, a special episode was with Walmart CRO set Delaire that we shot live at Con Lions France. So if you haven't heard it, all you got to do is search for CPG guys, Apple podcast set Delaire or episode 400 and you should be able to find it. Michael, I can't thank you enough for joining us during a busy week. Thank you.
- [15:56]
Michael Mosser
It's been my pleasure, y'all. Thank you very much.
- [15:57]
Brian Guildenberg
Charles and Sara, what a pleasure to have you on the show. I know this is a busy, busy, busy week for you guys as you are live at the Walmart Seller Summit 2024. So I'm going to jump right in so we don't waste your time here and you can get back to selling and being the awesome five star sellers you both are. So Charles, I'm going to start with you first. I love the name side Hustle Network because that's how this podcast was formed. I was president of sales of the General Mills Company until May 4th of this year and the side Hustle was Peter and I started this podcast four and a half years ago and now it's our full time job in business for me. So how did Trista. Yeah, I shouldn't know Trista, but I trolled you and I figured out Trista is a well known person to you. I'll let you say who. How did Trista and you come up with this idea? And my trolling points out that ebay came to mind. So I'll let you tell us.
- [16:49]
Charles Leslie
Absolutely. Yeah, you just took the words out of my mouth. Exactly. Our story as well. We were both full time careers. We loved what we did, but we didn't love the idea of being tied down to a schedule. Someone telling you when you can eat lunch, when you can go home and if you needed a day off. Absolutely could not stand that. I was a massage therapist, she was in the medical industry and we started looking at different options to fulfill that income and figure out how to get out of that rat race. And so we stumbled upon different platforms, ebay being one of the major ones as a collector and electronic seller. I love to go to garage sales, thrift stores, find VCRs for $5 and I found out you can sell them for 50 plus. That was an unlock in my brain. So I was doing that on the weekends and prepping and shipping and listing and doing all of that. Long story short, we've been on this journey for nine years now. We two years in, we're able to quit both of our full time careers, full time sellers. And obviously Walmart was a big player moving forward for us. We're putting a big focus on that platform now.
- [17:46]
Sarah Ray
So the same I had just become a stay home mom and I was looking for a side income so that I could still provide some support to my family and had started on another platform and quickly realized the possibility and the velocity that online selling can bring and started my Instagram to kind of showcase my journey. And I went with Arbitrage Avenue because I like to diversify and utilize all of the different platforms. And Walmart became one of those platforms about three years ago. And just last year is when I really started to push my Walmart journey and bring a lot of my items over to this marketplace. And it's just grown ever since.
- [18:33]
Charles Leslie
And fun fact, this is the one that was actually nagging me for the last two years about getting on Walmart. I was on other platforms and this February is when I finally, it's like, all right, click apply, get in, get my stuff going. The second I made that first sale I'm like, okay, we are, we're, we're up and running now.
- [18:52]
Brian Guildenberg
I'm going to jump there next. But here on the CPG guys, you know, 410 episodes in Walmart has over 10 plus episodes on, on the CPG guys. And I got to tell you, we refer to Walmart as the world's most elite retailer. And in the journey of any seller, it's incomplete without being, without trading with Walmart. So you guys are certainly doing something right. And you earned the badges of five star sellers as well, which is a big deal. So Sarah, I'm going to jump to your Instagram profile. It says busy mom with an ecommerce. It's just what you told us. Large brands to the day struggle to leverage Instagram in any meaningful way to move products. They use it more for a one way communication to communicate whatever they want with consumers. It's never a two way street. It doesn't really hit home the points needed from a customer perspective. So how are you leveraging Instagram to scale when the largest brands are still so shy of social media?
