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

shipments that are coming into FBA next month? No. 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. All right. So 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 i'm gonna have we're gonna have a link in the comments um or in the description here below for this um it says we were regularly allocated additional capacity based on available space remember that's something you have to pay for so you gotta like 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 like how it varies. And 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 May. It's telling me your capacity is going from 458 to,

down to 178. Good grief. That's like almost one third. Or I mean, it's like, you know, 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 like, I guess Amazon is overloaded in May and June, which is kind of surprising. You know, some people might be slowing down the replenishment orders due to tariffs and stuff. So I don't know what's going on in Amazon, but

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'm

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, you know, take a look at your capacity manager to see if this is affecting you. And if you have to, you know, do any changes based on this. Now, Amazon was kind enough to actually give us some frequently asked questions about this that, you know, some sellers had when they released this. And I'll read some of these notes here.

Uh, question one says, is this going to impact, uh, inventory already on its way? Like in other words, you, 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, uh,

All right. They that this weekly buzz is coming out because like today is the deadline. You have to submit requests for more space for next month by today. All right. Next question that Amazon ask, 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 going to need to read Amazon's answer there. It's obviously not just a flat thing across across the board.

Um, next message says, are there exceptions to these capacity limits for my prime day inventory? Now this, uh, 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, for a prime day.

Um, it says, how will the new capacity limits affect my inventory storage? Um, 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. Like 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 two 30. Like there is no way that that's five months, but I'm not sure what it's a base net off of. Um, it says, are you the next question? Are you basically 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, uh,

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 14. 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've just forgotten about it. I might need to participate in this. I just got,

Couple 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 of my house and a dog. But yeah, basically this is a special day, Amazon pet day, May 13th and 14th. And it says, Hey, might be a good time to create a promotion coupon or discount. So basically,

It's not Prime Day, it's Pet Day. And again, you would think that if it's Pet Day, Amazon's probably going to be sending a lot of traffic and maybe doing some promotions for pet owners on the website. It might have a makeover, I would think would happen.

And if that's the case, you know, 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,

uh 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 we were never planning to do that we were thinking about doing it on the amazon hall site

But 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 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 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 much you know like if they raise the price what was their original price and how much of it was because of the tariff amazon would have no way but

Do you guys remember? I think last week, Shevali 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 haul. 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 get free tariffs on these, 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, he,

call to make sure it wasn't going anywhere, I guess. And, and sure enough, Amazon is not putting that, that tariff on there. But what do you think? That would have been crazy, right? If, if Amazon was putting on all the products that come from China, a, you know, just on regular Amazon, like, like a little tariff surcharge, like line item that, that just doesn't make any sense. Um,

Switching marketplaces, let's go to Walmart. And Walmart has a couple of programs it's talking about. The first one I'm not so sure about. It says Grow With Us. It basically looks like an educational program. Make sure to check the link to find out more information. But the reason why I wanted to bring this article out is every year Amazon does the open call. 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. All right. That are made or assembled. Okay. It doesn't have to be completely made here, but assemble in the USA, uh,

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. And remember, that's like

I'm going to 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, you know, in the, in the store, that's 5,000 times what? 60 units. I mean, we're talking POs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars here, right?

For one PO, like you cannot match that sales on Amazon. So, so yeah, I know, you know, selling on walmart.com, you know, might not seem very lucrative, but if you can, you know, 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 you. 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 to the, uh, with the loophole. And then you remember that, uh,

There was articles in the previous weeks that said, hey, all right, a lot of Chinese sellers are like, you know what? We're not even going to worry too much about the U.S. market. We're just going to go concentrate on Europe. And so Europe is like, hey, we want...

Those those that tariff loophole to be to be changed or to be closed because it already is announced to be closed, but not until 2028, as it says here. But but France is like, hey, we need this now. All right. So I guess they're looking at the US and like, hey, this this needs to stop because it's given maybe an unfair advantage to sellers out of China. So it'll be interesting to see.

Um, this, 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. Um, 2028 is a long time to wait for you sellers based in France, based in EU to, 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 three-hour delivery to...

