E137: Burc Tanir

Richard Hill:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One, and welcome to episode 137. In this episode, I speak with Burc Tanir, CEO and co-founder of Prisync, competitive price tracking and monitoring software. Burc is known as the pricing guy. When you think about pricing, it can be a very daunting task to keep on top of competitors and monitoring the different brands and margins that you're working with. If you thought using pricing technology was just about being the cheapest, then you'd be so wrong. In this episode, Burc and I talk why pricing really matters for e-commerce stores, the different types of pricing strategies merchants can implement, how does dynamic pricing impact Google Shopping results? Now, I know a lot of you listen, and I know a lot of you are actually running Google Shopping, so this is an absolute blinder of a bit of advice.

So why also is pricing and a pricing strategy so important for Amazon and where Burc sees the future of pricing in e-commerce, and so much more on this one all around pricing and dynamic pricing. So if you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast, you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now, let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Hi there. I just wanted to take a quick break to introduce our sponsor, Prisync. Prisync is a competitive price tracking and monitoring software that can dynamically change your products prices on all sales channels. They work with brands such as Samsung, Sony, and Suzuki to increase their online revenue. If you run Google Shopping ads, like I know a lot of you do, this software is absolutely key to accelerating profits. One of the reasons I recommend Prisync to my clients is because you can find out what your competitor's pricing and stock availability is in one simple-to-understand dashboard giving you a huge competitive advantage. If you have any questions about this software or you're ready to take a 14 day free trial, head to eComOne.com/prisync. That's eComOne.com/prisync. P-R-I-S-Y-N-C. And complete the inquiry form and we will connect our listeners to the Prisync team. Right. Let's head straight back to the episode.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. Today's guest, Burc Tanir, CEO and co-founder at Prisync. How you doing, Burc?

Burc Tanir:
Yeah, I'm doing fine. Thanks. Thanks, Richard. What about you?

Richard Hill:
I am very good. Very good. Very looking forward to this one.

Burc Tanir:
Same here.

Richard Hill:
We've obviously been trying to get Burc on for a little while, but we got you in the studio today/ So thank you so much for coming on. I think before we get into all things Prisync, it'd be great for you to introduce yourself to our listeners and how you got into the world of e-commerce.

Burc Tanir:
Sure, sure. Well, thanks a lot for having me first of all, Richard. Pleasure to be in the studio, as you said. So as you briefly introduced, I'm the CEO and co-founder of Prisync. And Prisync is essentially a competitive price tracking software, dynamic pricing software. But to respond to your question on how I got into e-commerce is absolutely relevant to what we do today. So maybe starting from the very beginning. So I graduated from the university, I came up with another startup idea, which is not Prisync, which eventually failed. So let's mention that part really fast. And after that failure, I kind of decided to become an entrepreneur again. So I really started, decided to retry, let's say. And at that time I really wanted to check out which markets are really, let's say, attractive to be targeted, I would say.

So I didn't really want to become another e-commerce entrepreneur myself, so I didn't want to run an online shop and direct the consumer brand or something. But is that I really wanted to find out which problems are worth solving in the e-commerce ecosystem around at that time. And around at that time was like 2013, 2014, and I did some research through my friends and they were either starting up their own web shops or they were working in various e-commerce companies. And the common theme just popped up from those conversations was that they were wasting a ton of time on competitive research. So they were literally hired by their employees just to actually open multiple Google Chrome tabs of their competitors and copying and pasting all the product information, pricing information from the competitors into a dummy Excel file. So they were doing this for, I don't know, 100 products, 10 products for few competitors.

And eventually with the Excel file, they were actually trying to come up with optimum prices according to competition. And I noticed that this is actually a common, let's say, procedure in nearly all e-commerce companies in competitive markets. And this was mostly done in a manual way across the board. So all I said, "Actually this can be automated," so I checked out the feasibility of it and found it pretty feasible. So I actually decided to build, let's say, with my co-founders, an automation around it. So technically we decided to build an automated competitor price tracking software for e-commerce companies around 2013. And in the first few years of the company, we technically didn't have any software. So we did this manually on behalf of our clients. So this was mainly a service. So we did gain that early traction that way, and then we built software on top of that. And the rest is actually not history, but today basically.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Isn't that a great story? I think that'll resonate with so many listeners there. I think the e-com stores, they start with a, "You know, if we just..." You know how things start. I think it's just really interesting. And most e-com stores start with just a, "Oh, if we could just sell one or two products. And then next thing you know, you're selling a hundred products and 500 products and a thousand products." And obviously I know your business pretty well. Me and Burc met up a few weeks ago at an event here in Lincoln in the UK`. And obviously I know the scale of your business now and it's phenomenal. And I think it's great to see. I think you see a lot of sort of SaaS and E-com SaaS particularly start with a spreadsheet and a manual process and then turning that into what it is today. So what is the mission now? What is the sort of plan for Prisync now? What is the mission behind Prisync?

