Future Outlook and Consumer Fatigue

Hello and welcome to the mododern Retail Podcast. our show that covers the ways the retail industry is changing and modernizing. I'm Special Projects editor Melissa Daniels Today's conversation is going to get into the ins and outs of how brands navigate Prime Day, the eleven year old sales event from Amazon. It's really become a new tent poole sales season event across the ecosystem. You know, it started as a twenty four hour event back in twenty fifteen, now it's a four day sale, now we've got big summer sales from the likes of Target and Best Buy and Walmart that compete with the event bigger and bigger. We've also heard from some brands here at modern retail who are questioning whether they even want to participate. Some brands aren't that excited about a potential bump in sales because there's so many marketing costs associated with participation, but others still see it as a really big opportunity to get people in their summer spending Here with me today to unpack all this is Katherine McKee. She's the fractional head of growth at Morphology Consulting and she's advised on digital go to market strategies for more than fifty brands. and she's shepherded companies through many a prrime day, through the good, the bad and the ugly. Katherine, welcome to the show Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure be here. I can't wait to get into this with you. It's been a topic that I've to casually with sources and companies over the last few weeks and the attitude is not like super rosy and excited. You know, someome people are kind of like, man, Prime Day we got to figure it out. And you know this is the first year they're doing it in June. So the first thing I want to get your take on is just how big of a deal Prime Day is for brands right now right here in twenty twenty six That's a really fair question because as you mentioned, it shted a lot. I think it used to be a huge deal and over time has sort of softened. So across categories, is it is a little different, right? I think beauty and wellness are performing incredibly well at Amazon. and so this does feel like a big opportunity for them. There are other categories that are performing maybe less well or flattening So I think over time by category, it's changed a lot. I think I'm hearing similar things that you are that a lot of brands are feeling that it's a lot of work, it's kind of expensive and they're not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. So I think from a brand perspective Is Prime Day Worth it has a lot of different components in it versus from Amazon's perspective. ime used to be about getting people to sign up for a prime account, right? And now that almost everyone on Earth has one, so good job, Amazon We're in kind of a place where you know, what is your goal for Prime Day? And I think that has a lot to do with how you view your performance or what you get out of it. I like this notion too that for some sectors, it's going be a great get for others. might not be so much, even if it once was. Curious what you're hearing about moving this up to June. I talked to some brands who had to do some different logistics and supply chain operations. They had to adjust their forecast a little bit based on demand looks like in June versus July. But for some companies, it's like a huge get. My colleague Alison Smith interviewed an outdoors brand, for example. that's like, yeah, this is still peak patio furniture time versus July. so they're thinking they're going to outperform Yeah, I mean, I think that's amazing. and that is very true. A lot of categories are very seasonally dependent in a way that I think Amazon probably doesn't think about it. They want to be the everything store. they want people in there reading reviews looking for things whether or not they purchase all year round. So I think fromom a brand perspective, If moving it up a month, puts you in a much better selling space, that's amazing. and that is true for some categories. I think for the rest of them It does land on some logistical problems. If we've gotten kind of used to getting your extra shipment in and so you're shipping it to Amazon storefronts or to Amazon DCs in June for sell through in July, then that's probably how you timed your boats, iss how you timed your inventory coming in, it's how you timed your forecasting models. And so moving it up and not really telling people when or where I think was a difficult hurdle for people operationally because that does mess up your supply chain. that does make it more difficult. And I think You know, Amazon sometimes misses those u operational things that need to be true for a brand, you can't necessarily pull a ship forward for weeks. You're not necessarily making it go faster. And you don't necessarily want to airship it I mean, that's got to get into your margin. So like do you want to hit Prime day now on these days? A, maybe it depends on your category and maybe not. There's also the other element of July is close to back to schoolool, which is close to PBDD, which is close to T twelve. So I think for some brands, there's also an element of like this does even it out a little more, like pulling it up into Q two is better in terms of their margins in terms of their sales patterns where like the prom up times aren't sittting on top of each other. But I will say a lot of people reacted not great in my client said for me Well, this is going to be a scramble to kind of get ready. Yeah, that's a very diplomatic way to describe what I heard from some brands about their response. I think too, it was that sort of waight of seeing the news break, Hey, it's going to move up to June. and then