In order to help better prepare professional Amazon sellers, we’ve brought in the inventory management gurus over at Webgility and SkuVault to help sellers strategize their products, campaigns, prices & profits for Q4.

1. Strategic Inventory
Planning for the
Holiday Shopping Rush

2. Presenters
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Danny Shaw
Head of Product
Webgility
Director of Business Development
SkuVault
Rob McGrorty
Jeff Coleman
VP of Marketplace Channels
CPC Strategy

3. Housekeeping
• Everyone is set on mute
• Questions can be submitted via the question box
• If we can’t get to your question, we follow up after the webinar
• We will email the webinar recording to all registrants
• Slides and other PDFs in the handouts panel
• We’ll be sharing other resources as well during the webinar
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4. Agenda
• Introductions
• Understanding where you are today
• Strategic inventory management for the holidays
• FBA Fees – are you prepared?
• Deep dive into historical data
• Financial intelligence for Amazon sellers
• Q&A
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5. About CPC Strategy
We Drive Conversions by Matching Retail Inventory With Consumer Intent.
Offering a focused suite of retail advertising services, CPC Strategy is an elite Retail Search
agency that specializes in driving performance growth on the channels that most directly
impact a retailer’s digital bottom line. With over 350 clients and over 75 million dollars of ad
spend under management, we know a thing or two about what drives success in online retail
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SOLUTIONS
• Retail-Focused Paid Search (PPC)
• Google Shopping Management
• Shopping Channel Management
• Amazon Sales Acceleration

6. About Webgility
Unify connects all of your sales channels with your accounting and integrates with industry
leaders in shipping, inventory management, marketing automation, and point of sale so you
can optimize operations for your whole business. We lead the industry in service and have
thousands of happy customers to prove it.
• Solutions for multi-channel e-commerce businesses to streamline operations and scale
• Compatible with 80+ e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, eBay, QuickBooks, Xero
• Help our customers process 2.5M orders each month, saving $7.6M and 352,400 hours
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7. About SkuVault
SkuVault is a cloud-based inventory & warehouse management system system that’s designed to work with
your warehouse, not against it. Real-time quantity syncs prevent out-of-stocks, barcoding and QC reduce
picking and shipping errors, our smart re-order reports ensure that your purchasing decisions are backed by
hard data, and our integrations streamline processes for our e-commerce merchants.
Our clients on average decrease out-of-stocks by 10x, reduce labor costs by 30%, and reduce fulfillment time
by 87%.
• Inventory Management
• Product Catalog
• Kitting & Bundling
• Barcoding
• Multiple Locations & Warehouses
• Physical & Cycle Counts
• Advanced Reporting
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• Real-Time Quantity Syncs
• Buffers
• Basic & Wave Picking
• Quality Control
• Supplier Management
• Forecasting & Re-Ordering
• Purchasing & Receiving

8. Where Are You
Today?
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9. Today’s E-commerce Landscape
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Apps don't work
well together
● Too many choices
● Need multiple
apps to solve
problems
● Integration is
painful
● Expensive
Operational tasks
are manual
● Shipping
● Inventory
management
● Order
management
● Fulfillment
● Accounting
... and more
Analysis is difficult
● Information is
scattered
● Data is inaccurate
● Difficult to stay
compliant
It’s hard to get
everyone aligned
● Distributed teams
● Disparate apps
● Collaboration is
difficult
● No agility

10. Poll
• What fulfillment method(s) do you use? Check all that apply:
• In-house
• Seller Fulfilled Prime
• Fulfillment by Amazon
• ​Drop-ship
• Third party logistics
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11. Keeping Your Inventory Accurate
Stock Takes
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12. Stock Takes: Physical Counting
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What is Physical Counting?
• Entails an exhaustive, annual audit
• Involves all physical items of inventory
in a facility
• Counts each item one at a time
• Halts all production, unlike a cycle
count which can be performed as a
daily task
The Purpose:
• To account for any inventory
discrepancies that aren’t picked up in
cycle counts
• To rectify misappropriated quantities.

