# Navigating the Ins and Outs of Amazon Vendor Central ## Podcast transcript **James Dihardjo** Thank you so much for making time all the way from England to speak with me. I wanted to hand it over to you, first off, just to tell us about what you do in the e-commerce space or your Amazon space in particular. **Martin Heubel** Yeah, it's my pleasure James. Thanks so much for having me on the show. My name is [Martin Heubel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinheubel/). I am the founder of [Consulterce](https://www.linkedin.com/company/consulterce/), and this is an e-commerce strategy consulting practice where I help multinational brands and national brands, that work on a 1P vendor relationship with Amazon to actually make sense of all of this Amazon puzzle that is out there. So, particularly when it comes to channel selection accounts... **James Dihardjo** Yep. That all makes sense and I certainly think a lot of people would make use of someone like yourself. So, I just want to get straight into the question. So in Australia, Amazon itself is fairly new and a lot of smaller brands come up as a seller then they get this invitation to Vendor Central. Why do brands get invited to Vendor Central? It seems random. Why should they use it? **Martin Heubel** Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, look, Amazon is a great marketplace in order to sell your products, right? They have loads of traffic. The conversion rates are much higher than on many other platforms. The definition of a 1P seller is different compared to a 3P one. Simply, you get to ship your product towards Amazon at a wholesale or list price and Amazon takes care of inventory and price management... **James Dihardjo** Yep. I mean that all makes sense. From a brand's perspective, if you get approached by Amazon and they buy from you, what do you think the role of Vendor Central will be going forward? **Martin Heubel** It's one of those questions I get all of the time. I think working with Vendor Central aligns with Amazon's ambition for the next couple of years. Just look at the store openings in the US and UK... **James Dihardjo** Yeah, interesting. I did want to build on that. In terms of predictions, because you mentioned earlier you said Vendor Central has a lot of levers. What are your predictions on that? **Martin Heubel** I think Amazon will want to take out as much friction as possible. The focus will certainly be on giving vendors better visibility around analytics that improve availability... **James Dihardjo** Fantastic, Martin. I appreciate that detailed prediction and explanation of your thinking. Thank you.