Startup Q&A: Josh Owens, CEO, SupplyKick

RTIH: Tell us about SupplyKick

JO: SupplyKick is a marketing and inventory management solution for brands selling on Amazon that enables their products to reach their true potential.

The intricacies of the Amazon Marketplace are more complex than most brands are equipped to navigate. Faced with a vast, complex marketplace, many brands benefit from additional insights, guidance, and resources to achieve success on Amazon. 

By helping brands identify, manage, and implement strategic opportunities in the Amazon Marketplace, we lead them to realise long-term, sustained growth. SupplyKick partners with hundreds of category-leading brands, including Heartland Foods (Splenda), Blue Rhino, LogOX, and ciao! baby.

RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?

JO: SupplyKick was founded by Chris Palmer in 2013 with a set of Herman Miller chairs for sale on Amazon. By 2015, we were expanding rapidly by building stunning Amazon solutions for brands across consumer categories. I joined the company as CEO in 2016 after working as a professor at Butler University and Indiana University Bloomington.

Today, we’ve shifted our business model to exist as either a wholesale or agency partner, and we have helped brands sell nearly $100 million of products on Amazon. SupplyKick is proud to be a part of building the next great digital retailer. 

We’ve had one guiding principle along the way: work with and build exceptional brands on Amazon. As SupplyKick has grown, we’ve developed marketplace experts to help guide the way, from marketing and paid advertising to logistics and IP defence. The modern mall is full of opportunity, and we want to be the leaders in connecting great brands with their customers on Amazon.

RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?

JO: Largely positive – our partners love that we keep a pulse on the ever-changing world of Amazon. We provide thought leadership and deep analysis of platform trends, offering the expertise and foresight to keep brands ahead of the curve. Using information from our wide product portfolio and from across the Amazon Marketplace, we help them realise long-term success.

Here’s one tangible reaction: Before partnering with us, Johnson Hardware was represented by a variety of sellers on the Amazon platform who were not invested in their brand. By consolidating to a single-seller model, Johnson Hardware was able to increase year over year sales by 111% on Amazon while gaining greater transparency of their brand strategy. We love seeing success stories like this again and again from our partners.

RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?

JO: We struggled with differentiating ourselves early on because Amazon can be so confusing for brands, but our results and experience are what set us apart – particularly becoming a full-service solution for brands selling on Amazon. 

Growing a team quickly can also be hard, which is why we focused on values like full transparency as a core principle while building the business, making sure to always over-communicate and share obsessively so our entire team had buy-in to our mission and goals. 

“Omnichannel retail brands are sometimes so focused on building up their owned channels – their website, their social media or even their Google listings – they don’t recognise and properly strategise for Amazon as a separate platform that has a lot of potential to reach key target customers where they’re already shopping”

RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?

JO: According to Bloomreach, nearly half of online shoppers start their product searches on Amazon. If you’re not on Amazon, you’re missing out on consumers who are looking for products like yours. And too many brands think of Amazon as an individual sales channel, when in reality their presence (or non-presence) their drives offline sales.

I think omnichannel retail brands are sometimes so focused on building up their owned channels – their website, their social media or even their Google listings – they don’t recognise and properly strategise for Amazon as a separate platform that has a lot of potential to reach key target customers where they’re already shopping.

RTIH: What’s the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?

JO: An interesting question we were recently asked was: What does Nike ending its partnership with Amazon mean for my business? Our team always tells our prospects that you don’t have to sell to Amazon to be on Amazon. 

It’s important that brands don’t cut ties with Amazon entirely, even in light of recent news developments. Rather, a brand should take a look at its relationship with the platform and see what it can be doing to get a better control on pricing, customer experience, marketing, and fulfil quick-ship orders by engaging a third-party, full-service retail partner.

RTIH: What can we expect to see from SupplyKick over the next 12 months?

JO: Expect to see continued growth this year. We’ve already received ‘Best of Tech’ Mira Award for Scale-up of the Year and a spot on the Inc. 500 list of Fastest Growing Companies in America. 

Our sales are up over 50% YoY, and we now have more than 1,000 ASINs in our catalogue. For a startup, we’re continuing to see rapid growth at scale both in terms of talent and revenue, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.