The Profit Issue

Welcome to The Profit Issue

Profit is the thread running through every major change on Amazon this year.

Creator partnerships now deliver 8-12x ROAS relative to standard ad spend. Amazon's 2026 fee increases penalize slow inventory turnover. Return fraud creates double losses on consumables. Non-FIFO fulfillment drives disposal costs. Together, these forces reveal a single story: the margin requirements to succeed on Amazon are tightening.

And in an environment marked by tariff uncertainty and rapidly shifting trade policies, protecting profitability isn't a goal—it's survival. If you're feeling the squeeze, you're not alone.

The brands that will thrive aren't those with the biggest budgets. They're the ones with clear visibility into unit economics, the discipline to make hard portfolio decisions, and the agility to adapt as the landscape shifts.

That's what this issue is about: giving you the insights to protect your margins when both the margin for error and the margin of opportunity keep shrinking.

Campaigns and Content - The Amazon Creator Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight

Amid all the focus on Sponsored Products, DSP, and retail media budgets, a powerful growth lever is sitting in plain sight: 23% of Amazon sales flow through affiliate links, yet fewer than 5% of CPG brands actively partner with those creators strategically.1

Amazon Creator Connections—a formal program launched in 2023—now offers brands direct access to this ecosystem through performance-based campaigns. For CPG brands in food, beauty, and lifestyle, this isn't just another marketing channel. It's the same creator-driven commerce model fueling TikTok Shop's explosive growth, except the conversion happens inside Amazon's ecosystem where purchase intent is already highest.

Amazon's marketplace generated over $638 billion in 2024, with creator-driven sales representing an estimated $146 billion—larger than the entire U.S. grocery e-commerce market.2 Yet most CPG marketing teams treat creator partnerships as experimental brand spend rather than core performance marketing.

The Creator Economic Advantage

The economics of creator marketing differ fundamentally from traditional brand advertising. When you run Amazon PPC, you're managing product costs, shipping, inventory risk, and operational expenses at every level of scale. You need 3-4x ROAS just to maintain healthy margins.

Creators operate under different rules. Zero product costs. Zero inventory risk. Zero costs that scale with volume. Once they cover content creation expenses—typically requiring just 1.1-1.2x ROAS—every additional click becomes pure profit.3

That difference creates a new kind of marketing chemistry. If a creator achieves even a 1.1-1.2x return on ad spend, the campaign becomes self-sustaining—an unbounded system that feeds itself. Creators can scale faster than brands because they're not limited to a single SKU. A creator's video can feature five complementary products—a moisturizer, a supplement, a snack—each generating commissions across multiple brands.

The Performance Data Validates the Opportunity

The returns speak for themselves: influencer marketing delivers an average $5.20 ROI per dollar spent, with top performers seeing $20+ returns.4 Affiliate campaigns—the model Creator Connections uses—deliver an average 12:1 ROAS, nearly 4x higher than Google Ads' 3.31:1 average.5

For brands that embrace creator partnerships strategically, creator-driven traffic represents 15-30% of total Amazon sales.1 Meanwhile, 94% of consumers who see influencer content showcasing Amazon products make those purchases on Amazon—not on brand DTC sites.6 The platform effects are too powerful to ignore.

What We're Hearing from the Market

A VP of Marketing at a $25M beauty brand shared: "We were spending $50K monthly on Amazon PPC at 2.8x ROAS and wondering why growth stalled. We tested Creator Connections with $10K in additional commission budget and saw those partnerships deliver 8x ROAS because we only paid on actual sales. The creators were incentivized to make genuinely compelling content, not just run ads."

Another executive at a supplement brand noted: "The lightbulb moment was realizing creators could test messaging and positioning faster than we ever could. They'd try five different angles in a week. We'd spend months on creative testing. Their agility plus performance-based payment created a powerful feedback loop for our entire marketing approach. Creator-driven sales now represent 22% of our Amazon revenue."

The Strategic Balance: Not Either/Or, But Both

Brands cannot abandon owned advertising entirely. You need owned channels to:

• Maintain brand authority and control messaging

• Build depth of brand equity beyond endorsements

• Ensure customers know they're buying more than "some goop endorsed by someone famous"

The opportunity isn't choosing between brand marketing and creator partnerships—it's architecting a hybrid model:

• Your owned channels (60-70% of budget): Build brand depth and authority through PPC, DSP, and brand content

• Creator partnerships (30-40% of budget): Provide agile testing, authentic social proof, and performance-based acquisition at scale

Three Strategic Plays

1. Redefine Creator Spend as Performance Marketing Stop viewing influencer partnerships as experimental brand marketing. With Creator Connections, you only pay commissions on completed transactions—your CAC is capped and transparent from day one.

Immediate priority: Launch 3-5 Creator Connections campaigns targeting micro-influencers (10K-100K followers) in your category. Budget 15-20% of Amazon marketing spend as additional commission (10-15% on top of Amazon's standard rates). Success benchmark: 6-8x ROAS within 60 days.

2. Leverage Creator Velocity for Message Testing Creators test messaging at velocity internal teams can't match. Rather than viewing this as a threat to brand control, use it as a rapid testing engine.

Operational next step: Provide product, key benefits, and brand guidelines—then give creators creative freedom. Track which messaging drives highest conversion and feed those insights back into your owned marketing. Target: Identify 3-5 high-performing angles to incorporate into owned content.

3. Architect Hybrid Budget Models Build portfolio allocation that optimizes blended returns: 60-70% to owned channels for brand authority, 30-40% to creator partnerships where you only pay on results.7

This quarter: Model a scenario where 25% of Amazon revenue comes through creator partnerships at 8-12x ROAS. Compare total profitability against current 100% paid media approach. Target: 10-15% improvement in blended ROAS across all channels.

Track creator-driven sales as a core KPI. Most brands can't quantify what percentage of Amazon sales come through affiliate links—this represents a critical measurement gap. Establish baseline metrics this quarter, then target 15-20% creator-driven sales within 12 months.

The Bottom Line

The creator economy represents a fundamental shift in how customers discover products on Amazon. The brands that move first on Amazon Creator Connections will own the playbook for creator commerce in their categories. Everyone else will be buying attention secondhand—at premium CPCs and declining returns.

Here's your starting question: How much of your Amazon revenue currently comes through creator-driven sales? If you don't know the answer, that's the first metric to establish this quarter.

FIFO and Find Out: Why Amazon Doesn't Care

If you've ever managed inventory on Amazon and felt like your oldest stock just sits there — you're not imagining it.

FIFO (First In, First Out) is inventory management 101: oldest units sell first. It's critical for anything with expiration dates. But Amazon's fulfillment network doesn't work that way. Your February inventory sits aging in a Texas warehouse while your May shipment flies off the shelf in California.

This isn't a mistake. Amazon prioritizes speed to the customer over the health of your inventory. And with 2026's fee increases, that choice is about to get expensive.

Why Amazon Doesn't Do FIFO

Your inventory isn't sitting neatly on a shelf in one location. It's distributed across dozens—sometimes hundreds—of fulfillment centers nationwide, spread out in cubbies on roaming shelving units managed by algorithms optimized for one thing: delivery speed.

When a customer in Seattle orders your product, Amazon ships from the warehouse closest to Seattle. When someone in Miami orders, it ships from Florida. Amazon has no system to track which batch arrived first across this distributed network because their algorithms optimize for getting products to customers as fast as possible, not for rotating your stock by receipt date.

Amazon's fulfillment network was built for speed, not symmetry. FIFO isn't a bug in the system—it's a casualty of scale.

Amazon's 2026 fee increases—covered in detail earlier in this newsletter—make their priorities crystal clear. Starting January 15:

• Inventory aged 12-15 months: Fees double from $0.15 to $0.30 per unit/month

• Inventory aged 15+ months: New $0.35 tier (or $7.90 per cubic foot)1

If you're carrying 10,000 aged units, you're now looking at $3,000/month instead of $1,500.2 Amazon is telling sellers: move your inventory faster, or pay exponentially more for warehouse space. They want you selling at velocity where aged inventory represents less than 2% of your total costs.

What We're Hearing from the Market

A supplement brand owner shared: "I sent in inventory with 18 months until expiration. Six months later, I'm getting customer complaints about products arriving with only 4 months left. Meanwhile, I'm sending fresh stock every month that sells immediately. Amazon won't tell me where my old inventory is sitting, and by the time I figure it out, it's too close to expiration to sell."

