EP273 - Amazon FBA Roll-ups with Alex Kopco of Forum Brands  Alex Kopco is the Founder and COO of Forum Brands, a roll-up of digitally-native consumer brands selling via Amazon. In this interview we discuss Alex’s experiences at Target and Amazon prior to founding Forum Brands. We talk about Forum Brands specific business model and their unique tools and expertise for Amazon sellers, the Amazon FBA Roll-up trend in general, and the future of commerce. Episode 273 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday August 19, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 273 being recorded on Thursday august 19 20 21 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott showed listeners Jason as you and mr. snow two of my favorite topics are Amazon and Entrepreneurship lately there’s been a lot of exciting intersections in that area as different companies have been started to kind of quote-unquote roll-up Amazon FBA Sellers and explore a. House of Brands kind of concept leveraging Amazon so we’re going to dig into that topic tonight and joining us on the podcast to help us explore that is Alex kopco he is the CEO and founder of form brands Alex welcome to the show. Alex: [1:18] Thank you so much super excited to be here guys. Jason: [1:21] Alex we’re thrilled to have you and Scott, that Scott wasn’t just giving you lip service these are his two favorite topics so he’s going to be super annoying to talk to, but before we jump into form Brands which we are excited to get to we always like to give listeners a little bit of a taste about our guest, backgrounds and how you came in your role and if I have it right I think you have kind of a perfect background for your current role. Alex: [1:48] I do yeah it’s true I have spent, really the last decade in e-commerce I got my start working for Target specifically for target.com at the time when target.com was actually still being powered by Amazon Target, little known fact was the largest seller on Amazon’s Marketplace back when I was there and I was part of the team, that was rolling target.com off of the Amazon platform, which was a great first experience in my career to see what this whole e-commerce thing was about working for especially a big box retailer and one is well respected as Target and is good at merchandising and all the great things that Target does it really did feel like the wild west despite it being a 50 year old company and then I transitioned was looking for just a change in life a change in scenery and you know the winters in Minneapolis can be pretty brutal and so I actually had the opportunity to go work for Amazon and Seattle where I over a number of years had basically every retail job that you can imagine at the company also did a stint at Amazon as a product manager where I was working on Amazon’s physical retail stores team. [3:08] The non grocery version which was super super interesting a ton of Technology went into powering the Amazon stores as well and so I oversaw some of the technology aspects there and really, over my course of my career at Amazon fell in love with the power of data the power of. [3:26] You know under understanding customers based on what they do as well as what they say and being able to provide you know surprise and Delight moments for them regardless of whether they were online or in stores and for me you know my passion for entrepreneurship since these are Scott’s two favorite things Amazon entrepreneurship. [3:45] Sort of nurtured at a very young age and happy to delve into my memory Palace there but, the the impetus for really lea