SmartScout's Scott Needham - Understanding Categories Worth Pursuing on Amazon Marketplace

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0:55Scott Needham: Hi, I'm Scott Needham, the founder and CEO of SmartScout, and you're listening to the CPG Guys podcast.

1:03The CPG Guys: Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Peter V.S. Bond and Sri Rajagopalan, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.

1:49The CPG Guys: And my older daughter, Ria Raj, who is now a Mac Cosmetics girl, the face of Toyota EV, and as of this week, has been signed by Republic Records with Hybe USA. I'm, of course, joined today by my East Coast co-host, co-founder. And like me, he's a fellow adjunct professor of business at the SC Johnson School of Business. Peter, how are you doing? What's up for this weekend? Shree, I'm doing great recovering from our trip down to Northwest Arkansas. You and I spent a couple of days there at the Walmart Data Ventures Inspire event. recording some episodes, seeing some friends. And what am I doing this weekend?

2:23The CPG Guys: Well, I'll spend a little time with Nadia, but then I've got to pack my suitcase because we're headed to grocery shop next week. It's a pretty busy September, Sri. I hope everything is going great with you. Everything's going great, Peter. Just getting ready for Cat Size US segment of the tour. And grocery shop, as you mentioned, can't wait. We've got a packed schedule. We've got a bunch of podcasts going. We've got a party. We've got dinners. One of them is for Dollar General. So we've got a handful, man. It should be fun. Let me thank all of you that listen to us and of course our sponsors. Without all of you, this podcast doesn't really exist.

2:56The CPG Guys: I want to say thank you from the bottom of our heart. Make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your preferred listening platform where you can get our latest episodes. Go back and consume the over 620-odd episodes we've already published. We have three quick asks to our audience if you're getting value from this conversation. The first one, subscribe to us on whatever platform you're listening on right now, whether that's Spotify, Apple, Amazon, anywhere else you get your podcast hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. Second, it's not me, it's Peter. He loves a number.

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4:16The CPG Guys: This conversation goes beyond tactics. It goes into strategy, the blind spots, large brands still have around third-party seller share and category concentration, what's really driving the connection between TikTok shop and Amazon growth, and what disciplined data-led marketplace decision-making looks like at scale. Today, we're joined by someone who has lived on both sides of the Amazon marketplace, as an operator who built RealScale, as a seller, and now as a founder of a platform that helps others do the same with data. Scott Needham is the CEO and founder of SmartScout, an Amazon and TikTok shop marketplace intelligence platform he built after his own experience running BioXer, an Amazon wholesale business that generated tons of millions of dollars in FBA revenue.

5:01The CPG Guys: Scott also holds Amazon United, AMZ United, and spends much of his time talking directly to sellers and brands about what's actually working in the marketplace right now. If you want to understand what the data says about where the growth is on Amazon and beyond, you want to hear directly from Scott, and that's what we're doing today. We're going to hear directly from Scott. Scott, pleasure to have you on the CPT, guys. Welcome, man. Hey, thank you for having me here. Can't wait to get started. So to our audience, please check out the digital show notes of this episode to find a hyperlink to Scott's LinkedIn profile and to the SmartScout website to learn more as we carry on with this conversation, which I will kick off with the first question for Scott.

5:42The CPG Guys: Scott, I mentioned that you built and sold real Amazon businesses before you ever built SmartScout. What was the recurring frustration in your own account level data as you ran those businesses that made you say, I got to build a tool for this, for the industry?

5:58Scott Needham: So the true story is I've been selling on Amazon since like 2013. And we were looking for opportunities just like categories, brands, what was doing really well. And so I have software developer background. And so that's what I did. I just kind of mapped everything out. You know, there's some complicated things that happen on Amazon, the thousands of categories that they have and then they have brands and then there's also multiple sellers on a brand which sometimes can be kind of a pain point and so just wanted to put that all together and my first goal was just like look for opportunities like hey what brands are are growing what brands are shrinking which categories are big and so that was a foundational questions that we had and once we had some of those insights, we just kept adding on top of it to more data, more information.

6:57I mean, since you've been a, you've actually sold, you found a business and actually sold

7:03The CPG Guys: on the Amazon platform before you built SmartScout, I do want to ask you just on a day-to-day basis, how frustrating was it before you started SmartScout to actually pull data, go through the analysis process? Is it hours, is it days, or is it impossible?