A beauty brand executive noted: "We thought FBA meant Amazon would manage our inventory properly. Instead, we're paying disposal fees on products that expired in their warehouse while newer batches sold through."

A food brand VP put it bluntly: "Amazon knows what FIFO is—they just don't care. Their system is designed to serve customers fast, not protect our margins. That's the trade-off for using their logistics network."

The Workarounds (And Why They All Fail at Scale)

Experienced sellers have developed tactics to manage FIFO issues:

• Creating separate FNSKUs by expiration date (unmanageable beyond 10-20 SKUs)

• Letting inventory run to near-zero before replenishing (guarantees stockouts and kills velocity)

• Using FIFO-aware prep centers (adds 15-25% to logistics costs)

• Pricing newer batches higher to move old stock first (artificially constrains pricing strategy)3

All these workarounds share the same flaw: they add operational complexity that breaks at scale or force trade-offs that damage other metrics. Amazon is never going to implement FIFO across their network. The distributed nature of their system—the very thing that enables two-day delivery to 200 million Prime members—makes true FIFO technically impractical.4

From Amazon's perspective, FIFO would slow fulfillment and increase costs. Random stow allows items to be placed anywhere there's available space, maximizing throughput. Enforcing FIFO across a distributed network would mean:

• Tracking every inbound batch's receipt timestamp

• Coordinating cross-warehouse transfers to align order routing

• Prioritizing by expiration over distance—increasing delivery times and cost

That tradeoff doesn't serve Amazon's Prime promise—and it's why FIFO compliance isn't coming.

What CPG Brands Should Actually Do

Accept the Trade-Off Using FBA means accepting that Amazon prioritizes delivery speed over inventory age. If this is unacceptable for your product category, consider FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) or maintain direct control through alternative channels.

Model the True Cost Factor 3-5% product loss from expiration into your FBA economics. If your margins can't absorb this, either your pricing is wrong or your product isn't viable on FBA. Budget for monthly removal orders as standard operating procedure, not emergency expenses.

Action this quarter: Calculate your aged inventory percentage. Anything above 2-3% should trigger immediate removal orders.

Optimize for Velocity, Not Volume Send smaller, more frequent shipments timed to your actual sell-through rate. Yes, this increases per-unit inbound costs, but it reduces aged inventory risk. Amazon's fee structure now rewards this behavior—they're literally charging you more to hold excess inventory.

Action this quarter: Shift from quarterly to monthly shipments for any SKU with shelf life under 12 months.

Track Aged Inventory as a Core KPI Monitor your Inventory Performance Index (IPI) score and aged inventory percentage weekly, not monthly. Amazon penalizes sellers with IPI scores under 450 by reducing storage capacity up to 30%.5 Set internal targets: aged inventory should never exceed 2-3% of total units.

Action this quarter: Add "% aged inventory >180 days" to your weekly executive dashboard.

The Bottom Line

Amazon's fulfillment network was built for speed, not symmetry. FIFO isn't a bug—it's a casualty of scale. In Amazon's world, your inventory doesn't move first-in-first-out. It moves fastest-in, fastest-out.

The brands that win are those who design their operations to work with Amazon's logistics: short replenishment cycles, tight velocity targets, and proactive aged-stock management.

That's not a bug. That's the feature you're paying for.

Amazon's 2026 Fees: The Devil in the Details for CPG Brands

Amazon's latest fee update claims an average increase of less than 0.5% per unit—roughly $0.08. But for CPG brands operating in compressed-margin categories like food, beauty, and pet products, the headline obscures a more challenging reality. Small increases on low-priced, high-velocity SKUs can shift profitable items into break-even territory, and the fee structure varies sharply by category and price point.

The Real Numbers Behind the Headline

According to Amazon's 2026 U.S. Referral and FBA Fee Changes Summary, here's what brands will actually see¹:

Per-Unit Fulfillment Fee Changes

• Standard ($10–$50): + $0.25 (small) | + $0.05 (large)

• Premium (>$50): + $0.51 (small) | + $0.31 (large)

• Low-priced (<$10): + $0.12 average

• Aged inventory (12-15 months): + $0.30/unit monthly

• Aged inventory (15+ months): + $0.35/unit monthly (new tier)

Consider a $15 organic pet supplement in a small standard box. That $0.25 increase represents a 1.7% hit to selling price—potentially 8-12% of contribution margin in a category where margins already run 15-20%. For premium beauty items over $50, the $0.51 increase is proportionally smaller but still meaningful when multiplied across thousands of units.

Beyond base fulfillment fees, brands face increases to inbound placement services (averaging $0.05 more per unit), stricter aged inventory penalties, and new packaging fees for select bulky items—particularly impacting food and toy brands with seasonal inventory patterns.

What We're Hearing from You!

In conversations with CPG executives this month, a consistent theme emerges: this isn't just about absorbing another fee increase. It's about recognizing that the multi-year trend of compressing Amazon margins requires a more sophisticated approach to channel economics.

One VP of E-Commerce at a mid-sized pet brand put it plainly: "We can't just optimize our way out of this anymore. We need structural changes to our cost base and channel mix."

That sentiment reflects a broader shift. Amazon's adjustments mirror a five-year progression toward premium pricing for logistics and storage services, tracking with inflationary trends in global shipping and labor.² Meanwhile, alternative marketplaces—Walmart, TikTok Shop—are gaining share, making channel diversification not just prudent but necessary.

The Bottom Line

Amazon's fee adjustments reflect its evolution from a sales channel to a premium logistics provider with pricing to match. For CPG brands, this means treating marketplace profitability as a strategic priority, not a tactical footnote—and recognizing that sustainable growth requires Amazon as one component of a multi-channel strategy, not the entire go-to-market approach.

Footnotes

¹ Amazon Seller Central, "2026 U.S. Referral and FBA Fee Changes Summary," October 2025.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external/G201411300?locale=en-US

Amazon's Refund Problem: Why CPG Brands Pay Twice for the Same Product

Your Amazon refund rate probably doubled in the past 18 months, and it's not because your products got worse. Here's the CPG-specific challenge: when customers claim issues with beauty products, supplements, or food items, Amazon typically issues an immediate refund without requiring the product back. You lose both the product and the revenue. And as economic conditions tighten, expect this to accelerate.

Refund fraud has nearly tripled since 2018, with fraudulent refunds now representing 14% of all retail transactions—costing retailers $890 billion in 2024 alone.1 For CPG brands operating on compressed margins, this double-loss dynamic is fundamentally reshaping marketplace economics.

Where Profit Disappears

For CPG categories—particularly beauty, personal care, food, and supplements—Amazon's policy favors immediate customer satisfaction over seller verification. Customers claim products arrived damaged, leaked, expired, or "not as described," triggering automatic refunds while keeping the items. Unlike electronics or apparel where returns are required, consumables and beauty products typically qualify for returnless refunds.

The numbers: chargebacks and refunds will cost merchants over $100 billion in 2025, with 75% attributed to "friendly fraud."2 What's particularly concerning: 84% of customers now view refund requests as more convenient than contacting sellers, and 72% don't understand that false refund claims constitute fraud.3

Amazon itself isn't immune. The company took a $1 billion charge in Q1 2025 tied partially to unresolved customer refunds and returns, reducing North America retail margin by nearly a full percentage point.4 If Amazon—with its scale and infrastructure—is absorbing margin hits, the impact on mid-sized CPG brands is proportionally more severe.

Why This Accelerates in a Downturn

Two forces are converging: systematized refund manipulation is expanding through social media promotion of "refund as a service" schemes on TikTok, Telegram, and Discord.5 First-party fraud—where verified customers intentionally file fraudulent refund claims—surged to 36% of all reported fraud in 2024, up from just 15% in 2023.2

More significantly, economic pressure drives opportunistic behavior. As household budgets tighten, the temptation to claim "product arrived damaged" and receive both free products and refunds increases. Historical data shows refund fraud spikes 15-25% during economic downturns as consumers look for ways to stretch dollars.

The CPG Double-Loss Dynamic

A fraudulent refund on a $12 pet supplement doesn't just erase that sale—you lose the product's full COGS plus shipping, and it wipes out profit from the next 6-8 units. In beauty and personal care, where returnless refunds are standard policy, some brands report refund rates approaching 12-15% on certain SKUs. At those rates, only products with 40%+ gross margins remain viable on the platform.

