#449 – The Global Seller Blueprint: Tariffs, Logistics, Miles, & Winning Product Listings with Antonio Bindi
Antonio Bindi, an accomplished eight-figure Amazon seller from Brazil, joins us to share his remarkable journey from dentistry to the e-commerce world. Antonio has become a success story by expanding his business in the US and Europe, leveraging the exciting and sometimes challenging opportunities that come with global expansion. His insights reveal how navigating tariffs, managing logistics, and optimizing inventory can open doors to new horizons and even world travel, painting a captivating picture of what it means to thrive in the e-commerce industry.
Our conversation takes a closer look at the complexities of international e-commerce, with Brazil playing a central role. We discuss the challenges sellers face, such as the intricate Brazilian tax system and high tariffs, and how these hurdles impact foreign companies trying to enter the market. We also compare Amazon’s efforts with MercadoLibre’s dominance in Latin America, shedding light on the unique e-commerce landscape in the region. Antonio’s experiences bring to life the dynamic nature of the market and the strategic moves necessary for success, regardless of location.
The episode further explores the transformative power of AI in enhancing product listings on Amazon. By shifting from traditional keyword-driven strategies to intent-based searches, AI is revolutionizing how products are ranked and seen by customers. We discuss the importance of optimizing product imagery and tailoring listings to specific contexts, such as beach gear in its natural setting. These insights into product visibility and conversion strategies provide valuable takeaways for sellers looking to enhance their e-commerce toolkit. Antonio’s story and expertise offer a wealth of knowledge for seasoned sellers and those just embarking on this exciting journey.
In episode 449 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Antonio discuss:
- 00:00 – Exploring Global E-Commerce Opportunities With Antonio Bindi
- 02:41 – Theft in Rio Carnival Excitement
- 14:49 – Innovative Event Planning and AI Exploration
- 16:17 – Maximizing Miles With American Express
- 23:11 – Maximizing Travel Rewards and Mile Transfers
- 26:45 – Navigating Tariff Impacts in Canada
- 27:22 – Reviewing Global Inventory Strategy and Operations
- 31:09 – International Market Expansion Strategy
- 35:20 – E-Commerce Trends and Strategies Discussion
- 36:35 – E-Commerce Competition in Brazil
- 46:45 – Optimizing Product Listings for Amazon with AI
- 47:27 – Shifting Towards Intent-Based Analysis
- 53:13 – Exploring Business Pricing Strategy for Resellers
- 1:00:01 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Hello, welcome to episode 449 of the AM/PM podcast. This week I’ve got an eight-figure seller from Brazil that’s selling in the US, selling all over Europe doing quite well. So, we talk about everything that’s happening in the tariff world happening about expansion, why you should consider expansion as well as some opportunities you might be missing to actually travel the world for free through your Amazon sales and business. Enjoy this episode with Mr. Antonio Bindi.
Kevin King:
Mr. Antonio Bindi, welcome to the AM/PM podcast. How are you doing, man?
Antonio:
I’m doing great, Kevin. Very nice to see you again.
Kevin King:
If most people don’t realize that you’re in Brazil, you’re in Sao Paulo, or Rio?
Antonio:
I’m in Rio, I live in Rio. I was born and raised in Rio.
Kevin King:
Born and raised in Rio, I was in Rio for Carnival in 2009, I think, yeah, 2010. I actually went to Rio for Carnival, which was my second or third time to Rio. I’ve been there before just as a tourist going around, but that was a blast, uh, I got, I got robbed, uh, but in a bloca.
Antonio:
Well you you got the whole the whole experience then.
Kevin King:
I got the entire entire experience and it’s kind of funny, a little short little story on that is I was back then, I was doing a lot of travel this before I was doing the Amazon stuff and I was doing a lot of travel spending a couple weeks every month traveling the world. I did that for seven years and I’d met this girl in Colombia, like the prior April of 2009, and we kind of hit it off a little bit and I was like you know what, maybe I’ll just invite her to Rio to come to carnival with me. So I messaged her around Christmas time in 2009, like, hey, you want to go in February to Carnival? And she’s like, hell, yeah, so she comes and I end up marrying that girl and then divorcing from that girl. But we were in, we were in. That was, that was our first official. I guess you could say date was uh, in your backyard at carnival. But I remember, uh, I was in a bloca and blocas, these like big uh street, uh street mobs. I guess you follow a band around these drummers and stuff and they go up and down the streets and you’re following around drinking, shouting, singing, it’s, it’s a a lot of fun. They go all through different streets. I was in one of these blocas and, uh, I knew I was in Rio and Rio has a reputation for pickpocketing.
Kevin King:
So I had only taken my iPhone probably like an iPhone three or something back at the time and one credit card and I had them in opposite pockets. And we turned this corner in this bloca and there’s this baby stroller sitting there on this corner and a little baby inside and we’re dancing and jumping up and down and everything, and someone’s like careful, careful, the baby, the baby, the baby. But that was long enough for someone to come up from. It was a distraction, an intentional distraction. Someone to come up from behind, go into my pocket and take my phone and I’ve never felt you know the rest of that they didn’t get the credit card, they only went in one pocket. I’ve never felt so naked in my life. For the next five days I had no phone. It’s like it was weird, but so I love Rio. I want to come back for New Year’s. New Year’s is supposed to be pretty awesome, too.
