Amazon's inventory capacity has dropped sharply! Sellers: Go home for the New Year now

It only takes a moment for Amazon sellers to go from being big inventory holders to being inventory losers.

The peak season is coming, and it is a good time for Amazon sellers to do a great job. Unfortunately, Amazon's operations have severely restricted everyone's "talent and passion"!

Yesterday, a large number of sellers reported that Amazon had once again cut inventory capacity, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand, and as many as tens of thousands or even more. This "random cut" of inventory capacity has caused many sellers' replenishment pages to go viral. The affected sellers were disheartened: Now they can go home early for the Chinese New Year.

Peak seasons have always been a time when accidents happen frequently. In addition to the decline in inventory capacity, many Amazon sellers have recently reported that Amazon is not only slow to put products on shelves, but also has a high incidence of lost items. Troubles of all sizes are coming one after another during the peak season, which is supposed to be a good time. And as it is the end of the year and the beginning of the next year, it is natural that some sellers will think, "I will stick to it until the Chinese New Year, and I will not do Amazon next year."

With more imports than exports, Amazon is still the most popular cross-border e-commerce platform for sellers, with a huge number of new users every year. In the eyes of global consumers, it also maintains its dominant position among cross-border e-commerce platforms, with more than 5.5 billion monthly visits, far exceeding the second place.

However, with the rise or "encirclement and blocking" of new and old platforms such as SHEIN, Temu, Walmart, and eBay, Amazon's market share is inevitably divided up. In the future, will Amazon's "monopoly" situation be rewritten?

A large number of Amazon sellers' inventory capacity has dropped sharply! Account managers give reasons

Amazon is cutting prices again!

On the Amazon platform, "stock capacity reduction" is not new, but when it happens on a large scale without sellers being prepared, it instantly ignites the sellers' enthusiasm for discussion:

The products are not put on the shelves quickly, but the limited storage capacity allows them to be put on the shelves quickly and in large quantities.

This time the storage capacity was directly cut in half, which is much more drastic than Pinduoduo's one-shot cut.

There were originally tens of thousands of storage spaces, but now there are only a few thousand left. Amazon has no intention of doing this.

I just finished creating a shipment in the morning, and in the afternoon I owed Amazon thousands of storage spaces .

It is being restocked. It was normal one second ago , but when I refreshed the network, it turned red. It is more frustrating than a red code .

Why did Amazon suddenly go crazy? I hope the platform can admit its mistake and return the cut storage capacity to me!

Last time I cut more than 80,000 yuan, and this time I cut more than 20,000 yuan, so I can go home for the New Year .

…

It is understood that the inventory capacity of Amazon sellers has been in a state of slight adjustment since August this year. At the end of August, Amazon suddenly showed its power and began to drastically cut the inventory capacity. After that, it was barely safe for more than a month. When the sellers let down their vigilance, Amazon "swung the knife" again, catching the sellers off guard and making them resentful!

One of the sellers stated in detail that in October this year, Amazon has been continuously cutting inventory capacity, and the number of standard parts in one of his stores has been cut by 60,000 for several consecutive weeks.

Coincidentally, another seller said that at the beginning, the inventory capacity was more than 600,000, but Amazon has cut it to more than 100,000 now. According to this trend, it may be reduced next week, and the inventory capacity will become negative in a few weeks. In the eyes of many sellers, it is a lucky thing that their peers still have "surplus" for Amazon to "recycle". Their inventory capacity has become negative. Not only do they have no goods to ship, but they also have to pay a sum of money to the platform.

Why did Amazon suddenly reduce the inventory capacity of sellers? Some people joked that Amazon actually had good intentions. It knew that everyone’s goods would not sell anyway, so it “suggested” everyone not to send so much goods…

This is of course a joke, but what is the real reason? An insider said that the explanation from the Amazon account manager is that it is the BFCM stocking and warehousing stage (products participating in the Black Friday Cyber ​​Monday promotion in the US must be stocked in the Amazon FBA warehouse before 11:59 pm Pacific Time on November 2), so the overall warehouse capacity of FBA is very tight.

