2X eCommerce Podcast

Amazon Wholesale Secrets: How to Find Suppliers & Scale to Millions → Corey Ganim
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Corey Ganim: [00:00:00] This is a group by that we did five months ago where the distributor that we bought the Dyson's from, they had a direct connection to a very large manufacturer of kitchen products.

They had a great relationship with them. They'd been selling them for years and the manufacturer approached this distributor and said, Hey, we've got A pretty big load that we're looking to move all at once. It was about $650K. I think it was like 5 truckloads of product and they were asking the distributor to broker that out to some of their buyers.

And that was a special 1 for me, because we actually met with them in New York. So we sat down with them at dinner. We actually went out with them, right? We even went out to the club with them. And I love to tell the story. Cause it's we sealed this deal at a club in New York city at midnight over a handshake.

Mhm.

Corey Ganim: Like you said, you buy a larger amount of inventory, you send it to FBA. And then one day Amazon decides, Hey, you can't sell this anymore. So what do you do?

You got to pull it all back out of Amazon and you got to monetize it in some way.

Mhm.

Corey Ganim: from September of [00:01:00] 2020 to today, December of 2024, That campaign has generated, $802,000 in additional sales for a total ad spend of just over 18 grand.

Mhm.

Kunle Campbell: So on this episode of the 2x eCommerce Podcast, we're unlocking the secrets of amazon wholesale how to buy in bulk Dominate the buy box and turn supplier relationships into serious profit If scaling is seven or even eight figure amazon business excites you then trust me you'll want to hear this.

This is the 2X eCommerce Podcast hosted by Kunle Campbell.

Kunle Campbell: Hey folks, welcome back to the 2X eCommerce Podcast. Now imagine tapping into a network where you don't just buy wholesale. You buy with power where one smart deal can give you leverage, [00:02:00] increase your margin, and put you ahead of the competition. That's exactly what today's guest. Corey Ganim has mastered.

He started from flipping thrift store finds and now runs a massive group buys worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, securing the best deals and navigating Amazon's tricky policies like a pro. We talk about how to land game changing wholesale deals why amazon is favoring Professional sellers more than ever and the exact playbook to build your own profitable wholesale business This is a must listen for any operator looking to expand Automate and win big and before we dive in Hit that follow button on your favorite podcast platform.

The more you support the show, the bigger, the guests and insights we bring to help you grow. Now [00:03:00] let's get into it.

Mhm.

Kunle Campbell: Welcome to the 2X eCommerce Podcast.

Corey Ganim: Hey man, thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to chopping it up with you.

Kunle Campbell: Amazing. Amazing. We've been in touch for the last six or eight weeks. I think I joined your community. You have a lot going on. Do you want to just give people an elevator pitch on what you do, what you've been doing, really what you do.

Corey Ganim: Yeah, absolutely.

Overview of Guest's Businesses
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Corey Ganim: So really what I've been up to, it breaks down to three main components and it really is structured in the form of three different businesses. So the first business, which is the primary is the Amazon wholesale business, which. I know we're going to go into at length here during this conversation, but that's where we're buying products in bulk from manufacturers and distributors and selling them on Amazon.

So that's been the main business for the last seven and a half years for me. Second business is my personal brand where I'm putting out content at scale, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. [00:04:00] And then podcasts as well. And so monetizing that through affiliate sponsorships, that type of thing. And the third, which is the newest, but also fastest growing and where I'm spending a lot of my time is like you mentioned, the community that we have.

We've got a fantastic community of almost 200 Amazon sellers, all selling in the same business model that I mentioned wholesale. And we're seeing a lot of really fun stuff happening inside that community as well. So that's what I've been up to in a nutshell.

Kunle Campbell: Amazing.

The Wholesale Network Community
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Kunle Campbell: I'm a member of your community and it's essentially wholesale, right?

Corey Ganim: Yeah. So the community, it really breaks down to two tiers. And it's called the wholesale network. So inside the wholesale network, we've got our wholesale network tier, which is the folks that are trying to get to that seven figure per year mark in revenue. And so we're helping them through coaching, through one on one training, through workshops, courses, all that good stuff.

And then on the other side of the spectrum, we've got our mastermind community, which is sellers. Who are already selling seven or eight figures per year on Amazon [00:05:00] with the wholesale business model. And the main benefit there, and I know we're going to get into this as well, is we're doing a lot of what I like to call group buys within that community.

And really that's just us combining our capital, combining our connections and combining our expertise to buy large amounts of product. And you have leverage as a result and then turn around and sell that product on Amazon.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. . So really that power you're leveraging purchasing power, with the with how many merchants are on the platform?

Corey Ganim: So we've got you mean within the mastermind community, we've got 60. So we've got about 65 people within that community there. And the beauty of that is 65 people. But in terms of buying power, we're talking, eight figures in buying power between everybody in the community there. So when we approach a vendor or a distributor or a brand as We like to even call ourselves a buying group, right?

If we like to approach them as a buying group, it's way more enticing to that supplier to deal with [00:06:00] a large buying group than it is for them to deal with some individual Amazon seller or individual operator. So it does give us leverage and makes us. Really a more serious contender.

