Abdu Alhadithi: To some extent, brands are borrowing the trust from the creator
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: who speaks directly to the audience. And if you go, you put that creator through rounds of approval and sign-offs and there's guardrails, et cetera, you're probably compromising the authenticity that you're paying for.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm. But those targets, as I say, on TikTok are gonna be very different on Amazon, you know, as they are on your socials, you're not expecting a return on your socials because you can't generate that.
Abdu Alhadithi: Welcome to Still Loading, the podcast where people in marketing, e-commerce and retail tell the truth about what it actually takes. My guest today is one of the most genuinely non-eligible people. in the space of Amazon and e-commerce in the UK. She spent seven years inside Amazon itself, introduced entirely new categories to the UK marketplace, then left to found a baby products business in Costa Rica before coming back to build e-commerce nurse, an agency that's now been running for 13 years, helping brands grow on Amazon, TikTok shop and beyond. She's also the founder of Vendor Society, a membership platform for Amazon vendors. a board trustee for children's charity Toybox and the host of the Your Mind Your Business podcast. She describes herself as someone who speaks Amazon, but I'm about to find out what that actually means. Carina welcome to Still Loading.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Well, thank you. I'm really pleased to be joining you today and that was a really nice intro, so thank you. I realised
Abdu Alhadithi: No, thank you.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: actually I think I keep myself quite busy.
Abdu Alhadithi: I know one of my first questions is, Where do you find the time? But in your own words, Carina, who are you and what do you do?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: So I am Carina. I've been in the Amazon space, as you can tell from from my my early days for over twenty years now. So very much my background has been e-commerce right from the start of 2004 when Amazon was a startup and e-commerce was not the thing that it is today. So very much I call myself you know, a pretty I'm I'm highlighting my age, I would say, how long I've been in the industry, but that's really, really about me and I've seen the evolution of Amazon and just e-commerce in general. So really find all of that fascinating. I'm also not only just, you know, the knowledge of e-commerce is not just who I am. I run an agency, e commerce nurse, where we support brands selling on Amazon and TikTok shop. I also do consulting for brands that are trying to figure out their e-commerce strategy, as well as running in-person events and as you mentioned the podcast, and a proud mother and complete crazy fitness fanatic as well.
Abdu Alhadithi: what was your first click?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: My first click. Do you know what? It was when I started my career at Amazon. Because if somebody said to this dad today, do you want to go and work for Amazon? It is a very different question to asking someone that question in 2004. When I first started my career, I was an assistant buyer working for Wix building supplies. And that was very much pretty old school retailer. where you almost had to stay in a role for a certain number of years before you got promoted. It wasn't about what you could do, your capabilities. It was almost like you had to show that loyalty before you got to the next level. So being me, very impatient, I obviously got itchy feet after about a year to 18 months and was looking for something new. And it was like, don't worry, Carina, you've got this great buying career ahead of you at Wix. And then I I was looking And this job came up at Amazon. And at the time I didn't even know who Amazon was. And I was like, did some research and realized that there were books, books and media business at the time. But they're they've just gone into kitchen and home. And I thought, kitchen home, that sounds a bit weird. Online, internet, selling online. I didn't really understand it. But I thought, do you know what? I'm gonna go for it. It sounds like an opportunity. I'm gonna figure it out. So I went for the interview and just something and I turned up in this interview, not being me. completely in a suit, which my friend to this day laughs at, because I was in this like power suit, because that's how I thought you should dress for an interview, and got the job. and just felt when I got there that there was something that felt right. And when I went back and then I quit my job at Wix, of course, to go to Amazon, I was told by so many people, you're absolutely crazy. Why would you go to a place that thinks that you can sell kitchen and home products online? you've got such this great exactly
Abdu Alhadithi: We've got a very stable business here right now.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: you've got this great career at Wix, etc. And obviously I took that step and, you know, now the future speaks for why that was such a wise decision at such a long time ago, really.
Abdu Alhadithi: And rewind back to that interview, I'm really curious to know Amazon's interview process is quite renowned in terms of can have five to seven interviews on the same day. Was it the same back then or was it a little bit more relaxed?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was definitely not relaxed. I had my first stage interview, I think I met with three or four different people, and then I had a next stage interview as well with with a few people. You also have a test. I didn't do the test at the time, but I know that I've given the test to quite a few people, of which some people have walked out the room and not even gone there. So it is definitely
Abdu Alhadithi: Wow.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: a rigid, a rigid interview process.
Abdu Alhadithi: you joined Amazon, like you said, 2004, before people knew what Amazon was and what it's going to become. What was it like working for Amazon then? Did you have a feeling this was going to be something massive or were you just experimenting?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it's interesting. It grew rapidly, so you could already see, you know, you're just starting there and you're working for kitchen and home, and next minute they're about to launch home and garden. And then it was just crazy the the way they worked in terms of adding all these products, the selection, and now we're adding this other category and so forth. So you could see the expansion was pretty rapid. But I think in the UK you could just almost look at the US and see What's happening in the US, you could automatically know that that's coming and will play out in the UK. That was at the time, 2004, when all these e-commerce sites were appearing, and but a lot of them didn't succeed. And then you could see that Amazon just just took off then. And this was pre seller really kicking off. This was working on Amazon vendor where you were working with brands and bringing brands on board. So It was a it was a crazy time. I never sort of saw it as a start up time, but now when I refer to it, it was really a start up. They weren't making any money, you weren't making profit, you were just trying to create that initial awareness that Amazon, for example, sold kitchen and home products. And so yeah,
Abdu Alhadithi: It was the market share play, wasn't it?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it was it was a fun place to be for sure.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, remember as a vendor way back early days, the margin they used to take was peanuts compared to retailers. And it was seen like fast growth, very high margin retail to be in. And obviously that changed over the years. And speaking of newness, you introduced sports and fitness as a brand new category in Amazon. How did that opportunity come about? Was it something that you spotted and put your hand up or was it kind of thrown at you?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it was really interesting because I actually after eighteen months I left Amazon because I was headhunted by Tesco to help start their marketplace.
Abdu Alhadithi: Nice.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Marketplace before, not the current one.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: and so I took some time out but realised that was a mistake. Tesco didn't run how Amazon did. Amazon was very much supporting if you've got an idea, bring it to the table, no matter what level you're at. You can kind of be opinionated and Just say what you what you thought, and that's the way I'd sort
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: of started my career. So I was like that. So it didn't necessarily work. My style of working didn't necessarily fit in the Tesco box. So I would then went back to Amazon, sort of tail between my legs, can I come back? And I was offered a couple of roles. It was like, yeah, you can come back to consumer electronics, or we've got this new area, but you can't we can't talk about it unless you sign an NDA. So I remember signing an NDA in the interview and then they said we're about to launch softlines. Sports and fitness is going to be no watches is going to be the first area, then sports and fitness, you're going to be the first member of the soft lines team. Are you in it or not? So then I had a choice of jobs that I could go back to and I went for soft lines. And so yeah, went and launched initially a little soft launch of watches, and then the big launch was sports and sports and fitness.
Abdu Alhadithi: And what was it like? What did that teach you about how Amazon thinks, you know, building a whole new category from scratch?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, it was it was interesting. What it taught me is there's there's no perfection here. Like Amazon will launch something and you'll probably anyone listening that's used to working with Amazon, they'll be smiling because Amazon will launch something when it's not necessarily fully ready and it's broken and things aren't working and they'd call put a stamp on it and say it's in beta. Right. That's typically what would happen and that's what happened where we're still learning. so it was almost like Do get a certain amount that you can do and then test and learn and let then the customer help you decide what's working. What are the products that the customer wants more? What are the product categories that we want more of? Because when I launched, I didn't know what product categories were going to sell the most. I think I had a bit of tennis wrap. I I looked in the Argos catalogue and thought, well, what's Argos selling? Let's get all the brands that Argos are selling. Let's get and and I looked at all the retailers and I went after all those brands. The key thing there at the start was it was a sales role. It wasn't a buyer's role, and it was a sales role because the brands didn't want to work with Amazon because they were like, why
Abdu Alhadithi: Interesting.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: is Amazon sp selling sports and fitness? So I had to then explain to them why it's great to be there at the start. And a lot of brands didn't want to, because they didn't want to upset their relationship with Argos. A lot of them, you know, had really well connected relationships with certain retailers that they just went, yeah, but Amazon just sells books or Amazon undercuts everyone. Why should we want to work with you? So at the start it was quite a challenge. Not not anything today where everyone wants to work with Amazon. It was trying to literally get them to say yes. And at that time when they would say yes and you get that paper it was a paper contract in your hand. was one of those great experience and I was trying to before launch I was ramping up all these contracts, getting all these brands up on the website and yeah, it was kind of a crazy, crazy time.
