Thought I’d do another quick update on the Amazon UK FBA journey.
Looks good on paper, but as always, revenue does not tell the full story. Some products are selling well and consistently. Some have been break even. Some have only really been useful for freeing capital back up.
The biggest lesson recently has been around listings, GTINs and trusting what suppliers say before the stock actually lands.
One supplier let me place a fairly large order after explaining over the phone that I intended to break the stock down and sell it in smaller packs. They were aware of the plan before I ordered.
The stock arrived. Then when I needed the correct GTIN/listing route sorted through Amazon, they refused to provide what was needed.
That was a big lesson.
On top of that:
- The pallet went to the wrong shipping address, which cost around £200 to sort
- I spent a lot of time repackaging stock into smaller packs
- The listing route then turned out not to work properly
- I’m now having to look at reviving an old/dead listing instead
Looking back, I probably should have explored the original listing route first before spending the time and money breaking everything down.
On the positive side:
- I’ve cleared out some stock that had been sitting around for ages
- A few products are now proving consistently profitable
- I’m learning the catalogue/listing side properly
- The next 6 months look a lot more promising
On the negative side:
- Revenue is still nowhere near actual profit you may expect form 13k sales
- Operational mistakes have eaten into margins
- GTIN/listing issues can kill an opportunity quickly
- Some lessons have been expensive
Another big shift is sourcing;
I thought casting a wider net was the answer. More software, more scans, more suppliers, more products.
But now i have learnt that a wider net can make things more cloudy, not clearer. Sourcing software is useful, but it also feels heavily saturated because lots of sellers are looking at the same data.
The better route seems to be building proper wholesaler relationships and focusing on repeatable stock, not just random “opportunities”
Still early days and definitely not pretending I’ve cracked it, but the business feels a lot more real now than it did a month ago.
For other UK sellers, did you also go through this stage where the sales looked decent, but the actual profit lagged behind because of mistakes, listing issues and stock you had to unwind?