Selling through Amazon FBA

[redcell]

Anyone shocked by the storage fees that landed today?

[redcell]

1 hour ago, tacsniper said:

From my experience, one of the things they do is compare the weight of your shipment vs what was received. This allows them to determine what's missing.

I have learned over the years, the bigger your shipment, the higher the chance of items not received/missing.

Are you talking about the size of the overall shipment or the size of each box?

[Achilles]

53 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

From Amazon : 

"As a reminder, FBA inventory was due on December 3  for the holiday season. Please consider sending your replenishment inventory in January as we focus on fulfilling customer orders during the holiday shopping period.

Thank you for providing customers with unbeatable selection and great prices. We’re proud to help you fulfill your products, delight customers, and grow your business."

"Stop sending us ****, we have too much ****."

[landphieran]

1 hour ago, redcell said:

Anyone shocked by the storage fees that landed today?

I sent most of my inventory in a 1-2 weeks before black friday and got hit with $500 worth, which isn't bad? Can't really remember what i did last year. I'm going to cry at december's cost however. I held a lot of my inventory for sale for the next couple of weeks so those fee's are wracking up.

[cobrakai]

They are pretty painful, but getting used to it.  Sucks that they do it in October now also when sales really don't start picking up until mid-November.  I wish they could give a storage fee discount based on your inventory performance score.

[legorunner]

2 hours ago, landphieran said:

got hit with $500 worth,

I really appreciate posts like this to remind me how small I am on AMZ. My storage fees that hit today are just under $30, and this year I'm excited to be selling more than last year - by comparison my storage fees this time last year were a whopping $18ish. 

[Mark Twain]

Not that it matters to many of y'all, but those who are still gated might be interested to know that it appears Amazon has removed the CPC requirement to get ungated on subcategory toys. That, or my meager FBM sales have finally magically removed that barrier for me. I've checked with five brands, including LEGO. Was there two weeks ago. Weird timing, no? 

To be clear, this is just the CPC requirement. new sellers still have to have brand and category approval. Though, I'm getting automatically approved on more and more brands. 

 

[carini26]

On 12/8/2019 at 6:02 PM, landphieran said:

Maybe I had quite a few extraordinary years in the past, but it feels like the competition on the listings this year has been much worse than in the past. There seems like there was a lot of HUGE online retailers during Christmas dropping 500-600 of a set at a time. This has caused most listings to mostly just decrease in price. It might be still early in the year but moving forward this resale model is definitely going to get harder.

I feel like there are 15-20 FBA sellers who had/have crazy high stock levels this year.  There are dozens of SKUs that haven't been able to shake loose yet.  

It's gotten to point where eBay prices have fully caught up with FBA on a$$ ton of listings.  Elves, as one example, has really underperformed.  Some MC sets should be 25-30% higher by now (though looks like 21146 Skeleton Attack is finally making a run).

 

 

 

[Darth_Raichu]

16 minutes ago, carini26 said:

I feel like there are 15-20 FBA sellers who had/have crazy high stock levels this year.  There are dozens of SKUs that haven't been able to shake loose yet.  

It's gotten to point where eBay prices have fully caught up with FBA on a$$ ton of listings.  Elves, as one example, has really underperformed.  Some MC sets should be 25-30% higher by now (though looks like 21146 Skeleton Attack is finally making a run).

 

Sadly that trend is not going to change going forward.  We are at the point where bigger sellers are crowding the market.  The smaller sellers have to be creative to compete.

Not sure what your expectations are for Elves, I thought it is tracking as expected.

[Ed Mack]

29 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

Sadly that trend is not going to change going forward.  We are at the point where bigger sellers are crowding the market.  The smaller sellers have to be creative to compete.

Not sure what your expectations are for Elves, I thought it is tracking as expected.

Creative as in charge less?

[Darth_Raichu]

6 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

Creative as in charge less?

or sell your soul to the devil to get magical FBA powers

[redcell]

1 hour ago, carini26 said:

I feel like there are 15-20 FBA sellers who had/have crazy high stock levels this year.  There are dozens of SKUs that haven't been able to shake loose yet.  

