January 2, 2025
LAS VEGAS – Prosper Show exhibitors and speakers have plenty of wisdom to share, and a lot of that advice and analysis can be found in the virtual pages of the Prosper Show newsletter. We include general news, but the features are exclusive to the newsletter. In 2024, we asked a lot of questions and got a lot of thoughtful responses. If you too have wisdom to share with readers, feel free to drop me a line at [email protected]. You could even give me a call (old fashioned, I know) at (970) 227-1002. The following is a sampling of the best quotes from 2024.
“Other social sites know how to build followers and they’re trying to build up multiple marketplaces and multiple audiences. However, if you’re big on TikTok, and it’s banned—you’re in trouble.” — Ian Sells, founder and CEO of Million Dollar Sellers
“Everyone is eager to diversify their dependence away from Amazon. We went into this with the mindset that we can take a lot of what we’ve done with Amazon and apply it here to Walmart, and we are going to have success. It didn’t happen.”
— Matt Snyder, brand advisor at Vari and CEO, Brands Excel.
“Prioritize three to five things every year as strategic initiatives and swing for the fences. You just need one of those ideas to take flight and enjoy commercial success.” — George Chang, general manager, head of SHEIN US Marketplace
“As a Canadian business content creator, the potential ban of TikTok is very worrisome. As traditional forms of media are disappearing, people have found knowledge, education, and community on TikTok. A majority of my followers are women, and women make up a small percentage of e-commerce entrepreneurs. The best part of TikTok for me has been the ability to use my platform to inspire female entrepreneurs who would traditionally not be able to start an e-commerce business due to lack of support, motivation, and inspiration.” — Mandeep Kaur, full-time Amazon FBA seller – April 4, 2024
“This Q4 was a record-breaking holiday shopping season and closed out a robust 2023 for Amazon. While we made meaningful revenue, operating income, and free cash flow progress, what we’re most pleased with is the continued invention and customer experience improvements across our businesses.” — Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO
“In 2024, you need to be investing in full funnel advertising. Sponsored products are continuing to get more competitive with rising CPCs, and advertisers need to leverage new capabilities to stay ahead of the competition. Amazon itself is investing in more mid and upper funnel ad units and providing access to measurement tools to understand the impact your campaigns have on the shopper journey, and ultimately on your sales.”
— Joe Rideout, co-founder and chief product officer at Perpetua
“In Q4 we delivered year-over-year revenue growth of 24%, which represents 30% growth when adjusting for the sale of our logistics businesses, and achieved an operating income margin of 13% and a free cash flow margin of 21%.”
— Jeff Hoffmeister, chief financial officer, Shopify
“Remember that Prime Day doesn’t end after Prime Day. Make sure that you’re also set up with an FBA reimbursement solution ahead of Prime so that when you’re inevitably faced with issues like Customer Returns and Lost or Damaged Shipments, you are quickly able to recoup losses and protect your profitability. — Shannon Curley, director of Marketing at Carbon6 Technologies
“The second the hall opened our booth was packed. We are up to 200 qualified leads, and we would have been happy with 100. We are already sending out contracts. Prosper Show 2024 is a smashing success and we can’t wait to come back next year to Las Vegas.” — Ari Gemza and Greg Potts, Levanta
“The quality of leads at Prosper Show was awesome and we had good foot traffic. We will be coming back to Prosper in 2025 with a larger booth.” — Joshua Topham, Seller Labs, Georgia – March 8, 2024
“When it comes to competing, America needs to be willing to go back to what works, namely making good products. Spend the time to develop something unique—not just a blue widget when everybody else’s is red. We must look at real products that are different, with actual brand stories. The brand needs to stand for something, more than just making money.” — Paul Baron, founder and CEO of Influx Catalysts
“Last year’s Prosper changed our business in extremely beneficial ways. The consensus I’m hearing is that it’s been an excellent show—better than last year and I got 20 leads per week from the people I met here last year. Prosper is about the partnerships. We really enjoyed the SkyFall event, by the way. People are looking at Canada with its similar culture.”
— Lucas Simon, KB Financial Solutions
“I found that it’s not super effective to work with influencers who have huge followings. I typically work with micro influencers who have anywhere from no followers up to 10,000 followers. In many cases, they are going to make better content. Ideally they have an engaged audience. You can take that content and post it on your own page and further promote it.”
— Dakota Morse, founder and CEO, Alt Group
“I walked by the Kapoq booth and I saw they had all this data and information displayed in the way that I was looking for,” remembers Hewlett, a resident of Marin County with experience as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. “They had a bunch of extra tools that I wasn’t even expecting. At the time, I was looking to find somebody else to do the bidding on my keywords. I saw they had that capability as well, and it was something I could easily switch to.” — David Hewlett, owner of SmartLabels
“When it comes to tax time, e-commerce tax really is a different animal from a main street business, restaurant, or boutique clothing store.” — Matt Remuzzi, founder/owner of CapForge Inc.,
“Gen Z has a pretty short attention span. According to an IAB UK article, it’s only eight seconds. They like short-form videos, but despite that attention span they do take their time to research and make sure that the product they’re purchasing—whether it’s low- or high-priced, is the best option.” — Samantha Evans, director of Operations, Envision Horizons
“It’s been a good show. We feel like the sellers are more mature as to where they are in their e-commerce journey. We’re seeing the same people plus some new people, and even the newcomers are further along.” — Ben Rey, chief revenue officer, Teikametrics
“We prioritize permission marketing through thought-leadership content. Our weekly newsletter, industry eBooks, and detailed strategy case studies position us to attract qualified, interested leads. This results in meaningful engagements and stronger business relationships compared to the often-ignored—or resented—interruption marketing methods. Permission marketing also allows for ongoing trust-building and value delivery, which is crucial in our long sales cycle.” — Tristan Williams, senior content strategist, Envision Horizons
“I’ve really seen a wide range of sophistication amongst sellers. Some are using platforms like Make.com or n8n to build some really impressive and sophisticated automations. On the other hand, I see a lot of sellers waiting on the sidelines, wondering when AI will be ‘worth it’. Given the improvements to the foundation models even in just the past several months, and the rapid evolution of tools and applications using them, I expect most if not all sellers will start finding some key workflows using AI that will materially impact their day-to-day work.” — Nikko Patten Weinstein, senior director of Data & Analytics, Carbon6
“If you don’t have a patent, anyone can enter the market and start competing with you. If you have a patent protecting your product, then no one can enter and you will dominate the market.” — Julian Gonzalez, Esq., associate intellectual property attorney, Goldstein Patent Law
“Even in 2024, poorly formatted appeals remain the biggest mistake made by sellers who panic and act rashly. Since that can significantly impact the effectiveness of your escalation, stop for a moment, take a break, walk outside, and reassess when you’re thinking straight.” — Chris McCabe is CEO and owner of ecommerceChris
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