Today, we are happy to have Michael Fenech – an Australian entrepreneur, writer, startup advisor, e-commerce expert, and a co-founder of SKUdrop.
Contents:
- major changes in logistics during COVID / how SKU drop was born;
- changes in the logistics climate in China in the past years;
- SKUdrop service overview;
- what a shipping plan looks like;
…and much more!
Speaker1: [00:00:03] Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the sellerboard Show Podcast. Today we have a very special guest. His name is Michael Fedak. He is the founder of the SKUdrop. And we are going to be talking about, uh, logistics and the ways that you can improve your costs and actually improve profitability. Michael Hello. Thank you so much for coming to the podcast.
Speaker2: [00:00:29] Alex, it’s great to be on your show and hello to the audience and I’m very excited to speak to you about all things logistics and in particular skew drop. And as you mentioned, you know, profitability is very important and we solve that problem. So thanks for having me.
Speaker1: [00:00:44] Sure. I’m looking forward to an interesting discussion because as you’ve mentioned in our previous talk right now before the recording, you know, I like the point that some or maybe most of the sellers focus too much on sales and product research, and they they kind of drop out of the face when you have to look around what’s going on with your logistics and try to improve that, you know, to reduce costs. So I think this is a very good point to start. But before we do that, I would really like to know more about you. What’s your Amazon seller journey? Because you are an Amazon seller and how you got into e-commerce in the first place. So could you please elaborate a little bit on that?
Speaker2: [00:01:29] Ensure been intercom for about five years now. My wife got in it into it together. I’ve got a tech startup background of of built sort of media technology and partnered with major corporations in America and worked with famous celebrities. And I remember I was sitting down in a hotel in Beverly Hills and I said to myself. I want to get a side hustle where I can make money while I sleep. And it’s sort of, you know, minimal management, but obviously very profitable. And obviously Ecom came to mind and my wife and I first started doing Dropshipping, so we had over 700 SKUs drop shipped from China to the US using Google Shopping. And that was actually quite good, very tough when you’re competing with Amazon in the US, you know, our shipping was 2 to 3 weeks, whereas in Amazon FBA it’s like one day or two days prime whatever. So it was a very difficult process, but we learned a lot. Then we decided to turn our focus to Amazon FBA. And to cut a long story short, since 2019 we created a brand. We’ve got three SKUs. Um, we’re pretty much the alpha in our niche and doing over $1 million a year and it’s just a great business that has our products have really good what we call USP unique selling proposition, which makes us stand out from the crowd and we do well and stuff like that. And then we also have a really big community in Australia called the End Game Network where we nurture sort of people helping them sell stuff on Amazon and sort of amongst all that. During Covid, we then started SKUdrop, which was solving a really big problem in the logistics side, as you mentioned before.
Speaker1: [00:03:17] Sounds sounds really mean, not intense, but it’s a lot. Sounds like a lot in a short period of time. I have a question here that comes to my mind. Um, I’ve talked to some of the startup founders or maybe software founders that also work with Amazon and provide services for Amazon sellers that originated as Amazon sellers themselves, and most of them exited. So they they sold their Amazon business and just focused on developing the software and delivering delivering it to the market. But you are currently also selling on Amazon. So I would like to know how how is that experience? I mean, did you think about exiting or maybe what motivates you to keep the business running? Are you planning to to keep on selling?
Speaker2: [00:04:08] It’s a good question. My wife and I spoke about whether we want to be in a position where we could exit. But I think our initial sort of thoughts at this point in time is to keep the brand, because it’s doing very well. We’ve got very good supplies, very good team around us that can help us manage the brand. So we think, well, we’re sellers, it’s profitable. Let’s just keep it. Yeah. Also too, for me and my wife, it’s just like, well, we’ve got a big community of Amazon sellers and I’d like to be in the game still. And then obviously whatever we learn, we can pass on and sort of be still be a seller. So yeah, at this point in time we’re going to keep it. And again, we’re solving a really big problem in Amazon and being a seller I think can help me keep focused on what the sellers are going through to better serve their needs.
