What do you do when wholesale for brick-and-mortar sales suddenly causes you to lose the Buy Box? There's only one thing to do: get out of brick-and-mortar sales. That's exactly what Anna Maria from BabyForte did after large online pharmacies snatched the Buy Box away from her on Amazon. Local pharmacies reacted immediately and negatively to her cautious price adjustment. Since then, she has been focusing fully on her online business again. In this podcast episode, she talks about the three phases a D2C brand goes through when it is being built up, why she continues to invest in her web shop, why she relies on a clearly defined brand portfolio, and why she is not looking for investors at the moment. She also reveals why her team spends every week analyzing click rates.
Takeaways:
Note from the sponsor Taxdoo:
Every marketplace trader can tell you a thing or two about it: different tax rates, different responsibilities, tax advisors who are inexperienced in e-commerce. The taxtech company Taxdoo wants to remedy this situation. Taxdoo offers a comprehensive platform for online retailers who need to carry out legally compliant and efficient sales tax reporting and accounting processes. The software analyzes all sales, fees, and payments, resulting in a transparent and audit-proof solution, is seamlessly integrated with many marketplaces and can handle all EU and UK sales tax processing, including OSS exports. If you want to know more about VAT, read our blog article, in which you will also find a table with all VAT rates in the EU, UK, and Switzerland. Find out more here:
Note from the sponsor MediaMarkSaturn:
Even though it's only summer, Cyber Week is coming around faster than you think! That means: Plan early. Because the time between November 24th and December 1st is not just a sales boost – it’s a full-on operational challenge. The most common mistakes? As Alexander Klinger from MediaMarktSaturn knows it’s not enough stock, no prep for returns and customer inquiries, poor product content and shipping KPIs all over the place. MediaMarktSaturn shares participation details 4 to 6 weeks ahead. Secure visibility, top homepage deals are handpicked – only sellers with strong KPIs and competitive prices stand a chance. And use Retail Media wisely. They work, but only if you book them early. For more practical tips see the full interview on Marketplace Universe:
https://marketplace-universe.com/good-cyber-week-preparation/
Today at let's Talk Marketplace, we talked.
Valerie Dichtl:About the Marketplace story of the German supplements brands BabyFORTE, MascuPRO and PuriaFAM. Founder Anna Maria Silinger told us how she uses Amazon, Doc Morris and Shop Apotheke as her main sales channels and.
Ingrid Lommer:Why she withdrew her products from the brick and mortar pharmacies after those retailers stole her Amazon buy box.
Valerie Dichtl:Have fun listening.
Ingrid Lommer:Let's Talk Marketplace.
Valerie Dichtl:The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Valerie Dichtl.
Ingrid Lommer:Hey, everyone. Great you tuned in again to Let's talk Marketplace.
And today we have a topic for you that we don't touch on that often or haven't even featured it yet, because we're going to talk about supplements. Do you think, Valerie, did we touch upon that?
Valerie Dichtl:We touched upon it once a little bit in our episode with my friend Gregor where we talked about the healthcare industry on Marketplaces and especially on Amazon. So what do you have in mind today?
Ingrid Lommer:I thought, because when we talked with Gregor, it was his perspective of a supplier, of a service provider. And today I thought it would be great to get a brand's point of view on the topic.
And that is fitting really good because it gives me the opportunity to bring in a guest on the show that was in my list for quite a while. She is the founder of the supplement brands BabyFORTE, MascoPRO and PuriaFAM.
And she's been active in the German Amazon scene for over 10 years, I think.
And I think she is the only brand owner who has ever told me that she has removed her products from the brick and mortar sales channels because, and I quote, the distribution over those classic retailers cannibalized her Amazon strategy. So I think that is a nice starting point for a conversation. So welcome, Anna Maria Silinger. Hi.
Anna-Maria Silinger:Hi. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Valerie Dichtl:Yeah, welcome, Anna Maria. It's really nice to meet you. I know Ingrid has been connected with you for quite a while already, but we haven't had the pleasure yet.
