#538 - The Path To Half A Billion Dollars Annually - Solo Stove

Listen in as Alvaro Lopez from Solo Stove shares this brand’s incredible entrepreneurial journey that began with two brothers with a vision and has since flourished into a significant role in the Amazon, Walmart, and e-commerce landscape. Our conversation paints a picture of how his academic pursuits in international studies set the stage for a career that expertly intersects with the Amazon-selling industry. We also unravel the story behind Solo Stove's creation by two brothers who dared to dream beyond the confines of their day jobs, skillfully navigating the supply chain from China to North America to deliver a product beloved by outdoor enthusiasts.

Join us as we dissect the intricate details of brand strategy and e-commerce optimization for Amazon and Walmart. From the leap of establishing a direct-to-consumer channel to strategic maneuvers post-IPO, our discussion with a global director of marketplaces offers many insights. We dive into the crucial role of consumer obsession and mastery over logistics, and we share invaluable tactics for brand defense on platforms like Amazon. The importance of rich content and keyword optimization to cut through the noise of a saturated marketplace is laid bare, providing a roadmap for e-commerce success.

Wrapping up, our chat transitions from the tantalizing secrets of Peruvian chicken to strategic e-commerce maneuvers. We highlight the essential role of high-quality ingredients and cultural heritage in culinary success before shifting to the nuances of effective copywriting and the power of tools like Helium 10's Cerebro tool. Alvaro emphasizes the significance of localization in global branding and imparts wisdom on the 'action over perfection' philosophy that has fueled the growth of many successful brands. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to navigate the complex yet rewarding waters of e-commerce with agility and foresight.

In episode 538 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Franco discuss:

• 00:00 - Strategies for Solo Stove's E-commerce Success 
• 07:58 - Solo Stove's Brand Defense Strategy In Amazon
• 09:50 - E-Commerce Brand Strategy and Optimization
• 12:05 - Strategies for Brand Protection
• 15:01 - Emotional Branding in Marketplace Selling
• 18:56 - Marketplace Performance Analysis and Expansion
• 20:21 - Expanding Sales Channels and Branding Strategies
• 25:57 - Peruvian Chicken's Secret & Other E-Commerce Strategies

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension

► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)

► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft

► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Transcript

 

Bradley Sutton:

You've probably heard of Solo Stove, a company that does almost half a billion dollars annually and does ads with people like Snoop Dogg and more. Now, today we're going to talk to one of the heads of their Amazon business to see what strategies that any Helium 10 user has access to that help them increase to this level. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

 

Kevin King:

Hey, what's up everybody? Kevin King here. You know, one of the number one questions I get is how can you connect to me? How can I, Kevin, get some advice or speak with you or learn more from you? The best way is with Helium 10 Elite. If you go to h10.me/elite, you can get all the information and sign up for Helium 10 Elite. Every month, I lead advanced training where I do Seven Ninja Hacks. We also have live masterminds and every single week, one of those weeks I jump on for a couple hours and we talk shop, we talk business, do in-person events. Helium 10 Elite is where you want to be. It's only $99 extra on your Helium 10 membership. It's h10.me/elite. Go check it out and I hope to see you there.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And again I am here on the other side of the world, here in Frankfurt, Germany, and got to link up with somebody I've known virtually for a while but now got to meet in person Alvaro: from Solo Stove. Alvaro, how's it going?

 

Alvaro:

Good, Brad, thanks for having me. Good to be here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, your accent is not a typical Swiss accent. I know you live in Switzerland. Where, so where were you born and raised? Let's talk about you, the person first of all.

 

Alvaro:

So I'm originally from Lima, Peru, my parents, but I grew up in Washington DC, which is why you hear the accent. So just outside of DC, you know, finished secondary school, started my undergrad in Utah and took a two-year break. During that undergrad, moved around Mexico, different parts of the states for an LDS mission at the time, and then, right after I got back and got into my undergrad, moved to Spain. That's where I met my wife, who's Swiss, German, and that's what really brought us to Southern Germany. This is why you're hearing American accent.

