Gabi Bar is the Co-founder and Executive Vice President of Technology Commerce Management (TCM). TCM delivers the e-commerce aggregator industry’s first predictive, AI-driven e-commerce performance optimization. Founded in 2016, TCM now operates e-commerce businesses on Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, WooCommerce, and more.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Gabi Bar explains how the market for FBA private label brands has evolved over recent years
- What drew Gabi and his team to the private label space?
- The biggest surprises Gabi has seen among Amazon entrepreneurs
- Gabi’s data-driven process for evaluating brands on Amazon
- How private label brand owners should prepare their businesses for an acquisition
- What makes a brand a good investment?
- Gabi discusses TCM’s company mission: to share the digital wealth
- When is the right time for private label brands to sell and how can aggregators achieve long-term success?
In this episode…
With thousands of new FBA private label brands hitting the market each year, there has never been more data and information available to both sellers and investors. However, many aggregators don’t know how to leverage this data to accurately pinpoint and evaluate a profitable brand. So, how can you avoid getting lost in this influx of data on Amazon?
According to Gabi Bar, the key is to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning. By leveraging this big data in the private label space, his company has successfully optimized the evaluation process and identified high-growth brands to invest in. Now, he’s here to share his data-driven process and expert strategies with you.
In this episode of the BBE podcast, James Thomson interviews Gabi Bar, the Co-founder and Executive Vice President of Technology Commerce Management (TCM), about the value of big data when acquiring private label brands. Gabi explains how his firm leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify successful FBA private label brands to invest in. He also shares his tips for determining the right time to sell and effectively preparing for an exit. 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
- Technology Commerce Management (TCM)
- Gabi Bar on LinkedIn
- Thrasio
- Empire Flippers
- Jungle Scout
- Disruptive Advertising
- 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.
BBE 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 BBEs 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 BBEs and the former business head of the selling on Amazon team at Amazon, as well as Amazon’s first Fulfillment by Amazon account manager. 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. BBEs 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 help 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 Disruptive Advertising. For off Amazon advertising, Disruptive Advertising offers the highest level of service in the digital marketing industry, focusing on driving traffic, converting traffic and enterprise analytics. Disruptive helps their clients increase their bottom line month after month. Check out disruptiveadvertising.com to learn more. Our guest today is Gabi Bar, Co-founder and Executive Vice President of TCM – Technology Commerce Management. TCM delivers the e-commerce aggregator industry’s first predictive AI driven e-commerce performance optimization. Started in 2016 in Israel, TCM now operates e-commerce businesses on Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, Wayfair, WooCommerce, and more. Gabi, welcome, and thank you for joining us today on the BBE Podcast. I want to start by asking you about all these private label businesses on Amazon, obviously a lot of interest right now in companies looking to invest in these firms. And yet these private label businesses have been around since the start of the Amazon Marketplace. Why do you think all of a sudden there’s so much interest now, in these private label brands?
Gabi Bar 2:16
I think that we need to go back to private label by itself, we will look at a company, you probably you’ve heard just a small man co anchor, or is the first private label business on Amazon. I think they’re they’re publicly traded now and the Chinese Stock Exchange Traded I think last time seen about $68 billion. But if you look at the evolution of the business, you can see there was there was the notion that a business cannot be migrating to a different owner. That was the was the caution by all the FBA business owners that I’ve seen that the Amazon terms of services is being terrified of any movement that, you know, if you just change one thing, you’ll be blocked. And so there was not even the concept of ARIA, I can either sell my business or transfer otherwise a couple of years back, but I think when we started, we started as a service provider. And as we looked into the T Ras and we can examine burger, we saw that there’s really an option of transparency ownership of the business, and we sell it to sell it to give it a try. But it was not until I guess I have to give it to you. Well, I mean, give something to my really worthy rivals. Yes. ASIO as their only when they started really launching their capital injection, and it’s been all over the all over the media, then the aggregation businesses start picking up, because in one end, business owners now realize that they can transfer ownership on the other. There’s capital injection coming from a lot of places. And I mean, if you look at, like, let’s say, five, four years ago, maybe five years ago, I mean, one on one, e-commerce business was the same time we started, yes, you had to really sell out the business, not because it wasn’t doing great, but the lack of capital the investing community couldn’t really figure out and understand we the FBA business and how can we, you know as an investment view, and you know, again, I have to enter to trust you. It really opened up the investment community. And since then it’s been a flight capital over over $4.5 billion of capital being raised in last few years, even one and a half year. So I guess all of this combined with, you know, with the understanding that this is a really good business, because you’re buying a profitable business to begin with, you’re not buying a distressed asset, you buying a profitable business, all of this combined together. They’re really putting two aggregators, we’re okay wherever there’s something here, there’s something that I want to take advantage you and, and that becomes a new disruption in the market.
James Thomson 5:28
Well, what do you think’s gonna happen? What do you think’s gonna happen in the next couple of years as more and more investors pile in? I don’t think a week goes by where I don’t hear about or get a call from someone saying, Hey, I just raised $50 million.
Gabi Bar 5:41
Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right. If I actually had a call today, surprisingly, from an aggregator, Indian. Yeah, okay. Right. Yeah. And India, predominantly, an aggregation of business e-commerce business in India, this is a really growing market. But you have to understand how the India market is, is operating. But you’re absolutely right, as more and more money being put in by this one. And on the other end, I’ve read somewhere that over 140 million business online businesses have popped out during 2020 alone. So there’s so much traction on the business and the private label side. And there’s money on the other side, which also affect the valuation of the businesses and the multipliers. There’s some bidding wars. And that’s where our technology comes in handy. But if you look at the overall market, there’s I think there’s room at least for a couple more years, and when it’s will be even out as far as the multipliers And really, the businesses and but it also depends on the heartbeat or the market grows by itself, as the market grows at a rate that, obviously COVID is really given a given push up very quickly. So I believe that we’ll see, maybe in five years, we’ll be able to see some, even on the chart, but it will grow almost everything.
James Thomson 7:16
So let me let me ask you about your experience before you founded this company. You have been working with e-commerce brands already. And you’ve now managed over 130 e-commerce brands, as an investor and an operator, what has drawn you to this space? And what are the kinds of issues that have surprised you the most about what you see going on here among these types of entrepreneurs.