Burc Tanir:
Well, the mission is really to become the... I mean, this might sound too ambitious, too bold, but yeah. That's startup life. So you would like to become the pricing backbone of e-commerce? So not just necessarily competitive pricing, competitive price monitoring, but really becoming a very sophisticated, but also understandable. So easy to use pricing automation technology for all sides of e-commerce from, let's say, nearly all industries, all countries. So as of today, we primarily focus and we primarily hit the competitive markets where competitive pricing is the main, let's say, profitable strategy. But we kind of miss, for example, direct to consumer space where you don't really have direct product comparison. So you don't really have any direct competition which sells the exact same stuff that you can compare against and reprice. And also there, for example, pricing is mostly... I mean it mostly depends on your inventory levels, it depends on seasonality, it depends on many other stuff.

So we would like to expand that, let's say, mentality. So we would like to incorporate in a way more, let's say, decision criteria into our engine than it has today. So this is one big mission, but all in all, we really would like to become, like I said, the pricing backbone. Not necessarily only for e-commerce, but really when you think about, for example, CRM, you come up with Salesforce. For hosting, it's AWS. So one, people mentioned pricing, we would like to be that company.

Richard Hill:
That number one.

Burc Tanir:
That leads the market. So that's the big goal.

Richard Hill:
That's a brilliant sort of aspiration. And why the hell not? Obviously I've seen your tech in action and I know it firsthand. So I think pricing is something that isn't really talked about a lot. I think we've done 135 episodes and pricing I don't think has been mentioned once. And ultimately when we think about you guys that are listing now, ultimately you're selling a product, someone's going to Google, Amazon, eBay, Shopping, whatever it may be, looking for your SKU. And if you're selling branded SKUs, your SKUs are the same. It's the products and the only differentiator... Well, that's not the only differentiator. Just correct that. But a key differentiator before they've even got to your site is price. Obviously there's imagery and price description, but price such a important factor.

But if you've got thousands and thousands or tens and tens of thousands of SKUs, obviously that's quite challenging, isn't it? To do it on a manual process or even to pay somebody manually to do it. It's a real pain. So I think my next question, does pricing really matter for e-commerce stores? I think it's fairly obvious. It does. I'm answering my own question here, but what would you say?

Burc Tanir:
Yeah, yeah. I absolutely agree with you on that. And throughout this, let's say, 10 years of journey where we really try to validate this. Not validate, but really prove this idea to our customers, to the other e-commerce merchants in the company, and in the market. Is that I believe pricing is an area where demand is over weighing the supply. Consumers care more about pricing than the merchants. For example, in shipping, in various other tech areas, I think merchants are already aware of the importance of the area because they can understand the consumers, et cetera. But I think in pricing, they don't really care about pricing as much as their consumers do. So there's actually an imbalance there, unbalance there. And I also can understand this with this analogy. So I believe pricing is mostly maths and people don't really like maths in high school, I don't know, in university.

So it's kind of the boring stuff they wouldn't like to do. For example, social stuff, which is marketing, I don't know, user experience. So those areas are more arts.

Richard Hill:
Bit more creative.

Burc Tanir:
Arts. Yeah, so people are most inclined towards that area and they typically prefer to neglect, let's say, maybe voluntarily, maybe involuntarily, the pricing side of things. I absolutely agree with you on saying that at the end of the day, pricing is what we really sell. I mean obviously product experience, everything. But on a transactional level, we kind of put our pricing in front of our buyers and they actually like that price and they just buy the product at that price. So that's actually way more crucial than it's now considered, to be honest. And that's kind of one of our goals as a company. So we really don't really try to sell our software and convince people onto the value of our software, but really try to make pricing more relevant in e-commerce. So as relevant as, I don't know, user experience, as relevant as shipping experience.