Speaker1: [00:04:58] Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, from my previous discussions, you know, with the guys that just reached a point when they understood that it’s time to exit, time to sell the business for me. I’m not an Amazon seller, but for me it was like, you know, a sign that Amazon is like an A game and that you eventually will have to exit. You will have to to sell your business and move on with something else that will be, I don’t know, maybe more sustainable or will be less stressful or I don’t know why. What is the motive behind this? But, you know, your example for me is inspiring. It means that you actually can keep moving on. So yeah, it’s a girl.
Speaker2: [00:05:38] Yeah, I mean, a lot of people, yeah, that’s probably the goal. But then there are a few people that are actually this is their full time job. Yeah. So they’ve left the 9 to 5. They’re not working for anybody. They’re solely working for their own brand they’ve built up. So this is their source of income. So there are a lot of people who have transitioned from 9 to 5 to selling on Amazon full time. And they, you know, I suppose may consider it, but that’s putting food on their table. So they’d want to nurture it as best as they can and keep it sort of profitable and still earn money from it.
Speaker1: [00:06:09] Yeah, definitely. Definitely. All right. My next question is, you said that the idea of creating Skill Drop came to you while being already an active Amazon seller. So probably you’ve understood at some point that there’s an uncovered pain point for Amazon sellers or maybe a problem that you could solve. How what was that point when you realized that and how it came to you? I mean, where the idea came from?
Speaker2: [00:06:39] Yeah, it was a good question. So it was during Covid, obviously, I think it was about a two year period. There was lockdowns and all and all that sort of stuff. And I remember during Covid there was a point in time where logistics and cost of containers went through the roof what would be, say, a $4,000 container. We heard some stories where that $4,000 container was being sold for like 25, $30,000. So what happened was a lot of people got got surprised because no one’s ever really sort of thought about the logistics side of things. So when these prices went up, everybody went, hang on a minute, I’m losing money. Shipping is really expensive. We need to do something about it. So myself, my business partner here in Australia and a number of other key Amazon sellers in China, in Miami, in Florida, we got together and we actually had a Zoom call and the agenda of the zoom call was we asked ourselves a question. How can we solve the logistics problem? If you think about the existing supply chain tactic, it comprises of this and I’ve got a presentation which I can touch on this later, but basically.
Speaker2: [00:07:52] Products are ready in China. Let’s say, for example, you try and you try and email a number of freight forwarders to get different quotes. Once you get a quote, you send your whole order over to America. You store it in the expensive US and then from there you do LTL shipments into Amazon. Yeah. We looked at that model and thought, hang on a minute. How can we make it more efficient? You know, one of our Chinese partners says, I don’t know what you guys do, why you have a us3. And we leaned in and said, What are you talking about? He says, I’ve never used a three pl in America and I’ve never ever shipped a full container. And we said, hang on a minute. Well, and we explored this more and basically Dew Drop was born. So what skew drop is basically it’s an innovative supply chain tactic where Stu Drop becomes a historic facility in China, which is much cheaper than a US. So we become your logistics partner as well, where we’ll give you multiple shipping options to ship directly to Amazon FBA.
Speaker1: [00:09:01] Right?
Speaker2: [00:09:02] Eliminating all the costs of the three, which means you got more efficiency, which means you make more profit margin. But the key thing is this a big discovery is that we organized 3 or 4 months worth of stock and we do shipments every three months skew drop model. We look at doing small, regular weekly shipments weekly and mathematically weekly or fortnightly depending on the shipping rhythm that you want to use. But we’ve worked out mathematically that if you do smaller weekly shipments and eliminate a three. You will save on your supply chain, which will then refer to. Increasing profit margin for your SKUs. Now, recently we had one of the biggest Amazon accountants in the world actually used Skydrop and they he sent 106 CPM, which is about one and a half containers to Skydrop. He did 42 shipments and he actually ran the numbers and said, Right, I’m going to test Skydrop versus my old supply chain model, which is full container over to us. Yeah, cut a long story short, we saved him 9%. Wow. On his supply chain. Well, and we also saw a number of other benefits as well, which we can touch on, but. We. It proved our hypothesis. And we’ve reinvented the supply chain. Taking in the beauty about Skydrop is that we become your storage facility, trying to manage your logistics, multiple shipping options directly in Amazon, all managed by beautiful software tool that can show you what’s stored, how much inventory you have. And in a click of a button, we can do a shipping plan, which takes a long time. If you’ve got many SKUs literally in three seconds and it’s a time saver, there’s a whole host of other benefits of Skydrop, which we’ll get into as we progress through the interview. But yeah, it’s exciting because we’re so happy to see our customers with efficiency, which then results to. But. Well, I.