Antonio:
Pretty awesome. Rio is starting to have all these yearly huge concerts in Copacabana Beach. Last year we had Madonna, next week it’s going to be Lady Gaga and Beyonce. The mayor is trying to bring back the event scene to Rio.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome. Now, for those that don’t know, your background is in Dentistry, right? I mean before you got into this Amazon gig. So walk me through how that happened. You went to school for Dentistry, were practicing, had some offices, and then how did that segue into Amazon?
Antonio:
Well, it took 20 years for that to happen, but I graduated in 2000 but around 2004, I started this small home-based e-com thing selling glow sticks in Brazil. No one sold glow sticks here in Brazil, so this is something I found online.
Kevin King:
So these are those sticks that you wave above your head at parties and stuff right?
Antonio:
Exactly. Bracelets, glasses, all those glow stuff that you could buy. I started importing that to Brazil early 2003, 2004. And that moved into a new business, I mean my first business. That’s still something I run on crowded identification. We sell wristbands and lanyards, badges, all kinds of stuff for events, the RFID bracelets, the one with the cashless consumption. We developed it to a big retailer in Brazil.
Kevin King:
So you did that for the Lady Gaga concert? The Madonna concert?
Antonio:
We did it for Lady Gaga, we did it for Rock in Rio, for Lollapalooza the big ones that happen here, Tomorrowland. We’re the big guys in this segment in Brazil. Cool, it’s like 22 years old now, but it came from just playing around with these glow sticks and someone asking me hey, where can I find them? I said, well, buy it from me. And then I became that was my first time selling something and it just came naturally to me. 10 or 12 years into Dentistry, this business was thriving a lot more than my practice and I just decided to move on to full e-com. It’s not even e-com anymore. It started as an e-com thing, but now we’re this with uh, with the wristbands and badges. But I was living uh. In 2018, I went to to the states, my wife was going to study and we. We stayed there for a whole year and that’s when I started to like watch videos, watch a lot of YouTube. I was a bit bored. So these ads for this incredible way to make money online by selling stuff on Amazon popped up.
Kevin King:
So like Amazing.com and that kind of stuff back in those days, was it Amazingcom or something else?
Antonio:
No, it was something else, it was just like arbitrage. Some dude selling something from his garage and at some point I was in Facebook groups. Someone referred me to Tom Wang, who’s responsible for us first meeting in Vancouver, Vancouver, correct? Yeah, so that’s the first event I went to. That really hooked me up and I very soon started my brand and just went from there. So I learned from watching a lot of videos, from being in courses, from taking your course, your Freedom Ticket and others, but I never took Amazing. We met at an Amazing event in Las Vegas a few years ago. I think it was the last one they had. They hosted probably 2020 or 19. Just before the–
Kevin King:
Yeah, it would have been somewhere around 2019, probably 2020, 2019.
Antonio:
Yeah, I believe so. That’s when we met, right after Tom Wang’s, and they’ve been learning the hell out of it ever since and contributing, and you know I’ve spoken at events, spoken at your events in Puerto Rico. What I say is that by talking and you know, trying to collaborate or to help people, I learned stuff that I didn’t know, I didn’t know. Sometimes I have this like very strong opinion that if you do this with your listing and someone said, well, that doesn’t work in my niche, and then I learned something new. So I this, very early on, I decided that by trying to be very present in the groups, especially on Facebook, that helped me learn a lot. It really did.
Kevin King:
How much time do you devote? You’re doing eight figures now, right, not counting the bracelet or the party stuff.
Antonio:
No, that’s crazy.
Kevin King:
Just on Amazon alone, you’re doing eight figures. There’s a lot of eight-figure sellers. I just met some at Prosper, where we just saw each other last. They came up to my BDSS booth and like what is this, who are you guys? And which was like cool, I’m in the right place. There’s people that don’t know who we are. And then these guys were doing like 20, some odd million, 23 million, 25 million, and selling since like 2016. And they had no, this was their first conference and they had no idea this whole world existed, uh of you know what? What is? How much time do you devote to, like participating in the groups or watching YouTube videos or keeping up? Cause you’re running a multimillion dollar. You know an eight figure brand plus you got your other company. How do you, how do you allocate that time and how do you allocate that importance? Like you kind of just said, that’s how you learn and keep on top of things, but how do you balance that? When actually doing what you’ve got to do to run the business.
Antonio:
My other business is mostly being ran now by my partner. We’ve been together since the very beginning. My business partner just this year and for the last five, four years has been running the whole thing. I’m in the background, we talk a lot, but I don’t really participate in the day-to-day there anymore. Just like more strategic.
Kevin King:
That’s the bracelets and party stuff?
Antonio:
The bracelets, yeah.
Kevin King:
Okay, okay.
Antonio:
Uh, it’s. It’s like I said. It’s a very mature, 23 year old, uh uh company that’s already running on its own, with a very good manager who knows all about the business and, uh, there’s no one I trust more than him and vice versa. It’s been doing really well. We have these.