And that was an interesting introduction just now, which opens a lot of questions, I would say. But before we dive into those, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit more? So who are you? Anna Maria?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, I mean, I'm Anna and I'm the founder by now of three D2C brands, which are Babyforte, which is the product line for women before and during pregnancy. Then we have Mascopro, which is a product line for men, especially for fertility.
And then we have a product line by now, a third one, which is called puriaFum, which addresses women's health beyond pregnancy. And like you said, I mean, we exclusively sell D2C, so especially on Amazon, but also on other marketplaces and in our own shops.
Valerie Dichtl:And how did you come up with this topic? I mean, I think you just stood up one day and said, like, okay, now I'm doing those brands and sell it reseller on Amazon. And how did that happen?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Well, I mean, I was already. I had a connection on a professional level. I worked in a company where we sold Quick tests before, so it was not really that far off.
But then I had the idea in a personal moment. So, you know, I was sitting there with a friend who was starting her family journey. She and her husband, they wanted to have a baby.
And she told me that she deliberately decided not to take any of the well established big brands or products from one of these brands because she said that many of them, and I think she's right, they use a lot of, you know, artificial colorants, they use unnecessary fillers, you know, coatings around the tablets that make them look very shiny. And so what she did was she bought a lot of different supplements, like individual products.
And she was basically opening a drawer and I thought, wow, that's really a lot.
And I think for her it was very complex to decide, decide which products to take, you know, and some, you know, they had a bit of a funny smell or she said that she didn't tolerate some of them. And so I thought, well, maybe that's a good idea. I think I can, I can do that better.
And yeah, that's how, how I came to the concrete idea of Baby Forte.
Valerie Dichtl:Wow.
Ingrid Lommer:But you don't have any background in medicine or something like that?
Anna-Maria Silinger:No, I think, I mean, I just dove into that, you know, from a marketing perspective mainly, and I had some idea because Quick Tests are medical products as well. So, you know, I had some like. Yeah, I mean, I had some professional idea about that.
But then again, I think I understood also that I need to find very professional partners to live up to, you know, the standards of quality management and compliance in that respect. So we build on that quite early. Yeah.
Valerie Dichtl:And how long is this a go?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Well, that was actually, I think 15 years ago. So that was definitely quite a while. Yeah.
Valerie Dichtl:Okay, great. And what would you say are you doing best in the marketplace business?
Anna-Maria Silinger:I mean, I think what we are doing best, it's always difficult to say. There are a lot of people who do a lot of very good things, you know, very professional strategies.
But I think that one thing that we did very well is that we understood quite early what a chance marketplaces could be. Because in the end, I think a brand is a very strong asset. And I think when you sell on Amazon, you know that better than I do.
There are a lot of categories where it's difficult to get in later on because there are such strong sellers with so many reviews. And so I think that what we did quite smart is that we understood the importance of marketplaces in a very, very early stage.
Valerie Dichtl:Okay, and then let's come to the more fun part. So tell us a fun fact about you, Anna. Could also be a private one.
Anna-Maria Silinger:A fun fact about me? Let me think about it. That's a difficult question. I will tell you one fact about me.
I will tell you about my favorite KPI that I'm obsessing about and that I'm, I think, getting on my team's nerves about with every week. I love looking at the CTR and I'm constantly getting on my team's nerves that we have to look at ctrs. Every day I'm comparing products.
I'm really obsessed with that because I always say, guys, you know, we don't need to think about conversion rate if nobody visits our product page. So please look at the ctr. I'm challenging all the time.
So I think when you ask anybody from my team, you know, what's Anna's favorite thing to talk about? It's the ctr.
Ingrid Lommer:The ctr. Nice one. Very nice. Anna. Then we have been getting to know you a bit better now and I think you are just the right person to dive into this topic.
Supplements on marketplaces. So it's great that you're here but. And yeah, we'll do that. We'll dive into that.
But before, before we do that, a very short advertising break in which we'll talk about something that some people might not like to talk so much about and that is taxes. Today I would like to introduce you to our sponsor and partner. Taxdoo.
The service provider aims to make life easier for marketplace users by automating unpleasant tasks such as sales tax compliance and accounting.