Speaker1: [00:11:11] Already. That’s amazing. I can’t wait to see the presentation. First of all, right, now, you already sold the idea to me. But before we do that, um, I have a question about the, let’s say the profile of your regular client or an average client. So me as an Amazon seller, let’s say, how big I should be to, you know, to kind of address your services and see if you can help me. I mean, you mentioned before that you are not shipping necessarily full containers. So what starting with what what volumes of, of merchandise Can can I, can I start with a drop?
Speaker2: [00:11:54] So basically to answer the first part, who is Skydrop suited to? It could be suited for a beginner. Or a cellar with a really, really large cellar. Okay, Now we’ve got we’ve got everybody in the spectrum. We’ve got the beginners all the way up to sellers who are sending, you know, multiple containers a month. Now. The thing is, Skydrop is a consolidation warehouse in China. So we’ve got all everyone’s cartons under the one roof. And from there, when people do their weekly shipments, we can fill up containers and then ship them and then obviously disperse them out to the fulfillment centers. So anyone from beginner to a large seller, we’ve got them all and they’re loving the efficiencies and obviously the time savings as well.
Speaker1: [00:12:46] All right. All right. Got it. Got it. So basically, your kind of flexible with the, you know, the services that you provide for the for the beginners and the top sellers. All right. Got it. I have a question here about working in China. Yes. My question is, there has been a lot happening in China recently, in the past year. I mean, from full lockdown to opening the borders. And there are there were a lot of talks about the sentiment of, you know, the Chinese people and the changes, how it affected the economic situation, the prices in the mainland and stuff like that. So maybe a general question, um, how, how did you feel that the climate for your type of services changed in the past year in China and did it? Or didn’t.
Speaker2: [00:13:39] Look, to be honest with you. I mean, we haven’t really noticed anything too, I suppose. What’s the word I’m looking for? To be concerned at all about our dealings with China. We’ve actually got Chinese partners on the ground in China and full staffing of the warehouse and operations team as well. So from a skydrop perspective, it’s business as usual. And yeah, we’re even during parts of Covid, we it was just business as usual, if anything. And I suppose all freight forwarders would have felt this, there would have been a couple of little delays with Covid breakouts, but I suppose every seller experienced that depending on where their supplier was located in China. But yeah, we haven’t had any issues in regards to the operational side of things out of China.
Speaker1: [00:14:29] Got it. Got it. Thanks. All right. So you’ve started telling us about how what what problems Skydrop solves and some of the details of how it works and the benefits. And you mentioned that you have a presentation that you can share with us. So if you if you can do it right now, I’ll pass it out to you.
Speaker2: [00:14:53] It. Now, I’ll just say if you could let my share screen and then I can just.
Speaker1: [00:14:58] Of course, I’ll try and do that right now. Just a sec.
Speaker2: [00:15:11] Yeah. Good. Man. Wealth. Well. I think if you get a security and then you can go up to share screen yet I think it’s up. There you go right now.
