Elite Commerce Group: Propelling brands to the top of Amazon.
- KLS
- 12 minutes ago
- 11 min read
For the 183rd feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Elite Commerce Group and Founder, Eric Martindale. Their goal is to take your Brand to the top of not only Amazon, but on the right mix of up to 200 other digital Marketplaces. Amazon and other digital Marketplaces are only growing in complexity. The secret is out, and the big brands are here. This means that while e-commerce is exploding, many brands are struggling to capitalize on this generational opportunity. Their team lives for this fight, and fight to win. They fight for you. They are tech-powered with their own proprietary fast-growth software system, which allows their team of experts to systematically beat your competitors. They leverage intensive data, off-the-shelf software tools, and their own proprietary software tools to analyze and beat your competitors. This is what their team does for their brand partners every day. If you need to win in digital commerce, they're the Agency you've been searching for.
"Together Talks" feature # 183: Elite Commerce Group presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Story of how it was created?
I started out in the Marine Corps. I was an active duty officer in the Marine Corps and I ended up getting a really rare assignment in Pennsylvania, at the University of Pennsylvania. That brought me home, and I knew I wanted to get out from there. I saw a lot of professors there had other jobs and businesses, and they were making money. I started out importing. I had done a lot of homework, before I even got to UPenn, and I started importing.
It went well. I grew business while I was still on active duty. I got to a point where I couldn't move what I needed to for an agreement. I got myself in a tough spot. I turned to Amazon. That was way back in the early days. I did a little bit of digital advertising the first year they opened it and just fell in love with it right away. I knew that it was for me. I ended up growing an Amazon agency. Then about 2017-18, we had a brand that approached us and asked us to manage this platform called Instacart.
We said yes, I always say yes. If it's not being done out there and it needs to be done, we just say yes. Even if we're not going to stick with it long term, we say yes. We test everything that comes out. We tested Instacart. We tested super good return, but it took us like all of no time to realize how strategic that was. I realized we were actually growing retail accounts that were worth a lot more than just the sales we drove through Instacart.
We started really leaning into that. Fast forward to today, I like to say we're the first agency that leaned into retail media. I don't know that it's 100% true, but I don't know anybody who started before us. We help to drive velocity on behalf of brands in retail. You can get very strategic with that. It's keeping a retailer healthy. It's manipulating what happens at the shelf before category review. It's trying to get more SKUs into a particular retailer. It's trying to get data from one retailer really kind of hyped up, take that to another retailer that you plan to sell to. There are all kinds of cool things you can do through retail media.
What separates you from your competition?
One is we have a team of developers. If there's not a software available, we make it. We've had an integration with OpenAI, an API integration since Almost since it was available. We test everything that comes out. If there's a functionality that's not out there, we build it internally. I have one other person on the team with myself, where we really strive to be strategists.
I think we are really good with knowing what a platform can do, what the impact is at the retailer, what's possible, what's not possible, even to the point where we have brands that are going in for a category review and we're giving them data and telling them what to take with them. I did sell to retail, but it was mostly in these small chains, back when I was importing. I'm not trying to make myself as an expert in selling into retail or anything like that, but working with a lot of different brands, we get to learn from those brands. Then we can pass that on to other brands.
What have been the biggest challenges?
2023 and 2024 were tough because we really had to adjust. Money dried up for a lot of brands and we unfortunately saw some go under and some just run out of money and quit doing certain advertising activities. We went through a little bit of a rough patch there. The other thing I would say is, a shiny object syndrome. I told you we're very founder personality driven, where I really want us to be leaning in to platforms as they come out. But we have to do that very carefully, now payroll has grown. That's the thing that keeps me up at night. CPG brands have to afford inventory and everything that comes with running a business. Payroll for me is an absolute monster. I have to be careful what new platforms we take on and how we take them on.
What companies make a good fit?
We take calls from brands all the time where they're in 200 retail doors. It's not worth it for them to pay an agency for the little bit of activity that we can get them. I would say the ideal brand probably has about a minimum of 1,000 doors. We can work with less depending if they're national doors, we can take a DTC brand. We've done this many times where they're established in DTC, on Amazon maybe, and then they're launching their first national retailer. We can work with that brand 100%, whether it's Sprouts or Whole Foods or Kroger. But for the most part, we're looking for a minimum of a thousand doors and really the sweet spot's 5,000 doors. But there's some variables in there that make some brands much more workable at an earlier stage of the retail game.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
It was a little easier then. It wasn't really a pivot. It was more a second set of offerings. In fact, we still do a ton of Amazon management. It's about half of the business and it's growing. Even when we try to stop it from growing, it's almost all referral right now. It sometimes grows faster than we want it to. There are definitely times where I think we've scaled it too much. But there wasn't that much risk in that regard.
The one thing I would say as an owner, I tended to give away the farm for a long time. Once that retail media started, it's really where we hit scale. Just because you're taking what you do and doubling it, isn't always the answer. The inbound was crazy because nobody was doing it, truthfully it still kind of is. Everybody that we had on Amazon, most of them, as soon as they found out we're doing retail media, they wanted to do that too.
I'm like a bleeding heart kind of guy. In the past, if I find out a brand is in some kind of capital constraint, I offered for them to defer payment. I got myself in a tough spot a couple of times doing that where there were way too many of those in the business. I had to completely let go of invoicing and and even what we're bidding brands.
