The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets

The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets

By David Aladdin: A fan of The Amazing Seller, Amazon Private Label Podcast, FBA Seller, Amazon, Silent Sales Machine, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Scott Voelker and you.Business
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The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets episodes

  • AS 79: Woocommerce vs Shopify – which is better?
    What’s up you invincible Kings! Wondering what is the best e-commerce platform is? For almost a decade, I’ve been building e-commerce sites, platforms, web services, and have often pondered the true answer to this. I’m your host, David Aladdin, and Your listening to episode 79.



    As of recently, I’ve come to a solid conclusion as to which is better, woo commerce or Shopify. The best e-commerce platform for physical products is shopify. In this episode, we deep dive into why Shopify best’s woocommerce, and why I think you should use it too.

    Woocommerce, oh how much potential you have, yet so much headaches. Woocommerce, is an awesome platform to start an e-commerce store. Don’t get me wrong. It’s core platform is free, recently acquired by Automattic and distributed as a core platform as free.
    Shopify is better for physical products....
    The first question you ask yourself is…am I selling physical or digital goods? I prefer Woocommerce for digital goods and Shopify for physical goods.

    What is Woocomerce?

    Woocommerce is has many strengths, including the fact that it easily installs onto Wordpress, an free install-able core operating system to hundreds of thousands of websites on the web today. In addition, wordpress is fully customization, from themes, to plugins and every single aspect of your website.

    Out of the box, it comes very polished as well, with reporting, product creation and fairly flexible to work with most WordPress themes.

    Not only that, Woocommerce was once the solution I used to power my own e-Commerce site, until I started to realize the major potential flaws and headaches that came with it.

    For one, Woocommerce claims its’ free, but most of the functionality exists in plugins that cost on average of $70 to buy, with 1 year of updates. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but when major core areas of your functionality cost $70/year to keep updated, it gets pretty frustrating year after year, buying these upgrades, with fairly glitchy updates.

    That’s not to say that you have to pay for the update, but usually when you don’t pay for the upgrade, that core section is unupdated either now not working, preventing a conflict in another area, that is now not working.

    Now imagine having 5-10 of these plugins, each $70/year. If you don’t upgrade, you potentially have conflicting plugins, or security vulnerabilities in your site.

    Security vulnerabilities is something that scares me deeply with Woocommerce.

    When you have the e-commerce portion of your website hosted by wordpress, on a shared or dedicated server, you always have the potential of being hacked. My biggest concern was this. If I automated my fulfilment through my e-commerce wordpress site to my FBA storage, I could potentially be screwed one day if my wordpress site was hacked for whatever reason.

    And yes, there are tons of ways to secure your Wordpress site. But in the past decade or so, with all the security plugins like wordfence, ninjasecurity, secure cloud based security, the list is long.., I’ve still been hacked – say it be a wordpress theme glitch, an un-updated plugin from codecanyon. It happens a lot.

    Was it me just being lazy? Definitely not. Wordpress has been highly refined over time, but every add on that you have, requires constant updating. It is extremely annoying to see 10 new plugins requiring updates each week, and then checking all of the plugins to get updated.
    Wordpress is great but breaks down a lot from updates
    If you use wordpress, you know exactly what I mean. Then on top of that, sometimes, if you update all the plugins, you can get the white screen of death, which can just happen as perhaps your server sql database crashed, or something corrupted.

    19 min
  • AS 78: How Shawn went from Mcdonalds to 100 Million + Sold in e-Commerce


     

    In this episode you'll learn:

    * Shawn's tale of rags to riches
    * How Shawn went from selling hamburgers at McDonalds to having sold 100 Million + in revenue generated
    * How to choose a market
    * How to brand build products
    * What products to not go for
    * How to source directly in china?
    * How Shawn deploys strategies for launching new products
    * How to use AMS or Amazon Marketing Services and why it's important
    * Products that Shawn goes for, high and low end
    * Mistakes and lessons learned from Shawn
    * Trips Shawn take to China
    * And all the wisdom I was able to extract out of him within 1 Hour

    And lots more!

    David Aladdin:  Great to have you on show.

    Shawn Heart:  Hello, how’s it going David nice to meet you.

    David Aladdin:  Can you take us to the beginning, before your first selling. What happened?