Speaker1: [00:15:28] Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker2: [00:15:28] Beautiful. Okay, So this is only a very, very short presentation. Let me just get rid of all the panels and everything and then just go from there. So, um, obviously. I can double my cash flow with a skew job supply chain. I’ll talk about that after the presentation. But this is a very, very short presentation, gives people a very good overview of what we do. So basically, as mentioned before, this is what we’ve been doing all these years. This is a standard supply chain tactic where the product is ready. We emailed freight forwarders back and forth trying to get the best quote. Um, then once we work out who the freight forwarder is, we pay for our entire order up front. So that’s like between, you know, depending on the order, it could be 5 to 15 or $20,000 up front out of your business. And because you’re sending your entire order over to the US, you’re risking the whole three months or four months worth of stock because all that order is on the water. Yeah. So if the container gets pulled aside for a customs inspection business, continuity for those skews or skew will be affected. So there’s an increase in risk. Obviously you’ve got to pay your full tariff up front. Obviously you’re doing the full order and 3 or 4 days out from port you’ll manage your tariffs and have to pay that.
Speaker2: [00:16:49] Then you’ll land in a three PL And that’s where the fun begins because you’ve got to pay receiving fees, container cleanout fees, storage fees, software fees. There’s a lot of different fees involved in terms of using a three PL and then once your goods are stored, then you’ve got to do shipping plans and then pay for small parcel delivery or less than less than truckload shipments into Amazon, which is more money, more people handling your goods and this is what people are currently doing. Um, and, and we made a really, really big discovery that there’s sellers that, that are doing things completely different and their Chinese sellers or Eastern sellers with these different strategies, they’re not suppliers, they’re very sophisticated Amazon sellers. And what they do is they store in China, they do smaller weekly shipments, direct to Amazon. And the really big surprise is they don’t send full containers. It’s like a supermarket. If you sell 15 apples for the week, they’ll just replace the 15 apples. And that’s a similar thing that these this strategy is doing. So off the back of that Dewdrop was born and this is the solution. Store in China, we become your storage facility in China.
Speaker2: [00:18:07] We we become your logistics partner. We could manage your weekly shipments direct to Amazon, and it’s all managed via software. But the software sitting between your seller Central Account warehouse and we manage it all for you. And we can do a bit of a demonstration in regards to that. Sure. Now, if we look at the solution from a skew drop perspective, this is what the supply chain now looks like When using skew drop, you send your products to skew drop. Now you might be producing out of China and then you can store in our warehouse in China in Yiwu. Now one really big advantage of storing in China. And this has happened about 3 or 4 times already to existing customers. Now, let’s say, for example, you store all your goods in a us3 and you discover a major issue with your product. How are you going to fix that effectively? You’re going to get parts from China sent over three in America. They’re going to try and fix it. Now, when your goods are stored in our storage warehouse in China and your supplier might be might be 40 minutes up the road, they can come and pick your goods up and fix it.
Speaker1: [00:19:23] Right. Right.
Speaker2: [00:19:25] So when you’re storing in our warehouse, you can create a shipping plan, which is really, really easy and we can show you that. But here’s where it gets very interesting. You do. You have you pay smaller freight costs up front because you’re now doing a weekly shipment. You might send 300 units to Amazon FBA and that shipment might cost you $275. You’re potentially keeping, depending on the size of your order, you’re potentially keeping, you know, between 5 or 15, $20,000 in your pocket right now because we’re doing smaller weekly shipments, We’re reducing risk because if you have a weekly shipper that gets pulled aside for a customs inspection business, continuity can still flow because, you know, you’ve got shipments coming up behind that original shipment. Paying smaller tariff amounts up front again, keeping more cash in your pocket. You’re eliminated in three plays and all those expensive fees. There’s no need for speed LTL shipments direct into Amazon. So you’re saving money there as well. So. But that’s basically the. The presentation. And what I’ll do is I’ll just stop sharing. What I’ll do now is I’ll, I’ll if you like, we can discuss that. But then we can do a software demonstration.
Speaker1: [00:20:46] Sure, sure. We’ll do that. We’ll do that. Thank you for sharing the presentation. I have a question that comes to my mind right now, so if I get correctly, how, how, uh, how it works. Basically, in order to have a weekly shipment and you need to always have, uh, products on the water. So just in, in batches that follow and in each other. So this is, this is what a lot of sellers do.
