Tony Donoso 00:03
I know we don't talk about eBay much anymore, but a lot of our dealers do sell on there and do pretty well so that's another one also.
Narrator 00:10
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I am your host. Andrew Maff, owner and founder of BlueTusker, from groundbreaking industry updates to success stories and strategies, get to know the ins and outs of the eCommerce Industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it!
Andrew Maff 00:25
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the E comm show as usual. I'm your host, Andrew Maff, and today I'm joined by the amazing Tony Donoso, who is the E commerce sales director over at Carrera Revell of America's. Tony, how you doing Buddy? Ready for a good show?
Tony Donoso 00:40
How you doing?
Andrew Maff 00:42
Doing all right. Appreciate you joining us here. Super excited to talk to you. Very different.
Andrew Maff 00:46
First of all, if you're listening to the podcast right now, I highly recommend checking out on YouTube, just so you can see Tony's background. That is very cool. Being in the toy space always super fun. I like starting these off pretty stereotypically. So I'd like to give you the floor. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got started with Carrera, and we'll take it from there okay?
Tony Donoso 01:08
Sure, absolutely. So I'm no stranger to the E commerce realm. I started with my own business back in 2006 we were actually selling cell phone accessories and some other little stuff online, strictly on Amazon and eBay back in the very beginning of those channels, a lot has evolved since then. I found myself in 2018 landing here at Carrera, and I came on board as the E commerce manager. I've been here quite some time now, as you can tell, and currently, my role here is the E commerce Sales Director.
Andrew Maff 01:43
Beautiful, so tell me a little bit about the kind of E commerce approach at Carrera. Is it mostly on marketplaces? Is it also kind of DTC ecommerce, like the website, like, what's, what's your main approach?
Tony Donoso 01:56
Sure. So we do a little bit of everything. We do have the DTC website, but we also have some relationships with the big, big channels, Walmart, marketplace, Amazon. We also have a lot of dealers of ours that are also on those channels. So we have kind of a very big, diverse portfolio, if you want to call it, where we sell 1p to some of those retailers. We sell 3p on those marketplaces. But we also have our retailers who are selling on those marketplaces as well, and some of the bigger ones are also on their own DTC websites as well.
Andrew Maff 02:34
Yeah, it's always interesting to have a conversation with someone like yourself in at a business like yours. You know, a lot of the people that we have on the show, they're seven figure brands. They're typically 3p they're typically owners, still operating a lot of the business. You know, in your scenario, I know you guys are, you know, you're sneaking up on nine figures, like, it's a it's the very different world. So you start to have that 1p element to you. You have a ton of different marketplaces. I know you guys are global. So it's a very it's a very different, different kind of setup and way that you guys are selling. So I'm very excited to kind of dig a little bit deeper into this. Tell me a little bit about the product line real quick. So obviously I see your background. Is it mostly in the toy car space, or is there anything outside of that?
Tony Donoso 03:19
For the most mostly vehicles. So we're Carrera Revell of America's here in the US. We sell slot car sets. We sell some RC cars. We also have the Revell line of model kits and some RC as well. So we're very diverse. In that sense, we have everything from the average consumer product where, where you have the mom and dads that are buying gifts for their children for the holidays and birthdays. But at the same time, we also feature model kits and slot cars that some of the big hobby enthusiasts have been using throughout their life, and they're still following the brand and and very loyal to us.
Andrew Maff 04:00
Yeah, actually, you just brought up a good point of a question. I know I wanted to ask you. We're fresh off Q4 as of recording of this. So I know we're kind of mid January as of right now. What? How was it for you? How did things go? Obviously, in the toy space.
Tony Donoso 04:16
Yeah. Q4 for us is always very heavy compared to the rest of the year. The rest of the year usually is pretty, pretty good, but we see that that boost in Q4 from all the gift buying and and all that, yeah, yeah, it was. It was a pretty good year with all the challenges we were facing, which I'm sure many other manufacturers were as well, but we navigated through them and we came out in a pretty good position.
Andrew Maff 04:41
Yeah, I know we don't want to get into specifics on a financial side. I just did kind of a report on some research and stuff that like I saw Adobe posted. So one of the things they mentioned was q4 2025, comparative to 2024 was up, I want to say it was like six something percent year over year across all e commerce. Whereas 23 compared to 24 it was actually up, like almost pushing 10% so like, the growth this past year wasn't as much as prior years. Did you guys see something relatively similar, or did you actually kind of surpass that?
