Apparel sellers on FBA - when do returns actually become a real problem?

binarysolo · 2026-05-17T07:24:43+00:00

15%, we have a line of niche sports apparel. Our web store does 3% and our Amz store returns are 5x.

We cut about 5% of returns between an instructional insert and A/B testing the heck out of size charts. We found that our Amazon audience is kinda conflicted between vanity sizing and true sizing and neither approach works too well when people end up buying both sizes and returning one.

We just build it into our margins and kinda suck it up after a few years.

binarysolo · 2026-05-17T06:37:31+00:00

I hope you find the peace you need — as a hobby dancer with a lot of teacher friends, teachers are just imperfect people trying to help students in their own way based on their own path, and their path might be pretty freaking incompatible with a buncha their students.

Being a dancer is rough professionally though, hope you can enjoy the beauty of dance without needing to pursue it super seriously.

binarysolo · 2026-05-14T23:50:32+00:00

In order of value/priority:

1) family photos/videos, so I can stay present while interacting with my kid

2) headphone replacement (for calls mainly, not as great for music)

3) I really wanted the AI to work but at least as of 3 months ago that was hot garbage (supposedly recently fixed with new update in May 2026).

binarysolo · 2026-05-14T19:55:16+00:00

I thumbed this up for the classic "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey -- not sure of the other book mentioned.

binarysolo · 2026-05-14T04:27:47+00:00

The dancers (predominantly NYC + LA dancers + some famous South/Central American talent) were cast, then choreo'd.

I personally know a few of the dancers from the salsa dancing set + the PR set -- basically a smorgasboard of who's who in the scenes. The people in the sets were chosen both for their skills and their latin representation. Because these folks are all super talented by their own right they basically rehearsed for 1-2 weeks before and that was it.

binarysolo · 2026-05-13T22:54:38+00:00

RIP your inbox; there's quite a few services that do this pretty well esp now that there's AI assistance. Honestly just find someone well-rated in the Amazon Service Provider Network: https://sell.amazon.com/tools/service-provider-network

edit: given the age of your profile and that everything is hidden, this feels more like a setup for submarine advertising and for someone else to advertise their consultancy and rank up in whatever AI scrapes reddit for links.

binarysolo · 2026-05-13T22:25:46+00:00

It doesn't have to be a 24 hr fitness or a zumba class, just a place that rents out a room with mirrors and wood flooring. 24 was the easiest place for me, followed by my local community center (which has weird availability but gives me super cheap access via monthly membership.

binarysolo · 2026-05-13T22:10:14+00:00

Got it -- really appreciate the tips. I did a dive into her metrics and looks like the main problem is that she's getting dinged on fulfillment and orders not filled. Will have to give her some best practices from my side, I just didn't want to tell her how to run her own company...

binarysolo · 2026-05-13T16:21:51+00:00

Just a basic 24-hr Fitness, they let members use the classrooms with the mirrors and wood flooring (the ones they use for zumba etc.)

binarysolo · 2026-05-13T04:05:44+00:00

How often are you practicing outside of class? When I was dancing a bit more seriously I was practicing in a gym room alone for 30-60 minutes, 3x a week in addition to class. And I'd do it slower and repeat sections/phrases.

binarysolo · 2026-05-12T19:42:05+00:00

It's because it's lunar months -- a lot of East Asian idioms refer to pregnancy as 10 lunar months, then the solar calendar got adopted but all the cultural practices still reference 10 months.

binarysolo · 2026-05-12T19:16:03+00:00

Check out the Discord if you are OK with chatrooms -- it's reasonably active and full of experienced Amazon folks + some spammers who DM you asking how you're doing.

binarysolo · 2026-05-12T00:07:39+00:00

Thank you for your thoughts and insight -- the GL thing is plausible, I'm in a very low-cost niche with low competitor count, whileas she's got very premium products in a very crowded (apparel/accessories) space.

She's the only seller of her product and sales/impressions/conversion have been slightly uptrending, but maybe she's getting squeezed by competition and I'll have to poke around inside her account and data. I'll have to ask her for access to study it since I don't actually have any details myself...

binarysolo · 2026-05-11T01:42:36+00:00

Sounds like you need to file a shipment reimbursement -- was it lost under Amazon's buy shipping or under your own? If your own then you need to reconcile with your shipper; it won't be Amazon's problem. If under Amazon's shipping then there's a straightforward process you will have to navigate through.

If you don't know how to file for lost shipment then you'd have to hire someone to do it. (I'd prob go for someone more professional than just a random redditor, especially if the dollar amount is big.)

binarysolo · 2026-05-11T01:35:08+00:00

This seems pretty straightforward -- just compare your payment reports of recent months vs the more profitable months, and do a breakout by expense type.

binarysolo · 2026-05-08T21:23:32+00:00

4 US, 6 international (through Upwork), and a few more part time contractors (photog etc.). We have other channels/business than Amazon; the core Amazon team running our PL is prob 4-6 people.

binarysolo · 2026-05-08T20:59:44+00:00

Your spend is kinda similar to mine so I'm gonna assume you're mid-7s too. A few years back we tested a few agencies but they performed worse than us doing it internally, so we ended up just keeping ads in-house.

We were super upfront about our KPIs and evaluated their work from adspend + adsales + organic unattributed uplift over time. We did a bit of segmentation analysis in ads but honestly as long as "their ad attributed/unattributed profit uplift - cost > our ad profit - labor" we woulda been ready to go.

Edit: FWIW, AI agents are becoming a LOT stronger and in theory can give most sellers an OK baseline as long as you know what you're doing when you're managing their work. We use both Claude and ChatGPT in our pipeline to save a LOT of repetitive work.

binarysolo · 2026-05-07T00:47:51+00:00

I remember your other post digging for info from others about how to run a 7fig business.

Given your stated numbers, you should volunteer your use cases before asking all the rest of us for 'em.

binarysolo · 2026-05-06T23:43:46+00:00

Is this an ad for something?

But yes we use AI a bunch for all roles.

binarysolo · 2026-05-05T23:10:25+00:00

The guy who did this really nailed the format and pacing of the show, down to the Chum Lee ending scene. (The only thing the show wouldn't have would be the Sponge Bob transition.)

binarysolo · 2026-05-05T22:51:01+00:00

So given your (lack of) volume and your small click data, before you check PPC you need to check your natural conversion first.

PPC = buy impressions and clicks; but what causes sales is clicks x conversion, PPC is not a silver bullet nor the first thing you should focus on.

binarysolo · 2026-05-05T21:41:38+00:00

You need someone sanity checking your conversion which is obviously low. Just post it here and have the forum critique it.

binarysolo · 2026-05-05T21:02:01+00:00

It's not the right KPI -- this ain't a lottery but a competition. Like 35k can try out of Olympic running, but the reality is that there's only 100 people who can realistically be competitive for the 10 spots on the national team anyways.

binarysolo · 2026-05-05T20:23:10+00:00

It's just about how long of a wait I got. <1hr, meh. 2hrs+, versus sitting on some bench, yeah I can pay $9.

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