#377 – Inside the Secretive and Thriving Marketplace of Buying and Selling Amazon Accounts
Ever wondered what happens to those Amazon accounts that fall by the wayside, or how you could swiftly step into the e-commerce arena with an established online store? Join me as I sit down with the pioneering pair, Yoroslav from Ukraine and Aaron from the UK, who have carved out a fascinating niche in the Amazon ecosystem, wheeling and dealing in the trade of Amazon accounts. Their tales of growth, from Aaron’s modest outset with Amazon selling to Yaroslav’s foray into the world of online auctions, underscore the diverse pathways to success in this digital bazaar.
In our conversation, we pulled back the curtain on the logistics and strategic finesse required to run a bustling Amazon operation. The duo spills on the value of robust systems and processes when scaling up, and how a team of 40 to 50 can effectively manage a portfolio of high-revenue brands. Our guests don’t shy away from the gritty details either.
As the episode unfolds, we examine the nuts and bolts of acquiring and transitioning online stores, revealing the intricacies of valuation and the due diligence required to sidestep potential landmines. Yaroslav’s knack for creating a thriving marketplace for these digital storefronts paints a picture of a sector where auctions are commonplace and the rules of the game are constantly evolving. Whether you’re an e-commerce veteran or new to the marketplace hustle, this episode offers key lessons and insights into a side of Amazon that remains shrouded in mystery to many.
In episode 377 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin, Aaron, and Yaroslav discuss:
- 00:00 – Exploring Buying and Selling Amazon Accounts
- 08:49 – Amazon Partnership and Selling Journey
- 18:19 – Selling and Acquiring Amazon Stores
- 20:59 – Acquiring and Selling Amazon Stores
- 25:06 – Selling Amazon Stores and Closure
- 26:42 – Acquiring and Selling Dormant Amazon Stores
- 29:47 – Acquiring and Transferring Online Stores
- 31:03 – Due Diligence for Selling a Store
- 36:53 – Acquiring and Selling Stores
- 40:40 – Exploring Opportunities in the Amazon Marketplace
- 41:05 – Jay-Z’s Journey to Meet Amazon Execs
- 45:11 – Demand for Partnership With Online Sellers
- 47:28 – Understanding Amazon Accounts
- 53:29 – Wearable Technology Opportunities
- 54:00 – Buying and Selling Amazon Accounts
- 54:47 – Kevin’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 377 of the AMPM podcast. This week my guests are from the Ukraine and from the UK. That’s right, you’re. Sloth and Aaron are my guests this week and they run a company that specializes in buying and selling Amazon accounts. So maybe you started up an Amazon business and it just didn’t go like you wanted and you’ve got an account that’s just kind of sitting there idle. They might buy it off your hands. Or you got an old account that you’re not using anymore. They might buy it off your hands. Or maybe you’re looking to Enter into the Amazon space or start a new company and you want an account that has a little bit of a history and a reputation, maybe has to sell our feedbacks, has some different payout terms. They can help you connect with accounts that have that. It’s an interesting model. It’s a great discussion. I think you’ll learn a lot and discover a whole new avenue of ways to make money on Amazon. Enjoy this episode, and coming up next month is the Billion Dollar Seller Summit virtual event, February 21st and 22nd. You don’t want to miss that. All the details at billiondollarsellersummit.com. Yaroslav and Aaron. Welcome to the AMPM podcast. How are you guys doing today?
Aaron:
You’re doing great, thank you, thanks. Have a good.
Kevin King:
Awesome man. So we’re doing like a little European to the US podcast today. I’m in Austin, Texas, Aaron, I think you’re over in the UK, and Yaroslav you’re in. I think you said Prague, right, yeah, that’s right, that’s awesome. But we met Over in Seattle at Amazon’s like accelerate event back when was that back in September of last year or something like that? Right?
Aaron:
Yeah, that’s right we. It was September last year, amazing event. It was great to great to connect there with you.
Kevin King:
How was that for you guys? I mean, what do you guys get out to? A lot of different events. Or I hadn’t met you guys before and I’m at a lot of events, so was that one of the first ones you’ve been to, or do you? Do you just pick and choose, or tell me about that?
Aaron:
I’ve been attended a ton of events over the years. I actually saw you at the Danny McMillan event in London, Kevin, last year. I think it was May or June. We bumped into each other and then that was briefly, but then, yeah, that was the. The next one after that was Amazon Accelerate in September. But yeah, we try and be selective that the ones we go to. Jay-z, when was the last time you was at an Amazon event?
Yaroslav:
I think I was in most of the forums in Ukraine. So there were there were local Amazon seller forums in Kiev, in Odessa, we the first server forum was actually Minsk, which is, which is which may sound a bit weird, because and sellers from Ukraine, from Belarus. Back in the day, they just collapsed and went to this kind of events, but I think that was the time when I was selling them a certain numbers and not dealing with Doing our business that we have right now. So that’s probably the first event. We came to you together and was Awesome.
Kevin King:
I actually spoke in Kiev back in 20. I think it was 2018 at Igor. There’s a lot of Igor’s in in Ukraine, but there Igor’s event it was, it was like a. Really, it was in the summer of 2018. I think it was like June. It was a. Were you happy? Did you happen to be at that event?
