#370 – Cracking the Code of Effective Branding with Frankie Thorogood
What if there was a secret formula to building successful Amazon brands, and you had the opportunity to learn from a seasoned brand strategist? Buckle up because today on the AMPM Podcast, we have a real treat for you. We’re thrilled to have London-based branding expert, Frankie Thorogood, share his exceptional insights into the intricate world of E-commerce branding and marketing.
From the initial spark of passion for advertising to becoming a successful brand owner, Frankie’s journey is nothing short of inspiring. We chat about his first product, a snood, and how he maneuvered its negative perception to his advantage, a classic case of turning lemons into lemonade. We also share our experiences with online selling, particularly sportswear and compression wear, discussing the unique challenges and breakthroughs that marked our journey. We even get to dissect the success story of his UK-based sportswear brand, discussing the challenges of selling on platforms like eBay and Amazon, and the need for finding the right logistics partner.
We conclude by walking you through the maze of customer feedback and its critical role in shaping a brand. We underline the importance of human interaction in understanding customer needs, a nuance often overshadowed by focus groups and AI testing. Shifting gears to marketing strategies, we share our experiences with Amazon, discussing pricing strategies and the need for understanding the buyer’s perspective. All this and much more in our insightful session with Frankie Thorogood. So, tune in and gear up to dive into the fascinating world of E-commerce product branding and marketing.
In episode 370 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Frankie discuss:
00:00 – Branding and Marketing Strategies for Success
01:58 – Bookstore Trips and Changing Reading Habits
07:37 – Analyzing Clever Advertising Campaigns
14:35 – From Retail to Online
16:57 – Selling Sportswear and Compression Wear
23:04 – Building a Successful Brand on Amazon
37:57 – Understanding and Engaging With Customers
44:23 – Marketing Strategies and Branding in E-Commerce
47:44 – Using Simple, Confident Titles on Amazon
53:57 – Passionate Pursuits and Potential Businesses
57:25 – This Week’s Words Of Wisdom From Kevin King
Transcript
0:00:00 – Kevin King:
Welcome to the episode 370 of the AM/PM Podcast. Got a really good one for you today, speaking with Frankie Thorogood from the UK. We’re talking about branding, building brands, advertising a lot of cool topics in this discussion. I think you’re gonna really get some good value from it and really enjoy it. Enjoy this episode with Frankie. What’s up, Frankie? Frankie Thorogood, the guest on the AM/PM Podcast today. How are you doing, man?
Frankie:
Very good. Thank you, Kevin. Kevin the King. The King is here.
Kevin King:
And we’re all just here from him it’s good to be the King, you know. It’s good to be the King.
Frankie:
It’s good to be in the presence of King, of the King and royalty.
Kevin King:
So we met what Danny’s event right Seller Sessions back in May, earlier this year I think it was.
Frankie:
Correct correct.
Kevin King:
Yeah, a lot of people may not know about you. You’re based over in the UK. Are you in London proper or are you outside?
Frankie:
of London. I am in very much the heart of London. If you listen carefully, you might hear a siren. Yeah, I hear it. Yeah, so I am right in the middle of Camden. Camden’s quite famous People. You know international people might recognize it. It’s famous for live music. It’s got a lot of history of like punk, rock and roll. So, yeah, that’s where I live, right in the middle of Camden town.
Kevin King:
Awesome, awesome. I mean London’s a cool place. I’ve been on probably nine, 10, 11 times over in London. It’s always a cool, very diverse city. I used to remember my father. He used to love to go to the bookstores there Back before you could buy stuff on Amazon. I think the first time I went to London I was in my 20s and my father was making one of his semi-annual trips to go to London just to buy books. I went with him to London and he would just go and spend like four days just going in all the bookstores because he could get books in English. He’s an avid reader that he couldn’t find in bookstores in the US, so now he doesn’t need to do that. You can get pretty much anything online. But yeah, I remember those days. That was back in the 90s.
Frankie:
Well, there’s a certain irony to that, Isn’t there? Considering what we’re all up to these days?
Kevin King:
Yeah it is it is. It’s kind of like yeah, it’s almost like a full circle there, but there’s a lot of really good books and I’ve Grilla Market has been books that have really changed my outlook on things in the past. But it’s just time. But so I chose, instead of spending, like you do, the few hours a day reading an actual book, I read more newsletter, short form type of stuff.
Frankie:
Yeah, sometimes books, there’s a lot to say about it. But sometimes if you get a good one, it’s a long game and it’s a slow burner, and sometimes they change your life over time, or they change your business over time as well, in ways that is not quite easy to pinpoint. The newsletter style is like boom, here’s a point. I’m going to action it tomorrow. I can test the results next week. So I think we’re going to talk about some stuff that I’ve done in the past, and a lot of the stuff I feel like that’s made me successful has been a little bit counterintuitive, and I would argue that there might be, let’s say, a gap in the market or it might be an opportunity for people like us to try and force ourselves to engage with some of the longer form stuff out there for that purpose, because no one else maybe other people are missing it, maybe it can. For example, I read advertising books and just marketing stuff in the broad sense brand marketing, right, I’m reading at the minute the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I’ve read that.
Kevin King:
That’s a book I actually like three or four years ago. I actually read it cover to cover Because those chapters are short to the point and it’s good quality stuff, but that’s a really good book. For those of you listening that, if you haven’t checked out that, I highly recommend you check that out.
Frankie:
Yeah, it’s like a classic, right? I mean it’s so old that half the examples about the internet didn’t exist when this book was written, so you’re not going to find, you know, but that’s a good point.
Kevin King:
That’s a really good point. It’s like everybody now there’s a lot of young people in the e-commerce business in their 20s, early 30s. I don’t know what your age is, but I’m an older guy, I’m in my 50s. So it’s everybody’s like oh, this is cool new techniques that we’re doing now, and I’m like there’s nothing new about that. That’s the same thing that people were doing 70 years ago and just now it’s in a different medium, it’s on meta or it’s in an email or it’s just a different form, but it’s. The psychology stays the same. I always tell people if they’re going to read books, if you’re in the e-commerce business, some of the best stuff you can do is read marketing psychology, because human behavior doesn’t change. The medium or the delivery of the message may change, but the delivery mechanism of the message, but the psychology of human behavior, doesn’t really change that much.