Abdu Alhadithi: It's interesting. You mentioned the piece about pricing. I remember working at Philips the time when digital shelf became a thing and all these organizations started measuring pricing on an ongoing basis. And there was this conviction. Everyone was fully convinced that Amazon was leading on price and always the first to discount. We realized actually there was a lot of the other retailers that were leading on price and Amazon would follow, except that because Amazon was solely online, it was the most obvious to find out and the most discoverable. How did Amazon build that reputation and why hasn't it faded
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah. Yeah. I I mean it's a good question. It's like it's stuck, but it has stuck because originally it was sell it cheap. Like we
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: we didn't follow the market. We were just told to sell, okay, they're selling it for X, we sell it a couple of pounds cheaper. Like they w as long as we make a couple of pound profit on a on a on a product that's about a hundred pounds worth, they didn't care. They w they were quite happy to make almost a loss or break even on those products. So I think because of that, it's almost haunted them all this time because then people ex it you know, assume that. But I think as you say, because Amazon is Amazon, Amazon is huge and it becomes it's that showroom, it's that reference point that people go to
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: to understand price reviews, etc. It it puts them in the firing line a lot more than any other brands. They can't necessarily hide from it, but definitely now they're not they're not leading on price. they're now obviously things have changed over time and margin is something that's important for them from a profitability perspective. So but yeah, that that bit still lingers a bit in terms of people assuming that Amazon is the cheapest when it isn't.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, it was certainly one of the fastest growing and there was a stat, this must have been around 2015, 2016, where 55 % of e-commerce shoppers started their journey on Amazon, but only one in three bought on Amazon. The other two would
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: buy elsewhere. So it was almost like the first port of call for anyone to go shop around, compare prices and reviews, and then decide I want this product and then probably go and buy it elsewhere. I remember a time where we were selling electric toothbrushes on Amazon. Whenever we ran lightning deals, we'd have a spike on Amazon. But the following week after the lightning deals, the sales at John Lewis would spike as well, merely because
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: John Lewis has an amazing warranty on electronics. And a lot of people trusted John Lewis a lot more than They did Amazon. So even though we saw a spike on Amazon, we saw that spike within John Lewis. And we realized actually within John Lewis, we probably don't need to discount or run promotions as often as we thought we would. We can do stuff on Amazon, protect brand on John Lewis and get the full margin because of the value add. And that brings me to a question I've always had and I always ask and challenge people on this. Is Amazon purely a sales channel? Or is there a marketing channel deep down within that?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: There's definitely I mean it's a transactional website, so there's the element where people are going on the the website to search with purchase intent. But not all, as you mentioned before, and I mentioned earlier about it being a showroom, it is a place that people refer to. So you're in a store, you see a couple of products, I mean I automatically will go and check them out and look at the reviews. And then am I then and then I might up probably look at price, but also I'm about to grab it off the shelf. So do I want to then wait for it to be delivered? Yeah, there is a convenience, next day delivery, etc. But what for? For an extra for a pound, you know, depending on the price, but I think, you know, so there is that part now where it becomes an i an important marketing tool to the point where we've had conversations with brands and said where brands go, I don't want to sell on Amazon. And it's like, well, one, you're already on Amazon. Because you're not selling you see your brand representation
Abdu Alhadithi: whether you like it or not, yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: is not looking good because you've got other sellers selling your product because they know to take advantage of that because you're not on it. But also people are gonna go and search for your product no matter what. And and that's where the marketing piece of brand representation comes on.
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: is that it's so important not to neglect the fact if you don't want to sell on the platform, fine. But customers are going to find your product and they will discover it. So you then make that decision how you want to be represented.
Abdu Alhadithi: selling into Amazon, I remember the two most difficult stakeholders were the finance directors slash CFOs because kind of throwing a lot of marketing money at it in the first year, questions around margin, et cetera, but also brand teams. And the biggest argument I used to hear from brand teams was you cannot build a brand on Amazon. Amazon destroys brands. You have to build the brand elsewhere. Where do you stand on that statement?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, I think I mean I have this conversation a lot with with brands, as in brands that are about to launch. And it also depends on the type of product that you're selling, if it's an innovative product or anything, because you can't really sell innovation because people aren't looking for innovation because they don't even know it necessarily exists. But Amazon is not great. It's purely transactional. so it's not great in terms of The brand building that you could build in your on socials in terms of community and you have a lot more control in around video content, etc. Whereas Amazon it is very much about there's little space that you can play with to really build a brand to life. But at the same time, there are mechanics, you've got your brand store, you've got different your brand story. There are things that you can do in terms of cross-selling to start bringing a brand
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, precisely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: to life. And I had that conversation with a recent client I'm working with, as in they have very much focused on Amazon at a product level, but now they're realizing they need to build a brand. So then it's about, okay, then you've got to stop looking at Amazon at product level. You've got to be how do you start creating families? How do you start using those product pages like your A plus pages to start highlighting wider ranges? Comparison charts aren't even being used. Of secondary images aren't even bringing the family of products together. It just very it's very separate. So it can you can build a brand to some degree, but you've got to build it with additional socials and other activ it's not the s you can't do it alone, effectively.
Abdu Alhadithi: Working on Amazon over the last 13 or so years and then in Amazon before that, what do see brands still get wrong other than the way they utilize product pages?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, brands still well, the biggest thing that brands get get wrong is the set it up and leave it is definitely one we see a lot. It's like, well we've we've done our pages recently, they're okay. And then you look at them and you think, Whoa, they're not okay. They they just haven't evolved. So but that's
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: because there's also an argument in terms of whether or not the economies of scale make sense to constantly update the products. The other biggest thing that we see now of brands doing is just too much selection on Amazon. And that is because that's what Amazon initially wanted. But
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: now it's about you need to be intentional with the products that you're selling on Amazon because and focus on it's always the 80-20 rule. Because if you're sitting there and you're trying to make everything look fantastic on every single listing and not all those lines, by the time you finished all the listings, everything's changed again and you have to do the repeat. So that's where, you know, the part of no setting it up and leaving it, but also just being really focused on your range. Because if you've got a huge range, you're never going to be able to evolve. So those are the the the the key pieces that I would say a lot of brands don't do. And also another piece is getting very focused on the ads part on the ROAS. And really
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: being very focused on one target because that target itself doesn't tell you everything. It doesn't tell you about any potential halo. It's not telling it's not looking at it as a percentage of overall sales. You're not understanding, you're not breaking it are you breaking that down with new customer acquisition, branded and search and everything. So I think those are a few things that brands I could I could come up with a list of things really, but
Abdu Alhadithi: 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: those are the few a few things that we often find issues.
Abdu Alhadithi: And I love the point you mentioned about ROAS and I think brands get that wrong, not just on Amazon, but in the, even within DTC. And my take on ROAS is probably if it was up to me and the industry said to me, give us one metric we can completely ban and we will ban it forever. I'd probably say ROAS because
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: you're ultimately leaving money on the table. All
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: ROAS really tells me is you've gone to the bottom of the funnel, shared ads
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: to people who probably would have bought without the ad and would have bought organically. And now you're celebrating a very healthy marketing ROAS but what you're not doing is building a brand and bringing incremental customers. So you are long-term leaving money on the table. If someone said to me, blended ROAS across everything
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: and within ads, this is the contribution to revenue. you go, okay, so the organic channels are burning a lot of calories. They're doing a lot. That tells a bit of a bigger picture. one thing I find interesting about Amazon is it's always evolved. So Amazon started a lot of mini industries within the realms of e-commerce. So Amazon Prime came about And then about a year or two later, they had this statistic where the average LTV went up from 300 pounds a year to about a thousand just through prime membership and just giving people that value out of free shipping. That's when free delivery started becoming a thing. And then DTC brands started following suit So Amazon has always put the industry under pressure. the other thing it started doing was subscriptions. And then the industry realized actually this is really good. Let's try and implement it within Shopify, within Salesforce and all these other platforms. And it feels like Amazon has led the way when it comes to, how we commerce operates. And it feels now they're doing a similar thing within Amazon advertising. So we've got the AI shift. within Amazon advertising and building that sort of ads agent that can build, entire campaign structures and automates targeting. Is that a fair characterization of where we are within Amazon ads?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I believe so. I mean I don't go too much into the mechanics 'cause of my team managing the ads piece, but I think there's one important thing to pull out there is there are AIE is gonna make the operating execution piece more and more automated, but
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it makes that strategist role and the why you're doing what you're doing even more important. So there becomes, you know, it's fair enough, you you still need a driver And you need to make sure it's going in the right direction and the why. There is the creative piece, and that's really going to set people apart because there's this whole other conversation on AI and creative in terms of how do you stand out when everyone looks the same. But I would say the the key part here is who's the driver and who's actually understanding what it is the brand wants to do and the direction of the brand, the brand's goals, all of that. is something that needs to be fine tuned because there's no one case fits all when it comes to what it what a brand is looking to achieve, their nuances,
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: etc.
Abdu Alhadithi: I've heard a lot of brands talk about in housing, Amazon management. And I think five years ago, no one would have dared have that conversation in any business. Now with that change, lot of businesses feel that managing Amazon becomes a bit simpler. What would you say to brands that are thinking we can now? in-house it because it's automating some of the most complicated parts to it and probably, are they over simplifying the world of Amazon ads management?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Think there's a key part there where you've got to you've got to ki it's it's constantly evolving. So if you're gonna bring anything,
Abdu Alhadithi: Mm-mm-mm.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: even if you bring ads management or any Amazon piece in-house, is your team in a place that they are gonna continue evolving with the platform? That's the ultimate part because they need to bring their knowledge, their experience, con it's they need to be constantly learning, and that's what we we we find. So That's why a lot of businesses will work with agencies because they're they're they're getting their insights from so many different sources. So I think ultimately that's the part. But I also think the Amazon ads part it needs to be looked at as part of the overarching Amazon strategy, which then needs to look at the overarching e-commerce strategy and
Abdu Alhadithi: interesting.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: then the overall commerce strategy and the fact that they can no longer run in isolation. I think People bringing things back in-house in a way where they've had ads running completely separate to even their Amazon account, it's a positive in the sense if it's going to be aligned with everything else, but it can't run in isolation. And that's that's the piece there that I would say you can bring it if you're looking to bring it in-house, yeah, it might be easier to do, but you just gotta make sure you've got that knowledge and know-how. And the ability to really understand strategy and all the different connecting pieces to how that's gonna work with your Amazon, et cetera, online.
