One product we are currently still manufacturing we do thanks to low returns (less than 1%) and high conversion.
At 127% with subscriptions, and 97% unit sale not factoring subscriptions, this product should be gold.
and this is with my lower variation, on bottom of first page (sometimes) for the more common search phrases.
And, unlike my towels, this has a $19 avg sale with total amazon fees at $8.35
leaving me with about $11 per unit, and thankfully some margin. But not enough to sustain the brand without increasing volume 3-5x.
if I can just get this product to rank higher, I feel I’d have gold, but it’s a struggle and every time I try campaigns they are somewhat painful and don’t see the same conversion rate.
jungle scout is great at showing me volume estimates on improving rank, but I’m stuck on the rank improving part. You’d think this conversion rate would get rewarded in ranking, which has me thinking the higher ranks must be 100%. If you are on the page you purchase.
this product did take a small hit. we had some defects in our last manufacturing run either do to new machine or how they were shipped, dropping our rating from 4.7 to 4.5.
I was doing a lot of replacements to ensure happy customers, but still got some negative reviews, which was enough to drag the score down when it was already over 700.
I suspect the below is part of the problem. Big Park Ave brand that probably has an advertising budget / network that would make us all cry.
To win in consumer products you have to be everywhere. Who knows what kind of regional / national ads they run. Print / Social / Video / TV. They probably have real influencers working with animal care networks or save the planet folks.
When you have these things, you can charge a lot more and get it… Sales = Rank and the whole thing snowballs into success. They probably have tremendous buying power and pay half what you do for their inventory.
Probably some well funded angel capitalist dream machine that doesn’t make any money yet but might or might not. I see these types of things pop up all the time in my world.
Very hard to compete with stuff like this when making money isn’t the first objective for them. It’s brands like these though that sometimes turn into the next big thing which is why people take the risk and invest.
Well, it’s not entirely jampacked, as it is very hard to get certified to be compostable.
We had a license for over a year before Amazon allowed us to sell with “compostable” claims, with us begging them to take a look, as all our certifications were in order (and we were spending on them to keep them active while getting rejected)
What’s fascinating about the brand page I just posted. They don’t seem to have certification, and Amazon’s own AI says there is no BPI or TUV certification on the bags being sold.
The same Amazon who blocked me for over a year with a valid certificate and lab tests, seems not at all concerned about the regulatory requirements with this seller.
The barrier of entry for compostables is the TUV/BPI licensing requirement.
Tricky question. It goes beyond days on hand. The more an item sells, the more FC’s Amazon will locate the inventory in. Completely out of our control as sellers. This is a question that boggled my mind for years, since same day arrived on the scene. I spent considerable time analyzing this based on both my seller accounts and all of those combined listings.
At first, I thought it was days on hand, which plays a role but then I conducted some experiments and looked at lots of FBA inventory reports. I came to the realization that if I had a decent seller, and placed 4 months of inventory or more at FBA, the inventory stayed in a select # of FC’s, no matter how much we sent in.
Our hero items were sent and kept in 5X more FC’s, really regardless of the overall total inventory. At that point, same day did become a function of days on hand still and that number is 61 days+ which is really total BS because there would be ample inventory but Amazon would still punish for no reason.
It’s likely that you could find same day when geolocating your inventory based on ship to location but it will be limited.
Having same day does help conversion a lot in very competitive niches but like most things on Amazon, that is out of our control.
When we got SAS, I ran this question by 2 of our 3 SAS managers that we had that also worked in Amazon logistics in a previous life and they both confirmed my conclusions.
Life is not fair. Amazon is not fair. It’s this exact thing that killed my first Amazon account. On 9-1 I am throwing out what’s left at FBA for that account and beginning the process of waiting the clock out to close that account and business in its entirety.
I feel lots of your pain when it comes to Amazon and who we all need to compete with, including Amazon’s ridiculous actions / reactions.
Products like this are all about marketing and public perception. If someone were simply purchasing best value for money they would buy this ASIN:
B00NABTC8M
Compared to the compostable bags they cost less than half and have more rolls. You’d be surprised how many people spend extra money on “eco friendly” stuff. In reality almost all these compostable bags are thrown in the trash and end up in a landfill anyway. As far as the original question goes, the way to increase sales on this brand is to dump marketing dollars into it. Both on and off Amazon. The product having more value for the money over a competitor’s product isn’t really relevant here since the people buying it must be willing to spend extra money for a product that has the same utility as a much cheaper one (like I would never buy this, I love my single use plastics). It’s almost all marketing.
I see this in other categories all the time. The best sellers are the ones who were either there first and have some brand loyalty, or the ones who dumped tons and tons of money into a good marketing campaign.
All those “biodegradable” plastic items don’t quite degrade as much as you’d think in a landfill. They need certain specific conditions to actually degrade.
you have multiple grades of compostable, typically the ones that require a facility and ones that do not.
Our bags are the ones that do not. BPI is updating their rules on compostable licensing now over this very point.
It’s like saying you should have your green energy subsidy revoked from your vehicle because you the driver drive to fast and take away all the efficiency.
TUV licensing is far more comprehensive with seedling, home, industrial.
But the key point is. you can throw the compostable bag into a bush, and the remnants, all of it, will be like a figment of the imagination within 90 days. a plastic bag will remain there, unless someone grabs it to dispose, until you die. lol
THe key point is that nothing remains and is as damaging to the environment like plastic.
THe Oxo-biodegradable plastics being marketed today are so good, that the one you threw away today will be going through your grandkids pee hole after you are gone.
It’s actually fascinating how strong the plastic lobby is for “green” initiatives not to force alternatives.
