For two decades, Michael Parker and Sol Sanchez de Muniain built and ran A Quarter Of, one of the UK's largest online sweet and candy shops, repeatedly achieving best-seller status in the Amazon UK grocery section.
From this marketplace, the Anglo-Spanish couple exported boxes of sweets to more than 30 markets, including the USA, Canada, Madagascar, Singapore, South Africa, Australia and several European countries. In their best year, they reached a turnover of around two million euros on Amazon alone.
The business was founded by Michael Parker in 2003. At the time, the entrepreneur ran a small marketing agency, but decided to create an online shop selling British sweets from the 60s, 70s and 80s, most of which were "disappearing due to the emergence of the large supermarkets, even though they were all still in production", recalls Sol Sanchez de Muniain. They started with two orders a day, but the business gradually gained visibility and traction in the digital world until, in 2010, Amazon's growth in the United Kingdom changed local consumers' shopping habits and, consequently, caused a "significant reduction in direct traffic to the AQuarterOf.co.uk website".
Unable to fight this trend, Michael and Sol decided to join the e-commerce platform. It was a turning point in the history of the retro sweet shop, with its products literally starting to sell like hot cakes.
"We decided to leverage the enormous sales volume potential offered by Amazon UK, which involved creating products from scratch and learning in depth how to maximise sales on the marketplace. Most of the orders were for British expats living abroad — our business model was built on nostalgia."
"Growth was fast and, in 2016, we had our first best-seller in the Amazon UK grocery category, at the peak of the sales period (pre-Christmas). One of our best-selling sweet boxes sold 3,650 units in a single day," she reveals.
Last year, after 13 years of success on Amazon, Michael and Sol sold the A Quarter Of brand, for a number of reasons (including Brexit). Based in Portugal since 2017, where for years they ran the UK business from a distance, and now living with their children in Santo Tirso, they decided to found the consultancy Parker Agency to help Portuguese merchants scale their sales on Amazon.
"We understand the science of selling on Amazon. We know exactly how it works and we can advise other companies on the whole process. Parker Agency offers a 360º view and proven experience in creating best-sellers in one of the most competitive markets in the world. We are sellers first, consultants second."
CREATING AN AMAZON DEPARTMENT
Parker Agency's range of services is extensive and includes listing optimisation (product pages), product launch strategies, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising management, support for international expansion, inventory management and A+ content development (richer content descriptions, to increase conversions).
The consultancy's focus is on adapting its offering to each client's individual needs. "Every company will have different priorities and will require different levels of service. A company that has never sold on Amazon will need help with keyword research, pricing, product descriptions, guidance on product images, among other areas. On the other hand, a company that is already on Amazon but wants to increase its sales may need more help with campaign management to boost its products. We will audit what is needed to create a success story," notes Sol Sanchez de Muniain.
According to the co-founder, one of the main challenges small merchants face on Amazon relates to the marketplace's paid advertising system (Amazon PPC), which "is not user-friendly". "To make any decision about advertising campaigns, sellers are forced to spend long hours analysing spreadsheets of data. In addition, the system limits you to the last 60 days of data. This means that planning for seasonal peaks, such as Christmas, is impossible," she explains.
That is why Parker Agency developed its own Amazon campaign management system, anchored in two pieces of software: Amalyzer and AdRazor. The first aims to make analysing merchants' Amazon PPC performance faster and more intuitive, through key metric cards, for an instant overview of performance; trend charts, to analyse changes over time; and data tables, for more detailed analysis. In addition, the software removes the 60-day data limit, enabling long-term performance analysis, maximising seasonal performance and identifying search terms that generate losses.
As for AdRazor, it is a professional-level tool that allows Amazon advertisers not only to see what is happening with their ads, but also to take action to optimise performance.
"We see our role as an outsourced Amazon department for the companies we work with. Our aim is to help Portuguese companies create their own Amazon departments. If that is your goal, we can offer training and our software to help you do it."