So we really try to bring pricing to the awareness level of all those other e-commerce areas, let's say. So all-in-all, if I come up with certain steps, for example, one you ask to a regular merchant, I don't know, in the UK, in the US, 60%, this is actually a research done by I think Accenture. So 60% of them actually states pricing as the most important decision criteria. So then comes obviously free delivery, then comes obviously user experience and all that. Still people care about pricing more than other stuff. But I think the main reason why merchants are not really caring about this as much is since it's maths, since it's not a creative area, not maybe fun area. So it's unsexy, boring and all that for all those reasons. But I really have seen, obviously we serve about thousand clients, so I actually kind of have some experience with nearly all of them.

And I have really seen the edit value firsthand. So one, you have better pricing, you run your business on a better track. And it really, maybe we will discuss this around the line, but it also compliments with all the other initiatives. For example, if you really focus on user experience, but if you actually don't have good pricing strategies, I mean that user experience will be just nice user experience. No transactions, no sales or something. So I don't say that pricing is everything at all, but it's something. And it's really something vital. That's what I'm trying to say.

Richard Hill:
But I think it's something that is, I guess I think it's quite crudely done normally. It's just like, "Okay, we've import..." There's obviously different scenarios but there's no real science behind it. And if there is, it's a temporary science because that person hasn't got the time or the inclination. Like you say, it's a bit like we've got a couple of real GA4 geeks in our business, whereas most companies, if we say GA4 and data and the maths side, then, "Oh God no. Can't we do..." Not interested sort of thing. And pricing is similar, isn't it? Obviously, I think it's more of a side where people go in, they're setting maybe their new SKUs up or their new lines up, they've got a new CSV from a manufacturer or a new set of products or they're just starting out and pricing then is just left. And if that was Google Ads, that will fail. And of course, you're going to ruin your Google ads.

What do you have? I've done the ads. Well, no, you've got to be on that, you've got to be on it, you've got to be on it. But obviously inherently, if you've got 10, 50, 100,000 SKUs, that's quite challenging.

Burc Tanir:
And sorry, just to add on to the Google Ads analogy, I think it was like that in the past. So people were kind of setting their price and it was spraying and praying. So they received those prices from suppliers, maybe they add a certain profit margin, so if they apply cost based pricing. But with inflation, that kind of really changed. So you can't really still keep the same prices for too long. So you at least have some pressure to change your prices. So when people started to feel that pressure more often than before, they now started to question, so how should we really change our prices? Whether we should really change or not? So I think this, let's say, pressure of changing prices more often than before kind of made it more relevant. And I think it will stick for a while.

Richard Hill:
No, I totally agree. So I think when we talk about pricing as a strategy, I think a lot of people may think, "Oh, it's just about being the cheapest. That's the strategy." But obviously there are a lot of different pricing strategies that different businesses, different industries, there's a different things that can dictate a price. So if you were to break that down into different pricing strategies that our listeners... We might have some people that have got... They're selling low margin products, high margin products. Some people that have got stuff that's in and out of stock all over the different merchants. And what are some of the strategies that might help our listeners to think about pricing it? It's not just about being the cheapest. What other things can pricing help you do?

Burc Tanir:
Yeah. I think it's all tied to the business goals really. So it's not really something... I can't really name one global strategy which will succeed in every business scenario, but I think it's really closely tied to your aspiration as a company. So I was saying that, for example, your aim might be really to improve your profitability, your aim might be really to increase your gross merchandise on GMV. Your aim might be simply increasing your, I don't know, market penetration. You might maybe not consider profitability for a certain period of time. So your pricing strategy will really be done, decided accordingly. But I think one key area as a company, for example, in our case, we really push profitability over sales volumes. For example, we try to... Especially nowadays in the last few months, few quarters and probably this year, we really try to put profitability above sales volumes, above top line figures.

And while doing that, we really actually believe that people, I think this can be applied to all businesses. I think not all products are created equally. So for example, if you would really gain additional sales, additional profit margin from your products, that's not really going to come from all products all the time. So let's say you have a thousand products and even from a consumer point of view, not all products are that price sensitive. For example, there might be some, we call them key value items. So there are some key valued items for example in the supermarket, these are like eggs, milks, et cetera. So people really take supermarkets as cheap or expensive really depending on a few literally key value items. So if a merchant, for example, figures out those key value items in the eyes of their consumers and if they really, for example, focus on competitive pricing, really aggressive maybe pricing for those.