- [19:50]
Sarah Ray
I really feel like social media has such a powerful impact on your business. Not only can you connect with other sellers and know what is trending, you can also connect with, you know, customers too. And if you pay attention to what's trending on social media, you know, kind of which direction to take your business and to stay to stay current in the trends and especially with seasonal opportunities every year, there's those items that, you know, they're the chase. It's what everyone's looking for. And if you pay attention on all of the social media platforms, then you will be right there in the middle and you'll be able to grab those sales and offer those products for your customers. And what I love the Most about social media is that it connects me as a seller to other sellers because, you know, there's bumps along the road that you can't always navigate on your own. But if you can create a community and create a following and bounce ideas off each other, you can get through those hurdles together and everybody comes out a winner at the end. So that's. It's just. It's changed my life completely.
- [20:55]
Brian Guildenberg
The community word is golden, right? Like, we debating that is silly. Large brands don't understand community because it's too much about research. It's too much about, you know, doing all kinds of studies and then focusing on cohorts and things of that nature. But is one social media platform better than the other? Or pretty much wake up, pick one, just go 800 miles an hour.
- [21:18]
Sarah Ray
I think they all serve their purpose. I love Instagram because I feel like it really brings you closer to your audience. But TikTok and Facebook, they have their place. They provide like Facebook provides an opportunity for some of, you know, I don't want to say older sellers, but they're familiar with Facebook, they grew up with, you know, Facebook, and that's where they live. And then TikTok is all of the current trends. We all the constant scroll. So they each have their purpose, for sure.
- [21:49]
Charles Leslie
Absolutely.
- [21:50]
Brian Guildenberg
You know, CPG guys are now going to sell merch on Facebook. Thanks to you, Sarah.
- [21:56]
Charles Leslie
A lot of my sales have personally been organic. We can run some ppc. But a lot of stuff, I'm just looking for things that are actually moving. I have fallen into the trap, like many sellers do in the past, where I might buy something because I like it and I think it might sell, and then it sits for six months and it doesn't move. So then I start changing my mindset to why don't we just start reversing this data from what I like to what the customer wants. And that's when we start looking at things that are actually moving. And a lot of times it's the boring stuff. I personally am a huge 90s toy and video game collector. I want to sell that all day long. And now that they're opening up that new category, I am very excited for that. But currently in the past, what I've been doing is selling the things that people want. Deodorant, toothpaste, food. You do those types of personal care, consumables, beauty. These are the things that people are not just buying because they need it and want it. Now they're also going to be repeat customers because it's Going to run out and they need to come back and get that again.
- [22:52]
Brian Guildenberg
If you got any of the number 42 Mariano Riveras from one of the World Series winning, I cannot say that.
- [22:58]
Charles Leslie
I have in stock.
- [23:00]
Brian Guildenberg
That's what happens when you got a Yankees fan living in Dodgers land and a Dodgers fan living in Yankee land. It's just that's how life kind of took us. But Charles, I want to go back to selling on the platform. Right. How do you actually acquire product and then move it? Do you have to take physical inventory? Do you have to get it to a fulfillment provider? Do you use fulfillment, Walmart's fulfillment services? How do you handle that piece?
- [23:28]
Charles Leslie
Yeah. So once we have product combination of both, it depends on a few metrics. If I'm going to be doing seller fulfilled or Walmart wfs. If it is something that is going to take a week or two to be shipped in and checked in and ready for sale and I know it's a very fast mover, I might hold that back at my warehouse and sell that Seller fulfilled. The benefit of that is you can actually sell that tonight and then if you do wfs, you have a little bit of lag time because of that shipping time. Now with that being said, I am moving a lot more into WFS because of the hands off approach. I'm in a unique position where I actually own a 3PL as well. So I own a warehouse with staff that ships WFS for clients. So I'm in a unique position where I can just give that all to them and do that. But I'm also able to just do our own Seller fulfilled right out of our garage sometimes, which is a pretty awesome situation versus SF which is seller fulfilled. And you have to hold it, list it, wait for it to ship and then you do direct to customer benefits to both. But I am very much like most entrepreneurs trying to get as hands off as I can. So WFS is where I'm leaning into now.
- [24:36]
Brian Guildenberg
And so when you say garage, who helps you actually do that fulfillment and how do you reward them? When you say fulfilling from my garage.
- [24:43]
Charles Leslie
We also have a nine year old which is excellent poly bagging and bubble wrapping. And then my 5 year old is amazing at stickering and she loves that.
