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When we first decided to start selling on Amazon we added a couple products and quickly realized that the complexity of doing it for 500 or more products would be incredibly time consuming. And so we realized that just not something we could do internally. So we started looking for a professional firm outside of our building because we also realized that the cost of hiring somebody internally would be prohibitive. So started looking for firms outside of what we normally do. A couple obstacles. Being brand new to Amazon, didn't know what to expect.

Spoke with many companies that said they could handle it all and so was a little gun shy about really what to expect from the companies that promised the world and maybe wouldn't be able to deliver the discomfort of maybe having a company off site that's not internal, that we can't visit and talk to on a, on a daily basis or whenever we want. So some hesitation there in terms of maybe the company's going to be across the country or something like that and just not knowing what to expect from various companies. Typically, talk is cheap.

Everybody can sell themselves and say they can do at all, but the proof is in the pudding. So you know, talk is cheap. Show me. And so it's the results that really, that really matter. When we first started on Amazon we had used a different company that I found online and it didn't turn out well. So I started looking for a new company and came across Marknology through word of mouth. So actually my wife met someone whose husband used Marknology so started the process there, started talking to them and after talking to Marknology and many other companies realized Marknology was a great fit.

What I liked about Marknology, Andrew and his team is that first they're a family run company which is great and I love the fact that they're in one location because the previous company that we used was spread out all over the country. So in my experience with them it was very hard to get to get buy in and leadership across the organization with the other company. The fact that Marknology is located in Kansas City and all in one place, they can communicate much better and we can communicate together much better. And just speaking with Andrew and his team, you could tell that they are very, very knowledgeable with Amazon.

Their expertise level is extremely high. And it took probably many weeks for us to make a final decision. They were very patient in dealing with me through that process, Not having to manage this channel myself and doing it internally in our company. Again, the complexity of managing Amazon is very high. So having that, that team as my eyes and ears on the account at all times. I don't have to worry about it. So it's out of sight, out of mind pretty much. But they're always accessible when I need questions answered.

With our product line, we have at least 500 items that we wanted to get online right away. And for us to be able to do that internally would be very time consuming with just one or two people with Marknology, they were able to do it much faster than we were. And with their knowledge of how to do things in bulk with Amazon, it sped the process immensely. Marknology is really like an extension of our company in Kansas City, even though we're located in Los Angeles. So it's been very easy to communicate with them. The tools they use to communicate and keep us updated is fantastic.

We use a little bit of email, but a lot of basecamp, which is very easy and user intuitive. It's a seamless process. It's like they're right down the street from us. Again, talk is cheap, show me. And they do what they say they're gonna do. I have never had an issue with them over promising and not coming through. Absolutely. And in fact I have. Again, they are just a quality company, quality team to work with. The fact that they work as a team is fantastic. You can tell that they communicate and that they are very passionate about what they do.

They are very forgiving with me in terms of my lack of knowledge for the Amazon process and overall ecommerce process. So they're very patient with our weekly meetings and they explain things in, in a very detailed way. I've been so happy with the service that I've gotten from Marknology. I've actually asked them to do a little bit more for us. So they've expanded and done a little bit for us on ebay and they're actually also doing some social media for us as well.

20 years in business, we've always had our company focusing in on brick and mortar locations. We would sell to the stores. But we're realizing that our industry is changing. We're seeing more and more people move to the online marketplace. And Amazon is one of those players. And so we knew that we needed to step up and start optimizing and enhancing our listings on Amazon. So we started looking out there to try and find what companies were out there. And so it's just something that we've got to do to be up with time.

Well, we have an awful lot of resellers out there that are already selling our products, and they're excellent resellers. Some of them are brick and mortar stores because they've had to do that to continue to add sales to their stores. They would sell inside, but a lot of their customers want to order online, so they've created their own platforms online. That's been good for them. And it's also been good for us because we were able to promote our products through their store and also on their online platforms. One of the platforms that they're working with is Amazon. Amazon's been good for these independent stores and how they can promote. So some of the obstacles is that when we had a number of sellers out there, we started trying to figure out, okay, who do we work with and how many do we want to work with? But it's hard to narrow it down. We have a lot of resellers out there that said, let us be your exclusive, or narrow it down to just one or two or three of us. And we looked at all of our resellers, and we're proud of all of them. They're all doing a great job. And so that was our obstacle. That's why we reached out, tried to find an entity like Marknology that could come in and do the consulting work that could help us out, that it wouldn't push us into making a decision about exclusivity. We wanted to get out there and be a company that can improve our own listings to benefit others.

Our advertising person had said, hey, we're understanding that an individual from Marknology is going to be speaking in the local community. And they said, you need to come down and take a listen to this gentleman. He's pretty good, he knows what he's talking about. So she went and visited and listened to Andrew speak from Marknology. And she came back and she said, Darren, we need to, we need to sit down and talk with these people. So we invited Marknology to come to our business. We sat down and we found out quickly that they're a group that studies out and really tries to take a look at everything in the Omni Channel out there. Looking at Amazon, looking at what everybody else is doing in the marketplace. But we could tell just from the first meeting that they were staying up on the trends and, and what's going on in the marketplace. So we felt really good about it. But the most important thing is, is that we found a partner that we could sit down and work with directly and also learn ourselves at the same time. That's been a big thing for us. We wanted to be able to be part and understand the Amazon platform and all the other platforms.

Plain and simple. Our listings have been completely improved. We had a lot of great resellers out there, but not one person at that time was evaluating or looking over our listings. We had quite a few listings out there that were totally incorrect. We've got about 50 listings on Amazon. I'd say probably half of them didn't have the correct information on there, or they just weren't optimized at all. It was very limited, maybe one image, no enhancement of the text or the copy. So right away we've been able to go in and start enhancing our listings so that we could be a better company, that we could show our company as a better brand on the Amazon platform as well as other platforms in the marketplace.

It's a company that really they've got a great group. I think we use this communication software that we work with them with to try and manage all the projects and I'm working with multiple people from the company. Every one of them is very pleasant, very well spoken, great communication back and forth. There's a lot of hey, great job, hey nice job, you're doing a good job, keep it up on both sides which makes it really fun to work with. It's a good group of people. Oftentimes late at night, it might be eight or nine o'clock at night when I'm getting a chance to respond back and I get an email or I get a response from one of the team members even at midnight or even at 9 o' clock or 6 in the morning. I mean they're working around the clock to try and improve our listings to try and improve our company and our brand on Amazon as well as others.

If you're a company and you've got a lot of resellers out there on the Amazon platform, and you're just trying to decide who you want to work with or where you want to go, or you just want to get involved and improve your own listings and learn along the way, because this is a critical piece to our companies moving forward, is to understand this platform, to understand the, the online marketplace. And I would definitely say that you don't have to make a choice of an exclusive reseller With Marknology, you can come in and work with a company that says, hey, we don't have any exclusivity. We're not asking for exclusivity. We want to work with you, to contract with you, to improve your listings, to improve your brand. So it made it very comfortable for us to be able to step in and, and start right away improving our listings, start right away increasing our brand image out there.

Marknology helps us out with our promotion and paid advertising sponsorship with Amazon. And I really like the fact that I don't have to worry about that. I can go in and create the brand, help out with the brand, talk about what images I want to see, talk about the copy for my listings, but I don't really have to worry about the advertising spend. I know that that's being managed and monitored closely by the owners of the company, and that I feel comfortable about that, because anytime that I'm going to spend money, I want to make sure that it's getting managed correctly. And I feel like that's where Marknology's skill is also at, is in managing the spend of the company.