In July 2020, BidX launched a pilot project called "FreakyFriday". The idea of the project is to step into the role of sellers themselves to better understand their needs and their daily challenges. To do this, teams of 2 were formed to sell products either through Merch by Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing or FBA. In the following case study, the team chose to sell products using FBA.
Product finding
The first step before you can start selling is, of course, to find a suitable product. To do this, the team first set some criteria. On the one hand, the product should have a strong demand, i.e. be searched for very frequently on Amazon. On the other hand, the product should already be offered, but still have potential for improvement. Products such as food, electronics or cosmetics were categorically excluded, as they are too costly and risky due to the necessary certificates.
A tool was used to search for keywords where the displayed products cost about 15€ (not too expensive, as otherwise they would be too expensive to purchase), had an average rating of 3.5 (potential for improvement) and were in a "suitable" product category.
Amazon Brand Analytics was also used for the analysis. The focus was to find out which keywords have a very high search volume.
After extensive research, a pigeon repellent was finally determined as the product.
Subsequently, the analysis of existing products on Amazon began. Among other things, reviews were analyzed to understand what buyers (didn't) like, what they were missing and what could be improved. The analysis revealed that the spikes of the pigeon repellent are often too short and blunt, so that pigeons still land on them. Therefore, longer and more pointed spikes were to be used for their own product. Another important criterion for most buyers is effortless length adjustments of the bars. To meet this requirement, the own product should have predetermined breaking points.
Insights could also be drawn from the "Buy it with" section. Since buyers often buy additional double-sided outdoor adhesive tape, this was to be offered together with cable ties in a set with their own product in order to create another unique selling point.
What also stood out in the analysis was that most products are brown, black or green. Therefore, the own product should have a discreet, transparent color to create a unique selling proposition.
Product sourcing
Once the product and all the requirements had been determined, the team began to source the product. For this, suitable suppliers were searched for on Alibaba.com. It was ensured that these were verified and had the Alibaba trade guarantee.
A total of 8 suppliers were contacted with pictures and precise descriptions of the desired product. Price, minimum order quantity (MOQ), packaging and shipping were negotiated with them. The decision for a supplier and the order of the goods was made in July 2020. 250 pieces including white cable ties and 3 m transparent double-sided adhesive tape were ordered. Together with neutral packaging and transport to the Amazon warehouse, the price was 1613.44€. In September 2020, the products then arrived at the Amazon warehouse and the sale began.
Listing creation
An optimized listing is essential for the success of a product on Amazon. Above all, images, titles, bullet points and the description are important for customers to make a purchase decision.
In this case, the images for the listing were provided by the supplier and post-processed with Photoshop. For the bullet points, 5 concise points with many keywords were created.
In addition, A+ content was created. This replaces the product description completely by images with short explanatory texts. This allows products to be presented even better and content to be conveyed visually.
You can see the finished listing here.
After the listing was completed, campaigns were created for the product. Especially with a product launch, it is extremely important to run ads to make potential customers aware of the product and increase the chances of sales significantly.
For this purpose, an extensive keyword research was first executed to determine relevant keywords for the BROAD campaign. Then, a competitive analysis was conducted to identify competitors. The ASINs from these competitor products were then used for the PAT campaign.
The BROAD and the PAT campaign were created in the BidX tool (start date: 09/20/2020). At the beginning, the main focus was to increase visibility and improve organic ranking. For this purpose, a relatively high ACoS was accepted for the time being. Because you can enter an individual target ACoS in the BidX tool and even set individual rules for pushing the products, the campaigns were so successful that the products went out of stock. Subsequently, a lower target ACoS was aimed for, which the tool was also able to achieve.
Success measurement
From the start of sales in September 2020 until April 2021, 1239 units were sold. Amazon paid out €10,129.26 for this (sales minus FBA fees and advertising expenses). Minus all expenses for the goods and shipping for 1250 pieces in the amount of 6,007.57€ thus 4,121.69€ (before taxes) could be earned. These were reinvested again.
*Gross sales, paid out by Amazon, i.e. FBA fee and advertising expenses are already deducted.
**Due to returns, more items were sold than were in stock.
***Profit before taxes.
For the entire team, the project was an exciting experience in which they learned a lot about the challenges of Amazon Sellers by stepping into the role themselves. The use of the BidX tool has made the creation and optimization of the ads much easier and has significantly increased the success of the product.
