A product can make good money on paper and still be a bad buy for your business: Amazon may restrict it, charge more to hold it, or refuse it for months of the year. Keep a short never-buy list of your own, and check every order against it before it goes out. A rule there always wins over a good price.
Hazmat
Hazmat products are dangerous goods: aerosols, anything flammable, many batteries, some cleaners and beauty products. Amazon stores them in special warehouses, may ask for safety documents, and limits how many you can send. Some sellers aren't set up for them at all.
If you can't sell them, the Exclude hazmat rule on Results hides them once the Amazon data includes hazmat details, and hazmat raises a product's risk in the Risk column; see Filtering and rules. If you can, buy them like any other product, but count the extra paperwork and the send limits. A listing Amazon hasn't classified yet can still turn out to be hazmat, so check it before a big order.
Meltables
Chocolate, gummies, lip balm, some candles: Amazon accepts meltable products only in its cooler months, and stock still in a warehouse when the heat starts can be removed or destroyed at your cost. Amazon's meltable window has for years run from mid October to mid April; check its dates each year.
A buyer has three choices:
- Skip them: never buy meltable products.
- Cool months only: buy only stock that arrives and sells before the heat starts.
- Buy anyway: you take the risk yourself.
For cool months only, the PO Assistant's Arrives mark on the chart shows when an order would land: today plus the supplier's lead time, or 14 days when none is set. Allow about 10 more days to be checked in at Amazon, then count the days the order should last from there. If they run past mid April, cut the cases or wait for autumn.
Oversize
Products Amazon sizes as bulky or larger cost much more to ship and store. A big box can lose its whole margin to fees. Results counts the referral and fulfillment fees in each product's profit, so a box whose fees eat its margin shows it there. Monthly storage isn't in that profit, and for a big box it adds up fast, so order oversize products in small amounts and sell through before you reorder.
Never buy
Keep every hard rule in one place, a short list you check each order against:
- Hazmat, if you aren't set up for it, and meltables in the warm months, above.
- Brands you're not approved for. See Brand approval.
- Brands you choose not to buy, such as brands that file complaints against sellers.
- Categories you choose not to buy, such as Grocery or Baby.
- Rules in your own words, such as "No glass".
Results can hold part of it for you: save Exclude hazmat and a Highest risk rule as a preset and they show in every catalog in your workspace; see Filtering and rules. The rest is yours to check by hand.
A worked example
You can't ship hazmat, and you buy meltables for the cool months only. On February 20 you open a candy catalog. A chocolate bar makes a 60% ROI, and a PO Assistant read suggests Buy 3 cases: 300 sales a month split between you and 4 sellers is 60 a month for you, 90 units for 45 days, 3 cases of 30.
The supplier's lead time is 25 days, so the Arrives mark sits on March 17. With about 10 days to be checked in, the bar goes on sale near March 27, and 90 units would still be selling in May, well into the heat. You order 1 case instead: 30 units, about two weeks of your share, sold by April 11.
A can of whipped topping in the same catalog is an aerosol, hazmat, so you pass whatever its price.