Tony Donoso 05:22
We've seen pretty average growth throughout the last couple years, starting since covid, when everybody really started buying stuff at home, especially stock car sets. Everybody was home with the RC, the model kits. Everyone was home for quite some time. And our products are also a good way to keep you off of the electronics, whether it be the iPad. So our we're still in, I would say, a growing phase. When I came on board in 2018 we did not have too much e commerce presence. So from that standpoint, we're still always growing year over year.
Andrew Maff 05:57
Yeah.
Tony Donoso 05:57
But as far as the national trend, and, I guess, global trend as well. We saw a pretty good increase this past year.
Andrew Maff 06:03
Nice. That's good. So you listed all of the different marketplaces and stuff that you sell on, what's your where's your main focus, or at least, where's the majority of that revenue, because of the Amazon.
Tony Donoso 06:12
So to be honest, we're pretty, pretty split up amongst everywhere. We just launched on Walmart marketplace in the last two years. So we've been growing on there in terms of E commerce. I would say Amazon is probably pretty much our strongest but we're also growing our D to C website. We also have our retailers who are growing online as well too. I know we don't talk about eBay much anymore, but a lot of our dealers do sell on there and do pretty well. So that's another one also.
Andrew Maff 06:46
Yeah, yeah, eBay is always kind of interesting. You know, it definitely was, because I got started around the same time you did around 06-07, somewhere in there, and eBay was, like, that was where you were, yeah. And it's definitely not that anymore. But yeah, I feel like people sleep on it sometimes and like, hey, it's still, it still does semi decent.
Tony Donoso 07:09
Yeah. And also our products we do have, so they keep value, especially amongst our hobbyists. So there might be a car that released 10 years ago that someone might have it, say, sitting in the jewel case still they want to get rid of it, or even as used, there's still an aftermarket for that as well, where people are still searching and finding stuff. So that's where I think eBay comes into play as well for that.
Andrew Maff 07:33
That concept of having, like, resold stuff that was just like classics now, and they've, if anything, they've, like, appreciated in value is just That's so cool.
Tony Donoso 07:42
Yeah, that'll definitely happen with some of us, especially some of our cars that are maybe 10 years old, they'll still work on our tracks. And somebody that might be hunting, per se, a Camaro that we don't make anymore for our digital sets or or a Formula One car that we might have produced at one point, they might be in the hunt for those. So they'll pay a premium, especially on an eBay site or something like that.
Andrew Maff 08:06
That's awesome. What? Um, so you obviously wildly peak in q4 I've done a ton of work in this toy space. It's like basically complete night and day comparative to the rest of the year. What do you do the rest of the year? Like, how do you do you make like, from a budget perspective, do you just kind of pull advertising spend back until you get into like, kind of that q4 realm again? Or, like, what's, what does that kind of process look like?
Tony Donoso 08:32
Yeah, so we'll scale it back. I mean, right now, in January, we're still having an abundance of sales, especially with people buying accessories and extra stuff for their tracks, and then we'll pick up again in the spring, when you have Easter and some of the holidays around there. And also, as the weather gets warmer, our RC cars. So one of our most popular licenses that we carry is Mario Kart. So we have a lot of fun RC cars that you can use outdoors. When the weather gets nicer, they'll also run inside as well. So it's kind of steady throughout the year, but we do have our ups and downs. So yeah, well, different times of the year. We'll scale back the advertising. And of course, like you mentioned, q4 we get pretty heavy.
Andrew Maff 09:13
Yeah, tell me a little bit about the licensing. I love that concept. I know I feel like a lot of brands miss out on it, and the ability to piggyback off of some of these just monstrous brands is just a fantastic way to push out product. Like, what's your approach with those?
Tony Donoso 09:29
Yeah, so that's the one thing that sets us apart from a lot of the sellers on the websites, you'll see a lot of generic lock car sets with cars that don't have licenses. We're very heavy, I shouldn't say very heavy. We're solely into licensing. So we'll have, for instance, Lamborghini, we'll have Ferrari, we have Mario Kart, we also have NASCAR. So we have a lot of popular licenses that people are searching for, and that kind of gives us the premium over some of those generic sets that are being sold. I think that helps us. I think people also pay more for a license as well, where it might be a set that has to a red and blue car, for instance, online that's selling for a third of the price that we're selling it for. But being that we're getting licensed products, we're number one the quality is much better, because these brands expect good quality if we're using their license.
