Paul Sonneveld
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Marketplace Masters. I'm Paul Sonneveld, and today we're taking a topic that is massively underserved in the Amazon content space, B2B sales on Amazon, and specifically for mid-market manufacturers. Here's the reality. Amazon business is now on a run rate of more than eighty billion in B2B revenue. It is quietly becoming one of the largest B2B distributors in the world. And yet when I talk to manufacturers and the agencies that serve them, most haven't really worked out what their Amazon B2B strategy should look like or whether they even need one.
So today, we're going to go right back to the fundamentals. Why does it matter? How does it actually work? And what are the considerations before I jump in? And to help us, I have one of the most respected voices in B2B commerce globally, Brian Beck. Now, Brian brings two decades of e-commerce to this conversation, including seven years in C-level roles at the likes of Harbour Freight Tools and PacSun. He is the author of a billion-dollar B2B e-commerce, widely regarded as the definite book on the topic. Co-founder of the master B2B thought leadership series with Andy Hoare and managing partner at Enceiba which, as far as i know, is the only agency in the world exclusively focused on B2B. So when it comes to the intersection of B2B and Amazon, there are a few people who've thought about this more deeply than Brian. So, brian it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today.
Brian Beck
No, Paul, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to your audience. And man, you just make me sound old. I've been at this for a while, man. So yeah, glad to be here. Excited to talk.
Paul Sonneveld
Absolutely. No, no. You're a wealth of knowledge, so I can't wait to get into it. Before I do, just a reminder for our audience, this is a live show. Two things. One, things tend to go wrong. Hopefully not today. But more importantly, you can ask your questions directly to my guest, to Brian, today. So the way to do that is to pop them in the LinkedIn comments section. Or the YouTube comments area, and they'll automatically feed to us, and I will do my best to put them in front of Brian. So don't hold back. Ask your questions. Audience participation is what makes this show great. Okay, Brian, well, let's jump into it.
Brian Beck
Sure.
Paul Sonneveld
So for a mid-market manufacturer who hasn't seriously considered Amazon, what's actually changed in the B2B buying landscape that makes this really a board level conversation in 2026? What's different these days?
Brian Beck
Well, goodness i mean it all starts with the buyer, Paul. I mean that today the buyer has become younger. As as we continue in our careers, the folks that are millennials and younger are now entering B2B procurement roles. Seventy-five percent of the global workforce is now millennials and younger. These folks are all turning and into their forties at this point. So, the buyers changed and that buyers and a lot of their their they grew up as Amazon natives. They grew up their digital natives, and they have similar expectations on the B2B side that they bring to their their consumer behavior.
So as we look at, you know, what's, what's changed, it's really the original. And I'd say the buyer I'm talking about the origin, the end user of your product. If you're a B2B company, or if you're a sitting in a distributor or some other reseller of a product, you wanna use e-commerce channels to buy product and research product. And Amazon has become a primary place that, you know, is accommodating that need. Amazon has invested now heavily on the B2B side to accommodate common functionalities to address inefficiencies and some of the friction that's presented by traditional B2B channels. So ultimately, it is the end buyer that's driving a lot of this. And Amazon has benefited from the fact that the B2B industry as a whole is very slow to move and has adopted e-commerce and digital channels more slowly than consumers channels have and other industries so fascinating to see but yeah, it's the end buyer that's doing it, Paul for sure.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, you gotta show up where the buyers expect you, right? I guess that's the punchline there.
Brian Beck
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
So very interesting. You've just published this Amazon B2B pulse study
Brian Beck
Yeah
Paul Sonneveld
Love to get your kind of top-line thoughts on what is the one finding that really surprised you the most about how B2B brands are showing up or failing to show up. Maybe that's a better way of putting it.
Brian Beck
Well, yeah, no, that's right. I mean, that's a lot of it, right? So every year for the benefit of your audience at Enceiba, we publish, do research on and publish a sort of state of Amazon on the B2B side. So we call it our pulse report, and we survey principally manufacturers on how they're thinking about using Amazon for their own business. And some of that could be consumer crossover. Some of it could be B2B selling on Amazon. But we try to get a sense of where the industry is, both in terms of what they expect from Amazon. Are they selling? If they are selling, why aren't they? You know, what continues to surprise and amaze me, Paul, of all the data we find is the reasons that companies don't sell on Amazon. You know, you've got this huge channel that has enormous potential, and in fact, if you let me share my screen, I can even show you some of the data. Let me pull that up here. There you go.
