Save 2-3% on Imported Inventory and Cross-Border VAs

Ryan Cramer is the Affiliate Marketing Manager at PingPong, a revolutionary payment service provider for cross-border e-commerce sellers around the world. Currently, PingPong has more than 600,000 users and has processed more than $10 billion for global e-commerce sellers. In his role at the company, Ryan is responsible for content marketing and partnering with online sellers and service providers.

Ryan is also the host of Crossover Commerce, a podcast that features top marketplace sellers, industry experts, and e-commerce influencers. He is passionate about content creation, out-of-the-box marketing, and industry networking.

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

• Ryan Cramer discusses the hidden fees that Amazon sellers experience when selling internationally
• How PingPong helps sellers improve their bottom line through its currency conversion system
• How do you save money through PingPong, and where do your saved funds go?
• Ryan talks about paying international VAs and freelancers through PingPong
• The simple process for creating a PingPong account
• Ryan’s predictions for the future of PingPong and other fintech businesses
• The marketplaces and market trends that Amazon sellers should keep an eye on in the coming years
• Ryan shares the story behind his hit podcast, Crossover Commerce, and how to listen today

In this episode…

Are you trying to cut down on hidden fees that are hurting your business? Do you want to not only save money every month, but also boost the overall value of your company?

Let’s get right to it: you want to grow your business. However, many e-commerce entrepreneurs face innumerable fees that chip away at their profits and inhibit their long-term growth. According to Ryan Cramer, one of the biggest fees that can impact your business is through currency conversion. As he says, by optimizing your currency conversion and eliminating hidden fees on international payments, you can save thousands of dollars every month — and skyrocket your business’ value. So, how can you solve these cross-border currency issues to improve your bottom line and grow your business today?

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Ryan Cramer, the Affiliate Marketing Manager at PingPong, to reveal how you can boost your business’ growth by significantly saving on cross-border payments. Listen in as Ryan discusses the common challenges Amazon sellers face when selling internationally, how to reduce fees when paying cross-border VAs, and how PingPong can help e-commerce sellers expand their businesses and achieve a wildly profitable exit. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Ryan Cramer on LinkedIn
• Ryan’s email: [email protected]
• PingPong
• The Crossover Commerce Podcast
• Quiet Light
• The Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• Mark Daoust
• Joe Valley
• “Amazon Funding Partners…No Interest, No Credit Report, No Personal Guarantees” on the Quiet Light Podcast
• Robby Stanley on LinkedIn
• AccrueMe

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley  0:29

Hey folks, Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks again for joining us one more time. Today’s episode is sponsored by, you guessed it, Quiet Light Advisors, Quiet Light Brokerage, whatever you want to call us, we’re here to help. First and foremost, well, we’re all online entrepreneurs that have built, bought or sold our own online businesses. And we’re here to help you guys understand the value of your most valuable asset or likely your most valuable asset, your business, you work your tail off, you’ve taken all sorts of risks to become an entrepreneur grow that business, the worst thing you can do is make a quick decision to sell. We want you to think about it in advance, get the knowledge, get the power gate position, your business in strong, strong position to get maximum value with great deal terms. That’s, you know, a combination of those two things are very important. You can’t get great value and terrible deal terms because you won’t sleep well for years. If you get the wrong kind of deal. Enough about us. Today’s guest is Ryan Cramer from PingPong. No, not the game. It’s the place that actually provides marketplace sellers and entrepreneurs, a global solution for controlling their own domestic and international funds. A PingPong account, again, not the game service, the SaaS business, all that good stuff, enables companies to significantly reduce their costs when receiving or making international payments, all on a platform that helps increase operational efficiencies and save time, allow sellers to manage their business profits from a single source, which is the key and managing your profits is the absolute key to eventually getting maximum value to pay attention. and boost your bottom line with words of wisdom Ryan Cramer from PingPong is about to impart with us, Ryan, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast.

Ryan Cramer  2:15

Thanks for having me, Joe. That’s a mouthful, I say every episode that I do my own podcast, and I have not gotten it down like us. So that was good.

Joe Valley  2:23

Well, I’m putting a lot of pressure on you. Because I just said you’re also going to impart impart words of wisdom? Absolutely. So

Ryan Cramer  2:29

that’s what that question.

Joe Valley  2:31

So a lot of people are just crazy busy trying to keep up with just inventory. And they screw that up a little bit, right. It’s a challenge. And then the little details that can be you know, international payments and moving funds back and forth and, and accepting them the wrong way maybe even get allowing Amazon to do the exchange rate for you. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s a big part of what you do. And I want you to say what you do in a big picture. Because the bottom line audience is that services like PingPong will improve your bottom line, and they will make your life easier. And when you go to sell your business, that bottom line is gonna put more dollars in your pocket, it’s gonna put more dollars in your pocket and more control between now and when you eventually do sell. Right, right. Is that about? Right? Good?

