Episode 76
Many e-commerce business owners are having a hard time overcoming the current Amazon inventory restrictions. That’s why in this episode David and I will be talking about the strategies we’re implementing. But that’s not really it. We also want you, the Firing the Man Nation, to share your own solutions. Let’s stay the course and fight through these tough times together.
Listen to this episode and learn how to overcome Amazon inventory restrictions!
[00:01 – 05:07] Opening Segment
- We introduce our topic for today
- How the Amazon restrictions have affected our accounts
[05:08 – 13:30] Our Thoughts on Inventory Restrictions
- The rule that applies to everything but David wishes would go away soon
- We think that these restrictions should be temporary
- Ken guarantees it
- Don’t miss our exchange about Inventory Performance Indicators
[13:31 – 23:21] Solutions to Amazon Inventory Restrictions
- Solutions to these Amazon inventory restrictions
- Checking inventory daily
- Send shipments daily if possible
- Run reports and find slow-moving products
- Consider increasing prices and here’s why
- Ken shares what he thinks as the top solution here
- Want some Amazon refunds? Check out Getida
- Promo code: FTM400
[23:22 – 30:59] Why You Should Stay The Course
- Why you should try the Amazon FBM and warehousing
- Do you have an idea we did not mention?
- Send us a voice mail below!
- Why you should not give up now
[31:00 – 33:34] Closing Segment
- Connect with us. Links below
- Final words
Tweetable Quotes:
“If you’re out there and you’re struggling to manage inventory, you’re not alone.” – Ken Wilson
“Stay the course. Fight through these tough times.” – David Schomer
Resource mentioned
——————————————————————————————
If you have a strategy that you are using to overcome this hurdle, hit us up at https://firingtheman.com/contact-us/. If you share an idea or pro-tip with the Firing the Man Nation that was not mentioned in this podcast that will help Ken and I navigate this more effectively, we will personally buy you a steak dinner.
Email us –> support@firingtheman.com
David 0:00
Real quick before we get into the show, I wanted to share a new service called Getida that Ken and I have been using that has made us over $10,000 in Amazon reimbursements. The service requires no monthly subscription, and getida collects a small percentage of the money they recover for you. It takes less than five minutes to set up and works on all Amazon marketplaces. Go to getida.com GETIDA, and enter promo code FTM 400. That’s FTM for firing the man 400 to get your first $400 in reimbursements commission free, how much money does Amazon owe you? And I have to sell something for seven bucks, right and I’m gonna lose two bucks on every sale, it still generates cash flow, and a removal order generates no cash flow. And so we have been looking to every alternative, even if that means selling at a slight loss, just to clear out some stale inventory. And it’s a good practice.
Ken 1:00
You know, as solopreneur you wear 10 hats and you try to do everything and you know, inventory management. So just learn and pivot and get better. That’s what we’re working on.
David 1:10
Don’t stop just because you know, business is hard. And this is just one challenge. There will be different challenges in a couple months, and we’ll just have to navigate through those as well.
Intro 1:20
Welcome everyone to the firing the man podcast a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more than join us, this show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts serial entrepreneurs David Schomer and Ken Wilson.
David 1:44
Welcome everyone to the firing the man podcast on today’s episode, we discuss the current inventory restrictions put in place by Amazon, and how to overcome this challenge. Stay tuned for how to use Amazon’s bs rules to get ahead of competition. Ken, what’s going on man?
Ken 2:01
David, what’s up, I’m excited to be in the studio today taping another episode, you know, bringing it covering Amazon inventory restrictions. It’s a bullshit it’s impacting a lot of people and we’re gonna go deep today and get right to it.
David 2:16
It is it’s a hot topic. You know, any amazon seller I’ve talked to in the last month has mentioned this, it seems to be something that’s affecting everyone accounts of all sizes. And it is certainly created challenges for our businesses. But the nice thing is this is impacting everyone, and it may weed out some competition. So we’ll just have to get right into it and talk about what we’re doing in our businesses to help overcome this, and talk about a couple strategies that we’re using. So how would you say these restrictions have impacted our accounts?
