Podcast Episode 176 – Top 2 Secrets for Finding More Inventory to Sell on Amazon

Every Amazon seller wants to find as much profitable and in-demand inventory to sell as possible, and today on The Full-Time FBA Show we are giving you our top two secrets to do just that. Listening today, you’ll hear about how making two tweaks to your sourcing guidelines can open up an opportunity for you to find even more inventory that is both profitable and in demand. We even tell you the number one way to buy items at the absolute lowest price possible and give you some resources to learn about how to buy items at wholesale cost. You don’t want to miss out on these incredible two secrets to help you increase inventory and grow your business!

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Key points from Episode 176:

• Why every Amazon seller wants to find more inventory to sell.
• The top two strategies we use to find more inventory to sell on Amazon.
• One: Lower your ROI requirements – and we’ll show you how. 
• Why you need to transition from clearance sourcing into more regular priced items.
• The power of replens in your Amazon FBA business.
• Two: Lower your buy cost – and how you can do that!
• The number one best way to buy items at the lowest possible price: wholesale sourcing.
• How to get started learning wholesale sourcing.

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• FREE Wholesale PDF eBook
  
• FREE Wholesale Webinar
• Episode 88 – How Replens Boost Your Sales and Profits in Your Amazon FBA Business
• Episode 89 – Four Replens You Need to Sell on Amazon
• Rakuten – Free Cash Back for online or in store purchases
• Honey – Free online shopping coupon code finder

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Episode 176 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]

[0:00:21.5] REBECCA: Hello there and welcome to this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. We’re on  episode number 176 this week and today, we’re going to be talking about our top two secrets for  finding more inventory to sell on Amazon. So when I say our top two secrets, I am talking today with my cohost and business partner and husband, Stephen Smotherman. Welcome to the show, Stephen.  

[0:00:44.2] STEPHEN: I’m excited about this episode and talking about strategies to find more  inventory, it’s going to be some good stuff, we’ll help you find more inventory for your Amazon business. We’ll do that today on the show.  

[DISCUSSION]  

[0:00:58.0] REBECCA: Before we get into our topic today, we want to be sure and remind you to be  sure you’re subscribed to The Full-Time FBA newsletter. It goes out once or twice a week, we  send out that email newsletter. You can subscribe at fulltimefba.com, we send out links to articles, other blog posts, YouTube videos, all sorts of information to help you turn part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA. So be sure you’re subscribed, fulltimefba.com.  

So getting into our topic today, every Amazon seller wants to find more inventory to sell on  Amazon. I know that’s a big part of what I do is to analyze in our business, “Do we need more inventory, where can we find that inventory?” All of us are looking at that, right? If you’re running an FBA business, you’re selling on Amazon, you know that the more inventory you have, the more you can sell.  

But of course, it’s not just about sending everything possible, anything and everything, into an Amazon warehouse. You have to be sending in inventory that’s both profitable and in demand. It’s going to sell, it’s going to sell and it’s going to make you money. So today, we’re going to pull back the curtain on our business and talk about our top two strategies that we use to find more  inventory to sell on Amazon. Stephen, start us off.  

[0:02:11.3] STEPHEN: So the first of the two strategies about finding more inventory to sell on Amazon  is number one, lowering your ROI requirements when sourcing for inventory. So ROI stands for  return on investments. So as an example, if you buy something for a dollar and after fees, you  can get $2 back, that’s 100% ROI, you’ve doubled your money.  

So we want to make some good money on Amazon and when we’re a beginner, it’s a good idea  to have some high ROI guidelines. Many Amazon seller starts selling at you know, garage sales or thrift stores and they start off clearing sourcing and buying stuff really low and sometimes, that’s a really good strategy because the ROI is usually really high.  

There’s more wiggle room when it comes to profits in case you need to lower your prices or  maybe wiggle room when it comes to lowering your price, if it takes a long time to sell and the  storage fee start adding up. So buying super low and selling high is a great way to learn how to source of inventory on Amazon.  

You learn the different personalities of different Amazon categories and how sales rank numbers work in each of those categories. It’s a great starting point when it comes to beginning strategies to find inventory. The higher the ROI, the more wiggle room there is if things don’t go as planned but that’s not where you want to stay for your long-term success. 

Eventually, you want to work away from garage sales, thrift stores and clearance sourcing and  start buying stuff in retail stores or online stores that are regular priced items, items that you can  continually replenish.  

