Liran Hirschkorn, CEO and founder of Incrementum Digital, yesterday shared publicly on LinkedIn a decision that most agencies would quietly skip past: his firm turned down a paid Amazon project. The client was a 30-year family business with an active retail presence in TJ Maxx, a real wholesale operation, and a budget in hand. The refusal, which circulated widely across the Amazon and e-commerce marketing community, frames a structural problem that many practitioners recognize but few state openly during a sales call.

Why the project was declined

According to a LinkedIn post by Hirschkorn, the reason was not the client's business standing or the competence of the people running it. "Not because the brothers weren't good. They were. Not because the business isn't real. It is," he wrote. "Because the products were generic."

The post describes a client with two brothers managing day-to-day operations, a proven wholesale presence in physical retail, and what Hirschkorn characterized as products that "look good on paper from a data standpoint." Incrementum Digital reviewed the project internally before declining. A follow-up email from Hirschkorn to the prospective client, included in the post, spells out the reasoning: "Launching on Amazon today, especially in categories like pet and home, requires a very strong brand foundation and clear differentiation to win. Without that, even products that look good on paper from a data standpoint can be very difficult (and expensive) to scale successfully."

He added: "We don't want to charge for this project only to be unable to successfully scale the brand afterward."

The post attracted 65 reactions and more than 12 comments within roughly a day of publication, according to the engagement figures visible on LinkedIn, with commentary from Amazon account managers, PPC specialists, e-commerce consultants, and agency founders.

The algorithm argument

Central to Hirschkorn's reasoning is a characterization of Amazon's current marketplace mechanics. "Amazon in 2026 isn't a distribution channel," he wrote in the public post. "It's an algorithm that rewards differentiation and punishes sameness."

The argument rests on a specific competitive scenario: a commoditized product - he names pillows and dog throws as examples - competing on a search results page against Chinese sellers offering the same item at 40 percent lower prices, with 5,000 reviews already accumulated. In that environment, Hirschkorn argues, ad spend accelerates the problem rather than solving it. Running pay-per-click campaigns on a product with no meaningful differentiation drives costs without generating sustainable returns, because the customer is comparing the listing against dozens of nearly identical alternatives where the competitor holds a structural price and social proof advantage.

This framing matters for the marketing community. The cost mechanics of Amazon advertising have intensified significantly. Amazon's AI shopping prompts moved to paid general availability on March 25, 2026, ending a free beta period and introducing cost-per-click charges for AI-generated shopping conversations that had been accessible at no cost since November 2025. Advertisers who did not monitor that transition closely may have seen CPC costs rise without a corresponding change in campaign structure.

What wins in physical retail does not win on Amazon

The post draws a direct contrast between the dynamics of TJ Maxx and the dynamics of Amazon search. Physical retail shelf placement rewards a different set of attributes: reasonable price-to-value, recognizable packaging, and fair margins that survive the wholesale model. A product can perform well in that environment with modest brand equity and a clean label.

Amazon's search results page introduces a different filter. The customer can, within seconds, compare 60 or more similar products sorted by price, reviews, delivery speed, and algorithmic relevance signals. According to Hirschkorn, "The things that win in TJ Maxx (decent value, a clean label, fair margins) don't win on a search results page where the customer is comparing you to 60 other similar products."

That gap - between retail channel fitness and marketplace fitness - is not broadly communicated by agencies during sales discussions, according to the post. Hirschkorn describes the willingness to state this honestly as rare in a sales context. "Here's the part a lot of agencies won't say in a sales meeting," he writes, before detailing the Chinese seller pricing dynamic.

The competitive pressure from vertically integrated sellers with direct manufacturing relationships is not new, but it has grown more visible. Amazon sellers reported sales declines of 60 to 80 percent year-over-year between May and August 2025, with multiple forum participants attributing the drop in part to international sellers able to offer dramatically lower prices while maintaining margins. One merchant described the situation in stark terms, posting that Amazon was "dead for local sellers" without direct factory relationships. That forum discussion, tracked by PPC Land in August 2025, also noted increasing competition from Temu, TikTok Shop, and Shein fragmenting consumer spending further.

The structural question agencies avoid

The implication running through the Hirschkorn post is that certain agency practices - taking on projects where success is unlikely, charging for research and launch work regardless of product-market fit - create a misalignment between agency and client outcomes. The post does not name specific firms, but frames the behavior as a pattern.

"We'd rather turn down the paid research project only to fail with the launch," Hirschkorn wrote in the LinkedIn post. The follow-up email to the client goes further in making the agency's reasoning explicit to the prospective customer rather than simply declining without detail.

The question of what qualifies as genuine differentiation on Amazon has become more operationally complex over the past 18 months. Amazon shifted Brand Store quality ratings from engagement-based to sales-based scoring in December 2025, replacing dwell time with revenue attribution across 29 countries. That change, combined with the Brand Stores API reaching general availability in February 2026, means that brands able to invest in programmatic storefront management can compound their advantages systematically. Brands without differentiated product positioning have fewer mechanisms to overcome that gap.