really waiting for that date to come out felt kind of difficult You mentioned back to school, I want to stay on that for a second because When you think about people's shopping patterns, I don't know how many parents are quite in back to school mode yet. they're still adjusting the summer camp. Yeah. So I'm not sure if you know you're gonna see that same like stocking up on sweaters, school supplies Maybe it's still the tablets and electronics. I can see that still maybe being strong Mbe And I think too Um O obviously not working at Amazon, but I think like over the years, seeing the way they've moved their promotional calendar around, they the last couple years have been real heavy in the backkend. And I think you could see that through sales were flattening. You weren't buying on Prime Day and PBDD and back to schoolool and T twelve. You were buying your one big thing like in whichever one of those you liked, and the rest Maybe you participated as a consumer and maybe you didn't And so I do sort of think if you move Prime Day into June, that does separate out like the time periods of when you would buy things, which could make back to school more impactful if they're going to try and make that a bigger deal And I do think it separates the categories a little bit. I do also think it as a brand, it would have been nice to have a slightly more firm heads up so you can plan because you have to do months of planning, right? to like get the product in and get your forecasting right and your pricing right. You need months to set it up correctly Right. We're going to get into that in a second, but I just want to see if you can define for our uninitiated listeners twenty twelve and PD. What do you mean by those events? Oh, yes, sorry, I hand people do acronyms. So Amazon has what they call high value events. It learning opportunity. It's all good.. I always get somewhere I'm like, what is she saying? So they have what they call HVEs, which are high value events and they have four of them a year. The first one is the March Big spring sale The second one is Prime Day Now in June, usually July. TBDD is prime big deal days. It was basically Pime day two. It's the one they put in October. And T twelve used to be Black Friday Cyber Monday, which is two days. And then was last year it was twelve days with a two week lead and then a two week lead out. So T twelve, they call Turkey twelve internally, and it's essentially like around Thanksgiving through the first week or two of December Right, right. Yes, redefining what Black Friday is and how long it goes on and what kind of sales event it is. Thank you for outlining that for us. just to make sure folks are riding along with us You mentioned forecasts and the decisions that brands have to make around pricing and inventory. and all that feeds into something that I really find fascinating, and that's the overall cost of participating in Prime Day. because I think You know, initially and maybe it felt this way in years past to brands where they knew there was going to be this rush of customers to Amazon, this big opportunity to get in front of new customers or win back loyal customers with a great deal, help them stock up, and it would be this really boost to business, but now I think the math has changed for some brands because they are anticipating that level of demand. So curious if you can break down the different buckets of spend that a brand has to do in order to participate in Prime Day Absolutely. I think in a vacuum, the first one that you need to know about is just the redemption on the discount. You're paying Amazon, whatever the discount is. So if you say it's twenty five percent off per unit you're going to get that back on an invoice that you're going to pay them for the redemption of the coupon, so to speak, for the discount. So that is like bare minimum of any promo, you're paying for the promo So that's what it has always been. weome customer. That's the sale. Yeah. Right. We would love to have you. so we're gonna pay ourselves back on some of the price and like that's, you know, standard promo The next year of it, which has been true or more recently is that to get your fair share of traffic You're going to have to pay for some of it. So you're going to want to increase your media spend in search and probably display around the time of the event. So a couple weeks before and a couple weeks after That wasn't a big deal seeven eight years ago, but now that everyone on Earth is able to do Prime Day because that wasn't always true. Like Celler Central couldn't do it for a long time And everyone can buy media, which also wasn't true. I used to be very specific what you could promote when very aggressive guardrails. Most of that's gone now. to the Victor Go the Soils, if you're willing to spend a ton of money, you can buy that traffic That does behoove a lot of people around Prime Day. So your spend went from just the redemptions into search to get Pople in, to search and display to get peopleople in. and the cost per click is through the roof. This is an incredibly expensive time to promote because everyone's doing it. So everyone is feeling really firm about the traffic. You have more traffic also. So bear in mind that the clicks will increase as well as the cost per click. So you do really need to like double slash triple your budget for the month of the promo So the week of the promo but then the weeks before and the weeks after are when you want to kind of get that traffic distribution So really the media costs of water increased quite a bit. in terms of where Amazon's coming from. And I think too, depending on the type of account you have, you may have to pay extra for