Kunle Campbell: Okay.

Amazon and Other Selling Channels
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Kunle Campbell: And is Amazon the only selling channel?

Corey Ganim: So within our group, that is the main selling channel by far. We do have some folks running some Shopify operations. We've got actually quite a few people doing really well at Walmart as well. And then we have other people that have retail connections. So some of them are doing some B2B distribution to retail as well.

We run every end of the gamut, but. Amazon is the main channel.

Kunle Campbell: Okay.

Product Categories and Group Buys
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Kunle Campbell: And then what about category of products? So do you specialize in like electronics or other categories?

Corey Ganim: So I'd say as at least me personally, I like to sell a lot of tools and automotive products. That's just where I've stumbled into over the years. We just happen to have some really good relationships with some tool distributors, some that have been in the business for a very long time and ones that we've been buying [00:07:00] through for a number of years.

And then as a group, as a community there, when we're doing these group buys, we're not really focused on any particular category. The very first, it's actually funny. The very first group by that we did as a community back in about a year ago when we started was for 96, 000 of Dyson vacuums. And. There's a whole backstory behind that, but really the moral of the story is we are product agnostic.

My motto, I like to say this as if it makes dollars, it makes sense. So one day it's vacuums. This past week it was six figures worth of DeWalt tools. Flashlights to be specific and it's never a boring day. Let's put it that way.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. There's so much to unpick, unpack here.

Guest's Origin Story
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Kunle Campbell: How did you start? I know you, you mentioned something about your, you had a family business, which was wholesale. I just like you to take us to your Genesis, please. I

Corey Ganim: So origin story is as follows. So I'd always been [00:08:00] interested in buying low and selling high growing up. In fact, in college, I started buying stuff off Facebook marketplace and turning around and flipping it on eBay. And then one day I stumbled upon this YouTube video of this guy talking about.

He's going into Marshalls and TJ Maxx and Walmart and Target, and he's scanning stuff on the shelves. Comparing it to the price of that product on Amazon and flipping it on Amazon. And that to me just completely blew my mind because up until that point, I thought everything I bought on Amazon, I was buying from Jeff Bezos, right?

I didn't even know that there were third party that third party sellers were a thing. Shortly after I graduated from college, this was back in May of 2017. I actually started going around to every thrift store in my town and buying used books for 50 cents a dollar, 2 and selling them on Amazon for anywhere from 15, 20.

Some of these used textbooks go for 50 or a hundred dollars. So the ROI was crazy high. [00:09:00] Fast forward a little bit. I actually had to move across the country to Chicago. Did not have a way of driving around to thrift stores. I didn't have a car. So I was forced to pivot if I wanted to continue selling on Amazon, which I did.

So I started doing what's called online arbitrage. I'm buying products from target. com or walmart. com or digsportinggoods. com and flipping it on Amazon fast forward. Another 2 years, a much more scalable business model come to find out is what's called wholesale, which is what we're currently doing, which is instead of buying from those retail websites, going directly to the source.

Whether that's to the manufacturer themselves or to a large distributor and buying in very large quantities and getting better pricing and getting terms as a result. So that kind of leads me to where we are now.

Kunle Campbell: mean, so you were in Chicago. You're based in Chicago now.

Corey Ganim: So I was, I moved there graduated from college, moved to Chicago for about two years. And it's funny because. When I was in [00:10:00] Chicago, I was actually working for a big corporate tech company, and I just got fed up with the environment. And it was one day that I decided to pretty much throw all of my stuff into a Penske truck, drive back to North Carolina, which is where I'm from, which is where I live now.

Moved back in with my mom and decided to try to make a go at Amazon wholesale full time, even though I was like six months into the game. And even though I had made like maybe 300 bucks in profit up to that point, I'm like, I'm just going to try to figure this thing out. Cause the corporate thing's not for me.

Kunle Campbell: You took a chance on yourself, which is fantastic. So what's been the journey thus far from a wholesaling standpoint? How did you build a wholesaling business from ground up?

Corey Ganim: Yep, great question.

Starting in Wholesale
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Corey Ganim: So we've had quite the, quite the journey because and what you'll find the trend here is that we never really stuck to any particular path too long, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. So when we started out again, I started on Amazon in 2017, which is about 7 and a half years ago started [00:11:00] 2019.

And when I started doing wholesale I was 100 percent what we call brand direct, right? I was just calling brands and trying to buy directly from brands. So my strategy.

Kunle Campbell: let's pause a little bit. You're you, how did you know what brands to call? Because a lot of people get frozen right there. You're not in a particular category. You're, your category agnostic. Where did you get the list from? What happened?

Corey Ganim: Ah, yes. Great question. So that's the number one, most common question I get by far, even from people that are in this business, people that are doing Amazon wholesale still struggle with this.

Finding and Working with Suppliers
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Corey Ganim: And that is how do you find good suppliers? And also spoiler alert for those in the audience, we do have.

