Throwback: The Roadmap to E-Commerce Success: Strategies for Amazon, Walmart, and Beyond

In this episode, the host interviews Josh Gibson, founder of Sojourn Group Consulting, about strategies for growing e-commerce sales on marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart. Josh shares expert tips on protecting profit margins, optimizing product listings, leveraging Amazon’s NARF program for international expansion, and efficiently managing inventory shipments. He discusses the benefits and challenges of expanding to Walmart and other platforms, emphasizes the importance of strong team communication, and recommends trusted industry resources. The episode concludes with actionable takeaways for maximizing sales and diversifying channels for long-term growth.

Chapters:

Introduction to Josh Gibson and Sojourn Group Consulting (00:00:00)
Overview of Josh’s background, company focus, and personal life.

Protecting Margins on Amazon: Categories, Weights, and Inbound Shipments (00:01:15)
Importance of tracking product categories, weights, dimensions, and optimizing inbound shipments to protect margins.

Challenges of Managing Amazon Shipments and Auditing (00:02:19)
Issues with Amazon’s inventory reconciliation and the need for ongoing auditing to avoid losses.

Prioritizing Marketplace Expansion and Expected Sales Lift (00:03:10)
Discussion on which marketplaces to expand to first and typical sales lift percentages.

Expanding with Amazon NARF (North America Remote Fulfillment) (00:03:50)
How NARF enables easy expansion to Canada and Mexico, and the expected 7% sales lift.

Considering Deeper International Expansion (00:04:53)
When to consider establishing a physical presence in Canada or Mexico for further growth.

Selling on Walmart Marketplace: Opportunities and Challenges (00:04:53)
Walmart’s marketplace growth, operational challenges, and the shift to Walmart Fulfilled Services.

Walmart Advertising and Early-Stage Advantages (00:05:49)
Opportunities in Walmart’s less competitive ad platform and strategies for early success.

Walmart Sales Lift and Rural Market Penetration (00:06:56)
Typical 5–10% sales lift on Walmart, with strong performance in rural and Midwest areas.

Three Actionable Takeaways for Marketplace Sellers (00:08:49)
Maximize success on your primary channel.
Fully optimize listings, especially for mobile.
Expand to new marketplaces after optimizing the first.

Optimizing Amazon Listings for Mobile and Conversion (00:09:48)
Detailed tips for optimizing titles, images, videos, and A+ content for better conversion.

Expanding to Additional Marketplaces Beyond Amazon and Walmart (00:10:54)
Consider Target, eBay, Newegg, Etsy, and Wayfair for incremental revenue after maximizing Amazon and Walmart.

Most Influential Book Recommendation (00:12:31)
Gary Vee’s books and content for building a brand and leveraging social media.

Favorite Productivity Tool or Resource (00:15:00)
Slack for team communication and the importance of a fast, reliable computer.

Most Admired E-commerce Influencers (00:16:14)
Recommendations to follow Steven Pope, Bradley from Helium 10, and Kevin King for free, valuable content.

Closing Remarks and Appreciation (00:17:26)
Harry thanks Josh for sharing actionable insights and expertise.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites 
Sojourn Group Consulting
Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon)
NARF (North American Remote Fulfillment)
Walmart Connect
Helium 10

Influential People 
Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary Vee) on LinkedIn
Steven Pope from My Amazon Guy on LinkedIn
Bradley Sutton from Helium 10 on LinkedIn 
Kevin King on LinkedIn

Events 
Sell and Scale Summit

Productivity Tool:
Slack

Transcript:

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Today I'm super excited to introduce you to Josh Gibson. over the past 20 years, Josh has been leading sojourn Group consulting, a company with a strong e-commerce focus. Sojourn Group consulting specializes in marketplace sales, and has evolved from being a third party seller into an agency that helps other sellers grow their marketplace presence without having to hire a full team. Their years of experience and team make their bolt on solution very simple for many companies. Outside of work, he is happily married for 15 years and is the father of four children ages eight, six, four and two. That makes him very busy at this stage in his life. He says there's little time for anything except work and family. So welcome to the podcast, Josh.

Josh Gibson 00:00:45  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Josh Hadley 00:00:46  Well, with how busy you are with a young and growing family and the business, we're excited to have you share some of your time with us. So thanks again for joining us. What else is there that you know? You're saying that Amazon eats your margin for business lunch and dinner or for breakfast? Lunch and dinner, right? So what else is there that you know, people should be paying attention to? And Amazon specifically for now that, you know, there could be a lot of, you know, marginally going out the business.

Josh Gibson 00:01:15  Yeah. I mean, it's important to to track your weights and your gyms and your categories of what products you're selling in because there's some products. Say you're selling a printer. A printer should be in an 8% category, but sometimes they'll slide into a 15% category. So you're losing that that amount of money. You don't see it unless you're tracking tracking it. Or they could dim it out wrong. Say something. They as they went through their Cuba scan, it dimmed out incorrectly. So being able to go in and update and fix those dimensions and then do do file backs on those. also trying to find better, more efficient ways to do inbound shipments. and so there's, there's tools out there that we use that can take like right now we're running a full truckload, for $400, inbound FBA, where that same truckload going, another the route could be 3 to $4000. So it's the more time you do this. And the nice thing about our team is we can sit in a bullpen and go, okay, what are you guys learning? What'd you find out? and trying to take our collective knowledge, plus being able to go to, like, this, scale and sell summit and meet other people that know more things and aggregate this information to become more valuable.

Josh Gibson 00:02:19  which, to your point is, if you're an owner operator trying to do this yourself, it becomes complicated because you don't have the resources and the ability to to learn all these things. Yeah. But to your point, it's it's the weight in gems. It is the categories. It is inbound shipments. I'm blanking on a few others, but it's really managing that protection of your bottom line. that's important. And it's also like specifically with inbound shipments is the annoying part is you can get that FBI ID cleared, they can say fully received. And we've seen with some clients ten, 12 months later, they say, actually we're five short. And if you're not going back and reordering those, even though you thought you did a good job auditing it. You can los...