Beat Tool Fatigue: Multichannel Made Simple with Yoni Mazor

Chris: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Seller Performance Solutions, Chris McCabe here, our guest Yoni from GoFlow. You know, Yoni Mazor, from many, many, many episodes. We’ve been on this podcast almost five years. I wish I knew how many episodes we’ve done. We’ve done a lot. I’m gonna say this is your fifth or sixth.

Yoni: Yeah, probably so.

Chris: So I think our listeners know you well and if you’re watching his face, the handsome yoni has rejoined us to talk about operational efficiencies. Maybe to start, we can cover how there might be a glut of services and tools out there. I think part of the problem, I get into conversations with sellers, they just get a whirlwind of maybe sales pitches or information free audits, free test drives of tools and new companies. I mean, [00:01:00] and would you position what you guys are doing versus what other people are doing? And I’ve talked to you and I know you’re offering a leaner meaner version. But I’ll let you say it just so I get it right.

Yoni: So before, I’ll explain how sellers out there can actually try go flow for free, which is, is really exciting for the sellers and also for us. I’ll tell a bit more about Go Flow in general. So, the idea for Go Flow, , is it’s practically an operating system for e-commerce sellers.

So especially if you wanna expand to more channels, then we become your MCOs, which is multi-channel operating system. When I say an operating system, it means that it kind of provides you the full cycles and motions of an operating system and it starts from forecasting. You’re able to do forecasting, so you know how much inventory you wanna sell per item, per channel, per your portfolio.

If you have a whole portfolio brand, so from the micro, micro to the macro. But of course then you can also generate purchase orders. With the platform, with the operating system. And then once your purchase orders come in and arrive, you’re able [00:02:00] to receive them within the system. Then you can allocate inventory to wherever you need, if it’s your warehouse, if it’s FBA, if it’s WFS, which is fulfillment services or any three pls.

And then also you can manage your listings. You can en list on channels. You can synchronize inventory, the quantities of inventory. It would, you know, if it’s one channel, multi-channels and then once the orders come in, all the orders come into one place, then you can either fulfill it yourself.

Or send a command to Walmart or Amazon or your three PL two will fulfill it. You can also put it, plug in your carrier so you can get the best rates for carrier shipping and then returns if you need to process returns and restocking and re, you know, putting ’em back to your inventory all the way to analytics.

You know, look into your sales, how much you sold, how much you sold this week versus last week or last season. Things of that nature. This way you get the full cycle of, of the operation cycle that is kind of needed, especially if we want to really grow. In a healthy way at scale. I think what happens is a lot of the sellers and brands out there are kind of Amazon native and, and Amazon’s kind of the gateway into e-commerce.

So you maybe you have a one skew or a few skews. [00:03:00] You just throw it into the system. You really focus more on the go to market and launching it and getting some ranking on it and getting some revenue traction, and you completely miss out on the fact that you’re actually building a business that needs an operational system to, to do properly at scale.

And there then when they’re already kind of generate a couple hundred grand revenue, maybe a couple million, they realize, oh, I need a system. And then it becomes a bit harder to apply and set up because then you have a patchwork of spreadsheets and this tool and that tool and that, so it becomes a little bit clumsy and hard to really scale.

So the idea is for Go Flow is to provide this kind of operational system and capabilities to, the sellers, all the sellers, Ms. For free. So therefore, we, we kind of created the a free version. It’s free forever. It’s called Go Flow Core. So if you want to try it out, test it out, free of charge, uh, it’s, you could just visit, go Flow us slash core cores, CORE.

This is where you’re gonna be able to actually start your Amazon journey. ’cause a lot of you guys listening to this, you’re probably starting your journey on Amazon. But also you’ll be able to expand it to Walmart. You’ll be able to expand it to Shopify if you want to create a Shopify [00:04:00] store for your brand and then also eBay, so you get free of charge integrations to four channels.

This is completely free if you wanna upgrade to the paid tiers. Then we have 200 channels in integration, so you can really take your brand to the next level that’s always ready for you. And, of course you’re gonna be able to generate 500 regular orders per month or 1000 fb orders per month.

So you can do basically up to 12,000 b orders yearly, free of charge all within the operating system, so you’re gonna be able to shore it up and bring it all in. The forecasting, the purchase orders, inventory management, the listing optimization. The fulfillment, the carrier, the returns all into one, all in one place.

