The Garlic Press is Back
Less about “what to sell”, more about to “how”.
Hi all.
A quick re-introduction for those who wonder what this is.
I’m Max Burdilov, an 8-figure Amazon operator with a decade of experience in e-commerce. Over the years my company has launched hundreds of products in different niches, both in the USA and in Europe.
The Garlic Press started three years ago as a short weekly note about promising Amazon product ideas.
And then I stopped. Research was taking too much time; it no longer fit around our business, and it ate into family time.
I did not expect this newsletter to survive, but then something unexpected happened.
I took on an internal project to streamline training within the company. I built an insight engine that ingests and transcribes 50+ hours of seller-focused content each week, podcasts, YouTube shows, niche newsletters. Most content is in English, but there are also German and Spanish sources, as well as a few Chinese ones. Most of it is about Amazon, with a bit of TikTok and general business advice that I find relevant.
The engine distills each piece of content, looks for insights, rates each one for novelty, and sends them to me, so I review only the items I probably haven’t seen before.
After three months of testing, the whole thing looked interesting enough to share with the world and maybe to turn into a digital product that I can make money from while enjoying the process.
I decided to give it a go and bring The Garlic Press back to life with a new mission. The plan is to publish it for free and test it publicly for 1–2 months to see if the content is worth charging for.
Anyway, let’s take a look at the first five insights that I found this week.
1. 🤖 ChatGPT As Senior Product Researcher.
Rather than treating ChatGPT like a throwaway idea generator - press button, get ten ideas - you turn it into a continuously improving partner. You begin with your product settings (price floor, review cap, margin needs) and ask for a batch of suggestions.
You then grade each idea “good” or “bad”, with a quick explanation. ChatGPT absorbs the feedback and tries again, narrowing the list with every round. Within an hour the same chat thread understands your filters well enough to give you decent product opportunities, without much hand-holding.
Save the ChatGPT URL and you’ve got a permanently trained “senior product researcher”, ready whenever you need a fresh product idea.
7-Step SOP:
✅ Open a new ChatGPT thread.
✅ Paste your product criteria (price ≥ $40, reviews ≤ 400, etc.).
✅ Ask for 10 product ideas.
✅ Rate each idea good / bad and explain why.
✅ Ask again for 10 new product ideas.
✅ Repeat 3–4 cycles until the suggestions match your standards.
✅ Save the trained chat link.
More data:
Tools needed: Chatgpt / Gemini / Claude
Complexity: 2/5 (needs high-level human feedback)
Tags: product_research, prompt_engineering[Source]
2. 🔄 Store Raider Infinite Ideas Loop
Most new product idea hunts start in a keyword database (H10 etc), and show exactly what every other subscriber sees.
The Store Raider tactic is the opposite of that. It begins with live Amazon storefronts instead. Choose any listing, click Sold by → Storefront, and look at a brand’s entire catalogue: satellite products, bundle experiments, accessories, and the quiet niches that that they might also be selling in.
Scrolling those pages gives instant actionable context. Real prices, review density, image angles, even the language buyers use in feedback. After two or three turns (storefront → promising ASIN → next storefront) you usually land in a niche you hadn’t considered (cutlery trays → perfume stands → under-bed organisers).
Is it obvious? Yes. Does it work? Yes.
5-Step SOP:
✅ Choose ANY niche. Begin with ANY listing, such as lunch bags.
✅ Run X-Ray → hide sponsored ads.
✅ Filter by price, reviews etc.
✅ Open seller → Sold by → See all products.
✅ Repeat in each new niche once the current list feels exhausted.
MORE DATA:
Tools needed: Helium 10 X-Ray
Complexity: 2/5 (VA-friendly)
Tags: product_research[Source]
3. 🖼️ Season-Sync Gallery Upgrade
Most Amazon listings run the same image stack 365 days a year, even when the product’s context shifts with the weather.
Season-Sync tactic is about not being lazy and doing the opposite.
Keep your copy, bullets, and title exactly as they are, but swap one or two gallery shots for scenes that match the season: beach towel in July, cracked winter hands in January, cosy couch in October. Search results already push seasonal keywords; a matching visual tells the shopper “yes, this is for right now,” and pushes the conversion up.
Real-world example from the source of this tactic: a lotion brand replaced its generic lifestyle photo with a close-up of dry, chapped winter skin two weeks before January and saw +14 % CTR in the first week.
4-Step SOP
✅ Shoot four season-specific scenes (summer, autumn, winter, spring).
✅ File them in clearly labelled season folders.
✅ Upload the matching pair roughly 30 days before the season starts.
✅ Measure CTR shifts in Manage Your Experiments or Brand Analytics.
MORE DATA:
Complexity: 3/5 (easy to do once, harder on repeat)
Tags: conversion, creative_ops[Source]
4. 🚚 Micro-Batch Ordering to Fight Duty Swings
Tariffs move faster than your containers. Large orders from China lock you into today’s duty rates, which can be painful.
I know many sellers who instead chose to wait the whole tariff situation out and paused all orders from China.
An alternative tactic is to split a 5 000-unit PO into mini-batches of 200–500 units shipped every two to four weeks. Yes, it is more expensive, but it hedges against fluctuating duty rates.
A real-world example from the source of this tactic: a beauty SKU that would have paid £18 000 in import duty on one container instead paid about £3 000 per 300-unit shipment.
3-Step SOP
✅ Negotiate a contract with the supplier for five staggered mini-POs.
✅ Ship each lot via air cargo or small ocean LCL; book through Freightos or similar.
✅ Re-quote duty, freight, and FX just before each release; resize the lot if costs drop.
MORE DATA:
Tools: Freightos for spot quotes
Complexity: 2/5 (requires changing logistics workflow)
Tags: inventory_management, cash_flow, tariffs[Source]
5. 🎯 “PPC Blind Spot: ASIN Targeting Isn’t Page-Locked
Many advertisers still think adding an ASIN to a Product-Targeting campaign limits ads to that detail page. I was one of them.
In reality Amazon treats the ASIN as shorthand for every keyword the product indexes for. Your Sponsored Product ads can show up anywhere: at top of search, rest of search, or on other product pages.
In the same way, “brand-defence” campaigns that target your own ASIN quietly bid on dozens of non-brand terms, inflating spend and ACOS. One look at the Search-Term Report confirms it: rows of keywords, not the ASIN you entered.
Bottom line: treat PPC Product Targeting as broad keyword bidding in disguise. Use it for reach, not for surgical page placement, and keep true brand defence in exact-match keyword campaigns instead.
5-Step SOP
✅ Check Search-Term Reports for existing Product-Targeting campaigns to see where spend is going.
✅ Avoid targeting your own ASINs for brand defence; use exact-match brand keywords instead.
✅ Judge performance by the converting keywords you actually pay for, not by assumed product-page impressions.
MORE DATA:
Tools: Amazon Ads Search-Term Report
Complexity: 2/5 (requires report review)
Tags: amazon_ppc, asin_targeting[Source]
This is it for today. Let me know your thoughts on the new newsletter format. You can reply to this email or via the poll below.
Thanks for reading.