What We're Hearing from the Market

A beauty brand VP shared: "We're running at just over 1% net profit on Amazon, almost entirely due to refund abuse. Customers claim products arrived 'leaking' or 'used' when we know they weren't. Our refund rate is 4% on Amazon versus 1% on DTC where we can actually investigate claims. The difference isn't our product—it's that Amazon's policy assumes the customer is always right."

A VP at a mid-sized supplement brand notes: "We've pulled our lower-margin SKUs entirely from Amazon. When someone can get a $15 product for free just by claiming it 'didn't work as expected,' and they keep the product, we're literally paying people to take our inventory. Only our 50%+ margin items still make sense on the platform."

Strategic Response Framework

1. Build Pre-Fulfillment Documentation Implement video/photo documentation during packing for products over $20. While Amazon rarely considers this evidence for CPG refunds, it creates defensibility for pattern abusers and helps identify packaging vulnerabilities that legitimately cause damage claims.

Action this quarter: Document your top 20% of SKUs by value. Track whether damage claims correlate with specific fulfillment centers or shipping carriers.

2. Model True Unit Economics with Refund Reality Amazon's Revenue Calculator now includes return/refund fee modeling.1 For CPG, add your actual refund rate (not Amazon's category average) plus 20% to account for economic-driven increases. Model products at these refund levels to identify which SKUs remain profitable.

Beauty typically runs 6-10% refunds, supplements 4-8%, pet consumables 3-5%, food 2-6%. Products exceeding category benchmarks by 50% warrant immediate investigation or removal.

Action this quarter: Audit your catalog against category refund benchmarks. Calculate the refund rate threshold where each product becomes unprofitable, then set alerts when approaching 75% of that threshold.

3. Price for the Double Loss This isn't hypothetical—65% of Amazon sellers raised prices in 2024 specifically to offset refund fraud and fee pressures.1 For CPG returnless categories, build a 3-5% refund adjustment into pricing models. This isn't margin expansion; it's survival math.

Action this quarter: Re-price vulnerable SKUs to account for full product loss (COGS + shipping + fees) on refunded units. Test whether higher prices actually reduce opportunistic refund behavior.

4. Set Hard Refund-Rate Thresholds Define the refund rate that triggers channel reconsideration. For most CPG brands, 8-10% sustained refund rates make Amazon unprofitable unless gross margins exceed 45-50%. Make this a quarterly board metric, not a hidden operational cost.

The Bottom Line

Amazon's returnless refund policy for CPG creates a unique vulnerability: customers keep products and money, while brands absorb full losses. As economic conditions tighten through 2026, expect opportunistic refund behavior to increase 15-25% as stretched consumers rationalize "the company can afford it." The brands that will survive are those pricing for this reality, setting hard refund-rate thresholds for channel participation, and making ruthless portfolio decisions based on true unit economics—not hopeful projections.

What refund-rate threshold will trigger removing a product from Amazon for your brand?

Let’s Meet Up!

January 2026 – Winter FancyFaire (San Diego, CA)
A celebration of specialty foods and beverages.
Perfect for brands seeking wholesale and retail expansion.

February 2026 – SOURCING at MAGIC (Las Vegas, NV)
The industry’s largest apparel and accessories sourcing event.
Connect with global suppliers and manufacturers.

March 2026 – Expo West (Anaheim, CA)
The must-attend event for natural and organic products.
Network with buyers and explore CPG and wellness innovations.

Local Spotlight – Detroit & Southeast Michigan
Expect multiple retail and e-commerce events through late 2025 and early 2026, focused on manufacturing, omnichannel retail, and marketplace growth. (Full schedule coming soon!)

Want to connect at one of these events?

Schedule A Meeting With Me!

Footnotes

1. CNBC, "Easy returns cause big trouble for Amazon sellers," June 2025; National Retail Federation data. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
   
   

2. Chargeflow, "The Ultimate Chargeback Statistics 2025," 2025. ↩ ↩2
   
   

3. Chargeback.io, "23+ Chargeback Statistics Every Merchant Should Know for 2025," 2025. ↩
   
   

4. Amazon Q1 2025 earnings analysis. ↩
   
   

5. CNBC, "Refund fraud schemes promoted on TikTok," March 2024. ↩

Here Comes Fall…

From the Big House to Your Business: Q4 Strategy Time

Just got back from an incredible Michigan Football game with the family (Go Blue!), and there's something electric about fall in Ann Arbor — the energy, the anticipation, the sense that big things are about to happen. That same energy should be driving your Amazon strategy right now.

From meltables to mega-sales, Amazon's latest changes signal one thing: Q4 is no longer coming — it's here. While other sellers are still thinking "soon," the smart money is already moving. Vine's expansion, variation theme cleanups, and BFCM inventory deadlines aren't gentle reminders — they're starting guns.

What's inside this month:

• 🚀 Geo-expansion opportunities are finally live

• 🛠️ Major catalog cleanups underway

• 🎁 Meltables and inventory deadlines — holiday prep starts now

The brands that treat September like preparation season instead of planning season will dominate Q4. The question isn't whether you're ready for the holidays — it's whether you're ready to act while your competition is still deciding.

Time to get in the game.

The GEO Revolution is Here: Practical Steps to Get Ready Now

By Oscar Barbarin | September 2024

The landscape of search is transforming before our eyes. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) isn't just coming—it's here, and forward-thinking brands are already adapting their strategies to thrive in this new reality.

What's Really Happening Behind the Scenes

The AI agents powering today's search experiences have distinct preferences. They're actively crawling the web, seeking structured information that can be easily referenced and cross-referenced. These systems prioritize content that answers specific questions clearly and concisely, but there's more to the story.

Here's what we're seeing work consistently:

Resource Hubs Are Gold: Brands are creating dedicated "Resources" sections on their websites—and it's paying off. These centralized information hubs make it easier for AI crawling components to discover and catalog relevant content.

Structure Matters More Than Ever: The most successful content follows a simple formula: clear headings, dated information, and logical flow. Think black text on white backgrounds with obvious timestamps and authorship.

Author Authority is Everything: Every piece of content needs a clickable author byline that links to other work by the same person. AI systems use this to build credibility profiles and discover related expertise that might be relevant to user queries.

Recency Rules: Recent publication dates signal relevance to AI systems. They assume newer information is more accurate and valuable.

The Hidden Opportunity: Structured Research

Here's where most brands are missing a massive opportunity. You might not have access to laboratory equipment or cutting-edge research facilities, but you have something equally valuable: direct access to your customers.

The Survey Strategy: Start asking your customers the questions that matter—both about your products and about broader issues that impact their lives within your brand's sphere of influence. Then execute professional surveys, analyze the results, and publish comprehensive findings.

Why does this work? AI systems love structured research. They gravitate toward content with tables, analysis, references to other documents, and clear methodology. Original research positions your brand as an authoritative source in ways that repurposed content simply cannot.

The New Marketing Funnel Reality

The traditional marketing funnel has been disrupted. Consideration is no longer happening after the search—it's happening within the search itself, through conversational interactions with AI agents.

These agents have specific intentions and requirements. They want to find information that's:

• Easily referenceable

• Clearly authored

• Recently published

• Properly structured

Your job isn't just to create content anymore. It's to inform these agents so they can represent your brand accurately in their responses.

Your September Action Plan

1. Audit Your Content Structure: Review your website's information architecture. Is it easy for an AI to understand and navigate?

2. Create a Resources Hub: Launch a dedicated resources section with your best, most structured content.

3. Plan Your Research Project: Identify 2-3 questions you could ask your customers that would generate valuable, publishable insights.

4. Check Your Visibility: We're now using a tool called Gumshoe to help identify current GEO visibility. Understanding where you stand today is crucial for measuring progress.

The brands that adapt now will have a significant advantage as GEO becomes increasingly important. The question isn't whether this shift will happen—it's whether you'll be ready when it does.

Want to explore how GEO might impact your specific industry? Let's schedule a conversation to dive deeper into your opportunities.

Launch with Reviews: Vine Opens for Pre-Launch and Oversized

Imagine going live with 30 reviews on Day One — now you can.

Amazon's Vine program just expanded in a game-changing way. For the first time, sellers can invite Vine reviewers to test pre-launch ASINs and products in heavy/bulky categories that were previously excluded.

This is massive news for anyone launching furniture, fitness equipment, appliances, or other oversized products. These categories have always struggled with the chicken-and-egg problem: customers won't buy without reviews, but you can't get reviews without sales.

