KOR Water: Applying Marketplace Experience to Client Growth

KOR Water came to me for help improving its Amazon business. What started as a marketplace assessment turned into ongoing work across listings, inventory, advertising and the systems needed to support continued growth.

Amazon marketplace strategy · Ecommerce operations · 2017–2018

How the Relationship Started

KOR Water was already selling on Amazon when the company began looking for someone to help improve the business. At the time, I was running Ravenox and had spent years building and managing our own Amazon operation.

KOR's Product and eCommerce Manager, Jessica Shen, later said the company had spent about five months looking for the right person. She came across Amazon's coverage of what I had built with Ravenox, reached out, and we started talking about what KOR needed.

That operating experience was important. I wasn't approaching Amazon from the outside. I was dealing with many of the same problems every day in my own business.

Starting with the Fundamentals

I started by looking at KOR's existing Amazon operation: the products, listings, inventory, advertising and the way the account was being managed.

Some of the work involved things customers would see, such as product information and listings. Other issues were behind the scenes. Inventory had to support demand. Advertising had to make sense relative to stock. The company needed the right access and control over its brand and marketplace presence.

Those pieces are connected. Driving more traffic to a listing doesn't help much if the product goes out of stock or the information on the page isn't right.

From Assessment to Execution

The initial work turned into a longer engagement. Instead of handing KOR a report and walking away, I continued working with the team on the account and helped implement many of the recommendations.

That included product and listing issues, inventory, advertising and other day-to-day marketplace decisions. I also spent time explaining why I was recommending certain changes so the team could make better decisions on its own.

By 2018, I was still supporting KOR as the company worked through marketplace and brand-access issues and continued developing the operation.

Early Growth

The changes produced results quickly. In a July 2018 LinkedIn recommendation, Jessica reported that KOR's Amazon revenue increased 40% during the first month we worked together and continued growing in the months that followed.

That's KOR's reported result, not a number I've independently audited, but it was encouraging to see the work translate into growth so early in the engagement.

More importantly, the work wasn't built around chasing a one-month number. The objective was to improve the underlying operation so the business could support continued growth.

Growth Creates Its Own Problems

One thing I've learned from running ecommerce businesses is that growth can expose weaknesses pretty quickly.

If sales increase, inventory becomes more important. Advertising decisions matter more. Listing problems affect more customers. Brand control becomes more valuable. Processes that worked at a smaller scale may stop working.

That was part of my work with KOR. We weren't just trying to generate more sales. We were working through the operational issues that came with building a stronger Amazon business.

Why This Engagement Mattered

KOR was one of the engagements that helped shape how I approach consulting today.

Running Ravenox gave me firsthand experience building an ecommerce operation. Working with KOR required me to take that experience, understand a completely different company's business and determine what actually applied to them.

There's a big difference between telling someone what worked for you and helping them figure out what will work for their organization.

I still approach consulting that way today. Understand the business first, identify the real problems, develop a practical plan and stay close enough to the execution to know whether it's actually working.

Further Reading

• Jessica Shen's recommendation on LinkedIn
• Amazon's profile of my Ravenox experience

Related Work

• The Amazon operating story
• My current consulting practice