Should You Launch Your Product During Q4 or you Should Wait for Q1 Next Year?
I know it’s summertime right now and you’re probably wondering, “Firaas, why are you talking about Quarter 4? It’s July right now.”
Well, if you are an experienced Amazon FBA seller, you should already have ordered your inventory for Q4.
Let me explain.
Usually, it takes 3 to 4 weeks for your supplier in China to make your products and then it takes another 6 to 8 weeks to ship those products to the Amazon FBA warehouse.
And in between, if you are doing a product inspection, it’s going to take up some time
as well.
You must be prepared and have your inventory in the warehouse by October. Now, I am saying October because I think, personally, October is a really good time to have all of your inventory ready for Quarter 4.
That way you have a little bit of time to run some Amazon PPC sponsored ads and to slowly launch your products.
Now, is it a good time to launch your products during Q4 or should you wait until Q1, Quarter 1?
Q4 is October, November, and December of every single year.
This is the most happiest, busiest time of the season because everybody is shopping for their loved ones on Amazon.
You can expect to double your sales and more.
During Q4, inventory sells super fast.
Depending on what your product is, how high you are ranked close to page
1, you may be doing 3 times more, 4 times more, I have seen situations during Q4 where Amazon FBA sellers were able to sell 5 times more what they originally sold throughout the year.
That is the power of Q4.
Now, since everybody sells a different product on Amazon, you may be wondering, “how much inventory do I need for Q4? How can I prepare for it? How do I know if Q4 is the perfect time to launch?”
What I think is, if you are a beginner Amazon FBA seller, I think if you order twice as much inventory than you normally do, that would be playing it safe during Q4.
Normally, products sell 3 to 4 times more compared to the rest of the year.
You want to be prepared.
Because if you run out of stock during December, it really sucks.
Every single year so far that I have gone through Q4, we have ran out of stock for our best sellers.
It’s not that we didn’t handle our inventory properly, it’s just we did not expect for specific products to sell out that fast.
Another reason why I like to launch products during Q4 is that it’s going to be very low risk for you.
When I say that you are operating at low risk during Q4, what I mean is if you have a product that you are planning to sell, I still think you should launch it because during Q4, you are going to experience the whole journey of selling on Amazon and if, if you have a bad product, you are still able to liquidate that product no problem.
Everybody is shopping during Q4.
That is the beauty of Q4.
I personally think even if you have a bad product that is about to fail (IF), you can still sell it out during Q4 and get most of your money back.
There’s really nothing to lose if you were to launch your product during Q4.
Let’s talk about some things that you should be prepared for if you had to launch your product during October or November because it is so competitive during these months. Sometimes transportation to get your products to the Amazon FBA warehouse may take longer.
Things happen, you might hit some roadblocks and you need to be prepared.
The number one thing that you should prepare for and what I talk about earlier was to have
enough inventory.
Now, don’t order too much inventory because I have heard of some stories where some people ordered 7, 8 times the amount of inventory and I don’t think that’s necessary for a beginner seller.
Like I said earlier, you want to order maybe 2 or 3 times more if you are afraid that your product will not sell.
But you do not want to order the same amount of inventory because I can almost promise you that your product will sell during Q4.
And of course, I want you to make the most profits as possible during the holiday season. First, you want to have enough money to buy the inventory to prepare for Q4.
Second, you have to have a launch strategy.
I stress this on my channel and I always ask new sellers, “Hey, how are you launching your product? Do you have any money to set aside to launch your product?”
Because launching your product on Amazon will cost you some money.
It doesn’t matter what type of launch that you do, for me, I always teach people to do organic Amazon Pay Per Click launches which means I am using Amazon PPC sponsored ads.
Now, I can’t tell you a specific amount of money that it will cost to do your launch because we all sell different products.
If you sell a very competitive, over-saturated product, you may need more ad spend. And especially if you are launching a product during Q4, you need more ad spend because more people are shopping.
Therefore, more customers are going to be clicking on your ad.
Then, you get charged.
The goal here is not to think about the amount of money that you will lose.
What you should be doing is making sure that your product listing is A plus so if customers do click on your ad, they are going to add your product to cart, check out, and buy.
That is the ultimate goal.
I see a lot of new sellers always trying to penny pinch or their Amazon PPC sponsored ads and they are only spending $5 a day on advertising, that is not going to work.
