When you’re out sourcing, one of the things you need to consider is your competition. Say you’re out sourcing at Big Lots and come across an item with a great ROI. You research the item with your favorite scouting app and see that there are other FBA sellers selling this item. Do you join them? Or pass and look for other items with less competition? It’s something to consider when making reselling decisions.
In the past, some scouting apps were able to tell you how many of an item a certain seller had in stock, but Amazon changed the way these scouting apps get their information, and now it’s a complete mystery. Or is it?
When a scouting app returns the current data for a particular product, it will usually show you current prices, some of your competition, sales rank, and other pieces of information. Wouldn’t you also like to know how many of an item one particular seller has in stock? It could make a big difference in whether or not you decide to buy an item for resale. It could be helpful information to know if a few of the lower priced sellers have 5 to 10 of an item in stock before you decide to add yourself as a seller of that item.
Even more critical is knowing how many of an item Amazon has in stock. With Amazon’s buying power, they could easily have hundreds or thousands of an item in stock at any given time. When Amazon has that many in stock, it’s often a good idea to pass on selling that item.
There are two main ways you can find out how many items your competition currently has in stock. One way is to use an app that will find the data for you, and the other way is to find out for yourself with a manual method. I’ll break down both of these methods for you here:
1. How Many Manually
Here are the steps to manually find out how many items someone has in their current FBA inventory:
1. Go to the Amazon sales page for the item in question.
2. Click on the link that shows all of the current product offers (new, used, collectible, etc).
3. Choose one of the current sellers and add their item to your cart.
4. Click on the “edit your cart” link.
5. Click on the quantity and change it to 10+.
6. Type in 999 (the highest number allowed) and click update.
7. If that seller has under 999 items, then it will state, “This seller only has XX of these available.”
There ya go! You now know how many of that item that particular seller has in stock at a FBA warehouse. This method works with 3rd party sellers as well as with Amazon themselves. Note: These methods only work for seeing Amazon’s stock level when Amazon doesn’t have purchase quantity limits. Amazon sometimes limits purchases to 3 units, in which case they may have hundreds in stock, but you will only see 3 units available.
8. I almost forgot! Don’t forget to remove these items from your cart. I once had almost $30,000 in my Amazon shopping cart when using this method. I wouldn’t want anyone to accidentally buy everything in their cart.
The pros of this method are that it’s free, and you can do it both on your desktop and on your smartphone with the Amazon buyer’s app. The main cons of this method are that you can only do this trick for one seller at a time, and if you have multiple sellers to research, it can take up a lot of time.
2. How Many Automatically (with the How Many App)
My favorite method to find out stock levels of my competitors is to use the How Many? app. When you sign up for How Many? you get access to both the Chrome extension and the smartphone app. The How Many? extension can be easily installed on the Chrome browser and be up and running in no time. When you open up an Amazon sales page and click on the How Many? icon, you’ll see the inventory levels of every seller selling that item (including Amazon, FBA and MF), even if the seller has buyer limits on his listing. You’ll even see how many inventory items the seller has if they are above 999 (the limit of what you can see doing this manually). To learn about many more features of How Many?, simply click here.
How Many? also has a mobile app that you can use anywhere you have a connection. Simply scan the item’s barcode or enter in the UPC or ASIN, and you’ll see immediately the stock levels every seller has for that item.
There is a free version of How Many? (which allows 5 free scans per day) and a paid version that has unlimited scans, but for the time it saves, it’s well worth the cost for us. For that one monthly fee you get access to both the Chrome extension and the mobile app.
Knowing how many items your competitors have in stock is not only good for when you are out sourcing, but also when you are pricing your items. If the three lowest priced sellers all have just one item in stock, then depending on the rank, you might want to price your item higher than theirs, knowing they might sell out while your item is headed to a FBA warehouse. On the other hand, if you see that the lowest priced competitor has 100 in stock, you might want to price more competitively to get a quicker sale. It’s all about strategy and what works best for you.
Now, you give it a try.
