How to Accelerate Amazon Sales on Slow-Moving Inventory 

1. Drop prices

2. Increase advertising spend

3. Create a bundled giveaway

4. List excess inventory on deal sites

5. Offload to your competition

Let’s take a closer look at each.

Drop Prices on Your Excess Inventory 

Dropping prices on your excess inventory is the most common and easiest way to liquidate. You can either gradually reduce your price daily. Or bite the bullet, and drop prices to a level that’s irresistible but still protects your margins.

The most typical way to implement these reductions is either through offering a percentage discount. Or building a packaged deal where customers get an item or two for free if they buy a few.

People like to buy in bulk on Amazon. Packaging your struggling products this way helps them move faster and decrease depreciating inventory sitting in your warehouses.

There’s a caveat here. Be careful not to spend too much too fast.

You’re already in a cost crunch.

If dropping prices and increasing advertising spend isn’t helping, you can create a bundled giveaway.

A creative way to shed excess Amazon inventory is to create a bundled giveaway. Pair a product in your line – or a product that’s selling well which you don’t currently offer – with your dud product.

People will buy the popular product anyhow and see your add-on product as a freebie. If you position things correctly, the price point of the bundle can drive a solid return.

The most important thing to remember is to theme your bundles. Ensure the popular product is complementary to your dud product or at least naturally pairs with it. You don’t want to leave potential customers scratching their heads about weird product combinations in a bundle.

The Internet is swimming with “deal sites” to consider when Amazon selling just isn’t working. We’re all familiar with eBay and Etsy. But there are many others flying under the radar. Wish.com is an excellent option to consider, for example.

Your product-market fit may be better on these platforms. Not every product is a perfect fit for Amazon. Remove some of your stock from Amazon to make it available for the deal sites, and see what happens. You might be pleasantly surprised. This last option may sound crazy, but it can be highly effective.

Why in the world would you provide your competition with products that aren’t selling? It’s a reasonable question to ask.

If your competition is in a tight niche market, they’ll be looking for an advantage to leverage. Taking on some of your inventory provides that leverage.

This process works best when the product is unmarked and basic. If the product is technical, has many moving parts, or is white-labeled or proprietary, your competition will be less likely to add it to their mix for obvious reasons. Make sure to sell excess stock to the competition as close to cost as possible to minimize losses you’ll suffer from redistribution.

Once you’ve decided it’s time to liquidate, you also need to understand how to remove inventory from Amazon and the restrictions placed on that activity.

When you close a listing, you’re removing the product from your store, and the product will show as inactive on your pages. The primary identifying information of the product will remain available on Amazon. If you choose to reactivate the product later, it’s easy to with a couple of clicks. When you delete a product listing, it’s permanent.

You won’t find the product anywhere on Amazon or your seller page. You’ll be able to see historical sales data but no other identifying information. You should only delete a product from Amazon if you’re 1000% sure you’re never, ever going to sell it again in the future. There’s a small allowance for buyer’s remorse here. If you delete a listing, you have 24 hours to reverse it, but after that, deletion is permanent.

To remove excess inventory from Amazon, you create a Removal Order.  You can choose to have Amazon get rid of your excess inventory – for a nominal fee per item – or have Amazon return the items from the warehouse inventory to an address you provide. This option is the more expensive of the two.

Amazon provides extensive tracking on removal order costs, so you can see the effect each is having on your bottom line. More importantly, so you have a high-level view of the impact of improper product-market fit and poor demand forecasting, to avoid these in the future.

There are a few essential-to-know restrictions on removing inventory from Amazon.

Amazon provides extensive tracking on removal order costs, so you can see the effect each is having on your bottom line. More importantly, so you have a high-level view of the impact of improper product-market fit and poor demand forecasting, to avoid these in the future.

There are a few essential-to-know restrictions on removing inventory from Amazon.

Amazon Removal Order Restrictions

Amazon will ship inventory back to you – the more expensive option – with a few restrictions, including:

1. Amazon will not send the merchandise back to Post Office, Army Post Office, Diplomatic Post Office, or Fleet Post Office boxes.

2. It’s possible to ship to non-domestic US addresses, but there’s a different process for that.

3. Inventory cannot be shipped by Amazon to another of your fulfillment centers.

You cannot use this inventory to send customer orders, gifts, or promotional items, and

5. Amazon will not ship the merchandise back to you, which is labeled dangerous. They will only dispose of this inventory.

There are also restrictions on the number of items removed and shipping and packaging, outlined on the Amazon website.