For brands starting out on Amazon, it can be a rocketship ride and you need to have the inventory processes in place to keep up with your growth. Justin Goodwin, The Revenue Accelerator, has built out the systems for many Amazon brands and helped them find success. You’ll hear about what planning tools may work best for your company depending on size, how much safety stock you need to have, and what goes into a startup finding success on Amazon.
Takeaways:
- From an operational perspective, the areas that a company must focus on to scale include its manufacturing capacity, the accuracy of sales forecasts, the integration of sales forecasts into production, and the ability of the current manufacturers to scale.
- When you are selling through both retail and e-commerce, you need to allocate your inventory to a certain channel and the distinct processes that each sales channel requires.
- Many of the automated demand-planning tools available require large amounts of historical data, so startups will have issues using them. Instead, building out a forecasting model can be more useful and provide more accurate results.
- When ordering inventory from a manufacturer, you need to keep in mind the level of safety stock you want. If you are using 3PL, you also need to consider how much safety stock to have at each location to meet demand without creating inefficiencies.
- Your safety stock at each location should give you enough time to place a new order with a manufacturer to replenish stock directly. Avoid moving stock between locations at all costs as this adds cost without adding value, therefore reducing margins.
- When using an ERP system, there will be some pain points and you need to be aware of idiosyncrasies that pop up when moving data between systems and correct them.
- Customers trust Amazon reviews much more than other review sites, especially Google. Amazon is trying to provide the best customer service and part of that is through driving trial purchases and repeat customers.
Quote of the Show:
- “Having to move the freight between locations makes me cringe and I think would make any operations professional cringe” - Justin Goodwin
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