Reasons why Amazon sellers are out of stock, what to do if they are out of stock?

Today I will talk to you about the reasons that may cause a product to be out of stock, how to deal with different situations before it runs out of stock, and what you can do to re-stimulate links after it runs out of stock.

1. Seasonal changes

Generally speaking, it is easy to run out of stock when the seasons change. When spring turns to summer, the sales of products such as short-sleeved sandals will increase, and when autumn turns to winter, products such as snow boots will become popular again. This change has a certain pattern. It is recommended to keep historical sales records, use data to predict seasonal demand changes, and prepare seasonal product inventory in advance to prevent hot sales and out of stock.

2. Sellers fail to predict sales

When Amazon sellers cannot accurately predict future sales trends, and when they find that sales have increased sharply but inventory is insufficient, it is too late to replenish stock.

3. Insufficient stocking funds

For some small sellers, unlike big sellers, they don’t have enough funds to prepare large quantities of inventory, so they can only prepare small batches of inventory. Therefore, when their products become hot-selling products, they are prone to out-of-stock situations.

4. Changes in buyer demand

For some fashion apparel products, they may suddenly become popular because of a celebrity, which may easily lead to a shortage of the product. It is also possible that the arrival of a certain festival will lead to the hot sales of certain products. For example, before Christmas, the sales of various toys will inevitably increase. For this kind of change in buyer demand, it is recommended to remind all sellers to predict the coming of changes in advance and prepare inventory to cope with hot sales. For example, prepare for the pre-Christmas shopping spree in October and grab the BUY BOX, so that the sales in November and December will definitely not be low, and it will not be easy to be out of stock.

5. Inadequate supplier management

There is usually a running-in period between sellers and suppliers, and for suppliers, they may stop or reduce production for some reasons. Therefore, it is recommended that sellers and suppliers maintain a good cooperative relationship, keep abreast of any changes in production by manufacturers in real time, and continuously update the SKU quantity of the store.

6. Out of stock due to competitors

When your competitor's products are sold out, and you become the only seller, your sales will increase significantly and cause out-of-stock. It is recommended to bundle popular products with unpopular products to increase the overall sales of the store.

The above are the main reasons why Amazon products are out of stock. In general, products may be out of stock because of problems with suppliers, seasonal changes, holiday seasons, changes in buyer demand, and competitors.

Here, the out-of-stock time is divided into two situations: within two weeks and beyond two weeks.

  First, determine how long it will take to restock the existing products based on their sales rate and current inventory. If the product is out of stock for more than 2 weeks, it will have a huge impact on the listing, and even spending a lot of money and time later may not necessarily result in the product being promoted.

  1. How to deal with the expected out-of-stock period within 2 weeks

1. Emergency replenishment

2. Reduce product prices: If the product can be replenished within 2 weeks, it is best to adopt a price reduction strategy. The price reduction must also ensure that the product has a certain profit margin. At the same time, it also increases the advertising budget and quickly puts the product on the shelves in a short period of time. This can increase the product ranking in the short term. As long as the seller replenishes the stock in time, the ranking will only fluctuate within a small range in the later period, and there will be basically no major damage to the listing.

3. After the product is completely out of stock, the listing must be in the currently unavailable state, and you must not follow the FBM sales.

If there are Amazon warehouse deals selling the same thing at this time, I will just spend money to buy it. There are only a few of them anyway.

After restocking the products within two weeks, a magical phenomenon will happen: the ranking of the products will not change, but may even go higher.

The product advertisements are not much different from before the stock-out. Everything can be connected efficiently with the stock-out. If you are lucky, you will find that it is even stronger than before the stock-out. The logic is very simple: first stimulate the natural ranking weight and advertising weight through greater sales. Then keep the listing from being disturbed by the reduction of traffic and conversion, because everyone knows that non-FBA conversion will be greatly reduced. After the restocking, it will naturally have a good natural ranking weight and advertising weight. Even if it is not high, at least it will not be much lower than before.

  2. The expected out-of-stock time is more than 2 weeks

Out of stock for more than two weeks, or even longer. In this case, the above tricks may not work, after all, it has been too long and the weight has been lost. If this is the case, it is recommended to re-create it as a new product and stop stimulating the old product. If you want to stimulate the old product, the sales volume needs to be several times that of the new product to be effective.

The specific method is to first create a new listing that is exactly the same as the original listing, and then send the replenishment FBA directly to the new listing, and do not put the inventory on the old link again.

Then, after the goods are in the warehouse, a new and old merge variant will be created. The inventory of the old listing will be adjusted to zero directly, and it will not be displayed on the front desk, but the original Q&A and Reviews will be moved to the new listing.

The last thing you need to do is to use the promotion methods of the previous new products to create this new listing.

This approach not only takes advantage of the reviews and Q&A of previous listings, but also takes advantage of the promotion weight bonus during the new product period. It is much better than trying your best to stimulate an old product that is on the decline.

If a product is out of stock and restocked products are now in stock, what can we do to re-stimulate the link?

1. For off-site discounts, it is best to send them to the bestseller category at one time. When out of stock occurs, there should be at least 300 items in the replenishment inventory to restore the ranking.

2. Review, keywords, especially the previous words. Foresighted people should arrange 5-10 reviews before the product runs out of stock, depending on the sales volume. After the product is replenished, gradually post reviews, preferably with pictures and videos, to increase page activity.

3. QA: During the out-of-stock period, QA still needs to be arranged (mainly answering and asking questions to existing Qs). After the goods are put into storage, one group of QA can be arranged per day.

4. Coupon, increase, promotion level, increase the number of single purchases, increase sales conversion rate, and link to existing hot-selling products (depending on the store structure)

5. Increase advertising investment, automatic (increase bids for precise matching and similar products), manual (increase bids for previous keywords), budget increase by 20%

6. LD BD and other platform activities