Ryan Cramer  3:19

Yeah, I mean that Yeah, that’s a lot. So there’s a lot of different things that you as an Amazon seller don’t have control over. Right? It’s an asset that you as a brand, want to have control over. But Amazon will dictate for you fees to have in your inventory in their warehouses, their referral fees, the Commission’s that you sell per product on their marketplaces, there’s a lot of things that you don’t have control of there’s that’s just like cost of doing business, right. But what I tried to tell people and like why solutions, like us exists or payment service providers exists, is because there is a way that you can impart and have control over money that’s just left on the table. I say that one year like Reiki and all that money, hopefully at that you’re getting money every two weeks or so there’s that little that’s left behind, and people just don’t understand, like why that you have to when you’re raking that in, you have to leave it behind. And that’s a lot when it comes to fruition when you’re an international seller, or if you’re just paying how different service providers or your VA is, or just any kind of Freelancer money’s coming and going all the time, you may not have this holistic view of Hey, can I actually save on my cost of doing business with a simple solution of payment servers service provider like PingPong, so that’s kind of where I shine the light pull back the curtain say like listen, you have this capability to save percentage points and put it to your bottom line as profit. It’s not it’s not a fictitious number. It’s not made up. It’s legitimate money that you can instantaneously start saving today when you do work with providers like

Joe Valley  4:51

1. And so we’re talking about cross border payments anytime you p pay your VA s or get paid from Amazon international or it’s not even just Amazon, it’s any third party platform where you may be selling international making and receiving payments internationally across borders. That’s what we’re talking about. Right?

Ryan Cramer  5:10

Yeah. 100%. So from the very basics of your business, you’re probably working with the supplier not in the same country as you not that’s pretty typical, right is probably 90, 95, 97% of us. Sellers out there. So I’m talking from a US perspective, just to make it pretty simple and straightforward. So from the US perspective, if I’m sourcing from a country like China, and I start this working relationship, I’m probably going to start off with a company like Alibaba, that’s pretty typical. They have their own network of suppliers. But if you don’t go with a solution like them, there’s ways to find out suppliers to figure out, hey, if I like this supplier XYZ, I’m going to pay them in two ways, right? I can either pay them in USD, which is the United States dollar, through international wire, or they can pay them in local currency. Now, not I don’t know about you, but I don’t have RMB or CNY, just floating around my house in my I don’t even know what I can pay for. So yeah, that’s about it. Yeah, believe it or not, those are the two types of currencies that are locally accepted in Chinese marketplace. So that’s, that’s where people can use to pay out their employees, like they can use it in the marketplace. That’s what the currency like USD is for us. So I’m trying to think of that technical term, what it stands for, but RMB and CNY are just the two acronyms I’m gonna use for my, for my,

Joe Valley  6:31

normally I call people out on acronyms. I mean, I know what are these? stand for? Yeah, I know, he

Ryan Cramer  6:37

asked me like literally any other country. I used this example all the time. But no one’s like, Hey, what’s the same for an off the top of my head? I’m like, that’s a good question. I need to look that up. Yeah. Because it’s escaping my mind. I have every other acronym and in my Rolodex of wheelhouse what it stands for?

Joe Valley  6:50

So jumping, jumping ahead, if somebody is brown numbers, by $100,000 worth of inventory and a monthly basis. Yes. Yep. And they actually don’t care. How does PingPong help them with that?

Ryan Cramer  7:03

Yeah, so I’ll go, I’ll even take a step further back, so the trip did not. So the traditional asset that you would have to do is you’re paying a supplier anyone to use an International Bank, you would have to fly over to that country, you’d have to set up an entity, establish it with either a person most often than not, that represents you on the international way, you’d have to show your documents of business, your like your IMC all those kinds of documents that you can open up big account, it’s time sucking, and you have to do that in order to open a bank account. But because you’re a small fish in a really, really big pond, you are not going to get a very big credit like limit where you can actually send in that currency. And that’s because of safety guidelines, and all that other fun stuff that we as a company get to jump through for you anyways, by paying in local currency, believe it or not, you can actually save percentage points. So in your example, on $100,000, if I’m paying a supplier in USD, in theory, I’m sending them $100,000. But what you’re actually getting and not $100,000, there’s percentage points on the on the invoice that you’re receiving anywhere from two to four, potentially even 5%, on what people are actually charging on top of that are baked into that invoice amount, where they’re going to use that currency conversion rate. So think about if you’re going to a grocery store or something like that, or a restaurant, and you use your credit card, those every time a credit card is swiped. For convenience purposes, you are actually there’s a fee associated with it. So most times businesses eat that cost. But also, there’s opportunities for them to pass on that cost to you as a customer. It’s in your line item you see as like a credit card charge. Most of the time. That’s why you see like, hey, has to be a $10 minimum threshold on a credit card, because it doesn’t make sense otherwise, because you’re getting screwed on fees. Okay, what but the hidden cost. And that’s why I’m going to talk about the hidden costs in this $100,000 example, is 4% or 5% of that $100,000 is going to be going towards just conversion in general. And that’s not something that Yeah, okay, so you’re talking about, you’re talking about massive amounts of money. Most people it’s like a couple $1,000. But if you’re talking about grains, like really big numbers over there, they’re doing their because they have to convert that money for themselves anyways, if they’re receiving USDA, you have to pay out your employees in RMB or CNY. Whatever’s convenient for that region, they have to pay out they have to use it for their own costs of goods and whatnot. So in theory, they have to either eat the cost, which not many businesses are just going to eat $40,000 worth of you know, fees, they’re going to pass it on to you as a seller. So those are things that if sellers aren’t empowered, and they know where all the money’s going towards, you have to start asking those questions like, hey, what if I instead of that $100,000 is all going towards this? What’s that line item breaking down? You know, is it fees Is it like what is it all going to In a lot of times, you know, businesses will tell you like, this is what it costs for me to convert it, you know, that’s on you, too. If you want me to do business with me, that’s what it’s gonna come down to. So So anybody

