#442 – Inside the #1 Amazon Seller in the World: Rob Hahn Reveals the 3 Secrets to E-Com Domination
Imagine unlocking the secret to skyrocketing your brand’s e-commerce growth without sacrificing ownership. In our conversation with Rob Hahn, the Chief Operating Officer of Pattern, we promise you’ll uncover strategies that could transform your approach to selling on Amazon. With Pattern’s model, which focuses on acceleration rather than aggregation, you’ll learn how brands can maintain control while scaling their market presence. Rob provides a unique perspective on how Pattern’s advanced technology, coupled with their expertise in fulfillment and logistics, empowers brands to flourish both domestically and globally.
Our discussion also takes you behind the scenes of Amazon’s logistics revolution. Join us as Rob shares stories from his time as a former Amazon executive, highlighting the company’s remarkable journey from relying on third-party logistics to developing its own delivery network. This shift not only gave Amazon a competitive advantage over rivals like Walmart but also reshaped the landscape for sellers navigating its complex logistics system. We discuss the intricacies of Amazon’s fulfillment network and how recent changes have pushed many sellers to rethink their strategies, favoring those with substantial resources.
Finally, we explore the transformative power of AI and data-driven strategies in e-commerce. Discover how Pattern stays ahead of the competition by investing heavily in AI to predict market trends and optimize logistics. We dive into the competitive landscape of global e-commerce and the enormous growth potential that still exists. With insights into Pattern’s innovative approaches and a sneak peek into their upcoming Accelerate event in Salt Lake City, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways for brands looking to amplify their e-commerce journey. Don’t miss the chance to learn how you can leverage these insights for your brand’s success.
In episode 442 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Rob discuss:
- 00:00 – The Pattern E-commerce Accelerator
- 03:44 – Marketplace Growth Strategies With Established Brands
- 07:28 – Scaling Brand Growth Through Partnership
- 08:38 – Amazon Fulfillment Advantage
- 13:27 – Evolving Complexity of Amazon FBA
- 18:29 – Amazon Career to Startup Success
- 18:40 – Evolution of Amazon’s Logistics System
- 28:33 – Amazon’s Cost Center and Logistics Focus
- 29:40 – Logistics Complexity in Amazon Fulfillment
- 30:45 – Amazon’s Two-Tiered Crosstalk System
- 35:38 – Evolving Trends in E-Commerce
- 36:21 – Leveraging Data and Insights for Success
- 39:06 – Data, Insights, and Actions Explained
- 42:44 – AI and E-Commerce Competition Future
- 43:48 – Impact of AI on E-Commerce Operations
- 49:58 – E-Commerce Growth and Opportunities
- 54:13 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 442 of the AM/PM podcast. You know there’s one seller out there that globally on Amazon, is the biggest seller in the world and I have the chief operating officer on the podcast this week, Rob Hahn. We’re going to talk about what it takes to actually be the number one seller in the entire world on Amazon, his system. He’s got three parts to it of why they’re so successful and some opportunities where you actually might be able to work with them as well, where they could really blow up your brand. Enjoy this episode with Rob.
Kevin King:
Now sometimes, you know, on the AM/PM podcast we have some really interesting guests. But today I think we have an extra interesting guest. You know everybody’s always out there monitoring, looking at you know, talking about Chinese sellers and how they’re crushing it and they’re all the top sellers. But actually most people don’t realize the number one seller on Amazon globally, in the entire world, is actually based in Utah and it’s a company called Pattern. They do their own show. They’re huge. I don’t even know the exact number it’s in the gazillions of dollars, I think, way up there. And today we have the COO, the Chief Operating Officer of Pattern, on the show. Welcome, Rob, glad to have you here, man.
Rob:
I’m glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Kevin King:
For those that haven’t, that have been living under a rock and they don’t know what Pattern is because you guys go under a lot of different names and so they might not actually know the underlying name. What is Pattern?
Rob:
Yeah, so Pattern, we call ourselves an accelerator. Right, there’s other accelerators in the space. We kind of coined that term and that concept of working directly with brands. So we buy and sell inventory, sell in marketplaces globally. So we work with brands directly in a very, very close relationship. We really are pretty obsessed with that relationship. But we take their inventory, we buy that inventory and then we sell it kind of everywhere. But we do everything kind of soup to nuts, right. So it really truly end to end partnership, ranging from fulfillment logistics through the marketing. We’ve got a bunch of. We’re really at our core technology company. We are using and leveraging technology, physical hardware and software in our fulfillment centers and really an end to end solution for a brand to be an extension and to just really grow internationally and domestically here on all marketplaces. Amazon is our biggest marketplace in the US, obviously, it is the by far biggest. Yeah, so we’re an accelerator. It works with brands and really just helps them hit the gas.
Kevin King:
I just want to make sure people that are listening understand the difference. It’s not. He didn’t say aggregator, he said accelerator. So you’re not actually buying brands and like the Thrasio and the other model you’re actually, brands are coming to you and like maybe they tried it themselves or maybe they’re in some other channel and they just don’t want to mess with the Amazon channel. So you take them and put gas on it basically.
Rob:
Yeah, I mean like there’s lots of reasons that somebody would work with Pattern right or somebody like Pattern. It’s either hey, I kind of outgrew my britches right, like I started really well, I, you know I’m, I’ve created a great product and that product did really well and now I’m kind of maxed out. My team of six people or whatever that I’ve got on my team today. They don’t have the fulfillment expertise, so they don’t have the marketing expertise, so I don’t have the dollars to go build the tech that’s required to go really be successful in the marketplace. So I have a great product but my team is not one that can actually go, you know, blow up on the marketplace. I don’t have the knowledge and the expertise.
Rob:
So, if somebody has kind of gotten to that point, a lot of times they’re like, hey, how can I get bigger and grow in that marketplace without a massive fixed expense? And that actually is where we come in, where we kind of take that and have that really grow. We do, let you know, fewer kind of cold starts to do all in the marketplace. We really take people that have already a good product and a good idea and a good team and we, as you said, pour the gas on. So that’s definitely what we also work with really, really big brands where they’re like hey, we’re so big sometimes that we can’t, you know, we’re so segmented and siloed, we don’t have this expertise and we’re not able to really give the effort and the time and be as agile as we need. We work really well with brands like that too.
Kevin King:
So, I just want to make sure I understand the process. So if I’m, let’s say, I started selling on Amazon in 20, I don’t know 2018.
Rob:
Sure.
Kevin King:
And I built up a pet brand and I’m selling some dog treats and I’m doing I don’t know, $5 million top line per year, and I’m like, like you said, six people and I’m like, kind of tapped out. I’m kind of getting, you know, this is getting beyond my expertise range of logistics and handling and growing. And, you know, because there is a difference between it’s easy to get to a million on Amazon, but five, 10, it’s a whole different. Whole different mindset, a whole different structure and everything the bigger you get.
