The Cigar Aficionado’s Third Hand
Stage V Clinger is a flexible, adjustable cigar holder made of spring steel, designed to hold a cigar horizontally and attach securely to a golf cart with ultra-strong neodymium magnets. The company had forayed from their own online shop into Amazon, but approached us for solutions when their account got banned from Seller Central.
From Workarounds to What Really Works
The initial move that Stage V Clinger made upon their account ban was to switch to a third party seller account. They could still have an Amazon presence this way, but sacrificed some of their profit margin to the wholesaling process. Stage V knew there must be a better way to sell on Amazon, and turned to us for answers.
We transitioned Stage V into a plan that would return more agency and profit to the account owners: moving into Vendor Express. This was a program that allowed sellers to wholesale their products to Amazon without the invitation that is required to participate in Vendor Central.
Building the Foundation
Getting set up required consistent monitoring and coaching to ensure we made the most out of what the platform had to offer. We navigated account setup, secured the first purchase orders from Amazon, and provided guidance for sending the first batch of inventory into warehouses.
Making Ourselves Seen… and Heard
With inventory shipped, we launched the content creation phase of the project: product descriptions fleshed out with more information and keywords, brand-unified thumbnail sets, and strategically researched backend search terms. Being a product that requires some explanation, we maximized the space that Amazon allows to offer suggestions for use and share the problems that the Stage V Clinger solved with its clever design.
We created, managed, and optimized a Sponsored Ads campaign for all ASINs listed on the Stage V account. With daily monitoring and deft adjustments, we pruned away the lowest performing, highest ACoS key terms in increments to maximize our ad spend.
Surviving the shutdown
When Amazon Vendor Express announced its shutdown in March 2017, we had to develop a new strategy to keep up the heightened sales volume that Stage V Clinger had been experiencing since the start of our project. To transition back to Seller Central, we helping Stage V buy an active Amazon account to host their products.