7:18Scott Needham: in some ways, months and years to like kind of collect the data and organize it and be like, okay, you know, this is the relationship that's happening. And sure, you know, you can pull all the data in like a day, but getting an insight that helps people like get visibility, it's taken time. And I'm like, I'm not even joking. I'm in my sixth year of this. I'm like still like so excited for like the next view that like, you know, feels like it unlocks a different perspective.

7:50The CPG Guys: And do you feel that even today, that's what sellers are experiencing? And that's why Smart Scout exists to enable them to not feel that experience of years and months, like you said.

8:01Scott Needham: Yeah. So it just depends that the phase that someone is in, are they looking for more traffic for their listings, for their products, or are they looking to sell new products? So based off of where they're at and what their interest is, that can actually totally change their perspective. But at the end of the day, everyone's an entrepreneur and they want to grow their sales and they want to beat their competition. So those are kind of like, I think the first feelings that people have when they want data, They want that data to help them accomplish those key business-like feelings.

8:41The CPG Guys: Scott, welcome to the CPG Guys podcast. Sri and I are very excited to talk to you today. We've spent a lot of time in the past couple of years at the Amazon Accelerate event. I know it's coming up next week in Seattle. It's a very busy week. There are a whole lot of conferences going on. But when we go there, we listen to the sellers and everything you talked about and what led you to found this is something that we hear from them. And to a large degree, they go to that event to create that community so they can learn and figure out collectively what they can do. But there's value also for very large established brands, the ones that aren't necessarily at Accelerate.

9:19The CPG Guys: You know, they have they already have strong retail measurement and they think they have visitability around Amazon. But the question is, are there blind spots that they don't know they have? And particularly around third party sellers, as they look at who their competition is, right? Their category share or where their business has been shifting and they're just not aware of it. What should they be thinking about?

9:46Scott Needham: I think the questions in large businesses are perhaps even more like they're harder to get good answers to any even legacy CPG companies to like newer ones. They all feel like digital is just like you have to win there. And sometimes they just want to know, are we winning? And if not, like, are there a new entrance to the space? And how much should I be worried about them? And a lot of times we'll find like for big brands, like they'll have a team that's just like, hey, you're the Amazon team. You're the digital team. And sometimes those teams have a hard time conveying like that, those questions like, should we invest more?

10:28Scott Needham: Well, if you want to like actually like win that argument, you kind of need to bring data to the leadership because if they're not digital or, you know, they've never been in the Amazon ecosystem, they don't actually know like some of those like scorecards like, hey, we do $100 million on Amazon. Is that good or is that bad? I don't know. And so answering those questions and like seeing threats or seeing opportunities is kind of like the table stakes for what we try and work on.

10:56The CPG Guys: And as a follow up to that, at a very foundational building block level, do they even have problems defining what the category is? Because it's not like the hierarchy within Amazon is incredibly refined the way that brands typically pay companies like Nielsen and Serkana to structure the data. I've got to imagine that that in and of itself can prohibit them from understanding what the real landscape is.

11:25Scott Needham: Yeah, I've seen companies kind of introduce their own, like the way that they want to categorize it. I've kind of just like put my hands up to the air be like well however Amazon categorizes it they have 40 ,000 categories let's just like look inside of those and sure like if you want to create your own custom categories that's actually pretty useful I think a great example is actually like creatine right now you know I think two or three years in a row of like just doubling in size but But how is that categorizing happening? Is it creatine for women? You know, like are they like the brands that are targeting that?

12:05Scott Needham: Or is it, you know, like a premium creatine that's very expensive? There's even certain ingredients or classifications of creatine. So, you know, you could take the way that Amazon classifies creatine and actually split it up five different ways. And those five different ways are actually pretty meaningful for, you know, a decision maker. because creatine's grown 400 % in the last two or three years. You got to be beating that to actually feel like you're winning. But you bring up an interesting thing is that there is a bit of a conflict of how Amazon operates and how CPG brands like to operate.

12:49The CPG Guys: Love that. And I know the larger even food brands are looking at creatine and protein today. So let's jump there. So when you sit down with an enterprise brand for the first time and you actually, this is a great example you just gave of creating, you actually show them what's actually happening in that category. Do you see deer in headlights? Do you see a wow? Are they curious? Do they want to jump in? Do they want to go right into the data and dig deep? What actually happens?

