Amazon has lifted its inventory restrictions? No more worries about replenishing goods during peak season

Amazon recently announced that it will gradually lift shipping restrictions, giving sellers more opportunities to ship inventory to FBA warehouses during the peak season.

Sellers are all worried about logistics during the peak season. On the one hand, the goods are stuck on the road and not moving, and on the other hand, Amazon has replenishment restrictions. During the peak season, most sellers have fully replenished the inventory of hot-selling products and cannot create more delivery plans. They can only wait until the products are sold out and the inventory is reduced before they can continue to ship the vacant part. Everyone knows that it will be too late to replenish at that time. According to the current logistics time, the goods will be out of stock for at least half a month.

Amazon's announcement this time is aimed at slow logistics and potential out-of-stock risks caused by shipping restrictions. First, more than a dozen new FBA warehouses including BGY1, MXP6, MUC3, EMA3, NCL1, MAD7 and POZ2 were put into use, bringing a large amount of transportation capacity to handle shipments. At the same time, some shipping restrictions will be gradually lifted according to the actual situation of sellers, allowing sellers to handle replenishment plans during peak seasons more flexibly.

Here, the shipping restrictions Amazon refers to are specifically shipping restrictions based on ASIN, not storage capacity restrictions. If either of the two is full, no more shipping plans can be created. So even if Amazon gives you more shipping restrictions, if your IPI score is below the threshold and you are subject to storage restrictions, your shipping plan will be restricted.

This is a good sign, as it means that Amazon's huge investment in Q3 has now paid off.

The shipping restrictions themselves are to prevent a large backlog of orders during the peak season, because Amazon will not be able to handle these orders in time after the reduction in shipping capacity caused by the epidemic. This is why Amazon reduces the processing pressure of warehouses by restricting sellers' shipments and frees up shipping capacity for peak season orders. The shipping restrictions were officially implemented last year before Prime Day.

But before the peak season this year, the opposite happened. Amazon actually lifted some restrictions, allowing sellers to replenish more goods. What does this mean? It means that the warehouse has surplus capacity and can help sellers ship more goods.

This is also the content of Amazon's Q3 financial report released not long ago. Amazon's profits in Q3 decreased significantly because it invested a lot of money in the logistics system in the third quarter, including building more warehouses, hiring more fleets, and more importantly, communicating and cooperating with terminals and cooperative logistics providers to provide fast channels for FBA replenishment shipments, etc., which cost nearly half of the profits in the entire Q3.

This investment is quite effective. The time period before the black house network is the time when the warehouse is most loaded. At this time, Amazon can free up transportation capacity and relax the replenishment restrictions. After the peak season, the replenishment restrictions are likely to be greatly relaxed. Everyone can prepare a replenishment plan after the peak season in advance to prevent out-of-stock after the peak season.