Joe Valley  10:11

that’s buying inventory overseas, that’s called China for now. They should, if they’re sending them money directly US dollars the government had before, and I’ve invited my local bank wired 25 $50,000. And so what I really should be doing is asking that supplier to break down the costs of that 50 $50,000 invoice all the way down to the level of currency conversion. Right? Yeah,

Ryan Cramer  10:35

absolutely. If it’s

Joe Valley  10:36

$100,000 example, if it’s literally if I’m paying 4%, that’s $4,000 that I could be saving in that currency conversion. But there’s going to be a cost associated with it through PingPong. Well, what Yeah, so I’m going to wire that money to my PingPong account, and then pay them in local currencies that just

Ryan Cramer  10:56

yet, yeah, so opening an account with us. So taking that first example that I displayed, how I always tell people is, you as a entrepreneur, need to save three things typically time, your time, your money, and your effort. So when you open an international bank account, you spending all this time to just open a bank account so that you can convert it potentially, in this different currency. And you have to do that for every marketplace you’re going to be operating in so yeah,

Joe Valley  11:23

I’ve been doing this for almost a decade, right? And I don’t, I couldn’t can’t count on a single hand, how many people have told me maybe maybe more, but that have actually opened an international bank account, I just think that wiring money there, I think they’re losing 4% pretty easily. So skipping on to, you know, the the savings that PingPong provides, you know, on that $100,000 and 4% a month, if I’m spending $100,000 a month, PingPong is gonna help me with that, and how much am I gonna save?

Ryan Cramer  11:52

Yeah, so getting to the to numbers, PingPong will never charge you more than 1% on our fees. And that’s when you convert the currency. So if USD and it goes over to like RMB, for example, or it sends out to a different USD to USD, like, that doesn’t typically make too terribly much sense in terms of our ecosystem. But when you’re changing over in currency, exchanges to a different currency, that’s where we, you know, we charge RP, but it’s one person maximum. So instead of the wire, you know, if you’re wiring internationally, you’re 50 to 150 bucks per wire, then it’s also doing in person. So that’s your time that you’re spending doing it in person. Also, the currency conversion gets baked into that invoice. So you’re still paying that on top of all these other currency conversions. But also banks do is that they will give you a set price for the what that currency is like, they’ll set it for you, though, they’re like, this is what it is. And we’ll add our fees on top of that currency conversion. So again, 2, 3, 4 percent depends on the bank, honestly, and how much you’re doing. Um, that’s another way you get hit, like all those different ways every portal that goes through, that’s where you get hit with PingPong, you can use your receiving funds to either pay out your supplier or you if you’re a US entity, you can we call top up, or take your money from your bank account, put it into our ecosystem, and send it out to that supplier, for example, in this case, and that ranges maximum will keep on charges people as 1%. Okay, so simple math, just doing

Joe Valley  13:18

simple math for like, exactly 3000 bucks a month, $36,000 a year in this simple example. And there’s always nuances to it. So $36,000 a year in that example, a business is spending 100 grand a month on inventory, if you’re, you know, listing your business, and it’s being sold at a four time multiple, what is that? $144,000? Something like that. I think

Ryan Cramer  13:44

it’s six figures, right?