Some time ago, Amazon US announced that in order to prepare for the upcoming holiday sales season, the inventory entry time for Black Friday and Christmas season will be restricted. Sellers must ensure that the inventory arrives at Amazon's operation center before the following dates ↓↓↓

Black Friday Week : November 2

Christmas Day : December 1

Amazon said at the time that it would receive a large amount of inventory during the upcoming holiday sales season, and the warehouse entry deadline was set based on the consideration that a large number of sellers would prepare more inventory for the big promotion compared to daily. Concentrated shipments may cause the warehouse to receive/shelf speed to slow down significantly, resulting in missing the big promotion. Sellers are advised to complete the arrival of goods before the warehouse entry deadline recommended by Amazon. Goods that enter the warehouse later than this date can still be entered, but there is no guarantee that they can participate in deals and other activities in time. Therefore, sellers need to carefully count the inventory, prepare for replenishment, and ship in advance.

So, Amazon received too many goods at once, but did not have enough staff to handle them, so it had to force sellers to reduce their shipments to "save their lives"?

The peak season is coming but you can’t make money by shipping? Sellers can expand FBA storage capacity in this way

This wave of operations by the platform has brought a series of negative effects to sellers and others.

First, it reduces the operating profits of cross-border traders. In order to clear excess inventory as quickly as possible, many sellers have to offer low-price promotions, which will lead to more products joining the low-price clearance wave, thus affecting the profits of many sellers.

Secondly, it ruins the mentality of sellers. After Amazon’s massive cuts in storage capacity, the cross-border circle was wailing, such as “ I hope the company can take a holiday earlier so that we can relax during this peak season ”, “ The platform is determined to let everyone go home for the New Year! ”, “I was planning to promote new products, but now I have to give up”, “If this continues, I won’t do business with Amazon next year”, etc. Don’t think that many sellers are just talking. If they have experienced a series of bad events before, then Amazon’s massive cuts in storage capacity will be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

With the warehouse capacity cut, expanding FBA warehouse capacity has become a top priority. How to expand? Many sellers are looking for service providers to break through the shipping restrictions, but this has certain security risks and may be held accountable by Amazon later; to be on the safe side, many sellers prefer to adopt the FBA warehouse capacity expansion method provided by Amazon.

Amazon said that first, sellers need to improve their Inventory Performance Index ( IPI) scores so that they can reach 400 points in one of the two assessments each quarter to ensure that they have unlimited inventory space in the next quarter.

Sellers on the US site should note that if the Inventory Performance Index (IPI) score does not meet the standard during the two assessments , but still hopes to improve sales performance during the peak season by increasing inventory space, they can use Amazon's newly launched "Storage Limit Manager". With this tool, you can apply for more storage space for products with strong sales, and win performance points through the sales brought by this part of the storage space, which can be used to offset the storage space fee. Therefore, you may not need to pay for this part of the additional storage space in the end.

In addition, sellers in need can also apply directly to Amazon account managers . One of the account managers stated in detail that the collection of capacity expansion demands this week will end before he gets off work on Tuesday ; if the capacity expansion demands raised last week are not automatically effective in the background at 3 pm on Monday , it means that the application has not been approved and you can continue to apply; in addition, if the seller happens to encounter a capacity reduction situation and the existing inventory ➗monthly sales <4 , you can also try to find an account manager to solve the problem.

As Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday approaches, sellers who need to expand capacity can also apply for special storage capacity for Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday , but they need to meet two hard conditions:

1. You must have already registered for LD/7DD for Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday ;

2. The account applied for must be the account managed by the account manager this year . No other account submissions will be accepted .

Amazon sellers who need to expand capacity may try the above method.

Amazon lost items also broke out! Sellers have difficulty in claiming compensation

Before Amazon drastically cut sellers' inventory capacity, incidents such as warehouse overflows and lost goods had already troubled many sellers.