extra inventory to be held. So seller Central is like this. You can't go over a certain amount of inventory. so you would need to buy pay sort of like the holding fee for that. And I think too in vendor Central You needed to buy more inventory. you needed to submit it to wish months ago to make sure that it was approved You have to have the floor price built in and you have to have a rubric for bringing that product back So you can also be dinged for being out of stock, being low in stock, not shipping on time when they order it any kind of operational snaffu that comes in. And I think that is often considered a hidden cost of Amazon, that that's something of that drives people crazy you look at it and you're like, I got it. I'm paying twenty five percent on the redemption and I'm gonna to put more media in. But then you're getting these three percent invoice stings back because you were short size or you didn't have all of the colors or you know you're the microphones that you were selling, you only had half the stock that you thought you had when Amazon decided to stock up for the sale. So there is also a an operational element that I think it gets quite expensive for brands that brands get a little frustrated by Yeah, that's a really, really great breakdown. I want to return to this idea of CPCs, you know, really skyrocketing and the effect that that has because I feel like here in twenty twenty six, we're already hearing that CPCs are through the roof So for this to be compounded with the extra demand and you rush to spend that brands are making for Prime D, it cannot be feeling affordable, I imagine I think you bring up a really good point that the unit economics of what you're selling need to support however you're promoting it and that totally is going to get tight. Retail media God bless it for my job, but retail media has really taken off in the last couple years. So budgets are tighter and they're more focused. And Amazon is very efficient. So people were already allocating a lot of dollars into Amazon that they maybe wouldn't have before. And that makes it more expensive for everyone else, right? If we're bidding and you're like, I'll just increase these bids, then I have to also. So we're moving from things that should be eight cents a click to like two dollars a click. That's an enormous increase. Totally. And that's before we get into a sale period. And that's before we increase clicks, right? So You're making a really good point that Budgets are getting squeezed in a maybe kind of unnatural way. And I think from From a brand's perspective, you really need to have that built into your unit economics. You really need to be aware of how much it's going to cost you to turn that unit and if it's worth it or not And it might be later. like, you know, the math might not make sense on one unit, but maybe the halo will later. Like there' Differe ways you can slice it, but I do think that you bring up a really good point that we're getting to a point where it may not be worth it or may not be profitable for you to participate Mhmhm. Yeah, you mentioned too this idea of having to ramp up your marketing a couple weeks before the sales event itself. I mean, I imagine that's because it's ramping up your visibility among shoppers s going to help you out in the algorithm as a result of that because, hey, this is a popular item that people are seeing and clicking on. So you know that's sort of the snowball effect of the Amazon algorithm, I suppose If I'm the brand who's selling that, you know, I have to take that into account in the forecasting and the inventory as well because some of those eyes are going to turn into conversions, right? Yeah Just kind of curious if you have any anecdotes or examples to share of like why that time before Prime Day is like kind of just as critical as the event itself Yeah. Amazon's algorithm, which is how they rank products and how they serve the product back is very similar to Google in a lot of ways. It's, are you what the person is looking for? Is your page good? Is it clear? Is it scrapable? Is it indexable? But a really big component of it is also Off site search So are people Googling your thing randomly without Amazon? Are they just interested in gloss right now. Are they interested in a microphone? Then where would they go? Are they reading reviews? Are they arere they coming into Amazon to do anything? That is critically, crucially important on Amazon. Outside traffic in is crucially important But what also matters an enormous amount is C they get there once they were on Amazon So increasing your spend is truthfully sort of a way to fake this out You want to have a really good organic rank, which is without any spend. Did the algorithm read your page, understand it and serve you back to the person? That's your organic rank. You can kind of game the system in buying ads for that, which moves people out of sort of the awareness set into the consideration set because they've seen you So that will bring more traffic to your page, even if they don't buy. Amazon very much values a person who came to your page, read a review and left They want people engaging with the pages even outside of shopping So if you can prime your page by having more search and usually more display before the event, so people are aware, they're looking for your brand specifically, they're looking for your things specifically, or they've just come to your page boosts the page's value because it's increased quality score. Someone came here, they got what they wanted, even if they didn't buy anything, they got the information they wanted, they saw the pictures, they watched a video, whatever it was.. So it really