Amazon Selling in Quarter 4 - Holiday Season & Beyond

Beginning around this time, sellers will notice a welcome influx in sales.

  1. Have enough stock starting Black Friday, until the end of January - Be prepared for Cyber Weekend, Christmas & January sales. Make sure your stock can cover this period. Some sellers may triple there business or more over this time.
  2. Prepare your stock in good time - Suppliers, factories and warehouses are going to have delays over this period. Shipping with couriers can be lengthy and a little more problematic. Plan carefully. Try to analyze last year's sales or your 3-month preceding sales and potentially triple these as a forecast, depending on your niche. You can use Amazon reports to help you do this. 
  3. Carefully watch sales and restock normally slow-selling products selling fast - Watch out for slow-moving products that become big sellers over the Q4 period. When people are buying gifts they may be entirely different from purchases they routinely make for themselves. If you are lucky Q4 is a perfect time to clear dead stock or slow-moving stock, possibly at even higher prices.
  4. Use Sales Rank in a different way - Take extra care when using sales rank to estimate sales in Q4. A Sales Rank of  100000-500000 can be a big seller in Q4.
  5. REPRICING - Make sure your pricing strategy is set up in advance and potentially less aggressive than normal. We find users can make particular gains/profits by pricing high in this period. When competitors sell out our users can mop up the sales at significantly higher prices. A typical user may price between 5-10% higher, or more, over this period for certain items. Items with sales rank between 0-35000 are at risk for selling out, allowing higher priced sellers the opportunity to step into the Buy Box.
  6. Sell Smart - You don't necessarily need to sell the hot product this season. All the hot products will receive immense sales volume, they usually have very high competition. Medium selling products will sell well too. 
  7. Stock up on packing and postal supplies too - Make sure you have not just the stock on hand but also supplies such as packing tape and boxes etc. Have in supply all you need to either send your products to your customers or to get your products into FBA.
  8. Monitor FBA returns and missed reimbursements - Amazon FBA returns can increase in this period. We generally advise you to carefully check Amazon has reimbursed you. This includes any eligible returns and lost packages. We recommend this is done in bulk in January, rather than individually. 
  9. Allow additional time for Customer Support - Be prepared for an influx of customer support requests. Customers are sometimes stressed this time of year, so don't be surprised if you get a difficult customer over this period. Take any animosity with a grain of salt. Stay calm, relax and think of the dollars rolling in. Then think of Christmas dinner, family, friends and a movie. If you need to appease a customer with a partial refund, full refund or gesture it may be worth it. This allows to focus on more important things and keep your metrics high. Remember for Christmas sales Amazon allows the whole of January for buyers to return.
  10. Be mindful that all couriers will have delays - Be prepared that all courier and shipping companies will have delays. Stay calm and try to be organized to minimize disruption.
  11. Be happy - Enjoy your holiday season. Rest, work and play. Live the good life. 

Seller Republic would love to work with you to achieve your goals. We campaign for a minimum wage of $5000 per month with a 20-hour maximum workweek. We want to take you to this or beyond. For more information please check out Seller Republic & our Ethos. 

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