Episode Summary
In this Prime Talk Podcast Video Sponsored by GETIDA, Jim Mann, the Director of Acquisitions at Thrasio, a leading marketplace brand acquirer, discusses how to sell your Amazon business & gain freedom. Jim shares his life’s journey into eCommerce.
E-commerce is going through such an interesting time at the moment. There are so many opportunities for entrepreneurs who have developed successful private label brands to cash out and move on to the next passion project. Yoni Mazor from PrimeTalk discusses what options you have if you’re thinking about selling your profitable e-commerce brand.
In today’s episode, PrimeTalk has teamed up with Jim Mann, the Director of Acquisitions at Thrasio, a leading brand acquirer in the e-commerce space. Thrasio will help you transition out of your private label brand in a way that is most profitable for you. They have the resources, the marketing, and the staff to buy your brand, make it more profitable, and get you a larger share of the pie in return.
Jim Mann talks about his start in London and Spain in consulting and retail and how it led him to team up with the giant Thrasio machine. So if you’re a seven-figure Amazon seller who is considering getting out of your brand and moving on to your next adventure, then this episode is for you!
Visit Thrasio for more information.
Learn about GETIDA’s Amazon FBA reimbursement solutions.
Find the Full Transcript Below
Yoni Mazor 0:06
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of PrimeTalk. Today I’m excited to have a special guest. I have Jim Mann. Jim is the Director of Acquisitions at Thrasio. Thrasio is a leading marketplace brand acquirer. And Jim, welcome to the show.
Jim Mann 0:20
Thank you very much, Yoni, lovely to be here.
Yoni Mazor 0:23
Same here. Thank you so much for your time. Alright, so today’s story is going to be the story of Jim Mann. You’re going to share with us, you know, who are you, where you’re from? You know, where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? How did you begin your professional career? So without further ado, let’s jump right into it.
Jim Mann 0:40
Okay, are you gonna ask me some questions, Yoni? Or you want me to freestyle?
Yoni Mazor 0:44
You’re going to freestyle, and then I’m going to pick up on whatever I think is, you know, extraordinary.
Jim Mann 0:48
Okay, so I’m here in London. I lived in Spain for 12 years, but I’ll come to that later. My first job out of uni was working with a company that promoted Anthony Robbins in Europe.
Yoni Mazor 1:03
Let’s backtrack. Let’s backtrack. So you already jumped into Spain, but you were born and raised in London?
Jim Mann 1:08
I was born and raised in London. I’m half Spanish. My mom ran away from a very traditional Spanish family to the UK. My dad was a pilot, my mom became a stewardess.
Jim Mann 1:19
Wow. So your mother ran away from Spain from which area do you know?
1:23
From the Basque Country up in the north near San Sebastian.
Yoni Mazor 1:26
And share with us a little bit, what was the issue there? Just you know, to expand their horizons.
Jim Mann 1:31
Yeah, my mom was a…she’s probably a little bit of a rebel. Spain is quite a conservative country, used to be very conservative. She was one of six. She was expected to grow up and become a good wife and move into the family business. My granddad was a hotelier and she just looked on that future and thought that’s not for me. And she wanted to go to Switzerland to become an interpreter. That was quite expensive at the time. My grandfather said no, it wasn’t about the money. It’s about the principal. And she said, Fine. I’m going to go do this on my own. So she moved to Spain…to France, actually, for a year. Did France for a year, learned French then moved to the UK to London. And when they lifted the net, she decided she wanted to travel. At the time flying was super glamorous. And
Yoni Mazor 2:13
This is which decade? Do you know?
Jim Mann 2:15
This was in the early 60s. This was before British Airways. What was the movie with…Catch Me If You Can, it was that kind of era.
Yoni Mazor 2:23
PanAm I think. PanAm.
Jim Mann 2:25
Yeah. Yeah. You know, people used to wear suits to travel. It wasn’t a budget airline.
Yoni Mazor 2:29
It was glamorous. Yeah. It wasn’t like, it’s almost like a punishment.
Jim Mann 2:33
Yeah, yeah. So my dad was a pilot, and they met and fell in love. And that was it.
Yoni Mazor 2:39
So your father was a commercial pilot?
Jim Mann 2:40
Yeah, with British Airways.
Yoni Mazor 2:43
And he was always a commercial or he had some air force background?
Jim Mann 2:46
No, he was an accountant. So his family were all accountants, and he was, you know, very similarly, was forced to become an accountant against his will. And did that for about eight years. And then said, Look, this isn’t for me. And he disappeared off, trained himself as a pilot, and came back. About a year and a half later, announced to the family that he was now a pilot and joined BA.