Yaroslav:
I heard about it, so I actually this guy, Igor. He was the one who taught a lot of people in Ukraine. Yeah, it was. I met him a couple of times personally.
Kevin King:
That was an awesome event. I mean it was like the way he set up the room, the way the lighting was. I mean he went over the top. You would have thought it was like an Amazon five million dollar event or something, but you crane style with, with dancing girls at the party and the whole nine yards. It was truly Ukrainian styles. It was a lot of fun. And then, yeah, Danny’s a seller. Sessions, Aaron, that was. That was pretty cool. I’ve been to a few of those as well. He always does those cool Christmas parties and stuff too. It’s always, always, always great. So you guys have been. So your background is both of you were selling. Or tell me the story, won’t you go first, Aaron? What’s, what’s your background in this whole e-commerce world? And I’ll ask Yaroslav is yeah, sure, awesome, yeah.
Aaron:
So I started out. I think it was a SM. It was a SM one where I kicked Wow, ten years ago in March so we’re almost coming up to 11 years and it feels I mean, feels like a lifetime ago, which it was actually was in internet years, but kicked off Going to that event. I was actually in the far off west of Australia at the time working in the mines to get my visa, so it was pretty tough, working in one of the hottest places of the world. I was like, look, I don’t want to do this forever. And then I was learning how to make money online affiliate marketing. Then I got an email from Mark Ling promoting the Amazon ASM one event. Looked at it, went all in, flew over to the States Austin, where you’re at now and basically met my business partner At the event and basically launched a business and things you know went well initially Kicked off. First four months I was able to quit my job and then we went and built out a team over there in the Philippines and I spent a lot of time back and forth 2014 15 in the Philippines, love that country, love the people. So, yeah, that was the initial kickoff to the journey, launched a bunch of different brands.
Kevin King:
You’re right place, right time. Back then it was like that was about 2012, 2013 or so. There’s just literally Stick your name on something and it’s it just sold like crazy. I mean your phone’s just dinging off the hook, right.
Aaron:
It was a different game, for sure, right, and I was green in business. It was like my first business, so obviously a hell of a lot of lessons to learn along the way, for sure, but an incredible, excited moment really. To the first, I remember it was Garcia, Cambodia, right, everyone was selling that. It was like a lot of sold, it’s sick of label and it was so one it was just, you know, it’s a mind perspective shift. As you know, you sell your first thing online. It’s like, oh my god, somebody’s purchased it, so yeah, so that was that how. That’s how I got started, built, you know, several supplement companies and an electronic brand and and done some various other things as well. But and then fast forward to now we essentially are by and selling Amazon stores. So we can get into that in a minute, but I’ll hand over to Jay-Z or Yaris.
Kevin King:
I’ll be do that before we go to Jay-Z or Yars Lafes. He’s also not. He’s going, he’s got he’s a dual personality there, Aaron. So what? So you did, you did a sim one. Back then you could I think the event was free or something right. You could actually, that’s just if you bought the course and was that’s right? Thousands of bucks, and then you could come in. They did these big events and then so you did that with the supplements till like 20. You said 1216. And then did you pivot into some other partnerships or sell off one of those brands, or what did you do in the Before you and you’re on a sloth hooked up for sure.
Aaron:
So it was 2016, when so we had a partnership that we was building a Team over in the Philippines and that was running multiple supplement brands. So we was doing what we was doing back in the day is creating one supplement brand, rank them all up to the top, or the various products, different keywords, and then we just basically create a separate brand, same suppliers, launch that and try and dominate the front pages of Amazon. Essentially, we was doing, we was doing well, but unfortunately, a partnership that we had, it didn’t go, didn’t go as planned, and then the team that was running the brands that I had essentially kind of fell apart. Well, I was kind of taken away for, for you know, it wasn’t. It didn’t go the way we’d expected on both parts, so I was left to come catch the brands didn’t end up going the way I’d hoped on all of them.
Kevin King:
We saw because of Amazon, or because I just I partnership Issues? Or was that because Amazon started cracking down and Were you guys up to something that you shouldn’t have been, or something, or was it?
Aaron:
It was nothing was up to, it was a partnership situation. So, okay, you know, we, we built this, this, this team of this amazing team that was running the, the brands, as a disagreement between I’m one of the partners and then, essentially, I had to catch these falling plates, essentially these different brands and products. And you know, it was a great and amazing learning experience because I got to figure out how to build and grow a team. We built, I think, maybe 40 or 50 team members Over there. I learned systems, process, operations, which was, you know, critical because we rolled that into the brands that were. We had an electronic brand at the time and, you know, used all them, systems and processes, and that was really the, the, the transition point. Some of the brands, again, we done well out of. We never sold any Again. I was green and I didn’t really know what I didn’t know at the time. But basically, from there, what happened was we had the, the electronic brand that we, we had again done that and wound, wound that down ultimately because there was regulations coming in on Amazon and you know, we kind of part ways at that point. But yeah, how that makes sense in terms of that trajectory and from there, what we you know, coming from that experience, we had entire playbooks on how to Find, launch, you know, find products, launch products, rank them, you know, run teams operations, get reviews, you know, build security infrastructures, on how to access stores safely, you know. And a huge playbook and really what I did from that point. There it was.
