Can You Order Less Than 50 Units For A Test Batch?

Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. Welcome to the Ecommerce Freedom Podcast. Before we dive in with today's episode, I've got two cool resources for you. The first one is my new E Commerce Q and A group on Facebook. So in this group, the point is, you ask questions in the Facebook group, and I answer them with daily videos, okay? So you can get your questions answered.

Really, really, really quick.

It's a great resource. If you go to ecommercefreedom.com and look at the top of the page, you'll see a button for the Q and A group. Click on that, it will take you to the Facebook group. Second resource I got for you is an Amazon accelerator call. So what I'd love to do with you is talk about your goals, talk about where you are now, and talk about the stuff that could prevent you from hitting your goals right Together on a strategy session, we will come up with a plan for you to replace your income with an Amazon business.

If you'd like to book a call.

Where we can do this, go to ecommercefreedom.com, look at the top of the page, and click Amazon Accelerator Call. You'll be taken to a very short application page. You can fill that in on the next page. You should be able to book your call. All right, hope you really enjoy the episode.

Hey, how's it going? It's Oli here. So today we have a great question, which I actually noticed in a comment underneath the video from Eduardo. And Eduardo asks, what's the minimum number of products that you can realistically do a test batch and still get useful data? I want to launch several products, and doing my usual 50 units per batch would work out way over budget, especially with the express shipping on all of them. So this is a great question, Eduardo. I've got a good answer for you. And please excuse the plaster on my chin. Had a fight with someone earlier and got stabbed in the face. Although by someone, I mean me. And when I say stabbed, I mean cut myself shaving. Anyway, so to answer your question, when we're testing products, right, we're not looking to make profit ever. This is one of the big mistakes people make when they're trying to test products, right? Send products into the warehouse, very small quantity. And after the shipping, after the order, usually there's not much margin left, right? Once you've used pay per click advertising to get some sales, you can't get much momentum in the test batch. Like, you can't get your products to page one, really, because you don't have enough products to get the momentum to get to page one. So what happens is you usually break even or make a bit of a loss. That's fine, because as Eduardo pointed out accurately, when you are doing a test batch, you're not looking for profit, you're looking for data. All right? You're trying to figure stuff out about the product. Is it going to sell? That's one of the things you're trying to figure out, right? Very simple, yes or no, that's the data you'll get from that. How much can you charge? This is data you can gather from the test batch. Will the customers appreciate the type of value you add to the marketplace? It's another piece of data, another question you want to get answered from your test batch. And there's loads more things you can figure out. You know, how many sales will the product get per day? Which bundle is going to be the most effective? Which picture will work best on the listing? You know, you can figure all this stuff out from a test batch. That's why they're so powerful, because you can learn all of this stuff before you go ahead and spend more money on stock. So Eduardo wants to test several products, and he thinks that 50 units per batch would be a bit too expensive, which is understandable because sometimes it can be £750, a thousand pounds for a test batch of 50 units, depending on the product, the size, the weight, the bundle you're doing, and loads more factors. So here's the good news. Like, I have tested products with less than 50 units on a couple of occasions, and so have my clients, and you can get some data from a smaller test batch. Now, I think the more products you get in your test batch, the better, right? If you can test with 100 products, obviously you're going to learn way more about that product than if you just have 50, right? If you have 20 products in your test batch, you're not going to learn as much as if you have 50 or 100, because the product just won't be out in the marketplace for as long. However, you can get a good idea of whether the product will sell or not, and you can get a rough idea of the price that people are willing to pay. So, simple answer is, yes, you can test several products with smaller quantities. But there's two things I want you to consider if you're answering this question, if you want this question answered. Number one, if you have a very small budget, then it might not be a good idea to test three products, because, remember, you've got a reorder. So let's say you test three products or four products or whatever, one of them goes really well, you want to reorder and be profitable, you're gonna have to pay for that. What if two or three of these products goes well and you want to reorder all of them? You might not have enough money for the reorder, right? So I'd be thinking about how you can make one product work very well because you might only have enough money to reorder one product. Alright? So that's something to think about. Just get clear on your strategy. And the other thing is, consider some other ways that you can save money on your test batch. There are other ways to make this stuff cheaper rather than just ordering less units. Because remember, if you're ordering 20 units and you're getting them shipped over all the way from China, the express shipping is still going to be quite expensive per unit. There's a few other things you could try. One of them is sourcing stuff locally, right? So you could go to a local manufacturer, you could go to maybe ebay, right? One of the best places to find people who sell stuff wholesale. And you could find something to test on Amazon, right? So you could get, you know, 50 products from one eBay seller, 50 products from another ebay seller, combine them into a bundle, sell this bundle on your Amazon account and that can be your test batch. Obviously, shipping fees are going to be so much cheaper locally compared to sourcing from China, and in many cases you'll get the items much quicker as well. Alright, so this is something you could do instead of ordering less units if the purpose is saving money. And many of my clients have sourced stuff locally and made sales from their locally sourced stuff, and then they've gone on to create proper private label products out of those things by sourcing from China, putting a logo on it, branding the product, bundling it properly and shipping in a ton of stock. So a couple things to think about. It's a great question. Hopefully this helps out a few other people who have slightly smaller budgets. And just think about it, you know, what's the end goal here? Because if you want to sell several products, then you need to have the money to reorder those several products. It might still be better off if you do one at a time, but something you got to think about. All right, thanks so much for watching this video. If you found it useful, please comment below. Let me know if you've got any other questions. Comment below as well. And if you're watching this video outside of the Facebook group, then please click the link below or above this video, jump in the group, and you can get your questions answered on a video as well. All right, thanks so much for watching the video and we'll speak soon.