behooves you prior to the event to increase your spend. One more people are coming in, right? Like if everyone knows that like it's in June, People are probably adding to basket, they're probably looking through what they might want, and they're going to wait and see if your thing goes on sale If you get that, you land some of those people, those are very high value targets that Amazon values very much. So you do want to increase spend for the people. But you also want to increase it so the algorithm gets it so that when the event turns on and a million people who have never heard of your brand are like, hmm, mayaybe I do want tablets for my kids school. Maybe I should think about that now then they they're ready to be like, oh, hey, did you know that Melissa sells tablets? Like you se have you seen hers over here? So it does really behoove you to increase that spend so that you're not missing. the consideration set or the awareness set of people as they come in, which makes it cheaper when you're getting them to convert later, right your cost per click will come down, the more valuable your pages. I feel like that also speaks to why we've seen shop pages and product pages just get so much more multidimensional You know and you do have so many more videos, you do have so many more graphics, things that really encourage the viewer to spend time on the page and engage with it, right? You know, I think that's just become an art in and of itself. And if I was a brand participating in Prime Day, you know, I guess I'd make sure that stuff is really ready to go as soon as Q two turns comes around like really make sure it's in great shape one hundred percent. And that we touched on a little bit earlier, but the amount of time you need to prep for Prime Day is probably triple what people think it is 'ause you do want to get your pages right in January. so that they have been ranked for a long time. They're performative, they're doing well by the time you turn spend on in June or July And you're you're right L it Gone are the days where you could just sort of put your title up in a couple photos and call it a day. Like it's veryery important that you're giving good, useful, actionable information to the consumer in all the ways they view it. So in physical copy, in the titles, in the images, in the videos but also with the rise of all the AI shoppers as well. So like Roof needs to know what you're talking about, outsideat Claude needs to know what you're talking about. And I will say that The business I've been in for a long time is sort of talking to brands and getting them to make the pages more informative. and that seems a little unbranded. It seems a little You know, like you sell expensive skincare. You want the page to be sleek and like no copy and pretty and you're like, oh no, no, those robots need to be able to read exactly what's happening. You need this page to be use every character you can to explain it. So even more important with the rise of the various LLMs is that they need the context of everything that you're writing to be able to read it. And that also is very important to Pageerank Yeah, I really like this idea you bring up of the way that AI is changing the shopper journey, right? Because it just makes me think about how the motivations of what's bringing people to a page has changed, the way they get there has changed. You know, at the top of the conversation, you mentioned how Prime D dayay was started as a way to get people to sign up for Prime the motivation, that was where we started. And now it's like no you have to really make sure this is a product people want What are some of the other ways that you're seeing brands use AI to help solve for that That is a sticky wicket I think as like a data person. Well, some is working, some isn't. Right I think from a brand side The feeling that you can churn out a lot of content because content's hard. Content is hard to do. It takes forever. It's so many iterations There's a lot of tention. in the back.ually You mean, you know, you know best It takes forever And I You know, it's a process that I think a lot of brands would love to cut down on. It's also a process where partart of the sticking point is that brands love branded content and Sorry, brands, Consumers hate it. So there's always this tension between like, please stop telling me how beautiful the packaging is on this deodorant, I just want to know what the ingredients are. Like the only thing that I care about this deodorant is this thing that the brand considers kind of boring. So with AI, there has been a lot of like, great, we can churn out a million videos That is great you do need to control if they're good or not. So like sometimes there's AI slot, but sometimes there's just I love this beautiful video. We shot a thousand of them and the consumers are like I don't know what this is. likeike what am I looking at? So similar with when you're looking at copy, when you're looking at titles, I think that's ly I think that's making harder for brands right now that there's a lot of extra work going into churning out a lot of stuff you can't use. The flip side though is that you can use AI to scan your reviews really quickly. That is a huge, huge, huge, important part of synthesizing data. What did the customers tell you in customer service logs? What did they tell you on your ratings and reviews? What did they say on competitors' rating and reviews? And like what were the key components and takeaways? That helps a ton in solving for a customer journey I think similarly with things like promotions and price changes, you get a much better idea much faster of what the market price is for any kind of good. And