Andrew Erickson · Brand Expand: Beyond PPC

Stay in stock.
Keep your rank.

How to prevent stockouts and protect your Amazon rankings during Q4.

About me

Andrew Erickson.

2015Started selling on Etsy and Amazon.
3xThree 7-figure brands, two exits.
2026Three first-place AI hackathons.
NowCo-founder of InventoryHero.

My first brand

Stockouts were killing me.

Before

10 / day

Steady, for weeks.

Then

6 weeks

Out of stock.

After

10 / day

Right back where it was.

Lost

$16,800

420 units × $40. One product.

My $418,000 mistake.

What I have seen · not an Amazon rule

A stockout charges compound interest.

01Organic rank you have to buy back with ads.
02Reviews you never got, on units you never shipped.
03Shoppers who found a competitor instead.

The countdown

Today is October 29.

days to Black Friday

Nov 27

days to Cyber Monday

Nov 30

days to the last ship day

Dec 22, delivered by Christmas

My rule of thumb · days of cover

Never under 30 days. Never over 9 months.

Floor

30 days

Under 28, Amazon charges a low-inventory fee.

Ceiling

9 months

Cash sits. Aged fees start at 181 days in FBA.

Goal at FBA

6 to 8 weeks

Enough to sell. Not enough to age.

Goal, AWD + FBA

3 to 5 months

AWD refills FBA behind you.

What to do today

Under 6 weeks at FBA? Ship straight to FBA.

Ship to FBA today

Sellable sooner

From a US 3PL, most units sellable around Nov 29 in our data.

Ship to AWD today

Too late for Q4

It lands in AWD, then needs a second trip to FBA.

TikTok FBT check-in · as TikTok told sellers

TikTok closes the dock for Black Friday.

Now TikTok, because if you use Fulfilled by TikTok, your check-in problem looks different. This is what TikTok told FBT sellers in its September newsletter, as reported by seller sites, so confirm it in your own Seller Center. TikTok wanted holiday stock in by October 15, so that one has passed. From November 2, check-in at its warehouses can take up to five days. From November 21, the hubs only take small parcels: no full truckloads, no pallets, no floor-loaded containers. Then from Black Friday through December 6, the docks close completely. Your orders keep shipping, but a truck that shows up in that window is not unloaded. So for Black Friday, our math says trucks land by about November 20 and parcels by about November 21. If you have freight that might land in the blackout, have your carrier hold it at their terminal. Receiving restarts December 7, still slow until December 10, and is back to normal December 11.

TikTok Shop stock tips

Keep TikTok in stock from Amazon.

From AWD

Ship cartons to FBT

AWD can send bulk cartons to TikTok's warehouses.

Backup

Turn on MCF

If FBT runs out, Amazon ships your TikTok orders.

Discount

35% off MCF

On TikTok Shop orders, through an approved app.

Three tips to keep TikTok Shop in stock, using the stock you already have at Amazon. One: you can ship cartons from AWD straight to TikTok's FBT warehouses, using AWD's Multi-Channel Distribution. Get them in before November 21, when FBT goes to small parcels only, and well before the Black Friday dock closure. Two: set up Multi-Channel Fulfillment as your backup. If FBT runs out, Amazon ships your TikTok orders from your FBA stock, so the TikTok listing never goes dark. Three: Amazon is taking thirty-five percent off MCF fulfillment fees on TikTok Shop orders, Standard and Expedited, since July 16. The catch: the discount only applies when the orders flow through one of the approved integration apps, like Pipe17, GeekSeller or CedCommerce. Orders you type into Seller Central by hand do not get it. We have a free calculator for that discount on our site.

Never pay to advertise a stockout

Throttle ads. Don't pause them.

600 ÷ 25 a day = 24 days (out Nov 22)
600 ÷ 31 days = 19 a day (to Nov 29)

Today

25 / day

15 organic, 10 ads.

To last

19 / day

Until the restock.

Cut ad sales

About 56%

Ads 10 to 4 a day.

Scan to open the free PPC throttle calculator

FREE CALCULATOR

Run your own SKU

Now, what if you are going to run out before the restock lands? A made-up example. This SKU has six hundred units at FBA and sells twenty-five a day, fifteen organic and ten from ads. Six hundred divided by twenty-five is twenty-four days, so it runs out November twenty-second, the weekend before Black Friday. The restock ships from a 3PL today, sellable around November twenty-ninth. Seven days dark, right through Black Friday. The instinct is to switch the ads off. Do not. Slow them down just enough. To make it to the twenty-ninth, six hundred units have to last thirty-one days. That is about nineteen a day. About fifteen a day are organic, so ads can only bring in about four a day instead of ten. That is a cut of about fifty-six percent to ad-driven sales. Lower bids, trim budgets, or nudge the price up a little. Cutting ads costs a little momentum, but going dark costs all of it. Two honest limits: if organic alone gets you to the restock, pausing works too. And if organic alone will run you out, no ad setting saves you, you need a faster lane or a price increase. Scan this for the free calculator and run it on your own SKU.

Adjusting for seasonality · live demo

Forecast Q4 from the best signal you have.

1Your top 5 competitors' sales history.
2Your own sales history, last Q4.
3Keyword search volume.

Chinese New Year is Feb 6, 2027

Your Chinese New Year PO is due by Thanksgiving.

Your January planning starts now, because of Chinese New Year. It is February 6, 2027. My planning assumption: nothing gets produced in Asia from January 25 to the end of February. Factories wind down before the holiday and workers come back slowly after it. So your last shipment needs to be done and out by January 25. Work back from that. If your factory needs sixty days of production, the purchase order goes in by November 26, which is Thanksgiving Day. If it needs thirty days, December 26. And you also need your next order planned and placed before Chinese New Year, so your factory can start production on it the day it reopens, around March 1. If you wait until March to order, your spring stock lands in May. These dates are my planning assumptions, not a factory's promise. Ask your own factory for its closure dates.

January returns

Returnuary.

The money coming back · only if you file

Amazon and TikTok owe you money.

Inbound

Units missing

Amazon: 9 months. TikTok: day 14 to 180.

Warehouse

Lost or damaged

Both: 60 days.

Returns

Refunded, not returned

Amazon: 60 to 120 days. TikTok: 60 days.

Fees

Overcharged

Amazon: 90 days. TikTok: file promptly.

From each platform's published policy. Confirm before filing.

Two minutes · a yearly dollar estimate

What do Amazon and TikTok owe you?

1Your reimbursement estimate.
2Which claim windows are still open.
3Your Hero finds the claims. You file them.

Scan to take the InventoryHero reimbursement quiz

SCAN FOR THE QUIZ

inventoryhero.ai/tools/reimbursement-quiz

Thanks for having me

Everything from this talk, free.

1The PPC throttle prompt for ChatGPT or Claude. It runs slide 10.
2This entire slide deck, dates and all.
3The free PPC throttle calculator.

SCAN & DROP YOUR EMAIL

inventoryhero.ai/brandexpand