Ken 2:50
Sure. Well, within the last, I think, you know, Amazon’s been testing different restrictions over the last what, 90 days or so. And each time it’s like, it’s cutting deeper and deeper into how we have historically functioned, right? It used to be, we could send in as much inventory as we wanted to. And we would pay a little bit of fee on long term storage fee or whatever how much volume we’ve had in there. And since they’ve really start cutting in, you know, they did asin restrictions, and then now they’re doing account wide restrictions. And it’s just really cutting into how we function so some of the stuff that’s hit our businesses is number one stranded shipments. You know, we’ve had shipments where we created you know shipping labels for and then they just canceled like the next day we go in and it’s canceled we’re like you know, already some labels to suppliers have boxes in motion. And Amazon says Nope, we’re just canceling the shipment. So that’s one way. Another one is you can’t create new shipping plans at all. So if you’re you know, selling on Amazon, you go and look at your storage volume. And you know, you can see on your storage volume in units in your inventory, what they will allow and what they won’t. And it seems like, you know, here, we’re, you know, June 1, it seems like through the month of April and May it’s like fluctuating, you know, you have you know, X amount, you know, 3000 units under so you can ship in 3000. The next day you come in and you’re 5000 under and so you have no capacity to ship in. That’s not good. It’s impacting a lot of sellers. Number three, no product launches. You know, obviously, if you can’t even restock your current product catalog, there’s no way you’re going to be doing the product launches. It’s just basically stifled product launches. You just can’t do them right now until this resolves. Next one, which is really huge is you know, it negatively impacts sales when you can’t restock. So let’s go back to the regional sales, righ? Amazon.com has regions in the US and if your products are stocked in a specific region, you’re going to get showcased there because you’re going to do one day two day delivery, right. So As your inventory draws down, and you sell out of certain regions, and Amazon can’t get that product to the customer within a day or two, you’re going to lose those sales in that region. And so as your inventory draws down, you’re losing sales, that’s huge. Last one here, the last high level one that’s impacting us is your hero products going out of stock. So if you have a hero product, and it’s selling 100 150 units a day, and you’re under your storage limit, and you can’t send any in, well guess what’s going to go out of stock first, your hero product like, and that’s usually where, you know, the 80 20 rule is where you’re going to make 80% of your profit is on your hero product. So yeah, those are all the ways that it’s you know, it’s impacting our accounts, and a lot of other sellers listening to this.
David 5:50
You know, the last two points, I think, really seem to be the worst for us. And, you know, I was looking at one of the portfolio companies today, we currently have 32,000 units in stock, our inventory cap is at 20,000 units. And so of those products, we have a couple that sell awesome, like several 100 units a day. And then we have some that are slow movers. And unfortunately, with the account wide restriction on top of, you know, the entire account, we can’t send in those hero products, and that is the bread and butter of our business. And so, you know, I think it’s forced people to take a closer look at inventory management. But you know, every company is going to have some slow moving products, and they’re going to have some fast moving products, I would say that 80 20 rule applies to, well, it’s a rule of the universe. So it applies to everything. But you know, it applies to everyone’s company. And so this is something that I really hope goes away and goes away soon. So, you know, which leads me to my next question, Is this temporary? Or is this going to be how things work going forward?
Ken 6:57
Yeah. What are your thoughts? David, do you think this is temporary? Do you think it’s permanent? What’s up?