    Shawn Heart:  I come from a small town, in central Indiana. Decided I was a little bit too lazy to work and too nervous to steal so I had to start business you know, that was the next best thing. So, short story long I started importing fresh cut flowers from South America and selling those literally on the road side you know as a teenager. After school I would just go park my truck on the side of the road and be doing my homework as I was selling flowers for about 6$ a dozen that we imported for 2$ and just fell in love with the idea of creating value and being able to buy and sell. You know back then my marketing strategy was pretty simple. Before I even was introduced to the word marketing, I basically just threw a huge benefit on a road sign that said "Roses ahead. 6$ per dozen" which was unheard of you know, so on strictly on price because back in those days in the early 90's you know, the cheapest flowers you could buy for your wife or girlfriend were about 30 or 40$ a dozen. So 6$ a dozen was like almost too good to be true and that’s really how I got my started in my business world.

    David Aladdin:  What year was that by the way?

    Shawn Heart:  That was 1991, somewhere around in there. Yeah.

    David Aladdin:  I’m guessing, I’m guessing you had a lot of girls wondering where they can flowers with you.

    Shawn Heart:  Well I was known as the Rose Boy in high school which is not that cool. What happened was, I only had one job David. I got a job when I was 16 years old at McDonalds and you know the reason for the job was to be able to put gas in my car and pay for insurance. So I worked a couple of weeks at McDonalds and had my first pay check and it was 84$ and my brother had just dropped out of school about a month prior to that and my dad said "Look you can even get a job or start a business". So he introduced him to a business where he could buy fresh cut flowers from a local whole seller for about 3$, 3.50$ a dozen and sold them for 6 to 7$ and how we found that.

    Every Friday on his way home from the office, he would stop at this old lady who was on the side of the high way selling flowers and just got talking to her and she told him "you know I do this just to supplement my income".  So when my brother dropped out of school you know, like I said you can either get a job or start a business. This is my older brother so he said "Ok, I’ll start a business". So he tells him about this flower deal and we are all laughing at him you know, because there was really, my father was the only entrepreneur in my family, he was an independent insurance agent. So everyone was like, you know factory workers living it, the American dream of working for 35 years and retiring with a gold watch and a pension so it was really outside of our normal thinking.

    So,
    53 min
  • AS 77: My Investor Copied My Business After Meeting – The Real Hijacker
    Dark times guys. The Potential investor I  had talked to back in March ended up copying my business, specifically product that we talked about at a meeting on March 25th. If you go through the amzsecrets blog back in March, you can see specifically when I was meeting with this investor and what happened. This is, unfortunately a true story.



    It all started on March 25th. A local investor wanted to acquire my business.

    My march 25th post went exactly like this.

    We went to a very…very fancy restaurant. Everything was over $25 (for lunch). We were the only ones there. Beautiful restaurant, yet empty lol. “Order anything!” he says. Exactly how you would think these things go down…

    So we talk alot about the business. His businesses, mine… etc. He’s a very interesting, very savvy, business guy. Exactly how you’d think he would be like.

    Then things get down to business. He’s very interested and sees the potential for expansion.

    His request is 66% of the business. 33% for him. 33% for his business partner. And 33% for myself.

    In return, I give him a “x” valuation of both perceived combined with actual costs. This “$x” value is not yet finite, and I have not yet thought of number. By paying $x he gets the 66%.

    In addition to “$x” he is also guaranteed to fuel the company, providing 2M minimum to fuel growth and accelerate it to brick and motor both in the U.S and overseas.

    At which point, he aims to super launch the company to acquisition in 36 months, for an acquisition of 200-300M.

    All would be done with teams of lawyers, everything in writing, and paperwork//contracts.

    I have yet to determine my valuation of the company, but this is definitely getting interesting. Do I want to sell? No. Would I consider a partner who is extremely savvy in business overseas, well connected with major business players… definitely.

    The dinner went well. Then emails preceded. He wanted to essentially steal the business, and bring in new cash. I wanted my multiplier.

    Nevertheless, Fast forward 3 weeks ago, 8-9 months after that investor meeting I was browsing Facebook the other day, and I saw picture of a similar product posted by a facebook friend. This girl had liked it, since it was a competing product of mine, I wanted to see what was so likable about that product. I clicked on the photo, nothing big, went to the instragram account of that photo, and I saw a photo of her, one of my other friends, around a table, with the product siting in front of them.