13:14Scott Needham: Yeah, it depends. If they're looking for the scoreboard, we've got that. There's probably, what, 50 creatine brands. And then maybe we'll like laser that into like, hey, this is actually your segment. You know, you're a premium creatine brand. This is what you're competing against. Yes, we'll track the inexpensive, you know, the value players. But let's focus on these. And then if they have any like problems with their channel, for example, if they have like resellers, we'll highlight, okay, here's the resellers that are actually like, you know, really moving volume on that and which they all kind of, all these like things kind of play into like this final thing of like, Hey, you know, here's compared to your competitors, here's how much money you're spending on retail media, Amazon ads versus what we see.

14:09Scott Needham: And here's where, here's where you're spending it. Here's where they're spending it. So there could be some kind of differences and, and kind of like all of these things just give visibility. And I'm not going to pretend I know how everyone makes a decision, but we just want to give them as much information as possible to like, you know, help them make their strategic decisions. Some people are looking to spend more. Some people are looking to spend less. And it depends the phase or maturity of their category.

14:36The CPG Guys: So, Scott, you recently launched TikTok Shop Analytics. So for a senior brand leader, what's the real question they should be asking? not how a video performs on TikTok in isolation, but which trends there actually translate into an Amazon category growth and which are just noise. Like, how do they make sense of this? Yeah.

15:00Scott Needham: So I feel like TikTok has kind of like just like really pushed social commerce into a way that is really new and kind of like shifts the way that we think. I mean, a lot of brands are starting and kind of getting traction. Amazon feels a lot about like, hey, it's like block and tackle. Your products, your listings looking good, get your advertising in place. Whereas like the social commerce is very much leaning in to what you just kind of described. Like what are the things that turn someone that's not even aware of my brand to interest it? And so that's why in TikTok shop, or just like a TikTok in general, it is actually connecting with creators that leads a success on that channel.

15:49Scott Needham: It's giving them samples, helping them become fans themselves, and they could share that passion with others. And they're obviously incentivized because if they do a good job, if the creators become a good job at selling the product, oftentimes a lot of brands will share commission with them instead of sending instead of spending you know what 10 of your revenue on retail media tiktok shop is more about like how can we incentivize more creators and then the ones that pop off how do we dig into that to be like this is like this is what's turning us from you know no awareness to like someone actually just buying the product.

16:38Scott Needham: And I mean, our data shows right now, as we connected these brands that are selling on both marketplaces, brands that have a successful TikTok shop, they're growing five times faster on Amazon. I know there's some correlation to that data. You know, the people that are like leaning digital just happen to have both channels, but it is crazy how like successful Well, TikTok shops kind of just like lifts other channels in a way that we kind of haven't really seen before.

17:12The CPG Guys: You know, the industry is still the largest brands talk about their inability to really get their flywheel going on TikTok shop, but they look at it, admire it, and they know they need to. So it'll be great to hear from you if there's an actual example you can give us. a TikTok shop trend that clearly moved the needle on Amazon versus one that looked exciting, but didn't actually result in any movement from a volume perspective.

17:38Scott Needham: So yeah, TikTok shop is not just like the formula. While like I described, you know, working with creators sounds great on paper. It's a little bit harder and some categories it really makes sense for and some of them maybe doesn't work so i i can point out i know there's a lot of like there's a lot of like people that kind of hit the dream of like started at zero and go to you know maybe a hundred million dollar brand and some some of those actually started on tiktok shop like that's that's like happening what's the we actually had an employee at smart scout who left our company because he started a successful TikTok shop.

18:22Scott Needham: And I'm not joking. We actually didn't have TikTok data at the time that that happened. And that was super inspiring to me of being like, okay, I have to lean into this. There is something where he created a grocery product and now he's done over seven figures, over a million dollars off of both platforms and they kind of feed into each other. And actually, this is one quick little anecdote. So he asked me, he's like, he's like, why can I charge$65 on Amazon when all my competition charges 45? And he's like, he's like, it's TikTok shop. People learn about his product on TikTok shop. They go to Amazon and they buy the product that they just saw, even though he's in a category where he's priced a little bit higher.

19:08The CPG Guys: And is that because they go right to the buy box essentially after they get to Amazon? So and and they don't they don't they don't shop to see what else is there that what what is it that that caught is it or is it just they saw it and they have immediate brand equity because it was on TikTok.