Rob:
Yep.
Kevin King:
So I have, I have a. I have a few options. One is to heck with this. I’m going to go. I’m going to go sell real estate and not do this Amazon business.
Rob:
Yep.
Kevin King:
Another one is I’m going to sell. I’m going to sell to an aggregator and take some chips off the table. Hopefully, in today’s world it’s harder than it was and not as lucrative as it was.
Rob:
Yep. Much bigger:
Kevin King:
Or I’m going to say you know what, I want to retain ownership of this thing and maybe I’m going to sell this in five years, but right now I’m at 5 million. But I’m going to go partner up with these Pattern guys. Let them blow me up to 20 million. Retain the ownership, correct me if I’m wrong on this, retain the ownership and then maybe look at options of selling it five years from now for a much bigger multiple. And these guys take a lot of the headaches off, a lot of the growing pains. They got the experience, they paved the road for me. Is that kind of how it works?
Rob:
Yeah, I mean there’s, I think there’s kind of two yes, you’re very you’re, you’re very like that’s nail in the head kind of situation. You, I mean really. I mean really there’s a couple options right, like I’m going to grow this thing that I want to sell it, or, hey, I’m close to profitable today. I don’t want to add to my fixed base, I don’t want to go hire 20 people to go accelerate this thing. If I keep my cost base the same and keep the same profit percentage but I get more volume on top, right, then I’m leveraging what I’ve already got and I get to keep more dollars and I become profitable or more profitable over time and then I don’t need to sell it. I’ve just now gotten something that’s paying me a check every single month. So it’s, it’s kind of one of those two options. But you’re exactly right, it’s full ownership. We don’t do any of that.
Kevin King:
You don’t take any equity?
Rob:
Uh, we don’t buy equity, we’re we’re buying, we’re buying inventory, just like you know, like Amazon would in a one P relationship. We’re buying that, but it’s a lot closer partnership. There’s a lot more control, and partnership is the right word, right. Like we actually say like hey, what are we trying to do together? What target do we have together? Let’s go chase that market share or take chase that top line number. Let’s figure out how to optimize and maximize your advertising. Let’s take away the complexity of your logistics. Right, so it just, it really just like I said it like unlocks what that brand can do in that, in that marketplace.
Kevin King:
So do you actually, in this example that I gave, where I’ve got my dog brand of 5 million, do you take over my listing and it becomes inside of your Pattern like massive wholesale network? Or is my still running on my listing and you’re managing it, or how does that process work?
Rob:
No, so we would go under our accounts. So there’s some advantages to consolidated accounts. Um, for lots of reasons. Um, but yeah, so we would end up working. We work with lots of brands to transition them off of their account or wherever that is. They’re working with an agency or somebody or another seller or whatever that would be, and it comes over under our accounts, but it’s fully managed by us. So the ASIN either exists or we need to create the ASIN or whatever that would be. But we would take over, we would, we would bring the inventory into ours and we’d set it up in our product catalog. We would run and create a new listing. But we, we do everything. We do all the content, we do all the pictures, we do all of the everything associated with running that listing and managing it from then on.
Kevin King:
So instead of me getting a royalty, I’m basically turning it over to you. I still own it. I might have, I might be sitting on a board and have a little bit of say, but maybe you can override me because you’re got the expertise. But so then I’m just, instead of if I was wholesaling to Chewy in this dog example before, for my dog treats for $5 a bag, I’m just going to make an agreement with you to wholesale them for I don’t know whatever $6 a bag and so. But then you’re going to take care of all the costs, the PPC, everything above that, because it’s all in your account and you’re going to blow it up. So at the end of the day, maybe I’m making in theory less, you know, on paper per unit by making more because of the gas you put on it. Is that a fair way to describe it?
Rob:
Yeah, I mean. Sometimes it’s not less right. It really depends on the product. It depends on what you’re doing before. Sometimes, for example, I lead our global logistics and fulfillment. Sometimes our logistics and fulfillment is so much cheaper that sometimes it’s like, actually for the same exact price, we can just buy it at your wholesale price or what you were selling it at, and sometimes we can just give you the same check. We’re just going to. You know, double your business, or whatever that might be.
Kevin King:
You make your margin off the economies of scale and your efficiency on your side?
Rob:
That’s right and that’s exactly right. So it’s really about there. It’s really hard to do. I mean, we send in more to Amazon than anybody in the world from a fulfillment perspective by many times over, and so we’ve been able to invest. I personally have many, many developers on my team focused on fulfillment tech alone. I’ve spent millions of dollars on hardware and warehouses. You can’t compete with that with a small seller. My variable cost per unit is going to be dramatically lower than anybody else out there by a good distance right, and my transportation to Amazon is going to be faster because I have density and cheaper because I have density. We can lower a cost structure so much that this consolidation actually allows us to basically make the money on the savings that we can give to a brand while we’re accelerating that brand. It’s this flywheel that keeps giving back as we continue to grow it.
Kevin King:
There’s a lot of people, at least in the FBA 3P space. They’ve heard your name, but they have no idea that you do this. They don’t understand this at all. I think this podcast is going to open some eyes on several fronts of some opportunities for people. Do you go out and recruit, do you guys have an analytics team that’s like, oh, this would be a good brand, that would fit into our portfolio and we could, and you go out and you approach them? Or do people come to you and say, hey, I’m at my wit’s end here. I’ve done what I can. Please help and help me take this to the next level.
Rob:
Both. There’s lots of brands that find out about us and see us at a trade show or see us or whatever that might be. And they’ll be like “Hey, I want to go faster. I want to grow and so I’m going to reach out. So you can go to pattern.com and hit like a you know, contact us and do it like more of an inbound motion. But we also we do. We get we’ve got something like 37 trillion data points from Amazon transactions, both ours and other people’s. We’re a data company, tech company. Like I said, we’re getting an enormous amount of information from Amazon on products, everybody’s stuff, everybody’s products, every customer experience that we possibly can, for example. And we’ve got some that were like, hey, that brand, that product is like in the strike zone. It could be so much more. If it was optimized in this way, it would be, you know, it should be getting more market share. We do market share analysis across multiple categories and so we can go outbound and say, hey, your pet food, you should be doing better, let us take a crack at it. So it’s both.
Kevin King:
That’s interesting. So how did Pattern actually start? Did it start as a seller and he just evolved into this tech company? Or was it a tech company first that said, oh, there’s an opportunity in Amazon. Or how did it start?
Rob:
Yeah, it really was as a seller. So the founders, Dave and Mel, they out of a garage. Basically we’re like, hey, let’s try to go sell some stuff and see what this Amazon thing was just over 12 years ago now. And they started selling you know random stuff. And then they kind of got in the VMS space and started getting some like more you know kind of exclusive or semi exclusive contracts with brands. And then they brought on and they’re like, hey, this is really hard. And so they built some of their own first technology. Right to say, hey, how do I help manage my own stuff better? And they’re like this is super hard. I bet you other sellers could benefit from having software. So then it was initially like, oh, how do we go? Maybe it’s a software solution is the right option. But then it was like, well, actually, why don’t I just buy the stuff and I’ll take on all the complexity for you? You just get the benefit of it. And that’s where it really started kind of spinning for brands where they’re like you can just send me a check, versus a service model where you know I’m charging a fee, where you, you know I can send you an invoice or I can send you a check and, like, a lot of brands like to get a check right.
