Amazon.com plan for a busy Christmas season

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4 Aug 2016

It’s August, so Selfridges have opened up their Christmas store on London’s Oxford Street.

They say that visitors from all over the world visiting the UK want to go to Selfridges and buy Christmas decorations that they can’t get at home. One does wonder if you need to sell Christmas decorations five months before the big day, why they even bothered to stop selling them in January.

It does prompt the question as to when you should start your Christmas planning, and for many businesses it pretty much starts the first day back after the Christmas break. If you’re not already thinking about Christmas then you’re probably not going to trade as profitably as you might with a little more planning.

Amazon are no exception to planning early. Last year they missed their earning expectations basically because they spent too much on fulfilment.

Last year, Amazon were overwhelmed by merchants wanting to hold their stock in Amazon warehouses to benefit from Fulfilment by Amazon and Prime eligibility. This meant Amazon had to put some last minute plans in place and as with all emergency measure it cost a heck of a lot more than their normal operations.

That’s why Amazon in the US have introduced two measures this year to alleviate their storage and shipping problems. Amazon.com have announced that they’re going to open eighteen new warehouse locations ready for the peak season – last year they only added six. The second thing Amazon.com are going to do is charge their merchants more if they place stock in American FBA warehouse and it doesn’t sell over the Christmas period.

As well as planning what stock you’ll be selling over Christmas, it also makes sense to know where it’s going to be stored, when to send it into your fulfilment house (whether that be Amazon FBA or an alternative provider) and what your logistics are going to cost.

If you’d like to get ahead on planning for peak, sign up to ChannelAdvisor and Tamebay’s ‘Unwrapping Christmas 2016 webinar‘ announced today and taking place on the 7th September.