13. Stock Takes: Cycle Counting
What is Cycle Counting?
• Perpetual form of inventory auditing procedure
• Audit of a smaller subset of your inventory in a specified location on a
specified day
• Dependent upon the amount of inventory in stock, could take anywhere
from a week to several months
The Purpose
• Accounts for discrepancies between the quantities you should have (and in
e-commerce, these are the quantities available for purchase on your online
marketplaces) and the quantities that are actually physically present in your
warehouse
• Maximizes the value of the audit and minimize the pain of the physical
count by performing at least 4 full cycle counts per year
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14. Stock Takes: Physical & cycle Counting
Best Practices
• Do your full physical inventory count the first week of November. Most e-commerce merchants
are going into the busiest time of their year, and their inventory must be up to date
• Conduct more cycle counts, fewer physical counts. We recommend:
• 4 cycle counts/year
• 1 physical count/year
Benefits of This Model
• Fewer labor hours and tedious manual processes associated with physical counts
• Fewer oversells, undersells, and unaccounted for/unlisted inventory
• Maintains accurate inventory levels across your channels
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15. Reordering,
Forecasting, and
Buffers
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16. Reordering, Forecasting, and Buffers
Reordering
Set reorder points going into the holidays to help your purchasing team know when to reorder new product,
so that you don't run out when you need it most. During the holidays it can be a challenge to know when &
what to reorder:
• For suppliers with a longer lead time, make larger orders
• For suppliers with a shorter lead time, order fewer quantities more frequently, so that your capital isn’t
tied into inventory
Forecasting
Use your sales history, along with your percentage of sales increase over the year, to understand what to
reorder.
Buffers
Make sure to set minimum quantity buffers, so as to not oversell. Sales can come in faster during the
holidays than most integrations can support.
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17. Quality Control
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18. Quality Control
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Quality control drastically reduces customer service costs, eliminating customer
service issues such as:
• Mis-picks
• Mis-ships
• Damaged items
• Incorrectly listed items
These kinds of issues can be eliminated before the order ever even leaves your
warehouse. Happier customers mean:
• Better marketplace feedback
• A more enthusiastic and responsive customer base
• Better search rankings & visibility
• More sales
Phew! Imagine how reducing the number of angry customers could help morale,
sales, and your bottom line, especially during peak season.

19. Are You Prepared?
FBA Fees Increase
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20. FBA Fee Increase
Changes that Matter: Holiday Storage and Handling
• Holiday storage costs going
• up 2x for oversize
• up 3x for non-oversize
• Handling Costs
• Down an average of 14%
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21. FBA Fee Increase
What to do?
• Qualify for Featured Merchant, then Merchant-
Fulfilled Buy-Box
• Plan FBA Replenishment as “JIT*”
• Lean towards high-margin products with low
competition and small physical footprint
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22. Poll
• Where are you currently selling? Check all that apply
• Amazon
• Other marketplaces
• Own website
• Brick-and-mortar
• Wholesale
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23. Deep Dive –
Historical Data
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24. Why Does E-commerce Breed Chaos?
It’s not your imagination.
• Virtual marketplaces and selling platforms
• Evolving data standards
• New sales and fulfilment approaches
• Multiple systems with disparate data
• Plethora of apps
• Most owners have no expertise in accounting, analytics,
operations, or logistics
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25. Signs You Need Help
• Do you have a pulse on your business financial health?
• Are you in control of your margins?
• Do you have the levers to scale your business?
• Are you sitting on a pile of spreadsheets?
• Do you know where your bottlenecks are?
• Are your customers coming back for more?
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26. Adjustments Must Be Made
What’s preventing you from making necessary changes?
• You have non-integrative systems (stores, marketplaces, apps,
software)
• You can’t afford downtime
• You have no budget for marketing or infrastructure growth
• You have no time or energy to plan or strategize
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27. Integrate, Streamline, Automate
Make workflows more efficient
• Find tools that aid collaboration
• Leverage business systems that are
already integrated and working together
• Use applications that improve the flow
• Sell on channels that complement each
other
• Create a data-focused culture
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28. Know Your Inventory KPIs
Financial Intelligence
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29. Total Average Order Value
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Plan discount initiatives, set free shipping parameters, track the value
of a new or returning customer more effectively, and project the
number of new orders you’ll need to hit your revenue targets

30. Average Order Profit
Helps to visualize the average profit your business generates on each order in a more logical way,
which helps you plan better and gives you more power for negotiating
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31. Gross Profit of Each Item
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Helps you prioritize vendor orders, keep an eye on inventory, and (most importantly)
identify the right products to push versus those that are not worth it for you to sell

32. Top-Selling Products
Helps to understand what items are flying off the shelf the fastest
to make sure there are enough of these top items on-hand during the holidays.
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33. Inventory Days to Zero
Avoid overselling, which puts you at risk of
unhappy customers and bad reviews
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34. Q & A
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Danny Shaw
Head of Product
Webgility
Director of Business Development
SkuVault
Rob McGrorty
Jeff Coleman
VP of Marketplace Channels
CPC Strategy