#661 – Amazon BLOCKING FBA Shipments? and New Tariff Calculator | Weekly Buzz 4/30/25

#661 – Amazon BLOCKING FBA Shipments? and New Tariff Calculator | Weekly Buzz 4/30/25 Bradley Sutton: You might not be able to send inventory to FBA next month? Are tariff surcharges going to show on Amazon shopping results? TikTok Shop is opening in another country. These stories and more on today's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, and e-commerce world. We also let you know what new features Helium 10 has and give you a strategy of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. And I haven't done the buzz in a week or two or something. My team has been doing it since I was on the road, but good grief. I think they were saving all the news articles for this week when I've got the buzz because we have got a lot to go over today, guys. So let's go ahead and hop right into it. Now, the first story that we're going to be talking about is actually email you might have got about FBA capacity limits. All right. Is Amazon shutting down? All shipments that are coming in to FBA next month? However, for some of you, yes they are. What email should you be looking out for? Let me read you what this email says. You might have gotten an email that says, we're making our normal monthly capacity limit updates for FBA to maintain fulfillment network efficiency. Now, this is something that kind of goes on every month, but it never even bothers you because it's so much higher than how much inventory you are using, but like this month, it is getting slashed. You might get an email that says also or the email continues I should say, based on our estimates of your on-hand inventory and open shipments as of April 25th, your capacity utilization will be close to or over the limit for May if you do not take additional actions to manage your inventory health. It says if you need more capacity in FBA, request from the capacity manager In Seller Central, and we're going to have a link in the comments or in the description here below for this, it says, we regularly allocate additional capacity based on available space. Remember, that's something you have to pay for, so you got to request it. But what is happening to some accounts? Let me show you a few of the accounts that I have access to or some of my accounts. Here's three of them just to show you how it varies. It's not necessarily the same across like all accounts. Here is one of my accounts and as you can see right here at the very top left, this is what you guys want to look at in your capacity manager. It says, hey, I've only used 22%, 103 out of 458 cubic feet. So almost nothing, right? And as you can see, my April capacity is 458. So if I'm in the hundreds, I'm like, oh man, I'm sitting pretty. I have no problem to worry about, but look what happened. For me, it's telling me your capacity is going from 458 down to 178. Good grief. That's like almost one-third. It's like 66% down almost. That's crazy. June, it's still going to be down to 200. But then July, it goes back to 458. So I guess Amazon is overloaded. In May and June, which is kind of surprising, some people might be slowing down their replenishment orders due to tariffs and stuff. So I don't know what's going on in Amazon, but May and June, they seem to be tapped out. But again, this is not across all accounts. Here is that hemp cream account that you guys see me do case studies on. My capacity on that account was 100 in April. It's 100 in May, 100 in June, 100 in July. No issues there. My Project 5K account, another different account, it says, hey, you are using only 33% of your capacity, 195 out of 595. So again, I'm like sitting pretty, right? Look what happens to my capacity here. It goes from 600 in April. Now in May, it's going down to 245. I'm already at 200. So this is getting pretty close. Like if I was getting low on one product or I'm trying to launch a new product, I might be in a little bit of a pickle trying to send more inventory in May and June, but it goes back up in July. So this is something you guys need to definitely take a look at your capacity manager to see if this is affecting you and if you have to do any changes based on this. Now, Amazon was kind enough to actually give us some frequently asked questions about this that some sellers had when they released this, and I'll read some of these notes here. Question one says, is this going to impact inventory already on its way? Like in other words, you send a shipment, but now you're over. Are they going to reject the shipment? No. Amazon is not going to do that. It says, hey, if it's on the way, it's going to be received as normal. But if your total on-hand inventory plus inbound shipments exceed, you're going to be unable to create new shipments in the send to Amazon. So again, it's important that you guys check this like today. This weekly buzz is coming out because today is the deadline. You have to submit requests for more space for next month by today. Next question that Amazon asks, are these capacity reductions a flat reduction across the network or certain sellers and products are being prioritized? I think I already answered that part, so I'm not even going to need to read Amazon's answer there. It's obviously not just a flat thing across the board. Next message says, are there exceptions to these capacity limits for my Prime Day inventory? Now this answer says, if you need additional capacity for products that you expect to be popular for Prime Day, submit a request. Like right now, no. Like whatever it says right in there, that's what you're going to have to deal with. All right, so go into the Capacity Manager