Yoni Mazor 3:10
Unbelievable, really unbelievable. I never heard of an accountant turned into a pilot. Especially after 8 years of experience under his belt. That’s, yeah, that’s unusual. And impressive. Okay. Wow. So that’s already an interesting background right here. So. So you grew up, born and raised in London, your parents were, I guess, also way growing up because of the nature of their occupation?
Jim Mann 3:28
Yeah, so I had a lot of au pairs living with me. I was on my own. It’s just me.
Yoni Mazor 3:35
Only child? Wow. Diamond. Right.
Jim Mann 3:37
So yeah, just me. Spoilt, spoilt single child.
Yoni Mazor 3:41
Okay, very good. And so alright, so you grew up born in London, I guess. You know, very independent, I guess. You know, growing up or you just had to be. And then you finished high school and where’d you go to university?
Jim Mann 3:52
I went to Nottingham, which is..
Yoni Mazor 3:56
Nottingham?
Jim Mann 3:56
Yeah. Do you know, Nottingham? I guess you probably don’t. It’s kind of…
Yoni Mazor 3:58
I do…from the football, you know, from the Premier League. So I’m familiar with… Yeah. Yeah, Nottingham. Almost all the towns in the UK are in the Premier League. I do have a connotation. When I was young. I actually did a whole project about the Premier League. So I exposed a lot of the cities, but I guess for the audience, so Nottingham, yeah. So which area is that? You know, if you’re,…
Jim Mann 4:19
It’s pretty much in the middle of England, it’s right in the middle. It’s about two hours north of London by car. And they have a team called Nottingham Forest, which never does very well. It’s a very depressing team to support. But they’re in the Premier League. So I did my degree there and studied business with marketing. Came out of that, I wanted to go into marketing but then discovered that it wasn’t great money.
Yoni Mazor 4:43
And what year did you graduate?
Jim Mann 4:47
What year? 2? Oh what year did I graduate? 1996 I think it was.
Yoni Mazor 4:55
Ok good. Manchester United when I think Beckham started to play football around that time for Manchester United.
Jim Mann 5:01
You’re like an encyclopedia for soccer. Yeah, it must be.
Yoni Mazor 5:02
Yeah. 95-96 I believe he started playing, David Beckham, was already retired. Yeah.
Jim Mann 5:08
Yeah. So um, I had a buddy working in this company, as with all things in life, you often kind of ended up through your network doing things, which is…
Yoni Mazor 5:17
So you said you graduated with marketing, but it wasn’t your thing?
Jim Mann 5:20
I did business studies with marketing. And it was a four-year degree, a year in Spain, three years studying. And the natural trajectory of a lot of people was to come out into a marketing role, either agency or in the enterprise. But that wasn’t for me. I didn’t, it didn’t really excite me. And then a friend of mine was working with a small consultancy at the time, who were promoting Robbins in Europe.
Yoni Mazor 5:46
Tim Robbins, Anthony Robbins?
Jim Mann 5:47
Tony Robbins.
Yoni Mazor 5:48
Yeah. Tim Robbins, you know, the major, I guess, life-changer, you know, motivational?
Jim Mann 5:55
So at the time, that was for a lot of people, that was crazy, freaky stuff, right. You know, as you know, my friends used to say you’re doing Jedi mind tricks, you know? And…
Yoni Mazor 6:05
So this was revolutionary. And we’re talking about 96-97, the year of 96-97? Yeah, it was early days.
Jim Mann 6:11
Yeah, it was very early days for that stuff, and certainly in Europe. And we realized that there was a market for this stuff in enterprises and companies. So at the time, Anthony Robbins was filling football stadiums with people and having these three-day events, and then just completely rewiring people to go out and achieve what they thought was never possible before. And we thought that companies need this. So we built a program for companies, and we called it “Breakthrough to Peak Performance”. And it was all about shifting people’s mindset, setting up beliefs, and goal setting, and personal responsibility. And all the stuff we’ll talk about now around mindset, we were kind of pioneers of that stuff in Europe. That started off as a basic training program, we made it up to the boardroom, because then a lot of companies were trying to drive change to their organizations, and change is found… is based on the mindset of your organization. So we then started working at the executive level, and talking to them about…they’re trying to change the process, the technology, the strategy, the most important thing, the speed of execution is all linked to the mindset of the organization. And so we put together communications packages, leadership programs, and we just did the whole thing from the boardroom, down to the shop floor.
Yoni Mazor 7:24
And how big was your team? The team you’re working with?
Jim Mann 7:28
Uh, we were seven. Then we got up to 50. And then we were acquired at 250. And I left at that point because I had
Yoni Mazor 7:34
You were acquired at 250? Which year and by whom?
Jim Mann 7:37
The acquisition happened in 2006.