Rob:
So it kind of shifted from okay, how do I be a really good seller? To, uh, how do I then use technology and leverage that technology to build scale, which then lowers a cost structure, which then makes it more attractive for our brand to come in and work with us, right? So, um, we’re certainly not the cheapest solution out there and I don’t think we’re trying to be. It is definitely something where brands get very, very strong results from us and, uh, we’ve gotten that you know a very good track record of growth with brands. And so, uh, that growth from like seller into kind of a power seller, if you will, that’s powered by technology uh took multiple years, but really, in like 2018, really started hitting the gas and we’ve been on a really, really strong growth trajectory since.
Kevin King:
So when I come in, if I, if I work with you guys, I got my six people and I hit my 5 million, I say Pattern, take it, Do I? What are my six people now doing and what am I doing?
Rob:
Well, it depends what they were doing before, I mean what we end up. It generally it’s not um, it’s not like there’s nothing anymore. It generally is like, okay, what do you got? It’s still a partnership, right, like you still have an inventory person. But it’s now we’re doing the math and saying, hey, we want to, we want a hundred units. What are you seeing? What’s your demand? Like right, they get to focus more on building the brand than the execution part of being in the marketplace. So it varies brand to brand. Some brands want to be more involved in creating content, for example. Some are like, hey, that’s not our expertise. Some want to be more involved in forecasting. Some are like I have no idea. So it really depends on where your expertise is, your brand. We come in, we fill in the gaps, and so it allows us to really then figure out like, okay, where do you have gaps, let’s fill those in and let’s grow from there together, like that is our genuine approach.
Kevin King:
I think a lot of people that get into, especially on the FBA side, that saw a YouTube video or they took maybe the Freedom Ticket or something they don’t realize the complexity that this business has become. I mean, in the early days 2013, when Pattern started, or 2014, 15, when amazingcom was blowing up, and that’s when Helium 10 started. Around 2015, 2016 it was much easier. You didn’t have to be yeah, you still had all these different components of logistics and inventory and this and that and the other uh and ranking and, but it was a whole, much easier and a whole different game. Now it’s become so competitive and so much more refined and so much. There’s so much more data. I mean, in 2015 I would might. One of my you know, one of my products is a seasonal calendar and I would sell 400 a year on Amazon in 2015 during the calendar, the fall season. Now I sell 400 a day. That’s how much Amazon’s grown and the logistics and just the size and the sheer magnitude and it and it. Now it takes to scale. It takes serious systems and serious know-how and a lot of money. So who’s funding this? When I come to you with my little pet brand, am I still funding it on my side. Are you helping out on the purchase order side, or how does that work?
Rob:
Yeah, so the mechanics of you know, when somebody, when a brand, works with Pattern, we end up buying the product, right? So inside, that is almost everything that’s going to be required to run and operate and sell that thing. Generally uh, you know, we work with brands on advertising comes from the brand, usually right, like they’re the ones that are saying, hey, I want to grow the brand because it’s a more holistic marketing strategy. It’s not just here’s what it is on Amazon, right, generally it fits into a more holistic marketing strategy. So you actually don’t want to segment it and leave it to us, right, right, like it’s really. It’s more of like, hey, we’re going to spend dollars to go do that thing, but we don’t like do an upcharge, for example, on we’re not a marketing agency, we buy the product running those ads are included, but the dollars to actually like, hey, I want to spend X number of dollars or X percentage of my top line sales that comes from the brand, but then we operate that budget using our technology.
Kevin King:
You buy it on net terms?
Rob:
Yeah, yeah, we buy it on Yep.
Kevin King:
And so the brand’s got to have the capability or the connections to actually finance it, just as if they were wholesaling this to Tom’s Sporting Goods or something like that.
Rob:
That’s correct, yep.
Kevin King:
Okay, and then your primary focus is Amazon, but you also do Walmart and other channels and retail as well. Right?
Rob:
Yeah. So I mean we actually are pretty expansive across. So we’ve got offices in London, in Australia, we’ve got warehouse in Poland. We are a pretty big Tmall and Pinduoduo. We’ve got quite a bit in China. We’ve got an office in Guangzhou, we’ve got an office in Hong Kong, got a decent presence in Shanghai, so we’ve got very much a global presence. But even in the US, like we’re a large Walmart seller on the three piece space, we also have other products, like we’ve got a PIM dam, a PXM, where you can actually connect content, do syndication and actually also from a logistics and fulfillment side we are, we’re more than just our own stuff. We built all this technology. We spent millions of dollars in hardware, software and now we actually sell 3PL services. So like I’ll do, I sell a bunch of stuff on Shopify about our own product, for example, and Amazon. But if you have your own seller account I can actually combine your inventory, I can create your shipments, I can label your product, I can do carton labeling and pallet labeling et cetera and get it into for transportation, consolidated as a 3PL. So we’ll do D to C fulfillment. We do mark, like prep, we sell just our transportation called middle mile. So like we do services also on the side in some scenarios, but like the best way for a brand to accelerate is still through, like that main buy, sell motion where it’s a more all inclusive type of offer.
Kevin King:
So what level do I need to be at if I want to use, like your, your 3PL services or to come to you to put gas? Do I need to be? You said earlier you only want to really work with some proven stuff, so do I need to be at a? Or where you see a major gap? And so what? What? What’s just a baseline. I know it’s going to vary by situation, but just as someone listening that’s just starting out, they’re not for you really, someone that’s kind of proven that there’s a market demand for this and you can go in and go, wow, you’re not exploiting this. That’s the ideal customer, so probably someone that’s already hit like a million dollars run rate.
Rob:
Yeah. I mean like I think, if you’re in that range where, like you said, like if you’re, you know, doing seven figures and you’re like, yeah, I think I can, you know, do this thing or whatever, or six, like is you start to get to the point where you are, uh, like, hey, there’s actual demand for this. Right, um, I’m not just like buying and selling arbitrage, but like I’ve built a product and that product has a place in the Amazon ecosystem or the Walmart ecosystem or bull.com, right, whatever it is globally. Like I have traction. Um, now I don’t know what to do with myself. Right, like that’s sometimes is what people come to us. Then, yeah, absolutely. Like, if you are at that level and the 3PL side, what’s cool? I mean, if you think about this way, like if you’re under that mark, we could actually service from the 3PL side. When you’re smaller, that is a much smaller entry level, because it’s like a lighter touch for us. Right, it doesn’t require as much. But if you are hitting it, you know some people will come in the 3PL side and they’re working with us on 3PL side. They get big enough and then we can transition into, like that full kind of acceleration model, which I think is really attractive to brands.
