If you’re not diversifying your sales channels, you might be leaving money on the table. On this 112th episode of The E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Chris Shipferling, founding partner of GW Partners, a full-service firm that helps consumer brands navigate expansion and, ultimately, acquisition.
In this episode, Chris will discuss how GW Partners leverages operational expertise — including a deep understanding of the nuances of E-commerce — to help clients optimize and increase value. With over twenty years of experience in the field, he’s got a lot of valuable insights, so be sure to listen to this episode for a crash course in smart business management!
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Andrew Maff and Chris Shipferling
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Chris is an experienced executive with over 20 years of experience in the consumer products industry. Throughout his career, he has served as a sales and marketing executive from SMB to Enterprise level as well as operated his own brands.
As a founding partner of South Col, a consumer products growth fund, he has been actively involved investing in the e-commerce consumer products space.
In 2018, Chris joined GW Partners (formerly Global Wired Advisors) as a founding partner, bringing his extensive experience in sales and marketing to the team. Prior to that, he started his own consultancy, where he worked with business owners and executive teams to develop and implement digital strategies that drive growth and success.
Transcript:
Chris Shipferling 00:03
At the end of the day, if you're looking to really sell your company let's make sure you have the right information
00:15
and I wanted to show
Andrew Maff 00:22
right we're gonna show you an awesome yes another episode of the show Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host Andrew Maff. And today I am joined by the amazing, Chris Shipferling
Chris Shipferling 01:09
That's right.
Andrew Maff 01:09
He's got it. Family Partner over at GW partners, Chris, how you doing, man? Ready for good show.
Chris Shipferling 01:15
I'm doing good man. I am. I've got my water and I'm ready. I'm ready to rock dude.
Andrew Maff 01:21
Beautiful. I know we were chatting beforehand. You're on like a podcast run today. So I'm glad I got you. After you got like the first practice podcast
Chris Shipferling 01:29
- Yeah, that's right, man. That's right. I'm primed. And I'm ready to actually talk about the real meat and guts of DTC beautiful. So
Andrew Maff 01:37
let's let's do a stereotypical thing. Let's pretend no one knows who you are. No one is thinking about GW partners. Let's start high level real quick. Why don't you have a little bit of insight into yourself? GW? And we'll go from there. Okay.
Chris Shipferling 01:48
Yeah, absolutely. So look, high level we sell, we sell businesses. That's what we do. You know, if you hit me with with one, give me one sentence, that's it. But our approach is we like to get involved as early as possible, because we can help affect the outcome. And so what does that look like? It's it's a phased approach leading towards an m&a event. And so we get involved with pretty much every facet, every function of the company, by both doing an out a deep analysis that helping the founder owner when it comes to execution, through strategic resources, and through strategic thinking and planning. And then we move the company towards the owner founder goals, right? That's the really the thing that drives that's the that's the North Star is marketing folks love to say it's in. And we're we're guiding everything towards that because we've got to get the company to a place where the market is going to agree with the goal. That's really what we're doing. So high level, that's what we do. My background has always been in. I've been in consumer products pretty much since, you know, gosh, 2003 started off in the baby product space work there as a sales and marketing executive for various companies was working with Amazon when they were still considered a bookseller. And they started to venture out into being more of a stronger retailer worked with CSN stores, which turned into Wayfair worked with, oh gosh, diapers.com when they were in a small little tiny house in New Jersey, and I'm starting to feel like a grandpa of E commerce but
Andrew Maff 03:14
you're dating yourself.