    They were having a business meeting about that product. So, this girl, is actually the daughter of the investor, who’s also my friend. I had met the investor through her, we had done previous buisnses together once upon a time. I had built a technology company for him

    Two of their products, that was discussed march, was siting on that table in that photo. Their were 4 people photo. I sat down, I looked at it, and I titled it… be better than the competition. It sits on my desktop as an image. I would actually make it my desktop background, but that would probably piss me off too much.

    Now, I feel like this is something you only hear in movies. Like Mark Zuckerberg copying Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss on their social network concept except they didn’t have a business launched it was just at idea phase.

    When I had met with this investor, I had told him multiple business secrets, products, revenue numbers, inside business secrets that we all have in regards to our own businesses and even inventions I was working on. Theres secrets to selling on Amazon. But theres also business secrets that each one of us have, specific to our business. Some of those were revealed. . I didn’t tell him everything, but I know for fact,
    15 min
  • AS 76: How Dan sold 12 Million+ Selling Wholesale Products
    Today I’ve got an invincible king on the show, Dan Meadors. Dan and his business partner Eric Lambert started selling on Amazon in 2011 using a credit card with a $600 limit and in a short time, sold 12+ Million. He goes through exactly how to sell wholesale.



    In this podcast you'll learn:

    * How to sell on Amazon
    * How to sell wholesale on Amazon
    * How to scale your Amazon business
    * How to buy product
    * How to decide what products to buy
    * How to hire employees as you build your business
    * How to operate your business strategically and make decisions
    * How to know which products source well on Amazon and which ones do not
    * How to move from retail arbitrage to a wholesale business
    * When to get a warehouse
    * How to choose a business partner
    * How Dan sold 12 million in wholesale products over the past 4 years.
    * What not say to new vendors
    * What is the criteria for the perfect wholesale product
    * Has brand gating affected affected your ability to sell wholesale
    * What is the criteria for the perfect wholesale product?

    And much more!

     

    David Aladdin: Great to have you on the show Dan?

    Dan Meadors:  Hey, It is fantastic and I have been mostly watching this show all time?

    David Aladdin: Can you tell us in the beginning before your first million when it all start?

    Dan Meadors:  Well we started out with doing with doing retail arbitrage at the airport, both employed with awesome job actually and we one of our buddies had he was well over six figures and he came and he gave his two weeks’ notice and we just started bugging him like what is going on? Like why are you leaving because in Kentucky six figures salaries is really high salary and he was like no man, he was just like making more money at home selling stuff on Amazon and I was like Are you serious? I said what is this so he took us out to Walmart to show us well what was what he did and this was retail arbitrage and we were doing retail arbitrage at that point and we got over $600  a credit card, actually it was a personal credit card when I was like, it was really strange because I got paid pretty well and I don’t had to have but I didn’t have any credit like I never needed credit for anything like you know I just bought everything I want so when I first got my credit card it was $600 limit and I was like I guess we would see how this work. So we went out and we bought some cool stuff and then we sold it on Amazon and you know it scared us at how fast it sold. We were like well this is really cool. So we went out and we did it again and again and again and about the end of the year. . . that December we had done about  $60,000 in sales all from the magical 600 bucks and we decided that hey we if we imagine if we did this full time how much money we can actually do so then we decided to go full time in January 2012

    David Aladdin: So, when you guys first started were you guys working at the same place? What were you guys doing?

    Dan Meadors:  We were working in the internet retail company that sold off it’s website, it sold toys and games like that. . .

    David Aladdin: Like similar ecommerce business and then you guys transitioned into your own myth

    Dan Meadors:  Yeah it was definitely similar and but it was different because that was a really established website and like any manufacturers they wanted their products to be on that website like so they would go you know we got to approach when I was there we got to approach a lot about caring people’s products and as an Amazon seller we don’t get approached very often like hey man when you sell my product on Amazon like there is half of it and it’s more like you reaching out to them and it’s ju...
    58 min
  • AS 74: How Steve went from Janitor to selling 750 Million on e-Commerce, Box, and Amazon
    Steve Simonson came on the show today and revealed dozens of golden nuggets. He is a serial entrepreneur (e.g. last real job was as at the age of 18) & has built a few businesses from zero to 50 Million +.  Over the years Steve's ventures have generated over 250 Million in consumer sales & 500 Million + in B2B sales.



    This is definitely one of my favorite amazon podcasts interviews thus far.

