Lunch With Norm
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[LWN] 🚓 From Public Enemy #1 to Grandpa...

[LWN] 🚓 From Public Enemy #1 to Grandpa...

Lunch With Norm's Weekly Newsletter - Amazon News & Updates

December 01, 2025 • Estimated Read Time: 17 minutes

🚓 From Public Enemy #1 to Grandpa…

What you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:

🚓 From Public Enemy #1 to Grandpa… [True Story]
🚨 ChatGPT Shopping Research is Here!
🚀 5 Tech Shifts You Should Pay Attention to
⚒️ How We Built a Landing Page With AI [Quick Guide]
🔥 Here’s 15 Years of Sourcing Secrets...

🚓 From Public Enemy Number One to Grandpa… [TRUE STORY]

When I was living in Montreal back in the late sixties, one of the residents was a man who topped the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

That’s Alvin Karpis.

Public Enemy #1.

This guy was the brains behind the Barker-Karpis gang.

They called him “Creepy” Karpis for his ice cold demeanor.

He was infamous for his bank heists and high-profile kidnappings that got him some pretty big pay days back in the day.

Growing up, I heard a legend that he went so far as to remove his own fingerprints.

Anyway, after he served 26 years in Alcatraz, he got deported to Canada…. To Montreal.

Barbara was my uncle’s girlfriend at the time and Karpis’s goddaughter, or as she’d say, her “grandpa” figure.

Imagine this notorious gangster, sitting on your living room floor, bouncing a little girl on his knee, telling stories like a charming old grandpa.

He went from being the mastermind of the Barker gang to just “Grandpa Alvin”.

The best part?

She had these wild, hilarious stories of how this once-feared criminal was just a warm, kind, and surprisingly gentle old man by the time he was in Canada.

By the late ’70s, Barbara was a teenager with these unforgettable memories of the man behind the legend.

So, what’s the business lesson?

It’s that people are always more than their reputation.

In business, like in life, the person you least expect might just have the most to teach you.

— Norm

👇AMAZON NEWS AND UPDATES👇

✅ The BIG winners and losers of Black Friday 2025

📈 Walmart Q3 results are in! Globally, eCommerce grew 27% with growth in each business segment of more than 20%.

🚨 TikTok’s US sell-off deadline is about to expire once again

⚠️ Amazon Customers Issued 48 Hour Warning… An increase in cyber attacks have started

❗Walmart CFO warns affordability crisis is getting worse

🚀 U.S. retail giant Walmart enters Africa with South Africa launch

🦾 TikTok tackles AI-Generated slop with new user controls

🔥 Last Chance: 50% OFF COSMO Transformation Ends in Less Than 24 Hours!

Amazon's algorithm is evolving… Rufus and COSMO are reshaping how listings are ranked, read, and recommended. But most listings aren’t structured for AI yet.

Our close partners from ZonGuru are offering a super valuable COSMO Transformation Service that gives you a fully optimized listing (title, bullets, backend, images, and SEO mapping) purpose-built for Amazon’s AI.

Here’s what you get:

✅ AI-optimized copy (title, bullets, backend fields)
✅ Full image audit + 7 actionable upgrade ideas
✅ COSMO + Rufus SEO mapping (before/after)
✅ Upload-ready CSV
✅ Delivered in under 5 days

Simply submit your ASINs and we do all the work for you - delivering everything to you in under five business days for as many products you submit.

50% OFF your COSMO Transformation order – Was $100, but now just $50 Pay-Per-ASIN. Valid for US and UK marketplaces. No Subscription needed.

🚨 This offer ends December 2nd or in less than 24 hours! Don’t miss it.

Order your COSMO Transformation with 50% OFF

🦾 Shopping Research in ChatGPT is Here!

You can now ask ChatGPT for help with shopping!

Just ask a shopping question, or tap the (+) menu and select Shopping Research to get started.

Step 1: Tell It What You Need

Once you launch it, describe what you’re looking for and answer a few follow-up questions about your preferences, budget, who it’s for, or what features matter most.

If you’ve got memory turned on, ChatGPT can use what it already knows about you.

For example, if it knows you're a gamer, it'll prioritize performance specs automatically.

