Developing the correct barcodes for Amazon inventory

 

What does it mean when your inventory is Un-commingled, Stickered, has Amazon barcodes, or FNSKUs?

When creating a shipment to send inventory in for FBA, you will have to choose what kind of labeling you would like for your items.

You have two options. Either use the UPC/EAN or other Manufacturer Barcode, or apply Amazon labels.

Use of Amazon labels generates an FNSKU for your listing, which must be placed on each item as a sticker with a barcode. The inventory is now considered stickered and will be un-commingled.

This means the items will belong only to your account, and will not be shared between accounts selling the same items. When a buyer purchases an item from a listing, an item supplied by the business with an FNSKU will be sent to them.

How to tell the difference between FNSKU and ASIN:

• FNSKUs can be identified because they start with an X.
• ASINs will start with a B.

What determines an item to be called commingled, sticker-less, or a manufactured barcode?

Conversely, items without these labels might be called commingled, sticker-less, or manufacturer barcoded. Instead of FNSKUs, they will show the ASIN on your FBA inventory page.  

Sticker-less, or commingled items can be shared between seller accounts that list the same ASIN. In practice, this means that all units of the same ASIN sent in by different sellers are kept in the same pool.

Potential reasons you could get hit with a warning:

• A buyer who chooses your listing may not get one of the items you sent in. Resulting in a removal order may not return your original items to you.

It also means you could be hit with a warning for an inauthentic or infringing product for example – even if the unit that was problematic was supplied by another seller.

All listings start as sticker-less when you create them. The best time to convert is when you first send inventory in for FBA. You shouldn’t convert a listing that you’ve already used for sticker-less items, as this can cause issues.

Also, once a listing is stickered, you will not be able to change it back to sticker-less.

Don’t hesitate to ask for help:

If you would ever like to change the labeling preference for an item, we recommend you start by creating a new listing.

This help page is a good place to start for more information about FBA labeling requirements.

If you have more questions about the pros and cons of stickered vs. sticker-less, reach out to

Is it worth it to sell on Amazon in 2022?

 

There are many benefits and challenges for Amazon sellers, but in today’s market environment, is it worth it to sell on Amazon in 2022? Short answer: yes.

What do you think makes Amazon one of a kind, and why is almost everyone looking to sell on the platform? The fulfillment option on Amazon is a key driver of its popularity. When you think about the benefits of fulfillment by Amazon, it just makes sense to build a brand and start selling on the marketplace.

You can create your dream brand, ship your products directly to Amazon and have them take care of nearly everything else. Amazon FBA is an incredible business model because it allows anyone, regardless of their e-commerce experience, to open a store, list products, and start making money. But, as most FBA sellers realize, it isn’t as cut and dry as many make it to be.

With the popularity of Amazon comes a few challenges as well, including:

• Fierce competition with millions of sellers listing products on the platform
• More and more sellers from around the world, including China which is a big supplier of cheap items
• The rising cost of goods makes it difficult to make a profit
• Increased logistics and shipping costs incurred when shipping inventory to Amazon fulfillment centers
• Difficulty sourcing for products with Amazon enforcing strict policies that could see your account suspended if your products don’t meet their standards

Despite these challenges, Amazon still offers great opportunities for sellers. It all depends on whether your business model is compatible with Amazon. In fact, it’s worth noting that in 2022, despite the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, three-quarters of Amazon sellers are still profitable.

Keep reading to learn more as we explore why selling on Amazon is worth a shot.

We think is it worth it to sell on Amazon in 2022

The world of e-commerce is vast, but very few companies have the influence Amazon has enjoyed for years. Amazon receives nearly 3 billion monthly visitors, making the platform twice as popular as Walmart’s second-ranked mobile shopping app. So, as a small business, listing your products on Amazon puts your products in front of millions of visitors per day.

So why is Amazon the most powerful, effective small business incubator in the world’s history?

• Amazon Prime members: Over the years, Amazon has built quite an audience boasting nearly 160 million Prime members in the USA alone. Why are Amazon Prime members significant? These people pay a monthly subscription to Amazon, and because of that, Amazon is usually their first shopping destination.
• Low capital investment: With Amazon, anyone willing to accept the risk of online arbitrate and retail arbitrage (OA/RA) can easily start a business with little investment. Online arbitrage is where you purchase a product from an online seller and sell it at a profit on another marketplace like Amazon to eBay. With retail arbitrage, you buy products from one market and resell them elsewhere at a higher price.
• Testing product ideas is inexpensive:Market research is important when conducting business; sometimes, it can be quite expensive. But not on a platform like Amazon. Amazon receives millions of visitors daily, and you can take advantage of that to get an early read on the market value for a product you want to launch. You can always deactivate the listing if the product doesn’t resonate with people. No harm, no foul.
• Specialty goods:These are unique consumer products that only a specific group of buyers are willing to purchase. They include designer clothing, fancy groceries, fine watches, expensive perfumes, and special types of cameras, among others. Usually, these products are impossible to sell in a brick-and-mortar retail store without a large customer base. Amazon makes it easy for sellers to sell these types of products. Considering that there are 160 million Prime members, most of whom are willing to spend on specialty goods, it’s worth a shot.