You know, at a garage sale, thrift store, even clearance sourcing, you’re not going to be able to  go deep on a buy. You’re not going to be able to continually replenish your product when it sells out. Overall, you want to move into sourcing regular-priced items to find the replens that are constantly profitable.  

Those profitable replens are out there, you just have to find them. You can check out episode 88 and 89 for some more information on replens, why they’re so awesome, how to get started with  that but, so obviously, the higher the ROI, the more comfortable you can be about selling that item for a profit. 

But eventually, you need to start lowering your ROI guidelines. Sure, 100% ROI is awesome  profit but you know what else is also profit? 50% ROI, 30% ROI. Now, it’s taken 10 years for me, but I’m at an ROI comfort zone of about 20% and that takes time with lowering your ROI requirements. 

You will be able to find more inventory because you’ll find more stuff that’s profitable in that percentage of ROI. So if you’re wanting to start lowering your ROI, test things out, see how it goes, see how a lower ROI impacts your Amazon business and then test out even lower. Over time, you’re going to find more inventory and make more money.  

[0:04:45.5] REBECCA: And just to be clear, if you have a 20% comfort zone, that doesn’t mean that all of our inventory has a 20% ROI on it. It means that there are some items that depending on how fast they sell and how high of a volume we can buy them in, we could potentially be comfortable with selling it at a 20% ROI and this is not something that we’re suggesting you do right off the bat as a beginner. 

Like Stephen said, when you are just starting out, you really want to keep your ROI closer to 100% or somewhere close to that range because you are going to be making mistakes and learning as you go and you want to make sure that you have plenty of room to absorb some of that risk but when you’ve had enough time to kind of learn that and you know, “Oh, this item is  going to sell and I’m going to be able to sell a lot of this item” then why not sell it at 20%?  

[0:05:34.4] STEPHEN: Absolutely. So Rebecca, get into the second strategy for finding more inventory  to sell on Amazon.  

 [0:05:40.9] REBECCA: So the second thing that we have kind of worked with over the years to find ways to source more inventory is that we are able to lower our buy costs and store more  inventory. Now, that you’re probably wondering like, “Okay, what does that have to do with finding more inventory?” Well, if you’re able to lower your buy cost and to find ways to  strategically and consistently lower your buy cost, then you’re going to have more money to  work with and you’re going to be able to make more profits.  

So if you are able to lower your buy cost, you’re going to be able to increase your profits when you sell that item and you’re also going to be able to have more money to source with. If you can lower your buy cost, then that will make your money go further and you’ll be able to buy more inventory.  

So there are several ways that we have found over the years that consistently help us to get  more for our money and source inventory at lower prices. Earlier, we talked about how clearance sourcing can be helpful for beginners and that is something that we still will do from time to time but it’s not really a long-term strategy for success to scale a business, so it’s something we just do from time to time. We don’t rely on it for the bulk of our inventory now.  

So how can we then buy our inventory at lower prices that is a long-term strategy for success if  we are not depending on clearance-priced items? So when it comes to online arbitrage, there are some tools that you can use to help you save money on your purchases or to even get cash  back. Online arbitrage is the sourcing method where you are buying inventory from an online  retail store to sell at a profit on Amazon.  

And so we have just consistently implemented some strategies that we use over and over again that are giving us a percentage back and they’re increasing our percentage of our ROI on all of our purchases that we do for OA. One that we use regularly is Rakuten. It used to be called Ebates, I still call it that from time to time but it is Rakuten. They’ve got some cute commercials out there, maybe you’ve seen them but it’s a cashback program.  

They have a website, they also have extensions that you can use. You can link your credit card to it to even use it in retail stores but it’s really easy to use when you’re doing online arbitrage to make sure that you are going through the website or that you are clicking to activate the extension, wherever you make your purchase.  

You can even get a $30 bonus for signing up if you use our link that we’re about to give you and it’s just cashback on your purchase that does not require you to spin anymore on a purchase, you’re just getting a percentage of each purchase back when you purchase through the Rakuten website on tons of sites that you would use regularly to do online arbitrage.  

Tons of retail stores will have these partnerships with Rakuten where you can get a percentage back and it can actually add up really quickly, so that once a quarter when you get your big fat check, you’re getting that cashback and possibly rates as high as 10 or 15% if they have promotions going on for different holidays on sites that you use on a regular basis for online arbitrage.  

And another site that we use regularly to get some discounts on those AO purchases is Honey. Honey is also an extension that you can use, you can go to fulltimefba.com/honey to find out more about it. They will give you coupon codes for your purchases, so you can make sure that you are buying your online arbitrage purchases at the lowest possible price that you could at that time. It will scan your cart. 