A free resource. We're going to give away at the end, which kind of goes into a lot more detail on this, but the gist of it is I use a tool it's called smart scout to pull a very specific report, which essentially breaks down [00:12:00] the brands and a given category to a much finer criteria. And so to be more tactical, tactically speaking, I like to sell tools and automotive, right?

Tools and automotive is one of my favorite categories. So I'll go into this tool. I will choose. The category tools, and then I'll set a few very specific criteria. And that'll take the number of brands in the tools category from let's say 30, 000 brands down to a very targeted list of about 200 or 250, right?

That's my short list. Those are the brands that I then go in and reach out to and try to open a direct wholesale account.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. Makes sense. So I like the fact that you honed in on a particular, so tools and automotive, parts. So yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And then that's when you, okay. And then what was their reaction when you call them initially?

Mhm.

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Mhm.

Corey Ganim: So usually the reaction is. Not too good. If you're not positioning yourself properly, right? Because when I started, like I said, when I started back in 2019, multiple years ago, and I had no idea what I was doing. So I'm calling these brands and I'm basically saying, Hey my name's Corey. I sell an Amazon.

Can I buy your products for resale? And I'm [00:16:00] getting boom, hung up on hung up on, right? Nobody's taking me seriously, but it's because I'm positioning myself as just an Amazon seller, right? Amazon sellers are a dime a dozen. So these guys. Just didn't want to even hear from me. So really it was when I started positioning myself as more of an eCommerce business owner that does has a retail and distribution business, right?

Just taking the business more seriously. That's when brands were much more willing to work with me. And I saw my. I guess account close rate go from, let's say 5 percent to 15 to 20 to now, nowadays if I call a brand or a distributor and position myself properly and show proper value, you're able to land 30 to 40 percent of accounts, usually no problem.

Kunle Campbell: What were your first few deals? What did you, so you mentioned the Dyson group deal, but there might've been deals before the group deal. How did you, what was the trajectory and the journey to put in community together and doing the Dyson deal?

First Wholesale Deal and Growth
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Corey Ganim: So I'll even give you a [00:17:00] rundown on my very first wholesale deal ever. And it was with a brand that like I said, I went through that process that I mentioned earlier. I found this brand and they were a brand of lawn and garden products, and they actually happened to be located in Chicago, where I was also located.

And so I just cold called them out of the blue, gave them my normal pitch. Hey, I'm Corey Ganim but interested in, potentially purchasing your products. For sale in our retail business. Come to find out they, they're located near me. I go meet them in person. I'm able to buy about 2, 500 worth of their products.

They're on the spot. Which they told me they get like a hundred calls like that per week. The only reason they were willing to talk to me is because I went and showed up there in person. So that was the very first buy ever fast forward to, going to trade shows and buying 60, 000 worth of Gillette razors at a time, fast forward to, buying all these Dyson vacuums as a group.

There's really hundreds of situations in between that we could dive into.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. So for listeners, [00:18:00] who are they reaching out to? Are they reaching out to distributors or are they reaching out to manufacturers?

Corey Ganim: So they could really go either direction. It's my. My recommendation usually to go directly to the manufacturer, it's going to be a more direct path and what you can pivot to asking if it's a huge manufacturer, or let's say like a, Procter and Gamble type brand that we just don't have a chance of getting a direct account with something good to ask those types of brands as well.

Hey, can you put me in touch with the distributor here in my area? So getting a warm introduction from the manufacturer, a lot of times is better than going directly to the manufacturer themselves.

Kunle Campbell: Okay.

Breaking Down a Group Buy Deal
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Kunle Campbell: Let's break down a deal. Let's break down. I think we, let's look at the first Dyson deal and obviously you have matured and you've done much bigger deals of recent, so let's start out with the first, with your first group buy. And we'll take it from there. How did the Dyson deal come about and what were the margins like and the number of [00:19:00] participants in the deal?

Corey Ganim: Yeah. So this all came about as the result of a relationship that came from a trade show. So there's a trade show that I attended. I believe this was March of last year. So March of 2023. At this trade show, I met a rep for a distributor and this distributor is a pretty large distributor of consumer electronics products, right?

Anything from vacuums to headphones to, DVD players, you name it. I get to talking to this guy. We ended up setting a zoom call up for after the show. And he says to me, he's Hey, Corey would love to work with you. But unfortunately we get a lot of Amazon sellers that waste our time. So our minimum order for any new customers who are considering selling on Amazon is 50 grand.

And you've got to buy directly off of our price list, which as anybody who's in this business knows the price list is where, not usually the best deals are right. This is where the leftover stuff goes that these distributors want to get rid of. What are you saying to me basically is, Hey, you've got to earn your way in.

So [00:20:00] I'm looking at their price list. I'm like, I want to get my foot in the door with the supplier because I know there's a lot more good deals on the backend. And we find this product. It's an LG headphone. And, we have to obviously buy 50 grand worth. I didn't quite have enough money at the time.

So what I did is I tapped my buddy Kaja. I said, Hey, here's this distributor. I met him at a trade show. They're vetted. I've got this deal here. It's not a home run. It's a base hit. But it's a foot in the door with these guys. Do you want to go in with me? Cause I think we have a lot of benefit on the backend.

