Update: Amazon FBA inventory cutoff for Christmas Week is December 3rd (2021). This is the date they recommend having inventory arrive at FBA to ‘ensure’ it will be checked-in and in-stock for Xmas week.

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Amazon has announced that the FBA-inventory cutoff date for Holidays 2021 is November 3rd.

Specifically, they said, “to ensure your inventory is available for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas“.

This is earlier than in years past. It is unclear if there will a total block of incoming inventory after November 3rd, or if they just want sellers to send inventory as soon as possible.

All I know is they sent out the PDF below. Feel free to read it yourself.

TAKEAWAY: Send in as MUCH inventory into FBA as you can before November 3rd.

Key dates from the PDF:

November 3rd – “This is Amazon’s FBA inventory cut-off deadline for U.S. sellers to ensure your inventory is available for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas selling on Amazon.   Inventory should arrive at our fulfillment centers by this date to ensure your clients’ products are available for customers during holiday.”

Also, October 8th is the Deadline to submit 7-Day Deals, Best Deals, and Lightning Deals.

PRO TIP: the twin FBA-FBM method.

This has saved our clients from going Out-of-Stock, thus saving them countless $10,000’s of dollars in profits.

Basically this trick is to create a DUPLICATE of all of your FBA ASINs as FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant). These duplicates will have the same ASIN, but a different SKU.

You can do this by clicking the dropdown next to the ASIN > Add Another Condition. Then type in a new SKU (I just add -FBM onto the end). 

So if your FBA inventory goes OOS, it will automatically accept orders via this FBM SKU. Just make sure you have inventory ready to ship out via a 3rd Party Logistics provider (3PL). We recommend Deliverr – their pricing and delivery times are similar to that of FBA.

Or as a 3PL alternative, as some smaller sellers do, just ship daily orders yourself from your home office! ANYTHING is better than going OOS! So have some backup inventory ready.

So basically, you should order plenty of excess inventory from your supplier, send as much as Amazon allows into FBA, and keep the rest in a 3PL or at your office. When your FBA limit goes up, you can replenish FBA inventory from there. Or if FBA goes OOS, you are ready to fulfill via FBM.

OK, that was just a quick announcement based on what we received from Amazon!

What are your Q4 inventory tips & questions? Leave a comment below.