Three clients ran out of stock this year. Only one of them had the problem you'd
By Brandon Fishman · July 23, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Three clients ran out of stock this year. Only one of them had the problem you'd expect.
The first one shipped product to Amazon with the wrong expiration date printed on the package. Amazon wouldn't accept the inbound. They had to pull it all back, get it relabeled, and by the time it returned to the FC they were out of stock for weeks.
The second one mislabeled the actual packaging. Amazon's receiving system couldn't process it. Same result.
The third one miscalculated demand the old-fashioned way.
All three lost the same things: BSR, organic ranking, and Subscribe and Save subscribers. It takes weeks to claw any of that back, and the subscribers don't return automatically when inventory does.
Every founder I talk to thinks stockouts are a demand forecasting problem. Fix the forecast, fix the stockouts.
That's almost never what I see.
The brands I work with run out of stock because of operational mistakes Amazon caught upstream. Wrong dates, wrong labels, inbound shipments rejected at receiving.
If you're auditing your Amazon ops this quarter, don't start with the demand forecast. Start with what happens between your manufacturer and the FC.
That's where most stockouts actually begin.
♻️ Repost if this changes how you think about inventory risk.
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