Nordic Naturals: Building Direct E-Commerce Capability

Nordic Naturals brought me in to help build greater control over its ecommerce business. What started with an assessment turned into hands-on work across Amazon, product content, advertising, inventory, marketplace systems and training the internal team to eventually manage more of the operation themselves.

Ecommerce strategy · Marketplace operations · Team development · Work began in 2017

Starting with the Operation

I began working with Nordic Naturals in 2017. It was already an established consumer brand with a very different business from the companies I had built and operated myself.

Before recommending changes, I needed to understand how the existing operation actually worked.

I looked at the company's marketplace presence, product information, listings, inventory, advertising, systems and the people responsible for managing them. That gave us a starting point for separating the immediate problems from the things that would take longer to build.

Building a Roadmap

From that assessment, I developed a phased roadmap for the ecommerce operation.

Some of the work was tactical and could be addressed relatively quickly. Other pieces involved systems, responsibilities and decisions about how Nordic Naturals wanted to manage its ecommerce business over the long term.

We also looked beyond the immediate Amazon work at other marketplaces and international opportunities. Not every idea needed to be pursued at once. Part of the job was deciding what mattered most and putting the work in an order the organization could realistically execute.

Then We Started Building

The engagement moved from planning into implementation.

I worked with the team on Amazon Seller Central, Fulfillment by Amazon and Brand Registry, along with product listings, content, SEO, imagery, advertising, inventory and replenishment.

There was also a substantial amount of work behind the scenes. ChannelAdvisor was part of the operation, so product data and marketplace integrations had to work with the broader systems the company was using. We worked through Vendor Central and additional marketplace opportunities as well.

Brand control was another part of the job. That included dealing with unauthorized sellers and minimum advertised price issues and helping the company think through how it wanted its products represented online.

Ecommerce Is More Than Advertising

It's easy to look at ecommerce as a marketing problem. In practice, the pieces are much more connected.

You can improve advertising and create more demand, but somebody still has to make sure the product is available. The listing has to be accurate. Inventory has to be replenished. Product data has to move through the right systems. Customer-service issues have to get handled. The brand has to maintain control over how its products are represented.

Improving one part of the operation without paying attention to the others can simply move the problem somewhere else.

Building the Team Alongside the Systems

One of the most important parts of the Nordic Naturals engagement was making sure the knowledge didn't stay with me.

I spent a lot of time explaining what I was doing and why. We worked through responsibilities, organizational structure, documentation and training as the internal team took on more of the day-to-day operation.

That wasn't separate from the implementation. It was part of it.

If a consultant builds a system that only works while the consultant is standing there, I'm not sure they've built much of a system.

Teaching Was Part of the Job

Carrie Phair, who was Nordic Naturals' Marketing & Education Manager at the time, captured that part of the engagement in a LinkedIn recommendation she wrote in December 2017. After describing the assessment, planning and work with the team, she summed up my approach pretty simply: “he teaches.”

I appreciated that because it reflected what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted the people responsible for the business to understand the decisions well enough that they wouldn't always need me to make them.

Nordic Naturals IT leader Mark Timares later wrote about the marketplace side of the engagement as well, including the work around Amazon, listings and brand control.

What I Took from the Engagement

Nordic Naturals helped reinforce something I've carried into the consulting work I do today.

A good strategy has to survive contact with the actual organization.

You need to understand how the business works, identify the real problems, decide what matters first and then help implement the solution. Just as importantly, the people who will own the operation need to understand what you're building and why.

That's still how I prefer to work: understand the operation, build a practical plan, help execute it and leave the organization more capable than it was when I arrived.

This describes work that began in 2017. Amazon, marketplace platforms and the tools used to manage them have changed considerably since then.

Further Reading

• Client recommendations on LinkedIn
• Nordic Naturals profile of Mark Timares

Related Work

• My current consulting practice
• Nordic Naturals in Selected Work

The Amazon operating experience behind my client work