and if in May and June you don't have enough space, you've got to put a request in for Prime Day. It says, how will the new capacity limits affect my inventory storage? It says, on average, the capacity limit adjustments for May and June will provide enough storage for five months of inventory in May and five months of inventory in June. I'm not so sure about that. I do not maintain five months of inventory. And then you saw my one capacity, I was at 200 and my capacity is going to be 230. There is no way that that's five months, but I'm not sure what it's based off of. It says, the next question, are you making these changes based on the tariffs? It's So guys, there you go. Take a look at your email or if you never got the email, you just want to make sure. Go check your capacity manager to see if you've got a big time reduction of inventory capacity in May and June. You might not be able to send inventory and if you are over space right now. Next article is actually from Amazon and you guys know I have a bad memory. But this is called Create Deals For Amazon Pet Day. It says, Amazon Pet Day, which runs May 13th to 14th. This is something that's been going on since 2022. Now again, I don't remember this. Like it's been going on for like three years already. I might have just forgotten about it. I might need to participate in this. I just got a couple of more pets. I have had two cats. Now I have a goat. Yes, I have a goat in my house, or not in my house, outside my house, and a dog. Basically, this is a special day, Amazon Pet Day, May 13th and 14th, and it says, hey, it might be a good time to create a promotion, coupon, or discount. It's not Prime Day, it's Pet Day. And again, you would think that if it's Pet Day, Amazon is probably going to be sending a lot of traffic and maybe doing some promotions for pet owners or on the website might have like a makeover I would think would happen. And if that's the case, yeah, you'd probably want to go ahead and do a deal of the day or some kind of discount perhaps to get some extra click-through rate on your pet related products. Now the next article says that we're actually this is from USA Today it says Amazon denies plans to list tariff prices after President Trump calls Jeff Bezos to object. Now what happened was another outlet Punchbowl News said that hey the tariff prices are going to be put next to the total prices of products all right and and basically President Trump found out about this he called Jeff Bezos and said like yo, what are you doing, bro? And and Basically Amazon replied according to this article saying no. No, we were never planning to do that We were thinking about doing it on the Amazon Hall site, but we wouldn't we wouldn't put that now. I believe that why do I believe that a lot of people are raising the BS flag not the Bradley Sutton flag, but the BS other The acronym flag on Amazon saying, Oh yeah, yeah, they just chickened out or something. No, like that to me doesn't make sense. Like why would Amazon do that? Why would Amazon have put a tariff on or like a tariff increase? Like if they don't know what the increase is on a regular item on, on amazon.com, like it wouldn't make any sense. Like how would they know how the seller is being affected by tariffs and, and how, you know, like, If they raise the price, what was their original price and how much of it was because of the tariff? Amazon will have no way. But do you guys remember I think last week Shivali talked about how in Sheen and Timu, there's actually this tariff like surcharge fee or something that's showing up when you check out. Now, Sheen and Timu is something close to what? Amazon Hall. So I Don't think Amazon is lying when they say, no, we weren't trying to do it on the regular page. It was going to be on the Amazon haul because that actually makes sense because remember the de minimis is ending and so you can't get free tariffs on these cheaper items directly from China. That's why Sheen and Timu had that little tariff fee and so maybe they were considering doing the same thing like Sheen and Timu and putting it on the Amazon haul that would make all the sense in the world, but you know, President Trump found out and he's like, oh heck no. And so he I call to make sure it wasn't going anywhere, I guess, and sure enough, Amazon is not putting that tariff on there. But what do you think? That would have been crazy, right? If Amazon was putting on all the products that come from China, just on regular Amazon, like a little tariff surcharge, like line item, that just doesn't make any sense. Switching marketplaces, let's go to Walmart, and Walmart has a couple of programs it's talking about. I'm not so sure about it says grow with us. It's basically it looks like an educational program, you know, make sure to check the link to like find out more information. But the reason why I wanted to bring this article out is every year Amazon does the open call, right? And this year they're announcing open call, June 24th, they're going to start getting the applications. And basically what this is, is that, you know, SMBs are going to be able to pitch their shelf ready products, right? That are made here but assembled in the USA for potential consideration into Walmart and Sam's Club. Now, this event is actually October 7th and 8th in Bentonville, but you're going to be able to put submissions to be considered to be invited there. I've been to Bentonville before to Walmart when I used to work for a different company. Remember, that's like a dwarf, whatever you do on Amazon, guys. If you actually get into Walmart stores, I don't know how many there are nowadays, 4,000, 