MerchantSpring Marketplace Masters

Amazon isn’t your retail partner anymore, and it’s negotiating like it.In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld is joined by Martin Heubel, founder of Consulterce and former Amazon senior vendor manager, to unpack which AVN tactics have stopped working and what to do instead heading into 2027. Drawing on his 2026 vendor negotiation study, Martin shares why only one in ten vendors found this year’s negotiations collaborative, and how leaner Amazon teams are changing the game.You’ll learn:Why Net PPM targets keep moving, and how to push back when Amazon’s own discounts are the problemHow to build a cost price increase case that survives Amazon’s scrutinyWhy low-ASP portfolios leave you exposed, and how premiumizing creates a counterbalanceWhat to check when Amazon calls a seemingly healthy product unprofitableWhen a 3P alternative gives you leverage, and when it backfiresMartin’s top three moves to make before your 2027 negotiation

Your QBR slides say the account is healthy. Your bank balance says otherwise.In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld sits down with Stephan Putter, Co-founder & CCO of Leadsphere, to run a money audit on Amazon accounts. Stephan shares why leakage typically runs from 3–4% up to 20%, and why the longest-running, best-performing accounts are often the leakiest.Topics discussed:The three buckets where money leaks: Amazon-side fees and chargebacks, logistics, and outdated COGS and pricingWhy small $20–$30 chargebacks add up to real money, and how to dispute them with evidence you already haveThe 30-day rule for claiming reimbursements before they’re lostWhy a 15x ROAS can mean you’re paying for sales you’d have gotten for freeHow hybrid 1P/3P setups quietly cannibalise each otherStephan’s one-hour challenge: measure five SKUs and compare them to what Amazon has on file

Where are your Amazon sales actually leaking?Your Amazon account might be getting plenty of traffic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean shoppers are making it all the way to purchase.In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld, CEO and Co-Founder of MerchantSpring, sits down with David Holmes, Chief Growth Officer at BrightShift Labs, to unpack how brands can use Amazon’s Search Query Performance (SQP) data to find exactly where shoppers are dropping out of the purchase journey.David breaks down the Amazon search funnel — from impressions and clicks to add-to-carts and purchases — and shares practical ways to diagnose and fix the biggest leaks.They cover:What your impression, click, cart, and purchase share really tell youHow to spot problems with your main image, pricing, reviews, and listingUsing customer reviews and Product Opportunity Explorer to improve conversionFinding high-potential keywords with strong conversion but low visibilityCombining SQP with advertising data to identify wasted spend and cannibalisationWhy SQP purchase data may not match your overall Amazon salesHow to use search data to inform both SEO and advertising strategyDavid also shares a real-world dog food case study where a listing redesign helped increase conversion from 19% to 27%.If you're managing an Amazon brand or agency account, this episode offers practical, data-driven ways to understand where your funnel is leaking — and what to do about it.Host: Paul Sonneveld, MerchantSpringGuest: David Holmes, BrightShift Labs

In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld welcomes back Chris Turton, Managing Director of Ecommerce Intelligence in the UK, for a candid revisit of a conversation they had eighteen months ago, when Chris was distinctly unconvinced that AI was moving the needle for agencies.The fear in the market is familiar: AI makes execution faster and cheaper, clients expect fees to come down, and agency margins get squeezed. Chris thinks that’s the wrong hypothesis. For his agency, AI has been about creating client value, not cutting cost. He explains what’s actually changed in his thinking (AI shopping and agentic commerce, yes; generative engine optimisation on Amazon, still not convinced without better data), and what he’s genuinely automated, including a Claude-built system that handles a 5,000-variation vendor catalogue problem that used to consume hundreds of hours.Paul and Chris also get into the trap of treating AI output as “done” when every listing on page one scores ten out of ten, whether clients are asking for AI discounts at renewal, how freed-up time gets reinvested without being burned on peripheral projects, how agency team structures are shifting toward performance and numbers-led roles, and why multi-retailer visibility is becoming the thing that makes you better on Amazon.Chris closes with the mistake he’s made repeatedly: building AI tooling without starting from the end in mind.

In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld is joined by Gregor Leopold, CEO and founder of Global AMZ in Munich, for a practical walkthrough of the first 90 days after taking over an Amazon vendor account. The brief was deliberately specific: not top-line strategy, but sequence. What do you do first, and what comes after?Gregor starts with the audit he insists on for every client, including the ones convinced everything is already running well, and the things it consistently uncovers: high-volume ASINs turning no profit, duplicated listings, missed reimbursements, and advertising KPIs that look excellent because the spend is sitting on branded keywords. From there, he walks through the sequence: pull the data, run the 80/20 on both your best and worst ASINs, then work the catalogue and the ad audit in parallel.They also dig into why Gregor argues Amazon is now a media platform with a store attached rather than the reverse, and why that makes catalogue work ten times more important than it was five years ago, now that AI models and search engines are reading your product data. Plus the uncomfortable internal conversations, the "little kingdoms" inside mid-sized and large brands that cost them double and triple investment, why ROAS is interesting but not the most important number, and how to hold your ground when Amazon tells you a product has gone CRaP.If you've inherited a vendor account and don't know where to start, this is your running order.For more vendor-focused episodes, the full library is at merchantspring.io.

