What Amazon's top sellers do differently in 2026 and how you can replicate it

Speaker introductions and agenda

00:01:50 Matt Tomaszewski: Welcome everyone to the Amazon Growth Masterclass. Today we're going to focus on really specifically what top sellers are doing differently.

00:02:04 Matt Tomaszewski: I'm Matt, I head up our partnerships in North America here at ChannelEngine. Maybe left to right, Jason, Scott, you already intro'd yourselves — who are you representing?

00:02:26 Jason Rubenstein: Thanks, Matt. Jason Rubenstein. I'm a senior partner development manager at Amazon. I've been with Amazon for about five years, both on the advertising side and now helping 3P sellers grow and scale and be as successful as they can in their first year on Amazon. Great to be here.

00:02:47 Scott Axonovitz: I'm Scott Axonovitz. Thanks, Matt, for the kind words and ChannelEngine and Amazon, of course, for allowing me to share the stage with you all today. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer at Jungle Scout, overseeing all of our commercial business lines, helping businesses grow rapidly and profitably on Amazon.

00:03:07 Jordi Vermeer: Jordi here. I'm VP of Revenue for ChannelEngine here in North America. I've been here also a while, about five years, and would love to also share how we help sellers to optimize and maximize Amazon today.

00:03:41 Matt Tomaszewski: Let's maybe quickly introduce Jungle Scout. Scott.

00:03:45 Scott Axonovitz: Sure, thanks so much. So for those of you that are unfamiliar with Jungle Scout, we are the global leader in on-demand Amazon intelligence. We've been in business for over 12 years, covering more than 18% of Amazon's GMV across 600 million products with accuracy down to the ASIN and variant level. We've had millions of customers who trusted us to help drive their business forward. And the way that we like to look at it is we are the single source of truth for Amazon, helping business folks answer really three questions: what is happening in the market, why is it happening, and what should we do about it? At our core, we turn Amazon data into the intelligence that businesses need to drive profitable growth.

00:04:35 Matt Tomaszewski: Jordi, how about a quick one on ChannelEngine?

00:04:38 Jordi Vermeer: Yeah, so ChannelEngine, we've been around for a while. We're a marketplace integration and management solution. We do that for 1,300 global marketplaces and third-party sales channels. Mostly, obviously, Amazon is our largest channel and we cover all Amazons around the globe. Founded in 2013, around 200 people. We're global, with global offices. Typically, the main flows or things that we support with are content listings — to make it a lot easier on Amazon or other channels, and also often AI-enabled — we help with price management and promotion, setting up the prices and running them after you've had your strategy set out, then a lot around operations like orders, stock levels, the fulfillment shipments, etc. And then we go pretty deep into reporting and settlements. So those are some of the main flows — let's call it your back end to sell on these marketplaces.

00:05:45 Matt Tomaszewski: And then do we just support Amazon?

00:05:49 Jordi Vermeer: Obviously, no. So there's a large amount of channels. Of course, the focus is on Amazon for this one. But we've seen also the presence on other channels is significantly helping to sell on Amazon. So right now, with the LLMs, for example, that we launched or the TikTok shops of the world, they're actually driving Amazon growth as well. So that's why we're looking at the complete picture.

00:07:02 Matt Tomaszewski: Topics we're going to be exploring: how to win the buy box without killing your margins, how do you get found on Amazon search with AI shopping, building an Amazon operation that scales, improving your visibility across Amazon, and how do you get ready for peak season.

Building an Amazon operation that scales

00:07:51 Matt Tomaszewski: We want to start with building an Amazon operation that can scale. Jason, I know you work with sellers at various stages of this growth. When you're thinking or looking at ones that are really successful on Amazon, what are they doing differently operationally from your perspective?

00:08:04 Jason Rubenstein: Yeah, thanks for teeing that up. Successful sellers on Amazon are investing in operational excellence from day one. We talk about day one a lot, but in the true day one sense, it is a core function of launch strategy or expansion strategy, whether that's within our channel or within a different region. Starting with your own channel, your own inventory and your own channels, and ensuring that's going to work with an FBA model or maybe direct it as a vendor.

