I know it’s fall, but when it comes to selling on Amazon Handmade and prepping for the insane holiday season, you need to be working on it NOW. It’s even more important if you are doing FBA (fulfillment by Amazon), but it’s also essential to start planning now, even if you are strictly FBM (fulfilled by merchant).
How You Can Prep for FBA Sales for the Holiday Season:
Prepping your inventory and taking the time to plan will save you so much stress when November rolls around and you are out of stock for Black Friday. Of course, there is only so much planning we can do, we never know if an item will suddenly get popular (orders and reviews do help search ranking) and sell out quickly, but we can do some things to plan effectively.
1. Source Your Supplies
Make sure you have a stockpile of supplies to make your product and packaging to have a lot of inventory ready ahead of time to send in. You don’t want to be in the middle of the holiday rush and realize you are out of jewelry boxes or packaging tape!
2. Review Last Year’s Numbers
You should have year-over-year growth, and many other factors can affect our numbers and how they might fluctuate. But, the best information we have is looking at and analyzing last year’s number of sales and then duplicate it, or triple it, for your most popular items.
You’ll also want to take a look at out-of-stock items; how many and which items were out of stock for a majority of the holiday season? That obviously affected your sales numbers for that item last year, so you can use that data to plan better this year.
Is this year easy to predict and plan for? No. But try your best to at least KNOW what you sold last year so you can make decisions on that.
3. Plan Your Shipment Dates
If you’ve done FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) through a previous holiday season, you know how crazy it can be in terms of getting shipments into Amazon on time. There are postal delays. There are delays in checking and scanning your shipments once they arrive at the warehouse.
We need to know this and keep it in mind when planning when to make the inventory and when to ship it into the warehouses for the holiday season.
Sometimes you’ll get lucky, and a shipment will get scanned in really quickly, but you can’t depend on that, which is why planning ahead is essential.
You should plan for the bulk of your holiday shipments to be sent at the beginning of October so that they are scanned in, ready, and available for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush.
How You Can Prep FBM Sales for the Holiday Season:
1. Source Your Supplies
Again, source your supplies. Just as crucial for FBA as it is for FBM. You can’t plan for everything, but you know which items are your top sellers. So, make sure to make those supplies a priority.
Always have extra packaging supplies on hand - ribbon, boxes, bags, packing tape, labels, ink, and paper, just to name a few.
You can even spend this time sourcing and researching other suppliers with lower costs, quicker shipping times, or local options for when you are in a time crunch.
2. Review Last Year’s Numbers
Similar to FBA, you want to review your FBM numbers from last year. How many did you sell of each item? Add it to a spreadsheet, and then figure out a number that works for you regarding supplies you might need to buy ahead of time to double or triple that number for this holiday season.
3. Polish Up Your Listings
Now is the time to polish up your listings for the holiday season. Pretty soon, all you want to focus on is creating inventory, planning, prepping, and concentrate on the holidays. You don’t want to worry about fixing or doing additional keyword research during the busy holiday season.
You can spend some time going over your listings and ask yourself:
Is this listing getting the views I’d like? If not, do some keyword research and optimize it.
Is the description clear? If not, spend some time crafting some new product descriptions.
Are the images crisp, clear, and showcase the item in a way that will get people to buy? If not, spend some time retaking some photos of your most popular items.
4. Add or Create Any Outstanding Listings
The holiday rush is not the time to add or create listings, now is the time to do that before the holiday rush begins. Have a pile of unlisted items that you’ve wanted to add to Amazon Handmade? Set aside some time each week to add 3-5 new products and listings to your Amazon Handmade shop. If it’s not listed during the holiday season, nobody can buy it!