What challenges will sellers face on Amazon?

One of the biggest challenges sellers on Amazon must worry about is competition. With nearly 2 million users enrolled and more on the way, starting a business on Amazon means bumping elbows with millions of rival sellers.

The entry barrier when starting on Amazon is quite low, which is usually a blessing and a curse. The mere fact that getting started isn’t too difficult means that you must brace yourself for stiffer competition than you would encounter elsewhere.

There is also another element of Amazon’s competitive landscape many don’t even know about. In some way, you will also compete with Amazon itself. How? Amazon has its own private label, Amazon Retail, that sells a staggering array of products.

How do sellers still find opportunities?

The competition has only increased in recent years. So, how do sellers find opportunities despite the growing competition from other sellers and Amazon itself? Here is how:

• Amazon-only versions of products:Brand owners selling also in brick-and-mortar stores can create Amazon versions of their products. Amazon has conquered the e-commerce space; even physical stores use this to sell their products. But selling on Amazon is very different from selling at a brick-and-mortar store. There is a need to create Amazon-only versions of your products. Doing so helps keep RA/OA sellers off your listings, creating a competitive advantage that helps you succeed on Amazon.
• In-depth analysis tools:One can use many tools to stay ahead of the competition. Tools like Helium 10 can help you find product categories where there is still an opportunity to sell. Whether through product research, sales analysis, keyword research, or earning reviews, these tools help aspiring Amazon FBA sellers build successful businesses on Amazon.

Side note: If you are an RA/OA seller, you must be very careful about overstocking any product because of the “race to the bottom “on prices. This is where price-cutting gets so extreme that margins disappear completely. In a typical race to the bottom, competitors fight fiercely for customers because of continuous price reductions. But feel free to overstock products during high volume sales times like Christmas and other special holidays because these are the times when you are likely to make more sales than any other time in the year.

How can I learn more about selling on Amazon?

With the many opportunities available for entrepreneurs, selling online or the thought of it can be daunting. Fortunately, many Amazon sellers continue to enjoy success thanks to the many available resources. Here are places where you can learn more about how to get started when it comes to selling on Amazon:

• YouTube: It is a new age of social media and online content creation, and YouTube has everything you need to learn about starting a business on Amazon. As long as you have an internet connection, there are so many channels you can browse through if you want to become an Amazon FBA seller.
• Online courses: There are so many courses online that you can subscribe to if you want to learn more about selling. These courses (free and paid) are created by experts who’ve spent years successfully selling on Amazon and other eCommerce spaces. One course worth checking out is the Freedom Ticket by Helium 10. The course will equip you with the knowledge and tools required to start and grow your business on Amazon.
• Amazon FBA Facebook groups:Facebook groups are another free resource you can exploit to get started on your Amazon selling journey. Search for Amazon FBA groups, ask questions, navigate seller issues from members, and even get to meet like-minded entrepreneurs.

Summary

So, is selling on Amazon worth it in 2022? Absolutely yes!

With millions of people visiting the platform daily and a staggering 160 million Amazon Prime members, it’s clear why businesses are lining up to sell on Amazon.

But at the end of the day, you must be open to change to succeed on the platform. After all, you will be competing with millions of other sellers. You also have to take advantage of the many resources and Amazon masterminds available at your disposal to learn more about selling on the platform and how to navigate through the many challenges you may encounter. These two are all the tools you need to start and build a successful business on the world’s largest online marketplace.

Oracle Joins

 

About 

A join is a query that combines rows from two or more tables, views, or materialized views. Oracle Database performs a join whenever multiple tables appear in the FROM clause of the query. The select list of the query can select any columns from any of these tables. If any two of these tables have a column name in common, then you must qualify all references to these columns throughout the query with table names to avoid ambiguity.

Oracle supports inner join, left join, right join, full outer join and cross join.

You can join a table to itself to query hierarchical data using an inner join, left join, or right join. This kind of join is known as self-join.

Setting up sample tables

We created two new tables with the same structure for the demonstration using Sample-tables.sql script. The SQL script is under followed.