Yoni Mazor 7:42
You were there for close to a decade? Close to 10 years?
Jim Mann 7:44
Yeah, I was there nine years. Yeah. And if I’m honest, I was getting a bit bored. It was really exciting. We were pushing boundaries. We were innovative. We were different. We were selling hot air, which is quite hard to sell. But it makes it quite exciting. You’re selling a piece of tech, you can see a tangible result for the implementation of that. We were just selling hot air. It’s like what do I get? That your people will get on board and you can execute. That’s what you’re gonna get, but that you’re trying to sell that.
Yoni Mazor 8:12
So the hot air is basically a mindset. A mindset is nothing. It’s intangible. You can’t hold it or grab it. But eventually, it brings results.
Jim Mann 8:19
Yeah, yeah. So I did that. And I was getting itchy feet. I was then at that stage, I was 30-31. And I felt like I didn’t want to be doing that forever.
Yoni Mazor 8:28
And who was the acquirer again, sorry, I’m not sure I…?
Jim Mann 8:30
There were two acquisitions. The first one was a company called Rogen SI who had a similar organization in Asia and Australia.
Yoni Mazor 8:36
And they just bought the unit for basically for businesses for uh enterprise level?
Jim Mann 8:40
Yeah and that was Rogen SI and then a couple of years later, a US firm called Teletech. I Bought Rogen SI. So
Yoni Mazor 8:51
How do you spell Rogen SI?
Jim Mann 8:55
R O G E N S I. So there were 2 companies. Rogen and SI, they became Rogen SI. And then Teletech acquired Rogen SI. So both of those companies are now gone, and they exist, the company that’s there now is Teletech.
Yoni Mazor 9:08
Got it. And this is already separate from Tim Robbins or they’re still working with association with the…
Jim Mann 9:12
No sorry, so the Robbins, we separated from Robbins very early on when we realized that selling football stadiums of people with Robbins was not sustainable. Wasn’t really…we weren’t we moved into the enterprise model within about two years. And then we’ve separated…
Yoni Mazor 9:27
Got it. So you came in 96-97 for the first two years it was mainly about Tim Robbins. And afterward you basically laid all the tracks where just you guys are selling organizations. The ability to create an environment where it’s just the mindset is much more focused on results and results-driven and innovation and taking that organization to the next step. Got it? That’s very good context as I was under the assumption it was all Tim Robbins.
Jim Mann 9:52
No, we set…we parted ways with Tony Robbins quite early on, then focused on the enterprise. But you know we’re very thankful for his inspiration, you know? The consultancy would never have been born without the Robbins part of the journey.
Yoni Mazor 10:09
So what was his part though? You guys were part of their group or are you always kind of a third party that was just always independently…Always independent. Got it.
Jim Mann 10:16
Yeah, we just took the license for Europe to promote Robbins in Europe.
Yoni Mazor 10:20
Got it, makes total sense. So 2006 you find yourself with I guess the next station. What happened there?
Jim Mann 10:25
So then I decided, right different. I had my first kid and I got mortgage-free, which was a big milestone for me.
Yoni Mazor 10:34
Mortgage-free because you are you made a fortune doing this, or what was the?
Jim Mann 10:38
No, meddler, I made enough money to pay off my mortgage. It wasn’t retirement money.
Yoni Mazor 10:41
Got it, got it. Okay, that’s good. So you’re young and you’re early, early 30s. That’s pretty good.
Jim Mann 10:46
I got mortgage-free and moved to Spain, decided I wanted to go for slightly lower speed.
Yoni Mazor 10:51
Hold on, you’re mortgage-free and did you sell the house? The asset or you…?
Jim Mann 10:56
Yeah, yeah. So I moved out of the house in London and put it up for rent, was living off the rent in London for a year while I was working out what to do in my life. I was in the south in a place called Tarifa, it’s the southernmost tip of Europe. You can see Africa across the water.
Yoni Mazor 11:12
You can see also probably Gibraltar, right?
Jim Mann 11:15
It’s right next to Gibraltar. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also the wind capital of Europe. So it’s a bit like…there’s a between Africa and Gibraltar that you have the Gibraltar Straits and the wind fires through there And as a result, you have the best windsurfers and kite surfers in Europe, and much of the world, go there to train.
Yoni Mazor 11:36
So are they harvesting energy there as well with the wind?
Jim Mann 11:39
Yeah, they are. Although they’re off a lot of the time because the wind’s too strong so they have to keep turning them off.
Yoni Mazor 11:44
Wow. I didn’t realize that. Yeah. So how long were you there in Tenerife?
Jim Mann 11:49
That was in Tarifa. Tarifa. Happens all the time. I was there 12 years.
