Supply & Demand: The State of Ecommerce

There are more brands that need Amazon help than there are people qualified to give it. That gap is the real story of ecommerce growth right now, and it is creating career paths that did not exist five years ago. Host Michael Maher sat down with Brett Bohannon, founder of Voartex, to talk through what is actually driving the state of ecommerce heading into a new growth cycle.

Bohannon has been in the Amazon space since 2016, first as a seller and then as a strategist helping brands find revenue that was already sitting in their business, just unclaimed. His read on the market is straightforward: demand for qualified help is outrunning the supply of people who actually know what they are doing, and that imbalance is reshaping hiring, pricing, and even how people think about their own careers.

Strategy Is Not the Hard Part

Bohannon breaks Amazon brands into three stages: net-new brands that need foundational help, brands climbing steadily, and brands that have plateaued and cannot figure out how to break through. The strategies that work for a plateaued brand rarely work the same way for a brand new to the platform, because a plateaued brand is fighting different problems underneath the surface.

"You got to check all the boxes, do all the right things and then implement the strategies above that."

— Brett Bohannon, Founder at Voartex

Maher's own framing echoed this: strategy on Amazon is not the differentiator anymore, execution is. Everyone knows they need strong product pages, an advertising plan, and ongoing optimization. Almost nobody executes all three consistently and well, which is exactly where the opportunity sits for both sellers and the service providers who support them.

Perspective Sells, Not Just Photos

Bohannon shared a simple personal example: he listed a travel trailer for sale with quick phone photos and got almost no interest. His wife relit and restaged the same trailer, added curtains, and the listing pulled in ten inquiries almost immediately. Nothing about the trailer changed. The way it was presented did.

"I love that perspective thing. If you don't know who your customer is, you know, that's, that's okay. And maybe some early stages, but then you can figure it out."

— Brett Bohannon, Founder at Voartex

The same logic applies to product listings. Brands that stage their product in real use, the way a cooler brand shows people camping instead of just photographing the cooler on white, are giving shoppers a way to see themselves using it. That shift in perspective often moves conversion more than any copy tweak.

The Talent Gap Is a Business Opportunity

Bohannon is candid about a problem he sees getting worse: the pandemic pushed a wave of brands online fast, and qualified Amazon operators simply did not scale to meet that demand. Agencies end up choosing between raising prices, hiring less experienced staff, or turning away work.

"The supply and demand for qualified Amazon individuals, the supply is low, the demand is high. So obviously, they're going to get paid more. So we get less qualified people in this pool."

— Brett Bohannon, Founder at Voartex

Both Bohannon and Maher have started treating this as a talent development problem rather than just a hiring headache. Bohannon is building resources to train people who want to break into ecommerce part time or as a career switch. Maher has been showing up at university job fairs, arguing that schools are years behind on teaching skills like digital marketing, logistics, and marketplace account management, even though the job demand is already here.

Watch the Guarantees Closely

As more people flood into the space, both guests warned about the rise of overpromising. Sellers hear pitches guaranteeing doubled sales in six months and, without a way to evaluate the claim, take them at face value. Maher argued for a different standard: state your average results honestly, set expectations conservatively, and let outcomes exceed them rather than fall short.

What This Means for Brands

• Diagnose which stage your brand is actually in, new, climbing, or plateaued, before choosing a strategy, since the same tactics do not work for all three.
• Invest in how your product is staged and photographed. Real-use imagery consistently outperforms sterile product shots.
• Expect to pay more for genuinely qualified Amazon talent, and budget for it rather than settling for undertrained help.
• Be skeptical of agencies promising guaranteed percentage gains. Ask for real average results instead.
• Consider ecommerce operations as a legitimate career path when hiring or training junior talent, not just a side gig.

Watch the full conversation between Michael Maher and Brett Bohannon for more on where they see the talent gap heading next.