David 7:02
They have to be I think they have to be temporary, when we first got hit with these, I remember you commenting, it would be nearly impossible to grow a business this way. Right. You know, you mentioned you can’t add any new products, we’ve stalled out any new product launches, because we can’t even restock our existing inventory. And so, you know, if I think of the customer experience, you know, sellers are not able to bring new products into the market. And if there are other platforms, say Walmart that are allowing people to do product launches, and they don’t have these inventory restrictions well the customer is going to, you know, no longer shop on Amazon, they’re going to go to Walmart. And that can be walmart.com, I’ll tell you what I can say in my personal life, will have better pricing and good shipping, like same. I like walmart.com I really do as a consumer. And so my favorite product is out of stock on Amazon. That’s the second place I go. And so you know, however, so anyway, I don’t think this is going to be permanent. But I do think that Amazon is making a slight pivot and that is sticky, that will be around for a while. And so what you have, if I think about this, it’s an inventory problem. Amazon has not enough space, and there’s too much inventory, and they can’t accept any more inventory. And so, you know, if you look at the typical Amazon business, it’s run, and I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, but it’s generally run by someone who’s amateur at managing inventory. You know, I can say, as a solopreneur. Man, we were 10 hats. And it’s hard to be good at all 10. And there’s a lot of people that aren’t good at inventory management, and they need some help. Well, Amazon has to deal with the implications of these amateurs, right? They’re storing their inventory. And you know, I’ve done this where I launch a product, I don’t know if it’s gonna sell. But guess what, I’ve got a year until I get hit with long term storage fees. So you know, it’s not in my basement. It’s in Amazon warehouses, and it’s their problem. And so I think, you know, looking at days of inventory on hand, and inventory turnover, is going to be something that as sellers, we need to do a better job of, you know, we had this ipi for the longest time, and I didn’t know this inventory performance indicator. Is that what it stands for?
Ken 9:12
Yeah, IPI.
David 9:13
Yeah. And it was kind of like credit score, but for the longest time didn’t mean anything. And so I didn’t really pay any attention to it. But I think that is going to, you know, that number and how you manage inventory is going to impact your selling account. And so I don’t know, what do you think?
Ken 9:31
Yeah, absolutely. Just, uh, you know, want to follow up on some stuff that you mentioned, and then I’ll give my prediction if it’s temporary or not. So, I mean, if you’re listening to this, and you know, you’re like me, I’m not really good at inventory management. I really loved that I could just buy a bunch inventory and send it all into Amazon, and then kind of wait to see what the numbers are and then send in more when that gets low and not really have to worry about anything else. Right? Well, like you mentioned earlier, Amazon is forcing their Third Party sellers to go next level with their inventory. Otherwise, you’re just you’re gonna go out of business, you can’t operate unless you get a handle on your inventory management. And so yeah, if you’re out there and you’re struggling to manage inventory, you’re not alone. Like, it’s like David said, you know, as solopreneur, you wear 10 hats and you try to do everything and, you know, inventory management. So just learn and pivot and get better. That’s what we’re working on. So in terms of, you know, if I think the inventory restrictions are temporary, absolutely, Amazon cannot function like that, like their business model is to have the largest catalog of products for shoppers, right. And by doing this, you know, restricting inventory, you’re stifling new product launches. So this is temporary, I can guarantee you, it’s temporary. And I think it’s done. We don’t know when Prime Day is this year, as of yesterday, I looked and I couldn’t find a release date for Prime Day. So I believe that Amazon has squeezed down third party sellers from sending in inventory so they can get a handle on their FBA warehouses get caught up, you know, they’ve had staffing issues, COVID issues, you know, they’re expanding rapidly. And I think they’re kind of having a period of pause. So it’s basically blocking as many incoming shipments as possible getting these warehouses functioning optimally. And so they can deliver on Prime Day at the expense of third party sellers, right, like this is negatively impacting third party sellers businesses, and it’s positively impacting Amazon. Because when the dust settles, you know, if Amazon gets their warehouses functioning optimally, at the cost of not accepting incoming shipments, and then delivers on Prime Day, it’s gonna make them look good, right? But it’s gonna stifle third party sellers revenue, it’s gonna it’s gonna decrease it because we’re not going to maximize Prime Day can’t get any inventory in and, you know, but those are my thoughts. You know, Amazon is doing this, I believe, personally, that Amazon is doing this so they can deliver on Prime Day, and it’s kind of like a catch up from past six months of 12 months of, you know, ecommerce penetration is skyrocketing. So, I do think that this will go away. I don’t know how long, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, I think it’ll go away. But also, I do think that, like you mentioned earlier that you think Amazon is pivoting a little bit. I do agree with that, I think like, and I don’t know all the math behind it, but they’re expanding, they’re putting a ton of money into building new warehouses, new infrastructure, but I think ecommerce penetration has out scaled that, like they can’t keep up. And so one way to, kind of level set everything is to push down third party sellers right, like don’t accept any more inventory. So those are just kind of my thoughts and my guesses.