In some cases we have this strategy called lost leader pricing, for example. So if you really have the, let's say, muscle. Let's say it that way, you might even aim at being a lost leader in those key value items and maybe aim for higher margin for the rest of the bank. So maybe rather than replying to your question with something to be done, I can simply just say something that I would recommend avoiding. So one is, for example, regarding all products the same. So applying, I don't know, the same profit margin for all the products. One, the discounting time comes applying the same blanket discounting across to board because some of your products would still sell even if you do don't do this 20% discount. And when you make that unnecessary discount, you will leave money on the table. So to sum it all up, I think people should really understand the, let's say, pricing characteristics of all their products.

And accordingly, they need to be really competitive. For some of the bunch, they really don't need to catch the competition but maybe even stay premium so that they might maybe consider upselling. So the most common, for example, analogy here is having those key, for example, consumer electronics items at a competitive pricing, but setting your accessories, I don't know, cables and stuff at premium levels. Because when people buy something at £3,000, I don't know, £2,000, they don't really count the 50, 100 for an accessory. So they would pay even if it's 100 instead of 50. So I think one key thing that I might say is actually handling all your products really depending on your pricing characteristics. And after that, really figuring out which strategy would work, competitive pricing, premium pricing and all. That's one thing that we really try to encourage over at Prisync.

Richard Hill:
That's a lot, isn't it? I think that's great. Because I think ultimately what you started with there was profitability, I would say. And really this is almost our motto on the podcast really, especially with the economy the way it is and all the way the news is and the reality of life. Ultimately we don't want to be sitting there shipping thousands of boxes and turning over hopefully millions of pounds. But at the end of the year or the end of the month, there's no profit there. So it's just being very smart. So we might have to have some lost leaders to some but not all. Some. Some. Some. Some.

And if that's some high ticket items, because we need to... You might think about your cash flow. Do we need to get a certain level through? Again, it's just different horses for courses sort of thing. You've got certain cash flow, maybe charted or cash flow prediction is telling you need X, Y, Z. So you've got to price some high value items. But then also you know that if somebody buys this particular product, they're likely to buy this sort of product. So you might have a lost lead on this. And the computer was a brilliant example because that's the business I used to be in. And I can remember buying USB cables for something like £0,10 and buy about 25,000 of them, five, six pallets of them. But we would sell them in hundreds for £0,80, in thousands for... So we would make 400% or whatever it was on a cable, but we'd sell tens of thousands of them.

Burc Tanir:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Richard Hill:
Whereas on the laptop, we will probably make about 5% on our laptop back then. It's probably worse now. It's a very difficult game, the independent sort of PC market. So knowing that. So you've got the lost leaders, but then ultimately I say all products are not the same either. You've got different margins, different products, different competitors. Some products you might know, you are the only ones that have got stock, so why are you giving them away? Or you might be... There's three or four people in the UK selling or wherever you listen to the podcast, there's only maybe a handful of people selling or got that relationship with that distributor manufacturer. And if you are one of four and you are monitoring those...

Hi there. I just wanted to take a quick break to introduce our sponsor, Prisync. Prisync is a competitive price tracking and monitoring software that can dynamically change your products prices on all sales channels. They work with brands such as a Samsung, Sony and Suzuki to increase their online revenue. If you run Google Shopping ads, like I know a lot of you do, this software is absolutely key to accelerating profits. One of the reasons I recommend Prisync to my clients is because you can find out what your competitor's pricing and stock availability is in one simple-to-understand dashboard giving you a huge competitive advantage. If you have any questions about this software or you are ready to take a 14-day free trial, head to ecomone.com/prisync. That's ecomone.com/prisync. P-R-I-S-Y-N-C. And complete the inquiry form and we will connect our listeners to the Prisync team. Right. Let's head straight back to the episode.

The other three. And you can see that they've gone out of stock. Oh, you can probably pop your price up another 5%.

Burc Tanir:
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just sorry to interrupt, but you said something really interesting. So I think really handling pricing hand in hand with your supplier relationships is vital because in some cases, for example, some merchant might have a better relationship with a certain supplier than you have. So in that case, maybe they might have a cost advantage for certain products, certain brands, et cetera. So by really actually benchmarking your overall performance, pricing performance against that, for example, merchant. We even see with some of our clients where they really drop certain brands from their assortments. So this is kind of assortment planning, merchandising, not necessarily pricing, but this decision can even be influenced by really your pricing strategy.