Yoni Mazor 11:56
12 years, so 2006 up to 2018? Up to recent.
Jim Mann 12:03
Yeah, in 2017 I came back to London. Yeah. And during that time, I ended up with like a basically a big retail unit. I built a retail unit, it’s about 6000 square feet.
Yoni Mazor 12:16
Oh like a brick-and-mortar retail?
Jim Mann 12:18
Yeah in Tarifa. And just like surf and lifestyle stuff. So you know, Ruka, North Face, Patagonia, we had a section with surfboards and kitesurf equipment. We had a boutique, which was more girl, you know, female.
Yoni Mazor 12:34
So let’s talk about this, you know, this entrepreneurship, this is your own business, right? I guess you sailed into doing your own business and what was the evolution of that? So 2006 or seven? You said, Let me go to Spain. What actually…what triggered that…what made you change the scene?
Jim Mann 12:50
I fell in love with Tarifa, it’s a stunning place. It’s pretty unique. And a lot of the people living there. A friend of mine said go they will love it. And they just knew me inside out. And I went down as I have to come back.
Yoni Mazor 13:02
So you went alone? You went with your wife and what have you?
Jim Mann 13:05
Yeah, well, my partner, my one kid, we had three other, so I had four kids since. And I ended up just as well, I made my base. While I was there, I did a bit of consulting back in the UK. And I ended up working with eBay. And the European management team. And in one of the events, we were doing for them we had we were working on the strategy deck with them. And there was a big thing around the move towards marketplaces. This was 2013. And I didn’t know, you know…
Yoni Mazor 13:39
So you’re not working for eBay? You’re working with eBay as a consultant?
Jim Mann 13:43
I was working on my own. Just old contacts used to call me and I used to go back and just do the odd freelance project because the money was great. And I couldn’t say no to it. So a few weeks here and there back in London or in Spain or other parts of Europe.
Yoni Mazor 13:54
And what was the project about in 2013?
Jim Mann 13:59
This was working with eBay. This was the…actually they were building a team a bit like Amazon, which was reaching out to retailers and convincing retailers to go on to eBay as a sales channel. And they were offering them, channel managers, basically on eBay.
Yoni Mazor 14:13
This is for globally or just for Europe?
Jim Mann 14:15
Oh, yeah, this was global. This was a European team, but part of the global. And they were trying, you know, eBay had an image issue. And they were trying to get big brands to see eBay as a bona fide ecom channel. And these guys were doing that. And part of that was their pitch deck was around the move towards marketplaces and how e-commerce stores were going to struggle more in the future and the money was going to end up in marketplaces.
Yoni Mazor 14:40
And what was the image issue you would say eBay had? Or maybe still has, what was the issue? Or as you perceive it,
Jim Mann 14:47
This is just my…I can’t, you know?
Yoni Mazor 14:51
It was just too wide, too wild?
Jim Mann 14:54
This is just personal. A lot of people, I think, see eBay as a cheap place right? And so big brands worry about which stores they’re seen in and eBay is effectively the store. So if you want that illusion…
Yoni Mazor 15:04
They were afraid if their brand is there, it’s prevalent, maybe dilute the prestige.
Jim Mann 15:12
That’s about it. And that’s what these guys were trying to convince. And they were successful. They went from zero to huge numbers very quickly.
Yoni Mazor 15:18
Oh, yeah. Okay. That’s interesting.
Jim Mann 15:19
So whilst..a short time after this, a friend of mine came to me and said, Oh, there’s this guy’s doing a course on how to sell on Amazon.
Yoni Mazor 15:27
And this is 2013 as well?
Jim Mann 15:29
This was 2013 as well.
Yoni Mazor 15:31
This is evolutionary, I tell you from all the guests that I had, I really do, spot-on, that 2013 was almost like a “big bang”, man. Yeah. You know, retailers and marketplace players really shifted in during 2-8, 2-13. But yeah, so what happened? What transpired?
Jim Mann 15:46
This was the famous ASM. Amazing Selling Machine. So it was ASM 1, and my friend said like, it’s not cheap. I think it was $3,000 or $4,000. He has let’s get it. And so we did it. And this all makes sense. And
Yoni Mazor 15:59
It was a physical event?
Jim Mann 16:03
ASM online program. Amazing Selling Machine.
Yoni Mazor 16:05
Got it, I didn’t realize that. Okay.
Jim Mann 16:06
Yeah. And so follow the program, picked some products based on the criteria, ordered it from China. It’s quite a slow process, right? It takes six months, by the time you get your samples, stuck it up on Amazon, then it’s sold, and I was like, this works! Let’s buy some more. And you know, from there very quickly, within a year and a bit, got up to seven figu
