[Top Agency & eCommerce Series] Inside Amazon Marketplace Success with Rob Cromer

Rob Cromer is the CEO and Co-founder of Aisle³, an Amazon-first marketplace agency that helps founder-led, mission-driven brands scale across platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Under his leadership, Aisle³ has been recognized by Adweek as one of the fastest-growing agencies and has earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 list, supporting notable brands such as Nama, Caraway, and Ripple Foods. Known for championing founder mindset, intentional gifting, and agile operations, he is committed to building profitable companies that value relationships, creative storytelling, and sustainable long-term growth.

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

• [4:48] Rob Cromer shares an overview of Aisle³ and the concept of the “third aisle” in modern retail
• [8:40] Lessons from building Adcade, a VC-funded ad-tech startup, and shifting away from software
• [14:31] How Aisle³ structures client collaboration cycles and biweekly strategy meetings
• [18:00] Common mistakes brands make when preparing for Q4 and major Amazon shopping events
• [21:39] When and why brands should expand into Walmart, Target, and other marketplaces
• [25:38] How Aisle³ evaluates product-market fit and decides which brands are a strong match for Amazon growth
• [29:29] FBA vs FBM and how fulfillment choices shape ranking, reviews, and conversion
• [34:27] Building Aisle³ profitably without VC money and prioritizing long-term culture
• [43:14] Why Aisle³ chooses depth over breadth and structures compensation around growth

In this episode…

Founder-led brands often struggle to cut through the noise on massive marketplaces, where competition is fierce, and software tools alone aren’t enough to guarantee success. Many agencies promise growth but deliver generic solutions that don’t truly move the needle. How can these brands rise above the clutter and turn into household names?

Rob Cromer, an expert in e-commerce marketing, explains how founder-led brands can overcome marketplace challenges by taking a human-centered, agile approach. Rob emphasizes building deep partnerships with brands through transparency, intentional communication, and continuous improvement. He shares actionable strategies to maintain consistent growth, prepare strategically for high-traffic sales events, weigh the pros and cons of FBA versus FBM, and use thoughtful gifting to make products stand out. Rob also highlights the importance of long-term relationships, profitability, and a dedicated full-time team in driving sustainable success.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Rob Cromer, Co-founder and CEO of Aisle³, to explore how founder-led brands can dominate marketplaces. Rob shares insights on inventory management, product assortment, and Black Friday/Cyber Monday prep, along with the impact of thoughtful gifting to help brands stand out.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Rob Cromer on LinkedIn
• Aisle³
• Adcade
• EOS Worldwide
• Summit OS
• Amazon Vine
• Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad by James Clear
• Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Special Mentions:

• Rob Prentice on LinkedIn
• Buzz Wiggins on LinkedIn
• Riley Corr on LinkedIn
• Nama
• Lalo
• Ripple Foods
• Tiago Forte on LinkedIn
• Dan Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Gary Vaynerchuk on LinkedIn
• Harry & David Gourmet Food Gifts

Related episodes:

• “[One Question] Building a Platform to Empower Others with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Mastering The Ancient Art of Jun Kombucha with Holly Lyman, Founder of Wild Tonic” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “How To Start From Scratch With a Food Product Business with Peter Rahal Founder of RxBar” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[One Question] Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness with Tom Bilyeu of QuestNutrition.com” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet and Snack Series] Growing a Brain and Body Nutrition Company With Will Nitze” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Growing Your Business and Serving Your Community with Cameron Healy of The Healy Foundation” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Cloning Minds With Dara Ladjevardian of Delphi” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “Success isn’t measured by how much you raised — it’s about the company you’re building.”
• “When you do gifting well, it definitely stands out from the crowd.”
• “Amazon is about doing everything right all of the time, and the ‘everything’ is a lot of things.”
• “We decided from day one that Aisle³ needed to be profitable, building a business the way we want, not just chasing valuation.”
• “Relationships over transactions is a big one for us — we’re not looking for just the next logo; we want to work with brands for years.”

Action steps:

1. Plan holiday promotions months in advance: Doing this prevents inventory shortages and avoids costly last-minute decisions that hurt sales.
2. Adopt an always-on optimization process: This helps brands stay competitive in marketplaces that shift rapidly week to week.
3. Use FBA strategically to win the Prime customer: Listing key products through Fulfillment by Amazon increases visibility and conversion because shoppers prioritize fast shipping. 
4. Build an omnichannel presence beyond Amazon: Diversifying into retail, DTC, and secondary marketplaces protects a business if Amazon imposes restrictions or changes its rules.
5. Invest in strong, long-term team relationships: This stability leads to higher-quality execution and deeper client trust.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Rob Cromer of Aisle³. You can check him out at Aisle3.com. Rob, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is part of the Top Agency Series. Also really e-commerce series too. Some cool ones I’ve had on. I had Jason Swenk, who built his agency up to eight figures and sold it, then started a group for agency owners with a group he wish he had, you know, when he first started. So that was an interesting story. I had Kevin Hourigan on. He started his agency in 1995. This was really talking about the evolution of the internet business and also the agency world through a couple of decades from the e-commerce. 