So, going down here. So we find a lot of companies, and let me maximise this or see it. We find a lot of companies aren't selling on Amazon because of channel conflict. This is continuous. This is a concern that existed in the B2C side and consumer products for years. But we're talking about twenty years ago, and the brands can the consumer side have largely gotten over this this concern. But it still exists, and it's very persistent in B2B. And when we ask the question, what are your reasons for not selling on Amazon? Our number one reason is fear of channel conflict. I don't want to disintermediate my traditional channels, whether that's distributors or whether that's retailers or even an internal sales force that people are concerned about conflicting with. It'll be number two.
The other thing that continues to surprise me is, hey, my products aren't right for Amazon. Well, you know, that's that's legacy thinking, quite frankly, because a lot of the products now that we're selling as Enceiba and Amazon are bigger, bulkier products. These are products that you wouldn't necessarily think using conventional wisdom would sell on Amazon. But things like, you know, HVAC systems and big giant fans and pallets of building materials and, you know, stuff that goes by a truck, commercial, big commercial lawnmowers. These products sell in significant volumes now on Amazon. So what always surprises me every year is the reasons people don't sell. And it's really, I think it's sort of lazy thinking because you're not challenging your notion of what this new customer is looking for. You don't realise, a lot of our B2B leaders don't realise that this has changed.
But the other thing I'll share real quick here, Paul, is that these companies also, when they ask them these questions, do you think there's opportunity there, revenue opportunity, over a third of them say, yeah, there's a lot of opportunity here. So you've got this sort of weird dichotomy where they say, well, heck, yes, there is some opportunity, there's significant opportunity, but hey, we're not going to sell. And there's best practices associated with addressing that, mitigating that channel conflict and the consumer brands have gotten over you know, years ago now we're dealing with it in B2B, so fascinating that always surprises me
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I mean, in a way, going back to those objections, right, I think it was about a third of people just worried about channel conflict, right?
Brian Beck
Right.
Paul Sonneveld
Not surprising. I mean, that's a very common refrain. But when you're dealing with, when you're talking to your clients or their boards or the sales leadership team, I mean, how do you reframe that conversation, right? You know, naturally there's some fear, right? General conflict, and you know, no point getting business over here and losing it over there. Particularly when the other off-Amazon relationships are probably very, very established relationships. I've been there for thirty years. How do you reframe that conversation?
Brian Beck
Well, it's a great question, and there's so many aspects to it, Paul. I mean, you know, we get the number one, you get the incrementality question a lot. And I just shifting product volume from one channel to another. Fact of the matter is no. What's happening often is that the products that are being sold, if you're not represented there, they're being sold by another brand, another company and often those increasingly those companies are those brands and sellers are coming out of Asia. In fact, the majority of three-piece sales, something like fifty percent of the largest 3P sellers in the Amazon today, are coming from China.
And so you're looking at a dynamic that has completely shifted, and so this incrementality piece is actually I call it existential versus incremental, because you think you're focusing on the wrong thing if you're thinking only about incrementality because the buyer has changed their behavior they've shifted their search. Seventy percent of product search is now starting on Amazon and that is that isn't the case not only with consumers but with businesses as well. And so we've had clients, and we've worked with them to conduct studies that show that most of the revenue coming from Amazon is actually incremental revenue. You're doing things like recapturing volume from the aftermarket if you're an equipment manufacturer or recapturing market share that you've lost.
I think probably the best way to reframe your market, the question, and I love doing this with CEOs, we'll go on to Amazon and we'll search for the product category, search for the product name. Let's say it's a, I don't know, a pneumatic impact hammer, right? Which is a typical B2B product that's used in production. And we'll go search that term in Amazon, and we'll look at the products that come up, and then we'll have tools that show us, my goodness, this product here from a brand that you've never heard of, Mr. CEO or Ms. CEO, that's doing five million dollars a year on Amazon. And guess what? The product quality is not crap. In some cases, in many cases, it's a comparable product, in some cases made in the same dang factory that your products are made in. So, you know, the dynamic has shifted, and to bring it home and to really reframe it. Examples are one of the best ways to do that. So that makes sense?
