Podcast Guest

Hai Mag

CEO and Co-founder of Eva

Podcast host

Martin Zerrudo

CEO SUEG Group

Martin Zerrudo

CEO SUEG Group

May 25, 2022

Is AI Pricing the Future for FBA Sellers?

watch the video

Hai Mag Hai Mag is the CEO and Co-founder of Eva, a company providing AI-powered repricing, restocking, and reimbursement platforms to Amazon sellers. Hai is an e-commerce entrepreneur, growth leader, and investor, having provided services in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Before developing Eva, Hai was the Vice President of Oracle, responsible for one billion dollars in sales in recurring revenue each year. Hai’s expertise in the tech world dates back more than two decades, with career experience as an executive in Silicon Valley at different startup companies. He has an educational background in computer science, information engineering, business administration and management, and business and managerial economics.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How the changing landscape of AI led to the development of Eva
How Eva helps you balance AI and human intervention when selling a product
Hai Mag reveals the three main data points impacting Amazon decisions and how Eva leverages them
What is the parent/child pricing?
Hai’s tips for pricing your products to stay ahead of the competition and increase profit
Why your product is not selling
How Eva helps make your pricing competitive
Can Eva help with reimbursements?
What sparked Hai’s interest in AI?
Hai talks about where e-commerce will be in the next 5-10 years

In this episode…

Are you an Amazon seller struggling to price your products? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the many data points surrounding Amazon pricing? Should you consider using AI to solve your pricing problems?

Hai Mag uses AI software that provides pricing and reimbursement for Amazon sellers. In this episode, Hai shares insight into how his company, Eva, leverages Amazon data to ensure your price points stay competitive and appropriate. He’ll help you understand which aspects of pricing, restocking, and reimbursement Eva covers so you can figure out your business needs.

In this episode of What Do You Do Next?, host Martin Zerrudo talks with Hai Mag, CEO and Co-founder of Eva, to discuss utilizing AI to price your products on Amazon. Hai reveals the demand for AI in Amazon’s competitive market, how Eva uses AI to price your products effectively, and how AI can help you stay ahead of your competition.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Episode Transcript

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Martin Zerrudo 0:00

Welcome to the what do you do next podcast brought to you by selling universe ecommerce group. Whether you're just starting your E commerce business, finding ways to grow your online brand or can't seem to find the right tool or partner to help you break through. We're here to help. Hi, my name is Martin Zerrudo. And I'll be interviewing experienced sellers, strategic service providers and other e commerce experts will help you answer the question, what do you do next?

Martin Zerrudo 0:22

Today, we're joined by Hai Mag. Hai is the CEO and co founder of Eva.guru. Eva provides AI powered repricing restocking reimbursement platform to Amazon sellers that helps small and medium businesses thrive. So whether you're an Amazon private label or Amazon seller, Eva is an all inclusive solution for you to always be one step ahead of your competition now. Hi, thank you so much for joining us. How are you today?

Hai Mag 0:52

I'm doing great, Martin, and thanks for having me.

Martin Zerrudo 0:55

Of course. So Hai is an E commerce entrepreneur, growth leader and investor with experience in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. And before Eva, Hai, I believe you are doing 20 plus years of experience as an executive in Silicon Valley at different startup companies, as well as the vice president Oracle responsible for 1 billion in sales in recurring revenue every year. First of all, I give you a round of applause. That's an impressive resume. Thank you for joining us today.

Hai Mag 1:23

I hope you can hire me one day.

Martin Zerrudo 1:27

We'll hire each other, we'll hire each other. So hi, I know you have your own podcast. You've been on other podcasts. I did listen to a couple of episodes that I heard something that you said. It kind of made you very passionate. I'm gonna bring it up. And you can tell me a little bit about okay, you said 99.9%. When people say AI has nothing to do with AI, it is a marketing stunt. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And why does that fill you with passion when you when you say that?

Hai Mag 1:54

Right? You know, like, that's very interesting, you know, to, you know, to point to start with, you know, our conversation, obviously, one of the thing is like, I'm also a computer engineer, and graduated at 99 with an A with a focus in AI, artificial intelligence, university. Exactly. And now it's the time when AI was there, by the way, AI is there for 50 years. But the problem with AI in 99 was like, the data was not like the processing power required was huge. And the compute power was not enough. And the data was not enough because they every company was running their own stuff in silos. Now, whatever 10 years after is, all this cloud companies started to come in AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and AI became pretty much like a standard because there is more data, and there's more compute power. Now, when I started looking at the Amazon space in 2017 18, a lot of companies on the advertising space on other spaces, they were talking about AI, but then, you know, looking checking the company's like what exactly they mean by AI, I understand that it's not actually AI. It's really some rules, some algorithms. But the note that but not the real AI, because there is a big difference here, which is in an AI environment, the compete the software is learning, which means that maybe today the decision is one and tomorrow based on a lot of different factors, the decision is to for exactly the same parameters, because the software program is learning. I haven't seen really any particular software that is learning and that was one of the reasons like we wanted to build Eva, which is kind of like a really AI solution that learns from the behavior of the products, the SD, as well as the competitor behavior, the context is changing by the time one day, it's COVID Next day, there is a war and there is a lot of complex, which is also impacting, you know, the way that the decisions are made. So while we are building a kind of decision making engine, the key point about AI is like the decisions are also changing by the time and that's