What's Changed:

• Pre-launch ASINs are now Vine-eligible (get reviews before you go live)

• Heavy/bulky categories finally have access to the program

• Oversized products can now build credibility from launch day

Why This Matters for Q4: The timing couldn't be better. With Black Friday and holiday shopping around the corner, having social proof from day one gives you a critical advantage. While competitors struggle with zero reviews, you'll launch with credibility that drives conversions from the start.

Your Next Steps: Review your catalog now — especially new products or anything in furniture, fitness, home improvement, or other oversized categories. Amazon directs sellers to "go to Enroll a product in Vine" to get started, and you can find complete details in their Vine Seller Guide.

The sooner you submit eligible FBA products, the sooner Vine Voices can start testing and reviewing them. Don't let this opportunity pass — the brands that move fastest on this expansion will dominate their categories this Q4.

Source:

• Amazon Seller Central Forum: "Get Vine reviews before your product launch" by News_Amazon (July 2025)

• Link: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/4f25bc97-946d-470d-ab93-13f385ab4644

Variation Shakeup: Amazon Sunsetting Redundant Themes

Starting now, Amazon's killing off certain variation themes — and your listings could split apart. Between September 2, 2025, and November 30, 2025, Amazon will remove variation themes from product templates that aren't relevant or frequently used Amazon Sellers Brace for Major Impact to Variations during Q4 - EcommerceBytes, but there's more to this story than meets the eye.

Amazon has revised their original plan to only remove variation themes that had no sales in the past 12 months Amazon Sellers Brace for Major Impact to Variations during Q4 - EcommerceBytes, responding to massive seller backlash. However, the risks remain real: child ASINs could lose traffic and rank, URLs might break, and conversion rates could plummet if your variation families split apart.

The biggest concern? If affected families aren't fixed, Amazon will split child ASINs into stand-alone listings Amazon Sellers Brace for Major Impact to Variations during Q4 - EcommerceBytes, potentially separating your reviews and product ranks just as Q4 ramps up. Smart sellers are auditing their high-traffic SKUs immediately to identify at-risk variation relationships before the September 2 deadline.

Ready to protect your catalog? Request a variation audit — we'll flag vulnerable listings before Amazon's changes impact your Q4 performance.

Sources:

• Amazon Sellers Brace for Major Impact to Variations during Q4 by EcommerceBytes, published August 25, 2025

• Original Amazon announcement via Seller Central forums, August 20, 2025

3 Amazon Business Red Flags: Are You Making These Mistakes?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1Vsca4BJ6_0

Sweet Timing: Meltable FBA Reopens Sept 22

Chocolates, gummies, and heat-sensitive favorites can ship to FBA again. Amazon is lifting meltable inventory restrictions starting September 22, 2025, with customer orders resuming October 13—perfectly timed for the holiday gifting surge.

This reopening covers all heat-sensitive products that melt at 155°F, including chocolate, gummies, and select jelly- and wax-based items. For brands in snacks, supplements, and seasonal treats, this represents a crucial Q4 opportunity.

The timeline is tight but manageable: You have less than three weeks to prep and ship meltable inventory to hit those early October delivery windows. Smart sellers are already forecasting demand and preparing shipments to capitalize on the holiday season kickoff.

To get started, visit Send to Amazon to create your shipments. You can also download the complete list of meltable ASINs to verify your products qualify.

Don't let this window close on you—start planning your meltable inventory strategy now to maximize your Q4 revenue potential.

Sources:

• Amazon News and Announcements - "Send meltable inventory to FBA starting September 22, 2025" (September 1, 2025)

• Meltable FBA Inventory Policy

• Send to Amazon Portal

Mark These Dates: Prime Eligibility Cutoffs for BFCM

Miss these inbound deadlines, and your products won't be Prime-eligible for the biggest sales week of the year.

Amazon's Black Friday/Cyber Monday inventory cutoffs are unforgiving. Your window to secure Prime eligibility runs from October 9-30, depending on your fulfillment method. Products arriving after these dates risk reduced visibility or missed sales entirely during peak shopping season.

Critical BFCM Inventory Deadlines:

Fulfillment Method

Arrival Deadline

Notes

AWD

October 9

Earliest cutoff - plan accordingly

FBA Minimal Splits

October 20

Standard FBA option

FBA Amazon-Optimized

October 30

Latest possible deadline

With all shipments now scheduled within 7-day delivery windows starting August 18, timing precision is critical.

The stakes couldn't be higher. Last year's Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday broke Amazon records for both sales volume and items sold. This year's holiday season is expected to be even bigger, making Prime eligibility essential for capturing maximum demand.

Your move: Pull forward your Q4 inventory plan immediately. Prioritize your top sellers and seasonal SKUs for early shipment. Use Capacity Manager to request additional FBA space if needed, and consider Amazon Warehousing and Distribution to hold overflow inventory at lower rates.

The clock is ticking—don't let missed deadlines cost you your biggest sales opportunity of the year.

Sources:

• Amazon News and Announcements - "Get ready for the holiday shopping season" (August 2025)

• FBA Peak Season Readiness Playbook

• Send to Amazon: Delivery Window Guidelines

Amazon Ending Prep Services — What's Your Plan B?

Starting Jan 1, Amazon's FBA prep/labeling service goes away — and many sellers still don't have a backup.

Amazon is discontinuing its FBA prep service effective January 1, 2026, leaving thousands of U.S. sellers scrambling for alternatives. If you currently rely on Amazon for stickering, polybagging, bubble wrapping, or labeling, this change could seriously disrupt your replenishment flow.

What's Being Eliminated:

Prep Service

Impact

Alternative Needed

Product Labeling

FNSKU stickers applied by Amazon

In-house or 3PL labeling

Polybagging

Amazon bags individual items

Pre-bag before shipping

Bubble Wrapping

Amazon protects fragile items

Custom packaging solutions

Set Creation

Amazon bundles multi-item sets

Assembly before inbound

The clock is ticking faster than you think. Q4 is your testing ground—use these busy months to trial 3PL partners, invest in in-house prep capabilities, or implement automation tools. Don't wait until January to discover your backup plan doesn't work.

Your immediate action items: Audit what percentage of your SKUs currently use Amazon prep services, then start testing alternatives now. Whether it's partnering with a 3PL, building internal capabilities, or investing in prep automation, you need a solution locked in before January 1.

The sellers who act now will maintain smooth operations while competitors scramble in the new year.

Sources:

• Amazon Seller Central - FBA Prep Service Discontinuation Notice

• FBA Prep Requirements Documentation

Events & Deadlines Tracker (Sidebar or Bottom Section)

• Sept 2 – Variation Theme Removals Begin
  
  

• Sept 22 – Meltable FBA Reopens
  
  

• Oct 9–30 – BFCM Inbound Deadline
  
  

• Jan 1, 2026 – FBA Prep Services End
  
  

Coming Next Month (Teaser for October Issue)

• 🧾 2026 Planning: Budgeting for Retail Media
  
  

• ⚖️ A/B Testing at Scale: What Works (and What Wastes Spend)
  
  

• 🎄 Black Friday: Final Checklist Before the Storm
  
  

The Reality of Agentic Search

In 2023, I wrote "How Do You Market to an AI Agent?" exploring how the shift from active searches to AI-driven recommendations would fundamentally reshape marketing. Now that agentic search is here, I'm seeing something that most marketers are still missing entirely.

The Multi-Agent Reality We're Actually Getting

Everyone's talking about AI agents, but here's the crucial misunderstanding: the agent you'll be marketing to isn't the friendly LLM you chat with.

Look at OpenAI's new agent model. It's not one AI doing everything - it combines three distinct technologies:

• ChatGPT for communication

• Deep research capabilities

• Web search functionality

This pattern is everywhere in AI solutions now. What we're getting isn't a single superintelligent agent - it's multiple specialized agents working in concert:

1. Communication agents that interact with humans (friendly, conversational)

2. Management agents that determine task completion and workflow progression

3. Execution agents that actually perform searches, evaluations, and purchases

The Execution Agents: Your Real Target Audience

Here's what most marketers don't realize: the search and purchase agents won't be friendly like ChatGPT.

These execution agents will be mechanical, robotic, almost insect-like in their behavior. They'll be crawling, slithering, searching as efficiently as possible to resolve human or organizational needs. They're optimized for speed and accuracy, not conversation.