Speaker2: [00:21:14] Yeah. So what a lot of sellers do is they have at least 42 days worth of stock in Amazon FBA because their next shipment potentially with regular service is about 42 days. But what we do is we add 42 days worth of stock, but we just send whatever we sold for the week before we just replenish. Yeah, we’ll send in 300 units this week. X, y, 310 units depending on what we sell. Obviously we forecast as well in terms of Prime day and sort of beef up the stock amounts, you know, to make sure we’ve got the stock. But basically that’s it. Smaller weekly shipments are mathematically works out. Obviously with removing three, it’s a much more efficient supply chain. Like I said before, the Amazon accounts that did the testing, 42 shipments have worked 89%. Now, seller of his size is massive, 9% significant. He also worked out, which is really interesting. He worked out that for a for a particular skew, he needed to hold $500,000 worth of stock for that skew. But with the skew drop model he worked out, if he could reconfigure his ordering with his supplier. He could hold half the amount of inventory and still service the same amount of sales. So what he’d worked out, Dewdrop, can actually create internal financing because you don’t have to hold as much stock, but yet you can still service the same amount of sales. And that’s huge because we know businesses like Amazon businesses are very cash intensive. Yes. Yes. And when we want to scale, scaling is difficult unless we get finance. If we can keep that internal financing in the business, well then we’ve got potentially may have money spare to launch that third or fourth product.
Speaker1: [00:22:56] It kind of reminds me, you know, of the Japanese just in time production model. So when you have parts coming in to the production line just in time when you need them. So this is basically what happens with the merchandise if you use Skydrop. So just supply exactly as much as you need without having your cash frozen in a lot of merchandise in the warehouse.
Speaker2: [00:23:20] That’s actually a very good point. But, you know, there’s been times with our brand, we do a shipment and we send over this is before Skydrop. We’d send over 3 or 4 months worth of stock and we’d be paying 15, $20,000 in shipping. I did a shipping plan this week and it was, um, I use regular service truck last mile and I think it was $169. So again, think about the cash flow keeping. I’d rather the money in my pocket and sending a full order which increases the risk and then paying a freight forwarder up front. So logically, when you think about the model, it just makes complete sense. And as a result, we’ve nearly got 500 brands using our service and we have hardly marketed at all. So yeah, it’s really interesting.
Speaker1: [00:24:12] This is a product led growth, so just the product sells itself.
Speaker2: [00:24:17] Exactly right. It sells itself exactly right. People do the math and they go, yes, it makes sense. And then they join.
Speaker1: [00:24:24] Actually, it’s kind of similar with seller bought because, you know, we have a business model that makes seller bought will try to make it as affordable as possible for for most of the people to try you know so it’s like $15 a month to to start and when the people do the math, they really understand that they don’t need the more expensive tools. So it’s basically yeah, we also have this exactly right, this model. All right. Now, if I may, I’m really curious to see how a shipping plan looks like. If you could show me. Yeah.
Speaker2: [00:24:57] And no problem. So I can do that.
Speaker1: [00:24:59] Yeah. And another question may be if you can touch on that, is the forecasting, I mean, how based on what do you do the forecasting and how how it works?
Speaker2: [00:25:08] Yes. What I’ll do is let me just I’ll just get the. He okay. And I’ll just go back to Zoom. Um, so we have a lot of features coming in and one of those features is obviously forecasting. We don’t have that feature at the moment, right? But basically what I do or we do with our brand is we look at historical sales, what we’ve been selling, we look at what’s coming up and we plan accordingly in terms of the volume we ship directly to Amazon FBA. But I’ll just go now to Skydrop and you let me know if you can see the screen. Yep. Okay. So basically this is the skew drop dashboard. So first of all, you’ll see these information panels across the top. We’ve got 800 total units stored. We’ve got 40 cartons that are stored in our warehouse. We’ve got 0.2, two of a cubic meter stored. And we’ve got an information panel here that shows the cartons in prep what’s incoming to the warehouse and what’s currently in transit to Amazon. And then we’ve got a number of tables underneath the main dashboard area where we’ve got products being prepared. So there’s three cartons that are being shipped to Amazon FBA.