It's gotten to point where eBay prices have fully caught up with FBA on a$$ ton of listings.  Elves, as one example, has really underperformed.  Some MC sets should be 25-30% higher by now (though looks like 21146 Skeleton Attack is finally making a run).

 

 

 

This has been entirely predictable and something I've been planning for.  It has taken a little longer than I thought it would, but, as the years have gone by, the capital base that larger sellers were working with has grown each year, allowing them to stock more inventory.

[landphieran]

12 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

Creative as in charge less?

 

42 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

Sadly that trend is not going to change going forward.  We are at the point where bigger sellers are crowding the market.  The smaller sellers have to be creative to compete.

Not sure what your expectations are for Elves, I thought it is tracking as expected.

I agree with Carini's statements.

I expected the 41187/41193 to be low 90s by this upcoming weekend.
I expected 41323 to be low 70/80's.

I think the most disappointing performance to me has been on nearly every small set: notably both small elves sets, the creator robot(31062), and the technic helicopter. These ended up being slightly profitable with a good buy in. But nothing to write home about. Most other small sets were mostly garbage *Incredibles.. not so much*

I took an unfortunately timed vacation and got put pretty far behind on shipping stuff out this year and got about 60% of my stock out. Missing most of my elves sets as well as others. I know mathematically its more efficient to sell out every year and keep the cycle going but I'm starting to think a two year cycle of sales may be better for me. I work alone and personally would rather purchase less. Hold for slightly longer and see better margins.
 

[Bold-Arrow]

10 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

or sell your soul to the devil to get magical FBA powers

many already did 

1 minute ago, landphieran said:

 

I took an unfortunately timed vacation and got put pretty far behind on shipping stuff out this year and got about 60% of my stock out. Missing most of my elves sets as well as others. I know mathematically its more efficient to sell out every year and keep the cycle going but I'm starting to think a two four year cycle of sales may be better for me. I work alone and personally would rather purchase less. Hold for slightly longer and see better margins.
 

there ya go

[exciter1]

At least some knew to hold out on LOTR and Lone Ranger, this is the year.

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, exciter1 said:

At least some knew to hold out on LOTR and Lone Ranger, this is the year.

I’m still sitting on   ☀️  ? ?.. maybe next year 

[landphieran]

2 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

many already did 

there ya go

That's a sad edit  - but probably true. I'm sure most of the large sellers have similar cycles, plus popularity of many of the sets dies off pretty hard after a year.

My only consolation this year was 21146 and 21123 Iron Golem. I hoovered up all the 7$ Iron golems on target.com while people were talking about how much of a dumpster fir they were. They have been ripping hot all season and I expect this weekend to smash.

[Bold-Arrow]

2 minutes ago, landphieran said:

That's a sad edit  - but probably true. I'm sure most of the large sellers have similar cycles, plus popularity of many of the sets dies off pretty hard after a year.

My only consolation this year was 21146 and 21123 Iron Golem. I hoovered up all the 7$ Iron golems on target.com while people were talking about how much of a dumpster fir they were. They have been ripping hot all season and I expect this weekend to smash.

it was a slight exaggeration on my part, but it seems moving to a 2 year hold will be the way to go going forward if not 3 .. Many of the sets that retired toward the end of 2018 are still underperforming ( yes there are exceptions like the ones you mentioned )  . Remakes and the wide selection of sets across all themes is making selecting the right sets at the right price even more challenging . 

[Achilles]

36 minutes ago, exciter1 said:

At least some knew to hold out on LOTR and Lone Ranger, this is the year.

My Steamrollers and Gorilla Strikers are ready to go.

[legorunner]

1 hour ago, landphieran said:

I expected the 41187/41193 to be low 90s by this upcoming weekend

I agree, 41187 has been the biggest disappointment of the season for me so far. This one evaporated pretty quickly locally and I never saw it on clearance like most of the other Elves sets after Christmas. The best looking dragon from the bunch retiring last year, but obviously everyone else thought the same...I too expected 90s if not $100+ by now. 

I started in 2016 and have put most of the profits each year into more inventory, so it makes sense that the big time sellers are doing the same. It will be interesting to see what stock levels and prices are like this time next year on this year's retiring sets with all of the deep discounts online the past couple of months - I expect this will speed up this year's trend: even higher levels of stock and even lower prices. 