Chris Shipferling 03:15
I am worked and worked in, in consumer products eat I saw etail like really start to take off. That's really where I'm going. And I was working with a Spanish bass brand running North America for them when I got just sick and tired of a buyer's opinion. And I said, there is a way better way to reach the consumer, in my opinion right now. And that is going directly to them and having the conversation. Yeah, well, I learned Amazon, uh, taking a widget, putting it through, you know, the wash, that was like really good training wheels as then you start to venture out and you learn the mechanics of Google advertising and meta, well, that wasn't meta then but meta SEO, email marketing, you know, training wheels were off with Amazon and that to me was really starting to become the harder acquisition channels to understand and DTC was definitely a very challenging sales channel but highly rewarding especially at the time this was 2016 17 So I started my own company where I I helped I consulted with brands really in the baby space a lot more my friends to formulate digital strategy because you know, a lot of brands back then even now are so heavily weighted towards what they know the best that's selling to Walmart that's selling the target and consumer products and so then I met up with some I'm in Charlotte man so investment banking town, so I met up with some investment bankers and we said, hey, there's a much better way than a business broker process to sell a you know, lower middle market, ecommerce business or a direct to consumer consumer products business. And so Uh, yeah, we started our version of our firm, back in 2018. Since then we've evolved, you know, we grew to lots of employees, and then had an unfortunate event happened with one partner, myself and my current business partner, we just stepped away completely. And we've started our own effort. Everything that I just said in the beginning, which is we sell businesses, but we really get in and we dig in as early as we can to help optimize that sale. We're, we're the insurance policy, so you leave no money on the table a man?
Andrew Maff 05:32
Nice. So how does it work? Is it like, you know, there's a certain type of client you work with? Or I'm sorry, a certain type of brand you work with and you your services? Or like part of the equity you get? Or is it like an investment situation? Is it like a straight up just you acquire them build it and get rid of it? Like, how, what's that process? Like?
Chris Shipferling 05:51
Yeah, the process. So I don't want to confuse your listeners, we do have a growth fund, where everything I'm about to say is pretty much the same, but we take equity, but I don't want to confuse listeners, let's I'll focus on GW partners. Because that growth fund is with it's a joint venture with sellers funding and our seller, Spy, and also a scholar and multiply me. So that's all it's called South Col. It's a whole other separate thing. We can leave it in the show. For GW partners. Yeah, we are we are we are a service provider taking retainers through the phases. So we have failed, we have four phases effectively. Phase one is our analysis that takes two months, we've got to get to know your company, we've got to get to know your data. I can't take your word for it. Unfortunately, I've got to really dig in and see are there any Gremlins anywhere? And effectively what we do through all the functions? With each function, we do a SWOT analysis, we, you know, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, we got to understand where is the company, and then from there, we create a just a laundry list of things that need to change just to make it very simple. It's our recommendations for what happens next. That's our execution phase. So an execution phase, I'm rolling up my sleeves, and I'm getting very dirty with you. I'm working side by side to Jim Collins the hell out of the company, right? Wrong. People off the bus, right people on the bus and right people, right seats, that's just not employees, that's real service providers. And again, we're driving the bus towards goal, right? You told me, I need 30 million for the company, you're at 10 million well, so it's a longer bus ride, but let's do it right. You may have adjusted for D to C and you have zero, by the way, this is this is very much our client base, no Amazon effort or just didn't care about Amazon, no other marketplaces and no real strategy or thought for retail. But they've got a nice product, they've been able to sell it really well to, you know, directly to the consumer through their website. And now they're stressed out about CAC. And they're starting to think about ways to okay, how do I move away from just direct to consumer and that also with new sales channels brings more revenue to reach the goals. But so that's what it looks like. And we're taking retainers all the way through Phase three is more of a maintenance phase where I'm going if I were advisors to you at that point, we've gotten to know each other because we were in the foxhole together. And we were in the trenches. And so you really start advice at this point. And we're actually taking a few steps back to start thinking about how we're going to sell the company, what's the strategy for the process, and we're really doing a lot of research and information digging on, okay, who's the right fit for this, we're starting to have anonymous whisper conversations with private equity that we know very well within the particular category. And then phase four is we built the deck, you know, we've got all of our marketing material materials, we've done our quality of earnings, we've done our diligence, and now we're actively pursuing an auction for the company to then drive towards an LOI, then a closing and then everybody is very happy. Because there's been a clerk and so as I knew that, so we take retainers, but what we do, this is really important, we credit all of our all of the retainer money to our success fee. So once the business has been sold, that goes on as a as a credit, to Yeah, to the success, but because to us, it's not about taking retainer fees. We do that because we can't we can't afford to have a negative ledger running all the way through. Right. Yeah. And so that's that's really where, but but but for us, we're aligned with the business owner on selling the business.