In terms of warehouse overflow, warehouses such as LAX9, LGB8, LGB9, SBD3, MCO2, SMF6, ONT8, ONT9, and FTW5 are experiencing serious warehouse overflow. Not only is the rejection rate very high, but the approval time also takes a long time. To make matters worse, there are news reports that Amazon workers are on strike again. There have been four strikes in warehouses in the United States. The reasons are the old-fashioned poor working environment and low wages. Now is the peak sales season, and the strike of warehouse workers will definitely aggravate the degree of FBA warehouse overflow to a certain extent.

Affected by the FBA warehouse explosion, many sellers have run out of goods for sale. Although some of the replenished goods have been delivered to the warehouse, they have been waiting for a long time and cannot be put on the shelves:

GYR2 was signed for on October 14th but has not been put on the shelf yet. The backend shows that it has been delivered but it has not been registered.

The HAJ1 warehouse has been overstocked. No goods have been received for 20 days, and the order volume is almost reduced to single digits.

It has been two months since ONT8 was signed for, but it has not been put into storage. The case response is either perfunctory or asking to wait.

GYR2 has also been signed for but has not been put on the shelves yet. I am looking for a way to speed up its listing.

…

Now there are a lot of goods piled up in Amazon warehouses, and the number of lost shipments has increased. "Amazon no longer displays the lost shipment investigation button. It directly tells you that the shipment investigation is completed, but there is no compensation," said an Amazon seller. He said that the probability of encountering such things was not high in the past, but this year it is obvious that this problem has occurred too many times recently , and it occurs in almost every shipment, either too much, too little, or mixed up, which makes people terrified .

How should the seller solve the problem at this time? Some people suggest that the first thing to do is to wait patiently. "When I encountered this kind of problem before, I contacted customer service for a month without any help. Then one day I suddenly found that the lost goods had returned by themselves."

The above situation occurs because the goods are not actually lost. If the goods are really lost, people who have experienced it say that you can try to open a case to provide proof of ownership of the inventory , such as bills, receipts or signed packing lists provided by relevant suppliers. These bills should indicate the delivery date, quantity, product name, etc. of the lost products. If you fail once, keep trying.

It is worth noting that the invoice date must be earlier than the delivery time, and the proof of receipt must also have a signature and FBA ID. This method may not be useful for every seller.

"It's like this when the peak season comes. There's either a sudden shortage of storage capacity or a bunch of troubles after the warehouse is blown up." In fact, in addition to these common troubles, Amazon will suddenly block the seller's account, and sometimes you will be caught even if you have not violated the rules. As Amazon's services are becoming less and less adequate, many industry insiders are angry. Although things like warehouse explosions are understandable, what is intolerable is that Amazon's intention to cut sellers has become more and more obvious in recent years. Most of the time, it is centered on consumers and the platform. Sellers work hard in the end, but they are all working for the platform.

Want to escape from Amazon? Will Amazon's dominance continue?

A large number of platform sellers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Amazon.

Thinking from another perspective, it is precisely because Amazon is the only dominant player that it has the capital to become a "light" seller.

Although online shopping has flourished in recent years, giving rise to a large number of e-commerce platforms , no other platform can shake Amazon's online dominance.

Recently, data company SimilarWeb released the latest ranking of global e-commerce platforms in 2022. Amazon ranked first in terms of visits, with more than 5.5 billion visits per month.

eBay platform ranked second, with nearly 3 billion monthly visits . The third place was Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce Shopee , with over 600 million monthly visits .

Other platforms that made it into the top ten include Rakuten, AliExpress, Walmart, Mercado Libre, Etsy, Taobao, and Wildberries. The monthly visits of these e-commerce platforms are all less than 600 million.

From the above data, we can find that Amazon's monthly visits are far ahead of the second place, and the gap between the second and third place is too large. Amazon has not yet encountered a strong opponent.

A forecast data for this year's Black Friday also confirms Amazon's popularity among consumers.

A survey shows that more American consumers plan to shop online than in-store on Black Friday this year. Specifically, Amazon is the preferred retailer for American consumers this holiday season. 64.3% of consumers will shop at Amazon, 47.9% will shop at Walmart, and 38.8% will shop at Target.

