I started selling on Amazon 11 years ago this month. Crazy to think about how much my biz has changed over the years. From a side hustle while working a corporate job to full time gig. Going from dining room to a finished garage to 2.5k warehouse to 7.2k to almost 15k warehouse. One man team to having 20+ working for me. Suppliers / sources / sourcing methods constantly changing with the times. 2019 we did $8M in sales with a huge focus on RA. I did OA and WS myself and I had a team of RA shoppers up and down the east coast. I had 3 people that were local and would shop and drop off almost daily. Then 2 that were semi local (60 to 90 mins away) who would shop during the week, store stuff locally and then do one big drop off. And then 5 shoppers scattered around stores we targeted in FL, TN, GA, DE, MD. They would shop and ship back to my warehouse to prep. While I was having good success with RA, I always struggled with efficiently managing it and how to scale it further. In 2020, COVID hit and I shifted our RA team to OA shoppers and went all in on OA. We hit $11M in Q4 alone that year with RA just being 1.47% of our total sales and OA sitting at 80%. Massive unplanned shift based on adapting to what market was giving us. Once constant I've seen in past 11 years it Amazon is always changing and you need to adapt or you will be pushed out. Excited to see what the next 11 years bring!

Walmart seems like a bigger nightmare to deal with then Amazon. I dont even do $10k a month and feels like anytime I make any attempt to ramp up, they either nuke half my listings or nuke my account. Anyone got any experience with this? Looks like they want a detail explanation of what was done to cause the suspension but they don't actually tell me what was the actual issue.

Unions #1 fan

For a Cowboys fan, this guy is pretty funny.

Dealing with Amazon seller performance / CSM Brand Review team is fun! -Got brand review, submit submit requested docs -Auto rejected -Call Account Health. Your invoices look perfect, you should have been approved, let me send it up for 2nd review -Another auto rejection, and now added 2 more ASINs to brand review -Resubmit, rejected again, but finally get some feedback, we can't accept invoices bc they are altered -Only "alteration" was highlighting the items, so submit without highlighted -Rejected, you MUST highlight the impacted items -Resubmit with 2 versions of invoices. one that is raw unaltered, one with highlighted. Add another document and further proof to address all concerns -Rejected, please only submit documents we request Usually need to wait 2 to 5 days between these responses while six figures of inventory sits sidelined. Craziness!

On September 1st, Amazon randomly restricted me in Carhartt. No warning, no email, just restricted. Think most sellers got hit too and most I spoke to seemed to reverse itself pretty quick or could get auto approved. Not me. I tried to ungated for 3 weeks with various invoices, order confirms, packing slips, etc. Nothing worked. Getting denied for invoices being mailed to my buying email and not my Amazon selling email and other ridiculous reasons (or no reasons at all). Then other day, restriction is gone. No explanation. Still had open case requesting approval which i closed. The restriction glitch just fixed itself. Amazon is nuts and an absolutely horrible to work with. However, you can't beat the eyeballs it site brings and money you can generate through that traffic. For me to help mitigate the risk of dealing with such a shitty partner, I've diversified off Amazon (have decent size RE/rental biz) and stay diversified within Amazon (try to keep most brands under 5% of biz). Certainly not a full proof plan bc Amazon can still shut your whole damn biz down for onw reason or has been known to hard restrict your top 10 brands without notice, but it can help in situations like this in which we been down 2 brands for a few weeks (day before Carhartt restriction we got a Brand Review that we are still fighting!).

Might be time to hang it up with Amazon and move to flipping tickets! Not bad profit for a preseason basketball game!

Been battling with Amazon on random brand restriction. It only a 10 unit invoice so should be easy clear. Last rejection for brand approval on restrict brand was rejected bc the delivery confirmations were NOT sent to my seller email. That is a new one for me. We have a team of account execs and shoppers who all have their own email address. Even when i do orders, I'm not using my seller email to communication with suppliers or do OA purchases? Does anyone actually use their seller email for purchases?