What Hirschkorn recommends instead

Rather than a full catalog launch, Hirschkorn advised the prospective client - should they choose to proceed independently - to narrow focus to 2 or 3 SKUs with genuine differentiation. According to the email included in the LinkedIn post: "If you still decide to launch on Amazon I recommend picking 2-3 products that have very strong COGS and a clear differentiation (for example a licensing play or unique design)."

The email closes with a warning about agencies at the other end of the spectrum: "I would watch out for agencies that promise you the world."

The cost of goods sold (COGS) emphasis is significant. On Amazon, margin compression happens simultaneously from multiple directions: advertising costs, fulfillment fees, return processing costs, and competitive pricing pressure. Amazon's prepaid return label policy took effect February 8, 2026, eliminating the high-value exemption and standardizing return infrastructure across all price points - a change that disproportionately affects categories where return rates are already high. Products with thin COGS margins entering this environment face compounding cost exposure before a single advertising dollar is spent.

The broader context for marketing professionals

Hirschkorn's post circulated inside a professional network that has been watching Amazon's marketplace mechanics tighten throughout 2025 and into 2026. Platform policy changes have systematically increased operational burdens on sellers. Starting March 31, 2026, Amazon ended commingling practices across FBA, drawing a structural line between brand owners enrolled in Brand Registry and resellers. From the same date, only Brand Registry sellers maintained eligibility to use manufacturer barcodes, requiring resellers to apply Amazon FNSKUs to every inbound shipment - an additional operational cost that affects thin-margin commodity sellers most directly.

These cumulative shifts reinforce the argument Hirschkorn is making at the product level. Amazon has been engineering its infrastructure to reward brand owners and penalize commodity resellers at multiple layers simultaneously: search algorithm dynamics, brand store quality scoring, barcode requirements, return policies, and advertising auction mechanics all create a compounding advantage for differentiated brands with strong COGS structures.

For agencies and brand strategists advising retail brands on marketplace expansion, the post raises a practical question about intake processes. The standard assessment of a potential Amazon client typically examines sales history, category dynamics, and budget. Hirschkorn's reasoning suggests that product differentiation - not just category opportunity or advertising budget - should function as a threshold criterion before a project begins.

The comment thread on the post reflects how widely this resonates. Jason Boyce, founder and CEO of Avenue7Media, responded: "Respect saying no is the right call. On Amazon, distribution without differentiation just accelerates commoditization and margin loss." Ehtisham Ali, a Walmart marketplace growth specialist, echoed the point: "Turning down work shows strength focus standards and long term brand value over short term gain." Multiple commenters noted that the pattern of products succeeding or failing on Amazon is recognizable to anyone with substantial marketplace experience.

The post also attracted a referral offer from Boyce, who noted that if the client were in the apparel category, Avenue7Media could help develop brand presence on and off Amazon - illustrating that the refusal created a secondary routing of the opportunity rather than a dead end for the client.

What this signals to the Amazon advertising ecosystem

PPC Land has tracked Amazon's broader infrastructure shifts throughout this period, including the introduction of agentic AI for seller platform management announced in September 2025 and the advertising API opening to AI agents in February 2026. These tools increase the operational efficiency ceiling for well-resourced, differentiated brands. They do not lower the baseline requirement for competitive product positioning.

The Hirschkorn post is notable not because its content is unfamiliar to experienced practitioners - the marketplace dynamics it describes are well-documented - but because it was stated publicly, in writing, directed at a prospective client, and shared with a professional audience. The accompanying email, which the post reproduces in full, shows a candid internal reasoning process made visible. That transparency is what drew reaction.

As Alvin Santos, an Amazon PPC specialist, wrote in the comment thread: "Win-win for both sides. If you worked on Amazon long enough, you can already see the pattern of products that will do well vs those that don't."

Timeline

Summary

Who: Liran Hirschkorn, CEO and founder of Incrementum Digital, an Amazon and retail media agency. The prospective client was a 30-year family business with wholesale presence in TJ Maxx, managed by two brothers, with a budget available for the project.

What: Incrementum Digital declined a paid Amazon launch project for a retail brand after an internal team review. Hirschkorn shared the decision publicly on LinkedIn, including the follow-up email sent to the prospective client explaining the reasoning. The post argued that generic products - specifically in home and pet categories - cannot win on Amazon's search results page against Chinese sellers with 40 percent lower prices and 5,000 accumulated reviews, regardless of advertising spend.

When: The LinkedIn post was published approximately one day before this article, on April 17, 2026, according to the engagement timestamps visible in the post. The email to the client was written around the same period following an internal review.

Where: The LinkedIn post was published on Hirschkorn's personal profile and reposted by the Incrementum Digital company page. The underlying marketplace dynamics described apply to Amazon's US marketplace, with specific mention of pet and home product categories.

Why: Hirschkorn's stated reason was product fit rather than client quality. Without clear differentiation - through a licensing arrangement, unique design, or comparable structural advantage - he argued the agency would be charging for work unlikely to produce scalable results. The post frames this as an ethical commercial position: taking on projects with foreseeable failure outcomes extracts fees from clients without delivering the advertised outcome.

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