Valerie Dichtl: doo was founded in Hamburg in:Managing director Roger Gothmann was himself a tax manager at the Federal Central Tax Office and now enjoys explaining the special circumstances of E commerce for two tax advisors for which German and European tax law was not really developed.
Ingrid Lommer:Taxdoo offers a comprehensive platform for online retailers who need to carry out legally compliant and efficient sales tax reporting and accounting processes. The software analyzes all Sales fees and payments and resulting in a transparent and audit proof solution.
Valerie Dichtl:The Taxdoo platform is seamlessly integrated with many marketplaces and can handle all EU and UK sales tax processing, including OSS exports.
Ingrid Lommer:Yeah, so if you want to make tax a bit easier and have less to do with bureaucracy in the future, you might like to take a look at Taxdoo's solution. And if you want to know more about that, read our blog article which is quite in depth actually.
We'll link it in the show notes and you'll also find a full table of all vit rates in the eu, UK and Switzerland. So that might be helpful. Okay, so right Anna, let's talk a bit about your first brand about BabyForte.
That's where you started with and you started, as you said, as a pure Amazon brand 10 years ago. Why did you start there?
I mean this is not like the normal point of, of sales that people 10 years ago would think about when they thought about, yeah, pregnancy supplements. So why Amazon?
Anna-Maria Silinger:I mean in the end I think where we are that, you know, we are in a market where the established brands they traditionally sell via pharmacies. And so I understood quite early that it's, it's very difficult as a new brand to really still enter that game. You know.
And then when Amazon started growing, I mean in the first years you could already see the success that they had with books. And I understood, okay, this might really be an advantage in E commerce that they take over this very fast shipping with fba.
And I saw that the marketplace was growing. So I guess at first, you know, it was, it was pretty much a guess that this could become something big.
But I thought at the time that it was, it was worth a try.
And then I had the brand already, I had the product, I just had one product at that time and so I decided to launch and when we did, I was still the CEO of a different company. So you know, at first it was really a side project.
So I just hired two part time employees, launched the product on Amazon and that's pretty much what I did.
And what I saw was that the product, the turnover of the product was developing quite positively, especially you know, as we just, I mean, I mean it's not that we did nothing but we didn't really do a lot. We mainly listed the product and you know, did some groundwork, some accounting, you know, shipped the products there.
And so, you know, the more I observed that, the more I got the idea, okay, this could really be a new approach to the market and maybe for us, for our Brand a chance to get in there, you know, next to these very established brand. And so that was how I got that idea.
Ingrid Lommer:So how did that market change for you in the last 10 years? I mean, when you started out there, you said yourself your classic competitors would normally only go through pharmacies. Has that changed?
Is the market now more competitive than it used to be 10 years ago?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, it's a lot more competitive. I mean, when we started, I think we basically had the only products that you could take seriously.
I mean, the platform was there, there were not really any regulatory issues. You just listed a product, you showed the front and the back and off you went. So that was the start. And I mean, today that is completely different.
And I think also a difference today is that when you look at the list of the, let's say, 100 most successful sellers on Amazon, you will find several big online pharmacies there. So it's a huge shift. And also in regard to how we need to understand the marketplace, how professional you need to be there.
I think back then I started my business with €4,000. I think today that would be very, very difficult because you need more upfront investments and reviews with Amazon, vine or in advertising.
So I think today it's a whole different story. And, and we experienced that also because we launch different brands now.
So when I think of the early days of BabyForte, the early days of PuriaFam, it's a whole different story.
Valerie Dichtl:And how many different products are you selling?
Anna-Maria Silinger:I think right now we have around 40 products in our portfolio, but also with different package sizes. So that was an important point for us. When you sell on marketplaces, you also need a certain amount of average baskets.
So we thought, okay, maybe it's good to not just have one, but to have different package sizes and then we can also, you know, discount them for our customers a little bit more. So that was quite good. But I think, you know, for us it's not really about having a huge product portfolio.
It's more about really finding a good fit for our customers. So.
Valerie Dichtl:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Ingrid Lommer:So how did that company of yours evolve all the time? Because before, when we talked a bit about how we're going to set up this podcast, you told me that one of your.