Frankie:
Yeah, I agree. People say we’ve got short attention spans. Now talk about TikTok advertising. That hasn’t changed either. We haven’t rewired the human brain in the last 10 years. You still have to get someone’s attention in the first three seconds, the same as you used to when there was three TV channels or there was no TV and it was just a newspaper. You have to. It hasn’t changed either. So there’s a lot to be said for studying some of the old masters. Ogilvy on advertising is like that guy. He was a copywriting genius. People talk about writing their copy for Amazon. I still write all my own copy, every bullet point, every title, every A plus every product description. I still write it. I wrote it for the old brands up until the very, very end, even once we’d sold it I was like no, I want to approve the copywriting. So these are like whatever old school skills. They haven’t changed. You can learn a lot from some of the old masters as well.
Kevin King:
Have you seen a newsletter Speaking of the old Ogilvy stuff? Have you seen a newsletter called the Ad Professor? It’s a British guy that actually puts this out. He puts it out, I think, twice a week but he analyzes all the old ads, all the old Ogilvy ads I sat down at the piano and everybody listened, or whatever all the famous ones. And he finds the current ones, all the top ads that are working really really well currently, and I don’t know where he’s getting all this stuff, but they’re amazing and just to see, he’ll do like 20 of them each week. Here’s 20 things that are just really creative, really cool, that are working out there right now, and he pulls them from all kinds of different places and it’s really good because it gives you ideas and inspiration. Like man, if I applied this to what I’m doing, I’ll take this little section, do this little section, and just creates that everything that’s old, everything that’s old is new again and there’s hardly any new ideas out there. There’s nothing really novel and new and for the most part it’s just a repackaging and some of the best things you can do is copy smart.
Frankie:
Oh yeah, for sure. Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel, for these guys have been doing this for decades. Exactly, he’s the Ad Professor you said.
Kevin King:
Yeah, it’s called the Ad Professor. Yeah, it’s coming from a newsletter at marketingplugcom, but he does all the counter stuff. Like I never read the Economist as an ad, you know. Or he does a, you know. Like he has a ad, shows an ad for a Porsche, it’s a, it’s a from Porsche and Porsche it’s. They’re showing like a 9-11 and they’re saying whoever? What’s the tag line? It’s like whoever drink, did you dream of owning a Hyundai one day when you were a young child? Or did you dream of owning a Porsche? And I just it’s really cool. I can’t believe. Yeah, really cool stuff like that. There’s one that just when Twitter rebranded to X he, it was the World Wildlife Federation, I think it was, you know, save the Animals, kind of Peter, one of those Save the Animals companies. So they showed the, the Twitter. They showed like a little bird, like a little chick, like a little baby chick, and they showed the first Twitter logo, the next Twitter logo, the next Twitter logo, the next Twitter logo, and then they put that, they and they put an X and then the tag line was you know, we’re here to save the, save the wildlife, or something like that. You know it was really clever. So he finds that kind of really cool stuff and he breaks them down on on what they’re doing.
Frankie:
It’s really good, but when I did a marketing degree, right, that was what I thought I wanted to do.
Kevin King:
That’s what I got too.
Frankie:
Yeah, but then you know, so I actually apply to every ad agency in London, you know, like to for a job in an ad agency and these guys hardly pay anything and they, every single one of them, rejected me. And I always got to the final stage, the final interview stage, and then they would, they would reject me and I can remember sitting in them. I was really passionate about advertising. I love the psychology element of it. It’s basically sales, you know like it’s. You know I used to say that my interviews like for me advertising is like sales. You have to understand the other person and try to persuade them that your product or service is what they need. I don’t think the advertising industry liked hearing that because they’re a bit too pretentious, but I am. But I used to sit there and look at the brands that they were marketing for and I used to just think I would like to work on the advertising campaigns for these brands. But you know, I would love even more is to own one of the brands and drive the advertising for my own brand myself and I feel like you know, like used to come through. They could kind of sense that wasn’t my heart, wasn’t quite in it, and so that’s why I ended up, you know, unemployed with my degree, ended up getting into the marketplace’s game, so yeah, talk about that.
Kevin King:
So you, you tried to. You graduated university, tried to do advertising. Didn’t work out. So you said the heck with this, I’ll just build my own brand, do it on my own, and that’s what you’re. One of your big skill sets and what you’re known for is branding and really crushing, and you’re crushing it with a couple different brands on that front of your own graduate university. And then did you go straight into like, okay, I’m just going to develop a product and start doing like some DTC stuff or what were you doing?
Frankie:
So I got. I was desperate to start a business. I was like I love business, you know, I want to get involved. But I didn’t have an idea. I didn’t know what to do. And this is what about 13 years ago. This is yeah, 2012.
Kevin King:
Okay, 10 years, Okay cool.
Frankie:
Yeah, yeah. And the way I got started was this is going to be a niche reference for UK people will get this. UK people that follow football, i.e. soccer will get this. But footballers started wearing a snood. And what a snood is a piece of warm thermal fabric that goes around your neck like a scarf, but it’s connected at both ends. You pull it over your head and this footballers would wear this to keep their neck warm while they’re playing football. Now, this is interesting for a few reasons. Number one the snood was vilified. It was very famous because football is a famous and everybody follows the Premier League and you’ve got more and more foreign players and more and more of this narrative that football is becoming too soft, right, like football players are just diving all the time. There’s no contact anymore, like they feel now they’re feeling too cold, they need to wear a neck warmer. So this whole narrative in Australia.
Kevin King:
There are a bunch of pussies or something now or something.
Frankie:
Exactly. I mean, that hasn’t really even gone away, but that was that narrative was very strong back then. And so snooze were very famous and they were getting covered in the media and stuff and I wanted to wear one because I play football on Sunday morning, Sunday League football, which is very brutal. It’s barely football, is basically just going to war. And I really wanted to wear one because I thought it would. It would annoy my opponents. I thought if I was running around the pitch wearing a snood, they would. They would be like attack him because he’s weak. You know what I mean and I love that. I just love winding up my opponents and it gives me more power. So I was like, let me get a snood, because I want to wind people up basically. And guess what? I could not find a snood in this whole country.
Kevin King:
Really, I could not find a football players getting them.
Frankie:
You know what? I’ve never I’ve actually never worked that out. I don’t know where they were getting. It must have had some international supply chain that I wasn’t aware of. So because I was, there was basically two places you could go shopping back then for sports in a sports apparel sports direct and JD sports in the UK. So I went to, I went to both of those and neither of them sold football snoods. And I was shocked. I was like I cannot believe this, because I can’t be the only one that’s going to try going to try and buy one at the minute. So there we go. What do we have? We have a surplus of demands and a lack of supply. Boom, that’s a business idea. And so that’s what I did.