Joe Valley  13:45

My seven year old is a math magician here and I hit correct me to the penny. But it’s a lot of money. And the point is that it’s not just money being put in your pocket along the way, but it’s money being put in your pocket when you eventually exit your business. And the bigger your businesses, the better. This is a way for buyers that are out there listening to gain some instant equity. Right, our largest transaction we sold last year was $25 million dollars. Imagine if that company selling internationally and then signs up for a PingPong account with inventory that they’re spending or buying. How much instant equity you would get as a buyer by using services like PayPal. Yeah,

Ryan Cramer  14:23

that’s what I tell people is like, yeah, put that money towards your inventory or more goods or advertising or just like paying yourself out even a little bit like yeah, or I would, I would suggest obviously reinvest in your business. But that’s money that didn’t exist before that you can just like instantaneously put towards product that helps you grow quicker, helps you exit quicker. That helps you do a lot of things a lot quicker. All right. Well,

Joe Valley  14:45

let’s talk logistics here because I don’t do this and I’m going to ask some questions because the audience probably doesn’t do it either. Some are probably using your your services already, but let’s just say I’m an Amazon seller and I’m getting paid out every two weeks. Is that money, let’s say Some of its international some of its domestic? Do I want the domestic money just to come to my bank account? Because there’s not a cross border savings there, and then have the international funds go to my PingPong account?

Ryan Cramer  15:12

Yeah, so in this case, Amazon pays you every two weeks, which is like it’s on, on, it’s on the schedule, if you use receiving funds, so in your example, if you have an international account that’s coming to your in the United States, and you’re selling in the UK, for example, yeah, absolutely use a service like PingPong to receive those funds internationally. So this is the cool part, every two weeks, Amazon will pay you out. And they will do those conversions for you say, if I’m just dipping my toes in the international water, and I’m only doing 10 grand a month or $1,000 a month even, there’s no, there’s no minimum threshold, you have to use us in order to start receiving into your PingPong account. So that’s step number one, that’s fantastic, okay, there’s no monthly fees to hold on to your funds in any sort of currency. If it’s $10,000, sitting there in your UK bank account, you don’t have to convert it right away. That’s the beauty is, if I’m just selling $10,000, and I want to wait until it gets to $100,000, I can have that receiving fund receive the pound, let it sit there, it doesn’t accrue interest or anything like that. But I can let it sit there until I’m ready to have it convert either to USD, or I can take that money and convert it over to pay out a supplier. So you’re eliminating the transactions back and forth. Commerce basically think about PingPong, that’s where our name came from back and forth over the single net, it’s fast and spurious. People get tired of Washington and go back and forth. with us. Obviously, if it keeps going back and forth, and trends, when’s the X in different currencies, that’s where you’re going to keep getting hit with all these fees. So you can just hold on to it, limit the amount of transactions to different currencies, and use it for that one time, when you need it, you can then make that currency conversion and then use our low rates to be able to convert it. It’s interesting to work. We’ve focused on inventory, because I think that’s where most people and I did it. I took us on this track. Sorry, if you don’t want to go there. But I know you’re fine. No, that’s where this is a typical situation that every seller has to deal with. Yeah, and

Joe Valley  17:06

it’s where most of the cost is right? It’s, you know, wiring funds internationally for inventory. But almost everyone I talked to and work with is using an international VA freelancers, whatever the case might be. So you know, I’ve got a client now that’s got, like 11 VAs in the Philippines? And I’m 99% sure they just send them, you know, a weekly wire or a CH,

Ryan Cramer  17:32

probably their PayPal and three USD. Yeah, exactly. So

Joe Valley  17:34

if there’s if they’re spending, you know, five grand a month on a VA, which probably would be high, if there’s 10 of them, maybe, maybe not. They can make those payments through their PingPong account, if they have international revenue that they leave there from Amazon, or would I, if it’s me, do I put the money in my PingPong account and then pay the VA through my account.