00:08:38 Jason Rubenstein: Furthermore from that, they're adopting FBA. They adopted early — top sellers use FBA. It's what we consistently see. Because FBA is going to come with a Prime badge, it's going to come with our two-day or faster delivery. That gives you access to Subscribe and Save, which if you're starting off as a new brand, is a huge way to capture loyal and returning customers. And honestly, all those programs that relate with FBA are going to compound over time and show additional results.

00:09:13 Jason Rubenstein: There are a few other things too. If we're thinking about just a few core pillars — operational excellence, FBA, advertising — they're leaning into advertising as a core investment, not only in capturing new customers, but also customer retention. Where I see Amazon operators take this to the next level is leveraging Amazon advertising to optimize your other channels. We have loads of data on who your customer is based on what they're purchasing across other categories. And so leveraging things like audience segmentation really, really sets brands apart as they scale and grow, not only on Amazon, but other channels too.

00:10:03 Jason Rubenstein: Content, always content, but furthermore, it's about brand assets — having a really strong brand store and brand story, a place that you can direct those ads to. So all of your products, your assortment can be viewed, can be purchased, and obviously retarget that audience too.

00:10:22 Jason Rubenstein: But the last thing is just: successful brands on Amazon don't do this alone. I love when the founders are working on product, working on strategy and focusing on that, letting specialized partners with a lot of expertise come in — whether that's an agency, a developer partner, a technology partner — handling things like catalog management and advertising optimization, content creation. That's a huge load off so that founders and operators can really focus on the brand, the product, the story, and continuing to grow.

00:11:06 Matt Tomaszewski: I guess from your perspective, you've been in that seat for a few years now. How's the profile of a successful Amazon seller changed?

00:11:15 Jason Rubenstein: A successful Amazon seller was definitely looking at Amazon as their main channel — like let's crush it on Amazon. And it's changed because Amazon is one of the many channels now. Where I think brands are focusing so much budget attention into Amazon, it's now an omni-channel landscape for sure, much more than it was before.

00:11:47 Matt Tomaszewski: We're also seeing a shift from the classic 1P to hybrid and 3P. Are you seeing established brands also starting to think differently in that way?

00:12:03 Jason Rubenstein: I am. I mean, there's a little bit of red tape there when it comes to vendor relationships and sellers. But those that have the ability to go hybrid or move to 3P — yeah, you're taking back a lot of control and ability to make changes quickly. And then there's hybrid models outside of like 1P/3P — a hybrid model could be you're selling on FBA, but you have a really good fulfillment network. And so you're doing seller fulfilled prime for big deal days to help with the load of a busy season.

00:12:46 Matt Tomaszewski: Jordi, from your perspective, what do brands tend to sometimes underestimate as their Amazon business grows?

00:12:54 Jordi Vermeer: Good question. I think in general, often they start with a quick setup and put the listings on manually on the back end of Amazon, which is good for the short term, but it's not a scalable long-term solution — because the backend is somewhat clunky and you don't get feedback really well back on what are the errors or where can I optimize things like my content.

00:13:20 Jordi Vermeer: So where we really excel is: one, set the foundation right on the content and make sure that things are automated, but you also optimize the content. And then setting the right pricing strategy — I think that's one of the key pieces. Making sure it's not just: "this is what I sell on my website, so that's just what I'm going to put on Amazon." Because there are other sellers or other products, and you want to be participating in promotions or the peak days like Black Friday. So setting the right pricing strategy is one of the most crucial parts to drive your sales on Amazon.

00:14:09 Matt Tomaszewski: I'm really excited to switch gears a little to Jungle Scout. Scott, you all have a very unique view across the marketplace with all the data points you have access to. What does the data tell us about how brands are growing today?

00:14:31 Scott Axonovitz: Yeah, absolutely. I think back to your original question — what we sort of view as what Amazon and folks that succeed well on Amazon do is they view Amazon as a proxy. Whether that's a proxy for innovation, whether that's a proxy for trends that are coming, for pricing strategy. To Jason's point, so much of this has become omni-channel, but if you don't use Amazon as a proxy, you're really going to struggle on a lot of these other platforms.

00:15:01 Scott Axonovitz: Amazon growth is expanding across all categories, which is really probably no surprise to a lot of folks. But the majority of that growth is coming from the 3P channel. And as we know, disruption, innovation, pricing strategy, and ultimately competition are really originating and driven through this 3P channel. And when you start to look at that competition coming from the 3P channel, it is really accelerating.