And he's you know what, let's do it. So we did, we bought the product transaction went smoothly. I tried to go out of my way to be the easiest customer this guy had ever worked with, right? Cause I wanted to earn his trust. That deal went smoothly after that, he starts bringing me opportunities because he sees that we're legitimate.

He sees that we're serious. And one of those opportunities was for this Dyson. I think it was either like the V7 or the V10 [00:21:00] cyclone vacuum cleaner. He's Hey, Corey, I've got these Dyson's coming in. What do you think about them? They tend to do really well on Amazon. I can tell you guys are legit.

What do you think? And so I looked at it. I'm like, damn, these look really good. And so at the time, what really good quote unquote looks in our world was. Keep in mind, this is a higher ticket product. This thing sells for around, four or 500. And it was looking like about a 22 to 23 percent ROI on this product.

And so after you factor in returns, which on a higher ticket product, definitely hurts your margins, probably in the 17, 18 percent range, which typically isn't great, but this was a very high volume product as well. So not only were we You know, we're making a 17 or 18 percent ROI. Sure. But it's selling, hundreds of units per month at a very high price.

So he brings me this opportunity, the MOQ, which stands for minimum order quantity was about a hundred K on this [00:22:00] particular product. I didn't have a hundred K, but I had a mastermind community that I mentioned before that we had actually started building more formally at the time. This was about probably seven or eight months ago.

And so it was as simple as putting a blast out into the community. Hey guys, I've got this opportunity. Somewhat time sensitive because if we don't buy it, somebody else definitely is because it's a good deal who wants to participate with me. And immediately to the guys inside there, Nick and Dylan say, Hey, man, I'm in, they wired me the money.

I wired the money directly to the supplier. And then we completed the transaction. The supplier actually sends those products directly to FBA directly to Amazon, where Amazon then fulfills those orders directly to the customer. And. It, it went very smoothly. Everybody, made money on the deal and it was a great experience.

And we've sent sense, excuse me, spent, I believe that distributor told us our group is their number one [00:23:00] eCommerce customer. And keep in mind, this is a 500 million per year distributor. I think we've spent about 12 million with them in the last seven months is what we were told. So that foot in the door was huge to getting to that point.

Right?

Kunle Campbell: Incredible. Incredible. So how many units did you eventually purchase from them? The Dyson, the V10

Corey Ganim: So the Dyson's, I think we went to a hundred units each because I don't remember the exact buy costs, but it was something like we put it. We were like, right around 35 K each is how much we spent and yeah, it was somewhere around like a hundred units each, something like that. So again not a high I guess not like a just a higher vault, not higher volume product, excuse me, higher sale price product, which is the type of products that I love.

I love selling expensive stuff.

Kunle Campbell: With the 17 percent return

Corey Ganim: Yep. And that's after factoring and returns.

Kunle Campbell: Yeah. Okay.

Unit Economics and Profit Margins
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Kunle Campbell: So I want to dig deeper into the unit economics on Amazon. So obviously you have your FBA fees which you can't change [00:24:00] essentially. Do you. Do you do ads and how does it work? What other expenses are in what does your P and L look like?

Let's say let's using the Dyson deal.

Corey Ganim: wholesale model, which is what I've been describing up to this point, we actually don't run any ads. The only time we run ads is if we're working, let's say, exclusively with a manufacturer and as part of our deal with them, we are running ads, right? Otherwise I don't run any ads aside from a campaign, which I think I can break down here shortly, which is.

Added significant money to my bottom line, the catch all campaign that I mentioned to you earlier. But like I said, there's, so we have no ad spend there. You pretty much just got your overhead in the form of your team, your software expenses, your inbound shipping costs, your cogs, and your. And then like you said, your Amazon fees, which unfortunately you can't change.

And that's fixed right around, depending on your average sale price, it's going to be 27 to [00:25:00] 33 percent of your revenue, right around 30 percent on average.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. The rest of it, so what about your cogs?

Corey Ganim: COGS is usually around 55 percent of revenue. So a healthy wholesale business is going to have COGS under 55 percent of revenue,

Kunle Campbell: Okay. So 55 plus 2025, I guess

Corey Ganim: Amazon fees are right around 30%, right? So caught, you've got cogs at, let's say 55 Amazon fees at 30. so now you're at 85. you're really, if you're OPEX is another 10%, then you're at 95 and your net profits at 5%.

That's again. Assuming you're paying yourself a salary there within opex, then that's a pretty healthy wholesale business at

Kunle Campbell: an average salary

Corey Ganim: So I

Kunle Campbell: hundred K.

Corey Ganim: yeah, so for every a hundred k, and it's hard to say because I'll tell you what, I pay myself, right? We only do we're gonna do 3.3 million this year in revenue, and I pay myself 120 KA year, W2, which after my [00:26:00] W2 is factored in, our net margin on the year is gonna be around 4%.

So again, at scale. The margins are not anything crazy, right? Cause it's a volume game.

Kunle Campbell: So volume game. Yeah. And the fact that you don't have to really advertise it, it's really an operational efficiency game, really.

Corey Ganim: All it is exactly.