When I started the business, when I started on Amazon, I also tried to bring some of that party stuff into Amazon, but that’s like super saturated. We had issues with the account, so it’s completely separate now. My Amazon stuff business has nothing to do with that business, but he runs that and I’m fully dedicated to Amazon right now and it’s something that I already have my systems. I have a team of 23 people here that are running my logistics running the day-to-day. I have a very good COO who takes care of everything related to teams and operations, and it’s kind of my job to be up to date. It’s my job to know what’s going on, what’s next, what are the challenges? I’m the one who is reading the news every day of this is going on. What’s what’s next? Uh, what are the challenges? I’m the one who’s bringing the news every day of this is going on. Look what I just received at the BDSS group, which look what I just read on MDS and stuff like that. So that comes from uh, from my expertise, and my uh knowledge is fundamental for the, good working of the team, and that’s how I do it. Last year I don’t know if you missed me, but 2023 was a year that I really, really traveled. I probably went to 12 different events throughout the year and I had a little bit of trip guilt because of my children. They were you know, daddy, you’re always traveling. They weren’t vacations and I traveled with Agatha. We went to Croatia for vacation, but that was an MDS trip to Croatia with you know, we rented a super yacht but it was still work in a sense. So I kind of took 2023 to relax a little bit and just travel with the children.
Kevin King:
You mean 2024?
Antonio:
2024. Yeah, it was a chill a little bit more, but this year I’m back. I went to Prosper. I really wanted to go to Europe. It was back-to-back with Prosper, plus all the challenges to go to Iceland. But yeah, I think next I’ll probably have a couple events that I’ll attend, this year for sure, and Nashville. I’ll be there.
Kevin King:
Yeah, Nashville is April 8th to 12th and the only other in-person event I have before that’s Market Masters in November, which is my new event. I don’t know if you got access to the replays. If not, I’ll take care of you on that. But for BDSS, yeah, but we did a demo of what that is at the BDSS in Iceland and people were like they had not seen it. People that have been. No, it’s like my premier event. Now it’s my top, top event and I’m switching the model up so you’ll see it in Nashville next year. A lot more people. The price of the tickets are half for the top top level ticket, half of what they’ve been, and then there’s a ticket as low as 500 bucks, uh, for Nashville, uh, and we’re gonna put 500 to a thousand people in there.
Antonio:
Yeah and plus you have more locals so it’s probably easier for people to get to Nashville.
Kevin King:
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons. That’s one of the reasons we chose it. It’s right on Broadway, it’s right on the heart of Nashville, where all the bars and restaurants are, and someone that doesn’t want to stay in the Grand Hyatt because it’s out of their budget can. There’s a holiday inn across the street, you know, and some cheaper options. So we it’s all very carefully orchestrated and we’re doing some really cool stuff that no one’s ever done at a big event. So when you take it from 130 people in Iceland to 500 to a thousand people, it’s a different animal and you can lose some of that charm or some of that edge that we have. But we’ve got some pretty cool ideas that no one’s ever seen at that size of an event before. That’s going to be, I think, pretty cool.
Antonio:
You teased me on some AI stuff that you were doing with this more advanced GPT model. I’ve been really interested in checking that information out. I think from what we spoke during that cigar in Vegas. I think there’s some really good stuff going on that we’re looking forward to take a look at.
Kevin King:
Yeah, there’s some good stuff. So, speaking back on the travel, I mean you’re one of the masters when it comes to. I think you told me like I haven’t paid for a trip, a hotel or a airfare for either business or my family in years because you’re like the master of credit cards when it comes to like maximizing what you’re spending anyway on Amazon, on ppc and other stuff and actually maximizing that. And I think at one point you told me you got like, was it 6 million miles? Are you capable of getting 6 million miles per year on just an Amex, a series of Amex cards or something like that?
Antonio:
Here’s the deal Amazon gives you five sorry, American Express Gold, the business American Express Gold will give you four miles, four points on a dollar on advertising spend or freight. So if you’re using Uber Freight, if you’re using FedEx, a lot, UPS, all of that can give you four times the points. I don’t use UPS, I don’t know any any self fulfilled, but if you’re doing self fulfilled with, with any of these major carriers, it’s also good for that. So it’s for a bunch of non FBA sellers or mixed sellers there’s. It’s not only PPC. PPC is what I talk about because that’s where my spend is, but it’s also good for freight. So it gives you–
Kevin King:
Meta Ads and Amazon PPC both? So if you’re running Meta ads or Amazon—
Antonio:
Google Ads anything online advertising will be eligible for the Forex. Plus freight, plus–
Kevin King:
Up to $150,000 in spend per card so that’s $600,000 per card, because 150 times 4. And then you said you can get 10 cards.
Antonio:
You can get up to 10 cards per business. So if you have like multiple LLCs, multiple partners, you can just go forever. It’s it when you apply you need at least 90 days between applications. But if you do it consistently, if you have a partner, if you have a second LLC, you can just build all of these credit cards and make it infinite. I have friends who I’ve hooked up with American Express with this system and they’re up to 10 million miles. They don’t fly coach anymore. It’s like the whole family goes on trips. They’re traveling even more than I am. I have friends like spending uh 500,000 a month in PPC alone and they said it’s the best thing ever happened to them. It’s, it is to me as well. Uh, and the great thing about these American Express miles is that you, you, you, when you spend your miles there, Amex is actually buying a ticket from the airline. So you also get points with the airline. So it’s a fully cash paid ticket that Amex hands money to American Airlines or United or whatever and you make points there.
Antonio:
So not only I have these infinite miles that I’m making with American Express, I’m also building miles and status with the other airlines, Agatha and I. For anyone who hasn’t realized that, yeah, Agatha is my wife and my business partner, but we were both um uh executive platinum with American Airlines. Uh, get like the sweet lounges and upgrades. Uh, we’ve earned like eight free upgrades each for the last, uh last year, so it’s been amazing. Now the children are flying uh with us all the time. We took a cruise we went on the Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise, all paid with miles, 800,000 miles. Just book it.