Aaron:
I believe I think it was around 2017 or that was mid 2017. I started having Amazon sellers reach out saying, hey, I know you’ve built a team in the Philippines, can you help me? So I actually started. I had a kind of a group coaching thing that I was helped. I started done that for about a year and a half, had about 30 clients, seven and eight figure sellers showing them and just giving them all the SOPs and playbooks really that we’d used and that was that. And then we was, instead of doing the coaching, which I actually I really didn’t like, just to that whole model of coaching and trying to get people to implement SOPs. It’s not the sexiest stuff to talk about as well. At that point, we was like people don’t wanna really implement this, they’re too busy, why don’t we just do it for them? So we had an agency actually, whereas we was for about a year and a half we was running everybody. There was full service inventory management across seven and eight figure brands, so obviously really intense. We was doing that for about a year and a half and that was that kind of that agency model as well. But we kind of wrapped that up as well because very intense, very demanding managing inventory management for four or five different seven figure brands is a lot. So that was the journey really so far. I hope that made sense.
Kevin King:
Now, that’s perfect. And what about you, Yaroslav? How’d you get into this and what’s your story?
Yaroslav:
I was. I started selling Amazon in the beginning of 2017. And before that I was basically I was selling chargers for mobile phones in Kiev. So I was just going to different bars and cafes with big box that I ordered from China. So it was like an ultimate charger for different phones, like power banks, like power station 12 different power banks. So it was like a Hork solution, so, but they weren’t really high quality and the business didn’t go well. So my close friend offered me to go to Slovakia and to sell soybeans to Slovakian farmers after, because there was a business opportunity. I went to him and we were literally going from village to village in Eastern Slovakia, near Kosice, you know, and we were trying to have deals with the farmers over there.
Kevin King:
So literally like door to door, knocking on their door, trying to sell them something in person. Okay then talking to.
Yaroslav:
Slovakian farmers Cause I lived in Czech Republic for four years. I started here, played hockey and then, because I knew Czech, I could talk to Slovakian farmers and they understood me. It was really funny. But our company I didn’t know that the previous company that did that basically that’s what my friends father’s company. They had bad reputation and in the end the business went bankrupt. So we were doing that for three, four months and we went back to for a vacation to Kiev. It was December and I was sitting and working. That’s how I got into Amazon. I was sitting and working in one of the cafes in Kiev. I was completely like just doing this soybean stuff and that was so fun. So a couple of girls they sat down on the nearest table and one of them she started talking about Amazon. She told oh, I’m drop shipping on Amazon and I recently I had $50 per day in profit. I was sitting typing something and I would show my head over here. I was what’s going on Like? And I literally closed my laptop and started staring at the girls like this. And then it felt weird and I told can you please tell me about this? What are you doing? It’s like it’s completely something completely different.
I want to know about that, and so I basically got her contact and then we I forced her to teach me, then we- went back to Slovakia and after a few months I registered my Amazon account and basically forced her to ask her not force, but I was asked her to teach me how to drop ship on Amazon. That was the beginning of the story.
Kevin King:
And that’s like 2017, 2018. And then, how long did you do the drop shipping for?
Yaroslav:
17. So it was April 2017. And basically, I just spent all whole days trying to learn, trying to figure out how to do that, and I started. I was completely broke at that time, so two business managers didn’t go well, I didn’t have any money. And then I started doing drop shipping and in the first months I just could afford, just like a nice flat. So everything has changed in one month. So it was like so crazy back in the days and I was whoa, what’s going on in my life? And then, yeah, I started hiring some people, implementing some procedures and it’s, yeah, I was drop shipping until 2009. Teams. So it was two, three years. So basically, at the end of 2017, all my stores got shut down. I got a lot of funds. That’s like a typical story of a drop shipper. I started my own software for drop shippers. I just invested a lot of money over there and in the beginning of 2020, I was in a huge debt because of all the suspensions and the investment into the software. And I asked myself I had a team already, I think five or six people who are doing all the orders, searching for the listings, and I kind of asked myself how do I get the funds quicker and that’s where the idea with the stores it came to me and I just started developing that business.
Aaron:
So how did you two meet? Typical story we met online, one of them ones, but it was basically, I think, jay-z quick, if I’m wrong. But to just tag onto what Jay-Z said, essentially after I, you know, I wrapped up the agency that I was doing for you know, done for you inventory management, we was doing all the customer service, we was also doing bookkeeping. After I wrapped, that up, had a little period of rest, because that was very intense, and then again people asked me about hey, do you have any? Do you, you know, did you have an Amazon store that you don’t sell anymore? It was actually, you know, a friend of mine and I was like, yeah sure, ended up selling him a store.
Kevin King:
Basically like you’re selling the accounts, basically like a debt account.
Aaron:
Exactly. Yeah, it wasn’t in use and essentially, as you know, there’s, you know, thousands of businesses bought and sold on Amazon and essentially the same process as if an aggregator would purchase a business. You know it’s done exactly that same way. And I had a friend say hey look, can we acquire your store with an asset purchase agreement? We’ve got you know, we wanna transfer it so we can launch our new private label brand.
Kevin King:
So this is just to be clear, just so the audience understands this is a store that you set up prior, maybe years before that you basically quit selling on. So it still has a bunch of history, still has. Maybe there might be a few random products still sitting in there or something, but it has a bunch of history. And someone comes in they wanna buy it because it has a history and already has like a bunch of seller feedbacks and things like that. That’s what we’re talking about, right.