 

Bradley Sutton:

There you go. So how long have you been in Europe then?

 

 Alvaro:

That was in 2014. So it's been. It's crazy to think it's been a decade. Yeah, but it's been a decade, a decade exactly this month.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, where did you go to University?

 

Alvaro:

Utah State.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Utah State. Yeah, aggies, oh, I got it. Oh, yes, man I always try to like test myself.

 

Alvaro:

Right, it's like randomly in a very cold part of Utah the coldest part of Utah right on the border with Idaho but it's a pretty big undergrad campus, about 25,000 students, so don't keep me honest, but the international programs are amazing.

 

Bradley Sutton:

What do you study when you're there?

 

Alvaro:

I study International Studies. I'm really an honor trajectory to work for the State Department at the time, and I had already met my wife prior to finishing my undergrad, and so when I finished a foreign service exam right after my undergrad, she had got a gig in Basel. She works in the biotech pharmacy industry and Basel is mostly known for the pharma industry, and I took a job at the time in e-com through some friends in my network, and the rest is history, dude.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, what was? So when did you get into e-com?

 

Alvaro:

2016.

 

Bradley Sutton:

2016? So what? What part of e-com was that? Was that Amazon, or was that?

 

Alvaro:

Specifically, I was working through an agency at the time that was helping North American brands expand on Amazon generally, and I was a first European hire at the time to bring brands into Europe, and that's really we were able to successfully scale certain clients and from there moved around through other European companies, brought me into Luxembourg. I've worked back in between Germany and Switzerland for a few years and it's so now for almost four years. Great as a thing, yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, so that's Alvaro's background. Let's talk about Solo stuff. A lot of this is that household name. I've had all kinds of cool companies like. I just interviewed somebody from Lego here now. We got Solo, so yeah for those who don't know about Solo. So what's the background of Solo? So the company?

 

Alvaro:

Yeah, so you know, Solo stuff is a business. Of course we're in the consumer product goods industry but, like our whole goal as a brand and as a business is to help our customers connect with their loved ones and connect with the outdoors. So I'll kind of get back to that later if we go in detail. But the organization itself, two brothers founded the brand in 2010, as you see my t-shirt here I'm like repping well the company and really what they were looking. They were both entrepreneurs. They're both Chinese, Canadian origin, so both very familiar with the supply chain aspects in China, but, of course, going up in Canada, so many opportunities in terms of producing things in China and bringing it over with healthy profits in the Western market. So these two brothers were just looking for ways to find freedom from their day-to-day jobs. We're both were working at the time some pretty strenuous jobs. So they found a space and so I'm giving a lot of context. I think it's important to understand.

 

Alvaro:

As they were iterating different product lines, they created this ingenious. What was this mini, now known as the light? But it was the original, just only Solo Stove and it was really a camp stove designed to be able to light a little camp stove within 90 seconds from twigs to a burning fire that you could cook with, with just the stainless steel concept, and so that same design and engineering is ultimately what ended up being optimized into grow I almost spoke German there close into bigger camp stoves from the light. And then, back in 2018, we ran a kick starter that introduced the bonfire range, and that's really what helped accelerate our growth and our momentum as a brand. But originally started from two brothers wanting to just have freedom in their lives, to create products that create good moments that leads to lasting memories. And now here we are as a publicly traded business.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Public company having Snoop Dogg. Maybe some of you guys saw the ad campaign like I'm going smokeless.

 

Alvaro:

You did go smokeless. Yes.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So that's, that's pretty cool. Now, you're a publicly traded company. I know like I think you guys had published like in 2022. You've done over like 400 million across all platforms. Were you up last year, down last year, 2023?

 

Alvaro:

Yeah, so from a marketplace perspective, we were up, which you felt really grateful. Obviously, last year, 2023 was really interesting year. We’re kind of pretty much all brands in our sector are reconciling like post pandemic trends. So as a business, overall we were pretty flat, healthy, cash wise and profit wise, very strong marketplace and international saw tremendous growth, which we can talk about this in detail. But I view our partnership with Helium 10 as a core variable to that consistent performance. I'm really helping us understand where the market at scale really is and how we can continue to take part of that market share that we have and grow it. So, from a marketplace perspective, amazon specifically USA was up in Amazon global was up significantly year-over-year.

