Podcast Episode 154 – Why You’re Not Finding Any Inventory to Sell on Amazon

Are you struggling to find inventory to sell on Amazon? Our focus today is to answer many of the questions we get via email as to why you might be unsuccessful in finding stock to sell. Join us as we go through the top three reasons why you are not finding inventory.

We’ll discuss some of the best ways to expand your horizons and find new sources of profitable inventory to sell on Amazon. It’s our goal in this episode to leave you with the best and most consistent way to make sure you have goods to sell. Don’t miss out, listen today!

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Key points from Episode 154:

• The biggest reason you aren’t finding enough inventory to sell on Amazon.
• How to get approved to sell more things: apply ASAP.
• Overcoming the top distractions from focusing on the task of finding inventory!
• Why you need to get out of your comfort zone.
• Why you shouldn’t rely too much on low-hanging fruit.
• What it means when we say “low-hanging fruit.”
• The best way to find consistent inventory to sell on Amazon.
• And more!

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Full-Time FBA Facebook group
• Podcast Episode 43 – How to Get Approved to Sell Restricted Brands on Amazon
• Category Approval Course
  • Use code FT20 to save 20%
• Premium Sports Brand Approval Course
• How to Get Approved to Sell Restricted Brands on Amazon
• How to Check Open Amazon Applications and Reapply to Sell Restricted Products

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Episode 154 Transcript:

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01.8] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Full-Time FBA Show. In each episode, it’s our goal to help you turn part-time hours into a full-time income, selling almost anything on Amazon. Now, your hosts of the show, Stephen and Rebecca Smotherman.

[WELCOME]

[0:00:21.3] REBECCA: Hello there and welcome to this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. We are coming to you today with episode number 154, “Why You’re Not Finding Any Inventory to Sell on Amazon” and here with me today to talk about this topic is my cohost, Stephen Smotherman.

[0:00:39.6] STEPHEN: I’m excited to be here. You see, we get these emails from people who sell on Amazon and sometimes comments on our Facebook group about having struggles finding inventory to sell on Amazon. So we kind of broke down what’s going on and figured out some ways and reasons why you’re not finding inventory to sell on Amazon and that’s what we’ll talk about today on the show.

[DISCUSSION]

[0:01:02.0] REBECCA: Before we get into our topic today, we just want to remind you that we have a newsletter and if you are not signed up for it already, why not? You should be. You can go to fulltimefba.com, look for the subscribe box up in the top corner and be sure that you have your email entered in there. You will get about two emails a week, we try to keep it pretty consistent and pretty to the point.

We give out tips about selling on Amazon, links to videos and blog posts, lots of good information about how to turn part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA. Make sure you’re signed up at fulltimefba.com and as Stephen mentioned, we often hear comments in our Full-Time FBA Facebook group or in our inbox with our email of people saying, “I just can’t find the inventory to sell on Amazon.”

“I don’t know how you all are doing it but I can’t find it” or “I’m not finding enough. I can find a little bit but it is not enough to make a full-time income or it is not enough to even make it worth my while. I am losing money because of the fees” all sorts of different things could be coming up. People can get really frustrated over the situation when you are not finding enough inventory to make it worth your while to sell on Amazon but it really doesn’t have to be that way.

In today’s episode, we’re going to share with you why you’re not finding enough inventory and what you can do about that.

[0:02:18.8] STEPHEN: So the first reason is the biggest one, especially when it comes to beginners who are just starting selling on Amazon. One reason why you’re not finding enough inventory is because you’re gated and restricted from selling a lot of stuff. Maybe you have been outsourcing and you’re like, “Oh this is profitable but I am not approved to sell it” and it can be kind of frustrating over time.

So if you are gated from selling certain items on Amazon that can be a reason why you’re not finding enough inventory and it makes sense. Now, this has to do with the fact that for those who are just starting selling on Amazon, they are going to be gated in certain categories or certain brands that would like to have the people who sell them on Amazon, the brands would prefer you to have some experience.

So when it comes to being approved to sell, most brands have that experience at about six months. So you can see if you begin selling on Amazon, you have kind of a six-month waiting period before there’s a lot of brands that will start to approve you. Now, to get approved, you have to apply.

So no matter where you are, if you’re a beginner or if you are an experienced seller on Amazon, if you find out you’re gated from selling an item that you are restricted, that you are not approved, then what you do at that moment is apply as soon as possible. If you’re doing retail arbitrage and you’re in a store aisle and you see you’re gated, then apply right there in the store aisle. There is a quick way to do that in the Scoutify app.

I love that, you can do it in the Amazon seller app, you can apply right then and there and see if you get approved, and sometimes based on your seller experience, you might get approved. Maybe some brands just want people to apply to be able to sell it and they’ll approve everybody but some of them they require three months, maybe six months but just apply as soon as possible.

A lot of people see that they are gated and that’s a stop sign to them and they just move on. No, it’s not. It’s just a roadblock that you need to work through. The second step after you apply, if you got rejected or they request more documents or things like that, you can set a reminder to reapply in three months and so do that on a regular basis. Every three months, go in and reapply for the items, for the brands, for the ASINs that you are restricted from.

The longer you are selling, the more likely with your good seller metrics and good feedback scores and things like that, you will start to get approved overtime. Some people also consider using ungating course, the only one that we recommend is fulltimefba.com/categoryapproval. There are so many ungating courses that have kind of sketchy ways of getting approved for some brands or categories and we don’t recommend other courses.

