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If 60% of e-commerce lives beyond Amazon, why are so many brands still waiting on the sidelines? We sat down with Seth Hurd of Brand Expand to map a clear path into the channels that actually fit your products—and to separate hype from traction across Walmart, TikTok Shop, Shopify, and niche marketplaces. From review dynamics and margins to logistics and speed, we unpack where early movers are winning now and what will matter most in 2026.
We get tactical about Walmart’s latent logistics advantage and why its online growth rate may outpace Amazon’s mix shift over the next few years. Seth explains how to pick platforms based on category and price point, not fear of missing out—think Chewy for pets, Etsy for handmade, and specialty retail where your buyer already shops. We also dig into TikTok Shop’s low-friction onboarding and creator engine that makes it the most effective launch booster of 2025, often seeding repeat orders that migrate to Shopify, Amazon, or Walmart where reordering is habitual.
AI threads through everything here. On the practical side, it compresses content creation, improves listing quality, and turns messy customer feedback into clear product and UX fixes that lift conversion rates. On the strategic side, it rewires discovery. GEO—generative engine optimization—will decide which products appear when a shopper asks an assistant for “the best leakproof bottle under $25.” We lay out how to make your brand legible to these systems with clean specs, authentic reviews, rich media, and a defensible value story. And because Q4 waits for no one, we share the unglamorous moves that protect growth: order inventory early, build relevancy weeks before peak, and avoid the annual bottlenecks that quietly erase momentum.
If you’re serious about expanding beyond Amazon, protecting margin, and staying visible as AI reshapes search and reordering, this conversation is your roadmap. Subscribe, share with a founder who needs it, and leave a review with the channel you plan to test next.
Chapters
1. Cold Open: AI Running Everything? (00:00:00)
2. Guest Intro and Q4 Context (00:00:37)
3. Why Expand Beyond Amazon (00:02:08)
4. Walmart’s Shift and Logistics Edge (00:03:24)
5. Picking the Right Marketplace Fit (00:06:31)
6. Walmart Growth Outlook vs Amazon (00:08:18)
7. Expansion Timelines and Margins (00:11:28)
8. 2025 Channel Trends: TikTok Shop (00:12:18)
9. TikTok as Launchpad, Repeat on Core Channels (00:15:22)
10. Q4 Ops: Inventory, Delays, Readiness (00:18:34)
11. AI’s Role in Ecommerce Execution (00:19:27)
12. AI Safety, Regulation, and Acceleration (00:22:13)
13. Will AIs Buy for Consumers? (00:26:02)
14. GEO: Ranking in AI Assistants (00:29:12)
15. Practical AI at Brand Expand: Feedback Loops (00:32:06)
94 episodes
