SHORT TABLE
COMPREHENSIVE BRAND MANAGEMENT
Short in stature but tall in possibilities, Short Table produces an all wood picnic table that you can take anywhere. Touted as the perfect picnic companion, this 10 inch tall table was ready to launch on Amazon, but their team didn’t know where to begin.
SHORT TABLE GROWS TALL ON AMAZON
OVERVIEW
THE PROBLEM
Short Table was looking to launch their unique product on Amazon, but had no experience with the Seller Central platform.
THE RESULTS
With the Ridgeline team managing Short Table on its behalf, this innovative product achieved 8x sales growth between Month 1 and Month 4, and climbed to #12 among Top 20 Best Sellers for picnic tables.
STRATEGY
HOW WE DID IT
CATEGORY AUDIT
We started our strategic planning with a category audit to determine where Short Table should compete. Was it a camping table, beach table, picnic table or small coffee table?
COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT
We also did a competitive assessment to determine why category leaders were winning, so that we could include important benefits and details in Short Table’s product listing.
DEMAND PLANNING
THE PLAN
A good demand plan takes seasonality into account to ensure there is enough inventory on hand to meet sales needs. Short Table experiences higher demand in the summertime, but as the weather becomes cooler sales slow down. Our inventory forecast made sure to account for this as the winter season hit.
LONG TERM STORAGE
Long term storage fees can quickly erode product margins. We spaced out shipments into Amazon to mirror seasonal fluctuations in demand so there was no chance of a Short Table sitting in a Fulfillment Center for longer than 12 months.
RETURN RATES
A crucial part of a demand plan is anticipating and proactively mitigating returns. Nothing eats into your profit margin faster than a high return rate. With a listing that does a good job of setting consumer expectations and an accurate forecast, we’ve been able to keep Short Table returns below 5%, which is far better than the industry average.
CATALOG MANAGEMENT
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We made sure to set up Short Table in the correct product category and utilized all of that category’s discovery and enrichment attributes. Proper categorization has a large impact on Amazon’s search algorithm, as it helps to determine the product’s relevancy to a customer’s search query.
It’s not only building a complete, accurate product listing that makes Amazon's notably cumbersome platform a hassle. Once a listing is live, Amazon’s automated bots can easily cause product data to change, or a listing to “break”, without warning or notice. When you’re launching, this can derail all your progress very fast, so when we started with Short Table, we constantly monitored their detail page to make sure it was serving up the proper information at all times.
DISCOVERY
Launching a new product on Amazon can be rough. Most brands can expect anywhere from 75% - 90% of their initial sales to come from advertising. More often than not, that means brands are just breaking even through the first several weeks following launch.
A10 SEARCH ALGORITHM
Organic ranking on Amazon is governed by what’s known as the A10 Search Algorithm. This takes into account multiple factors to determine which products to display for any given search term, including: sales velocity, reviews, advertising and other indicators of high-demand products.
ADVERTISING SALES VS TOTAL SALES
After 7 weeks of advertising and continual optimization of our strategy, Short Table began to build organic rank, allowing us to decrease ad spend while sustaining sales. By year 2 Short Table was able to rely mostly on organic sales, instead of advertised sales, due to the organic ranking built up from an aggressive advertising launch strategy.
ADVERTISING DRIVES SALES DURING LAUNCH
During the first 4 months of Short Table’s launch, the % of sales from advertising dropped steadily from 88% to 27%.
WINS & STATISTICS
THE RESULTS
AFTER A 4 MONTH PERIOD
<5%
RETURN RATE
Consistent inventory levels and a below-average return rate have kept Short Table's profit margins intact.
8X
SALES GROWTH
Sales grew 8x between Month 1 & Month 4. The percentage of sales from advertising fell from 88% to 27%.
#12
TOP BEST SELLER
Short Table broke into the Top 20 Best Sellers for picnic tables, reaching as high as #12.