Some interesting ones have been fan favorites: Wild Tonic, Kombucha I like Kombucha, Rob, so I like the brands that I eat and consume. The founder of that came on and talked about her journey. Also the the founder co-founder of RxBar talked about his journey. This is presold pre before he sold out the Kellogg and obviously now he’s started David Bar. I’ve had a few interesting bar companies. Quest Nutrition Founder, Tom Bilyeu was on also IQBAR founder Will Nitze was on as well. So there’s lots on there. Go on InspiredInsider.com if you want to check them out. The Kettle Chips one is a really interesting one. He built two I think two like nine figure companies. It was kind of not easy to do. So super humble guy also. 

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in a few ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability, and the full execution and production. Number two, we’re an easy button for companies gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners, prospects, even your staff. Simple, easy and affordable. You just give us a list of the people and we’ll send gifts to them we like. Not just one off gifts we like to send a campaign of gifts. 

So it could be like three gifts a year for like four years. And so we kind of call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it stress free for a company to build amazing relationships. And that’s what I always look at. You know, the number one thing in my life is relationships. So I always look at ways to give to my relationships. And personally, I found no better way over the past 15 years. Under profile, the people and the companies I admire and share with the world that they’re working on on the podcast, and then send them sweet treats in the mail so you can go to Rise25.com or email [email protected]. 

I am super excited to introduce Rob Cromer. He’s a CEO and Co-founder of Aisle³. Aisle³ is an Amazon first agency built to help founder-led brands win on marketplaces. They start with Amazon, but you name it, you know, Walmart, target, etc.. Aisle³ was recognized by Adweek as one of the fastest growing agencies and ranked on the Inc. 5000 list. Several companies you know you could check out the Our Work page include Nama I’m big into health so Nama you know stuck out to me Rob as a cold press growth machine, friction Caraway nonstick brand and many more. So Rob thanks for joining me.

Rob Cromer: 03:51

It’s great to be here. I appreciate it, Jeremy. I’m excited to talk about gifting at some point because I’m a big fan of taking things offline and bringing things back to the tangible world, so let’s get into that later.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:02

You have to be because you’re in e-commerce, right? I mean, you’re selling physical gifts. But oftentimes when we’re communicating with our relationships, we’re not sending tangible things. We’re not sending those things.

Rob Cromer: 04:14

It used to be a norm, right? You would get something from the people that you were working with, a thank you note, or, you know, a holiday gift. And I don’t think you see it much anymore. So when you do it and you do it well, it definitely stands out from the crowd. And we as actually our team does a lot of work thinking through the year, getting to know clients beyond just the day to day work so that we can be a little bit more thoughtful around gifting as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:40

Love it. I’m going to pull up your site here and just start off and tell people about Aisle³ and what you do.

Rob Cromer: 04:48

Well, the big third aisle is kind of a big one for us. So we work in marketplaces where an Amazon first marketplace agency that helps challenger brands turn into household names. We. What is the third aisle? You know what? We should probably answer that one first. The first aisle we consider retail. It’s where brands have been forever. It’s on the shelf. It’s in store. The second, which we kind of saw the rise in the last ten years of e-com and DTC right brands selling on their own websites. And the third, which is now the fastest growing aisle in in marketplaces. Right. Things like Amazon. So we work with what we call mission driven brands.

So brands that speak to their customers in a different way, that have something more to them than just a product. And we help them tell those stories on the marketplaces. We work with them in a full service suite of capacities, from creative to performance, marketing to fulfillment and ops to help them sell their products. And if we’ve done our job right, they go head to head with the tentpole legacy CPG players out there, and hopefully we can help them create revenue streams that help accelerate their business and turn them into household names and real competitors out there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:13

I know one of the ways you do that is through the PSAs process. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Rob Cromer: 06:20

Sure. PSAs came from a past experience. So one of the other founders, Rob Prentice, who’s our CMO, and I have known each other for 25 years. We’ve been best friends since high school. We met on the water polo team. He was a little older, took me under his wing, and we have been best friends ever since. One of the things we’ve been able and lucky enough to do together was start multiple businesses. Our last business was a software company and in that we had a large software development team.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:56

Was that or was that?

