🤦‍♂️ I Can’t Explain This…

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

• 🤦‍♂️ I Can’t Explain This... [True Story]

• 📊 Amazon Seller Registrations Hit Decade Low

• 💊 Amazon Sets Deadline on Inflated Supplement Ingredient Claims

• ⚒️ How to Create a 3-tab AI App! [Step-By-Step Guide]

• 🔥 Secret AI Shortcuts Your Competitors Use Daily...

Hey Beardos, I’ve got a quick message today.

I am speaking at BDSS 13 Virtual (Jan 20-22)! There’s still time to pick up last minute tickets. It’s packed with the very best in the industry.

See you there.

🤦‍♂️ I Can’t Explain This… [TRUE STORY] 

This story goes back to the 80s, when I was in college studying film and cinematography.

For one of our midterms, we had to produce a short film, and part of our shoot was planned at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto.

Five of us piled into a tiny car with cameras and gear, joking around like broke college kids do.

On the way, my buddy suddenly slammed on the brakes.

Sitting on the side of the road was an architect’s tube, one of those long cardboard cylinders with caps on both ends.

For reasons I still can’t explain, he got out, picked it up, and tossed it into the car.

There was a name written on the cap, but none of us thought much of it. We just kept going.

We arrived at the mall, started setting up our shots, and as we were getting ready to roll, this tiny elderly woman walked over and struck up a conversation.

She asked what we were doing, and I told her we were shooting our midterm for college.

She smiled and said her granddaughter went to the same school.

Then she paused and added that her daughter had just told her something awful. Her granddaughter had lost her midterm. All of it. Her architecture drawings.

Gone.

When she said her granddaughter’s name, every one of us froze.

We slowly looked at each other, then at the tube sitting near our gear.

I picked it up, checked the name on the cap, and said, “I think this belongs to your granddaughter.”

Inside were her missing midterm drawings.

The grandmother couldn’t believe it.

We couldn’t believe it.

Out of all the places, all the people, all the timing, that tube ended up in our car.

By the end of the day, her granddaughter had her midterms back, and five film students were left speechless.

Business lesson:

Opportunities, connections, and solutions don’t always show up through strategy or planning.

Sometimes they come from paying attention, being honest, and doing the right thing when chance puts something in your hands.

In business, those moments matter.

You never know when a random stop on the road turns into a defining moment.

— Norm

🚨 Amazon Seller Registrations Hit Decade Low in 2025

Back when I first got into this game, Amazon was the wild west.

Some stuck with it. Some didn’t. But the barrier to entry was low, and the upside was massive.

That era is over.

In 2025, Amazon recorded just 165,000 new seller registrations.

That’s the lowest number in a decade, down 44% from last year. And it’s not because e-commerce is shrinking. Amazon’s third-party GMV hit $575 billion globally.

What we’re seeing now is what I’d call a “professionalization moment.” The hobbyists, the “easy money” seekers, they’re being squeezed out.

Tariffs, AI competition, rising ad costs, platform fees, and increasing pressure from overseas sellers (especially China) have pushed out casual players.

Over 100,000 sellers now do over $1 million a year. 235 sellers do $100 million or more.

And for those willing to adapt, the opportunity has expanded. There are fewer new sellers, fewer active sellers overall—but traffic per seller is up 31% since 2021.

What does this mean if you're just getting in?

• It’s no longer about “trying Amazon.” It’s about building on Amazon.

• You’ll need capital. You’ll need systems. You’ll need a clear brand story.

• And most importantly, you’ll need patience.

The biggest winners today?

Sellers who got in early and built for the long haul. More than 60% of the top 10,000 sellers joined before 2019.

But that doesn’t mean the door is closed. It just means the rules have changed.

🚀 Read more here

💊 Amazon Sets Deadline on Inflated Supplement Ingredient Claims

Amazon has notified dietary supplement sellers that starting March 31, 2026, listings with misleading or inflated ingredient claims risk deactivation.

The focus is simple: what you say on your listing must match your Supplement Facts Panel exactly. Amazon is no longer treating supplement listings like marketing pages. They’re treating them like regulated labels.