Ryan Cramer  17:57

So you do one, either of those situation. So you can use your funds that you’re using as receiving like, as an Amazon, from your Amazon payments, no matter if it’s USD, or we have over 10 different currencies you can receive funds in. So that’s US dollar, Canadian dollar, Mexican peso, the pound, the Euro, the Japanese yen, Australian dollar, and then gets even crazier the Singapore dollar, the Hong Kong dollar, and then dirham, which is in the United Emirates. So even if you’re paying people in the Middle East, that does also and you’re selling in the Middle East, which is a marketplace that, you know, is untapped. Really, you start receiving funds in a day as well. So those are the kinds of ones so you can receive them, but you can pay out 160 different currencies, there are solutions. So if it’s going one way, you can use your funds, either from your receiving accounts like a like a, you know, from your bank accounts in Amazon that you’re receiving from Amazon, and use those funds to pay out your Bs, or you can what we call top up so you can put money into it almost like a shopping of a debit card, or like one of those prepaid cards when you put money into it from your Us Bank Account, which is what we suggest to do for us sellers. And then you can pay out your via through there. So an example of case in point I just talked with, not even amazon seller, a service provider in wants of the company, but he has 250 employees all around the world 100% remote, they’re not all in the United States are actually almost all international. So he has to figure out and load in all of these different payment conversions through a service provider and pay him out every two weeks. So if you’re talking 250 employees, which is massive and he’s continuing to hire guests convert USD and his dollar account over to all those different currencies. So that’s a lot for one person to handle. Typically what people suggested like just use PayPal, it’s convenient, you can receive one to one as a customer, but those fees are astronomical like they were first to market and they’re fantastic for like I’m gonna pay you back Joe have Or pizza, like, Here’s $10. But like you and I, that’s not a charge, like, it’s going to be a lot. But when you’re talking about, you know, hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars, then that starts to rack up pretty quickly, we looked at his stripe account, and he, he receives subscriptions from like all over the world. So stripe will convert that for you to your Us Bank Account, that’s the bank account you wanted to use. So from the pound to the USD, he didn’t even see the breakdown in terms of fees. And I said, Why don’t you click on that little like icon right there. And it shows you that conversion process and said fees, it said $10,000, just for one marketplace, in just for one person. And I was like, Listen, stripe is fantastic to receive credit card payments. And as a processor, they’re technically a PSP, but they do one good thing and they’re going to accept credit cards, that’s what they do. But when you take that money as a service provider, he put it towards my bank account. If I’m receiving funds internationally, they’re going to convert that funds just like a bank, but they’re going to charge that same two and a half percent or so. So even if you save up, you know, one and a half percent, that’s still money that as a service provider is not actively selling on Amazon and saved instantaneously in goes, I’m not going to downsize, I’m going to continue to scale. So that money might become $150,000 over the course of a year. And I said, What would you do with $150,000? If you just save that instantaneously? It’s like, either add it onto my house or, you know, put it into my business. Those are the kinds of possibilities where, you know, we don’t ask the right questions, you don’t know their savings that can happen. And you make your business more valuable in that context as well. Because it’s not a, you know, red line item where it’s like you’re losing on fees, like you don’t want to do that. Now,

Joe Valley  21:40

how complex is this? Right? So everybody I talked to is busy trying to keep their head above water, just kind of on the hamster wheel of trying to stay ahead and not getting anywhere. And then to add something on like this. Is it complex? Or do you and people on your team? Take a look at Okay, show me your, you know, transactions and you figure out how to save the money and what to do?

Ryan Cramer  22:02

Yeah, it’s not like it’s not like checking your credit or anything. We’re not in the lending. So that’s impressive for most a lot of companies will do like the savings and cross borders and lending which they’re that’s fantastic solutions for people. sure you’re just strictly focused on ecommerce sellers and how they can optimize their e commerce journey and say e commerce because it’s not just Amazon, it’s like on Shopify, it’s on. You know, Airbnb, it’s like anywhere where you’re receiving goods, Etsy, all those kinds of things where you’re receiving funds internationally as an e commerce seller, we can help you with those fees. So in terms of your question, is it easy, right? If I sign up for today? Is it easy? So yeah, super easy. You can go today, it’s free to sign up, which is the first barrier to entry, do I have to pay a monthly fee? No, it’s free to sign up, what you do is you put in your credentials in it’s called a KYC. or know your customer, it’s like opening a bank account, you need to verify you are an entity and you can establish who you are. So because we work with tier one banks, so banks meaning chase city, Wells Fargo, HSBC, if you say what is that popular bank, and you name it, it’s probably worth who we’re working with, I think Bank of America for some reasons, like the only one we’re not working with. So anyways, long story short, we are opening up a digital bank account with those banks on your behalf. So we need to verify your legit business entity. And we need to verify to them that you’re not like some terrorist organization that’s like funding money around the world and sending money across borders. And so that’s those are like compliance and regulations that we have to strictly go under. But your money is within these banks. And under a legitimate bank account routing number, you know, you get your PIN number, all that fun stuff that you get to use for business purposes, like it’s all b2b focus. So that’s where the strict, it’s easy to do takes, once you fill out those forms and upload those documents, they can take same day to get verified to start receiving and sending money. That’s being time. So any new entity that you send money to you just have to verify, hey, this is our contract agreement. This is their a freelancer, I pay them every two weeks, and then they become part of your drop down button that you can either schedule payments, or you can just do one off payments, however you need to automate it.

Joe Valley  24:12

Okay, I’m not looking for an easy solution. Everything that is worth doing is generally, you know, take some effort, that’s for sure.

Ryan Cramer  24:19

Exactly. Right.

Joe Valley  24:20

Look what I started first doing, you know, the service that we provide at Quiet, you know, 2012, there was really no international Amazon sellers or tech target online, I don’t think existed, right. And now, there’s all sorts of marketplaces and, and they’re growing internationally, Amazon being the biggest place for expansion. But where do you really see this going? From your point of view as somebody that deals with so many cross border transactions? Do you guys track the growth of cross border transactions? Do you see what can you can you predict what’s going to happen more accurately than I can for the next, you know, one to three years for the folks that are selling us and want to go international?

