Amazon's Strange stocking habits

[mattpricetime]

This is something i've been noticing, not sure how many here may have noticed it as well.

For basically the last two years has anybody figured out exactly why Amazon seems to only keep a small assortment of nearly anything in stock? For many years it seemed like Amazon had a really big stock, where you would have choice of them or third party sellers.

Nowadays it seems like they only stock like 20 of something, and when it runs out they go to third party sellers only. And if the third party sellers run out before Amazon restocks it makes the item look like it's discontinued when in reality it's not.

In some cases i've seen an item being sold by Amazon on monday, go out of stock in entirely by the end of the week only to be back being sold by Amazon before the weekend is over. If your turn around can be that fast, why not stock more?

I've seen this happen on books, dvds, games and some clothing items so far. If it was only on discs i'd assume maybe Amazon hopes more people will buy downloads from them if they make it harder to get a disc, but it seems to affect non-disc things too.

At this point i'd really hate to be a small business depending on Amazon for stocking.

[Ark]

Older things they stock less, covid made DVD production complicated, and people are sheltering and buying things online more.

[mattpricetime]

It's weird because on one hand the covid impact on the MOD discs now makes complete sense. Amazon isn't forwarding your order to the manufacturer, they are ordering bulk shipments title to title. (Probably 20 at a time) Then distributing it to you from their stock. The period where most of them said "ships within 1 to 2 months" was the point where the factory in Illinois got backlogged due to covid-protocol. Nowadays Amazon pretty much only lets you order from them if they have stock or have already placed the order for new stock in (aka Temporarily out of stock)

The more pressed discs however are rather different as I don't know any presser that makes orders that small. The bare limit on most is typically 100. Maybe they changed that due to covid. And a lot of the major studios use a manufacturer in Mexico these days for them. If those titles disappeared for like a month to give time for the manufacturer to make them, ship them, pass through customs, and reach Amazon you'd understand. The downtime sometimes being only a few days makes that situation a bit harder to rationalize. Unless they actually are getting bigger orders and only putting 20 up for sale at a time. And also I haven't really noticed any shop getting less of them during covid. But maybe that's just local luck.


But that only covers the disc aspect. Manufacturing for different items take different amount of time and work. Covid delays can probably account for some of this but some of this did start before the pandemic so I'm still thinking some of it may also be a deliberate choice. The pandemic put a lot of power in Amazon as a business, they probably can afford to disrupt some supply chains for their own benefit later on.