[Crew Review] No more Amazon restock limits?

If you’ve ever been hit by Amazon restock limit cuts before, you know how challenging it is to look for alternative storage, especially when it happens during peak seasons. To remedy this, Amazon announced a new FBA management system that’s supposed to provide more predictability and control to third-party sellers.

With this new system, a single monthly limit is set. And if you need more capacity, there’s now a way to get it.

Is this really good news?

How to Hire and Keep the Best Employees

You can start a business with just a vision and a great deal of determination. But as you grow, your success will be highly dependent on the people that work with you in building your brand.

Successful entrepreneurs know that good employees are the best assets but are hard to come by. After about two decades in the business, Mike has discovered a hiring technique that allows him to avoid bad hires that he’ll have to deal with later.

This is his recruitment tip.

Has Amazon Prime Reached Its Peak?

For the first time ever, Prime memberships in the United States stopped growing. This is according to a report released by the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).

By the end of 2022, CIRP estimates that there were only 168 million Prime members in the US, a few millions less than the 170 million in 2021. Amazon Prime was able to maintain its streak for years, but it seems like it started to slow down in the last three years. The increase in the Prime membership fee from $119 to $139 may have played a part in the trend after it was implemented last year.

Prime members are more likely to shop more often and spend more on the platform than those who are not, so if this trend continues, this may have an impact on Amazon’s overall sales, including those of third-party sellers.

However, Insider spoke to an Amazon representative, who insists that CIRP’s report is inaccurate. According to him, Prime membership continues to grow. But when asked about the actual number of US Prime members, he said they don’t offer country-specific breakouts.

Growing Brand Awareness in the Metaverse

According to a study, most people still prefer visiting physical stores. But with how things are going, it won’t be a surprise when we’ll soon do most of our shopping online.

A couple of big brands are already future-proofing by building a community and introducing new products in the metaverse before actually launching them in the real world.

For example, Gucci and Claire’s have collaborated with Roblox to create Gucci Town and ShimmerVille. Bloomingdale’s constructed its 150th-anniversary holiday virtual store last year, and Coca-Cola developed a drink that originated in the metaverse with a taste inspired by pixels.

The future of e-commerce seems to include metamalls and AR. If you want to keep up with the developments, you better brush up on these technologies and start thinking of ways to use them in your own brands.

Amazon to Lay Off 18,000 Workers

Thousands of Amazon employees will be spending the rest of January looking for new jobs as the company starts its biggest workforce reduction ever in order to cut on costs. The lay offs were announced as early as November last year and were commenced yesterday.

Doug Herrington, Amazon’s worldwide retail chief, told workers in a memo that they will be providing support for impacted employees. He cites as an example the separation pay and the 60-day non-working transitional period with full pay and benefits, including several weeks of severance for affected workers in the United States.

The workforce reduction is just one of the steps the company is taking in order to reduce costs. Other steps include launching a second Prime Day, making Buy with Prime available to all US sellers, and discontinuing its charity donation program, AmazonSmile.

Affiliate Corner

Your Amazon Listing’s New Best Friend

Last year, we were on a mission to actively increase our sales and conversion rates by tweaking our listings. Most of our changes were focused on keywords, and we’ve seen some products going 3x in terms of revenue.

It took a lot of experimentation, hard work, and help from DataDive.