So when you, for example, figure out that you won't ever get to a profitable point at a desirable, let's say, sales volume, so why would you put any effort, any marketing budgets, et cetera, into that brand, into that product category? So they even consider, for example, not maybe necessarily stocking that product, but we might discuss lines, but maybe they might just drop their paid marketing budget for that products group. So they only list it if they were have organic visits buying stuff, they might keep them in the web shop but they not necessarily, for example, might push this on Google. I don't know, different things.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great one, isn't it? Because obviously if certain channels that you are marketing on, you just can't compete, potentially. You can take them out of your feed or you can set at £0,10 or a 1 cent bid depending on where you are. Because that's another thing we've talked about a lot that quite often... Well, exactly that. You might have 10 thousands SKUs in your feed for shopping and then you might, "Oh, we're only going to sell these 300 in shopping." Where we say, hang on a minute, keep the other 9,700 but just put a penny bid on them. And if you sell one, the margin, assuming that there is some margin there, will be there. So it is quite rare that you would take everything out of the feed, but obviously adjusting your pricing or your bidding on your paid media to literally just nothing. No, brilliant.

Burc Tanir:
But just one other thing on the supply. So I'm really trying to emphasize that when you really, literally when you manage your pricing, findings that come up out of this really dictates some of your other merchandising adjacent decisions. So one other thing with the supplier aspect is, I mean hear this all the time from our clients. So let's say they monitor the pricing from their competitors for a certain brand and they notice that there is this really consistently low price competitor for a particular brand. But we cannot really beat that price. So I hear from our merchants, for example, that they show our dashboard, our data to their supplier and they renegotiate for their own cost. In the next batch of supply, they can actually get a better discount, better cost of good sold so that they might try to then maybe they might even set up the same price but they might improve profitability. So having data in hand helps in many ways, and this is one of those ways.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I like it because I think quite often, as a merchant, a competitor can be pricing well below you and you won't even know. Of course, I think most people are looking at stuff and this and that, but ultimately you're not going to necessarily see if a competitor on a Friday night drops its price by 10% and then puts it back up on a Monday, you wouldn't know. Maybe. Whereas if you've got tech there, but you've got Prisync there monitoring and alerting you to, "Oh, actually competitor A dropped their price on this line." And then on Monday morning, right. So back to the manufacturer, ideally to negotiate. Actually, well, to have a conversation.

Renegotiate your rates. Renegotiate, it's going to give you leverage. You're trying to find that leverage to get a better deal because again using... Exactly. I mean obviously what price you pay for stuff, you make your money in my eyes when you buy stuff right. So it's that leverage negotiation and they'll go, "Well, we can't give you anything in the extra." "But well how come now?" But maybe they can't, but maybe they can give you some marketing development fund or maybe they can give you an extra 30 days or they can give you some other leverage maybe that's going to help you, but it gives you another sort of angle to negotiate. Yeah, brilliant. So slight change then. So what would you say to people that say building a brand and customer loyalty is more important than pricing?

Burc Tanir:
Yeah, I would just say what I said earlier, they are not really comparable to be honest to my point of view, but they really compliment each other. Without one done perfectly well, I think the other one would just not really perform. So if you don't have good prices, I think all that you know. UX, all that experience you might have just might be covered on some tech blocks, et cetera. It's a nice case study and all, but technically it won't really work because you will have people on your website doing this and that, but they will probably prefer other competitors that have much better pricing than your website test. So I think all that investment might be kind of really wasted. But also I don't really claim the opposite. So I don't just say that well just have the best price and forget the rest and you'll survive.

I totally disagree with that to be clear. So I don't even really have slight, let's say, inclination towards that. So that's why I've been giving examples around to areas where pricing might not be considered as the central piece. But when you really focus on your pricing, it really affects, for example, different aspects of a website. For example, pricing is the value that we see on the product page, but even how to display your prices to have strike through pricing next to it and all. It's also kind of UX, so it can be pricing but it's also UX. It's how to show discounts, how to show free delivery, whether you see.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah.

Burc Tanir:
Those are technically pricing but at the end of the day, user psychology, so at the end of the day user experience. So I believe nearly every single user affecting touchpoint in e-commerce are really linked to each other. So I don't believe comparing them against each other is really the right way to do so. They really compliment each other and pricing really compliments many other investments e-commerce. Yeah, that's what I think.