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, absolutely. I guess just demonstrating that I think that's probably a lack of belief that the demand truly exists because Amazon is regarded in their minds just as purely a B2C, small packages that fit in your letterbox or fit on your doorstep. But as you're saying, the audience has shifted. They expect to buy these things on Amazon you have to be there. And what a great way to prove it just to look at the search volume, the look at the sales that someone else is doing i mean, this is, do you want those sales to go to this other competitor, or would you like a slice of it? It's sort of that's a great way of framing it, particularly if it's data-backed.
So, frame, let's go down a level and talk about some nuts and bolts here, maybe we can start with what is, I'm actually not terribly familiar with Amazon business. It gets bandied around all the time. I think we've got a couple of areas in our application where we report on it, but it's certainly not the prime focus. So take us through it. I mean, what is Amazon business practically? And, you know, what's different in terms of how the buyer experiences it?
Brian Beck
Yeah, great question. Great question. Let me share this, just some data, so people understand the magnitude of what Amazon business is. So Amazon, you know, start Amazon business started in 2015, and it was the outcome of Amazon's first effort in B2B, which was called Amazon Supply. Amazon Supply didn't work. They started in 2012, and it failed. And Amazon learned from that, and they launched Amazon Business, which today generates, as you mentioned at the beginning, eighty billion. We expect them to cross one hundred billion this year. That's our point of view on it.
Eight million business buyers, ninety percent of top local governments were buying in the U.S., buying via Amazon Business. Three times higher conversion rates versus B2C. You know, so you've got some real growth happening here. So the question is, what is different about it? Why does it you know, how does it exist alongside of Amazon? Well, it's not a it's not a different website. And you can stop sharing now, Paul. It's not a different website. It's the same website as Amazon. That's one of the key learnings they took from the Amazon supply evolution is, you know, the customer, the B2B buyer really likes the Amazon experience, or at least they become accustomed to it over the years. And so we want a different Amazon learn, they don't want a different website, they want the same website with a similar type of experience.
But what Amazon businesses essentially is a look and feel sort of a layer, think of it on top of Amazon that introduces more features and functionalities that allow for the business buyer to more to meet their needs as a business buyer, which are different than a consumer. In a business setting you need to be able to buy in bulk you need to be able to see specific attributes for example that might be you know relevant to your product category. So you know if I think about whatever fasteners or electrical products, automotive or hvac or plumbing products there's certain attributes to those products which a consumer doesn't care about if it's they're not putting them into an industrial commercial application.
So there are different navigation elements that are introduced. There are some specific search elements to Amazon business. There are features related to bulk buying, requesting quotes through Amazon. So if I'm a business buyer, I can say, hey, I want to buy a thousand units of these, and I'm looking for a specific quote on this particular purchase. Amazon businesses also introduce workflows for specific types and for industry verticals. They are investing heavily in what's called managed spend, which is the portion of B2B buying which is planned in advance by large organisations, government entities, universities, et cetera. And Amazon is actually out now bidding on RFPs from large organisations, and by the way, winning some of those, and introducing procurement function so that they're integrating with procurement systems.
If you're listing your products on Amazon and Amazon Business, you're able to show up in those procurement systems, also avoid the cost and time necessary to, if you're a seller, to integrate to those systems directly. It opens up a whole new world in Amazon for sellers. On the buy side, the reason they're adopting it is number one, they're already there. The B2B buyer is already using the consumer side of Amazon. So they're adapting and want to use Amazon for their business buy. So there's a whole host of features that are attached to Amazon business. Now they're doing more to allow businesses to target specific industry verticals, things of that nature. So they continue to advance the features that are available for targeting business buyers for Amazon business. So hopefully I answered your question, Paul. There's a lot under the surface of what I just said. But anyhow, go ahead.