Frankie:
I went to Alibaba and in those days, you know, like Alibaba, people didn’t even it was relatively new itself. People actually didn’t even know about that. I went, ended up on Alibaba. I ordered some snoods and in fact, what I tried to do with them was I walked around Oxford Street again like in London, the famous shopping street, and in those days used to have a bit more independent stores everywhere that would sell like luggage and, like you know a bit of clothing and stuff like that. I went up and down Oxford Street and I went up to all the owners of these stores and I made deals of them. I said I’m bringing in football snoods. Everybody knows what they are. No one’s selling them. I’m going to bring them in. I can’t remember what the prices were, but I’ll bring them in for one pound, I’ll sell them to you for three pounds and you can sell them for five pounds or something like that. And people, people were interested. I made deals on paper while I was waiting for the goods to come in from China.
Kevin King:
Are these licensed with the teams on them or just straight? Just simple colors?
Frankie:
or something the most unbranded piece of generic fabric you’ve ever seen. So you can see where the story might end up going because of that fact. But no licensing, no, nothing, not even like any unique design at this stage. It was just like order. You know the first. I had 100 pounds. I had 100 pounds of savings money and I invested it all in snoods and when I went in for them to come in, I cut all these deals. What happened then was I met somebody through my family friend who had been selling accessory phone accessories on eBay. Again, 2012, amazon marketplace barely existed. Ebay was actually the place you would go to if you wanted to, like you know, do a marketplace business. And he was, like don’t go to these shops. That’s just like old fashioned. You should be selling this on the internet. Use, and you can use eBay to get straight to market very easily. So that’s what I did, and if it wasn’t for that one conversation, you might see me today doing deals with retail high street retail stores rather than doing anything to do with online. But that one conversation changed everything and I said fine, let’s just stick them on eBay.
Frankie:
The irony of it was that the margin actually ended up no better once you take into account the marketplace fees, the shipping and so on. So the margin are probably going to be stronger. If I just get to the shop, the reach is going to be higher. Yeah, of course. Yeah, and you know I’m not. I don’t regret it so. So that’s how I got started. I got. I was the first person in this country to sell snoods. I ended up selling snoods to footballers because I guess they had the same problem as me. Some of the other ones couldn’t find where to get them.
Kevin King:
I sold them to like basically, you get an order on eBay from like some famous footballer and you’re like you’re checking your orders as they email is like holy cow. So, and so David Beckham just ordered one, or whatever, or my event. You’re like no way.
Frankie:
You’re like yeah, yeah but I wasn’t even surprised.
Kevin King:
You just ordered one.
Frankie:
Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t even surprised at that point, because everybody wanted to snood and I was the only one. You had them, so, so that was how.
Kevin King:
I mean, I mean, how did I end?
Frankie:
up doing in the end. I wish I could remember the numbers, but you know, when you, when you get into business, I can remember the day I sat there on New Year’s Eve and my phone made a ding in noise and it said ding, ding, ding, you’ve sold an item, congratulations. And that that, still to this day, is one of my highlights of my entire business career. We’re selling that first nude and I was just like, oh my god, we got something. We got something here, and I don’t know how many snoods I sold. But what I do remember was I ran out of stock and I wasn’t bullish enough and I didn’t order more stock in time. So you know, I had to keep waiting for it. That was the mistake I learned from, which I corrected later.
Frankie:
At the time it felt like I was a millionaire from snoods. The reality is it was going to be like in the you know the low thousands or you know I don’t know exactly how many, but it didn’t last long because, as I mentioned, it’s like an unbranded. There’s no differentiation. Anyone else can go and find out where to source these and, of course, what you end up in is a price game, which is everyone’s you know nightmare on the marketplaces. It’s obviously the big downside of using them and on top of that, you know it was a bit of a craze, you know, like a like fidget spinners would be another recent craze that everybody would be aware of. It wasn’t going to last forever. It wasn’t a sustainable business model, which I knew, but it was what got my foot in the door in terms of selling anything, got me a foot in the door of selling online, and it got my foot in the door of sportswear, which is then how I then developed what became the sportswear brands that we, that we built for the next nine years and eventually sold. So what?
Kevin King:
what kind was that? Clothing, sportswear clothing brands or accessory brands, or what kind of what kind of stuff was?
Frankie:
it. Yeah, so you know athletic sportswear. So, like any, I think we in the UK, sportswear means you know, like actual, you know, athletic apparel that you’re going to go and do a sport in. I think sometimes in the US is used to mean like a bit more casual, casual wear yeah, but yeah, it was.
so the next product that I did was compression wear. So compression, compression sportswear was invented by Under Armour and it didn’t really. I think they did it in 2008 or something there’s a good story about, about how they created that and it started to become commoditized and, like compression wear started to become popular and, again, I was one of the first people in the UK to have, like you know, like a independent compression wear offering. So that was the first.
Kevin King:
These are like people know, like compression socks and stuff or these or these more compression, like shirts and things are like, or okay, yeah, so you’ll see it.
Frankie:
If you watch athletes these days, you know like underneath the team jersey they’ll have something else on, like a long sleeve top, very tight, or some long shorts underneath there. You know, like the team kit. So that’s compression wear.
Kevin King:
So it’s the Under Armour, what the? I remember they had big ads during like American football games here where they’d show the guys all in these like really tight black shirts or something and hypen how it made their performance better and all kinds of stuff.
Frankie:
So what is?
Kevin King:
actually, for those that don’t know what is the compression where people know it for, like the foot, you know that’s a popular item and that’s to help blood circulation in your feet, you know, keep you from getting clots and stuff down your feet. So as people age, a lot of times they need or they’re diabetic or whatever they need compression socks. But when it comes to different parts of the body, like the arms and the chest and stuff, what is it actually really doing there?
Frankie:
Well, there was studies done on it. The main benefit would have been during the winter and it’s for warmth, so it’ll keep you warm, which we need here usually, not now. Now we’re desperate for cold, but yeah. So, like, a big part of the compression wear market is like okay, I’m going to go play football on Sunday morning, I’m freezing, I want to wear something underneath, right, and it’s lightweight, it wicks. So one of the benefits wicks the sweat from the skin, so you’re not drenching yourself in sweat.