Martin Zerrudo 4:31

it's funny you mentioned it's a great way to approach this topic. Um, I'm hoping to approach it in a way to kind of ease the hesitation that maybe some of our audience members or people who when they hear AI, of course the benefits of Eva.guru Hey, it'll, it'll pretty much handle all the decision making for you. It'll give you actionable. I think the the term we use is we visualize the action, right? That's what you said before insightful analytics. But for somebody who's in love with their product, this is their baby. be this is their brand handing over all that data, and that potential decision making to artificial intelligence? How do you generate some of that trust or credibility that, hey, if I'm giving all of this information to an AI, that the information that it's giving me is the right information that I should make a decision on?

Hai Mag 5:17

Right? I mean, you know, again, if we go back to like, a 10 years ago, when eBay and you know, eBay was there, Amazon was there, there were like, maybe a few competitors in the listing, it was so easy, like just to start running campaign campaigns advertising and be the number one or two second product, you know, that are, like easy, and anybody can really do that, although it still requires some expertise. But the data was like, able, like any human being was able to process the data. Now, the challenge today is like, on any listing on Amazon, there is like another 500 competitors, the prices are changing, almost like every two minutes. And there is like so many decision points, just to give you an idea, Eva is today tracking 16 million products. And on a monthly basis, we have 3.5 billion decisions. I mean, so the question is like, who in this world decisions really, you know, look at all this data and come up with the decision. So it's almost impossible. Having said that, at the the human intervention is still required, for example, you know, you guys are running an agency advertising automation, for example, it's not an area, I think that this fully automated solutions really work. I mean, I've seen I tried them many times. Yeah, they always claim it's AI, which is not AI. But even if they are rule based solutions, they don't work because that the context requires somebody to look into that was the real competitor, maybe not this guy, but that guy. But what's the real keyword, you know, because we're the same keyword, it means maybe a children's toy, as well as a professional equipment, but it's the same keyword. Now somebody needs to look into that type of things as well. So while the product, the the software is very much helpful, still, the human intervention is required, specifically when it is advertising or keywords management. But when it comes to pricing, it's a very much data oriented decision. Like, you know, it's not really more a human because like, if the demand is increasing, the price may increase. If the inventory is low, the price should go down or up, you know, like the decisions are more database. That's why we think that like pricing, and the profit is an area which can be automated 100%. The only challenge of that is like to track millions of products and billions of decisions. That's the challenge that we think we sorted out to solve with Eva.guru,

Martin Zerrudo 8:12

that's fantastic. So I guess when somebody's hearing this, I think they might think, okay, Eva.guru was fantastic. I think the platform makes sense to help leverage my small to medium size business. But when you mentioned there's 3.5 million decisions happening, that's holistically how does the pricing from different categories that are not in the category that I'm selling a product, in effect, how Eva.guru provides solutions for me, because if it's generating all that data from different categories, but I'm not selling in that category, how does that benefit me as a seller?

Hai Mag 8:43

Well, probably you are right, like if it's not your category that may not be really effective. But it's mostly about like, there was a context like we mentioned, like the war, the the supply chain problem, or, like, you know, any type of an economical crisis in a specific country, these are all kind of impacting the overall decisions, not just one single category, but at the same time, it starts from the products on demand, like the demand of the product is defining the, the the overall, you know, the pricing decisions. But then the demand also depends on a market where typically what we see is like that market is maybe three to five different products like fighting for the same market, and then there's maybe another 100, but it's more a different set, different type of users or consumers. But there's actually most of the time three to five products trying to get like market share from each other. Right.

Martin Zerrudo 9:45

You know, they say you don't know what you don't know. So in what way does Eva.guru provide insight or data to the user to the person who's using your platform to see things that they normally wouldn't without the platform or without Eva?

