Jing Gao and Eddie Levine have each labored in e-commerce for more than a 10 years.
Eddie Levine
Eddie Levine and Jing Gao 1st satisfied at an Atlanta e-commerce conference in 2016. Two several years later on, they shared their very first kiss outside an Amazon seller summit in New Orleans. And in 2020, Gao left her property in Los Angeles to transfer in with Levine in Chicago, bringing their e-commerce enterprises beneath a person roof.
So it only produced feeling that when it came time to tie the knot, they turned to e-commerce for their inspiration.
On Aug. 21, the couple tied the knot in Chicago, and the marriage ceremony reception was stuffed with Amazon paraphernalia. At the reception, company ended up seated at tables specified by a ten-digit code made use of to look up merchandise on Amazon’s web-site (recognised as an ASIN in vendor parlance). Marriage ceremony favors were being little Amazon packages, entire with barcodes and stuffed with treats, put in miniature searching carts.
Wedding ceremony favors have been bins of treats, created to glimpse like miniature Key offers.
Eddie Levine
Attendees posed for pictures in entrance of a backdrop declaring “Jeddie (a mixture of the couples’ very first names) Prime Working day,” an homage to Amazon’s annual summer browsing bonanza.
Though the references ended up a minor little bit esoteric, at minimum the couple was self-assured that some of their attendees would comprehend them.
Levine gave a toast all through the reception. “I stated, ‘Last but unquestionably not the very least, e-commerce brought us together. If we have fulfilled you as a consequence of e-commerce, instantly or indirectly, stand up,” he explained to CNBC in an job interview.
“Actually half of our guests stood up.”
Not everybody acquired it, though.
“The bartender was like, ‘Can you tell me what the offer is with all the Amazon-inspired stuff?,” stated Robyn Johnson, CEO of electronic marketing company Marketplace Blueprint, and a pal of the pair who attended the wedding ceremony.
Marriage ceremony guests could get photographs in entrance of a Primary Working day-encouraged backdrop.
Eddie Levine
Both Levine and Gao have worked in e-commerce for much more than a ten years. Levine is president and co-founder of Hub Dub, which assists brand names deal with their corporations on line and presents logistics companies. Gao runs an Amazon business selling household décor merchandise.
Levine and Gao are section of an lively community of sellers, consultants and assistance providers that is sprung up all around Amazon’s 3rd-party market. Released in 2000, the marketplace has become a centerpiece of its dominant e-commerce enterprise, as it now accounts for additional than half of on the internet retail revenue. As of 2021, there were being extra than six million 3rd-celebration sellers worldwide on the Amazon marketplace, according to analysis agency Market Pulse.
A “five-hour marriage contract”
Gao fulfilled Levine at an Atlanta convention through a expert who was supporting her with her Amazon company, and who also happened to be Levine’s good friend.
They didn’t hit it off proper absent. But above the following months, Gao and Levine continued to run into each individual other on the e-commerce meeting circuit and made a friendship.
Their friendship turned romantic in June 2018 at Amazon’s Boost conference for third-social gathering sellers in New Orleans. The conference coincided with Gao’s 29th birthday, so she invited Levine and some of their mates out for a night of barhopping in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter. That evening, they kissed for the very first time.
On the past working day of the conference, they went for a prolonged walk by the streets of New Orleans, a memory they both of those 50 percent-jokingly describe as their “5-hour marriage deal.”
“We ended up contracting in which we’re heading to reside, the family we are going to bring, the religion we are going to have in the home, education and learning,” Gao explained. “We had been lining it up.”
“Based mostly on 5 several hours of back again and forth, we uncovered we were being at least a respectable match,” Levine added.
A number of days later on, Levine flew from Chicago to Los Angeles for their initially day. He returned to Chicago the adhering to day in time for a 10-working day trip in Europe.
They ongoing courting extensive-distance for the subsequent two a long time, right up until June 2020. It was the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and they could no more time properly hop on a airplane for their bi-weekly visits. They determined it was the ideal time to shift in collectively, and Levine proposed to Gao at Niagara Falls that September.
Levine was the a single who arrived up with the strategy for an Amazon-encouraged wedding day.
“We went through all these ideas, and they ended up so uninteresting,” Levine reported. “I wanted a little something that showcased our history and gave homage to in which we arrived from.”
Levine, who is Jewish, selected Jeff Cohen, an Amazon worker who formerly worked for Seller Labs, which held the convention exactly where they met, to serve as a witness when they signed their marriage agreement, recognised as the ketubah. And friends who served join the pair at Amazon occasions experienced particular “matchmaker” signs on the again of their chairs.
They jokingly toyed with the concept of turning their marriage into a total-blown Amazon conference, with a program firm presenting, in jest, to sponsor the function.
“I said, ‘No, I am not finding you a booth at our wedding ceremony,” Levine mentioned.