How Do I Find a Competitor's Stock Levels Using Inventory Levels?

As a private seller on Amazon, you will discover there are times when you need to research stock levels of specific products available on Amazon. This tutorial summarizes those times, and shows you how to use the Helium 10 tool Inventory Levels. 

I. Wholesale Product Research

As a wholesaler, you may need to sell a product at a higher price than your competitors. When that’s the case, you are unlikely to capture the Buy Box or sell many products because customers will choose to buy the product at the lesser price. But, there are scenarios in which customers will pay the higher price--when your competitors run out of stock--and you will sell at a price that nets you a profit. 

You can use Inventory Levels to determine how much inventory a seller (or multiple sellers) has in stock, and whether they are in any danger of running out. If sellers frequently run out of stock, then you know there will be periods of time in which shoppers will buy from you, because you are the only one who can sell and ship the item immediately.

II. Private Sellers and Hijackers

Private sellers occasionally discover other sellers have jumped onto their listing. It might simply be someone who bought the product, didn’t return it, but decided to sell it themselves. But it might be more serious, a shady seller with a counterfeit product, usually of inferior quality, and whose sales could result in a lot of bad reviews. If they claim to be selling the same product, and share your listing, then you share reviews as well. How do you figure out whether you need to act quickly?

You can run Inventory Levels on your own product to see how many items the second seller has in stock. For example, if the second seller only has one or two items in stock, it’s likely they will sell them and then disappear. But if they are selling FBA and have hundreds of products in stock, you know that they are selling counterfeit items at your expense and risk. You will need to do a test buy, and build a case with Amazon to have them removed from your listing.

Now that we’ve covered a couple of the reasons you need Inventory Levels, let’s quickly walk through the process.

1. Inventory Levels is part of the Chrome Extension that runs on the Amazon website. To use the tool, you must be on a product listing page.

2. You must be signed into Helium 10 to use the extension, but if you are not, the software will prompt you to log in so you can open the tool. Activate the drop-down menu by clicking on the Helium 10 icon in the top right corner of the browser toolbar. Then click the button that says Inventory Levels.

3. Inventory Levels will open as a pop-up window, and begin loading the data available on the listing.

In the chart, you’ll see the names of each seller, whether the seller is fulfilling the product by MFN or FBA, how many items are currently in stock (this can change daily, and/or be controlled by the seller, especially if the product is MFN), the prices, seller ratings, percentage of positive buyer feedback, and the total number of seller ratings. This set of data can help you determine how long a seller has been in business on Amazon, and how successful customers have been with their service.

If you see a n/a appear in the Stock column, then the seller has found a way to obscure their inventory numbers.

To learn more about how Helium 10 can help you manage your inventory, check out the articles in the Inventory Management section of the Knowledge Base. To learn how Helium 10 can help you protect your inventory from arbitrage, check out the articles in the Inventory Protector section of the Knowledge Base.