Working with Minnetonka Moccasins
Minnetonka Moccasins is a leading shoe manufacturer and trusted heritage brand. Like many shoe brands, Minnetonka was faced with the difficulty of monitoring, enforcing, and protecting their MAP pricing as well as content consistency across the channel. Powerplay partnered with Minnetonka Moccasins to clean up their Amazon presence and together created one of the best selling slipper assortments on Amazon.
Key issues faced
- Transitioning from Vendor Central to Seller Central
- Management of forecasting inventory and logistics for a seasonal business
- Monitoring and removing rogue sellers, unauthorized sellers and authorized sellers breaking MAP
- Managing a matrix of these sellers uploading conflicting content to product listings
- Managing large assortment with a SKU count of over 10,000 color and size combinations
- Driving traction on existing listings and new product launches
Implementation
- Deployed full brand protection program and began monitoring and removing rogue sellers from top 100 listings
- Forecasted through drive time with 3% margin of error and minimal stockouts
- Managed inventory as Vendor Central ran out and backfilled effectively with Seller Central
- Developed hybrid fulfillment model to maximize assortment visibility for customers to minimize storage costs
- Set up dropship logistics allowing us to carry more of the assortment
- Leveraged content syndication software to streamline product data across multiple ecommerce platforms
Outcome
After initial Seller Central transition:
- Over 30 unauthorized sellers removed from Amazon
- Achieved consistent and growing sell-through on existing listings
- Identified key growth areas and custom new SKUs for launch
- MAP strictly monitored and quickly enforced across the Amazon channel through our brand protection program
- Identified leaks in distribution network, reducing number of authorized sellers to clean the channel
- Full content optimization across the entire assortment of over 5000 SKUs
As a result of the ongoing partnership:
- Increased speed to market by streamlining product launch process by 75%
- Secured 100+ SMUs, becoming a launchpad for new product and reducing the brand’s risk to test new styles, achieving 100% sell-through on these SMUs and added 25% incremental sales lift
- Achieved #4 best seller ranking in “Men’s Slippers” category
