On September 7, local time , Amazon Europe issued an announcement saying that in order to leave more storage space during the holiday sales season , obsolete inventory in Europe will be processed in the near future. The specific announcement is as follows:

Starting September 15, 2022 , Amazon will automatically remove obsolete inventory to create more storage space for the upcoming holiday season.

It is reported that Amazon defines " stale inventory " as goods that have been in its fulfillment centers for more than 365 days .

Amazon says the automatic removal of stale inventory can help sellers save on stale inventory surcharges and improve Inventory Performance Index scores .

If sellers still need obsolete inventory products, they need to provide a valid return address in the Amazon backstage , namely "Automated fulfillable inventory settings" , otherwise the backlogged inventory products will be automatically donated, recycled or disposed of by Amazon .

If the seller chooses to reject Amazon’s automatic removal of expired inventory, he or she also has to go to the “Automated fulfillable inventory settings” and select “Disable” in the automatic long-term storage deletion settings .

Sellers should note that if automatic clearing has been selected , secondary changes cannot be made .

This move by Amazon has caused a lot of discussion among sellers.

They believe that this is Amazon's approach to buying products for free before the peak season, because the return fee is high, and small commodity sellers with low profits will choose Amazon to handle it.

There are also sellers who think this is a good thing, because it can solve the problem of storage fees, and there is no need to pay other fees such as return costs.

Of course, some sellers said that the products left over from last year's holiday season wanted to try to sell out this year, but they were about to become obsolete and were moved out of Amazon's warehouses and were destined to suffer a wave of losses.

The peak holiday season in Europe and the United States is coming. In order to cope with this peak sales period, the Amazon platform has been frequently updated recently.

Take the European station as an example. In the past month, Amazon Europe has successively launched new services in logistics, warehousing, returns, and compliance.

It is understood that not long ago, Amazon added the Small and Light program ( Small and Light) to its logistics European integration service ( Pan-EU) for small and light commodities with fast circulation and low unit price . At the same time , you can also enjoy lower delivery costs.

Not long ago, Amazon also announced the launch of a compliance reference tool in Europe to help sellers manage compliance obligations and keep abreast of changing compliance requirements.

The Compliance Reference Tool provides information on product compliance requirements, such as import and export regulations from where it is sold/shipped, and compliance requirements for products such as toys, baby products, or products containing lithium batteries.

However, this new tool is temporarily unable to provide compliance requirements for all products, such as dangerous goods, chemical products or food.

Amazon Europe has also launched a new return settings page, allowing sellers to manage the return settings of all their stores with one click, effectively simplifying operations.

The peak season is approaching, and Amazon is intensively optimizing the operation of various departments, but sellers do not seem to be optimistic about the holiday sales this year, especially in the European market, but the specific market performance still needs to be decided after this node is over.