95% of Americans. All right. 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% three hour delivery. So is Walmart going to be able to, you know, 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, you know, said that they were interviewing some sellers, you know, 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, you know.

prime deals and stuff like that. And it's not just the tariffs. You guys know how in the weekly buzz we reported a few months ago, how, you know, the prices or the cost to do some of these deals are kind of going up for everybody. Right. 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. Um,

20% said, you know what, I'm doing the same thing that I did last year. 9% said they're gonna 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 Resumed Business with Some Chinese Factories

after tariff related halt. Now just reading through the lines, there were some interesting inferences that this article said, basically what happened was, um, well, 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. All right. Now this resumption came days after meeting with president Trump, uh, where Walmart targeted home Depot were there. So, you know,

do Walmart and target know something that the rest of us don't be like, you know, or are they been, are they kind of like, you know what? We're cool with this 140% tariff. We just don't want to run out. It could go, it could be either of those things, but regardless, it's something that we should be looking at because, you know, if they're ordering because they think by the time production is done, the tariffs will go away. Well, that would be, I think, uh,

pleasant for everybody involved. But conversely, let's say President Trump told them, you know what? These tariffs are here to stay. It could just be a matter of they're like, hey, and the article kind of inferred this too, like, hey, we don't want to run out of stock and have empty shelves. Like we're just going to have to, you know, grin and bear it.

So that's something that you sellers are going to 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 got to make a decision. Are you going to go ahead and reorder or, um,

Are you just going to let it run out of stock? Which we're going to go. Let me know in the comments. And 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. Wow.

I'm not sure if I said that right. But anyways, basically that means TikTok shop is going to be coming to Japan. All right. So another marketplace seems like TikTok shop is just opening up marketplaces left and right in Europe and now expanding in Japan.

Japan. So 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 is used more, but we want to start growing the form too. So go ahead and ask questions about, you know, e-commerce and things and, and,

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 into 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 I'm not, we're not going to have a strategy of the week this week, just because we've got way the, the product team has been working overtime because we've got too many, too many new feature alerts that are launched this week. The first one is about tariffs. All right. So basically in helium 10 profits, basically,

this is this I think goes for starter platinum diamond whatever level you have you've got a new tool in there all right 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.

And 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 egg tray from China. And basically it says, hey, for the last few months this year, my pre-tariff net profit is $7 a unit. So 35% margins. Good grief, I'm making a lot of margin on this.

egg tray right here. Now, once you get to the tariff analyzer page, you can have a list of your products. And what you want to do is set the country of where your products are coming from. So like, for example, this bat 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. It's $3 and 44 cents, which is only 13% profit. So I wasn't doing this good to start, but it says, Hey,

The tariff is estimated to be about $8 based on my cogs. All right. So you guys have to like put in your cogs. Hopefully you've got that done in profits. And by the way, if you don't, 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, 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, your post tariff net profit is negative four 75. All right. If I don't do anything. So if I wanted to have the same profit margins of 13%, uh,

It's going to tell me what I have to put the price at. And it's $33. Now, 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 bat bath mat. The tariff is only $2 and 60 cents. 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 if...

I wanted to go ahead and see how much it might cost to make a bath mat in Uzbekistan. All right. So this is a brand new tool that is coming or that's coming. That's live right now in your dashboard. So go to profits.com.

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? Um,

and this might help you make a decision for the next new feature. Let's turn it over to Carrie. 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 10s managed refund services is now available on

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,

Amazon owes sellers refunds all the time due to things like lost, damaged or mishandled inventory. And 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. And 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 want to do is you want to log into Helium 10. And once you're in Helium 10, you're going to click at the top where it says manage refund service. And then what you're going to 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 managed 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 going to 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 going to want to 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. 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 and

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, et cetera. 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 keywords?

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, of what I'm clicking into. So if I want 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, it's not your first language.

There's a lot of translated languages that you can turn the keyword results into. All right, guys, that's it for this week's weekly buzz. Make sure to tune in next week to see what's buzzing.