Jordan Buckner (00:00)
If you're a CPG founder in 2025, Amazon isn't optional. It's foundational to selling for your business. But selling on Amazon today looks nothing like it did even a year ago. So I invited Anshan and Rafay, who are co-founders of BoostUp AMZ, who have helped scale dozens of consumer brands on the platform. And in this episode, I really want to break down exactly what you need to know to stay competitive from the latest policy changes and fees.

to the strategies that are separating the top performing brands from those who are getting buried in the search. I'm also here to debunk some of the biggest myths around Amazon advertising and what founders get wrong. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed by Amazon's complexity or you're wondering how to exactly make it profitable, this conversation is your roadmap. So let's get into it. Shayan Rafay, welcome to the podcast today.

Shayan Sohail (00:52)
It's a player being over here.

Jordan Buckner (00:54)
So tell me a little bit about how Amazon is looking, kind of selling in 2025 and why it's so necessary as a platform for CPG brands.

Shayan Sohail (01:05)
Definitely. So just in regards to how it looks for brands out there. So basically the competition is actually over there. So if you're a new and upcoming brand that is initially just starting to sell on over and thinking about selling on Amazon, the more quicker you do so is the better because ultimately Amazon is the platform where you already have demand built up for specific products. The quantity or the scalability of the demand would vary from category to category, of course, depending upon

on

in which category you specifically selling in. But the earlier that you are in the market itself, you will be getting the advantage of being a mover inside the market itself rather than moving over after two years where there are hundreds of other brands that are already competing if you're not already on the platform itself.

In regards to the profitability itself, you could say initially, well, you're just starting over on Amazon itself, things will get a bit competitive because we do have bigger brands out there that are taking most of the market share itself. But the thing is that...

we can sort of work towards over on taking the market and go for the market itself in smaller portions itself, segregating the product type into different niches in order to target specific niches that go hand in hand into what specific product features do we have for our product itself in the market and sort of build our customer base from there on itself and move ahead and compete with the other big players out there.

Jordan Buckner (02:34)
You know, it's wild because from some of the latest statistics I saw, you know, roughly 75 % of all U.S. Amazon shoppers or Prime members, they have a subscriber count of over 180 million in the U.S. alone, which is, the majority of at least half of the country here. And so it's really a good representation of what consumers are searching for and shopping for across the entire

spectrum on the internet and so it's a really great place to start for brands.

Shayan Sohail (03:05)
Yeah.

Definitely, definitely. And just one more thing to actually add on over itself over here is that, for example, you're a new brand that is just coming over into Amazon itself. In the few initial months, there won't be that much profitability itself that you see from day one onto the brand itself. But the thing is that selling on Amazon will give you key advantage of spreading your brand awareness across all different online platforms, as well as ⁓

into

the.

You could say like the grocery shops that we have or any distribution centers that you're actually partnered over with whether it's Target, Walmart, etc. Right? So basically selling on Amazon gives a translucent effect on all these other platforms that we're actually selling over on. So for example, if you're just selling, just D2C right now through your website, and if you sell over and start selling over on Amazon itself, you'll definitely be able to see an increase

the search volume for your specific brand itself, of the keywords that the customers are searching, and vice versa. I mean, if you're an established brand that has been selling over on the website itself, there'll be definitely customers that are searching for your product on Amazon. So it's definitely a requirement for any brand out there to have their presence and take advantage of the already built up demand for their products

take advantage for that.

Jordan Buckner (04:33)
No, that's really smart. thing someone wants to explain it to me is when you're searching on Amazon, you can instantly figure out if there's demand for your existing product in market, right? You can tell how many people are searching for your product. You can tell if they're searching for the category or type of product brand announced it, or if you can tell if

no one's searching for your product or your brand. And it's a really good representation on how easy or how difficult it's going to be to actually succeed, not just on Amazon, but selling anywhere.

