On this episode of RetailPlaybook, Andrew sits down with Kevin King, one of the biggest names in the Amazon seller world, for a big-picture conversation about how AI is reshaping e-commerce. It’s a field guide to what’s coming: shopping by intent, agents that buy on your behalf, and what sellers need to do now so they’re not caught flat-footed.
Kevin King is a longtime Amazon seller-educator and the co-founder of DragonFish, an email marketing agency that writes warm and cold emails for brands. Before his team writes a single word, they build 20 custom-trained AI “brains,” fed by 30 years of articles and tactics Kevin has clipped and saved. He also runs the Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter, and his background working with developers on websites gives him a director’s-chair view of how to get the most out of AI.
Listen/Watch Our Interview:
Kevin and Andrew start with the big question: is AI the biggest shift e-commerce has ever seen? From there, they get into where Amazon search is heading, what shopping by intent will look like, and why brands may soon need two versions of everything they publish.
They also dig into the walls going up around Amazon, Walmart’s new rules for shopping agents, and why MCPs are changing which software tools are worth paying for. Kevin shares his own AI stack, his take on which AI companies will survive, and the one piece of advice he’d give any seller right now.
Highlights
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟱𝟬𝟬-𝘁𝗼-𝟭 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲: A speaker Kevin heard at Funnel Hacking Live said you need 500 words of context for every word AI writes. Without it, you get the average of the internet.
𝟮𝟬 𝗔𝗜 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁: At DragonFish, the team builds 20 AI brains, trained on 30 years of Kevin’s clipped articles and tactics, before writing any copy.
𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴: Kevin believes brands will need one version of a site or listing for humans and another for machines, since agents want data straight to the point while humans like to browse.
𝗞𝗲𝘆𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸: Kevin expects traditional keyword search on Amazon to fade within the next year to year and a half as intent-based, conversational shopping takes over.
𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲: Walmart now publishes rules for agents shopping its site. Andrew asks if brands should too; Kevin compares it to robots.txt, with the catch that agents can simply ignore it.
𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: “In this AI world, there’s only two things that matter.” Amazon has both, which is why its order-confirmation emails now just say “household item.”
𝗡𝗼 𝗠𝗖𝗣, 𝗻𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹: Kevin won’t adopt a software tool without an MCP. One MCP into AWeber turned 100 advertising emails into a 10-page playbook in five minutes, work that used to take weeks.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 $𝟱𝗠 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: Sellers doing $5 million today who brush off AI could be at $500,000 in a few years, wondering what happened.
Kevin has seen every era of e-commerce up close, and his advice for this one is simple: pick a lane, ignore the noise, and start building. Enjoy the conversation.
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