19:25Scott Needham: They search for the brand directly. They don't they kind of like, hey, I just saw like this brand was just like I just watched a 45 second video. Some guy told me that that's what I want. And it builds a little bit of brand equity. And when it comes to stuff like specifically consumable CPG, like brand equity goes a little bit further than like, I don't know, if you're buying hardware or very basic stuff. And so, yeah.

19:53The CPG Guys: The minute you enter the brand term into the search. So, yeah. That gives them the attention that brings them to the top of the search list. And that's why it gets them right to the PDP.

20:08Scott Needham: they watch the video they're going to go to amazon and just search for the brand okay so and i mean i hate to jump in this everyone every brand out there wants like tell me the halo effect the problem is there is so much that happens because that like that just isn't quite as trackable someone leaving an app and going into another app with like all the privacy things that are happening on like Apple, like you can't just like track that behavior, but the results are, they're obvious. When a video goes viral or does really well in TikTok shop, sales lift on Amazon. So I can't tell you how many times we've seen that.

20:49The CPG Guys: I got to just reaffirm, you know, TikTok, Amazon, these are like the Achilles heels of large brands because they need to learn even further. And your conversation here is testimony to how those behaviors actually work. So let me remind the audience that we're speaking with, Scott Needham, CEO and founder of SmartScout. Peter, over to you. Scott, let's talk a little bit about category concentration, because I think that was one of the more interesting patterns that emerged in your data set. Some categories tend to consolidate around just a handful of brands, right? Others can fragment into hundreds of undifferentiated sellers.

21:27The CPG Guys: So I guess my question to you is, what does category concentration tell a brand about where they should defend their share and where they should be investing in growth. Right.

21:38Scott Needham: I would even almost add another layer. Are these brands all new? Let's say, you know, a new trending category. If they have only been there for less than a year or two, that means it's probably still up in the air and someone could come in and like shake it up. Whereas we see like others were like, hey, these three, they've been in this category for 15 years. And it's gonna be really hard to just spin up a new product and jump in. But to your point, there's some categories that like, you know, maybe started at 10 brands. Now there's 20, 30, 40, and just really balloons up. And it's hard. It's hard to be like, you know, differentiated.

22:21Scott Needham: And if anything, Amazon can feel quite challenging but it's it's uh i do feel like as these large cpg brands pay attention they actually have like an unfair advantage with existing brand recognition with like budgets that you know startups can't even compete with and they kind of buy their way back into dominance so definitely have seen you know the biggest cpg brands win on amazon and as they lean in to like what does digital you know what does that actually look like for their business they do a good job an example you know a potato chip brand for them to like lean into digital what does that mean well they can't just sell like one bag of potato chips at four dollars like doesn't work.

23:19Scott Needham: So they create SKUs that really like are optimal. And I'll be like, okay, you know, 18 bags, this size, and they're able to sell it for$26. And to the consumer that like, maybe they're used to buying that at Costco. Well, they don't have to go into a crowded Costco to get what they want to get a good value. And so it certainly is interesting kind of how these categories actually still evolve.

23:47The CPG Guys: But I guess you made something. I just want to clarify the point here. Are you saying that while challenger brands can come in and they can start to take share away that over time, the big national brands have a strategic advantage and they can wait it out, they can buy their way back in and they can push aside the challengers? Is that what is that what's going on?

24:09Scott Needham: Definitely. I think you see both ends. There are some categories where the challenges were there first. And then the incumbents with the retail awareness, you know, people that walk down the aisles.

24:23The CPG Guys: The brand equity in what they've established.

24:26Scott Needham: They come in and they're like, okay, it's time to take this seriously. You see that a lot with beauty brands that just said no to Amazon for 15, 20 years. And now they come in and they're like, we're going to, we see this as like an important brand position. And so that happens. Whereas sometimes the reverse happens. Let's say they've had a longstanding 1P relationship and they've been there, but they missed a customer insight that allowed for, you know, a new emerging CPG brand to come in and kind of really create a wedge. I've seen one of the largest CPG brands squirm at one of the competitors that came in and did that.

25:10Scott Needham: They created that wedge and it started digital first through Amazon.

25:21The CPG Guys: Very well said indeed. I'm still going to say Amazon and social media in general, which is like TikTok and others, are still the Achilles heel. So now if they want to learn more, get in touch with Scott. That easy. I'll still tell you, Scott, that Amazon, as well as social media, especially TikTok, is still very much in Achilles heel of the largest enterprise brands today. Because I deal with a lot of them every day for a living, just like Peter. But now we've got a solution. Talk to Scott if you want to know more. That easy. So I do want to jump into and get a little geekier now. So how does a brand tell the difference between a category that's fragmenting because of real innovation versus one that's fragmenting because of low quality, undifferentiated competition, which is what these large brands are used to?