So yeah, that’s a little bit on the utility of Go Flow, but how that is right now open, available to sellers out there free of charge. So you can just plug and play, set it up in motion and use it the way you need it. And, hopefully when you do bring all this revenue in and you want to keep scaling and expanding.

You have the right partner with you, which is Go flow, then you can expand to the other channels I mentioned. But of course, what’s hot out there right now is Temu, it’s TikTok shops. Shein, and they’re all [00:05:00] coming up and popping as a opportunity for sellers and the brands to keep expanding, getting.

I think sometimes what’s missing with the brands and the sellers out there is that they don’t realize that they’re in the retail game and the branding business and in the branding and retail business, your fiduciary duty is to make sure that your product. Are available to as many shoppers as possible for your brand, right?

So if your brand, let’s say doing apparel, it could do really well on Amazon, but also it could do well on, on, let’s say, on target or on Macy’s or in Shein, stuff like that, or T-Mobile, you, you need to do that. It’s your duty for a business. You know, of course Amazon is big, is huge. It’s fundamental.

And you kind of start there, which is great. But if you’re really trying to build a brand, you need to think holistically and globally. Of course, you try to do domestically here in the US which is really, really a good start. But then expand to Canada, expand to Mexico, and typically Amazon also empowers that you can expand to Amazon Canada, Amazon, Mexico, Amazon, uk.

So that’s a really gateway to expand globally, which we also support that as an operating system. But then in other platforms, or channels, which when we say channel, we kind of mean [00:06:00] another marketplace. So put all together, I think it’s just very smart and watch for the sellers to have that in mind.

How to construct their business at scale and really build something significant that will bring maximum revenue, maximum profit. But of course, also, also, if they ever want to exit and sell it, they’re ready to go.

Chris: Well, what, what key mistakes did you. When you started this or got involved in this, you see sellers making mistakes, either wasting money, wasting time, wasting energy, wasting something.

What are the top two mistakes that people are making that lead them to decide, you know, I have to change my game up here.

Yoni: I think one of them is that the world of MAS multichannel operating system. It’s for the most part, for the regular entry level seller or the micropreneurs, it’s outta reach.

So they don’t even want to think about it because the, the price point is so high. It starts from two, $3,000 a month or beyond. And then sometimes they take a rev share, so they completely rule it out. That’s the first mistake. You rule it out, say, ah, I’ll just figure it out. Let me just make my first million, my first million in revenue on Amazon.

That’s all they they’re [00:07:00] really like crazy driving to that. And that’s good, but they still should have, other considerations in mind? You were saying, uh, Chris?

Chris: No, I think, but are people still thinking that way? The first million on Amazon is not an easy layup anymore. So I’m imagining that people wanna set this stuff up early because they’re not just depending on Amazon Exactly. To be the piggy bank anymore. I mean, not if you’re starting now.

Yoni: You want to create your first million on e-commerce wherever it’s possible. So if Amazon provides that, great, but if there’s friction there, nothing’s stopping you really from expanding right away to other channels. If it’s Shopify, you’re for your own brand, right? Because small example, if you’re already driving traffic outside of Amazon, into Amazon, you’re listing, which you, you know, you’re kind of mastering that. Mm-hmm. And you’re generating, I dunno, 500,000 revenue and that’s it.

You’re tapped out. Why don’t you try driving outside traffic to your Shopify. And then maybe you generate another a hundred grand and then drive traffic from outside again and allocate it to Walmart, to Shopify, to Amazon, and can do all of this free within go. In terms of operating system, you can connect all those channels, [00:08:00] manage ’em for free, drive all the outside traffic, and maximize the eyeballs.

That are segregated, meaning there are some eyeballs that only shop on Amazon. Mm-hmm. You wanna capture those. There are eyeballs that only shop on Walmart. You wanna capture those. There are eyeballs that only shop on your Shopify store because you got ’em somewhere on social media or whatever. TikTok, or, or, or meta, whatever it is on Instagram’s.

Yeah. And that’s the idea.

That’s my next question. Um, because more people buying more on TikTok or Meta or wherever using social channels to. Search for product. Right. Huge. Especially with the young, with the young

generation, although teenagers that basically they kind of get their first debit card or credit card, and they’re so influenced from everything that’s happening online in social media.

