First. You should be very very very quiet with this complaint or else someone that’s still sitting on 2,000 fidget spinners might spin all of them at your face in jealousy. Fidget spinner deaths are never pretty.
Second. Rejoice. This is the best problem to have in FBA.
First: Here’s what you shouldn’t do…
Gradually raise your price to slow down your sales to stay in stock.
Please don’t do this.
Amazon is a little bit like a bitter ex- and that they never ever forget, which is why if you ever get back together with them they will 100% remember the last thing you did.
So, if you were selling 200 items a day and then broke up with them (went out of stock) and then got back together they’d _assume_ you were selling 200 items a day and put you right back on page 1 with all the other winners.
If you were selling 200, then 100, then 20, then 2, Amazon says “Wow, this item really was getting unpopular at the end right before they went out of stock, so let’s just…place this here. On page 17. Page 17 is nice. It’s a fixer-upper. It has charm.
Step 1. don’t muck with your price by raising it.*
(*you can muck with it a little. sometimes by raising the price you might discover that you sell more. So, feel free to raise it until it has an adverse affect on your sales)
(i’m not sure the word muck is nice. It feels wrong when I say it and also when I type it, so maybe keep that in mind too. It’s the least important part of that step though)
Step 2. You can screw with your price by lowering it.
Screw just seems worse than muck but we’re stuck with it now gang.
If you lower your price as you are running out of stock, your sales velocity will actually increase (go figure) and then instead of going out of stock with a 200/sale a day item, you’re going out of stock with a 250/sale a day item.
It’s like if you’re breaking up with someone and then on the very last day you buy them a Tesla as a break-up gift. “I can’t be with you but here, it’s basically a huge battery with wheels I hope you love it.”
The current reigning theory is that when you come back in stock, Amazon will honor the 250/day rate and rank you accordingly.
Step 3. When you go out of stock close your listing.
To extend the broken relationship metaphor, imagine you break up with your ex- but in a great way. “Honey I love you but I’ve been invited to go to Botswana to help with the starving kids and I just can’t do long distance but I’ll be back in 2 months because you’re the love of my life. Please wait for me.”
Leaving your listing open is like… occasionally texting your ex during that 2 month period, every couple of weeks… but instead of sending a sweet I love you, you’re just texting them this:
“Hey you kinda suck.”
Then when you get back after 2 months you wonder why they Hey Kinda Dont Like You Any More.
This is because while you’re out of stock for 2 months while your listing is OPEN, there’s the chance that your product will get returns. And when Amazon gets a return that it thinks it can resell, it will put it on the shelf. And then that one item will sell.
So now suddenly you’ve got 200 sales a day for a year and then nothing, and then 1 sale on one day. Nice. You Kinda Suck in Amazon’s eyes and they’re not gonna forget it when you get Backswana.
Step 4. Don’t forget to raise your price when you’re sending your inventory in.
It’s a dumb thing but Amazon loses things all the time, basically Amazon will look at your historical price for a product, and sometimes (but not always) they’ll just look at your list price. So if you send in 2000 items with a list price of $20 and Amazon loses them, they’ll give yoU $40k. If you forgot to raise your price from $10, you’ll only get $10k.
JK it’s $20k I just wanted to give you that brief moment of satisfaction from having caught me in a mathematical error, because I love it when I catch other people in theirs.
Summary
If all this feels like a lot of work to have to do with one product, imagine doing the same thing with twenty products. Yeah you don’t want that life and I don’t want that life for you either. The best thing to do is keep an eye on your products inventory.
If you have 5 products and it takes you three minutes each to check their sales vs inventory and predict their stock out 3 times a week, that’ll mean you’ll spend (5*3*3*4, show your work) 180 minutes a month just checking inventory. That’s THREE HOURS every month, that’s 36 hours a year.
Or you can just sign up for Amachete and we’ll give you an easy page where we’ve done all the math and accounted for how long it takes your manufacturer to ship it so that you’ll know exactly how many days you need before you press that buy button.
You can just glance at it. And we’ll let you know if it’s getting kinda close.
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