Is there any new information about storage restrictions? Amazon finally responded!

In the past two days, everyone has encountered many troubles when preparing for Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday. Some were split into seven or eight warehouses, and some were cancelled due to a bug in the creation of shipments. The most painful thing is that the IPI score is not high enough, and Amazon limits the amount of FBA inventory that can be used.

According to Amazon’s statement in July, sellers with an IPI score below 500 will be restricted in the warehouse capacity they can use, and the specific amount of restriction will be determined based on the seller’s sales and product market demand. It was also made clear that this warehouse restriction will last until the end of the year.

Recently, when everyone was restocking for Black Friday, they deeply felt the disgust of warehouse limitations. Many sellers were complaining about the unreasonable capacity and reported this issue to Amazon. Finally, Amazon officially responded to the sellers about this issue in the background today!

This time, Amazon once again made it clear in the announcement that the ASIN-level storage quantity restrictions are still valid. Amazon will continue to evaluate warehouse storage capacity and sellers' actual sales, and will reserve more storage space for sellers' products as much as possible.

The big news from this announcement is that Amazon will re-evaluate the distribution chain capacity and buyer consumption demand under the latest epidemic situation in the United States, and then issue new guidance policies on IPI warehousing restrictions in mid-December.

This announcement also proves our previous speculation that after the US quarantine policy failed and was forced to restart the economy, the epidemic prevention pressure in Amazon warehouses will be a long-term problem. The epidemic prevention pressure will seriously limit the efficiency and upper limit of warehouse processing orders. Therefore, in order to solve the delivery pressure caused by the surge in orders, the only way is to expand the number of overall warehouses and processing personnel.

Amazon mentioned in the announcement that in order to cope with the epidemic this year, Amazon will hire 145,000 seasonal employees during the holiday shopping season at the end of the year, and expand the capacity of standard-sized FBA warehouses by 50 million cubic feet by January next year. These efforts can effectively improve the distribution during the peak season at the end of the year, and sellers will be able to use more storage space.

So although Amazon did not say what the big news about the IPI will be in mid-December, judging from the information revealed in the announcement, it is likely that the available space for sellers will be adjusted up.

Although this adjustment is good news, the timing of its implementation is a bit late. It is already mid-December, Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday are over, and sellers have relatively low inventory. In addition, local consumers in the United States are on holiday to prepare for Christmas. Experienced sellers know that the period from holiday to Christmas is very slow, and the following January and February are traditionally off-seasons. At this time, increasing inventory capacity will have limited effect on sellers.

Of course, in the long run, increasing the upper limit of available storage is definitely beneficial, as it is one of the signals that shipments and replenishment are returning to normal. The more such signals there are, the closer we are to normal shipments.

In addition to increasing the warehouse limit, the big news in mid-December may also be a better possibility, which is to lower the IPI red line score to 400. If it is simply to increase the inventory limit, Amazon can actually adjust it directly in the background. The limit itself is constantly changing, so there is no need to notify so solemnly.

Therefore, the big news in mid-December may also involve the update of the policy itself. In short, any form of update is good for sellers. After Cyber ​​Monday this year, there should be no more farce of suspending warehousing in December last year. Therefore, sellers do not need to worry about the delivery after Black Friday Cyber ​​Monday this time, and must seize the opportunity of big promotion.