Shayan Sohail (05:05)
Correct, correct. I definitely do agree over here with a lot of external tools and the reports that we have over from within Amazon itself. It really does make it easy and difficult keeping away on both sides of the scale.

Jordan Buckner (05:20)
Yeah, you know, I remember I had my own product that I talked about before. It's called Teasquares is a line of energy bars. And when you look at searches for protein bars on Amazon, they're really high. When we're essentially trying to sell an energy bar made with tea or a caffeinated energy bar, and there are like zero searches for it.

And we're like, great, there's a huge opportunity for us. But what we actually realized is because no one was searching for it, it was really expensive to get in front of new customers and not just on Amazon. was the same in grocery stores, it the same on our own D2C site. so I always tell brands, it's really hard to sell your product on Amazon. It's going to be really hard to sell it everywhere. And if it's easy to sell your product on Amazon, it's going to be easier to sell it in other...

channels as well because it's just so representative of like what people are shopping for and how they're shopping.

Shayan Sohail (06:14)
Correct, correct. I 100 % agree to this terminology itself because if there are searches itself as well for your specific product itself on Amazon, you're actually just missing out on potential sales that you could be getting.

Because even if you're starting to work over on indexing and showing yourself to a few people on Amazon, without even investing over on ads itself, you'll definitely be indexed on a few low search volume keywords itself, mid-tail, long-tail keywords that might potentially even end up getting you a few sales.

Jordan Buckner (06:45)
that. So let's talk about two different things. One, I want to talk through the difference between a new company that's only launched in the last year or so that wants to sell on Amazon and a more established company. And let's say you've been around three, four or five years, you're doing maybe a million dollars in sales or a couple of millions. So not like the large brands, but the differences between the two. And so let's start with the

established brand. So if you have been selling in market for a few years, some people know about your product, how should you think about approaching Amazon?

Shayan Sohail (07:19)
Definitely, so to the million dollar in sales are specifically for the website and not on Amazon, right? Or on Amazon.

Jordan Buckner (07:25)
Right, just

outside of Amazon.

Shayan Sohail (07:28)
Perfect.

Perfect. So definitely if the brand itself is doing a million dollars in sale, approximately, I think there is a huge opportunity for you to be seeing your potential on Amazon itself. So what we basically do is that we work over on a few researching tools that Amazon also has. And with that, there's this tool called Helium 10 that basically allows us to research specifically into the market itself to see what sort of search volumes do we have, as well as what sort of estimated revenues, you know, the people

in the same category that the brand is selling in, what sort of revenues are they achieving over into the market itself? So after that, what we work on overdoing is that we work towards over a product feasibility report. So basically what it means is that whether within the current state of our product, whether it's the pricing, what sort of back-count do we have, and all that situation, all the attributes that we have over for the product, we sort of see even if it's viable itself as well and profitable.

actually go up into and selling on Amazon because the main thing that most new and old sellers are currently facing on Amazon is the increase in the Amazon selling fees itself.

With that, Amazon is also now making a lot difficult for brands with their new inventory storage limits itself that they've recently rolled out. So a lot of different sellers are facing this issue itself as well because I was working with another company that basically does like merchandising shirts. So 75 % of their sales happen like in June and July. So basically what Amazon did, not realizing the historical value like in the last

year

how much revenue did they did. They're basing their inventory projections for the last few months and eventually they've just slashed their inventory limits itself and they're unable to actually send on over any inventory into the Amazon warehouses itself as of right now but they're still working with the support in order to try to get them to convince and go ahead with inventory limits. But coming back onto the topic itself after we do the prior feasibility test we work over on

just seeing what sort of different niches do we have over within the market itself. And we sort of work over to see how we can slowly work our way and temper into the market itself. Because as I said earlier, we'll definitely have.

a bit of search volume for our product on Amazon because if we're doing a million dollars in sales, they're definitely people that are looking over on us, maybe on Facebook or Google and definitely searching on over on Amazon to get the prime shipping in for their products. So we'll definitely have a bit of demand already built up for the product itself on Amazon. All we need to do is break towards over on initially fulfilling that demand first for the people that already know about the brand, know about the product and each and every thing.