 

Bradley Sutton:

What percentage? You know what once you get to a certain level. This is similar to what I talked about, Silas, who formerly from Lego is, is like what percentage is from brand search? And then what percentage would you say is just coming from people typing in you know, smokeless Barbecue pit or something? Random keywords.

 

Alvaro:

It's a great question and actually you know it ties directly into what we can do within Helium 10 and tech stack. You guys simplify, but from what we've seen, both within the search query performance on brand analytics and seller central, and from the believe it's Frank and center said, able to remind me where we can find a search volume that I don't yep, yep, we see that the Solo Stove branded searches is almost three times bigger than smokeless fire pit. Wow, which is wow, which is unique, because there's not a lot of brands that can pretty much be synonymous to an entire market. I mean, yeah, of course. Yeah, Lego is.

 

Bradley Sutton:

One of the only examples where it's like I don't know what you would skate toy bricks right.

 

Alvaro:

Kleenex, I guess. So we've been really grateful that we can drive that. Obviously, in the US, Germany, Canada, UK, Amazon is definitely if not the biggest, one of the biggest search engine platforms for consumers looking for a product or looking into a product. So, naturally, the way we have our omni channel sales channels, I should say set up, we leverage Amazon as both, of course, a place where we can drive tremendous growth and profit, but also a place where we need to defend the brand. So I think from a percentage perspective, all over half of our sales come from branded search, which is really a strong attribution to our entire brand and marketing team and, of course, product development team. We can go into detail in this podcast, however you wish, but for us, a marketplace that's really critical is how are we defending the brand, how are we displaying the brand, how's our content, what's that consumer experience like and how are we defending the traffic that's looking for us so we're not losing them in the funnel? It's a critical component of our strategy.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. I definitely want to get into some specific strategies, but one just general question I'm curious about is from what I understand, Solo Stove in the States has been kind of like a household name for a while. You're a little bit newer here in Europe. What was your expansion strategy? Like, did Amazon play a big role in trying to get your brand out here, or was it a lot of just traditional marketing?

 

Alvaro:

Yes, so we officially. So. I was actually the first European hire fun fact for Solo Stove back in very end of 2020, going into 2021. Originally brought on as a director of marketplaces globally. First for Solo, this was pre acquisition of other brands, pre IPO, so then took that role as we acquire new brands right shout out to Oro, Kayak, Iel, Chubby Shorts. So it was really really interesting experience. And then that fall 2021 is when we launched direct to consumer.

 

Alvaro:

Now, we had a little bit of a head start. We had some great distribution partners, some that we still work with very closely with today, that we had some organic search and so really, from the circumstance in the car that we were playing, that really helped us define, specifically in Europe, the way we're going to market is like where to put our focus in terms of marketing spend and our focus in terms of channels, like where we're actually going to sell. So we immediately noticed that in Europe specifically Northern Europe to be most specific, right between the UK, Nordics, Benelux, the Dach region, right Germany, Austria, Switzerland we knew that would be our focus. So that definitely helped us define where our headquarter would be, which is today in Rotterdam. That was extremely critical. Make sure we staff that effectively.

 

Alvaro:

For us, consumer obsession is our fundamental. We want to make sure customers have a great experience and that logistically which we own our distribution out of Rotterdam we own all of our logistics. That's an extremely critical component. So, in terms of, like, the actual launch right, the setup is critical. Understanding which market we're going to play in.