Rob Cromer: 06:58

That was Adcade. Yeah. That’s right. And that was you know, we can dive into all that. But that was.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:03

I didn’t realize that it was a software company.

Rob Cromer: 07:05

Yeah. So it was software. We were VC funded. It was one of those hustle mentality kind of companies try to become the next unicorn. And coming out of that, I actually am now anti. All of us have a very different anti-the pushing young founders to the breaking point and giving them unrealistic goals and the chasing of valuations rather than profitability, and always having to think about where your next round of funding comes from rather than who your customer is. And I think it while it’s sexy and everybody wants to, you know, be the next big thing, I think success isn’t necessarily measured by how much you raised in your last round. It’s really about what is the company you’re building, what is the positive impact that company has on the people around you and the people that work for it? And is that company hitting the goals that you’ve set for it, rather than the goals that somebody else is setting for you? But we can.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:17

Talk about that for a second, because I’m sure you took a lot of learnings. From Adcade into Aisle³. And it’s interesting because it was a software plus agency. How did that work. And and we’ll get to this one. This. Aisle³ is just there’s not like a software component to it right.

Rob Cromer: 08:40

So it’s the opposite. No software in Aisle³. We are human capital human touch almost anti software especially in a space like Amazon. And we can dive deeper into that later about why.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:53

But because I think when I, when I talked to a lot of agency owners, that would be like their dream to have like this again, grass is always greener of. Yeah. We just want software multiples and have a software that’s sticky along with the agency. So it’s interesting you had that life and then you moved just to agency. So talk about the software plus agency world and and how that worked.

Rob Cromer: 09:19

Yeah. So ADK had a software that enabled developers to build ads in a technology called HTML5 that would deploy an ad across all different devices on the web. So your phone, your computer, whatever you might be on your tablet. Whereas they used to be built in flash, and our team had a team of people that would build those ads, and that was the agency on behalf of publishers like the New York Times, Conde Nast, Hearst. And we were an agency that worked with advertisers and publishers together. And we also had a self-service platform that people could use to build their own ads. One of the things going back to Soar that we took away from that business was the way software developers worked. 

They had a methodology called Software Agile Software development. And really what it comes down to is inputs, outputs, objectives, activities and postmortems. And that thought process would enable them to consistently iterate and continue to build things in a more robust way than I’d ever seen before. I’m not a software developer, so as CEO of that company, it was interesting to to you know, I was lucky enough that one of my good friends, Buzz Wiggins, who now has a company called Aerflo, was the CTO of that company. and he and the software team taught me a lot around agile. And we took that. And Rob and I, Rob Prentice, who’s our CMO of this company, and he was the CEO of of Rob and CEO of Adcade, sat down and said, okay, in building Aisle³, how can we create something that is different than every other agency? 

I think when you talk to clients around, you know, why are you leaving your agency or what are you disappointed with with your current partner? Or what is the experiences that you don’t like an agency? A lot of times the feedback is there’s a flurry of upfront activity, and then the agency tends to set it and forget it, put it into kind of cruise control and coast off of the margin or the profitability that they’re getting, and assume that they’re the client will eventually churn. And it’s a retainer based business that we find Defined to be the antithesis of what we like. So we took agile software development and brought it to marketing, and that’s what Soar is. It stands for strategize, optimize, advertise and report and repeat on it. And what that means is we as a team are always thinking about those inputs, outputs, objectives and activities and then doing postmortems on that. And it allows the work that we do to be always on. And I think in a marketplace, always on is an unusual kind of default for agencies. And it works with a certain subset of clients. 

And that specifically being challenger brands, they’re not the big guys out there. They don’t work with somebody fresh out of college who is a marketer that’s being told the strategy from nine levels of telephone. We’re working directly with the founders. And CEOs like this is their lifeblood and they are all in. And it’s important that our team is all in with them. And we find that saw is an operating system that sits above everything that we do, creates a more compatible system with the founders that we work with, and it permeates into our team in kind of the core values that our team employs. Like we are intentional in every way. 

And intentionality, I think, comes from the ability to to look at what you’re doing, to be critical of what you’re doing, to actually be thoughtful relationships over transactions is a big one for us, in that we’re not looking for just the next logo. We don’t want to churn out brands after bringing them on. We want to work with them for years, and this helps us do that. And then kind of taking all the things that we found as founders and working with founders. We want our team to have that founder’s mindset, to be able to actually be actionable on the things that they’re doing and accountable and saw helps them do that as well.

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