Abdu Alhadithi: And how does it change the agency structure in terms of like what agencies will start charging clients for and how, does that mean for ads management
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: So I think, you know, if even if you look there's different types of agencies out there. There's some agencies that outsource a lot at low cost, very much focus on that volume and that output, where probably they've been using they're probably AI almost becomes an automatic move for them in whereas there's some other agencies and some businesses that are more strategy first, they do the execution. But the strategy part becomes very important and alongside the creative that's all about, you know, if you start touching AI for certain brands and it makes the brand okay, that could be detrimental to the brand as well. So
Abdu Alhadithi: Correct.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think it really there's there's probably a part where you can't necessarily bundle all brands together. I think it really depends on An element of if they're a premium brand, if they're a brand that are are in other other retailers, etc. and looking at it from there. But the the challenge that you then have, and I even just using AI is that brands then think, okay, well, you're using AI more, there must be a cost saving. I'm
Abdu Alhadithi: Exactly.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: still trying to figure out what the cost saving is because I'm actually, you know, we use AI, we have a lot of humans, we use AI for a lot of different things. We're not necessarily seeing a cost saving. What we're seeing is greater insights and better output and smarter decisions being made. But it's almost like AI isn't necessarily cutting back on the work. It's ramping everything up and it's being used to complement as a w as opposed to taking things away.
Abdu Alhadithi: It's a really good point you mentioned there because a lot of people seem to misunderstand what the best use of AI is. Can you get AI to do some of the operational work? Yes, you can by all means, and you can probably get it to do some of more intelligent work. Should you trust it to go out and do that alone? Probably not. And when people realize that actually what you then use AI to do is give it as much insight as possible or as much information as possible. and it will help you make really good decisions very quickly, but it needs the background, it needs the context.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: probably leads to the next question, which is, if everything was fully AI automated within Amazon and ads underperformed, whose fault is that? How can you determine whether it's the campaign structure or... or the creative when you can only manage one or two dimensions of the total ads architecture.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, and I think that's where you've got to be careful because if it's fully fully automated, I mean you're putting your your trust in all in that completely. So if it isn't isn't working and there's no override, then it's whoever the tool is then with. But yeah, I think it's hard to answer that one really in terms of 'cause I think everything is so case by case as well.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. And it's probably one where we're getting the few cases of that scenario happening before the
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: industry really realizes. And then whether Amazon backtracks and opens up a little bit. you touched on using AI to build creative for Amazon. You're also working on TikTok Shop, Do you feel there's a bit of a contradiction in that sort of direction of flow where you've got AI enhancing image creation and AI is trying to get more and more perfect at creating images. Whereas in the realms of social media, it's about being natural, authentic, potentially rough around the edges. Is there a contradiction there?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: In a way, but I wouldn't even go fully A I wouldn't be pushing AI for all your image content on Amazon, in all honesty, because I think I mean we work with premium brands where the creative piece is extremely important. So they don't want AI imagery to look the same. I think if you a lot then comes down to budget. But I think there is going to be more. My daughter, she's 14. If I show her an image, I don't even think it's AI. And she's like, I'm not touching that, it's AI. So you've also
Abdu Alhadithi: Wow.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: got this new generation that have been brought into AI generated imagery and that, and they're tired of it already. So I'd be really interested to see how that's going to evolve from a point I see it on socials. There's like, for example, in the personal training space, The format of the flyers that they post looks the same for everyone. So
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: where's the point of differentiation? So premium brands will see that. So I think that that's the part with the creative that comes even more important is how do you differentiate yourself from that AI? That's one part. The it can help in some ways, but you've you know, in terms of the the creative and standing out from the competition. When it comes to social and TikTok, yeah, at the end of the day, they value authenticity. That's why TikTok's working. It wants to see somebody that looks like their neighbour or their friend telling them how good the product was. They like it and they think, do you know what? I think I'm gonna try that because I trust you. So that then becomes a trust thing. If and and this is the biggest challenge at the moment with AI coming in, is that it's the trust element as well.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: And when people start seeing things that look like it's generated by AI, can I trust it? So with TikTok and that authenticity, it's going to become more more and more important because it's a genuine person that is talking about the product that they've have been following for some time and they feel that they can trust them and they go ahead and make that purchase.
Abdu Alhadithi: So a perfect type curve, like a bell curve, so to speak, you've got
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: people take up AI image creation, and then very quickly, there'll be fatigue, and then it's no longer going to be as big a thing. That's
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think so. See, yeah. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: quite interesting. And you touched on the success of TikTok Shop. What's your read on where TikTok Shop actually is at the moment Is it a real growth channel for brands? Or is it sort of more noise?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think it's it's the first time I've seen anybody come into the industry that's giving Amazon a run for their money, I'll be honest with you. We went into TikTok shop two and a half years ago. I built a whole new department in the agency and everyone was like, Why you you know, are you sure? You sure you're gonna you know, you're back in? And I said yes, because it is the sa I saw the same signs that I saw at Amazon in two thousand and four when I joined Amazon. I was like, I can see it. I could see the same sales trajectory. The first year was a bit like the Wild, Wild West, but in the last year, we're in 2026, there's been a real shift in TikTok shop here in the UK. I know US is a bit more advanced, where TikTok are now focusing on the big established brands. And so to do that, to make that attractive, and I saw it the same with Amazon, is you've got to change your platform as well. You've got to make your platform be more attractive why the brands want to be on it. And then more and more brands that come on it, then they can say, my competitors on it, I'm coming on it. For example, we just saw an announcement recently, and we know in the beauty space, Sephora and Ulta are on there. We also can see that boots are have just launched on there, so you can
Abdu Alhadithi: in the last week,
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: start seeing all these retailers and all these brands, so you can see that real shift. Is it a growth channel? Yes. Is it a growth channel in isolation? No, not necessarily. It's an You know, it's social commerce, it's an awareness tool. So there is a halo effect that we're seeing on Amazon, we're seeing elsewhere. But again, it's case by case. If you've got high retail price point, chances are there's going to be a higher halo because people are going to want to purchase it on a place that they feel that they've got a better warranty or a place that they trust. But it might be a lower price point, they might be comfortable purchasing that within TikTok shop. providing there's free shipping because if you're a prime eligible customer and you have to pay shipping on TikTok shop, it's a deterrent. So you're naturally gonna see, you're not gonna see the highest return like you see on Amazon on a platform like TikTok because it's also a social awareness tool. But
Abdu Alhadithi: Correct.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: we're definitely seeing huge growth come from TikTok.
Abdu Alhadithi: It's a really interesting dynamic because we were saying earlier, Amazon created its own little ecosystem and sucked people into their environment through Prime and all of that.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: TikTok shop have almost created their own niche for themselves where products listed on TikTok shop won't really necessarily appear on search. So price competition might not be highlighted. So kind of protecting themselves from the reputational damage Amazon had to endure. And Amazon... always prided itself of the fact and it's fact that, you know, your customer acquisition costs on DTC are going and targeting people based on behaviors and based on characteristics, right?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: just because someone fits your profile of an ideal customer doesn't necessarily mean they're in the market for a product like yours. Whereas on Amazon, you can know that because they're on Amazon, they're searching, they're in the category, and you kind of just need to be visible to them. So Amazon shortens that path. you know, from awareness to acquisition. TikTok has gone and thrown that out the window completely and said, we're going to shorten it even further. You're going to see a really cool video and build an immediate emotional connection. And what we're going to do is thrive off of those impulse purchases in the moment.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: I love this. I want to get it. And that fear of, fear of loss. Is
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: and what they've created is a new customer journey. it's the discovery led customer journey of it's TikTok is a demand generation tool, whereas Amazon there's there's a cap on what people are searching for. So that's it's just a search it's it's search focused, but TikTok we're just finding it's it's creating, it's creating demand. Amazon's capturing that.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: But that's the part with this discovery led customer journey that's really becoming it's just it's it's changing the way people shop.
Abdu Alhadithi: Now, how can brands evidence the demand that's created through what they're doing on TikTok Shop?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I mean it it's it's a hard one because you're trying it depends because you you you've got two two goals really when you're on TikTok shop. You've got sales, but you've also got awareness. So, you know, you you and also the sales might not necessarily come from Amazon. They could come sorry, from TikTok shop, they could come from Amazon. So that kind of part of the halo and it's really hard to to measure. So whoever ends up figuring that one out is gonna be A very wealthy individual. I know loads of people trying to figure out a software to to to understand that attribution. But so that's the the one piece. So, you know, you've just got to be very clear on what your your KPIs are and what you're measuring because I think this is where you've got to be very clear. If you go on TikTok shop, you've got to be very clear on why you're doing it and what you're looking to achieve. If you're going on TikTok shop because you think you're going to get the same level of sales and profitability on Amazon, then you're already making that mistake. If you're going onto TikTok shop because you know that you want to generate a certain amount of sales, a certain amount of awareness, but then you know that that's going to come because you've got the awareness piece in there, your return is going to be lower and you know that it's going to benefit other channels. That's a different story. So I think just being very clear in terms of why you're going on the platform and what you're looking to achieve. we work with brands. and and help them even figure out their their PL at the start. So they're very clear on what that looks like. And many brands will will break even or make a loss for a period of time. As long as you know that, that's okay. It's when you go onto the platform and assume that you're going to make profit from day one and then you pull the plug, not realizing the impact that you've just had on other other channels from the awareness that you've created.
