Amazon Prime Day has just been over a month, and sellers will usher in Black Friday again. Will this year’s Black Friday be a Black Friday with a lot of orders, or a Dark Black Friday?

01Amazon announces that Black Friday will start on November 20
Amazon's official platform released the specific time of this year's Black Friday on November 16: Amazon's Black Friday starts on November 20 and ends on November 27, and the event will last for a week.

Amazon officially stated that consumers will shop earlier than in previous years, such as holiday gifts, and many consumers will choose to buy in advance. Amazon also revealed that recent hits are toys, home and Amazon devices.

Many offline stores in the United States are closed this year, and consumers can only choose to spend online. According to the data, consumers' enthusiasm for shopping will continue to rise. In Drive Research's survey of 2,000 consumers, online shopping on Black Friday in 2020 is expected to increase by 28% compared to 2019, and revenue from Cyber ​​Monday will also increase by 18% compared to 2019.

In addition, some domestic cross-border industry people pointed out that "Black Friday" will show a hot trend. From the perspective of consumers, "Black Friday" is in the transition season of autumn and winter. Some specific products such as winter clothing are in great demand for shopping, which is a rapid expansion of the market. Good time to share.

Will Black Friday really bring more sales this year? There are many sellers looking forward to it, but many people express helplessness. Some sellers said that their expectations for this year's Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday are not high, and even keeping sales from falling is a good result. Perhaps as the seller said, this will usher in the most unpopular Black Friday.

In fact, there are reasons for sellers to lose confidence in Black Friday. The key points are: inventory and storage restrictions. The seller's inventory limit, Amazon has not canceled this regulation so far, how can sellers increase it?

02 How Amazon Sellers Can Increase FBA Inventory Limits
Recently, Amazon released an announcement on seller inventory performance in the background, which stated the factors that affect seller inventory performance indicators:

To effectively manage FBA inventory, thereby reducing overstock, increasing sell-through rates and business profits. We measure inventory management through the Inventory Performance Indicator (IPI). This score is based on performance in the following tasks:

1. Reduce redundant inventory to improve profitability

2. Increase sales to balance the number of weeks that inventory can sustain sales

3. Fix products that are not available for sale to ensure stock is available for purchase

Keep the best sellers in stock

Sellers can get higher storage limits or be exempt from volume-based storage limits when they increase their IPI score.

In addition, Amazon also answered several questions from sellers:

Q: Will deleting the old listing have a bad effect on the IPI score?

A: No. IPI is based on your inventory performance on hand. Listings with no ASINs (including non-restockable products) lack of inventory and sales will not affect the IPI score. When deleting a listing, make sure there are no items available for sale, otherwise it will cause the listing to become "No Listings". No listings for sale that incur storage fees when there are no listings for sale may affect the IPI score.

Q: Will we get unlimited storage capacity once the IPI score exceeds the required threshold?

A: No. We publish and evaluate over two weeks of score checking to determine your quarterly storage limit. You will need to achieve the required IPI score during any score check week to be exempt from storage restrictions in the next quarter. If your IPI score is greater than the threshold after the second score check week, you will still be subject to storage restrictions for the next quarter.

Your IPI score relates to your near-term and long-term inventory performance, and is based on the time period in which a higher score was achieved. Our goal is to ensure that inventory performance metrics are representative of your overall inventory performance. We recommend that you maintain your Inventory Performance Indicator score for the next storage limit cycle.

Q: If we have a SKU that is out of stock and the stock cannot be restocked within 30 days, will closing that SKU before we restock improve our IPI score?

A: No. Marking an ASIN as non-refillable removes it from the FBA in-stock rate calculation, which allows you to better determine in-stock rates without affecting your IPI score. Additionally, ASINs that are out of stock and sold (including non-restockable products) will not affect your IPI score.

A high IPI score can get more inventory. If Amazon sellers want to increase the inventory limit, they must follow Amazon's inventory performance evaluation standards.

There is good news! ! Amazon will update the storage limit inventory performance metrics in mid-December.

03Storage restrictions will be relaxed in mid-December
In the process of restocking for Black Friday, the most painful thing for sellers is not enough IPI score.

This year, many people have deeply felt the trouble caused by storage restrictions. Amazon stipulated in July that sellers with an IPI score lower than 500 will be limited to the available warehouse capacity. The specific amount of the limit will be determined according to the seller's sales and product market demand, and the storage limit will continue until the end of the year.

However, just yesterday, on November 17, Amazon issued an announcement saying that the platform will continue to evaluate storage capacity and make corresponding adjustments to leave as much space as possible for sellers' products, but the current ASIN quantity limit is still valid. New guidance on the release of IPI warehousing restrictions will also be updated in mid-December.

Amazon also mentioned that during the holiday shopping season, the platform will employ more than 145,000 seasonal workers worldwide for picking, packing and distribution. Standard-size FBA storage capacity will also expand by nearly 50 million cubic feet in January.

As a result, sellers will have more storage space, but it will have to wait until mid-December, when Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday have ended. Although there will be Christmas in the future, from previous years, Christmas is a holiday period. January-February is also the low season. From the perspective of that time, the improvement of storage restrictions has limited effect on sellers, but in the long run, this will be a good development.

(Source: Cross-border Research Society @ President)