I think that has been phenomenal for brands I think too with like ad creative, you can also do a lot with scanning ad creative AI. So I wouldn't necessarily use it to create it, but you can learn a lot about like what is performing well, what is lasting longer, what's a stopping point in of video? where are people pausing to get the most out of it. So I do think AI has done a lot for me. learning standpoint, from a data ingestion standpoint, from a like broad data set into actionable takeaway standpoint, that has been super helpful for brands Yes, I am with you on so much of this and feel like it's really pertinent to a big shopping event like this because you want to make sure you're putting your best foot forward, right? So if all you're putting out is slop or ads that people can see right through or information that doesn't feel pertinent to their discovery journey, you know you're not going to get them, You're not going to win them over St. If you want to work smarter, if you want to work more efficiently, There's a lot of things that AI can help you with. Even that idea you mentioned of using it to really understand the post purchase vibe and Experience R? Yeah. sccan your reviews, get that customer feedback and learn what you can do with that. What you were saying though also made me think of a survey that Gartner recently put out with that I literally put it in my favorites because I'm just gonna to like read this every morning and then navigate through the world with this lens But The headline is Gartner sururvey finds forty nine percent of US consumers say Gen AI has made content quality worse Fty nine percent of US consumers say GAI has made content quality worse So before we get really excited about how AI ads are maybe, oh, that's seeing higher conversion than, you know, this photo shoot I did in the Bahamas. What impression are you leaving with? and is it worth your brand trust to get that higher conversion on a single ad Yes, yes, very fair. And probably You know, I'll speak for things that I've seen live Some of it's the video. Some of it's the video in your ad, the person has an extra finger or it's sort of like a weird car in the background And that makes it a little untrustworthy. I almost think the sloppier slop videos perform better in ads. the like very cartoon, very obviously fake, very obviously just sort of like goofy because you get it. There's no uncanny valle, there's no like, u, what's happening? L I think it wass C too though. Yeah. Right, right. L this is I'm aware that like blood droplets don't speak to me. so like I like get what's happening. But I think it's copy. We're seeing a whole lot of product pages that have real weird claims on them and some very strange call out. Oh yeah, some very strange, you know, like My favorite example, this is from like two years ago. When Amazon was rolling out Rufus, they were they were updating brands producties pages for you, like as as a gift And I worked for an apparel brand and their dresses were made of silk and their review is commented at how if you sweat in them, like the sweatstains would show. And for some reason, the LLM read that as the dress was wet all the time and that it would like drip water. So the explanation was like, gorgeous dress, like dripping water, like stunning water filled dress. And you're like, o Yeah I don't think they help for Prime Day. Yeah, that might not get you where you want to go. thing that I do want to get into now that we've sort of broken down what goes into Prime Day is the decision a brandon makes on whether to participate or not and whether there's any sort of penalties or consequences there because The way some brands have been talking to me about it this year feels like, well, I have no choice. I gott to do Prime Day. Here we go again Why is it that brands feel like they have to participate in this That is a really great question. I do think The first half to part is that most brands have sold to retailers before. and it's super important to remember that Amazon is not a retailer and your fender manager is not a buyer If Nordstrom comes to you and says, we think you should do this event, that is like gun to your head. You're doing the event. And they they're telling you what they want on the event. You guys are talking about it together. It is a retailer driven situation. So I do think a lot of people have been trained that if if the person ats who they view as the retailer makes a suggestion that it's a nicely worded order which is not true at Amazon. This is really up to you. That said It would behoove you, if it makes sense to do at least two of the high value events becausecause all the traffic on Amazon is going to be there. E everybody is going to be on the website and that is not vendor manager driven but that is algorithm driven. So if you are not showing up because you're not participating on Prime Day or T twelve or whatever it might be, you are going to be penalized, but not a notot an emotional penalty. but just you missed all that traffic. So the people around you, if they participated and you didn't and you sell the same thing, they're going to get that boost to their page that you're not. So there is an element of You probably want to do at least two. You don't have to. there's no hard requirement But it's going to hurt you in the long run if you don't, do at least a couple of them because you're excluding yourself from the big important event. However, it matters a lot on what your goal would be for the event and what category you're in, not all categories should do it. I mean like luxury shouldn't do any of them. right? So there's like a layer of like Is this even for you? Should you even be