Step 2: Guide the Search

While you're chatting, it's searching across the web, pulling current info like prices, reviews, stock availability, and images.

As it surfaces options, you can give feedback by saying “Not interested” or “Show me more like this,” which helps it refine the results as it goes.

Step 3: Get a Personalized Buyer’s Guide

After a few minutes, it breaks down the top products, key tradeoffs, and what makes each one stand out, all based on the most up-to-date info from trusted retailers.

You can click through to buy from the retailer now, and in the future, ChatGPT plans to offer direct checkout for certain merchants through Instant Checkout.

It pulls from real product listings and cites reliable sources so you're not getting made-up info.

🚀 5 Tech Shifts You Should Actually Pay Attention to (According to Amazon’s CTO)

1. Loneliness Will Be a Tech Problem (and a Business One Too)
Loneliness is now considered a public health crisis.

People are forming emotional bonds with companion robots, not because they're flashy, but because they show up. Expect a GIANT wave of tech aimed at helping people feel less alone.

2. Developers Aren’t Going Away
AI can write code in seconds now. That doesn’t mean devs are obsolete but that it means the good ones will matter more.

If you can think in systems, adapt quickly, and understand the business side, you’ll thrive. The “renaissance dev” is part coder, part strategist.

3. Quantum-Proofing Is No Longer Optional
Bad actors are already hoarding encrypted data now so they can crack it when quantum tech matures. If your business deals with sensitive info, it’s time to start using quantum-resistant encryption.

I highly recommend Esure.ai from my cybersecurity friend, Chase Norlin. He’s been on the podcast multiple times.

4. Military Innovation Is Spilling Over Into Civilian Tech
Defense tech is moving at lightning speed and AI systems in the field are getting weekly updates. That tech is going to fuel big changes in disaster relief, remote healthcare, and supply chain logistics.

5. AI Tutors Will Be the Great Equalizer in Education
Personal tutors used to be a luxury but now, AI-powered tools are bringing that experience to millions. Teachers aren’t going anywhere, but what they focus on is evolving. AI is taking over admin work and making room for more 1:1 creative learning.

🔥 Video Generator (BETA) is Now Available in Amazon DSP

Amazon just expanded its AI-powered Video Generator inside the DSP and it’s now available in open beta for advertisers in the U.S.

If you're running Online Video (OLV) ads through Amazon DSP, you can now create professional-looking videos using your product images, existing video, and info scraped directly from your Amazon listings.

Here’s what it does:

Turn a product image or ASIN into 15-second, multi-scene video ads
Add animations, music, custom fonts, and branding
Pulls from product pages, A+ content, and more to keep things on-brand
Spits out up to six ready-to-run videos in minutes

This will now make high-quality video accessible to smaller brands who don’t have the budget or team for production.

And since it’s baked into the DSP workflow, there’s no extra lift to use it.

🌎 Where in the World is The Beard Guy?

Can you find Norm in the picture below? Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see the answer!

⚒️ How We Built a Landing Page in Seconds

Level: MEDIUM

1. Set Up Antigravity for Business Dev

We installed Antigravity from the official download page, signed in with a personal Gmail account, and made sure Chrome was available, which matches the preview requirements in the Antigravity docs.

We chose a fresh configuration instead of importing settings from other editors and picked an editor theme that felt comfortable for longer sessions.

2. Choose an Agent Mode and Policies

We selected an agent assisted development style flow, which the docs recommend as a good balance between autonomy and control.

We set the terminal execution policy to allow common installs and commands, and used a review policy that lets the agent proceed on routine changes but still surfaces artifacts for review when work is more complex.

3. Create a Workspace in the Agent Manager (Mission Control)

From the Agent Manager view, which the docs describe as Mission Control, we created a new workspace and pointed it at an empty local folder for the project.

The Inbox in the Agent Manager keeps track of conversations and artifacts, which makes it easy to come back to this landing page project later.

4. Set Up the Antigravity Browser Subagent

Following the browser setup flow in the docs, we let the agent launch the Antigravity managed browser and install the Chrome extension when prompted.