Aaron:
That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Yeah, so essentially, you know the stores were created in 2013,. They had better payment terms. You know they had no reserve, they had loads of seller feedback, loads of sales history, and you know all the bells and whistles really and essentially, you know it was approached and that was how it first started, you know. So I sold my first my old store to a friend and then he launched his business and I realized hang on a minute, there might be something here. I had like three more Amazon stores that we’d used for different, various, different companies. So at that point it was.
Kevin King:
How much were they paying for these? I mean, how much were they? Did it depend on the number of seller feedbacks, or was there a criteria? Was it? Are we talking real money here, like how I’ll give you 500 bucks, or what are we talking about?
Aaron:
So the first time this happened so this was four years ago now, but four years ago, I believe, so probably a little bit more than that it was, yeah, I think it was $5,000 or $4,000. And I was like well, you know, this was just settled, so that was that was.
Kevin King:
It’s like free money for your trash.
Aaron:
Right, and that was the first time you know. So it was like, wow, there might be something here. And you know, through that journey of selling on Amazon myself, I had the opportunity to sell the other stores and then that’s kind of how I transitioned into doing what we do now. I was doing this separately to Yaroslav. Yaroslav is also acquiring dormant accounts from sellers who just threw in the towel. A lot of people have a bit of a rough time on Amazon, can’t make it to work, or they get divorced or God knows. There’s a thousand reasons people stop selling on Amazon Competition, finances, time, kids, all that. What we found is there was actually a hell of a lot of people that had these stores. I started just reaching out to people that I knew. I said, hey look, if you don’t use this, I can acquire it from you using the same process, how an aggregate would buy a business, following that same process, acquiring the store, and then I’ll turn around and I’ll sell it on to a private label brand that wants to hit the ground running or a wholesale seller, for example. That’s really how it started. Then I stumbled across Mr. Yaroslav and I started to essentially buy these stores and sell them to Yaroslav. That’s how we first met. He was actually buying stores from me.
Kevin King:
Cool, you would buy them for whatever the price a thousand bucks and you’d sell them for him, mark them up and just sell them for him. And then, Yaroslav, you would turn around and sell them to other people who maybe had trouble setting up a store, because back then we didn’t have all this ID verification and all that kind of stuff. Or maybe was it the other Ukrainians or just whoever wanted to buy it. Or did you have a special niche, like Chinese sellers, that wanted burner accounts, or what was the buyer for them?
Yaroslav:
Basically back in the days, back in the selling sport, I started selling these stores and I decided really, really so. I knew there was a lot of people doing buying and selling stores in Ukraine, for example.
Kevin King:
I knew there was a market.
Yaroslav:
I personally acquired a few stores for my drop shipping business before, and it was one price.
Kevin King:
After one year.
Yaroslav:
I reached out to the same guy and he told me the price was five times more and I was what’s going on? I just started creating my own website. I realized that people do not trust me and I started creating the website. I created the separate telegram channel for all people who wanted stores and back in the days but in 2020, I just tried to create, I just tried to put all these guys in one telegram channel, forward them there and then just whoever reaches out, I sell this. I didn’t do too much qualification. I haven’t qualified these guys too much. They wanted the store. I just I had it and I sold it. That’s it. I posted, sold in that channel and it created the demand for other people. They saw that these stores are selling and they reached out to me more and more and more and more. They kept telling to other people and I ended up creating options for these stores back in 2020. It was really fun. People were bidding for the stores, people from different countries. There was a basic description. People knew that I can deliver. I can just deliver the store, so I’m not as camera.
Kevin King:
They can reach out to me. I’m real and I talk to them. Now it’s like a regular business. I’m a broker experience, brokering data accounts and bringing them back to IZB for other people. I did a bit of listing creator.
Aaron:
I knew a lot of different things. What you do is really just finding stores for people. That I understand is just a little closure on it.
Kevin King:
You can sell Amazon or other accounts.
Yaroslav:
I think a lot of people don’t realize that they can sell that. You see it occasionally pop up someone posting one of my, like Massimo Danebake, at a store from 2018 or before that they were looking to sell or get me some criteria like that, but you don’t see a lot of it. I know, like the, I think it was a Dan Ashburn or something. He had a company or was doing something at one point promoting that, or maybe it was an affiliate deal, but you know I’m sitting on four or five stores right now that.
I have from the past, when I was from the pandemic. You know I was just sitting there with this idol. You get $39 turned off and just sitting there. So what if someone’s out there? Like you said, a lot of people start this business. They took ASM or now it’s amazing.com and just doesn’t work up on them. So a lot of that stores. How does Amazon look at that? You, like you said, it’s just like an aggregator takes over the store. Sorry, sorry, I have two stores. I think you got it right Exactly how the process works 85 or something. But does Amazon? Okay, is there any things you got to be careful of when you buy and want to basically flip it to somebody else? So you’re sending a transfer this from this person to me. Are you all taking possession of?
Aaron:
it and then passing it on, or is it? You just go over in the middle, just coordinate from the seller to the buyer.
Yaroslav:
You’re trying to go selling this store as well. Let’s give it a try.