When you put all your items in your cart, it will scan your cart for you and tell you which coupon code you can use to get a percentage or a dollar off on that purchase. It’s a really great way to just continue to get some money back and to increase your ROI as you’re making the purchase. So be sure and check out both of those Rakuten, fulltimefba.com/Rakuten and then Honey,  fulltimefba.com/honey. All of these links we will have for you in the show notes for this episode  too.  

[0:09:45.0] STEPHEN: Yeah, because Rakuten’s kind of hard to spell sometimes.  

[0:09:47.3] REBECCA: Right. So be sure and go do the show notes, fulltimefba.com/176 and you can find the links for these. Now, the best way to source inventory at the lowest price possible is to  make sure you are buying your inventory directly from the brand. You’re taking out the middle man, you’re taking out the retailer, you’re taking out a distributer even and you’re just going directly to the brand. 

This is what is typically called wholesale sourcing in the FBA world and is the number one best way to buy your items at the lowest possible price that you can so that you can also consistently replenish them. Plus, there are even times when you’re doing your wholesale sourcing that you can purchase your inventory at an even lower price with wholesale discounts or free or discounted shipping. 

Several of the companies that we work with will send out coupon codes from time to time or will  have weekends where they say, “Hey, we’re going to do a free shipping weekend, let us know if  you have an order.” So it’s possible even to get discounts on that wholesale sourcing, lower than even what is the published wholesale price. 

So the truth about this is that it is a really great way to get your inventory but it can be hard work. It is not as easy as just going to target.com and looking for inventory and buying it. You have to get a wholesale account in order to get wholesale prices. You can’t just create a login  and start buying for most of these and so it’s going to take some work. 

You’re going to have to find these quality accounts and do the work of convincing the brand to give you an account but once you do, once you figure out how to do this and once you get started and have several of these accounts going, it can really be amazing and transform your  business. 

We’ve been sourcing with wholesale sourcing and selling this way on Amazon for several years.  At least five or six years now, I would say, but just last year, in 2022, we experienced a transformation in our business even after having several of our accounts for years and continually adding new accounts. 

In 2022, we experienced something with one of our wholesale brands that just really transformed our business and was able to add six figures to our sales for the year just from one brand. So this is not something to take lightly. To think about wholesale sourcing, it can be that you add in a little bit here and a little bit there. 

But it can also give you a truly transformative experience where you scale your business  incredibly in just one year and totally change the game of what your revenue looks like and what  your profits are going to look like. If you take it seriously and if you look at how can we add in  more of these items that we’re buying consistently over time being able to replenish them at  lower buy costs.  

[0:12:31.3] STEPHEN: So lowering your ROI requirements, that’s going to help you find more inventory. Lowering your buy cost that’s going to allow you to have more inventory to buy but  you’re going to have more cash to spend because you lowered your buy cost. So those are two  really great strategies to use when it comes to finding more inventory to sell on Amazon.  

And the best sourcing strategy, the real long-term success strategy on wholesale on Amazon is wholesale sourcing. If you’re looking for some help with wholesale and learning how to get  started and learning if it’s right for you, then I highly recommend The Wholesale Formula. So I’m going to give you two links. 

One of them is a link to a webinar that’s coming up tomorrow and if you are listening to this in  the future, you can go to this link and watch the replay, fulltimefba.com/wholesalewebinar. You  can check that out and see things for yourself and also there is a course, The Wholesale  Formula, fulltimefba.com/wholesaleformula, that will walk you through exactly what you need to  do, exactly how to land the clients. 

Exactly how to overcome the hurdles and if you’re worried about any aspect of selling wholesale or any wholesale accounts, The Wholesale Formula will walk you through it. So fulltimefba.com/wholesaleformula to learn more about that.  

[CLOSING CONVERSATION]  

[0:13:47.6] REBECCA: Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. As we mentioned, the show notes for this episode can be found at fulltimefba.com/176, any of the links that we mentioned, I know there were several, be sure and check them out, those can be found at the show notes as well as the transcript for this episode if there’s anything you want  to go back and refresh yourself on, fulltimefba.com/176.  

[0:14:10.7] STEPHEN: And next week on the show, we’re going to talk about how we took one wholesale brand from $50,000 in sales to over $100,000 in sales in just one year’s time. We’re going to talk about the strategies that helped us find success with this and we’ll tell you right  here on The Full-Time FBA Show.  

[OUTRO]  

[0:14:29.3] 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]