So Your Amazon VM Disappeared - Now What? - Episode 225

INTERVIEW WITH OLIVERA BOJOVIC

DESCRIPTION

In today’s podcast, we are talking with Olivera Bojovic about the issues facing brands on Amazon’s Vendor Central platform in 2022. Since late Q1 some brands have been struggling to get support in their day-to-day operations as well with strategy. How did this happen and now what?

Make sure you tune in to find out!

Olivera is a Senior Account Executive at Bobsled Marketing where on a daily basis she is speaking to brands, learning about challenges and obstacles they’re facing on Amazon and helping them to navigate the crazy Amazon ecosystem. Before joining the Sales Team at Bobsled, Olivera worked as part of the Client Delivery Team, directly supporting clients on Amazon Seller and Vendor Central.

“From what we see now, Vendor Central will definitely become a fully self-serve platform for most of the brands, and their portfolio will soon consist of only premium brands.”

— Olivera Bojovic

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Olivera joined Bobsled 4 years ago as an Account Specialist and worked as part of the Client Delivery Team, directly and supporting the operational side of the clients’ businesses. She had an opportunity to work with brands on both platforms - 1p and 3p - which allowed her to learn all the ups and downs of both setups and what makes brands opt for one of them.
Olivera is now on the Sales Team and she gets to talk with various brands who are on the lookout for a solution and best way to approach this crazy ecosystem, which is a great resource to learn about all the issues and obstacles from brands first hand.
More and more brands on Vendor Central are complaining about lack of communication with their Vendor Central team. The Vendor Managers assigned to those projects were no longer involved in the conversations in the same capacity.
Around late Q1 last year, most of the Vendor Managers were just pulled from their existing assignments and reassigned to different projects or previous roles, like getting new business to 1p. They are reaching out to premium brands that are not currently on Vendor Central.
This happened to brands which were usually mid-sized, from the VC perspective. The larger the brand, the more likely it is to still have a VM assigned.
This left brands with no solution for their issues and made them restructure their in-house teams and take on the work that used to be handled by their Vendor Manager.
Premium brands still have Vendor Managers, and this will probably continue.
Using VC makes sense for certain brands, because they can view the 1p model as a wholesale relationship. Also, while brands have control of the content and advertising, Amazon is in charge of the customer service, so there’s no need to worry about those metrics. Some products are not available on SC or the FBA fulfillment can be too expensive.
At Bobsled, we’ve been working with brands on Vendor Central for almost seven years now. By supporting them, we got to create valuable relationships with their Vendor Managers as well, and their insights were very useful. Brands started using their VMs as some kind of a shortcut to solutions for any and all operational issues.
Without that support, Vendor Central has become sort of a sell-serve platform. Brands are now reaching out to agencies such as Bobsled to get help with content optimization, catalog organization, shortages, chargebacks, recommendations, insights to help strategy and planning.
Over the years, we’ve written a lot of content for brands who want to move from VC to SC, or operate a ‘hybrid’ model. The main issue that drives this is profitability and control over price points.
Some of the brands are still not allowed by Amazon to switch to SC and move their inventory. If they have a Vendor Manager, there is a chance to reopen negotiations and stay on 1p.
Olivera is excited about what 2022 will bring and how Bobsled can support clients in this new setup. Late last year we developed a self-assessment tool called Amazon Savviness Score. The purpose of this is to help brands understand where they stand on their Amazon journey and what is holding them back from the growth. This tool has been really helpful so far and clients are using it internally to plan out their 2022.
Olivera is even more in favor of 3p due to these changes.
To contact Olivera and discuss your own Amazon Vendor Central situation, check out the links below.