Aaron Conant  0:18

Happy Thursday, everybody. My name is Aaron Co-founder, I'm the Co-founder and Managing Director here at BWG Connect where a networking and knowledge sharing group of 1000s of brands who do exactly that we network and knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it is that shaping digital. Today, I talk with 30 Plus brands a week to stay on top of those trends. And when the same topics come up over and over again, that's how we come up with the ideas for these events as a whole. So those are offering the one on one conversations we're having. So you know, we'll shoot you a follow up email, we'd love to have a conversation with anybody that's on the line today. You know, you know, what are you struggling with? What are you dealing with DDD connections that are out there, our giant networking group and love to do that a couple housekeeping items. As we get started, we've placed everybody on mute, don't be offended. If we don't do that, then the system will do it randomly throughout the call. But still, we want to get as many questions answered today as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question or a comment, want to jump in hit star five, a handle go up on the screen here, and we can unmute you and bring you into the conversation. The other way is, if you can't come off you email me any questions, Aaron@bwgconnect.com. And we'll feel questions that way as well. And the last thing is, you know, we're starting this, you know, a few minutes after the hour, and we're going to try to wrap up with four to five minutes to go on the hour as well. So if you're looking at your watch, no, we're gonna give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. And so with that, I want to kind of kick this off from the standpoint of this topic, you know, was not coming up as much. A few years ago, especially as the pandemic started to hit, there's this huge focus on growing digital and on Amazon. And the trends that I'm getting now, as we hit the last like four or five months in the last year, or hey, we've, like we've got enough by Amazon is off. And it's rolling. We don't necessarily want to keep doubling that business year over year. And there's been this strategic shift to a couple things this direct to consumer is one. And once company has figured out individual pick Pack Ship, it's this marketplace expansion where it opens up so many different places sell that can help diversify, you know where the digital sales are going. So we've got some great friends, partners, supporters of the network that are come highly recommended from multiple different brands of the network, for their expertise in helping with international expansion, but also, you know, just any kind of marketplace expansion as a whole. And so, you know, Dave, I'll kind of kick it over to you if you want to kick us off. And then just reminder, if people have questions, you know, it's our five or email them to me. But, Dave, if you want to give a brief background of yourself, Mamenta. That would be awesome. I know Cue is on as well. And then we kind of jumped into the overall q&a.

Dave VanderJagt  3:08

Absolutely. Sounds good. Thanks, everyone, for being here. We're excited. We're looking forward to sharing some information, things that we've learned doing this in the global marketplace, kind of expansion arena for the past, well for the past about six or seven years as Mamenta. But longer than that, if you look at the tenure of a lot of our team, my name is Dave and I'm the Senior Director of growth over at Mamenta. I've been in the marketplace space, a lot of that time spent on an Amazon agency size for the past five years. A little bit on Mamenta is a software as a service platform that helps brands scale with integrations into over 260 marketplaces through 75 pre connected warehouses across 70 countries. We work with brands that generally fall into two buckets, big market brands that have aspirations to be global, but don't have any global infrastructure yet, and large multinational brands that have grown through acquisitions and have a global presence, but have all these disparate kind of technology infrastructures that aren't communicating with each other. And really, our end goal for them is the same. We want to establish a branded an official store a brand experience for each marketplace. And our software basically becomes the connective tissue for managing their catalog, inventory order, price shipping and messaging data. I also want to introduce Cue Orr, Cue is on the call today. He's our Vice President of Global Marketing, and has been with Mamenta since our inception. Throughout that time, he's worn many hats and helping us everything with everything from account growth, to paid and organic search, product management, UI, UX development and his emails, everything related to them and then to brands positioning that enables our growth. He's got a deep digital marketing, eCommerce, and branding background, and it's helped us really get to where we are today.

Aaron Conant  5:01

So just say had a couple more people join, you have questions, hit star five, we can unmute you and bring you in, or email me any questions Aaron@bwgconnect.com. And we'll get those questions answered. So I want to kick off. You know, this is We're literally at the front of where a lot of people are investigating what to do. And so the first question is, how can how can an organization determine when timing is right? Right to, you know, expanding to marketplaces both domestic right, but then also International, which is a huge focus.

Dave VanderJagt  5:36

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, from from our stance we timing is always right. I mean, especially now with COVID. With supply chain disruption, general market unpredictability, and more more distribution channels can can only help alleviate those and other headwinds. If your brand isn't considering global marketplaces, chances are someone else's, could be a competitor to be an authorized unauthorized reseller retailers or maybe that counterfeiter. So it's always best to be in the position of proactively controlling a marketplace, instead of reacting to a marketplace where your product has been set up without you knowing, or your brand's image or intellectual property has has been compromised your rat bad actors, and we see that fairly often as well. Our general recommendation is once your, once your local or domestic home region marketplaces are set up, we like to say just to kind of keep your backyard, your your own backyard clean first. But once those are set up and have achieved some level of traction, it's time to start looking abroad and assessing the opportunities offered in other countries and regions. So contrary to some opinions, you don't actually have to reach the ceiling on each marketplace before you start to look at global options.

