If you’re new to selling on Amazon, then the big question after ‘What should I sell?’ and ‘Where do I source it?’ is going to be ‘How much stock should I order?’
Without any previous sales figures to go on, you could guess and risk holding too much or too little stock – OR you could follow my simple guide and nail it first time!
It’s a tricky one. You’ve just started your Amazon journey. You don’t want to order too much stock and have an empty wallet and a full warehouse, and on the other hand, you don’t want to order too little and miss out on those all-important early sales.
Most people who’re new to selling on Amazon have a strict budget, and the decision of how much stock to order is largely dictated by how much they can afford.
Let’s face it, unless your Jeff Bezos, you’re not going to have a bucket load of money to sink into your new business. So, the first thing you need to think about is how much you can afford.
But even if you’ve got a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars to spare, you’re not going to want to waste it – so here’s my simple system to choosing how much stock to buy for your first order.
The 90-day rule
A good rule of thumb is to do order enough stock to last you 90 days.
Why 90 days?
This is based on the estimated times for the production of your products, the shipping from China, and, of course, the time for you to sell your goods.
Production time = 30 days
Shipping via sea freight from China = 35 days
Time for selling = 25 days
Total = 90 days
These figures are estimated and I’ve been prudent with the production and shipping times to allow for minor delays.
So, now you know how many days you need stock for, the next question is, ‘How many sales per day am I likely to make?’
Predict your daily sales with FBA Toolkit
It’s hard to guess how much you’re going to sell when you’ve never sold anything before – but you CAN find out how many units your competitors are selling.
You can do this with a product’s Best Sellers Rank.
This knife set has a BSR of 213 – a fairly arbitrary number to us. But we can use it to find approximately how many sales it makes each day with a brilliant, free site called FBA Toolkit.
Simply scroll down the homepage to the Kitchen & Dining graph, enter the sales rank and click GO.
The knife set sells about 60 sets per day (Wow!)
Take the average of your top 10 competitors
Find your ten closest competitors in your niche and use the method above to find out their daily sales. Then simply divide by 10 to get an average.
Then all you have to do is multiply that figure by 90 and you’ve got your initial order.
Example
Average daily sales for 10 products under ‘knife set’ = 25
25 sales x 90 days = 2250 units to order
Of course, if you have a stricter budget, there’s nothing wrong with ordering less just to see how it goes. But, if you want a clearer idea of how much stock you’ll need, then I’ve found the above method to be the easiest and quickest way.
Thanks for reading guys and gals!
Hugs and kisses 🙂
Stacey xxx