From the above, we can predict that Amazon will continue to dominate the market for a long time to come . However, Amazon still needs to have a sense of crisis.

First of all, there is the negative impact of the overall environment on the platform and the problems that exist in the platform itself. Recently, several analysts have lowered their expectations for Amazon's third-quarter sales, profits and other financial targets, citing rising operating costs, poor Prime Day sales, and inflation.

The second is the “encirclement and interception” by other e-commerce platforms . Amazon’s status as the big brother in the industry cannot be replaced by other platforms for the time being, but this does not prevent other e-commerce platforms from having the ambition and actions to become the boss.

As we all know, Amazon is a comprehensive cross-border e-commerce platform for all categories. Currently, many platforms have taken a different approach, focusing on a major category and becoming the big brother in a subdivided category.

For example, in the top 10 ranking of fashion e-commerce platforms , Amazon is not on the list, while Zalando ranks first. Others on the list include Vinted, ASOS, Myntra, etc.

In the top 10 ranking of home furnishings e-commerce platforms , Wayfair topped the list, followed by ManoMano, Houzz, Conforama, Pepperfry and others.

On the other hand, the rise of platforms such as SHEIN has also divided a lot of Amazon's traffic. In the first half of this year, SHEIN's sales have exceeded US$16 billion (about RMB 110.72 billion), with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 50%. According to data from the application analysis platform Apptopia, in 2021, fast fashion e-commerce SHEIN was the second most downloaded shopping app in the world, with 190 million downloads, a 70% increase from 2020. In the first half of this year, SHEIN's downloads in the US market, Amazon's home base, far exceeded Amazon, ranking first.

In addition to the old cross-border player SHEIN, the rise of up-and-coming players such as Temu has also snatched Amazon's market share to a certain extent.

In the past week or so, Temu has been among the top ten apps downloaded by Apple and Android app stores. On October 17, Temu topped the list of shopping apps downloaded by Apple App Store, ahead of Amazon, Walmart and other e-commerce platforms . According to industry insiders, Temu's rapid rise is almost entirely driven by advertising, and this shopping app has not yet become popular on social networks. This also means that Temu may bring more surprises in the future.

On the one hand, other platforms are constantly challenging Amazon, and on the other hand, sellers are complaining about Amazon. In recent years, the voices of "I want to escape from Amazon" seem to be getting louder and louder. Amazon is like a besieged city. People outside the city want to get in, and people inside the city want to get out. After comparing with other platforms, will you still be enthusiastic about giving up Amazon?

There are definitely a lot of voices.

"Perhaps our products are more suitable for other platforms. After leaving Amazon, the company has been doing much better, and I am in a much better mood. I am no longer anxious every day," said one of the sellers. Amazon is too asset-heavy, and there are often many accidents. Although it can still make money, there are more things to worry about...

There are also many sellers who think Amazon is more attractive.

A seller who sells on both Walmart and Amazon said that he personally prefers Amazon over Walmart. "Although Amazon is very competitive, at least the operation console is much better than Walmart. Walmart's backend will give you a heart attack, and Amazon's market share is overwhelming. If you can't do well on Amazon, don't expect other platforms to do well. At most, you can only make a little money."

Another seller also said that escaping from Amazon is nothing more than jumping from one pit to another. Why can't you focus on one pit? Jumping back and forth is like a fool , wasting time and energy.

Some sellers also feel that they cannot give up on Amazon, but they should also try other platforms if they are able, otherwise Amazon will become more and more domineering.

Now a multi-platform layout has become a consensus among many sellers. For big sellers with large businesses, they have put all their eggs in multiple platforms. The editor has carefully observed the financial report of a listed big seller and found that, relatively speaking, the net profit of products sold on the Amazon platform is much higher than that on other platforms such as Wish.

This may indirectly illustrate that Amazon has a lot of "annoying problems", but it is still more likable than other platforms.

Is it worth continuing to work on Amazon? In fact, everyone has their own answer in their hearts!

Amazon Platform