Kevin King:
You worked for. You got your start in the e-commerce by actually working for the man himself Amazon right.
Rob:
I did yeah. So I was eight years at Amazon. I started as an intern there back, like I’m going to say, early Amazon days, Amazon, like all my swag. I kind of kept swag from like each year Amazon does a lot of like t-shirts and stuff, but my stuff it’s like Amazon.com. I remember when I came back I had my offer from Amazon and I came back to my college dorm and I was like I have an internship offer from Amazon.com and my neighbor, or my neighbor, my roommate was like what’s Amazon? Like this is a college student. Like this isn’t that long. I look like I’m 15, but I’m older than that. But like this isn’t that long ago. A lot has happened in whatever 15, 16 years since that happened. Where you know, my own roommate was like I don’t know what Amazon is. This is a college student, right. Like that’s unheard of to think about today. So it was pretty early on in the Amazon years. Yeah, it was eight years.
Rob:
I started as an intern and then I got into the robotics space early on with Amazon as they acquired Kivan 2012 and then started launching buildings. And I had a really cool opportunity to lead very, very large, very, you know, awesome teams and a lot of people took bets on me very early in my career. But, yeah, I ended up leaving Amazon as, like you know, an executive level director, level running large Amazon robotics fulfillment center, so like these 6,000 person million square foot monstrosity. I was in Baltimore when I ended my career at Amazon, but yeah, then I joined a startup, a very, very small startup called Whitebox, and I was there for four years and we ended up selling off the fulfillment side of the business to UPS and I joined the pattern team about two and a half years ago now. So I’ve been in this ecosystem the entire time, but I was inside Amazon at a really cool kind of like hockey stick growth time for about eight years.
Kevin King:
Amazon’s distribution system is amazing. I mean their projection system. Where they project, I’ve always told people where Amazon comes in and says, oh, we recommend you order 3,207 units. I’m like ignore, that is what I tell everybody, because they have no clue what you’re doing on social media or what you’re doing on this. So there’s some of their projection stuff and some of their tech is pure garbage, but a lot of it is just freaking amazing, I mean. And when it comes to the fulfillment side of things and the distribution, I mean, if you just sit back and just sit for a minute and just sit and think, go to a park bench for 15 minutes and just listen to the birds and just think about how they freaking do this, it’s an amazing, freaking, well-oiled machine. Whoever built this freaking matrix and this maze and you’re one of them you said, uh back in when they went to robotics. It’s, it’s brilliant, uh, and it’s like it’s.
Kevin King:
People always like, well, Walmart’s going to catch up to uh, to Amazon, like, no, they’re not. Walmart has distribution centers, they got stores, they have some advantages on their side, but but that’s why Amazon bought Whole Foods. But there’s the tech side on Amazon. The logistical side is crazy. I mean, look at, now they’re doing what 70, 80% of their own delivery and four or five years ago it was UPS and FedEx and the post office doing everything and they convinced the post office to start delivering on Sundays. I remember the post office showing up at my door on Sundays eight, nine years ago and I’m like what the hell is this? It was Amazon convincing them to do it and now Amazon is doing it themselves and UPS just finally threw up their hands back in February and said we’re out and it’s an amazing, freaking system. So can is it is a little bit to that, a little bit about what you I mean what the robotics and where, maybe how it evolved and like where it’s going and what a competitive advantage it is.
Rob:
I think it’s probably more amazing, even than it seems from the ads, cause like it kind of feels like magic sometimes. You’re like it, just it just works. It’s like it’s not magic. It’s a lot of math, it’s a lot of logistics, it’s very hard to do. But I remember I mean I was pre-Amazon logistics right. Like this is when, like FedEx did a lot, you know, on track and I mean UPS was doing a giant percentage of the deliveries at that point, like early on in my career at Amazon. And but the interesting thing, I mean you said Amazon is so much farther ahead than Walmart than you think they’re so disgustingly far ahead of Walmart in so many ways. I think Walmart actually has a really cool advantage. In some ways it’s like over 70% of the US population is within 10 miles of a Walmart. Walmart has this ability when and if they go chase that thing the right way. They’re so siloed to right, like to really make the e-commerce experience, but right now it’s so fractured. They’re like they’re working, they’re investing a lot, like I do think it will be better, but they’re still like at where Amazon was in I don’t know, 2010, 2012. Like they’re very, very, very far behind.
Rob:
Amazon did this thing right, where they made a transition from using all the monies in transportation. If you think about the total cost of fulfillment, right. If you think about e-commerce, why Amazon won? If you go back to like .com boom and then bust timeframe, there were lots of e-commerce companies Like I need like it’s hard to like really grasp and understand, but like there were a ton of e-commerce companies, Amazon won for a couple of reasons. One of the major reasons is because they own their own logistics. They didn’t use 3PL. They own because they tied the logistics and fulfillment so much with the customer experience that it differentiated them from so many of their competitors and peers at that time and that has become like the common strength. That prime tag has nothing to do. It’s a marketing wrapping around logistics and fulfillment. That’s all. It’s trust that comes from a fulfillment operation. Right, like people don’t really, I think think about it and then it like today. If you’d say what is the prime like? How many days is the prime tag mean? People still say two days, but that’s no longer what the Amazon consumer expects. It’s one day is a huge percentage and you see a giant lift.
Kevin King:
I want it at 4 am tomorrow.
Rob:
Exactly right. So like sub-same day, same day, sub-same day, next day network now is a huge percentage and it’s proven. You can look at it a hundred different ways. You have a massive conversion lift if you can get it faster. And so what Amazon has basically said is transportation costs is the highest cost and it’s also tied together with speed, which improves my ability to increase conversion. And so, like they’ve built this entire network out to try to get it closer to the end customer. Along the way, sellers have taken on a ton of pain here. Right, I guess we could talk about the inbound like network in 2024 and how disastrous it’s been with placement fees and everything else. But if you focus on the outbound network, Amazon made like.
Rob:
If people think about robots in an Amazon environment, people are like and I was there before right, when I went to Amazon there was like very little automation, very little automation, very manual processes back in the day. Then they like accelerated very fast and then they got robotics. But the robotics that they have invested in first have very little to do with like manipulation of items. It’s not about people replacement, it’s actually about transportation. Let me tell you why. My building that I was in initially could hold X number of units, like millions and millions. They’re big buildings 1.2 million square feet building. These are huge buildings. They could fit millions of units. But if you get a robotic storage solution, you can Google this right, these robots that Amazon acquired through Keepout. They’re like big orange Roombas. Right, they’re like pickup shelving units. But the density that you can do for storing inventory in a building doubled. If you can double the inventory that you’re holding in a facility.
