[EPFN] If Your Product Looks Like This....

Internal Review: Why US Launches Struggle and Europe Remains Wide Open

A few days ago I mentioned the product research challenge I’m hosting on December 17th and 18th, and I want to give you the real reason I created it.

After working with thousands of sellers, one pattern hits harder than anything else:

most products fail long before they ever touch Amazon’s front end.

Not because the idea was terrible, but because the validation was based on hope, assumptions, and the infamous internal gut feeling that convinces people their product is the next big thing.

The numbers prove it.

Roughly 85% percent of failed Amazon products die because the marketing cost was underestimated. 

Another 60 percent collapse because the product never matched what customers were actually asking for.

And about 95% percent of new sellers still build products from instinct rather than from data, which guarantees a painful and expensive learning lesson.

Meanwhile, the United States stays crowded, competitive, and unforgiving, with only one out of ten new products achieving meaningful success.

But here is the part most sellers overlook: Europe. 

Almost 40 percent of high potential niches in Europe have noticeably less competition, hundreds of millions in unmet demand, lower tariffs, and products often sell at the same or even higher price points.

Yet the majority of sellers ignore it simply because they do not know how to read the data.

With tools like SmartScout combined with VOC.AI, you can finally pull accurate insights directly from Germany, the UK, and other European markets before making a decision.

That is exactly what I will be teaching in the challenge. No sales pitch.

Just the truth about why products fail, where the real opportunities are hiding, and how much money you can save when you stop relying on guesses and start using data that actually tells the story.

JOIN THE CHALLENGE

File This Under: Things They Don’t Tell You About Hazmat Products

Remember, guys, when I mentioned we had a fire at the barn and the whole circus was going on behind the scenes?

Well—surprise, surprise—I’ve got updates.

I’m dropping the contact information below for the department responsible for reimbursements. They’re the ones handling my case right now. We’ll see how this goes (manifesting smooth government-level efficiency… I know, I know 🤣). I’ll keep everyone posted as things move forward.

But for those who missed the previous issue, here’s the recap:

We had a fire at my barn because we bought a leaf blower. Yes. A leaf blower.
While charging the lithium battery, the thing exploded and set an entire area on fire.

Thank God my team was right there—they managed to put it out before it turned into a full-blown disaster movie scene. Still, I filed the A-to-Z claim, and now we’re in that lovely process every seller dreams of navigating.

Now… let me tie this chaos back to something you can actually use:

🔥 Seller Reminder You Should NOT Ignore

If you’re selling lithium batteries or any hazmat products, your general liability insurance is NOT enough.

You need additional insurance specifically covering damages and injuries—ideally $1M+ in coverage.

When something goes boom, melts, explodes, leaks, or catches fire, it’s not the moment to say:

“Oh yeah, I should probably check what my insurance covers…”

You're welcome.

Strategic Product Planning for 2026: Three SKUs Every Seller Should Be Developing Now

Every seller I know is chasing the next product idea, and it’s not because they’re restless.

It’s because every successful SKU eventually reaches its limit. 

Even the product that carried your brand last year will hit a point where sales soften, competitors show up, or the market shifts and the advantage you had starts to fade.

And here’s the part most sellers pretend not to see: we spend our entire careers studying other people’s listings to take market share, and then act surprised when someone tries to take ours.

That’s why your long-term growth depends on the pipeline you build, not the product you launched last quarter.

You maintain what you already have, but you also plan the next product, the next extension, and the ecosystem that lets you cross-sell and retain customers instead of rebuilding demand from scratch.

The first product you should plan to launch in 2026 is the one your current buyers would logically purchase next.

If you have a list, use it.

If you don’t, you need to think seriously about building one through a pre-launch campaign, community, or content that attracts your ideal buyer.

Start by scraping reviews from your existing audience, then generate a customer avatar with AI based on real customer language.

Feed that avatar into this type of prompt:

“If I am selling [product], and the buyer avatar is [insert avatar], give me product ideas that match these requirements: projected revenue of [X], cost of goods under [Y], margins above [Z], preferred competition level: [low, medium, or high]. Use public Amazon data to reference estimated units sold by comparable brands.” This approach gives you a product line extension rooted in actual customer behavior, not guesswork."

The second product you should target is the one that creates recurring revenue.

Sellers often think subscriptions only apply to consumables, but nearly every niche has a recurring angle if you look for it.

