A sub-category earthquake on Amazon: over 50% of BS products become unsaleable

Before every peak season, Amazon would review the compliance of products on the platform, and this year’s rectification has also come. Yesterday afternoon, a large number of best-selling products in the baby crib surround category on Amazon suddenly became unavailable for sale, and some sellers called it a "category tragedy."

Baby products sub-category earthquake, more than 50% of BS become unsalable

Yesterday, some sellers suddenly discovered that a large number of best-selling products in the crib guard category of baby products had become unsaleable, suggesting a major category purge.

The editor found that there have indeed been huge changes in the Crib Bedding Bumpers category on Amazon's US site. 29 products in the top 50 best-selling list of this category show "This item is no longer available", and 55 products in the top 100 are shown as unavailable. The remaining products that can be sold include non-crib bedding bumpers products such as baby bionic beds, mosquito nets, pads, and anti-collision strips. There are only a handful of fence products that can be sold.

(Partial screenshot of the best-selling list of bed guards)

The ranking of new products in the crib bedding category is even worse, with only 4 products in the top 50 still available for sale, and the rest of the products are no longer available for display. In addition to crib bedding, there are no abnormal sales in subcategories such as baby crib bedding sets and mosquito nets.

(Partial screenshot of the new product list of the bed guard category)

After checking, a seller said, "It's terrible. I see that the top 19 are gone."

Some sellers speculated that the mass extermination of sellers in the sub-category of side seams was likely due to compliance issues. An operator seemed to confirm this speculation: "The maternal and infant category needs to be reviewed by sub-category; the previous company made baby fences, and all the links were deleted." However, some sellers believe that it should not be compliance factors that caused dozens of Best Seller links to be deleted, because "small sellers of maternal and infant products are fine", is there another hidden reason?

In addition to compliance issues, crib bumpers also face the risk of patent infringement. Some sellers said that this type of product has invention patents and they have been the victim of infringement.

Controversial bed guard products

Maternal and infant products are the focus of safety review, and bed guards are even more controversial commodities.

To prevent infants and young children from falling off the bed, many new parents choose to use bed guards to reduce the risk of their children falling. However, from actual cases, although bed guards reduce minor injuries, they may increase the risk of falling and suffocation for infants and young children due to height and gap discomfort.

According to reports, a report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission showed that between 1990 and 2016, there were 107 fatal incidents of crib bumpers in the United States, and 282 incidents of babies' heads, limbs, and suffocation. In 2015, the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) updated its baby sleep safety guidelines, stating that crib bumpers should not be used in cribs, and recommended that this product be discontinued, and then many places stopped selling them.

Most of the crib guards currently on sale on Amazon are improved models, which have added padding to prevent the danger of babies' hands and feet getting stuck. However, after using an improved product, a buyer still gave a two-star negative review of "waste of money". The mother said that even if she tightened all the straps on the crib guard and padding according to the instructions, the padding would continue to slide down, and it could not protect the baby's hands and feet from getting stuck. Some of the child's movements would easily crush the padding, and the so-called protective effect was minimal. "I regret buying this." She said.

Products in the baby category have become unsaleable, and Amazon sellers in other categories are facing a shortage of products. Due to storage capacity constraints, sellers are racking their brains to increase storage capacity.

Due to storage capacity restrictions, sellers are out of stock and clearance sales are frequent

Recently, Amazon has been updating its inventory capacity on a regular basis every Monday. It made adjustments on Monday and Wednesday of last week. The inventory capacity is updated twice a week, and there is a decrease each time. This is an unspeakable pain for most sellers.

As the peak season approaches, many sellers are unable to replenish their stocks due to limited storage capacity. Currently, many sellers have reported that there are signs of large-scale out-of-stock situations. As time goes by, the out-of-stock crisis will gradually erupt and will occur to more and more sellers.

In order to increase storage capacity, some sellers have started to clear their inventory and improve sales. An industry insider said that because he helped some sellers clear their inventory before, many Amazon sellers have recently asked if they can help them clear their inventory in FBA. Obviously, more people have this demand this year. This is also the most troublesome problem for cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses. When sales are good, they have to stock up a lot. Once problems arise, it is difficult to deal with the goods. If you donate them to Amazon at no cost, it will be easier to deal with them , but it is really not easy to recover a certain amount of costs, because the price of clearing the goods at this time is very low.

For sellers, clearing inventory is indeed a headache . As one seller said, when clearing inventory, new products can be sold at a loss, but when they are profitable, there will be no orders.

Many of the products that sellers are clearing out are new products. Under the current circumstances, many sellers are facing the dilemma of difficulty in promoting new products. An old seller said that it is particularly difficult to promote new products this year. So far, there is no product with stable orders. Occasionally, there are products with a lot of orders, but they are stuck because of out of stock.

The shortage of new products is limited by storage capacity. Some sellers bluntly said that a new store has a storage capacity of 1,000, which is only enough to launch one new product. The storage capacity is simply not enough, and it is too difficult to launch new products.

New products are difficult to promote, products are out of stock, and inventory is cleared at a loss ... These problems all seem to be related to storage capacity limitations. A seller described the general situation: "After sending out the last batch of goods today, I feel that there will not be many opportunities to replenish the stock this year, and I estimate that there will not be many batches. It feels like time flies, and suddenly it is September. Recently, some links are clearing out the stock, not only to avoid the 3 times storage during the peak season, but also to free up the storage capacity of the overflowing warehouse for better-selling products." This should be the current situation of many sellers.

However, there is still hope for improvement in storage capacity restrictions.

Surprise! Storage capacity increased at several European stations

Recently, the storage capacity of European sites seems to have been adjusted. The storage capacity of many sellers in European sites has increased. According to multiple feedback information, the storage capacity of the UK site has increased relatively much, and Germany and other sites have different increases. Even if the seller's sales have not increased, the storage capacity of several European sites has also increased.

A seller was pleasantly surprised to find that he was finally able to replenish his stock. The German site released 10,000 units of storage capacity, and the British site also released more than 1,000 units of storage capacity.

Another seller said that the inventory capacity of the UK and Italy sites has been increasing for three consecutive weeks, with the UK site increasing more and the Italian site increasing less. Similar peers said that sales peaked in July, and sales fell again in August and September, but the inventory capacity of the European site has been increasing recently.

While the storage capacity in the United States has been declining, the storage capacity in Europe has increased, which has indeed surprised many sellers. One seller said frankly that the peak season is coming, and after the storage capacity in Europe has increased, he feels a little comforted. However, because he has been abused by Amazon for too long, he dare not have too many illusions.

The storage capacity of the European station has increased, so will the American station be far behind?

Amazon, category, not for sale