Hai Mag 9:59

Right So one of the things is definitely, you know, our core functionality is pricing. There is another thing, which, you know, I think it's important for us to mention, we also run warehouses across us. We have a warehouse in Houston, another one in California, we invested a lot into this, because we believe that there is three main data points that is like impacting the Amazon decisions. Number one is like the advertising related domain, which is the keywords and the campaigns and the bids, impressions, clicks, that's the depth domain. The second is the inventory. And the third one is more the price and the profits. So when we look at these three domains, like we are very much in the price and profits and the inventory domain, and these two are also impacting the advertising decisions we have. So many times, campaigns are running, but there is no real inventory, there's like three left. So what's the point of bidding? When, exactly, or when, if like, the inventory is inbound, which is not yet, you know, sellable, but it's sellable, which means that the campaigns are still running, but the delivery dates are like two weeks later, a lot of the automated like advertising tools, they don't understand that they just like, optimize the campaigns based on, you know, the the conversions collects, and things like that, but it's not only the advertising domain. Now, when it comes to the pricing domain, what we are doing is not only giving like actions for the user, because unfortunately, when they Amazon sellers, 100 sk use, it becomes impossible just to tell them, hey, you need to increase the price by 2%. because the demand is low or high. Instead, we actually do it. So that's the more or less like prescriptive analytics, it can be called, which means that we are visualizing like, Okay, this is what is going on. And this is why Eva will take a decision now to take your price to a next level. The reason is, for example, the price goes up, because the demand is is really good, and there is no reason to have the same velocity, but maybe $1 better price. Now, if that brand is selling 1000 products a day, which there are some brands like that right, then it will be $1,000 additional profit. So that is what like Eva is doing with the pricing. Same thing with the inventory, like if the inventory is going down. And then it is important to delay or prevent a stakeout by maybe increasing the price. We have tried that during the q4 the brands that are using Eva were able to make 30% better profits, because they were not able to restock. They know that they cannot you know Amazon is not allowing. Exactly and they know that they are going to sell it by December 24 or something. So the question is, what is the right price now, why to keep it at the same level, if you cannot restock. So this is where like Eva is impacting directly the profits by you know, putting all this decisions together and executing them. But at the same time user may or may not also intervene and change the price as well, you know, so it's not just like AI or Eva is doing everything. We call it she by the way, like she's or maybe you know, the user may also come up with a different reason to change the price or to keep the price static. So there's all possibilities as well.

Martin Zerrudo 13:48

So ultimately, the users of your platform are not ceding all control or power to Eva. She's providing as much data and insight and suggestion and strategy. And it's still ultimately up to the brand owner or the seller to pull the trigger on the decisions or the insights that Eva is providing them.

Hai Mag 14:07

It's up to Eva or up to the the Amazon Seller both works because what makes sense. That's why if if they want like a fully automated solution as the Amazon seller, it will be fully automated. Also, the seller has a lot of stake in it because there are different types of pricing strategies to have 107, for example, is what we call the parent child pricing, which is very unique to Eva, what if like you have one product with 45 variations like a T shirt with color and size, it can easily be 45 different variations. So so the demand that you're looking at is that the white t shirt X large or blue t shirt medium or the demand of the parent which is like every single variation, the demand right? And that's why Eva was able to do a look at the overall demand, and changes the price. Exactly, and all the different types of SK use that are related to each other, they will be all changed at the same time seeing, you know, simultaneously the price. So it's amazing. You know, that's, for example, a different strategy versus like an individual SKU demand. Like, for example, in this respect, if you think about Tesla, the Tesla red car is actually like, $1,000, more than the white car one. Yeah, exactly the same car. But Tesla doesn't care, right? It's like, you know, if you wanted to weigh the red, you need to pay more like people pay more. Now, this can also be the strategy to let every single different product to have their own pricing. Versus in the other example of T shirt with different variations. What's the point of like, just looking at one single size and decide that, oh, you know, the X large should be more or something like that. So it based on the parent, now, these two decisions, it's a business decision. So we let the user to decide whether demand base or parent child base,

Martin Zerrudo 16:16

right? For those who are listening base, they'll say, Hey, I usually go by my gut, what my floor price is, or my upper floor price is what is my range? How does Eva? How does she tackle that question? What is too low? And obviously, you know, profitability has to be there. But what is, is there a threshold for how low the she'll go? Or how high she'll price depending on the data points that have been given to her?

