Arjun Narayan, Founder & CEO of SalesDuo, Talks About the World of eCommerce On Amazon

Arjun Narayan, CEO and Founder of SalesDuo, knows that selling on ecommerce platforms such as Amazon can be tricky. In order for businesses to continue to grow, it takes more than uploading products and hoping customers find them through a search. In the world of ecommerce one must be constantly gaining the attention of consumers or they will be on to the next brand. 

SalesDuo gives you an Amazon Account Manager, Artificial Intelligence solution and an entire suite of Amazon programs, for best results on Amazon Vendor Central, Seller Central, Amazon Advertising, Shortage Claims and Chargebacks. Narayan understands how important it is for ecommerce businesses to have access to the right tools in order to have a thriving business.

Grit Daily was able to talk to Arjun Narayan, and learn more about what has made SalesDuo so successful in a market that is extremely competitive.

Grit Daily: Please tell us a little more about yourself and your company.

Arjun Narayan: I am the Founder and CEO of SalesDuo. 

At SalesDuo, we work with brands that have an eCommerce presence on Amazon and other eCommerce platforms as well as their own website to help them grow and manage their online presence. We provide our customers with a duo formula — An Artificial Intelligence system that manages all aspects of the Amazon and other eCommerce businesses for the brands, and an experienced Account Manager that manages the Artificial Intelligence system for the brands. Brands are able to grow their presence with a lean set up at their end.

Grit Daily: What was your thought process and inspiration behind the creation of SalesDuo?

Arjun Narayan: While I was working at Amazon, I noticed that Amazon obsessed over the consumers as the end customer. I felt there was ample opportunity by focusing on the brands that sell on Amazon and other eCommerce platforms. Today, the amount of investment — both money and people needed to grow online and to expand to other channels is extremely high —  so our thoughts were to help brands grow their online presence with a lean set up at their end, by leveraging Artificial Intelligence.

Grit Daily: There are nearly two million small and medium-sized businesses operating on Amazon today. How does SalesDuo help these businesses get started? 

Arjun Narayan: We normally work with brands that have spent some time growing their brand on Amazon and are at the point where extra help is needed to continue that growth and manage their Amazon eCommerce businesses. We then help them to get on to other channels and globally once they have established their initial product market fit.

Grit Dail: Can you tell us a little bit about the services that you provide and how this sets you apart from other platforms that offer similar services?

Arjun Narayan: We are a full service eCommerce company. We manage all aspects of the Amazon and eCommerce business starting with Cataloging — all creative and content aspects of it, Business Intelligence Dashboards and Analytics, Order Management, EDI, Account Management, Marketing and Advertising.

Our competition does not offer all the programs that we do. A brand would normally work with multiple vendors to get the entire suite of products, but with us they get them all under one roof. Also, no one leverages technology the way we do, which helps our customers keep things lean at their end and keep their costs under control.

Grit Daily: We see companies being completely transformed after turning to selling platforms such as Amazon and Walmart. Tell us about some of the most surprising examples of this that you’ve seen.

Arjun Narayan: There are several brands we have seen that were bearish (or not too bullish to be appropriate) on the prospects with eCommerce. We were blown away by what we saw in just the first few months on a few particular brands. One example is a brand called Planner Pad that sells planners. In just the very first quarter of their listing, they started making 6 figure numbers per month. That was pretty surprising to us. Also, we have been taken aback by some of the growth established brands have seen. One such brand would be TNG Beauty Products that was doing close to $10M annually before we started working with them. In the last 36 months they have grown 3 folds from there.

Grit Daily: What’s the biggest mistake ecommerce companies make when entering the Amazon selling space?

Arjun Narayan: There are several — which one is the biggest would depend on the brand and their current context:

1. They don’t account for all costs involved to grow and manage an eCommerce business.
2. Some of the small brands that are just starting up believe Amazon will do everything for them. All they have to do is just list the products and they will start flying off the digital shelves, this isn’t the case.
3. Another mistake we see is, brands will set  up large teams inhouse to manage and then realize the talent pool needed is a very diverse heterogeneous set of people. The person that can do advertising cannot do order management. And similarly the person who can do SEO cannot do the creative work. Someone that can do Account Management cannot do most of the other activities.

Grit Daily: As we are coming up to the end of the year, do you have any tips for sellers who are looking to start their businesses on selling platforms for the holiday season?
Arjun Narayan: If you are looking to start on eCommerce — you need to take that leap of faith —  eCommerce is here to stay. There will be instances like COVID that will give a huge spike and then there will be seasons that will cause dips but eCommerce is here to stay and you cannot ignore your online presence via your own website, Amazon and other eCommerce channels. As the global borders to trade diminish — businesses will soon be procuring inventory from one country, doing business from another and pretty much selling to all countries and all this can be facilitated only by eCommerce.