So you’ve set up your Amazon shop, and the sales are coming in —but are you truly maximizing your profit potential? On this 163th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Mark Botha, Founder and CEO of SellerVue. In the competitive world of eCommerce, it's crucial for sellers to focus not only on sales but also on optimizing their supply chain and reducing hidden costs.
Mark Botha discusses in detail the biggest mistakes most Amazon sellers make regarding profitability and how sellers can operate smarter to achieve long-term success. If you're ready to take your Amazon store to the next level of profitability, listen in on this informative episode with Mark Botha.
Watch the full episode below, or visit TheEcommShow.com for more.
If you enjoyed the show, please rate, review, and SUBSCRIBE!
Have an e-commerce marketing question you'd like Andrew to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: hello@theecommshow.com
Andrew Maff and Colleen Quattlebaum
CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com | Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff
Mark Botha
So you’ve set up your Amazon shop, and the sales are coming in —but are you truly maximizing your profit potential? On this 163th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Mark Botha, Founder and CEO of SellerVue. In the competitive world of eCommerce, it's crucial for sellers to focus not only on sales but also on optimizing their supply chain and reducing hidden costs.
Mark Botha discusses in detail the biggest mistakes most Amazon sellers make regarding profitability and how sellers can operate smarter to achieve long-term success. If you're ready to take your Amazon store to the next level of profitability, listen in on this informative episode with Mark Botha.
00:02
Geez, you know, this is the stuff that actually makes a big difference when it comes to one, exiting and two, profitability. Hello. Everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. As usual, I am your host, Andrew Maff, and today I'm joined by the amazing Mark Botha, who is the CEO, founder over at SellerVue. Mark, how you doing? Buddy? Ready for good show? Very
01:14
good. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
01:16
Super excited to have you on. Obviously, we're gonna stay focused on seller view, stuff which is profit, which is fun. So really looking forward to this conversation, I was, like, started off relatively normally, and give you the floor. Let everyone know, give them some insight about your background and, obviously, about seller view, and we're gonna take it from there.
01:33
Okay, yeah, sounds good. Well, actually, I'm, you know, I'm actually originally a chiropractor, went to school become a became a chiropractor, and they actually ended up buying a course on how to sell on Amazon back in like, 2012 and from there, just hey day, you know, the heyday of it. And it was a time where, you know, like you really didn't have to think about margins, because they were, they were so good, right? So it wasn't, it wasn't until I sold my first until I sold my first e commerce business, when I was like, geez, you know, this is the stuff that actually makes a big difference when it comes to one, exiting and two profitability. So I actually, I ended up, you know, pivoting a little bit from I saw, obviously, have my E commerce shops and Amazon, but I pivot a little more to, like a tool that would allow me to really understand my costs at a more granular level, become less reliant on spreadsheets, so that every time I had something, a new invoice come in, a new shipping plan come in, I would be able to automatically capture this data. So it just kind of evolved from chiropractor to selling on Amazon, to dipping my toe in the software world, which has actually been pretty cool and exciting. And also, sometimes I talk to my developer and I'm like, Are we doing the right thing here? But it's such a, you know, it's such an amazing experience to, you know, build something and see something kind of come to life, and at the same time, you know, help me grow my own business to, you know, what I would think is the max profit I could achieve,
03:11
yeah, when great that you were a chiropractor, we could focus on that if you want my back is killing me. When you got into the Amazon world. Were you selling products that were, like, chiropractic related, or were you just, like, diving in with something totally
03:28
different, you know, you know, I've always been, you know, fitness, like I played rugby, you know, went to the gym. So actually, my first products were kind of fitness related, nice. And actually it was like an exercise band. And in 2012 there were, there were three listings. There were just three of us selling news. We
03:51
were just reminisce about old times. Those were the good days. They
03:55