I think to back to your question, the risks, I think it was more a risk of scale. As a founder, when you start to hit that inflection point and start to scale, that's where your flaws become evident. That was one of mine. You can scale a lot of things, but you can't, or at least you shouldn't scale flaws. Don't scale mistakes.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
There have been many, I continue to learn things, but some things that stand out. In the service-based business, is so hard to hire for. But you really have something special if you actually care what happens to your clients. I almost face-planted a couple of times where I had people within the business say, Eric, "what are you doing, look at all these accounts, we're working for free or nothing". But I think on the other side of that, if you actually care what happens to your clients, you'll go the extra mile, and that's hard to talk about scale.
How do you hire for that? How do you know that you're bringing in people that actually care? Because once people know that, they will stay with you forever. They don't want to let you go. But it's really hard to instill that in a team if it's not natural. People know it's not real. You look at all these sales programs, and they talk about things like churn and sell the dream and all that nonsense. I guess it works, but I think most people see through it. People want to know, I think it's the secret sauce. when people actually care. When you care, you're up at night when things go bad for them at the same time they are.
Balancing relationships with clients?
I know I have clients that are friends. They are absolutely friends, that I will visit. But I think now it's dicey, because they're paying you. I think when you are so close with a client it's almost like you've been through the fire with them a number of times and you've been through hard times and you put skin in the game. Sometimes you do things for brands and it doesn't make any sense on my end, but it damn sure feels good when you know you're doing something good for them.
Sometimes you have to just do it, whatever the money is, the transaction, the contract has to be out of mind some of the time. Somebody has to think about it, but I think when you're in there doing the work, it's just helpful to know where the end zone is and just try to drive the ball in. You were talking about how you guys are an extension of the team and I think eventually you start saying things like "we". You're talking about their mission and you say "we have to", and "we were published here". I think that is the kind of the zenith of service arrangement or relationship.
Why are services hired?
Determining what are you paying for. You really want to pay somebody by the hour or do want to pay for experience where like you said, 90% of the time things go right, but you have your basis covered with the other 10%. Can you reduce that 10% to 5%? That's experience, I think. I think that's why people go to services anyway, right? I mean, you can do it yourself. Or you can hire somebody, but with a service business, you've got teams of sometimes 150 years of combined experience.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate most?
Leadership. I think it's become very cliche. I come from a leadership background in the Marine Corps, and it's different. It's not as different as I think people would think, but there are a lot of differences. As an owner, it's a little different because you're pulled in so many different directions. If you look at really big companies, you have a CEO that's focused outward. Before you get to that point where you have C-suite and things like that, the owner is doing both. It's really easy to know your job and you should know how to do it.
But I keep coming back to how valuable it is to spend time with people and time leading. You can't lead everybody, no one can, but you can't lead everybody aggressively or intimately. The time that you put into your team on whether it's projects or strategies or whatever level you're at is just invaluable. It really is. It's cliche. Everybody says, I'm a good leader. You have all that cringe stuff that goes around. But really leading your team at your level and check-ins and meetings and one-on-ones, I think, are just invaluable. The more time you put into them, the more you get out.
What is your why?
Probably everybody's heard that cliche, you should do what you love. The truth is, sometimes you have to make what you do what you love. I keep going back to the Marine Corps, I almost never talk about it. I don't know why I keep going back to it here. I think just the nature of the questions, but whether you love it or hate, it is very mission driven. It's very, very mission focused. Very few people join the Marine Corps for a paycheck. It's a stupid way to get a paycheck, honestly. There are other better ways.
When you leave the Marine Corps, there are very few opportunities you can have to really fall in love with a mission to the same level. Maybe that's not true, but it seems that way, right? You get out of Marine Corps, everything is mission, mission, mission, mission. It's drilled. There's indoctrination. You love it. There's indoctrination. Why you went. It's usually everything you ever wanted out of it. Then you get out of the Marine Corps and you think, well, I don't know what my mission is anymore.
It can't just be to make money. And it is very common, I think, in the military in general to feel lost. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I definitely felt that way, even in a business that was growing and it was making money. I felt like I have no idea how am I supposed to love this? But then it just clicked that one point. I realized we're helping. We're in a sense, we're the cavalry. I firmly believe that now I say it internally, constantly, but when people need help, can we fly in and fight alongside of them. I flipping love it. I absolutely love it.
We end up on calls all the time where we're going to launch, a brand maybe, or just it's an intro call where I'm not as passionate because they just want to see what else is out there. Instead when someone tells us we have this problem and we don't know how to get around it, I freaking love that. I think in the service business, that's what you do. We should look at ourselves as the cavalry. Somebody's in trouble, they need help. They're trying to do something and if we can do it, we fly in and fight alongside of them. There should be a relief. They should feel a relief like, thank God these guys are here. I love that. That is what keeps me going.
Piece of Advice
I'm going to use something that is probably very appropriate right now. I think there's a lot of fears about tariffs and the economy and potential recession. We were talking about that earlier, I just got off of a call a little while ago and everybody's in a different spot. Some people are very, very bullish. Some people are very worried. If you're in that worried camp, I think the best thing to do is to step back and look at this like you're in a helicopter.
If the helicopter starts to lose altitude, don't cut your engines, right? People panic and they decide they have to stop spending on something. I think there's a place for that. I think what you figure out is, what is my engine? What is keeping me in the air? Don't cut that. It's different for everybody. Don't cut sales. If you have performance advertising that's driving sales, don't cut that. Cut the other stuff. Throw the other stuff overboard. But figure out exactly what is driving your sales and let that not be the thing that you cut. You can dump the rest of the dead weight.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Elite Commerce Group and Founder, Eric Martindale, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!