Modern Retail+ Research: How Amazon sellers are prepping for a deal-heavy October Prime Day and holiday season

Focus group members

Monil Kothari, founder of Haus of Brilliance, a New York City–based fine jewelry brand.

Stacey Tank, CEO of Bespoke Beauty Brands, parent of Jason Wu Beauty and KimChi Chic Beauty. KimChi started selling on Amazon about 18 months ago, but the company also sells through other channels, including DTC, TikTok Shop and traditional wholesale.

Chuck Gregorich, founder of Net Health Shops, an outdoor goods brand selling fire pits, fountains, hammocks and other bulky garden items. Gregorich has been selling his wares through Amazon.com for nearly 20 years, but he also sells on other marketplaces, including Home Depot, Lowe’s and Walmart.

Prime Big Deal Days outlook

Kothari: “I’m actually canceling my Lightning Deals for this October Prime Day. We don’t have enough inventory for the bestsellers that were picked for the Prime exclusive deals. On top of that, the fee is $1,000 for one of my items, and I have, like, 25 units left. It doesn’t make sense to pay a fee, plus take a discount, still advertise and compress margins. Also, the cost of replenishment is much higher. I’m going to run very minimal coupons, as well, on the items — maybe 5% just to get the value of a coupon.

Tank: “We will participate. In the last four-day Prime event, we saw a 360% increase in sales, and it was profitable for us. Our approach for this October is to make sure we’re in stock, so we shipped in heavy, shipped in early, knowing a bit more about what the Amazon customer is excited about from us to make sure that we’re deep enough. We have a pretty science-based approach. We can see where you are on in-stock. If you’re driving ad spend, what’s your return? Then we can move the dials. There’s no limit on the number of tweaks we can make.

Gregorich: “Our October will be very similar to our July. In July, we had a lot of out-of-stock issues or low-stock issues, so we did not participate very well at all compared to last July. Even though we’re back in stock now, it isn’t like we’ve got all this extra stock where I can say, ‘Let’s really blow this out in October,’ because then I’ll be out in December. So, we’ll really pull back from where we were a year ago. The other thing is that we have a major tariff cost, and we haven’t increased our prices enough. For some things, we’re just not going to be able to do as heavy of discounts as we would have last year.”

Earlier deals, fewer deals

Kothari: “We’ll definitely be doing less deep discounts, so focusing on more reasonable promotions and being more targeted. We do have some older stocks, so we’ll maybe be more focused on moving that and getting it out of the way. We’re also working with more local vendors, so we’re actually prioritizing getting local inventory up and running for the holidays. I think the holidays are going to be good, but I think it’s going to be good for those who are prepared with stock and the margins needed to thrive, not just get through. We’re trying to diversify our advertising across different products, running different campaigns and doing more A+ Content on the items that are not our bestsellers, to make up for the fact that we might not have them for the holiday.”

Tank: “Deals are going to start early. There’s paranoia about the fragility of the customer — people’s debt levels are rising, and disposable income is going down. I think people will come out with what they can do pretty early. What we’re doing is doubling down on innovation. We have a ton of innovation that has launched and is launching. We have a firecracker first quarter of innovation that’s planned and first-ever K-beauty things in the U.S. that we’re going to be launching soon. For those who are able to have good fundamentals, this is a time to play to your strengths and try to really show up for the consumer.”

Gregorich: “We’ve got some SKUs specific to holiday — things like Christmas trees or ornaments. We’ve got a two or three month window where it’s either going to sell or it’s not going to sell. In other years, if we didn’t sell out a SKU, I’d be OK to just let that carry over to next year. This year, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it sells out, even if that means aggressive discounting in early December. I don’t want to carry that inventory another year, along with the extra carrying cost I have in my current inventory, which is 30-40% higher than it was a year ago because of all these tariffs. We’ll be conservative on discounting early on, but flexible. You never know until you get there — something sold really well last year, and this year, nobody wants it.”

‘Cash is queen’

Kothari: “I still think customer sentiment, weirdly enough, is high. But I think it’s fragmented across income groups. Most of retail now is being driven by a smaller, affluent group of customers. My own numbers are showing that our sales are up.”

Tank: “We’re starting to see these young DTC brands disappear — Paravel, Youthforia, Drew Barrymore’s cosmetics brand Flower, Paravel. I think we’ll see more of that as cost pressures rise. Cash is queen for us. We’re rock solid, but a lot of smaller players won’t be able to weather this. I wonder now: Will we be able to take share? We get retailers that call us saying, ‘Hey, we have extra shelf space because so-and-so is not able to participate anymore.’ There will definitely be some type of shakeout effects going on.”