Aaron Conant  6:48

Yeah, I think that's something that's changing, right is the facilitation of Cue, if you want to jump in? Yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

Cue Orr  6:55

Yeah, yeah, definitely on on the international scale, if you're looking to go global, especially outside of the US, the way my message started is that we, we saw a different way of shopping globally than what we do domestically. Most places in the US, it's all focused on calm, but we realize that the marketplace is we're on the forefront, internationally. And when you're trying to go into these markets, the best place to go is to go to the marketplaces not to try to develop a dot com First approach. It's a marketplace first approach. And that's kind of the best way to go when you're when you're looking at going internationally. So it's not necessarily timing. If you're just looking to expand your market outside of the US.

Aaron Conant  7:43

Awesome, love it. So just a comment comes in. It's around like brand protection. And Dave you mentioned, you know, unauthorized resellers, you know, bad players. So you see that same thing internationally. And then, you know, is it the same strategy, like, basically clean up the marketplace, and the, you know, the single reseller or find a single partner to resell on those marketplaces?

Dave VanderJagt  8:07

Yeah, oftentimes, we talk a little bit about inventory deployment options and partners and things like that. But But generally speaking, similar tactics apply, right? What we often see those in some of these international marketplaces, you know, the rigor that that a reseller, an authorized reseller, let's just say maybe, maybe even a bad actor has put into the listings in the presence and, you know, kind of the overall effort of investing into the brand is pretty minimal. So, so even in those situations, where there may be a small handful of resellers, a brand that that's going to come in and put more muscle behind, building out the listings, right, you know, full full product in a full portfolio of product images, you know, video content, building brands or pages, many global marketplaces offer similar content opportunities that we're familiar with through amazon.com or walmart.com. So, so really, you know, a brand has an opportunity to come in and, and really take over even these these marketplaces, oftentimes where there are some of these done authorized resellers.

Cue Orr  9:10

But yeah, it definitely helps us like a, like a leader into these markets, as you're doing market research and trying to understand where your brand might be the best fit when you start seeing the gun authorized people popping up. That's a great indicator of where you will find success, and then also being able to control your brand at the same time.

Aaron Conant  9:31

No, I love it, right? No, it's, that's awesome. I hadn't thought about it that way. But if people are actively and you have multiple people selling the brand there, that means I mean, this third party resellers, they're not just they're focused on making money. So they want to be reselling the products that are actually moving. So it's actually a good indication, which leads into another question that comes in who have hundreds of global marketplaces where should I start? But anyways, I don't know if you also had comments on that Cue, but it's actually a good thing in a way an indicator.

Cue Orr  10:00

No, it definitely it definitely is. And that's one of the indicators that we look for it, you know, are other people selling your brand? How do you know how many searches if we can get that information from some of the marketplaces that we work with. And then when you come in, you're some of the, some of them will just some of the MacBooks will just be additional brands out. And you're able to build your own presidents with a brand sword, and things like that. So it's really, it's really, it looks like a negative, but it can be helpful in identifying what's going to be the most successful moving forward.

Dave VanderJagt 10:37

and possibly and kind of build building on what you said a little bit. I mean, there's there's that there's a handful of things to in terms of like, when you're looking at all these marketplaces where to get started. And you know, the first two, we often talk about our inventory and logistics related. So like, Where does inventory exist? today? Do you have inventory in country? Do you have a partner, a distributor, a wholesaler, or retailer, have somebody that's available within that country that could potentially be a partner to help police from an inventory sand fulfill for that particular marketplace. We also look at things like you know, where are products being manufactured. So if products are being manufactured close to the marketplaces you're looking to enter. For example, if you're a US based company, but you have products being produced in Asia, it may be more advantageous to sort of dropship those those products direct into into the country, whether it's direct from the manufacturer to a distributor, to the brand's own, sort of wholly owns infrastructure in that country, to fulfilled by network, you know, whatever that looks like. But if you have the option to just take product, let's say from Asia and maybe ship for maybe China shipped to Japan, to enter the Japanese marketplace to area, that's that's certainly an advantage as well as something to consider from a logistics standpoint. If I may, there's a couple other things to look at, regarding marketplace opportunity assessment. And basically just understanding where revenue potential may be the greatest. And a lot of times when we're working with brands, some of the questions that we ask or that we walk them through would be, you know, Where were your highest brick and mortar retail sales countries, outside of, again, your home region, your home country, because this could be indicative of where you're going to see commerce traction, pick up the fastest within marketplaces and those countries. A second one is where are you getting the highest digital traffic day? So looking at Google Analytics, Google Trends, Instagram followers, Facebook followers, you know, where are they today? And sort of what country representation can you see from those audiences? And then the second and the last thing would be, what marketplaces is your product already being sold in? So similar to what we just talked about? So if you're seeing a lot of your product already being listed in that marketplace, or somehow getting diverted to that marketplace? The question asked is, why not take back control of your brand image, the customer experience and sort of take take control of the sales and revenue opportunity that that marketplace represents?

