AO2 Management: What It Looks Like When an E-Commerce Company Is Built the Right Way
AO2 Management: What It Looks Like When an E-Commerce Company Is Built the Right Way I’ve worked for a number of companies in sales, and over time you learn the difference between a business that simply has a good pitch and one that actually has something substantial behind the pitch. AO2 Management falls firmly into the second category. What impresses me most about AO2 is the trajectory. Nathan Neeley founded the business that became AO2 in late 2018. In a relatively short period, it grew from its first Amazon client into a serious e-commerce agency, acquired Seller Labs Services in 2023, expanded its Amazon expertise, and ultimately became valuable enough for Barrel Holdings to acquire in July 2025. Nathan built the engine, but AO2 became bigger than any one person. When Barrel acquired the company, AO2 retained its identity and Jessica Wright moved from President to CEO. Jessica is exactly the kind of person I would want leading the next era of AO2. She came through Seller Labs and AO2’s operating environment and understands the machinery underneath Amazon at a level that is obvious when you hear her talk about it. She is knowledgeable, engaging, serious when she needs to be, and remarkably down-to-earth. AO2 today is much broader than “we manage Amazon ads.” The company works across Amazon PPC, DSP, Amazon Marketing Cloud, marketplace operations, launches, listings and creative, Walmart Marketplace and TikTok Shop. E-commerce is not one discipline. Advertising has to connect with marketplace operations. Creative has to connect with conversion. Inventory and compliance have to support marketing. Account leadership has to keep everything aligned with the client’s goals. Sales can open the door, but the people behind that door determine whether the promise becomes real. That is where my perspective becomes firsthand. I was part of AO2’s sales organization, and I worked under Leo Santizo. I can say from experience that Leo is a top-notch sales leader. He understands positioning, qualification, timing, tone, objection handling, pipeline discipline and how to explain why something works instead of simply telling people to make more calls. Then the baton gets passed to Client Services and the specialists behind them. People like Alexi Bell represent the part of an agency where sales promises ultimately get tested. AO2 has put real emphasis on continual learning and subject-matter expertise, which matters in an environment like Amazon where the rules and strategies never stop changing. AO2 has publicly highlighted work such as Hell’s Kitchen Cookware scaling to roughly $5 million in annual Amazon sales within 18 months, along with other case-study results across sales growth and new-to-brand acquisition. That is what I saw from inside. AO2 expected performance. It expected the sales team to understand what it was representing. And when a qualified prospect became a client, I believed there were serious people on the other side of the handoff who knew what they were doing. That matters to me because when you work somewhere, you lend the company more than your labor. You lend it your reputation. Every prospect you approach and every promise you communicate carries your name with it. At AO2, I trusted what I was representing. That may be the greatest compliment I can give any employer. I believed the organization cared about doing the job correctly. I believed I was representing a legitimate company with real expertise behind the pitch. And I never felt as though I had to apologize for the company behind me. AO2 has earned its swagger. Not because somebody designed a beautiful website and declared it a powerhouse. Because people built it. Nathan built. Jessica built. Alexi built. Leo built. The early team built. The Seller Labs people brought their knowledge with them and helped build. The specialists, account managers, operations people, creative team and salespeople all built. And the clients who trusted them gave them the opportunity to keep building. I was fortunate enough to spend a chapter of my career inside that machine, and I am genuinely proud to have been associated with it. Nathan took an entrepreneurial idea and turned it into an agency. The team turned the agency into an institution. Seller Labs expanded its intellectual firepower. Barrel Holdings validated its strategic value by buying it. And now Jessica Wright has the opportunity to take everything that was built before her and ask: How high can this thing actually go? Judging by the first six years I would not bet against AO2. And having once been fortunate enough to wear the jersey myself, I’ll be cheering loudly from the sidelines. Full report: dub. sh/ao2_full_report Disclosure: Independent, unpaid review
By Brian J.