The Tradebyte ecosystem doesn’t just connect retailers, brands and platforms, but also strong partners. Recently, Amazon expert Input Factor Consulting has joined Tradebyte as a service partner. We talked to Tobias Jaroschek, founder and CEO of IFC GmbH. Find out everything about the company in the interview, how you can profit from collaboration with IFC and the most important aspects in selling on Amazon for Tobias.

Tobias Jaroschek, Founder of IFC

Tradebyte: Dear Tobias, would you please introduce yourself to our readers?

Tobias: I am the founder and managing partner of IFC GmbH and Mercatura Warenhandel GmbH. IFC is orientated towards strategic consulting for Amazon Marketplaces and Mercatura is a Europe wide retail company. After my studies in the Netherlands and Sweden, I was employed at Arvarto for almost seven years before I started working at Amazon Germany. I worked at Amazon for five years, where I was responsible for the retail sector as a purchase manager in the category Kitchen and Household. Before I left the position in 2017, my team and I were responsible for different categories and the development of the Private Label business in Germany.

Today, our mission is to provide every Amazon “Supplier”, i.e. “Seller” and “Vendor”, the ability to unlock the Amazon Blackbox with our individual tailored strategies, in order to make life on Amazon easier and optimize the business through growth-orientated strategies. Our tailored strategies rely on the use of numerous “Tools” that we have predominately developed. Our “Tools” are inspired by the tools we used at Amazon during our time there.

Your multi-year experience at Amazon is clearly your most valuable resource. What would you say is the most important factor for businesses that want to be successful on Amazon?

Unfortunately, there is not “one” answer, as business with Amazon has become much more complex and sophisticated in the past couple of years. Moreover, we expect that in the coming years that the complexity and sophistication of Amazon will become more extensive. In the first discussion with our clients, we attempt to understand what their level on understanding of Amazon is and how they have used Amazon until this point. Having worked with a three-digit number of “Suppliers” during our time at Amazon, we have gained deep insights into business processes. Through our experiences, we are convinced that we can provide our clients with adequate solutions for their individual challenges. Quite often we begin explaining to our counterpart where Amazon comes from, in which directions Amazon wants to develop, and what consequences that has for each individual. Just to name an example: Until a few years ago, there were no paid advertising campaign possibilities for retailers. Within five years in this segment alone, there was a huge growth in the number of agencies and consulting firms, in order to support the alleged “overwhelmed” users. Amazon continues to develop its own “EcoSystem” and will continuously present new challenges to its users. If I have to answer your question with one sentence, I would say: you stay agile and very data orientated, in order to establish and build a successful business on Amazon.

Could you possibly clear up the preconception of the algorithm? As you know, there are many people/companies who believe that they have cracked it.

When we were working for Amazon, we tried internally to understand the algorithm but we failed. To my knowledge there is only a handful of people, who really understand the formula. I was told, that the development team, who work in this sector, guard the formula, like CocaCola guards their own recipe. Moreover, the algorithm seems to continuously develop itself. In other words, if I think that I have cracked the algorithm, in a few moments the algorithm will look completely different. To this day, I have yet to meet a person or service provider who believes they have understood the algorithm.

What can our customers expect through our partnership with you?

Individual support to the highest degree. All of our experts worked at Amazon themselves and know what they are talking about. We always test all of our tools and optimizations strategies on our retail account, before we use them for consultation. Our decisions are not based on rumors, suspicions, or gut feelings, but rather on data, that we collect, structure, and evaluate. All the measures we formulate are always tailor made to the needs of our respective clients.

What do you hope for from our future partnership?

We are both in very similar business segments and I am strongly convinced that together we can make a difference for our customers. Our mission is to make the life of Amazon “Suppliers” easier and more successful. We enjoy that Tradebyte takes a very similar approach as well. Furthermore, we hope to have a knowledge exchange at eye level in order to always be up to date. To conclude, a quote from J. Paul Getty, “In order to be successful with a business, to reach the top, all individuals must know everything possible about the business.”

Thank you very much, Tobias, for your time and the interesting chat. We are looking forward to a very successful cooperation and future Amazon projects with you.