Hai Mag 16:40

Oh, that's a great question. But like even I want to answer it from a broader perspective, each time I meet with a brand, the first thing that I'm hearing, I'm a brand, I know that I don't need a Pricer there is no competition, okay. And then I then the thing start, like, when they start using Eva, the first thing that they realize is, first of all, there is competition, in almost every SKU, although they are the brand owner, there is at least another three sellers, they find this products through a different distribution channels, or just doing retail online arbitrage. There is always competition. And because of the competition, they are on their own listing, they are losing the buybacks ratio, which is very easy for them to look at. Each time I look at the brands, the buybacks, when ratio is between 85 to 92%. If they use Eva that goes up to 99 200% the difference that 8% Different can easily be 1000s of dollars, because like just they are losing the buy box means that they don't really, you know, no, they don't really sell because if they are not on the buy box as an even as a brand, then somebody else is selling the same product. So that's the first thing that I see is like, you know, the brands telling me there is no competition. The second thing is like I asked them, so why do you have this 9999 That 99 price? What's the what's the reason for that? The National wisdom, right? Um, you know, it sounds about right, exactly. Like you said, it's a gut feeling. And then the first thing that with IVA dado is like we asked them to enter the cost information, all the types of you know, the costs additional, like, maybe the shipping costs, the cost of the manufacturing everything. Once they see it, they click the button, they see what the minimum price should be based on their margin expectation where a lot of brands, they don't even know what is their margin, and they don't have like an initial price based on the margin. So that's the second thing that we realize. The third thing is, we are blending the advertising data into the sales data. It's also very few companies are able to do it in the right way. So once we do it, the first thing that they see, oh my god, I'm losing money on this product, because like, advertising is totally different sales price profits, and it just shows the EVAs just shows that Congratulations, you are doing great advertising. So. So Amazon is making a lot of money. Consumers are happy, but you as a brand, you're losing minus 5% of this product, because too many campaigns were profit. So what's the point? So that's another thing that we realized then, obviously, that decision of like how much profit needs to be made? What should be an initial minimum price? What should be like a maximum price that the customer wants to see? Like, what these are all very much data related decisions, and at the end, there has to be a profit associated with that. So that's the question that we're asking to the seller rather than it What's your gut feeling? The question is, what is the minimum price and the margin you want? What's the maximum you think that the people should pay. And then we define a range. Now, once the range is defined, we just let Eva decide, you know, in that range, and then even goes up and down with the price every day, and finds the best point best profit point in that range. So the range is a business decision. But the price is an EVA decision, because Eva looks at all different million points, two data points to come up with best price. So that's how it works.

Martin Zerrudo 20:37

How long does it usually take? When you input some of those data points and decisions that are goals or targets? How long does it take for you to get to the correct price?

Hai Mag 20:47

Well, it's not really too much time, it's actually happening right away. The reason for that is because we took like, we look at 24 months of sales data 60 to 90 days of advertising data, and based on that the next day decision will be done direct automatically. So there is no learning period, because the data is already available. As soon as all of it is downloaded, like the past data, the next day data will be the right one, having said that, we also don't want to fluctuate the prices too much, of course, so to come to the right pricing point, maybe every day, if I will increase the price by 1.8% or 2.1%, but not like 10% Oh, this is the right price, let's raise it by 10%. Because what we also realize is like, if that's done, then there is a psychological, you know, situation with like, the consumers will think oh, you know, like, why these guys are doing like price gouging? Because like, I need a mask, and these guys just increase the price by 15% You know, from yesterday to today, while we all need masks, now they are taking advantage of the thing you know, so in order to avoid that, whatever is doing is very much slowly like increasing the prices and checking the same data points whether is it is it come, you know, is Eva should continue to to increase the prices, but maybe to the optimum point it will take five days to come. But what if like five days later, there will be different data points different like velocity consumers, maybe the price will go down again, you know, like it's all possible.

Martin Zerrudo 22:25

Can I throw a scenario at you? Hi, sure. So say I'm an Amazon seller, I'm in talks with an aggregator. They want to buy my brand, my profitability margin is maybe 18%. And they said, if you can hit 25% in the next six months, then you have an offer. Can you even help me in that situation? What do I do next? In that situation?

Hai Mag 22:49

I love that. I love that scenario. It's exactly the one of the biggest reasons the brands should come to us come to you. Because there are a couple of ways of you know, increasing the profit, right? One way is like you outsource some some functions, you reduce the cost. That's one one way, the second way is like maybe reducing the again a costs and marketing costs. And the third way is like reducing, you know, making more profit from the same level of sales velocity. And that's where the Eva comes in. We think that, you know, even with aggregators, by the way, we've worked with aggregators, we were able to increase the aggregator margins by two to 4%, which may sound like oh, you know, it's like, now that's significant, talking about like companies doing like 10 to $100 million on Amazon. And if their margin is increased by 1%, were talking about like a million dollars of additional maybe profit, same thing with the brands, we have seen between five to 12% profit increase, if they use dynamic pricing, they can see the impact easily in 15 days, not like you know, six months or so, in 15 days, they can see the impact. And typically in 30 days, they will definitely see like, you know, there is a margin increase of 5%.

Martin Zerrudo 24:23

Wow. Is there ever a scenario where maybe utilizing Eva would not be appropriate? What would be certain situations where maybe Eva would not be a good fit for this particular scenario? Well, I

Hai Mag 24:36

mean, let's say the one of the good example is like when there is super low velocity, because the AI decisions happen obviously, when there is good level of velocity, if it is like selling a few items a month. What Eber will do is like will probably, you know, kind of reduce the price to the minimum price level. because there is no sales now, at this moment, when there is no sales, is this really a pricing issue? Now this is also a very important feedback to the, to the Amazon seller. Because if the price is hitting to the minimum price, and it's not really even going up, probably either the product has some challenges. Maybe the images are not right, maybe the SEO is not right, maybe the campaign management is not working properly. So at least Eva will still show that the price is insensitive. Like, you know, there is no sensitivity with the price. And that's another proof point, like it's not about your price, you need to do something different than the price to sell this product. Obviously, still, the Amazon seller may reduce the minimum price, which means that the minimum margin they are expecting needs to be reduced. But then the question is, oh, is this the right product to sell? You know, like, if you're making only 10% margin, maybe it's not the right product, because the minimum price the minimum profit needs to be achieved. So at least you know, maybe Eva is still like Eva is not usable in terms of making more profit in this scenario. But at least showing that it's not a price problem anymore, because you are hitting to the minimum price, go and change change something else with this program.