Aaron:
We had this model for essentially one or two months, and then we just that’s the reason why we went to speak with Amazon and meet them, and talk to them really is to you know what we do, and is no different to what an aggregator does in terms of acquiring an asset. They normally use an asset purchase agreement to acquire a business running business, and what we do instead is we acquire a store which is not selling and it’s kind of dormant really, and then we’re turning around and we’re giving it to sellers that are going to be growing on the marketplace, providing more products for the increase in selection on the platform which is what Amazon want, of course providing service to their customers and ultimately, bringing revenue to the platform that would have never been there. So that’s.
Kevin King:
What would Amazon say? That’s? I’m just wondering why Amazon doesn’t have a policy like okay, if you quit selling in a year, we just close it down. You’re like Gmail does that. If you don’t use your email account, they turn it into a spam trap after six months. But because if I’m starting up a new company, that history is somebody else’s company. But it’s like you said. That’s the same reason someone else buys another company is they’re getting that goodwill, they’re buying that history. That’s an asset and so from that point of view, I think Amazon would have a hard time saying you can’t sell these. These are assets, as long as everything, whatever rules they have, checks out of the new buyer and stuff. It should be gold. And I think a lot of people, like you said, don’t realize they’re sitting on these assets. And someone that started with five grand and tried to sell on Amazon and just didn’t work out for them, they might be able to recoup a good portion of that or maybe even all of it, depending on how old their account is.
Aaron:
Exactly, and really we’ve got some crazy stories about some people that we’ve acquired these stores from.
Kevin King:
But what’s one of those crazy stories, what’s a really good that you can say, that’s really cool, interesting, that people will be like, wow, that’s interesting.
Aaron:
I got one for you. So this is a lady called Tina. We bought a store from her maybe a year ago, a year and a half ago, and she said we went through, bought a store, sent her the money and then she followed up like two weeks later saying maybe might have been a month later, but it was. Hey, just want to just let you know that my mother was really sick in New York and I didn’t have the money to go and see her, but the money that you provided for me for my store enabled me to go and get tickets, fly to see her before she passed away, and I just want to say thank you. So that was probably one of the most profound ones and without the funds that she’d got from the store selling the store to us, she wouldn’t have been able to see a mother before she passed. So that was one of the stories. We’ve got other stories about people using critical medical bills, using the funds for critical medical bills. It kicks down a new business. In fact that’s quite a common one. People use the funds to kind of go again, if you like.
Kevin King:
So what is a store? What are the variables that determine how much the price is? Is it the older it is the more it’s worth, or the more seller feedbacks the more it’s worth? Can you give me an idea what those are? Are someone listening? Can I make a 500 bucks? I know it depends. I know there’s a number of variables, but at least give me some sort of ballpark range of something.
Aaron:
Sure, I’ll give you a range. So we bought stores anywhere from like on the very low end. Somebody who’s just opened a brand new store tried. It didn’t work. We bought them for like 500 bucks. On the flip side we’ve bought stores. I think the most we’ve probably spent is 14K on the high end. That was obviously an extraordinary store. Most of the stores range between 500 bucks, 4k, 5k. The odd store we get is more than that 6K, 7k, 8k. These are super high volume stores that have done millions of dollars in sales. They might have a better payment reserve various different things like that but anywhere in that range, really depending on the store itself.
Kevin King:
So how do you do your due diligence? So if I come to you and I’ve got my store, let’s say I’m public on this. I had a company called Germ Shark that we started during the pandemic. We sold millions of dollars worth of a hand sanitizer Amazon. Because of Amazon’s algorithm, we constantly got shut down, even though we had a guy on Speed Dail, a business development guy, his home cell phone number on Speed Dail. He’d get us back up. We’d be back up for an hour. Then we’re shut back down again because of this algorithm, bs. And so we finally just said the heck with it. We threw in the towel. If I came to you and I said, hey, I want to sell this store, it was only operating it’s 2020’s when it was started. It was only operating for about a year, year and a half. I don’t know what the seller feedbacks are on it probably maybe a couple hundred or something. There’s no inventory left in it. Everything’s been deleted out. What would something like? How would you do your due diligence on that, diligence, on that, to see what that might be worth for you guys? Would it be I give you the login, you log in, or I make you an admin or something. You log in, you check it out, or what’s the process there?
Aaron:
Sure, yeah, I’ll dive into. Basically we have a procurement team. They would set up an appointment with you. There’s a few questions first, just to get an idea around the store. Then they have set up a call with account, check in, spec specialist be like a fifteen minute call every on zoom and it just go through the store. We can click and go through ourselves if you share the permissions, remote access on the store, so on zoom, sorry, or you can just guide and we can go through the store and that’s typically how it works. Then I see what swing back around with. After they’ve analyzed that, they’ve looked into that, yeah, all the metrics, they’ll swing back around with an offer and then usually they say, yes, I want to do all know all. There’s a little bit of negotiation at that point, but that’s the process, Kevin.
Kevin King:
How do you figure out if there’s any like black hat that happened on this account, like if maybe this account you know, has you know that Amazon knows everything happens? Maybe In three years prior they were doing all kinds of crazy ranking stuff and it’s kind of sitting there in the In the account history and if something ever happened in the future, amazon could refer back to that if they want to. How do you, how do you check against anything that? Or is it even possible to?
