Amazon Sourcing FOMO at Black Friday

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Black Friday, without a doubt, is the most stressful time for an Amazon online arbitrage seller. There’s the pressure of having to have enough stock at the fulfilment centres, and there’s also the overbearing weight of excessive deals that makes you feel like you *should* be buying as much stock as you should.

I played the Black Friday game in 2014 and 2015 as a consumer. In 2016 and 2017 I had QUIET Black Fridays as an Amazon seller. I just had the wrong stock in and the combination of Amazon’s and the private label deals just distracted people from all of my goods. Thankfully the sales recovered in the lead-up to Christmas, but I did feel like I failed on probably the most important day on the ecommerce calendar.

For both of those days – or weeks, actually – I was obsessed with trying to find the best deals. It’s a time when there are supposed to be deals. It’s the whole point of the occasion. However, I actually found that there wasn’t actually as many true deals as I hoped there would have been.

As a consumer, I was a lot less in-tune with massive price drops from retailers. A 30% offer sounds major, and as though I should be able to squeeze a flip out of it. As an Amazon seller that spends so much time looking for these price changes, I realised that the Black Friday deals aren’t nearly as impressive as they could be. Oftentimes, the price drops are mirrored on Amazon anyway, so you can’t even sell them for profit on there.

In 2017 especially, I was stressed trying to find things to sell. I was working at the head office of a massive retailer at the time. The office was buzzing with excitement as they attempted to hit hourly sales targets. I used that as an opportunity to go missing and hide in a meeting room to hunt for any sign of profitable deals around online. By 4pm I was so stressed that I’d barely come up with anything. I don’t need stress like that. As it was more of a thing to promote a whole week of Black Friday deals, I’d already done four days of hunting by that point and faced constant disappointment along the way.

I was looking for trainers, beauty sets, desirable electricals and just kept facing tiny margins. It just wasn’t worth taking the chance on them at all.

In 2018 and 2019, I chose not to source anything for the whole of the Black Friday weeks. Nothing. I just stuck to the old reliable replenishables and left the rest to others. It’s way too stressful on actual Black Friday to go hunting down deals, because you’re competing with both other Amazon sellers and the public too. I decided to pass on the FOMO and just leave Amazon sourcing for a little while.

I may not get amazing sales, and I may not be able to source much more than usual on Amazon, but I let the pressure go since 2018 and I’ve been a lot more productive since. I’ve found it a lot more helpful to just focus on buying things that people are going to end up buying a lot more of on the lead-up to Christmas.

You may have had more success around that time of the year, for sourcing or selling, but that’s just where I’m at with it. It’s up to you whether you decide to get caught up in the hunt or focus on something else instead.