Kevin King:
Yeah, for a lot of people 800,000 miles would be like a lifetime earnings. Of some of these people that play the mileage game. That would be like their dream. But for you that’s a month.
Antonio:
It did hurt my account, it was a hit, but it was also a completely free, money free trip. I travel, I, I, we, we got the tickets for probably 250,000 miles for everyone, uh, plus the uh, this, uh, the cruise for another 100. We, I had like three, three million miles in my account. We spent a million and went on a great free vacation. That’s how I see it.
Kevin King:
Yeah. So do you have one of those rules where you actually, when you redeem the miles, you have to get certain dollar cents per mile? When I redeem my miles I want at least two and a half cents per mile on a redemption, Otherwise I just pay cash. If I go and I look at, say I’m flying American from Rio to Dallas to come to something, to come to the next BDSS or to Miami, and I look at it and the price is, I don’t know, $10,000 for a round trip for a business class ticket. That means that if I spend 100,000 miles to get that ticket, I’m paying a penny per mile. 10 cents per mile is the value. So that’s a good value. Versus if I had to pay 500,000 miles for that same ticket, it’s not nearly as good a value. Do you look at it like that or you don’t really care?
Antonio:
Absolutely. It’s completely straightforward. With American Express it’s one cent per mile. That’s what it is. So for a $1,000 ticket, you’re going to spend 100,000 miles.
Kevin King:
But you can transfer those miles out of Amex too into Delta or into other airlines.
Antonio:
You could also do that, for my use or the airlines that I can use that didn’t prove very efficient. I would rather spend them through American Express. American Express works like Expedia. It’s basically an online travel agency. They’re more valuable within American Express than they are if you transfer them, because I remember transferring miles to Air France for a trip and the same flight would cost me like 80% more miles to Air France than they would by using American Express and I wouldn’t get the miles with Air France. I wouldn’t get the extra miles from purchasing the tickets from Air France.
Kevin King:
I do. Sometimes I look at code shares like Avianca and Air France or Star Alliance, I think. So sometimes you can book the exact same flight. It’s an Avianca flight number but it’s actually on Air France Metal and you can get a discount. Or sometimes Amex will offer a 30 or 50 percent. They just did 100 bonus transfer so they double your points. If you did a transfer by you know this would happen back in April um to certain programs within uh by a certain date, you get double the points uh for example. So you can, you can game it like that.
Antonio:
Yeah, that happens. Uh, I know that you could transfer. I’m not sure if you can transfer to Alaska, but I know that buying—
Kevin King:
You can transfer to Hawaiian and then Hawaiian to Alaska. I’ve done that, so you can’t go directly to Alaska, but you can go, since Hawaiian and Alaska are joining forces now. You can transfer to Hawaiian and then from Hawaiian you can transfer to Alaska.
Antonio:
You transfer the miles directly, like you can with.
Kevin King:
I just did it to go to Taiwan on uh Starlux Airlines, which is Alaska partner.
Antonio:
Alaska is out of the way for me, but I know that if you have miles in Alaska, you you’ll uh—
Kevin King:
You can use on American yeah.
Antonio:
American Airlines tickets for uh much fewer uh miles than you would with American Airlines directly yeah, yeah, so you have all these. You know the websites that will tell you my miles are here. I want to do this trip. What’s the best way to? I had a kind the name now, but I know there are some websites.
Kevin King:
There’s Points Path, there’s Points Finder, there’s Expert Flyer. There’s quite a few. Yeah, it’s, but it’s cool how, as a lot of people in our business don’t take advantage of these kinds of things, they’re not aware of them or they have the wrong credit card or they’re just putting on their debit card or something like that.
Antonio:
Or they’re charging a PPC to their Amazon account.
Kevin King:
Yeah, exactly, you can get these extra benefits and these add up to tens of thousands of dollars of extra benefits. This is not chump change when you’re at that level of spend, but part of the reason you’re at that level is how many Amazon marketplaces are you in? You’re not just in the US, you’re in quite a few, right?
Antonio:
We’re across a whole of Europe and Canada and Mexico. At this point we just shut down a few stores in Europe because the volumes are so, so small that they weren’t worth the time we spent with booking. Like Poland or, you know, Sweden, you have like a one sale a week or maybe three sales a week. In the end, our effort the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze to keep those alive, so we just shut them off. Uh, at this point, we’re doing uh very well in uh UK and Germany. Uh, we have decent sales in France but it’s borderline unprofitable because uh storage and FBA fees in France are crazy high. Um, and we have decent sales in Italy, which is okay, but Spain we have to have might keep it open just to make use of the Pan-Eu rates. So Spain and Netherlands, though, the ones that we accept to take the hit, but it’s mostly UK, Germany and Italy for us.
Kevin King:
But US is by far the biggest for you, right?
Antonio:
US?
Kevin King:
us, the biggest of them all?
Antonio:
By far, by far. US is more than 60% of the whole business.
Kevin King:
So how’s this whole tariff thing that’s been going on since early April Now we’re in just about two months of it now, here at the end of May? How’s this going for you? What impacts and what changes have you had to make? Are you sending stuff to Canada and storing it? Are you doing free trade zones? Are you cutting back on orders?