Aaron Conant  13:10

Ah, so another question comes in was this standard launch time to get international marketplaces up and running?

Dave VanderJagt  13:17

Yeah, so the typical experience, guys. So, in our experience, six to eight weeks is common. That's that's kind of a broad statement there just because the timeline may ultimately depend on warehouse options, inventory deployment, how many and what integrations are necessary within that country? Again, like we said earlier, is that from from an inventory deployment stances is the brands owned warehouse? Is it a fulfilled by network? Is it some partner like a distributor, wholesaler retailer? How are we physically getting products into that country into that marketplace? available? But But looking at the tech integrations as well, what things are new? Or What are potential custom builds? So connecting like warehouse management systems, ERP systems, you know, logistics, networking, etc, together. So basically like this, the short answers are how much infrastructure exists today and can be integrated into quickly or will just need to be developed. But, you know, oftentimes, you can move through that quickly. So six day weeks as a general rule of thumb.

Aaron Conant  14:28

Awesome, love it. Just a reminder for those who joined. You can hit star five in the handle go up on the screen here. And we can unmute you and bring you in and get your questions answered. Or you can keep emailing them to me Aaron, aaron@bwgconnect.com. Yeah, awesome. So something they're like common mistakes, though, are stumbling blocks that that people should be aware of. There's a whole you know, I think that's the other side just Are there any things that are like a trip ups or things that people need to consider? that are like, Hey, this is uh, this is a no go at XYZ is in place or, you know, anyways, I'll kind of kick it over to you.

Dave VanderJagt  15:07

Yeah. So the first the first mistake is not using Mamenta. But, but But seriously, you know, not partnering with the right people not understanding the complexities and the nuances of international eCommerce trade. So things like currencies, warehousing, inventory, business, and tax laws, etc. Each of these can be different for for the specific country in marketplace. A second thing is not prioritizing the marketplaces by opportunity. So we know countries that have or excuse me, companies that have been into a marketplace only because, you know, one of their executives was an expat in that country and personally use that marketplace when they were living there. But when the brand launched, they saw almost zero sales opportunity and zero revenue and zero sell through, because there wasn't just wasn't existing demand existing demand there. And that could have probably been easily avoided with some due diligence. We see some brands kind of in a similar vein, there also apply focus on new marketplaces that don't offer a lot of demand or opportunity. And there's tools which help with with historic marketplace sales, revenue, Demand Estimates, but even just a very kind of rudimentary level, just doing just doing your basic research, right. So just going to a given marketplace, on searching for your brand name searching for maybe your top products or non branded keywords that you expect. Shoppers will use to find to look for your products and understanding where they're ranked. All of that's going to start to develop a good view of what currently exists and what the opportunity may look like for your brands.

Cue Orr  16:48

And I'd like to add on also an internal poll alignment from the brand. A lot of times, there's different decision makers with different bottom lines and a different vision of what this global marketplace launch will look like for them. Some are using it as a test to understand the market to make a bigger launch in a region. Others have a bottom line driven are looking for sales as soon as possible. So, you know, it's good to be aligned internally and understand what your what's your goal, what's your timeline is for a specific outcome. When we're launching internationally,

Aaron Conant  17:31

it's a quick question comes in is around who's the champion normally internally? Is it sales? Is the Econ team is there? I'm sure it varies, but that's usually the champion internally.

Cue Orr  17:45

I can take that. So as to your to your points, good question. It does vary. Every organization is different. Sometimes it's Director of Global Sales, sometimes the international director of eCommerce, sometimes it's domestic eCommerce, and they've been tasked with growing the eCommerce business, internationally, sometimes it comes from the CEO down. It's, it's whoever is the most passionate about growing the brand, internationally with an organization.

Aaron Conant  18:21

Awesome. No, love it. Love it. It's just a comes up on, you know, I would say 30% of my calls now. And there's been this random collection of people who are asking about it. And I think it's when people are looking for growth. This is the next growth lever. Right? It's not everybody's right for direct consumer. And so that's kind of the next, the next question that comes in. And so I have two I want to stack one on top of it, which is, hey, are there certain categories that you see this works? Well, for? Or that doesn't, maybe there's ones that are carved out? I can say, a lot of times, maybe it's electronics, if the you don't have the right plugins, right, the right outlets or whatever, maybe it's lamps or I don't know. But the other one is, you know, essentially, how do you determine Product Catalog mix for international marketplaces. So those kind of go hand in hand? Anyways, anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts around, you know, the right categories, and the right catalog mix.