And then after that in order to work with scalability for that new brand that is doing good amount of sales outside of Amazon we worked towards over on introducing the product to the customers that might have maybe heard about the product but not specifically searched to their branded searches on Amazon and we sort of worked towards over on providing the customers with this product on Amazon for the customers that actually do not know about the brand.

Jordan Buckner (10:40)
So, Shayan I think one thing you said, which is so important, is if your product's in market, there are people, whether you know it or not, they're searching to buy it on Amazon. And I think one conception that a lot of companies have is say, like, hey, if I'm not on Amazon, then those people will just buy through my D2C website and I'll make a higher margin.

Shayan Sohail (10:51)
Get it.

Jordan Buckner (11:04)
I'm curious what you think, but what I've actually seen and experienced as a customer and seeing other customers is maybe going actually through the checkout process through a branded site is usually more complicated and there's more points to drop off more easily than on Amazon and that usually the conversion rate from someone looking on a product page on Amazon is going to be higher than the conversion rate on your website. So it's not just that.

they're not gonna buy it on Amazon, they're just gonna buy it on your website, they just won't buy your product at all.

Shayan Sohail (11:32)
Correct, correct. So basically the overall Amazon platform is built for purchase intent. No one is out there to actually research for a specific product or research for a specific supplement. People go to Google for that. Amazon is solely a buying platform where people come, they search, and they actually want to get something and get it delivered to their house. So I think that basically answers the overall question in a very small sentence itself, that people on Amazon

that go up on Amazon and search for any specific product, whether it's a supplement, they're there to buy it. But if they want to research, like what are the advantages and the disadvantages for that supplement, they have Google for that, people, our customers actually go to Google to actually research over for a specific product itself.

Jordan Buckner (12:16)
Yeah, and I think one example I always tell with people too is I usually will shop for a lot of things at Target stores here. And if someone's not selling at Target, but maybe selling at Walmart, since I don't normally go there, like actually just won't go to Walmart to buy the product. And even though in the real life, there's like a physical distance, but even online, there's that same mental distance between going to another site, having to put your credit card information in and your address and all this stuff. And that

If you can't get someone to check out in five seconds like it is on Amazon, then you'll lose them, they'll get distracted, maybe their kids start asking for them and they forget and come back to it and they never come back to it. And so there's definitely that mental distance as well to purchasing.

Shayan Sohail (12:46)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Correct.

Agreed.

Jordan Buckner (12:58)
So let's talk about new brands. if you're just starting out on as a new company and you know Amazon's important, you want to get started. How should you, what tools are available on Amazon one to understand if there's a demand for your type of product or not. And then what type of expectations should you have in terms of what selling is going to look like in the first six months to a year.

Shayan Sohail (13:20)
Perfect, perfect. So basically in regards to the tools for new sellers, Amazon has their own search term report, which basically shows us all the search terms that customers are searching on over on Amazon on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. So we have a whole set of compilation of data in an Excel sheet that basically shows the...

search term essentially and Amazon gives the search score to the specific, you could say search term, for example, a specific keyword. So being at the top means that the search volume over there for that specific term is the most. So basically using that specific report, we get the overall idea of how much demand there is for a specific product to the market. With that,

The report actually does show the top three click competitors as well that are selling on Amazon. And with that, what sort of conversion rate of those specific clicks they're actually achieving over on Amazon. So basically, this specific report gives us like a bird's eye view over at the demand and the type of competition that we have over in the market itself.