    In this episode you'll learn:

    * How to sell private label on Amazon
    * How Steve grew his brands from zero to millions
    * Dozens of golden nuggets in this action packed interview
    * Steve's insights into e-commerce
    * White labeling strategies
    * Big insights on scaling from 0-2million, 2million to 5 million, 5 million to 10 million and beyond
    * The types of products Steve sells
    * What products to sell on Amazon
    * What products sell better on Amazon
    * Why margin is the key to success
    * Mistakes Steve made
    * How he prepares for Amazon 4th quarter
    * How he packages his products

    And lots more!

    Contact Steve:
    http://StartSolid.com

    DAVID ALADDIN: Great to have you on the show, Steve!

    STEVE SIMONSON: My pleasure, glad to be here! Thank you!

    DAVID ALADDIN: So, can you take us to the beginning? Before your first million, where did it begin?

    STEVE SIMONSON: Sure! Well, I can tell you that… I went to college…I won’t bore you with that long story. But I went to college I dropped down after one semester. I was working as a janitor, and I was too poor to continue on frankly. And I didn’t really like it, if you want to know the truth. I thought college was annoying, and I thought it was cumbersome and I was making 3 bucks an hour working in the middle of the night.

    You know, once I kind of got my first taste of business with a partnership there that kind of expanded into becoming a partner in another line of business that we had, and we expanded from, you know, kind of janitorial to carpet cleaning, into insurance restoration work. And over time we kept learning pieces of the puzzle, of how you run a business, how you hire people, how you grow, how you sell, how you market. And all of those lessons were learned the hard way in my opinion.

    We generally made mistakes, we generally, you know, hit problems that were, you know, catastrophic like how do we make payroll, or how do we, you know, get this customer to be happy when we’ve really messed up in a huge way. So we learned lessons in a very old school way, which is just by doing it. And so, from there I ended up getting into some showroom businesses where we had home improvement products, window treatments, floor coverings, counters tops, things like that. And that was kind of an off shoot of the insurance restoration business and the construction businesses and at that time, and so it was out of stock, so, we e-mail the customer: hey, sorry, it’s a couple weeks delayed.

    And the moment the rug came in, I sent out my best person, I said: Kathy, run down there and get that rug off to Bulgaria, and then we are going to toast again that we are international business people, this is a Friday. And so, she runs it down, we send it off, and the very next day we get a credit card notice of, you know, fraud.

    DAVID ALADDIN: Oh, Jesus!

    STEVE SIMONSON: Our first, very first sale, was fraudulent. And that was the first lesson we learned about the internet converse.

    DAVID ALADDIN: Wow!

    STEVE SIMONSON: So, can you believe that? It’s a credit card fraud, the very first one!

    DAVID ALADDIN: It’s impressive!

    57 min
  • AS 73: How I’m ranking to next Apple and Samsung – Ranked in Top 5 on Amazon in Major Category
    Today’s podcast is episode 73 and your listening to How I’m ranking next Apple and Samsung by building the best most powerful amazon listings.



    We’re to go into deep into detail on how I’m copywriting my Amazon listings and how I’ve grown my products to rank in the top 5 of some of the largest Amazon categories. I’m in a very generic category, facing corporations, and century old behemoths who easily pull 60 million or more in yearly revenue. The good thing is, they’re not too tech savvy when it comes to Amazon. And that’s where I’m gaining the edge on them… specifically leveraging tools that’ I’ve built that understand process big data.

    To put it into context, if I was selling mobile phones, I’m ranking next to Samsung and Apple.

    It has gotten pretty crazy.  This episode has been much awaited, and I’ve held back on going into deep detail until my tools were at a certain threshold of power that could take any amazon listing, and turn it into a kings listing.

    And they are really powerful.

    I believe that the key to building the best Amazon listings requires leveraging massive amounts of data, so big data +  and deciphering which data is most releveant for your listing using smart algorithms.

    So this is where it gets exciting. So lets say I’m building a listing for a new mobile phone that I’m selling.

    I will use Word Hammer, which is like merchant words but on steroids. It allows me to query any keyword, and it returns me over 1000 of the best keywords with the most volumetric search keywords.

    So when I type in mobile phone into word hammer, it’s showing me over 1000 results, with the most popular keywords searched on amazon being:

    boost mobile phones – 450,000
    t mobile phones – 368,000
    mobile phone – 246000
    mobile phone case–  27100

     

    How Amazon keywords churn out.


     

    Those are pretty surprising results. You think iphone or android would search higher, but it doesn’t.  That being said, these 4 strings of keywords, all need to be part of your amazon listing, in the title, in the bullets, description, and the search results fields with 5000 characters allowable..