00:15:41 Matt Tomaszewski: What do you guys think is driving that shift? How should an established brand think about the role of 3P moving forward?

00:15:56 Jason Rubenstein: I'm happy to jump in. Especially with beauty — we're seeing such an influx of large direct-to-consumer brands jumping straight from Shopify right to Amazon, coming with $5 million of annual sales beforehand. These are overnight brands. It would scare me if I'm an established brand to keep your eyes on so much competition being created so quickly. I think that just reinforces, to Scott's point, like using Amazon as a proxy — it's a great lens for what's going on externally.

00:16:29 Jordi Vermeer: Yeah, I would say we're also seeing some of the larger companies like Nestlé or Unilever buying some of those D2C-native brands. So they have to kind of switch gears and run operations next to the 1P for their main brands. And those brands have to also run the 3P because they have been historically. They're seeing that those P&Ls start making sense for a lot of the products as well, which is funny enough in the beauty space as well. So therefore they started to operate more hybridly, and they also started to have better conversations with their vendor managers to potentially have other brands or certain products switch over to 3P. The combination or the hybrid sales is very powerful. In the past years, we've seen more larger or mid-size brands allowed to completely go to 3P, which has been a very interesting and powerful experience for them because they are much more in control.

00:17:35 Matt Tomaszewski: Are there signals that an Amazon seller should think about when they're deciding between 1P, 3P, hybrid?

00:17:55 Jason Rubenstein: 1P is still invite-only, right? One of those direct-to-consumer brands from beauty can't just choose overnight that they want to become a vendor. It's something that we're going to reach out to you about and discuss. So I would say if that's not an option, a strong 3P model with a really good backup plan as far as fulfillment by yourself or seller fulfilled prime is a really good strategy to go with. You just don't want to be caught in a busy season selling through inventory and having to pull from other channels.

00:18:38 Jordi Vermeer: Yeah, I would add the flip side — during peak season, 1P ran out of stock and they kind of lost out on a lot of sales. That was actually one of the triggers for them to start that conversation with their vendor manager about whether they could at least have a supplemental 3P, which some succeeded in, some did not, to be fair. Another scenario is we've seen companies where the P&Ls don't fully make sense on the 1P side. So they started doing bundles on the 3P and that made more sense for them. There are also a few drop-ship sellers — because they're responsible for the shipping anyway — that have also migrated to 3P.

00:20:02 Matt Tomaszewski: Scott, can you walk us through how many beauty products and brands have been added and what that looks like from your perspective?

00:20:08 Scott Axonovitz: Absolutely. I think what we're underscoring is how important having access to some of this data is to actually prepare for peak season or tentpole events. We've seen over 25,000 new beauty brands enter the category year over year, with those new products already accounting for almost 10% of category revenue — 9.3%. That's a really, really important thing. This is not just about new entrants into the space; the new entrants coming onto Amazon, their revenue and their products are landing with consumers.

00:20:48 Scott Axonovitz: What's striking about these new launches is they monetize very quickly — revenue for new listings is up 50% year over year. Where previously you might see new entrants come in but your immediate reaction was, "they're not taking much of my share," I think we can all say that you can't really just passively look at the market anymore. The brands that are creating disruption are capturing growth quickly. Staying ahead of that means understanding who's entering, what they're launching, and where the revenue starts to move. If you can track all of those things, you can start to build a moat around your business if you're an established brand. And if you're an emerging brand, this is really interesting because you could use Amazon, as Jason mentioned, go right from your Shopify direct-to-consumer experience right onto Amazon and really make an impact, then start to truly drive consumer insights around what your business looks like.

00:21:55 Matt Tomaszewski: What's separating these brands that are breaking through?

00:22:05 Scott Axonovitz: I think it's a little bit of both. I'll let Jason speak to what he's seeing on his side, and in a couple of slides we'll actually talk a little bit about ad spend and visibility and how that can drive some of this traction.

00:22:17 Jason Rubenstein: I'm seeing brands that are entering with really strong niche products — we're talking one or two ASINs — that are just doing a really good job. They have really strong branding. Maybe there's some significant influencer spend, micro and macro. They're doing it all. And that product is moving. And what we see is the search frequency rank rising for these products before launch. So they already have the demand ready to go.