-- Create BALLOON_A table
CREATE TABLE BALLOON_A (
    ID INT PRIMARY KEY,
    COLOR VARCHAR2 (100) NOT NULL
);

-- Create BALLOON_B table
CREATE TABLE BALLOON_B (
    ID INT PRIMARY KEY,
    COLOR VARCHAR2 (100) NOT NULL
);

-- Insert data into BALLOON_A table
INSERT INTO BALLOON_A (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (1, 'Red');

INSERT INTO BALLOON_A (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (2, 'Green');

INSERT INTO BALLOON_A (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (3, 'Blue');

INSERT INTO BALLOON_A (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (4, 'Purple');

-- Insert data into BALLOON_B table
INSERT INTO BALLOON_B (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (1, 'Green');

INSERT INTO BALLOON_B (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (2, 'Red');

INSERT INTO BALLOON_B (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (3, 'Cyan');

INSERT INTO BALLOON_B (ID, COLOR)
VALUES (4, 'Brown');

Both the tables have some common colors such as Red and Green. Let’s call the BALLOON_A the left table and BALLOON_B the right table.

Oracle inner join

The inner join selects records that have matching values in both tables.

The following statement joins the left table to the right table using the values in the color column.

SELECT
    A.ID ID_A,
    A.COLOR COLOR_A,
    B.ID ID_B,
    B.COLOR COLOR_B
FROM
    BALLOON_A A
INNER JOIN BALLOON_B B ON A.COLOR = B.COLOR;

ID_A COLOR_A ID_B COLOR_B
---- ------- ---- -------
2 Green 1 Green
1 Red 2 Red

2 rows selected.

The above SQL query joins both tables and returns rows from the left table that match with the rows from the right table as per the selected criteria in on clause.

Oracle left join

The left join returns all records from the left table (BALLOON_A), and the matched records from the right table (BALLOON_B). The result is NULL from the right side, if there is no match.

The following statement joins the left table with the right table using a left join.

SELECT
    A.ID ID_A,
    A.COLOR COLOR_A,
    B.ID ID_B,
    B.COLOR COLOR_B
FROM
    BALLOON_A A
LEFT JOIN BALLOON_B B ON A.COLOR = B.COLOR;

ID_A COLOR_A ID_B COLOR_B
---- ------- ---- -------
2 Green 1 Green
1 Red 2 Red
3 Blue 
4 Purple 

4 rows selected.

The above SQL query returns all rows from the left table with the matching rows if available from the right table. If there is no matching row found from the right table, the left join will have null values for the columns of the right table.

Oracle right join

The right join returns all records from the right table (BALLOON_B), and the matched records from the left table (BALLOON_A). The result is NULL from the left side when there is no match.

The following example use right join to join the left table to the right table.

SELECT
    A.ID ID_A,
    A.COLOR COLOR_A,
    B.ID ID_B,
    B.COLOR COLOR_B
FROM
    BALLOON_A A
RIGHT JOIN BALLOON_B B ON A.COLOR = B.COLOR;

ID_A COLOR_A ID_B COLOR_B
---- ------- ---- -------
1 Red 2 Red
2 Green 1 Green
  4 Brown
  3 Cyan

4 rows selected.

The above sql query returns all rows from the right table with the matching rows if available from the left table. If there is no matching row found from the left table, the right join will have null values for the columns of the left table.

Oracle full outer join

The full outer join returns a result set that contains all rows from both left and right tables, with the matching rows from both sides where available.

The following example shows the full outer join of the left and right tables.

SELECT
    A.ID ID_A,
    A.COLOR COLOR_A,
    B.ID ID_B,
    B.COLOR COLOR_B
FROM
    BALLOON_A A
FULL OUTER JOIN BALLOON_B B ON A.COLOR = B.COLOR;

ID_A COLOR_A ID_B COLOR_B
---- ------- ---- -------
2 Green 1 Green
1 Red 2 Red
  3 Cyan
  4 Brown
3 Blue  
4 Purple  

6 rows selected.

The above SQL query returns all rows from the right and left table with the matching or not matching rows.

Brand Reviews- what gives?

 

Brand reviews got you asking questions? We have the answers.

Many brands or categories may require some sort of brand review through Seller Central to list your inventory on Amazon.

Recently, Riverbend has seen many questions regarding category or brand review.

This happens when you have already been approved for a brand (ex: Nike, Kitchen Aid, etc.) and have been selling for 6 or more months.

Occasionally, Amazon will request that you submit new documentation. You do this to show your supply chain for these products after you have already passed the initial approval process.

Amazon is not typically asking for information regarding a specific ASIN.

Typically Amazon is not asking for information regarding a specific ASIN. They want to verify your supply chain for the brand or category in general. Amazon may also sometimes state that since you were approved to sell within that specific brand/category that the compliance requirements were updated.  

They usually will ask that you send an email to csm-brand-review@amazon.com with the following information:

— Store name

— Seller Account Email Address

— Invoice(s)

These invoices do not need to cover 365 days’ worth of inventory but should be a good example of your supply chain for the brand or category. This is best proven with a copy of an invoice from within the last year that shows a bulk buy.

