Last week, Inventory Optimizer sat down with the COO of an 8-figure Amazon seller to discuss seasonality and how Amazon really doesn’t understand it (despite their best efforts).
They just don’t get it when it comes to restocking FBA.
Craig Barnell is the Cofounder of Fishers Finery, a digitally native brand specializing in award-winning silk pillowcases, loungewear, and more. Fishers Finery is an 8-figure seller on Amazon and a-7-figure seller on Shopify. Since so many of Fishers Finery’s top-selling SKUs are highly seasonal, Barnell has a lot of experience with seasonality.
Do you have products with seasonality outside of Q4?
Seasonality is the increase in order demand during finite periods. For most sellers, seasonality refers to the surge in order volume during Q4 (coinciding with the start of the holiday season). However, other brands dedicated to serving a specific time, event, season, etc., might have additional seasonality periods (Prime Day, Mother’s Day, etc.).
One of Fishers Finery’s top-selling catalogs is cashmere, primarily seasonal items like hats, gloves, scarves, and accessories. The cashmere season starts in the fall and then tails off by mid-winter, early spring. They’ve been using the Amazon platform for fulfillment by Amazon and multi-channel fulfillment, and they’ve struggled with Amazon’s forecasting tools. When Amazon was putting caps on the amount of inventory sellers could send in, Fishers Finery was spending hours preparing reports with data from Inventory Optimizer to unlock the top threshold volume.
Because of the 4+ years of historic data and the proactive AI-driven forecasting model from Inventory Optimizer, Fishers Finery successfully pleaded their case, and Amazon had to make adjustments. They were also able to help other struggling sellers by presenting the data to Amazon.
“Our demand forecasting allowed us to convince Amazon that their threshold for product to be sent in was nowhere close to accurate.”
Just one example?
With one of Fishers Finery’s best-selling men’s cashmere hats, Amazon suggested sending 80 units of inventory as late as September 15th for a 100-day selling season.
Meanwhile, Fishers Finery ordered 3,000 units because they had factual data from Inventory Optimizer showing how much product they were actually going to sell.
Amazon accepted 1,200 units, but Fishers Finery still went out of stock because of the time it took for Amazon’s algorithm to reconcile the replenishment.
If you’ve experienced issues with Amazon accepting additional stock for your unique selling season, your business needs Inventory Optimizer.
Get the data to show Amazon how much product you really need—when you really need it. Learn more by scheduling a demo.
