Amazon’s algorithms are very smart. For instance, they can tell when you buy a luxury pen that you’ll need a refill to go with it. They can guess when you start to advertise your product what keywords will be most appropriate. And they can tell just how much inventory you ought to have in the warehouse.
If you have too much, watch out! Amazon charges you for stock that has been in the warehouse too long without being sold.
First of all you need to check your inventory and sales figures on Seller Central. If sales dropped recently, Amazon may have recalculated how much stock you need based on that lower figure rather than on your usual sales level. If you can already see sales coming back, then it’s likely things will adjust in due course.
However, if you really do have too much stock in the warehouse, there are several things you can do. If the situation looks really bad, and you have somewhere to store stuff, you can take it out of the warehouse, though you’ll still have to pay to get it back.
If sales have been flagging a little and your stock is relatively high, re-marketing is probably your best bet. Take a look at your product page and refresh the photos, improve the keywords, or rewrite the product titles and descriptions so they are punchier and more persuasive.
You might also decide to push your advertising budget up a bit till your sales start shifting your stockpile. Depending on the scale of the problem, just doubling your ad budget for a couple of weeks might be all you need. If your product lacked visibility, that should address the issue.
You could also bundle your excess stock with another product. For instance, if you sell pet stuff and have an excess inventory of dog collars, include a collar with every leash you sell and you’ll soon make inroads on the excess. You’ll be able to charge a little more for each leash, though you might not make the full sales price of the collar as customers will expect the package to sell at a discount to the value of the items if purchased separately.
If you have a really major problem, such as a stock of last-generation mobile phones or last season’s fashionable sandals, then you can use Amazon Outlet to offer deals. You could, as a last resort, use Amazon’s FBA Liquidation to send the inventory to a wholesale liquidator; but in that case you’ll be lucky to get back 10 percent of your intended sales price.
The other fast way to shift inventory, of course, is to use a one-off promotion. Discounts, particularly deep discounts, can get your product moving fast. That will push it back up the sales rankings as well as getting rid of excess inventory. So why not use a short term coupon campaign through Vipon to target discount-hungry buyers and free up a bit of warehouse space?