Martin Zerrudo 26:29

That's something we actually encounter a lot. When we do audits of potential clients, we go through their accounts. And it's surprising how many are not retail ready, you know, images are not utilized correctly, the SEO, not using the right bytes, or keywords or characters, there's no A Plus module, the brand is not registered. So you're right. Either as a tool, and as a platform, she can only be as effective as the pieces that you give her to play with. And if do you encounter that often, where they come to you say, hey, fix my problem? I think Eva can make me sell more. And you're like, Hey, your your listings are actually not great.

Hai Mag 27:06

Well, I mean, definitely, we cannot say that like in terms of exact problem. While we can definitely say that, it's not a price problem, and they are able to see that in a visual way like, Okay, looks like it's not a price problem. There is another problem here that needs to be fixed before. But at the same time, even the price is sensitive, and we are able to sell more items or with more profits, everything that you do on the you know, images content, a plus content or obviously on the advertising will definitely help you know, the the the item to sell more, there is another way of looking at it like the one you know, one, let's say a part of me that is the price and what if like the seller is pushing a lot of ads and still not selling, which means that both of them are not working right, then there has to be another problem, which is maybe the images or content, we also see a lot of time that it's a competition problem, right? And what it means that there are very similar products, and one is trying to sell for I see it a lot in supplements space, but it's similar in different space is the same ingredients. Same thing, like people know that like let's say they know that this is the same cell C or whatever, exactly, let's say it's vitamin c one is $20 your customer is like trying to sell it for $20. And there is another one which is selling at $10. Now the problem is, even if this $20 Eva is trying to you know change the price between let's say 20 to 25 and trying to find the best point. But there is a challenge there is a competitor, which is already at $10 You know, whatever campaigns you do still you know we shouldn't ignore the fact the main reasons why people come to Amazon. I mean, statistically people come to Amazon for three reasons, variety, shipment time, and the price. So they will check the price you know they will just do the keyword search, find a $10 vitamin C and buy that one so there is nothing you can do. Now one way to address that is like it is also possible with Eva to do competitive pricing. So pick like another agent and make sure that for example your maximum price is always below the competitor, which are which happens, you know, which really works nicely. For example, you are the second guy coming into the vitamin C market and there is this guy was selling it for $20 you do everything right campaign, all that stuff, but you also want to make sure that your price is competitive, and the prices are also changing and everybody's looking at other guys prices. Wherever it's done automatically, it's much more effective rather than waiting a couple of days and always trying to find the competitor prices and try to change your price. It can all be done automatically with Eva as well.

Martin Zerrudo 30:13

That's fantastic. In that scenario, how do you avoid a race to the bottom? What if you undercut by a couple of dollars, they do the same? And you go back and forth? How do you avoid or how does Eva help avoid that situation?

Hai Mag 30:24

Well, I mean, with the brands, we don't see that much, you know, because like, it's Eva is like, the one of the few tools or actually the only tool that I know, which is doing similar reason pricing, like because it's hard. There are tools like which can monitor that like even in helium 10, you can monitor it or Jungle Scout. But these tools are not changing the price, like Eva is also taking the action and changing the price. So it's not very much automated. Having said that, we see that a lot with the reseller space, like on the reseller space, it's super aggressive. Everybody's trying to, you know, go undercut each other. Right? Yeah, then there's like so many different strategies that Eva is doing. One of them is like, for example, share the buy box, instead of trying to win the buy box, because sharing is caring, why not share the revenue. And that's one thing, there are also advanced strategies, like one of them is like, take the price up, and wait for some time and check if the competitor will come to your price. Now, that's also a nice strategy, we call it like a yo yo effect, which then increase your price. If if the competitor is also doing the same, it's nice, right? Then you can stay on the on the upper point of the price range, then we call it something a bit advanced and upward sprout pricing, which means that if the competitor came to let's say you're at $10, to competitors, $10, you raise it to 11. competitor comes to 11. Why not? Why 12 And then the competitor curves, and then 30. So it'd be a race upwards. Exactly. So it's kind of a race of worse. It happens, by the way, we have seen so many times that that also works. And the system is trying you know that type of thing, especially on the when the buybacks are it's on the same ad same or similar, you know, on the same listing, that's what we see not on like different listings trying to compete with each other. It's not advanced that much yet, you know, the Amazon competition. But in the future, for example, thinking about to two brands using Eva and competing with each other. It may happen, it may happen, like it's a good problem for you to have a good problem for me to have, obviously, we can, we are assuming they don't talk to each other and deciding the price together. But at the end, you know, if one stays one is matching the others price rather than going, let's say $1 Less, that's a strategy that they can also take and just share the sharing is caring. And exactly. And then then let the let the consumer decide on the same price. Which one is a better product content and