Andrew Maff 09:31
Yeah. Nice. So you brought up CAC, which I actually find it's one of like the unspoken things in data C like everyone thinks they know how to formulate their CAC and then everyone's answer is different. Yeah. So how were you when you sit down these brands? How are you actually coming up with what their actual customer acquisition cost is how what what expenses are Are you filtering into that?
Chris Shipferling 10:01
Yeah, I mean, look, we're so intimate with the finances. That's that's the advantage we have. So we can basically say, we can sit down and say to you, how do you want to formulate this, because at the end of the day, we know the p&l extremely well. So typically, the way that we're approaching CAC is like total T CAC. It is client by client, but just to kind of generalize it. We're not usually including like salaries of the people who are working on it. That's typically not like to us that's fixed costs, like we're really trying to understand from a more pure sense, like, every single every single dollar that's spent through any acquisition channel, whether that's even down to seriously like, how much did it cost to ship the product to these influencers, like, we've got to understand what all the fully fully baked costs are, that are, are truly purely attributed towards, I'm going to acquire the consumer but no man like overhead, like, we have already an allocation of overhead that we've done as as far as a percentage. So like, when we're creating unit economics for an Amazon or for DTC or for a new retail channel, like, we've already got a percentage of overhead, we're going to allocate to that because we've done a body of work to get to a place where we really understand the finances. But the T CAC for us is what I just said, it's really any dollar that's really going towards outside of human capital, or you humans working on the business. That's that's what we're attributing, because we've got, and then we start to really get very granular, obviously, in attribution, in specific acquisition channels, like what's the attribution and what's the CAC for each channel, etc, etc. So
Andrew Maff 11:51
got it is because I've spoken with so many sellers, and it's, I don't know if anyone does the same, I think they all have their own way of factoring CAC. And when you're trying to map that out, it always becomes such a challenge. So you the brands you work with, are they primarily of a certain?
Chris Shipferling 12:15
It looks like you went mute. By the way, man, I can't hear you.
Andrew Maff 12:18
This is why I shouldn't have my mouse over the mute button.
Chris Shipferling 12:23
She heard I heard that.
Andrew Maff 12:24
This is my first podcast.
Chris Shipferling 12:27
I didn't want to say it. I was gonna do it in the chat. Oh, God. Thank God for editing man. Thank you.
Andrew Maff 12:34
Yeah. Leave it in. We're all real. So okay, so the question was, God, the brands you work with, you know, you mentioned Amazon sellers? Do your due to see, are there certain sizes you work with? Are there certain categories, certain business models, like, what's that look
Chris Shipferling 12:53
like? Well, 100%, we typically work with sizes, you know, around five to 7 million, a lot of times the owner has, you know, enough cash flow to start thinking, first off their business is typically at an inflection point, that point, right, you work with a lot of C brands, you work with a lot of brands, and you know that once they hit about that five to seven to 10 million, depending on their economics, they're really at a nice growth inflection, where they're at a point where they're saying, Hey, I've got a lot of cash flow, I want to put it more, I want to put it into the business, and you're telling me what to do with this to go acquire more consumers, right. And so that also lends itself to a couple of things, they've got a view of, I want to exit, and two years, a year, three years, whatever. So that's why that revenue mark is a really good fit for us. Because by the time we take the business to market, we want them to be at least 15 million 20,000,025 3035. Because that has enough market share and gains enough interest from a wider pool of buyers, the smaller you are, you just shrink your buyer, your buyer base who's going to pay a lot of money, that's all the owner founder cares about. That's it, right? And so you know, you've got a lot of buyers like if you got a one to $3 million business and you put it on this buy sell and you do use a broker and they use SBA and all that kind of good stuff. Like yeah, you got a big pool down there, but you're going through SBA man, you're only gonna get a three multiple because the the guy might say hey, I'll you might demand someone to pay a seven multiple and they're like, Yeah, I will. And then it goes through the bank underwriting process and their own evaluate, you know, valuation and, and appraisal and appraisal comes back and says, Sorry, the business is only worth up to multiple. Well, okay, yeah, you get my point when you're talking to sophisticated capital, you know, you at that size, you start to become interesting to them. And of course, the more interesting and attractive you are, the more that you're going to magnetize that multiple up for sure. So, yeah, long way to answer that. That's kind of who we worked with as far as who you know. We're fairly category agnostic. However, there are a couple of categories we just have more of an affinity towards than others. It's probably a lot like you and your business. It just kind of happened that way. I came from products and toy bands. So we work with a lot of baby product companies just because they hear my background. They're like, Oh, this is awesome. Like, you get the industry
Andrew Maff 15:19
got to find that common ground.
