How The Sak Is Winning on Marketplaces with Mirakl | Max Tepper at Mirakl Summit 2025
Max Tepper, Senior Brand Manager at The Sak, joins Omni Talk live from the Mirakl Summit to share how the iconic handbag and accessories brand has transformed into a marketplace powerhouse. Max discusses The Sak’s post-pandemic pivot from brick-and-mortar to DTC and marketplaces, their successful onboarding with Mirakl, and how strategic channel expansion—including Nordstrom, Amazon, QVC, and more—is fueling growth. If you're a brand looking to scale through marketplaces without losing control, this is a masterclass in how to do it right. Learn how they test fast, reach new customers, and simplify operations across many, many different retail marketplaces.
#TheSak #marketplaces #MiraklSummit2025 #ecommerce #omnitalkretail #RetailMarketplaces #handbags #digitalcommerce #retailtransformation
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Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:This is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker B:And I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker A:And we are coming to you live once again from the Miracle Summit in Brookfield Place in New York City.
Speaker A:And we've got a fabulous guest with us today.
Speaker A:It's a Marketplace seller, I believe, our first one of the day.
Speaker A:And I'm proud to introduce to you Max Tepper, the senior brand manager at the Sack.
Speaker A:Max, thanks for joining us.
Speaker C:Thank you all for having me.
Speaker C:Appreciate it.
Speaker B:Tell our audience who might not be familiar yet about the company, the Sack, and what you sell.
Speaker C:Definitely.
Speaker C:So the Sack is a women's handbag and accessories brand.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C: We were founded in: Speaker C:We specialize in crochet and leather handbags and also footwear.
Speaker C:So crochet, leather, suede are our primary three materials that we sell.
Speaker C:And we were historically a brick and mortar brand, so we really only sold in brick and mortar stores before COVID But I think this is going to be a similar story to a lot of other brands, maybe brands that you've interviewed or will interview.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:When Covid hit, you know, our orders were canceled, stores were closing down, but we still had a great product and a great business, and we had to figure out how to keep it alive.
Speaker C:So that's when we transitioned into E commerce.
Speaker C:So we started by investing a lot of money into our DTC website and then Amazon.
Speaker C:Once we saw the potential there and the growth and the scale that those platforms were experiencing, we realized, you know, what, we need to get on every marketplace we can that has the right customer for our brand.
Speaker C:So that's why I'm here today.
Speaker C:That's why I have a job.
Speaker C:I basically came in to scale all of these new marketplaces that we're growing on.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:And that's why you're here, because essentially you're what they call a connect seller.
Speaker A:Miracle connect seller.
Speaker A:So what all.
Speaker A:I mean, you said you've grown the marketplaces extensively.
Speaker A:What marketplaces do you sell on currently?
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:So our biggest marketplace is Amazon outside of our direct to consumer website.
Speaker C:And then we also sell on Nordstrom, Macy's, Kohl's, Walmart, qvc, the list goes on.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:But those are the big ones.
Speaker C:Long tail.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:But for my job personally, I've had the pleasure of leading our launch on Nordstrom, and that's been really instrumental in our.
Speaker C:In our growth plan for the next year and beyond at the sacs.
Speaker C:So their customer really aligns with our brand and our products.
Speaker B:Max, you've been in the industry for a while now.
Speaker B:What would you say is the challenge that Miracle has helped you solve at the sack and that you can see the potential for, for other brands?
Speaker C:Sure, I can definitely speak to that.
Speaker C:So I think Miracle has really helped us basically grow a lot of marketplaces at the same time at scale.
Speaker C:So having everything integrated into one kind of simple API is really, really helpful.
Speaker C:Of course, it's also on the marketplaces themselves to have a good backend, have a clean catalog system that makes updating and publishing listings easier.
Speaker C:But on my end, my experience actually comes from working mostly with Amazon brands.
Speaker C:And for anyone who hasn't sold on Amazon, it's a mess.
Speaker C:No one enjoys listing and managing products on Amazon.
Speaker C:Even though the dollars are there, the demand is there.
Speaker C:It's kind of a no brainer.
Speaker C:But it's so complicated and so messy.
Speaker A:So like a lot of grunt work.
Speaker C:So much grunt work, error checking and not having the, you know, the resolutions that you want to come to.