Richard Hill:
No, I agree. I agree. I think also when you mentioned that sort of sharing the old price with the strike through and then obviously the new price, which is the discount. If you haven't got that set up, that's just quite... Well, it can be a fairly simple thing. And then that translates nicely into my next question because Google Shopping, obviously you can show an old price and a new price and the discounter price and if you're utilizing all the sort of variables, functionality, custom labels within Google Shopping. But we touched on dynamic pricing. So what we're saying is with technology and the likes of pricing, you can automate changes based on different variables and subsets and monitoring, making sure you're profitable or you might have lost leaders and so forth. But how does dynamic pricing impact Google Shopping results?

Burc Tanir:
Well, it impacts really nicely I would say. And the one use case that I really try to highlight and emphasize that, for example, if we put profitability into the center of our business, I think that should be consistently applied across the board. So for Google Shopping, I really encourage people to think profitability first. So they should really aim at profitability on their Google Shopping campaigns, not just revenue, not just clicks and all that. So if you think that way, the way we run our flow is as follows. So let's say you have 3000 products on, I don't know, Shopify, let's take as an example, and you apply dynamic pricing. And by dynamic pricing, I mean technically repricing, depending on your competitor prices, you aim at a minimum profit margin. Because, well, we said we put profitable into the center.

So you always clearly define a minimum price, sorry, minimum profitable threshold. And you actually dictate the software, dictate your strategy, let's say ignore the software, dictate your strategy to follow this minimum profitability threshold as long as you have the right competitive position. So for example, you aim at being 1%, £1, $1, I don't know, cheaper than the cheapest price in the market as long as you have, I don't know, 10% profitability. So technically not all your products will follow that because, well, if you are in such a market like good luck to you, you are in a great position, enjoy that position as long as it's there.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah.

Burc Tanir:
But for example, typically we see, for example, for those 3000 products, only 1000, I don't know, 500 of them really follow that. And what we really encourage our clients to do is actually to label those 1,500 products where you had the desired profitability and the desired competitive position and you really allocate the majority of your paid budget toward those. Because for those items, technically you might kind of assume that buyers will see all those other options, promote it on Google Shopping and they will click and click and they will open multiple tab on Google Chrome to benchmark different offers from different merchants and eventually with better probability, they will convert at your store because you have the most competitive pricing. So creating those clicks, enabling those clicks, which will convert better is the smartest thing that I have heard of in Google Shopping so far.

So really allocating your budget for the more competitive, for the products that will convert at higher property is also kind of a pricing strategy. So it obviously sounds like marketing strategy, but again, as I mentioned that many things are following this logic, marketing automation can even be influenced by pricing. And this is the power use case that we have been pushing with our merchants that are using Google Shopping in the last few quarters and we have seen some nice success there.

Richard Hill:
I think that ties in well because we talk a lot about Google Shopping, obviously probably circa 50% of our agency eComOne is Google Shopping. And we're doing a lot more implementations with the cost of goods on it in the data within Google Shopping. So obviously we've got the cost of goods at your end on the pricing, so we've got the margin there. But then with the cost of goods data rather than tracking RoAS, we're tracking PoAS, which is Profit on Ad Spend. And ultimately what we said right at the beginning guys is it's about being profitable. So if you're spending whatever it is, you're 10,000, your a hundred thousand a month on Google Shopping, but you've got a PoAS number, profit at your money you're making. But that's going to be even better if you're pricing right with the likes of Prisync and having that strategy there.

So you've got that cost of goods at both ends, at what you're pricing at, but also when you're maybe letting Google loose a little bit with your PMax, you've got a strong cost of goods rather than, "Right. We've got a five times RoAS." Well, a five times RoAS might not work for certain subcategories, sub subcategories, but if you've got a actual cost of goods for every single SKU in the backend, then working on the pricing as well, work with those together. Yeah. It's interesting. I think probably at least 50% of our listeners are shopping. We've got a lot of questions, we've got a couple of other... Well, we've got a very good Google shopping episode coming up in a couple of weeks about all the new changes with PMax and Google Shopping, so keep an eye out for that one guys as well. So pricing on Amazon, why... We've talked about shopping, Google Shopping, but we know a lot of our joint customers are obviously on Amazon as well. Why is a good strong pricing strategy so important on Amazon?

Burc Tanir:
Well, again, I think Amazon is probably the most competitive market that's technically designed so. So you have this buy box context where pricing is one of the most important criteria to capture. So again, when you really have the desired profitability, aiming for the buy box is a no-brainer. So I think you should, again, watch out your profitability, watch out your cost of good sold, and when you can capture the buy box for those profitable items, always try to do so because that will eventually increase the sales volumes of the products where you are profitable at a desired level. So that is the right growth that we all desire for. So I think the clear answer will be just that Amazon is designed so, so Amazon really prefers the best offer to be kept to the majority of eyeballs and everything. So that's really vital. Again, the same as certain dropping thing applies to Amazon as well.