Dave VanderJagt  19:20

Yeah, absolutely. I can take kind of part of that. I'm curious on Cue’s, Cue’s, thoughts and experience there too. You know, a few, a few of the categories that we've seen that, you know, had some struggles you call some of them out, Aaron, but you know, a lot of the other ones would be highly regulated products. So caught, you know, car seats is, you know, for kids is one that kind of comes up somewhat often right? Each country has its very own specific laws or each region right, the EU is probably going to have a set of laws, maybe even down to the country level. You know, in terms of how they, how they manage things that are for child safety and protection. We've also seen some some channels Just in the way of like highly regulated CPG products, so, especially when it comes to things like food, we a good friend of mine works for a company that created that does a dairy free protein bars, and one of their ingredients is monkfruit. And monkfruit is not allowed him to be this not, at least as of today. So you know that they'd loved it to launch over there, but they just, they have some limitations and less until that becomes a permitted ingredient in food over there. So so it's worthwhile to do some research. And understand that in terms of product catalog mix, for brands with with larger product catalogs, we always recommend starting your analysis with the top selling products and other marketplaces, right, maybe that's maybe that's obvious, but But look what you're already selling. Also consider your your top selling brick and mortar retail products within that, that country, that new country or region. Or you can take a little bit more of a test and learn approach by launching a small set of products within your catalog within that given marketplace, and potentially even launching, leveraging a cross border fulfillment partner to get a better understanding of what will actually sell. And that might even be the lightest way, or sort of easiest, fastest way to test a market and see what what could sell well,

Cue Orr  21:24

yeah. And in addition, to go back goes back to talking about global our internal alignment. And understanding what you're trying to do in a market. Some brands are looking to push their best brother, they want to make that the best seller globally and everywhere. Other brands want their wants their brand to be successful and have sales. So to them, it doesn't necessarily matter if they sell their best seller or if they sell another product. And that's kind of understanding the nuances of that region. And getting down into the grit and the details and understanding how that market might be different. And offering maybe a flavor profile a color or something that's different that's more attuned to that region or country, and pushing that understanding that that will probably perform better in that region than your than your best seller. So it kind of gets back to what what you want to do and what you want to push out internally. And then we're able to work step by step to kind of roll that plan out with additional marketing, whatever needs to be to push that product.

Aaron Conant  22:36

So another question that just comes in. So are you helping brands with all this initial assessment? Like, can we connect people with you if they're looking at this the chairman? Hey, do I have to write that up? You know, do I have the right products? What is rollout look like? Where should I start? What are the products? Like? Is that part of like, upfront, we can connect people with you to kind of walk through that.

Cue Orr  22:59

Do you want to answer that one? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. It's something that we help with and what kind of differentiates us from a lot of players in the market. We definitely want the brand to be successful. We're just not trying to connect, catalog and inventory orders prices shipping. You want the brand to enter a market successfully, and and have an opportunity to grow. So it is something that we are focused on.

Aaron Conant  23:27

Awesome. I have a bunch of people asking about inventory and inventory deployment. What are the options that are there? Because that's the I think a big concern, right? Hey, listen, there is one thing, getting the product to the consumer who's bought the product is is another, you know what, you know, the different options for inventory deployment that are out there. How do you guys look at that?

Dave VanderJagt  22:54

Yeah, absolutely. So there's, this is one of those, you know, kind of more complex areas that does take a little bit of time and due diligence to dissect. But getting it right is important, or at least having a strategy and kind of sequence for how you're going to approach it is important. So there's there's several different options. It really no particular order here. So the first one is cross border. So this would be shipping from a home country or let's just say another country of origin to that new country. And this is really more of a direct to consumer type model, but leveraging marketplaces for the sales. So in for us, we have we have partners that we work with that sort of our logistics experts in that regard. We work with groups like globally, and AMG and others that help us especially with cross border type shipments. In that same kind of regard. Establishing a cross border regional hub is an option for some groups as well. So for example, shipping from maybe Hong Kong to other nearby Asian countries, or shipping from the UK To within the EU is an option. Another would be brand owns, or even a Mamenta network three PL. So I kind of focusing on that three PL option and that three PL partner. This is where we move product into that respective country and then shipped to the consumer through direct fulfillment or leveraging a fulfilled by marketplace network that you're launching a couple others would be, obviously that marketplace distribution. So the fulfilled by network, obviously, we understand that as fulfilled by Amazon, typically. But a lot of other marketplaces Lazada if you want to talk about some of the stuff in Southeast Asia, and many of the others out there also have their own fulfilled by sort of distribution center networks that you can leverage as well. And then And then the last one would be dropship, from the manufacturer to any of the options we already talked about. So the regional hubs, the three PLs, marketplace distribution centers with a brand owned position. And this is basically it's more kind of relative to where a manufacturer is actually able, able and equipped to handle this. So having the manufacturer ship cross border to a brand owned or three PL warehouse, or to a marketplace fulfilled by network are all options.