there? And would it get you closer to a goal? So if you're not in a position I would say there's probably like broadly three goals for Prime Day One is that you have unhealthy inventory you need to get rid of. Either you have too much of it at your warehouse and you want to sell it down or Amazon has too much and they want you to sell it down. That is my least favorite but that is an option There's a version of you have products that are good, that should be performing well and aren't for some reason But they should. and not like the brand thinks they should, but like, you know, it does really well at Nordstram, but weirdly not well at Amazon. Like what I would call like medium products Those would benefit from the extra traffic, thoseose benefit from the eyeballs, those benefit from all the hullaboo that's happening. You sort of artificially inflate their value. That is my favorite way to do Prime Day And there's a third version, which is sort of like relationship management, We think we should, we're going to put like a hero product up because Amazon asked us to do that. and we think we'll get something back. And that is That's a tough one. You got to make sure that you're going to get something out of it after that. So if you're like Dyson, Dyson Air Rraps were like the thing on Prime Day for two, three years, right? six hundred dollars blow dryer In a vacuum I would never put a hero up on Prime Day in a vacuum because for most categories it makes no sense. You're selling them at a good margin anyway. You don't need to create demands. They're very popular. It'd be crazy to mark them down ure unless it's a gateway to something else Right? So like, if you got a Dyson Air wrap three years ago on discount You probably also then bought some of their hair products. You probably also bought attachments, you they're beautiful products. You probably also got sucked into the Dyson worldld and bought other ancillary things In that specific instance, you could put your hero up because Amazon wants you to because it will behve you later But I do think brands get stuck because your vendor manager will tell you to put your Hero product up and you feel like you have to. And the answer is you absolutely do not have to. And you need to be very clear on what your goal is because otherwise you're just setting margin on fire for your highest value good. That's not going to get a lot out of it You're not increasing the value of that page. It's already an incredibly popular page. So like What do you want to get framed against what Amazon wants to get and make sure that you can set it up in a way that you're both going to win Right. Yeah, well, that example of what happens with the discounted hero SU also makes me think about the way that this can be cannibalizing traffic from some of your other wholesale accounts, right You know, and some of the dance you have to do to make sure that, you know, your inventory at Y other big boxes or marketplaces is still in a sound shape and that you're getting the pricing you dynamics right between what you can and can't do. because you don't want to like just have your prime day sales coming at a cost of all your other accounts. For sure. Fsy That's a fair concern, right? Like if you don't have a mAP policy in place, so a minimum advertised pricing policy in place that denotes price matching or when you're allowed to go below X percent and on what days. If you don't have it kind of organized, you can immediately cause yourself some really big problems and you don't want to be You don't want to get caught in the Macy strap. You don't want to be in a place where you have to constantly mark things up to mark them down or increasingly mark things down because they were on sale. first at Walmart, then at Target, now at Amazon, then at CVS, back again at Walmart. If we start getting into that cycle, you're just chasing yourself down the drain and you do need to be very careful that you're cle of what promo periods are cleared for whom and when and that you have enforcement in place. You need to be able sure that you as the brand are able to oversee that management. It's not it's not an easy Right? Like its it's a little complicated. It does require headcounts. So you do also want to make sure that you're in a place where you're not gonna to hurt yourself by doing one of these events where it's going to hurt to your point your other accounts. Any other pros and cons or any other just dynamics that you feel like brands are considering this year as they enter Prime D, things they're looking out for, things they're doing differently You know I'll start with the pro because I think this one's important. which is that on Amazon in particular, if you perform well at a high value event like Prime Day You will reap crazy rewards later. provrovided it's a consumable product or a repeat purchaseed product or you have some halo to your products. The more you can elevate your page with traffic, the the higher and better you'll perform six months from now, a year from now. It really does feed the flywheel. It really does feed the algorithm. It really matters a lot to your future growth that you can get good traffic in. So that is a big pro I think the con side is that This event has sort of changed what it is over the years It was only one day before, it was only very specific categories. There were huge discounts. L it was like Christmas, right? Like it was a really big thing T twelve years ago I think now Amazon has shifted its promotional model into running promos roughly once a month So gone are the days where it's only on sale twice a year where it's a really big deal. you got to save up, you're going like plan for it in