00:22:56 Jordi Vermeer: I also think it's worth mentioning — I believe I saw a Forbes article around this as well — that TikTok Shop, especially for beauty brands, has some of the top 10 TikTok Shop sellers in that category. What they also stated is that a lot of the brands that get discovered on TikTok, still a lot of the purchases are happening on Amazon. So this is some of that kind of multi-channel facet — they still get the service and the two-day shipping from Amazon, whereas the discovery and getting enthusiastic about the new product or a new brand in beauty can happen on another platform.

00:23:46 Matt Tomaszewski: Jordi, from your standpoint at ChannelEngine, tell us a little bit about what that growth looks like behind the scenes. At what point does complexity start becoming a real problem for these brands versus just the number of orders they're processing?

00:24:20 Jordi Vermeer: I think typically when either the SKU amounts start surpassing 50 or 100 SKUs, or when the number of channels starts surpassing more than one or two, and when the selling models become hybrid — you start doing different fulfillment and logistical models like combining FBA, FBM, Seller Fulfilled Prime, MCF. When you start to drive more complexity from adding more channels, fulfillment models, or SKUs, that's when automation starts to become more and more important because you can't keep track of your three products that just blew up. You have a lot of products. And then also, a lot of organizations that become larger need to get their reporting and their financials in order, making sure that their settlements at the end of the month look right. It's important to automate these things to get a clear picture of your full P&L.

00:25:28 Matt Tomaszewski: You'd alluded earlier to established brands starting to use 3P in a way to complement their existing Amazon business.

00:25:37 Jordi Vermeer: Yeah, we have an example of a client that's one of the largest electronics appliances companies in the world. They have all their main products on Amazon Vendor, but they're now going to launch all their spare parts on the seller piece because they get a lot of requests for it and Amazon isn't going to want to carry it because it's kind of long tail. And that for them is really good also for their brand optics — it makes it complete. Amazon's happy because they have those products that people actually want and need to support the main products.

00:26:19 Matt Tomaszewski: We see spare parts, long tail product lines, discontinued assortment, all those new brands.

00:26:28 Jordi Vermeer: Sometimes they launch a different brand or they acquire a brand and they do that 3P, and then the rest goes 1P. So yeah, there's a lot of that going on for sure.

Maximizing visibility and product discovery

00:26:52 Matt Tomaszewski: Let's flip over to maximizing visibility. We talked a little bit about the operational side. Now let's move over to your products being found. Discovery on Amazon is ever-changing. Traditional search matters a lot, but AI-powered shopping experiences are absolutely creating a new way for shoppers to discover and evaluate products. Jason, let's start with Amazon itself. How's product discovery changing with things like Alexa and conversational shopping?

00:27:31 Jason Rubenstein: It's changed even in the last few months since we've had the opportunity to connect Alexa AI. The way people are searching for products, but also how the algorithm is working, is changing. Previously I would have said, we're reading your bullet points, looking deeply at each keyword, the story it's telling. But where it's changed now is we're looking at structured fields like price, rating, down to the rating that customers are giving for things like waterproof or not waterproof. It's really, really granular — we're not just scanning bullet points.

00:28:19 Matt Tomaszewski: What does that mean for how sellers should think about their listings?

00:28:30 Jason Rubenstein: When you're thinking about a listing and the back end of how you're uploading them — fill out every single attribute field. Not just the material or the dimensions, but things like use cases and compatibility, which allows you to optimize for conversational queries. So in a waterproof tent example: is this good for camping? Are you answering that question, are you adding to that conversation? We have tons of category-specific style guides in Seller Central to leverage, but think about synonyms and alternate names that can go in there to really expand. And leverage tools that are going to give you some really good insights into what to upload.

00:29:22 Matt Tomaszewski: Are there any specific callouts that you'd say sellers are overlooking?

00:29:30 Jason Rubenstein: Think about content too — it's not just the text. A Plus content, having high-quality images within your brand store, is just going to enrich your AI footprint with Amazon. It's skyrocketing as far as shoppers using this experience and converting through it. To give some specific stats: in Andy Jassy's latest earnings call, US customers that are using Alexa for shopping are spending 40% more on average compared to shoppers that aren't. So it's not that they're converting more, they're spending more. And that's what we all want at the end of the day.