Ryan Cramer  24:58

Yeah. So I’m going to start throwing some numbers at people just in context of like, where the industry is going not just for e commerce, but in FinTech. Just recently, a competitor of ours Payoneer been around in the space for 15. You know, 15 plus years started in Israel. And now they’re based out of, I think New York, they just got acquired by an went public evaluated, evaluated at what three, I think it was $3.5 billion, just as a company entity and those just like a, like some blank check company that purchased them. So $3.5 billion, I think the latest statistic that they showed was, they’re facilitating 60 plus billion dollars in transactions that’s coming in and going across border that’s across borders. Okay. Um, PingPong in itself. We’ve been around for five years, and we’ve seen data in analytics, we did it roughly 20 to $25 billion. And on each one, so five years. So there’s a time Yeah, with a be like a big D. Okay. Yeah. So we’ve been around third of the time, that’s amount of cross border payments that we saw. That’s in all of our marketplaces in China that’s in India that’s in South Korea, that’s us, sure. So on and so forth. So that’s what the be. So we’re growing at a rate that’s pretty phenomenal and fantastic. Even in the in the in a decade. 2020 felt like a decade and year where everything was very much different than expected. But it’s still there’s growth. The other statistic I will start throwing out there with you is that the internet, he said international sellers weren’t a thing. Back when he first started 70 marketplace polls came out with this number in January 75%, of new sellers in the Amazon ecosystem, were all coming from China. And that’s across the Amazon board in every single marketplace. So it was, you know, across all new sellers, it was all from China, there was a lot coming from Europe, us is still very much up there. But there’s a lot of international players who are trying to make their you know, know if for lack of a better word,

Joe Valley  26:57

to help the US seller, what I’m actually and that’s that’s a scary enter number seven, the new sellers are from China, that would worry a lot of people that sell online now, from the so well,

Ryan Cramer  27:09

kind of like yeah,

Joe Valley  27:11

you know, what I mean? Is, is if I’m a US seller, how, how big is it? How important is it for me to, to look at going internationally over the next one to three years?

Ryan Cramer  27:21

Yeah, and let me back up. So that’s new sellers, right? That’s not like I’m successful on Amazon. That’s, that’s definitely just like I opened an account and I want to throw out a product that’s, that’s still good like that, that I think it went from like 47% to 75, which is definitely growth opportunities. But there’s still of the top sellers of all like 1000, top Amazon sellers, still a significant portion are coming from Amazon in the United States or in they’re located in the United States, but for opportunity to grow internationally. So this is like, no matter where you are as a seller and marketplaces, Amazon has always been amazon.com has been first to market and everything. They are trailblazers, everything gets greenlit here, everything, you know, like everything gets tested in this market. And then it starts to roll out slowly to these own marketplaces. I think we’re at 18 different marketplaces with Poland being the most recent one, I think is what they’re just announced. So of 18 countries around the world, there’s only you know, of the hundreds that are in the world, there’s a team that Amazon has an ecosystem there. And that’s kind of crazy in terms of that skew of numbers. Amazon will continue to push to have outside sellers. So in marketplaces like India, where it’s very hard to sell as an outside seller to get into India. But once that happens, and it will eventually happen, that there’ll be marketplace, you can opt absolutely dominate one to billions of people like Greg there and instantaneously. International marketplaces has been something really cool to keep an eye on because I never tell people don’t sell on amazon.com because that’d be silly to not do. You start there. And then you start to grow your brand internationally, because that’s where a lot of these aggregator companies are going to start taking your brand to the next level, because they’re going to first and foremost look at how can I start to put your products in international opportunities in Europe, which 66 to 75% of the business to Europe, an Amazon is happening in UK and Germany. So those are the two markets you have to be

Joe Valley  29:24

I was gonna ask that which you know, knowing what you know, which marketplaces should people focus on UK and Germany. Okay.

Ryan Cramer  29:30

Yeah, two at two and three are UK in Germany. 100%. Now because of Brexit. I had a couple of guests on, you know, Andy Hooper, who talks with ECAM I think it’s ECAM group is one of his econ groups. And he talks about how to help Amazon sellers get into uk The only differences in like with Brexit, and I’ll just talk about that real quickly. Brexit The only differences is that they don’t have that natural cross border essentially relationship with people where You can just like take your goods from UK and then distribute to the rest of the EU, you have to put it in one, send goods and UK and then also do it in Netherlands, for example, he said, Go into Netherlands and then from there it can be distributed amongst the EU network pretty easily. But more often than not, your marketplaces of growth are going to be Germany, and UK. And those two flip flop two and three in the Amazon ecosystem. Number three on like, those are two a and TB. Number three on the list is Japan, which is kind of crazy. So think of Amazon marketplaces. They did roughly I want to say just on just shy of four monthly visitors in the Amazon ecosystem, and doc JP, it was just over, I want to say a billion unique views a month. So us more How does it How does it compare to Canada?

Joe Valley  30:49

It seems like it seems to be the much higher with you know, a lot of people just go Okay, well go to Canada, you know, relatively speaking the same language unless you’re deep in Quebec, you know, looking back, you know, why? Why do people go to Canada first versus, you know, UK, Germany or Japan.