With that, after that, what we work on doing is that we use the external tools. With the help of the external tools, we sort of work towards digging in depth into the market itself, seeing what sort of other keywords that we have within the market itself that maybe Amazon didn't report itself because the report is a bit restricted itself to a set amount of terms. But with that, we use Helium 10, you know, as I mentioned earlier, that basically gives us a bit of a...

in depth into the market itself, any mid-tail long-tail keywords, any essential keywords that are 100 % relevant to the products, maybe that the Amazon did not really portray or add over itself, and with that, gives us specific revenue and unit sold number itself as well available on Amazon. So basically, as soon as we get the understanding on how big the market is for one product, we basically go ahead and see what sort of strategy would be the most optimal

over here in order to actually go ahead and start offering the customers the product itself. Since we're a new brand, we'll definitely have to start over from the scratch itself. We'll be definitely competing with products that have maybe thousands of reviews. So essentially, the scalability itself as well.

Amazon is not a platform that can provide us overnight success, right? So it's a slow building process that we'll have to work over on with keeping in mind what sort of specific KPIs, profitability KPIs that we have to maintain that determines how aggressive you can go into the market itself with or with what sort of ad spend can you actually go ahead and offer the customer your products.

Jordan Buckner (16:02)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. then would you say, like, is it easy to become profitable on Amazon in your first year? Or does it really take six months or a year of investment before you start seeing that growth and the revenue coming in consistently?

Shayan Sohail (16:17)
Perfect. So there's not a hardball part number over here. For example, after six months you start receiving profits. It totally varies upon what sort of demand, what sort of competition do we have over within the market itself. If it's an innovative product that basically cuts out any, you could say protein bars, for example. We have a really innovative product that

gives the same nutrition value, for example, in a chewing gum.

For example, with that, maybe if that picks up, if that key aligns with the customers itself, there is a possibility to achieve good amount of revenue share and sales over in the market itself. But if we're going with just the protein bar, we'll slowly have to work and scale up because we did work with a brand earlier for protein bars itself as well. So it almost took us, you could say, nine months in order

to get the first dollar of profit onto the Amazon platform. So it definitely varies. mean, if the the category is less comparative, the more chances you have to get earlier profits. But if the competition over here we have over like in the bigger categories, it definitely does take some time to build your brand base and your brand awareness into the category and then sort of work towards over on ranking on a few keywords in order to get the

which is the revenue numbers up and then hopefully scalability from there. And with that, start working over on seeing what sort of profit margin do we currently have and then.

Align the KPIs like that with that that you are growing the revenue numbers itself as well whereas with that you're now starting to focus over on profitability itself. So that does somewhere take around about one, one point five years itself but totally varies upon the competition and the demand that we have over within the market.

Jordan Buckner (18:06)
Yeah, and I think that's key because I also seen where like some brands like maybe if you have some awareness and people are searching for your product already, you can start see those sales generate automatically and you have a good price point and offer. And then if it takes longer or slower time period, then just know that like that's probably the trajectory for your brand. There's some things to maybe accelerate that a little bit, but it's very representative of what type of business that you will likely have.

Because some brands launch and they just see steady growth because it's the right product, the right price point, and the right problem that they're solving. And then other people see a much slower growth. And that's representative, I think, too, maybe a lower level of demand for your product. so a lot of people will get on Amazon and say, like, hey, I heard about all these other companies that doing so well on Amazon. And I think the reality is because people watch those products and they don't necessarily want yours. And it's a good way of finding out early.

and probably a lot less expensive than if you said they launched in a retail store.

Shayan Sohail (19:06)
Correct, correct. I do ignore it.

Jordan Buckner (19:08)
What attributes of products make it more successful on Amazon in terms of like, is it still like smaller, lightweight products with a higher price point still do better? Or have you found anything there? I know there's maybe a lot of like beverage companies. Like is that really hard to sell on Amazon? What's your take on that?

Shayan Sohail (19:30)
So basically in the earlier stage of Amazon, know, when COVID hit and Amazon peak, then, you know, people started really this work for building out a brand and the easiest and the most cost effective way was to, you know, launch a smaller product that has a bit of demand in the market. You work over on ranking.