David 12:49
Absolutely. And, you know, putting myself in the shoes of Amazon. And let’s just use an example of one pallet position. Alright, so picture a pallet of goods in a warehouse that has 100 products, okay? If that inventory turns once a year, that means Amazon’s gonna generate 100 FBA fees for that. Now, imagine if that inventory were to turn 12 times a year, right, now they’re going to generate 1200 FBA fees. And so it is in their best interest to have the highest volume products in their warehouses and really discourage people from putting slow moving products in their warehouses. Because, yeah, it’s, you know, a fast moving product is a higher ROI for them. And so I get it, I really do get it. And if I managed an entire Amazon warehouse, I would probably get really frustrated with amateur inventory managers, who just send in a container and cross their fingers. And listen, I’ve been that guy. I mean, on product launches, you don’t have anything else to go off of. So you just kind of take a best guess and you move on. And sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s the Amazon warehouse that has to deal with that. So anyway, I think we are both in agreement that these restrictions are temporary. Now Ken we’ve put in some daily, weekly, monthly tasks to help us overcome this challenge. Can you dive into what those have been?
Ken 14:12
Yeah, absolutely. And before we get into that, one thing, you know, that I’d like to highlight is that, you know, David and I just went over all of the, you know, the bullshit restrictions and the challenges that we’re facing. And now we’re going to talk about the solution. Because anytime, you know, like, if you just complain about something, or always talk about, oh, this isn’t, you know, this challenge or whatever, I don’t want to hear that. If you’re gonna say, Hey, I have this issue. And then I’m going to say okay, what’s the solution? Right, like, because there’s always a solution to the challenge. And so now we’re going to talk about some of our solutions that we’re working on to kind of to kind of overcome this challenge, right. So number one, you know, check inventory daily. So, you know, David and his team, in the portfolio companies, you know, they’re kind of modifying everything checking inventory daily, can we get a shipment in? What does it look like and just being on top of it, I think that’s crucial. Especially, you know, you can’t just let it sit idle for a while you got to be on top of it and look for new changes, Amazon is constantly changing e commerce constantly changing. So check your inventory daily, and then, you know, be reactive like, with someone else pulling the levers on control, you can’t really be proactive, you don’t know what the levers are, but you can be reactive and you can do it daily. You know, if you’re checking your inventory daily, sending daily shipments, possibly, if you notice one day, you know, like you mentioned earlier with 32,000 units in stock, and our max quantity would be 20,000. Well, you could have checked the next day and it could be at 35,000. So then we could squeeze in 3000 units that day. And then the next day, Amazon might take it way back down, right. But if you’re checking daily, you could squeeze in some units.