00:30:32 Matt Tomaszewski: Scott, from your perspective, when you're looking at data, how are people actually discovering these products on Amazon?

00:30:36 Scott Axonovitz: I think Jason said it perfectly. Search visibility really matters, but it's not always the whole picture — whether it's ad spend, pricing, customer feedback for ratings and reviews, style guides, or A Plus content, all of that plays into this whole picture. If you take a slide and look at Neutrogena as an example, they have 5.2% organic share of search and 4.8% sponsored share. So they are spending heavily to hold the shelf through ads while simultaneously benefiting from massive brand awareness that's driving organic placement. That's an established brand defending their position in market.

00:31:35 Scott Axonovitz: But if you take the next layer down and look at something like Medicube — which we'll consider more of a challenger brand — with a fraction of the ad spend, they're growing organic search share. They're building demand off Amazon through social or influencer marketing, their grassroots community. And that demand is ultimately converting into organic visibility on Amazon and then driving conversion and sales there. Their revenue today might look modest, but the trajectory is what really matters. The takeaway is not to pick between organic and paid. The folks that win today know how to understand and operate both. Paid placement protects your shelf position in the near term, but organic visibility over time is ultimately what allows you to have sustainable market share.

00:32:38 Matt Tomaszewski: What are we seeing in terms of keyword trends and branded versus generic searches?

00:32:57 Jason Rubenstein: There's always this sweet spot between bidding heavily on your own brand terms — capitalizing on that, playing defense from competitors — but at the end of the day, you're most likely capturing a sale that you would have gotten otherwise and seeing a really good ROAS that's going to make it look good, but it's really not. So you've got to play the balance between the two. It's search, it's display, it's really always optimizing — the right keywords, but it's also understanding the time and place and looking at Amazon data and reporting to influence how and where you're spending. There's a ton of things through Amazon Marketing Cloud that we're giving more access to that are super advanced when it comes to optimizing and looking at new segments and markets.

00:33:55 Scott Axonovitz: Yeah, absolutely. Keywords are so interesting because there are certain things you have to purchase to protect. But then there's this whole other avenue of what is now starting to trend. And disruption can be a good thing, especially as it relates to keywords — what are people now searching for? We see this a lot in the beauty category with sun care products. All of a sudden over the last 12 to 18 months there was this huge rise around whether products were clinically approved or dermatologist recommended. Those things start to become really interesting — if you would have rewound three to five years ago, you would not have seen any of those keywords tied to sunscreen.

00:34:42 Scott Axonovitz: Now all of these things are starting to emerge. It's about trying to understand what trend is coming, what keywords then follow — because you can typically bid on those keywords and get them tied to your listing at a much more affordable rate than the longstanding keywords that you have to purchase anyway and that, to Jason's point, would have driven the sale in most cases.

00:35:09 Matt Tomaszewski: Visibility isn't just about search — making sure Amazon has the right information about your products is a huge component. Jordi, going back a little to the operational side, what are the realities of trying to keep all that product information and data accurate across these catalogs?

00:35:42 Jordi Vermeer: Yeah, like I said before, the foundational layer is important. Sometimes brands start with doing things in the back end, but then you don't exactly know what's there. So having a structured way of flowing your product data into Amazon and making sure it's as complete as possible — of course you need to make sure it's accurate to Amazon's restrictions, which isn't always easy — and that you optimize it and make it as complete as possible. That's often where we see people stop: "I'll do the required fields and that's it." Whereas, especially for an LLM or for AI like Alexa, you need to make sure that you deliver the content in a structured way, and the more structured the better. Attributes are a very structured way of doing so.

00:36:47 Jordi Vermeer: Attributes is the new sexy — as I heard someone else here say. LLMs can read them much better. Of course, the context is important with all the descriptions and the reviews. But those attributes are very, very good. So make sure that's correct, because that's where things like Alexa is going to read off of, and that's where some of the AI recommendations are going to be based on. And then having catalog health reporting, making sure that you get feedback and can analyze: are all my products listed? Is everything complete? Am I discoverable? Having a health report is going to be important.