Chris Shipferling 15:23
And that's why we also focus on consumer products. Because when people when they talk to us, they go, Oh, you really get you really understand consumer products very well. We don't sell agencies we don't, we've done one SAS deal. That's, that's, we'll never do that. Again. We all know our lane very well. And it's consumer product companies, you know, there are a few, we don't really like supplements, those are hard to sell. Those are hard and a lot with it's a lot. It's hard to market on and a lot of hacks. It's a lot of tactician stuff, there's not a ton of strategy behind it. So it really in supplements, man, you're just trying to build. You're just trying to build the next Goliath. So the other Goliath that's bigger than you wants to buy you for your market share. That's really all you're doing. And then consumer electronics just suck. The margins are so bad, they're just so slim. And it's just I talked to a guy once he was a reseller, so we don't touch resellers at all. But we talked to him. This is like, five years ago, my man was doing 100 million through Amazon 900,000 in profit 10 million sitting on his balance sheet for inventory. I'm like, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night, dude. Like that is that is a It's impressive that you've got that much inventory and that little profit, that's actually impressive. But that's, that's because the dude is doing 100. But if someone actually really cared about his company, they pay him like three mil of goodwill. And then they would create like a five year Best Buy type of no interest payment plan on the inventory. Yeah, you know, it just it's just that's just that's just doesn't sell so just to give some examples of things that there's so it's probably just like you I mean, you're you're gonna get granular on certain categories, because you're like, Sorry, man, just like trying to work in this category is not easy. Yeah,
Andrew Maff 17:15
just supplements are a nightmare to market. The you know, there's so many rules. We do for whatever reason, I don't even know how we got into this. But we do a lot of like restricted brand stuff, right? Like CBD THC. Like it's fun. And it's it's great to see him grow. Because the margins are great. But the the scaling of it is a nightmare, because it's all content creation. You've got rules you've got to follow of advertising, all that fun stuff. But I digress. So the sorry about as much as you're willing to tell me without forcing me to pay your retainer just for this episode? Like, what's the thought process on how you start to scale things? I have a very strong opinion about people that are solely on Amazon, I think that it's kind of respectfully dumb. And they can exit for a significantly higher multiple if they could diversify and own their own data and all that fun stuff. But like what's, what's your approach? What's your stance? And I know every business is different. But if you've got any kind of generalities, you're
Chris Shipferling 18:13
you're nailing you're nailing it right on the head, dude. I mean, number one, the reason why Amazon businesses went up is because it's the same reason Dogecoin went up, right? There really isn't a whole lot behind it. But because Elon Musk said Doge, and how much he loves it. And again, I know there's people who own Doge and they probably would, they would argue with me till the cows come home on how great the project actually is. And better. My point is, you had someone screaming carnival barking about it, and all of a sudden the value went up? Well, very similar. We had our star very similar carnival barkers called aggregators that came in all at one time, only wanting Amazon businesses, and it drove up the value prior to that, and Amazon business was extremely hard to sell. And if you found a buyer getting it to underwrite through the SBA process was extremely hard. And private equity was like, not touching it for a lot of reasons. And that's why the aggregators actually saw a whitespace with it. Because they were like, we'll big capital doesn't want to touch this, and we can get involved in we're finance bros. And we're smarter than the digital marketing bros. And we know more than them because we're smarter, and we went to Harvard. And so we're gonna come in and do all these things. And we're gonna blah blah, blah. And what they fail to realize is what everyone has already realized, which is scale. Economies of scale with with 10 Different Amazon brands is not a thing ever period. It's so silent. It's not a thing. It's very difficult to wrap and scale them together, right? Yeah. The only place you get any type of economies of have any type of economy period. You know, tailwind is If you happen to find the same, like one manufacturer can build more of more products for you. Yeah, you're negotiating effectively raw material at that point. That's not a that's not a business I want to be involved in. So yeah, anyways, long