Martin Zerrudo 33:21

to your point, it's no longer pricing thing. It's a branding thing. It's an authenticity thing. It's an engagement thing completely out of what Eva provided. So before we shift to another topic, if I'm a seller, I'm trying to keep my topics low. I've already invested in maybe Helium 10. Tara help manage my account I've invested in pack for you to help manage my, my campaigns. Does Eva come in to replace both? Does she supplement some of the things that helium 10 or pack you can't do? How does that work?

Hai Mag 33:49

Right? I mean, you know, I see it's very much complementary, we like you know, like helium 10. And we are a good partner. We have like a very, to many, like hundreds of customers using helium 10 and Eva together. Same thing with pack view. And I was just talking to a very large customer they are using Eva and peck view hand in hand. Because one does the advertising automation, Helium 10 does more the keyword stuff and overall, you know, kind of giving analytics. But Eva is very much focused on pricing, profitability, you know, the inventory management, there is another thing that Eva does in a very good way, which is the reimbursements. I don't know I'm sure you know, you know about this topic. This is not exactly a software because like showing the user couple of reimbursement ideas, that's typically only 30 to 40% of the potential reimbursements are covered. But we have a team based on the Amazon terms and policies also we do the reimbursements with almost four to 1000 customers right now. Percentage. Yeah, we take a percentage, but it's very low. It's like 13% for the large sellers. And it's free for the sellers who are doing less than 100k. So if they become an IVA subscriber, they don't even pay for the reimbursements. And we know that a lot of companies are trying to charge 25% 20%. This is huge. I don't think that market will exist in the future. But we already kind of tried to give it on a very low margin, a very low commission. It's either zero or one, three 13%. And what we are seeing is like a lot of customers are coming to us. So all this functionality of pricing inventory reimbursements, there is no conflict with Italian or PAC view, and we love to work with them.

Martin Zerrudo 35:53

Fantastic. We do the same thing. So we're of like mind are based here. reimbursement is another one of our teams reimbursement is free. And if it's something that they're a little bit bigger, I think we do like 10%. So it's exact same thing that you guys do, which is fantastic. My last question, how would you for those who are also providing repricing tools or services? What would you say is the key differentiator I already feel like I know what you're gonna say, but what would you say is the key differentiator, what makes Eva different from all the others?

Hai Mag 36:22

Right, I mean, in terms of pricing, we are actually far away now in terms of like completing the vision, because the pricer tools in the market, they are all built for resellers. So it's all about when the Buy Box dominate the buy box, it has no value or a very limited value for the brands and the private lender trying to scale. Yeah, exactly. So in terms of like brand and private label pricing, or there are a lot of customers, they have their own brands, but they also do, they also resell, what Eva will be the kind of a very unique solution, like looking at the demand using the power of artificial intelligence, checking the inventory, doing parent child pricing or similar raising pricing. This is already far away in terms of like any other competitor that we are aware of that is able to do all this completing the division of pricing for the brands. So that's I think, you know, already a unique market and the unique solution. And the rest of the solutions like reimbursements. All that stuff is just like complementing the solution to make sure that we are able to maximize the profits more.

Martin Zerrudo 37:39

That's fantastic. I mean, that was a very great. I mean, last 40 minutes talking about how comprehensive and honestly, it sounds very user friendly. You know, at the beginning of the conversation, I really put you to the test, like how complicated is this? What is this AI? What happens if this happens and and I think based off of where we are right now, is pretty clear the value that Eva can provide. Now, if you don't mind, if I may ask a little bit of questions about your history. You had mentioned that you graduated a Senior Computer Science and Information Engineering from Bilkent. University. For those who don't know, Bilkent University is a prestigious university in Turkey. I think top one, two or three in various categories. I looked them up online before episodes. So congratulations. Hai, I'm graduating in a very prestigious, a university in Turkey. And I know you've actually got your MBA in the University of is it? Is it Lester Lancaster?

Hai Mag 38:31

That's right. Yeah, Lester.

Martin Zerrudo 38:33

Lester has the right pronunciation pronunciation next, right? Yeah. So I see here, you are part of the activities and societies for artificial intelligence and distributed database systems. Was this a club? Was this a society? Tell me back in 1999, what was this society that you were a part of that sparked this journey into AI?