In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld is joined by Scott Ohsman, VP of Digital Commerce at Quickfire, for a candid look at the first 90 days of an agency-client relationship. Scott has 30+ years in the game and over 200 Amazon brand launches behind him, and his premise is uncomfortable: by the time a client tells you they're leaving, they decided months ago, usually in the first couple of weeks.Scott walks through where those weeks go wrong. The handoff gap between sales and account management, and why the kickoff call is where it surfaces badly, in front of senior people on both sides. The "amnesia" problem, where documented caveats vanish from the client's memory. The seniority mismatch when a client sold by a strategist meets a junior AM, and how to have the conversation when you've assigned the wrong person. Why account load isn't just about volume but complexity, and why the overloaded Ad manager juggling twenty accounts is the industry's quiet failure point.Then reporting, and Scott's test for every report you send: what does it mean, and why should I care? Plus the client who goes dark after signing, and the extreme escalation Scott used that turned into a long, happy relationship.If you own account management or sales at an agency, this is the systematisation conversation most owners have never had.For more sessions like this, the full on-demand library is at merchantspring.io.

In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld takes on the oldest debate in the Amazon world: 1P or 3P. Joining him are Sebastian Barrios and Stephan Putter of Leadsphere, a Mexico-based agency and certified Amazon Commerce partner running hybrid vendor and seller setups for brands across Amazon and MercadoLibre.Their argument: the best brands stopped choosing. 3P is your risk, experimentation and demand-creation channel. 1P rewards proven products. The real work is deciding, SKU by SKU, where each product belongs. Sebastián and Stefan explain why hybrid became urgent (Amazon's ongoing waves of vendor terminations, the most recent just nine days before recording, and 3P unit share declining for two consecutive quarters for the first time on record), the four-step allocation framework covering forecastability, velocity, price point and MAP sensitivity, and why running the same ASIN on both sides invites conflict with your vendor team.They also cover one content standard but two completely different advertising strategies, upper funnel on 1P and lower funnel on 3P, how distributor leakage (not Amazon) breaks your pricing, when hybrid is the wrong answer, and live audience questions on seller account gating and how to get Amazon to stop ordering an unprofitable ASIN.

In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld sits down with Alasdair McLean-Foreman, one of Amazon's earliest third-party sellers and founder and CEO of Teikametrics, to unpack Amazon's July 27 listing overhaul: titles cut from 250 characters to 75, a new 125-character Item Highlights field, and AI rewrites that went live automatically if brands didn't respond in time.Ten days in, the results are a mixed bag, with some sellers reporting sales drops and even brand names stripped from titles. Alasdair explains why this is much bigger than a formatting change: it's Amazon restructuring its catalogue into machine-readable content for Alexa for Shopping and the agentic commerce era. They cover how to split titles versus item highlights, why your ads data is now your best content optimisation signal, where the biggest wins sit (long-tail catalogues, with lifts up to 135% on reactivated SKUs), and how the same shift is playing out on Walmart's Sparky and TikTok Shop.If your content and advertising teams still operate in silos, this episode makes the case for tearing that wall down before Q4.If you're getting value from Marketplace Masters, hit follow and forward this episode to whoever owns your content and retail media.

In this episode of Marketplace Masters, Paul Sonneveld talks with Christian Umbach, co-founder and CEO of Autopilot, about Amazon's "third shelf": the AI Shopping Assistant. Christian's team studied 2,000 non-branded queries and around 70,000 ASINs to decode how Alexa picks products, and the results break the rules brands optimise for.The headlines: 64% of top Alexa picks sat outside the organic top ten, 40% appeared nowhere on the traditional results page, and advertising won't buy you in. What does matter: 4.0+ ratings, availability, sales and review velocity, and catalogue quality. They also cover why apparel showed the most diversified AI results, how ChatGPT sources 45% of its shopping carousel from Google Shopping, and why your Amazon data discipline is now an asset across every AI search surface.If your Amazon strategy stops at organic and paid, this is your wake-up call.

In this episode of Marketplace Masters, host Paul Sonneveld goes deep on the operational side of Amazon Direct Fulfillment with Chris Khoo, founder of KhooCommerce and one of the most experienced operators in the Amazon vendor world.Most vendors treat Direct Fulfillment as "FBM for 1P," backup inventory, or a chargeback eraser. Chris explains why the reality is more demanding, and more valuable. Amazon calls it dual fulfillment internally, and used well it protects the buy box, bridges out-of-stock gaps, and captures demand spikes that traditional PO cycles simply can't respond to fast enough.Paul and Chris covered:Which products are built for DF: bulky, high-value, multi-part, and seasonal items, and why small, low-value products rarely justify the handling costThe real disqualifier: whether your warehouse can actually run direct-to-consumer fulfilment alongside palletised PO shipmentsA day in the life of a well-run DF operation: order sync, batch picking, label automation, and carrier cutoff timesHow Amazon measures DF performance, why on-time shipping compliance is the metric that can get you removed from the program, and who really controls the carrier (AOC vs VOC)EDI vs SP-API integration, and why the inventory feed is the link most vendors overlookHow to think about margin and cost recovery when Amazon pushes DF in your annual vendor negotiationReal cases: the vendor who went from one order a day to 400 in 48 hours unprepared, and the glassware brand shipping millions per month through a fully automated DF flowIf you run a Vendor Central account, this is a serious upgrade to your operational playbook.