But category approval, fulltimefba.com/categoryapproval, goes to the one that we recommend that is a safe way to do that. Now, if you want more information about restrictions, you can check out our podcast episode number 43. We’ll put that and other links in our show notes for today.

[0:05:00.2] REBECCA: Another reason you might not be finding enough inventory to sell on Amazon is that you’re distracted from the task of finding inventory to sell. I say this as somebody who this has happened to in the past. It is easy to get so caught up in other things in your job or other things just in your life that you are not focusing 100% on the sourcing that you should be spending your time on.

Instead, you are doing other menial tasks that you could outsource and hire to somebody else or you’re just not prioritizing sourcing as opposed to doing all the other things that need to be done. Outsourcing is the number one way to free up your time in order to get rid of that distraction of menial jobs. You can hire somebody to help you with prep.

You can hire somebody to help you take care of your Amazon seller central account doing some of that back office type work inventory management and whatnot and the more time that you then have somebody else helping you with those types of tasks is more time that you can focus on sourcing and then if you are able to focus more time on sourcing, it should follow that you would find more inventory to sell on Amazon.

So if you are not finding enough inventory, really take a long hard look at what are you doing with your time in your business each day. Are you spending enough time sourcing or are you just kind of skating through your sourcing time and spending a lot of time on other tasks that you could easily outsource?

[0:06:27.0] STEPHEN: A third reason why you’re not finding enough inventory to sell on Amazon and this might hurt a little bit but you are just too comfortable. You know, you only source in your comfort zones, maybe you’ve got favorite categories that you stick with or favorite stories that you stick with, favorite websites, that you like to do online arbitrage from but those comfort zones might have worked well before.

But you might be going through a little dry spell with these situations and sources and so you’re a little too comfortable, maybe it is time to try something new. Get a little bit out of your comfort zone, find a new source, find a new store, a new category to try. Try something new, expand your knowledge of something new so that you can grow your Amazon business that way, and find more inventory because you are not just going to retail store and just going to this toy section.

You are going to find stuff at other sections as well. Try something new, get a little uncomfortable, and guess what? That uncomfortable-ness, is that a word, uncomfortable-ness?

[0:07:20.3] REBECCA: Sure, it is now.

[0:07:21.1] STEPHEN: Okay, we’ll go with that, will eventually go away and you’ll become comfortable and find success in other categories and other stores as well.

[0:07:27.7] REBECCA: Discomfort.

[0:07:28.6] STEPHEN: Discomfort, thank you. Thank you English major.

[0:07:31.1] REBECCA: You’re welcome. Along the same lines, another possible answer to the question of why you’re not finding inventory to sell on Amazon is that you are relying too much on low-hanging fruit. This is a different kind of comfort that you might be relying on here. Low-hanging fruit means easy and effortless items that you can just find without spending a whole lot of time or effort and if you can do that, so can anybody else.

When you’re doing that, when you are relying on that type of low-hanging fruit, it becomes harder and harder to find inventory with less competition and higher profits. So when we are talking about low-hanging fruit when it comes to sourcing, what we mean is only sourcing at clearance aisles and big box stores, going to thrift stores, garage sales, looking at sales items, all of those are items that could find you some good profits at times.

But it takes a lot of work to find them on a consistent basis in large enough numbers to give you a consistent inventory and consistent profits. None of those places, clearance aisles, garage sales, sales items that are on like a seasonal or a time-dependent sale, none of those are going to be long lasting enough to continually give you profits and cashflow and you are going to need to just keep working at finding new hotspots and that is kind of draining and not the best and most sustainable way to run your business.

[0:08:55.8] STEPHEN: Yeah and you know what? The absolute best way to find consistent inventory to sell on Amazon, where you are not worried about where you’re going to find your next big hotspot of inventory, your next honey hole if you will, is to focus on finding replens and replen is short for replenishable. A replenishable item is an item that you can find on a consistent basis that you can continually replenish your stock.

You know where to find it, you send in a certain number to Amazon. When your stock starts running low, you go out and get some more, restock, replenish your inventory and do that on a consistent basis and we’ve got a course to help you with that. The Resellers Guide to Replenishables, find profitable Amazon inventory to sell again and again. You can check out that course, fulltimefba.com/replens.

We’ll put the link in the show notes but with that course, we’re going to walk through our three-part replen formula, how to find inventory that you can continually reorder again and again on a monthly basis so that you are never worried about finding more stock to sell on Amazon. We’ll walk you through the replen rule of 12 and why it’s so important when making your sourcing decisions and so much more.

Again the link, fulltimefba.com/replens and that’s going to solve your inventory problems and we’ll help you just continually always have inventory in stock to sell on Amazon.

[CLOSING CONVERSATION]

[0:10:16.9] REBECCA: Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. We are on episode number 154, so if you are interested in seeing the show notes with all of the links that we’ve mentioned as well as the transcript, be sure to check out fulltimefba.com/154.

[0:10:32.2] STEPHEN: Next week on the show, we’re going to be talking about the things we ignore as Amazon sellers. There is some things that some people obsess with and focus on, we just ignore it and we’ll walk you through those things that we ignore next week on The Full-Time FBA Show.

[OUTRO]

[0:10:48.1] ANNOUNCER: That is all for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. So head over to fulltimefba.com/podcast, where you will find the show notes and links from this episode. While you’re there, subscribe to our newsletter where you’ll get several free downloads of our popular and helpful Amazon FBA resources. Now, take action on what you have learned today so you can find success at turning part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA.

[END]