I see. So some of our merchants are, for example, watching out Amazon marketplace, they notice that some areas are really competitive because unless you watch, unless you see, unless you automatically observe, you cannot really even make that decision. But when you start monitoring, you even make some redundancy, reduction decisions. So for Amazon, that's the same thing. So some merchants might be really preferring not to be in some categories after monitoring the data. So that also is tied to a certain planning. So all in all the short answer will be that Amazon wants that. So we kind of obey that.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, no, no. I get it. I get it. So crystal ball time then, what do you see is the future of pricing? I think obviously this, there's a lot of takeaways there and I think there's a lot of things that our listeners should really be thinking about right now. Not waiting six, 12 months. Pricing is a whole new strand that I would suggest that the majority of our listeners don't have a tech stack behind it or a technology behind it that is doing a little bit now and then. But coming into six, 12 months crystal ball time, what are some of the things you think are going to be coming down the line in pricing and our listeners need to be thinking about?

Burc Tanir:
Yeah, well before really mentioning some sexy, innovative stuff, et cetera, I believe the key change will be the adoption of such software. So not necessarily just our software, but I think since technology is making such tools, such size tools like us, our competitors also more accessible. I believe companies, regardless of their size, will start to adopt some pricing automation because, like I said, it'll be more accessible, more affordable, et cetera. So people will adopt more. So I think market penetration of such software will dramatically change and hopefully we'll ride that wave so we won't just watch it. So I think the adoption is one thing that I expect to be dramatically changed. And the other thing will be, I think obviously making pricing smarter and by that I mean really having much more other signals that really fuels this dynamic pricing engine. For example, I mentioned that we currently only rely on competitive pricing and profitability, but inventory levels are also vital to come up with the ideal price point for a product at a given time.

The daytime is also relevant. For example, you mentioned Friday evening. Maybe by analyzing the data, you might notice that discounts made during the weekend converts better. So after you analyze this data, daytime might be it. I leave a more sophisticated, actually an engine where you have more data points to be crunched and to be optimized is the future of the technology. But before coming to this innovative part, like I said, even if the technology stands still, for example, even if we have the same product in the market for, I don't know, two years, I think we will have way more customers. That's what we have been seeing. Obviously we are improving our product and tech so we don't stand still, but I believe adoption will really change because the thing is pricing technology has somehow misleadingly been categorized as an enterprise technology. So it was always thought that Walmart has it, Amazon has it, some name says it, but if you're a smaller medium size business, I mean don't touch it because those are expensive.

But I think that contact is really changing. I don't really want to market, but our software might even cost as less, I don't know, $50, $100 per month if you want less out of it. So we really have beginner, I don't know, plans and that's the same thing for our competitors. So there are many other accessible tools in the market now. So if I say two things, one is the adoption of such software in the market will be very, very different from what it is today. And technology wise, I think it'll be way smarter in the sense that pricing will be dictated by many other factors other than just competitive signals.

Richard Hill:
More data.

Burc Tanir:
But more other data points.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think that's an interesting one you said about more adoption. Because when I think about the clients that we have, and I know the clients that use a technology, they are... How can I put it? They're our top tier client, they're the ones that are pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. I think of a client that we have, they're in a very, very... Well, everyone's in a competitive niche for pricing. When we took them on, they had a pricing technology, and this is probably about four years ago now, they were using pricing tech.

And like I said, I think this adoption piece is just, I think it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. When I think about the people that are using it, they're the ones that are probably doing a little bit better than the ones that aren't.

Burc Tanir:
Really?

Richard Hill:
Or a lot better in some instances. So obviously you've mentioned a few things there. I think, yeah. Absolutely. There's sort of more data and I think that's similar and on the ad platforms, different data coming in and around returns data to inform different bidding and things like that. So I think, yeah. That's good. That's exciting to watch. But for you guys at Prisync then, can you give us an insight into maybe what, obviously it's probably similar to what you've said, but some of the things that are coming on your roadmap over the next few months, in the next 12 months?