As a small scale guy I'm happy with my profit margins this year even if I'm not exactly blown away by most sets, but at some point time is worth more than money, so we will see....

[carini26]

The  FBA whales just need to create their own OPEC-like organization and collectively decide when to turn up or cut back production.  

And another example... this race to the bottom on a set like Heartlake Hospital is becoming hard to watch.  That should have been $225+ by this weekend.

 

[marcandre]

8 minutes ago, carini26 said:

And another example... this race to the bottom on a set like Heartlake Hospital is becoming hard to watch.  That should have been $225+ by this weekend.

 

That's one I have been disappointed in. I had one slip through at 180 (which is still too low) but it's really sunk since then. Maybe next year. 

One bright spot for me is Destiny's Bounty. Amz stock ran out & it has shot back to $230. WM blew these out 2 years ago & I'm ready to move them. 

[Darth_Raichu]

2 hours ago, landphieran said:

I took an unfortunately timed vacation and got put pretty far behind on shipping stuff out this year and got about 60% of my stock out. Missing most of my elves sets as well as others. I know mathematically its more efficient to sell out every year and keep the cycle going but I'm starting to think a two year cycle of sales may be better for me. I work alone and personally would rather purchase less. Hold for slightly longer and see better margins.

I am surprised smaller operations are still doing 1 year cycle.  I do not see any point in this unless you can consistently buy at 70% discount or more.  Especially after Amazon, USPS, UPS, & US government take their ever increasing cuts.

And like I said above, next year is going to be worse

[cladner]

2 hours ago, Darth_Raichu said:

I am surprised smaller operations are still doing 1 year cycle.  I do not see any point in this unless you can consistently buy at 70% discount or more.  Especially after Amazon, USPS, UPS, & US government take their ever increasing cuts.

And like I said above, next year is going to be worse

lol - if you did loaded up on brickheadz you are cleaning the fred up. i'm not even talking about mickey or minnie.

harry potter, hermione, stormtrooper, boba fett, luke+yoda, darth vader minecraft brickheadz at every target, walmart bn at MSRP  - you would have more than doubled your money post fees on a few of them.  i am having tough time keeping $65 minecraft bhz in stock (msrp.$19.99).  if you got them on easily obtainable 30-50% discount (especially stormtrooper and darth on the $5.99 and $6.99 permasale before stacking in the target gift cards) you are having a fantastic year.  once i saw mickey and minnie going in such a short amount of production time and it was confirmed all 2018 bhz were retiring, i started buying early and often in bulk from amazon at msrp and on sale.  i think people who are holding onto brickheadz for another year are going to see epic returns as the sell counts start to dwindle further.  i'm just moving on to the next thing. 

 

this year will be the same as last - great if you picked the right sets.  freaking ship in a bottle is already selling for $145 fba instock for saturday delivery.  already looking like a great year if you have a lot of that one.

 

meantime, some price creep happening on sets as we get to crunch time and people start paying attention to the delivery date.  if you are instock fba for tomorrow, make sure you are priced higher than instock fba for december 28th or give up the premium just to make a sale slightly quicker.  i am 25% higher than the buybox on some listings and still seeing significant sales volume.  no specifics - thanks  

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by cladner

[landphieran]

7 hours ago, cladner said:

meantime, some price creep happening on sets as we get to crunch time and people start paying attention to the delivery date.  if you are instock fba for tomorrow, make sure you are priced higher than instock fba for december 28th or give up the premium just to make a sale slightly quicker.  i am 25% higher than the buybox on some listings and still seeing significant sales volume.  no specifics - thanks  

 

I think buying up all brickheadz at MSRP with an assumption its retiring in 6 months is "getting creative"

Everyone should raise there prices a bit going into the weekend. It is going to be a frenzy into early next week. Due to a weird thanksgiving I think christmas crept up on a lot of people and its GO TIMEEEE! 

Side note, my shipments to joliet are being processed in two days. Amazon was a bit dramatic with their warning.

Edited December 13, 2019 by landphieran