advance. I think the consumer' probably a little tired.'s somethingomething is always on sale. And it's always fifteen percent off, twenty five percent off, thirty percent off. Like where againg, getting to kind of Macy style shopping where things are constantly on promo and you get fatigued really quickly. It's not as exciting, it's not as interesting And from a brand perspective, That's expensive So like how many events are you going to do? How long are you going to run it? And if you were on sale two months ago You have to do your markdown on the lowest rolling price in the last six months, meaneing that if I was twenty percent off before, I need to be another twenty percent off now for the price to be approved for Prime Day. So you're really taking big bites out of your margin. And I think brands are doing some more calculations on unit economics and seeing that you know maybe the top line isn't driving the bottom line. Like maybe you are moving units, but you're not making money from it. It's not profitable So I do think that there's a layer of like, you gott to pull it back. Which events do you want to do? It's not going to be all of them And which ones m sense for your category? Like you were saying that the brands you spoke to, the actor category, they're probably not doing Mother's Day They' probably not to share Labor Day But like this prime day in their key moment is probably great for them where maybe March wasn't or maybe October won't be. And so I think it's I'm seeing a lot more brands be a lot more. careful about where they're putting their dollars when promotionally and really kind of minding what's happening in their pricing market Because Amazon can be so efficient and you can make so much money, and you can also very easily lose your shirt because you don't maybe keep track of all these like minute changes And things like, you know, your media spend is going to go into it, your redemption spend is going to go into it, your operational spend, if you misship anything, which you're probably going to, right? It's a crazy time of year, you're probably going to All those things really add up and I've seen a lot of brands come back and do PNL on just Amazon and be like, Wait a minute, we're not we're selling so many units, but we're not making a ton of money and that's That's tough as you scale. That's a tough way to go to market. So I'm seeing a lot more brands pay a lot closer attention to that, I think, this time around in weighing whether or not Prime Day is for them So many great points there and just a great reminder of why This should all be strategized in advance smartly, carefully, pivot when the winds pivot, pivot when the motivations pivot and you can Prime yourself for success. if I may veryy clever, love. If I may make a p their. Lightning round, Catherine, do you shop Prime D day I used to. I probablyrobably won't this one unless the face lotion I normally buy on Prime Day goes on sale. But I don't need an extra jar. Mine's currently full, so I don't I might not Do you want to drop that pd wreck for me or I'll send it you after. I'llnd it you after. Excellent, excellent, excellent. I love a good cream. You know I'm not a prime day member currently or I'm not I'm an Amazon prime account holder. ere you before and you changed We had been, yeah. When I married my husband, he had an account and we used it for a while, but we live half a mile from a Walmart and I have a proximity to a lot of the home essentials that we were using Amazon for. I will say we strategically take advantage when they offer me a free account if I do order something and you get the thirty days free I can't say I haven't taken advantage of that, but not currently enrolled. So unless something really wins me over in the next couple weeks here in the run up to Prime and the event itself Uh, you know, I'm just gonna keep shopping where I shop and buying what I buy and browseing Facebook markarketplace like I do. That's really more my speed these days. Facebook Marketplace is so good To your Walmart comment though, you are maybe the tenth person in the last two or three weeks to say that to me, that they're close to Walmart and they have the the Walmart like Pro plan or whatever where it ships from store. And my friends that are young moms They're like, yeah, diapers here in an hour. L I don' need to bother with subscribe and save on Amazon.. Yeah. I mean, I usually leave my house once a day anyway, so I'm a big pickup person. Those guys know me real well at this point. Yeah. And it's great because I can do it if I just need a couple things. I can set it in the morning, add to my card all day, and it's like I don't know, man. it's replaced Amazon for me. Hands down. I think that's so interesting. think the the dynamics of what people wanted changed. And I think a prime account You know, sorry Amazon, but my whole family is on my prime account. so there's like six of us. That's kind of you. Money' kind of you kindind of to me. I'm nice. Catherine McKee, thank you so much for coming and dropping knowledge for us today Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure less. I always love talking to you All right, happy prime everybody Prime Thank you for listening to this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, a show by Digitay Media. If you haven't already, please subscribe and head to Apple Podcast to leave us a review and a rating. If you want more from modern Retail, you can find us at modernreail. coO. You can find me, senior reporter Melissa Daniels on LinkedIn and Blue Sky And you can also subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter at the mododern Rake Tail profile. We'll see you next week