Abdu Alhadithi: And I really want to talk to you about the P &L piece. But before we move into that, are there businesses who shouldn't be on TikTok Shop? I mean, we've spoken about retailers that are on TikTok Shop now. And, you know, my view is it's a very difficult channel to be profitable on when you're a retailer, you know, you're buying at trade price. your margin is fairly limited as it is. And then you're paying the commissions to TikTok Shop. Then on top of that, you know, just because your name is boots or target doesn't necessarily mean people buy from you, you still need to invest in that creator economy. Would it be very difficult for retail to be profitable? And if so, if, if, they're not profitable, why are they there in the first place?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think that's when retailers will focus more on own brand as well, because the at the end of the day the biggest lever on TikTok shop is affiliates. So you've got to be having samples
Abdu Alhadithi: Correct.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: to be sent out. So is the retailer funding that or is the brand funding that? So again it's gonna
Abdu Alhadithi: precisely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: be okay, you can focus on own brand, because you've got more control over the samples and all of that. But I think it's the same as, you know, when you're when you're a store, you're asking that brand for a certain marketing budget, because you want to push a certain gondola end or something like that. It's almost
Abdu Alhadithi: precisely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: like what brand what funding can you what samples can you give us? What funding can you give us to push that on to push it on TikTok shop?
Abdu Alhadithi: And when it comes to the creator economy, so outside of TikTok, you know, lot of a lot of creators would work on a sort of commission model. So they'd
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: go promote with a unique code and link. Now for that to work and for it to be, you know, make a business for a creator, the brands they work with, they'll have to be quite selective. They'll want a brand that's already got some awareness because you just need to scream and shout about the brand, you're to generate some sales or the brand has a high price point where the five 10 % commission is worth quite a bit. When it comes to TikTok shop, the way that it's increasingly reliant on that creator economy, is that gonna be a barrier for entry for startup businesses?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: No, we've seen new brands just evolve on the platform. So if you've got a great product and it goes into the hands of an affiliate and that affiliate creates great content, that brand can boom really quick. Because it's the it's that awareness there that they can have. You know, we've seen it with some brands that you think, you're a well known brand, you should have kicked off a lot sooner, and they don't necessarily. So yeah, I think it's getting it in the fine getting it in the right hands of the affiliates and the affiliates really believing in those products. And then their content really taking off. The hardest thing is you can't predict that. You can't predict what affiliate you can go after certain affili affiliates knowing the criteria, the GMV that they create, what sort of other content they've created for other for other brands. But we've seen it where we've gone, okay, this we're we're we're taking a we're gonna test this creator. They're not driving a huge amount of GMV. But we're gonna test them. And then all of a sudden they become the best creator for that brand. There's just something. And you look at the video and you're like, I can't even understand. And neither can the creator. And the creator tries to redo their content, almost thinking it will happen again. And it doesn't. So it's quite fascinating, which is why the creator piece on TikTok has to be volume based. Because you just
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: don't know. If you're selecting go, I'm only picking these 10 people. It's not gonna work like that. It's it's you know, it's about sending out a large volume of samples and seeing who comes
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: back. Then you nurture those ones and you retain them, but at first it's like you don't really know. it's hard to say. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: And it speaks volumes about authenticity. you know, when you can't explain why that specific video drove so much revenue, it's probably the connection that the influencer has with their audience, the way he or she
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yep. Yep.
Abdu Alhadithi: speaks, et cetera, et cetera. And that's where I feel brands need to be a little bit less protected because you're in a platform
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: that requires a lot of authenticity. To some extent, brands are borrowing the trust from the creator
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: who speaks directly to the audience. And if you go, you put that creator through rounds of approval and sign-offs and there's guardrails, et cetera, you're probably compromising the authenticity that you're paying for.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: So there needs to be a bit of a balance and rethinking how, a brand, we exist and how we work I really want to double click into the P &L piece because what a lot of businesses I see doing is create separate P &Ls for every channel, one for TikTok Shop, one for Amazon, one for DTC, and then one for every single retailer, et cetera, et cetera. in a world where connected commerce is such a big thing, but you can't fully connect the data behind all of those commerce channels. It is connected commerce that everyone's talking about simply amalgamating all of those P &Ls into one and saying you've got a total business, but you have to be where the customers are, therefore all of those different channels, but not all of those channels will drive the same level of profit. Some might just about break even. We kind of need to be there in the first place. Do you feel that that could unlock a lot of opportunity for brands where they don't spend too much time deliberating on why is TikTok shop just about breaking even? Why is Amazon margin a bit lower this year than last year, but actually enjoying the total growth that having all those channels being present and active drives and unlocks for the brand?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, definitely. You have to look at a blended. I you you still gotta have targets for each platform. Yeah,
Abdu Alhadithi: Of course.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: you still gotta have be very clear on that. But you need to make sure that you're blending it all together and looking at what that overall return is that you're you're and and is that hitting where you need it to be. Then you can look at each separate one to know is that hitting certain targets that we need at an individual level. But those targets, as I say, on TikTok are gonna be very different on Amazon, you know, as they are on your socials, you're not expecting a return on your socials because you can't generate that. So with TikTok, it think of it almost as 50-50 social commerce. So that's where you've just got to make sure you've got clear, relevant targets for each platform. And then we always say blend in, blending it together. And there is no great software out there that, as I mentioned, that does that.
Abdu Alhadithi: 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it would be fantastic if it does. There's ways we look at trying to understand that by looking at if you've just launched on TikTok, have you seen an increase in your branded searches? What does that increase look like when we do certain activity? And trying to understand that. So you but it's all going to be assumption based anyway. There's no
Abdu Alhadithi: Exactly.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: complete accuracy. But you should definitely where e-commerce is today, you should definitely not be looking at anything in isolation.
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely. And I think remove shop from TikTok, you're still going to have to advertise there. You're still going to have to partner with those creators. You'll still
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, exactly.
Abdu Alhadithi: have to invest that money in there. At least now you've got some sales to show for it. The fact that it's just about breaking even probably isn't a problem statement. It's money that you couldn't have quantified otherwise, you
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: know, three, four years ago. Now I'd love us to move to the next segment, which is before we close, we're going to play a game. The game is called Still Loading Fully Loaded. I will read out a number of statements to you. And once I've read out a statement, I want you to tell me still loading. I don't really have an opinion yet on this. Maybe one line or explaining why or fully loaded. I've got an opinion on this and a one line summary of that opinion. Are we ready?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Okay. Yep.
Abdu Alhadithi: Brilliant. Statement one. Most brands on Amazon are leaving significant money on the table and don't even know what they're missing.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Fully loaded. I explain
Abdu Alhadithi: What's the opinion on that?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: that. Mo most brands are. I I think that comes down to what we were talking about ROAS. they're hiding behind some some KPIs there that they're not actually really getting down and understanding what's going on behind it. And
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it could be completely disguised. There could be so much more opportunity there.
Abdu Alhadithi: I agree. TikTok shop will be as important as Amazon for e-commerce brands within five years.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Fully loaded. Hundred percent. As I've probably s explained that already.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, the trajectory kind of says itself.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: Genuinely connected commerce across Amazon TikTok shop and D2C is not actually achievable right now. The data walls make it impossible.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Still loading, I think it's not impossible, it's just not accurate, but it still needs to be done.
Abdu Alhadithi: Interesting. The brands that will win on Amazon over the next five years are the ones investing in brand, not just ads.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: fully loaded, I think I'm all for for for owning brands rather than just being product led, but just to add a caveat to that, I think it also depends on what category you are and how brand led that category is.
Abdu Alhadithi: The Amazon agency model needs to fundamentally reinvent itself in the next three years or risks being irrelevant.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think still loading, I think there are some huge shifts that are gonna be are gonna be happening in and I think agencies need to evolve as the industry evolves, which I've which should be already happening. Most agencies should should evolve if we go back what's happened over the last ten years in any case.
Abdu Alhadithi: in the realms of e-commerce now is feeling confident?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, I think the main thing is you've just got to evolve with the industry and you've got to have your eyes open and don't be afraid of change. You've got to see where's the opportunity and where can you add value and where can you help brands. And I think I've with
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: for example, AI, we've never shied away from AI. I had the elephant in the room conversation with the team early days to say don't fear it, we use it. But we also need to know where we add value and why we are the agency that we are. So as long as you stay true to who you are and know your value, I think that's important.
Abdu Alhadithi: And final question before I close. What's still loading for you?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Still loading for me. I actually think it just links back to the last question that you asked. I think, you know, we're an agency in a constantly evolving industry that's probably evolving the fastest it's ever done with TikTok coming into the picture, with AI and everything, and we just need to constantly be figuring out how we can add value and support our clients. because we don't want to be offering a service that the clients can get for X amount and go, yeah, but you really need us. We genuinely want to make sure that we're adding value for our customers and that's what we need to constantly be be thinking about and working on.
Abdu Alhadithi: And that's a perfect place to land, Carina. From the home and garden buying team at Amazon in 2004 to building her own brand in Costa Rica, to 30 years running e-commerce, and there's right in the middle of the biggest structural shift Amazon advertising has ever seen. That's a perspective you can't really manufacture. Thank you so much for being honest with me today. Carina, where can people find you if they wanted to have a further conversation with you.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, great question. So if you would like to talk more with us and come and find us at e at e-commerce nurse, you go to our website, ecommercenurse.com, or you can find me, Carina McCloud, on LinkedIn, always happy to have a chat. also if you've got any questions or you're trying to figure everything out that we've been discussing today, we can just arrange a discovery call. Always happy to talk through, understand where you're at and and help you on your e-commerce journey.
Abdu Alhadithi: And I'll make sure I link all of that information in the show's notes so they can find it We'll be back next week with another conversation, another first click, another person figuring it out one step at a time. Still loading just like the rest of us.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Thank you. Thank you,
Abdu Alhadithi: Thank you.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Abdu.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: who speaks directly to the audience. And if you go, you put that creator through rounds of approval and sign-offs and there's guardrails, et cetera, you're probably compromising the authenticity that you're paying for.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm. But those targets, as I say, on TikTok are gonna be very different on Amazon, you know, as they are on your socials, you're not expecting a return on your socials because you can't generate that.