Antonio:
We have been sending to Canada for the last couple of years. We don’t do any NARF anymore. I mean, we do it for Mexico a little bit, but we don’t use remote fulfillment for Canada. We have our own FB inventory there which works.
Kevin King:
In a 3PL? You store it in a 3PL in Canada and then go to Amazon?
Antonio:
We’re pulling out from that because we found out that the 3PL prices are okay but freight charges to transfer from 3PL to Amazon are crazy high in Canada. This was costing us like six points in margin—
Kevin King:
Oh wow.
Antonio:
Just in logistics. That’s really really high. The end of last year, we discovered that having a 3PL and transporting to Amazon was killing the profitability completely in Canada. We changed that we’re shipping to smaller volumes. We changed our portfolio just to get like the better, the best bestsellers over there, but we haven’t made like any uh purchasing changes. Uh, as of now, in the states we have we, we have some orders that that were about to be shipped. We have two, two product launches that we fully paid to the suppliers, I said listen, just keep that in your warehouse for the next, whatever this takes, and that’s what we do. We were postponing a launch that’s fully paid for just because we don’t want it to be hit.
Kevin King:
Are you set with good inventory levels in the States where you can ride this out for a little while before, or are you raising prices? Are you holding off on doing that until your competitors start raising prices, or what? What’s your strategy with the current inventory that you have sitting in?
Antonio:
So that what we are holding back or launches, so we’re not, we’re not being hit with any. You know our stocks, because it’s product though that that’s not being sold yet but with whatever we have in stock, we’re pretty well uh stocked, especially with our, with our main sellers. I know that we have to make a decision over the next couple weeks whether we’re boarding or not, uh replenishment, uh shipments, but I was trying I was kind of writing that out to see where it would go.
Kevin King:
Are you just going to ride this whole thing out, whether it takes a few more weeks, takes a few more months or a year, or are you looking at alternative sourcing?
Antonio:
Alternative sourcing isn’t something that would be easily switchable to. We have potential factories in India that could make our product, but not at the same speed, not in the same quality. Other issues that you know we are, but only our product inspections weren’t that good, but the factory inspections were. We would see some bad atmosphere not atmosphere but bad labor conditions that we didn’t agree with. So India was kind of cut from our list. And I don’t really see–
Kevin King:
So you tried India or are you just—
Antonio:
Oh yeah. I’ve travelled to India, I’ve spoken to suppliers. I’ve done factory inspections and product inspections and many of these won’t even cater to my demand. They’re unable to manufacture in the speed that I need, so there was a switch that we never even tried making. What we might do in the near future is focus more on the international markets where they’re profitable. Maybe the products that are sitting in China now, instead of launching them in the States, we’re probably going to trickle them down to Canada or UK to sell them and maybe launch them elsewhere. The thing is a launch if I decide that today, this launch is going to happen in 60, 70 days just because of lead times. So we’re kind of trying to see who will stop the staring contest first.
Kevin King:
Yeah, because you might decide and pull the trigger and say, okay, we’re going to launch in the UK and Germany. Then halfway through that the US opens back up and you’re like, well, that’s where I need this stuff actually as a priority. Now I’ve got this whole other thing going on.
Antonio:
Exactly. So we could do a hybrid of that. We have, like, probably a couple containers of the product sitting there. Uh, maybe we could do that with half of it and send the other half, but it’s something that the team are uh discussing uh this week. Uh, what would be the best mitigating strategy from now on.
Kevin King:
So how many SKUs are you handling right now?
Antonio:
We have 24, 25 product families or product types with more than 400 SKUs because of size and color. But listings like parent listings on Amazon in the States we probably have 24 to 26, maybe. Few of that in the other marketplaces. We don’t carry the whole selection everywhere, just the bestsellers, and also we don’t carry all the variations for the ones that we do sell. Some products that we sell home stuff for storage, and Americans are more into storage and the bigger the better than Europeans are. So that’s, there’s also this kind of a cultural differences that have us not cross over with the whole portfolio.
Kevin King:
So is most of your team there in Brazil? I see them walking back and forth in the background sometimes. Do you have people in the Philippines, or is it all Brazil based team?
Antonio:
Everyone’s Brazilian. I don’t have any VAs. I’m very old school in the sense of remote work, probably lose a lot of great opportunities with great people elsewhere. But I also like the over-the-shoulder work. We’re all sitting in the same room. It’s an open space. We’re all hearing what everyone else is doing. So if someone’s inventory says something about this product that’s not arriving, our PPC team is like, hears that immediately and reacts immediately. We don’t have this you know long processes to for um information to go through the company so everyone sits together. There’s a lot. We don’t have any. We don’t have a lot of Amazon talent in Brazil, people who know Amazon. So the interactions in the office are very important for people to learn. I always bringing information sometimes. I once had like a whole team sitting around the table watching BDSS online for like two whole days. So like, listen, this is going to cost us $1,500 per person If the whole team here, a lot of us are going to learn at the same time. And I mean you know what happened right after that we had this conversation about the contest. But let’s to go there. I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve traveled with my team a lot. I brought them to Prosper, I brought them to CapEcom.
Kevin King:
I see your wife a lot, Agatha, but have I met any of your team guys?
Antonio:
Yes, I remember this one party at Rooftop that Yael, was Fortunate, was hosting in Vegas. I had the whole team there and they all wanted to shake your hand because—
Kevin King:
Okay yeah.
