The most frustrating thing for Amazon sellers is that a buyer likes a product but it is out of stock. In this way, you will not only lose an order, but also a long-term customer. In order to avoid this situation as much as possible, we have compiled the following countermeasures.
1. Eliminate it from the source
Unless you make the products yourself, dealing with a supplier or manufacturer is unavoidable.
Managing your relationship with your suppliers or manufacturers is the first step to avoiding out-of-stock situations on Amazon. To avoid sudden stock-outs, it is necessary to have more discussions with them on the production and sales cycles.
If you don’t know where to start, here are some questions to ask:
How long is the general production cycle of a product?
How long does it take to restock?
Will your order quantity affect the manufacturer's production supply?
How do you typically negotiate with suppliers? Is there any wiggle room on price?
Can the manufacturer guarantee a minimum monthly order quantity?
When is the busiest time of year for manufacturers?
How do manufacturers arrange their holidays? Will there be unexpected power outages that affect production? Is there anything that sellers should pay attention to?
What is the manufacturer's minimum delivery quantity?
The more you can consider the other person's perspective, the more relevant the questions you ask will be to the actual situation. Let suppliers or manufacturers feel your care and sincerity, they will serve you seriously and avoid you from having unwanted out-of-stocks.
2. Understand the product’s sales history and sales cycle
Fusionzoom erp will calculate your safe sales days based on your sales history and historical sales volume, and calculate the stocking quantity and time for you based on the stocking cycle to achieve the purpose of intelligent stocking.
Just as you expect suppliers and manufacturers to fully understand their products, you should also understand your own products.
By understanding the product sales cycle (peak and off-season) in advance, you can reserve more inventory during the peak season and reduce inventory appropriately when the off-season comes.
For example, for backpack retailers, the back-to-school season is the hottest time for backpack sales. One or two months after school starts, school bag sales will enter the off-season because children all have school bags.
I recommend using the Amazon Seller Coach tool, which shows you the inventory status of each product and how it’s selling. It will even recommend you inventory levels based on your sales. You can use it as a rough guideline. You can check it by logging into your seller center. It will help you to keep track of your inventory frequently.
3. How to deal with emergency out-of-stock situations?
If you manage to stay informed of your inventory status and reinvest your profits into purchasing more inventory, but still find that you don’t have enough inventory to restock, you may need to slow down your sales as a stopgap measure until you can get more inventory.
First, pause any ongoing marketing or promotions to prevent too many consumers from clicking on your product pages. If that doesn't work, temporarily raise your price (higher than your competitors) and demand for your product will drop. If you’re out of stock on products that you fulfill yourself, you can change those product listings to “Vacation” (not applicable to FBA listings).
