What is going on with Amazon's Buy Box Rotation?
As of the time of writing this post, over the last couple of weeks, we have noticed that the buy box is not rotating the way it used to. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to who the buy box is sticking with. We have seen it stick with sellers with very low overall rating and low stock as well. We assume this is just a glitch that Amazon will eventually resolve, but it has caused quite the impact to a lot of historically strong replens. The reason it impacts replens is when the buy box sticks with one seller too long, the other sellers are eventually going to lose patience and start lowering prices to try to take the buy box. There is always a chance this will happen regardless, but with the current buy box issues, this has been happening a lot more frequent.
So, what can we do?
Our advise is as always, to go wide and shallow on your purchases, meaning do not buy too many of any one particular product. Spread your purchases out across many products to lessen your risks. Also, try to stay patient with the pricing. With replens, your goal is to be able to source those again and again, so if you start chasing the price, you might be able to get your current stock sold, but you will have burnt that replen for the future.
Another piece of advise, if you sourced a product where the price has tanked, but you managed to sell out and do not intend to purchase again, make sure to keep that product on a list somewhere and refer back to that list in the future once all of this has settled down to see if that product is once again a good sourcing candidate.
If you have experienced this recent issue with the buy box not rotating to you, or if you have been on the receiving end and the buy box never seems to leave you, we would love to hear a bit about your experience in the comments below.