David 15:51
Sorry to interrupt the episode, you may have heard Ken and I talking recently about a new tool that we’re using for Amazon refunds. Now I have used other refund tools like this. However, I can tell you in the first seven days, they scrubbed the back end of my Amazon account going back 18 months, and found $5,000 of refunds. And the nice thing about this is, it’s my money, Amazon made a mistake, and they are just auditing my account. The other thing I really like about this tool is there is no monthly fee, they only charge a commission if they are successful in getting you your money. Go to getida.com GETIDA and enter promo code FTM for firing the man FTM 400. This is an awesome tool. I can’t say enough good things about it. Now back to the episode. One thing I want to comment there is to quote 40 year old virgin, if you don’t use it, you lose it. And we’ve seen this happen where our account wide access or our account wide caps slide down. I mean, they’ve been decreasing. And so if we have 600 units available, guess what we’re going to generate a shipping plan for 600 units. Because I think that’s kind of Amazon’s attitude is, if they’re not going to use this space that we’re offering them, we have 1000 you know, 1000s of people that have filed cases that are applying that they want more storage, and they want it today. And if we’re not going to give it to this seller, we’ll give it to this other seller that’s asking for it. And so yeah, if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Ken 17:25
Yeah, absolutely. Very good. Next one on the list, run reports and find slow moving products. So this is something that we’re doing right now, we’ve been doing it for several weeks now, you know, we’re being forced to upgrade our inventory management strategy, right. And so this is one way to do that is running reports, find slow moving products, you know, create coupons, if you can, if it’s profitable, or if it makes business sense, don’t just do it for the sake of doing it. But crunch the numbers know your numbers, like David always says, know your numbers. And if coupons make sense, if you still have profit, you know, create coupons, they do help. And sometimes you have to, you know, create a coupon and check it in a week or two and kind of see the numbers and see what you’re doing there. But test them test coupons, run outlet deals, you know, if the margins are there, if you got slow moving products, run outlet deals, increase your PPC spend, your budgets, if you have the margin there, if you’re you know, running at a profitable ecos maybe dial it up a little bit spike the sales, that’ll help or your budgets, you know, if you run your accounts at, Okay, I’m gonna spend you know, $500 a day, or $100 a day or whatever it is for your size of your business, you know, look at that and reevaluate, are you leaving sales on the table, and if you are profitable sales, hey, dial that budget up, liquidate, or this is the last resort, liquidate or Institute removal process. So if you have products that are sitting in there, you know, let’s just say they’re over 12 months, you’re getting long term storage fees, they’re not selling well, they’ve just been like, under the rug for a long time, right? And you’re kind of like lifting the rug and sweeping everything around. And you’re like, Oh, what’s this? That’s some, you know, random product that we launched two years ago, and it’s not selling as well. Yeah, you know, what it might be time just to go ahead and liquidate that do removal process, whatever, just kind of cleaning up that inventory management a little bit.
David 19:19
You know Ken, you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but this has forced us to upgrade our processes, in terms of like identifying slow moving inventory, and then getting it out. And, you know, we both are in agreement that these inventory restrictions are temporary, however, you know, creating coupons, running outlet deals, and managing inventory by pulling these levers. This is going to be permanent in our businesses. The process that we followed to get specific on this is within Amazon, we run the excess inventory report. And anything that has there’s a column days of inventory on hand, and if it’s above 200 days of inventory on hand, we’re Creating a coupon or an outlet deal. And we’re doing this on a monthly basis, those outlet deals, they do expire. But this is just good practice, you know, you look at take ABC department store, there’s a reason that in April, you can buy a really nice winter coat for 50% off, right, that’s what big retail does, is they run specials, right to clear inventory out of the queue, and to generate some cash flow. And so you know, we were talking about, you know, you said liquidating, is a last resort. And we had had this discussion, we were talking about doing a giant removal order, and that generates zero cash flow. In fact, it costs us money to do that. And I hate and I normally would never say this, but I hate selling at a loss, it drives me completely bonkers. But say my breakeven point is nine bucks, and I have to sell something for seven bucks, right, and I’m gonna lose two bucks on every sale, that still generates cash flow. And removal order generates no cash flow. And so we have been looking to every alternate alternative, even if that means selling at a slight loss, just to clear out some stale inventory. And it’s a good practice. So anyway, that’s I just wanted to jump in there and say that.