Picked up 2 of the haunted mansion sets. Now do a create one mansion and one ship or do i create one larger mansion?

Last week I posted about how my Account Health was 1,000 and first time in a long time we had 0 inauthentics and 0 IP complaints and clearing issues had been relatively easy. So of course, Monday evening I get a brand review and Tuesday get another brand go restricted for us. Both initial submissions have been rejected. Combined the brands make around $350k of inventory with one completely stranded and other will be stranded in 5 days. Can't send either brand into Amazon yet. I'm confident I'll resolve both issues, but always a pain when dealing with these. Hopefully no more surprises today!

These loan offers are purposefully misleading. Even where they try to put in small print the actual APR they still full of shit as no way they are offering anyone 10.99% APR for any significant sum of money. A 10% fixed fee, paid bi weekly for 1 year is about a 20% APR and 15% is going to be closer to 30%. The math can actually be MUCH worse if you only need the funds for a short period of time like Q4 ramp up. Let's say for Q4 I decided to take a $500k term loan for 12 months for a 15% fixed fee through one of Amazons fixed fee offerings. This will cost me $75,00. On the other hand a wiser person then me, has arranged a $500k line of credit at Prime+1 (7.75%) with a bank. Interest only payments monthly. We both only need the funds for 60 days to fund Q4. The smart guy with the LOC will pay $6,370 in interest compared to the $75,000 in a fix fee. He saves himself $68k which just goes to pad his Q4 earnings. Should u ever take one of these fix fee loans? It should be a last resort and you should make sure you fully understand the costs and be sure you can generate the returns necessary because the costs are HIGH. Not all Amazon lending options are as bad as these fixed fee options. Sometimes they will offer more traditional line of credits or loans in the 10% to 12%. Those are the ones I keep an eye out and consider adding.

0 IAs & IPs. Not sure last time I've seen this on my account health screen so seemed like it needed documenting. Big improvement from the 11 i had in April. My Account Performance course will be dropping soon!

This might be the single most impressive Amazon seller feat I've seen. 13% Rating, 1.6 out of 5 stars over past 12 months. 893 reviews. Clearing scamming. I see a lot of these sellers pop up, but not sure I've seen one that has operated with such terrible metrics for so long. And not only operate, but dominate buy boxes with their insane metrics. Amazing!

2 key themes I got out of this post: -A community for sellers 7 figures and beyond is needed -More local events for said sellers. Unconference is probably the closest thing we have at this point. And Sourcing Simplifiers ASD parties were close! Those around long enough remember 5 Star or even to an extent Sourcing Simplifiers. SS wasn't targeted directly at large sellers, but became a place where they hung out and the conversations were very different then most other Amazon communities that existed at the time. I don't have all the answers how to address these needs, but I am going to give it a shot so stay tuned!

Seems like there may be demand and no supply here. Maybe better question is, if one was to get started what would it look like? What platform? What is min revenue entry point? Free or paid? How keep it active and doesn't die like so many other communities do?

Where is the best discord/FB group/etc for larger eCom sellers? The challenges at $1M - $5M a month is vastly different than those trying to hit their first $100k month (which is a great accomplishment for sure). Lots of beginner - to moderate hangouts exist, but anything worth wild for those pushing beyond that level?

Amazon's Inauthentic review process absolutely blows my mind. 7/20 get IA, we submit docs same day 7/22 denied 7/28 resubmit similar docs 729 denied 8/5 resubmit with suppliers supplier docs 8/7 denied 8/9 denied (we didn't submit anything new) 8/10 - We decide to give it time bc we've already got rejected 3 times 8/14 - "After further review of your account, we have decided that you may continue to offer the below items on Amazon. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. No action is required from you at this time." This seems to happen all the time!!! Seems best approach is just wait them out and eventually they will send an approval message on an old appeal they already rejected a few times!

My take on AI is killing buy & hold.

Item Dimensions and fulfillment (FBA) fees are at the individual sku level. Dimensions and FBA fees can be drastically different for each seller. It is NOT at the item level. Is this not widely known?