Antonio:
I have probably four or five of my team members over there. They love it, it’s uh, and they fight for who’s next and who’s coming on the next trip. Now, it’s something that I use as also as incentive. You know the, the new performers, the good performers, the brilliant people that are coming with me. I brought a couple to AMZ Innovate last year, Probably going to do the same later this year. Even Amazon Unboxed the PPC-focused one. I brought my PPC team all on American Express Miles.
Kevin King:
There you go, there you go.
Kevin King:
Isn’t Amazon starting in Brazil, though? I know they do books and some Kindle stuff, but isn’t that one of their big focuses.
Antonio:
Amazon’s been selling merchant products for probably the last five, six years. It’s very mature, uh, great, um, great fulfillment. But they’re not as big as Mercado Libre. Mercado Libre still like the dominant marketplace in Brazil. Uh, terrible, uh interface to work with. I’ve tried selling on Mercado Libre here and there’s no advertising, it’s just on and off. There’s no keyword, there’s no strategy, you just toggle it on and off, but fulfillment is great. It’s super reliable. They have their own planes, they have their own vans. It really, really works. But Amazon is like the contender now against Mercado Libre. But more rules on Amazon. They’re more strict with who they approve. Mercado Libre has a lot of sellers with multiple accounts, hundreds of listings for the same product. It’s kind of a jungle still. They have to do a lot of cleanup there too to make it more friendly to the user and for sellers as well.
Kevin King:
So you’re not selling on Amazon Brazil right now?
Antonio:
Well, not at all. My business is fully abroad. Brazil is very complex with taxes.
Kevin King:
It’s expensive Imports can be. You’re talking about tariffs into the United States. Brazil is famous for a lot of high tariffs of products coming in.
Antonio:
Tariffs can build up to 60% of the product cost, without any retaliations or without any special schemes. But not only tariffs, but even your sales tax, your corporate tax, everything is very. We say that if you try to put the whole tax code, the whole Brazilian tax code, in a book, it would be like two stories high. It’s really hard to navigate, especially if you’re a foreigner, or if you’re a foreign company. You don’t get access to special tax schemes that Brazilians have access to. So if you’re a small company in Brazil, your overall tax is like 6%. Once you hit certain thresholds, you start paying more, but these lower tiers aren’t even available for foreigners. If you have a foreign partner or foreign entity involved, you don’t even have access to those lower tiers. And what Brazilian scalers do is they’ll just open tens of companies under their parents’ names, their neighbors, and just be this huge salad of LLCs or the equivalent here, just to keep all of them under the thresholds and not pay taxes that a large company would pay.
Kevin King:
So when you order something for yourself or your family, are you ordering on Mercado Libre or do you not do a lot of e-com ordering?
Antonio:
No, a lot. I mean I’m building the house. I won’t go to the store for a circuit breaker. I’ll just buy everything on Mercado Libre. It’s cheaper, it’s reliable, it’s fast. Um, I probably receive the three or four packages. It’s like Amazon for, like Amazon’s for Americans. Mercado Libre is good for me. Now we’re receiving three, four packages a day of, you know, dog pads, or dog pads or dog food. We even buy groceries from Mercado Libre. There are other services for that but we’ll buy everything from Mercado Libre.
Kevin King:
Yeah, it’s big all throughout Latin America. I’m familiar with it. It’s big throughout Latin America. It’s big in Mexico, where you’re selling on Amazon, and it’s big in Colombia. It’s big all over South America.
Antonio:
They became the largest company in the whole of Latin America, the largest in Petrobras, the largest in all the mining companies, the number one.
Kevin King:
Yeah, they’re huge and there’s people in the States, in Miami, that help you. Actually, if you want to get into Mercado Libre as a US based company, they’ll help you export stuff into there. I don’t know anybody that’s had huge success and done huge numbers with that, but I know people have dabbled in it and either stuck with it because it just adds a little bit extra revenue or they’ve said, uh, it’s not worth the juice, not worth the squeeze, and then they back out.
Antonio:
I’ve spoken to these providers. They’re from Argentina, I believe.
Kevin King:
Uruguay like Knock Knock is one of them.
Antonio:
Uruguay, Knock, Knock exactly.
Kevin King:
And there’s Sky Postal and there’s several.
Antonio:
You’re still doing small shipments from the US to Brazil and they’ll resell the products. I don’t think it’s sustainable as a you know you’re not gonna do huge volumes with that. If you want to do huge volumes, you don’t want to take that route because you know you’re adding all these steps to your, to your logistics and just makes it a lot more expensive. You want to import from China or from wherever your suppliers. What they do, which is good, is because you, as an American, you can sell here, but, as I said, you won’t be able to have those um access to that simplified tax scheme. Uh, what they’ll do is they’ll use their account. So you’re not the seller, they are and you’re using their company, but it comes with a cost. It comes with margin losses. I don’t know anyone, I haven’t met anyone who has had huge success with that, and I’m not really sure how they care for your. I have nothing bad to say about them. I really haven’t used them, but I wonder how they’re able to manage your listings as well as you would as a seller yourself.
Kevin King:
Yeah.
Antonio:
Plugging in as many sellers as they can. Whatever sells, sells.
Kevin King:
How’s AI affecting what you’re doing?
Antonio:
We’re using mostly for we’ve done some listing work with AI. Tried to dabble with images. Nothing great came out of it. I know Joe had, Joe la Madiba, was at your event talking about AI and she’s using them to create UGC and listing images. I have to look into that a little further.