Speaker2: [00:26:25] There’s the ID, we’ve got stored products, we’ve got two products here and there’s ten cartons and 30 cartons and then we’ve got our uploaded products. Now these are a little bit of a sneak peek. Alex Right. We have a release this feature, but in the very near future at the moment we can ship to the US, but we are opening up the UK market, which is really exciting. So now you can have all your goods in China under the skew drop warehouse roof and then you can say, okay, I want to send this stock to the US, this stock to the UK. So that’s actually this is a this is actually a real account connected to a seller central account and UK shipping is coming up very soon now to create a shipping plan. This is how simple it is. You go to send products to Amazon. Okay, click here. Right. And we just wait for it to load. It won’t be my Internet, actually. It’s a little bit slightly. Just refresh it. Oh, she should lock me out. One second. I’ll just log back in. Sure. Sorry about that. No, calm down.
Speaker1: [00:27:35] Here you go. Really? Like this? This animated graphic, you know, kind of makes me think of how many products are currently on the water. So it. Yes, exactly. Always, always products on the water. So I think I could watch it all day.
Speaker2: [00:27:48] Yes. So same price to Amazon. So this is what we have. We can select our market if we want to send to the US or the UK. And basically the first step is to choose whether you want to go sea or air. We have both options. In this case we’re going to go sea and there’s the product name, the skew and the available cartons for this particular product. Let’s say I’ll want to replenish 200 units. I’ve got ten cartons and you’ll see here there’s 200 units from here. All I do is press this button, create shipping plan within Seller Central. We’re talking to Seller Central at the moment, and the plan’s done. Yeah, there’s the. Shipping to G three. That’s the fulfillment center on the West Coast. Units expected 200. Got it. Now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to calculate the shipping estimate to get these cartons to Amazon. Once we press this button. There it is. It’s all done. Here’s your cargo details. Mastercard, cubic meters. Wait. And now our shipping algorithm has worked out that the best rate is a CPM rate with truck delivery. And this is what we show all our customers. Yeah, we’ve got regular medium express truck delivery and we’ve got regular Medium Express, Fedex or UPS delivery. Now there’s 1186 data points. That has manipulated your carton sizes. The warehouse destination. And we’ve compared truck to kilogram rates and we’re giving you all these different options.
Speaker2: [00:29:34] So you may select this one. You can filter everything lowest price, lowest to highest price. You may select that or if you want the fastest shipping, this is the fastest shipping and that’s the cost. And it’s all laid out. And once again, I want to point out, usually when freight forwarders give you a quote, they either give you a kilogram rate or a rate. We compare both rates and we go which what rate wins and we provide that for you with multiple last mile options. Okay, So now let’s say, for example, we want to select the express, which is 25 to 40 days into Amazon. It quicker checking times. You can expand for more details. It’s using maths and express. We’ve got our prep fees as well, which is $2.75 per carton. We select that. We confirmed a shipping plan and send the carton labels to our warehouse. And that’s all done. Now warehouse right now has all the information for this shipment as well as your labels. Now, for everybody watching who uses a three in the US, I know and I’ve been there myself. You’ve got to use Excel spreadsheets. You’ve got emails. It’s a nightmare. Skydrop saves a lot of time. If we go back to our dashboard, you’ll see now 13 cartons in prep and here’s the new products being prepared. Here’s the skew, there’s the ID, and that’s the demonstration on saving efficiency, which can give you increased margin.
Speaker1: [00:31:19] Nice. That looks really simple. I mean, me very simple. Not, not not being a seller, but but, you know, not being exposed to these kind of problems. You know, that you mentioned the spreadsheets and everything. I just can imagine that it’s really a process that you have to pay attention, a lot of details and take a lot of stuff into consideration when doing these plans. But the desktop really looks pretty simple and user friendly. I mean, very. Yeah, Yeah. It looks really, really good.