Because of this fundamental difference, the way they consume information is completely different from how humans (or communication agents) process content.

Where These Agents Are Actually Looking

AI engineers are telling us these agents search deep into web content - not the top-ranking Google results everyone obsesses over, but the longer, deeper, more detailed pages.

This is why everyone's saying "write more content" and "create Q&As." But I think they're missing the bigger picture.

The real goldmine is backend product catalog information.

These mechanical search agents are going to be reading through structured product data, but they need much more than basic specifications. They're looking for a comprehensive matrix of information - like individual cubbie holes for each attribute they can use to determine best fit.

What agents need includes:

• Detailed product/service descriptions and specifications

• Usage scenarios and contexts

• User demographics and behaviors

• Performance data and results

• Legitimate research data - brands sponsoring statistically significant, academically robust research

• Raw qualitative survey data and analysis with outcomes

• Brand values and attributes for values alignment matching

• Problem-solution mappings

The agents will examine multiple different attributes of both the product and brand to match the needs of the consumer, organization, or process they're serving. This includes everything from functional product attributes to alignment of values between the consumer and the brand.

The Amazon Advantage

Having comprehensive catalog information on Amazon is probably more critical now than ever before. Amazon's structured data format is exactly what these search agents need - detailed specs, categorization, reviews, and outcome data all in a standardized format.

This connects directly to what I predicted in 2023: "having your product information fed into and referenced across various databases will be key." Amazon has become the dominant product information database that AI agents will reference, and they're probably closest to creating a comprehensive stream of product attributes specifically designed for search agents.

Amazon already has catalog information for such a large percentage of available goods, giving them a massive advantage in creating the matrix of product information, usage data, specifications, brand values, and research that agents need to make optimal matches.

While everyone else is trying to figure out how to structure information for AI agents, Amazon already has the infrastructure these agents will consume. All this information must be accessible to agents crawling the web today, but in the future, someone (likely Amazon) is going to create a dedicated stream of product attributes specifically optimized for search agent consumption.

What to Watch For

Keep your eyes open for new services creating dedicated data streams for AI agents. When someone builds a platform that provides constant feeds of product and service information specifically formatted for agent consumption (JSON, APIs, structured data), that's where you'll want to be.

As I noted in my 2023 piece: "Whether it's a profit-driven database, an institutional one, or an awards-based repository, the broader the coverage across these platforms, the higher the likelihood of your product being recommended by AI agents."

The agents will know exactly where to go for reliable, standardized product intelligence.

The Strategic Shift

This isn't about writing better blog posts or climbing Google rankings. This is about preparing for a fundamentally different type of search entity - one that doesn't care about your brand story or marketing copy, but obsessively focuses on matching solutions to needs with mechanical precision.

The companies that understand this distinction - and structure their product information accordingly - will have a massive advantage as agentic search becomes the dominant discovery method.

The question isn't whether this future is coming. It's whether you'll be ready when these mechanical search agents come crawling through your data.

July Video Q & A’s

Can you Scale on Amazon without Discounting Your Price?

When Is A Brand To Early or To Late To Enter Amazon?

Newsletter - July 2025

A Fresh Perspective That Comes From Travel

Standing atop the Eiffel Tower last week, watching Paris sprawl endlessly in every direction, I was struck by something beyond the view. Here was a structure that shouldn't exist—an "eyesore" that sparked fierce debate when first erected, yet became the very symbol of its city through sheer persistence and reinvention.

The same thought hit me wandering through Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey, where medieval walls have weathered centuries of battering tides not by resisting the water, but by learning to work with it. These weren't just tourist stops on our family trip—they were masterclasses in adaptive resilience.

The parallel to our industry is impossible to ignore. The brands and retailers thriving today aren't the ones clinging to yesterday's playbook. They're the ones embracing the tide—whether that's the shift toward retail media, the complexity of modern marketplace dynamics, or the evolving expectations of customer engagement.

In this issue, I'll share the latest strategies and insights from companies that, like these enduring landmarks, have learned that survival isn't about standing still—it's about standing strong while moving forward.

Prime Day 2025: The Marathon That Paid Off (Sort Of)

Amazon's Prime Day 2025 just wrapped up, and the headlines tell two different stories. The good news? Record-breaking sales of $24.1 billion over four days—that's a 30% jump from last year and equivalent to "two Black Fridays" worth of volume (Barron's). The complicated news? The event felt more like a marathon than a sprint.

Here's what actually happened: Amazon stretched Prime Day from two days to four (July 8-11), and while 63% of shoppers appreciated the extra browsing time (JumpFly, Inc.), analysts are warning that longer events dilute the urgency that made Prime Day special. Day 1 alone brought in $7.9 billion (JumpFly, Inc.), but early sales were reportedly down 41% compared to 2024's opening day (Retail Dive).

The shopper behavior shift is telling. Over half of Amazon shoppers compared prices across Walmart, Target, and other competitors—a sign that the deal-hunting game has evolved (Barron's). Most purchases were under $20, with big-ticket items like appliances seeing the real growth (freezers up 160%, home security up 185%) (Barron's).

For B2B marketers, the takeaway is clear: Extended promotional windows can boost total volume, but they require different strategies. Brands that treated this as a strategic campaign—pacing ad spend and showcasing full catalog discounts—saw 2-4x revenue growth. Those with partial participation? Only 1.3-1.6x lifts (Acadia.io).

The bottom line: Prime Day 2025 succeeded in scale but lost some of its lightning-in-a-bottle energy. It's a reminder that in our attention economy, sometimes more time doesn't equal more impact—it just means you need smarter tactics to cut through the noise.

Growth Levers Missed By Mid-Market Brands

Planning for Back-to-School and Q4 Success

I hate being that dude saying that it's time to talk about back-to-school and it's just July, but the reality is you're gonna need to get your supply chain in order, get your pricing in order, get your selection in order. These are when you need to start making these decisions.

The Seasonal Shift is Here

Back-to-school season isn't just about notebooks and backpacks—it's a complete consumer behavior reset. Families are transitioning from summer routines to structured schedules, driving demand across categories from tech and apparel to food and home organization. This period serves as the crucial bridge between summer clearance and holiday build-up, making it your last chance to optimize before the year-end sprint.

Turn Prime Day Data Into Q4 Gold

Your Prime Day performance just handed you a roadmap for the rest of the year. Which products exceeded expectations? What inventory moved slower than anticipated? Use these insights to double down on winners and pivot away from underperformers. More importantly, identify which Prime Day successes can be repositioned for back-to-school bundles or early holiday gifting strategies.

Black Friday Prep Starts Now

While your competitors are still basking in Prime Day glory, smart brands are already sketching out their Q4 playbook. Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals don't materialize overnight—they require inventory forecasting, creative development, and strategic positioning that takes months to execute properly. Starting now gives you the runway to test pricing strategies, creative angles, and audience targeting before ad costs spike in November.

Your Back-to-School Action Plan

Inventory Audit: Ensure you have adequate stock for demand spikes, especially in high-velocity items that could sell out during peak periods.

Content Refresh: Update product detail pages, A+ content, and gather fresh reviews to maximize conversion rates when traffic surges.

Campaign Strategy: Develop ad campaigns that speak to lifestyle transitions—convenience, organization, fresh starts. Consider cross-category bundling opportunities that increase average order value.

Test and Scale: Use lower-cost July and August traffic to test messaging and creative before competition intensifies.

The brands that win Q4 are the ones making decisions right now. Prime Day gave you the data—now it's time to act on it before your competitors catch up.

Places We Can Meet In Person

📍 August 2025 – Chicago Collective (Chicago, IL)
The premier menswear trade show.
Meet top brands, discover trends, and network with global retailers.

📍 September 2025 – Amazon Accelerate (Seattle, WA)
Amazon’s flagship seller and brand conference.
Get the latest marketplace strategies, tools, and growth insights.

📍 January 2026 – Winter FancyFaire (San Diego, CA)
A celebration of specialty foods and beverages.
Perfect for brands seeking wholesale and retail expansion.

📍 February 2026 – SOURCING at MAGIC (Las Vegas, NV)
The industry’s largest apparel and accessories sourcing event.
Connect with global suppliers and manufacturers.

📍 March 2026 – Expo West (Anaheim, CA)
The must-attend event for natural and organic products.
Network with buyers and explore CPG and wellness innovations.