Aaron Conant  26:21

No, that is awesome. But how do you how do you choose? Right? I think that's the next question. How does a brand choose which one is is the best?

Dave VanderJagt  26:32

Yeah. Yeah. So it's, um, you know, typically it's, it's what is does anything exist today. So, like we talked about earlier, we kind of see groups, sort of approaching this from two different angles. One is like, I'd like I see this, I believe that there's an opportunity from in these global marketplaces. But I have zero presence there today. I have no retailers, no wholesalers, no partners, no distributors, like there's nothing that exists in that country today. And that's kind of like a more of like a whitespace type approach. So like, that's, that's that's kind of one one option is okay, let's let's figure out maybe three PLs a way to do it, maybe cross border just to test the market is a way to do it. The other is where there's already something happening in that particular marketplace, there's already you know, product being listed. How is it getting there? Is it getting? Is it some type of channel diversion? Is it is there actually a distributor or some type of retail network that you have that that the brand already has relationships with or maybe somewhere inside the brands distribution network, our product is getting sold into those countries. Oftentimes, if you have that kind of advantage in you and you have a let's call it a retail or wholesale partner in country that you trust and have some type of a relationship with, they can be a great asset in terms of helping deploy from the inventory standpoint, while the brand owns and controls the actual marketplace representation of all the products. So everything we've talked about earlier that content, potentially advertising, brand store presences and enhanced content within the within the marketplace listings, all of those different things.

Cue Orr  28:16

And some of the other things that we also want to look at our we want to cost shift the product and wasted dimensions, need to understand what the total landed cost is going to be from either shipping cross border or to land the product there and warehouses. And one of the network's also a huge thing for cross border is the de minimis levels, understanding what you're going to be taxed on and what is the threshold. For instance, Brazil, the minimum level is $50. So any product that is shipped in Brazil above $50, cross border is cast that I believe 100%, for that good. So those are just a couple of different things. details that you kind of need to know, when you're looking into choosing a marketplace and what's going to be the best fit for your product.

Aaron Conant  29:16

I think it's a great segue to because a lot of questions come up with international around duties and taxes, you know, in selling the new markets as a whole. How does a brand figure out what those duties and taxes are? You know, doesn't get the flaming. I think back to my branded days. They always got the finance team a little flustered. When we started about launching International, you know, POTUS brand figured out because he got access?

Cue Orr  29:40

Yeah, definitely. It's a tough thing. But we usually we recommend working with a logistics company that specializes in this import exports. And understanding that down to a tee we partner with with many different companies to understand that on on a country by country basis and are able to connect Are brands with those those people?

Aaron Conant  30:02

Yeah, absolutely. So, couple more questions that have come in here. One says our company has grown through brand acquisitions. And now we have multiple disparate technology infrastructures in different regions and countries, what would be your recommended approach?

Dave VanderJagt  30:17

Yeah, so in that situation, good question. But most companies in this position will basically need to decide whether it's more advantageous to consolidate systems or find integration points to connect those systems. So at Mamenta, one of our our core value propositions is our ability to provide custom integrations into almost any technology system or, or tech stack. And that allows us to kind of stitch together and control the brand's global catalog inventory, order price, shipping messaging data, and then the brand could see a bigger picture of their marketplace presence and health, and then be better equipped to make decisions at a global level. In terms of process, first, we recommend starting with an audit of the current tech stack that touches anything to do with the marketplace. So touch briefly on this earlier, but typically, this is some combination of ERP WMS, warehouse management system WMS, system fulfillment, logistics, could be several layers deeper, if there are legacy systems involved. I started my career at Whirlpool, you know, over 100 year old company, we were always dealing with, with legacy tech systems and trying to kind of passion pull things together, it was it was pretty common, you know, the audit, and in sort of running an audit to understand everything like that could stretch beyond those in house systems into distribution, wholesale or retail partners as well. Like we said earlier, depending on how inventory would be deployed, understanding the technology stack within the partner, let's say that's going to help us with moving inventory into the marketplace or inventory to the end customer is also going to be important. So we recommend, from there prioritizing which marketplaces are most important based on that opportunity assessment we talked about earlier. And then determining where the focus needs to be. From from our standpoint, we look at which parts of a brand's technology stack, we already have pre existing integrations with. Like I mentioned earlier, we have, we have integrations into over 260 marketplaces. But there are more out there. So we kind of look at what we have that exist today. And then we scope in any custom or new integrations, and then prioritize those individually with the brand.

Aaron Conant  32:33

Awesome. Love it. Just have a hand up. I'll unmute Phil here really quick, Phil, if you want to jump in and get a question, you know, refinish on yourself company be awesome. And then ask away?