Rob:
What it means is when you buy because people on Amazon don’t buy like a red marker and a blue marker, they’ll buy an iPhone and a blue marker. Right? If I can get those two things in the same box, my cost to do fulfillment to you is cut in half because I’m not shipping a blue marker and an iPhone to your door, right, I’m going to have it in the same building. So it not only leverages fixed costs but it reduces down the time that I have split shipments and therefore I save money on transportation. I don’t have to combine them and I can go faster. Right, so they’ve gotten higher density buildings in more effective storage solutions closer to the end consumer, which reduces down transportation costs and reduces down the time in transit to get it to your door, which increases conversion. It’s this incredible logistics and fulfillment flywheel that drives this marketing machine and gets all these eyeballs right. It’s a dramatically more impactful thing than the experience you get on any other marketplace in the world right now.
Kevin King:
I’ve always been, you know. I noticed this years ago where I would order something. I would order the black marker and then an hour later I would order a I don’t know a gadget for my kitchen or something, and both of them would say they’d be delivered tomorrow. But Amazon system would be so sophisticated it would push the orders together and then what most people don’t realize is, like I live in Austin, so there might be, I know there’s several distribution centers here, there’s like seven or there’s. There’s a spider’s web of like warehousing stuff here and down to San Antonio and up to Waco, and some of that stuff is coming. That black market is coming out of San Antonio and the kitchen gadgets coming out of Buda, Texas, and then they’re all getting merged into South Manchac Road in Austin and they’re getting to me the next morning. And that’s the sophisticated system to combine all that stuff and to automatically tell you what size box it’s got to be in. It’s mind-blowingly good.
Kevin King:
But where I think they fall down is on the inbound side, and they haven’t got. The inbound side is still a freaking mess and that’s what us third-party sellers still are feeling the pain of. So the outbound side to the customer almost perfect. The inbound side, it’s got a lot to be desired. Why is there such a mismatch there? Are they two completely different thought processes and flows? Or is it just Amazon’s like? We only care about the customer, we don’t give a shit about the sellers. So we’re going to focus all the energy and money there. Um. What was why the mismatch?
Rob:
Yeah, I think there’s a couple of different, a couple of different inputs to that Um. One is that, uh, Amazon culturally always starts at the customer and works their way backward. That’s like that’s in, that’s true at each point. That actually is a positive thing about Amazon. Now, sellers are definitively not a customer for Amazon and they’re not seen as customers, right, like they are not their sellers, they are, they are purchasers, they’re clients. They’re not customers. Like in many, many ways it’s like hey, you know, we’re enabling you to sell stuff on the platform and they don’t see us as customers and they don’t treat us as customers. But they do start at that end consumer work the way back. So, and also, the cost for Amazon severely sits on the outbound side of the house, not on the inbound side of the house from both a labor perspective, but also like you’re on the hook as a third party seller to get it to Amazon. Right, they are on the hook to get it to the customer. So their cost center all sits in the outbound side, like they have made a ton of advances on the inbound side to be super fair. But let’s talk about this last year. Last year was a shit show, right, this has been an absolute insanity around the change in the logistics network, right, what Amazon did this last year. Okay, let me pause, though stick with me, I’m going to be on Amazon’s side for a second, then I’ll come back.
Rob:
Amazon is not wrong about placement, because what we just talked about getting closer to an end consumer, getting the right stuff in the right place where people are going to buy things that is key to getting faster delivery speeds, which absolutely converts better. It is undoubted, it is very it’s true, it’s, it is not a question, it’s not even debatable. Absolutely has incredible opportunity for you to be able to sell more if you’re closer to the customer. So the concept that they’re trying to solve on the inbound side is not wrong. Get the right stuff to the right place. Traditionally, when they had you know, when I started Amazon they had like eight fulfillment centers. They’ve got a billion fulfillment centers. Now the problem is, when you send something to Amazon that’s a standard size product, it goes through a crosstalk. Amazon can no longer connect all of those crosstalks to all the fulfillment centers, meaning if you send it to one place, you actually won’t get to the population, you won’t get the spread, you won’t get the placement, you won’t get the density you need close to where people are buying. So Amazon said–
Kevin King:
Okay, let’s explain real quick what a crosstalk is. A lot of people I know what that is, but a lot of people don’t understand what a crosstalk is.
Rob:
Yeah, so a crosstalk will. Do you send stuff to Amazon? Amazon does? It’s not a fulfillment center. They don’t ship to a customer, they all they do is receive.
Kevin King:
They’re not storing it there.
Rob:
That’s right. It’s just flows through that building.
Kevin King:
It’s passing through.
Rob:
That’s correct. Yeah, so they receive it.
Kevin King:
It’s like an airline hub or something.
Rob:
That’s exactly right. Yep so you come in and then it just distributes it to the multiple fulfillment centers and that is where it sits, is stored and then is shipped to the end consumer. So that cross-doc can’t ship to that many fulfillment centers because you only have so many. Like you can’t mechanically ship to that many places, so you’re constrained. So what Amazon ended up saying is I need to regionalize my inbound network, so like I need you to send it closer to the end consumer and then I’ll get it to the fulfillment center. And but they ended up creating a two tiered crosstalk system. They have a national crosstalk system and a regional crosstalk system that the national crosstalks would say hey, I’m going to, you’re doing a two tiered crosstalk, which means you’re going to send it If you can’t split it up where to five or more locations. That’s how it’s configured right now. If you can’t split the five, you’re going to send it to one. I’m going to split it to the five for you and then it will go to an FC and that adds like a week of lead time. So it’s not only more they charge a placement fee if you send it to one place, but it also adds a week of lead time, at least in most scenarios, if not more. During peak it was a lot more.
Rob:
And so you’ve got this super complex fractured environment and you’ve added a bunch of cost for sellers. If I was selling, if I was sending one truckload before a week, now I have to send it to five or 10 places and I’m sending LTL and they blew up the entire LTL network in the entire country because they were trying to get things in. They still you know, they still early January, I’m sorry, early February 2025, they still have not recovered from peak, which is crazy. They still have not recovered because they were digging out of this massive backlog and hole from fracturing the inbound network right in peak. They were launching new crosstalk buildings in October. Honestly, they botched the entire rollout, but the concept of placement is the right one. So it’s a challenging thing to be like you guys suck at the execution of rolling it out, but like the concept is the right one for brands to lean into.
Kevin King:
A lot of brands are used, I mean from your point of view, because you’re able to mix a lot of stuff together it’s probably a cost savings for you and improved inbound, available to ship or availability timeframe. But for the smaller guys, it’s some of—
Rob:
It’s so much harder.
Kevin King:
It’s actually costing them more.