Ok, now it’s time for you to put your new inventory research skills to the test! Here is an item that I want you to research. Take a look at the three lowest priced FBA sellers and let me know in the comments how many they each currently have in stock.
Product: Paw Patrol Chase’s Spy Cruiser, Vehicle and Figure
Don’t peek below at what others are posting. In fact, others may have done this exercise at a completely different time than you and will have different results. In any case, you never know if someone bought this item on the same day as you are reading this blog post, and the inventory levels have changed. Comment below how many the three lowest priced FBA sellers have in stock.
I found the following quantities:
2@$7.99
2@$7.99
1@$8.77
4@8.80
I wonder if us adding it to our cart while someone else is going through this exercise will skew the results. Awesome tip, Stephen! This should be really helpful!
Thanks great info I use the 999 method didn’t know about app amazon don’t make it easy for sellers I used to get my info for stock from FBA wizard but amazon blocked it I try that app thanks again
1,2,4
Passionate About Books has 1
Bison Bellow has 4
JDP Sales has 2
Phoenix Treasure Box has 7
Great job everyone! I hope this will help you make smarter buying and pricing decisions!
I use this trick quite often. But, knowing how I do things with my FBA inventory, I think it is always good to remember that just because another FBA seller has only 1 in stock doesn’t mean 10 more aren’t on a UPS truck. And it doesn’t mean that after those 10 are sold more wont be coming. Especially on larger items or slower selling items, I don’t overstock them, but replenish them as needed.
So it is valuable to use your wits and decide if the item is likely to be a Replenishable item that the seller can get more of at any time, or if it is likely to be a “one-off” type item such as clearance items from a big box store. I also look for a connection between the seller and the product. If the seller name happens to be the publishers/manufacturers name, for instance, then obviously they have unlimited supply.
Good additional thoughts, David.
KMKB has 1 @ $9.95
Roanoke Store has 2 @ $9.95
Make Your Mark has 2 @ $10.15
Well done, Laura!
Thanks for the tip! I also found that the number left in inventory shows up when you only add one item to your cart….
Traci, I have found this to be true some of the time… but for some reason, not all the time.
This is an awesome tip! Thanks Stephen!!
Is there any way to find out how much of an item the competition is selling per month?
Martha
There is not a way to know exactly how many items the competition is selling per month, but you can find out some information so that you can get an idea of how many times per month an item will sell. It’s a website called CamelCamelCamel.com. You can search using the item’s ASIN on that website and it will tell you the sales rank and price history of that item. You can guess that a sale was made each time the sales rank chart has a big “uptick” in the graph. Hope this helps!
1, 1 & 4 when I looked at it. Thanks for sharing your strategy Stephen. That info along with the rank will help me make better decisions.
Jan
Glad I could help!
4,1,1
Good job, Tommy!
Hi there.
The Reseller’s Guide to Board Games – Does it cover how to find profitable boardgames online?
You see, I’m overseas living in Sweden, and I can’t go into a physical store in the US.
That is my only question to you.
Kind Regards,
Johan Norberg
There is a whole chapter on how to find board games on eBay and sell on Amazon, so yes, it does cover finding board games online.
No he podido realizar ventas en amazon. no se si las palabras claves estan mal,o no es muy vendido este producto en amazon
Thank You Stephen for the knowledge, this will help me a great deal I appreciate you for helping us so much.
Hy Fatima!
I’m new do yu help me.
I need amazon selller account please help me.
Thank you Bee!
Hi,
There is an option by ‘edit listing’ to limit how many of an item a customer can buy in one order, so if a seller enters there any limit, then this trick wouldn’t tell you he’s true inventory count…
That’s true, but almost nobody uses this option… except for Amazon. Most 3rd party Amazon sellers don’t want to limit the number of items a person can buy from them. But it’s something to think about, so thanks for brining it up.
Great information as always! I’ve always been curious on this exact question!
Actually, I just tried it and when you put it in your cart it tells you how many they have left in stock. Great info ! Thanks !
The first three FBA offers are all priced the same:
#1 has 1 left
#2 has 8 left
#3 has 1 left
Thanks Stephen for all you do!
hmm the “how many” extension doesnt work if the seller has limited the number of units that can be bought.