    In my opinion, and from my testing, sprinkling the highest volumetric keywords in each location will rank you better, for high searched ranked terms.

    So in other words, the keywords that are type in the most into Amazon, that related to your product will perform the best.

    And with word hammer, you can quickly build your product listings directly with the results. You can select the highest 10, 100, or 1000, and directly send it to our amazon list building tool called Keyword King.

    So instead of adding keywords that you think will do good, your using big data, to determine the highest searched keywords, and integrating that into multiple sections of your product listing.

    Now here’s where it gets even more interesting. I’ve build word hammer to leverage both amazon and google data separately. So when you query “mobile phone” for google, you actually get different results, and even though they’re different, they perform very good as well from what I’ve noticed.

    So why’s this crazy.

    Well instead of building your Amazon listing with keywords you think are good, you now are using the best keywords from the 2 most powerful search engines, amazon and google, and populating your listing in the 3 key areas:

    1. Title

    2.Bullets

    3. Search Result keywords

     

    See how Google churns out different keywords.

    12 min
  • AS 72: Where should I store my inventory? Choosing a warehouse with Tim Werkley
    Today I had Tim Werkley on the show. Tim Werkley owns Swan Packaging Fulfillment located in Wayne NJ. Swan provides multi-channel pick/pack order fulfillment and FBA prep and support services, they were established in 1986 and operate a 125,000 square foot facility with 60 employees.



    In this episode, you'll learn:

    * How Tim's warehouse scaled from a small warehouse to the operation it is today
    * Where to store your inventory if you are a private label seller, fba seller, wholesaler
    * Best storage practices
    * Rates for current warehousing solutions
    * How Tim uses technology in his businesses
    * The state of fulfillment with Amazon, and where it is going
    * How the inside of a warehouse operation looks like
    * Issues I have with warehousing and Tim's answers
    * Machines in warehousing from carton labeling, to sealing machines
    * Different solutions for different sellers
    * How to optimize your supply chain and logistics
    * How you can multi-channel fulfill with a 3rd party storage provider
    * The evolution of Swan Packaging Fulfillment
    * How to handle wholesale orders
    * How Amazon acquiring businesses affects fulfillment businesses
    * IT side of business
    * How to choose a warehouse
    * Where to store your inventory

    And lots more!

    Get in touch with Tim:
    http://www.swanpackaging.com/

    AS 72: Where should I store my inventory? Choosing a warehouse with Tim Werkley

    DAVID ALADDIN: Great to have you on this show Tim.

     

    TIM WERKLEY: Thank you David, good morning? How are you?

     

    DAVID ALADDIN: Great, so you have a 125,000 square foot warehouse 60 employees, let's go back to the beginning where you just have one employee, what happened?

     

    TIM WERKLEY: Sure so we were established in 1986 which is 30 years ago this year. We started in Roselle Park New Jersey with about 25,000 square feet something like that. It is a family business. I'm very fortunate to have parents who started the business and I'm the only child so taking it over was a great honor and privilege that they gave to me and they're great teachers and mentors and growing the business and helping to perpetuate it. So I do thank them.

     

    So yes they started it in ’86, we had a small facility, we did what's called one-shot fulfillment. So we were packing books into boxes for one customer really and sending them out to consumers in the public and over time that evolved into other kinds of fulfillment as well as packaging.

     

    So we did a lot of things like kit assemblies and shrink wrapping, different kinds of contract packaging services and then I'd say in the mid-nineties we started getting into order fulfillment. So storing inventory for some of the same customers and picking and packing and shipping orders and then as e-commerce grew and the services to support that became more popular to outsource at least we really convert away from the packaging business in primarily into the order fulfillment business.

     

    And at this point we have about 125,000 square feet and about 60 employees. We ship thousands of orders every day across somewhere around 40 or 50 customers and it's a very behind-the-scenes industry that nobody knows about unless you are somehow involved in this for some reason but it's you know it's an important component of the e-commerce industry and a support network that allows packages to be shipped to consumers homes.

     

    DAVID ALADDIN: Interesting so in the nineties and actually like while you're growing up you're working it was yo...
    48 min
  • AS 71: How I improved my Amazon Seller Feedback from 91% to 100% – Removing Amazon Seller Feedback Step by Step
    In this episode, I go into how I improved my seller feedback score from 91% to 100%



     

    This episode we talk in-depth strategies for improving your seller metrics which initially was prompted due to episode 65 – How my entire account got suspended on Amazon and How I was Unsuspended.