Rob:
Way more, like way, way more. It’s actually one of those where scale absolutely is important. I actually I mean this is why we’ve started selling some of our 3PL services as well, because density wins right, and this is where a large seller like me that has the technology but also, more importantly, the density I just have more transactions than anybody else. I really believe that Amazon will not solve our inbound transportation problem. They’re not going to come out with great products, they’re not going to invest in it, and I actually believe we can solve this ourselves as sellers like banding together, to work together to do this thing better than Amazon’s going to solve for us. I think is a very real thing, and we have the architecture, we’ve got the backbone for it and the expertise right, so it’s I think it’s a thing that I’m passionate about. Amazon is hurting the small and medium-sized seller way more than they’re hurting the big seller when they added this type of complexity from a logistics perspective.
Kevin King:
But, like you said, they really don’t care, because if they hurt a medium-sized seller, they don’t really care about him because there’s another guy standing right behind him waiting to take his place.
Rob:
That’s correct. I mean, that’s the Amazon way right.
Kevin King:
It’s the Amazon way. Somebody else will take its place. We’ll fill the gap. No big deal. It’s back to what you said about the change. It used to be that if I’m in Austin and I ordered something and it was in a warehouse in Pasadena, Prime Air would bring it over before. Prime Air would get trucked over in a couple of days or sent on a FedEx plane or whatever is under agreements, and then I would get the item. Now they’ve gone from that to, like you said, this hub and spoke system where there’s like I think there’s like eight regional, eight divisions in the US. It’s almost like American Airlines has a hub in Dallas, Chicago, L.A., Charlotte, Miami and JFK. It’s kind of like that same system.
Rob:
Not dissimilar, yeah.
Kevin King:
And so now it’s to the point where if I order some product and it’s in the warehouse in Pasadena, it’s probably not even going to show up on my, on my, as an available item to buy perhaps. Or it may be on page two or three with a extended delivery time, versus if it’s in my little one of my little eight regions, it’s in a warehouse in Dallas, it’s probably going to be available to me. And so now the logistics of actually playing the game on Amazon from and knowing where is your inventory, and it’s going to affect your sales and affect your market, affect everything. And when you show up and you can’t some of these tools you can’t trust that. It says uh, you’re ranked number 17. Uh, and you actually may be number 17 in Duluth, but you’re number 290 in Miami. Uh, number three in, uh, in San Diego, or something.
Rob:
Yup 100%. It’s extremely different depending on where you are. So I think the reality is that if you’re going to be excellent, if you’re going to be excellent at selling in marketplaces, you have to be world-class at selling stuff that motion of marketing, that motion of advertising, that motion of content. But you also have to be world-class at moving stuff. You cannot. They’re so linked together and that is like how much of the right thing at the right place. You can’t send in too much, you can’t send in too little. Like finding that balance is very, very, incredibly hard, and you have to be world-class at both If you actually want to grow and win market share, and in the hardest environment ever right? Amazon has created the most competitive marketplace in the history of time. If you’re going to do that, you have to be world-class at both. You can’t choose one or the other.
Kevin King:
I used to say, you know, 10 years ago, when people were doing FBA, the money’s enough and finding products on Alibaba and sticking your name on it and finding an opportunity on one of the keyword tools of the day. Then it became, as the competition came in, it became more and more competitive. Like you just said, it became, the money was made in the sourcing who could source better, who could source for a lower price? Now I think it’s evolving to two things. I think it’s evolving to who can do the logistics better like you just said, world-class logistics and make your margin there over somebody else. And then, beyond that, it’s AI and who’s going to be able to be able to use AI properly and I’m not talking about to analyze your PPC and your keywords, I’m talking about to use AI and some of this big stuff that’s coming out. There’s some amazing stuff, like some of the deep learning tools from Gemini and OpenAI, where it can use past data, and someone like you, you said you had 37 trillion or some crazy number of data points. Someone that has that kind of data. You have your own LLM inside there and you guys have a proprietary one that nobody else has.
Kevin King:
I mean, Amazon’s the only one that’s close to you probably that has something a little bit more probably, but you have, so your tools can go and take a look at, like, what’s the history, the 10 year history of I don’t know these dog treats? Oh, we see a cycle that it always, you know, when it’s year of the, when Chinese New Year’s, a snake or a rat is always a sales spark, or whatever the trends may be. You know Hoover’s a Democratic president or a Republican, all these different things and it can say, oh, okay, six, it can project, can project forward, because right now everybody that’s trying to sell on Amazon it projects from the back. They’re looking at what’s going on right now, looking at past sales data, last past keyword history, past rank and deciding where’s the opportunity going forward. And they may be looking at keyword tracker or Google trends or some of this stuff to see what’s kind of. But they’re still a step behind with the AI and the big data, like you guys have, you can be six months ahead. So you can be actually like, look, this product nobody’s ever heard of, I don’t know doggy donuts. I’m just making something up here. You’ve never heard of doggy donuts, but the AI says that doggy donuts, doggy donut treat chews you know, little toy chews for puppies is going to be a hot thing six months from now because of all this past data.
Kevin King:
You should go out right now and make doggy donut chewy toys. And if you do that on October 13th to October 31st somewhere we’re estimating the AI this is going to start taking off because of these different things and that may happen. But even if it’s at 80% time, it happens. 80% accuracy, 20% failure that’s the same failure rate that a lot of the most sophisticated sellers have right now using past data. So you might get stuck with something, got to liquidate it out, but no big deal. But you’re now, you’ve got the data and you’re ahead of the game and you’re going to win every single freaking time. And now, with agents and stuff that can do a lot of this stuff, I’m sure you guys are probably on top of a lot of this. Yep, it’s going to become a data and logistics game much because anybody can source, anybody can use the tools, anybody can come up with an idea, it’s fastest to market and who can do it for the least cost, and that includes everything across the board.
Rob:
And fast too, right, it’s like speed, it’s cost, it’s all those things. And the logistics side, the fun part is it’s actually kind of sheltered from AI in so many ways because you’re physically moving a thing. First of all, it’s kind of like the least sexy, like people don’t want to go, they’re like, oh, it’s like you know you have to do it and you know how, how interesting could it possibly be? But sometimes people’s entire margin is in their logistics, right, like their entire margin of logistics.
I break this down, I mean I think you are absolutely right. Data becomes super important. I break this down in three ways You’ve got data, you’ve got insights and you have actions. Those three major, critical, important buckets, right. Data. Where am I collecting that data? How am I housing that data? How am I like the architecture of how I’m sourcing and holding that data? Insights are more like hey, here’s my, anything that you can glean from that, right, like that insights layer. Basically is like how do I know something about what’s going on in that data? Give me suggestions of what I should do or tell me what happened. Like either read me the news of what’s happened or tell me something that’s interesting that I should do comes from that layer. And then you’ve got the actions that’s placing an ad, that’s changing a keyword that’s shipping a thing that’s buying another product, that’s long, you know. Six months ahead, I can see a doggy treat making something different and it’s very it’s very infrequent that anyone in the world can do all three of those things.
