Preparing for the new business season on Amazon: tips for those who order and deliver goods from China

Referral fee is a percentage of each sale through the marketplace that Amazon takes for the opportunity to run an e-commerce business on its platform. For FBA sellers (those who use Amazon’s warehouses to deliver goods to the end customer), this is one of the three main fees, in addition to paying for warehousing and shipping to the end customer. For FBM sellers (those who deliver directly to the end consumer from their warehouses), this is the only mandatory commission that is charged.

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is the most important day in the Chinese calendar and falls between January 22 and February 5 in 2023. As the largest manufacturer and exporter of goods, China, of course, has a great influence on the purchasing processes and international delivery of goods. The pressure on the country’s work organization processes in the pre-holiday days is largely felt among Amazon sellers, so advance batch planning, production setup and logistics organization are extremely important.

Here are the main points that should be considered when preparing for a new business quarter.

Prepare goods in advance

Factories stop their work two weeks before the holiday and even earlier, and the gradual resumption of all processes occurs only in early February. To avoid problems with goods – coordinate schedules with production, ask when the last working day is at the factory and do not hesitate to properly prepare. If you have seasonal items in your arsenal, be sure to prepare enough for several months in advance.

Use prep centers (if necessary)

The most important thing before the holiday is to replenish stock with goods, deliver them to Amazon warehouses and/or prep centers. The human factor quite often becomes the reason why part of the goods during this period arrives with defects. Sometimes this is also due to the fact that a long holiday period is good for changing jobs, so many workers simply do not return to the factories, and newcomers take their places. Therefore, it is very important to make sure that you have a chain of goods quality control set up, or to use prep centers, which also include checking the goods before sending them to Amazon warehouses.

Deliver safely

Due to super-large orders, tariffs are rising, the number of possible delivery slots and the number of free containers are decreasing, there is an overload and freezing in ports. Other difficulties arise, in particular, caused by quarantine anti-COVID measures. Our friends, the logistics operator Partner Trade, who have been specializing in the delivery of large cargo from China for many years, shared recommendations on how to avoid delivery delays:

• charter a ship early: book your delivery 3-4 weeks before the Chinese New Year. During this time, the cargo will have time to process, and it will reach its destination on time;

• organize product inventory to avoid delays or stockouts;

• work with a reliable logistics partner. A proven 3PL operator with the necessary experience and qualified specialists will help to avoid delays in deliveries during the Chinese holidays.

To get a professional consultation and calculate the cost of a future batch, fill out the form at the link.

Analyze your own sales

Even if your product is not made in China, you still need to prepare. To organize a sufficient number of goods in warehouses, analyze your own sales. Compare the results for recent months with last year in the same period. If you are a beginner, studying your competitors and their results is also important. You should build a promotion plan, increase advertising budgets to get better results. Learn how not to burn your ad budget and the most common mistakes sellers make when launching campaigns in our Top 5 Amazon PPC Mistakes That Burn Your Budget.

We also recommend using the Inventory Dashboard tool in the seller center (only available with an active account), which helps to predict the required amount of goods. It provides insight into inventory scheduling analytics, how long your items have been in storage on Amazon, insight into stocking fees, IPI (Inventory Performance Index), excess inventory, and other features of your product.

Don’t forget to congratulate your partners from China

Finally, we would like to add that for the Chinese, New Year is one of the most important holidays. Usually it is a family holiday and a time to meet friends. And since traditions have always been highly valued in the East, greeting partners will strengthen your cooperation. Usually in China they give something paired for the holiday – perhaps this simple secret will help you choose gifts that are guaranteed to please.

When planning each subsequent business period on the marketplace, you should also remember the general rules of preparation: optimize listings, check the quality of photos of your products, work not only with visual content (always update texts before the corresponding season). Leave a request on our website and get a free consultation.

 In addition, we would like to thank our partners: the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Ukrposhta  and Startup Ukraine. Thanks to our joint initiative, the referral cancellation program for Ukrainians became possible.