How a plumbing manufacturer used Amazon to test the US market, with 100+ items listed and a pilot beating its KPIs
A plumbing manufacturer’s CEO saw Amazon as the cheapest way to find out whether the US market wanted the products. Looking Glass Group sized the prize, set up the account, listed more than 100 items with full content and built the net-sale model for every SKU, and the pilot is exceeding the KPIs it was given.
The situation
The CEO’s question was a market question, not an Amazon question. Is there US demand for these products, what would it cost to find out and what would the account have to look like to compete? Amazon was the answer because it is the fastest, most measurable way to put a product in front of American buyers without a distributor, a sales force or a warehouse lease.
The risk was the usual one for a manufacturer new to the platform: listing everything, spending on ads before the listings could convert and reading the noise as the answer.
What we did
Sized the prize with real category data
Before the account existed we assessed the size of the prize in the key categories using real category sales data: what sells, at what price, who the competitive set is and what share a new entrant could reasonably take. The output was a number the CEO could test the pilot against.
Set up the account and built the catalogue
We set up the account and listed more than 100 items with full content: researched titles, bullets and backend keywords, imagery and the product detail that plumbing buyers search on. A large catalogue is built as a process once and then run across every SKU.
A net-sale model for every SKU
For every item we built the pricing and profitability model: retail price less Amazon’s referral fee, advertising, fulfillment and logistics, and what is left. That model set the price floor and the decision on whether an item belonged on Amazon at all, before a dollar went to advertising.
The result
The pilot is exceeding the KPIs it was given, and the company now has a live, measurable read on US demand for its products. The assessment number and the pilot number can be compared, which is the whole point of a pilot.
Why it worked
The order of operations. Assessment before setup, listings before advertising, a profitability model before a price. Every step produced a number the next step could be judged against, so the CEO got a market answer rather than an Amazon bill.
This is the work described on our Amazon services page. If you want to test a market rather than bet on it, the marketplace assessment is built for exactly that question.
Key facts
- Client: a plumbing manufacturer (anonymous)
- Category: plumbing supplies
- Platform: Amazon, US market
- Service: Amazon assessment, setup and management
- Listings: more than 100 items with full content
- Model: pricing and profitability model for every SKU
- Status: still in pilot and exceeding its KPIs