Christian Salza is the Managing Director of Berlin Brands Group, a firm that creates, acquires, and grows brands globally. At Berlin Brands Group, Christian manages M&A responsibilities and drives global expansion. Before this, he held senior roles at multiple firms that built and sold brands online.
Christian has over 20 years of experience in corporate and start-up environments across Europe, the United States, and Asia. He is also a Board Member of Talentroad GmbH and a Member of YPO’s Berlin chapter.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- What has sparked the recent interest in Amazon private label brands and what does the future hold for the industry?
- Christian Salza talks about the two types of FBA entrepreneurs
- How Berlin Brands Group helps new Amazon entrepreneurs maximize the value of their businesses
- Christian’s thoughts on the best ways to find successful brands for sale
- What private label brands should do before they go to the market
- Christian shares his tips for investing in brands with broad appeal in different marketplaces
- How Christian helps brand owners determine the best time to sell their businesses
- The strategies Berlin Brands Group uses to achieve long-term success
- Christian’s advice to investors who are buying Amazon-centric brands
In this episode…
With the recent interest in FBA private label brands on Amazon, most aggregators and investors choose to focus solely on brands within this marketplace. However, buying Amazon-centric brands may be limiting your growth potential. So, how can you broaden your investments beyond Amazon?
As Christian Salza advises, aggregators should consider buying brands in other e-commerce marketplaces. By optimizing the unique demand of each marketplace, you can scale your business to global success — without the limitations of the Amazon platform. This is the secret behind Berlin Brands Group, a firm that has been successfully acquiring and building private label brands for over 15 years.
In this episode of the BBE podcast, James Thomson interviews Christian Salza, the Managing Director of Berlin Brands Group, about the value of investing in FBA brands in different marketplaces. Christian shares his advice for buying brands outside of the Amazon marketplace and explains how his firm evaluates potential brands for sale. He also talks about Berlin Brands Group’s strategies for achieving long-term success. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- BBE
- Controlling Your Brand in The Age of Amazon: The Brand Executive’s Playbook For Winning Online by James Thomson and Whitney Gibson
- James Thomson on LinkedIn
- Berlin Brands Group
- Christian Salza on LinkedIn
- GETIDA
Sponsor for this episode…
BBE applies decades of e-commerce experience to successfully manage their clients’ marketplace accounts. The Buy Box account managers specialize in combining an understanding of their clients’ business fundamentals and their in-depth expertise in the Amazon Marketplace.
The team works with marketplace technicians using a system of processes, proprietary software, and extensive channel experience to ensure your Amazon presence captures the opportunity in the marketplace–not only producing greater revenue and profits but also reducing or eliminating your business’ workload.
BBEs prides itself on being one of the few agencies with an SMB (small to medium-sized business) division and an Enterprise division. Buy Box does not commingle clients among divisions as each has unique needs and requirements for proper account management.
Learn more about BBE at BuyBoxExperts.com.
Podcast Episode Transcripts:
Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.
Intro 0:09
Welcome to the BBE podcast. We bring to light the unique opportunities brands face in today’s e-commerce world.
James Thomson 0:18
Hi, I’m James Thomson, one of the hosts of the BBE podcast. I’m a partner with BBE and the former business head of the selling on Amazon team at Amazon, as well as the first account manager for the Fulfillment by Amazon program. I’m the co-author of a couple of books on Amazon, including the recent book, Controlling Your Brand in The Age of Amazon. Today’s episode is brought to you by BBE. BBE takes ambitious brands and makes them unbeatable. When you hire BBE, you receive the strategy optimization and marketing performance to succeed on Amazon. We also support investors with due diligence services. Go to buyboxexperts.com to learn more. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to send a big shout out to the team at GETIDA, a global leader in Amazon FBA auditing and reimbursements. GETIDA analyzes your Amazon data, reconciles your FBA inventory and files claims for reimbursements on your behalf. To learn more, check out getida.com. Our guest today is Christian Salza, Managing Director of Berlin Brands, a firm that acquires and grows brands that leverage the Amazon channel. At Berlin Brands, Christian manages M&A responsibilities, identifying vetting and acquiring brands. Prior to Berlin Brands, Christian was in senior roles at multiple firms that built and sold brands online. Christian, welcome, and thank you for joining us today on the BBE podcast. Hello, happy to be here. And I want to start our conversation today by asking you about these private label brands that are now a very hot commodity. What do you think has happened to create so much interest in these types of businesses? When private label brands have actually been around on the Amazon Marketplace for 20 years?
Christian Salza 2:08
Yes, obviously, we have seen a lot of changes in the e-commerce platforms or in the e-commerce world over the last few years that the damage has already accelerated that. And so there’s a number one that’s a much bigger market. And also, and number two, there’s much higher, higher demand. And also there’s a higher profitability. You know, a couple of years back, a lot of e-commerce businesses were actually not making money, especially in Europe, there were deficit businesses. And the good thing about Amazon businesses and Amazon FBA business is that they actually, you know, are being much, much more profitable, and, therefore are an opportunity for the sellers for these acquisitions. And, yeah, so what what we see right now is that we believe that there’s a lot of Amazon individual Amazon sellers out there that have built their brand and have done that quite successfully, you know, they will also benefit from you know, because it gets more and more complicated to actually succeed in it haven’t been expert in so many different fields that ever benefit from selling it. We actually have a you know, professional team, men taking that over. But also in regards to bbg. We don’t only take over, you know, your brand on Amazon, but we pretty much take it over for the entire Europe and manage it on more than 100 channels and more than 28 countries. And so that’s obviously an opportunity for the seller to really benefit from our, you know, distribution network, and logistical infrastructure. And therefore, that’s a win-win for both and, you know, we buy something that’s already profitable, but a little bit smaller. We put in our platform, we scale it globally. And then you know, it’s a big win for both of us.
James Thomson 3:57
What do you think’s going to happen in the next couple of years as more investors come in, looking at private label brands, and different types of investors are starting to come in as well, your more traditional PE firms and even some family offices and venture capital firms?