 

Alvaro:

I mean, these were things that were important to set up, but once actually going live to market, we're a digitally native brand. So when we went live to market, it was an omnichannel mix digitally, meaning that we focused, hyper focused on our website and across Amazon Pan Europe, and we did more our first full year being live direct to consumer than it took solo, so 10 years to do it domestically. So it was, I would say, obviously and this is with the same profit constraints that we have in the US obviously, as public and traded business, we have a responsibility to shareholders, not only to drive top line but also to drive bottom line. So we're really, really proud of that story and we've just seen year over year growth, sustaining those same top and bottom line figures that I'm alluding to.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right, let's get back into some specific strategies. You alluded to like kind of like brand defense and putting a moat around your brand. And yes, of course, when you're that size of a company, like you guys are, it's important. But even smaller sellers, once they're building up their brand, there's going to be brand search and it might not be at the scale of a Solo Stove or Lego, but they would have to follow the same principles as kind of like you have. So what has been your strategy? I know, like Helium 10, maybe Adtomic and some others tools talk about that a little bit, but what's your strategy at protecting your brand?

 

Alvaro:

One of the most profound conversations I remember the last three years working with Solo Stove and solo brands is a conversation I had with our Chief Digital Officer at the time, who's also one of the founders of Chubbies, Tom Montgomery, who, like what an incredible experience working under his wing for over a year. We were talking one day about like specific tactics for operating on Amazon, and one of those things actually was brand registry, and I was going into detail and he, for lack of better terms or articulating this, he just kind of stopped me and said hey, Alvaro, this is a fundamental, we don't need to go into detail here. So, when it comes to like your defense on Amazon, like make sure that the resources Amazon provides you to defend your brand, be it like the most fundamental basics being like hey, get brand registered. Make sure it's basically like an Amazon trademark right. Or maybe it's a transparency program right If you're dealing with counterfeits or unauthorized resellers.

 

Alvaro:

Maybe it's project zero, which is a more robust element of transparency I'd say, make those fundamentals in your business. I would say that's an extremely critical component. Like, make the resources that Amazon has to give to you now, what Walmart's providing right through their seller platform, make those brand resources to defend your brand of fundamental and exhaust them right. If you're a bigger business and you need to make that cross I'd say cross department focus initiative, like with your legal team or your finance team or your CTO, do so, but just make it a fundamental like don't postpone any resource you have through brand registry. Okay, hope that kind of answers your question.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, absolutely, so definitely important. And again, you don't need to be a humongous seller. I would say brand new seller. Why not start with brand registry? You know, if you're just an arbitrage seller or something, of course, yeah, you don't even have to worry about that, but everybody should be protecting their brand. What about on the kind of like listing optimization, keyword strategy, advertising strategy? As far as protecting your brand in that sense, though.

 

Alvaro:

Yeah, I mean indexing is critical. You know, as I alluded to earlier, we have a lot more search for Solo Stove than someone who's probably looking for a product that we sell right, similar to our core product, I'd say. But as far as like what we do to defend a brand through the listing, going again back to the principle, fundamentals, we have hundreds and thousands of assets. So this to any brand that's serious about selling on marketplace, where I mean, look, cost of acquisition is more expensive, there's more sellers, there's more listings, you need to make sure that your content is rich, right? So for us, where you know anyone can buy like a random fire pit from Walmart or from Target for 50 bucks, 100 bucks, you know why are you gonna spend three, four, five times more on a solo, so fire pit? And it's because we want to evoke that emotion of creating good moments. And so, for us, part of the defense strategy is hey, is the content, the copy, your A plus for Amazon specifically, is it evoking that emotion that you want to be associated to your brand? Right for us, it's, of course we're selling fire pits, but the end to all these means is can we evoke the emotion on that session that a customer or potential customers having with our Brand, showing that they can create good moments with the brand. I think it's a really critical component of our brand and that defense strategy from a listing perspective.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Yeah, I think that is something that smaller sellers sometimes think they don't have to worry about. But you know, people look at that stuff, you know, and in a cookie cutter world where maybe there's 15 people doing the same thing, similar prices, that's the kind of stuff that sets you apart and makes you memorable. What kind of advertising do you guys, you know, focus on? Do you just do pretty much everything that Amazon provides, whether it's sponsored, band, display, DSP, etc?

