Company Profile- Etopia

Etopia: an army of Amazon experts

Etopia Consultancy was founded in November 2019 by Asha Bhalsod – aka the ‘Amazon Lady’ – and since then has transformed from a one-woman-band to a team of 10 Amazon experts ready and able to provide just about any service companies need relating to the platform, from product listings to major advertising campaigns. Here, Asha tells Toy World how her agency has grown and how it can help toy suppliers and distributors.

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I never dreamed of having an agency,” says Asha, speaking to Toy World from her brand-new garden office. “When I set up Etopia, all I wanted to do was help as many businesses as possible navigate the Amazon space. I set up a service called Audit & Assessment as a freelance consultant, so I still had time to be a mum and a wife. But now I look back at the past four years and the journey I’ve been on, and I can’t help but still be a little amazed – and very grateful, of course.”

Asha landed a major international toy company as her first client straight out of the gates in 2019, auditing its entire Amazon business over the course of four weeks and ultimately making recommendations on improvements. She was then asked to stay on and action those recommendations. Both the UK and European subsidiaries of a big Japanese toy company then came on board, along with a couple of other clients, before Covid struck in 2020, turning online into the main retail channel for a population in lockdown and propelling the likes of Amazon to ever greater heights than ever before. Added demand for Asha’s services led to her recruiting two new full-time members of staff mid-pandemic, and from there the agency has only gone from strength to strength.

Though Asha remains the face of the agency, there are now 10 full-time team members offering a raft of Amazon services. Asha’s latest hire is Hannah Hughes, who joins as head of Strategy. In her new role, Hannah will be looking at improving Etopia’s internal processes as well as strategies for external clients. Like her colleagues, Hannah will work remotely, with quarterly catchups enabling the team to collaborate face to face on projects, share new ideas for the agency, and, Asha tells us, have some fun.

At its most basic level, the agency helps companies that have found themselves experiencing challenges with the ecommerce giant to address the key issues, then takes them through its flywheel of services to see how it can assist them going forward before handing the improved, streamlined and far more efficient Amazon business back over. Audit & Assessment remains firmly at the heart of everything the agency does, but it also provides (among many other things) Full Service Account Management for Amazon, where Asha and her team oversee a company’s entire Amazon business.

“Toys, as a retail category, is very traditional, and toy companies tend to play in the space in a very traditional way,” explains Asha, when asked what she would class as ‘challenges’. “In the early 2000s, when toy companies began partnering with Amazon, the retailer just cared about selection, about growing its toy presence online. Everyone therefore hopped into bed with it, enjoying good terms and easy to manage accounts. From 2010 onwards, however, Amazon began to evolve its marketing element, from brand stores to advertising and content. The marketing element added a new layer of complexity for companies and brands. And now, post-Covid, we’re firmly in the midst of what I think of as Amazon’s profitability era. The platform just wants to make money, but many companies now find it unprofitable to work with. Amazon has become a labour-intensive account requiring way more time, effort and investment to trade in what is essentially the exact same way as it was 10 years ago.”

One of the more labour-intensive facets of Amazon is product listings: the way all the toys and games we all see at toy shows and previews every year actually end up on the platform. It might seem simple on the face of it, but done properly, this requires keyword research, SEO optimisation of descriptions and bullet-points, and A to B testing so companies understand which type of content drives conversion.

As a verified Amazon Advertising partner, Etopia can also help companies get to grips with Amazon DSP, the demand-side platform that allows brands to take a full funnel approach on and off Amazon. With a breadth of reporting tools and ability to run DSP campaigns, Etopia can take brand reporting further with new Amazon AMC reporting abilities. This no doubt will benefit brands by helping them gain a holistic understanding of the Amazon customer journey.

Working with an agency such as Etopia gives companies unfettered access to a team of experts that between them boast many years of experience working with Amazon across a very wide range of sectors and specialities. By contrast, in-house marketing teams are usually far more focused on a very specific area of Amazon, or a very specific product/brand. This can result in a lack of ‘outside the box’ thinking and limited problem-solving abilities. Asha, meanwhile, tells us there’s not a problem her team hasn’t come across - and fixed - at one point or another.

Working with an agency can also be more cost-effective than relying on an in-house team. Dealing with Amazon requires a multitude of skills, which Etopia possesses. Building a comparable in-house team would, at a bare minimum, require skills in strategy, account management, marketing, operations and analytics. Ultimately, the size of the account might not warrant that level of salary outlay.

“The demand for what we do and its proven success, which can be measured by the number of enquiries we’re fielding from some really big players, means that the agency will continue to grow,” says Asha. “In fact, we’ve just hired an ex-Amazon brand specialist of four years who will enhance and deepen our breadth of knowledge even more. We’re building an army of Amazon experts: James Papps, for example, managed Amazon at Unilever for seven years, and Hannah, whom I mentioned earlier, has also been working on Amazon accounts for seven years. The talent we’re attracting is phenomenal.”

That talent will certainly be kept busy. Amazon as a retailer, Asha says in no uncertain terms, isn’t going away. Yes, consumers did return to brick & mortar retailers following the pandemic, but Amazon remains price competitive – and companies need to stop shying away from using it. The key lies in ensuring they’re doing so profitably, with a decent strategy in place, and this is where Etopia can help.

We’d be here all day if we were to cover every single service Etopia offers – they’re all available to peruse on the website – but Asha is particularly keen to highlight how her agency can help companies with their global expansion.

“Selling to Europe means considering the vastly different characteristic of eight unique marketplaces, plus the complexity of Amazon launching a new marketplace at any given time,” she explains. “Language, culture, habits, regional nuances, market demand; these are all intricacies to consider when expanding into unfamiliar territory. But we can bring global businesses with an existing Amazon trading relationship into Europe for you. Vendor or Seller, warehousing, packaging, conformity requirements, tax obligations – we can do the entire set-up, then manage it for you too.”

If you’re reading this thinking ‘Great, OK, but I bet those services are out of my budget’, fear not. Every quote is completely bespoke and tailored to the number of services needed and which markets they’re for, meaning businesses of all sizes are encouraged to get in touch. Support contracts by the hour are even an option, with a dedicated Amazon account manager assigned to work on exactly what’s needed (eg: admin and tidying up listings) for short periods of time. Rejected purchase orders during peak season, for example, can quickly spiral out of control and cause huge headaches (and lost revenue) for smaller companies. For just a couple of hundred pounds an hour, companies can purchase the help they need to halt that spiral, or head it off entirely – and potentially save Christmas.

To find out even more about how Etopia can help your business, readers can visit Asha at the New York Toy Fair from 30th September to 3rd October 2023, call her on 07958 168 699 or email asha@etopiaconsultancy.com.