story short, yes, no, all Amazon business and most of the time, you'll agree with me because you're in the space. That company that's all Amazon, there's a reason why they're not off Amazon yet. It's because they're so commoditized, or their ao V is so low. They're CAC and ao V and LTV. Those economics will never work off Amazon, ever. And so you're staring at something that you're just basically saying, Okay, this is now a devalued asset, I could go out and maybe get three multiple for it, because I've got a corporate banker who just left his job, and he just wants some steady salary and income. So I'm gonna get Yeah, like two and a half, maybe three, multiple. That's why the aggregators have gone back to two and a half. I talked to an aggregator the other day, or I wouldn't say the other day, but it was like three months ago. And it made me laugh, I actually had to hold back laughing because he was like, Look, we're paying, we're paying three multiple, like three, three and a half multiple. And if it's a really great business of really good size, and really diversification, will pay up to like, five. And I'm like, Do you have any clue what a P E fund, even in this bad market will pay for a very good business of what you just described? Yeah, that sucker is getting done at least seven and I multiple with a lot of great candy for the owner. Like, it's just so like, oh, my gosh, so anyways, yes, you have to diversify. And mainly, you have to be able to prove that a you're in consumer products, man, you gotta have great product. I preach this on every single podcast that I go on. If you don't, that's really where we actually spent a lot of time with founder owners on product development. Because unfortunately, it tends to be more of a weakness. They've created something good, but they haven't created a plan for for the next few years. And when you talk to I just talked to somebody yesterday who, you know, worked as an executive of L'Oreal and and hanes and I could go on the list of this resume from this person I spoke to, and they're actually they're on their own doing a lot of consulting and one of the things we're doing is three year product roadmaps, it matters and consumer products, man, like, anywhere you go, I worked I used to work with a lot of p&g guys. That's all we talked about was three year roadmaps. So anyways, that's, that's where you have to, you have to have great product, it has to be able to sell in lots of different sales channels and acquisition channels. And you become highly attractive.
Andrew Maff 22:46
argument to is always like it I imagined and obviously correct me if I'm wrong here, but it severely opens up your buyer pool. Because if you're solely selling on Amazon, like I always use this analogy. And I don't know why cuz I don't really fish or hunt. But it is the way I always do this. Like if I had if I had a business, and I was just selling on Amazon and I sold a ton of fishing products. The only company that's going to be interested in buying me is just someone who wants to probably benefit from you know, processes, obviously, the profit coming in some pre existing like advertising data I have and then whatever I've got from like an inventory like manufacturing side of things, but then that's it. But if I'm diversified, and I've got my own site, and I have my own list, I have, you know, traffic coming in, I've got people getting pixeled, I've got all this extra data that I have to leverage. All of a sudden now, a company that sells hunting gear could be interested in buying me because they might be able to sell their product to the existing audience I already have. So it doesn't that kind of like by having your own DTC site, even if you're on the other channels. I'm not saying like no one should be on the marketplaces. But I find the marketplaces are better from a customer acquisition side. And then you should actually be focused on building the brand and your own data seaside because that will make you more valuable in the exit. Am I close? Yes,
Chris Shipferling 24:02
you are. I mean, I think I think most of what you said is very, very true. And there's a lot of nuance in there, per se but everything you said was very true. And I mean, that's also the the ability to build community, by the way is going to become a very big topic in the next two or three years. Especially when you've got aI pretty much about to I think obliterate the SEO space. FYI. I think building Yeah, I do.
Andrew Maff 24:27
The average person is going to start us like I've said like my father in law is like one of those guys who won't have like a Google or an Alexa in his house because he thinks it's listening to him at all times. I'm like those types of guys. Yeah, I don't see being like, Oh, let me just ask this robot personal questions and see if it weren't like you think like Middle America is going to accept the AI that it'll actually just knock SEO out in the next couple of years.