Yeah. Uh, I mean, that’s, that’s where it’s coming. That’s that generation. So if you, the earlier you start and in tapping into them and they’re, um, consuming habits, which is social, extremely social. Yeah. Uh, the better footprint you’re gonna have for your brand and exposure and, and the chances of success, because that’s just the future.

You gotta invest in the future.

Chris: Is [00:09:00] it, um, I mean obviously you think that this is a better way of doing it. Is there competition to the point where you have to spend a lot, you have to, you have to go to accelerate. Even if you’re not focused solely on Amazon, you have to spend a lot on ads. I’m just curious how this came into being, because it’s such a crowded field of competitors and companies and people raising VC and, and trying to get something like this going about, uh, you’re saying

Yoni: crowded, meaning the, the world of, uh,

Chris: SaaS.

How many competitors are there, would you say, if you had to guess?

Yoni: For what? For Go Flow specifically or just in General South

Chris: for Go Flow.

Yoni: Yeah, so I’ll be honest, this is a kind of a legacy technology that’s been around probably the earliest, like over 20 years. Mm-hmm. Uh, and be because that, because of that legacy of over 20 years where those systems were so expensive and some of them required revenue share.

Obviously the mid-market and enterprise brands were okay with it. They settled into it and they, they, they settled properly. But the ones that are on the entry level game, uh, [00:10:00] completely. Ruled out and over ignored. Um, so we are here, I’m here to, so that, that’s just a fact in the past 20 plus year, and I’m here kind of trying to basically trailblaze and, and, um, and pave the way for the brands and the sellers to get access free of charge to a premium.

Enterprise level system, an operating system that it’s in reach. Why? Because it’s free, free forever. And then of course if you tapped out of the limits, you want to go into the pay tiers. It’s still very affordably priced to begin with. And we have a month to month. Typically with those systems, you had like a year, two or three commitment, right?

Plus rev share, plus set of fees, licensing fee, all there so many fees just to get in. So you never want to even consider, you know, trying another. So it’s kind of a trench warfare in, in a way. But we we’re here kind of changing that dynamic where, and, and in other words, we’re trying to, to democratize this technology, democratize this capability to put in reach into all the brands that are out there that are really serious and focused on building a real business that is expanding to as many eyeballs as they can across all the [00:11:00] channels.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and of course, even if they aren’t Amazon native, but Amazon, even in Amazon, you take the number one place you tap out. But it doesn’t mean you cannot generate more revenue outside in, in other places. It’s, it’s always the case, by the way. So a, I wanna educate about that so they know. Everybody here, uh, knows when I was selling, when I was doing e-commerce, we’re doing about a hundred million a year in revenue.

We had about 14, uh, storefronts, and we expanded to many channels as we can. And it was very robust. Amazon was always the largest, but still all the other ones, you know, they brought in all these millions and millions over the years. So that was something, you know, that added to our, the business, right? And to the value of the business.

So. I, uh, coming from that place I want, but it was, it was very expensive when we were doing it, and we always had, we needed, always needed kind of techie people and the technical people to constantly manage the feeds and the connections. It was buggy with Go Flow. What I found interesting is, first of all, it’s 12 years old and it’s built very, very, very meticulously to be very, very smooth and plug and play and intuitive.

So you come in, you plug and play, you know, you don’t need a tech person or, or a techie person onboard or anything like that. Uh, things don’t usually break or, or have any [00:12:00] disconnections, and it’s priced month to month. You can cancel at any time. First, you can try free. That’s an amazing thing. But even if you’re starting, uh, starting to commit and, and, and going to the pay tiers, it’s month to month, no long term commitments, no set of fees, no licensing fees.

It just here to democratize that technology so we can hopefully have a, a good layer of, you know, entrepreneurs and e-commerce seller using it at scale. Perfecting us, giving us all their feedback. Say, Hey, you can use this feature, you can use that dynamic. So I wanna incorporate all that into, to have this journey and partner with them together to, you know, make it as best as possible for them, uh, and, and keep pushing them to their growth.

I’m the CGO or Chief Growth Officer, so I’m passionate about the growth for, for this company, but also for the sellers that did the same thing, same kind of role within my previous, uh, adventure and, and, and company. So, mm-hmm. For the most part it was very, very successful. It was very fun, uh, to help on the tech side, but also on.

Let’s call it on the content and educational side, where the more they know and the more they they, uh, uh, strategize about, and the more they implement, the more they grow over the years and become successful. Because one thing’s for sure, it [00:13:00] only gets harder, more complex. The more Com competition comes in, more and more variables come in, and the idea is to simplify it and dumb it all down with the best strategies, the best.