You feel like as you are at the moment, mostly trying to get your startup to change into a mature company. So what do you mean by that? What has changed in your internal setup?
And also for you, as a founder of a marketplace driven company, what makes a mature marketplace company?
Anna-Maria Silinger:I mean, I think in the end, you know, when I look back and when I look at the journey from where I started to where I am today, I think, you know, at first it was this, this time where, like, I would say the first, I don't know, like one, two years, it was really about understanding the marketplace, understanding customers, understanding, you know, okay, what sort of products do customers really want and how does the marketplace work.
And I think when you want to be successful online and on marketplaces, an environment with a lot of reviews, you need to be obsessed with product quality because otherwise it doesn't work in the long term. So I think that was really the start.
And then I think the next thing that came or the next milestones that came along the way were that we realized, okay, I mean, having a brand new for women, for pregnancy is a very good start. But in the end it has a certain limitation. We realized, okay, men also want something for fertility.
So the next milestones were, on the one hand, enlarging the product portfolio, also thinking about, okay, what can we do for men who also have similar issues? So we launched the second brand and the third brand.
And I think once that was done, it was, in the end, you know, sounds simple, but, you know, in the end it was a matter of scaling, you know, so it was this, this journey from becoming a solo entrepreneur to really building a team, building structures, launching on more platforms.
And so, yeah, I mean, looking back, I think this time of, like, groundwork of really understanding how does that work to sell on marketplaces, that was really the base for everything. And since then, we have 1 million growth pains all along the way. Always, you know, that's everyday life of an entrepreneur, I would say.
Valerie Dichtl:Who hasn't?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yes, who hasn't?
Valerie Dichtl:That's right.
Anna-Maria Silinger:But in the end, I think, yeah, once you really understand Amazon, you know, as the mother of all German marketplaces, I would say then, you know, from then on, it's. Yeah, I'm not sure if it really gets easier, but at least, you know.
Valerie Dichtl:I wouldn't say it gets easier, but you have the base, a really good base. Right. And a long base for your products. When did you start with the last brand?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, the last brand. We started it, I think, about three years ago. And to be honest, it grew much slower than expected. Not because it was not successful. Not successful.
But I think, you know, what happened.
Valerie Dichtl:Was that the competition was bigger.
Anna-Maria Silinger:No, I think that actually Baby Volta and Mascarpo, they sort of outperformed it, you know, So I think Baby Forte and Mascarpo were So much stronger than we expected. So they grew a lot faster and we had to put a lot of focus on them.
And so I think now we are at a point where, I mean, yes, Puia Farm is not small anymore, but in comparison to the other brands, it is smaller.
So now we are at a time where we can really say, okay, now we have the time to really build up the product portfolio and differentiate more internally between the teams. Especially when it comes to content marketing, it is a success. We have the knowledge about marketplaces.
But I thought, okay, by now we would have at least 10 products and we are launching, I think the fourth one next week.
Ingrid Lommer:So how have you structured that within your company with these three brands?
Is that like all the teams are responsible for all the brands or do you have specific brands, brands, teams that might even be in competition against each other at the moment?
Anna-Maria Silinger:No, I mean, right now they're not in competition with one another. I think what we do or what the plan will be is that we have certain fields in the company that we combine for all three brands.
So hr, accounting, supply chain, I think that's something that you can easily centralize. And for us right now, we didn't really split the team because I think I told you before, we are a bootstrapped company.
So for us, what is really a premise in all of our activities is that we only scale marketing campaigns when we can be break even. First sale, after contribution margin, 3. So after marketing.
And this means that we always need in the end, you know, because performance marketing, especially performance marketing, is expensive. We always need certain amounts of basket sizes. So, you know, that we even have the chance to.
So for us a first step is always that we build the product portfolio to a certain extent, you know, that we achieve certain basket sizes that we see, you know, in small tests that we can meet our goals in regard to the break even and then we scale. So right now we mainly invest in building up the product portfolio.
But when I look at it like, you know, in the future, when I see the brand in 12 months, then I think that what we will definitely split is the social media and content marketing. Because I think, you know, in the end, performance marketing, I think an account manager, performance marketer, he can work on different campaigns.