Ken 21:12
yeah, absolutely. That’s a goldmine there. And like David said, we’re kind of, you know, using this as a, you know, as a point to add in long term to kind of level up our inventory management processes. Moving on down the list. Next one, consider increasing prices to slow your sales, if you’re close to stocking out. So let’s say, and this is one you’ll have to, you know, it can be a detriment, if you have a hero product, and it’s ranking really high on you know, 20 30 50 keywords, and you, you know, decrease the conversion rate, it’s going to hurt your ranking, you know, you have to measure that before you pull the trigger on this lever, you know, and there’s also like, what we’ve noticed is that, you know, your competitors are going to sell out to, like, everybody is under this restriction. So if, you know, if you sell water bottles, and there’s 12 sellers out there, and nine of them are stocked out, and three of them are not, and you have the best product, you know, you might be able to increase your price, and not really hurt your sale. So this is a lever, you know, take a look at your, you know, the entire view of your category and see what your competitors are doing. But you might be able to increase your price a little bit. And just to kind of slow those, you know, because if you can’t restock, and you know, if you’re out of stock, that’s not gonna help you at all, no revenue, no ranking anything. So take a look at that, maybe increase your prices. You know, piggyback on the top of that, you know, today June one, Amazon just instituted price increases, you know, on fees. So, you know, you’ve got that you’ve got supply chain issues you’ve got freight is through the roof. So it might be a good time to reevaluate your overall pricing strategy anyway, to kind of keep up with your, you know, your profit margins, everybody is eating away at your profit margins, Amazon freight forwarder, you know, and so you have to react at some point you have to increase pricing or your business, you’ll go out of business, you won’t be relevant. So next one, and this one, I think, is probably the top item on this list that I think moves the needle the most. And that’s contracting a three PL to store your inventory, and ship it out, if possible. This is especially true if you have you know, if you source your products from overseas, even if not, it’s a great, great idea to have it as a buffer, but especially if you source from overseas, a three PL is almost a must have now. And what we’re using the three PL for kind of in the portfolio companies is we’re keeping 30 days of inventory in the US as a buffer stock. And so, you know, if you’re sourcing from China, you know, it’s usually a 90 day lead time, you know, 30 days in production, you know, 60 days from, you know, a to z, and you know, so you can’t really manage inventory effectively with a 90 day lead time. So if you keep 30 days of buffer stock and a three PL you have that you can kind of send in those daily shipments and kind of use that as a as a buffer. That’s really huge. And the other one, you can enable fbm if you know if your FBA listings go out of stock, you know you should have fbm listings created for all of your listings and then you can just switch over to fbm you know your sales are not going to be as much as FBA listing but it’s going to be something and if you have inventory, let’s say Amazon like you know you mentioned earlier David, hey we have 35,000 units and our limit is 20,000 we can’t ship anymore in we’re stuck but if you have a three PL or you know maybe you’re still you know pushing products out of your garage, click on that fbm listing, get those sales, ship it out at least you’re getting some sales so that’s kind of the last item on the list.
David 24:44
Yeah, one thing I want to comment on the three PL is this is a term that I think is somewhat generic and can be interpreted in a couple different ways. So take a company like deliver or ship Bob, they are doing the they will ship an individual unit to your customers. And that’s a nice backup for FBA, and a lot of them have two day shipping. And so it’s a very suitable alternative to FBA. One other type of three PL and I’m not even sure if you’d call it a three PL is warehousing to where we ship them a container, they hold that container and ship in a pallet or two at a time to Amazon. And that’s been something we have a warehouse out in California that we’re using. And our rationale behind that is yes, we’re incurring additional storage fees. However, when we place an order in China, usually it’s somewhere around 80 to 90 days before it’s checked in to Amazon warehouses. And I like having that inventory on US soil. Because whenever these restrictions are lifted, well now we’re only two weeks out, right? We can, or one week out, depending on how efficient Amazon is getting your product through FC transfer, but that’s something that we haven’t, like, we haven’t stopped ordering. And that’s like, we’re kind of rolling the dice honestly, like, we just placed an order this week. And I don’t know, we didn’t generate shipping labels, because we couldn’t. But I don’t know when that order is ready to ship if we’re going to ship it to our warehouse in California, or in to Amazon, but it’s going to ship and I do want it on US soil. I think that’s going to help us and so we’ll have to whenever these restrictions are lifted, we’ll have to have a party after we generate shipping labels.