5,000, and imagine if each of them are carrying three cases of your products that have 20 items each. In the store, that's 5, 000 times 60 units. We're talking POs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars here for one PO. You cannot match that sales on Amazon. I know selling on walmart.com might not seem very lucrative, But if you can leverage Walmart.com sales into trying to get to this open call and then potentially getting your product picked up in stores, that's like game over for your business in a good way. All right, next article is from Yahoo UK and it's entitled France Urges Fees On Cheap E-Commerce Parcels In EU. So they're having a little bit of FOMO. They saw that President Trump is taking away the de minimis, meaning that all the Sheen and Timu items are going to have an actual tariff on them and not get through with the loophole. There were articles in the previous weeks that said a lot of Chinese sellers are like, ìWe're not even going to worry too much about the U.S. market. We're just going to go concentrate on Europe.î Europe is like, ìHey, We want that tariff loophole to be changed or to be closed because it already is announced to be closed but not until 2028 as it says here. But France is like, hey, we need this now. So I guess they're looking at the U.S. and like, hey, this needs to stop because it's giving maybe an unfair advantage to sellers out of China. So it'll be interesting to see. This week is when it's supposedly going to go away for US. Let's see how that whole transition goes and what's the fallout from there. But then let's see. 2028 is a long time to wait for you sellers based in France, based in the EU to like not have this competition from Sheen and Timu and other websites. So let's see what happens in EU when it comes to this tariff loophole. Going back to Walmart, Payments.com had an article about them and it's entitled, Walmart to Offer 3-Hour Delivery to 95% of Americans. So this was, I believe, mentioned in like the shareholder report last week as a goal that Walmart is having. That's pretty crazy. I know Amazon doesn't have 95% 3-hour delivery. So is Walmart going to be able to deliver on that promise and then is that going to help sales on Walmart.com? Let's see. Next article is from Reuters.com and it is saying, Some Amazon sellers are pulling out of Prime Day amid Trump tariffs. So this article said that they were interviewing some sellers here and there and they're like, hey, because of all these tariffs, it's like we can't afford to do Prime Day this year. Not that they're going to close their products, but like not doing... It's not just the tariffs. You guys know how in the Weekly Buzz we reported a few months ago how the prices or the cost to do some of these deals are kind of going up for everybody. I'm just curious, what about you guys? I actually did a poll in the Helium 10 members Facebook group and this was just recently, so there's not enough results yet, but I was kind of shocked. So far in the initial results, 65% said, you know what? I'm not doing any promotions during Prime Day. 20% said, you know what, I'm doing the same thing that I did last year. 9% said they're going to pull back on some of their investments on Prime Day. What about you guys? Which do you fall under? Let me know in the comments. Are you going full blast on Prime Day this year? Are you pulling back a little bit? Are you pulling back completely? Let me know in the comments below. Next article is from CNN and it's entitled, Walmart Target Resume Business With Some Chinese Factories After Tariff-Related Halt. Just reading through the lines, there are some interesting inferences that this article said. Basically, what happened was it says Walmart and Target have resumed business with some of the Chinese suppliers after pausing orders for a few weeks due to the uncertainties over the tariffs. Now, this resumption came days after meeting with President Trump where Walmart, Target, and Home Depot were there. Do Walmart and Target know something that the rest of us don't? Are they like, ìWe're cool with this 140% tariff. We just don't want to run out.î It could be either of those things. Regardless, it's something that we should be looking at because if they're ordering because they think by the time production is done, the tariffs will go away, well, that would be, I think, pleasant for everybody involved. But conversely, let's say President Trump told them, ìYou know what? These tariffs are here to stay.î It could just be a matter of they're like, ìHey,î and the article kind of inferred this too, ìHey, we don't want to run out of stock and have empty shelves. We're just going to have to grin and bear it.î So that's something that you sellers are gonna have to think about either a the tariffs are going away soon or not going away completely But maybe getting reduced and so, you know, that'll give you some relief or B. It's there to stay for now You've got to make a decision. Are you going to go ahead and reorder or are you just going to let it run out of stock? Which way are you going to go? Let me know in the comments. For those of you wanting to calculate what does your price have to be in order to make up for these tariffs, make sure to check out the new feature alerts in a couple of minutes. I'm going to talk about a brand new tool inside of Helium 10 that will help with that. Next article is from Reuters.com, TikTok Shop. I am coming from Japan. I'm not sure if I said that right. But anyways, basically that means TikTok Shop is going to be coming to Japan. Alright, so another marketplace seems like TikTok Shop is just opening up marketplaces left and