Abdu Alhadithi: Welcome to Still Loading, the podcast where people in marketing, e-commerce and retail tell the truth about what it actually takes. My guest today is one of the most genuinely non-eligible people. in the space of Amazon and e-commerce in the UK. She spent seven years inside Amazon itself, introduced entirely new categories to the UK marketplace, then left to found a baby products business in Costa Rica before coming back to build e-commerce nurse, an agency that's now been running for 13 years, helping brands grow on Amazon, TikTok shop and beyond. She's also the founder of Vendor Society, a membership platform for Amazon vendors. a board trustee for children's charity Toybox and the host of the Your Mind Your Business podcast. She describes herself as someone who speaks Amazon, but I'm about to find out what that actually means. Carina welcome to Still Loading.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Well, thank you. I'm really pleased to be joining you today and that was a really nice intro, so thank you. I realised
Abdu Alhadithi: No, thank you.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: actually I think I keep myself quite busy.
Abdu Alhadithi: I know one of my first questions is, Where do you find the time? But in your own words, Carina, who are you and what do you do?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: So I am Carina. I've been in the Amazon space, as you can tell from from my my early days for over twenty years now. So very much my background has been e-commerce right from the start of 2004 when Amazon was a startup and e-commerce was not the thing that it is today. So very much I call myself you know, a pretty I'm I'm highlighting my age, I would say, how long I've been in the industry, but that's really, really about me and I've seen the evolution of Amazon and just e-commerce in general. So really find all of that fascinating. I'm also not only just, you know, the knowledge of e-commerce is not just who I am. I run an agency, e commerce nurse, where we support brands selling on Amazon and TikTok shop. I also do consulting for brands that are trying to figure out their e-commerce strategy, as well as running in-person events and as you mentioned the podcast, and a proud mother and complete crazy fitness fanatic as well.
Abdu Alhadithi: what was your first click?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: My first click. Do you know what? It was when I started my career at Amazon. Because if somebody said to this dad today, do you want to go and work for Amazon? It is a very different question to asking someone that question in 2004. When I first started my career, I was an assistant buyer working for Wix building supplies. And that was very much pretty old school retailer. where you almost had to stay in a role for a certain number of years before you got promoted. It wasn't about what you could do, your capabilities. It was almost like you had to show that loyalty before you got to the next level. So being me, very impatient, I obviously got itchy feet after about a year to 18 months and was looking for something new. And it was like, don't worry, Carina, you've got this great buying career ahead of you at Wix. And then I I was looking And this job came up at Amazon. And at the time I didn't even know who Amazon was. And I was like, did some research and realized that there were books, books and media business at the time. But they're they've just gone into kitchen and home. And I thought, kitchen home, that sounds a bit weird. Online, internet, selling online. I didn't really understand it. But I thought, do you know what? I'm gonna go for it. It sounds like an opportunity. I'm gonna figure it out. So I went for the interview and just something and I turned up in this interview, not being me. completely in a suit, which my friend to this day laughs at, because I was in this like power suit, because that's how I thought you should dress for an interview, and got the job. and just felt when I got there that there was something that felt right. And when I went back and then I quit my job at Wix, of course, to go to Amazon, I was told by so many people, you're absolutely crazy. Why would you go to a place that thinks that you can sell kitchen and home products online? you've got such this great exactly
Abdu Alhadithi: We've got a very stable business here right now.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: you've got this great career at Wix, etc. And obviously I took that step and, you know, now the future speaks for why that was such a wise decision at such a long time ago, really.
Abdu Alhadithi: And rewind back to that interview, I'm really curious to know Amazon's interview process is quite renowned in terms of can have five to seven interviews on the same day. Was it the same back then or was it a little bit more relaxed?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was definitely not relaxed. I had my first stage interview, I think I met with three or four different people, and then I had a next stage interview as well with with a few people. You also have a test. I didn't do the test at the time, but I know that I've given the test to quite a few people, of which some people have walked out the room and not even gone there. So it is definitely
Abdu Alhadithi: Wow.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: a rigid, a rigid interview process.
Abdu Alhadithi: you joined Amazon, like you said, 2004, before people knew what Amazon was and what it's going to become. What was it like working for Amazon then? Did you have a feeling this was going to be something massive or were you just experimenting?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it's interesting. It grew rapidly, so you could already see, you know, you're just starting there and you're working for kitchen and home, and next minute they're about to launch home and garden. And then it was just crazy the the way they worked in terms of adding all these products, the selection, and now we're adding this other category and so forth. So you could see the expansion was pretty rapid. But I think in the UK you could just almost look at the US and see What's happening in the US, you could automatically know that that's coming and will play out in the UK. That was at the time, 2004, when all these e-commerce sites were appearing, and but a lot of them didn't succeed. And then you could see that Amazon just just took off then. And this was pre seller really kicking off. This was working on Amazon vendor where you were working with brands and bringing brands on board. So It was a it was a crazy time. I never sort of saw it as a start up time, but now when I refer to it, it was really a start up. They weren't making any money, you weren't making profit, you were just trying to create that initial awareness that Amazon, for example, sold kitchen and home products. And so yeah,
Abdu Alhadithi: It was the market share play, wasn't it?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it was it was a fun place to be for sure.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, remember as a vendor way back early days, the margin they used to take was peanuts compared to retailers. And it was seen like fast growth, very high margin retail to be in. And obviously that changed over the years. And speaking of newness, you introduced sports and fitness as a brand new category in Amazon. How did that opportunity come about? Was it something that you spotted and put your hand up or was it kind of thrown at you?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it was really interesting because I actually after eighteen months I left Amazon because I was headhunted by Tesco to help start their marketplace.
Abdu Alhadithi: Nice.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Marketplace before, not the current one.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: and so I took some time out but realised that was a mistake. Tesco didn't run how Amazon did. Amazon was very much supporting if you've got an idea, bring it to the table, no matter what level you're at. You can kind of be opinionated and Just say what you what you thought, and that's the way I'd sort
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: of started my career. So I was like that. So it didn't necessarily work. My style of working didn't necessarily fit in the Tesco box. So I would then went back to Amazon, sort of tail between my legs, can I come back? And I was offered a couple of roles. It was like, yeah, you can come back to consumer electronics, or we've got this new area, but you can't we can't talk about it unless you sign an NDA. So I remember signing an NDA in the interview and then they said we're about to launch softlines. Sports and fitness is going to be no watches is going to be the first area, then sports and fitness, you're going to be the first member of the soft lines team. Are you in it or not? So then I had a choice of jobs that I could go back to and I went for soft lines. And so yeah, went and launched initially a little soft launch of watches, and then the big launch was sports and sports and fitness.
Abdu Alhadithi: And what was it like? What did that teach you about how Amazon thinks, you know, building a whole new category from scratch?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, it was it was interesting. What it taught me is there's there's no perfection here. Like Amazon will launch something and you'll probably anyone listening that's used to working with Amazon, they'll be smiling because Amazon will launch something when it's not necessarily fully ready and it's broken and things aren't working and they'd call put a stamp on it and say it's in beta. Right. That's typically what would happen and that's what happened where we're still learning. so it was almost like Do get a certain amount that you can do and then test and learn and let then the customer help you decide what's working. What are the products that the customer wants more? What are the product categories that we want more of? Because when I launched, I didn't know what product categories were going to sell the most. I think I had a bit of tennis wrap. I I looked in the Argos catalogue and thought, well, what's Argos selling? Let's get all the brands that Argos are selling. Let's get and and I looked at all the retailers and I went after all those brands. The key thing there at the start was it was a sales role. It wasn't a buyer's role, and it was a sales role because the brands didn't want to work with Amazon because they were like, why
Abdu Alhadithi: Interesting.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: is Amazon sp selling sports and fitness? So I had to then explain to them why it's great to be there at the start. And a lot of brands didn't want to, because they didn't want to upset their relationship with Argos. A lot of them, you know, had really well connected relationships with certain retailers that they just went, yeah, but Amazon just sells books or Amazon undercuts everyone. Why should we want to work with you? So at the start it was quite a challenge. Not not anything today where everyone wants to work with Amazon. It was trying to literally get them to say yes. And at that time when they would say yes and you get that paper it was a paper contract in your hand. was one of those great experience and I was trying to before launch I was ramping up all these contracts, getting all these brands up on the website and yeah, it was kind of a crazy, crazy time.