🌟 Local Spotlight – Detroit & Southeast Michigan
Expect multiple retail and e-commerce events through late 2025 and early 2026, focused on manufacturing, omnichannel retail, and marketplace growth. (Full schedule coming soon!)

A couple Fun Candid Photos from the trip: 

Normandy Gas Station: Huge Chupa Chups and 1 Meter of  Ibérique Pata Negra and Honfleur Port 

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

Newsletter - April 2025

Your Marketplace Playbook: Power Dinner, Prime Day Prep, & Strategic Shifts

🥂 ATLANTA | APRIL 25

Private Power Dinner — Hosted by Oscar
If you're in Atlanta this week, I’m hosting a private dinner focused on real-world power — the kind that comes from clarity, action, and letting the right partners take the other fights off your plate. Reach out if you'd like to join.

🧠 MARKETPLACE STRATEGY INSIGHTS

SHEIN May 6 Webinar: What Every Brand Needs to Know

• From Funnels to Networks: Shoppers now move through a journey shaped by influence: Stream → Scroll → Search → Shop. BCG report »
  
  

• The New Marketplace Standard: Bazaars are out. Curated ecosystems are in.
  
  

• Leadership Isn’t Portable: Success on Amazon doesn’t guarantee results on TikTok Shop, Walmart, or SHEIN.
  
  

• Product-Market Fit Matters: Some platforms are better suited to specific categories — force-fitting leads to friction.
  
  

• Execution Framework: Use a Customer × Platform × Fulfillment × Geography matrix to guide content, pricing, and profit.
  
  

🔥 SUMMER SETS UP YOUR WINTER

Prime Day is Expanding — Prep Now
Amazon’s Prime Day 2025 will run for four full days, giving brands extended exposure and customers more time to shop. This is your moment to set up Q4 momentum.

Key Actions:

• Deals Due: Submit Prime Exclusive Best & Lightning Deals by May 23
  
  

• Inventory Deadlines: FBA must arrive by June 9 (minimal splits) or June 18 (optimized splits)
  
  

• Top Opportunities:
  
  

• Best Deals (15% off min.)
  
  

• Lightning Deals (20% off min.)
  
  

• Prime Member Coupons (5% off min.)
  
  

• Exclusive Price Discounts (15% off min.)
  
  

📘 View the full Prime Day Readiness Guide »

📦 FBA SHIPMENT CHANGES

Amazon to Start Charging for Incorrect Shipment Dimensions
Soon, if your provided dimensions are off, you’ll see a fee adjustment—either a credit or charge. View discrepancies in Inbound Performance > Inaccurate Transportation Weight/Dims. Rollout begins with 30-day notice.

📬 QUICK HITS FROM AMAZON

Amazon’s Latest Seller Updates, Summarized:

• New Program: Seller Incentives Plus replaces Launchpad — benefits include Premium A+ access and $2K in ad credits for qualifying new brands.
  
  

• Returns Reimagined: Join Amazon Renewed Webinars (May 8 & 9) to turn returns into revenue.
  
  

• Canada KYC Updates: New verification rules for Amazon.ca sellers — 60 days to comply or risk deactivation.
  
  

• SPP Migration: All third-party providers using Seller Central APIs must switch to Solution Provider Portal (SPP) by August 31.
  
  

📬 QUICK HITS FROM Walmart.com

🔍 Walmart Gets Smarter with Target ROAS Bidding (And So Should You)
Walmart is rolling out Target ROAS bidding—an AI-driven tool designed to help advertisers align spend with performance goals more precisely. This puts it in line with mature marketplaces like Amazon and Google. For brands or agencies already integrated via API, this could be a game-changer for margin-aware campaigns. For those not yet plugged in—time to get technical or get left behind.

🎯 Back-to-School Blueprint: Layered Media = Better Returns
Walmart’s case study on J.M. Smucker shows the power of omnichannel layering. By combining Homepage Features, Onsite Display, and Offsite DSP (including Pinterest), they drove a +48% ROAS vs. non-seasonal efforts. If you're not combining upper- and lower-funnel levers—especially during peak seasons—you're leaving returns on the table.

Newsletter - Febuary 2025

Creator Connections: Moving Budget from Speculative to Performance

The days of blindly throwing ad dollars into PPC campaigns and hoping for a return are over. Performance-based partnerships are here, and Amazon’s Creator Connections is giving brands and influencers a new way to collaborate with bonus commissions on top of Amazon’s standard affiliate rates. Instead of spending $13K on ads hoping for $130K in sales, brands can pay $13K in commission on actual revenue—a shift that removes speculation and puts performance at the forefront.

What Is Creator Connections?

Amazon’s Creator Connections is a free-to-join program that allows influencers and content creators to earn extra commissions by partnering with brands. Unlike traditional affiliate programs, this model offers exclusive brand campaigns, personalized partnerships, and additional financial incentives for creators.

Why It Matters:
✅ Access to Top Brands – Work with household names like Reebok, Microsoft, Anker, and more.
✅ Bonus Commissions – Earn extra payouts beyond standard Amazon affiliate rates.
✅ Content Control – Choose products that align with your audience and promote them on your terms.

The Reality: What Influencers Are Saying

While Creator Connections offers new opportunities, seasoned Amazon influencers are noticing growing pains in the program and the industry at large:
📉 Increased competition – More influencers mean video saturation, leading to fewer views per creator.
🔄 Amazon’s evolving algorithm – Frequent changes in video placement strategies impact earnings unpredictably.
🤖 Quality vs. Quantity Matters More Than Ever – The best-performing creators are focusing on high-value content, comparison videos, and cross-platform promotion (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram) instead of mass-producing product reviews.

How to Make Creator Connections Work for You

🔹 Repost and Repurpose Content – Top influencers maximize reach by sharing their content across multiple platforms and testing different posting times.
🔹 Diversify Revenue Streams – Successful creators aren’t just relying on Amazon—they’re also leveraging YouTube AdSense, TikTok Shop, and third-party affiliate programs.
🔹 Be Selective – Pick brand partnerships strategically. Prioritize products that align with your audience and that you genuinely believe in.

Is Creator Connections Right for You?

If you’re a content creator, influencer, or brand looking for a more performance-driven way to generate revenue, this could be a game-changer. But as with any emerging program, adaptability is key.

Want to know how to integrate Creator Connections into your e-commerce growth strategy? Let’s talk.

📸 Need Product Images? We’ve Got You Covered!

For just $2,500, get high-quality product images that make your listings stand out.

✅ 4 product families
✅ One color backdrop
✅ 2 days of shooting
✅ 1 day of editing

You won’t find a better deal for professional, marketplace-ready images. Let’s get your products retail-ready!

📩 Interested? Reply to this email, and we’ll take care of the rest.

🌍 CosmoProf 2025: Innovation, Trends & What’s Next

Like every year before it, CosmoProf 2025 delivered an incredible lineup of brands, manufacturers, and packaging experts pushing the boundaries of quality, creativity, and customer-centric innovation.

Beauty Is Personal—And It’s Evolving

Beauty isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about identity, self-expression, and trust. Much like food, the products people choose are deeply personal, shaping their confidence and well-being. This year, it was exciting to see a shift toward cleaner, safer, and biologically impactful solutions, moving beyond surface-level marketing into true innovation.

🚀 Trends That Stood Out at CosmoProf 2025

🔹 Hair Color Explosion – Vibrant hues, natural tones, and specialty dye products were everywhere. The demand for self-expression through hair color is only growing.

🔹 Beyond Fruits & Plants: Fermentation & Animal-Derived Ingredients – Ingredient trends are evolving with a strong push toward:
    📌 Fermented skincare and haircare solutions for enhanced bioavailability.
    📌 Rendered ingredients from plant and animal sources making their way into formulations.

🔹 Bold & Bright Branding – Some regions are setting new standards in product storytelling and visual appeal with vibrant, highly expressive designs that could resonate strongly with U.S. audiences.

🔹 K-Beauty’s Science-Driven Minimalism – The clean, lightweight, lab-meets-nature aesthetic remains a core part of this space, blending cutting-edge science with a focus on simplicity.

🔹 Representation & Diversity on Display – More hair types, skin tones, and product applications were front and center, highlighting a push toward truly inclusive beauty.

🔹 Barber & Beauty Appliances on the Rise – More tools and devices than ever before were showcased, emphasizing a growing category in professional and at-home grooming.

