Your 2026 Amazon Growth Checkpoint: Fixing the Foundations before Q4 finds the cracks

Smiley face on the screen and

thank you to those of you that have dialed in this morning to join us to talk about your mid-year Amazon growth points and what you can learn from the first half of the year before you step into the second half of the year and particularly that golden quarter where your Amazon strategy is typically either won or lost.

And hopefully today we can help you make it the former and turn it into a very successful end to the year and get you some great performance and some great results.

uh before i introduce the team uh the guys that got us today i think to give you a bit of background as to what we're going to talk you through uh and the structure for today and i'll and hand over to emma mike to introduce themselves uh why have we put this together uh we're mid-year we're in august and we always find that every year starts with a really ambitious amazon forecast and by august something has changed your competitors amazon your internal business have moved the rules moved the kind of boundaries around a little bit And the brands that win that second half are those that realise that and really start to knuckle down, focus and potentially realign their strategies for the second half and go on to win.

So that's really kind of the premise of today's session is helping you understand what has changed, what you need to be looking at and how you can really start to lay some foundations for a successful second push towards the end of the year.

I'll talk through in a second a bit of the structure and kind of some of the areas I want to touch on today.

But before I do, some quick introductions.

I'm Andy Banks.

It's been a while since I've hosted one of these, but I'm one of the two founders of VentureForge and we're an Amazon agency that partners with some of the UK's most successful brands on Amazon to help them become much more commercially successful.

We typically work with brands that are £5 million plus on Amazon.

We work across many, many categories and I'm hopeful some of that will come across today when we talk to our expertise.

There's very little we haven't seen, haven't been faced with on Amazon and hopefully what myself, Mike and Emma can share today will get some of that across and help support you in what you're facing into as a brand.

Before I talk any further, Mike, I want to come in your direction first.

Do you want to say good morning to people and just introduce a bit about yourself and your background?

Absolutely.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Mike.

I'm the Head of Advertising and Media at VentureForge.

I've been in the Amazon space for eight to ten years now.

I would say six of that being agency side, the rest in-house.

I've seen everything from an advertising perspective, so I'm always very well versed to give an input on that side across multiple, multiple brands from different scales.

So very happy to be joined today and join the conversation.

Thank you, Mike.

Emma, last but by no means least, good morning.

Morning, everyone.

I'm Emma, the Head of Client Services at VentureForge.

Basically, I've been in the world of retail e-commerce for about 12, 13 years, and the last maybe 10 years have been solely within agency side.

I've done both sides of the tables.

I've been a client of an agency, I've worked with an agency, And I've worked in every single sector that you can imagine.

And I do have a friend with me.

I do apologize.

So yeah, as the head of client services, I'm here to just have an overall helicopter view of how we're performing as an agency, how our partnerships work with our clients, and how our strategies are moving forward for the rest of the year.

I'm looking into next year already.

So excited for this conversation.

Thank you very much Emma.

So as I said, we're going to take you through today the kind of questions we'd be asking if we were a brand looking at how do we make the second half of this year a success.

There's probably seven areas we're going to take the conversation through.

We're going to start by talking about that mid-year reality check and realising where you are, looking at the P&L and maybe a little bit deeper in the P&L.

talking about the importance of sector and category performance data and how that could be used and sends checks at this point.

Talking about the difference between revenue and profit.

I don't mean literally the difference because if we've got anybody on the conversation today that doesn't know the difference, we have bigger problems.

But understanding what growth is costing you and what's the impact of looking at revenue versus profit at this time of the year.

We'll touch a bit on the consumer, how they're changing, how demand from consumers has changed over this year and the questions that you should be asking.

talking about changes with amazon apps i'm hoping that's you mike and not me that's going to be coming off some of those questions same i hope

it's not me

talking about what you can learn from Prime Day and what indicators you can take from Prime Day to understand how the market and your business has changed or might need to change facing into the second half of the year and of course we'll talk a little bit about the impact of AI on Amazon I think we've turned the corner on the eye thing I think the buzzword has gone I think you start people starting to see it come to life so we'll touch a little bit on the questions that you should be asking around how that might be changing your business how consumers buy how your competitors are trading Before we jump into the conversation, I believe we've got a little poll in the background ready to pop up.

Just interested in learning from you, the audience, as we start to structure our conversation today.

Out of those seven areas that we're going to talk through, where's your biggest mid-year blind spot heading into Q4? Is it knowing whether growth is actually profitable? Is it margin and cost erosion? Is it advertising efficiency? Is it understanding which products or which of your categories to back within your range? Is it trying to adapt to that AI shift that Amazon are bringing in? That could be any part of it.

It could be roofers, it could be AI tooling in the background, or could be how to read that prime data or demand signals correctly.

or we got it all wrong and is it something completely different that's that's affecting your business if you want to just kind of submit your poll there those results will start to pop up on the screen and it will give us a little bit of an indicator as to where we can set this conversation Mike I'm not sure you're going to like this but I certainly do most people are saying advertising efficiency

it's going to be the Mike podcast soon that's okay

What else have we got? So first place, just give us a couple more minutes for a few more votes to pop in.

Advertising efficiency, definitely number one.

Adapting to Amazon's AI shift, number two.

And very close in third and fourth is that point on margin and cost erosion and which products or categories to back.

Unsurprising, sometimes those two things actually go quite hand in hand.

Certainly will do with the advertising efficiency side of things.

if we've got most people's votes in there so that gives us a real kind of clear indicator where to spend some time so Mike don't be surprised if I do accelerate this down to advertising at some point in time then me and Emma can get a brew and you can absolutely

fine

by me

I'll just be sipping and enjoying

I think the first questions might come in your direction Emma.