Abdu Alhadithi: It's interesting. You mentioned the piece about pricing. I remember working at Philips the time when digital shelf became a thing and all these organizations started measuring pricing on an ongoing basis. And there was this conviction. Everyone was fully convinced that Amazon was leading on price and always the first to discount. We realized actually there was a lot of the other retailers that were leading on price and Amazon would follow, except that because Amazon was solely online, it was the most obvious to find out and the most discoverable. How did Amazon build that reputation and why hasn't it faded
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah. Yeah. I I mean it's a good question. It's like it's stuck, but it has stuck because originally it was sell it cheap. Like we
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: we didn't follow the market. We were just told to sell, okay, they're selling it for X, we sell it a couple of pounds cheaper. Like they w as long as we make a couple of pound profit on a on a on a product that's about a hundred pounds worth, they didn't care. They w they were quite happy to make almost a loss or break even on those products. So I think because of that, it's almost haunted them all this time because then people ex it you know, assume that. But I think as you say, because Amazon is Amazon, Amazon is huge and it becomes it's that showroom, it's that reference point that people go to
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: to understand price reviews, etc. It it puts them in the firing line a lot more than any other brands. They can't necessarily hide from it, but definitely now they're not they're not leading on price. they're now obviously things have changed over time and margin is something that's important for them from a profitability perspective. So but yeah, that that bit still lingers a bit in terms of people assuming that Amazon is the cheapest when it isn't.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, it was certainly one of the fastest growing and there was a stat, this must have been around 2015, 2016, where 55 % of e-commerce shoppers started their journey on Amazon, but only one in three bought on Amazon. The other two would
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: buy elsewhere. So it was almost like the first port of call for anyone to go shop around, compare prices and reviews, and then decide I want this product and then probably go and buy it elsewhere. I remember a time where we were selling electric toothbrushes on Amazon. Whenever we ran lightning deals, we'd have a spike on Amazon. But the following week after the lightning deals, the sales at John Lewis would spike as well, merely because
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: John Lewis has an amazing warranty on electronics. And a lot of people trusted John Lewis a lot more than They did Amazon. So even though we saw a spike on Amazon, we saw that spike within John Lewis. And we realized actually within John Lewis, we probably don't need to discount or run promotions as often as we thought we would. We can do stuff on Amazon, protect brand on John Lewis and get the full margin because of the value add. And that brings me to a question I've always had and I always ask and challenge people on this. Is Amazon purely a sales channel? Or is there a marketing channel deep down within that?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: There's definitely I mean it's a transactional website, so there's the element where people are going on the the website to search with purchase intent. But not all, as you mentioned before, and I mentioned earlier about it being a showroom, it is a place that people refer to. So you're in a store, you see a couple of products, I mean I automatically will go and check them out and look at the reviews. And then am I then and then I might up probably look at price, but also I'm about to grab it off the shelf. So do I want to then wait for it to be delivered? Yeah, there is a convenience, next day delivery, etc. But what for? For an extra for a pound, you know, depending on the price, but I think, you know, so there is that part now where it becomes an i an important marketing tool to the point where we've had conversations with brands and said where brands go, I don't want to sell on Amazon. And it's like, well, one, you're already on Amazon. Because you're not selling you see your brand representation
Abdu Alhadithi: whether you like it or not, yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: is not looking good because you've got other sellers selling your product because they know to take advantage of that because you're not on it. But also people are gonna go and search for your product no matter what. And and that's where the marketing piece of brand representation comes on.
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: is that it's so important not to neglect the fact if you don't want to sell on the platform, fine. But customers are going to find your product and they will discover it. So you then make that decision how you want to be represented.
Abdu Alhadithi: selling into Amazon, I remember the two most difficult stakeholders were the finance directors slash CFOs because kind of throwing a lot of marketing money at it in the first year, questions around margin, et cetera, but also brand teams. And the biggest argument I used to hear from brand teams was you cannot build a brand on Amazon. Amazon destroys brands. You have to build the brand elsewhere. Where do you stand on that statement?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, I think I mean I have this conversation a lot with with brands, as in brands that are about to launch. And it also depends on the type of product that you're selling, if it's an innovative product or anything, because you can't really sell innovation because people aren't looking for innovation because they don't even know it necessarily exists. But Amazon is not great. It's purely transactional. so it's not great in terms of The brand building that you could build in your on socials in terms of community and you have a lot more control in around video content, etc. Whereas Amazon it is very much about there's little space that you can play with to really build a brand to life. But at the same time, there are mechanics, you've got your brand store, you've got different your brand story. There are things that you can do in terms of cross-selling to start bringing a brand
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, precisely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: to life. And I had that conversation with a recent client I'm working with, as in they have very much focused on Amazon at a product level, but now they're realizing they need to build a brand. So then it's about, okay, then you've got to stop looking at Amazon at product level. You've got to be how do you start creating families? How do you start using those product pages like your A plus pages to start highlighting wider ranges? Comparison charts aren't even being used. Of secondary images aren't even bringing the family of products together. It just very it's very separate. So it can you can build a brand to some degree, but you've got to build it with additional socials and other activ it's not the s you can't do it alone, effectively.
Abdu Alhadithi: Working on Amazon over the last 13 or so years and then in Amazon before that, what do see brands still get wrong other than the way they utilize product pages?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, brands still well, the biggest thing that brands get get wrong is the set it up and leave it is definitely one we see a lot. It's like, well we've we've done our pages recently, they're okay. And then you look at them and you think, Whoa, they're not okay. They they just haven't evolved. So but that's
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: because there's also an argument in terms of whether or not the economies of scale make sense to constantly update the products. The other biggest thing that we see now of brands doing is just too much selection on Amazon. And that is because that's what Amazon initially wanted. But
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: now it's about you need to be intentional with the products that you're selling on Amazon because and focus on it's always the 80-20 rule. Because if you're sitting there and you're trying to make everything look fantastic on every single listing and not all those lines, by the time you finished all the listings, everything's changed again and you have to do the repeat. So that's where, you know, the part of no setting it up and leaving it, but also just being really focused on your range. Because if you've got a huge range, you're never going to be able to evolve. So those are the the the the key pieces that I would say a lot of brands don't do. And also another piece is getting very focused on the ads part on the ROAS. And really
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: being very focused on one target because that target itself doesn't tell you everything. It doesn't tell you about any potential halo. It's not telling it's not looking at it as a percentage of overall sales. You're not understanding, you're not breaking it are you breaking that down with new customer acquisition, branded and search and everything. So I think those are a few things that brands I could I could come up with a list of things really, but
Abdu Alhadithi: 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: those are the few a few things that we often find issues.
Abdu Alhadithi: And I love the point you mentioned about ROAS and I think brands get that wrong, not just on Amazon, but in the, even within DTC. And my take on ROAS is probably if it was up to me and the industry said to me, give us one metric we can completely ban and we will ban it forever. I'd probably say ROAS because
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: you're ultimately leaving money on the table. All
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: ROAS really tells me is you've gone to the bottom of the funnel, shared ads
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: to people who probably would have bought without the ad and would have bought organically. And now you're celebrating a very healthy marketing ROAS but what you're not doing is building a brand and bringing incremental customers. So you are long-term leaving money on the table. If someone said to me, blended ROAS across everything
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: and within ads, this is the contribution to revenue. you go, okay, so the organic channels are burning a lot of calories. They're doing a lot. That tells a bit of a bigger picture. one thing I find interesting about Amazon is it's always evolved. So Amazon started a lot of mini industries within the realms of e-commerce. So Amazon Prime came about And then about a year or two later, they had this statistic where the average LTV went up from 300 pounds a year to about a thousand just through prime membership and just giving people that value out of free shipping. That's when free delivery started becoming a thing. And then DTC brands started following suit So Amazon has always put the industry under pressure. the other thing it started doing was subscriptions. And then the industry realized actually this is really good. Let's try and implement it within Shopify, within Salesforce and all these other platforms. And it feels like Amazon has led the way when it comes to, how we commerce operates. And it feels now they're doing a similar thing within Amazon advertising. So we've got the AI shift. within Amazon advertising and building that sort of ads agent that can build, entire campaign structures and automates targeting. Is that a fair characterization of where we are within Amazon ads?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I believe so. I mean I don't go too much into the mechanics 'cause of my team managing the ads piece, but I think there's one important thing to pull out there is there are AIE is gonna make the operating execution piece more and more automated, but
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it makes that strategist role and the why you're doing what you're doing even more important. So there becomes, you know, it's fair enough, you you still need a driver And you need to make sure it's going in the right direction and the why. There is the creative piece, and that's really going to set people apart because there's this whole other conversation on AI and creative in terms of how do you stand out when everyone looks the same. But I would say the the key part here is who's the driver and who's actually understanding what it is the brand wants to do and the direction of the brand, the brand's goals, all of that. is something that needs to be fine tuned because there's no one case fits all when it comes to what it what a brand is looking to achieve, their nuances,
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: etc.
Abdu Alhadithi: I've heard a lot of brands talk about in housing, Amazon management. And I think five years ago, no one would have dared have that conversation in any business. Now with that change, lot of businesses feel that managing Amazon becomes a bit simpler. What would you say to brands that are thinking we can now? in-house it because it's automating some of the most complicated parts to it and probably, are they over simplifying the world of Amazon ads management?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Think there's a key part there where you've got to you've got to ki it's it's constantly evolving. So if you're gonna bring anything,
Abdu Alhadithi: Mm-mm-mm.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: even if you bring ads management or any Amazon piece in-house, is your team in a place that they are gonna continue evolving with the platform? That's the ultimate part because they need to bring their knowledge, their experience, con it's they need to be constantly learning, and that's what we we we find. So That's why a lot of businesses will work with agencies because they're they're they're getting their insights from so many different sources. So I think ultimately that's the part. But I also think the Amazon ads part it needs to be looked at as part of the overarching Amazon strategy, which then needs to look at the overarching e-commerce strategy and
Abdu Alhadithi: interesting.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: then the overall commerce strategy and the fact that they can no longer run in isolation. I think People bringing things back in-house in a way where they've had ads running completely separate to even their Amazon account, it's a positive in the sense if it's going to be aligned with everything else, but it can't run in isolation. And that's that's the piece there that I would say you can bring it if you're looking to bring it in-house, yeah, it might be easier to do, but you just gotta make sure you've got that knowledge and know-how. And the ability to really understand strategy and all the different connecting pieces to how that's gonna work with your Amazon, et cetera, online.