🤖 How We’re Leveraging AI to Drive E-Commerce Success

AI isn’t just hype—it’s a strategic advantage. At Hawke Media, we’ve built and deployed custom AI tools to streamline e-commerce operations, enhance product detail pages, navigate complex contracts, and track competitor movements.

📌 AI-Powered Detail Page Optimization (Fully Deployed)

Our proprietary GPT automates 80% of product detail page creation, ensuring high-performing listings with optimized structure, content, and keyword placement.

✅ Smart keyword integration based on years of performance data.
✅ Concise, conversion-driven copy for better customer experience.
✅ Automated formatting & structuring for higher engagement.

This tool is already in full use, helping brands improve conversion rates and reduce manual content work.

📜 AI-Powered Contract Intelligence (Partially Deployed & Refining)

We’ve structured the full UNFI, KeHE, and US Foods vendor agreements into our AI system, making them instantly searchable and interactive for contract compliance and operational planning.

🔹 Scenario Simulation – Want to know what happens if a shipment is shorted, back-ordered, or canceled? Our AI enables "what-if" analysis to assess risks before they impact operations.
🔹 Real-Time Contract Q&A – No more digging through PDFs—ask specific questions, and the AI pulls relevant clauses in seconds.

This tool exists and is actively being refined to provide even deeper insights into profitability, assortment decisions, and vendor negotiations.

📊 Competitive Intelligence & Promotional Monitoring (In Development)

We’re building an AI-driven competitive tracking system that monitors and analyzes competitor marketing campaigns in real time.

🔹 Automated Tracking – Capturing promotional emails, texts, and digital ads to reveal pricing strategies, promotional timing, and content trends.
🔹 Data-Driven Adjustments – Helping brands pivot their pricing and promotional efforts based on real-time competitor insights.

While this initiative is still in development, it will soon give brands unprecedented visibility into market movements.

AI Is Changing the Game—Are You Ready?

From e-commerce optimization to contract compliance and competitive insights, we’re using AI to solve real business challenges. If you want to see how these tools can impact your bottom line, let’s talk.

📅 What’s Next: Upcoming Events

🔹 Expo West 2025 – March 4-7, Anaheim
The leading trade show for natural and organic brands, showcasing the latest in food, beauty, and wellness. A great space for emerging brands to connect with retailers and expand their market presence.

🔹 Prosper Show 2025 – March 25-27, Las Vegas
A must-attend event for brands selling on Amazon, featuring top industry experts, networking opportunities, and cutting-edge strategies to scale your e-commerce business.

Planning to attend? Let’s connect!

Newsletter - December 2024

Navigating the Evolving E-commerce Landscape: TikTok Bans, Seller Angst, and Channel Strategies

The world of e-commerce is shifting rapidly, with sellers voicing growing concerns and exploring new strategies to stay competitive. Here’s what’s driving the conversation right now…

TikTok Potential January 19th Ban Sparks Uncertainty

Federal Court Rejects TikTok’s Bid to Halt January 19 Ban: What It Means for E-Commerce Brands

TikTok Shop (TTS) has emerged as a powerful driver of sales and marketing for brands integrating it into their multi-channel strategies. However, uncertainty around its future due to a potential U.S. ban is forcing businesses to hit pause on critical investments. With stability, brands could move full steam ahead on platform adoption and innovation.

The Ban: What’s Happening?

President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan-supported law requiring TikTok to either divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. This follows former President Donald Trump’s previous, unsuccessful attempt at a similar ban. The latest legal blow came when a federal appeals court rejected TikTok’s emergency bid on December 9 to delay the ban, which is set to take effect January 19. If no further legal action succeeds, TikTok will vanish from major app stores.

Implications for Brands

The potential ban raises serious challenges for brands banking on TikTok’s dynamic e-commerce environment. Companies still assessing how to optimize TikTok Shop may delay key campaigns or redirect budgets toward other platforms like Instagram Shopping or Amazon Live or Haul.

However, ByteDance’s deep investment in TikTok's U.S. presence suggests the company is unlikely to exit the market quietly. Ownership restructuring or strategic partnerships could emerge to preserve the platform’s U.S. operations.

What’s Next?

While legal and political battles continue, brands should monitor the situation closely and prepare contingency plans. Diversifying platform strategies now could mitigate potential disruptions and ensure continued digital growth.

Actionable Insight: Stay nimble. Diversify your social commerce portfolio while keeping a close eye on TikTok's evolving legal status. Consider testing other emerging platforms to maintain a competitive edge.

Amazon’s Latest Judo Move: Shifting FBA Reimbursement Policy to Manufacturing Costs

Amazon has long been a master of control, meticulously managing its supply chain. Now, in a bold shift, **starting March 10, 2025**, reimbursements for lost or damaged FBA inventory will be based on manufacturing costs (COGs).

Premium Products Should Be Concerned

What’s Changing?

• Cost-Based Reimbursement: Amazon will reimburse based on manufacturing costs (COGs), not retail value.

• Amazon’s Estimates: If sellers don’t provide their costs, Amazon will calculate them using industry averages.

• New Portal: The Manage Your Manufacturing Cost tool launches in January for sellers to input COGs.

Why This Matters

Amazon’s push to know your costs gives it a stronger foothold in controlling seller behavior. With access to sellers' profit structures, Amazon can:

• Benchmark and standardize costs across product categories.

• Pressure sellers with higher COGs to cut expenses.

• Potentially penalize “outlier” products that deviate from category norms.

Challenges for Sellers

• Distributors Are Vulnerable: Their naturally higher COGs could be disproportionately flagged.

• Gamesmanship Risk: Sellers may inflate costs to manipulate reimbursement benchmarks.

• Innovation Threatened: Premium products with higher COGs may face unfair scrutiny.

How to Stay Ahead

• Be Strategic: Provide manufacturing costs carefully, focusing on accuracy and positioning.

• Protect High-Value Products: Monitor how Amazon handles premium items in your category.

• Leverage Tools: Automate responses to Amazon flags on “high-cost” items to streamline negotiations with suppliers.

If you’re wearing rose-colored glasses, Amazon’s move to reimburse based on manufacturing costs (COGs) could be seen as a way to lower customer prices. A more cynical perspective suggests Amazon may use COG data to expand its private label offerings efficiently and understand how much margin is left to squeeze from sellers. By setting internal target margins for sellers, this approach, initially informational, could soon become a required metric—forcing products to align with average costs or lower, and potentially disadvantaging premium items.

As always, where there’s a judo move, there’s an opportunity to counter. Let’s see what tools and strategies emerge. There’s potential for tools that automate supplier notifications when Amazon flags a product for high costs. Such tools could help sellers start cost-reduction conversations, making it easier to adapt to Amazon’s evolving standards.

Seller Frustrations Are Boiling Over

Industry Concerns Mount Over Amazon's Treatment of Sellers

Key concerns are intensifying among industry insiders about Amazon’s treatment of sellers:

• Profitability Pressures: Fees, rising shipping costs, increasing advertising investments, and tightening economic conditions are squeezing sellers’ profit margins, while operational inefficiencies continue to escalate.

• Amazon Warehouse Distribution (AWD) Performance: Sellers are increasingly concerned about AWD's reliability, complicating their fulfillment strategies.

• Logistical Delays: Recent shipping performance, particularly during major events like Black Friday, has been a significant point of frustration. Sellers report delayed shipments from Amazon fulfillment centers, which has resulted in discrepancies between recorded sales volume and actual transactions due to unfulfilled orders.

A recent industry post captured this growing sentiment, highlighting how shrinking profitability and unreliable logistics are forcing sellers to rethink their business models. What sets this wave of dissatisfaction apart is its depth, the clarity with which sellers are articulating their struggles, and the sheer number of voices expressing concern.

Different Content Channels - Different Goals

Sellers today are embracing a multi-channel strategy to meet customers where they are, tailoring their approach to the unique environment in which their product information is consumed. The magic lies in understanding that different platforms frame the customer's expectations differently, requiring aligned content, pricing, and offerings.

TikTok Shop excels at driving product trials through short-form video content, where consumers prefer smaller samples at accessible prices. In contrast, YouTube’s broad reach makes it ideal for mass-market storytelling and brand awareness.

This approach extends beyond digital platforms. Whether customers are on Amazon, shopping in-store, or engaging with content-driven platforms, content and format must match their expectations. To maximize reach efficiently, sellers should streamline offerings into three core variations: large wholesale quantities, mid-tier options, and sample-sized entries.