Frankie:
So, like an outer jersey or like a t-shirt like this, if you get a sweat on it, it’ll become very heavy and wet with sweat, where the compression layer would sit underneath and it would wick the sweat away, which means like take it from the skin and then it absorbs on the surface of the fabric. And you could actually see that. You could see it happen, like if you put it on a wet surface, it would come to the top of the fabric, evaporate off and then you know, save you from being drenched in sweat. So it was the sweat wicking, it was the keeping you warm and yeah, there was, you know, like compressing the muscles. A lot of like people that wore it just enjoyed the feeling of feeling like they were locked in and their muscles were, like you know, being supported more. So there were some benefits there as well. It’s been a good three, four years since I wrote a copy for this, Kevin, so you’re really testing me, but yeah, that was what we did, so that was the next big thing. How many different skews, how many?
Kevin King:
different. You said you did for eight or nine years before you sold it. How many different skews did you have around this? Honestly, I think you got different sizes and you’re dealing with all kinds of crazy stuff, right?
Frankie:
Yeah, which is, like you know, everybody’s worst nightmare these days. You know, too many skews, too many variations. I think we had, we definitely had more than 2000. I think honestly, I think it might have been at 5000 at one point, before we cold. We cold a lot of it, but like we didn’t, it didn’t bother us, Like we didn’t find that problem.
Kevin King:
Did you have a big warehouse in London there with this, or did you have that you owned or managed, or did you job this out to the fulfillment company?
Frankie:
Yeah, I remember the day that I shipped everything off to the fulfillment what was they called Fulfillment company 3PO? Yeah, the 3PO. I remember the day I did that. It was like wow, like my life has changed, because I spent my entire day packing things and then running to the post office. But, yeah, I did my research. So your recent newsletter or I think it might be a recent podcast episode is talking about making profits at the buying side rather than the selling side, right? Something like that? Yeah, yeah, and that was one of the lessons I was taught early is you don’t make your money when you sell. You make your money when you buy. So you need to buy, right, yeah, Don’t skimp on that. And the same goes for all your service providers. So what I didn’t do was go to the biggest, flashiest website, freepl, who’s charging me more just to give me some account manager or something that I don’t need, and pay their salary. I scoured the country for the most cost-effective FreePL that I could find and also someone who was small enough that we would get the service that we felt we needed. And that’s what I did, and I ended up working with these guys, and you’re asking me if I wanted to talk about anything.
Frankie:
To be honest, these guys really deserve a shout out. They’re called Paxmart the UK. Like people can look them up. They’re in near Coventry, based near Coventry, which is in the Midlands, which is where most of our warehouses are in this country because obviously it includes in the name, it’s in the middle. They can ship everywhere quickly. But Paxmart is run by this guy, nick, and this lady, shauna, and yeah, that changed my whole life working with them, finding them, and I went through so many and I chose who I thought was the best combination of value and service and it really made a difference, because you’ve got that many SKUs right and with orders going wrong, they’re giving the wrong size or the wrong colour can happen a lot easier. So it was really important that we picked a good one and those guys were amazing.
Kevin King:
So are you selling D2C or are you also selling still on eBay? And did you go on Amazon and other places or getting into doing wholesale into, like any of those two big sporting companies, or what were you doing? We did?
Frankie:
it. We did it. I constantly got asked about wholesale orders or, like you know, doing some bulk stuff, and I just think a lot of people might relate to this now, like if we’ve got, if we start a successful brand, you start to get approaches for these things. So one of the new brands that I’m running now we got approached by like a very famous department store in the UK, like kind of prestigious place, and I was just like can I be bothered to like send you 50 units and just like deal with all of your old fashioned ways of working and of course there’s some upsides, but like I could spend my hours a lot better than doing this deal with you. So it was. It was the same back then with this with the sportswear. We always had people asking about it, but like I just felt the growth of the business was going to be online and direct to consumer or via the marketplaces and not in these wholesale thing. I just wasn’t set up for that. So I’m glad we never did it.
Frankie:
Amazon tried to do it as well. I tried to buy us, like you know, do a retail deal, which we we luckily never did because that sounded like hell. So it was mainly eBay for a long time. And then some people start to try and convince me, like you should check out Amazon, and I was just like I cannot be bothered. Have you seen the state of these flat files? I’m not going to, I’m not going to waste my time Bringing out a thousand cells and, like you know, I have to go for like approval for it and all this stuff. I was like I forced myself to do it and, of course, the rest is history. Ebay was still doing half a million or something in sales the last time I checked. I mean, we stopped checking it a long time ago with the old business, but it was. We had such powerful listings on eBay that they were just turning over like, like you know, hundreds of thousands. But yeah, you know, as soon as I got on Amazon, amazon itself started to grow and we grew with it and you know, like obviously the place to be now.
Kevin King:
So you ended up selling that out a few years ago right.
Frankie:
Yeah, TCA was the name of the of the brand and it was May 2021. So, yeah, just over two years ago, we sold that.
Kevin King:
Was that to an aggregator or to a strategic buyer, or what was it? Who bought it?
Frankie:
It was an aggregator, a US one or a?
Kevin King:
European one, European guys
0:26:14 – Frankie:
What was that.
Kevin King:
Like what was your sales volume when you exited? What are we all doing in gross merchandise?
Frankie:
We don’t reveal everything about it, but we were doing like a very healthy seven figures and we got. You know, this is what we started talking about. It’s coming around a little bit now, but what we had was we had a real brand, Kevin, you know, and how did you build that?
Kevin King:
though, and that’s a competitive space. I mean, like you said, under armor started it, and then every Tom Dick and Harry’s got compression something or another, because there’s a low barrier to entry. So what was it that actually? Like you just said, you had a real brand. What made it a real brand and what made it stand out?
Frankie:
You know, we always think, like, what are the great brands on, Nike, apple and we start thinking about the logo and the flashy advertising and stuff. We forget one very important point how did these companies start in the first place? Right, they started with a great fucking product. Simple as that. Stop trying to cheat the system, people. Just make a good product. Your brand will build itself, your business will build itself. No one can be bothered to make a good product these days. I guess I actually get sick of it. So we talked about when we met in seller sessions and that was my first ever Amazon event ever and I was even done Like I’d sold the previous company. I’ve got the new brands now which I run. They’re going to be. They are very successful, but I do. I have fun with it as well. I’m not like completely obsessed with, you know, making money anymore. So I went to seller sessions for a bit of fun, which is how we ended up meeting. But I got people so many questions they always ask me like how did you know what to sell? When they find out I’m on Amazon, how did you find out what to sell? And I just I’m like confused by the question Because that’s what you know.
Kevin King:
You did what you know and what you would buy, I mean, what you would want and what you would buy, right, yeah?