Abdu Alhadithi: And how does it change the agency structure in terms of like what agencies will start charging clients for and how, does that mean for ads management
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: So I think, you know, if even if you look there's different types of agencies out there. There's some agencies that outsource a lot at low cost, very much focus on that volume and that output, where probably they've been using they're probably AI almost becomes an automatic move for them in whereas there's some other agencies and some businesses that are more strategy first, they do the execution. But the strategy part becomes very important and alongside the creative that's all about, you know, if you start touching AI for certain brands and it makes the brand okay, that could be detrimental to the brand as well. So
Abdu Alhadithi: Correct.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think it really there's there's probably a part where you can't necessarily bundle all brands together. I think it really depends on An element of if they're a premium brand, if they're a brand that are are in other other retailers, etc. and looking at it from there. But the the challenge that you then have, and I even just using AI is that brands then think, okay, well, you're using AI more, there must be a cost saving. I'm
Abdu Alhadithi: Exactly.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: still trying to figure out what the cost saving is because I'm actually, you know, we use AI, we have a lot of humans, we use AI for a lot of different things. We're not necessarily seeing a cost saving. What we're seeing is greater insights and better output and smarter decisions being made. But it's almost like AI isn't necessarily cutting back on the work. It's ramping everything up and it's being used to complement as a w as opposed to taking things away.
Abdu Alhadithi: It's a really good point you mentioned there because a lot of people seem to misunderstand what the best use of AI is. Can you get AI to do some of the operational work? Yes, you can by all means, and you can probably get it to do some of more intelligent work. Should you trust it to go out and do that alone? Probably not. And when people realize that actually what you then use AI to do is give it as much insight as possible or as much information as possible. and it will help you make really good decisions very quickly, but it needs the background, it needs the context.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: probably leads to the next question, which is, if everything was fully AI automated within Amazon and ads underperformed, whose fault is that? How can you determine whether it's the campaign structure or... or the creative when you can only manage one or two dimensions of the total ads architecture.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, and I think that's where you've got to be careful because if it's fully fully automated, I mean you're putting your your trust in all in that completely. So if it isn't isn't working and there's no override, then it's whoever the tool is then with. But yeah, I think it's hard to answer that one really in terms of 'cause I think everything is so case by case as well.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. And it's probably one where we're getting the few cases of that scenario happening before the
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: industry really realizes. And then whether Amazon backtracks and opens up a little bit. you touched on using AI to build creative for Amazon. You're also working on TikTok Shop, Do you feel there's a bit of a contradiction in that sort of direction of flow where you've got AI enhancing image creation and AI is trying to get more and more perfect at creating images. Whereas in the realms of social media, it's about being natural, authentic, potentially rough around the edges. Is there a contradiction there?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: In a way, but I wouldn't even go fully A I wouldn't be pushing AI for all your image content on Amazon, in all honesty, because I think I mean we work with premium brands where the creative piece is extremely important. So they don't want AI imagery to look the same. I think if you a lot then comes down to budget. But I think there is going to be more. My daughter, she's 14. If I show her an image, I don't even think it's AI. And she's like, I'm not touching that, it's AI. So you've also
Abdu Alhadithi: Wow.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: got this new generation that have been brought into AI generated imagery and that, and they're tired of it already. So I'd be really interested to see how that's going to evolve from a point I see it on socials. There's like, for example, in the personal training space, The format of the flyers that they post looks the same for everyone. So
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: where's the point of differentiation? So premium brands will see that. So I think that that's the part with the creative that comes even more important is how do you differentiate yourself from that AI? That's one part. The it can help in some ways, but you've you know, in terms of the the creative and standing out from the competition. When it comes to social and TikTok, yeah, at the end of the day, they value authenticity. That's why TikTok's working. It wants to see somebody that looks like their neighbour or their friend telling them how good the product was. They like it and they think, do you know what? I think I'm gonna try that because I trust you. So that then becomes a trust thing. If and and this is the biggest challenge at the moment with AI coming in, is that it's the trust element as well.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: And when people start seeing things that look like it's generated by AI, can I trust it? So with TikTok and that authenticity, it's going to become more more and more important because it's a genuine person that is talking about the product that they've have been following for some time and they feel that they can trust them and they go ahead and make that purchase.
Abdu Alhadithi: So a perfect type curve, like a bell curve, so to speak, you've got
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: people take up AI image creation, and then very quickly, there'll be fatigue, and then it's no longer going to be as big a thing. That's
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think so. See, yeah. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: quite interesting. And you touched on the success of TikTok Shop. What's your read on where TikTok Shop actually is at the moment Is it a real growth channel for brands? Or is it sort of more noise?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think it's it's the first time I've seen anybody come into the industry that's giving Amazon a run for their money, I'll be honest with you. We went into TikTok shop two and a half years ago. I built a whole new department in the agency and everyone was like, Why you you know, are you sure? You sure you're gonna you know, you're back in? And I said yes, because it is the sa I saw the same signs that I saw at Amazon in two thousand and four when I joined Amazon. I was like, I can see it. I could see the same sales trajectory. The first year was a bit like the Wild, Wild West, but in the last year, we're in 2026, there's been a real shift in TikTok shop here in the UK. I know US is a bit more advanced, where TikTok are now focusing on the big established brands. And so to do that, to make that attractive, and I saw it the same with Amazon, is you've got to change your platform as well. You've got to make your platform be more attractive why the brands want to be on it. And then more and more brands that come on it, then they can say, my competitors on it, I'm coming on it. For example, we just saw an announcement recently, and we know in the beauty space, Sephora and Ulta are on there. We also can see that boots are have just launched on there, so you can
Abdu Alhadithi: in the last week,
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: start seeing all these retailers and all these brands, so you can see that real shift. Is it a growth channel? Yes. Is it a growth channel in isolation? No, not necessarily. It's an You know, it's social commerce, it's an awareness tool. So there is a halo effect that we're seeing on Amazon, we're seeing elsewhere. But again, it's case by case. If you've got high retail price point, chances are there's going to be a higher halo because people are going to want to purchase it on a place that they feel that they've got a better warranty or a place that they trust. But it might be a lower price point, they might be comfortable purchasing that within TikTok shop. providing there's free shipping because if you're a prime eligible customer and you have to pay shipping on TikTok shop, it's a deterrent. So you're naturally gonna see, you're not gonna see the highest return like you see on Amazon on a platform like TikTok because it's also a social awareness tool. But
Abdu Alhadithi: Correct.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: we're definitely seeing huge growth come from TikTok.
Abdu Alhadithi: It's a really interesting dynamic because we were saying earlier, Amazon created its own little ecosystem and sucked people into their environment through Prime and all of that.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: TikTok shop have almost created their own niche for themselves where products listed on TikTok shop won't really necessarily appear on search. So price competition might not be highlighted. So kind of protecting themselves from the reputational damage Amazon had to endure. And Amazon... always prided itself of the fact and it's fact that, you know, your customer acquisition costs on DTC are going and targeting people based on behaviors and based on characteristics, right?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: just because someone fits your profile of an ideal customer doesn't necessarily mean they're in the market for a product like yours. Whereas on Amazon, you can know that because they're on Amazon, they're searching, they're in the category, and you kind of just need to be visible to them. So Amazon shortens that path. you know, from awareness to acquisition. TikTok has gone and thrown that out the window completely and said, we're going to shorten it even further. You're going to see a really cool video and build an immediate emotional connection. And what we're going to do is thrive off of those impulse purchases in the moment.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: I love this. I want to get it. And that fear of, fear of loss. Is
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: and what they've created is a new customer journey. it's the discovery led customer journey of it's TikTok is a demand generation tool, whereas Amazon there's there's a cap on what people are searching for. So that's it's just a search it's it's search focused, but TikTok we're just finding it's it's creating, it's creating demand. Amazon's capturing that.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: But that's the part with this discovery led customer journey that's really becoming it's just it's it's changing the way people shop.
Abdu Alhadithi: Now, how can brands evidence the demand that's created through what they're doing on TikTok Shop?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I mean it it's it's a hard one because you're trying it depends because you you you've got two two goals really when you're on TikTok shop. You've got sales, but you've also got awareness. So, you know, you you and also the sales might not necessarily come from Amazon. They could come sorry, from TikTok shop, they could come from Amazon. So that kind of part of the halo and it's really hard to to measure. So whoever ends up figuring that one out is gonna be A very wealthy individual. I know loads of people trying to figure out a software to to to understand that attribution. But so that's the the one piece. So, you know, you've just got to be very clear on what your your KPIs are and what you're measuring because I think this is where you've got to be very clear. If you go on TikTok shop, you've got to be very clear on why you're doing it and what you're looking to achieve. If you're going on TikTok shop because you think you're going to get the same level of sales and profitability on Amazon, then you're already making that mistake. If you're going onto TikTok shop because you know that you want to generate a certain amount of sales, a certain amount of awareness, but then you know that that's going to come because you've got the awareness piece in there, your return is going to be lower and you know that it's going to benefit other channels. That's a different story. So I think just being very clear in terms of why you're going on the platform and what you're looking to achieve. we work with brands. and and help them even figure out their their PL at the start. So they're very clear on what that looks like. And many brands will will break even or make a loss for a period of time. As long as you know that, that's okay. It's when you go onto the platform and assume that you're going to make profit from day one and then you pull the plug, not realizing the impact that you've just had on other other channels from the awareness that you've created.