This enabled the browser subagent, which is a specialized helper that can open localhost, click through the page, scroll, and capture screenshots and short recordings. Once the extension was installed and permissions were granted, the main agent could test and verify the landing page directly in the browser.

5. Generate the React + TypeScript Project

In the Agent Manager, we started a new conversation in our workspace and used a natural language instruction like:

‘Create a TypeScript React app and give it a simple landing page for a modern business.’

We selected Gemini 3 Pro as the model. Antigravity created the initial project structure, installed dependencies, and ran the dev server, which matches the agent first flow described in the getting started guide.

6. Watch the Landing Page Come to Life in the Browser

Open the browser preview to watch the landing page render on localhost in real time. The blue border and activity indicators reflect the browser subagent taking control, exactly as described in the documentation. When the agent finished, we could see the initial landing page, even though the design was still bare and needed improvement.

7. Improve the Design With Visual Prompts and Screenshots

Once we had the basic layout, we used the inline screenshot workflow shown in both the docs and the video. We grabbed a screenshot of the current page and told the agent something like:

‘Make this look like a modern SaaS landing page with a stronger hero section and clearer calls to action.’

Antigravity updated the React components and Tailwind styles, then refreshed the browser preview and recorded a short playback, which is stored as an Artifact. This allowed us to iterate on the hero, typography, and spacing without hand editing every CSS rule.

8. Use Recordings and Artifacts to Shape Components

We asked the agent to navigate to localhost, record a walkthrough, and store notes in a markdown file. This matches the docs description of Artifacts as task plans, screenshots, and browser recordings that prove what changed.

We then referenced that markdown file to ask for new components, such as a more structured feature section or a clearer callout block, based on what the agent had seen in the recording.

9. Tune Antigravity Settings for Faster Iteration

In Settings, we aligned with the options described in the getting started guide. We enabled auto open edited files, auto continue, and auto lint fixes so the agent could move smoothly through its tasks.

For terminal commands, we chose a setting that lets the agent run common installs automatically but still ask for approval when something looks more sensitive. This kept the workflow fast while maintaining oversight, which is how the docs recommend balancing speed and safety.

10. Stay Organized With Version Control and Simple Prompts

Finally, we treated the workspace like any other project folder and initialized Git so we could always roll back to stable code if a later prompt broke something. From there, improvements were driven by simple, targeted instructions, such as:

‘Strengthen the headline and subheadline for a B2B audience.’

‘Tighten the spacing and make the primary button more prominent.’

The agent handled the code edits across multiple files, while the Artifacts view in the Agent Manager gave us diffs, screenshots, and recordings to quickly review its work.

Throughout, we used Planning mode for major changes and Fast mode for quick tweaks.

If you would like to learn more about AI check out FUTUREPEDIA

🔥15 Years of Sourcing Secrets in 60 Minutes...

Here are my favorite tips from this episode!

1. The smartest importers separate “product cost” from “development cost”

Factories routinely bury engineering, sample creation, and development hours inside the unit cost. In normal times, no one cares. Under 50–150 percent tariffs, that padding becomes financial suicide. The advanced operators negotiate two invoices:

One for true COGS (materials + labor),
One for development fees.
Tariffs apply only to COGS. Factories still get paid the same. You legally cut tariff liability, sometimes by 30–40 percent.

Disclaimer: Only use legitimate and accurate numbers. It is not worth the legal ramifications to try and cheat tariffs.

3. Most sourcing agents are middlemen

If a sourcing agent refuses to disclose the factory, you’re basically renting one. When you go to exit and can’t provide factory relationships, your valuations tank.

The Framework:
Try sourcing yourself AND through an agent at the same time. → Compare quotes, quality, transparency, and relationship access. → Choose based on evidence, not emotion.

4. Don’t ignore mold/tooling costs!

Creators constantly launch products without having the final sample in hand or understanding that tooling can cost $20,000–$80,000 before a single unit leaves the factory.
The winners:

Test final samples
Use third-party labs
Get influencer feedback during R&D
Document factory proof-of-production in marketing
Kickstarter’s biggest failures come from skipping this exact sequence.

5. Crisis periods are the best time to negotiate terms

When factories face downtime because tariffs kill US orders or governments shut down production they become highly flexible. In these windows, you can negotiate: