Prime Day Prep for Large Catalogs

With Prime Day 2025 extending to four full days, it’s not just a longer sale—it’s a bigger operational challenge. For brands managing large catalogs, this added time means more chances to win the Buy Box, or burn through inventory budgets and storage space if you're not careful.

Many sellers make the mistake of treating Prime Day like a liquidation event, dumping excess SKUs into FBA without a strategy. That can backfire, triggering long-term storage fees and poor sell-through rates.

To help you plan effectively and drive real results, we’ve built a step-by-step checklist for forecasting smartly, choosing the right SKUs, and optimizing your inventory strategy for Amazon’s biggest sales event of the year.
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1. Start With Demand-Driven SKU Selection

Don't promote everything—promote what sells.

Too many sellers assume Prime Day is the time to revive slow sellers. It’s not. This is a momentum game, and only products with proven velocity will cut through the noise.

• Dive into your historical data—pull reports from past Prime Days, Q4, and seasonal sales to see which products have high conversion rates and low return rates.
  
  
• Look for high-performing SKUs with strong reviews, fast sales velocity, and a clear value proposition. These are the ASINs worth your promotional dollars.
  
  
• Use Amazon’s Minimum Inventory Level Tool to identify the ASINs that are understocked and in demand, so you can proactively restock the right items.
  
  

Tip: Use Lightning Deals or Best Deals to spotlight your top sellers. Amazon is prioritizing discounts of 40% or more with premium placements this year, increasing visibility exponentially.
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2. Forecast Realistically for a 4-Day Event

Prime Day 2025 doubles the selling window, but that also means your inventory needs to last longer and be ready to move faster.

• Adjust your forecasts accordingly. If you sold 1,000 units over two days in 2024, plan for 2,000–2,500 this year. Add a buffer for residual post-event demand.
  
  
• Expect your ads and listings to do better than usual and prepare accordingly, so you don’t run out of stock or pause your ads too early.
  
  
• Include demand from external promotions like influencer pushes, email campaigns, and social media ads—Prime Day isn’t just about what happens on Amazon.
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3. Avoid the Overstock Trap

One of the most expensive Prime Day mistakes? Sending too many SKUs into FBA with no real plan to sell them. 

Use the Excess Inventory Report to identify what shouldn’t be restocked. These items drain storage space and distract from products that could win.

Also, more SKUs doesn’t mean more Sales. Prime Day isn’t a dumping ground for underperforming inventory. That’s how you rack up storage fees and tank your IPI. Products that aren’t optimized (poor listings, bad reviews, unclear value) won’t magically convert just because it’s Prime Day.
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4. Ship Early

With longer sales come longer lead times—and more congestion in Amazon’s warehouses. Delays during Prime Day can be catastrophic. Keep these dates in mind:

• June 9, 2025: Deadline for shipments with “minimal shipment splits”
• June 18, 2025: Deadline for “Amazon-optimized shipment splits”
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5. Monitor & Maintain Inventory Health

Once your SKUs are in FBA, the work isn’t over. Inventory that isn’t monitored is just expensive storage. On the other hand, keeping an eye on real-time sales and restocking at the right time is essential to avoid going out of stock when demand peaks.

• The FBA Inventory dashboard helps track your ASINs by excess, low stock, and replenishment status.
  
  
• Aim to maintain 28+ days of inventory for ASINs you’re pushing aggressively, especially those with Prime Day deals.
  
  
• Set restock alerts using Amazon’s Restock Tool and include lead times to prevent last-minute scrambling.
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6. Scale Advertising Without Burning Budget

Prime Day traffic is a gift—but only if you’re ready to handle it. Running out of budget halfway through means lost sales and blown opportunities.

• Increase your ad budgets with schedule-based budget rules—these let you automatically apply a temporary budget boost during Prime Day.
  
  
• Use dynamic bidding to stay competitive in real time. This prioritizes high-converting traffic and dials back when the quality drops.
  
  
• Use dynamic bidding to stay competitive in real time. This allows Amazon to automatically adjust your bid based on how likely a click is to convert into a sale. It helps prioritize high-converting traffic while dialing back spend when the quality of traffic drops.
  
  
• Focus your ads on your best-sellers and top discount products. Driving traffic to low-converting ASINs is a waste of spend and warehouse space.
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7. Optimize Your Storefront

Great content wins clicks—and sales. A poorly merchandised Amazon storefront can tank even your best Prime Day strategy.

• Schedule a Prime Day-specific version of your Amazon Store at least a week in advance. Feature your best promotions and top-selling categories.
  
  
• Add a Featured Deals widget to highlight active deals and coupons.
  
  
• Refresh your A+ Content and product pages. Use Manage Your Experiments to A/B test imagery, titles, and bullet points for better conversion rates.
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8. Understand Your Audience

Tailoring your strategy to buyer behavior can give you a massive edge. Consider this:

• Gen Z and Millennials respond to urgency, exclusivity, and buzz: use Lightning Deals, limited-time offers, and influencer content.
  
  
• Boomers and Gen X want value, clarity, and reliability: emphasize savings, trust signals, and practical benefits in your copy.
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Final Thoughts

Amazon isn’t just giving you four days to sell—it’s giving you four days to stand out with strategy. This is the time to execute with focus.

✅ Prioritize the best of your catalog
✅ Forecast with accuracy
✅ Promote with purpose
✅ Maintain control over inventory health from start to finish

Prime Day is a massive opportunity—but only if you're prepared to meet it head-on. The brands that win aren’t the ones doing the most—they’re the ones doing it best.

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