In the end he knows about KPIs.
But I think when you really want to dive into the brand and really create educational content, then I think it's good when people really have a focus.
Ingrid Lommer:On, on one topic, yeah, that's a different game. That's true. But I Find it interesting that you as an Amazon brand say that, okay, I want to be profitable from the first sale on.
Because this is what I often heard from D2C brands, especially those that start out only on Amazon. Yeah, well you, you just have to go in for the first half year.
You will, won't be profitable at least for six months or maybe for 12 months because you need to push that product first through marketing costs. But so this is something that you wouldn't do.
Anna-Maria Silinger:I mean it depends on the strategy. In the end, it's always, I think, a question of priorities. What, what is more important to you?
Is it in the end top line growth or is it, you know, that you want to, that you want to build like a piece profitable business.
So I think, you know, when you have a brand and you say, okay, I want to take a couple of investors on board, I want to show a growth story, then I think you don't need to, you know, you can burn money. I think it's okay. And I think in the end that's what an investor wants to see. They want to see that there is traction in it.
So then I would say it's a different story. And I mean, I'm from Berlin, you know, so that's where a lot of equipment commerce companies come from.
And I think there are so many businesses that are very, very big, they make a lot of millions and suddenly they realize, unfortunately we can make a lot of turnover but we can't really earn money and then in the end they are too big to fail. So in our case as we are bootstrapped, I think that it's a different matter for us.
Valerie Dichtl:Yeah, it's also your overall goal. Right. And I also have the feeling that if women doing businesses, this is what we hear more often. I mean this could also be our talk right now.
It could also be like hell, we are bootstrap. We don't want to scale, we don't want to scale to the moon.
We want really to like organically grow and grow healthy and grow profitable and we don't want an investor, etc. So yeah, it's a different kind of business what you have and what we have, but it's the same.
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean I've worked before. This is my first company.
I founded several companies previously and this is the first time I'm working without investors. And I always think it's still an option. You know, I wouldn't exclude the idea. It's not, you know, that I categorically never work with investors.
But right now I think, I mean we are growing and there are so many things that we know that we can do without taking millions in.
So why I mean it's always a matter of how much time do you want to dedicate also to managing, like to shareholder management and how much time do you really want to invest in the business.
So I think it's both possible options for strategies, but right now I'm choosing the bootstrapped one and we are growing so there's no need really to do that.
Valerie Dichtl:Well, I would say we should continue this conversation after another short break and just a quick word on our partner and sponsor MediaMarktun.
Ingrid Lommer:So I know it's summer, but do you know what you should be doing apart from enjoying the sunshine that is plan the Cyber Week because the time between November 24 and December 1 is not just a sales boost, it's a full on operational challenge. At least that what Alexander Klinger from mediamark Zeton told us in our latest interview with him.
He is responsible for all the partner business on the Cyber Week on the Marketplace Media and the Media Marketplace. And he said if sellers don't scale up their fulfillment and customer service in time, November can quickly become a nightmare.
Valerie Dichtl:Now the most common mistakes not enough stock, no prep for returns and customer inquiries, poor product content and shipping KPIs all over the place. So what should seller do? What shall what should sellers do? Start now, even if Cyber Week still feels far away.
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Ingrid Lommer:Okay, so Anna Maria, let's go back to the topic of marketplaces, which you know if you it's called let's Talk Marketplace. So let's talk a bit more about Marketplaces today.
So of course Amazon is your key or central platform, but you have been opening up to other platforms as well. Are you doing that in the same way that you say, okay, every sale on every new platform has to be profitable from day one?
Or are you a bit more lenient when you're trying out new platforms and.
Anna-Maria Silinger:When we try out more platforms, generally we are more lean. But to be honest, what we experience is that on many of the other platforms you don't need as much advertising these days.
I mean, so we sell also on Doc Morris and on Shopapoteca and there are not even as many options to run campaigns.
So you know, on the one hand my attitude would be okay, maybe we can just try, you know, marketplace and see at first and don't need to earn money in the first place. Place. But at this point it was not really.