Phil 32:42

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on. Phil, Vice President of Sales for DHL eCommerce. Yeah, probably could chime in on several of the discussions that were going on. But More more recently about the duties and taxes, just about every company and every transportation provider out there has some kind of duty and tax calculator that will integrate and plug in with multiple marketplace platforms. So I think that's all taken care of somebody earlier mentioned that, you know, like baby seats a little bit too big. And in terms of the new one of the new trends out there, which is whether it's international or domestic distribution for their brands, it's highly, the costs are just being increased more and more every year in terms of dimensional weight, surcharges and things like that. So all this work upstream in the supply chain with marketplaces and strategies are all done. And then they come to find out there's too expensive and that's really the extinction of of the company just because of the products they're trying to move. So it's fair to say it's probably an argue arguable number, but 70 to 80% of all views and good distributed within within commerce is less than five pounds. And that's more more of a favorable view. Not everybody, of course, can do 100% Less than five pounds, because of course, there's plenty of things that are over and bigger than that. But the ones that are really selling today out there in the in the marketplaces and in the world logistically are the ones that cost less. Now another trend that's going on right now is three to one clearance, which I'm not a customs broker, but some of you may or may not know that term, but it's up to $800 per item and on the customs invoice that comes through a three PL and gets imported into the United States for distribution from Asia, from China from Vietnam from wherever. And so there's only a few three fields that do this currently. So your your merchandise would come in via ocean, it would go into c'est la port. It would go transfer and bond down to Mexico where there's a few three pls. And then not only are they taking advantage of the Mexican labor rate and those costs down there. But then when it comes into the country, it comes in tax and duty free. And wow. You know, yeah, you know, one other older trend would would be what everybody knows, which is Amazon build, not all the recipes, and it's called regionalization. So that's older now, right? So the one biggest mistake we were talking about mistakes earlier, is all this work has done in the middle and the upper part of the of the supply chain, and no one ever thinks about the cost to move that item, or what the problems could be. So marketing within a company develops the Product to Ship. And you know, maybe it weighs 1.02 pounds when finished with marketing, you know, designing the packaging, etc, etc. But they never went back upstream. So all of a sudden, you're talking about dollars difference. And this is something else that's never thought of 70 to 80% of cost line item distribution and shipping costs.

Aaron Conant  36:03

You bring up a great point, because I have another question that comes in as well. It is rapid, and we'll jump back out to Phil. But one second here. Just placing back on new per se here. The question comes in is right around what you're talking about, you know, you know, I get that, you know, around a customer facing integrations around any given country language ingredients compliance. Can Can you have them expand more about how to manage the logistical path from production line to consumer of these various countries? Widget times cost, you know, $1 FOB pickup and US selling into Amazon? How does this translate in the EU? So anyways, to Dave, I don't know if you had thoughts on there as well. But it's kind of tagging off to what you know, Phil's talking about.

Cue Orr  36:52

Yeah, yeah, jump in? Yeah, definitely. There's some, it's something that Mamenta that I know, a lot of people don't look at. But when we're when we're doing these deals, and we're partnering with people, that's something that we absolutely have to look at. Because ultimately, that deal is going to fall apart. If we can't deliver the product, at a price to make profit, or at a price that is aligned with the company's goals of building awareness, sometimes we'll we'll do a partnership that necessarily isn't about isn't about profit, it's about building awareness and understanding if a product is going to be accepted within a region, and then they know that they can actually move product in there, into retailers and things like that. So that's one way to look at it. But we also, we always want to understand what the what the landed cost is what Look, the bottom line was, what is shipping, what does that full landed cost gonna be. So everybody understands what that is going to cost. Everybody overall.

Aaron Conant  38:04

Another quick question comes in around the role of technology in the space. I would love to hear your thoughts, your thoughts around that. And then another one comes in around advertising?

Dave VanderJagt  38:15

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of times the role of technology we sometimes hear kind of putting in that bucket of like, what, what do you need to look at from kind of a people process technology standpoint? You know, like, there's a lot, Phil touched on some major things, right? Understanding landed costs, understanding the business tax law, everything that goes into it, you know, from our standpoint, is one of the one it's kind of one of the value propositions that we bring either through through directly through Mamenta through, you know, our team and just decades of global global trade experience, as well as just helping companies actually deployed in these countries and actually leveraging a pretty large operating partner network, to focus on specific areas where maybe Mamenta does not have to have direct internal expertise. So I mean, theoretically, you know, a brand could do this on their own. They could they could, they could build the internal knowledge and expertise to do it. But one of the one of the faster ways or sort of faster paths, is working with a group like Mamenta. And sort of leveraging that operating partner network that's already pre built to sort of understand the exact opportunity, the audit the analysis and what it's going to take to be successful on those marketplaces. I think there was another question in there as well about advertising, right?