A seller with children’s bookshelves can build a monthly book subscription, complete with a Shopify ecosystem and influencer support.

A home brand can offer seasonal bundles or member-only releases.

This turns unpredictable monthly revenue into something steady and scalable, because you’re retaining customers instead of paying to reacquire them.

The third product is your premium product.

Premium is not luxury. Premium is margin. It’s the SKU positioned as a higher-tier option to the products you already sell.

When the market supports higher pricing because buyers want durability, quality, functionality or convenience, that’s where your profit sits.

A premium SKU often requires fewer sales to outperform your mid-tier catalog, making it one of the smartest strategies for reliable margin expansion.

If none of these directions feel clear for your brand, or if you want to refine them for your niche, reply to this email and I’ll help you find the path.

Most sellers already have their next three products hiding in their data.

They just haven’t looked in the right place yet.

When Three Sellers Launch the Same Product and Expect Different Results

Take a look at these three embroidery stitch books sitting in New Releases like they’re triplets that got separated at birth and somehow all ended up in the same kindergarten class.

Same product. Same media. Same positioning, which is actually no positioning at all.

And every seller here is probably convincing themselves they’ve got a shot at a long-term win. Do you think any of these listings will sustain?

Because I don’t. What we’re looking at is the exact scenario I teach people to avoid: identical products thrown into the market with no differentiation, no brand point of view, and no actual strategy other than praying for early BSR momentum.

Here’s the real story.

These sellers are already pricing against each other.

One is at seventeen dollars, another at twenty-five, another somewhere in between, and they all believe this race to the bottom is temporary. It won’t be.

It never is.

As Q4 traffic spikes, the algorithm will reward whichever listing is cheapest that day, which will force the others to lower their prices even further.

They will generate revenue, yes, but profit is going to be a completely different conversation.

And by mid-Q4, they will be dealing with something even better than low margins: returns.

They’re already collecting negative reviews at the early stage, which tells you two things.

First, the quality is inconsistent or underwhelming. Second, they’re likely attacking each other with bad reviews, because in a commodity product, the only way they know how to compete is by trying to drag the other listings down.

This is what happens when sellers launch products that force them to compete for placement instead of competing for customers.

These launches have no staying power. They have no real upside.

And they require a constant stream of cash just to stay visible. Yes, they may show revenue growth for a short period of time.

But the math never works out. Between price wars, ad costs, undercutting, and return rates, the profit disappears long before the revenue looks impressive.

This is the difference between launching a product and building a product.

One is a quick dopamine hit. The other is a business.

How to Fix a “Me too” Product When You Look Exactly Like Everyone Else

If you ever find yourself selling a product like this embroidery kit, where you and three other sellers are basically begging the algorithm to tell you apart: your main image becomes your main weapon.

If your product looks identical, if your media looks identical, and if your positioning doesn’t exist, then your real competition is not the niche.

Your competition is the shopper’s attention span, and you are losing it before the page even loads.

But there is a way to approach this strategically instead of adding more spools of thread and praying for the best.

Here is the exact structure you should be using with ChatGPT any time you’re trying to fix a product that blends in with the crowd.

First, start with a priming question: “I am selling a product that looks like the attached image. I need the strongest possible Amazon main image layout to differentiate my listing from competitors, communicate value instantly, and increase click-through rate.”

Then upload your product photo.

Once the image is in, use the prompt: “Analyze this product image. Create a high-converting Amazon main image layout blueprint. Tell me how to position the hero element, how to arrange accessories, what the visual hierarchy should be, what text overlay (if any) is allowed, and how to make the product visually superior to similar listings. Then tell me how to implement this blueprint with a photographer or designer.”

This gives ChatGPT everything it needs to generate a layout that actually separates your listing from the dozens of identical ones.

The text on the pic below is bad because of the original images.

I pulled them directly from the Amazon page.

But if you were selling something like this, you would be expected to do a far better job, and your creative should make the shopper stop scrolling immediately.

In real life, implementation is simple.

Take the blueprint and hand it directly to your designer, photographer, or a freelancer who understands product composition. Or just use ChatGPT/Gemini to do the job based on the blueprint, the same way I did.

Make sure your main image tells the full story at a glance: what the product is, what is included, and what the shopper can create with it.

Happy Thursday!

Izabella