In the early 2000s, Amazon UK did not have a proper sports and outdoors category. There was nowhere to list much of the range — from cycling components to outdoor gear. So we built one — working directly with Amazon to create the structure for a market segment that did not exist on the platform yet.
That sounds like a footnote. It was actually the single most valuable commercial lesson of the next twenty years, and it shapes how we approach every channel today.
Being early is a structural advantage, not a lucky break
When you are first into a category, you accumulate things that later entrants cannot buy at any price: review history, sales rank, and the algorithmic trust that compounds every year. A listing that has been selling and gathering reviews since 2003 sits on a foundation that a competitor launching today simply cannot replicate, no matter how large their ad budget.
Most businesses think about Amazon as a place to advertise. We think about it as a place to build durable position. The advertising is how you accelerate; the position is what you actually own.
Platform relationships are commercial leverage
Negotiating directly with Amazon to create a category taught us something most sellers never learn: the platform is not a fixed set of rules you operate within. It is a commercial relationship you can influence — through volume, through reliability, through being the kind of supplier the platform wants to keep. That understanding is what later turned into £40M+ supplied through Vendor Central.
The businesses that treat Amazon as an immovable monolith leave enormous value on the table. The ones that treat it as a negotiation — on terms, on co-op, on chargebacks, on category structure — recover margin the others never see.
Why most Amazon strategies are a decade behind
The advice most businesses receive about Amazon is built on how the platform worked years ago: optimise your listing, run some Sponsored Products, watch your ACoS. That is table stakes now, not strategy. The commercial questions — Vendor versus Seller, how to recover deductions, how to manage channel conflict with your own DTC site, when to walk away from a PO that loses money — are where the real money is, and almost nobody is having those conversations with clients.
We have lived all of them, on our own capital, before advising anyone else on them. That is the difference between an agency that runs your ads and an operator that understands your business.
FOR YOUR BUSINESS?