 

Alvaro:

It's a great question. You know, we actually just had some pretty high-level folks at Amazon in our offices last week in Great Vine. It's really grateful for that experience because we actually had some key members from the Amazon ads team coming to the office and really give us insights into some of the new products that Amazon ads is developing. And so for us, definitely it's part of a strategy broadly is to maximize the way we utilize resources that Amazon has to offer. But as far as like the going back to like the ad console and what we're executing highly and yeah, it's across the board right we obviously see best efficiency across sponsored product, right. And then the way we define that strategy top to bottom, the funnel is critical right, defensive to offensive, and we carry similar strategies across sponsored brand, sponsored display.

 

Alvaro:

And now we're getting to a point as a business where I mean you'll hear high-level team members from Solo, so speak about this over this coming year. But we're really trying to blur our performance digitally, right. Amazon is developing some products that is going to affect more positively performance outside of Amazon and we want to take part of that right through AMC or DSP. So that's gonna be a really critical component is leveraging the experience we have from the ad console right through the three core campaign types that we could have run into new products that they're developing and really blur both performance and our operations behind it with Amazing talent that we have in-house that historically been focused on, like paid social and Google, and trying to blur that operation, if that kind of makes sense.

 

Bradley Sutton:

On Amazon Advertising, how does your team leverage a Helium 10 Adtomic?

 

Alvaro:

You know the biggest, biggest benefit that we've seen with that Adtomic specifically is helping streamline extremely time-consuming things. I mean we're highly tactical, highly experienced and very, very detailed in terms of the, the campaigns and the way we're optimizing. I mean, you're probably looking at our account we have thousands of campaigns just in the US alone and then you can do the multiples of that because we put similar efforts across all of our channels on Amazon and we're in 15 Amazon stores a little bit under once you start to consider international. So what Adtomic has done really I can speak transparently with you here in person is helping a streamline, extremely time-consuming task like bulk changes, bulk edits, in a way that's not just to get it done to save time, but in a way that's it's insightful and data-driven. Yeah, to keep it simple.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Taking a step back, you just mentioned all the different marketplaces you sell in. If you were to say, you know, just gross revenue, top five, you know, I'm safe to say US number one, what would be? Germany, number two, UK.

 

Alvaro:

It's really interesting on Amazon. It's similar performance that we see between UK and Germany. It's funny because off Amazon our British business is more material. So it speaks a little bit to the power of, I think, of Amazon Germany, or maybe even the preference of consumer behavior. Maybe German is just again, we need to take a deeper dive in this but maybe our German customers just prefer to shop on Amazon Germany, for whatever their reason is I'll come back to your answer but an important fundamental as a brand is we want to meet our customer where they want to be met.

 

Alvaro:

That’s why omnichannel is so critical. But as far as Amazon, definitely the top four is Germany, UK after the US. Canada is up there and then in the rest of Europe between France, Italy, Spain and Holland. I think you have a pretty much flat performance competing for that fifth spot. We most definitely can scale our performance in Japan and Australia just from the data we can see in terms of search volume for our brand. But obviously Japan and Australia aren't necessarily right next to Europe, so it requires a bit more effort logistically. Yeah, that runs up the top five. I hope that helps.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, what about any non-Amazon marketplaces that you guys are doing well in, like you know, be it Walmart or TikTok shop?

 

Alvaro:

It’s a great question. You know, domestically, 100%, Walmart's been a really great partner of ours. Obviously, they as a business have been hyper focused on developing this marketplace that can, over time, become a pure competitor to Amazon. At the moment, from my understanding, at a macro level, it's still, you know, years away from really competing with Amazon, but they've been great partners in terms of giving us the human element and time and attention and placements that I think a brand like ours deserves, considering how much branded search goes into their marketplace. So that partnership with Walmart has been really important for us. Again, going back to the notion of meeting customers where they want to be met, we've found that there's a lot of customers that want to be met there, and so we're excited and eager to double down on the performance on Walmart marketplace.