were, they were, but yeah, like, super Yeah, like, very Yeah. Just, just totally out of my wheelhouse, you know, obviously bought the course, didn't know how it was going to work. And, you know, it did. But you know, I always, you know, also speak to new sellers now, like, you know, is it still possible? And I go, of course, it's still possible. You know, it's just, you got to do your homework. You've got to do all the right things at the base level. You can't just, you know, source a bunch of products and hope for the best. You got to do the optimization. You got to do the listings Correct. You do the pictures. You have to do everything right now. You can't just, you know, half, half go at it, yeah, back
04:37
in 2012 It was, uh, hey, I've got inventory, let's throw it up on Amazon, and that's it, like you you could just sit there, maybe ran some ads, maybe it didn't, and you were doing just fine. And now it's like, if you're not crossing your eyes and dotting your t's on every little thing. And I know I flipped that, but it's, I mean, it's you've. To have the perfect listing, you've got to have advertising in place. You've got to be monitoring tacos and inventory and reviews and all they're doing promotions and hopping on Prime Day and all this fun stuff. So, like, it's 500 different things to really stand out on there. And so obviously, I'm guessing that's kind of where seller view comes in. Yeah, more or less, yeah,
05:16
that's funny. You just said that, because, as you were saying that, I always, like, kind of come back to the conversation, you know, like, there's always, like, two hats in your business, right? There's like the left brain hat, the right brain hat, the right brain hat is all I say. The right brain hat is like your revenue stuff, like all the amazing, fun stuff that you can do, like sourcing new products and your PPC and new picks, sexy stuff, sexy stuff, the stuff that everybody wants to do, yeah, and then, like, the left brain hat comes on, and it's like, okay, well, what am I what are my numbers? How much profit Am I making, you know? What are all the little KPIs that I need to know? Like, what are my costs? Am I shipping this the correct way? Am I getting the best possible price on my shipping? Am I negotiating with my factories, I'm also seeing the best. And I always think my clients are like, Yeah, you know, I'll just take that off and I'm gonna put my right one back on. I mean, like, I'm just gonna source new products. Hopefully I will make up for this stuff that I don't know.
06:14
Brute force, yeah?
06:15
Brute force, which, you know, like, of course you can raise your revenue. You can, but I think sometimes you're raising your revenue at a disadvantage of what your profit is. Because you know, the number one thing that you know clients ask me, or users ask me is like, I don't understand where the money is. You know, when you're looking at your like, Amazon account, and you see this balloon number, and you're like, it just doesn't add up. Or you look at your your profitability tables in some, you know, profit app you're using, and you know, it goes Product A you got your costs, and you got your FBA fees, and you got those fees and this fees, and then you go, Oh, your profit margin is this much, and you made $4,000 in a product. The question is, where does that money? It tells me I'm making 4000 but it's never ending up in my bank account. Like, why is that? And like, what we like to do with our clients is, go, Okay, well, let's have a look at, you know, the number that is, I would say the most I use the word magical math is how you came up with your cost, you know, because that's the one that's really going to affect that number. And I use this example a lot with, you know, when I'm doing talks, is I had a client, and I went through this exact example with him, you know, he thought his cost was 441, or something. And it's in his profit app. He's selling, I think he said it was 18,000 units over the course of the year. And he goes, Well, this is my profit. So I'm like, Okay, well, let's have a look at how you you came up with this 441 so yeah, we went through all the shipping and customs and duties and everything that he was calculating at the end of the day, when we came up with the number, we came up with 544, was this cost, which was a 91 cent difference, or something that adds up 18,000 units. 18,000 units times 91 cents. You know, that's where the discrepancy is. And if you have a lot of products times the discrepancy, well that's where the money, the money, the money is just not there because your costs are wrong and because it's in your profit app at X amount. This is what you think. And then you look at Amazon, and nothing really matches up. Yeah,
08:32
in terms of the platform itself, it's not just Amazon, right? I think you guys also integrate with all the other platforms, like you're also directing with Shopify and, like, basically selling, just in general, correct? Yeah. So
08:45