I would say you should start at about $25 to $30 a day as a beginner so you can at least get your automatic PPC campaign going.
And during Q4, you may want to double that amount because there are more shoppers on Amazon.
Now, does this mean you are going to lose all of that money?
No.Of course not.
PPC advertising is an investment.
I really want sellers to think of this as an investment.
Every single business owner understands that in order for you to get a lot of brand awareness and for customers to want to buy your product, you are going to have to spend some money on advertising.
Be sure you do have some room to put money into advertising and obviously, make sure you know how to launch your product.
I do not suggest you to launch your product during Q4 if you do not know how to launch your product.
Make sure you get the help you need before diving into launching a product in Q4.
This is a serious business.
This is a real business.
You cannot just dive into launching a product blindfolded because that is the number one way on how you are going to risk losing all of your money.
And of course, I don’t want you to lose all of your money.
Now, the third and very last thing that you need to know to prepare for a launch during Amazon Quarter 4 is that you need to make sure that Amazon is allowing the amount of inventory that you plan to send to the warehouse.
And just last week, Amazon sent out an email to every single Amazon FBA seller saying that they changed the rules on how many units you can send into the warehouse as a beginner Amazon seller.
Depending on when you created your Seller Central account, depending on if you created a shipment plan or not, your account may be restricted to the number of units that you can actually send into the Amazon FBA warehouse.
The number of units that you are allowed to send into the Amazon FBA warehouse depends on your IPI performance.
If you do not know what IPI is, then just simply do a Google search.
You want to make sure that you are above this threshold and that you are okay to send the amount of inventory that you want to the Amazon warehouse.
Now, I do think this rule will change because everything with Amazon changed really quickly. It’s nothing to stress about.
But the last thing that I really want to mention is that, if your account is restricted on the number of units that you are allowed to send into the Amazon warehouse for Q4, what you can do is do FBM, Fulfillment By Merchant.
What this means is that, you, as an Amazon seller, is responsible to pick and pack and ship your product to your very own customer.
Customers can go onto Amazon, they can find your product, they can buy it.
But instead of Amazon shipping your product to the customer, you are in charge.
Some of my online friends, what they are doing is ordering bulk inventory, and then storing the inventory in their garage, and have some friends or family members help them pick and pack their products to their own customers during Q4.
Now, of course this is a lot of legwork.
Another way to get around this is to hire a third-party warehouse that is able to help you pick and pack your products and ship it to your Amazon customers.
That is still doing FBM. It needs a bit more work to do.
But trust me, you do not want to miss out on sales during Q4.
So many people are shopping and you can make so much money.
You just have to put in the effort and the work in order to make that happen.
If you do have a restriction on your Seller Central account and you are not allowed to send in the amount of units that you want into the warehouse, then you should consider doing FBM.
Now, if you live in the US, and you sell on Amazon.com, FBM should be a breeze. Because if you live within the US and you sell on Amazon.com, that is a pretty transition.
However, if you are Canadian or you are from anywhere else around the world and you are planning to do FBM on Amazon.com, it may be a little bit of a stretch.
Because then you would have to find a business partner or a third party warehouse company that can help you do FBM on your behalf since you are not living in the US and obviously you do not have a garage to store inventory.
This is just something that I want to mention because a lot of new sellers right now are thinking about doing FBM and preparing for Q4 with FBM, on top of FBA, to maximize their profits during this busy season.
You may want to put some thought into that if you are a new Amazon seller.
Like I said, things change on Amazon very quickly.
And we do not know when Amazon will lift these restrictions for the amount of units that you can send into their warehouse.
This is why you need to plan ahead and have a backup plan and do FBM if something like this happens to your seller account.
Should you give up?
Of course not.
This is just a bump on the road and you just have to work around it.
The most successful Amazon FBA sellers succeed because they always find a way to work around the situations that are happening within Amazon.
If something changes within Amazon, you have to change and find a solution to workaround
that problem.
That is what makes a successful entrepreneur.
Honestly, I think launching your product any time throughout the year is a good thing.
Because you need to experience trials and errors in order to make this business right.
If you do not experience any trials and errors, and you expect everything to just run smoothly
and run perfectly, it’s just not going to happen.
That is just not how business works.
If you do plan to launch your product during Q4, make sure you are prepared with everything
If you do have any further questions about Amazon Q4, contact me on messenger and make sure you drop me a question in the comment section below.
Courtesy: Tammara Tee