Hai Mag 38:54

Right, like, you know, of course, it's kind of like, through history right now. Yeah. All right. I mean, I think, you know, once I graduated from the computer science, you know, I was really obsessed with AI. Because in some way, you know, AI means the like, like, the logic, it's like simulating the human brain. The human brain also decides based on the data, the only problem with our brains is like, it's very subjective, like because there is also emotions, there is other impressions, but it's subjective opinions. And pretty much you know, anger, hate Lao is all subjective. It's changing. By with the AI, it's, it's data, so it's not changing that much, you know, so that doesn't care about your feelings. So these are like the collab conversations, you know, how can you really you know, pretty much simulate the human brain, but in a kind of more objective way, basically by using the data and that was kind of like also pretty much The the claps and how, like what we were like discussing on the high level, of course, then it goes into lower levels of like how to compute compute storage, and, you know, all languages, programming languages can kind of help that, obviously, you know, I worked in pretty much in 40 countries in the world from, you know, Europe to Africa, to Asia to us. So that was kind of a long journey for 20 years. I'm like a nomad from one to another. And, you know, like, that also helped me to kind of like, you know, build more skills on top of the computer engineering pretty much on, you know, how the business, what's the business requirement, rather than just focusing on the technology. And that's how, like, I pretty much more towards the, like managing business, you know, in the Oracle, especially where I spent maybe not less than 1314 years. And that was a good, right? Because that that also helped me to understand how to build enterprise software, like, for example, you guys know a lot about NetSuite, which is, you know, a part of Oracle, I was in Oracle when NetSuite was acquired. I mean, I had given my input into that, you know, I think it was a brilliant idea that Oracle acquired NetSuite at the time and, and then when I decided to start a startup, because that was the challenge that I want to get into. And I was in Palo Alto, then one of the things I realized with the Amazon software's, it's like, it's not enterprise grade, it's not scalable. It's like two, three people come together, build the software. Now, there was a reason for that, because Amazon was full of the private label brands, like, again, one or two people just build the brand, you know, and they want to make it successful. But if you look at today, with AD aggregators with a lot of retail brands, trying to find a way in there in E commerce, and then the private label guys, they now start from like, 100k. Like, they're, it's not a mom and pop business anymore. Like, oh, let's let's, let's find something in China, Alibaba, and let's

Martin Zerrudo 42:21

put a brand on it. minimum order 10,000 is

Hai Mag 42:24

over, right. I mean, that is still possible. But you know, you're the guy to make 10. I don't know, with all the advertising costs, increasing the inventory costs, freight costs, I mean, I would recommend anybody who wants to go really seriously into Amazon, to have 100k, you know, first of all, and to build their product have spent some time in r&d, it's not any more about like, find some product in China and try to sell it because there is another 100 people, they will try to do the same as well. So it doesn't make too much sense to me. So what I'm saying is, as of today, with the state, you know, with all the new professional sellers on Amazon, like aggregators, big brands, private labels with equity and money. Now, it's the time for them to use the enterprise software, as well as the right type of agencies that can really help them to grow. Right? So there's a lot of sense for IVA right now to have this 99.999% available solution, scalable solution that can really deliver value and IMS. I mean, I'm expecting like, you know, I mean, for example, you know, like Pac, few Helium 10 are acquired by assembling. And that group is even funded by a very big private equity firm. So like, these are not like coincidental stuff, you know, it's all happening because the enterprise software is required, Eva is required, Helium 10 is required, but almost like 99% of the software in the Amazon market today is depending or relying on two guys, one sales guy, and probably there is a very, like a nerd, a CTO was building that. And once they are having a fight or something, it's over, you know, so let's scale that. Exactly. I'm always seeing that in the last three years that we are in the market. And that's how we were able to grow, you know, like almost 40% month on month in the last 36 months.

Martin Zerrudo 44:32

Congratulations. Hai, that's fantastic. What did the name Eva come from?

Hai Mag 44:38

I mean, there is not really a too much of a you know, we were thinking that it will be an AI engine. So it will think think, you know, it will think and decide and change the decisions. It's like a human being. So that's how we ended up like, looking for a name. And yeah, I mean, Eva is you know, it's like the Adam and the EU The EVA is more kind of, you know, a Latin name or a Hebrew name, let's say, you know, Eve or a Spanish name, right? So, you know, it kind of like, brought this together, so like gonna give birth to new brands and let them grow. And that was kind of the idea behind No, that's

Martin Zerrudo 45:19

fantastic. Where do you see ecommerce playing out in the next five to 10 years?

