Amazon Product Failure Part 5


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Liran Hirschkorn joins us to open up about his Amazon product failure and give us the lessons that he learned.

His product was baby moccasins – for under 1 year olds and he had two variations – 6m and 12m sizes

How did you select this product?

  • Was doing wholesale at the time of his Amazon product failure
  • Was at a trade show and saw this lady with a booth and the baby moccasins
  • When she talked through pricing with Liran it didn’t make enough margin to make it worthwhile
  • She then told him he could make them himself from China
  • Being new to Private Label, Liran didn’t really factor in that there was a lot of competition
  • Not just competition but very low priced competition like $9.99
  • Liran was buying them for $6 trying to make a better quality product
  • He was selling at $16-$17 and it just didn’t take off at that price

The Pricing mistake

  • A common mistake in amazon produst failure is to think you’ll charge more than everybody else because you have better quality
  • The market doesn’t care or want to pay more for the product

What did you lose on this both in money and lost time

  • Opportunity cost of not doing another product that Liran could have done during that time
  • Lost the time value of the money, when he could have been doing something else with that money
  • Had to drop the price on Amazon and liquidate the product
  • Lost money on the product but recovered some of his initial purchase
  • Another mistake was he Launched with an initial design, then brought on more variations in styles and it just didn’t work out
  • With PPC costs, took a loss on it
  • After a couple of months he realised it was a loser and cut it
  • Don’t fall in love with your product – get out of it as soon as you can

Lessons learned

  • Liran did stick with it longer than he should have which compounded his amazon product failure
  • Didn’t really evaluate the data on Amazon and sees this as a rookie mistake
  • Seeing a product first and then bringing it to Amazon, rather than using the Amazon data to tell you which product to bring
  • Two most common mistakes Liran sees:
    • Nutritionist works with products and decides to bring them to Amazon, without realising how competitive it can be
    • My friend’s Uncle has a factory and I can buy things at a good price, then deciding to bring that product to Amazon without checking it out first
  • Liran feels he made similar mistakes with the moccasins, buying product at a Trade Show and deciding to bring it to Amazon

Pricing impact in Amazon product failure

  • Danny looks at the average price of the market and is realistic with the price he can charge, based on the top 12 on page 1 to get a feel for what the market will stand for that product
  • Kids babies, value for money has a lot of window shoppers in the baby space as they are constantly comparing products
  • Conversion rates were lower too with high impressions
  • Issues with the sizing, people would buy the 6m and then come back and say it was way too big and return it
  • There is a premium in the space and they are charging $24 but are ubiquitous and in retail stores
  • One of Liran’s mistakes was thinking he could compete on price with this long established brand
  • Amazon isn’t really a ‘premium’ market place
  • You don’t see loads of Rolex or high -end watches or expensive shoes selling well on Amazon
  • Amazon is a ‘good quality’ product marketplace and not a ‘premium qulaity’ marketplace
  • Liran was too much of a rookie to catch these mistakes

Summary of Amazon Product Failure lessons

  • Tried to compete with a larger brand that is well established
  • Took a product and tried selling at a premium price when the avg price on the page is a lot lower and you’re an unknown brand
  • Also, didn’t use any data or Amazon data to assess whether this was a good product or not

Three Main Metrics for new products

  • Customer demand – not inventing something new, making sure there’s enough demand
  • Not just one seller on the 1st page making all the revenue
  • Bunch of sellers on page 1 with thousands of revenue per month (Viralaunch – market intelligence)
  • Finding the main keyword and can I rank for that keyword
  • Looking at the reviews on the 1st page search results, if I get to the first page using giveaways can I ‘stick’ on that page
  • Who is surrounding me, and do they have 500 reviews, or are there some with 20-50 reviews that are doing well that show I can compete on there
  • You don’t want to see pages 2,3 and 4 with the same product – over-saturated

Liran’s one piece of advice

  • Don’t back into a product on Amazon
  • Don’t have product idea first – you NEED to understand the data
  • KNOW what you’re main keyword is
  • Use Helium 10 and Magnet to get Amazon search volume
  • Is there enough actual people searching for the main keyword
  • Look at the data on that keyword to figure out if you can compete
  • Don’t think that you’re going to bring a new product with no reviews and charge more than anybody else

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