Thread by @nicogloazzo

1/ **how to increase your #amazon seller revenue and #buybox by using FBM as a #FBA backup so you never go out of stock**

2/ Over the past year, @amazon added stock limitations for sellers which means you can send only a certain amount of products to their fulfilment centre

3/ If Demand is high there is nothing you can do until you build enough sales velocity that will allow you to increase your storage level

Often you do have items in stock in your own 3PL but you can’t ship them to @amazon because of the limited inventory. What does happen next?

4/ You risk running out of stock of your ASINs and lose momentum and SEO ranking. Other than losing buybox.

5/ Even if you manage to send some more inventory to Amazon sometimes it takes 2-3 weeks to be fully in stock across the country and so for a few days you might risk getting your ASIN OOS. And if you make 10K a day from a single ASIN that's a lot of money lost.

6/ What can help you to avoid this issue and maintain a decent sales velocity even while you are OOS on FBA is having a duplicated FBM backup SKUs

7/ What I found really successful is to have the duplicate FBM SKU always with a min quantity in stock (ie 50) and since Amazon will always prioritise FBA over FBM, if you are in stock for FBA you win buy box via FBA if you are OOS on FBA you will win Buybox via FBM

8/ Step 1 → Let's say you already have in your catalogue your FBA ASIN, now add a new product to your Amazon catalogue. Search for the ASIN you want to duplicate and list it again under a different SKU code( ie SKU: FBM12344 and the FBA one is SKU: 12344)

9/ Step 2 → Add a quantity of let's say 50 units to start with for this new FBM SKU and set the shipping fee in the shipment template to $0. Set the specific handling time per SKU to 3-5 days just to be safe

10/ Step 3 → In your 3PL dashboard add the specific SKU created and link your 3PL with the seller central platform so they can send the tracking code back to Amazon

11/ Step 4 → Activate automated pricing strategy with tools like @repricerexpress and create a rule set to adjust your price to be always 0.05 lower the buybox winner if they are on FBA (for your FBM SKUs).

12/ Step 4.1 → In this way you make sure to win buybox even if you are on FBM, since Amazon prioritise always FBA over FBM but if you are aggressive enough you can still win buybox over FBA resellers.

13/ With this strategy, you always guarantee a certain level of sales velocity and if anything happens to your FBA ASIN (ie lost, damaged, or amazon rejected a shipment as it happened to us) you can still get sales from your duplicated FBM SKU

14/ This can help you to increase sales by over 20% or more depending on your stock level and products. (Assuming you don't do FBM #Prime)
In addition, a recent CvR lift study I got shows that FBM in the grocery category has a conversion rate that is basically half of FBA.

15/ This means that for sure if you have a longer shipping time and you make users pay for shipping, this will have an impact on your CvR

However having an FBM backup SKUs can still help you to maintain sales velocity, ranking and get revenue daily.

16/ In summary, I recommend always having a duplicate SKU in FBM to cover any potential FBA OOS issue and maintain stable revenue, buybox ownership and #SEO ranking