Welcome to the first inventory report. I’ll be documenting stats and strategies used for sourcing inventory.
I’ll try to cover everything related to inventory: units bought, cash spent, categories of products etc. I’m hoping this will help me think about sourcing better because I suck at it right now.
Let’s take a look at the numbers for January 2025.
Inventory Breakdown
Units purchased: 151
Units sent for FBA: 88
Cash spent: $1,859.31
Avg cost per unit: $12.31
Out of the 151 units purchased in January, 12 were books while the other 139 were general arbitrage items.
I sourced 12 different websites. Most of the units were within the Beauty & Personal Care category, but we had some in sports, grocery, and video games.
Discounts ranged from 15% to 20% off. And I utilized a BOGO in combination with 15% off code twice.
Strategies
Mainly just storefront stalking. I don’t think this can be the only strat I use because a) everyone has access to each other’s storefronts and b) I’m already late to the listing if I’m finding it through someone else.
I’m already seeing the seller count skyrocket on a few listings.
Not a great feeling.
But I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to manually source websites that have sales and always tweaking keepa product finder when researching a brand to find products with increasing sales and decreasing seller counts.
This is still hard and it kind of sucks. My book buying was quiet in January but I am buying deals as I find them.
My seasonal buy tracker only has a few listings for February. But in March that count jumps up to 30 books to monitor. Hope to get a few good listings for the May/June mini season.