Chris Shipferling 24:51
Dude, so I don't know enough to have to give you a very intelligent answer where it's coming from is my brother Law, my brother in law is a huge SEO guy. It has been since 2001. And he actually worked on CNET, like he's worked in like, he's actually worked in some pretty astute SEO environments. He's the one who texted me two days ago, like this huge, provocative thing. It's going to be dead in the next two years. And then he proceeded to write a novel of why I will send you he's about to, he's about to do a whole series of videos and, and I'll send them to you because you want. Yeah, and I've been meaning to call him just because I want to dig in on that a lot more. But, you know, brand brand building community building, that's going to be that's good, because I think where he was coming from mainly was just the fact that AI really is just writing all the content now. And so I don't know if he was meaning like SEO is dead, or it's just as an industry, something where you can actually like, make money off of SEO. Yeah, I think that's more where he was going. And so but you know, relevant to what we were just talking about, brands now focusing on really trying to build that community is highly valuable. I mean, you've got nuanced people will argue. The cosmetics company that was sold to church and Dwight wrote not too long ago, for like 600 million they were they started as an Amazon business, but then people will point to see that's an Amazon. I'm like, the reason why church and Dwight actually gave a rat's rear end is because they were able to leave Amazon and sell in many different channels. And then they pointed to zesty paws and I'm like, same damn thing, dude. Then you can actually point to dude wipes where you know, Sean, I think his name is Wiley, O'Reilly, the owner of dude wipes, he'll say, hey, look, man, Amazon is like, Don't knock Amazon. That's our biggest acquisition, our sales channel. And I'm like, that makes sense that in grocery because like when I'm thinking about a product, like his, which is really just well marketed, baby wipes, diapers, if I want to buy that and have it come to me, I'm gonna put it on Subscribe and Save if it's something I'm using all the time. So I mean, his product is kind of lends itself to more being commodity, he's just really damn good at marketing. And oh, by the way, he's also commanded a shit ton, pardon my French a ton of market share. I mean, he's done a phenomenal job. So someone like him, that's my nuance. Someone like him will sell for a lot of money, even though majority of his sales are coming from Amazon, just because of everything else. I just said so. Oh,
Andrew Maff 27:17
yeah, I mean, I know, it's all it's gonna almost always be a majority of sales, especially as you mentioned, you know, if the brands that are commodity but I still think that even if that's the case, the margin that they're getting on that it's really just better from a customer acquisition standpoint. So if your branding is in a good spot, and you've got the necessary, you know, bells and whistles in place, then getting them to diversify and purchase from you in store on your own website, or setting up to Subscribe and Save on your site. That's a lot more beneficial. I like Amazon as a customer acquisition channel, I find it very hard to really justify anyone doing well on there. Because if you have a high enough a Ovie, and your margins are decent enough, the problem is, is that most people aren't shopping for things like that on Amazon, unless you've built a brand off Amazon, and then you just have the search volume for your own brand name on Amazon. Yeah,
Chris Shipferling 28:07
I mean, honestly, Amazon to Amazon to it could. There's a couple of things. I want to address what you just said, You are right. So majority of of how you approach building something highly valuable, is exactly what you said. The there are a few exceptions, but they're even the exceptions. That was my point. They have massive nuance to them. And yeah, people can't point to them as a case study as an argument against the majority of what you said. Because it's just stupid. That's just not the it's just not the case. But you're right, and the ability I see it the same way. It's either it's either an acquisition channel where someone may have discovered your product. Actually, I think it's more inverted. I think a lot of people do this. I discovered your product through meta. I discovered your product through Google. I just want to see if Amazon has it so I can get it faster.
Andrew Maff 28:56
Oh, yeah, I mean, we do so much work with by with prime now because people are just like, I don't even I used to before by prime even came out. We used to make a button that said available on Amazon. And we would just let people go straight to Amazon. And we would just track it through attribution because I knew they were going anyway. Yeah, so like screw it let's just make the overall experience better for them. And it worked. And then of course Amazon caught on and now they're stealing everyone's information.