Burc Tanir:
Sure. Well, I'm a very practical person, so I really put the goals before the technology. And also if technology is actually useful for a, I don't know, for a goal, I better utilize technology. So we don't just build technology for the sake of doing that. And I believe to really ride this wave of increased adoption, we really need to be more integrated with other technologies in place. For example, we need to integrate with other, I don't know, inventory management technologies. We need to be integrated with more e-commerce platforms other than Shopify, Magento, et cetera. So integrations will be a big thing for the company this year. So we will put a lot of technical resources at that front. So if any of the listeners are actually coming from such companies that might be willing to integrate with a piece of Prisync tech, they can simply contact me on LinkedIn, email, whatever.

So I am really eager to find out those adjacent technology companies which might be interested in linking our pricing tech. So integrations is one thing, and obviously we will have more data signals that will fuel our dynamic pricing engine. This is also going to happen after those integrations because if we integrate with an inventory management software, we will have access to inventory levels. So this is one thing. And other than that, we also plan to expand our, let's say, decision making journey more towards the feed management side of things. So we now, let's say, come up with new prices and so on, but the Google Shopping, the feed side of things are still done on the client side or maybe on the agency side. So we would like to also capture a bit of that experience without really healing the experience that's managed by agencies, et cetera, but making it maybe even simpler for agencies to use Prisync on their bidding, et cetera. So we would create some Google Shopping specific functionality like automated labeling and stuff. So this is maybe one specific area.

Richard Hill:
Like high margin, low margin, that's helpful.

Burc Tanir:
Exactly, yeah. Competitive, not competitive and all that. And yeah, I think I could just sum it all up. Integrations for better adoption across different audiences, more data signals, again, via integrations and also capturing more of the value chain when it comes to Google Shopping management via smarter pricing. So those are the key areas that I'm currently strategizing all on, I would say.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Brilliant. Well, I will look to get you back on in 12 months and we'll see how you've got on this next 12 months, but I think it's a very, very, very exciting time in the sort of world of Prisync. So looking forward to watching you on the journey and following you on the journey. So I'd like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to our listeners, Burc?

Burc Tanir:
Well, I'm now reading, trying to read a lot fiction to be honest because my life is absolutely non-fiction. So I just reread actually, I read this in university and readed it 'On the Road' from Jack Kerouac. I don't know if you know him but he's from this generation, so it's kind of a hippy-ish book. But like I said, I really try to get some fiction that's really kind of the opposite of my life and I really would say enjoyed all the experience that they had on the road and everything. And I really recommend that to be read. Like I said, I read it twice and probably I will read it maybe next time in 10 years or so. Hopefully. So I definitely recommend that one. I also kind of recommend reading fiction to all the listeners that's kind of in the business ecosystem. Obviously, I try to read non-fiction business book, economics book and stuff, but I really enjoy getting some fiction insights that really kind of nicely distracts you from the business. So when you come back to the real life, come back to business, you kind of feel energized.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, I think that's a nice finish there because I think, yeah, absolutely. We get recommended the sort of books that are behind me, but it's nice to have a little get getaway in the head, isn't it? Yeah, I've got quite a long trip coming up over the next week, so I might even get that ordered if I've got time. Yeah.

Burc Tanir:
Yeah, do it.

Richard Hill:
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. For the listeners that want to find out more about you, more about Prisync, what's the best way to do that?

Burc Tanir:
Well, Prisync is not super easy to spell, but I try to say it's almost as the pricing sounds. So P-R-I, but the rest is synchronization because we synchronize all the pricing. So they might maybe remember this. And other than that, I am pretty active on LinkedIn. I'm trying to be more active on Twitter nowadays, and I'm kind of tagged there as the e-commerce pricing guy. So I believe if you Google that, I will be the first results unless someone started to bid to that. So that's it. And they can simply find me on LinkedIn and my email is simply my first name @prisync.com. And yeah. That's how they can.

Richard Hill:
That's brilliant. And can you also go to ecomone.com/prisync, there's a page there we've created for Prisync, for the guys that want to take Burc's very kind offer of a trial, an extended trial. So feel free to go to ecomone.com/prisync. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Burc Tanir:
Thank you.

Richard Hill:
I look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Burc Tanir:
Thank you, Richard. Thanks a lot. Bye

Richard Hill:
Bye. Thank you for listening to the eCom@One e-commerce podcast. If you enjoy today's show, please hit subscribe, and don't forget to sign up to our e-commerce newsletter and leave us a review on iTunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eComOne, the e-Commerce Marketing Agency.