Hai Mag 45:25

I am really extremely excited, you know, to be on the E commerce space right now, first of all, if you look at the the overall retail, e commerce is still maybe 20% of the retail in us, but it's maybe 35 40% In China, you know, ecommerce in the overall retail, which means that there is still a lot of room like for E commerce to grow e commerce, probably there'll be 50% of overall retail in the next 10 years. So being an E commerce means there will be a lot of growth, and there will be some changes in the habits of people buying things, which we already see with COVID. Now buying grocery on Amazon is normal, right? Like nobody's question and get there three years ago, it was like an absurd thing, you know, white style, you know, the stuff on the E commerce for grocery. So we are going to see a lot more things like, you know, maybe buying and selling cars. And, you know, there is a lot of things that that will be one space, the other space is the b2b side of the E commerce, I think there is a great level of improvement that's required, because it's still done based on you know, human intervention, like the two people talking to each other. But actually, you know, Alibaba is trying to revote Shimon allies, you know, like trying to invent that space. Obviously, I think it's still in the younger ages, a lot there that needs to be seen. I mean, obviously, the advertising will be a key point, like reaching out to the customer will become more and more difficult. But at the same time, I think with omni channel different ways, like using the influencers, you know, again, like China is leading, you know, in many things area, right. And I think, you know, like people will just, you know, watch a video on tick tock and then buy that product, right, that the the the guy is using for that video, whatever. I think that this is still on the early days, you know, so there is a lot of things that are coming, you know, in E commerce, a lot of innovation in mentions, very excited to be in this market, which will definitely grow.

Martin Zerrudo 47:45

Oh, man, that's that's a fantastic insight. Hai, again, thanks. I don't want to take up too much of your time. This is a fantastic interview, we gain so much insight not only but Eva, but as you as a as a business person, as a leader. I do have one last question on on your LinkedIn, it says I love resilience, passion, hard work and compassion. Where does that sentiment come from? Is there a moment in your life where you exhibited real resilience?

Hai Mag 48:13

Well, I mean, you know, I was always kind of like an immigrant in multiple countries in my last 25 years of my life. And if you're like, the the minority or the different person, like trying to achieve things, but also to prove yourself, there has to be resilience, like a lot of people asked me, and I mean, are you like, really smart? And that's the reason why you were you were able to do this, like, you know, being the vice president of Oracle, when I was like, 35 years old, or, you know, like, you know, building a company like Eva. And I can tell you that, yes, you can be smart, it's important, you know, but, but you need to work hard. And working hard means also to be resilient. Now, you you don't you shouldn't give up. Like, that's one thing. The second thing is sometimes you get the punches, you know, I got a lot of punches, like, you know, the reason why we are getting the punches, because you're trying to grow, but you're in order to grow, you need to push some others, you know, like you need to disrupt the markets, like, for example, reimbursement market, like, if people are paying 25% You need to come up with a new idea, a better way, cheaper way. And of course, people will not be happy, you know, with bungee going, and they are going to push back, you know, and then you need to be resilient. If you're doing the right thing, you need to continue doing the right thing. So, that's why the resilience is, I think, very important to be successful. And if it just blends with the passion, hard work, I think, you know, that's all great, but at the end of the day, there has to be a different type of admission in In your mind, which I think is like, this compassion piece, because, I mean, I mean, I respect the people, obviously, that they want to make more money or get recognition. But for me, you know, it's more about like, I have a dream. And Eva is helping me today at one point to achieve that dream, which is to really help the nature to, to kind of like to help protecting the nature. And although it sounds very irrelevant, but the way that I think, and my co founder thinks about Eva is like, one day, it will become a billion dollar company, and we maybe will get hundreds of millions of dollars, we are going to invest 99.9% of that back to the nature and that's kind of like, still feeling us a lot, you know, in our journey. Otherwise, you know, I could be, I could stay as an Oracle, VP and make millions of dollars, you know, so it's not about money.

Martin Zerrudo 51:01

That's amazing. Is there any philanthropic effort or charitable foundation that you wanted to mention or shine some light to?

Hai Mag 51:09

Well, not not, at this moment, there's of course, like, you know, you know, kind of like, we are supporting a couple of the ideas, but the, you know, the idea is like to go back as the EVA grows and started doing this, you know, exactly right now, I am like 150% focused on the EVA growth, you're a, you're a founder, I mean, I'm a founder, it's not easy to grow the companies, it's like babies, then then they become the kids and now they're teenagers, and they have their own problems, you know, as the company grows, so, the focus is there, but for sure, at some point I will become a mature, mature female, she you know, ILA will become mature will become 18 years old, 21 years old, whatever it is, and then it will just go go from the house, you know, it's fine. Right? Time. I hope that you know, that I can focus very much on that philanthropic activity.

Martin Zerrudo 52:11

That's amazing. Again, Hai, thank you so much CEO, co founder of Eva.guru, whether you're a private labeler or Amazon seller, Eva is an all inclusive solution for you to always be one step ahead of your competition. Eva.guru was the website right Hai.

Hai Mag 52:27

Absolutely.

Martin Zerrudo 52:28

Thank you again so much for being part of the show. I'm sure this is the first of many conversations that will be having so much amazing insight. Thank you again.

Hai Mag 52:36

Thank you. Thank you very much Martin for having me and anybody can reach out to me by my email Hai.Mag@Eva.guru so it's pretty simple. My name and last name are also very simple. So that's why I thought it's easy to just, you know, tell it of course.

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