26:10Scott Needham: There's a few ways to look into that. I think you do want to understand like the search insights. Let's take a category. How much of that is being driven by branded search? Like customers are actually typing in, hey, let's go back to creatine. I would say a healthy number of the creatine searches are brand aware. Like they are typing in the brand that they want. And that becomes like, you just have to be totally aware of that if you're jumping in, that like, hey, people are coming into this category already knowing a brand. Or maybe they were told about brands through ChatGPT and they had a strong recommendation.

26:55Scott Needham: and actually cpg in general like consumables brand awareness is a lot bigger than people that are just looking for a solution where they're like hey i need this thing fixed in my house and i don't care who i buy from i'm never buying from them again and so i see these categories we actually have one layer in showing which categories are, you know, full of overseas sellers. So it's no secret that like Chinese sellers have actually eclipsed and kind of hit a little over 50 % of the third party sales on Amazon. And so we kind of show like, hey, this category, you know, 80 % of them are actually Chinese sellers.

27:43Scott Needham: And that kind of says like, Like, hey, this is a race to the bottom, kind of a commodity category. Fortunately, I mean, you can think however you want, but like CPG, consumables, is a little exempt from that. We look at this layer and we say like, hey, you know, grocery, fewer than 1 % are like sellers from overseas. Beauty and health supplements, less than 10 % are from overseas. There are some. I'm not going to like say that like there's some categories where like, hey, you know, we're seeing some Chinese manufacturers. pop up and kind of create these like commodity type products in those categories.

28:21Scott Needham: But for the most part, you really see a lot of like brands with brand equity, people aware of them outside of Amazon competing on Amazon.

28:33The CPG Guys: You know, Scott, last year, Sri knows about this story. I had a problem of a pesky little squirrel that had gotten into my house through a hole under an overhang on the roof. and I did my research to find out, well, how do, if I can get it out, how do I keep it from getting back in? And I was told, well, I needed to get some copper mesh. And of course I went to Amazon to get it. I don't have any idea what that brand is. I'm sure it came from China. That's a category where I'm never going to buy it again. I don't care what the brand equity is. That's one that's not important, but I trust me when I buy my energy drink, I know exactly what I want and that's the what I'm going to go for.

29:10The CPG Guys: So I think I understand the model that you are articulating. So my next question is, what does good data-led marketplace decision-making actually look like at scale? And what's the most common mistake you see when a brand treats Amazon as just another sales channel in their portfolio?

29:31Scott Needham: I think some of the mistakes I see, like, they're not necessarily data decisions, But I mean, I talk with Amazon sellers and brands all day, every day. And the ones that just keep leaning in to learn more, I don't care how much you've optimized. There's more. Let's take, for example, I know one protein bar company that like they change their packaging around consumer demand. keto eight years ago, like the thing. And well, that's evolved. And so as like, maybe like, maybe protein density now is a little bit more trending. So they just like call out different things. And so you would use the data to do that.

30:21Scott Needham: And then you would use a kind of an Amazon leaning in methodology of like, how can we convey this messaging? Where do we put it? Do we put it way to like have that in the image if someone's scrolling on their phone they have like one inch of space you actually can put readable text on your hero image and so to me it's like it's like a two-fold thing yes you want data and insights but you also kind of just need to invest and learn and watch the trends and and and optimize images and and just kind of like just go all in so you You know, really, Amazon has turned into something that like you just have to take seriously.

31:09Scott Needham: So and kind of like data is totally part of it. There's a little bit of skill and marketing and customer awareness. That is a part of it. And yeah, so I kind of, I think full picture.

31:22The CPG Guys: Peter, I'm just going to still continue to say there's so much to unpack on Amazon for enterprise brands. So if you're advising a CMO or the VP of e-com at a midsize CPG brand, what's the first strategic question they should be asking about their category before they get into the details of any single one tactic?

31:44Scott Needham: I think, so you want to see like, what's working now? Well, let's, we could maybe go back to the potato chip example. You see like, what's working now? Do people buy potato chips? Is this a$1 million a month opportunity or is this a$50 million a month opportunity? And a lot of brands are in multiple categories. So they could kind of choose which one. And then like, well, let's take the biggest opportunity the most seriously. and use a little bit of data of like, what's the price positioning? What is the customer searching for? And then develop their own just like winnable offer. And for some of this, you kind of do have to jump into the customer.