Kunle Campbell: So a lot of automation is required to really bring that OPEX down,

Corey Ganim: yeah.

Team and Automation
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Corey Ganim: And I do have two really talented team members overseas in the Philippines. Both of them full time with our business. One of them focuses on the buying side and the logistics side of the business. And the other focus is more on the admin side, but aside from them, it's. Automation software. And like you said, trying to keep costs and keep overhead as low as possible.

Kunle Campbell: So in your program, you teach how to train these the the, your VA's the assistance of staff that you get overseas.

Corey Ganim: Yeah. In fact, that's one of the big things that I, or that's really one of the big parts of the curriculum within our community, the wholesale network [00:27:00] is teaching people not only how to operate the business themselves, but teaching them how to properly delegate and not just, Hey, hand off some tasks to a VA, but here, Hey, here's how you do it properly.

Here's how you document that. And here's how. You make sure that you're not having to take this task back in house down the line when that system inevitably fails, right? More of a sustainable approach.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. And then what about the risk? You have the buy box, it's quite frustrating winning the buy box. And then I think sometimes you're not allowed to sell. What happens if you make a big purchase order, you get it to Amazon and then you're locked off the listing.

How do you navigate, those sort of challenges?

Corey Ganim: Yeah.

Navigating Amazon's Gating Issues
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Corey Ganim: And listen, what you just mentioned is a very real issue. And that happened to me twice this year. And it's happened to other people I know as well, where. Like you said, you buy a larger amount of inventory, you send it to FBA. And then one day Amazon decides, Hey, you can't sell this anymore. So what do you do?

You got to pull it all [00:28:00] back out of Amazon and you got to monetize it in some way. And like I said, this happened to me earlier this year, but that is the benefit and hat and being a part of a community of other sellers, because what I was able to do in that situation, I pulled that inventory out. I sent a message to the community and said, Hey guys, I just got gated on this specific ASIN.

Gated meaning can no longer sell who wants it. I'll sell it to you at cost. I just don't want to lose any money on this deal. Immediately. I had three people say, Hey, I, I'm still eligible to sell, right? Because how it works on Amazon is not everybody is gated and everything. I just got unlucky.

And so I was able to essentially resell this inventory to this other person in my community. I got all my money back. I didn't lose any money and they went on and sold it and crushed it, made a killing. So again, that's where having that community of folks around you can be very beneficial.

Kunle Campbell: I 100 percent agree with you. There's nothing like community. It's so important to be around like minded people, particularly when your chips [00:29:00] are down, there's always someone there to either inspire you or to save you to help you. So yeah, good stuff.

Building a Strong Community
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Kunle Campbell: Speaking of community, how did you, because.

It's a skill in of itself. It's a skill. How do you, how did you have, how you managed to build this community? You're, you have over 200 members in the general community and you said about 60 something in the mastermind. What tips do you have to, for listeners who are looking to build communities of customers for their D2C eCommerce businesses?

Corey Ganim: So I think a big. I guess a big key to our success and why this has worked out so well so far is simply put, because I care a lot, right? About the community. I care a lot about helping people and I want to make it an experience and a place where people. Can feel comfortable both with themselves and their business.

So I think that's where a lot of people go wrong. And I've even seen it in our space where you see Amazon creators or Amazon sellers launching paid communities. And it's more of a money grab, right? They're [00:30:00] not present. They're not answering questions. They're not too active. Whereas I do pride myself on being the opposite.

And I pride our community on having those same values of, Hey, We're here to help each other. We're here to support each other. And this is a growth minded place. So I think truly caring and instilling that care into the community is what's going to get people to not only join, but stay, which is even more important.

Kunle Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. Okay.

Challenging and Milestone Deals
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Kunle Campbell: Let's fast forward to to another sort of challenging deal for you. Not necessarily a very recent one, but somewhere in between that first deal and a more recent one, what did it look like? What did you purchase and how did you make it happen? How did you make it successful?

Corey Ganim: So did you say a challenging deal? One that maybe was a little bit of an

Kunle Campbell: Or I'll say milestone deal rather than a challenging deal, where you're like super proud of yourselves for pulling it together.

Corey Ganim: I'd say this is actually, I have a great example of this. [00:31:00] So this is a group by that we did back in. Probably about five months ago where I'm not going to name the specific brand, but so that distributor that I mentioned earlier, the one that I met at the trade show that we bought the Dyson's from, they had a direct connection to a very large manufacturer of kitchen products.

They had a great relationship with them. They'd been selling them for years and the manufacturer approached this distributor and said, Hey, we've got A pretty big load that we're looking to move all at once. It was about $650K I think it was like 5 truckloads of product and they were asking the distributor to broker that out to some of their buyers.

And that was a special 1 for me, because we actually met with them in New York. So we sat down with them at dinner. We actually went out with them, right? We even went out to the club with them. And I love to tell the story. Cause it's we sealed this deal at a club in New York city at midnight over a handshake.

And it's one that it felt like the culmination of over a year of relationship and buying and working together. Into, what had at that point was the [00:32:00] biggest deal that we had done together as a group. And I think we had, let's see, it was either eight or 11 community members participate in that.