Ken 26:21
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And you’re right, thanks for reiterating that so three PL and in warehouse you know, you could have your own, you know, you can even operate you know, if you have your own warehouse, and then you know store pallets and not ship single in but just store that buffer inventory, and pallets and bulk ship it in. So yeah, definitely want to keep those two separate three PL and warehouse. So how have we use this to kind of level up a little bit. Can you explain that to the audience?
David 26:47
Yeah, absolutely. So as we discussed a little bit earlier, we have taken a really hard look at our inventory management process. You know, up until now, the focus has been staying in stock. And what we’ve realized is what happens if you’re too in stock, right? What happens if you have too many products, and so, you know, the coupon deals, the outlet deals, increasing PPC spend, that is now part of our inventory management process. And I’d say it’s very holistic, right, we want to be in stock, but not too much in stock. And that has had a good impact on cash flow, right? You know, we’ve, when you buy inventory, and it sits for a year, it’s not generating any cash flow. And so we like moving those levers and, you know, cranking up our cash flow a little bit. You know, it’s also forced us to take a hard look at our product catalog and make a business case for each product. You know, I have some products right now that I’ll sell 10 of a month, they’re 10 profitable sales. And the supplier has a really low mo Q. And so I don’t mind that I just make 10 sales a month, does it probably generate no more than $30 of income? Yeah, but it’s $30 of income. And if I’m placing an order with that supplier, it’s not a lot of extra work just to tack on 10 or 15 units, right. And so However, I do think that that is, you know, we talk about the 80 20 rule a lot, and you know, those slow moving listings, they still get flagged for pesticides, they still, you know, we still need to update the images. When we do video, sometimes we’ll do video for those. And so there’s like maintenance that goes on in having a listing. And, you know, you may ask yourself, like, Is it worth it to maintain this listing that’s only generating 30 bucks a month in profit? And I would say the answer is probably no. And so as much as I been in the camp of more products, more products, more products, but it’s kind of forced us to trim the fat a little bit. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And so we’re focusing on on the 20% that generate 80% of the profits. And you know, another thing that we’ve been doing is reaching out to other sellers and seeing what they’re doing to manage this. And you know, this is a to the audience. And this is I cannot be more sincere when I say this, go to firingtheman.com. On the right hand side, we have select voicemail. And if you share a pro tip, or an idea that we haven’t mentioned in this episode, and it helps Ken and I navigate these waters, we will buy you a steak dinner, or whatever you want. I mean, this is something that, and we will share it with the audience, right, we can navigate through this together. But we really, you know, a lot of these pro tips that the warehousing, for instance, we were talking to an Amazon seller, and that’s where we got that idea. And it makes sense. And, you know, so far so good. And so, yeah, I don’t know, anything that I left out here?
Ken 29:30
No, you covered everything. One last thing I want to go over, you know, it’s um, so what I like to see this as an opportunity, right? And so this kind of inventory restriction is kind of squashing us down a little bit and we’re like, Okay, what can we do here? And I’m like, you know, we’re talking about, hey, let’s use this as a reason to go after more marketplaces like if Amazon is squeezing us down. Hey, where else can we go? Where else can we expand? use this as a reason to go after more marketplaces increase your diversity. You know, like, Walmart, for example, Walmart’s really kicking into gear, you know, they just opened up to all international sellers, it’s gonna be more competitive. But you know, hey, there’s no, you know, if you can get into the WFS, there’s no restrictions right now. So, you know, use this challenge yourself, hey, look out. Where else can I add diversity to my business, new marketplaces, things like that. So use it as a positive.