Paul Sonneveld
Well, what's really clear is Amazon is not seeing this as an afterthought i mean it sounds like they've made very large investments to really cater to the needs of the B2B buyer. I mean, for me also, what was fascinating on the slide that you showed before was around the conversion was three times as much. I mean, in a way that makes sense. I mean, these are very considered purchases, right? Customers are looking to, they're looking for, to purchase certain things, right? They're not researching, they're not like, it's not a discretionary thing, or maybe if I see something good, you know, they have a job to do, it's their job to buy. So that's very interesting, too. How about the question of, how does this play out in terms of 1P versus 3P? I mean, I see a lot of sort of discussions around this. I mean, you know, obviously there's a lot of discussions more generally, but in the context of B2B as a mid-market kind of manufacturer, do I start on 3P or is this a 1P play? How do you think through that question?
Brian Beck
Yeah, it's a great question, Paul. So, 1P and 3P, you can use Amazon Business in either one, right? If you went to Amazon business cleanly and said if you were not selling on Amazon at all, and said hey Amazon business, how should i set up well the first consideration is, are you considered a strategic brand to Amazon, meaning, do you have the potential to be large enough wherein Amazon wants to manage the relationship directly with you? In that case, you may be directed to the 1P side of things and really need to sell that way.
However, for many of our mid-market manufacturers, companies we work with, and we work with mid-sized to very large B2B manufacturers, they'll have a choice. And Amazon business often will say, hey, you know, 3P is a good path for you because there's at the end of the day in 3P for many categories, you have more margin to work with if you're not selling wholesale. So 3P for those you don't don't know, 3P you're selling through Amazon as a marketplace seller. Amazon never buys the product. It acts as a marketplace. You're selling through Amazon, and 1P you're selling to Amazon as a wholesale seller. So that's, there's a key difference there. Your company has to be ready for 3P it's more work.
But in 3P, you have, because you're selling at a retail margin, you have more profit margin to work with as a manufacturer. Therefore Amazon business, which requires really to be successful. You want to be able to offer bulk discounts to your pricing and things of that nature. You want to be set up for that. And in order to do that effectively, having a 3P approach gives you more margin to work with also responding to quotes and bulk buy requests and things of that nature. And so the dynamic is that, you know, oftentimes 3P will be the path that's chosen by the manufacturer for those reasons. You also control, to a large degree, your pricing, not fully always, but almost always your pricing, your retail pricing is what I'm referring to.
Now, 1P can be a good path. Also, it depends again on your, on your particular product dynamics. And they always tell companies, look at the beginning of this process. If you're new to Amazon, you have a choice. You can typically go either 1P or 3P, assuming Amazon wants to buy your products in 1P. And that's a good thing when you're starting, because as you get down the path, choices become less available to you. If you're large enough, and we've met some very large 1P accounts, you're typically locked into a 1P relationship when you get up above a certain size. Typically, that's around ten million dollars. Not always. It's not a hard and fast rule.
Anyhow, so yeah, the dynamics are important, we, you know, in B2B, Paul, the Amazon business side with 3P generally gives you more data which is, can also really helpful for optimizing in Amazon business selling program. And it's just the nature of the type of account it is, and working with Amazon. 3P is a self-service account, as I know you're aware. where companies can, they're responsible essentially to manage their account, and that's where we come in is to help them. In 1P, more of a traditional wholesale type relationship. Does that make sense?
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, absolutely. And actually, you started to talk about some of the specific B2B tools that are available, particularly in the context of 3P. So, maybe can you just give us a bit of an overview of these specific B2B features? And particularly the ones that mid market sellers should really care about. I don't know, business pricing, quantity discounts, you know, there's a whole range of things. You know, which ones are really important, and particularly in the context if you're starting out in terms of the B2B sales?
Brian Beck
Well, yeah, that's a great question. So there's some foundational elements, right? I mean, this is, again, why it can be helpful as a manufacturer in Amazon, because you have more margin to work with typically. But the foundational elements really are setting up your pricing and not just, you know, sort of one tier, but you want to set up multiple tiers of pricing, taking advantage of that quantity discount opportunity. So if someone's buying a hundred or thousand, et cetera, units from you, that's kind of a price of entry, right? in a sense, you're not going to get much further if you don't have the foundational elements. So if you're starting call to your question, you want to start with some pricing levels that are taking advantage of those different tiered pricing levels.