Kevin King:
Yes, you want us in our smart contest, which replaced the hat contest. She won first place on that with a technique that she showed.
Antonio:
Yeah, I sat with her over lunch on Prosper. I really wanted to take a better look. She has this great newsletter that talks all about AI how to do that. So, yeah, we tried that, but not with huge success. We have so many listings that once you want to implement that, you have to do it across your whole catalog, or at least a whole family, and it’s a lot of work. We did use it. We do use it for listing or for titles and for, like, when Amazon came with the new rules that you couldn’t have repetitions in your title, you couldn’t. You had to clean up the whole thing. We use ChatGPT to create a custom GPT here and told Amazon what the rules were and come up with new tiles for us. And we also use ChatGPT for some statistics uh, if we’re looking into a growth pattern. So we’re trying to find, uh, errors in our spreadsheets. Uh, I have three in my team. Three people are data scientists, uh, one’s dedicated to inventory planning, the other one’s for with our financials and the other one’s like oversees it. So we have they’re looking deeply into the signals and statistics stuff that I can’t even understand. I’m a dentist. I have no idea what they’re talking with our curves and you know their signs and cosigns. But I trust that they know their stuff.
Kevin King:
How do you see everything changing, with optimization. I mean, in the old way using DataDive, like you said, and Helium 10, all the keyword optimization which is still valid today, but it’s shifting more to an AI-based, sentiment-based, and it’s going to change the game over the next. It’s already starting to, but it’s going to start steamrolling, I think, a little bit faster, over the next year to two years. How are you preparing for that?
Antonio:
I think we still need to understand really well what this sentiment-based, what Amazon means by that. It makes a lot of sense, but how do you translate that into actual wording in your listings or wording in your titles? Does it mean that if my listing is a little bit more boring than someone who was more cheerful, is that what’s really selling? Does that help Amazon understand the product better? Or is it more specs? I don’t think AI is still doing everything that they claim they do in terms of how they understand the customer and why they display. For example, what we know about keywords is that if you don’t put those words on a listing, Amazon doesn’t even know what you’re selling. Amazon is not looking at the product. They’re not analyzing what it is. It’s just what you tell them. It is, it’s keywords and text. Maybe now with images, they can tell it a bit more. But how does that translate into better rankings is something that I’m yet to understand.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I think where it’s going is more intent-based versus sentiment. I mean, sentiment is more like a big building in New York City is the same thing as Empire State Building. That would be sentience and actually able to relate the two together versus intent based and analyzing just, rather than just keyword stuffing. Actually, you still need to get the keywords in there so that it helps with the intent, but it’s more intent-based stuff. And just at the end of April ChatGPT came out with product search, which is the first step into this. You have Rufus, which is about 12% or so of searches are happening on Rufus right now and people aren’t typing in exact keyword phrases. They’re typing in more usage cases or more, and I think you’re going to start seeing more of that. It’s a shift for the customer so that some of them are used to searching in a certain way, but I think you’re going to start seeing more of a shift.
Kevin King:
Right now, you’ve got to ride both lines, but I believe in the way Amazon’s analyzing images now to actually put it into context. So the example I always give is a beach umbrella. If you’re selling a beach umbrella, you put all the keywords for beach umbrella in your listing so that you hope you show up when someone’s taking a trip to the beach and looking for a beach umbrella. But if none of your pictures show the umbrella on the beach, they only show someone walking in the rain while holding an umbrella, you’re going to lose a lot of relevance and you’re going to show up further down in the search results because Amazon’s gonna assume well, the pictures don’t show this, the copy shows it, but the pictures don’t represent this. So there’s, there’s that type of stuff where every little item in your photos could make a huge difference. If someone’s typing in, I don’t know, a travel water bottle like the Helium 10 water bottle you have there. Yeah, there you go Helium 10. Um, that they’re. They’re. If that water bottle is in a picture with a cooler and someone is typing in I don’t know, accessory water cooler or beach accessories for my cooler, it’s going to know, because your water bottle was in a picture with a cooler, to show that as a proper accessory and give it more weight than if you just had water coolor accessory in your keyword listings, for example. I mean, that’s a really crude, rough example just off the top of my head, but that type of stuff I think is going to become more relevant.
Antonio:
This comes very naturally to me because of my product line. I understand that if you’re selling bicycles, you probably don’t have the same situation, but I sell storage stuff. I know a lot of people are looking for storage baskets, storage box, storage bin. But we naturally found out over the last years that people are looking for storage for something. So it’s either storage for blankets, for towels, for toys, for whatever, or for my bedroom, for my pantry, for my restroom by bathroom. So we’ve always had these not only in images, but our listings and our PPC was. We’re always catered to these themes that were related to the use or the place or what’s going to be stored. And I use an example in one of my talks about. There’s this seller. They’re selling these plastic boxes, storage boxes for toys. Naturally, toy storage will be the big thing that I will think of, but what they do is they have the same box can be used to store Hot Wheels, you know those little cars. They can be used to store LOL dolls. It can be used to store Bakugans and whatever names toys that are out there.