Aaron:
Part of the cool taking process is we go through all the performance notifications and go for all the cases, make sure that the accounts you know is clean. That goes into the whole process of testing. You know check in the account, sorry, before we make an offer and then going through, you know, asking the questions on the call as well. That’s that plays a part in that too. And really, just, you know we acquire most of our stores from private label sellers and we that there’s throughout the process of us hop on these calls and asking the questions. That’s when a lot of our due diligence done, looking in the account and we have some other checks as well, just to just to make sure as close as we can. We don’t buy stores that have been, you know, suspended a bunch of times and you know that stuff. So we’re really looking for the stores that are super clean and you know have the least chance of any any risk for any potential by the future.
Kevin King:
You go in and like if they got some random inventory still sitting there that they just never took out, you have them withdraw that or dispose of it. Or and also, if they have like, say they have their last, their 10 a, since they’re just sitting there just waiting for some hacker to come and make them into into, into something, do you have them delete all that stuff out, or so it’s totally, totally clean, or how do you do that? What do you do there?
Yaroslav:
Usually, usually we do right now we make them dispose of the entry or just send it to charity or whatever, whatever they want or just moving with you out. But yeah, basically we’re considering Acquiring some stores right now that have some active sales. So it’s another, another product that we’re trying where now we’re helping more the sellers that actually quit and they don’t want to do that, and we the part of the diligence is just talking to this, to these people, making sure they are real people that that’s really important making sure they are the owners of the store, making sure we’re asking what they were doing, what kind of business they were doing. We’re asking for supplier information as well, so just to have the clear picture around everything what, what was in that store. So that’s the most we can do with the store, the most we can do we’re doing. And another important thing that we one of the purposes are of us going to the conference was just to partner with them, as I mentioned, as we want to just get closer to them so we can have some enter Amazon dedicated team to our business, help us with acquiring the strength, ring with them, with the sell it with people who actually acquired the source and then maybe they may have some dedicated managers over there that will talk about the services that you can use on Amazon and it’s anything that can help people grow their businesses long term on that side, so we were, the more we can do we’re doing in terms of the diligence, but we know we can do more with Amazon’s help and alongside just Amazon.
Kevin King:
Do you take physical, do you pick, take possession of the store or do you just act as a go between the seller and the buyer?
Aaron:
So we act is kind of a bit of both. So we, as Jay Z said, let’s we buy a store, we acquire it with an asset purchase agreement, so that store is the chain of title is owned by our company. Then what we do is we find somebody that wants to acquire the store and then we don’t change any of the details obviously To us. We sell the store and then have the new owner, we transfer the store to the new owner.
Kevin King:
You know, in the way, jay Z, you know you basically, you buy, you buy the rights to it, basically, and then, so it’s not a, it’s not like Amazon’s changing it to you and then hasn’t changed it to the next guy. It’s a clean, simple, from one guy to the next, and you I’m sure you have an SOP, since you’re a master at all, that this is exactly what you need to do and what’s that process takes. So once the buyer and seller or matched, does it take like 48 hours to get a count? Transfers is like weeks, or what is it you typically take?
Aaron:
Right, I’ll jump in. So essentially we acquire the store from, let’s say, Mary. That might take anywhere from two to three weeks to go through that process look at the store, make an offer, begin the transfer process. Once we’ve done that, then, as soon as a buyer wants to acquire the store, we go through our process. Typically it takes anywhere from 10 to 14 days. Sometimes takes a little bit longer, depending on if Amazon re-verify. Then we have to push that through and get that done, but anywhere between two and three weeks really, Kevin, to transfer. We’ve tested this every way you can imagine and from our experience, we just rather go slow and diligent in making the changes of the store, because we’ve just seen what happens when things get rushed. That’s not how we approach our business. It’s a very methodical, streamlined process that we’ve done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. It takes about two or three weeks. At that point we deliver the store, show the new owner how to access it safely and all that good stuff. That happens in that way. So yeah, about two or three weeks.
Yaroslav:
And that process was developed by our trial and error plus consulting with lawyers that help with MBA business exits. We invested a lot of time in just developing that process. We made our secret sauce as well, because that’s what we do every day with this store.
Kevin King:
Does a new buyer have to go through that whole verification on Amazon with all the new laws where you got to show your ID and show your bank account, so does a new buyer have to go through all that, or is it just transfer over that verification process from the original?
Aaron:
So when you change anything these days on Amazon, since the Informant that oftentimes comes up and for sure, we go through and do that for the new owner. So that’s done. We just need the information and that’s part of the transfer process. So they get the store and they’re ready to rock and roll, and then the Informant says that it’s going to happen every year. So from that point on they’ll have to just do that re-verification process the following year. So that’s what happens.
0:40:40
So are you specializing in just one Amazon marketplace or do you do this for all market places, like Europe and Japan, Australia, everywhere, or are you only specializing in a few market places?