So we split that equally because these were products that had big volume, good margins, and we had enough room for eight or 11 people to get in on it. So it just felt good, man. It was like, I felt like one of those guys in the movies or something.

Kunle Campbell: Business is friendships, right?

Corey Ganim: Yeah. And it's fun. Yeah, I like those guys too. That's a cool part about it.

Kunle Campbell: How big was the deal again? It's

Corey Ganim: It was 650 K by cost. And I know I know I throw around these numbers, which, are not big compared to like big, they're bigger guys watching this to think that's nothing, but I'm not throwing around numbers to try and brag or anything.

I'm just trying to give people a realistic view into, Hey, this is what I guess eCommerce looks like at this stage or at this scale or in this particular industry, if anything.

Kunle Campbell: It's a journey, it's a journey and the theme of this month really is wholesale. We're hearing from different, sorts of wholesalers. I'm going to speak into, [00:33:00] to wholesale, to the head of wholesale for quite a big electronics brand, next week. And it's just, we need to hear stories at different, different times.

Just different stages, in, in the journey. So I really appreciate, all that you're sharing here.

2025 Outlook and Opportunities
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Kunle Campbell: And then more recently, just looking at 2025 what's the outlook and, what sort of, deals are you now so focused, given all the experience you've managed to build, over the last few years.

Corey Ganim: Yeah. So 2025 outlook. Overall, I'd say as an industry is very positive. Now, there are people in the Amazon space right now that are, they're throwing up the white flag. A lot of people are quitting because Amazon is enacting stricter policies. They're more strict on supply chain requirements.

Amazon has gotten stricter than ever. But that is a huge boon for professional sellers, like myself, like the folks in our community, the ones who are doing wholesale at scale are really poised to benefit in my in my opinion, going into 2025 and beyond now, as [00:34:00] far as. Specific opportunities that I'm most excited about heading into 2025.

So there's two in particular that come to mind. One is the relationship that we're forming with a, actually with a buying group for in the tool industry. This is a 900 million per year buying group that has access to the biggest brands and tools like Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita Et cetera, you name it. We just placed their 1st order with them last week.

And I think the opportunity with them in 2025 is massive. We've already started going through some of their products and I see them as being 1 of those 10 X partners. The 2nd, 1 is a very large grocery distributor. Similar situation where one of our members actually has a preexisting relationship with this distributor.

And he said, Hey man, I've got way too many opportunities and not nearly enough capital. So how about. We start brokering some of these deals out to the community. So everybody can benefit from that. We're doing our first round of those deals [00:35:00] next week. And I think again, opportunity there is massive because we haven't even scratched the surface.

Kunle Campbell: When you say groceries, this for Amazon fresh or for Amazon or just general Amazon of

Corey Ganim: Just general Amazon. So just general sale on the platform. So I'm talking anything from, I'm just making these up, but M& Ms to your Pepsi to just brand names like that, anything that people would just buy off of Amazon.

Kunle Campbell: Amazon, super, super interesting. And then within the community, are you categorizing Just sellers by the interest. Like you you probably not going to participate in a grocery deal. I'm guessing given the fact that you mentioned earlier that you're focused on tooling and automotive parts.

So is there segmentation happening in terms of, or categorization happening based on interest now in the group, in the. In the space, in your group, your private group, private mastermind rather,

Corey Ganim: Sure, so it's actually more organic. So I wouldn't say we do any sort of [00:36:00] segmenting because the way I see it, everybody that's a part of the mastermind has equal opportunity access to all of the deals that we have. But we have noticed that specific members have specific preferences, right? For example, one of our guys, I know for a fact, any oral B toothbrushes we post, he's going to buy every one of them, right?

He's going to beat somebody to the punch. And then we've got other guys where, DeWalt tools, they're taking as many as they can get, but it is more of a first come first serve type dynamic, just because again, I just think it's, we've got to give everybody fair access. Now there are. Certain opportunities that come up that might be, we might have to limit them for some reason.

Hey, this is a, a very selective opportunity, blah, blah, blah, whatever. We can only have 3 people on it. So we, in that case, we would do some sort of like raffle or. Some sort of drawing, but we try to make it as, as even as possible.

Kunle Campbell: is there any action in TikTok store?

Corey Ganim: And in TikTok shop, you

Kunle Campbell: TikTok shop. Yeah.

Corey Ganim: so we have a couple members who are experimenting on TikTok [00:37:00] shop. I know some guys specifically who are doing a lot with TikTok shop affiliate, which I know is a little outside the scope of my knowledge. But bottom line, I think potential there is huge. I, what I've seen be most successful is the people that have access to either a lot of influencer marketers or networks of influencer marketers who can afford to pay large groups of influencers to put out a lot of content and kind of see what sticks.

Kunle Campbell: Because it changes the dynamics in, in, in your, in, in, in the way your business works in this, in the fact that paying those affiliates is marketing, it's an additional cost and how are you going to manage that with with your margins? But I guess their fees. They're processing fees might be different to to Amazon.