Speaker2: [00:31:50] Yeah. And so what happens from now if you’re a customer of Skydrop, Everything is automated. So when we prep your cartons and put the stickers on. We’ll send you an email. Yeah. When the goods have been loaded and shipped, we’ll send you an email. Right. When your tariffs are due will actually automatically process the tariffs without you lifting a finger and then even send you an email with your 7501 entry summary for us. Customs. Yeah. When when we even when we update your tracking IDs and right you get an email with updated your tracking IDs. It’s all automated. Nice. You just work out what you need to send you. Select You select the shipping option. Now, one thing being a seller, we’re very conscious of shipping pricing and we’ve got some of the most unbelievable logistics partnerships on the planet to ensure we can provide the best possible pricing for our customers. And we’ve worked really hard to achieve that because we’re sellers and we know what sellers want And what was.
Speaker1: [00:33:00] Actually while you were doing the demo, that one thing came to my mind. And now that you mentioned the logistics partners, it’s a kind of a win win situation for them also because, you know, with doing regular shipments and, you know, with the sellers planning their shipments upfront and for a certain period of time, it’s like a commitment so that you will be using the services of these logistics providers. So it’s really like a subscription service for them. I mean, they’re getting clients maybe for smaller batches of products, but they’re filling up their containers or no. So for a longer period of time with sales, that should do for for the future, it’s a very good win win formula.
Speaker2: [00:33:42] I don’t know if this dewdrop umbrella. Obviously our logistics partners are enjoying the increase in volume that we’re providing because we’re growing so fast. And once again, it’s all word of mouth. So it’s really exciting. And the main thing for us. It’s like yourself, Alex, with your software and seller board. You’ve identified a need and you provided the solution. And that’s what’s really important for us. I am a seller just like the person, the man or the woman watching this podcast right now. I’m a seller just like you, and I understand your needs and we were hell bent during Covid, probably the toughest time of all to business. We were determined to solve this problem because we felt so passionate about wanting people to be more efficient in their supply chain. So yeah, it’s it’s been a it’s been a great journey and we’ve got so many more features coming out too, which I can’t wait to, to launch and share.
Speaker1: [00:34:36] That’s that’s that’s an amazing that’s inspiring. I really feel the emotion behind this. And really, you can feel, you know, that you are really involved in developing the product and the attitude. That’s amazing. Goal is all right. So I know that you prepared a link or I don’t know, a code for our viewers listeners so they can try out the software. We will probably share it on the screen, but could you please tell us more, the people that are listening or watching the podcast right now, how they should find your I don’t know. First of all, of course, the service and maybe follow your activity on social media or basically.
Speaker2: [00:35:16] Yeah, absolutely. So basically if you go to w-w-w skydrop.com and I think Alex you’ll put a QR code on the screen.
Speaker1: [00:35:25] Yeah yeah we’ll do that.
Speaker2: [00:35:26] And that’ll take people to the site. Skydrop.com. You can sign up for an account if you use the code. Skydrop 12. We give you 12 months free subscription as a $9.99 subscription for the service and on the website. Got all our fees as well. And just want to touch on our fees because it’s a really simple fee structure. So basically if you send one carton or ten containers to skew drop berries zero receiving fees, we do not charge for that like every three in the US. Well, I shouldn’t say every, but most of them charge a receiving fee. Trust me. Um, storage rates is $0.49 USD. A cubic metre per day, which is extremely cost effective and a fee of $2.75 per cart, which is pick, pack, prep and load.
Speaker1: [00:36:31] Got it.
Speaker2: [00:36:31] That’s all. That’s all for us. And then obviously, we’ve got the shipping, which you see the pricing there and that’s it. It’s a very simple model in terms of pricing that’s all on the website as well for people to check out. We’ve even got a really cool shipping calculator as well where you can sort of look at the weekly model and check out pricing. That’s really cool. Teardrop 12 is the code and you get 12 months of subscription free for the year.
