Note From Fred: January 2021

Happy New Year! I am thrilled to bid farewell to 2020.  However, despite being a turbulent year for our team both personally and professionally, I am so proud of the business outcomes that we achieved for our clients:

• We doubled dollar sales and unit volume for 2020 vs. 2019, growing +91% dollar sales and +102% unit volume.

• Our client conversion rates have increased by +45%, reflecting our strong digital content, graphic design, enhanced content, and copywriting.

• Impressions have grown by a whopping +691%, driven by creative paid advertising support, promotions, and search optimization.

Managing e-commerce on Amazon is never easy in the best of times, and this year was especially challenging.  There were countless new policy changes added this year (including FBA storage limits, new sizing standards for apparel, new requirements for Seller Fulfilled Prime).  Amazon also applied stricter enforcement of existing policies (such as Detail Page rules). There were new features added too (such as virtual product bundles for FBA).  All of this is enough to make your head spin!

I am grateful to the experienced Operations and Account Management teams at HINGE.  Together, they help keep our clients’ businesses running smoothly, regardless of the challenges and changes that they face.  In 2020, our teams:

• Updated 324,223 listings

• Fixed 8,315 listings, including solving 4,056 stranded listings

• Generated 777 replenishment reports

• Resolved 320 shipping discrepancies, plus another 156 other shipping-related problems

• Opened 4,199 cases with Amazon, to resolve other issues

Additionally, our clients are faced with steeper competition in 2020.  The cost per click has been trending upwards, +20% in December 2020 vs. a year ago.  This rising cost of digital advertising reflects the increased e-commerce marketplace activity.  Heightened competition underscores the necessity for great Copywriters to drive organic search, Graphic Designers to create conversion-driving visual content, and a sophisticated Advertising team to manage paid marketing spending efficiently. The results are carefully monitored and data-based by our Data Analytics team.

Clearly, it takes an army of experts to drive the kind of success we have in 2020. Thank you to clients for entrusting us with your e-commerce business.  Thank you to our strategic partners for helping us continually drive added value to our customers’ businesses. Finally and most importantly, thank you to our employees for accomplishing outstanding results (all while juggling child care, working from home, and heightened stress).