Aaron:
Just one for now. We’re just doing it in the US. So we’re just trying to focus and this is part of the reason. Great question, Kevin. It’s part of the reason we flew to Seattle. So it’s part of the reason. Jay-z Yaroslav is obviously Ukrainian, but it was the reason he drove a thousand miles out of Ukraine to get across the border to fly to Seattle so we could go and speak to Amazon and really talk to them, because in Europe there’s a button you can press. In Europe there’s a button called Transfer Account and it’s very straightforward, seamless process. It takes a bit of time but it works. In the USA they don’t have that yet and my theory is that it’s kind of a legacy platform. It’s a lot more complicated to have that button installed, probably on the US, and it’s probably not top of their priority list right now with everything else they’re probably doing. So we flew, jay-z made the crazy journey out of Ukraine to go and see, in front of Amazon, staff execs, shake their hands and talk to them about what we’re up to and how we’re taking these dormant stores and selling them to sellers so they can breathe life into the platform, and they absolutely love what we was up to the execs that we spoke to, and our goal is to work closely with them, and that’s very early stages of that, but we’re just looking to work with them. We do great business with buying these stores from people and providing them to other folks that want to grow on the Amazon platform and provide value to Amazon’s customers. So that was the whole reason, a big part of the reason we went there and obviously to meet loads of other Amazon sellers, like yourself too.
Kevin King:
So one of the things that you said yours is that you actually have a second model you’re working on right now where, if I started up and I bought a thousand units or something and I realized I’m in over my head or I don’t have the money to finance this growth and maybe I’m onto something, but I just don’t know what the hell I’m doing, that you’re going in and that’s a new model. It’s like okay, you’ll take over that account, you buy that account with the inventory and then you flip that to somebody else that actually has a clue, right? Do I understand that correctly?
Yaroslav:
We’re discovering that. So we’re not doing that yet, but we’re discovering. We see there is a demand for that and we are kind of we’re trying to respond to the demand because we’ve got our processes and our systems for acquiring almost anything we want. Basically, we can go on acquire, we can do target ads, we can use our partners. We have everything set up. We’re just trying to respond to the demand from the sales side.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I would think that would be that there could be a decent market there. Depending on what you know, some of those are bad product choices you don’t want to buy the 30th weighted blanket account or something like that but there’s probably some decent opportunities there where someone just they have a good idea, they just can’t execute or they don’t for a number of reasons time, money, knowledge, whatever it may be and there may be people that want to take that over and run with that.
Aaron:
Exactly that’s what we’re finding, Kevin. It’s like an aggregate, but on a very small scale Might be doing five grand a month profit If you grant. They’ve got a great idea opportunities there. That’s going to be something we’re exploring in the next few months. For sure, we’re looking forward to giving that a shot.
Kevin King:
So how big is this market? Is this like a very, very niche and there’s like a couple transactions a week, or is this? I mean, it sounds like you guys are pretty much all in on this. It must be quite a bit of demand out there for this. I know there’s a few other people doing it not the way you are. It seems like you’re doing it a little bit more sophisticated. Are there that many people that are like you said earlier? And we both said that a lot of people don’t even know you can do this.
Aaron:
Right? Yeah, it’s a great question. So there’s private label sellers who acquire these. We work with aggregators. There’s wholesale sellers. The dropship of things is not much of a thing anymore. We have some folks that are doing it properly with two-step dropship and that reach out to us. But there is definitely demand for these stores because, ultimately, when you create a new store, obviously there can be some challenges with that. With some of these older stores, as we talked about, you’ve got much more favorable payment terms, oftentimes a payment in full every two weeks instead of having a reserve or a lot of seller feedback, a lot of sales history and all the reasons aggregators look to acquire. Running businesses applies to this model as well. So, yeah, there’s definitely demand there. We’re just scratching the surface, to be honest, Kevin, we know we can help a lot more people that are doing great things on Amazon’s platform, launching great brand, doing good business, and that’s who we really want to continue to support.
Kevin King:
Aaron, you might remember this, around 2016 or maybe 2017, amazon made you kind of referenced it earlier. They had a legacy system and there was like two different I don’t know what the numbers were, but I’ll just call it version one and version two of Seller Central and they’re trying to get everybody to migrate to version two and when they first did it, they automatically migrated some people and it pissed off a bunch of people and because they lost their daily payments they didn’t have to they started having to pay a restocking fee for returns and there are some other things that happened along those lines. And I remember I was one of the last holdouts because they kept saying they took away the automatic and let you do it on your own, and then they put a deadline on it and you got to do it by X dates and I waited until that day or like a day before I did it, because I had daily payouts, I had no fee for returns. Most of that stuff has gone away, but some of those legacy things are still in those accounts. Right, there’s still some advantages in some of those older legacy accounts that could be worse. Something and I know now I don’t A lot of people say when they sign up they have a two-week. Well, you have the rolling reserve so you can take daily payments, but you don’t get paid for. Was it three weeks from delivery? Or basically something along those lines. But there’s some of those older accounts that that doesn’t apply right and you can get the full funds. Does that still exist or do they correct that on the older accounts?
Yaroslav:
It still exists. Yeah, yeah, but that’s one of the reasons why people acquire older accounts. It’s quite hard to find these accounts, I mean like daily pay. It’s quite rare. Just a standard. This is daily pay.
Kevin King:
I just want to be clear for those listening. Every new account I sign up for has daily pay. I can go and hit a button every 24 hours and take a payment, but the payment amount is like their sum and reserve and basically it’s two weeks from delivery or something like that, before that reserve. Basically it’s a three-week waiting period from the time the order happens until that reserve gets released. But some of these older accounts that doesn’t exist. You sell $20 today, you can take out the $20 tomorrow. So I just want to be clear for people listening of the difference between the two.