 

Alvaro:

And yeah, man, look, I'm based in Basel, one of my favorite things about living in Basel is it's on the border with Germany, France and Switzerland, and so I have firsthand, daily I can see how fragmented consumer behavior is across those three countries and so in Europe, way more nuanced in terms of our marketplace approach. It's obviously Amazon Paniu is critical, but I mean we've got other really important sales channels to us, such as Bowl, right out of Netherlands and Belgium, Allegro, which we've heard a little bit about today in Poland, Manor in Switzerland, Galaxies something in our radar, so a few other marketplaces just because it's so much, so much more fragmented that are critical for us.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Do anything in Korea?

 

Alvaro:

At the moment? No, but we do have a great partner in Korea and we do have some pretty strong performance, not necessarily through marketplace.

 

Bradley Sutton:

It's got to be some Korean barbecue, a product you have. I mean, Korean barbecue is so popular worldwide. Yeah, you know, there's got to be something you can do there.

 

Alvaro:

Yeah, I know that for sure there. I mean, if you guys ever want to see like amazing engineering around a Solo, so I mean I hope I don't know of some of your audience if they're looking at Solo stuff. The aesthetics of the product is so simple. It's a beautiful product, but some of the things we see engineered around the Solo sale out of Japan and Korea and China not by our team is incredible. So owe them a lot of props in terms of like giving us definitely some inspiration.

 

Bradley Sutton:

If you make an in-house Korean barbecue table or device, I would be your first customer. You know, because, like you know, like what I do in my house, you know, none of us are Korean but like I've been eating Korean food my whole life and I just only watch Korean TV and everything. But you know, I just got like this burner with a little tank of whatever it is and it's not efficient. Smoke, like you know, everywhere. I got to open up all the windows and I got to, you know, replay. It's like there's got to be a better way and I think you guys would be the ones to do it. So let me, let me beta test.

 

Alvaro:

Don't challenge us. We're one of the key polar of ours is getting indoors, you know, with some of our core lines.

 

Bradley Sutton:

We mentioned earlier how you, you know, did something with Snoop Dogg. You know that now that's something that, no, not you know brand new sellers or even million dollar sellers, you know should be considering somebody of that stature. But at what point should an Amazon seller start reaching out to maybe micro influencers or just you know people, people to promote their product?

 

Alvaro:

Yeah, look, it's a much different answer today than it was even two years ago. Like, if you're coming on Amazon or you're like a newer brand on Amazon and you don't have a strategy to develop your brand off Amazon, you're going to lose. You're going to lose and it's going to make me. Maybe right now you're on a wave and trying to feel as good, but I promise you, the more you can flatten your reach as a brand holistically, the better you're going to be. In this case, like, the best example is we've been able to grow successfully on Amazon with further investments off Amazon by driving more organic search, because Amazon is a beast right, it's a massive search platform. So the more you can drive awareness off Amazon, you're still going to be technically driving awareness into Amazon. So I would say today, when you consider the basics of you, know, increased competition, increased cost, you know.

 

Alvaro:

Then you have some macroeconomic factors to implement in terms of how consumers feel about spending, you know, their own hard earned funds into brands that maybe they've never heard of. It's a lot more nuanced today and a lot more difficult, so you want to make sure you're definitely focused on developing a brand where consumers can not only connect but have awareness about what your brand is, so they can make a more. You know, feed the funnel earlier and get to that bottom much earlier than anticipated, because Amazon, of course, is the bottom of the funnel when it comes to sales channel. Like, people are ready to shop if they're on Amazon. So, yeah, I would just strongly recommend, like, make sure you invest as much time when it comes to branding off Amazon as you do on Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, before we get into your final strategy of the day, just a couple somewhat off related topics. But first of all, if you guys want to find out more or find you know about their products, you know, just type in Solo Stove literally to any search engine or on Amazon or Walmart or anywhere. If people just want to find you on the interwebs out there is LinkedIn a good place to follow what you do.

