In this episode, Tyler Weese shares his inspiring journey from being a D1 football player to becoming the CEO of Skale Strategy, an e-commerce agency focused on scaling brands on Amazon. He discusses the challenges and importance of embracing imperfections while sharing strategies to help clients succeed on the platform. Tyler also highlights the evolving landscape of Amazon, the significance of authenticity in marketing, and the role of an omnichannel approach in scaling direct-to-consumer brands. He emphasizes the value of staying true to brand values and establishing a strong identity.
Tyler Weese is an experienced e-commerce leader who has founded and grown multiple brands on Amazon. He was the Director of Brand Growth at Skale Strategy, helping scale brands on Amazon. Weese also founded the communication product company Rettel Board, where he served as Director. He played college football as a wide receiver at Utah State University. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters of Marketing Agency:
- He believes that athletes and individuals with a passion for something make great employees and leaders.
- Tyler’s previous company, Rettel Board, was founded during his last year of college and was eventually acquired.
- Importing products for Rettel Board taught him valuable lessons about entrepreneurship and the process of sourcing goods.
- Inexperienced with sourcing, language barriers were a major hurdle at the start.
- Being an early adopter in a category provided both challenges and success opportunities.
- Skale is a full-service Amazon agency focused on helping clients navigate compliance and catalog issues.
- Establishing an authentic and passionate brand identity is crucial for effective marketing and establishing credibility.
Resources:
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Quotables:
- 22:56 – “We’ve long seen Amazon as, you know, the marketplace that is cheap or imported brandless product that is just, you know, serving a need, right? And I think that’s definitely repositioning, I think direct to consumer, brands need to pay attention and migrate towards Amazon. And there’s ways now that Amazon has made this possible for direct to consumer brands. So I see, you know, Amazon at its core, it’s a search engine, right? It’s a product search engine.”
- 03:57 – “I just love seeing people that, you know, challenge themself, have passion in life, have something that they wanna accomplish or excel at or do well in. And I think that for sure finding people that have a passion for something and can set goals and, and meet achievements regardless if that’s athletics, you know, music, whatever it might be. Yeah, I definitely love finding those people that have proven outside of a work environment that they can be successful and that they can be passionate about something.”
- 27:35 – “I came from the sales space and what I always tell everyone is, you know, I have my ways and, and that’s all I can like share with anyone else is how I do it. But I always preface and I always make sure to that they understand like, this is me using my strengths. Like you should obviously understand your strengths and where I, you know, build rapport galore. Maybe that’s just not your strength.”
- 25:26 – “I think, you know, obviously having some kind of omni-channel approach and, and getting outta your D2C site, Shopify or whatever it is, or just retail or something like that, I think is, is usually a good growth strategy.”
- 25:37 – Joshua: “If you had to teach something to other marketers, what would it be?”.. Tyler: “Hmm. I think just authenticity, right? Like don’t be someone or don’t create a brand that you are not, it is just hard to find passion behind what you’re doing or, or be compelling when you’re trying to be someone that you’re not. Right?”