Winning the Buy Box without sacrificing margin

00:37:45 Matt Tomaszewski: Let's shift to mastering the buy box without sacrificing your margin. We've talked about making sales, but how do you protect some of your margins? Discoverability is absolutely a part of that equation, but in converting that demand, let's talk about the buy box. Jason, from Amazon's perspective, what should sellers understand about staying competitive and maintaining buy box eligibility without simply defaulting to being the lowest price?

00:38:24 Jason Rubenstein: Yeah, great question. There's a lot to unpack here, but I think the common thing that most sellers miss and get wrong is not factoring in the total landed cost — not just product price — because things like shipping speeds, FBA fees, and returns are all going to impact margin. I always recommend pricing competitively at launch, but then letting data, letting some of your partners, guide you in those adjustments rather than just reacting to competitors. And there are lots of tools from Jungle Scout and ChannelEngine to remove a lot of this manual work. That's what the best sellers are doing: staying competitive on price, but also looking at fulfillment method as that advantage.

00:39:21 Matt Tomaszewski: Can you elaborate a little bit more on what factors exist beyond price?

00:39:27 Jason Rubenstein: Definitely price. Fulfillment method I mentioned. We're also going to look at seller performance metrics — order defects, late shipments, tracking validity. Those performance metrics go into buy box eligibility. And inventory availability — consistently having that in stock — is a core piece of your overall account health. It's not just the lowest price. We're looking at the full customer experience when it comes to eligibility.

00:40:06 Matt Tomaszewski: Scott, what does Jungle Scout's data tell us about how competitive pricing can differ across categories? And maybe from your perspective, how not to react when you have a gut reaction versus using data to guide you?

00:40:33 Scott Axonovitz: Yeah, absolutely. I think the first place to start is really with your own Amazon data — whether that's your Vendor Central or Seller Central. Starting with your Seller Central data and understanding where are sales going? Are sales going up or down while keeping your price consistent? If you're keeping things consistent from a pricing standpoint but sales start to decline, that's when you're going to want to use something like Jungle Scout to understand the market. Who is now coming in? What are those new entrants doing?

00:41:07 Scott Axonovitz: In some cases they're undercutting price, but in other cases that has a direct correlation to ratings and reviews. Someone may be coming in and cutting price, but that product may not be of the same quality. So you can start to see some of that in the data. If you start to realize people are just knocking off the price and the product really isn't that good, the data may suggest you maintain your price because those sales will eventually revert back. But if you start to look at it and say there's really high-quality product here, they just happen to have a better supply chain or manufacturer, then you want to look at: what keywords are they bidding on? What does their content strategy look like? What does their AI strategy around content look like? And that will ultimately start to tell you that there is some pricing pressure here and you might have to reprice to actually compete in that space.

00:42:13 Matt Tomaszewski: This is where automation can become super interesting. ChannelEngine's Repricer tool — Jordi, maybe we shift to a real live use case and case study of something like this being utilized.

00:42:40 Jordi Vermeer: Yeah. This is one of our clients that had been with us for a while, but then we together activated our Repricer, which acts on the ASINs that they're selling. This is a reseller, but it works a similar way for brands. The result was over 4% increase in their margins, which is quite significant. But they also found that almost 70% — a little bit over 70% — of their products were overpriced and therefore they never made it to the buy box and therefore they never even had an option to sell them on Amazon. So they had hundreds of products that they could start selling. Basically, using the pricing intelligence either enabled them to sell at a higher rate — because it looks at all the other sellers on the same ASINs and their seller ratings and acts accordingly — or to reduce the price to make sure that they could actually start competing on the buy box.

00:43:59 Jordi Vermeer: Where we see brands come into play — and I see in the audience we have quite a few brands as well — sometimes brands don't want to change their price or say, "this is my MSRP, that's it." That's where we see it more happening for intelligence. We also give things like buy box reporting, where you can see all the resellers and what pricing they're using. And that could also fuel a strategy: do I want to stop using these resellers, or let's be more flexible with the price and have that discussion internally? Because otherwise we're just going to lose the buy box and our resellers are going to win it, whilst in reality we have the margin to win it.

00:44:51 Jordi Vermeer: The last piece I typically recommend is price parity across channels. One thing Amazon really doesn't like — and I'm going to speak on your behalf here, Jason — is if you're selling the product on Walmart for cheaper than on Amazon, or vice versa by now, because Walmart also doesn't like it. They're going to suppress you on the buy box if you're selling it somewhere else for less. So we also have a price parity solution where if you start repricing on Amazon, you can make sure across all your channels it will have that same price. In general, I would recommend making sure you have price parity, because otherwise you have the risk to get kicked off the buy box in the first place.