you know when I when I built it. I originally built it for myself because my goal was to be able to find ways to maximize my landed unit cost. Like, I want to know what made up the standard cost, and how do I make it better? If I can't make it better, I might need to raise the price. But if I knew that my landed cost was 99.99% accurate, then that's my base. And then obviously the only way to change is either sell more better or better price. Yeah, so technically, what we are is, you know, before any marketplace where you know, from from supplier to warehouse floor. So whether you're selling on Shopify, Walmart, Etsy, at the flea market, whatever it is, you know what I mean, like you want to know your costs so that you can price correctly. So you know what we are, is what, what I wanted to do was, I wanted to kind of eliminate the way sellers calculate their costs, and to be able to do it automatically by creating a process of creating a purchase order, receiving an invoice from a supplier, sending off shipping quotes to your freight forwarders, getting back shipping invoices. And for the tool. Automatically calculate the shipping based on your cubic meters and your customs based off your custom tariffs, tariff rates. So, yeah, there's no need to, you know, have a spreadsheet to come back to the word magic maps, because at the end of the day, what I find a lot of people doing is, you know, it's very easy with a, with a, with a, with a factory, I ordered 10,000 units. I paid $10,000 it's a it's $1 a unit. What I, what I find happening with with shipping and customs bills is it's much easier to go my containers $10,000 and I got 10,000 units in there. You know what? Each unit's $1 so now my cost is $2 and then customs, I kind of do the same, and I kind of, like make it kind of fit into my profit margin, and then that's it where, you know, I was equated to maybe, like, shipping a piano in a box of matches. You know, the pianos are not going to cost the same as a box of matches. So, yeah, you want to calculate the cubic meters of, you know, the box of matches and the cubic meters of a piano,
11:05
yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's one of those things, knowing your your COGS is, is just one of those areas that drives me insane, like I'm on the marketing side. I'm very much on the right brand side. I like the sexy stuff. I stick to the sexy stuff. I know what I'm talking about for the sexy stuff. Sexy stuff. Outside of that, I get lost. But it blows my mind when we're, like, trying to evaluate, like, Okay, what target KPIs are we trying to hit? From an advertising perspective, what are we aiming for here? Like, where are we okay, what's LTV, blah, blah. So many brands think that they know they're cogs, and they just don't like what they factor in in terms of their landed costs is just amazing. Of, just like, we've worked with brands before, where they're just pulling stuff out of their hat, of, like, oh, and then I've got to factor this into cost, and this into cost. Like, no, no, that's not your cogs. That's hard. That's the hard costs of just business operations. Like, there's so many elements there that don't help to be able to judge that profitability and so, like, is in the direction that seller view takes everything. Is it kind of like helping decipher, like, what your true actual profit is and where all those costs are going
12:12
exactly? Yeah. So when you when I would say that we looking at a margin. We're looking at the three kind of contribution margins we got, you know, we got landed costs, cogs. We got, you know? So basically, I would say, from from factory to warehouse floor, what does it cost to land your product, and then the next contribution margin is, you know, what does it take from the fact, well, from the warehouse to the customer, the fulfillment part, yeah, what's Amazon? What the FBA charging? You know, you're in Shopify. What's your UPS? What's your FedEx rates? Can we make those FedEx rates better? I had a crazy conversation with a guy this morning about, you know, enterprise level UPS and FedEx rates, and the numbers that he was telling me was like, blowing my mind. And I was like, you know, if other people did this, they'll save money there too. Yeah. Who knows? Maybe we get back to 2012 you know, profit margins, yeah. And then, you know, the other contribution, number three, as is, is your is your advertising. So if you can nail those three, and make sure they're all fit inside your, your ideal kind of scope, you know, your profit margin is always going to be there. So what we really focus in on is understanding exactly what it takes to get to your product. And you know, one, can you make it better? You know? So if you know your your factory cost, can you negotiate a better rate? Can you negotiate better terms to kind of free up cash flow? The negotiating one is a big one. You know, oftentimes sellers, you know, they've been selling this product for years and have never, ever asked for a better rate. Yeah, I had one guy the other day. I was like, negotiations. I was like, Have you ever asked? And he said, No. I was like, well, just send them this thing. Just, I'm gonna send you some text to send it to him and see what they say. He came back and said they gave me. He was paying 72 cents. They gave it to him for 36 cents.
14:09
Whoa. They cut it in half. I
14:10
cut it in half. I got a picture. I couldn't believe he sent me a picture. Couldn't believe it.
14:17
So like just ask, can it? Will you help me negotiate some stuff, send me that.
