The insane holiday selling season on Amazon is in full swing for 2020, but don’t let that stop you! Keep moving forward and use your holiday momentum to carry you into even higher sales for 2021.
Whether this was your first year on Amazon or your 4th, you will always learn new lessons every single holiday season.
What did you learn this year?
Do you need to prepare your inventory even earlier this upcoming year for the holidays?
Do you have ideas on how to take advantage of the surge in traffic for other holidays, like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Prime Day? Think outside the box when it comes to your items!
Today I'm going through some of my client's reactions or feedback on their holiday selling season on Amazon and my advice to them to grow even further!
I sent too much inventory of an item and now have a lot in stock.
Unless it's holiday-specific, like a Christmas tree ornament, don't worry about it. It happens! Even Amazon's algorithm and robots can't predict when an item suddenly takes off, and when one suddenly drops. It's always better to be over-prepared for the holidays than under-prepared and being out of stock for weeks, right?
We can only predict things so much, and unfortunately, we can't read minds or see into the future.
Keep those items in stock, you won't be charged long term storage fees until the 6-month mark, and they are likely to continue selling over the next few months and special occasions.
I couldn’t keep things in stock!
It's tough when you realize you missed out on a massive number of sales because you couldn't keep items in stock. But it happens. Learn from it!
Start planning even earlier for the holiday season in 2021.
Another tip: If you literally couldn't have started any earlier but couldn't keep things in stock, it might be time to re-calculate your profit margins and increase your prices. Most businesses do a price or rate increase every year, when is the last time you did?
I wanted to do FBA but didn’t.
You can start now! You don't have to wait until right before the next Christmas selling season. Test the waters, send in a few of your items, and try it out. Then, when Christmas 2021 rolls around you will be a Fulfillment by Amazon pro!
Check out this post on my top tips for trying FBA.
I doubled or tripled my sales from the last holiday season!
Congratulations!
First, make sure to take some time off to celebrate your accomplishments, then you’ll want to take some time in January to figure out your numbers. Use your November and December numbers for planning next November and December (whatever your numbers were in 2020, you’ll likely want to double or even triple that amount of inventory for 2021!).
Knowing your numbers will help you figure out when you’ll need to start doing holiday inventory prep for the next holiday season, too. Not to mention, making sure you place supplier orders in time to meet your inventory goals next year.
Final Thoughts
No matter how your holiday selling season went, take a moment, look at your numbers, and celebrate your wins. Any win, big or small. Use your wins and areas that could be improved, to make 2021 an even better year!