- [24:51]
Brian Guildenberg
Love it, love it. Because this is how I did ask him what rewards he's giving. Remember we started this at the top of this show we referred to he's a toy collector so he's got built in rewards.
- [25:02]
Charles Leslie
The the problem though is they don't appreciate the 90s and they treat it like it's just any other toy. Yeah, it's the most painful collector.
- [25:11]
Brian Guildenberg
You got to be busting men. You got to be busing. So let me remind our audience we're speaking to Charles Leslie from the Side Hustle Network and Sarah Ray from Arbitrage Avenue. Sarah, so I'm going to jump over to you next. What tactics do you leverage and recommend for other sellers on the marketplace? Kind of asking you to give some advice over here. And then are you leveraging Walmart Connect in any meaningful way for search, et cetera, banner ads, anything of that nature, or pretty much have you reached the stage now where everything is organic? You list it and it's gone.
- [25:40]
Sarah Ray
So you're going to have trials at first for sure. Especially with Walmart, it's, it's new to a lot of us sellers and what we're able to offer. So we do a lot of test buys and we go really wide with our catalog and kind of just to see what moves essentially. And then when something is a fast mover, we'll go deeper on that. And one of the tactics that we love is wfs. Charles mentioned that we. A busy mom. I can't sell or fulfill out of my garage all the time because I'm busy with my kids. WFS takes that out of my day to day. They will package those items for me and send them and handle the customer service. So that's been a huge factor in my growth. As far as connect. I hadn't used that previously. However, I was able to meet with a Walmart customer support rep yesterday when the summit opened and he was able to show me kind of how to do that. He walked me through it, introduced me to flash deals. So now I have all these new tools in my tool belt that will even increase my sales. I'm really excited about so.
- [26:50]
Charles Leslie
And off that too, if I can, I will point out that that right there is the benefit of getting to physical events like this 100% because you can't just pick up the phone and call any platform and get that type of connection going on. So if you guys are watching this, listening, you haven't already and you're like, oh, I kind of want to try out one of those events. The networking, the talking to the reps face to face. That's the power right there. Yeah. The big one is, like I said earlier, looking for products that are actually moving quickly is always number one. So with Walmart, you can look at review counts, number of sellers, if the sellers have a pro badge, that's usually a big benefit to be on that listing. So there's different data points you can use in that realm. You can also utilize the social media platforms like Sarah mentioned, which is going to be the trends. So we all know how powerful TikTok is. One tick Tock goes viral about one product, it may not be just that one brand and product that's skyrocketing. What about the other products that are similar? Different brands, same line. So you can utilize social media data and then the data right off the platform itself. So trying. That's why I try to stick with products that have higher five star ratings. One thing that I like to do, I started doing this about a year or two years ago because when you're the first five years, you're really still just learning the basics. So it took me quite a while to figure out, oh, I can't just sell things that have five stars when those five stars might be five years old. So filtering down to recent reviews, I'm trying to pay attention to are they being returned because of poor shipping? Because that is something I can help, right? I can package something myself a little bit better or send it off to WFS to handle, or is it being returned because it's just a bad product, it might have a loose cap. Recently I just purchased a coffee, an actual coffee. What am I trying to say?
- [28:35]
Michael Mosser
Jug?
- [28:37]
Charles Leslie
Yes. So like coffee mug, but it had a specific, it was travel mug. That's what I'm thinking of. Had a specific lid on it and purchased this for my mom actually. And we had to ship it back because the lid was, it was just leaking right out of the box. And sure enough, I didn't look at those reviews as a customer like I normally do as a seller. And sure enough, those reviews show that there is a common leaky lid issue. And so as a seller, I'm paying attention to recent reviews and if I see any type of red flag like that, I'm probably going to stay away from that type of product.
- [29:09]
Brian Guildenberg
You don't like the 410 episodes, Peter. But Sarah, you were about to say something.
