4 Things You Can Do Now To Prepare For The Q4 Rush
By The Selling Family
Get stocked up on all of your supplies
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you will go through way more boxes, tape, labels and poly bags during the Fourth Quarter than you do the rest of the year, so it’s a good idea to stock up now! It never fails that we have coaching clients (and even ourselves sometimes) rushing to Home Depot or Office Max to grab some boxes or bubble mailers to get the days shopping items out the door. When we have to get them at places like that we spend more than necessary because we don’t have time to wait for a shipment to arrive.
The poly bags we keep in stock are 8×10; 9×12; 11×14; and 14×20. You can also get a starter kit of 100 that has multiple sizes and see which ones you like the most.
We go through tons of poly bags in the Fourth Quarter especially. A lot of toys need to be bagged because they aren’t completely enclosed in boxes or are plush, and we do a ton of bundles and multipacks as well.
Even if you aren’t approved to sell in categories like Grocery or Health & Beauty, or if you’ve never created a bundle, you can take advantage of others’ expertise. You’ll find a lot of existing bundles where you can jump on the listing. All you need to do is make sure you’ve got supplies ready to pack them!
You’ll use a variety of sizes of boxes, but during Q4 in particular you want to stock up on some of the bigger sizes, like 18x18x18. You’ll find that not only are you shipping out more items, but that a lot of them will be larger than usual. One of the big sellers 2 years ago were Max Tow Trucks which are pretty big. So we could only fit 4 in a big box. But if we only had the medium sized boxes, we would probably only be able to do 1.
Keep in mind that you need to limit box size to 25 inches or less on any one side or else your shipment is subject to oversize charges.
The Fourth Quarter is also a time when we will Merchant Fulfill orders more than usual. We do this either to jump on a hot item with a high profit before the price falls, or late in the season when it’s too late to ship something into Amazon but when sales are still rocking.
When we Merchant Fulfill, we usually like to ship items that are light and can fit into a bubble mailer. We order at least 100 of the 8×10 and 14×20 sizes.
Get Your Office And Workspace Organized
In the Fourth Quarter more than ever, you want to make sure you have an office or work space that functions efficiently. This isn’t the time to be searching high and low for your tape dispenser or box cutter!
Take an afternoon or a whole day, whatever’s necessary, and make sure your space is fully functional. Or see if there is another space that would make more sense.
This doesn’t mean you need to have floors you can eat off of or a desk with nothing on it. We all have our personal work styles and you don’t want to try any major changes out right now, either. But you do need to make sure you can work as fast as possible with as few distractions as you can.
One organizational tip is to make sure you can reach everything you use regularly from your seat. So if you’re sitting in front of your computer, think about where your printer is, your notes, your labels, etc.
Of course you will probably get up and pack items at a different spot, but do the same thing there. Have everything within easy reach in your prep area. You’d be surprised how much time you can save by making sure you don’t need to take just a few extra steps. Multiply that by 100 or 200 items, and you can easily add an hour to your day just because you have to walk around more than you need to!
One thing we do different during Q4 than other times of the year is we bring folding tables into the living room so we can have an “assembly line”. Even with a huge dining table it just isn’t enough work area, so we found having the extra tables makes it easier to work with.
Keep Selling Right Now, Don’t Wait For The Busy Season
A lot of sellers want to send in a bunch of inventory right now and stock their shelves in anticipation of increased sales and higher prices. We actually do the opposite.
Instead, we suggest you send in and price items to sell NOW. We feel it’s better to sell more product now than to wait to sell it later. You want to reinvest and grow your capital, not sit on it! This also goes back to not knowing what will happen later.
Even if they are proven items, why not just price them to move now? So you can send more later. If you have some leftover and prices jump, great, but at least they were selling the whole time.
Think of these next 8 weeks or so as a time to sell as much as possible in order to grow your available cash. Wouldn’t it be better to have a nice wad of cash to invest in the Fourth Quarter instead of running out of money because you spent it all in August and September on things you hope do well?
You’ll also have a much better idea in mid to late November of exactly what the most profitable and hottest items are. So make sure you’ve got the capital to act on what is hot at the moment! We teach that you should be able to triple your initial investment capital during November and December; so what do you want your starting figure to be?
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we’re not sending in SOME items now that we don’t expect to sell until later. It just means we are sending in enough for it to sell the whole time.
Start Watching For The Trends
We get into this in much more detail in our Q4 training, but you’ll want to start getting familiar with stores you might not have visited much during the year.
This includes Toys R Us, Target, Walmart and other places that sell toys in particular. You want to know the layout of the stores and where the different sections are. This saves you time when you’re sourcing there later and need to get in and out so you can hit as many places as possible in a day.
You should also start paying attention to the weekly store circulars and sales to get familiar with brands and toy lines. This way, you’ll recognize the hot toys when you see them in store. You’ll also know right away if you’ve spotted something unique, like a color variation that might not be available everywhere.
You can also do a lot of research online. You can search Amazon for bundle ideas or for themed products to get an idea of how well they’ve done in the past. Be careful to look for items that do well every year and not the ones that might have been hot for one season.
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