Yes, all tools that calculate stock levels are currently not working because of a change in Amazon’s way of providing info. I’m confident that the tools that provide this info will be working again shortly.
1 30 and 3
The free Helium10 chrome extension gives the inventory info for free, no need to pay for this info
Great tips! Any recommended apps/strategies to check a seller’s stock history as opposed to a sellers current stock level?
I don’t think that’s possible to check individual seller stock history.
Hey Stephen! Didn’t the keepa graph used to show how many “sellers” there were on a item over time? Or am I thinking of a different tool?
Keepa extension does on occasion shoe seller inventory quantities, but it is not consistent at all. It will show quantity for some sellers, but not all. It’s a work in progress and maybe one day can replace How Many, but it’s not even close right now. Find out what else HowMany doe right here: https://www.fulltimefba.com/howmany
I wasnt referring to Seller Inventory, I was asking about
“Amount of Sellers”. I thought there was a graph line you could add in Settings to show how many sellers there were over time?
Yes, on a Keepa graph just click “Historical Data” and you can see how many competitors there are for different conditions.
thanks for the information. I wish your blog entry had a date. Dates are so important and relevant to our work.
Hi! Thanks for the great tips. I think I just fell victim to this. I bought 10 products at £6 each, they are a popular toy, with returns of £10 on Amazon FBA. I was too late to notice Amazon are on the listing. There are 3 variations of the product and for all 3, Amazon add 999 to the cart. My question is, is this surprising? I do think considering storage etc. for amazon to have the maximum stock for all 3 variations to be quite unbelievable – or maybe I just want to believe that! My other option is to list and dispatch from ebay myself, what are your thoughts? Many Thanks!
Who knows what Amazon is doing… but it’s pretty rare when I decide to compete against Amazon. I’d just try to get your capital back and put that money into better selling inventory. A few posts to help you:
The times you can compete with Amazon and get the sales: https://www.fulltimefba.com/how-to-compete-against-amazon-win-customer/
How to know if Amazon was in stock in the past: https://www.fulltimefba.com/readkeepa
Usually means that Amazon has a current 1P relationship with the manufacturer, and knows that lead time & availability won’t be an issue for that item
If you actually place the order, you’ll get however many they currently have in stock, and then get backordered for the rest.
(Speaking as a 1P vendor, that has “999” in stock on the front of the website, and only 198 in the warehouse on the vendor portal)
That’s very interesting! Thanks for sharing.
thanks for the timely tip! one of my items i’ve been selling multiples of per day had another seller come in an undercut me by $5 and i was just getting ready to source some more to send in but was waiting to see if they dropped off
5 – good vibez
999+ – Amazon
10 – sbzproducts
Thank you Stephen for this!
All 3 vendors were Prime
$13.69
1) #1 top deals – 85
2) Design Tactics – 360
$14.95
3) Loot Hive – 1
Thanks for sharing the information Stephen.
all $13.78 and Prime
1 – 21
2 – 676
3 – 395
answers to my homework 🙂 221, 478, 10…thanks for the info. I knew to do the quantity thing, but could never get past if they had 9 or more, didn’t realize you could edit your cart to the 999, heard about it but did not know how to get there.. thanks for more valuable content, i always learn so much from your blogs and videos!
Designtactics -290 – $14.99
#1topdeals – 24 -$14.99
Cooper C – 2 Qty – $14.99
Great tip! Thank you!
Hi, Dear ”how many,, extension is not working on that product list on which seller made restriction limit? Any other method to check that stock level.
Thanks
How Many had a temporary glitch but they have fixed it and it’s working again.
Hi! The Amazon listing is showing the product as “currently unavailable. So when I activate the How Many chrome extension, it goes nowhere.
Right… if the item is “currently unavailable” then that means it’s out of stock and there is nothing for How Many to count when it comes to stock levels… because all stock levels are zero.
Looks like Howmany App is no longer free??
It’s free for 5 uses per day. You can see that when you click on “Pricing” at this link: https://www.fulltimefba.com/howmany