Wow, has it been more than two months since my last post? Time really flies, doesn't it!?
Actually, I would really like to write more, so I am going to make the effort to do so more often. Recently, I have been so busy and have a lot going on, so it has been difficult to post. In fact, I am so busy that I am still on a bit of a hiatus regarding music projects and music learning. However, sometimes I need to relax after work so I have been practicing patch design (making new sounds) on my synths, especially my hardware synth, the MiniBrute 2S. Through practice, one can gradually get used to which components bring which characteristics to the timbre (tone quality) and shape of a sound. I also got a book which I am reading during my commute to work. The book is called, Creating Sounds from Scratch: A Practical Guide to Music Synthesis for Producers and Composers. I’ll post a picture of the book here as I really recommend it as a comprehensive resource for sound design in the context of music production. It is really thorough and covers basically EVERYTHING, but it does assume a certain level of comprehension. It goes into the history of sound creation and synthesis and is a highly recommended read:
So, what is keeping me busy since my last post? If you remember, I wrote about three projects. One is the diet book. I already explained about that in the last post. I am about halfway through the marketing planning phase and I reached a few milestones there; I have a list of people I can contact to promote the book, but I want to take things slow so I have a fighting chance at selling the book and making the knowledge available to as many people as possible.
That being said, I would like to explain my second project which is called Amazon FBA Private Labeling.
What is Amazon FBA Private Labeling?
I should really thank my stepmom for introducing me to the world of private labeling and for her help. Amazon FBA Private Labeling is to design a product and have it made by a manufacturer and have it sold on Amazon (of course you can use other e-commerce sites or your own site, too). It is your own product and brand. Setting this up has been my big focus for the past two months, but before I say where I am with this, I would like to explain all about Private Labeling and give an overview on how it’s done.
Basically, the first step to Private Labeling is to think about a product and conceptualize one you would like to see sold. There are a few ways to do this and a few ways to find gaps in the market which can be exploited for profit. For me, this is the same thing as making something which delivers value to people: If the product you design fills a particular demand need, or if it creates the demand or style itself, it is sure to be a winner. For me, I used an online research tool and some of the marketing and finance skills drawn from my MBA background to assess the chances of success for the product I wanted to sell. This all came together as a feasibility study in churning a profit. There were several products I did this for, and it was even more of a challenge than usual because I am dealing with the Amazon Japan Marketplace. I also had to develop a listing for the product in Japan and convert some of the keywords to be used in Japanese. As a result of my study, some products/ideas were cut and some were accepted.
Once you have the product design, the next step is to make a Bid for Proposal and get the MOQ (minimum order quantity) from each of your potential suppliers. I initially would not be doing this because I am using some of my stepmom’s products to test the waters. However, I studied how to do it well and I will be doing this (hopefully) soon for one of my own products I developed. I still have to put a lot of chess pieces on the board for that one though!
Regarding finding suppliers, There are certain sources which can be used to make a list of suppliers to email. I would recommend the list to be made of companies which are first and foremost honorable and reliable. Of course, quality is very important too because poor quality can lead to negative views which will affect your product’s ranking on the marketplace.
Once you have selected a supplier (or at least made a short list of suppliers), you can have them make a batch and setup a delivery to the Amazon Warehouse directly, or you can ship it to a warehouse (storage) of your own, or you can hire a 3PL (third party logistics company) to handle this. As one might expect, these things fall on a cost/benefit spectrum correlated to the order quantity. Unfortunately, the delivery is where a lot of my trouble came in.
Naturally, I had to setup a company in Japan and connect it to the Amazon Marketplace. That is a blog post in itself, but for short, it is a little bit more expensive that in the United States and requires more red tape and then there’s the whole hanko (company seal) thing. This whole system and the hanko issues caused big delays. Not to mention, it is difficult to find reliable shipping companies in Japan who will work with anything other than big companies. This combined with the current global shipping debacle had me working on securing logistics for almost two months!
Anyway, there are several more meticulous things to know about setting up and optimizing the Amazon listing and the PPC (pay per click advertising), but I won’t get into them. After the listing is set up, it is time to assess the resupply situation and look at the sales data. I actually have a good outlook so far, but we’ll see where things will go.
That is a small overview of my second project. If anyone has an interest in doing this you can DM me or ask a question in the blog. I have one more post to make about the three things I am working on, then I’ll make another post about music soon!
Regards,
SCOPS
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