Frankie:
And made it good and made it better and good, but I don’t sit down there and say what can I sell. I sit down there and say what do people want? What do people need and what they can’t already get, and what is that? A great product. And there you go. Then you go and sell it. So I feel like people running their business backwards. What can I sell? I just don’t get that. So I didn’t build an Amazon business. I built a sportswear brand and I just happened to put it on Amazon. That’s how I think about it.
Kevin King:
I mean, I did the same thing in 2015 or similar with when the first Apple Watch came out. There was I was going to like that looks pretty cool, I think I’ll buy one of those. It wasn’t quite out yet and I was like how do you charge this thing? How do you? What do people do with it? You know, you just got to put a cable and like stick it across the table or on the nightstand. And there I look on Amazon and there’s people selling little charging docks, little stands, and back then they’re all like they’re cheap pieces of crap made out of like bamboo for 10, 15 bucks and they all look the same or slight variations, and they were selling like crazy. I’m like I don’t want that. If I’m going to spend, I don’t remember what that watch cost, but if that watch costs like 500 bucks or whatever it was, why am I going to put it on some chintzy little bamboo $15 stand?
Kevin King:
Apple has an elegant look to it. You know it’s a sophisticated look. You need like a nice white and silver or some sort of you know, colors that match in black stand. So I developed my own stand. I developed what I wanted. I spent like $35,000 or something like that in tooling this stand had. It would hide all the cables. It had a bottom which popped out and you wrap the cables around, so there’s not all these cables laying all over the table. It would charge your iPhone and your and your uh On your watch. It had a built-in Bluetooth speaker so that you could just you know if you’re sleeping at night you want to listen to some music or whatever. It would tie into the watch or the or your phone and a little chant channel on the back to hide everything. It’s set nice and neat on the corner of the desk and and I put that out at $89 and Christmas time 2015 and I was selling them like crazy and Everybody else’s look using. Back then there weren’t all these sophisticated tools like there are now. There are few tools, but people were looking. Just let me jump on this bandwagon of being another me too product and just make another Bamboo stand. These guys are making you know hundred grand a month. Let me go do that and Find a factory that can just make it slightly different. You can’t do that. You got to develop.
Kevin King:
And then the same thing happened with a dog bowl and there was this low-feed dog. Well, my dog was eating too fast and so it was eating its food when I put it in the bowl and just gulp it down and so they would get gas or be you know, burping or whatever. I was like this can’t be good for the little puppy. So I look it up online. They say, yeah, put a tennis ball in the inside the bowl or something to slow it down. That’s got to eat around the tennis ball, or. But they did not. Look on Amazon, there’s this bowl, there’s this Dog bowl. That’s a slow-feed dog bowl that has a patent on it and it’s like it’s ridged, it’s like looks like a little small little mountain and you just drop the food in there and the dog has to use its tongue to go around the little obstacles to slow them down.
Kevin King:
I’m like that thing is freaking ugly. That’s the ugliest thing I ever saw. A little piece of plastic. I’m gonna. I don’t want them sitting on the floor in my house, I want something nice. So I actually developed a really nice bone-shaped bowl with silicone and non-slip rubber and all this stuff and and came out with that and it sold like crazy and became to create a real brand out of it and that’s what I think, like you just said, is most people are not doing. I’m not one putting that work or that effort. They’re just looking for the quick buck. What can I find on on helium 10 that says there’s an opportunity to find a supplier and let’s just do it and make a quick buck and be done with it. But if you build a true brand, you create a motor around yourself and you create something that’s actually has value and someone will pay for and is your brand. Now, since you sold it, have you checked in on it, how it’s doing? Is it still? Are they? Are they managing it Okay?
Frankie:
Yeah, I mean, what, from what I hear well, I know for a fact is doing well, because they told me we had, we had a couple of earnouts and like bits and pieces that you know for the couple of years afterwards which is finished now. But so, yeah, they have to give me those numbers and it’s, it’s grown. It’s grown very, very nicely. So I’m very proud of that actually, because not all of the Brands that were acquired during the you know, like the rush, the land grab I think not. Not all of them are doing so well, which is why we’re seeing so many aggregators acquiring each other and consolidating and some of them are really suffering. So I’m very proud that TCA’s Do they do. I’m actually shocked to how well it’s doing. I’m a bit like I’ve actually realized that I wouldn’t have been able to do some of the stuff they’ve done.
Kevin King:
So just Europe, UK, or they have they expanded out to the rest of Europe or into US or anywhere.
Frankie:
I think they’re seeing some really good results in some of the smaller European countries, which, which people maybe ignore. I think, like Spain is doing quite well, but yeah, they do. They’re selling everywhere and I think one of the big deals they did was they got on to Decathlon. Decathlon’s like a major major sports retailer here and I think they’re on the Decathlon website now, which is which was one of the big projects. They did a suit after I sold it and Actually Chris, who’s my number two, he, I think he he can take the credit for most of that project, so he stayed on with the brand and implemented that. So, yeah, like TCA is actually going a lot better than I thought it could. To be honest, they’re adding, like definitely adding a couple of million to the to the revenue. So, yes, doing well, which is very pleasing. So what?
Kevin King:
was it about it? I mean, besides just a quality product, you can have a quality product but nobody knows about it. Nobody it’s. And that’s one of the things that’s happening with Amazon now with all this testing They’ve been doing with reviews, and I’m all for this, but whether you have a Product that’s been there since 2015 a dog bowl to say that’s been there since 2015, it’s got 27,000 reviews and it’s got this big moat around it that a new or better product may come out, but it doesn’t stand a chance because it has 10 reviews or 20 reviews and so people won’t give a chance. Or now Amazon’s Doing all this testing and hopefully it becomes permanent, where they don’t show the number of reviews anymore, and that will give a new product, a better product, a better chance and we’ll give An eva. It’s better for the customer, it’s better for innovation, better for the customer. The old school sellers hate it because now they’re their little moat is gone and they have to actually do real business and it’s.
Kevin King:
But what is it besides the quality, that made TCA a true brand and made it so good? Is it? Was it the marketing? Was it the avatar that you were appealing to? Was it how they made them feel when they they did it. They felt that they’re part of something, or what was it they actually? Branding is more than just a quality product and a logo, like you said. What was it that that really helped you create that brand?
Frankie:
So I used to yeah, I did used to think about this a lot, and I guess that the metaphor I always gave was actually Well, people used to ask slightly different questions. They say like what’s your USP? And I’d be like. I just say, like I mean, name me anything that has actually has a USP like, unless it’s a.
