How many units of a product to send to Amazon fulfillment centers? How to distribute inventory across different Amazon FBA centers? How to avoid “Out of Stock” situations while avoiding overstocking? How to reduce shipping costs? These are just a few of the questions that arise daily for both new and experienced Amazon FBA sellers. Keeping your finger on the pulse can be aided by the Amazon inventory management system SoStocked. It’s software designed to track and manage Amazon FBA inventory and forecast its needs.
Being “Out of Stock” is like putting sticks in your own wheels
Each product has its own buyer. Even a very brief absence of sufficient inventory in commerce can result in lost potential buyers, organic growth, and Amazon BSR (Best Seller Rank).
But that’s not all: Amazon strives to ensure a positive shopping experience for customers in every possible way. Therefore, sellers facing “Out of Stock” risk losing the Buy Box position, product listings, or even their entire Amazon account. Of course, such extreme penalties are imposed on sellers for a very long time or often when they don’t have inventory, but why take the risk?
To avoid the “Out of Stock” situation, it’s a bad idea to send maximum inventory to Amazon FBA centers, thereby creating surplus inventory. This will cost your business frozen income and high storage costs. Proper Amazon inventory management is a process that results in an optimal and observation-based quantity of inventory in Amazon FBA centers.
SoStocked: What is this and why is it worth trying?
SoStocked is a powerful Amazon inventory management software designed to empower sellers to optimize inventory management, increase profitability, and avoid costly inventory-related challenges.
SoStocked functions and benefits:
- Maintaining constant optimal inventory levels.
- Optimizing shipping and other expenses.
- Assisting in preparing for clearance sales and other sales leaps.
- Synchronizing inventory and marketing systems.
- Manual data entry and error elimination.
- Alerts when inventory replenishment is needed.
- Generating informative reports.
- Data-driven inventory demand forecasting.
- Real-time sales data monitoring.
Amazon inventory management is closely related to other business processes and involves handling a lot of different data. To simplify the management process and avoid errors, we recommend using specialized tools, such as SoStocked.
You can find more information and a free 30-day trial here: https://ps.carbon6.io/6gt3l7mdijkd-rvg5sd
What to do if, after all, the inventory runs out?
Plan or not planned, however, if you see that the inventory is rapidly depleting and you won’t be able to replenish it before reaching “Out of Stock,” you can take several significant actions:
- Temporarily increase prices to slow down the pace of sales and preserve as much inventory as possible until replenishment arrives.
- Trade with a hybrid model: not only traditional FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) but also FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant). This will prevent sales from completely stopping and allow you to continue meeting customer needs, albeit with additional constraints and a slower pace.
- Set a restock date visible to customers. By knowing that the items are not available for purchase until a specific date, customers can decide whether to wait or buy elsewhere. This will maintain the trust of some customers.
- Reduce advertising expenses or stop ads altogether. This will slow down traffic and provide time to restock inventory. Once your inventory is managed, you can resume advertising campaigns.
- Turn off the product listing when inventory is running low and you’re still waiting for restocking. Inform Amazon that you’re preemptively suspending sales due to unforeseen circumstances. This way, Amazon won’t perceive the reason as dwindling inventory, and you won’t be penalized. By replenishing inventory and resuming sales, you’ll regain visibility more easily than if you had to do so after going “Out of Stock.”
More about how “Out of Stock” affects Amazon sellers’ businesses: https://gotrellis.com/out-of-stock-on-amazon/
Amazon inventory management is a process that requires a lot of attention. It’s important to be able to analyze sales data, allowing you to forecast the optimal inventory level to avoid both “Out of Stock” situations and paying high fees for excess storage in Amazon FBA centers. Additional specialized tools, such as SoStocked, help manage inventory data. If you need assistance in managing this tool or want to entrust Amazon inventory management to specialists at DIGITAL FREAKS, please contact us using the provided contacts.