Abdu Alhadithi: And I really want to talk to you about the P &L piece. But before we move into that, are there businesses who shouldn't be on TikTok Shop? I mean, we've spoken about retailers that are on TikTok Shop now. And, you know, my view is it's a very difficult channel to be profitable on when you're a retailer, you know, you're buying at trade price. your margin is fairly limited as it is. And then you're paying the commissions to TikTok Shop. Then on top of that, you know, just because your name is boots or target doesn't necessarily mean people buy from you, you still need to invest in that creator economy. Would it be very difficult for retail to be profitable? And if so, if, if, they're not profitable, why are they there in the first place?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think that's when retailers will focus more on own brand as well, because the at the end of the day the biggest lever on TikTok shop is affiliates. So you've got to be having samples
Abdu Alhadithi: Correct.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: to be sent out. So is the retailer funding that or is the brand funding that? So again it's gonna
Abdu Alhadithi: precisely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: be okay, you can focus on own brand, because you've got more control over the samples and all of that. But I think it's the same as, you know, when you're when you're a store, you're asking that brand for a certain marketing budget, because you want to push a certain gondola end or something like that. It's almost
Abdu Alhadithi: precisely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: like what brand what funding can you what samples can you give us? What funding can you give us to push that on to push it on TikTok shop?
Abdu Alhadithi: And when it comes to the creator economy, so outside of TikTok, you know, lot of a lot of creators would work on a sort of commission model. So they'd
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: go promote with a unique code and link. Now for that to work and for it to be, you know, make a business for a creator, the brands they work with, they'll have to be quite selective. They'll want a brand that's already got some awareness because you just need to scream and shout about the brand, you're to generate some sales or the brand has a high price point where the five 10 % commission is worth quite a bit. When it comes to TikTok shop, the way that it's increasingly reliant on that creator economy, is that gonna be a barrier for entry for startup businesses?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: No, we've seen new brands just evolve on the platform. So if you've got a great product and it goes into the hands of an affiliate and that affiliate creates great content, that brand can boom really quick. Because it's the it's that awareness there that they can have. You know, we've seen it with some brands that you think, you're a well known brand, you should have kicked off a lot sooner, and they don't necessarily. So yeah, I think it's getting it in the fine getting it in the right hands of the affiliates and the affiliates really believing in those products. And then their content really taking off. The hardest thing is you can't predict that. You can't predict what affiliate you can go after certain affili affiliates knowing the criteria, the GMV that they create, what sort of other content they've created for other for other brands. But we've seen it where we've gone, okay, this we're we're we're taking a we're gonna test this creator. They're not driving a huge amount of GMV. But we're gonna test them. And then all of a sudden they become the best creator for that brand. There's just something. And you look at the video and you're like, I can't even understand. And neither can the creator. And the creator tries to redo their content, almost thinking it will happen again. And it doesn't. So it's quite fascinating, which is why the creator piece on TikTok has to be volume based. Because you just
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: don't know. If you're selecting go, I'm only picking these 10 people. It's not gonna work like that. It's it's you know, it's about sending out a large volume of samples and seeing who comes
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: back. Then you nurture those ones and you retain them, but at first it's like you don't really know. it's hard to say. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: And it speaks volumes about authenticity. you know, when you can't explain why that specific video drove so much revenue, it's probably the connection that the influencer has with their audience, the way he or she
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yep. Yep.
Abdu Alhadithi: speaks, et cetera, et cetera. And that's where I feel brands need to be a little bit less protected because you're in a platform
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm.
Abdu Alhadithi: that requires a lot of authenticity. To some extent, brands are borrowing the trust from the creator
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm.
Abdu Alhadithi: who speaks directly to the audience. And if you go, you put that creator through rounds of approval and sign-offs and there's guardrails, et cetera, you're probably compromising the authenticity that you're paying for.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: So there needs to be a bit of a balance and rethinking how, a brand, we exist and how we work I really want to double click into the P &L piece because what a lot of businesses I see doing is create separate P &Ls for every channel, one for TikTok Shop, one for Amazon, one for DTC, and then one for every single retailer, et cetera, et cetera. in a world where connected commerce is such a big thing, but you can't fully connect the data behind all of those commerce channels. It is connected commerce that everyone's talking about simply amalgamating all of those P &Ls into one and saying you've got a total business, but you have to be where the customers are, therefore all of those different channels, but not all of those channels will drive the same level of profit. Some might just about break even. We kind of need to be there in the first place. Do you feel that that could unlock a lot of opportunity for brands where they don't spend too much time deliberating on why is TikTok shop just about breaking even? Why is Amazon margin a bit lower this year than last year, but actually enjoying the total growth that having all those channels being present and active drives and unlocks for the brand?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, definitely. You have to look at a blended. I you you still gotta have targets for each platform. Yeah,
Abdu Alhadithi: Of course.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: you still gotta have be very clear on that. But you need to make sure that you're blending it all together and looking at what that overall return is that you're you're and and is that hitting where you need it to be. Then you can look at each separate one to know is that hitting certain targets that we need at an individual level. But those targets, as I say, on TikTok are gonna be very different on Amazon, you know, as they are on your socials, you're not expecting a return on your socials because you can't generate that. So with TikTok, it think of it almost as 50-50 social commerce. So that's where you've just got to make sure you've got clear, relevant targets for each platform. And then we always say blend in, blending it together. And there is no great software out there that, as I mentioned, that does that.
Abdu Alhadithi: 100%.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it would be fantastic if it does. There's ways we look at trying to understand that by looking at if you've just launched on TikTok, have you seen an increase in your branded searches? What does that increase look like when we do certain activity? And trying to understand that. So you but it's all going to be assumption based anyway. There's no
Abdu Alhadithi: Exactly.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: complete accuracy. But you should definitely where e-commerce is today, you should definitely not be looking at anything in isolation.
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely. And I think remove shop from TikTok, you're still going to have to advertise there. You're still going to have to partner with those creators. You'll still
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, exactly.
Abdu Alhadithi: have to invest that money in there. At least now you've got some sales to show for it. The fact that it's just about breaking even probably isn't a problem statement. It's money that you couldn't have quantified otherwise, you
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: know, three, four years ago. Now I'd love us to move to the next segment, which is before we close, we're going to play a game. The game is called Still Loading Fully Loaded. I will read out a number of statements to you. And once I've read out a statement, I want you to tell me still loading. I don't really have an opinion yet on this. Maybe one line or explaining why or fully loaded. I've got an opinion on this and a one line summary of that opinion. Are we ready?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Okay. Yep.
Abdu Alhadithi: Brilliant. Statement one. Most brands on Amazon are leaving significant money on the table and don't even know what they're missing.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Fully loaded. I explain
Abdu Alhadithi: What's the opinion on that?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: that. Mo most brands are. I I think that comes down to what we were talking about ROAS. they're hiding behind some some KPIs there that they're not actually really getting down and understanding what's going on behind it. And
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: it could be completely disguised. There could be so much more opportunity there.
Abdu Alhadithi: I agree. TikTok shop will be as important as Amazon for e-commerce brands within five years.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Fully loaded. Hundred percent. As I've probably s explained that already.
Abdu Alhadithi: Yeah, the trajectory kind of says itself.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah.
Abdu Alhadithi: Genuinely connected commerce across Amazon TikTok shop and D2C is not actually achievable right now. The data walls make it impossible.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Still loading, I think it's not impossible, it's just not accurate, but it still needs to be done.
Abdu Alhadithi: Interesting. The brands that will win on Amazon over the next five years are the ones investing in brand, not just ads.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: fully loaded, I think I'm all for for for owning brands rather than just being product led, but just to add a caveat to that, I think it also depends on what category you are and how brand led that category is.
Abdu Alhadithi: The Amazon agency model needs to fundamentally reinvent itself in the next three years or risks being irrelevant.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: I think still loading, I think there are some huge shifts that are gonna be are gonna be happening in and I think agencies need to evolve as the industry evolves, which I've which should be already happening. Most agencies should should evolve if we go back what's happened over the last ten years in any case.
Abdu Alhadithi: in the realms of e-commerce now is feeling confident?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, I think the main thing is you've just got to evolve with the industry and you've got to have your eyes open and don't be afraid of change. You've got to see where's the opportunity and where can you add value and where can you help brands. And I think I've with
Abdu Alhadithi: Absolutely.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: for example, AI, we've never shied away from AI. I had the elephant in the room conversation with the team early days to say don't fear it, we use it. But we also need to know where we add value and why we are the agency that we are. So as long as you stay true to who you are and know your value, I think that's important.
Abdu Alhadithi: And final question before I close. What's still loading for you?
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Still loading for me. I actually think it just links back to the last question that you asked. I think, you know, we're an agency in a constantly evolving industry that's probably evolving the fastest it's ever done with TikTok coming into the picture, with AI and everything, and we just need to constantly be figuring out how we can add value and support our clients. because we don't want to be offering a service that the clients can get for X amount and go, yeah, but you really need us. We genuinely want to make sure that we're adding value for our customers and that's what we need to constantly be be thinking about and working on.
Abdu Alhadithi: And that's a perfect place to land, Carina. From the home and garden buying team at Amazon in 2004 to building her own brand in Costa Rica, to 30 years running e-commerce, and there's right in the middle of the biggest structural shift Amazon advertising has ever seen. That's a perspective you can't really manufacture. Thank you so much for being honest with me today. Carina, where can people find you if they wanted to have a further conversation with you.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Yeah, great question. So if you would like to talk more with us and come and find us at e at e-commerce nurse, you go to our website, ecommercenurse.com, or you can find me, Carina McCloud, on LinkedIn, always happy to have a chat. also if you've got any questions or you're trying to figure everything out that we've been discussing today, we can just arrange a discovery call. Always happy to talk through, understand where you're at and and help you on your e-commerce journey.
Abdu Alhadithi: And I'll make sure I link all of that information in the show's notes so they can find it We'll be back next week with another conversation, another first click, another person figuring it out one step at a time. Still loading just like the rest of us.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Thank you. Thank you,
Abdu Alhadithi: Thank you.
Carina McLeod eCommerce Nurse: Abdu.