Rob:
Big data, like collection, housing and accessing, creating an insights layer that says, with that data, I should do something that’s actually interesting, not just tell me something that’s going on, but actually give me an actionable insight and then to do the thing. And we’re really solving all three of those in a very unique way. I genuinely believe that’s why we’re winning in so many ways. We are attacking each of those three buckets very intentionally because you have lots of ad agencies or like agencies out there in general, like third parties that can do one of those three things. If you tell me what to do, I can do it really well. I can show you what to do actionably, but, like I can’t click the button and do something with that thing or I can just give you access to the data. It’s very unique and where we’ve kind of planted our flag is we can do all three of those things and we can do them all in the same house with kind of world-class in each of the three buckets in multiple areas. I can do it in marketing, I can do it in logistics, I can do it in content, I can do it in you know, ad tech. Like all of those things, it creates a unique environment where we can give something that most brands can’t, because you can’t live in one of those buckets as a brand and be successful. You have to nail all three of those things.
Kevin King:
How’s Pattern’s relationship with Amazon? Is it strong? Or do you guys go through some of the same pain points where you’re having frustrations getting things done? Or do you have because of your size, they actually give you the golden glove. Or are there still issues where you’re like, uh, God, dang it, uh, just fix this. Quit messing with us. I mean, quit screwing around you. Do you know who we are?
Rob:
Uh, no, I mean, I think one of the things that you know is like Amazon is Amazon still. So, just to be super clear, right, it’s not like they’re catering to it, they’re still like you’re still you and we’re us. We don’t get like special treatment. What we do, though, is we do get to spend time in like having some strategic conversations that probably, like a medium seller can’t do. We get to give a lot of feedback, because we get to try some new things, like if they’re trying to like a beta or try something new or test something. We get to try a lot of stuff and be like and give feedback on those things. I think that’s one of the cooler pieces. We get to be part of the solution for not only big sellers, but like for everybody. Right, like we’re like hey, this is a bad seller experience for some of these things, but, as far as you know, do we have the same issues? Do we still have to like put in tickets and you know, yell at people and all of that, yeah, that’s exactly the same. So, unfortunately, our focus is on how do we be as efficient as we can in those processes, but we’re still just a seller to Amazon in so many ways.
Kevin King:
So a lot of your people that are doing? Are they experienced e-com people that you guys hire? Are you bringing them in and you want them to not really know anything about e-com so you can teach them the Pattern way, or do you want people that were previous sellers or previous agency owners or whatever and they have a clue and you just kind of help them out? What type of people are you looking for that work at Pattern?
Rob:
In like leadership roles and kind of at our highest level, our C-suite is filled with a bunch of people that have been doing this for a very long time and that we have a ton of experience doing that. As you work your way down, we are, we’re getting very experienced people that have done this. But we’ve got kind of a wide range If you’re. If you were someone who’s been doing this a lot and like, uh, and you’re an experienced seller or you’ve worked, you know, in this in the marketplace ecosystem, we can come in and show you the Pattern way. But also we’ve got entry-level roles from somebody who has no idea what they’re doing right, and they can come in and learn about this world that they probably have very little exposure to. So we’re really not, we just want great people. We have incredibly good high bar for talent here. That is the truth and that drives a huge percentage of our success is that as a team we are experienced, we are drivers, we are collaborative, we’ve got low egos. We just go chase the problem. We’re problem solvers. So regardless of what you’ve had in the background or your past, if you’re a badass and a rock star, you’ve probably got a place here.
Kevin King:
So the next intern just got hired. That’s going to be the next CEO of Pattern right?
Rob:
The COO or CEO, you never know.
Kevin King:
So how is AI affecting everything that you’re doing, from logistics to everything within? There’s some people that are getting super serious about AI and some people that just talk to talking about AIs, AIs, robotics, and Tesla robots and driving cars. And I mean, here in Austin there’s a toll road that’s called 130 that circles Austin and the idea was to get traffic out of the middle of town and it’s a longer way and it’s a toll road. So they try to get the trucks and stuff to go there, but they actually just cordoned off 13 miles of this road. I don’t know exactly how they’re doing it, but I guess a lane or something and it’s solely for automation testing of semi-trucks where it’s no drivers and semi-trucks or no drivers and semi-trucks moving goods, and they’re going to be testing a whole bunch of stuff. But I to me, I think the vast majority of people in e-commerce maybe at your level it’s a little bit differently, but down at the lower level, as peons down here at the lower level, we hear about AI and we dabbled with it with a tool that might help us write a listing or help us analyze our PPC, or some of these little miniature chatbots that people have done to say, analyze and help me get rid of my bad reviews, or something that’s cool. But when it comes to AI, that’s barely scratching the surface of what can be done, and I think a lot of people in the e-commerce space don’t have their head down into the weeds of what’s really going on in AI and how this is going to revolutionize not only the way people shop and the way they buy Pattern products, but the way you source, the way you do logistics, the way you do everything across the board. What is Pattern doing? Or how advanced are you guys, or what are you doing? Or where do you see, where are you projecting? This is going to go.
Rob:
I think AI, where humans probably think AI, we’re kind of uninteresting. I think how the purposes and the uses I mean you said it a little bit right like and the uses that we can come up with, like oh, it can help me do X when actually, where I think we will continue to be surprised by where AI will be most impactful. I think where we think it will be the most impactful is like, yeah, that stuff’s pretty easy. But if I break it down again, like data, insights and actions, the like, the insights layer of like what I can glean, what I can do, versus a machine that can do it not only faster but would get a connection that I can never possibly do and then and then execute an action that would be better than what I could have thought could have been done. That is across the board, that can be an advertising, that can be in content, that can be in product, like gap analysis of products that exist in the world, that can be pricing, that can be so many things for trends, logistics, how much should I buy? Like what you know, forecasting, like all of those things.
Rob:
And we are leaned in really, really heavy. So we have spent a lot already and we’re continuing to invest in AI as a pretty big driver of efficiency as we continue to scale. We’re able to this is one this is transparently one of the advantages of scale we’re able to invest a lot of money and people and time into taking a bet that on multiple different areas of AI that are going to separate us from our competition and from many brands that are trying to do it on their own, they can never invest that type of money right or that kind of focus in growing so across the board, in every single one of our areas, we’re investing in technology and specifically AI to help leverage what we’ve already been built.
Kevin King:
Are there any pattern? Do you guys really have any competition in what you’re doing, or are there just some small players are trying to get their foot in the door and they’re just kind of far behind? Or is there anybody? I mean, you’re up at the top, you’re number one globally and you look at number two, you know it’s, I’m in the top 10, there’s several Chinese companies, there’s a Pakistani company, there’s several, but who? Who’s the biggest? What’s the biggest threat to Pattern? It doesn’t have to be a, it doesn’t have to be a competitor. It could be a technology or a political thing or a whatever. What’s the biggest threat that you have to guard against?