Aaron Conant  39:36

Yeah. What marketplaces offer advertising opportunities, PPC, programmatic other.

Cue Orr  39:41

Yeah, yeah, you bet. Yeah, I can so most markets going at you. Oh, yeah. Oh, good. Take that. So yeah, most marketplaces offer some type of PPC on platform type of advertising. If they don't, we partner either. We're able to help internally with advertising, through Google ad networks, social channels, or we partner with local agency, they're able to roll out holistic marketing plans to drive drive traffic, create awareness, overall build the brand. So it's kind of marketplace, the marketplace, region to region type of thing. What is the best fit? But we're, we're able to work hand in hand with the brands and local agencies to commit a brand. launch successful.

Aaron Conant  40:30

Awesome. The next question comes in is around KPIs. So what are your typical? I mean, so another question that came in was around a lunchtime? We, I think we covered that earlier on, it's six to eight weeks, it may take a little longer, a little shorter, depending on how many integrations need to be done. You know, we talked about inventory, getting that out. And the next one, you know, is around like, like KPIs, like, how long before we know, know if it's going to work or not? And what are those things we should be looking at? They're going to be indicators, I think, you know, one of the things, you know, that was the highlight is like, hey, it's not always to make money right away. Sometimes it's just to feel out, you know, the category or the brand name or something like that. But we'd love to hear your thoughts around. What are the typical KPIs, you lay out with guys working with different companies. So I'm sure you have a variety of KPIs that you're looking at?

Dave VanderJagt 41:19

Sure. So this point in the process, where there's been, there's been some opportunity assessment, right, there's, there's we've looked at costs, we determine that there's a an entry into this marketplace that makes sense, or at least look like it appears to make sense, right? All signs point to it, let's get let's get the, the, the account set up, figure out exactly what what support network, we need to make that marketplace successful. And now we're starting to actually get products product listings are sort of that product catalog built out that branded presence built out. So for where should we start focusing, like what are the most important, you know, just like KPIs metrics that we should be looking at, and really, you know, the fundamentals of of the standard kind of marketing funnel apply here. So initially, our recommendation is going to be looking at impressions, right, so start at the top of the funnel, building awareness of the brand, getting eyeballs on the listings, you know, having a focus on those, those standard marketing KPIs, and then start working your way down and into the, or through the funnel, through consideration, purchase, activation, and then even post purchase the bottom of the funnel loyalty and advocacy, and have strategies in place with metrics for each of those. So really similar approach that your brand probably took for other marketplaces, maybe when they started to apply some focus on Amazon domestically, or maybe Walmart or eBay, whatever their particular marketplace. In so it's really a very similar approach, but starts us off the funnel, trying to understand the brand getting eyeballs getting getting traction is, is there is there a market out there that's looking at these products, and then start to understand what's it going to take to actually get them to convert?

Cue Orr  43:02

In addition, one thing that we also look at this price sensitivity, and understand how that local consumer is going to kind of react and going and going back to like the line of cost and everything, as you're shifting cross border, how that stuff is being displayed, a lot of times it will show on price versus a price plus shipping. So that can determine if a customer is willing to buy it based on how it's appearing on the marketplace, whether those two numbers are separate. And then also understanding if they're, they're willing to pay a premium for that product, where you may think that landed cost may be too high domestically, but because in that country or that region, the product isn't available, but there's demand for they're able to pay that additional premium that may be on thinkable and a local or domestic market. So we try to keep especially early on, we tried to keep a close eye on pricing and pricing of competitive products, and how that's being displayed and kind of measure that and try it a couple different ways. If we're not getting the reaction that we're we're looking for.

Aaron Conant  44:15

You have any you know, just thinking on that. And it kind of matches up with another question that comes in. How do I understand the revenue sales potential of global marketplaces? And I said, that's what people want to know at the end of the day. Is the juice worth the squeeze right time, effort money? Is it worth everything that I'm going to put into it? And then what is the typical lift internally at a company to get this launch? Because of a six to eight weeks? It seems like a pretty short timeframe. If it's a pretty easy lift, but is it basically just give it a try. Like it's worth spending a quarter to try and figure it out to get some feedback. We'd love to hear your your thoughts there. You know, how do I understand sales revenue potential of new global marketplaces?