Ryan Cramer  31:09

Um, it’s easy. Um, so there’s that there’s programs out there, like, there’s narf program, which is a really stupid term, it sounds like you’re throwing up, it’s the North American remote fulfillment program, where you can have your FBA inventory, get delivered to Canada marketplace, you just open up your account, but you can have it instead of sending goods there. It would just get delivered kind of a week later, or, you know, you can dip your toes in that, but I just had I had a guest on my show yesterday, it was like, why, why is Canada such a football? Why would people think like, it’s difficult to understand, why are people just not taking advantage of Canada, you know, Canada, or any international marketplace, people look at the logistics of tax. So for UK, it’s VAT, that’s super scary to understand, you’re like, I don’t want to have to deal with more tax, it’s, for lack of a better term. And this is very simplistic way of putting it, it’s sales tax, it’s 20%, you’re gonna get charged it, you’re gonna pay it during the United States, you’re getting charged sales tax anyways, you as a seller are just gonna have to fill in different forms and documents, your registered and then it’s really easy to just pay those entities and authorities out whenever you need to. So

Joe Valley  32:17

it’s just for an Amazon seller in the UK is you got to you got to add the tax onto the list price of the item you’re selling. Otherwise, you are screwed.

Ryan Cramer  32:24

That’s exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, as a business, if you’re not paying your VAT or GST, you’re gonna get really screwed when you try to exit your business and say, How do I balance these books and make them look clean? That’s exactly the number one reason you have to pay those authorities online. And it’s free to do you can do it in PingPongs ecosystem, you can pay this authorities for free with your funds, no problem, you just load it in, and then you can pay them out. It’s not a moneymaker for us, but it’s a use of authority, like you can use it for ease, for lack of ease. So going into those marketplaces, I think is just the education in general, people don’t want to have to like translate my listings, I have to get figure out how to get home my inventory there were a lot of people just think is like, whatever I’m doing the United States, I have to basically replicate that 100% and put it in those marketplaces, it’s not true. You can start your mo q or your minimum order quantity with your supplier, you can start talking with them now. And you can say, hey, if I want to start sending 10% of these goods to UK, for example, what would that cost me? Then you can start asking like what is the minimum order quantity amount that you can put into those marketplaces and really start to see how that goes. So testing that out. You don’t have to do 100% of your capacity, what you do in the US marketplace, scale it appropriately and no, it does well. For Canada, it’s really easy to do because you know, it’s closed. It’s not like going across another different ocean around the world. You put your inventory there and you don’t have to do translations or pure listing translations, because the question came up yesterday. Do you have to translate in Quebec for French? No, that’s not true. A lot of sellers or people who are shopping on Amazon they just have their browser translated for them all be like their words you should worry about you know, contextually, but more often than not, you don’t have to do

Joe Valley  34:13

let’s have some fun. What word should we worry about contextually? If we’re speaking English and it’s translated into French?

Ryan Cramer  34:20

Well, I know like I’m trying to think of the words that were specific in Canada In Canada I would be worried about or French or French context I’ll different images are the more worried about your imagery and as well as like how it’s being perceived as like your use. So in UK for example, like how elevators different from lift, they say lift and we say elevator or you say bollocks and these a balls. So if like there’s a toy set and you have a bunch of balls in one hour, like a total like I’m just making this up. I don’t know how much how much we

Joe Valley  34:53

have our children he pack

Ryan Cramer  34:55

exactly like a fanny pack. Yeah. And that’s your, for lack of better term. Yes. So it’s uh, so things like that were low, it’s no different in the way that you I’m saying like, you might think Fanny like for some people like I think you’re but but obviously it means other things. censor that for the audience, but just not knowing how that translates and cultural. Yeah, you know, it does. It’s not that big of a deal in Canada. So there’s opportunities, I think people, it’s just easy to do. And I think that’s why it’s so hard that people aren’t just trying to get into Canada. You know, it’s not gonna scale like amazon.com. But most people are shopping, you know, they’re closer to the border anyway. So your goods here and get there just as quick? Yeah.

Joe Valley  35:38

I might see maybe maybe five or 10% of somebody’s total revenue, if they’re selling in Canada, compared to the US

Ryan Cramer  35:44

and people have done as high as 30%. It really just depends on how well and how, yeah, exactly. It’s a green market. It’s, it’s an opportunity to market for sure.

Joe Valley  35:52

But all the international stuff, cross border stuff, I think it’s critically important that people take a look at PingPong. And just seriously, consider using the service, it may not seem like it’s going to affect your bottom line very much, folks, buyers, definitely look at it, it’s gonna help you gain instant equity if you’ve got an international seller, or if you’re buying an international business. But sellers as you expand, which, you know, you’re going to you’re going to be holding your business the next five years, you are probably going to expand internationally, if you’re paying VA is which we know you are if you’re buying inventory internationally, which everyone is except for supplement manufacturers, or sellers, and short, some there are some that are doing different things that they’re able to get them made in the US. But for the most part, it is international, I think they could be sizable savings by using PingPong. Before we wrap up, I want to talk quickly about your podcast because you’ve got Crossover Commerce podcast. Tell us about what that is. And if people want to listen to some of the things you’re talking about there. What are they?