Speaker C:So for me coming off of Amazon and now I'm working through Miracle, it's like so much simpler, it's a breath of fresh air.
Speaker C:And it just makes managing multiple listings, prices across marketplaces just so much easier.
Speaker C:Kind of like streamlines everything into one platform.
Speaker B:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker A:So Max, how's your marketplace strategy impacted your growth?
Speaker A:Like, have you been able to scale growth exponentially because of it?
Speaker C:Oh, we definitely have, yeah.
Speaker C:So I think the biggest reason that marketplaces are so important in the growth of our company is just different distribution, getting in front of new customers.
Speaker C:So like I mentioned before, we have our D2C website.
Speaker C:We do a lot of advertising for the website.
Speaker C:We do meta, we do email marketing, SMS campaigns.
Speaker C:We're reaching a lot of people, but a lot of those people are repeat customers.
Speaker C:They've already heard of the brand or they're on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
Speaker C:So then Amazon was new to us and that was basically people that are already on Amazon or they know the brand, but they want to get in two days versus the longer shipping times we have on the website.
Speaker C:And then for me, looking at these new marketplaces, there's customers on websites like Nordstrom that might not even know about this app or might have never seen it to begin with.
Speaker C:But now we're there with a good product at a good price point, it's high quality, it competes well within the other listings on the marketplace.
Speaker C:And suddenly we're acquiring a new customer that we would have never had before.
Speaker C:So it's really about matching the product assortment to the given marketplace.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:So we don't have all of our products on Nordstrom, only the products that we think are the most aligned with the Nordstrom customer.
Speaker C:And then once you have that right product assortment, just get it in front of the eyes of those new customers.
Speaker A:Which is something Ana Luisa said to me on stage today too, that the marketplaces, in and of themselves, depending on how many you're on, many of them are all incremental to each other, Correct?
Speaker C:Correct.
Speaker C:So I like to think that hopefully I'm not cannibalizing our website or Amazon sales, but actually just adding to the growth of the overall business.
Speaker C:So that's really what I think is most important, and I think that's what we're doing by reaching all these different customers.
Speaker B:Well, Max, you've given us so much to digest, our audience, so much insight as we close out.
Speaker B:The theme at the summit is accelerate.
Speaker B:What advice do you have for those listening brands who are.
Speaker B:Are in this marketplace space?
Speaker B:What advice do you have for them to really scale their marketplace business successfully, as successfully as you have at the stack?
Speaker C:Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker C:I would say don't be afraid to just try.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:There's a lot of, I think you can find that you wind up in analysis paralysis, where you're like, should we go to this marketplace?
Speaker C:Should we give them this product?
Speaker C:Should we give them that product?
Speaker C:You just gotta go do it.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So I'm not gonna say which marketplaces.
Speaker C:I've tested some marketplaces recently that haven't worked so well.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker C:But there's no way that I would.
Speaker A:Have known if you hadn't tried.
Speaker C:If I hadn't tried.
Speaker C:So don't be afraid to allocate some resources and time to just try and then see what works.
Speaker C:If you see a big marketplace is working, for example, Nordstrom is flying along and working well for us, that's when you start pouring in more resources and really focusing more of your time.
Speaker C:But don't be afraid to just try, go fast, allocate some time, allocate some resources.
Speaker C:If it's really working well, maybe spend a little bit of marketing dollars if you got it, because that's also really helped us.
Speaker C:But basically just go fast.
Speaker C:There's always going to be errors, there's always going to be things to work through.
Speaker C:But just give it a try, see if it works.
Speaker B:It's simpler when you're working off of one platform that's able to help you test a lot of the.
Speaker C:Because I still do manage some platforms off of Miracle, and having that platform, that platform bouncing back and forth can get a little bit confusing and tired.
Speaker A:But Net Net, I think you bring up a good point, Max, because it's a tried and true axiom to approach E commerce the way you're saying just go and do, and you can always pull back, but if you don't do, you never learn.
Speaker A:And that's the best way to approach ecommerce.
Speaker C:Correct.
Speaker A:Awesome, man.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Well, thank you for your time today.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker A:It was really great interviewing you, and thanks for spending the time with us.
Speaker A:We're going to be back in a few hours with more live streams.
Speaker A:And until then, Anne, be careful out there.
