Selling Lego on Amazon.com

[tk79]

looks like they cutoff roughly 20% of sellers at 5am PST going off one data point with the SW Republic Fighter Tank which had the highest seller count on my short list of retired stuff.

 

[smittypop2]

7 minutes ago, skinsfan0521 said:

From the sounds of it, I'm at a similar volume as scattcat and brickvoyeur and haven't received any letters... yet. I'm essentially 100% FBA and got ungated with invoices about 5-6 years ago, so was not grandfathered in prior to the gates being put up many years ago. But, my volume is pretty consistent throughout the year and especially this year. It certainly bumps up a bit in Q4, but not too much. I try to have consistent sales and cash flow throughout the year rather than focusing primarily on Q4. Based on the language in the last email that people got about consistent volume, maybe that's what's saving me so far.

I just looked and I have 32 Lego sales in the past 365 days via both FBA and FBM. That is telling you how low my Lego volume has dropped. I also sold off a decent chunk of Amazon inventory to a much larger reseller earlier this year. That very same reseller (sales have to be 10M+ a year) was culled from Lego and Funko during the first wave last month. I dont know that volume and sales have anything at all to do with it. I really think it is based on how long we have been in. This seller is huge compared to me, but has been on many less years. I have another friend who has been selling almost as long as me and he is still active in all categories as well. At the end of the day this hurts Lego and any other company that it impacts, so I really don't think they had anything to do with it. If they did, then they are idiots. 

Edited December 5 by smittypop2

[legorunner]

14 minutes ago, smittypop2 said:

That very same reseller (sales have to be 10M+ a year) was culled from Lego and Funko during the first wave last month.

I didn't realize there was a first wave last month outside of people whose accounts were inactive for a period of time this year, and I'm assuming this reseller was active all year. Was this reseller given the same canned reason the rest of us received regarding availability and sales volume? 

Either way, just makes it more confusing. Why do this in batches, they could easily roll it out all at once? 

[legolassie]

5 hours ago, skinsfan0521 said:

Would any of you be interested in sharing sales volume? I know that one of you said 45 orders in 60 days, someone else had 126 orders in 3 days, but no mention of sales $ anywhere or volume ($ and orders) throughout the year, not just during q4. I'm thinking that may play a part too? 

Either way, that really sucks for anyone getting this email!! So far, I've been spared, but this definitely makes me nervous to continue to buy new inventory. It seems that the email going around starting a few months ago was different and this one specifically calls out volume as a criteria (without giving any details of course). 

absolutely!  this would be VERY helpful to know!  I have sold 1000 items in the last 2 weeks, and am hoping to blow through and be done, this living on a knife edge is BS.

[teamhappyfrog]

I guess I will be looking for the mislabeled lego items on amazon I can list under, lol. It sucks they do nothing about rampant IP/KO listings that get reported.

[Pseudoty]

6 minutes ago, legolassie said:

absolutely!  this would be VERY helpful to know!  I have sold 1000 items in the last 2 weeks, and am hoping to blow through and be done, this living on a knife edge is BS.

Just curious what brought you here, the Reddit thread?

[NIevo]

I really don't think length or volume had anything to do with it.  I've been in for less then a year and have never broken $10k/month in sales yet I didn't get the letter. 

[Bobflip]

4 minutes ago, Pseudoty said:

Just curious what brought you here, the Reddit thread?

It was the Reddit thread for me. I've had an account on here for at least a few years but not used the forum before.

[Bold-Arrow]

Are we the go to place  on Reddit now ? We finally  made it 

[Pseudoty]

Just now, Bold-Arrow said:

Are we the go to place  on Reddit now ? We finally  made it 

Yeah, but most of the posts are more like: "Good, resellers are SCUM"  

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, Pseudoty said:

Yeah, but most of the posts are more like: "Good, resellers are SCUM"  

Wohoooo.... well they can all flock to Ebay for their after-maket needs. 

[legolassie]

29 minutes ago, Bobflip said:

It was the Reddit thread for me. I've had an account on here for at least a few years but not used the forum before.

Can you share the link pls.

[landphieran]

I don't think they care about consistent volume throughout the year, at least they hadn't. I have never done any selling from March-September. I usually put my account on vacation mode due to my other obligations. My average volume is 18,000-25,000 units a year. I haven't been flagged (yet).