Ryan Cramer  36:51

Yeah, here? Yeah. So this podcast started by accident back in 2020. Just like the age of like, how people started selling on Amazon. It’s always by accident, right? It’s never planned. But I started this podcast with kind of just a person in the space that he was Rob Stanley. He was with AccrueMe I think you had him on the show or Yeah, it was with his with the feedback was at the time. And there’s a question from our China audience or like, Hey, we just want to understand, again, international audiences, they want to get different perspectives on how to be successful. And I think in depending on who you are, you want to make sure that everyone can be successful in the in the right way. Obviously, you don’t want like hijacking and like things like that. But for Amazon sellers in China, they were really worried about like, getting shut down for imagery and copyrights and things like that. And they’re just like, from a US perspective, how do we prevent that? Like, how do we educate people not to do and so I reached out and was like, hey, I’ve heard network of people. I used to work at viral launch. I was in the e commerce industry, and everyone’s at home, so I kind of know where to find them. So you just message them and say, like, Hey, this is kind of the topic we want to cover. Can we educate people? Do you know anyone that would be smart to talk on this? And he goes, Yeah, like, we have Jeff Schick of Ralston, Schick, um, they’re in Florida, I think, Florida or California, one of the other. And he goes, Yeah, let’s just do like a zoom or something like that. And we’ll just, we’ll say, call it whatever you want to call it. And I came up with a name Crossover Commerce, because we talk about, you know, cross border payments, but Crossover Commerce, everything in anything Amazon or e commerce related, made sense. And I think it’s almost a tendency to turn like the crossover. This is this is our meta I got the crossover is your weakest point in your game in terms of table tennis, like it’s your it’s your weakest part of your like your backhand, essentially. So that movement is your weakest part and how to grow it is what I wanted to do from a different perspective. So took the name, and I ran with it. And he Robby we filmed our first episode, it was edited, it was like the whole nine yards. And I go, this is really cool. Like, I want to do another one. When you’re free Robby, he goes, man, I got so much else to do. Like I’m, I’m cmo, like I have other projects. And I go, that’s fine. Do you mind if I just kind of see where it goes from here. And I just finished my 54th episode of going live with people. And we do it. unedited. If I sound like an idiot or bumbling, I don’t get to cut it out. It’s it’s live for people to kind of ask questions and consume it. But my perspective is, I don’t try to pitch or don’t try to do anything specific. It’s presented by PingPong payment. So I did my reading like you do. And like, hopefully, you know, people are like, Oh, that’s great. I want to sign up. But my whole point is bringing value to an e commerce seller that they didn’t get from that when they walked in or started listening to our podcast. So even if they’re like, Oh, yeah, I know about PPC like that’s fantastic. But yeah, it’s on our part payments YouTube channel with all of our videos that go on there. We go live on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. And then we put them up on our podcasts through, you know, Amazon Music Shopify, or Spotify, Shopify, so you can be found anywhere, basically. Yeah. So if you search Crossover Commerce, you can find us for sure.

Joe Valley  40:06

Cool, cool. For a PingPong, what’s the best way for the audience to reach you?

Ryan Cramer  40:11

Yeah, so you reach out to me directly. It’s [email protected]. And if you’re a listener, and you were like, hey, how do I get signed up? You know, what kind of fun? Can you guys help me save money, email me directly, we’ll make sure like your first month is for PingPong fees are zero. So you won’t be paying, you won’t be paying any fees for us. But we’ll make sure that you get integrated in our platform, we will walk you through with our white glove service, sales team and customer service team. So if you email us, or I can make sure that there’s a link that’s given to Joe and his team. And then they can click in sign up for free through there as well.

Joe Valley  40:46

Yeah, we’ll add some links to the podcast, folks, but reach out to Ryan at PingPong. And I’m going to give a shout out to our friends at AccrueMe these folks that help sellers raise capital to buy more inventory, or they provide capital to buy more inventory. And they were on the podcast, probably about six episodes ago. So reach out to them as well. Ryan, fantastic. Thanks for your time, I hope you’ll be able to help a lot of the Quiet Light audience appreciate it.

Ryan Cramer  41:11

Absolutely. Thanks.

Joe Valley  41:13

And that’s a wrap of another Quiet Light Podcast. Folks, please do us a favor, reach out and give us a like or review anything you can do to help us grow. The audience in our organic rankings. More people we reach the more people we can help and the more people we help, the better lives they’re going to have through a bigger exit someday and better operated and run a business. So give us a ratings and review much appreciate it. We’ll see you next week.

Outro  41:40

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject your guest Email us at [email protected]. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.