    In my suspension letter, I had stated my metrics, of which my customer feedback for the last 90 days was sitting at 91%. I thought at the time that was a pretty good rating.

    After the suspension, I did a complete reanalysis of my account, 91% is not good enough. I wanted 100% seller feedback happiness, and yes it’s possible.

    There’s a lot of services that automatically remove seller feedback. The problem is, I think they overcharge big time. In my state of panic, I investigated how they did it, as well as how to do it without a subscription. It is actually extremely easy to do, and here are the steps.

    Step 1. Determine the negative seller feedback.

     You can do this by going into Performance -> Feedback -> View all feedback. Look up the order id for each negative feedback.





     





    Step 2: Open a case.


    Now I thought this was going to be frustrating and extremely tedious. It’s not.
    Go into Help > Contact us > Selling on Amazon > Customers and Orders > and then paste that order # in.

    Step 3. Amazon automatically pulls that order up. > Then you should  Select Customer Feedback Removal Request

    The review will show. And 99.9% of the time, the negative seller feedback will not even be about you as a seller. It’s probably about your product, and an issue they had with it. Or it may be about FBA fulfilment. 

    If it is about anything other than you the seller…or they included product details in the seller feedback, then Amazon will remove it.

    Not only that, I’d say about 80% of the time, Amazon removes it automatically without you submitting a support ticket. They’ve created an algorithm that can detect if seller feedback violated their terms of service, which automatically removes it if the machine learning process deem it violate amazon tos. This algorithm only processes your feedback, if you go through the steps I just mentioned. I’ve detailed it in the show notes…its 2 steps and can be done for each feedback.

    Now if Amazon’s algorithm doesn’t automatically do it, you’ll need to submit a support ticket. This is where it gets even more interesting.

    Submitting a support ticket for seller feedback is very straight forward. Same process as above, except you get redirected to file that ticket.

    You will be prompted to select the reason why this seller feedback violates Amazon’s TOS. Select the following:

    * Product feedback: The entire feedback is a product review.
    * Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) feedback - The entire feedback is regarding fulfillment or customer service for an order fulfilled by Amazon.

    And then you are prompted to give a reason. I have a cookie cutter response for each removal, hotkeyed into my keyboard, and that response goes exactly like this:

    The customer reviews makes reference to the product and the fulfilled by amazon experience.
    12 min
  • AS 70: How to build a brand better – Case Study of Trader Joes (Re-Listen AS 61)
    How do you build a brand better you ask? You analyze the brands that work! In this episode we analyze Trader Joes. I think this episode deserves a re-listen, to engrain it into our minds,  not just build a brand, but how to build a brand better. This is probably my favorite amazon podcast. Enjoy.

    So I went into Trader Joes today to buy flowers for my friend’s girlfriend. I figured if I got the best white orchids earthly possible, she would fall into my arms, and leave him. Yep I was pulling the sneaky SWITCH-ER-OO.



    In all honesty, he’s actually out of state. Today was her birthday, and I was actually on a mission for him to surprise her with flowers from me.

    At first thought, I was going to go to Walmart. But my actual girlfriend, said, TraderJoes has way better flowers than both Publix, Walmart and they’re also cheaper. So I was intrigued. I’m not a big fan of Trader Joes mainly because it doesn’t have everything I want..like Walmart or the “Publix shopping centers” that we have here in florida.

    And so I journeyed to Trader Joes, some 5-6 minutes away. As I’m pulling into the parking lot, I noticed just a huge flurry of activity. Trader Joes, was extremely busy. The parking lot was packed to the brim. Customers walking back and forth, left and right. What is going on here!

    I  walk in through the front door, and literally I’m hit with just a massive presentation scenery. Orange pumpkins as I walk in. Fresh flowers and scents to the right. Fresh produce along the walls. Literally,the greatest presentation of products that I have ever seen. There is something happening here that Walmart, Publix, Shop-in-stop and every grocery store I’ve ever been to is missing. There is literally magic in that store.

    I felt like I was in Hogwarts, and experiencing a different world. It was why the store was churning like a well oiled engine. The funny part about it, the experience is duplicated around the United States. Some how, Trader Joes has figured out how to build a massive corporate chain while creating the feeling that you are in this thriving home-town market place.