As I mentioned previously Amazon has been trying to force small sellers out via fee's and it must not have been happening fast enough. Small sellers aren't very unprofitable for Amazon so they were trying to makeup the cost via fee and process changes which didn't deter enough people.

Ironically, I finally left my job a few months ago after grinding away at my career and this business for 10 years because I was scared it could be taken away at anytime. I'll go back to the corporate world so everyone can get ungated again.

 

. 

 

[severalads]

Really sorry to hear it's affecting many sellers! I wonder if this is on US amazon for now? Reading US forum, seems like similar happened to Funko few weeks ago...

[gmpirate]

2 hours ago, NIevo said:

I really don't understand how it was selected.   I only sell FBM so wonder if that is a safer bet as I didn't get the notification.   There has to be another metric as I'm not a big seller.

For years I was mostly all FBA but switched to FBM for 3 quarters of the year and mostly all FBA during the 4th quarter.  They obviously don't look at your history in 4th quarter because this year my storage allocation was next to nothing and had to switch to mostly FBM.  I waited longer to start sending in my FBA stuff this year so their bots just allocated me less space.  The only time I used FBA this year is to send in small seasonal stuff.  Anyway from my perspective, since I've mostly been FBM, it must be a total sales volume thing.

[jeff_14]

20 minutes ago, severalads said:

Really sorry to hear it's affecting many sellers! I wonder if this is on US amazon for now? Reading US forum, seems like similar happened to Funko few weeks ago...

Haven’t received this email here in Canada, but had slower sales this year and had already begun slowing down my buying because of that. I only sell 8-12 items a month in a good month. Already turned my settings to vacation mode a few weeks ago when our national postal service went on strike. I get a lot of orders from very rural areas which were affordable at Canada Post standard rates but other shippers charge way too much for this to be profitable for me. So already missing the best sales time of the year and maybe Amazon has a new years surprise for me. 

[severalads]

5 minutes ago, jeff_14 said:

Haven’t received this email here in Canada, but had slower sales this year and had already begun slowing down my buying because of that. I only sell 8-12 items a month in a good month. Already turned my settings to vacation mode a few weeks ago when our national postal service went on strike. I get a lot of orders from very rural areas which were affordable at Canada Post standard rates but other shippers charge way too much for this to be profitable for me. So already missing the best sales time of the year and maybe Amazon has a new years surprise for me. 

I think I saw in this thread or on Amazon forum, email came from amazon.ca...

This year I am actually liquidating all my LEGO position and already sent all stock to Amazon. Price isn't as high, too much competition, some fat whales here in UK who seem to have endless stock.

Wonder if I shall just lower my prices and sell out. Or hold off for next 2 weeks and hope for the best

[LJD1019]

I have been selling Lego on Amazon for 10 years, usually doing 20k to 30k in sales a year, and I received the letter. 

Maybe for the better, Amazon's selling fees were getting out of control. 

 

[gmpirate]

Seems to be an uptick in sales today.  May be a good time to revisit some sets that were not considered listing previously.

[skinsfan0521]

2 minutes ago, gmpirate said:

Seems to be an uptick in sales today.  May be a good time to revisit some sets that were not considered listing previously.

I noticed the same thing. Sales picked up today compared to the last several days and some sets had a drop in total sellers of 20%+ overnight.

[tk79]

6 minutes ago, skinsfan0521 said:

I noticed the same thing. Sales picked up today compared to the last several days and some sets had a drop in total sellers of 20%+ overnight.

not sure if trolling

[Bold-Arrow]

3 minutes ago, tk79 said:

not sure if trolling

maybe a bit tone deaf, but he aint wrong 

[tk79]

Just now, Bold-Arrow said:

maybe a bit tone deaf, but he aint wrong 

i thought he was trying to joke that the 20% drop in sellers was because they sold through product. and i would expect an uptick in sales for anyone still standing.

[gmpirate]

I'm a little scared now to shut down.  Was planning on shutting it down 1.5 weeks from Christmas (FBM) and then picking up again after or in January.

[Migration]

So far I have not received the letter of death, I sell somewhere between $50,000 and $300,000 per year with absolutely no consistency there. Probably 90% Lego. I did have an issue earlier this year where my payouts were frozen, I could still sell items both FBM and FBA, but all funds went into account level hold. Whatever they were investigating, they are wrapped up in about a month and I was able to get my payout. Did any of the impacted sellers have a similar experience this year?

 

And sales absolutely picked up today. 

Edited December 5 by Migration