To wrap it up:

They are not removing your approval or stating they have received any complaints, but simply would like to re-verify your supply chain.

We have seen quick responses to this request, and you should have approval again within 2-5 business days.

If after 5 business days you have not received a response and you are still unable to list your inventory, we suggest you reach out to Seller Support to request an update

How to Sell Tickets for Your Small Event/Seminar Online

 

Points to be noted if required:

1. Create a website (Wix) & a brand mandate for your event (Colours, logo, slogan etc..)

2. Use Townscript.com for selling tickets

3. Create social handles & create events

4. Install google analytics & Facebook pixel in your website/landing page

5. Issue an early bird offer

6. Put up ads in display boards in Colleges

7. Find quality local social media influencers & provide an offer for their fans with a coupon code

8. Ask your speakers to put a post on Linkedin

9. Promote the event in your own circle

10. Facebook lead generation in the native language

11. A/B test your ads

12. Give an option for offline payment

13. Give personal discounts for friends

Additional tips: 1) You can create an interesting question around the field of your event and give an anonymous answer to it in an informative manner and leave a link to the conference at the end of your answer.

What’s Next, After the Millennials? Let’s Talk About Gen Z

 

We’ve all heard about Millennials and how different they are in terms of spending pattern and consumption behaviour. Well, they are in no way special. There has always been a shift in behavioural pattern every 20 years or so. Since Millennials have now achieved purchasing power, and they are the first ones to reach that point after the onset of the information age, the change is being watched and analysed by the whole world, possibly in awe.

From a marketer’s perspective, this change that happens mostly in a 20 year interval seems frustrating, because after trying on so many levels only the industry may ‘hack’ the marketing ‘tactic’ that may produce certain results, but that statistics or data may become invalid or vain due to the shift to the next generation and with that, the behaviour too.

For those who are new to this whole ‘Generational Segmentation’, I would like to explain in very brief about the different segments of generations we have witnessed the past century [Source: Wikipedia ]:

1) Baby Boomers – defined as those individuals born between 1946 and 1964.

2) Generation X – Demographers and researchers typically use birth years ranging from the early-to-mid 1960s to the early 1980s.

3) Millennials – Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years.

4) Generation Z – Demographers and researchers typically use the mid-1990s to early-2000s as starting birth years.

Currently, the thick meat for marketers lies in the Gen X and Millennial segments. For the sake of the length of the post and the context, I’d like to skip talking about Gen X and take Millennials only as the subject of analysis. I am noting below, only, the two main purchasing behaviours of those who belong to this category. [Source: Forbes ]

1) Millennials want their purchases to make them feel good ie, they spend for experiences.
Research has shown that more than half of Millennials purchase from a brand which relates to them as a person, which helps them portray themselves more explicitly.

2) Millennials trust peer-generated endorsements.
Interestingly, it has been found that they avoid paying attention to direct advertisements from the brands and place more belief on word of mouth and product reviews.

All these are good data for marketers and they have been riding on it. But, as I’ve mentioned above, what next?

As millennials are getting older, it has started to create a new space, the 20 years old window is slowly coming to an end and is opening gates for the new segment, the Gen Z.

The new segment is only barely learning to walk, and for the same reason itself, they haven’t exhibited sufficient patterns or traces for researchers to observe and to make sense out of it. But like always, looking backwards can help in predicting the future.

No, Gen Z isn’t going to study from Millennials, rather from Gen X – says a study done by Bloomberg. “Gen X is raising Gen Z to look like them: autonomous, cynical, with looser reins,” said Corey Seemiller, professor at Ohio’s Wright State University who has conducted research and written several books on Generation Z. [Source: Bloomberg ]

The above graph is one among the strong data clusters that clarifies the predicted similarity in behaviour between Gen X and Gen Z.

It’s all good to know that Gen Z is learning form Gen X, but what’s in it for marketers? The behavioural changes can be concluded as follows [Source: LinkedIn ]

1) Gen Z is tougher and more resilient than the millennial generation.

2) Sees more value in education.

3) Seeks financial security after witnessing those born in the 80s and 90s incur massive debt.

Alright now we do have a clarity about their behaviour, what are they going to spend on? (The million dollar question)

And the answer is… they are going to buy.. nothing!?

I may sound hideous, but that’s what their behaviour predicts. Instead of buying pricey items, they are going to save money by renting.

It’s assumed that Gen Z is going to literally rent out everything – from real estate to clothes to furniture. Hence a new window could possibly open up for marketers, that is to build products or services with such caution that, the particular should preferably be in a subscription model and may be put up in a manner that can withstand changes in user patterns.

As a marketer myself, I hope that the trend predicted withstands time so that we could help Gen Z choose better, worthwhile products to rent.

Thanks for reading