Kevin King:
I’m not a big fan of the USP statement. I think it’s a red herring. The customer is always right for me.
Frankie:
So, but I used to think so, if I haven’t got USP, then what the hell am I doing? And the metaphor I always thought was like the business is like a rope. You know, the rope has got like so many different threads that wind together. So we’re very good at this, we’re very good at that, we’re very good at this, we’re very good, we’re slightly better at everything than our competitors and overall you get a nice strong rope, which is which is the strength of the business. So you know like and so what is it? What makes a brand? I mean, it’s like a question that people talk about forever, and the best definition that I like, the one I go by, is Jeff Bezos. He says a brand is what your customers. No, it says your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. So it’s everything you do, like. People hate hearing this because it means it’s hard work and you can’t just like. It’s not just the logo, so, sadly, it’s not just the copywriting, it’s not just the imagery, but it’s everything you do creates the brand in the mind of your customers.
Frankie:
So number one, it is having a great product, and that I’ll never, I’ll never get away from that we used to spend like weeks, months. I had, like designers and product developers from Under Armour, Nike, Lulu, lemon, working for me making my products. Tell me another house on business that has got people from the giants of their industry making their products. So we start with it with a great product, and the way, part of the way you can get your great product is guess what? You just ask people, you just ask your customers what they want, and you have to be clever because, like you know, if you ask them what they want, they might just say a faster horse, like Henry Ford Says. So you have to read between the lines, you have to listen carefully, you have to prompt them here and then you have to do it carefully and they will tell you what they’re looking for.
Kevin King:
Then you can go sometimes I don’t know what they want. You look at the, look at some of the Apple products. You know that, yeah, but people, you know they. I remember when the I thought it was the first iPhone, I think came out or something, there’s a bunch of articles that came out said, yeah, this is the latest fad, this won’t last, or so. But sometimes people don’t know what they want. So, like you said, you have to read between the lines and you have to prompt them right and then Create that basically there’s a.
Frankie:
There’s a great quote with from the guy we talked about before Ogilvy, which I always forget exactly how it goes, but it’s like consumers don’t know what they want, they don’t say what they think and they don’t think they don’t think what they don’t think what they say, or something like that. Like, basically, it’s just, you know you have to be very Tactical about the way you engage with them, but you know ultimately you can do it. So that’s one way we did it. Right, speak to customers. You also have to have like a knack for it, right? Like I’m not going to pretend that I have no talent whatsoever, but when I spot a great idea or I hear a customer say something, my brain will latch onto it and I’ll get that. So you know you comes with a bit of, you know, innate ability, like to trust your gut on something as well. But what about?
Kevin King:
what. What about what you said, though, about Customers asking them what they want? I mean, in our business right now, one of the big things are sites like a pick-foo, which is a great company, great guys to actually test, and people now are using AI and creating you know, 100 different product designs of the latest, coolest dog bowl and putting that up there and saying which one of these would you buy, and Then they’re. Then they’re choosing that one and getting feedback, and the people say I like this one because it’s got rounded edges and I like it because of this, like okay, that’s the one we’re gonna do. But the problem with that in any kind of focus groups, stuff like that, and whether it’s pick-foo or anything else is that’s great, maybe for some brainstorming, getting some basic ideas, but people you just said it what people say and what they will spend their money on are often two different things. It may say this is my favorite one. Come when push comes to serve. Say, give me ten bucks for like no, no, no, it’s, it’s not that great. So how do you get past that when you’re doing innovation and branding? And is it just a gut feeling and enrolling the dice? Or how do you? How do you do, how did you do that? Or how do you do that?
Frankie:
Good question. I mean, I’ve not codified this in a way that we’re trying to talk about now, which I will, because this is super valuable and they’ll be companies. I don’t even know if people have done this yet. So there’s a few things I mean. Number one if you speak, I speak to people. I like to speak to people one-on-one, like customers, rather than in a group, because group dynamics you could just throw reality out the window. Right, they’re just gonna start lying, conforming to one another. But I speak one-on-one and and if you hear the same thing three or four times, it’s fairly good indication that you know like there’s something there so you can get, with the frequency of of the same response. You’ve got to be careful not to, not to. You’ve got a right and deliver a question in an open manner. So just, it’s pretty easy. Like would you buy this? Like it’s not.
Frankie:
I don’t think a particularly useful question like you say, like they could, you know whatever they say, we don’t know until they put their money with their mouth is Sometimes it’s you could. So it’s important to phrase questions correctly, keep them open-ended. Don’t prompt them, don’t let them think you know what it’s kind of like. Have the person you speaking to Give me expectation bias of what they think you want to hear, for example. So there’s an art to Engaging with customers and that you know that side of things. I’m sure there’s millions of resources online people can look at for how to effectively do it, but for me it’s something that came natural, like to listen to people and try and read between the lines. So that’s why I’ve lent into doing it, because I found I was naturally good at it.
Kevin King:
I mean one of the things I’ve done in the past and this may be, you know, some people may say this is a Kevin, that’s maybe a little shady or something, but I did this. I had a membership site and I did this. I was testing two different prices. I was like, price for this membership sites gonna be 9.95 or 19.95 and I could sit on a pole and say which would you pay for? And everybody’s gonna say the cheaper price. But I’m like, will they pay for the higher price? So what I did is I set up, I said we’re launching this site and I did a split test and that actually took them all the way through the credit card processing. I didn’t actually process the credit card, but they had to enter all their credit card stuff, just as if they hit submit and they got to thank you and everything. I just didn’t actually run the card and I did testing that way.
Kevin King:
I’ve done it also for products. Where I come up with a new product idea. Let’s just say it’s a dog bowl, for example. It wasn’t a dog wall. But to say it’s a dog wall and I have my own customer list, it’s one of the values of having your own customer list and I will segment that list. If I list is 10,000, I’ll take a thousand of those people and I’ll I’ll. I’ll put it up a special page on my website. That’s kind of like it has a. You know, you can. There’s some tools where you say you have to have a link to get to this page so it doesn’t just show up Naturally everywhere. And I would send out an email to these people and say and I put the dog wall up. You know, 3d imagery looks like it’s real in stock available. You know I’m not. I’m.