The other important thing is content. Listen, too often we find that brands that might be, you know, used to a consumer market or with many B2B companies don't even have good content. You are on Amazon and Amazon business. That's your virtual salesperson, right? So you need to take advantage of the content opportunities and all of them that Amazon gives you to convey the value of your product in a business setting. So if your business if you're selling to plumbers or electricians or you know whatever kind of a trade group i'm just using that as an example. You don't want to show pictures of residential applications or families frolicking through the fields using your product you want to show a plumber using that product and installing it in a commercial application in a commercial kitchen or something Right.
So this is not, keep in mind that you have to merchandise your product and also add attributes which are technical in nature. Remember that you're selling products to a technical buyer are, you know, those millennials that are now in business roles, B2B buying roles using Amazon.
They're technical people, they are going to understand the compatibility, the technical aspects, and features the application nuances for your product. And you need to convey that, and the content is the way to do that. So, you've got two things you've got to make sure you get right with Amazon business, when you're starting its content and merchandising correctly to the B2B buyer, which includes your images, by the way, and videos and other things, as well as your pricing.
Now, when you move beyond that, Paul, when you have those foundational elements set up, it then becomes, you know, all of the other tools become more relevant to you. Which are things like your request for quote functionality, introducing and getting yourself into the conversation for Amazon's bulk buy and manage spend programs. You've got industry vertical pricing that you can target specific industries. You've got Amazon business advertising, which was introduced in May of last year, which is driving tremendous results. It takes a different skill set than your consumer advertising in some ways. But it's generating just huge returns for our clients on the Amazon business advertising side.
So you open up a whole host of other tools once you have the fundamentals in place. Of course, we work with clients too to launch things like Amazon professional or commercial-oriented storefronts on Amazon. Sometimes we're setting up separate accounts to launch those storefronts. We might set up a separate 3P account or even a 1P account to be specifically oriented to the business offerings. So there's a variety of approaches there, and it really varies by industry and type of company, but those are some of the foundational elements.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, get the foundation right. You also answered my next question, which was let's talk about some content differences between B2B and B2C. Absolutely makes sense, right? No families frolicking through the fields with your plumbing supply product. Makes no sense.
Brian Beck
You never know.
Paul Sonneveld
There is a related question, though, which is the catalogue strategy. Not every SKU belongs on Amazon. How does a manufacturer think about which products to expose to the Amazon B2B channel and maybe which ones to deliberately hold back, maybe to protect margin or distributed relationships? I guess there's a little bit of channel conflict related to this. How do you think about catalogue strategy?
Brian Beck
Yeah, you know it's a great question because you know look Amazon doesn't live in a bubble as you all know and this this is what drives that fear that prevents some companies from selling on Amazon. And so as you look from one side of it is I would suggest people throw away your assumptions about what can sell on Amazon. Because things will sell there you don't you don't even expect to. So don't and you can spend time I mean it's right in front of you just take a look at Amazon, get yourself an Amazon business account. It's not expensive, and you can learn what's showing up there. It's going to look and feel very much like Amazon. Point of the matter is, throw away your assumptions first as you think about assortment. You really need to think about Amazon as it relates to your overall channels.
And the way I like to encourage our clients to think about this is to look at the value that each of those channels delivers to your end buyer. We might have certain products that take a high degree of consultative selling. In other words, the solutioning, right? If you're going to install whatever, if you're installing an HVAC system, a whole system into a building, you might need the consultation from your channel to help you do that, meaning your distributor to help you configure that, engineer the solution, et cetera. But there may be components of that that you want to offer through Amazon Business and other e-commerce channels where the buyer knows exactly what they want, and they go to the channel to buy it. And as long as you're managing your channels effectively and managing your retail pricing effectively across those channels, you can avoid channel conflict.