14:25
So just like that one thing, yeah, and then you know, in terms of like shipping, not even, like calculating your shipping correctly on cubic meters or value or volumetric or however you're shipping it, but going and having you know a couple freight forwarders or shippers that you work with that you like, you trust you know they're good, but that you can go, I have a pack list. I want a container. What's your quote? 6800 5800 5900 but the 5900 has been the lead time I'm going to 59 100? Yeah, I'm gonna save $700 over there. That's another way you know where you are, improving your margins. And then the other one, which content also blows my mind, is the customs, making sure that your HS codes are actually correct, yeah, because sometimes where, like, when you get your your customs entry ball, you see, like, a lot of the products are, like, grouped together. And sometimes a product that might be a 60% tariff could be a 14% tariff or 12% tariff. You know, it's variable, but it's possible that sometimes your codes are incorrect, and you're paying, you're paying a couple percentage more in tariffs, then, then, then you should be so that's the other thing that we do as well. Is with seller view, is we just don't lump you into the app and go, you know, start what you were doing before, and just repeat it in the app, because then you're just repeating the same, you know, yeah, there's
16:04
your magic mask. Yeah. We want
16:06
when you start telling you, we want you to be accurate from the start, so you have an accurate baseline. So when we onboard clients and get them into the app, you know, obviously the factory invoice, it is what it is, dollar unit. You know, it's $1 unit, yeah. But we will help kind of factor and calculate what your inbound costs will be. So we'll, we'll kind of have a look at your your shipping for the last 12 months and see how you've been shipping, and how you've been calculating your shipping. And if it makes sense, we'll go back and figure out the cubic meters of all the packages that you brought in, and actually assign a correct shipping cost to your to this use and products. And then the other thing that we can do is audit your HS codes to make sure that your import codes matches the materials. And are those the best HS codes that should be assigned to your products, because sometimes you can pick and choose an HS code depending on the variable material. And you know, we can make sure that you're choosing the right codes.
17:15
What about the costs? Let's say like, I guess I would say just like post fulfillment. But specifically I'm thinking, like, Amazon's fees, right? Like they've got their FBA fees and all their extra fees that they've got now, like, obviously those are always creeping up. So Amazon sells. Just stay focused on this type of stuff is obviously really important, but that's always changing as well. So how does that kind of get factored into all the different costs?
17:38
So that's kind of where, you know, where, where we kind of aren't it's not part of what we do. But we do have an integration where we can start managing the variable costs and then also help sellers recover any lost income from it's an incorrect dimension. So we do have, we do have a feature. We do have a feature. And the feature actually was my pet peeve. Because when you know my actually, my passion is building and selling e commerce businesses, which is why I built seller view in the beginning, because I wanted an easier way for my when I went to sell my business, that the buyer could look log on, have a look at how I came up with my landed costs, and go, Okay, well, that makes sense. I can see the stock value, I can see the unit prices, and I can also see the flow of information of how I came up with my unit costs. So ultimately, that's really why I built it. But it kind of evolved to, you know, first helping friends, figuring out their costs. And then I took on clients, and I was like, you know, it turns out everyone costs are incorrect. So by kind of coming back to the variable cost is, you know, I built a tool inside the app that actually manages the weights and dimensions in Amazon, because, you know, I understand using, you know, a company that will go out and find reimbursements for lost inventory, which, yeah, which is pretty standard now, but my biggest pet peeve was, why should I pay this company to retrieve dimension loss, or when Amazon changes the dimensions and charge me 25% for something that shouldn't happen in the first place. Yeah, so, so what we have is a, you know, you have to request the tool, so if anyone actually does sign up, yeah, I'll just say this, just make sure you message me, and I can enable it for you, but it will what it does is because we upload all the information to begin with, so we have a record of what your actual dimensions are. To start every single night, we double check Amazon. Amazon then pings back what the dimensions are, and sometimes, which, oddly enough, is, they change by a quarter of an inch. So. Your weight changes by a fraction. It'll throw it off. Yeah. And you know, the fee doesn't change. But the next four days later, another change, and you can start log this, you can log this information, and then all of a sudden, a week later, oh, yeah, dimensions change. You're now in a higher fee bracket. So now, now that we have all this information, because we tracking every time there's a change, change log, change log, change log, and now you get a notification, hey, something changed. You can automatically go into Amazon, open up a case, and get the dimensions changed back, and off you go.