I mean, we had investments, you know, to integrate the marketplaces into our, into our IT structure and our back end structure and our supply chain. But apart from that there were not so many options to spend money.
Ingrid Lommer:Okay, so that's mostly Doc Morris and Choprapatik at the moment or any other marketplaces as well?
Anna-Maria Silinger:No, I mean for us it's mostly those three. We are negotiating with some other marketplaces, we are looking into some.
But I mean when we pick a marketplace, it's also, you know, a lot of administration, a lot of effort for integration. So you know, I think, I mean there are different approaches.
Some people say, okay, I just want to be everywhere and you know, maybe in the future I really start selling significant amounts of products there. I see it a little bit different.
I pick marketplaces and I think, okay, well if we launch on a marketplace, there needs to be a good chance for a relevant turnover. So for us, I mean a very important sales channel for us is also our own online shop.
You know, it's, it's not a marketplace, but that's in the end, you know, very a core asset I think for a brand also and also important for marketplaces. You know, I think customers just want to see an online presence no matter where you sell, on social media, on the shops.
So that's really we, where we invest in. Yeah, that's the current state.
Valerie Dichtl:And how do you ship the products? Do you have like a central warehouse at your own place or how do you do this?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, we actually ship ourselves. I mean Amazon, you know, we make use of fba. I think we have the perfect products for that. They are small and light, so that's always good for fba.
But yes, actually apart from that we ship ourselves. And that has several reasons.
I mean, I mentioned before, we usually have different package sizes, you know, and in our case the capsules are usually in these blisters, you know, that where you push them out. So when we get our capsules, we just get the capsules in the blisters. And then we produce the products ourselves. So we need a warehouse anyway.
And that is quite good for us because we can react quite flexible to, you know, what package sizes do we need, where, which markets do we need to, for which markets do we need.
Valerie Dichtl:Products, which packaging, etc.
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, yeah, that's right. So that's. So we have a warehouse anyway and you know, then the step for fulfillment for us was not so big maybe.
Valerie Dichtl:And where would you say do you have like the biggest regulatory or operational challenges for supplements or marketplace business?
Anna-Maria Silinger:I think to be honest, for us it was comparatively easy because you know, we sell supplements for pregnant women and in a legal, like from a legal understanding it's a so called very vulnerable customer. So for me I think it was clear that if I want to get into that business I need to invest in compliance and quality management from the start.
You know, it's not just a legal obligation, but I think it's so also something as a founder where I convinced if I was pregnant I just want to be able to rely on the quality of the product. So that was something I really invested in from the start on.
And so when Amazon was starting to ask for more documentation or other marketplaces, I mean of course we had to compose the documentation, we had to understand what form does the marketplace want to have it, but we had it all anyway. And you know we are, we have, we have documentation about, you know, having vegan products. We are testing like we run lab tests all the time anyway.
So that was for us that part was easy.
So I think we had sometimes more of a challenge because on marketplaces there are so many automations, you know, and sometimes an algorithm picks up on something like you say, like you write a word in your listing and suddenly you get an email, your listing is suspended because you wrote something that is not compliant and you don't know which word it is. Right. And you sit there as a sound. Ah, really?
So you look at your listing and sometimes, you know, it's really like you sometimes have to guess and I think that's something this is a little bit company know how you know. I think this is also about having some connections to account managers from Amazon, having some experience with that.
So I think that was a bit of a challenge to learn. Okay, how do we avoid listing suspensions and if there is a suspension, what do we do in order to free the listing shortly Again.
Ingrid Lommer:Interesting. So I'm looking a bit at the time, but before we're closing down I have to get back to what I said in the beginning.
And that is your brief expansion into physical pharmacies because you did partner for a while with physical pharmacies and then pulled your products back. So what happened there?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, I mean, in the end I think what happened is from our, from our mission, you know, as a company, of course we want to be where our customers are at.
And in the case of supplements that have a little bit of a medical touch, you know, like pregnancy vitamins are something that doctors often recommend. You know, it's well known pharmacies have it on their shelves.
