The Story of Elon Musk & 2 Seven Figure Amazon Sellers


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Chris and Nicole Parr are seven figure Amazon sellers in Sports & Outdoors, we talk about dealing with and selling to SpaceX, the value of brand and premium pricing, the challenges of German reviewers and having a customer centric focus for your product and brand.

  • A year ago Chris got an email from the Boring Company wanting to buy 20k of one of Chris’ products with a link to Elon Musk’s Instagram page running around with a flame thrower
  • Researched a bit more and saw that it is genuine
  • Sold them a component that goes on top of the Flame Thrower and were dealing with Legal and Procurement at SpaceX
  • Turned it around in 5 weeks

Dealing with SpaceX

  • Played hard ball as knew the product was unique
  • Did the silence and silent treatment with SpaceX
  • There was a lot of press on the Flame Thrower and it went well
  • It was a fun story

Backgrounds in Retail and eCommerce

  • Chris’ background is retail and ecommerce
  • Nicole was 25yrs in airline marketing and customer management
  • Started 4 years ago in the Golden Years
  • Launched with one product
  • Range is very premium usually 50-100% more expensive than others in the category
  • Lots of Chinese sellers in the category
  • Got 27 products and bringing 15 more in this year
  • Very customer brand centric with marketing and sales background
  • Packaging is high-end as come from retail
  • Building customer avatars and personas

Building from 7 figures to 8 figures

  • Do re-packaging exercise and moving to more cardboard with matt-finish, spot-uv and gloss finish on certain elements
  • Cheaper and better at recycling
  • Reduce the height of packaging makes a big change in FBA fees and can save $1-$1.50 for 40k units a year
  • Customer oriented with touch points, packaging, listing, colours, pricing, images
  • Dealing with German reviews – fine until something goes wrong and then they go hammer and tongs
  • Lucky that sometimes customers contact direct and can work with the customer to fix it
  • German and Japanese quality

Pricing of Products

  • Cheapest product is $7 to $65
  • Lots of sales from Austria nad Switzerland as well
  • Market sells for $15-20 and we sell for $30 as we use higher quality materials than your Chinese sellers
  • Not afraid of competition as we have a Brand
  • We are in the middle in our category in terms of brands – se spend a lot

Launch Strategy

  • We turn on the early reviewer programme
  • Part of Marketplace Growth Programme programme in the States as seven figure Amazon sellers
  • Contentious on the Vine programme as some Chinese Sellers have access through their Vendor accounts – are lobbying for it
  • Turn on best deals for two weeks – even if you have no reviews you are on page 1
  • If you can get on page 1 in your category then you can sell 45 per day and the algorithm likes it
  • Turn on PPC day 1 with no reviews and aggressive
  • Do product targeting ads on all the main competition
  • Got 78k on Instagram, 70k on Facebook

Growing Social Media

  • Grown over four years
  • The basics of social media are what we follow
  • Regular timely content
  • Engaging and good quality
  • Asking questions, competitions, caption contests
  • All the right hashtags and research which ones
  • Have ambassadors and sponsor teams
  • Use Influencers and some come to us
  • Use the email list and send newsletter
  • Got 10k on the email list
  • Did some manychat and worked with Michelle Benton, Paul Harvey

Being off Amazon

  • Everyone concerned around risk of staying on Amazon even if you are seven figure Amazon sellers
  • We have a Woo commerce wordpress website which was tricky
  • Shopping links in Instagram – quite small
  • Drive most of the traffic to AMazon
  • Less than 10% of Sales come off Amazon
  • Very focussed on where money is made

Focus is Amazon

  • Amazon do a lot darn right and retail is really hard
  • Got business insurance (through Marketplace Growth Programme)
  • Play by the Rules – no black hat for these seven figure Amazon Sellers
  • Concern of being suspended is greatly reduced if you play by the rules
  • Went to Amazon HQ last Summer to meet and see account manager
  • They know all about you and know what you’re doing
  • Most suppliers are non-China

Seller Sessions Live

  • Chris is coming to London from Israel to be in Seller Sessions Live and Nicole is there for the evening
  • Respect for Danny, Paul and Liran
  • This is a local event and stellar speakers
  • Actionable content – Chris will be actioning this on the Monday after Seller Sessions Live

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