Aaron:
That’s right. And what we’ve seen, Kevin, usually these legacy accounts that you we actually call that these accounts legacy accounts too. But we’ve seen a lot of daily pay accounts that pay out in full from before 2006, 2007. But weirdly, we’ve also found We’ve actually come across more than one store that was from 2014 that had these daily pay in falls. So it might have been in that glitch when Amazon transitioned everyone out, but there’s definitely stores out there that still pay in full every day. As you can imagine, the game of business obviously is the faster you can reduce your cash flow cycle, the faster the company can grow, essentially because you can re-invest inventory into marketing and so forth. So that’s why, essentially, people acquire these accounts is because, often times, they have a two-week payment cycle Instead of having a reserve where it’s spread out. Let’s say, amazon owed you $100,000, you get that $400,000 after two weeks. If it has a reserve, then it could take three and a half weeks to get that $400,000. That really can slow a business down in terms of the growth.
Kevin King:
Right, it’s massive. I mean to pay $5,000, $10,000, and you said that someone paid $14,000 for account. You’d pay more than that in interest. If you’re a big company, just in that cash flow of three weeks of cash flow, it’s worth every freaking penny right there to do that. Do you help the new buyers? Do you help them migrate? Do you have an SOP and like here’s how you migrate your products over or they just Once they buy the account, they’re on their own.
Aaron:
In terms of when they.
Kevin King:
So I buy accounts and I want to like Maybe I got a hot selling product on my account that has one of these big reserves on it. I want to move that product to this new account that I just bought from you. That’s a legacy account from 2007 or something that has daily payouts so I can cash flow better. Do you have SOPs where you help them on that, or is that just that they’re on their own, where they To move that product, that ace, and over to the new account?
Aaron:
Yeah, some of that. We work with them through to get that rock and roll and our goal is really. There’s a line of what we can and can’t do, of course, but we will be there to guide and to make sure that they’ve got the store ready to do what they intended it for.
Kevin King:
Is there a public-facing website where people can go to? Or you got to be. You said, Jaroslav, there’s a telegram group or something, or how do you? If I want to buy something or if I’ve got something to sell, how do I go about getting a hold of you guys?
Aaron:
If somebody’s looking to sell one of their old Amazon stores or an old vendor account that they don’t want, then all you need to do is reach out to Aaron at growthaccounts.com so it’s aaron@ growthaccounts.com and then we can set the time to check out your account and see if it’s something that we can make you an offer for. If somebody’s looking to acquire an Amazon store, then they could just go to ecomstores.com and schedule a call there. So yeah, I hope that makes sense.
Kevin King:
So that’s Aaron at growthaccounts.com. If you’ve got one to sell, and if you have, if you’re looking to buy, it’s ecomstores.com, that’s correct.
Aaron:
Yeah, and if anyone needs any help with transferring, you know, if they’re going through an acquisition and they want some help with transferring an Amazon store, then we can also help with that stuff as well. But just reach out to the email address and, yeah, that’s the best way.
Kevin King:
Are there any of any hiccups in a transfer process, or is it usually just as long as you’ve got all the documentation is pretty smooth, or do they ever fail for some reason?
Aaron:
With Amazon there can be hiccups, as we all know right, so it’s rare that there’s something bad goes. Are there any red flags that go off during the transfer? What can happen is Amazon’s more sensitive these days. With the inform out, they can kick out an address verification postcard that can set back the, Because we’ve got to wait, obviously, for that to arrive and then do it. Yeah, it’s extremely rare that there’s any issues during the transfer process. Just because the amount of times we’ve done this now, We’d have to be idiots at this point not to notice the patterns of what to do, what not to do. Not saying that won’t ever happen, but from our experience that is very, very rare.
Yaroslav:
Sometimes Amazon. Just they have some glitches and you cannot update for the legal entity and you cannot choose the right country over there, which is weird. But what we do? We raise a lot of cases, we follow up, we got our team calling. If something weird happens, we usually wear wearable to everyone.
Kevin King:
Gentlemen, I really appreciate you taking the time today and sharing that. This is something that a lot of people don’t even know really exists or what the opportunities are there from both sides. So this has been great. I really appreciate you guys coming on and sharing today. Thank you.
Yaroslav:
Kevin, it’s a pleasure.
0:53:54 – Aaron:
Thank you, Kevin. It’s been a pleasure. Yeah, for sure, Thank you.
Kevin King:
I bet a lot of you just learned something didn’t even know. There’s a entire business out there of just buying and selling Amazon accounts. It’s big business. There’s a lot of Amazon accounts what’s it? Some 2 million accounts or something that are active on Amazon right now, plus another I’m sure millions that have been set up and either never really got going or were abandoned. So it’s a big business and there’s lots of opportunities around that. Whether you’re looking to recoup a little bit of your initial investment, get a little extra cash for some old account sitting around, or maybe you need to better your cash flow and are looking for an account that has some of these legacy things Great stuff Go to ecomstore.com if you’re looking to buy, or message Aaron at the email address he gave if you’re looking to sell your account. We’ll be back again next week with another great episode. In the meantime, I’ll get some more wisdom for you before we head out, remember your reputation is your most important asset. It precedes you before you walk into the room and it lingers long after the work is done. Your reputation is your most important assets. It precedes you before you walk into the room and it lingers long after the work is done. See you again next week.
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