Rob:
It’s a good question, I mean, I think, as more and more nobody’s invincible right and nobody cannot be caught. Right now, where we are in this space, I think we are very much differentiated from other accelerators and people that are trying to do the thing that we’re doing. I think we’ve got really, really good people. I think we’ve got the logistics side cannot right now, it cannot be touched. It cannot be touched. Our ad tech is really interesting and we’re continuing to invest in it. So, from that side of like doing the thing that we do, I think it’s gonna be hard to catch us for quite a while. I think, where what we can’t know is what’s going to change from a trend perspective on Amazon. Does Amazon change the rules of how their marketplace operates? If that thing changes in some substantial way, does that unlock an opportunity for a competitor for themselves for something else to happen? But the motion that Amazon currently exists? I do not. I, you know we are the best at that thing. We, I, we, it’s. It’s definitively true, both from a growth perspective and from an execution perspective. We are, we are the best in this space. So how do we keep being the best in this space is a challenge that we’ve got. I have a high level of confidence. We have the right people in the right place to continue doing that, but I’m super interested to see what happens in this market. Nothing is forever. Nothing is forever right. Like I just said, 15 years ago, the Amazon ecosystem is completely different, so I think it’s probably more some unseen thing that would put more of a threat on us than the execution that we are doing right now as we continue to grow. Our own internal thread is how do we stay really good, really scrappy, really partner obsessed, as we continue to scale and grow? If we can do that, I think we’re going to be in a really good spot for a long time.
Kevin King:
One of Jeff Bezos’ most famous quotes is “Your margin is his opportunity”. So why does I mean, with the amount of data you have, with the amount of the awesome logistics and infrastructure you guys have, why don’t you start your own marketplace?
Rob:
I don’t think we. I don’t think that’s I mean, who knows down like down the road but I don’t think we actually need to do that. Our margin is low. We actually don’t. We are a low margin, high volume business. We don’t keep a lot of percentage points on any transaction that we are keeping. We are all about scale. We’re all about growth. We know we’re a middleman between a brand and a marketplace, right, so we don’t get greedy and I think that’s one of our advantages as well. Like we’re not trying to expand and grow our margins and get really, really fat on a, on a you know crazy percentage. We’re really trying to stay as close as we can to a certain low percentage and just grow the number of transactions we get so that grows. I don’t know that we need to do a marketplace. There’s so much, I think. The other thing, you know another thing that Bezos. Actually I don’t quote Bezos much, but this is one that I talk about when I when I say he’s like there’s a lot of winners in this space. We are not. I think that we’re not anywhere close right now to the end or like terminal percentage of e-commerce transactions. I don’t know what it is, it’s not 100%, it’s not. You know, if you go in some market like Korea is like 43% or something like that of transactions happen in e-commerce. You know China’s 36 and the US is like 24 or something like that. Right, like worldwide I think it’s 22%. We still have so much opportunity to do here. Like it’s not necessarily yet interesting. We’re not close to kind of that terminal percentage where we need to go get more new primary demand. There’s so much secondary demand that already exists and it will continue to grow for primary demand in e-commerce. I think there’s so much room to run still. I think we’re just getting started.
Kevin King:
Awesome, I think you’re just getting started too, and I feel like we’re just getting started talking about this. We could keep going for quite some time on this.
Rob:
Yeah. I think so.
Kevin King:
But, Rob, if people want to follow you or reach out or learn more, or learn about Pattern or what’s the best way to get ahold of you or to find out more, if they’re interested in maybe working with Pattern on some level, or what’s the best?
Rob:
Go to pattern.com. You can check out all the different stuff we have, both from like services, from 3PL, fulfillment services or the core, what we would call our core accelerator model. Like, if you’re a brand, you’ve got some traction and you’re like, hey, I want to go hit the gas. Like all of that goes through pattern.com. There’s a contact us section and we’re also on all the socials. Like you know, I’m Rob Hohn. I’m on LinkedIn. Uh, happy to always like, follow and connect there. We post stuff about what’s going on in our world all the time. Um, and you know, connect that way. So we were any, pattern.com is the most effective, but we’re all over the place from that side, so we’re also be. You know we’re at trade shows, where you know we’re Prosper. We’re at Manifest. We’re at Expo East. We’re, you know, all of these types of Expo West, like all of these types of shows throughout the year as well. If you run into us, we’re always willing to kind of chat and see if it makes sense.
Kevin King:
And you have your own show too right that you do?
Rob:
We do. Yeah, so Accelerate. We have our own Accelerate um in May uh, May 21st, 22nd, here in 2025. Um, coming up, it’s in Salt Lake city. It’s really cool.
We actually it’s not like um, it’s not like a Pattern time share or something like that where you have to come and listen about us. We actually get some really incredibly cool people to come talk about. Like Jesse Itzler came last year, Jessica Simpson came and talked last year about like brands they’ve, you know, Honest Company came here. Like we’ve got these really cool people that are out there in the world that are like just doing cool stuff. We bring in people from Walmart, people from Amazon. Our competitors come and talk. Like we actually don’t care, we just want an environment where people can come talk and learn about e-commerce. Yeah, May 21st, 22nd in Salt Lake City. It’s a I highly suggest it’s. Very honestly, before I joined, I was like is this like a kind of a hokey thing? It’s super legit. It is a fantastic thing. We had a couple thousand people come last year. We expect it to grow this year. It’s a very cool opportunity to talk to people that are solving all the same problems. Like the end of the day, we’re all trying to do the same damn thing, so like it’s cool to get everybody in a room and talk about that.
Kevin King:
Rob, I really appreciate you coming on. This has been awesome, man. Thanks again for joining us here on the. I know you don’t do a lot of podcasts, but thanks for coming on.
Rob:
Thank you very much. I very much enjoyed it.
Kevin King:
Awesome talk there with Rob on talking about logistics and Amazon, what it takes to succeed and where everything’s going, and I think there’s a massive opportunity there for a lot of you too. If you’re at that point where you’re just kind of like ready to put some gas on your business but don’t want to give it up, they may be a good option to actually check out. So reach out to Pattern or reach out to Rob on LinkedIn and he can connect you to the right people and maybe they can help you really explode your brand if you’re already doing a million dollars plus and then sell it for even more money two, three, four years from now. Or take a look at their logistics. I mean they got this stuff down. I mean maybe as a 3PL, they’d be a great option for you as well.
Kevin King:
And a lot of you. When you’re listening to this, when this episode comes out, we’re at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. It just wrapped up and now I have my Elevate 360 event going on in Iceland at the Blue Lagoon. So hopefully some of you saw the stream of the event or, if you didn’t, there’s replays available. You can go to BillionDollarSellerSummit.com and check that out if you want to get to see replays of some amazing stuff that just went down in Iceland. We’ll be back again next week with another incredible episode of the AM/PM Podcast. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter at billiondollarsellers.com. Billiondollarsellers.com. And remember life is all about the experiences you have and the people you meet. Life is about the experiences you have and the people you meet. See you again next week. Bye.
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