Kevin King:
If I said that, I said probably shipping in seven days or something like that, and to see if people would actually did the same thing, how many of these people will go through and actually give me their credit card for it. And I just didn’t charge them. And then I come back and I say sorry. I think one time I totaled them. It was a test, but sometimes that pisses them off. I think one time I said, oh, we have a shipping delay, there’s a problem with the factory or something, so it’s going to be a little bit of delay. I forget what I say, but if it doesn’t work, then I come back and say something like sorry, this oversold. You know we’re working on getting some more in, or whatever it may be. You know we’re not going to charge your car. We didn’t charge your card, so don’t worry, you’re not out of anything. It’s nothing to refund and I’ve done testing like that that actually proves that they want this product. So that’s something that I’ve done to try to overcome those obstacles of put your money where your mouth is.
Frankie:
Yeah, I’ve actually heard that from a few places. Yeah, it’s just actually. I just remember something you mentioned before about the people launch. People want to launch new products on Amazon. They want to get their business going. Here’s one of my big you know, my big keys that I think people should try to try to use, and that is rich people shop on Amazon too. So how do rich people shop, right? Do they go to the shopping mall and look for the cheapest shop? No, they go to the fancy place with all the fancy shops. They want to spend money, so they want to use Amazon. Everyone wants to buy everything on Amazon. We don’t want to use any DTC sites. We can’t be bothered. But we don’t use it for everything, because there’s a dearth of quality and there’s just too much overflow of rubbish. And guess what’s the biggest indicator of quality? It’s your price. So people need to think about that a little bit more and create really good products and don’t be afraid, like you say, to charge for them, because prices are going to be a lot of money.
Kevin King:
I’ve actually done that too Exactly what you just said. I did this. I had a makeup mirror, a little portable makeup mirror for women, that I was selling for several years. I don’t sell it anymore, but I was selling for several years and at Christmas time I would actually rate everybody else is selling theirs in 1995. I would raise the price to $29.95. Yeah, and then I would put a $10 coupon on it. You know one of those clipable coupons on it. So when people would come there and they’re comparing two different products, they’re looking at the 19, there’s this is $19.95. Here’s mine. My images are good and everything too, but this one’s $29.95. It must be better. It costs more. Well, I’m on a budget I can’t spend. I’d rather just spend the $19.95. But wait a minute, there’s a $10 coupon. So I’m going to get a better quality item for the same price and they would buy mine and mine was better quality, but they don’t know that. And then they can’t touch it and feel it and hold it or whatever.
Kevin King:
But that’s the psychology of marketing that most people don’t think about. And I agree with you. I’ve done that with bully sticks. I’ve told this story many times. It was in my newsletter. In a couple places where I sold everybody selling 30 bully sticks in a bag for $30. On Amazon I sold three in a box for $55. And everybody just thinks it’s always about the cheapest price on Amazon. It’s absolutely not. In some categories, in some keywords, it’s difficult to compete If you’re not competing on price. But there’s a lot of opportunities in a lot of spaces where it’s not price based Absolutely.
Frankie:
And you know, the thing with the dog treats is there’s even another element which came to mind on top of that for me, which is the customer, i.e. the human buying. It will never actually know how good or bad that thing was for its dog, because it can’t really get the feedback Right.
Kevin King:
So there’s actually more uncertainty, right?
Frankie:
I mean, you’re going to put something in the mouth of a child or a dog that you’re responsible for and again, do I really want to put the cheapest thing in my dog’s mouth?
Kevin King:
No, you’re selling to the human. It’s the same old thing of McDonald’s with playgrounds. They put a playground in there, so the kids say they want to go to McDonald’s. You’re not selling to the. You’re selling to not necessarily the consumer of the product, but the buyer of the product.
Frankie:
Yeah, yeah, and I’m not saying that as well in the gifting space as well, so it’s different. But yeah, this is basic. This is marketing 101. It made me laugh a little bit when we were at seller sessions because you can see the shift happening away from. There’s definitely a shift happening now with the Amazon world, which is away from the short termism, away from the hack mentality, towards everyone’s same brand, right Brand, brand, brand, which is why it’s just becoming like ruined the word, which is fine.
Kevin King:
But what people? They’re saying that? That’s the mantra, but most people don’t understand what that means.
Frankie:
Well, exactly, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t quite get it. And some of the content, you know, is pretty. This is, you know, some pretty basic marketing branding 101, which everyone you’ve got to start somewhere, but I feel like the Amazon world is so far behind, but that’s, you know. That’s like a principle that I have, which is take, you know, I try to work out what I’m good at and then I think, well, where is where’s what I’m good at going to have the most effect? Where am I going to have the biggest impact? And that’s not necessarily the place where everyone else who’s good at what I do is playing. I want to find a playground where people that aren’t good at what I do are playing, because then I can stand out a bit more. So for me, that was the beauty of Amazon, was like okay, everyone here is playing a price war, cheap commodity game and I’m going to do I’m going to pretty much do the opposite.
Frankie:
And that’s a lot of the stuff with TCA is what. That’s what we did. I mean, my, my, my titles sometimes were like six words, six word product title, like women’s supreme running leggings, what TCA boom, that’s the title. No keywords stuffing, no, nothing. Do you know what that looks like to a customer? It looks like, damn, these guys are confident. You know they don’t need to. They’re not begging for sales, they’re confident in what they do. That sounds like an underarm or a Lululemon or a Nike type of title, not an Amazon title. So that’s how we did it and it can still work today. So now you’re building another brand right, at least one, yeah, we’ve got two or three.
Kevin King:
Some poverty or something like that.
Frankie:
Or what was it. What is it? We’re in the creative space at the moment. So I am after I sold. I mean, I love sports, but, like when I’ve been wearing my own sportswear for 10 years, I was actually sick to death of it. So it was actually like a relief to sell the brand and start wearing jeans again. But I’m a creative guy. I love creating. You can see behind me. I’ve got the guitar, got the piano, I’ve got some artwork back there as well, so I just thought let me do a business about something that I actually want to do myself. So yeah, so the brands that we’re doing now are all in a creative space, which just makes it fun to work on.
Kevin King:
So what are those launched or is still on the development stage? On those, Launched.
Frankie:
I’ve got other ideas which are yet to launch, but sometimes you don’t want to split your focus too many different ways, so I’m kind of wondering whether I launch more now or just try and focus on what we have.
Kevin King:
Are you doing it the same way, where you’re going after more of the premium, high quality market in a commoditized industry, or are you doing it a little bit differently this time?
Frankie:
No, this time is completely different. This time we’re actually running very much dual business Amazon and DTC. So that’s like a new skill set. That I’m learning is more of the DTC side of running a business, because TCA was almost all Amazon. We didn’t challenge on the DTC side. So, yeah, we’re doing both of those things and Amazon. Again, it’s pros and cons, right. So the pro is you can get a product in front of everybody very quickly, very easily. The con is it’s a search tool. So if you put something completely new on there that no one’s ever heard of, the chances of them finding it are low because they don’t know what they’re looking for. They can’t search for it yet because they don’t know what exists right. So you have to weigh up that when you’re using Amazon as well, because you want to be innovative and launch new things that haven’t been seen yet, but you have to try and still capture some demand that’s already existing. That’s a lot of people are using TikTok for now for product discovery. Yes, yeah, exactly yeah. So that’s exactly that type of stuff that we’re actually trying to learn and it’s like a new skill set for us at the moment.
Kevin King:
Yeah, there’s people right now using, I mean, TikTok’s got their own shop in the UK and they’re doing some testing in the US and they got a lot of stuff coming there where they’re setting up their own fulfillment networks and everything, because they realize this that TikTok is a great place for product discovery. They’re like why should we be sending this off to somebody’s Shopify site or to Amazon when we could just do this ourselves and take those margins? So they’re working heavily on that. But there’s people that one of the TikTok tactics actually is that to get something going. Like you said on Amazon, if you can’t get product they don’t know you exist, and something new and innovative, it’s hard to find it. Amazon has some programs that try to help push that out there a little bit, but you give up more points for being in those programs too.
Kevin King:
But what someone’s doing on TikTok is they got really smart. They went out and got five influencers I think this is Paul Harvey that actually recommended this get five influencers to actually create a user generated content video of your product and then post that on their link and then you run ads using their content. But you run that to a small audience. So if it’s a small audience of, say, five or 10,000 people. And those five or 10,000 people because there’s five different influencers, five different videos, all featuring your product and running to the small audience, it starts showing up in all their feeds constantly and they start seeing other people doing it.
Kevin King:
It’s a very small subset. So I just saw Kevin’s video and I just saw Mike’s video. I just saw Susan’s video. Man, this must be a hot product. Let me go search for it on Amazon and then that creates a demand. They go and they’re like this is pretty cool, let me buy it. And then it creates this flywheel and then you expand it out from there and you can actually almost force product discovery and then you can actually do it. Right now, the way the algorithm works by doing stuff like that, which is pretty cool little technique.
Frankie:
Yeah, it’s huge, and that’s the merging of the worlds that we’re seeing DTC and Amazon In 2012, in 2015,. For you as well, amazon is a dirty word. Even now, today, brands turn their nose up. They don’t want to be there, they don’t want to be associated with it, and that’s slowly changing and eventually that will, I think, disappear almost entirely. But where there’s this snobbery around Amazon, that’s opportunity for people. So I think it’s very interesting to watch that merging of the DTC world and the Amazon world, and it’s not so hard anymore to drive people to Amazon. They trust it. Like we said, they all want to buy things there. So, yeah, I think, yeah, we’re interested, very interested in TikTok and the TikTok shop, like you say, because they’re banning all the links, aren’t they to outbound to Amazon or whatever, but I don’t think it really matters, to be honest.
Kevin King:
So what else are you working? You just got these brands. You got anything else in the oven.
Frankie:
I mean, I literally just make music, Kevin.
Kevin King:
Yeah, all right. I see the piano behind you there.
Frankie:
I was playing the piano last night I got the guitar on the go. I sing as well. I love making music. I don’t think I’m going to be a musician or an artist, but it’s a passion. And you know what’s funny Like an entrepreneurial type of person is your passions tend to start to turn into businesses eventually. So that’s why I started these like creative product brands is because I thought, well, I’m already passionate about it, so we’ll do it that way. But yeah, I just, I like missing creative, like doing some art, and I love writing. I mean, I’m writing. I tried to get a blog going but didn’t really pursue it. I wrote some stories. All of these things are little passion projects. I love dancing. I’m going to dance class later tonight, but I have a feeling that one of them, or two of them, might start to funnel itself into like some kind of business, because that’s just what I naturally do. So it’s watch. It’s a watch this space for like what else I might do, but I’m a physical product guy at heart, right, like I just love a good product.
Frankie:
You know, you know, you know once you know how to do it as well. This is something that’s so interesting, Kevin, like the second time around is so easy. Starting a business the first time round is like you think you for some reason. We all do it, we all reinvent the wheel and we learn how to do everything. Maybe you need to, maybe it’s not. You can’t just get a mentor or follow a playbook. But the second time you do it I was like, oh my God, like this is so easy. So I think people should remember that as well. Like people was on their first business right now. It’s hard work as a grind. It was for me also, but there’s a very big difference between the first time you do something and the second. In anything and building a business is the same. So that’s what I found, and having a bit more fun with it now. That’s awesome.
Kevin King:
Well, Frankie, if people wanted to find out more about you, or to check you out, what you’re up to check out your blog or whatever that hasn’t been updated in a while, or whatever it is, how would they do that?
Frankie:
Instagram I’m called the Urban Artist, the Urban Artist, so I use that mostly to share my work there, if it’s writing or anything else. And you can find my LinkedIn as well, which LinkedIn is kind of a funny place, so I don’t take myself too seriously on there. But yeah, I’d love to connect with people on LinkedIn or Instagram. Yeah, man, I’d love that.
Kevin King:
Cool man, I appreciate your time today. It’s been a great chatting with you.
Frankie:
Kevin, it’s always a pleasure the King, the King is here.
Kevin King:
The King the King in the house, Cool man. I’m sure we’ll see each other or re-chatting again soon. Thanks, man, Cheers, bro. Great discussion this week with Frankie talking about branding and how you figure out how to actually create a true brand on Amazon. Great story and some great insights and some great resources for everybody. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. We’ll be back again next week with another awesome episode. We’re going to be talking about sourcing in India and some amazing opportunities that you probably don’t even know about when it comes to sourcing in India, Even if you don’t want to direct all your sourcing over there, just even switching 10% or 20% can make huge, huge differences. So look forward to that in next week’s episode Before we leave today. Our discussion today between me and Frankie reminded me of a quote from Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy is one of the greatest copywriters he’s still alive of our generation and he’s just amazing stuff. But one of the quotes that he said is marketing is about behavioral psychology and math. Marketing is about behavioral psychology and math. I couldn’t agree more. Have a great week. We’ll see you next Thursday.
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The post #370 – Cracking the Code of Effective Branding with Frankie Thorogood appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.
