Selling seasonal products on Amazon is like surfing in the e-commerce wave – catching the right timing can make you ride high and earn big; but if you miss the rhythm, overstock can make you capsize instantly. To do well with such products, the key is to understand their cycle laws and use a set of flexible strategies to turn short-term sales peaks into real profits.
I. Understand Cycle Laws: See Seasonal Products from a Time Dimension
The most troublesome thing about seasonal products is that the sales window is short but the demand is explosive. To handle them well, you first need to figure out the cycle laws of the products.
Characteristics and Opportunities of Three Types of Seasonal Products
- Strongly related to seasons: Products like winter skiing gear and summer sunscreen, their sales follow the weather, and the annual sales curve is almost the same. Such products need to be laid out in advance. For example, ski goggles in the Northern Hemisphere market need to be prepared from September, to optimize the Listing and accumulate some early reviews before the snow falls in November.
- Holiday-specific: Products like Christmas decorations and Valentine’s Day gifts, their sales are concentrated in one to one and a half months before the holiday, and no one wants them after the holiday. Data in 2024 shows that the sales of Christmas wreaths on the US site are the best in the first week of December, and after December 20th, sales can drop by 70%, leaving a very short time for clearance.
- Driven by specific scenarios: Products like camping equipment and back-to-school stationery, their demand is triggered by life scenarios, with less obvious but traceable cycles. For example, garden barbecues on the European site, their sales gradually increase as the weather gets warmer, with the peak season from April to August, but the specific best-selling days depend on the weekend weather.
Phased Operation by Cycle
- Observation period (3-6 months before the peak season): Use Google Trends to check the data of the past 3 years and find out the month when demand starts to grow. For example, searching for “halloween costume kids” will find that the search volume starts to rise in mid-July every year, which is the time to start product development and prepare the supply chain.
- Preparation period (1-3 months before the peak season): Send goods to FBA warehouses and do some small promotions, aiming to keep the product in the top 500 of the subcategory. Cherry blossom season peripheral products on the Japanese site, such as tableware with cherry blossom patterns, need to be warehoused by mid-February. At this time, run automatic ads to test the conversion rate of keywords and accumulate data for the subsequent sales rush.
- Outbreak period (the month of the peak season): Concentrate resources to attract traffic, the SP ad budget can be increased to 3-5 times the usual, and set up tiered discounts, such as 10% off in the first week and 5% off in the second week to stimulate orders. For fireworks festival-related products on the UK site, 7 days before “Guy Fawkes Day” on November 5th, advertising the keyword “bonfire night decorations” can achieve an ROI of 1:8.
- Finishing period (within 1 month after the peak season): Carry out “combined clearance”, bundle the remaining goods with non-seasonal products for sale, such as selling Christmas stockings together with ordinary towel sets, or doing “buy one get one free” to clear them quickly. Remember that Amazon’s long-term storage fees are charged quarterly, and seasonal products must be processed before the end of the quarter.
II. Find Breakthroughs in Product Selection: Avoid Red Sea Competition and Seize Time Difference Opportunities
Seasonal products seem to have fierce competition, but as long as you know how to find “time differences” and “differentiation”, there are still opportunities to make money.
Three-step Method to Verify Product Selection with Data
- Test demand intensity: Search for target keywords on the Amazon front desk and check the daily sales changes of top products in the “Best Sellers” list. If the daily sales of a winter glove suddenly increase from 50 units to 200 units in November and lasts for more than two weeks, it means the demand is really rising and it has entered the outbreak period.
- Analyze competition difficulty: Use SellerSprite to check the 上架 time and review quantity of TOP10 products in the category. If 70% of the top links are listed in the past year with less than 50 reviews, it means there are still opportunities in this category; otherwise, you have to be careful.
- Calculate profit margin: In addition to procurement and logistics costs, you need to set aside 15%-20% more for clearance discounts. For example, a Christmas hat with a cost of 50 yuan is sold for 15 dollars, which seems to have a good profit, but after counting 10% return rate and 20% clearance discount, the actual profit margin may only be about 15%.
Three Directions for Differentiated Product Selection
- Small function innovation: Add some small scene-appropriate functions to traditional products, such as adding a UV protection index label to children’s swimsuits, and making several replaceable expression accessories for Halloween masks.
- Focus on niche groups: Don’t rush for the mass market, focus on the needs of specific groups. For example, pet Christmas costumes have less competition than adult costumes, and pet owners are less price-sensitive.
- Customize by region: Modify products according to the cultural characteristics of different sites. For example, Thanksgiving decorations on the US site should highlight turkey elements, while the Canadian site values maple leaf themes more.
III. Flexible Operation: Use Elastic Strategies to Cope with Cycle Changes
Operating seasonal products cannot be static; adjustments must be made at any time according to market conditions, just like surfers adjusting their posture with the waves.
Skills for Balancing Stock Quantity
- Safety stock formula: Stock quantity = (historical average daily sales × sales cycle) × 1.2 (safety factor) – existing stock. For example, for Independence Day flags on the US site, the average daily sales last year was 80, the sales cycle is 30 days, and the current stock is 500, so you need to prepare 80×30×1.2 – 500 = 2380.
- Warehousing in batches: Prepare only 60% of the estimated quantity for the first time, and decide whether to replenish the remaining 40% based on the first month’s sales. For summer sunshades on the European site in 2024, sellers who warehoused in batches had a 40% higher inventory turnover rate than those who prepared all goods at once.
Rhythm of Traffic Regulation
- Warm-up period: Mainly run automatic ads to collect high-conversion keywords, and post some “trend previews” on social media, such as “2024 Christmas decoration popular color prediction”, to bring some external traffic to the Listing.
- Outbreak period: Run SB ads to seize the top position of the category, use exact matching for core keywords. At this time, a slightly higher ACoS (such as within 25%) is acceptable, first ensure sales and ranking.
- Finishing period: Turn off poorly performing ad groups, leaving only keywords with stable conversion, and add words like “clearance” and “limited time” in the Listing title and description to make hesitant buyers place orders quickly.
Three Risk Defense Lines
- Check patents: Go to official websites such as the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to check the appearance and function patents of products. Holiday products are especially prone to infringement, such as Christmas light strings and Halloween masks with specific shapes.
- Find multiple suppliers: Choose 2-3 suppliers and agree on “flexible production” to quickly replenish goods in peak seasons and order fewer goods in off-seasons.
- Plan for returns: Make it clear in the Listing that “seasonal products do not support returns for non-quality issues”, and prepare some low-cost solutions, such as partial refunds.
IV. Long-term Operation: Turn Seasonal Products into Sustained Profitable Businesses
Sellers who really know how to do seasonal products are not satisfied with only one transaction, but turn short-term opportunities into long-term advantages by accumulating data and iterating products.
At the end of each quarter, sort out the sales data of the current quarter and record these key information: the specific date when demand starts, the keywords with the highest ad conversion rate, the relationship between return rate and product defects, etc. These data will become the “compass” for the next year’s operation. In addition, you can change best-selling seasonal products into “evergreen models”. For example, for Christmas-themed mugs, launch a simple daily-use version, and balance the sales volume in peak and off-seasons through combined sales.
Operating Amazon seasonal products is actually playing with “time leverage”: using 3 months of preparation for 1 month of outbreak, and avoiding 90% of risks with a set of flexible strategies. Remember, in this field, “timing” is more important than “effort”, and “rhythm” is more critical than “speed”.