David 30:26
Absolutely. You know, this is something when we set out in 2020, we had each portfolio company, we had made goals for each one. And, you know, I would say one goal, it may have been a little bit different for each one. But, you know, we wanted to double revenue and triple net income. And we were planning on doing that through product launches, at least achieving a piece of that through product launches. Well, guess what, we can’t launch any products. And so we can either sit on our hands and do nothing. Or we can go, you know, go after market penetration on some of these other marketplaces. You’re exactly right. And so we’re very bullish on Walmart, if you haven’t, and I would tell our listeners, if you haven’t bought anything off walmart.com, just do it. Just put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and go buy some household item. It’s slick, it’s a good user experience, I would say it is as good as Amazon. I don’t think it’s better than Amazon. But, you know, if Amazon continues to put the squeeze on sellers, guess we’re all new product launches are gonna go? Walmart. or these other marketplaces. And guess where all the customers are gonna go? Walmart or these other marketplaces. And so, yeah, don’t stop just because you know, business is hard. And this is just one challenge. There’ll be different challenges in a couple months, and we’ll just have to navigate through those as well.
Ken 31:41
Yeah, absolutely. So David, do you want to wrap it up with last bit of advice?
David 31:46
Yeah, you know, I would say like, just stay the course fight through these tough times. You know, this is harder, it is harder to operate on Amazon this year than it was last year. However, I do believe that this is going to weed out some sellers. And by staying the path, it’s going to lead to a more rewarding outcome. And so just stay the course and fight through these tough times these inventory restrictions will be lifted. In a couple months, we’ll look back and laugh. All the hair that fell off the top of my head and how many gray hairs I got from this, but I don’t know anything else you want to mention?
Ken 32:22
Yeah, absolutely. And the same thing with the you know, it’ll put more gray hairs in my beard. But yeah, if you have questions, you’re listening to this, you know, reach out to us support@firingtheman.com, you know, hit us up with questions, you know, we always reply. Yeah. David, did you cover the challenge earlier or not?
David 32:38
Yeah, just to reiterate it, if you have a pro tip on how to navigate this that we didn’t mention in the podcast, go to firingtheman.com, send us a voicemail. On the right hand side of the screen. There’s a really easy tool, just hit send voicemail. And if it’s something that Ken and I that will help us navigate through these waters more efficiently, guess what, we’re gonna buy you a steak dinner. And hell, if you come to Missouri, we’ll do it in person. But yeah, anyway, and we’ll share that with the audience on future episodes. But I think we can get through this together, and a rising tide will lift all ships, so send that voicemail. Thanks, everyone for tuning in. And we’ll see you next week. Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s firing the man podcast. If you’d like this episode, head on over to firingtheman.com And check out our resource library for exclusive firing the man discounts on popular e commerce subscription services that is firingtheman.com\resource. You can also find a comprehensive library of over 50 books that Ken and I have read in the last few years that have made a meaningful impact on our business, or that head on over to www dot firingtheman.com/library. Lastly, check us out on social media at firing the man and on YouTube at firing the man for exclusive content. This is David Schomer
Ken 33:59
and Ken Wilson. We’re out
David 34:16
before you go we wanted to share a new service that Ken and I’ve been using called Getida that has made us over $10,000 in Amazon reimbursements. The service requires no monthly subscription and Getida collects a small percentage of the money they recover for you. It takes less than five minutes to set up and works on all Amazon marketplaces. Go to getida.com GETIDA.com and enter promo code FTM 400. That’s FTM for firing the man 400 to get your first $400 in reimbursements commission free. How much money does Amazon owe you?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai