Channel Mastery - Ep. 27: Christian Gennerman, VP of Strategy and Merchandising at 180Commerce

180Commerce

**fighting channel conflict**

“Amazon is being run by resellers. And they're just trying to quickly get sales because they're focused on their brick and mortar. They're not focused on what the negative reviews are for that product. The brand needs to own that.”
- Christian Gennerman

episode preview

Amazon, Amazon, Amazon! It’s the new, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” It’s talked about SO much that pretty much no one wants to talk about it. Well, if you take away anything from today’s episode it’s this: you cannot ignore Amazon.

Today, we talk about online marketplaces: Amazon, Walmart, Jet.com and more. (Spoiler alert: it’s mostly Amazon.) Here’s the thing: even if your brand isn’t active on one of the platforms, your SKUs – or knock-offs - are almost certainly being sold there. And if you’re not active in the way your brand and products are being experienced by the consumer, there’s a solid chance it’s not good.

As Christian says, it’s a scary retail world out there right now. But the biggest thing to fear is inaction. And today, in a preview to a LIVE panel discussion I’ll be leading at SIA on January 24, we talk about how you can outsource marketplace management to marketplace experts in a way that will save you time and ensure continued brand capital and trustworthiness.

featuring

Christian Gennerman

Christian Gennerman is an e-commerce business development specialist and VP of Strategy and Merchandising at 180Commerce. He was the first employee at Backcountry.com and he launched e-commerce at Jans, in Park City.

He specializes in creating business infrastructure and online platforms that deliver premium branding, customer experience and service. His extensive knowledge of new online marketing opportunities and analytical tools gives him the ability to see all points and bring them into a cohesive plan that yields growth and ROI to both online and offline channels

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“If you're waiting to think about this, you're going to be too late. It's going to go blow right by you, whether it's marketplace-only brands, distributors that are moving the product to other people, counterfeit, or customer service issues.”
“Sometimes have to go a couple steps backwards and remove all resellers so you can get control of your content, your pricing, and clean that channel up. Because, ultimately, if that channel's clean, you reduce conflict across all channels.”
“You have to tell a story in Amazon that makes sense and that is consistent [with the rest of your brand].”
“Amazon recently introduced [an] opt out, as a consumer, from getting emails to write reviews. Now, you're seeing a 3-percent conversion rate on 100 sales for reviews, which is much lower than it used to be. Right now, reviews are more valuable than they ever are.”
When we partner with a company or brand, we look at every review and every correspondence that's happening within Amazon. …It's old-fashioned customer service. Every brick-and-mortar store does it today. They do incredible, exceptional customer service where they can turn a negative into a positive very quickly just by communicating with the consumer. It's the same thing that needs to happen there.”
“Amazon is being run by resellers. And they're just trying to quickly get sales because they're focused on their brick and mortar. They're not focused on what the negative reviews are for that product. The brand needs to own that.”
“You can't ignore it.”
“I would think that Walmart somehow is going to capitalize on their physical locations and use their shipping network that they've already created to really create that multichannel experience for their customers.”
“One of the other things that's coming through the pipe within Amazon is the media buying share that's going to happen and transition into Amazon. And I can tell you, Google, Facebook: they're all shaking.”
“Most importantly, I just want to educate the brands right now.”

Channel Mastery - Ep. 27: Christian Gennerman, VP of Strategy and Merchandising at 180Commerce

episode preview

featuring

Christian Gennerman

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