The latest entry of Teikametrics’ ongoing Agency Spotlight series focuses on our partner Retail Bloom. Below, we ask Retail Bloom’s Director Nicole Reich about the agency’s origins, what makes them exceptional in the marketplace, and how they use Teikametrics software to take their clients’ Amazon efforts to new heights!

Q: How did Retail Bloom get started?

Retail Bloom launched in 2015, as a division of our parent company, Aleva Stores, a multi-channel retailer based in Michigan that currently operates 13 ecommerce websites. After experiencing major success and growth of our own ecommerce marketplace presence on eBay and Amazon, we realized that we had a great opportunity to use what we’ve learned to help other brands grow as well.

Q: What services does your agency provide?

We are a third-party marketplace partner for retail brands all over the country. Ultimately, our goal is to help brands market their products and increase their sales across online ecommerce marketplaces, including Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.

Overall, Retail Bloom teams take a multifaceted approach to helping brands win on these third-party retail sites, including:

– Creating optimized product listings and product detail pages.

– Protecting brand presence by investigating counterfeiters, illegitimate sellers, and violators of MAP policies.

– Helping expand brands into new online marketplaces outside of Amazon, as well as new countries outside of the US.

– Managing marketing and advertising campaigns.

Because Retail Bloom is an online retailer at heart, we provide the most value when we work with brands who want to sell on Amazon through a trusted third-party seller. In a sense, we become customers to our clients by placing weekly replenishment orders, including receiving and fulfilling their products in our warehouses.

Q: What are some of the things that make Retail Bloom unique?

Retail Bloom’s background is unlike most in the agency world. We grew out of a business that started in 1955 and has been family-owned for three generations. Beginning as a retailer and still acting as one today, we mastered the Amazon marketplace by experimenting with our own brands and products first. Very few agencies can say that they started off in the same shoes as their clients.

On the technical side, we have completed the process for the Amazon Advertising Sponsored Product Ads and the Amazon Planning and Strategy accreditations, and expect to achieve the Amazon Programmatic accreditation by the end of December 2019. This would make us one of the very few agencies to be 100% accredited in all three areas – Sponsored Product Ads, Planning & Strategy, and Programmatic Advertising.

Q: Outside of Teikametrics for advertising, what are other big problems you help solve for sellers?

Beyond advertising, we help clients whose brand presence is threatened by counterfeit products, inconsistent pricing and/or unauthorized sellers. This always of major concern to brands operating on marketplaces like Amazon.

Additionally, we understand what little things matter when you are getting a product live on Amazon and keeping it successful. For clients that want to increase profitability on Amazon and other marketplaces, but don’t have the internal skill set or bandwidth to do so, we are there to help.

Q: What are the questions sellers should be asking themselves when it comes to growing their online business?

When it comes to growing their online businesses, sellers should ask themselves:

• Do we have a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy in place for our resellers?
• Do we have an ecommerce authorized seller agreement established?
• Are all pieces of our intellectual property (trademarks, patents, etc.) properly filed and protected?
• When it comes to ecommerce, where do we excel? What components of our business, such as fulfillment, creative services, coding, etc should we consider outsourcing?
• What channels will our business use outside of ecommerce marketplaces to build the brand? (i.e. brick and mortar, social media, direct website, etc.)
• How do we use these different channels to support one another?
• Do we have marketing and advertising funds available for ecommerce marketplaces?

Q: Thinking about driving success for online businesses, what is one of your proudest moments as an agency?

It’s almost impossible to pick just one. We are very proud of where we come from – starting as a team of three employees borrowing office space from our parent company Aleva Stores and only managing about 12 brand accounts. After four short years of continued month-over-month and year-over-year growth for our partners, we have grown large enough to move into our own newly renovated Retail Bloom building this year. We now have over 20 employees, and manage over 80 brands across several categories.

At the end of the day, we receive the most satisfaction in just using our expertise and what we all have learned to help other brands succeed in the marketplace. Their success is our success and vice versa!

For more information on working with Retail Bloom, visit their Teikametrics Partner Page.