Does anyone have insight on what magic calculation they use for this? I typically ignore their recommendations and send in what I see is selling and/or might sell, but their current recommendation has me sending multiples of things that haven’t sold at all in the last 30 days.
Is there some magic sauce they know that I don’t? I’m tempted to do what they say as I’m trying to get more to FBA vs. FBM, but then it all just seems to flip to excess inventory.
Should be rolling 30 days of sales and its updated daily or every other day so that shouldn’t be happening - it did used to back in the day.
If you know for a fact you won’t sell then I wouldn’t send any inventory in because it’ll fuq up you sell-thru and thus your ipi. In this case, I would send individual units SPD and see how it goes and keep doing that until sell-thru is achieved
We have one sku that does 5 units a day with no more than $5 in ad spend per day (mostly less) and that is the only SKU that has JIT SPD restock - keeping around 50-70 days of stock at a time
I also doubt there is some automatc forecast on FBM vs FBA - the forecasts is on actual sales, but I haven’t done FBM
I’m not FBA, so my insight comes from this wise post a few weeks ago… 
Can you tell this is the bane of my existence!! LOL
Voodoo magic?
We follow it somewhat, but find it rather inaccurate. The recommendations, not Voodoo magic.
We check historical trends, often the number provided in the Inventory planning area do not match.
They are still recommending we send up Halloween items. Been bugging us to do that since the last rental season. As in, the extended return window included Halloween sales. You know due to COVID.
We just had to tear apart two boxes, and pull two units from each box this week. The items were headed to FBA. They recommended we send the SKU’s in Inventory Management. When we did, and tried to ship we were told to take the items out. This since we had recalled them in the last 60 days. Well yes, we did since they were aging. So why Amazon did you ask us to send them?
Sometimes I think they ask us to send enough items so they can be in 1 day shipping all over the country. I am ok with that, but it would be nice if they said, "If you send 40 units, it will trigger 1 day shipping, if you send 20 units your offers will be two day shipping.
But there I go again, thinking they (Amazon) thinks like a business.
When Amazon warehouses have room, they tell you to send stuff in. When they are full, they complain your stuff doesn’t sell fast enough. It doesn’t matter how much of the stuff in the warehouse is yours, if the warehouse is over whatever % of capacity they think is too full, everyone gets pressure to sell faster, run sales, lower prices… Even if your inventory is at 90 days of sales, if the warehouse is below whatever % capacity they want to keep filled, everyone gets pressure to send in more stuff…
Amazon cares about their bottom line, not yours. Their suggestions are things you can do to make their lives easier, not yours. Amazon is triggering my cynicism hard today, not yours.
This is what I’m wondering. The things they’re telling me to send only have 3-4 in stock so they’re definitely NOT 1 day - so maybe they know better than I do that if they were in stock everywhere they would sell more. I’ve been aiming to do that with my better sellers - but then they ask for more of the slower things. Hmmm
Always the way!
We have this conversation in our studio office, shop quite often. We use exactly the same words. “maybe they know better than we do” yet we have not been able to prove it.
Right now we are in the middle of a Cold Turkey test with Advertising. We stopped about 2.5 months ago. While our sales are down, year over year, our profits are up. It is so nice to see the Green chart on the payments dashboard, bigger, a lot bigger, than the red chart.
I want to do this so badly, since it stresses me out - but I don’t have the nerve quite yet.
It’s always been insane with handmade, particularly low volume things, and new listings.
I can get the first sale on a new item and its all “send 28!” which is absolutely not gonna happen. Meanwhile on something that I recently restocked that I know sells well, they say nothing.
Personally, I go with my own gut and history. I’m trying to get to 5 per item as I know whatever I send now has through the holidays to sell without becoming too old.
Ah this might be the handmade thing which is its own world I’m gathering 
We have items, some that are actually handmade on the commercial side. Since we started before handmade was a thing.
I think the inaccuracy issue is a low volume issue. We have some SKU’s with over 100 units a month, the requests from Inventory Planning are good with those. Accurate, even when the number changes from 60 to 160 a month.
The inaccurate ones are the low volume, one or five a month. They (the Amazon Systems) just don’t don’t get, not enough data.
I can understand that. What makes no sense is asking me to send “Back to School” products from October to March. Or Halloween items from November through June and beyond.
Any man or woman on the street would know, that makes no sense at all.
I have one item with 1 unit left that’s going to be over 365 days, just can’t seem to sell that last one, and will have to remove it before the 15th (or maybe try liquidation since it’s a low cost item) and keep the listing as FBM. But of course, Amazon think I should restock more for FBA. Not going to happen.
Give the Vine “Two for Free” special program a try. We have given away 6 aged items in 24 hours. It took 3 days to kick in and have them post on Vine. Once they did it was less than 2 hours before they were claimed.
Problem solved. When we recall the trip back will soil the product packaging. For us this was a good solution. Who knows we may get a good comment and some traffic.
Be careful, it is two free of any ASIN however, you are limited to two per parent. So if you use variations be careful not to exceed the two per parent. If you do they will charge $200, if you do it right it is free. You have to pay fulfillment fees.
I need to look for this - I looked at Vine briefly and it was pretty expensive to even include an ASIN, sounds like they’re having a special that I haven’t paid attention to. I didn’t receive any emails about it.
It was in the news section about 5 days ago.
Go to advertising, vine. The promotion is at the top of the page. Be careful, only two units per parent. Or they will charge $200!
When you confirm it will say $200 but one of the amazonians on the NSFE said as long as it is only 2 per parent no charge.
Yup, found it thank you! I’ve never used Vine so I need to read up on it. 
I don’t qualify, not a registered brand owner.
You and me, both @Dreamscape-Studio. I feel like we are the only ones who didn’t take advantage of the Brand Waiver feature for handmade sellers and now it’s too late.
My sales are still dead here, otherwise, I’d pay for the service aerides mentioned and start with the brand registry. Too lazy to do it myself, I need the help, lol.