- [29:13]
Sarah Ray
Sorry, I was just going to say to add to that, we both have a community that we run together and what we talked about earlier, you know, networking with other sellers, we share with other sellers what's working, what's not and they share back. So where some brands might only use their own data to, you know, gauge what they're going to sell on the platform, we have all of this data that we can share and we all Win.
- [29:39]
Charles Leslie
So and the unique part with that too is the fact that we are unfortunately on any platform, most sellers try to keep keep this as a competition.
- [29:48]
Sarah Ray
Yeah.
- [29:49]
Charles Leslie
And so when you get some of us together that have like minds, which is why don't we share what's working, why don't we share the lessons that we've learned what didn't work and we can help save each other a lot of headache and time that way.
- [30:01]
Sarah Ray
Grow together.
- [30:02]
Brian Guildenberg
You know, when you free yourself from that karma of a W2 wage, you realize that as you uplift yourself, uplifting others is the best outcome that was sent here to planet Earth for. And that's what clearly you both are doing through the community, which Peter and I really appreciate. That should be life mission. But Sarah, so in that spirit of sharing to the community, if someone were to ask you what makes you elite on the marketplace, not just scale and sell a bunch of units but be seen as a top seller, what would you tell them? Got you to that spot today.
- [30:37]
Sarah Ray
I think really being customer driven, responding to messages from customers, being prompt with your returns, fast shipping, getting your items out the door as quickly as possible, there's someone on the other side waiting for that product. So being really customer driven is what we try to do and it's paid off for us. And then like we talked about sharing that with others too. It's a win win for everybody.
- [31:03]
Brian Guildenberg
My interpretation of that is customer obsession, which is what should be the DNA in the heart of any brand of any size whatsoever. Right, so let me go back to customer obsession for one second. How often do you get a ping from a customer? How often do you get a return? Is this just normal? Once a day? Do you just aggregate by the week? Like how does this process work?
- [31:26]
Sarah Ray
You're definitely going to have returns. It depends on your volume. Of course. We do get multiple returns a week. It's part of our process. When those returns come in, we are going to open them, we're going to look at them. So a lot of items can be sent right back into the platform. Some don't work and we might move those to other platforms and sell them as used. However, now that Walmart's offering used platform, we can for that.
- [31:49]
Michael Mosser
So.
- [31:50]
Sarah Ray
But yes, it's just a daily process. It's going to happen. It's the cost of business. But in the end of the day you want your customer to be happy. So if they chose a product and it's not right for them, that's okay. It's going to be right for someone.
- [32:02]
Charles Leslie
Else, I personally will be searching those trending hashtags. I love to dive in there and I do the doom scroll as much as everyone else. And I'm paying attention to which products are popping because if there's some type of specific product that's doing well, like I mentioned earlier, I may not go target that specific product to source, but I know that that type of product is doing well. So let me look at the other brands or similar products. So as a seller, I'm very much trying to keep a pulse on those different products that are doing really well.
- [32:31]
Brian Guildenberg
I actually truly believe in dreamscroll, like the platforms, because you're selling actual product. You're going to TikTok, you're going to Instagram. Peter and I at doomscrolling LinkedIn. How many times a day, Peter, how many times you open the app? Like 40, 55 times an hour. And I'm literally looking through what's hot, what's trending, what the next hashtag is like. Some people think we're crazy because they have kind of coined LinkedIn into like a business platform, whatever that word means. Like, as though TikTok is not a business platform. They don't know who cats are. And Rhea Raj is. You might want to introduce it. Very generous of both of you, Charles and Sarah, to make time during a busy, busy, busy week for you both. You know, you just mentioned the value of being there live, right? You get to meet customer service, otherwise you're on the phone for four hours trying to figure it out. So we are thankful that you chose to give us a half hour of your time. Come speak to us. This shouldn't be a one and done. Hopefully we keep this conversation going at some point, but sincerely, we want to say thank you from the CPG Guys for joining us.
- [33:30]
Sarah Ray
Thank you for having us.
- [33:32]
Charles Leslie
Absolutely. We love doing this stuff and we. Anything you guys want to talk about in the future, we are.
- [33:48]
G
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