right in Europe and now expanding in If you're in Japan or you're selling in Japan, have got inventory that you can fulfill orders, this might be something to keep an eye on to be one of the first sellers on TikTok Shop Japan. Really quick, did you know that Helium 10 has a message form? Our Facebook group has used more, but we want to start growing the form too, so go ahead and ask questions about e-commerce and things. Different people that are on the forum will be able to reply to. It's not for like Helium 10 customer support or anything like that. You can always get that 24 hours through Helium 10. But if you want to participate in the discussions, be signed in to your Helium 10 account and go to forum.helium10.com. All right, next up, we have an expanded edition of new feature alerts. And so that's why we're not going to have a strategy of the week this week just because we've got way, the product team has been working overtime because we've got too many new feature alerts that are launched this week. The first one, is about tariffs. So basically in Helium 10 Profits, this I think goes for Starter, Platinum, Diamond, whatever level you have, you've got a new tool in there. This tool is going to be here in Profits and on the left-hand side where the menu is, you're going to hit the tool name Tariff Analyzer. It's going to have your products here. Make sure on the time range, you probably have like either this month or last month or actually this year might be a little bit better because it's going to give you a little bit more information on what your profit margins have been. What you're going to want to do is you're going to go into here and put where are you getting your products. You're going to go to the country of origin and let's say, hey, I'm getting stuff from China. I'm getting this If you have any questions or comments, please post them in the comments section below. Now, once you get to the Tariff Analyzer page, you're going to have a list of your products. Now, what you want to do is set the country of where your products are coming from. So, for example, this bath mat, I select China and I hit Apply. Now, as you can see, it says my pre-tariff net profit was actually pretty low, $3.44, which is only 13% profit. So, I wasn't doing this good to start, but it says, the tariff is estimated to be about $8 based on my COGS. So, you guys have to put in your COGS. Hopefully, you've got that done in profits. And by the way, if you don't have that done in profits, you need to go into inventory levels in profits and then you'll be able to enter in your cost of goods sold. But it's basically saying, hey, If I don't do anything with my price and I have a new shipment come in, this is calculating it out and saying, hey, your post-tariff net profit is negative $4.75. If I don't do anything, so if I wanted to have the same profit margins of 13%, it's going to tell me what I have to put the price at, and it's $33. These are just estimates. Let us know if you see any discrepancies, but it should be fairly accurate. So, basically, I would have to raise the price from $23 to $33 in order to keep the same profit margins I have now. What if I'm curious, like, hey, what if I change production of this product? Let's say I found a supplier in, let's just say Vietnam, all right? So, in Vietnam, let me go ahead and hit Apply on this bath mat. The tariff is only $2.60. All right, so that actually gives me 3% profit margin instead of the negative one. And if I want the same profit as I do right now, I mean, there's still a tariff there. I would have to raise the price from $23.97 to only $26. All right, so that shows me how much I might save if I switch production to another country. I can choose a big number of countries. I can pick Uzbekistan. I wanted to go ahead and see how much it might cost to make a bath mat in Uzbekistan. This is a brand new tool that's live right now in your dashboard. Go to Profits, and hit the tariff analyzer, and then make sure to go ahead and play around a little bit and see, hey, if these tariffs continue, what might you have to change your price to if you wanted to maintain the same profit margins, and if you found a supplier in another country, what's the tariff situation there? And this might help you make a decision. For the next new feature, let's turn it over to Carrie. Carrie Miller: Okay. So for today's Helium 10 feature update, which is a new feature update, we have some exciting news and that is that Helium 10's managed refund services is now available for platinum and diamond level subscriptions. Now, before it was only open to diamond level subscriptions, but we've now opened it up to platinum. And that means that you have more access to this incredible service. So why is this important and how can it make you money? Well, if you're selling on Amazon, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table and you might not even know it. And the truth is that Amazon owes sellers refunds all the time due to things like lost, damaged, or mishandled inventory. But tracking all these claims and doing all the refunds yourself, it really is time consuming and tedious. So Helium 10's managed refund services, they're designed to help you reclaim every single dollar that Amazon owes you without the headache and time wasting of managing the cases yourself. And you know, obviously you want to focus on growing your business and doing other things. So, that is why managed refund service is so important. It's so that you can focus on growing your own business. Now, here's how it works. The first thing you need to do is you need to make sure that your Helium 10 account is connected