Antonio:
And what they have is if you go into their product list, you’ll see that they’re selling the same box in different listings, but one listing has the main image, has the cars, the other image has the dolls. Because they realized brilliantly that people were looking for storage for Hot Wheels and if they had the dogs on the main image, that wouldn’t convert and how many different listings would you have to have? They probably took the, the main keywords, or the, the ones with the most searches, and catered for that specific audience for the same exact product. And I’ve had this kind of success with one of my uh storage, uh, a big, big sort of baskets that we used blankets on the main image and on another variation we would use the pillows and on another variation we would use toys. And our PPC was very directed if someone’s searching for basket for blankets, show this variation, if someone’s looking for basket for toys, show this variation, and so on. And we, it was. I mean I think it helped Amazon understand also in the old format, in the old way of a keyword, to, to product, to give relevancy to the best variation of the variation, the best convert, converted to each theme or each use case that we were targeting on our keywords.
Kevin King:
Do you, are you doing any outside of Amazon, any wholesale, like in the US, to a container store, to at home or any of the big storage or the guy that has all these kind of storage, kind of stuff.
Antonio:
Nothing big, nothing account, nothing, no one that I know. I do have resellers for sure. I have a bunch of people who are buying like the same item over and over and over, uh, for years, but and uh, we, we can’t reach out to them which we’re always trying to find out who they are and say, listen, buy straight from us and we’ll, uh, we’ll, give you the discount but–
Kevin King:
They’re doing this for Amazon through, like the business bot, business purchasing?
Antonio:
They have. They use. We have business pricing for all of our products, even if it’s like a cent lower than our regular uh. We always have the business pricing because you show if you’re shopping on a business account. There’s like a new, a separate uh sponsored brand, a sponsored products uh section that says uh products with a business price, but it’s like more, more, um, uh real estate for your, for your listings so we do have uh, not aggressive at all, but we do have business pricing and we have these uh companies that will uh, very certainly they’re reselling.
Kevin King:
So where do you see the future of this going? I mean, you’ve been doing this. You said 2018 on Amazon primarily. You’ve grown it to eight figures. You’re in all these marketplaces. Now you’re dealing with, uh, trump tariff headaches and uh, all this, all this stuff. Where do you see this going? Do you hope to make an exit? Do you hope to keep growing it and pass it down to your children? What’s your goal here?
Antonio:
I think I missed the great exit bubble. I was at a point that I was growing ridiculously that year. I think it was 2022, when everyone started all the hype.
Kevin King:
Yeah, the peak was the end of 2021, and then 2022 was still good too. Yeah, the peak multiples are late 2021.
Antonio:
Exactly. So that was a point of we were doubling our sales compared to the prior year and I had this kind of greedy feeling that let me grow this a little bit more and then I’ll sell. I think a lot of people went through that and just the whole strap against the way it went away. I’ve been talking to northbound for a long time now. We’re not actively looking for a strategic buyer, but that’s where I see it going. Probably someone who’s already in the space and just wants to immediately add these marketplaces or this portfolio, but I don’t see the aggregator model being fit for my product or for my product line. There’s not a lot of innovation. There’s nothing super exciting about the product. It’s just another storage item which does really well on Amazon, but I don’t see it as an attractive enterprise for the aggregators anymore. The ones that are left, though.
Kevin King:
So you just said it’s basically a commodity product in a way. What do you do to differentiate it? What do you do to set it apart? Or are you right place, right time and you have a moat of reviews and a big head start over anybody else that tries to come in?
Antonio:
We started well, there were very few competitors in the space in the specific niche. Today it’s like it’s war. But when we started, we were selling our product, our main product for like $39. We now are struggling to sell them in 27. So the Chinese just floated in. We do have solid rankings. We do have a very tight and efficient PPC strategy. It’s been going for, you know we went through different agencies and services, but I think now in-house, because we were very dedicated to our every keyword combination. We’re looking very carefully, so it’s very efficient. We have probably the best media in our niche. Our videos, our images. I think that does make a difference. We built a nicer brand around it than most.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Antonio, it’s been a pleasure having you on the AM/PM podcast here. I appreciate you coming on and sharing a little bit of your journey and some of what’s going on in Antonio world.
Antonio:
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Kevin. It’s always a pleasure to chat, to be with you. Hope we could do this more this year.
Kevin King:
We’ll have to do it privately over cigars next time we get together. That was fun in Puerto Rico me, you and Norm until like four in the morning or something like that. That little lounge at BDSS in Puerto Rico that we didn’t even know was in the hotel until like two or three days into being there. We’re like holy cow, this is awesome. Well, cool, man, if people want to reach out or learn more about you. Are you on LinkedIn? Are you on Facebook? Are you somewhere?
Antonio:
Linkedin is the best place to reach out. Antonio Bindi just hit me up there. I’m happy to connect and share. I’m always sharing something new or something exciting. I don’t have a newsletter, I don’t have a service. I’m just doing it for the fun, the thrill and to give back to the amazing community that taught me so much.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Thanks Antonio.
Antonio:
Thank you, Kevin, thanks for having me.
Kevin King:
Thanks again for joining us on the AM/PM Podcast this week. We’re here every single Thursday with a brand new episode. We’ll be back again next Thursday with another awesome episode. Should be talking about images and how to optimize those images and how AI is affecting everything when it comes to image creation for e-commerce and Amazon sellers. So until then, I hope you have a great rest of your week. I just want to leave you with some final words of wisdom. Don’t be afraid to give up the good in order to get to the great. Don’t be afraid to give up the good in order to get to the great. That’s John Rockefeller. We’ll see you again next week.
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