How to Unlock 4X Faster Amazon Profits by Anthony Cofrancesco from Data Dive Tools

Oleg: Welcome to aNavigators! Today, we have Anthony from Data Dive, who will give us some insight into the challenges of Amazon data flow or optimization stuff. But before we jump in, maybe you can give us your background, how you like your journey, and how you came to be part of the Deep Dive.

Anthony: Yeah, so I've been, first off, thanks for having me on the show. My name is Anthony Co-Francesco. I've been in the Ecom industry since about 2017. I actually worked for Amazon back in the day before I started doing it full-time. I don't know if we lost you... are we all good? Is it still showing me? Okay, okay, so I'm sorry, I just got stopped there. So what's up everyone, I'm Anthony KO Francesco, I've been in the Ecom industry since 2017. I started my career officially working for Amazon, and before I started a full-time job, a friend of mine from college, this was back before there were any courses teaching how to sell on Amazon, taught me how to sell on Amazon. I launched my first product, went to work for Amazon. I was working in loss prevention, so in the Fulfillment center, in the FC operations side. I got to investigate vendor theft, people, employees that were stealing items from the Fulfillment center, like security plans for the building, physical security, all sorts of crazy stuff. And so I worked at Amazon for about a year, and then that same guy who had taught me how to sell and helped me launch my first product, he called me up one day while I was working at Amazon and he said, "Hey, I've got this agency, a creative agency down in the Philippines in Manila. Why don't you quit your job at Amazon, move to the Philippines, and help me scale this creative agency?" And the creative agency was called Virtuous Graphics. So I liked my job at Amazon, but I didn't like not having the freedom, I didn't like not being able to go where I wanted in the world and having to be back into the office every single week. So it was crazy because I'd already dropped out of college, so I had a good job, my parents were proud of me, but I knew if I stayed at Amazon, I'd end up regretting not moving out to Asia. So I quit my job the next day, I put in my two weeks notice, and then I relocated out to the Philippines as the Director of Operations for this creative agency. When we started, we just had a photography and a graphic design department, and it was my job to grow that agency and add on all the services that Amazon sellers would need for their listings. So we did photography, graphic design, copywriting, and video, and we grew that team to more than 30 full-time creatives. At the time, there wasn't really many Amazon agencies that would focus on photography. You'd have to go out to Fiverr, build your own team, or work with photographers, graphic designers that weren't specific to Amazon FBA. So we were probably one of the first conversion-focused agencies out there. And so we grew that business for two years, like I said, we grew to more than 30 full-time employees, we helped tons and tons, like I'm talking hundreds of projects over that two-year period, people launching products, big brands that were working with us. And in 2019, during the big aggregator boom where there was a ton of money coming into the space, a small aggregator based out of Southeast Asia acquired the agency. After that, I stayed on for a few months and then handed off everything to the new owners. I knew I wanted to stay in the Ecom industry, seeing how fast it was growing. I felt like I was really learning a lot, and what was exciting to me is that even back then, in 2019, there was still a lot of new things about the platform. You could do really well just from having a good technical understanding of just Amazon specifically, and no one in the world seemed to know about this.

So, I wanted to stay in the industry. I approached a company called PickFu, which is a market research tool that allows you to split test images, product packaging, any kind of creative assets, and get feedback from real people very quickly. After selling the agency, I approached the people at PickFu. We had worked with them for a case study in the agency, where we were doing main image testing. This was before Amazon allowed you to split test the main image. We were one of the first agencies that would create multiple versions of someone's main image that they could test it to optimize for click-through rate.

I approached PickFu, grew that company over a period of two years, trained all of the large aggregators and their creative teams on how to use PickFu. Then after growing that for two years, I approached Seller Systems, a coaching company based out of the United States, arguably the best content to learn how to sell on Amazon. I really love making presentations, taking complicated information and making it simple. So I approached them about revamping the educational content for Seller Systems. At that time, I realized that Brandon Young, the creator of Seller Systems, also owned a software tool called Data Dive. So, I've been working for the past almost a year and a half between both of those companies, the educational company, the software Data Dive, and also we have a conference every year called Camp Ecom.

I've seen the industry from every different side, from selling (still currently sell products, going out to China in October for Canton Fair, looking to hopefully find a couple of new products to launch for this year), from the service side, and from the software side. So, a little bit of everything.

Oleg: Wow, it's quite a journey.

Anthony: Yeah, really amazing. It wasn't too long, but yeah, it's cool because, you know, this industry just didn't exist five years ago. And I remember my dad, it was after one of the Prosper shows, I was speaking on stage, and another person speaking on stage was like an ex-VP or C-level executive of Wayfair. And he's like, "Anthony, I don't understand how are you speaking at these conferences that these executives from major companies are speaking at?" And what I explained to him is everything in this industry is brand new, and so if you come from a traditional background, nothing really applies to Amazon. And so anyone who's been in this industry for a few years now, it's just whoever can come up with the best information and figure this thing out the fastest is ultimately who's going to win. And it's just cool to be a part of something that changes so fast.

Oleg: Yeah, yeah. I remember the time I joined Amazon myself in 2016, and it was like, "Wow, it's cutting-edge technology," and very few people really understand how it works, but everyone sees the potential and wants to do it. But it's definitely changed, right? So what we see today is much more mature, much more competitive, I would say. And like, what is your observation of the trends, what's going on in this? It used to be a very new place.

Anthony: Yeah, I mean, I'm just gonna... is it okay if I share a screen just for one second? Because I want to show a slide that I think people will find is pretty helpful. So, I'm not going to go through like a whole presentation or anything like that today, but I really love showing this example. I made this... let's see here... yeah, I think it's in consideration. We will surround audio, so it can be clear for people that just listen for us.

Oleg: Okay, yeah, I got you.

Anthony: Can you see the slide right now?

Oleg: Um, okay, one second, one second. I gotta click here. I got it now.

Anthony: Okay, I think you can see it now, right?

Oleg: Uh, yes, let me add to the stage. Yeah, I can see.

Anthony: Yeah, okay. So I'll describe the slide for anyone who's joining over audio, but this is really fascinating to me because the older I get in this world, I realize that it is possible to tell the future. We can't always predict what's going to happen 100%, but we can make really accurate predictions on where things are going based on where things have been in the past. And so, I've always been fascinated with this because when I first started getting into the industry, the landscape of Amazon was very different from where it is today, and things that work, things that we used to teach back then, are just not applicable now. I was talking with someone at a conference a few weeks ago, and we were saying, like, if you had the technology, the software, and then you had the knowledge set that you have now, and you were to go back selling on Amazon in the early days, you would be so much better than everyone else. It would be so easy to make money. It's just over time, like all of these gaps between how much people know, how much software helps, it's always changing.

And so, this slide here, you know, you're asking about the progression of Amazon. Yeah, I mean, this is cool. Like, it's broken down into four parts. I really look at it like, back in 2016, pre-2016, that's what everyone would call the Wild West, where Amazon is really just trying to fill the platform with any conceivable product. They want to sell absolutely everything. This is where you could almost launch anything, there was low competition, and you could do really well very easily. I remember the first conference I went to, a legitimate strategy for launching products was to order a hundred sample quantities from Alibaba, and then you would take, like, out of those hundreds, see which one performed, and then go and actually try to build brands and listings just based on the 10 or 15 that performed. Like, that actually worked.

Want to know how this episode ends and what spicy tips and tricks Anthony shared? Hop on and listen to this episode on our website or Spotify platform!