to Seller Central. And then our system is going to continuously scan your account for eligible refunds based on Amazon's policies. And our team of reimbursement specialists will manually file cases on your behalf. Ensuring that they follow Amazon's guidelines and help you get reimbursed. And the best part is that we only charge a small percentage of the successful refunds and it's really zero risk to you. And we're actually way lower in fees than any of our other competitors. So if you wanted to actually save money or get a lower fee for managed refunds, definitely check this out. Why should you use Helium 10's managed refund service over anyone else? Well, we'll maximize your reimbursements. You'll get more money back because we have lower fees and we do a better job. And you'll also save time. You're not going to be digging through reports or filing cases yourself and wasting all this precious time that you could be doing growing your business. And finally, our team ensures that everything stays compliant with Amazon's terms of service, which is extremely important. So I'm going to go ahead and do a quick walkthrough on how to set this all up. The first thing you wanna do is you want to log into Helium 10. And once you're in Helium 10, you're gonna click at the top where it says Manage Refund Service. And then what you're gonna do is you are going to accept the fee terms. Now, the first one here says that you understand that you will be invoiced 15% of the total funds successfully recovered by Manage Refund Service. That is basically a commission that Helium 10 collects for doing the service for you. And then the next part is I understand that my credit card on file will be automatically charged 15 days after invoices are sent to me by email. So what this means is basically when you get these refunds from Amazon, they go to your Seller Central account. And so what we do is we take 15% of that total amount and charge you on your credit card for that. Then you're gonna hit accept terms and continue. And in this step, you're going to add an account so that we have access to the information in order to process these claims for you. So if you don't have your account connected to Helium 10, you're gonna wanna add it and connect it here. And then you can hit set up. Once you're in the setup section, you can click on these little video tutorials and it's going to walk you through, basically with these videos, how to set up these different permissions on Seller Central. So that should be pretty straightforward. Once you're done with that, you're going to hit, I confirm that you're a brand owner and that you want to activate the inbound full service. And then you're going to hit next. And then this next part is you're just adding in your information about your company. So you're going to have your company name, the logo, address, signature, all of that stuff. And then you're also going to put in a packing list template as well so that you have all that squared away. And then you're going to acknowledge and confirm all that. And then you're going to activate. So again, don't leave money on the table. Set up your managed refund services with Helium 10 to make sure you get as much money back as possible. Bradley Sutton: All right. Thank you very much, Carrie. Now, for the last new feature alert of the day, it's actually something that hundreds and hundreds of sellers have been asking for in a certain region. That is in the Middle East. What marketplace have you guys been wanting Helium 10 to work for, for Cerebro, Magnet, other tools? Amazon, Saudi Arabia, one of the fastest growing marketplaces in the Amazon world. Actually, I think it's the number two fastest growing, if I'm not mistaken. So, what tools are working for it? For now, Cerebro, we're still building our database, but we've got tons of products already Live in our Cerebro database. So how does it work? Just like take an ASIN from Amazon, Saudi Arabia, go ahead and copy the ASIN, go to Cerebro, make sure to check the very last box in Amazon and that is Amazon.sa, Amazon Saudi. Put the ASIN there, hit get keywords and sure enough, all the keywords are going to show up and where it's ranking, the Amazon relevancy rank, if there's sponsored ads, etc. Now, this, you know, for those who can't see this is in Arabic, I guess, and you might be like, how am I supposed to make sense of all these You know, things that look like squiggly lines to you because you don't know this alphabet, right? Well, guess what? That's where Helium 10 comes in. Don't forget, we've got a translation tool here. So once you get all these Arabic words and you're like, I don't even know what words these are, hit the translate button in Cerebro or Magnet and then hit whatever your language is. Like let me go ahead and put English and I see this first one here says hats for men. The second one says men's hat, men's accessories, summer men's caps. And now, even though it's written in another alphabet, foreign to me, I can still see exactly what these keywords that this product is ranking for means to give me kind of like an idea of what I'm clicking into if I wanted to like dig a little bit further. So that's kind of like two features for the price of one. The new feature is that hey, Cerebro and Magna is working in Saudi Arabia. The older feature I highlighted there was our translation feature which definitely helps people where English or whatever other language is not your first language. There's a lot of translated languages that you can turn the keyword results into. Alright guys, that's it for this week's Weekly Buzz. Make sure to tune in next week to see what's buzzing.