So it's a complex question, Paul. I always recommend companies think about it by looking at what each of the channels they've historically sold through, what value they bring to that end buyer, meaning the distributor, the retailer, what have you, or the installer, or again, the companies have different names for these things depending on how they've gone to market or their particular channel. And then how does Amazon fit into that? There's still too much fear amongst B2B companies in terms of taking the step of offering the products on any e-commerce channel, even directly or through marketplaces.
To me, that's something that's holding the industry back across the board still. So I think there's a bit of getting comfort in that, as well. As they think about their assortment strategy, and it's not, if you're if you make a good product, the channel is not going to drop your product just because you're selling on Amazon. So anyway, I push on this a lot because I think companies are too conservative here and they need to offer more rather than less on this on these channels, including Amazon.
Paul Sonneveld
Very good. Some very good points there. We are over the thirty-minute mark, which means we're almost out of time, which also means I need to get to questions quickly because we do have a couple of audience questions. So I'm going to throw a couple of questions at you, and I'll have one of my own before we wrap up. All right. The first question comes from Andre. Yeah, I hope you can see that question, but I'll read it out to you anyway. Thanks for your question, Andre. His question is, regarding taxes, are there any specific tax setup requirements for B2B sales?
Brian Beck
Great question. So if you are a number one, if you are a 3P seller, Amazon in the U.S., we’ll collect and remit sales tax for you on your behalf. Now, that applies to consumer or B2B sales. So, Amazon is there's a whole series of laws in the U.S. that were passed around this. And so if you're 3P, and you're these are called marketplace facilitator laws, Amazon will handle that for you. On the 1P side, Amazon's buying the product. And I think you're aware of that now. Your question is so that operates like a traditional wholesale channel where there's no tax for you.
On the B2B side, really the only place we deal with tax specific to B2B is if there's some level of tax where there's an exemption so that if you're selling the product for reuse into another product that ultimately, so in other words, your product at the end of the day is not sold at retail, it's sold to a B2B buyer who reuses the product and they may be tax exempt or they may have some element of exemption in their use of your product in which case your product shouldn't be charged sales tax. Amazon does allow for you to submit sales tax certificates or exemption certificates and things through their portal. There is a place to do that in Amazon Business. And if you're interested, Andre, I can send you a link to find out more information on that. I have a link I can shoot your way, so just let me know.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you, Brian. Over to our next question. This comes from Gerard. Let's see. I'll read it out because it's a long one. If Amazon Business can unlock huge B2B demand, what happens when the manufacturer's problem is not demand, but limited supply? So I think we've seen some great examples of that, unfortunately. During major disruptions like the current release situation, should manufacturers restrict certain products, capital quantities, prioritise existing distributors, or use Amazon Business as a controlled allocation channel? I'm sure some of those conversations have come up for you with your clients in the last twelve months.
Brian Beck
All the time. All the time. Yeah. So, I mean, look, it's a very business-specific question, and it depends on how you're working with your traditional channels. The good news of Amazon and Amazon business is that you can certainly, depending on if you're 1P or 3P. So if you're 3P, you can sell the product. You can just you can make the product unavailable unless Amazon has it. You can make the product unavailable on the channel so you can use it as a kind of a it's a little bit of an on off switch. There's bigger implications than that. But anyhow, you can restrict the product on Amazon if you're a 3P. In other words, you know, discontinue or turn it off for a period of time.
In 1P, it's a little harder because they're buying the product, right? So restricting SKUs, certainly. Now, what we've seen, our clients will perhaps limit the availability of certain products on Amazon. Amazon business, and this also ties, there's other aspects of this that tie to profitability. I mean, you want to understand the value of each of these channels to your business, the profitability of each of these channels to your business, particularly in situations where there's a problem on the supply side, and you want to make sure you maximise the throughput and value of your inventory.
Amazon business, some cases, some of our clients indicate that Amazon is their number one most profitable channel. We have several instances of that. Very large manufacturers reporting to us, particularly if they're 3P, that Amazon is by far and away the most profitable channel for them. You think about that for a minute. It's crazy, but it's true. And, you know, in those cases, if there's restrictions or constraints on the financial performance of the business due to supply chain challenges, they're leaning into Amazon to do more sales because it's a very valuable channel. But you have to weigh that against, you know, obviously, the longer-term relationships with your distributors and other channels. So, you know, it's not an easy answer necessarily. There's not one answer to that question. It depends on your situation.