32:27Scott Needham: What are they searching for? What are they saying in reviews? Like some of the review insights and then help them craft a product that can win. There is something about Amazon while it has millions of products, like the sales curve goes real steep towards the top. If you get top of search on these like high volume searches, if you're like one of the top three, like those top three will often do more revenue than like the next hundred. So kind of getting to that top of search, creating that product offering that just is tailored to Amazon. It's just priced really well where the consumers feel like they get value.

33:18Scott Needham: It tends to just really work out on the back end. And after the launch, they're like, you got to do your prep before you jump into a category so that those decisions that you live with for years were good decisions.

33:36The CPG Guys: Scott, you made mention of user-generated content and the fact that there is a tremendous amount of learning to be had in the product ratings that are out there. LLMs have proven to be incredibly effective at surfacing and organizing those. Is that something that Amazon has started to crack down on from your perspective, restricting the ability to scrape the reviews and get meaningful insights? What's going on there right now?

34:02Scott Needham: No, you're totally right. They have made it hard or even impossible to get the full raw reviews. There's one thing that we do surface. Amazon, they know that brands want access to those, the sentiment. And so we work with their API to surface that. So it's not like, that's why we want to play nicely with Amazon. on. We don't go in and download reviews because it's against their terms of service. We do service their category insights where what they are basically doing is what brands would want. They are taking the hundreds of views in a category. So they have review insights for a category and then they review insights for products.

34:52Scott Needham: And you can do that with your product. You can do that with your competitor's products and see what are the positive things that people are saying? What are the negative things that people are saying?

35:05The CPG Guys: So, Scott, you've made a very generous offer to pull real numbers on a specific category ahead of a conversation with Amazon. Can you tell our audience about that offer and looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunity for brands as AI-driven discovery and TikTok shop style commerce keep reshaping where purchases actually start and happen?

35:31Scott Needham: With the years of data collection, you know, it's kind of, it's not hard for us to kind of shape what the category opportunity is. And just basically ask those, like, how is it going? How is this changing? And so, you know, if someone wants us to like put together just a quick snapshot, I actually get most excited when people like want that snapshot so they could like, bring it to their leadership and be like, hey, this is the opportunity I've been trying to tell you about. And because sometimes without kind of like this full picture view, it does get really hard to communicate of like, you know, like, are we winning?

36:15Scott Needham: Do I smell more opportunity? And so, yeah, I like to like, like I said, like bring in like, you know, all the different ways that consumers and brands are kind of interacting with each other.

36:33The CPG Guys: Awesome. So, Peter, I'm going to jump right in. Summarize for us, what are some of your big takeaways today? The biggest thing for me is just that brands large and small are in need of understanding the interaction between things like what's happening on TikTok shop and how that's actually translating into commerce outcomes on Amazon's platform and understanding where they need to make their investments. Is this a category that can grow where their brand equity is going to be meaningful? Or is this something where it's just highly commoditized and products are undifferentiated? It seems like with SmartScout, they're building a platform that helps brands make sense of the Amazon landscape and they would be served well by some platform like this.

37:22The CPG Guys: I'm going to second that a little bit, Peter. You know, having lived through building Amazon businesses at, firstly at Frito-Lay and PepsiCo, then J &J, then Revlon, then General Mills, different categories. I can tell you 15 years later from when I started, brands still don't understand Amazon to the extent they understand a Walmart or a Kroger in the in-store business. looks like what you're building, Scott, is for them to be able to play catch up and then also advance. That's my big takeaway. Scott, the CPG guys want to thank you for joining us on the podcast, sharing your insights, meticulously explaining what SmartScout does.

38:06The CPG Guys: No, thank you. So thank you for being with us today.

38:10The CPG Guys: So for our audience, if today's conversation sparked something for you, a new idea, a fresh perspective, a reminder why this industry is worth showing up for every day. Share it, tag us, tell a colleague the more voices we bring into this community, the sharper all of us get to the over 47 ,000 followers we have on LinkedIn that trust us to inform, educate, and entertain you about our industry. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your trust and for your encouragement. Until next time, keep pushing the conversation forward. I'm Sri on behalf of my co-host Peter V.S. Bond. This has been the CPG Guys Podcast.

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