Newsletter - May & June 2025
Prime Day is your qualifying race; Q4 is the championship.
I hope you had a pleasant Memorial Day weekend. In the US Memorial Day is a time for reflection, remembrance, and community—and yes, the opening of many pools. In e-commerce, it’s also the starting gun for the sprint to Prime Day.
Now is the time to tighten the details, and invest time and money into your e-commerce marketplace offer:
Audit your product pages—make sure your content is accurate, compelling, and retail-ready
Review the customer journey—from search to checkout, where are the drop-offs?
“Walk your store”—inspect listings like a shopper would
Finalize your promo plan—discounts, coupons, and campaign timing
Check your inventory and fulfillment—are you stocked and ready to scale?
Align your marketing strategy—what channels, what message, and yes, TikTok Shop should be part of the plan
Then play out the “what ifs”:
What if you sell out of your hero SKU?
What if your B-side products don’t move?
What pricing levers or coupon strategies could you use to adapt?
Prime Day is where you test, learn, and earn your place. Q4 is where you win.
Invest the time and budget now to optimize your e-commerce engine. The brands that win Q4 are the ones that build the right habits—and customer expectations—today.
Let’s make this season count.
Margins, Manpower, and the Math Behind Amazon Growth
After some phenomenal conversations in Atlanta with cutting edge brands, I found myself having to review some of the same topics. And I wanted to highlight those here, below.When it comes to scaling a CPG brand on Amazon, the decision between selling direct or through a distributor has profound implications—not just on margin, but on control, growth, and investment.
Let’s break it down.
🧮 Margin Math: Distributor vs. Direct
In the current distributor model, you're making $5.50/unit in profit. The distributor takes over from there, capturing $10.99/unit as they sell the product for $19.99. That seems simple—until you consider what you're leaving on the table.
Selling direct may involve more complexity, but with a solid operational backbone, the unit economics flip. Even after accounting for fulfillment, ad spend, and our ARMR fee, you retain $2.25/unit in profit—and most importantly, you drive nearly 3x the revenue. Our model projects $90K in topline sales over 30 days vs. $34K through distribution.
And you keep the steering wheel: pricing, messaging, marketing, and consumer insights are all yours.
💼 The Cost of In House vs. ARMR’s All-In Team
Thinking about running this internally? You’ll need:
An ops expert for demand planning and issue resolution.
A marketer to build and optimize campaigns.
A retail strategist to navigate the nuances of Amazon.
Tools for reporting, clawbacks, and advertising automation.
That’s a $26,331/month overhead if you’re hiring a qualified team with tools. Or you can hire ARMR, a Hawke Media Company, for $5K/month—and get a proven, cross-functional team ready to execute today.
In short:
→ Distributors limit your growth and strip your control.
→ A direct model delivers more margin, more data, and more velocity.
→ The right partner (that’s us) costs a fraction of building it yourself.
Want to dig into your unit economics and see what’s possible?
Let’s walk through it.
FUTURE EVENTS:
🗓 Upcoming Events
📍 Week of June 9th
Private Event — Chicago
Interested in attending?
Email: Oscar@HawkeMedia.com for an invitation.
📍 June 18–20, 2025
Outdoor Retailer Summer Show
Salt Lake City, UT
Visit Website → outdoorretailer.com