Chris Shipferling 29:23
Which is fine. That's a Big Brother Big Brother's at work, man. You can't You're right. I always say play nice with them. Right? It's the pie in the sky man. They that's and that's where I think a lot of but but at the same time, you know, even though you know so again it also is nuanced you know if you're a subscription based business then obviously acquiring them through an Amazon but trying to get them you know once they go to your website and see that the subscription on your website is much cheaper. You know operationally I'm gonna start trusting you but where, where I think you start to see more people buying direct to consumer and because of buy with prime that's actually Opening up a huge channel, but not everyone's using it. Unfortunately, if Shopify figures out a big commerce figures out a way to come anything close to Amazon's operational excellence, I think I think you're going to start to see Amazon market share on the marketplace shrink. I really do.
Andrew Maff 30:17
Oh, yeah. If they can figure out like, having their own like, hey, get it in two days sort of thing. And they, Oh, my God, that'd be amazing.
Chris Shipferling 30:25
That's really where Amazon? I mean, Amazon wins because it made they wanted to places they want it with the cart. And they've won with the delivery. Yeah, I mean, advertising on Amazon. I mean, Amazon still is like, it's, I mean, for all intents and purpose, man, it's not pretty, it's actually still ugly.
Andrew Maff 30:41
And I don't like the PDPs at all.
Chris Shipferling 30:45
Like, there's not much like it's just, it's a more if you feel like you're at a rug bizarre, like, genuinely, you know.
Andrew Maff 30:52
And we just so we also just left unboxed a couple of weeks ago, at least as the time of this recording, and like, the whole, the whole conference was just Amazon like, Oh, we're opening you know, now you've got TV ads, you can do you've got, DSP is now going to start showing on these channels. And here's all the different things you can do. Like oh, man, you guys really realized that you ran out of advertising real estate, you want to keep growing, you're just gonna put it off Amazon. And I find that most of those like DSPs. And like that kind of stuff, like they're taking so much like view through revenue credit that it looks like it's doing really well, which there's the brand awareness aspect, and it should take some kind of credit, but like, a lot of times, like we show clients those numbers, I go, okay, hold on, you're not rich. Let me explain what this actually looks like.
Chris Shipferling 31:40
That's right. He's exactly right, dude. And that's, and honestly, I mean, those those programs are really, I mean, genuinely saved for middle market brands. I mean, small business. They can't afford that top of funnel spend. at all, not even close. So yeah, it's funny you say that, because that's exactly exactly what's what's real estate. It's become Manhattan. And now they're like, Okay, let's go to New New Jersey and try and find some more people.
Andrew Maff 32:03
Exactly. And the PDPs are riddled with competitors. I'm like, This is so stupid, because I'm putting other people's products on my own website PDP. So I got to deal with this shit on Amazon. So
Chris Shipferling 32:14
it's so true. So true. But,
Andrew Maff 32:17
Chris, thank you so much for being on the show. I know we kind of ranted several times, which makes great episodes. So I love it.
Chris Shipferling 32:24
Man. Yeah, absolutely. This
Andrew Maff 32:26
is beautiful. Beyond. Yeah, appreciate your time, I'd love to give you an opportunity here. Let everyone know where they can find out more about you. Of course, more about GW. Yeah.
32:33
So, you know, simply put, go to our website, GW.partners you fill in the contact form, we do not pitch we do not we have very fruitful discussions like this, where we're all just, we're all trying to help each other number one, number two, at the end of the day, if you're looking to really sell your company, let's make sure you have the right information. We have a lot of m&a partners that we send people to so we're not a volume shop, right? So for us, it's just about really good fit and you know, doesn't make a lot of sense that aside, it's really understanding your business. And so by all means, let's just have a conversation so you have the right information, you know, when making your decision when it comes to either selling your company or getting in the right hands of a good resource.
Andrew Maff 33:15
Beautiful, awesome, Chris. Thank you so much everyone who tuned in, please make sure you do the usual rate review, subscribe, all that fun stuff or head over to whichever podcast platform you prefer. Or go to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes, but as usual, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you all next week.
Narrator 33:32
Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to theecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by BlueTusker, a full service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com Now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.
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