Tech technologies that’s out there, the best advice that’s out there, the best entrepreneurs out there and communities they can find and, and, and, and partner with or be in contact with. So you’re constantly playing on the top tiers instead of kind of being a, a till and you’re segregated and you really know what’s up, what’s not.

And then you just basically, uh. Basically position yourself where you have less chances of success. It’s, it’s statist. It’s also a statistical game. The more you know, the more you implement, the more the statistically, the more chances you, you can have of a, not just, um, surviving, but also hopefully succeeding a lot.

So you really can maximize the EBITDA and the free cash flow that you’re gonna generate as a business. And hopefully you can have a cash cow that can fulfill all your dreams, right? You want to have a house, you wanna have a car, you wanna have education for your kids, your grandkids build a wealth, you wanna build a legacy, whatever it is.

I’m honestly here to empower that. So go forward has a small mission within that to, uh, empower it so that you have the right structure and operating system and the, [00:14:00] and the right capabilities to constantly expand your brand, uh, to as many places as you can. Uh, and, uh, despite all the challenges, try to have a good time with it.

You know,

Chris: I don’t have any grandkids yet. I’m not ready to talk about grandkids. Many, uh, grandkids

Yoni: will be happy to adopt as they’re adopting, grandfathers. So No worries.

Chris: Right, exactly. Um, I’m just curious what. Your positioning is around like, what do you think Amazon, how do you think they study this arena?

And they’re obviously looking to make as much money as possible, as often as possible.

Yoni: Yeah, it’s a good question. Amazon’s very smart, very, very smart because obviously Amazon is, is a beast when it comes to its own traffic and its own revenue, with its own ecosystem of amazon.com.

But strategically, it’s very, very smart because. It realizes that it’s not the only game in town. There are always gonna be other games in town, games in town. So they’re empowering that, and the way they empower it is through, there’s a few examples. One of the quick one is like advertising. There’s a, you know, you can [00:15:00] basically advertise within Amazon now to, take traffic out from Amazon to outside of Amazon, and they can mon monetize on that, right?

So if you have a brand you wanna, you know, maybe send them to your Shopify store, whatever, there’s that element. Uh, there’s a few others, but I want to get into them. I’ll get to the one that’s, uh, closer to my heart, which is MCF, which is multi-channel fulfillment, right? So I don’t, I don’t know if most sellers are aware of this or not, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna educate about that.

So hopefully if it’s the first time I heard about it. And you can jump on this opportunity and actually expand your business very, very quickly and simply to, to more channels and more revenue. So here it is. So if you’re a predominantly an Amazon FBA seller, so all your inventory and FBA fulfilled Amazon, you have the option through MCF with multi-channel fulfillment to use that inventory to sell it in other channels.

So for example, you can go into Go Flow, go flow.com/core, you connect Amazon account, and then you connect. Let’s say you open a Walmart account. And or you connect your shop Shopify account, you connect them into Go Flow and then you say, Hey Amazon, when I sell this product on Walmart, or I [00:16:00] send it, I sell it on my Shopify store, I want you Amazon to fulfill it.

So this way Amazon and the F base will pick and pack the item and send it to your Walmart orders and it will send it to your Shopify orders. So you don’t have to get your own infrastructure, your own warehouse or, and do your own fulfillment. You could just leverage the inventory you already have on FB, right?

To expand your revenue and sales and, and brand into other channels and could do it all for free now because of Go Flow, right? So that’s a very powerful thing to have it, the palm of your hand. Uh, uh, so there’s many, you’ll be surprised, you know, this has been around for like, I don’t know, I mean, when I started like 15 years ago, was still there.

So it, it is been around for a long time, over a decade, let’s put it this way, right? Most sellers might be not even aware that then actually leverage their FBA inventory to other channels. And Amazon is very bullish on that. They want, they’re saying, Hey, we want you to expand to more channels. ’cause whatever traffic you’re gonna get into Amazon, all the revenue we know you’re gonna get that it’s all yours and you’re fighting.

It’s competition to begin with. You’re fighting, but you obviously, there’s more traffic and more revenue out there. We wanna be a part of that revenue. And the way they’re part of that revenue is when they fulfill your order with MCF, which is [00:17:00] multi-channel fulfillment. They monetize, they make money. So you’re happy, you’re generating sales on a tap of Amazon, which is more revenue, more profit.