20:43
So you obviously build the platform, as you mentioned, to obviously help you grow and sell these different e commerce businesses, and then you start doing it for friends, etc, and took on clients. So is it, would you say it's primarily built for brands that are looking for an exit in the near future, or is it more of like no, it's actually more relevant just for any e commerce seller, seller in general,
21:05
I think you know it's it's relevant to any e commerce seller that wants to, one automate how they calculate their costs, and also how to organize your shipments, how to get better quotes from suppliers. Because that's ultimately the top line level of it is to be able to create a purchase order, grab an invoice, assign the invoice to any SKU and automatically calculate your costs. But on the flip side of that, you know, I would say I don't think I've met an E commerce seller that isn't planning on selling at some point. That's a
21:40
very good point, too. At some point between
21:43
now and in three years, you're gonna have an internal conversation with yourself and be like, is it time? And you're gonna go, it's time, and you're gonna contact a broker, and the broker is gonna say to you, hey, this is what I need. And the very first thing that's going to go in through your mind is you're going to go, it's not time, because I was wrong. I don't want to do this because you don't have the you don't have the information. And I've had this conversation with a number of brokers, and they're like, it's so surprising that we get contacted, and then all of a sudden the person pulls back, because now the request of all this information, which this information, it's actually not that. It's actually pretty easy to attain. It's just scattered over your inbox, over pack, listen voice and shipping and conversations. It's all over the place. So if you know, if it's all in one place, like, sell of you, yeah, your weights and your dimensions, your PI, your supply information, your stock values, everything's in there. You know what I love when is like, when I have a client that goes, I want to sell, I'm like, Oh, this is going to be great, because they send off the broker, and the broker then emails me, like, this is amazing.
23:05
Does make a lot easier. It is crazy. Like most people, they like, they think, like, Oh, I'm ready to sell. And then they go to sell. They're like, All right, here's all the information I need. Like, what would you think? They weren't going to ask you that information? And then you go to dig it up. You're like, I don't know where any of this is. Like, how do you not how is this? No one's gonna want to buy this, if you have this kind of stuff, so it makes a lot of sense to be able to organize that information
23:25
as well. Yeah. And plus, you know, you know whether you're going to sell, you know, five years from now is it's having that, like historical data, because that's one of the the other things that syllabus does is we have a historical cost analysis so that you can actually see, like what my cost was two years ago. I can see is my factory price increasing. Is my inbound cost going down, where, where in the world is my cost in which direction they're going? So it makes a big difference. It makes a big difference in one being organized, because I think if you organized one, you can make changes. If you if you have the data in front of you and you're looking at it, you can go, oh, okay, I can see, well, my margins aren't where they should be, and I can see what I actually need to do about it. And if it's the best it's going to be, then my only options are, if I want to make more money, I need to sell more, or I need to increase my price, yeah,
24:26
Truer words have never been spoken. Mark, I don't want to take up too much more your time. Obviously, I appreciate you having on the show. I'd love to give you the opportunity let everyone know they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about
24:37
SellerVue. Yeah, so just pop over to sellervue.com we actually have a 21 day trial. So you can actually sign up for a trial. I would say, once you sign up for the trial, there's a time to book an onboarding call with the team. And this is a very, very important call, not for just one to show you how to use the app, but it's also a way, just like. I said, is to get you on the right track, to get all the information in there as best you can, so that when you do start using it, that all your information is correct, all your margins will now start being a lot more understandable, and you'll find out ways to make it improvement. So I would definitely encourage you know setting up that that onboarding call
25:24
Beautiful. Make sure we add it in the show notes. Mark, thank you so much for being on the show. Obviously, everyone who tuned in, thank you. Thank you everyone who tuned in to do the usual thing, rate, review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com. You can check out all of our previous episodes as well, but as usual, thank you all for joining us. See you all next time.
25:48
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 BlueTuskr, 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.