00:45:44 Matt Tomaszewski: Jason, anything you'd add from a buy box perspective on what successful sellers are doing?

00:45:55 Jason Rubenstein: Definitely leveraging FBA, leveraging tools like Jungle Scout as Scott mentioned. But there are also other fulfillment methods that can still win that buy box and ensure you're still meeting fulfillment metrics. There is, for a very small subset — and this is because you're on this webinar, because you know your partner or plan to be with Jungle Scout or ChannelEngine — you may qualify for what we call a dedicated offer. That is ownership of the buy box — your buy box — and removing those other third parties that shouldn't be selling the product. We save it for a very small set, but for partners that come through service providers like Jungle Scout and ChannelEngine, we may be able to offer that. If you're not currently selling on Amazon and are hesitant because of a bunch of third parties or distributors selling your products, this is something to explore.

Fulfillment strategies: FBA, MCF, and Seller Fulfilled Prime

00:47:10 Matt Tomaszewski: You brought up fulfillment and some of the programs that Amazon has in place. Jason, we hear a lot about FBA. There are other options available to sellers. Help us think about and walk through FBA versus MCF and Seller Fulfilled Prime.

00:47:29 Jason Rubenstein: This is expanding fast — we're creating new acronyms on a daily basis. FBA is still the core fulfillment: shipping to our fulfillment centers, using us to analyze which fulfillment centers to ship to so you've got good coverage across the country. Multi-channel fulfillment now gets into leveraging Amazon fulfillment for other channels as well.

00:47:53 Jason Rubenstein: But one thing we should focus in on is Seller Fulfilled Prime. These are brands that have an existing warehouse infrastructure. If you have strong logistics operations or partners that can do that for you, SFP might be the way to go. You're providing the fulfillment, you meet certain requirements, and we give you that Prime badge. In order to do that, you need an on-time delivery rate of 93.5% or more, tracking rates at 99% or more, cancellation rates under 0.5%. You must offer one- or two-day delivery to a large percentage of US customers, plus weekend shipping and pickup. SFP is growing pretty fast. It's a good hybrid approach for some models, but you need significant infrastructure or partners with that knowledge in order to keep that badge going. There's a review window when you sign up, then we look at the next 60 to 90 days to see if you've hit all those metrics, and then you're good to go. But it can be pulled back at any time too.

00:49:33 Matt Tomaszewski: Jordi, maybe once a seller's using these programs, how can technology help them get the most out of inventory performance infrastructure? You had a case study about Keter as well.

00:49:51 Jordi Vermeer: Correct. Yeah, Keter is a good example. They did a 1P-to-3P transition, but they couldn't manage a good combination of their FBM and their FBA, which caused them to rely on one or the other. That wasn't optimal because a lot of their products are long tail or larger and that was too expensive to run through FBA entirely. So often what you do is take your top 20% of products that you definitely want to have in FBA, and then the rest FBM — and FBM is also a fallback for your FBA. That's how Keter did it for Amazon and it started to accelerate their growth, because you're kind of never running out of stock.

00:50:37 Jordi Vermeer: What's important, especially in a Seller Fulfilled Prime program, is that things go as automated as possible, but you also set up safety buffers — things like buffers, limits, and stock allocations — to make sure that you never hit those cancellations because you've run out of stock because it sold somewhere else. Setting up the automations and your backend correctly to facilitate this would prevent you from having more cancellations or late shipments than you'd like, because you're going to get penalized for it — especially on Seller Fulfilled Prime — and your account health is going to be impacted.

00:51:34 Jordi Vermeer: The last recommendation is Amazon's MCF program. That means your FBA stock can be used for other channels to do the fulfillment. That's becoming more and more flexible, not just in the US, but also in the UK, Europe, and other regions. You use your Amazon as a 3PL, basically. This also increases your FBA limits because you're telling Amazon you predict a certain level of Shopify sales and they're going to do the fulfillment. You can do things like blank-box and last-mile delivery opt-out to make sure it doesn't look like it shipped by Amazon. That could also be a fallback — you do your own logistics for, say, your website, and then when you run out, you can still use your FBA stock levels. And the latest thing we've heard is that you can also use your 1P stock for the MCF program.