Corey Ganim: So that's actually not an avenue I would go down myself with my business model. Cause like you said, our margins just are not big enough to benefit from, running some sort of tick tock shop affiliate campaign. However, we do still get some of the benefit of those [00:38:00] campaigns going well for the brands that we sell.

And I'll give a good example of that. There's one. Brand of power tools that we sell that we've been selling for a number of years where one day out of the blue, we sold 35 units of a product that we usually sell to a per day. And I'm like that's weird. What's going on next day? We sold 60, right?

And in four days we sold through 60 days worth of stock. So I'm on the phone with the brands and guys, what's going on, right? Are you guys, is something crazy going on that I don't know about? And they're like Some influencer posted some video on Tik TOK and it's going viral. And now the whole, the listing sold out.

And and unfortunately we weren't able to get back in stock in time to capitalize on the rest of that. But that goes to show how even the folks in our position who aren't necessarily putting any ad dollars in, or in some cases, I hate to say it, but not benefiting the brands. We're just a reseller.

And so in the cases of these large brands, but that's how we can benefit from some of these social dynamics.

Kunle Campbell: Yeah. But the other thing is that they're de risking by sending to yourselves, just getting rid [00:39:00] of this, the benefits one way or the other.

Corey Ganim: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're at the end of the day, the brands are making like they're making the money, right? With the product had to come from somewhere and it came from them.

Kunle Campbell: okay.

Amazon Advertising Tips
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Kunle Campbell: Let's speak about Amazon. You don't really advertise on Amazon as you said, but you, you do have a tip, a really strong tip for listeners on how you run advertising with ridiculous raw ass. So let's hear that.

Corey Ganim: Yeah. So guys, if you take nothing away, nothing else away from this interview, nothing else away from this conversation. Remember what I'm about to say right now. This is my number one tip by far. I've got a YouTube video that explains like screen share, step by step set up in three minutes or less. If you'll free to plug that, if you want

Kunle Campbell: I will link to it.

Corey Ganim: But it's called the catch all auto PPC campaign, and it's particularly effective for people like myself, people who are resellers who are selling a lot of brand name products.

So you set up a, an automatic PPC campaign. [00:40:00] You add every single product in your inventory to that campaign. You set a fixed bid at 5 cents and you do dynamic or sorry, it's fixed bid. So you don't. That's what you do for the bid placement there. And then you simply turn it on, right? And every single week, if you add new products to your inventory, you just.

One click, add those products into the ad campaign. So it's about a three minute setup. It's about a 10 second per week maintenance just to add your new products. And from September of 2020 to today, December of 2024, That campaign has generated, I think when I checked this morning, $802,000 in additional sales for a total ad spend of just over 18 grand.

So the row as if you do the math is something like 44 to one, and this is the highest leverage thing you can do as an Amazon seller. So pause this and do it now. And what I found consistently, it adds [00:41:00] about 10%. To my monthly sales. So this one campaign accounts for about 10 percent of my revenue each month.

It's that significant.

Kunle Campbell: Yeah. And then Amazon drives the traffic directly to your listing, to your prize, to your listing, right? Not necessarily to the general listing where you need to fight for the buy box.

Corey Ganim: Yeah, exactly. So that is generally how Amazon PPC works. So Amazon will not serve your ad unless you're in the buy box. So it's basic, it's basically impossible for you to spend ad dollars for someone else to get the sale, more or less.

Kunle Campbell: Makes sense. Makes sense. Makes sense. Makes sense. And I know you've, we've, we touched on this earlier. What is the outlook? What are you, what's the outlook for Amazon in 2025?

Ensuring Supply Chain Authenticity
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Corey Ganim: So Amazon is increasingly catering to professional sellers and to brands themselves. So the writing's been on the wall for a number of years now, but we've seen it with a lot of the recent changes that Amazon has made to the platform, unless you are buying directly from the [00:42:00] brand. Or buying directly from an, a large authorized distributor of the brand.

You're putting yourself in hot water because of Amazon's new requirements around supply chain authenticity and all this stuff. So that leaves again, wholesale sellers like myself and like the folks inside my community. Very well positioned to dominate in 2025, because so many people are quitting over this when it's not really a big deal, in my opinion.

Kunle Campbell: So what are the measures they're putting in place to ensure that they know they're dealing with professional sellers like yourself?

Corey Ganim: 1 of the main things I just mentioned is the supply chain require that basically the tightened security Amazon has around supply chain. 2 years ago, 3 years ago, you could buy. Any old, crest toothpaste product from some guy off the street. And you could sell it on Amazon and make your money and nobody cares, right?

Amazon didn't really do a good job of verifying supply chain, but now with a lot of the counterfeiting going on in the platform, a lot of the knockoffs getting [00:43:00] sold the FTC, and not to mention the, these massive brands themselves are breathing down Amazon's neck saying, Hey, you better clean up the platform.

You better make sure. Our brand image isn't getting tarnished when somebody buys a pair of Nike socks and what shows up is a pair of, Nike socks from Alibaba, right? So because of that, Amazon has gotten a lot stricter on verifying your supply chain. I've already had two times this year where I get an email from Amazon saying, Hey, We think this product that you're selling might be fake.