So for us it was very likely that we said, okay, well if that's where pregnancy vitamins are sold, then we need to be there. And so what we did is that we listed with one of the wholesalers. So that's how the. Maybe a little bit of a background.
In Germany you usually don't make, you don't partner with single pharmacies, but you sell your products to the wholesaler and the whole sellers then again deliver it to the local pharmacy. So that's what we did.
And the first problem that we faced when we were a new and a young brand was that the local pharmacies, they were not exactly thrilled about our products. You know, they said, okay, well what's your marketing budget? Why should we recommend your product? How many customers do you have?
And I think, you know, they just prefer to really sell the well known and trusted brands. I think it's just easier for them. And to be honest, personally I can relate to that also.
So we thought, okay, well maybe we just need to do some advertising and then we will get this process running. Well, what we then experienced was that one day we logged into Amazon and we realized, oh, we lost our buy box pretty much for all of our products.
Because what happened was that the big online pharmacies, they started listening our products on Amazon. Of course they appreciated that we had campaigns running on brand keywords as well. And then they sold the products.
So then we said, okay, what are we going to do now? So we lowered the price a little bit, which I was not happy about.
You know, when you sell a premium brand, you need to be very, very careful with discounts. But we tried.
And then in return, the few local pharmacies that sold our products, I mean we had them on the phone and they said, guys, you know, you can, you can't sell below your own recommendation because when you do that, you're not our partner anymore, you're not our supplier anymore, but you become our competitor. And I think that was the point Where I thought, okay, at least with a young new brand these strategies can really conflict.
So would I see it the same today? I'm not sure. Maybe with a more established brands, a different approach.
I mean there are, you know, there are brands that for example, say okay, I sell in retail or in pharmacies, my small package size, then on marketplaces, all package sizes and in my shop I also offer certain discounts and bundles. You know, I mean, there's different strategies also to cope with that.
But yeah, in the end I think it needs to be well thought through decisions because what sounds easy is in practice sometimes a lot more complex.
Ingrid Lommer:Interesting story here. Right?
So maybe to close this up because we are over our time already, even though I do enjoy very much talking to you and hearing about your founder story. But still, so maybe I look in the future, what are you working on at the moment and where do you see your brands in, in a few years time?
What are you going for? More marketplaces or international expansion, which I can guess is difficult in your field. So what is your road to growth?
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, I mean right now we have three brands and we are selling right now in the Dach region and also in Italy.
So I mean I have more ideas for brands but to be honest, I think when I look to the next five years, I think for us it's really more important to dive deeper into these markets. I think we can, we can launch more products for Puriya Farm.
I think there are also some marketplaces that are already interesting for us or that could even become more interesting. I mean, there's a lot happening, you know, in the market with supplements and pharmacies.
So I think there are some quite, quite interesting chances that we have. I think we also, we can build more on our shop because of course marketplaces are important because like I said, that's where the customers are.
Customers love marketplaces. But shop is also important. So that's really one very important strategic goal.
And in the end, I mean, what I can say is I think me as a founder, I think I'm very connected to my brands. I like working on products, products that I can relate to and on product topics that I like.
And I can really say that my connection with the three brands that we have is very intuitive and heartfelt. I really like it.
So what I hope is that in the next years we get the chance to be part of people's lives, to make people's lives maybe easier with our products and also to create more educational, informative content about the brand topics.
Because I think people really seek for information and yeah, we have a great chance to provide a little bit about that in our shops, in our social media channels. So that's really what I really love about my job.
Ingrid Lommer:Thank you very much for your insights, Anne Marie. It was really great having you with us today and talking about your three brands and your inspiring story. Thank you.
Anna-Maria Silinger:Yeah, thank you very much for inviting me. Yeah.
Valerie Dichtl:And if you like listening to us today, you could make us very happy by following us and rating our podcast and Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you are listening to us. And of course by tuning in again next time.
Next week we will look into all the most important things that happened in the Marketplace industry in our monthly news review. So don't miss out on that and thanks for your support and bye bye.
Ingrid Lommer:Bye bye. You listened to let's Talk Marketplace, the.
Valerie Dichtl:Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Valerie Dichtel.