Tony Donoso 10:29
And on top of that, they're just fun. I mean, everybody loves Ferrari. Everybody loves NASCAR, yeah, everybody loves the Formula One cars, especially it's been growing here in the US over the last couple years. So it's definitely fun having those. And of course, in this spring, with the new Mario movie that's coming out, our Mario Kart license will see a boost with that as well.
Andrew Maff 10:52
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's a smart move, and, you know, it kind of, I guess it helps bridge that gap between toys and hobbyists of where, yes, it's a toy that kids can play with. But at the same time, it's also really interesting to hobbyists, because it's like almost a legitimate car, as opposed to just some no name thing on four wheels.
Tony Donoso 11:11
Yeah, and being that they're licensed, the detail on our cars are just phenomenal. They come in jewel cases, especially for a larger 132 scale and 124 clear jewel cases. So some people will even buy two of them, one that they'll actually race with. But then you have the collectors, similar like the die cast collectors, that they always have a nice, big collection. They'll keep our cases on the shelves, and they look just as nice, if not even better, than some of the die cast.
Andrew Maff 11:37
Yeah, that's pretty cool. So the from a marketing perspective, how much of that are you involved in?
Tony Donoso 11:46
For the E commerce stuff, I'm probably about 90% of the marketing. I handle everything, setting up advertising on Amazon and Walmart, yeah as far as budget wise, I don't necessarily set that, but I basically just kind of come up with all the campaigns we're running, and try and scale with Amazon. For instance, you know you have sponsored, brand, sponsored products, video, so I'll kind of allocate part of our budget to those different activations and kind of snap everything up with that.
Narrator 12:22
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Andrew Maff 12:52
Very interesting. So do you also get involved on the website side, or is it mostly on the marketplaces?
Tony Donoso 13:00
Yeah, so on the website side. So we don't really do too much search marketing on our website. We're really there for informational purposes, for our dealers and for our customers. So it's kind of a little in between. As far as that we know that our customer base is going to be searching for us, but at the same time, because we have so many online retailers, we don't necessarily have to do too much marketing from that standpoint. You know, some, some of our bigger dealers will have pretty, pretty good sites themselves, and they've been working with their hobbyists for the last 20 something years. So we kind of just are there as a supplemental thing, but for E commerce wise, we're pretty strong with Amazon and Walmart and those kind of channels.
Andrew Maff 13:47
Yeah. So it's always a very interesting conversation, because, like, there's a lot of situations where brands will have very strong relationships with their distributors, or obviously resellers in your scenario, so like, they kind of don't want to step on their toes. So do you really choose not to advertise the website at all and kind of let them do all that heavy lifting?
Tony Donoso 14:08
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say we don't advertise at all. We do say, if we're running a sale, we'll send out an email blast. If we're getting new products in, we'll do an email blast. We have our socials that we'll advertise things on there, whether it be a sale new items. So we always have the conversation going on there, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, those kind of sites. But yeah, I mean, we have very good relationships with all our dealers and our retailers, whether they're small or large. I mean, we're everywhere. We're throughout the country at your average shop, whether they're brick and mortar with a combination of E commerce, but we're also in mass marketplaces as well, so we kind of have a nice mix. So we don't really necessarily rely on our website for that purpose, but it's a nice little thing to have whether somebody wants to look up new products. We do get a lot of traffic. So being that we're a hobby brand, every year, right around this time, we release our new product items for the year. So you have a lot of people coming and we'll say what cars are coming out for 2026 what licenses are recurring? So that's kind of where we get a lot of traffic with that just naturally as well.
Andrew Maff 15:18
Okay, let's say, because I saw you guys are posting on Tiktok and Facebook and Instagram all that stuff. So it's really more of a continuing brand development, so that your retailers and your resellers can kind of benefit from that, right?
Tony Donoso 15:32
Exactly, yeah, we don't necessarily push, especially on socials. We more push the product than our site or another retailer site. Yeah, I just pushing the product out there, trying to do some brand recognition. So in the we're very big over in Europe, as far as Carrera and worldwide, in the US, we're growing still, so it's kind of nice that we can still push the brand out there, try and become a household brand, similar to some of the other big ones here, you'll know, like, if you walk into a Walmart or Target, you'll see brands that are household names, and we're put, we're still getting to that point where, where you walk into a saying, hey, there's Carrera.