Speaker1: [00:36:56] Got it. Got it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So let’s sum up for everyone listening and watching the podcast right now. If you really want to save on your costs, if you want to improve your profitability, definitely check out Skydrop. Use the code for the free period and give it a shot. I really do understand that there’s a lot to be improved always in all areas, you know, of the business and all the costs, expenses and everything that you can actually try and improve yourself because there are things that you can manipulate and there are fees, for example, from Amazon that you cannot change. But everything that you can try and change you should definitely do because it’s something that affects your bottom line. And then no today. So I thank you once again, Michael, for presenting our viewers with this opportunity. Besides that, I have probably one less question. It’s kind of personal. It’s not related to Skydrop. Um, you as a seller, you as someone that found a solution and, you know, created a service around it. Um. But what motivates you most in your work? What do you enjoy most?
Speaker2: [00:38:12] I’m driven by the end result. That’s my feel like I, I sort of look at the end result work backwards. Yeah. So for me, the end result is, is obviously, you know, maximizing everyone’s supply chain efficiency, you know, across the entire Amazon landscape. And that’s the end goal. That’s the end result. And then everything we do on a daily basis, the fuel that drives me is achieving that end result and getting critical mass. And being able to, you know, have a little bit of a say in someone’s profitability by having a more sufficient or a more efficient supply chain. That’s what motivates me to keep on going every day. It’s the end result is the fuel.
Speaker1: [00:38:59] Got it. Got it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. All right. Maybe there’s anything else you would like to share with our viewers and listeners?
Speaker2: [00:39:07] Um, yeah, Just thanks very much for taking the time to to listen to me and obviously look at Skydrop. It’s a really interesting model. It’s capturing the attention of the entire Amazon ecosystem. Um, Alex, we’d love to have you in our community in Australia as well. We’ve got a community engaged Network is a Facebook group and we’d love to interview you. And we put on a very large Amazon event yearly. It’s in November this year.
Speaker1: [00:39:34] All right. Could you tell us a bit more about the event for anyone interested?
Speaker2: [00:39:37] Yeah. So it’s called Southern Seller Fest on the website Southern seller.com. It’s on in November, November 10th, 11 and 12 this year. Last year we had the event, we had over 300 sellers and it’s not me saying it. It’s a lot of our international speakers like we’ve got Kevin King coming this year. Adam Runquist all the major speakers, and it’s being sort of known around the world as the number one event for last year, and we’re going to improve it even more this year. So it’s a huge event. Every massive speaker you can think of is coming to our shores in Australia, in Sydney at the ICC. W-w-w dot Southern Southwest.com It’s a website, so it’s a really cool event. Any Aussies watching this or in Amazon FBA make sure you’re there. All right. If you’re overseas, come and fly over and see our beautiful country.
Speaker1: [00:40:31] Definitely. Definitely. I really hope that I will be able to do that one day. All right. Yeah, definitely. Uh, okay, everyone check out the event. Also check out Drop. Michael. Thank you so well, thank you so much once again for coming to the podcast. Uh, that’s really something that we never talked about before here on my, on my experience with the podcast about improving, you know, the logistics chain. And I really feel that it’s a value material. Thank you. I wish you good luck with the event. Good luck with spreading the drop model through the world. Best of luck.
Speaker2: [00:41:07] Thank you. Yeah, Thank you so much. And thanks everybody for listening. Thank you. Goodbye.
Speaker1: [00:41:16] And that’s it. Michael, thanks again for coming to the podcast. It’s been a great talk. I suggest everyone see what SKUdrop is about. If you’re a private label seller, check out the software, see if it can help you save some money on your transportation costs because as you know, there are a lot of things that need to be taken into account when you are calculating your profitability, your overhead expenses, your Amazon fees and other types of costs that you have. And if you can work with these costs and reduce them, why not? So I suggest SKUdrop see if you can help you. And besides that, if you haven’t tried, report by now. Go to the sellerboard.com demo account and see how sellerboard can help you understand your numbers, increase your profitability and automate some of the processes inside your Amazon business. All right. Thank you for watching and listening. See you in the next episode. Bye bye.