You will not get on Amazon because it’s simply not Amazon native. But, and, and the customers are happy there, but also Amazon’s happy because they’re able to, uh, uh, fulfill that for you. So when it comes to Amazon, like I said, they’re very smart. They see the big picture. They not only support it, they empower it and they’re happy to do it.

And that’s how we fit into this, uh, mold.

Chris: That’s, yeah, they’re, they’re keeping an eye on it and they’re moving into any areas where they can make a little bit more out of traffic or. Order fulfillment, you know? Yeah. Another

Yoni: quick example is Amazon Buy with Prime. Of course. Yeah. When you can have your Shopify store, and then basically, not only that, they’ll fulfill the order, which through the MCF, uh, uh, uh, capabilities with multi-channel fulfillment, they’ll also, uh, financially process it.

So you can have this, um, buy with Prime. You’re go into, uh, any Shopify storefront and you wanna buy this product, you can check, you’ll have a Prime logo. So check out with Prime. So you can basically check out with your Amazon account and the Amazon wallet, uh, and the Amazon Prime account. And then, so that [00:18:00] will actually do the financial processing, but also the logistical of processing.

So that’s another layer you can see where Amazon is very, very bullish on empowering e-commerce for sellers, not just on Amazon, but also outside of Amazon.

Chris: Yeah, it’s an interesting concept. Interesting time in the business.

Yoni: So always interesting. It’s, it’s a, we’ll see what people

Chris: are willing to, well, like you said.

Some people are roped into deals and they can’t get out of ’em that easily. We’ll see what people are willing to experiment with or try out. Um, yeah, but even if you are, even if you’re, it gets more, more complex.

Yoni: Yeah. Even if you are playing for another legacy system and, and you want to try it out and you want to connect one of your storefront free of charge, it’s we opening that hatch, gladly and openly.

So you can do one-to-one comparison. You’re paying whatever, 5,000, 10,000 a month. Plus, plus 3% revenue for a legacy system. You go to Golo, try the free version, see how it all flows and feels and, and operates and hopefully it’s smooth and, and, and, and streamlines and it’s easier to use actually. And you don’t need some techie people that you have.

And overall, in other words, you, you could be in a situation where you [00:19:00] can, uh, then shift very after really trying and testing it, you know, make the educated decision to shift, uh, and then having a better outcome because you’re getting a better system, better outcomes, better performance for a third or less of the price.

Uh, and you were able to do that in a very methodical way where it’s not like, uh, any promises you here, it’s just open. Try it out free.

Chris: Yeah. And we’ll include your links and info in the show notes. Um, people have questions on anything they’ve heard. Best way to reach you.

Yoni: Yeah. If you have questions, I’m very open on social media.

Facebook and LinkedIn. Just, you know, look for Yoni Maur. Feel free to reach out, or just email me at yoni@goflow.com. In general, if you’re already kind of, robust in your business and you wanna, you know, one option is the, like I mentioned, is the core plan, which is free, you can just go and plug and play it, test it out.

So if you’re really good on self-serve and you’re very savvy, go for it. But if you need more help, more understanding, or you want to just check it out and book a demo and see how it all works before you do any actions is just visit, um, uh, go flow us slash Chris once saying, [00:20:00] go flow us slash Chris.

Yeah, the famous Chris McCabe, you’ll be able to book a demo. We know that we came from, uh, the Chris’ angle, so we’ll hopefully give you even better attention and better response for this way.

Chris: I hope so. I hope so.

Yoni: Yeah. And, yeah, so you’ll be able to see what is going on. We could do a discovery, understand where you’re now with your systems, especially if you’re mid-market or enterprise, you’re already kind of, doing a few channels, maybe using a legacy system.

Mm-hmm. And things are more complex and advanced. Happy to book a demo. So show you how it all works, understand, your capabilities and our capabilities. See if it’s a good match. I just do it in a very open, and, transparent and advanced way I would say.

Chris: Cool. All right, well it’s always good to catch up with you and know what you’re doing now.

We have a pretty good sense of what you’ve been up to lately and I’m sure we will get some questions on it. It’ll see how this evolves over the next six to nine months and wish you all the success with it, of course.

Yoni: So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Yeah, thanks everybody.

Chris: We’ll we’ll catch up with you soon. Take care.