Andrew Maff 16:15
Yeah, yeah. Very interesting the the marketplace side. So do you is there a lot of advertising? I assume there's a lot more advertising going on on those channels, correct?
Tony Donoso 16:28
Yeah. So Amazon, like I mentioned, we scale it up, and there at Walmart as well, up in q4 we do different campaigns, especially with new product launches. We want to get those out there, get as many views on those as possible. But at the same time, we want to try and and just get our products up at the top of search, especially that with so many generic brands out there. Now you really have to try and scale up that advertising to get in front of them and show them that our product is is a much better value. In addition to just basic advertising, we use a plus content on Amazon. We'll use good images, lifestyle images, we'll try and get videos in there where we can to really kind of set ourselves apart.
Andrew Maff 17:17
That was one of the things I was going to be curious about. So like, from an advertising perspective, on Amazon, a brand like yours, I would imagine you have an obscene amount of brand search. So you have people that are already searching for your brand name, but those more like generic keywords, yeah. Like, from a target like, kind of return perspective, do you factor in, like, an LTV because of the hobbyist element, once you kind of get someone into your ecosystem, they tend to come back and purchase more cars or additional sets or anything like that. Or is it more of just no we want to stay focused on that first purchase.
Tony Donoso 17:53
We kind of, I mean, we know we're going to have our regulars coming back all the time. So that helps us with our metrics, we know we're going to see a good eight cost because somebody is going to come in looking for us already. They're going to see it at the top of the list of the search and just click us naturally. But there are keywords that we know we have to really push out there, for instance, racing or race track. That's a very generic that we have to kind of make sure we're appearing all the time. Sometimes those are the more costly ones that we're eating with some of the really big brands here that have endless budgets. So that kind of, it's, you know, those are kind of the tricky things where we have to navigate the CPCs and try and not let that eat up our entire budget, but at the same time, reach for those new customers that are searching for that and kind of get up there.
Andrew Maff 18:49
Yeah. So interesting. Do you have is this all handled in house? Do you work with agencies for this in house that does Amazon ads?
Tony Donoso 18:59
Yeah, I usually try and refine everything throughout there, and that's the good part, that I'm handling it myself. So these next seven, eight months, I'm tweaking all the campaigns. I'm putting new items into there. I'm seeing what words are working, what's what the trend is, and as we get into late q3 early q4 at that point, I've scaled everything throughout the year and really refined what's working what's not. So when we do boost the budget, we can really take advantage of that.
Andrew Maff 19:31
Yeah, it's very cool to hear you do it in house. I know so many brands are like, I wish I could do it in house agency. I'm like, yeah, sorry.
Tony Donoso 19:38
Yeah. I like having to be able to see it hands on, and also the increase in cost of we're having to outsource it. You're paying a certain percentage for that agency to handle it. And if I want to see stuff in real time, I could just hop on to the site. If you look at Amazon or Walmart anytime, shut it down, increase the budget. If I see something's trending or the velocity of something that's going up, I can, I can react pretty quickly to that.
Andrew Maff 20:04
Yeah. Tony, this was awesome. I really appreciate your time here. This was very cool to hear how things run a little bit differently at a company at your size. I'd love to give you the floor. Tell everyone they can find more about you, and, of course, more about Carrera Revell.
Tony Donoso 20:19
Sure, absolutely. So if anybody wants to check out all our products and our website, it is carrera-revell-toys.com you can also find us at many of the hobby dealers throughout the country, whether it be a traditional brick and mortar store. You could find us on their websites as well. Simply search for Carrera slot cars, Carrera RC, Revell model kits as well are located throughout the country, and I really should say, throughout the world, if anybody's viewing this globally, and and, yeah, we could find this any marketplace we are in, some of the big mass retailers as well, in addition to, as I mentioned, the hobby hobby shops throughout the country as well.
Andrew Maff 21:01
Beautiful Tony. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you joining us today. Everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to the ecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us. See you all next time. Have a good one!
Narrator 21:22
Take care!
Narrator 24:19
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show. Head over to Ecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTusker 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 Blue tusker.com now for more information, make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of the E comm show!