For years, sellers got away with creative storytelling. That window is closing.

What Amazon is actually targeting

The main issue Amazon is cracking down on is inflated ingredient weights, especially in herbal supplements. A common example is listing a product as “10,000mg herb equivalent” when the Supplement Facts Panel only shows 500mg of extract.

Even if that conversion is technically true in sourcing terms, it’s now considered misleading unless the conversion is clearly documented on the label itself.

In short, if the weight isn’t printed on the Supplement Facts Panel, it doesn’t belong anywhere on the product detail page. That includes titles, bullets, descriptions, A+ Content, and images.

Legitimate scientific conversions are still allowed. For example, presenting Vitamin D as both IU and micrograms is fine, as long as both values appear on the panel. What Amazon no longer allows is turning extract weights into larger raw-material numbers for marketing impact.

Why this is different from past policy updates

Amazon’s Regulatory Intelligence, Safety and Compliance team has made it clear that supplements are now being evaluated as regulated products, not as brand storytelling opportunities.

Amazon is also using AI systems to cross-check listing copy against product images, Supplement Facts Panels, and even claims made on external brand websites.

That means old copy that’s been sitting untouched for years is suddenly risky. Most sellers won’t be deactivated because their products are unsafe. They’ll be deactivated because the listing copy no longer aligns with the label.

What sellers need to understand before March 31

Amazon expects every dietary supplement listing to present ingredient names, weights, and serving sizes consistently and accurately.

Product images must clearly show the full label, including the Supplement Facts Panel, ingredients list, brand information, and identifying codes like lot numbers.

This applies to everyone. Seller Central, Vendor Central, private label brands, manufacturers, and resellers are all held to the same standard.

If you’re reselling someone else’s brand, you’re still responsible for making sure the listing matches the label exactly.

The bigger challenge is scale.

Sellers with large catalogs now have to audit hundreds or thousands of ASINs and clean up legacy copy that was never reviewed through a compliance lens.

Amazon’s systems can now flag discrepancies automatically, so waiting this out is not a viable strategy.

🌎 Where in the World is The Beard Guy?

🔥 Secret AI Shortcuts Your Competitors Use Daily...

Here are my favorite tips from this episode!

1. Speed becomes a competitive advantage when process is documented

Rachel’s influencer vetting case proves that the bottleneck was never “finding better tools,” it was the existence of a clear, documented process. Once the SOP existed, AI collapsed a three-week timeline into hours. Sellers should understand that documenting workflows is not busywork. It directly converts into faster launches, faster testing, and faster revenue once AI is layered on top.

2. AI amplifies good processes and exposes bad ones

The episode makes it clear that AI does not fix broken operations. It scales whatever already exists. The reason the influencer workflow worked so well with AI is because it was already precise and detailed. Sellers should audit their workflows before adding AI. If the process is vague, inconsistent, or dependent on tribal knowledge, AI will simply produce average or unreliable results.

3. Downsizing with AI is short-term thinking

A critical takeaway is that treating AI as a replacement strategy instead of a leverage strategy creates long-term fragility. The businesses getting the most value are keeping humans focused on innovation and decision-making while AI handles execution. Sellers who remove all human oversight lose the ability to improve offers, creatives, and strategy over time.

4. “Own the playbook, rent the tech” is the real moat

Tools will change, models will improve, and platforms will wipe out point solutions overnight. What survives is the internal playbook. Sellers who invest in documenting how they do research, sourcing, launches, ads, and compliance can swap AI tools without starting over. This protects the business from tool churn and vendor risk.

5. Custom GPTs are the fastest entry point for solo sellers

For sellers without teams, the most actionable move is converting repeat tasks into custom GPTs. Brain-dump the steps, refine them once, and reuse them indefinitely. This turns AI into a reusable asset rather than a one-off assistant and compounds time savings across listing creation, keyword research, supplier outreach, and compliance checks.

🔥 Watch the full episode here

Find this episode of Marketing Misfits on YouTube and anywhere you listen to podcasts

And that’s it, Beardos.

See you next Monday!

- Norm

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