Peak season preparation

00:52:43 Matt Tomaszewski: Let's shift gears. We're sitting at the end of August. Jason, what should sellers already be doing now to make sure they're ready for major shopping events ahead?

00:53:01 Jason Rubenstein: Yeah, you should be just wrapping up inventory planning and optimizing all of your listings, having the content updates for peak ready to go now so you can publish that once ready. You should start focusing now on submitting deals and coupons — our deadlines are always going to be firm on that. Test out ad campaigns. It's never too late to start prepping for this, but you really should be focusing on inventory and coupons, deals, and promotions right now.

00:53:47 Matt Tomaszewski: Scott, can you take us through peak season things that you've seen others either take advantage of or miss in the past?

00:53:52 Scott Axonovitz: Yeah, absolutely. Jason said it perfectly — we're sitting here at the end of August and it's already started. If you haven't had your inventory planning sessions and you're not already testing your ads and so on, you may start to fall behind.

00:54:15 Scott Axonovitz: Peak season starts now, or has already started in some ways. If you look at search demand, that starts to rise in about 30 days from now. So think about all the things you have to do — take that 30-day window and start to back out what you need to do, whether it's inventory, planning, listings, or getting things over to Amazon in an orderly fashion. Those things all have to start now. Top sellers not only understand this, they get ahead of it. They leverage data and insights to understand how to grow efficiently during this time and take advantage of the opportunity that Amazon presents starting in early October. Those are the ones that have set themselves up for the next 12 months of success. And we will inevitably get phone calls in 30 to 45 days from now saying, "Hey, what can I do to maximize the holiday season?" The answer is: next year, call us about 45 days earlier.

00:55:41 Jason Rubenstein: Just to touch on one thing — obviously we know the holiday season, but stay flexible. We're changing deal days every year, every season now, so just be ready for what's to come, whether that's two-day deal days, four days a week. We keep moving the goalposts, which I think is a good thing — it just expands the field.

00:56:15 Jordi Vermeer: I would say definitely make sure you have your fallbacks as well. If you're a 3P seller and you haven't connected an FBM stock to it, I think that's crucial. Of course, now it's important to make sure your content is there because the searches are going to start. But also make sure you prepare from a technical perspective — have those integrations and the fallback locations ready to ship even if FBA runs out of stock, because it will or it might happen. And then you might have a little bit more grace with how long the shipping is during that period. As long as you can have those fallbacks, I think you're going to be solid.

Q&A

00:57:05 Matt Tomaszewski: It looks like we have a question from Chris to Jason.

00:57:34 Jason Rubenstein: Yeah, thanks for that question, Chris. This is a really bespoke offer. It's for partners that work with ChannelEngine or Jungle Scout — talk to your partner manager, let's set up a call and discuss. You'd have to not be on Amazon, right? This would need to be for a launch, or maybe there's a reason you've been on for a while and are now dormant. Great question. Follow up, talk to your account manager, and let's get a call set up. But my takeaway here would be: don't wait to launch new listings right at peak. You're not going to have reviews, the conversion is going to be low, and our AI algorithm needs a few months to build that critical mass.

00:58:25 Matt Tomaszewski: Amazon Accelerate is coming up in September — it's kind of the Super Bowl for Amazon sellers. We're all going to be there, so if you're going to be there, let's make sure we meet in person. And there's a question around the B2B model.

00:58:57 Jason Rubenstein: I'm aware of it. That's just where I'd have to phone a friend.

00:59:04 Jordi Vermeer: Yeah, we also operate it. Basically you can just say: sell on B2C or also B2B. The biggest focus is the quantity discounts that you're setting up on the B2B side. The biggest advice from our perspective is that things are being bought in larger quantities, so think about the strategy — how many products would it make sense to give how much discount — and spend some time setting them up correctly.

00:59:38 Matt Tomaszewski: Well, that's a wrap on this Amazon Growth Masterclass — what top sellers are doing differently. We appreciate Scott, Jason, Jordi, as well as everyone attending, and hope to see you all soon. Thanks everyone.

00:59:56 Jordi Vermeer: Thank you.

00:59:57 Jason Rubenstein: Thank you.