 

Alvaro:

Yeah, LinkedIn is great. I'm pretty private on social media unless your part of our online community. My German wife has taught me well in terms of privacy, but LinkedIn is a great platform. If you just look up, there's only one Alvaro. Alvaro, it’s a very Spanish name, very difficult to Germanize or Anglicize. So if you just look up, Alvaro Lopez. All opus, you'll find me for Solo stuff. I think it's the best way.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay cool. Random question why in Peruvian restaurants is the chicken so good?

 

Alvaro:

Man, it's a great question. It's definitely a combination of the..

 

Bradley Sutton:

You got some secret spice that you all are using or what's going on?

 

Alvaro:

Well, actually it's funny because I was like in Utah recently and I know the owner of one of the biggest Peruvian chicken chain in Utah called a Red Fuego. If anyone's ever in Salt Lake City, I've got a couple of chains around Provo, Salt Lake City and he invested like his core investment was the kitchen and he imported it from Lima. So I think that's a core component. And then, of course, you get into the quality of the chicken.

 

Alvaro:

I'm pretty pro animal rights here, so make sure that chicken's well taken care of. It's gotta be a healthy chicken that you're going to be putting into your diet. And then just the seasoning. I mean Peru is like I'm very biased here, but it's definitely top five culinary countries, I think, in the planet because of our mix man. It's a great balance between the indigenous ingredients and culture from the yin and beyond that the Spanish, Italian immigrants, Japanese, Chinese immigrants that came through the 19th century and just made a perfect blend of spices and herbs and that's what goes into the marinade of the chicken man. So those three things man.

 

Bradley Sutton:

It's such good stuff, man. When I was living in LA I would always go. I forgot it was something, Inka was the name of the restaurant. Oh my goodness, so good. Yeah, um, favorite Helium 10 tool?

 

Alvaro:

That's very difficult. Yeah, I mean to be transparent, it's a very difficult answer. I want to say the one I'm just going to complete a correlate a tool to success, and I think the way we write our copy has been critical, right cause we do index very specific things that we know have high search volume on Amazon that don't necessarily appear on our website. I say Frankenstein has been very critical in terms of, not only providing a good copy for a customer, but also getting keywords that have attacked. You know, I've added new, uh, new customers that would have never found us anyway.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. And then if you were to have a wish list, like maybe something that Helium 10 doesn't do, or a feature or a filter or anything, what would you tell me? Because that's my goal this year is trying to get all the features we don't have yet.

 

Alvaro:

Yeah, that's a great question. I knew you were talking earlier. You're going to spend more time in Europe, I think I think for serious brands that have I mean, you've seen now like the proliferation of great brands that are focused on Amazon. Well, a lot of these brands are going to have global reach. So I think the more resources you can offer to better localize and translate within Helium 10, I think, there's a massive market for that the more you can automate maybe it's something with ChatGPT, but something to translate and effectively localized would be critical.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Got it, got it. All right. Something I asked the guest is like give a 30 or 60 second tip, strategy could be about anything in e-commerce or non e-commerce. Could be about anything.

 

Alvaro:

Go ahead, yeah, I mean let me put my consulting hat on, which have been a brand operator for the last few years. So just focus on action and I think one of the most again going back to lessons I've had from the executive leads at, one of the most important things I took away from, our former CEO, John Maris. He said he'd rather have me focus on doing twice the amount of things half as good than half the amount of things really good and that, really, to be transparent, that philosophy of just iterating different initiatives, obviously targeted initiatives that can drive business, drive top and bottom line, has been really critical. In terms of finding out what sticks, doubling down on those and then the ones that don't work, quickly offloading them, have been really good. So I think just purposefully actioning items that's going to grow your business is extremely critical. You need to be. If you're not waking up every Monday, if your business is good and you're not waking up the beginning of the week, if you're not obsessed about how to double down on that growth, you're on a track to lose. And if you're losing and you're not obsessed about how to offset those losses, then you're going to lose even more.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, well, Alvaro, thank you so much for coming on here. It's been great to meet you in person and thank you for taking the time out and wish you and the solo so best of success. Maybe we'll have you back on the show next year and see what you guys are doing.

 

Alvaro:

Yeah. Thanks Brad!