Dave VanderJagt  44:59

Yeah, Absolutely so. So that approach is really that that kind of global audit we talked about. So it starts with some of the things Cue mentioned. So, first looking at competitors, how many are out there? What do you know about them? How long have they been selling? How much effort does it appear they've invested into building up that marketplace correctly. Second thing would be understand which of your market there excuse me which of your products is any are already listed, and who is selling them. And obviously, this can be tough as seller names are rarely the same as same name as the actual business name of that seller. But at least it kind of puts you in a position to do some additional digging and research. Some marketplaces will actually work directly with the brand to provide a market cap or other category specific data for product categories. For example, like makeup is X amount of sales revenue per year within their platform, or headphones are doing X million are growing or declining at specific rates. In our experience, eBay is actually an example of a group that will often work with directly with a brand to provide them opportunity analysis, as well as potentially helping help them with some promotional strategy and, and help them launch on the platform as well. Last thing would be leveraging technology to understand that opportunity wherever you can. So tools like helium 10, Jungle Scout, other marketplace intelligent tools, intelligence tools, offer some insight into unit sales revenue, other qualifiable metrics for looking at looking back historically. We've also heard groups like the Tista or, or statline, offer some level of global marketplace intelligence. From our research, that data's is limited to some certain categories. But for our clients, we do a lot of legwork. Before we kick off any marketplace, we realized, obviously, it's crucial to have confidence in the success of a new launch. And especially with all the resources in alignment that that are needed to get to get started. And a lot of times, you know, we kind of go through that opportunity analysis, you know, free of charge ahead of time, just just to make sure that it's going to be successful. Ultimately, at the end of the day, groups like Mamenta are only successful if they help the brands that they connect to these global marketplaces be successful. So we're incentivized and aligned right from the beginning.

Aaron Conant  47:36

Another question, they mentioned very marketplace starting marketplace first and then dot com. Can you elaborate on marketplace first is that physical retail stores or you think an international, it's easier to do an international marketplace than an international dot com

Cue Orr  47:54

Yeah, I’ll take that they all take part easier and a part of where that money most international markets shop. They're not used to shopping on.com dot coms are coming around. But most most places are based around global market or around marketplaces. And that's the way they actually came up shopping before the digital era. They were shopping on marketplaces, or local marketplaces, bodegas things like that. And then over time that transferred and to an online version of that marketplace or bodega, and now, that's where there is trust in shopping so and it's easier to kind of go into the digital marketplaces, then trying to establish your own brick and mortar or a retail location or build out a whole localized.com. And then also, with a marketplace is easier to connect into multiple ones, and get the traffic that they're already driving to the marketplace. And if you're able to partner with these marketplaces, they'll give you additional advertising, promote you during different launches and things like that. Whereas if you're voting for your own dot com, you're doing that per country, and then you're having to drive your own traffic to your own site and hoping people that are come come back as opposed to being on these marketplaces internationally and being discovered and being highlighted. And being part of this network that's getting you know, millions and millions of hits on on on on the daily

Aaron Conant  49:40

and I see we're getting right to time here. You know and I want to say you know quick thank you to Dave and Cue both of you for you know being open to letting us put you on the hot seat for the last 15 minutes or so. You guys are great friends, partners supporters, the network I would encourage anybody on the line today if you're looking for more information, the team at Mamenta comes highly recommended, you know, in the space, though the highest recommended from the brands in the network is a whole lot of different brands using them to facilitate international expansion in a controlled manner. But, but also, you know, to accelerate and maximize the opportunities that's there. So I'd encourage anybody, you know, put some time on the calendar with them, to kind of walk through where you guys are at in the space, they'll give us they're more than happy to jump on the phone and give overall guidance and kind of do an overall assessment. But you know, Dave, you know, trying to get over you for, you know, if you want to give some, you know, key takeaways here, and then we can wrap it up.

Dave VanderJagt  50:37

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you summed it up really well, we're, we're extremely happy to be part of that BWG network, we, we personally get a lot out of these calls, as well. And we hope we hope some of the things that we talked about today were were helpful, or at least directional. If there's anything that we can do, certainly get in touch, we'd love to see if there's, there's ways that we can help just understand what what global marketplace opportunities may look like, or what it may take, to start kind of really enter sort of taking control of what's happening with your brand and your products internationally. And so, we really appreciate the time and the opportunity.

Cue Orr  51:15

Possibly I personally like key takeaways. Yeah. COVID Yeah, I was just gonna say it was great. Talking to everybody. And no, we're definitely here to discuss any opportunities and educate. And that's what a lot of this is for us is educating people on the opportunities and kind of understanding what's out there because it's a fast growing space. And like Aaron mentioned at the beginning, it's something that's just kind of picking up steam, but it's kind of been there for for a while so and we've been in this space for a while we love talking about this stuff and undercover understanding where the best fit and opportunities for for different brands are so if you have any questions always feel free to reach out and we're happy to set up some time to discuss.

Aaron Conant  52:02

Awesome well thanks again Dave. Thanks to Cue for your time today. Thanks everybody who dialed in the great questions. You know, for follow up email from us. We'd love to have a conversation with you as well. If you're ever looking for any kind of recommendations and service providers, we got a short list recommended from brands in the network. I encourage everybody to have a follow up conversation with Dave and Cue and hope everybody has a fantastic Thursday a great rest of the week. Take care stay safe and look forward to having you at a future events already. Thanks again everybody. Take care now. We'll be in touch alrighty.