Paul Sonneveld
It's good to bring up some of the considerations, though, in different facets and how you think through that. As you say, the answer most likely would be different for every single manufacturer out there or their different flavours of that. Yeah, let me finish on my last question here. And I did feel sort of obliged to ask that. Because we have a lot of Amazon agency owners listening to this show as well. So from their perspective, for owners who currently service vendor clients or even seller clients, but maybe more focused on the B2C side, I mean, how is managing a B2B Amazon program generally different from managing a B2C program from an Amazon agency perspective?
Brian Beck
Sure. You know, I can answer that, you know, because we do both. Right. I mean, every one of our clients, for the most part, is selling through Amazon, quote unquote, consumer and business. I mean, we don't typically we don't restrict just to the Amazon business. The difference is really a lot of the stuff that takes a significant investment of time and effort to understand Amazon Business. And a lot of that has to do with excuse me the amount of you know relationships you're developing there. A lot of the programs are newer you need to get make sure you're in front of beta programs and other things and developing you know deeper relationships with Amazon that you might might otherwise do. And a lot of this exists even outside of your traditional, you know, if, if you have a lot of 1P folks here, you're dealing with your vendor management teams, things like that. And some of them will have some knowledge of the Amazon business, but it's very limited. A lot of this exists outside of the traditional Amazon channels.
So it takes understanding more broadly what's going on in Amazon. It's not as because a lot of this is evolving. A lot of these programs are new. They're not just going to show up in your dashboard. You need to, you know, you need to be working, you know, behind the scenes to really understand Amazon business. And so, but that all said, more and more of this is coming to Amazon. So you will see more evidence of it, you know, showing up for you. On the 1P side, you know, data can be, also harder to get about B2B selling versus on the 3P side. So that's the other pieces. You know, we, we find that often it's it's, it's a cleaner, cleaner and somewhat easier to manage on the 3P side. Although, you know, 1P can be very helpful as well in certain instances. So yeah, so it's just, it's just a bit of a different beast, I guess, is one way to put it.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I think that would be an understatement. All right. Unfortunately, we're going to have to wrap things up here. Brian, this has been generally valuable, this conversation. And honestly, I think we've probably only scratched the surface of this entire topic. But before I let you go, for anyone in the audience who's listening to this and wants to follow up with you directly, whether they've got specific questions on their own Amazon B2B journey or maybe want to keep the conversation going, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Brian Beck
Yeah, they just, well, they can look me up on LinkedIn. That's an easy way to do it. Shoot me a note there or just send me an email. Brian, B-R-I-A-N at Enceiba, E-N-C-E-I-B as in boy, A.com, Enceiba.com. Let me just do that quickly. Have I got that right? You got it right. The Enceiba tree, Paul, is the tallest tree in the Amazon rainforest, and we help our clients stand out in the rainforest. That's where the name came from.
Paul Sonneveld
Brilliant. Well, Brian, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with the Marketplace Masters audience today.
Brian Beck
All the best. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate it.
Paul Sonneveld
Take care. All right. Now, before we wrap up, a couple of quick announcements. First, next week, we have a fantastic session lined up with Chris Khoo, where we're going deep on the vendor direct fulfillment and specifically how to do it well. So if you sell on Amazon as a vendor, this is one you don't want to miss. And I'll drop the registration link in the comments right after the show.
Secondly, I'm going to be in Seattle in the first week of June for the Amazon Developer Summit. So if you're based in Seattle or if you're attending the summit, I'd love to connect. Let's chat about future podcast topics and whatever else is on your mind. Just drop me a message on LinkedIn. And thirdly, I can't believe, but it's almost been a year since we first released our MerchantSpring MCP.
This world is moving extremely fast, and I'm generally excited about the next iteration we've just shipped. So if you want to get your hands on it, drop me a note, and I'll get you set up. Thanks, everyone, for listening and joining us and for the great questions in the chat. If you're watching on replay, yes, this was live, and we run one of these every single week on Marketplace Masters. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Take care, everyone, till next time.