Tech Tools Making a Difference

Carbon6’s Advanced Tools: Empowering Brands with ARMR, a Hawke Media Company

Free PixelMe Audits: ARMR, a Hawke Media Company, offers complimentary audits of PixelMe to help brands optimize their digital ad performance. PixelMe enables:

• Precise audience targeting and retargeting

• Actionable insights to enhance ROI
  This free audit reviews pixel performance metrics and identifies opportunities to maximize the impact of every ad dollar.

Prime DSP Solutions at an Unbeatable Price: Carbon6’s DSP stands out for its extremely accessible price point—1/4 to 1/5 of industry norms. Features include:

• Advanced algorithms for data-driven ad campaigns

• Cutting-edge optimization to reach high-value audiences
  ARMR leverages this powerful tool to deliver exceptional results, offering premium DSP capabilities without the premium price. Together, these tools provide unparalleled value for marketplace advertising.

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Controversial Corner:

Capturing the Curious Consumer

In a world of endless scrolling, most consumers are on autopilot, moving from one laugh, rage, or viral moment to the next. But a select few are in curiosity mode—open to discovering new ideas. These are your golden opportunities.

Strategic product placement in repetitive, interest-driven content—like a unique shape of surf wax in the background of surf videos—plants the seed of intrigue. Over time, curiosity builds: What is that? Why do they use it? When consumers actively seek out your product, you've won their attention.

To execute this effectively, your product must have a distinct, recognizable feature—like a unique shape, bold color, or memorable design. Then, align your SEO strategy with those standout elements so that when curiosity strikes and consumers search, you are front and center. Let curiosity lead them to you.

Industry Insights & Events

Limited-time coupon fee reimbursement for new FBA selection

From now through January 31, 2025, Amazon will automatic reimburse FBA Sellers $0.60-per-redemption coupon fee for coupons on newly launched Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) selection. The promotion applies to FBA offers on products that first became buyable after November 2, 2024. Read more.

Amazon Science and COSMO’s Initiatives

If you haven’t explored Amazon Science yet, it’s a hub of groundbreaking research shaping the future of e-commerce.

For anyone interested in AI, technology, or e-commerce, Amazon Science is essential reading.

Amazon’s COSMO:  Common Sense Knowledge -  Finding User Intention

 

COSMO is Amazon's internal system for generating and deploying e-commerce-specific commonsense knowledge, leveraging fine-tuned large language models and user behavior data to bridge the semantic gap between customer queries and product information. It enhances search relevance, product recommendations, and navigation across 18 product categories, indirectly benefiting sellers by optimizing product visibility and alignment with customer intent.

1. User Intent and Behavioral Data Integration

• User Intent Capture: COSMO generates commonsense knowledge from user behaviors like search-buy (queries leading to purchases) and co-buy (frequently bought together).

• This knowledge bridges the semantic gap between user search queries and product listings, enabling better content alignment.

• Impact:

• Optimize product detail pages (PDPs) to match user intent.

• Refine keywords and product attributes to improve search relevance and conversion rates.

2. Query-Product Relationship for Content Enhancement

• COSMO introduces structured relation types (e.g., "used_for," "capable_of," "is_a") to explain product functions and user needs.

• Example: "Winter coat → provides warmth in cold weather."

• Impact:

• Enhance A+ Content by explicitly addressing how a product meets customer needs.

• Improve bullet points and titles with specific, intent-driven information.

3. Scalable E-commerce Knowledge Graph (KG)

• COSMO expands knowledge across 18 product categories (e.g., Electronics, Home & Kitchen, Clothing).

• Generates millions of high-quality relations with low annotation cost.

• Impact:

• Use this knowledge to guide content strategy for multiple categories on Amazon.

• Target content updates for products in high-opportunity domains based on user intent signals.

4. Search Relevance and Navigation Improvement

• COSMO improves search relevance by augmenting query-product matching with commonsense knowledge.

• Reduces semantic gaps in ambiguous queries like "camping gear" → "winter camping air mattress."

• Enhances multi-turn navigation by dynamically refining search queries.

• Impact:

• Guide clients on improving product discoverability with tailored keywords.

• Advise on backend search terms and attribute tagging to align with user behaviors.

5. Session-Based Recommendations

• COSMO enhances session-based recommendations by incorporating search queries and user interactions.

• Generates intent-specific knowledge for query-product pairs to predict the next purchase.

• Impact:

• Optimize cross-selling strategies for products frequently bought together.

• Use session insights to recommend complementary or related items effectively.

6. Practical Applications for Agencies

• COSMO can inform:

• PDP Content Refinement: Use generated intent knowledge to improve titles, bullet points, and A+ Content.

• SEO Optimization: Align keywords with user behaviors for better search visibility.

• Ad Targeting: Use search-query intent to fine-tune retail media campaigns.

• Product Bundling: Identify co-buy relationships to create effective bundles.

7. Revenue Impacts and Scalability

• COSMO’s deployment in Amazon’s search navigation resulted in:

• 0.7% increase in product sales (hundreds of millions in revenue).

• 8% increase in navigation engagement.

• Impact:

• Validate strategies for content updates and search optimization with measurable KPIs.

Events

Stay ahead by attending these key industry gatherings:

• Winter Fancy Food Show - Las Vegas, Jan 19-21, 2025

• COSMOProf - Miami, Jan 21-23, 2025

• Expo West - Anaheim, Mar 4-7, 2025

Want More Insights? Looking to discuss these topics further or share your perspective? Connect with us [insert link].

Newsletter - November 2024

As Autumn grows older , it's the perfect time to give thanks and give back.

It's also Amazon's 12 Days of Black Friday Event.

Kicking off 7 days before Thanksgiving and extending 5 days beyond, straight into Cyber Monday. The selling season has lengthened, for better or worse.

Article #1: hold the presses – are pigs flying - Amazon is NOT increasing fees for 2025

They must've heard the grumbling from the sellers because they have decided to hold on fee increases.

Amazon’s Fee Update for 2025: Stability, Simplicity, and Savings for Sellers As we look back on 2024, Amazon’s partnership with sellers led to record-breaking sales and significant enhancements in customer experience. For 2025, Amazon is prioritizing simplicity and stability, aiming to reduce your operational burdens and costs.No Fee Increases in 2025: Amazon has committed to not raising referral or FBA fees in the U.S. and will also lower some costs while providing more benefits for new selection growth.Key Updates for 2025:

• Reduced inbound placement fees for bulky products.

• Waived fees for new ASINs in the FBA New Selection Program.

• New incentives for adding high-demand products and expanding popular brands.

Amazon continues to innovate for sellers, including enhanced tools for fee calculation, efficient inbound shipping, and expanded seller benefits—all focused on making it easier for you to succeed.For more details on the 2025 fee changes, visit amazon.com/selling-fee-changes.

Article #2: AWD - Amazon Warehousing &  Distribution

The team and I had a call with the Amazon team. Capital-intensive operations are Amazon's jam, and AWD fits right in. They're working to make the supply chain more vertically integrated: Regional Distribution Centers feed Intermediate Warehouses, which then handle replenishment or order fulfillment.

Amazon is heavily supporting this program, and they'll keep adding value by two routes: increasing the challenges for those not using AWD, and reducing headaches and costs for those who do.

Who Should Use AWD?

As of today, AWD isn't for everyone, but for sellers dealing with customs, mixed pallets, and international logistics, it's a valuable tool. You can send mixed pallets without worrying about allocation—critical for customs. If customs cuts open your shipment and mixes the units, AWD ensures it all gets sorted smoothly, avoiding logistical issues.

Another perk? Avoiding inventory placement fees. AWD lets you send mixed pallets in, bypassing some costs. But remember, you'll still pay referral and storage fees once products move to fulfillment centers. Best practice: keep 8-12 weeks of inventory in AWD to ensure smooth replenishment.

Our Thoughts?

We do plan to explore it heavily for our clients and see how allocation of inventory there can help improve total profitability.

Why AWD Stands Out

• Mixed Pallets: Send in mixed pallets without added stress.

• Avoid Placement Fees: Save on fees and streamline inventory.

• Customs Solution: Border Patrol and Customs mixing up your shipments? AWD provides the flexibility to adjust

For sellers facing complex logistics, AWD provides a practical advantage. Learn more here: Amazon Warehousing & Distribution.

Happy Thanksgiving!