So back then we were able to use some gray hand techniques itself as well to get the product on the top of the page itself. But now Amazon really penalizes for that. But back then.

it was easy to actually work over in the small and light category itself. The Amazon fees are low and the product cost is low itself as well, whereas the amount of orders that you actually receive on Over-R code. So basically ranking over and selling in a small and light category was a bit easy, but since then we have a lot of Chinese competition over here that have just slashed the price by...

50 % 75 % they're just selling the product for really really cheap itself.

So in regards to success for any other category itself, would say each and every category gets certain amount of sales. It's just that the sales volume fluctuate itself as well. And with that, the sales number actually do vary category to category itself. So in regards to the feasibility, we need to actually check on over what sort of demand do we actually have for the product itself before actually seeing on over to see

even if it's feasible at all. Because the feasibility would actually be judged on over by the customers because what we can do is that make all the attributes for the product on the Amazon listing as much better as we can. We can show to the customers, this is the product, this is our unique selling point that we have for the product, this is how we're actually different on over from these other brands that are selling the same product as ours. This is how much better we are and this is...

just our unique selling point is this, this, this, this. So using that, I mean, if there is something really innovative and with that something new, there's definitely room for growth over here.

Jordan Buckner (21:31)
I love that. Last thing I want to talk through real quick is a little bit more tactically. What are some of your favorite tools within Amazon to help grow brands? know they start making a lot of that data more accessible and they have things like A-B testing for product titles and listing and images and even have, I forget what it is, like the report that shows essentially the sales funnel, like how many people are searching for your product, then seeing your product page and then actually converting so you can understand where.

you need to make changes, what are some of those other tools that brands and companies need to be looking at?

Shayan Sohail (22:03)
Perfect. So a couple to name right off the top of my head is basically there's this overall bar that we have over on the seller central called Brands. So basically in that we have Brand Analytics. So in the Brand Analytics we have a lot of tools that provides credible data that we have on over from Amazon itself. So in the Brand Analytics part, we have this key report that we actually look on over at, which is called the Search Query Performance Report.

So what this report tells us is that on an ASIN level, these are all the sort of keywords that we have. These are how many sales essentially we have over in the market for these specific terms. And this is how much branch share you're actually winging on over into the market itself.

Plus with that, we have the customer journey analytics, customer loyalty analytics, and with that, the report that I was mentioning earlier, the top search term report one as well for checking out what sort of search volume do we have within the market. Other than that, we have like the demographics data, market basket analysis as well. So a lot of new reports over here on the platform itself as well. Other than that, if we move on over towards the advertisement side,

we have Amazon brand metrics report and brand metrics impression share report itself as well. That basically gives us a funnel view of the ad itself as well, how well we are actually comparing ourselves to our peers that are advertising in the same categories as ours.

Jordan Buckner (23:31)
I love those. Yeah, I think definitely a lot of things to make sure you're taking advantage of and to help your brand grow. I mean, one key thing when I launched my old brand TeaSquare on Amazon is we first got the profile up and saw, you know, one, maybe two sales over a couple of weeks. And I'm like, okay, this isn't really worth it. And it wasn't until I actually sat down and said, all right, let me invest three months into really learning Amazon, how it works, all the tools.

optimizing our page or images and after doing that is really when we start seeing our sales take off. And so it's not something that you can just like put your product up there from based on what you think and find success. It really takes that continuous improvement over time to really grow your brand. And so if you're willing to do that yourself, I'd say like do it, like take that time, invest in Amazon, really learn how it works and test a lot of things to see what performs the best.

And if it's maybe a second or third level priority for you, work with someone like Sean and Raffae who really know Amazon because they are in the tools every day and can really test things out because you can find success on Amazon either as a way of understanding the demand for your brand or to take advantage of existing customers wanting to buy you or finding new customers. So there's a huge amount of potential there still, especially for

branded items that they're solving a real problem in the market. Shayan Rafay thanks for being on today and talking about Amazon.

Shayan Sohail (25:00)
Perfect. It was a player.