    I bring this story to you guys because this is truly a magnificent brand. It’s a brand of culture, thought, and art, crafted into an experience of buying groceries. Theres a reason why my girlfriend loves Trader Joes, over these other brands.

    Trader Joes has found a weakness in the market. They goal is to bring back the love and feeling that you get when market, rather than a corporate store like Walmart.

    If you go into Walmart, and then you go into Trader Joes, you’re experience is completely different. Besides the presentation of the products, I also noticed something I’ve never seen in grocery store

    The employees behaved entirely different. In Walmart, it looks like every employee hates to work there. They look miserable. No offense, but if you’re a Walmart employee just admit it.

    In Trader Joes, the employees morale is off the roof. They are all over the place like Santa’s Elves. Adjusting man made labels on each product. Some are working in the flowers section. Some are giving fresh coffee tastes out. And each one of them is doing is with a sort of energy, of santa elf energy. It’s hard to explain with words, but I think I was just in Santas workshop.

    There is a trickle down of quality from Trader Joes all the way to the employees. When you start your brand with expectations high, quality high, the spirits go high, and the experience of shopping is brought back, to an enjoyable experience.

    The point is, LETS BE the Trader Joes. Lets build brands full of magic, where customers fill our store fronts, and come back for more. It’s definatley possible, but it starts with your first product,
    10 min
  • AS 69: Who’s the best freight forwarder? Shipping, Logistics, and Strategy with Max
    Today I’ve got Max Lock on the show. Max started importing products from Asia when he was 16 years old, where he went on to realize how painful international shipping is. He is now the founder of Fleet a logistics marketplace simplifying international shipping for fellow importers.



    In this show you'll learn:

    * How to save money with freight forwarders
    * Which freight forwarder is the best?
    * Best freight saving tips
    * Ways to optimize your shipping logistics
    * Max Lock's story and how he created his company Fleet
    * How much money did Fleet raise?
    * What is Fleet?
    * Air freight vs Ocean freight and when to use them, why use them.
    * Ocean freight differences
    * Customs, X-rays during ocean freight
    * Where should I store my ocean freight goods
    * Where should I store excess inventory
    * How to operate more efficiently

    And lots more!

    Contact Max Lock
    tryfleet.com


    David Aladdin: Great to have you on the show Max.

    Max Lock: Yeah thank you so much for having me.

    David Aladdin:  So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, where your story began?

    Max Lock: Sure. So my story began really, a little over five ago. I was in high school at the time and I really loved technology. So I started applying for jobs and I got this job as an IT administrator at a chain of restaurants up and down the East Coast. So you know I was feeding my passion for technology and programming and from there I was in one of their stores one day, they were opening up a new concept, an organic concept store and I was trying this ice cream they were planning on serving.

    I tasted it. I thought it tasted absolutely horrible so my other passion outside of work is cooking. So I went home and for the next six weeks try to figure out what is the best way to manufacture ice cream. I brought it back to them; they liked it so, much they started selling it. I figured I have nothing to lose, took it to Whole Foods, took it to other supermarket chains, they started selling it and from there my volume quickly grew.

    So it no longer made sense for me to purchase the packaging here in the United States. So I started to look over seas and figure out how I could manufacture it for cheaper and to get them costume printed.

    At the time frozen yogurt stores were becoming super popular as well and a friend of mine was actually opening up a frozen yogurt store. So I decided to start, he asked me if I could manufacture cups for him while I was manufacturing cups for my own ice cream brand. So I started importing some cups and soon other frozen yogurt stores started reaching out.

    So about three years ago, my cups way out sold my ice cream and I, over the two to three year time period that I did, I manufactured over 35 million paper cups, spoons, lids other things of that nature in China and distributed them to stores all across united states. And what I realized was as a small business owner I, about 80% of my time was just worrying about the logistics like, ok manufacturing it takes some energy to get that set up. But then you find a factory that you are comfortable and you work with, but the logistics changes for every single transaction.

    So I started thinking you know, its super easy to book a hotel online or a flight online why is it so complicated to move my good from China to the States and that led me to start Fleet back in 2014 and got us to where we are today.

    David Aladdin:  Awesome. I got so many questions just from your intro. Alright so you started off with ice cream, that was 2012-2013?

    Max Lock: Correct, so yeah back 2012-2013 time period.

    53 min

About The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets

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We interviews top notch guests on his quest to build a billion dollar e-commerce business, Amazon Fba, private label, Woocommerce, Shopify, retail, private label bus