We need to jump on a video call with you and you need to prove to us that it's not. And what we had to do is we had to put together, I'm not exaggerating. It was a 27 page PDF of screenshots, verifying every single facet of the supply chain for this product. Everything from here is my passport, my license.

All the way to here is my email correspondence with the supplier all the way to here is the invoice. Here's the bank statement. [00:44:00] Here's the credit card statement. So Amazon is making you jump through all these hoops to prove your products are legit. And we pass with flying colors because our stuff is legit.

So again, for big professional, legitimate sellers. This is a good thing because this is filtering out so many people who are not sophisticated,

Kunle Campbell: yeah, they've got to do it. They've got to do it for the safety of the, of their community of their platform, marketplace security and safety. Okay. Is there any other thing you think the audience should know about wholesaling?

Building a Robust Wholesale Business
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Kunle Campbell: I would take that question back and actually ask you this, which is a good number of listeners, this podcast.

Already doing like good volume selling direct to consumer. How can they build out a very strong wholesale business? Because you use, you, you speak sometimes directly to manufacturers [00:45:00] who are these DTC, eCommerce businesses and distributors. So some of these eCommerce businesses do not have a distributor.

Network. How do they navigate? So they have a very strong wholesale sort of arm of the business to, to solidify, their reach in the market.

Corey Ganim: That's a great question. And so my answer is two pronged, right? So part one is brands that are going to build out a really robust wholesale program. They don't just sell to anybody who wants to buy in bulk. In fact, that's the biggest mistake that a brand can make is not being choosy with their distribution partners.

Because I see it all the time brands on Amazon where early on in the brand's existence, they sold to anyone and their mother, and then, three, six, 12 months down the line. On Amazon, they've got 30 different people selling their product. And it's like herding cats trying to get that back under control.

So I think [00:46:00] successful brands don't just sell to anyone. And then the second part of that answer is they have a. Tightly controlled supply chain. So like I said, they're very choosy with who they choose to represent their product. And when they choose somebody, they make sure that somebody also is tightly controlling distribution, right?

Not just getting their product in the hands of anybody, but the right people that represent their brand.

Kunle Campbell: So that distributes her pieces is very important. Would, okay. Yeah. It's critical. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I guess you'd probably want to, yeah, it's that distributor. So how would they select, this distributor, are they like category specific distributors. So let's say we, we sell apparel just as an example, would we be looking for distributors with an interest in apparel and track record?

Corey Ganim: So I would recommend yes. If anything, you want your distributor to specialize in whatever niche it is that you're in. Now there's something to be said for the [00:47:00] really large distributors who just have Connections or capabilities that maybe some of the more niche distributors don't have, but in general, you've also got to think about what your needs are.

Do you really need to get into a specific region? Because if so, there might be a distributor who's already very well entrenched in that region and you might go with them. Just for that ability, right? So a lot of it is needs dependent as well.

Kunle Campbell: and then they do the legwork locally to, to get your product, through.

Corey Ganim: So that's the traditional value that a distributor is going to add. That'd be their pitch to the brand as well. Hey, we're going to get you, depending on what markets they serve, we're going to get you on shelves in these areas, or we're going to get you. In the catalogs, and maybe some of these smaller wholesalers in this area as well, it really, again, it's very dependent on the distributor and what value it is that they specifically add.

Conclusion and Resources
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Kunle Campbell: Amazing, amazing, Corey it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. You do have a course, which is the [00:48:00] wholesale crash course. It's a start scale and outsource a widely profitable Amazon wholesale business. It's a five day email course, which breaks down everything you need to know about, setting up your wholesale business to scale it, scaling it up to seven.

figures, it's available on free wholesale guide. com. I will link to it in the show notes. Are there any other resources you want listeners to to learn about

Corey Ganim: the main other 1, I would recommend is actually my podcast, right? It's called the Amazon wholesale podcast. And so every single week, I sit down and interview. Other people in this business. And so I think if the audience has any interest in this business model at all, I think they would gain a lot from tuning in there.

Specifically I'd say episode 65, where I sat down with two other guys. They're actually both members of the mastermind community as well. And we just talk about what does success with wholesale look like in 2024 and 2025 and beyond. So I'd say that's a good episode to start as episode [00:49:00] 65.

Kunle Campbell: I will definitely link to, to the wholesale podcast, Amazon wholesale podcast, that is Corey. It's been an absolute pleasure having you. podcast.

Corey Ganim: I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Kunle Campbell: Amazing.

Mhm.

Kunle Campbell: Wow. What's an episode. If you're like me. You're fired up right now thinking about the potential of Amazon Wholesale. Corey didn't just break down the business, he gave you the blueprint.

So here's a question, what's stopping you? If you ever thought about Wholesale, about getting bigger, moving smarter, and turning Amazon into a serious profit machine, this is your sign to take action. And if you love this episode, Don't just stop here. Subscribe, follow, share it with one person who needs to hear this.

The bigger our community, the better insights you can bring to help you win. [00:50:00] I'll see you on the next one. Let's keep building